So! There are nine days of school left. And for some reason, I end up missing a lot.
I don’t mean the sarcastic “soooome reason,” (see: senioritis, junioritis, sophomoritis, and in some bad cases, freshmanitis) but just… stuff. Today I woke up with a nasty stomachache (no, not the female-exclusive-once-a-month kind or anything). What happened? My allergies. Nature is trying to kill me, in the form of torturous stomachaches and post-nasal drip.
Also, my French teacher is not helping very much. I actually missed Tuesday to stay home and get some schoolwork done (ha!). Funny as it sounds, this works. I got everything that I could do at home done. It was pretty awesome. Course, I still have a truckload of quizzes to do, but that should be at least partially fixed on Monday.
The reason I’m having so many issues in French is actually not a singular reason. As usual.
1. It’s the end of the year, and I’m seriously losing track of the class. Every time she writes down our homework on the board or something, I either get the wrong page (at which point I end up doing more work, unnecessarily) or she switches to a different topic and I’m too distracted by her to remember to write down what I’m supposed to do. Awkward.
2. She has dumped her crap on us. I don’t mean in the chamber-pot-out-the-window way where you can be perfectly safe as long as you carry a really big umbrella that’s been coated with Scotch Guard. This lady has assigned us four chapters out of the textbook for us to do–on our own–in two and a half weeks. A normal, somewhat closer-to-reality teacher would reserve four weeks for four chapters, and that’s with her help and WITHOUT making her students do just about every assignment in the book. All those assignments are there so the teacher can pick and choose which ones she wants the kids to do–not so she can hand them a workbook each and say “Do this stuff. Here you go, have fun!”
There’s also a lot of unnecessary drama over the fact that this teacher is leaving after the end of the year. I mean, she’s a good teacher and explains stuff well and isn’t screamy, but there are a whole bunch of kids protesting and demanding that this teacher, Miss… um… “Ms. Robinson” is kept instead of the other French teacher, “Mrs. Jones.” “Mrs. Jones” is senior to “Ms. Robinson,” and that’s why she’s staying, which is a really stupid principle.
I like Ms. Robinson, and I also like Mrs. Jones. Ms. Robinson gives you too much work sometimes; Mrs. Jones gives you hardly any work. Ms. Robinson tends to be more strict; Mrs. Jones is very casual.
Mrs. Jones is really cool, and she speaks both French and German, but she’s also just about as easily distracted as a kitten if someone mentions something that happened in history, or a movie that came out recently, or the color of that one cloud yesterday, or the fact that they will never buy a certain brand of dog food again because they gave it to their dog and now their back yard smells like a sewer and their mom got really angry so they went out and sprayed all the poop with Febreze. (Actually, that last one is more likely to come out of my German class.)
Once, when I took French III with Mrs. Jones, we got onto the subject of animal sounds in different languages, and whether dogs barked differently in France (the answer is no, in case you’re reading this late at night), and then got onto some really weird stuff. (The owls do say “Qui fait la cuisine pour vous?” though.*) In German, there’s an ongoing expressed desire to have a miniature pig as a pet and to walk it down the street. The guys in this class (guy-girl ratio is about 4:1) think that this is a good way to get girls’ attention.
Ms. Robinson has us do some pretty cool stuff, though. Our final is this big French formal dinner thing that we do outside school hours. Then, on finals day, she has to have a paper-test final… but it’s not actually going to be graded. Doctor’s appointments are encouraged on that day.
I wonder how the seating will be arranged for this dinner thing. Traditionally, the language classes work like this.
French: Taken mostly by girls.
German: Taken mostly by guys.
Spanish: Taken mostly by people who don’t care, and just want their language credits so they can get this obligatory class thing over.
So, since there are more girls than guys, how are we going to alternate genders in the seating, as done traditionally (unless I have this wrong)? Oh, well… that’s a problem for later. I know who I’d kinda like to sit by, although this might cause a minor inability to speak English, let alone French, and which might leave me garbling together some German words in an effort to translate what I’m trying to say into a language that isn’t English.
You could say that he is cute. And awesome. And talks to me like a human being, very coherently, and I can reply very coherently too… in English. It’s a little-known fact that if you treat girls like they’re, you know, people… rather than like members of the species OHMYGOSHAGIRL, or the slightly more low-cut species OHMYGOSHAGIRLWITHBOOBS… the aforementioned girl-people will like you better. And this guy is nice to people, not arrogant, kind of casual and friendly, and is also really, really smart.
I suspect he is an ENTP. And, as an INTP, ENTPs are probably my favorite type to hang around. They’re just… really cool people. There was one famous ENTP scientist who struck up a conversation with a janitor at a place where he’d delivered a speech earlier, and the janitor didn’t realize until somewhat later in the conversation who this guy was. The janitor said, “He seemed like the kind of guy you’d go bowling with.” They have all these cool ideas that could go anywhere; it’s a shame that these ideas often seem so far-fetched that people don’t take them seriously enough. They’re not quite as selective as INTPs about which ideas they voice, but they tend to say their ideas and then run a quick analysis of why or why not the idea wouldn’t work–although if you get an INTP who likes to mutter to him/herself (like me), then you’ll get voiced opinions and then a running debate with the same person playing both sides. This is a really fun thing to watch. Don’t miss it if you have the chance to observe.
For those of you who are new, I’m taking French and German at the same time. I think that this is one of the coolest things you can do with your high school schedule, if a little confusing at times. Tip: when you’re picking your “French name” and “German name,” try and see if you can find names that are really similar in spelling. That way, if you switch them up by accident–for instance, “Jacqueline” or “Raoulf” on a German paper–then the teacher might be able to figure it out, given the similarity and your handwriting.
Also, something I learned in French I: don’t use any name that sounds like a commonly-used word. My middle name is Aimee, and it is French, so I decided to use that for my French name at first. But every time the teacher said the word “love” (aime, aimes, aiment, etc.) or “friend” (ami[e]), I was jerking my head up from my paper, thinking I was being called on for something. I have a way of zoning out from everything else when I concentrate, and while it does have a habit of delivering “A” papers, it can be a little weird realizing that the past fifteen minutes was spent joking about how you aren’t paying attention to their French animal noises conversation or whatever, and you haven’t noticed.
Anyway! Now I’m the one who’s being kitten-distracted. It’s fifteen minutes past midnight and I can’t think of anything else to write about, so this is the end of my post. Woooooooo
*”Who cooks for you?” is traditionally the owl sound. Except it sounds nothing like an owl.
This new idea could turn out cheesy, or end up as really, really good. I think I’ve gotten past the first-chapter awkwardness–that whole thing will have to be reincarnated as a mega-flashback later, after introducing the main situation first, but it needs to be there as explanation.
Anyway, this is squaring up to be pretty good, if I can get it right. I’m not exactly sure where I’ll take this next. But I like it for now.
Phoenix’s edit is going well. I’m about halfway through, I think. There’s some major renovation that has to happen, though.
Anyway, I have a tourtiere that I’m making (the meat pie, not the dish it’s cooked in), and French Onion soup, and a zucchini tomato dish, and a salad, and the cooking requires my attention, so I should go.
While I’m still editing Phoenix, I’m not updating any of this site’s posts because it’s going to an agent later. So you guys are probably getting bored by now.
Well, I know I’ve said in previous posts that I had two ideas: the one about Fenna and Corid, and… another one. *flicks through list of posts* Oh. Yeah. The Eragon-ish one. I forgot about it.
This third one, believe it or not, is also about forming the Agency. I think it’s better. F+C sounds a lot like Mirrorworld in its structure: go here, go here, maybe meet some enemies or get captured once or twice but always find a way to get out alive. And where I enjoy Rhenna’s potential character and like the idea of giving Anatola a history as well, that plotline still sounds way too much like Eragon.
This one has plenty of cultural structure behind it; it takes place in kind-of-like-medieval-Europe-but-not-really-on-Earth. This is the opening chapter; it gives you a good base idea of what’s going to happen.
————-
In any world, there is always something worthy of somebody’s notice.
In this world, at this time, in this place, the only person who knew that this particular person’s activity was worth notice was a local shepherd.
He raised dogs. He raised rather good dogs, too—they had good eyesight, and could run fast, so they could see where several sheep might start to stray. They were gray-coated, sleek beasts, with shorter fur that didn’t get caught in brambles. And they obeyed well, learning and responding to commands easily.
He wished he could train this customer that well. She wasn’t from the village, and unlike everyone else he knew (except his dogs and sheep), she wasn’t human. She couldn’t be. Her skin and her hair were a smooth, dark brown, like good teak wood—he had never met that before. Her expression was blank, emotionless, but she was… too beautiful.
She wanted a dog. He was sure he knew why, although she hadn’t said. She had to be a sage. She had that slightly-not-human way of existing—everything she did seemed… wrong. False, or acted out.
The woman had been standing there for thirty marks, inspecting his dogs. After a long time of standing and watching, the shepherd jumped as she stood up, bore an almost-crazed grin, and declared, “This one.”
Negotiation of the price was minimal. She didn’t seem to care for bargaining very much. The shepherd was grateful. Now she was out of the house—and he planned to be, too, once she cleared off safely.
A sage! And he knew why she’d come—why she needed the perfect animal, so much she was willing to trek through the storm outside to get it. She was running out of life. This was newsworthy.
He pulled on a better pair of socks and his boots; as he buttoned up his coat, he muttered an explanation of where he was going to his wife and ran out into the rain.
The horse could not go fast enough. The village wasn’t that far away, but it was difficult to see, and muddy, and he knew he would need to give his horse a long scrub afterwards. But this needed to be dealt with now.
The Silver Arrow was crowded; on a rainy night, the people who lived nearby needed a drink to get through the cold night. Seeing his ragged, panting figure schlep over to the bar, the barman immediately grabbed for a mug as the people started to ask the shepherd what was wrong.
“She’s dying,” the man said, over and over. “She’s dying.”
Shrugging off the worried inquiries as to who was dying, and where, ad whether his wife was all right, the shepherd grabbed the proffered mug from the bartender and gulped several times before elaborating.
He explained what had happened.
“She looked the strangest—darkest hair and skin you ever seen, except in foreign parts and nobody really goes there except old Tom, and he makes up half the stuff he says now. She acted funny, too. Wasn’t right.”
“Frank, who’s dying?” the bartender pressed.
Frank shook his head. “She must have been a sage. She was too strange to be human!”
This caused a lot of uproar.
“She’s dying?” an anonymous voice called.
“Dying,” Frank responded. “She’s looking for her own replacement! And it ain’t human!”
“For heavens’ sake, Frank, why’d you sell her the dog?” asked another person.
“I wanted her out of my house!” Frank said. “But she wouldn’t go, not without that dog. I would have refused to take her price, but she went along with the first I suggested! Gave me a whole handful of silver coins!”
“What in the world are you boys going on about?” asked the bartender’s wife, appearing in the doorway from the back room where she’d been slicing up a ham. “What story—Frank, have you been drinking?”
“No!” Frank said, setting the mug down quickly. “I’m trying to tell everyone, we’ve got a dying sage on our hands!”
“It sounds right, Fannie,” the bartender said. His wife pursed her lips.
“Well, that’s not good,” she said. “I always said, they ain’t human and they shouldn’t be given that kind of power. They’re just animals, they’ve got no right to come in and control things. Which sage do you think it is, Frank?”
“I think she does storms,” Frank said, “which means we’re in for some rough weather soon while she tries to turn that dog human.”
“I don’t know why they make such an effort, it never really works,” Fannie said.
“That’s right,” said another member of the audience. “If there’s somebody with control over something that affects us humans, then a human should be the one to control it!”
“Well, the first ones were, remember,” Fannie said.
The bartender snorted. “Didn’t stay that way long, though, did it?”
“I understand,” said a man with a particularly strong-smelling drink, “that they might not have thought the humans back then were trustworthy. But the animals can’t tell the difference, so there’s no chance they’ll think any human is ‘worthy’ to be a sage! How is that supposed to end up back in human hands, you tell me!”
A murmur of agreement. Several voices, piping in:
“They’re just animals.”
“It’s a disgrace!”
“Certainly disappointing.”
“And what do you expect to do about it?” the bartender threw out. “They have magic. We don’t. We’re humans. They’re transformed animals. We hate them. They hate us.”
“Now is that really true, Red?” Fannie asked. “If they really hated us, why would they bother to protect us from storms and bad favor?”
“Because then they’d have to deal with it, too!” the bartender said, to more murmurs of agreement. “If they didn’t hate us, they’d find a suitable human successor!”
The murmurs were almost roars now.
“What are we going to do?”
“This won’t take!”
“And why aren’t we doing something now!”
“You could never fight a sage head-on,” Frank said, turning around and getting a little dizzy after his drained mug of beer. “Never. They’d… poof you… into a pile of straw.”
“Well, let’s say we want them out,” Fannie said.
“Which we do,” Frank interrupted, as the bartender refilled Frank’s glass in exchange for a silver piece that would cover his p’s and q’s for the rest of the night.
“And if you’re prepared to take the worst that would come without the sages, then all you need to do is starve them out. Give them no food, nothing.” This was Fannie.
“They grow their own food! Are you kidding!”
“No food, no firewood, no soap, no clothes, no shelter in the middle of the night, no animals, no seeds, no bandages—nothing. Not a piece of string.” Fannie’s eyebrows were raised. It was a clever plan. Maybe it was a clever plan to do a stupid thing, but it was a clever plan.
A little bit of quiet ensued.
“A mean mind you’ve got, Fannie. So it’s go?”
It was, by consensus, go. They would starve out the sages.
-
YES.
Today, I thought that my computer charger cord had fried. I spent a lot of time trying to find a suitable replacement for it ASAP.
It turned out that it was my power splitter–the box that plugs into the wall to give me more outlets–was the issue. One of the plug outlets (coincidentally the one the computer cord was plugged into) had gone off.
So: next time you think your cord is shot, check to be sure it’s not the plug outlet itself. :/
It’s not been a good day, I think. Long story.
A web comic called xkcd has recently released a comic titled “Umwelt,” which can be found here: http://xkcd.com/1037/
The mouseover text reads: “Umwelt is the idea that because their senses pick up on different things, different animals in the same ecosystem actually live in very different worlds. Everything about you shapes the world you inhabit–from your ideology to your glasses prescription to your choice of web browser.”
That’s right. Your web browser.
I was reading the comic in Mozilla Firefox, my default browser, where it looked like this.
Then I read the mouseover text, and tried it out in Google Chrome, where it looked like this.
Funny, right? Just wait.
And then I tried it in Internet Explorer (which had come with the computer, against my will), where it looked like this.
That’s not all.
IE carries a serious stigma for NEVER DISPLAYING ANYTHING RIGHT (and there’s a reason for that).
I even downloaded Safari just to try it out, where it looked like this.
Oh dear.
Edit: I just realized how geeky this makes me look, especially since I have the Calculator program and Notepad++ pinned to my toolbar, not to mention an MMORPG (among other things) bookmarked in Mozilla, an Adventure Time theme in Google Chrome, and now 4 browsers downloaded on my computer. Oops.
Oh, and the screens are wide because I’m working on an Eee PC. In case you were wondering.
http://xkcd.com/903/
For those who don’t know: when you read xkcd, you mouse over the comic for an extra caption.
It’s true that you end up at the “Philosophy” article if you click on the first un-parenthesized (I just made that word up) and un-italicized link in any article. I tried it with “Interrobang” and it took me six pages. From an obscure punctuation mark to philosophy? Bit of a stretch!
Phoenix has been put on the site in full! Just the first draft though. The new version, which I will be sending to agents, will be a lot better than this one. Especially the first chapter.
Also, yeah, I noticed that in the second chapter she goes to bed without showering at all even though she threw herself into mud earlier. That’s fixed. 
Anyway, it’s going to stay up on the site until the book sells (if it does). If I need to, it will be taken down. But for the mean time, enjoy.
A week later, Mark’s fully recuperated. The magic that had made him so silly-acting had healed him quickly, and now he can correctly identify me.
Xavier is absolutely thrilled about being a pegasus Epselan, although he mostly likes to ride Silvester if he can. The two are inseparable. And they won’t leave me alone at all. Oh, and Xavier’s managed to score himself some of the potion I was given to help his magic. Personally, I think the problem now is having him learn to use it better.
Mark, Key and I are travelling to Baffin Bay to find a polar bear for Mark to meet, although that I’ve made it clear that he isn’t allowed to take his home like Xavier and me. I’m guessing both that Silvester and Xavier are planning on coming, and that neither of them is planning to take the plane, which Mark has finally consented to board. I think he figures he’s lived through enough danger that a little more perceived danger can’t hurt too much.
Daniel seems to think that there’s some bigger magical thingy going on, but has assured me that I have nothing to do with it for now. I for one hope it’s not just “for now.” At least, not until I get bored, which isn’t likely to happen any time soon.
Key and Mark have now proclaimed that they’re going steady. As if it weren’t obvious that they had been for over a year. Silly people. I fear for the world if they marry.
Felix is still tagging along with me. It seems he, like Leslie, thinks that we’re the most interesting group on the face of the Earth. And he’s made it pretty clear that he’s looked in several different dimensions as well.
Mark and I are planning to move far, far away from Iowa. There would be touchy questions if any of my old classmates saw me in the street, even though I’m now wearing a hoodie and long sleeves all the time and claiming that the feathers on my face are “just my style.” We’re moving back to Colorado, actually, in a permanent house. Daniel’s made it clear that he wants to keep me in a place where I can be free to fly around and where it would be easy to hide, should the cult figure out I’m not dead, and he insisted on buying our house for us—which is no problem for the Agency. The exchange rate on interdimensional currency is ludicrous—and the Agency has a lot of money stockpiled in other places. We were staying a few days in the Agency to give our thanks and help clean up after the mess Ian and his idiots made.
There was just one more matter of business to attend to.
“Hey,” I said, navigating my way through the Agency stables, around several piles of pegasus dung. Xavier’s cleaning spells still could use some work.
“Hey,” Xavier said, setting down Currey’s brush. “What’s up?”
“I still owe you something,” I said. “You saved my life again.”
And on this one, I didn’t let go for a long time.
Mark was furious that I hadn’t come to him immediately.
“I was worried!” he insisted.
“You were asleep half the time!” Xavier retorted. “When you weren’t, all you did was make applesauce castles! And I don’t care what Key says, you do snore!”
Xavier was back in his leg brace again, but this time it seemed Hannah had welded it shut by magic. She must not have been terribly happy about his discarding it yesterday.
“You’re not going to hear a thing until you shut up,” I said in a sing-song voice. Felix copied my tune, amused.
“Yeah, that’s right,” Xavier muttered as Mark slumped back onto his pillow.
Mark wasn’t too happy to hear that I’d been partially killed. In fact, that’s probably kind of a euphemism, since I can’t print what he actually said.
Once the curses died away, though, he was pale and seemed panicked. A pretty, black mage girl came hurrying in and stuck a baby bottle into his mouth, squeezing the bag and forcing its contents down his throat. Mark’s eyes suddenly looked distant and blurred, and he stopped arguing or even saying anything. She left quickly, but not before I saw her name tag, which said “Netta, M. M. D..” So what were they called here? Magical Medical Doctors?
“Won’t your magic be less powerful with less human?” Xavier asked. I was so grateful for the matter-of-fact question that I almost missed the feeling of realization.
“Xavier!” I said.
“What?” he asked, looking confused. “What’s wrong with asking…”
“Wouldn’t your magic be less powerful with less human?” I pressed. “Especially if you were… missing something else?”
“What?”
“Xavier, are you sure you’ve never been an Epselan? Like, when you were really little?” Once I’d said it, I realized how far-fetched it sounded. But part of me still had to know.
Xavier looked blank. “I don’t know. I was drugged up pretty badly when I was seven. I’d broken both my legs or something and they didn’t want me to feel it. Can’t remember anything before then.”
“It’s possible,” Daniel said, walking in from somewhere else in the hospital. “If Ian was able to confuse my inspectors by magic into thinking nothing out of the ordinary was going on in his labs, he could have been doing anything. And I’m sure he killed off the animal sides of a few different Epselans before Phoebe told on him.”
Down the length of the room were mostly empty beds, except for the second-to-last one, where Key was being given another calming potion. A gigantic vase full of orange lilies sat on her nightstand and more were strewn across her bed—probably also Felix’s gifts. I wished I was being given the same treatment, because I found myself shuddering almost uncontrollably at Daniel’s words. Felix looked utterly distressed.
Mark leaned over to the side of the bed opposite us. For a minute, I was about to leap up and try to prevent him from falling off. But he stopped. His eyes flicked oddly back and forth for a second, but then he blinked and seemed to regain his vision. The healing magic done on him had really messed him up.
Mark was picking something up off the ground. I stared when I saw that it was his leather jacket, not exactly sure how a jacket could help our current situation, and Daniel looked just as befuddled as I was. But then he opened a zipper pouch sewn inexpertly into the lining, six inches under the sleeve. He dumped the contents onto his bed, and Daniel groaned in understanding.
“You’ve kept them with you all this time,” he said, almost laughing.
“Yes,” Mark said blurrily.
“What?” Xavier said, looking blank.
I didn’t recognize any of the ingredients sitting on Mark’s bed, threatening to fall off. I didn’t understand why this was significant to Daniel at all.
“When we were kids,” Daniel said, and I knew that this was the start of a story, “Mark and I were friends. We went to the same school, and we were the best pranksters that middle school had ever seen. I was, what, twelve… so was Mark. I used the magic I had to do dumb stuff to teachers we didn’t like, that kind of thing.”
“Remember when you rearranged Mrs. Heinen’s classroom to make room for that giant tree you put in?” Mark grunted. “That one was awesome. We hated her.”
Daniel started laughing. “Yep. She had no idea how it happened. Never was very bright. That was a good bit of teleportation magic, too. I remember you helped me set up the ropes and stuff.
“Anyway,” Daniel said, “I was kind of sort of working for the Agency. Right? For the Agency girl. Molly Fletcher.”
“She was hot,” Mark said.
“And also three or four years older than you,” Daniel retorted. “Molly was a really strong mage—”
“—which made her hotter—”
“—and she was very persuasive,” Daniel said, ignoring Mark. “So I worked for her for a while. Anyway, I was in touch with most of the stuff that went on in the area. Most of the magical stuff, you know? So when one of the assassin cult started tramping all over the area, I knew. So I told Mark. I knew he would be attacking schools, because he was after me, mostly. They don’t like kids with strong magic. Think we’re gonna goof up the worlds or something.
“Anyway, none of them knew what I looked like. They didn’t care, really—figured I’d fight back and show myself to protect the people around me. Try to kill the assassin myself, right? Well, they got the wrong class. They knew two people were involved in most the magic I did, and one of them was Mark.
“So before Mark went back to school the day after I found out, I gave him three sets of ingredients that would make anyone an Epselan, and the spell didn’t require any real magic and could be done unobtrusively. Both of those were stuff I needed, because Mark never really had much of a talent for doing magic. He could set it up better than I could—good with the mechanics and stuff—but never had the knack for being the catalyst. I told Mark that the spell would give a normal human special animal powers that would enable them to protect themselves from the assassin better than a normal human. I gave him the ingredients to save three people, as long as one of them was himself. I didn’t want to lose my best friend.”
“But he ended up saving two,” I said.
“Yep,” Daniel said. “Himself, as promised. I think he chose the polar bear because of Coca-Cola, but that’s another story.”
“You know, if you feed it to rats, they explode,” Mark mumbled.
“And me,” I said, getting us back on track.
“And you,” Daniel finished.
“But wouldn’t another piece of human die if I’d been shot then, too?” I asked.
“Yes,” Daniel said. “Very observant, Phoebe. But that was very magically special, like most other things you’ve done. Epselans are usually told to transform into the mostly-animal side and then are given a special poison that only works on humans. Normally, it’s very painful. You can only have as much human as you do animal for a certain amount of time before the human will decide to kill the adopted animal, since the animals are usually submissive to humans, us being on top of the food chain and all.
“That was why your hiding spells didn’t work, by the way,” Daniel added. “In case that phoenix hasn’t told you yet. Phoenixes aren’t afraid of humans.”
“Yes, he told me,” I said. “And his name is Felix.”
Daniel gave a short bow to Felix, who bowed back.
“Etiquette,” he said.
“So Mark didn’t get to save a third person?” Xavier asked.
“Oh, no,” Daniel said. “Right then, he disappeared from school and started caring for you, Phoebe. I helped him hide. He didn’t have time to transform anyone else. He could hardly slip them any poisoned apple juice when he was planning to illegally drop out of school and care for someone who was officially dead, could he?”
“So he kept the ingredients with him all this time?”
“Yes,” Daniel said. “He was able to save you from something he felt he’d brought on by being present. Key told you he liked you?”
“Er, yes,” I said, trying not to turn red as, out of the corner of my eye, Xavier’s face turned toward me.
“Think he liked you even better than he liked Molly,” Daniel said, sounding kind of impressed. “Anyway, if Mark remembers right, and I’m sure he does, you transformed into a mostly-phoenix once it was obvious you were in danger. You went from human to half to phoenix in about a minute. When the assassin came in…”
“The whole room was dark but she looked like she was being lit with a computer screen,” Mark slurred. “You could see her face and everything. Where is she? Is she hurt?”
“Potion overdose, buddy,” Daniel said, slapping Mark’s shoulder. “You shouldn’t have cursed so much. They didn’t want you hurting yourself.”
“I’m not hurt,” Mark mumbled. “Is Tallie hurt?”
I still hated that name.
“She’s fine,” Daniel said.
“No, she’s not!” Mark said, more strongly, then laid back again. “She’s hurt.”
“My name is Phoebe, Mark,” I said. My voice seemed to satisfy him.
“She has a new nickname.” Mark laid down, fell half-asleep, and rolled over, knocking half of the ingredients to the floor. Daniel caught the vial of water before it could shatter on the ground and started collecting pine needles from the folds in the white sheets.
“What do you think he wanted us to do with these?” Daniel asked.
“Isn’t it obvious?” I said. “He wants Xavier to be an Epselan again. I mean, Xavier just saved all our lives, right?”
“Huh!” Daniel said. “Well, that would solve his magical troubles, wouldn’t it?”
“I guess so,” Xavier said. There was a shadow of suppressed excitement in the way he looked at the numerous ingredients in Daniel’s hands.
“Do we even have to ask what species?” I asked.
“Probably not,” Xavier said.
“I’m having a potion brewed for you, Phoebe,” Daniel said. “It won’t bring back your ability to look human, but it should mitigate any difficulties you might have had with mage magic. In fact, considering who’s brewing it, I’m guessing it’ll make your magic stronger than before. It’s a very tightly kept secret recipe, though, so I can’t tell you more.”
“Why wasn’t I given this before now?”
“Needs special magical circumstances to avoid backfiring,” Daniel said. “But since you’re mostly phoenix now…”
“Why does that matter?”
“Why do you think you changed when you were in danger?” Daniel asked. “Phoenixes are natural protectors. I think the reason you found your phoenix side so anxious to take over was because you were in constant danger. That’s not to say that it wouldn’t have been pretty difficult to sort out,” he added, “but it was always trying to protect you. I doubt you would want to be in phoenix form for the rest of your life, but you would be safe, and it is still your mind in the phoenix. You saw how eager Felix here was to defend you. It’s just the way they are. Kind of noble, really.”
“And what does this have to do with the potion?”
“Well,” Daniel said cautiously, “first, you’re no longer being stalked so easily by that madman… and second, we don’t want humans taking the potion. People who are proud, greedy, whatever… they don’t need any more power than other people. It would be bad. That’s why the recipe is secret. Not that we think you would have used it badly,” he amended, “but it’s protocol. I do occasionally follow protocol.
“Especially when it fits with my main reason, which was that if you were caught—and you very nearly were—then that cult would be able to figure out the recipe from a bunch of different spells on your body. Magic like that is traceable. The reason it took the cult so long to find you is because they were searching for the effects of the poison usually given to new Epselans. Eventually, they realized they had to search manually.”
I had one more question. “Where’s Leslie?”
“Gone,” Daniel said.
“Gone?” Xavier said.
“She’s Leslie,” Daniel said, shrugging. “From what I gather, she heard about you becoming a phoenix Epselan and decided to try something similar herself. She’s a shapeshifter. She can’t do magical forms, although shapeshifters are magical creatures. And she can’t do the magic of any of the creatures she imitates. She can only use the physical benefits. She’s actually about twenty years old, but apparently she’s been tracking you because you were interesting. She didn’t have anything else to do and didn’t trust us, so when the cult found you, protecting you became her new hobby. She impersonated a twelve-year-old for you, Phoebe.”
“She’s a mind-reader and a mage and a magical-creature Epselan,” I groaned. “How the heck did she do that?”
“I have no clue,” Daniel said. “My biggest guess is that she knows where to look.”
“Wish I did,” said Xavier.
