The Family Shame

by Christopher Nuttall

  “I told them about the plot to attack the city,” I said. “Wasn’t that enough?”

  Father shook his head. “It should be. But they honestly don’t know what to make of you. You managed to kill a very powerful, dark magician. And you’re only thirteen. For the moment, you need to stay where you are.”

  I gritted my teeth. There was one card left to play. I could tell them about Callam. I could tell them that there was a Zero right here, someone they could take and train and eventually turn into a match for Caitlyn Aguirre. They’d sell their souls for another source of Objects of Power, someone who worked directly for them. The Family Council could hardly refuse to let me come home if I found them a Zero.

  But … Callam didn’t want to go to Shallot. And he was my friend.

  The temptation hung in front of me for a long chilling moment. Perhaps he would forgive me, eventually. It wouldn’t be hard to find places for his family in the big city. The people there took education seriously. And maybe he would be happy, working with his hands. I’d seen his face while he built the treehouse. I could go home …

  … And all I’d have to do is betray my friend. My one true friend. The one person who’d stuck with me after facing far worse than social disdain. Uncle Ira had nearly killed him and he’d stayed with me.

  No, I thought. I couldn’t do it. I’ll keep his secret.

  Father looked down at me. “I’m sorry …”

  “Don’t be,” I said. “But seeing I did do the family a huge favour, I want a few things in return.”

  Father’s lips quirked. “What would you like?”

  “Someone to help repair the hall,” I said. “Not all the blast was redirected upwards. And then someone else to help me fix the wards. Uncle Ira had friends, after all. And then I want a handful of teachers. You can probably send someone out here to help me study charms and potions and forging.”

  Father lifted his eyebrows. “Forging?”

  “It seems I will have a lot of time on my hands,” I said, as evenly as I could. Callam would need the lessons, not me. “I want to write letters to friends and family. And I want a horse too. Two horses. I don’t want to get bored out here.”

  “I suppose not,” Father said, after a moment. If he suspected my real motives, he kept the thought to himself. “You can write letters if you wish, I think, although I couldn’t guarantee privacy. Or replies. And I … I do plan to visit more often.”

  “That would be nice,” I said. I wondered if he’d foist another caretaker on me. Perhaps I could just hire Callam’s mother. “I look forward to seeing you.”

  Father nodded. “Very good,” he said. “Shall we go back to the hall?”

  I followed him as we walked along the driveway. Callam was sitting on the grass, waiting for us. The Kingsmen were packing up, clearly preparing to depart. I guessed they hadn’t found anything they could use against us, then. Father picked up the pace, hurrying towards the senior officer. He’d probably want to make very sure they hadn’t found anything too incriminating. Uncle Ira might be dead, but the family might wind up paying a price for his crimes.

  Callam grinned at me as I joined him. “Everything alright?”

  “More or less,” I said, sitting down next to him. “More or less.”

  I allowed my mind to wander as we waited for my father. The hall was mine now, for better or worse. I - and Callam - would have all the time in the world to study magic. Maybe I could talk him into travelling to Shallot. Or … maybe it didn’t matter. There was a lot to study that didn’t involve forbidden spells and potions. The ghosts were still out there, after all. Perhaps I could ask Father to send me copies of the family records. It would be interesting to see what, if anything, the original researchers had discovered.

  “You’re smiling,” Callam said. “What’s so funny?”

  “I’m happy,” I said. It was true. “And I’m home.”

  The End

  Afterword

  It’s really easy to screw up your life these days.

  Actually, to a very large extent, that has always been true. Society has never been kind to those who transgress against its rules, particularly girls and young women. A woman who lived in Jane Austen’s time, a woman who stepped off the beaten path - who lost her virginity, willingly or unwillingly - could expect to be called a slut, even if it wasn’t her fault. It’s still far too easy to fall into the trap of blaming the victim, particularly if there’s money or politics involved. Indeed, Jane Austen’s heroines ran the risk - as Lydia Bennet does - of bringing shame on their family as well as themselves, ruining their siblings’ chances of making good matches themselves.

  But as cruel and hypocritical as such social rules were, they had one great advantage over the rules pervading today. Everyone knew the rules. Everyone knew where the lines were drawn. It’s possible to win a game that’s rigged against you, but not when the rules are changed constantly, seemingly at random. (One can at least guess at the rules when whoever writes them is trying to weigh them against you.) Austen’s girls knew not to be caught alone with an unrelated man, for if they did they might find themselves forced to marry him - or watch helplessly as their reputations were destroyed (often by other women). Heinlein, too, touched on this when he wrote To Sail Beyond the Sunset.

  Now, the rules keep changing. What was acceptable yesterday is not acceptable today; what is acceptable today may not be acceptable tomorrow. What makes this worse, if that is possible, is that the self-appointed enforcers of these rules appear to believe that they can declare someone retroactively guilty of a crime. If a man commits a deed on Monday, a deed that is declared illegal on Tuesday, can he be punished for it on Wednesday? The enforcers appear to believe that this is right and proper, but it is not - not if we want to keep a functioning society. It will not comfort anyone to realise that Cicero’s retroactive prosecution for judicial murder probably helped speed the Roman Republic to its doom.

  We live in an era where a single ill-judged tweet or social media post can bring disaster, an era where something may be dug up from years ago, taken out of context and used against the unlucky poster. We live in an era where the self-appointed guardians of morality will look for a flaw in one’s armour - notice how carefully I avoided a different word that would allow a bully to declare me a racist - and then use it to drive the target out of society. Both Kathy Griffin and Laura Ingraham were targeted because they said something unfortunate, leading to punishments far in excess of the crime.

  There will be people reading this who will argue that one of these women (but not the other, depending on their political leanings) deserved such punishment. They may be right, from a subjective point of view, but is that really the sort of world they want to live in?

  We also live in a world where a respected scientist can be publically humiliated because of his shirt, two computer engineers can have their reputations ruined because someone took their words out of context, where rape victims are publically humiliated to ‘prove’ they somehow deserved it … is this really the world we want?

  Indeed, the political aspect of the problem only makes it (still) worse. Humans are tribal creatures. People are prepared to forgive people who are nominally on their side while calling for people on the other side to apologise, subject themselves to public humiliation and then slink off into the shadows. This has only made politics more poisonous, ensuring that people are less and less likely to take each successive outrage seriously. There are limits to just how long outrage can be sustained. People get tired of being outraged all the time.

  Vox Day’s advice on the subject is simple - never apologise. And the hell of it is that he’s right. In a civilised world, an apology would be accepted and that would be the end of the matter; in our current world, an apology is seen as a confession and used as a justification to continue the attack. Why should anyone apologise when it doesn’t benefit them? And why should someone subject themselves, hopefully metaphorically, to a Cersei Lannister-style walk of shame
when it only makes matters worse?

  We live in a world where a single mistake can haunt you for the rest of your life.

  I have no sympathy whatsoever for people who, at a relatively young age, commit terrible crimes and discover that the rest of the world has no place for them. Murdering or raping someone might be a mistake, in the sense that committing either ruins your life, but it is also an unarguable crime. A person who has done it once might well be willing to do it again, once released from jail. But I have a great deal of sympathy for people who make much smaller mistakes, yet discover that they can never escape them. Is there anyone, anyone at all, who can honestly say they have not said or done something, at one point, that might make them pariahs today?

  If that doesn’t worry you, it should.

  I was reviewing a couple of Heinlein’s later works recently and one of the things I said, quite reasonably, was that I found the incest disturbing. Incest has been taboo throughout history for good reasons, reasons that are backed up by science (and would require some pretty good genetic manipulation techniques to render irrelevant). Is it possible that some later generation, armed with those techniques, will look back and accuse me of being incest-phobic? If one of those people took my statements out of context, quite possibly.

  Nothing is ever forgotten on the internet. The result is a curious mixture of people who do everything in their power to avoid getting tainted by accusations of anything (to the point where they abandon any of their friends who did get tainted) and people who deliberately go out of their way to shock, making fun of outrage-mongers who feed on bullying those too fearful to fight back. Careers and lives have been destroyed: some people who said something unfortunate, some people who happened to have their lives destroyed because they were too close to a targeted victim. Tell me … if outrage-mongers destroy a business because the owner said or did something unfortunate, what happens to the people who happen to work there? They’ve been thrown out of work … for nothing!

  Do we really want to live in such a world?

  What we have forgotten, I think, is proportion. A single misstep cannot be allowed to ruin someone’s life, not completely. A little embarrassment isn’t always a bad thing. But when it goes too far, when it ruins lives, it has consequences. And those consequences are not always pretty.

  Christopher G. Nuttall

  Edinburgh, 2018

  If you enjoyed The Family Shame, you might like

  Trials of Magic, Book One in the Hundred Halls Series

  By Thomas K. Carpenter

  http://www.thomaskcarpenter.com

  Blurb

  There are exactly one hundred halls of magic to choose from. Ever since our parents were killed I knew exactly which hall was for me.

  Aurelia “Aurie” Silverthorne is one of the best and brightest to ever apply to the Hundred Halls, the only magical university in the world. To be accepted, she must pass grueling trials that claim the lives of aspirants every year.

  But more than her desire to practice magic is at stake.

  Aurie’s little sister has been courting powerful forces in hopes of protecting herself from the beings that killed their parents, but alliances come with complications. As things spiral out of control, and dangerous foes arise at every turn, Aurie knows the only way to protect her sister is to pass the trials—even if it means making a terrible sacrifice.

  Chapter One

  No one had died today. In fact, no one had died in the last seven days. It was the longest stretch since Aurie had joined the fourth-floor team as an orderly, which made it a joyous event, and simultaneously a superstitious one.

  Aurie dodged around the Jell-O cart, skidding to a stop outside room 438. A sign in big red letters read “WARNING. No perfumes, magical ointments, or any alchemy reagents within thirty feet.”

  She gave her aquamarine scrubs a voracious sniff. While she’d washed her scrubs by hand that morning, using a plain soap bar in the shower, and used talcum powder for deodorant, Aurie was worried she’d picked up hitchhiking scents on the crowded train ride.

  The only smell she detected was her mild body odor mixed with the talcum, so she went in.

  An emaciated girl on the bed lit up. “Awesome Aurie!”

  As she stretched her arms out, the dozens of wires connected to her limbs from scaffolding around the bed quivered.

  “Elegant Emily,” said Aurie, leaning over to give a hug, careful not to break a wire.

  Aurie hid a grimace as she realized how thin Emily had gotten.

  “How’s it going, kiddo?” Aurie asked.

  Emily put up a brave face. Suddenly, the car noises in the street outside quieted. Aurie could feel her heart press against her chest.

  “I heard the doctor tell the nurse that she’s out of spells,” she said, staring at her bone-thin hands.

  “I’m sure that’s not true. There are always more spells. The doctor probably meant that she’s out of spells, and needs to learn a few more to treat you,” she explained.

  Aurie reached in her pocket and pulled out a painted miniature about two inches high. The figure wielded twin scimitars in a fighting pose with the suggestion of winds swirling around her.

  “It’s you. A wind dancer,” said Aurie while she tucked a strand of errant blonde hair behind Emily’s ear.

  “There’s no such thing as a wind dancer,” said Emily.

  “You can be the first then, and have your own hall,” said Aurie.

  Emily offered a bittersweet smile as she cradled the miniature as if it were a puppy. The poor girl had been cursed by a vengeful air elemental to be near weightless. The wires kept her from floating to the ceiling. Without gravity acting on her body, she was wasting away like an astronaut in space for too long, and the airiness of her body made her susceptible to allergens.

  “She looks like you,” said Emily.

  Aurie squinted to bring the details into focus. She’d had a friend paint it for her, but hadn’t had a chance to study it.

  “Yeah, I guess she has my olive skin and dark hair. I don’t see any freckles, though,” said Aurie.

  “Or those dark circles,” said Emily, touching Aurie’s cheek below the eye.

  “Sleep’s overrated,” said Aurie reflexively. She’d worked the night shift at a convenience store on the outskirts of Invictus. “Hey! Maybe this means I’ll be your first student at the Hundred Halls.”

  Emily shook her head with faux indignation. “That’s silly. You have your Merlins tomorrow.” Then her eyes went wide as if she’d said something wrong. “I…I need the nurse,” she said suddenly, jamming the call button.

  “What’s wrong? Are you okay?” asked Aurie, examining Emily for signs of danger.

  The hard soles of running nurses echoed in the hallway. Aurie spun around expecting an emergency team only to find the doorway full of smiling people: doctors, nurses, orderlies, the rest of the patients—the kids.

  “Surprise!” they yelled.

  Aurie nearly tripped over her own feet, trying to figure out why they were surprising her, or even if it was supposed to be for her.

  “I don’t understand,” she said.

  Dr. Fairlight stepped forward as the spokesman for the group. She handed Aurie a small wrapped present about the size of a fist.

  “With your Merlins tomorrow, we won’t be seeing you much after that—”

  Aurie interrupted with hurried breath. “I’m still going to work here. I have a job, right?”

  Dr. Fairlight squeezed Aurie on the shoulder. “As long as I’m head of this floor you have a job here. Especially since this was where your dad did his residency.”

  “I miss him,” she said.

  Dr. Fairlight gave a comforting nod and continued, “But we know you won’t have as much time. Especially when you get into Arcanium.”

  Guilt welled up inside Aurie. “The Aura Healers are my second choice. It’s just…”

  Everyone laughed. “You don’t have to justify anything to us,” said Dr. Fair
light. “You’ll be great whatever hall picks you, though it’ll be the Aura Healers’ gain if Arcanium is too stupid to take the brightest student in decades.”

  Everyone always seemed to think that Aurie wouldn’t have any problem passing her Merlins and getting into the Hundred Halls, but even some of the best students had to take them more than once. It wasn’t usually an issue, but this was her one and only chance. She turned twenty in a month, which meant she’d no longer be able to take the Merlins. It was first time, or nothing.

  “Open it,” said Dr. Fairlight as the rest of the floor leaned forward. The kids crowded around her, eyes bright with the anticipation of her present.

  Aurie patted a few heads before making a production of the opening. Some of these kids wouldn’t be alive at their next birthday to experience presents again.

  She tore the paper excruciatingly slow while the kids laughed and giggled and cheered her on. “Open it! Open it!”

  “Hurry up!” said Emily from behind her, poking her with a bone-thin finger.

  Finally, after a dramatic finish, Aurie crumpled the paper and threw it into the waste basket.

  The kids practically climbed into her lap in trying to get the first glimpse of the gift. The open box revealed a pair of shiny earrings, eliciting an “ohhhh” from the crowd. Bright little rubies stared back at Aurie from the setting.

  “You didn’t have to do this,” said Aurie, shaking her head at Dr. Fairlight, who’d crossed her arms and had a smirk on her face.

  “Nonsense. We know it’s been a rough go, what with you and your sister on your own. We wanted to get you something you could remember us by,” said Dr. Fairlight. “Press the ruby and say ‘lux.’”

  When the words left her lips, a ruby-red glow filled the space around Aurie.

  “They’re perfect for late night studying when you don’t want to disturb your roommate. They also help you see in the dark beyond the glow,” said Dr. Fairlight.