by Maria Amor
The men and women in the room all seemed to pay more attention to Julia than to him, but Dylan didn’t mind; he had had more than enough of the council’s attention over the past three years, and he was glad just to no longer be the target of animosity from them. Julia, he knew, was likely to end up in contention with the group that ruled over the affairs of Guardians—but he thought they were going to find out, soon enough, that they needed her more than she needed them.
“Good afternoon Julia, and Dylan,” one of the council members—Dylan remembered the man’s name as Merrick—said as they both stepped forward, towards the little table in the center of the room. There were no other seats available; Dylan wondered if the delay had been, in part, to bring the table and chairs in.
“I have to confess that I’m not entirely sure why I’ve been invited to this meeting,” Julia said as she sat down, and Dylan pressed his lips together. They have no idea what they’ve got in her, he thought with amusement. “I’m a student—and so is Dylan.”
“Yes, but you were so dedicated to making sure the council knew the truth about Dimitrios and his thefts, we wanted to consult with you and Dylan some as we came to a conclusion about who to hire to that vacancy.”
“I’d like to point out that Dylan and I are far from being impartial,” Julia said. “I mean, if you wanted to make sure the least-strict dean possible got appointed to the post, then I think you could do that yourselves.” More than one of the members of the council snickered softly at that. Dylan managed to cover a snort with a fake cough.
“We’re both flattered to be invited, however,” he said when he’d recovered. “We both know what an honor this is.”
“Of course,” Merrick said. Next to him, a woman named Venira shifted in her seat, a barely-suppressed grin on her face.
“We know that you take representation of your elements seriously,” Venira said. “And we wanted to foster what we saw as important talent in a young Guardian-to-be.”
“Well, I appreciate it, for sure,” Julia said. “I guess I just feel a little overwhelmed at all the attention I’m suddenly getting.” Dylan saw the ingratiating smile, the charming humble attitude that Julia assumed, and had a brief struggle not to laugh out loud at how absurd it was. Julia was playing it to the hilt—and he thought that if nothing else, the meeting would definitely not be the usual boring thing that happened in the room.
“How will we be doing this? I don’t think Julia and I are qualified to interview anyone.”
“No—certainly,” Merrick said.
“Mostly we wanted to discuss the issues that the two of you might be aware of, within the school—and carry your questions to the candidates we have in the running,” a third member of the council, Mairi, told them.
“That seems like it could be something we’re qualified for,” Julia said. Dylan settled in his seat and poured his friend a glass of water.
“Excellent,” Venira said.
“What—as the two of you see it—is the biggest challenge a new dean would face, taking over the school’s administration?”
“As I see it,” Julia replied, “the biggest issue that Dimitrios left behind on the part of the students is a lot of suspicion and uncertainty. There are a lot of kids who will be coming back in the fall still worrying if there’s going to be more weirdness, if the new dean is going to be some other kind of fake.”
“In fairness, Dimitrios wasn’t—exactly—a fake,” Dylan said, glancing at Julia. “But she’s right, of course. Most of the students are going to be starting in the fall after spending most of a school year worried they’d be accused of something they didn’t do, or that they’re going to have to deal with professors who threaten them—things like that.”
“Understandable,” Merrick said.
“Do either of you think that there will be tension from the air or water-aligned students if the new dean is earth-aligned, as Terron Dimitrios was?”
“I don’t think it will matter what the new dean’s alignment is,” Julia said matter-of-factly. “I think they’re going to have a tough time gaining the trust of the students in general. They have good reasons to doubt school authorities these days.”
“Noted,” Venira said. “What do you think that a good candidate will do to sort of—allay those doubts?”
“Bringing back the clubs would be big,” Dylan said, sparing Julia the need. “And being consistent with the way that they enforce the rules.”
“We understand that there were issues with professors and consistency,” one of the council members—one that Dylan hadn’t met, dressed in brown and green—said. “Do you think that it would help just to have stable leadership?” Julia glanced at Dylan, and he could feel the pulse of growing annoyance in her thoughts; he couldn’t blame her.
“I think that a consistent leader who is willing to make things work the way that they did—more or less—before Dimitrios took over would find that a lot of the kids are willing to work with them,” Julia replied.
“Being interested in hearing people out is going to be important,” Dylan added. “A lot of the kids at the school feel like they were ignored, not listened to, and it just created a whole...vibe where no one knew who they could trust, even with their friends.”
There was a murmur through the council, and Dylan thought that its members didn’t necessarily have a good idea of how much Dimitrios’ eccentric approach to running the school had affected things. They were concerned with the relics being stolen more than they were about the kids in the school being driven out.
“I would like to add something,” Julia said, in a voice that was somehow quiet and also carrying. “I think the new dean—whoever it is—should make an effort to meet with the air-aligned students, especially the sylphs, and formally announce that their names had been cleared.”
“But it’s already common knowledge,” a man on the council said.
“But making the gesture is a big deal,” Dylan told him. “Showing that they know what’s been going on, and sort of—I guess—closing the chapter, is important.”
“Absolutely,” Julia agreed. “I don’t think most of you know how shaken up everyone was by everything Dimitrios did—not even just the stealing things, but threatening long-standing teachers and letting the ones he hired do whatever they want. It was weird, and that whole atmosphere is still going to be there until people know the new dean isn’t going to be like that.”
There was another murmur through the twelve or fifteen members of the council, and Dylan could see the consternation on their faces. “I agree,” he said, even though he knew that his opinion wasn’t even really wanted; he’d been invited because Julia would be present, not because anyone on the council really considered him a valuable resource. That was fine by Dylan—if he hadn’t needed Ruth’s intervention on keeping him from being punished, he might not have come back to the world of Guardians at all.
The meeting seemed to drag on forever, one of the members of the council asking a pointed question and either Julia or Dylan answering it, taking turns being aggressive and understanding throughout. He could sense Julia’s mood rising and falling as they continued: becoming irritable, and then amused, and then frustrated, and then sad, and then outright angry as some people repeated questions.
He carefully reached out and put his hand on hers underneath the table, flowing energy into Julia’s body to help her remain more or less placid. No matter how ridiculous her party turns out to be, when she turned 17 there is going to be a big change, and she’s going to be relieved. Dylan had to admit, privately to himself, that he was both excited about and dreading the day when Julia came into her full ability.
Finally—finally—they were done, and Dylan rose to his feet after Julia did, realizing that his legs had both gone partially to sleep. “Thank you both so much for your input,” Merrick said. “We might contact you to have one-on-one conversations as we get closer to the decision, but I think I can speak for the whole assembly here, when I say that y
ou’ve both been very helpful.” Dylan nodded towards the group, and contained his amusement and irritation both as he and Julia turned their backs on the council and walked out of the room.
He followed Julia out of the smaller chamber and reached out for her hand as they made their way out of the labyrinthine building. “Do you think they’re going to take anything we said seriously?” Julia glanced at him and rolled her eyes.
“Probably not,” she said. “But at least it’s on the record, and if they come to talk to us we can make that be on the record too.” Dylan raised an eyebrow at that.
“Why are you so worried about being on the record suddenly?” Julia stopped walking and turned to face him.
“How often did you end up being interviewed by someone and found out in the article afterwards that they totally changed your meaning?” Dylan let out a low whistle.
“You’re getting politically paranoid,” he told her, half-smiling wryly.
“I know,” Julia said with a sigh. She took her hand back from him and Dylan could hear the wind starting up outside—not howling, but enough to make its presence known through the windows. “It just seems like things are getting more and more complicated, and I can’t do anything about it.” Dylan watched as Julia started to walk away, and followed her a moment later.
“We’re still in that phase where people don’t trust us to make all our own decisions, but we know what we want,” Dylan pointed out. “It sucks.”
“It does,” Julia agreed. “I can’t wait until I’m eighteen. Even if I can’t completely walk away from being a Guardian, at least nobody can make me be in a particular place, as long as I’m not causing incidents or anything like that.” Dylan snorted.
“Well, at eighteen you’ll have had your full abilities for a year,” he conceded. “You’ll probably have enough control by then to not be locked up somewhere by the council, warded by a bunch of lead and iron.” Julia shuddered.
“If they ever try that on me, I swear I will find a way to make them pay for it,” she told him firmly. Dylan wasn’t sure that was—strictly speaking—possible, but he thought that if anyone could pull it off, it was likely to be Julia.
“Let’s just get back to Ruth’s place and chill for the rest of the afternoon,” Dylan suggested.
“I’m going back, and I’m going to climb the tallest tree on the freaking property line,” Julia countered. “And I’m going to spend the afternoon talking to the birds.”
“Probably a better conversation than you’d get with anyone back there,” Dylan said, gesturing to the chamber they’d just left. He got what he was trying for: Julia grinned. Just a handful of weeks more and we’ll be back at school and she’ll chill out a bit, he told himself. He wasn’t sure he believed it, but it was something to look forward to.
CHAPTER THREE
“You’re about to start your final year at Sandrine, that must be exciting,” the boy in front of her was saying; Julia nodded absently, trying to get control of the energy she could feel building up in her body. You would think that with the potential for an incident, no one would want me at these parties, she thought irritably.
“Oh, yeah—I hadn’t really realized that I was going into my senior year,” Julia said, as the boy’s words sank in finally. “I guess I’ve been preoccupied with everything else going on.” She dredged through her memories of the last few moments, trying to remember the boy’s name. Ken! That’s it. “I think I remember you mentioning that you’re going off to college this year, Ken?”
“Yeah, I’m headed to NYU,” Ken said, beaming proudly.
“Oh? What are you planning on studying?” Julia made a private bet with herself; the water-aligned Guardians and supernatural creatures that went to college typically only went into one of a few fields. Of course, Julia thought blandly, that was true of any of the elementally-aligned people she’d met who went to college. Air-aligned people usually (but not always) went into fields like communications, linguistics, sociology, and anthropology. Earth-aligned creatures and Guardians tended to go into finance—or on the other end of the spectrum, they went into geology.
“I was thinking of going into psychology,” Ken told her, and Julia’s smile stretched a little wider as she struggled to suppress her amusement at winning her personal bet. Water-aligned Guardians and creatures tended to gravitate to either marine biology, oceanography, or the social services; there were a rare few, like Dylan, who went into music, and then there were the ones like her grandmother who’d parlayed a lifelong attachment to gardening into something.
“You know, I haven’t really given much thought to my future,” Julia said, realizing it for the first time in at least a year; she had been so focused on finishing at Sandrine, and the political climate she’d been thrown into, that she hadn’t even thought about college, or what her career would be.
“That’s not all that surprising,” Ken said, giving her a quick glance. “I mean, everyone basically assumes that you’ll end up along the family line of business, especially with your grandmother being who she is.”
“I guess,” Julia said, shrugging. “I know there’s a lot of pressure on all corners for me to settle down with someone.” She made a face—even mentioning it in passing, in a polite conversation, reminded her of the extent of that pressure, and how much she’d come to resent it.
The real reason Ruth was sending her to all these parties was, she knew, as much for Julia to find someone she might want to bond with and eventually take as a mate—but the thought of finding someone to date, much less spend the rest of her life with, at a boring party full of older people talking about their finances and their latest improvements to their house, or politics, was distasteful.
“Well, you seem to be well on the way to that with Dylan,” Ken said, inclining his head in the other water-aligned Guardian’s direction. Julia stared at him in confusion.
“What do you mean?” she felt the smile fall off of her face but couldn’t bring herself to replace it immediately.
“Well, most of the families in the water alignment assume that you and Dylan—having been friends for so long—were planning on eventually making something official.”
“What?” Julia glanced at Dylan. Her parents had never given her the impression that they thought she and Dylan were anything more than friends, that Dylan was in the house for any other purpose than to be a companion and protector for her.
“Oh—is that not supposed to be a general idea?” Ken’s eyes widened slightly. “I mean, I know that it wasn’t official, but everyone’s been talking about how close the two of you are.”
“We’re friends,” Julia said, shaking her head. “Until last summer we weren’t even that for almost two years.”
“Then you’re still open to finding a mate eventually?” Julia felt her heart beating faster, and felt the tingling of anger working through her—but she knew that she couldn’t give into it. She had to keep her composure; there was no sense in embarrassing her family or herself by acting out at a major event. She took a quick, deep breath as unobtrusively as possible and smiled.
“That’s why I’m going to all these parties, isn’t it?” she reached out and made herself touch Ken’s shoulder. In the back of her mind, Julia was determined that as soon as she and Dylan returned to Ruth’s home, she was going to talk to the older woman; she couldn’t think of any way that such a rumor might get out—and apparently be so universally credited as a fact—without the older woman having some kind of hand in it. Her parents had made it clear to her that while they wanted her to be stable and happy, they didn’t want her to feel pressured into making a choice to be with any particular Guardian. “The council may have other ideas, especially given how volatile you can somehow be, but we fully intend to fight against any kind of arrangement.”
“I just—well, everyone assumed,” Ken said. “But if you’re still fully available, that will make a lot of people very happy.” Julia tried to keep a smile on her face in response, not only t
o the little suggestive comment but also from the still-shocking news that apparently the water-aligned Guardians at least all thought that she was interested in taking Dylan as a mate. Who would start a rumor like that?
As soon as she could get away from Ken, she pulled Dylan aside, gritting her teeth as she realized that if anyone saw them alone together, it would just reinforce the rumors that were apparently circling. “Have you heard about this?”
“About what?” Dylan had been speaking to someone else while Julia entertained Ken; Julia couldn’t remember who it had been, but that was unimportant.
“Apparently the rumor is that you and I are going to be mates eventually,” Julia told him. She expected Dylan to react the way she’d had to struggle not to: anger, or shock, or outright laughter at the absurdity of it. Instead his eyes widened slightly.
“Where would they get something like that?” Julia threw her hands up in the air, gesturing wildly.
“Apparently, it’s common knowledge in all the water-aligned circles,” she said, quietly but tightly. “And I have to assume it’s probably halfway through the rest of the elemental alignments too.” She shook her head, wishing that she could scream, or throw something, or hit someone.
“Careful,” Dylan said softly. Julia glanced around them and realized that he’d picked up on the rise of her energy, the sound of the wind outside. “No need to have an incident here, is there?”
“Ugh, I wish I could,” Julia said, taking a deep breath through her nose as she clenched her teeth to try and get control over herself. “Just how all these jerks.”