Dark Libraries and uppity wizard boy

I was having one of those moments where I was so lost in my head I'd somehow gotten from the Fairy Queen...to dancing...to rabbits....to luck...to holes and before I knew it, in the real world I'd run smack into something that was very much not a library bookshelf.    It was a person with a disconcertingly inviting chest  and... I looked up and froze in that "I'm just going to stand here staring like an awkward stone statue" mode that you can't break out of no matter how much you realize you're doing it.  It was Flynn.   In the process of my staring I gave up trying to find something wrong with him.   My mother had made it very clear I wasn't the kind of girl boys liked, and frankly I wasn't really into the kind of "liking" she did, so I hadn't wasted much time thinking about members of the opposite sex.  But I probably would have if they all looked like this darn uppity wizard I'd just smacked into like a lost blind mouse. 

I wanted to be that cool girl.  The one who was brilliant and in charge and not like those "other" girls, even though at this moment my body was betraying me entirely by imagining what it would be like to be kissed by him.  Kissed by him! 

Really, it was too galling!  Despised was a mild description of how he seemed to feel about me, and I desperately wanted to cling to the higher moral ground here.  I hadn't done anything, and yet here he was smoldering at me like he wanted consume me.  All of the sudden I noticed that we were in a very abandoned and quiet section full of Gothic books and Greek scribblings.   A shiver ran down my spine... I gulped.   Don't look at his eyes again, I told myself, don't look at his eyes. That was my undoing right there, of course when I'd finally ripped my eyes off of his, I had to try very hard not to notice how full his lips were. 

"You want this but you aren't getting it.'  He said, putting his hand on the shelf above my head.  His head lowered until his lips were barely inches from mine.   That magic...or spell...or potion or whatever I'd felt earlier, ripped through me again. 

Breathe.  Just breathe.

I flushed.  "That's fine."  I said chasing down and flagging my inner cool girl and forcing her into service.   He was probably used to being in salaciously dark corners of the library with girls, and I was the only one here who was hanging onto my wits by a thread. 

"It won't work on me."  He whispered into my ear. 

I had no idea what he was talking about. 

"You can play your little shenanigans with everyone else, but just know that I'm completely immune." He said, all smirky and smouldery and way way too hot.

I nodded.  I had no idea what he was talking about, but I believed him... I definitely believed him.  

He turned to leave, and my brain got a small fart of clear headedness.  Wait.  I grabbed his arm.   "Why am I here then?" I asked.  "If I'm really so evil, then why not just have me dismissed?"

I had to know.   If I was going to have stones for breakfast, room with a vampire and roll around in Cyclop salivia then I wanted to know if I was going to get sent home in a hairs breadth because Flynn and who knows who else had this idea I was some sort of sinister fakester. 

"Because it wouldn't be fair."  Flynn said. He folded his arms, surveying me. "I would never dismiss decent magic if it's the real thing."  It was almost as if he was daring me to prove him wrong. 

"What other kind of magic would I do?" I asked.  Unless he was accusing me of dark magic.

"Indeed."  He said, giving me a hard stare.  And with that he turned on his heel and walked away without a backwards glance.  I watched his black robe billowing around his tall body as he disappeared around a corner.   I finally breathed for what felt like the first time in way too long.  

Yeah, Christina could have the advanced spell tutelage if we won...  I didn't care at all.  Right?  Right. 

Diamond headaches and spinning tapestries

If I took the craziest thing I’d ever done in my life... (which was probably the time I tried to turn myself into a Herzarldan Monk by eating nothing but autumn leaves and drinking fairy sweat...turns out they’re born being able to subsist on such things and all I did was make my mother thrilled with how thin I became.  I know, I know...It was very nearly a Siren-ish thing to do, but I digress).  ...If I took the craziest thing, and multiplied it by ten and then added a doubling spell, it wouldn’t even come close to how I felt being summoned through the halls of St. Hernadine’s.  I just hoped that like my ill-fated attempt at piety, I wasn’t destined to some how crash and burn in such a way that delighted only my mother.  

At the rate I was going, there was a fair chance I might actually end up ironically turning into a halfway decent siren.   Oh the hilarity.   Too bad I wanted to be… well really anything other than a siren right now.   Last week I would have been thrilled at someone even half suggesting I might be beautifully charming, but it was too late...I’d tasted the forbidden fruit of maladical magic and now I wanted nothing more than to be running through foreboding stone halls in a green robe with a vampire and half demon.  

Cristina came to a screeching halt in front of me.  “No way. “  She said.  

“What?” Victoria and Tad asked.  They were both out of breath.  That’s what they got for being witches and wizards who had things like house brownies to do their running for them.  

“It’s Meritabulous.”  Lox said. “...Like our study, except where all the greatest minds of St. Hernadine’s come to relax and hash things out.”  

“You mean the room with the pillows?”   Here I’d thought I’d stumbled upon a secret haven next to my room, I hadn’t realized I was supposed to go in there, but it made sense that this place would intentionally lure you in with pillows and then get you stuck elucidating like a stuck cornish pixie with a few drinks under his belt.  ...or in our case, arguing like a whole roomful of said cornish pixies.  I gave the floor a little stomp just to let it know I was onto its tricks, and then I immediately felt stupid for being sassy to a floor.

“Should we go in?” Cristina asked, she bit her bottom lip and hesitated.  

“I thought vampires weren’t scared of anything.”  Lox said, pushing the door open as if to prove demons...er, half demons were far more brave than paltry vampires.    I noticed his arms were trembling a little though.  Apparently my coming from a small village had at least one advantage.  The entirety of our gossip about St. Hernadine’s could be summed up under the category “the only place you want to be if you’re dying” which  ensured I didn’t get nervous about the lofty unattainableness of unknown places like “Meritabulous”.   I’d thought I was super smart to be lusting after the library.  

“Good morning, I trust you all have had a good night’s sleep.”   

It was Master Dartor.

Everyone chuckled, the room was chalk full of blurry eyed people wearing green robes a size too big for them.   The laughter was the nervous kind bordering on delirium...but what else were you supposed to do when the Chief of Maladical Medicine was talking to you?  

“I’m going to do something new with you guys.”  He said.  “I’m going to ask the new kids for help.”  Behind him was Dr. Groats and a whole line of other Presencers.  They didn’t look as thrilled as Master Dartor about this new development.  I wondered if they were as exhausted as we were, or if you got used to it after awhile.    “We’ve got a very important patient, and right now she’s a mystery.  Reverse spells show nothing, potion panels show nothing, yet she’s dying with no visible cause.  She’s a ticking clock and she is going to die if someone doesn’t make a diagnoses.   This is where you come in.  These esteemable Dr.’s apparently can’t do it alone.”  

Master Dartor smiled like a benevolent father as he gestured to the imposing line up of black robes behind him.  They looked like one giant rebellious thundercloud.   And that’s when I gave up and joined the ranks of Lox and Cristina, feeling totally and completely unworthy to be standing in this room.

“I know you’re tired.  I know ‘exhausted’ has taken on new meaning, so I’m going to keep this short.  Whoever finds the answer gets to join Dr. Cargill here in treating her.  If there’s an advanced magical spell that needs to be done, or a complicated potion, you’ll get the chance to learn it as if you were a fourth year student.”  He said.  “I have her Missive right here.”  He tapped his wand in the air.  A million diamonds burst forth and formed briefly into a portrait of the patient.

It was someone everyone knew.  Even a lowly person from Hogswallow like me knew who it was.   She was a thousand years old, but looked like she was sixteen, had lips that poems would say were made of laughter and eyes that made you think they’d been chiseled out of pure wisdom or something.  It was the Fairy Queen.  

“Your quest starts now.”  Master Dartor said as the diamonds split off the portrait and found their way into each of our heads.  The moment mine hit me, I got reams and reams of information pouring into my brain.  Height, weight, age, every spell that had been done on her, every diagnoses ruled out or hypothesized.  Even though it was just information, I staggered a little under the weight… and I was one of the lucky ones, a little blonde intern with a heart shaped face fell over and a few others like Tad passed out on the floor.  

The Centaur who did our orientation hid a smirk behind a covered cough.   Master Dartor though, was unfazed by the less than confidence instilling reactions. .  

“You are dismissed.”

A sea of green robes started awkwardly shuffling for the door.  Most of us were staring confusedly off in the distance as we were pushed forward by our comrades, blinking as if we being bombarded by an epic sandstorm, which...if you could see into our heads was mostly an accurate picture.  But a few people like Cristina were craning their necks and walking as slow as possible...taking in every elusive forbidden detail...every piece of overstuffed leather furniture, the floating urns of mysterious liquids, the tapestries that you couldn’t look too long at without feeling like you were going insane.   It wasn’t until I had safely landed in the hall again that I realized something weird really had been going on with the tapestries… it was like the threads moved at nearly blinding speed, changing the colors and patterns so imperceptibly you weren’t sure if you were on being spun around or watching the worlds slowest painter.  I felt like maybe I needed to dunk my head under cold water or something to come out of it.

Cristina caught up with me.  “Hey, you wanna work together?” She asked.  

My brain was still frantically trying to process and sort the medical history of someone who was a thousand years old, but I guess I wasn’t able to keep the completely shocked look off my face because she noticed and nodded.

“Yeah, I should apologize about what I said earlier…”  

(by earlier, did she mean one thing in particular...or basically every word that’s come out of her mouth since I met her?)

“...but I’m not.”  She said.  “We both know you don’t like meaningless small talk.  What I really want is an in with Dr. Cargill and I think you’re the ticket.”  

I laughed out loud even though come to think of it, there really wasn’t anything funny about what she said.  I wanted nothing to do with uppity wizard boy and his seduction charms that made me feel unraveled inside every time I was around him.

“You’re crazy.”  I said.  Really, she sure knew how to charm someone into wanting to work with them.  “But I think you have me confused with you.  I have zero...no less than zero desire to work with Dr. Cargill and I’m pretty sure the feeling is mutual.”

“Wilkes, stop being an idiot.  The fourth years are placing bets on which one of the first years has the biggest chance to figure this out, and you’re leading the odds by a long shot.  I’m just saying, I went to Lussier and was the top of my class… I could help you, I just want a chance to do at least one upper advancement spell.”  

Was she seriously giving me her resume?  Why would I care where she went she went to school?  I was the forbidden siren from a small village on the east cove.  “You’ve got the wrong person.” I said.  This conversation was making me more and more uncomfortable.

“You know I didn’t take you for the ruthless type, but I have to say... Bravo.  Bra-freking-vo.”  Cristina said.  “You really did have me fooled for a second, but I guess deep down inside you’re just as competitive as the rest of us.”  

That wasn’t fair.  How many ways did I have to say I didn’t want to have anything to do with Flynn.  And was I not allowed to be competitive for some reason?  

“Fine.”  I said.  “We can work together… BUT, I don’t want in on any of the spells or potions.  You can have them.”  

“You’re kidding.”  Cristina said, “It’s the biggest opportunity a first year intern like us will ever get. I wouldn’t count on it happening again.”  

I spotted Flynn standing up against a wall, his shoulder leaning into it, watching us as the interns milled around talking in high whispers.  There was a smirk on his face as if he knew he was Fate’s gift to the world.  I wanted to so wipe that smile off his face… was he listening to us?  

“I just don’t want to work with Dr. Cargill unless I have to.” I said. “any advanced magic is yours”  

“Really? Because…”

“Do you want to work together or not?” I asked.  

Cristina grinned.  “I’ll meet you in the library after breakfast.”  

Bottomless pillows and absent siren voodoo

At the bottom of the double spirals staircase leading up to the separate girls and boys Spires there was a small inconspicuous door that stood open with a glimpse of overstuffed cushions strewn everywhere.  Frankly it looked better than a stolen peek in the hearth room Christmas morning.  I made an abrupt change of directions and decided a few minutes wallowing in a pillow twice as big as me wasn't going to hurt anything,   I didn't want to face my room and Cristina after a shift like that...  I wasn't sure what first shifts were supposed to look like, but I hoped they got easier otherwise it was highly possible I wouldn't survive another twenty-four hours here talking castle or no talking castle.  And I was supposed to start classes too?  

Apparently I wasn't the only one who thought rooms full of quiet and stuffed softness sounded heavenly because there on four other cushions were Cristina, Victoria and Lox sort of passed out with a glazed expression on their face.  A voluminous powder blue cushion groaned, "I think one more day here might kill me."  It had a very Tad like voice in its feathery depths.   Ah.  So I wasn't the only one.  I wasn't sure if that made me feel better or worse.

“They’re calling me Macbeth.’  Tad said, I could see half a face poking out.  

“Who’s Macbeth?” I asked, as I plopped down on a cushion so silky and deep I realized I may have a bit of real siren in me after all.  

“A human story where everyone dies.”  Cristina said, “Gosh, where’d you go to school Wilkes?”

“Nowhere.”  I said.  Not something I usually blurted out, but somewhere around the tenth hour and three hundred and twentieth bed pan, I’d stopped caring about a lot of things...that’s when I noticed a teakettle on a small magicked hearth.  Wait, there was coffee?   

“Nobody’s calling you Macbeth.” Victoria said. “At least you got to do real magic.”  

“I heard three interns whispering as we traveled from the thirteenth floor to the forty seventh...I definitely heard them say ‘Macbeth’ and real magic doesn’t count if you choke and can’t actually remember anything other than a death spell.”   Tad, said.  

“I swear if you say Macbeth one more time, I’m going to personally make you a permanent name tag.”  Cristina said.  “At least you weren’t completely overshadowed by star girl here.”  

“You wanted to be swallowed alive by a diseased cyclops?” I asked. I didn’t mention the bedpan part because so far everyone thought that was more funny than serious.   I mean dark magic was supposed to be obvious in a very evil league of evil sort of way...not in a bedpan that no one could figure out.  

“Yes, about that Lox and I were wondering how your skin is still so soft and delectably perfect after rolling around in flesh eating salivia”.  

“Don’t listen to her.”  Lox said.  “I believe my exact words were, “woah, she’s so hot even covered in goop”.”  

“Are you hitting on her?” Cristina asked.  “Disgusting.”  

“Would you rather I hit on you?  You’re kinda cute for a bloodsucker.”  

“Are you even allowed to be here? I thought demons were supposed to stay in the underworld.”

“Wait, what happend to Lucy?”  Tad asked.  “Is that the ruckus in Dires that everyone is talking about?  Dr. Groats started to spell anyone’s lips shut who talks about it.  

Oh wonderful, the whole castle knew now,and were using it at every chance to raise the annoyance level with my attending.  

“She was eaten by a Seafward Cyclops with a flesh eating fungi problem.”  Lox said.  “...Or she’d already choked and was trying to off herself...nobody’s quite sure which”    

“Almost” I corrected.  “almost got swallowed by an Ogre.”  

“But instead got rescued by the ever sought after Dr. Cargill.”  Lox said in a falsetto voice, clutching his chest and batting his eyelashes.  

That got Victoria’s attention.  “I thought you were emptying bedpans!” She said.  Far far away from my beloved Flynn, is what her words sounded like they really meant.  

“Yes, thus pissing off her royal vampireness.”  Lox said with a smirk.

“Oh please, I could care less how many skampy girls chase after Dr. Hot pants or whatever you two are calling him, I just don’t think it’s right  Wilkes stole my patient from me.”   Cristina said.   

“Us.”  Lox said scowling.  “He was my patient too.”  

I wasn’t sure what to say.  Oh well for a peaceful hide out in a  pile of bottomless pillows of bliss and quiet for a few minutes.

 “I didn’t get rescued by anyone.”  I said.  “and I didn’t do anything to your patient, except perhaps give you more work to do… for which I truly do apologize.  Would you believe me if I said it was a matter of life and death?”   

“She really doesn’t know.”  Lox said, to Cristina.  Was she making hissing sounds at me?  

“Know what?” I asked.

“Oh nothing, just that you cured our patient, and he’s currently blubbing his way home to the bottom of the ocean.”   Cristina said.  

Me?  But that was impossible.  I’d done nothing, unless you counted my brief stint as a piece of floss as life saving. “It had to be Flynn.”  I said.

This got Victoria’s raised eyebrows.  

“Dr. Cargill...whatever”  I said.  I couldn’t think of him as anything else other than uppity wizard boy, so after discarding that...Flynn was the next obvious choice that came out.  

“Ha, he wishes it was him.”  Lox said, finally seeming to find something amusing about the whole thing.  “He used a forced vomiting spell that sent you flying out like a half chewed cob, but otherwise he didn’t do anything.”   

“But that’s impossible…” I said.  

“Oh cut it.” Cristina said.  “I was starting to like you, but stop pretending like you aren’t enjoying wowing us all with your siren voodoo.”  

“But how am I doing it?”  I asked.

Well, at least that shut all four of them up.  They just sort of looked at me.  Cristina with a scowl, Lox with his arms crossed.  Tad and Victoria both with a quizzical expression on their face, their chins resting in their hands.   I took a deep breath.  

“Look, I think there’s been some sort of big mistake.”  I said.  How was I supposed to explain pig baths, rheumatic old wizards, a tiny village that smelled like fish… gray dresses...dozens of aunts who rolled over in their proverbial graves both (posthumously and presently) at my lack of siren magic.   “I can’t do anything special.  Do I look like a siren to you guys?”

The guys exchanged glances.  

“You’re doing it now.”  Cristina said.  

“Doing what?”  I asked.

But nobody had a chance to answer because at that moment my arm began to tingle, Tad pushed up his sleeve…. the scribblings on our arms!   Lox and Cristina were already halfway out the door.   

“You ready for this?”  I asked Tad.  It was the first time we’d been summoned and I felt a pull inside me (which mixed with half terror and a side of excitement was a  rather heady potion).    The earlier confusion I’d felt about which way went where was gone.  With the magic throbbing through my arm it made so much sense I felt silly not to have seen it before.  The scribblings...the candles… the castle.  They were all different parts to one thing.  St. Hernadines.  

“The Ogre did say to run, didn’t she?”  Tad asked.  His feet looked very much like they wanted to do the opposite, and were trying to take root into the floor.

“Yup.  We got this.”  I said.  He nodded and swallowed.  We took off after the others, because somewhere in this castle there was broken magic waiting for someone with a robe on to come in and fix it.  We could do this… I could do this.  

If only I actually believed myself.  

Cyclop snot and passed up magic carpets

This was where my plan stopped and luck needed to kick in.  Often the best defense against magic is no magic, and there's nothing the least bit magical about a seafward cyclops with the munchies.  I clung to the fact that Lox had mentioned this one had a terrible hankering for iron, and that I had opposable thumbs and limbs, and the bedpan did not.  It got swallowed like a boolie bean and I did not.    At least I hoped not, as I hung onto a cavity the size of a pot hole for dear life.  

But of course luck is the most undependable friend ever.  Never on time, and constantly rescheduling.  Mine apparently had better things to do, as my lifesaving cyclops chose that moment to get upset about the girl in his tooth.  Big stringy vines of rotting vegetation didn't bother him at all, but me?  He poked at me with his tongue, wiggling me loose which sent me tumbling down his tongue like I was being rolled up in the worlds soggiest, smelliest rug.  I had one last thought that the bedpan probably would have been a less traumatic way to go... oddly enough I also regretted the lack of pancakes in my short lived stint away from mother.   It's funny the things you think of when you don't have time to think at all.  

I was expecting the digestive system of a cyclops to be quite dark, so the shaft of light was a surprise.  I couldn't breath, I was so smothered and drowning in saliva, and then suddenly I wasn't.   I hit something with surprising force and it took a second for me to realize it was the hospital room wall.  

"What the..!"  A voice that was very angry and triggered a small bell of horror in my head.  

"Is she dead?" Cristina wailed, and I felt a momentary sense of affection that she didn't sound excited about the prospect.

"What is she doing up here?" The other voice said through rather clenched sounding teeth.  I struggled to sit up and open my eyes.  

"Don't move" it ordered.  

"Call a stretcher, and have a bed made up in Tinkers."

"Yes sir."  Lox and Cristina sounded scared.  

"Come on, don’t let me lose you.”  The voice said, I could feel hands touch me and a spell wrap around me.   The spell burned, but the touch...the touch was worse.  It snapped me back to reality with a jolt.  It was him.  Uppity wizard boy.  Flynn.  

I jumped up which is easier said than done when you’re slimier than a newborn swamp ogre..  

“Bed pan duty accomplished sir, what else can I do?”   I said. I did make an attempt at sounding normal even if it was sheer bravado.  I wasn’t sure what the punishment was for breaking what I had to assume was at least a hundred protocols not to mention potentially harming a direly ill patient, but maybe I could convince them I was at least wasn’t ready to give up?   

He stared at me.

At least I’d been right about the bedpan.  It may have impossible for even the attending to break the spell on it, but as a boringly almost nutritious snack it had no chance.  

“What just happened.”  He said, he seemed strained, like he was going to great lengths to be civil.  Probably because I had just seemingly attacked his patient for no reason whatsoever.

Speaking of, I looked at the Cyclops and if anything his eye looked a little less red and oozy, and his breathing sounded more normal.  Whew, the patient was fine. My legs which were already barely holding me up, started to betray me again.

“Whoah.” Flynn said as he caught me.  

Which was bad.  Very bad.  I don’t know if he always caught swooning interns, but I had to imagine I wasn’t the first one whose legs had gone to jelly (although for entirely different reasons!)..  I wondered if all of them felt that jolt of magic buzz through them.  He probably did it on purpose.  

Then he dropped me.

Probably because I was a slimy, nasty mess.  Besides, I didn’t ask him to catch me anyway.  But wait… was he angry?

If eyes were windows to the soul, then his window had nothing but lightening and thunder going on the other side.    And a furious wizard is nothing to joke around with.  

“How dare you.”  He said and walked away.  Not flurred away in a huff, just deadpan dismissal.  Shut the blinds to the window and leave.  

At this point Cristina, Lox and a whole host of orderlies and assistants came hurrying in with a flying carpet stretcher between them.  

“You’re standing.” Cristina said.  She sounded about as animated as Flynn just had.  Maybe I’d imagined her concern earlier.  At least this was the Cristina I was familiar with.”  

“I’m fine.” I said to everyon trying to get me to lay down on the flying carpet, even though one of my top ten wishes was to someday ride on one.  This wasn’t exactly the method I’d had in mind.

“How are you standing.”  Lox asked.  “That Mr. Glopulapede has a a flesh eating fungas.  Remember?  That’s why we were in the library.”

“Maybe Dr. Cargill got her out fast enough.”  Cristina said, although it sounded like she would have doubted her own vampireness if you’d asked her just then.  Why was everyone staring at me like this?

“I’m really fine.”  I said.  “Disgusting and probably in huge trouble, but fine.”   

As if to self fulfill my own words, Dr. Groats chose that moment to walk in the room.  

“If I wanted more patients, I could have easily gone down to the wharf and bagged myself a hundred attention whores that are less work than you.”  She said.  “What about ‘emergency gemheart surgery’ don’t you understand?”  

“Yes ma’am.  Sorry ma’am.”  I said.  This is where I got kicked out.  I’d be the first statistic.  I braced myself for it.

“If I didn’t have Dr. Hagler singing your praises down in Acquisitions and a mortally ill Cyclops on the mend, I’d be tempted to put you over my knee like a sprout and give you a good whooping.”  

“You’ve even got Flynn nervous you’re going to oust him off his young prodigical throne.”  Dr. Groat said, smiling a little.   It was a very very confusing smile.  

“Now wash up and get back down to Acquisitions.  I hear there’s a whole passel full of bedpans that need emptying.”  

I started to ask something, but gulped it down just in time.  “Yes, ma’am.”  I said, not quite believing my luck (who had apparently looped back around for a lazy hello).

“But how is she not dead, and why are you not kicking her out.”   Cristina asked for everyone else in the room including myself.  Bless her.

“Yes indeed.  The question of the hour.  When you figure it out, I’ll let you scrub in on the next gemheart surgery.” Dr. Groats said.  “I”m watching you Wilkes.”

Huh. Ok.  I stood there, still stuck in a sort of crisis mode where every inch of my body was screaming and I didn’t have any answers.  

More importantly though.  Now I had to figure out a way to navigate back to my room to shower and clean up.   Left nubs were floor numbers?  Right nubs were...what?”  

Oy.

Death by fungi, flame or black magic.

So laying on the floor didn’t ever solve anyone's problems...unless you're in a castle like St. Hernadine's.   While I was laying there wishing I’d been a normal Siren who would probably be at a tea party right now in a pretty dress..., I got the impression I wasn't alone.  "Hello?" I said. It was the same feeling I’d had when I’d tried to shortsightedly steal a piece of stone.  

Was St. Hernadine’s....but no even in the magical world, castles weren't alive and they didn't tell you things.  I was definitely too tired to think straight.   

There was an herb that was in the hallucinogenic spectrum.  It grew in the paws of sphynxs in the outer mountains.  One leaf  could make you think you were a unicorn that could hurl itself from the highest tower into a sea of rainbows  (you weren’t really a unicorn, but everything you did made you feel like it was the most spectacular day of your life), or it could make you think you were slowly being eaten to death by millions of ants.  You never knew which one you were going to be until you actually tried it.  If you were one of the majority who feels like they're dying slowly by ant death, then you'd be stuck  feeling  like that for the rest of your life (and into the afterlife if a few ghosts are to be believed...which being ghosts they aren't the most reliable, but still...).   But...there was always the chance you would draw the unicorn card.

That's how I felt about St. Hernadines.  It felt way too risky to trust listening to it.  It somehow made Master Dartor seem like a church choir boy in comparison, and yet it didn't feel terribly evil or anything.  And i couldn't quite make enough sense out of anything to decide if I really did hear it, or if I was trying to imagine something that wasn't there.  I was probably more at risk than the average person.   Sirens are always in search of their own unicorns and rainbow seas, and its been the demise of more than one.   

I picked up the carrot book again.  I hadn't been really intending to, or had I?  I couldn't tell.

"The magic in udigerous forests is said by some time contain the last traces of magic of the black variety.  There are no known ways to combat it, and as such it is best not to use magic at all and issue a full scansa warning to the surrounding area until it can be contained by those that have skill in dealing with it such as the infantile monopod found in the Almagas region of the…”  

It was impossible.  It couldn’t be black magic. (I was now arguing with a castle that I didn’t believe existed).  Black magic was way more sinister than this, and it didn’t go around wasting its time with bedpans.  Did it?  Who would believe me anyway?   I could be like a kid who insisted on saying her room had been messed up by an angry brownie than admit she just didn't want to clean it.   Plus, there was a good chance this wouldn't work.  

I took a deep breath and opened the door. The pot was still there.  My toes stayed firmly in the library and we eyed each other, trying to see what the other's next move was.   Well I wasn't going to spend my first night being beaten by a bedpan even if it was ensorcelled by black magic (Which! I didn’t believe).

I wasn't entirely sure where Dires was, but I had a good notion that it was at the very top of the hospital.   Stubby candles went up, right?  I wouldn't worry about the nubs, as long as I went up, I had to reach Dires eventually.  

This was where I wished I could use a spell to make me faster or something, but the problem with dark magic was that whatever you did, it fed off of too.   So if you made yourself stronger, than it made itself stronger.  If you tried to kill it, it killed you too.   There was a good reason it was completely outlawed in both the civil world and the underworld.  Not even criminals wanted to mess with it, because it always always won. And wasn't worth any amount of gold or power.  

Even though I didn't think  the bed pan could possibly have dark magic. (Did you hear that St. Hernadines?  I don’t believe you).  That old forest witch didn't look like she could even make a tea warming spell, let alone practice something that Hades himself wouldn't touch with a ten foot pole.  

But I didn’t have any better ideas,  my fingers were itching to use my wand, but my feet were going to have to rally ho and be the star player on this one.  No magic.  I counted to three and took off at a dead run.  It took the surprised bedpan a moment to realize I was gone.  Good.   I dashed down the hallway looking desperately at each candle.  They were all the same.  Did that mean they were stubby or tall?  How could you tell if you couldn't compare it to something.   I rounded a corner, still all the same.  Why couldn't they have picked signs or something more plain.  Why something so obtuse as candles?

I turned left at the next corridor.  These candles looked a little shorter than the hallway I just left.  Or were they?  It was hard to tell with the loud thumping of iron on stone getting louder and louder behind you.  At this point it didn't matter. I had to choose one and go before they found my pulverized dusty bones a hundred years from now.   Because the library was the bottom of the bottom and there were so many twists and turns I didn't think anyone had been back here in at least a century.  Maybe two.  

I took the shortest looking candle and put my finger in the flame, which was a lot easier than I thought my first time was going to be.  Up until now, I'd always tagged along someone else's pathway, and I'd been worried I wouldn't be able to make myself put my finger in a candle, but turns out all your phobias disappear when you've got an insane bedpan trying to kill you.  

The flames licked my finger and my whole body lurched forward as if it had a martyred death wish, and then suddenly I was staggering down a different hall.   

I didn't look behind me to see if the bedpan was still behind me.  Better to just assume it was.  I ran past a gnome pushing a cart.   "What floor is this?" I yelled.

He didn't say anything, or if he did, I couldn't hear him because i didn't stop to take tea and exchange pleasantries which Gnomes love to do.  I just kept running.  

"What floor is this!"  I asked the next person I came across.  A pretty witch who had her wand in her hand.   I think she said something about Woes...I couldn’t quite tell, but it didn’t matter because I saw a distinctly stubby candle in between two longer ones.  I grabbed it and up I went again.  The shock was even more jarring this time.  For a second I briefly considered that maybe  I was dead, that the bedpan had gotten to me and this was my painful entry into the afterlife.  And then I was on a new floor again.  This time I ran smack into a stone wall.    How many floors there were in St. Hernadines.  At least a hundred I would imagine... which if that were the case then I needed a new plan.   I wasn't sure how many more candle pathways I could survive without accidentally doing the bedpan’s job for it.    I staggered down the hall and ran into a cart full of potions.  They started fizzing and banging, I shouldn’t have noticed that one of them was a really expensive one that came from the mines of a disappearing island.  If the bedpan didn’t kill me, Dr. Groats surely would.  I don’t know how the bedpan did it  (no, it’s not because of the black magic I’m sure) but it had somehow found a way to follow me,  and so I clamored to my feet.  My ankle throbbed and I smelled like eucalyptus, but one good thing did come out of it, there etched in black letters on the cart was “Do Not Remove From Dires.”  

With relief I started yelling. “Where’s the Cyclops! Where’s the cyclops” to anyone and no one in particular.   Turned out, it was pretty obvious because Cristina and Tad were just then lugging their giant book through a door that sort of swallowed them up.   Swallow me!  Swallow me!  I thought, as I willed my legs just a little bit further.  I felt like I was in the throat of a frog and then there was the cyclops.  It felt very liquidy in this room and smelled like squid, which I only noticed because it’s very very hard to run through liquid and running was top priority in my brain.  

The Cyclops rolled it’s eye at me, it was oozing green stuff.  This clearly wasn’t a healthy cyclops otherwise it wouldn’t be on the most serious floor of the land’s best hospital.  Did I have this in me?  I would have changed my mind about my chosen plan, but it was too late, the bed pan was in the room.  I heard Cristina yell, but it was too late.  

I launched myself upward into the cyclops gaping snack hungry maw and grabbed a big scraggly tooth. 

When bedpans and tombs shouldn't have anything in common

Not to be gross or anything, but turns out there are twenty seven different kinds of magical feces (not to be confused with regular excrement that comes from magical beings, there's a big difference).   And there may be even more, but thats how many I became closely acquainted with my first night at St. Hernadines.   

It didn't start out so bad.  Acquisitions is where everyone usually starts out at when they come in through the gates, and consequently it was more like a carnival than a sick ward.  One man had tried to cut his fingernails with a potion that had so much skunkrat in it, he blew all his fingers off and had to have them recreated with flox-twine.  He kept trying to convince Dr. Hagler to make his hands bigger and stronger than they were, and Dr. Hagler kept trying to explain that flox-twine really only latches on correctly to memories and that it wouldn't "take" if he redesigned them differently.  

A little girl came in with a balloon... in her stomach.  I guess she got into a dare with her brother (I wanted to ask if she won or lost).  

An old witch who reminded me of Nanny Milgrin came in complaining her feet were hurting her something fierce.  They told her it was old age, gave her a salve to rub on it and sent her home.  I asked why we didn't do a pain relieving spell and a second year apprentice told me it was because you can't help but absorb some of the density of a person you were doing the spell on.

So?  I asked.  I'd done lots of those spells at Hogswallow, and besides feeling a little hungover for a few minutes as you contemplated the weight of the world, it wasn't really that bad.

The old lady was a forest witch though, and apparently they've done such terrible things that no one can handle doing a pain relieving spell on them without going into a coma.   I felt bad though as she hobbled away.   She waited three hours for a salve she probably could have made with the what was growing in her front yard.  

And so I didn’t mind helping wherever I could, even if that meant ensorcelling bedpans.   The problem was, when you have a spell or potion go wrong (which is usually what brings someone to acquisitions), it affects the whole body.   The gentleman who blew his fingers off with skunkrat, also gave himself highly volatile body fluids.   Every time I tried to clean his bedpan, it exploded into a ball of blue fire.  It finally took two of us first years, and an attending to ever so cautiously spell it into a docile enough state to ensorcell away.    

And the little girl with a balloon?  Yeah, the spell that magicked the balloon inside of her, also sent everything else into hiding.  Every time I tried to grab her bedpan, it disappeared and reappeared somewhere else.  (which is how they got the balloon out of her...they challenged it to a game of hide and seek and talked it right into an anti magic box).  

Chasing a playfully mischievous bedpan around for hours, was not exactly what I thought it would be like working here.  But every time I started to feel like my feet wouldn’t hold up my legs any more, or my stomach couldn’t turn itself inside out any more (thankfully nothing on me was magicked or charmed in any way so I used the regular facilities like a sane person).  

But I had finally met my match.  A bed pan that wouldn’t stop chasing me around.  Dr. Hagler the attending had even tried to coax the determined thing away from me, but it was more tenacious than a hellhound.  And no one could even figure out why it had its sights set on me!  It had been under the bed the old Forest witch had been in, and it was empty! She hadn’t even used it.  There was no reason it should be chasing me around, and worse whenever it caught up to me, it tried to bonk me in the head.

I was currently locked away in the library, because the library was so protected by a thousand spells, even I knew all the way in Hogswallow that not even an army of mountain giants could break into it.    Of course it felt more like a punishment.  Dr. Hagler had looked like the last thing she needed on her plate was a useless first year who couldn’t even handle bedpan duty.   Better to just send me away than have me creating more work for everyone else.

And that’s how I escaped Flynn’s bedpan assignment, which I realize now was so naive of me in the first place.  When I asked him what I should do after cleaning bedpans...ha.  As if there was ever an end to them.  He must think I’m not only a siren, but the least intelligent one of my species.   Or maybe he thinks we’re all that dumb.  Whatever, I don’t care.   

“Did you see that young Dr. in the cafeteria?”  

I was trying to research forest witches and the library was full of other students studying...or talking about Flynn.   You know, potatoe puhtatoe.  

“I heard he came here as a baby.”  

“I heard he was the smartest apprentice they’ve ever had...and he was only twelve years old.”  

“Do you know if he’s seeing anyone?”  

“My roommate is convinced he’s taking her to that silver dance over at Carlyles next Saturday, but I think she’s trying to speak that into existence.”

They both chuckled as they walked away where I couldn’t hear them anymore.  I tried to concentrate on the page in front of me.  I didn’t care if Dr. Flynn Cargill got his black robe at twelve of twenty...was he even twenty?  He looked so young, it wasn’t fair.

But no! Forest witches and pernicious bedpans!  That’s what I was here in the library for.  

“The Forest is the cumulative group of udigerous trees found to foster the grumpuctious form of magic best practiced by trolls and other creatures unclassified as workers of the night, but otherwise notable for the same types of magical activity.”

The book was titled “Cursed Roots” and had knobby carrot looking things twindling all through the cover.   

“While udigerous trees are most often found in groups, and can thrive anywhere, there is none so dense a populace as the infamous Forest bordering Cracker Bogen.  The relationship between the two is tumultuous at best, with the Forest fueling unsavory activity in the lesser regions of the big city.  However plans to remove the forest have met with derision and opposition with theories as to the loyalty and trustworthiness of upper council members being called into question.  In the third century, the treaty of Lagur was made to protect the forest as long as the citizens of Cracker Bogen experienced a certain level of security as spelled out in sections one a and b of the treaty.”  

“What are you doing here? I thought you were supposed to be cleaning bedpans?”  

I snapped the book shut.  It was Cristina.  

She and Lox were hot and sweaty and were wrestling a big book between them that looked like it was made out of a dripping sponge with a fight or flight complex.  

“I kinda got exiled here.”  I said.  Cristina raised one eyebrow.  “Long story.”  I said waving my hand, which was starting to feel like it was made out of lead.  Was it breakfast time yet?  

“Wow, you got the the gallow snap that fast?”  Lox said with a grin.  

It really was abysmal the more I thought about it.   I was starting to realize how bad it was I’d been chased off of the floor by a bedpan my first night.   “Well, maybe Cristina can have my room all to herself after all.” I said, hoping my attempt at a smile would distract them from the tears I was waging war against.  

“Oh please, don’t be such a dundel wort.  Lox’s teasing you. You’re already practically a legend.  We heard all the way up in Dires that you made Dr. Hagler give a real honest to goodness forest witch some sort of powerful potion.”

“Meanwhile that Dr. Centaur dude has us meticulously logging fungi readings on seafward cyclops the size of the cafeteria. “  Lox said.  “I have to feed him iron fence posts for snacks just so he won't eat the bed. Trust me, you’d rather be you.”

They obviously hadn’t heard about the bedpan chasing scene.  

“Come with us, we’re supposed to deliver this book to Dr. Steamy and Tad.”  Cristina said.  “You can ask him what he wants you to do now.”

“Yeah, Tad got to scrub in on a silver arrow removal on a Lichen.”  Tad said.  “Lucky bastard.”

“Thanks guys.”  I said, trying not to be too shocked at how nice they were being.  “But I can’t leave here without meeting my demise via portable toilet.”

“I think you’re just annoyed Dr. Steamy didn’t fall for your charms the moment he met you.”  Cristina said with a snort.  “But suit yourself, we’ll remember to visit you here in your book laden tomb.”  

“She’s joking, we’ll be too busy curing people and making a difference in the world.” Lox said, winking as they dragged the book out between them.  

Ah yes, that seemed more like it.  

As the heavy doors to the library started to close, I caught a glimpse of a certain bedpan hiding in the corner.  It leaped up and hurled itself against the crack in the almost closed doors, but it was repelled with a pop of magic.  It shook itself off and tried again.  

I slid down onto the floor.  There were only thirty six million books in here and the answer had to be somewhere.  

Tomb indeed.