Of Pens and Swords

by Rena Rocford

  Christine nodded. “Okay, that seems fair.” She kept nodding like a bobble head. “But you’ll help.”

  “Yes, and you in turn will do a smashing good job on your English class so you could go to college if you wanted to. Besides, you’ll have to study if you want to really capture his heart.” I gave her the look. “I won’t be available to wax poetic for you on your wedding night.”

  She held her hands together like a particularly penitent pilgrim. “Yes, of course, I’ll even try to get good grades.”

  “You don’t try?”

  “What’s the point? I’m a dancer. How can I put that kind of effort into my class work when I have to figure out how to perfect my turnout and control my foot when it’s sailing through the air a foot over my head.”

  “Point.” I chewed on my lip. “So we need to get his attention. We’ll need something big. Something romantic. Something Sara could never do.”

  “Poetry!” Christine cried out. “That’s easy, right?”

  “Poetry?” I choked. “Easy, you think poetry is easy?”

  “Well, Shakespeare wrote all those plays in poetry.”

  “It’s iambic pentameter, it’s meter, not necessarily a poem. Poetry is hard to get right. If you strike the wrong chord, it’ll sound chincy and trite. We’re looking for something that will speak to his soul.”

  “Poetry about art—his art!—it’ll be flattering and something Sara could never do. She doesn’t see past herself, so she probably never compliments his work.” Then she paused. “You can write poetry about art, right?”

  “Oh yeah, you could write poetry about cucumbers, but I doubt that’s the sort of key you want to strike.”

  She snorted. “No, but I’d like for him to know how his smile lights the room—how I light up inside when I see him. You know, how you just can’t stop thinking about him?”

  “Right, so I’ll just play him that stalker song from the eighties, and everything will be well addressed.”

  She slapped the table. “I’m trying to be serious here!”

  A smile lit my lips. “See, poetry is hard, hard work. You have to pull out the truths of your heart and lay them out for the world to see. Sometimes, that means something to someone, and they say so. Sometimes, it comes off as a gooey, sappy, love sick puppy with about as much in common with poetry as a Chihuahua and an elephant. And people say terrible things about art. It’s a risk.”

  “Dancing is a risk. What if someone doesn’t think you’re jumping high enough, or holding your legs at just the right angle? Critics are critics. Why can’t you just write him a dance?”

  I thought about that for a moment. “I’ll have to watch more ballet, but that’s basically what poetry is, words that dance across the mind. It’s not the perfection, it’s the hints and ghosts of a soul.” I toyed with words in my mind, but everything seemed like a flailing hippo compared to what I felt. It was like my words weren’t strong enough to convey my thoughts. I shook off the moment with a deep breath. “Still, we need to plan, and I need to start writing.” I pointed at Christine, drawing my focus back to the moment. “You, however, need to get moving on your homework.”

  She bent diligently to her book and pulled out a piece of paper folded in half near the beginning of this week’s assignment. I had already done it. I’d read Hamlet enough to not need to spend time rereading it. I’d seen a version with David Tenant: fantastic. Not just because he made an excellent Doctor, but because he really did the half crazy thing.

  Now all I needed to do was write a poem to crack the heart of the toughest nut in the whole school. It wasn’t like Rochan had actually shared his life ambitions with me. He was on the debate team, but was it something he did to shut his father up? I’d seen his father try to convince him to send applications to Yale and Brown, but I didn’t know if that’s what was really in his heart. He was amazing with photography, but everyone said art paid nothing. Was he bound for the tie wearing, ivy covered campuses of the East Coast? Was this year just his last chance to say goodbye to photography forever?

  Ah, but there was a way to tell: the college fair.

  If Rochan was going to follow his father’s lawyer footsteps, then he’d be all over the Harvard booth. If he was going to keep any hope of photography and art alive, he’d go to the Berkley booth. Not that they didn’t have a pre-law degree. And that was the beauty of it. If he listed law as his major and art as his minor, then he could swap the degrees at any point.

  Or double degree. Plenty of people did that when they had a true passion.

  So all I needed to do was follow him around tomorrow and see where he went.

  And it would be interesting to see where Sara went. Her choices would tell me a lot about what level of crazy we could expect. The ballet bot had spent her whole life trying to work herself into the position Christine was in now. The only problem was that puberty had bestowed upon Sara the same measurements as Barbie. Technically speaking, a beautiful body, but in terms of dance?

  Well, there weren’t a lot of very womanly ballerinas for a reason. Flat was preferable for dancing in the big leagues, and Sara no longer qualified.

  So would she sneer at the fair, or would she look into things like how to get into a community college? Right, Sara settle for something like a community college? Who was I kidding? She’d be there asking for a brochure to Yale.

  I sat with a plop on the chair across from Christine. It wasn’t like this was hard work, but poetry? I never let anyone read it. What if he hated it?

  What if he loved it?

  And if he liked it, how could I reproduce it?

  Well, Christine had a list of things she wanted him to know, so I could start there. His smile, his presence, his personal aura. Sweet mother of grammar, this was going to suck.

  I put my pen to paper and wrote a few lines. After comparing his smile to a sunrise for the third time, I decided I sounded too much like a toothpaste commercial. And even if it was spectacular, how could poetry distract anyone from the absolutely perfect body of Sara Davies?

  This was going to take more than poetry. I needed to call in favors.

  y phone rang, tearing me out of sleep. The world swam into focus from the murky place of dreams. Saturdays shouldn’t start with phone calls.

  “Hello,” I croaked into the phone.

  “Despite your decidedly beginner status,” Maestro Ferrero said, “I’ve decided to give you a shot. City Fencers is down a member. Kathy has the flu and I just found out about it. You haven’t fenced epee for anyone else this year, have you?”

  “Umm, no, but I don’t even have a—”

  “You can borrow my regulation weapon. But if you want to take advantage of fencing on the City B Team, you’ll need to get to Folsom and Eighth by nine-thirty. Think you can manage?”

  I squinted at the clock on my phone. It read 8:30. An hour. An hour to grab my uniform, all the gear I could manage, and get to The City. It took about an hour to get to that part of San Francisco. I sat straight up in bed. “I’ll be there.”

  “Good. Don’t forget to bring your dancing shoes.”

  A grin slid across my face. “Of course not.”

  The phone clicked on her end like it was one of those old style phones that had a holder to slam it into. I jumped out of bed, throwing the covers to the side. My bare feet hit the clutter on my floor, but I didn’t have time for anything but moving. “Mom!”

  “Cyra, is it necessary to yell?” her muffled reply came from across the hall.

  “I have a competition. I’ve gotta go!”

  “When did this happen?”

  I dug through my sock drawer, throwing the paired socks that weren’t for fencing. I couldn’t wear the usual heifer socks, because I was representing City. I needed some blue socks. I had a whole slew of different colored socks for practice, but there was a real dearth of appropriate knee-length socks in the world. I had a set with the Superman logo on the side, and I didn’t have time to look for more. “Someone c
ame down with the flu.”

  “When do you need to be there?”

  “Nine-thirty.”

  A muffled curse followed by feet hitting the floor. I tore through my shirts and checked my underwear. “White, white, white, where are the white ones?” The hazards of wearing over glorified white spandex.

  “There’s some in the dryer with your uniform,” my mom called.

  I tore down the stairs, half dressed and not caring if the windows were open. I got to the bottom of the stairs and turned the corner to the laundry closet under the stairs. The folding doors caught as I pushed them back and popped open the dryer. Clothes spilled out onto the ground. And throwing modesty to the wind, I stripped on the spot, putting on everything right then and there. I put my uniform on, since I probably wouldn’t have time to change at the venue.

  Saturday morning in San Francisco, there’d be people dressed weirder than me.

  I tucked an extra shirt and a pair of pants under my right arm as I zipped up my great white pants. The suspenders slipped over my shoulders, and I found a pair of flip flops near the dryer. Back upstairs to grab my fencing bag, and by the time I made it down again, Mom met me at the bottom of the stairs with a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. She held it up to my mouth, and I chomped it on my way to the door. Still stuffing gear into my bag, I kicked the door shut. I turned back to the house for my keys, but my mom stood there holding them out to me.

  I mumbled around the sandwich in my mouth. “Thank you.”

  “Kick their butts, sweetie.”

  I had the best mom.

  The car presented its own set of trouble, but the top was already down, so I just dropped my bag in over the side and slipped into the right hand seat. Its faded paint couldn’t diminish from the awesome of having a car with a shifter on the left side. I reached around the steering wheel to stuff the keys in the ignition and punched it. The MGB groaned to life, but after a couple revs, it puttered into motion.

  Driving had a way of reminding me of the dreams I used to have where I could fly. A convertible was about as close to flying as I was going to get. Wind whipped around me, blasting me from all sides. By the third stop sign, I pulled my hat out of the glove box and stuffed it over my head. The only drawback to early drives in a convertible was the wind. My short hair couldn’t fall into my eyes, but the wind chill on even a mild day became unbearable fast.

  By the time I made the freeway, the ground sped beneath my car.

  Northern California was only just getting its fall on. Green oak trees dotted the blonde hills, and they gave way to the mud flats and twisting hills leading up to the Golden Gate Bridge.

  In a stream of traffic, I came out of the tunnel. Fog clung to the rust-red bridge, but the towers poked through the tops, and a steady wind pushed the clouds through the cables of the great bridge. Sun beamed off the top of the rolls of fog, and as I drove into the shadow, the chill, damp air seeped into my bones.

  On the bridge, traffic slowed, and the fog moaned through the cables. The deck swayed, and for a second it seemed like the bridge breathed, a dragon just waiting to come to life. I tried not to let it psych me out. I needed my head in the game. I spun it on its head.

  Of course a dragon would help me cross the bay. A dragon would know where I was going. I let my mind paint the bridge into a great beast, rushing me to my appointment with destiny.

  Traffic ground to a halt in front of a couple of red lights. Some guy checked out my car, and I kept my stump out of view for a full two beats as he started to check me out. I thumped it up on the steering wheel so I could take the shifter in my hand. Shock radiated across his face like lightning, and I laughed.

  People were so shallow sometimes.

  The light turned green, and I peeled out as he gawked, unable to make enough sense of the situation to drive. He got lost in the traffic before the next light caught me, and before long, I pulled up to the salle hosting the competition. With a yank, I set the parking brake and grabbed my gear from over the side of the car. Usually, I’d put the tonneau cover on, but I’d have to trust luck and the decency of humanity for a couple hours.

  Luck and the decency of humanity? I was screwed. I just hoped they didn’t take anything important.

  My heart raced as I hit the door. Butterflies raised their ugly heads, and no amount of envisioning dragons or poking fun at people could hold back the fact that I was going to compete in epee for the first time ever.

  I took the stairs two at a time. The top floor of the raggedy building had all the walls removed. Posts held the ceiling up, and frosted glass kept out the great views of the I 80 overpass just to the south. Traffic droned on, but no louder than the fans, already running at full tilt. Hoards of fencers dressed all in white milled around.

  Ferrero saw me first. “Cyra!”

  I searched, and there she stood, two other fencers standing beside her. Both were clearly older than college age. Of course, this was the first year I’d be old enough to fence as an adult, so this was my new reality: people with more experience fencing than I had years of life. The two fencers’ shrewd gaze speared me. Their eyes searched out any weakness that I might have, trying to decide if today was going to be a complete wash.

  My insides suddenly turned to slush.

  I could feel their scowls on my skin. They hated me. They hated that they had to fence with me. I was the weak link. If they wanted, they could pull out now before anyone had seen the new girl fencing a weapon she didn’t even know.

  Maybe they were on to something.

  “Just in time,” Ferrero said. “This is Janet.” She pointed to the taller of the two. She was in her twenties, older, and somehow absolutely gorgeous. She had that willowy build that said basket ball or professional elf. Ferrero pointed to the shorter of the two. “This is Matilda, but most people call her Lady Death.” She looked up at me, holding out her hand to shake. The black makeup around her eyes echoed the Eye of Osiris. I took her right hand with my left. She scowled briefly as her eyes sought out the end of my right arm. She stiffened, covering her shock by shaking extra hard.

  Yeah, no hand, sweetie.

  “City! Do you have a third? We have a time limit here.”

  Ferrero turned to handle the officials. “Yes, this is the third. She is one of City’s alternates.” Over her shoulder to me, “Get ready.” She widened her eyes as she said it, an indication that I should hurry.

  Without being told a second time, I slipped into my jacket. Regulation uniforms had Velcro up the side of the fencing jacket, and I had all of my special protective gear built into my jacket to make it easier to get dressed.

  “Do you need help with your jacket?” Janet asked.

  Lining up the Velcro with my stump, I said, “Nope, I’ve got it, but thanks for the offer.”

  I reached back into my bag for the prosthetic hand I used for fencing. Ferrero caught me grabbing the extra hand.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Putting on my hand.”

  She shook her head. “Nope. This is epee. Everything you take on the strip is target. No need to bring any extra target with you.”

  I stared at her, then at my fake hand. It wasn’t that I didn’t like the prosthetics—some of them were really incredible—but I’d never fenced without it. It was like wearing a bikini or shaving my head.

  But she had a point. Everything was target in epee. In foil, if someone hit my prosthetic hand, it didn’t matter. In epee, it was a point for them.

  I put the fake hand back in my bag. Janet and Matilda exchanged a glance, but I put them out of my mind as we reported to the strip as a team.

  Ferrero had two regulation wired epees on the strip, and we started by testing everyone’s weapons with the weights. Wire mesh on the floor marked out the whole strip, and two sets of three chairs sat on either side of the scoring boxes. On the sheet next to the scoring box, my name sat in the slot for the first bout.

  “First up, we have Murphy and Berque. Fencers to the
ready,” the official calling our match said.

  Janet came to my side as I headed to the box of retracting cords that would connect us to the scoring machine. She grabbed the cord and clipped it to the back of my jacket before plugging my cord into the wire that ran through my jacket and down my arm to the weapon.

  She squeezed my shoulder. “Murphy is slow on her toes, but fast to get into the crook of your arm. She has nothing but counter attacks. She’ll show you her wrist, but she has a wicked counter.” She patted my back. “Kick her ass.”

  So much for good luck.

  My heart kicked into high gear as the urge to just call the whole thing off flooded through my body. This was the moment. Here was the truth of it. There was no one but me and my opponent. The official would only call things off if someone hit outside the strip, left the playing field, or committed an illegal maneuver, and this was epee, there weren’t many illegal moves.

  I raised my weapon in salute. Without meaning to, I brought it all the way to my lips, and the cold kiss of metal seemed only too fitting. My opponent returned the salute with a lazy wave of her hand before turning to the ref. I brought my epee to full salute with a calm deliberate motion that had nothing to do with the nerves pouring through my body.

  “En garde,” the official called.

  The thump thump thump in my throat took up all my thought. It pulsed through my arm, exploding in my hand as my knuckles turned white under the glove. I dropped into a low stance, and my muscles tensed like a spring waiting to leap forward. My whole body quivered in anticipation.

  I’d be fine once we started, but the buildup tore at my nerves.

  Every muscle bunched as the blood pumped through my body. Waiting for the ref to start the bout, everything in the room came into sudden, clear focus. Two strips over, someone dropped their water bottle, and it rolled across the floor. At the main table, one of the administrators chuckled at a joke. Janet narrowed her eyes at me, and my opponent showed me her wrist in a lazy en garde. It wasn’t that I thought I could actually hit her wrist. I hadn’t practiced enough to really nail it.