“Both.”
“King Henry . . . and what do you rule, King Henry? England, Ireland, and France?” Ceinwyn Dale asked, again with that smile. Snip, snip.
I wanted to haul a right hook into her and scream, ‘Your face!’ but, for once in my young life, prudence won over anger. “I rule the kingdom of me. It’s small but big enough where it counts, ya know?”
“What if I told you that you rule nothing? That you’re completely powerless before outside influences? That fate will kill you one day and there is nothing you can do to stop it?”
It’s like she was asking for it. I didn’t know it at the time, but Ceinwyn Dale’s an aeromancer with more besides and could have shot my little ass out of the window like I was a cannonball.
“I’m trying to be nice, lady,” I told her.
“You like to fight, don’t you?” Ceinwyn Dale observed.
Mom tried to wave that off, seeing the chance to get rid of me dying before it was born but the lady stopped the waving with a look. There is something about Ceinwyn Dale that makes you shut up and listen when she commands your attention that has nothing to do with the Mancy.
“You like to fight, King Henry, like to punch and take a punch especially I’d guess.”
“So? The shirt of the guy beating the crap out of the other guy give it away?”
“It’s the only time you can feel above,” Ceinwyn Dale kept up, talking around her smile. “The bones, that’s what you like. Bone hitting bone in one perfect punch. Their bones cracking and your bones holding up. Instant gratification.”
“You want gratification? Got other ways to give it . . .” Dad did cuff me then. “Hey, man!”
“Watch it or I’ll give another!”
I turned angrily back to Ceinwyn Dale. She watched me like she might eat me one day, like I was some lamb going bye bye come harvest day. “Enough games, you crazy smiling lady, what do you want? Who gives a crap if I like fighting? What kind of fucked up school are you a part of? And why should I bother to care?”
“You’re going to be so fun to break, King Henry.” She reset her smile. Going from annoying me to freaking me out. Current educated me always thought of the Cheshire Cat. Old white trash me saw reruns of Jack Nicholson playing the Joker from Saturday afternoons when there was nothing worth watching on the TV.
“Fuck you,” I told her. Real snappy wordplay at the time.
“You’re special. One in ten-thousand at least. One in a quarter million perhaps,” she explained. “Does this make you feel above? Does it make you tingle and give you goose-bumps?”
Damned if it didn’t.
Damned if it didn’t piss me off that she called me on the feeling, belittling it into nothing. Typical Asylum maneuver—making me seem like some pathetic little emo wimp.
I popped up from the kitchen table, pointing a finger at my parents, ready to spread my favorite word around. “Fuck you two for talking to her,” and pointed at Ceinwyn Dale, “and double fuck you with something rusty!”
I ran into my little room, locking the door. Know I did. Still remember the lock turning like amber frozen in time. All the good memories from before Mom got sick have faded away but that one stuck . . . me turning a lock. Something small—something huge.
Lying out on my unmade mattress of a bed, I clicked on my aforementioned gold-plated fan. The bike chain rattled as the tiny motor kicked full speed, clanging the bars of my headboard. A prisoner’s cup making noise to make noise and pass the time. Fitting sound for a fitting room.
Running away from your problems and hiding in your room when you don’t understand what’s going on is a long-standing teenage tactic. In my house, with its thin doors and even thinner walls, it didn’t work too well. You could still hear everything. But at least I didn’t have to see Ceinwyn Dale’s smile any longer.
I lit up a cigarette to calm down. Smoking was forbidden in the house . . . actually it was forbidden at all . . . but doubly forbidden in the house—I wasn’t giving much a crap at the moment.
My fan rattling and wafting exhaled smoke, I heard the aftermath. “Sorry about that, Mrs. Dale,” Dad said in his gruff voice which only got kind when he talked to my mother.
“It’s Miss still . . . and don’t worry yourself over him, I’ve seen worse. The Institution of Elements is very capable at handling young men with his type of problems.”
“Then you’ll still take him?” Mom asked. Her voice was happy, almost relieved.
“Of course we will . . . he’s a special boy, deep down. I wanted a reaction and I got one, my job is to see how applicants react to situations they don’t understand. As I said, I’ve seen much worse. He has hidden potential.”
“Let’s not get hasty. He don’t want to go, he ain’t going,” Dad reminded the women who were deciding my future for me—getting enough strings together to make me a baby bootie.
“He’ll want to,” Mom complained. “Once he calms down and hears Miss Dale out.”
Like hell I will, I told myself.
Pathetic little shit, I was. I popped on a stolen iPod and picked up a stack of stolen comics—told you I had a habit of getting lucky with accidents—and completely tuned them out on the idea I was going nowhere. Special. One in a quarter mil. Fuck her. My life could suck but it’s mine. I wasn’t leaving what I knew for some reject school that probably stole more money from the government on some crackpot scheme to improve troubled kids than I ever had.
Guess who my favorite comic book character was? Wolverine. Got to love a fighter. He’s short too. Got hurt but could take all the pain, that’s better than being invincible. Got all the women he wanted without having to deal with relationships like that poor sap Cyclops with his girlfriend that died fifty times. A teenage boy’s wet dream. Comic, cigs, girlfriend, fighting: my life.
My life, assholes, take your strings and shove them.
A couple comics finished and lots of heavy metal songs later, I realized I wasn’t alone anymore. Over the rim of my comic book I saw the smile.
How you doing, Alice?
My next look went to the door, which was still locked. And it wasn’t one of those shitty locks you could pop with a hairpin, but a nice deadbolt I’d stolen from Home Depot. Yeah, I stole a lock, bite me and go find your own irony.
The music still beat from my earbuds as they dropped away. I screeched a little from the shock. “Who the fuck are you, lady?!?”
“Ceinwyn Dale, a recruiter for a special school for special people.” I checked my window, still shut. She noticed, but commentated on something else, “You like comics?”
“Yeah.” The ‘bitches’ and ‘fucks’ were largely killed dead in the face of the impossible.
“And music? Metal? That’s fitting . . .”
I sat up on the bed and put out what was left of my cig.
“You can check the door if you’d like,” she told me, matter-of-fact about my astonishment. I checked again. The nasty-ass clothes I’d kicked in front of the door hadn’t even moved.
“I ain’t going to your school, lady.”
“Why not?” She was genuinely curious. Ceinwyn Dale, always the interested observer.
“I’m not a freak. I get by. I got a life. So I fight, who gives a rat’s ass?”
She picked up my iPod and browsed through the playlist. She had beautiful hands. Not a body part most guys notice, and Ceinwyn Dale had some others that were pretty noticeable, but her delicate fingers and sapphire fingernails drew the eye when she used them in front of you. Nimble manipulation, just like the rest of her, turning those fleshy stubs into the finest tool, skinny and elegant. “Is this the entirety of your reasons?”
“I got a girl.”
“And you love her?” The smile quirked extra.
“Sure. I guess.” Love wasn’t a big emotion in the Price household. We had trouble managing giving a shit.
“Or do you just like what you get to do with her?”
“That too.”
One part about
Ceinwyn Dale I started figuring out during that first conversation is she mocks everyone but she treats her kids the same as she does adults. Which I wasn’t seeing much of back then. It was inclusive and part of the reason she’s such a good Recruiter.
“You’ll have to give her up.”
“One more reason to not go to your stupid school.”
She tapped the iPod screen with a sapphire nail. “Did you steal this?”
I calculated an answer in my head. My usual answer was to deny, deny, deny. But . . . who wants a thief at her school? So . . . logic train . . . “Yup, I steal all the time.”
“An iPod, comic books, and your girlfriend’s virginity, what a thief!” Ceinwyn Dale mocked me.
“Again, fuck you.” The whole door-being-locked thing had to wear off, though I still couldn’t figure it out. But another very teenage skill is to never let the facts get in the way of some hating.
“Say your favorite word again, King Henry. I dare you.”
And just as I moved my mouth to oblige the lady, a ball of compressed air lodged itself between my jaws. Yup, shit got real. I started choking. Panic came right on its heels. Eyes went wide, pulse went high, arms grasped, trying to grab onto Ceinwyn Dale to either make her stop or get her help.
She watched it all with her smile. “How long will it take? I do wonder . . .”
“Please!” I tried to say but it came out as a ragged hiss. Another round of grabbing followed, which she batted away. All my fighting and I felt like a baby as I drifted down to the floor, eyes going foggy.
[CLICK]
When I came to, my jaw was still locked open. I was on the floor with my dirty clothes, stained with blood, spit, smoke, and teenage lovemaking. That day is almost eight years ago and I want to take a shower just thinking about the floor. Ceinwyn Dale reclined on my bed, looking down at me from her side, a comic book draped over one hand.
“I do wonder . . .” she repeated. “How long will it take you to realize you have a nose, King Henry?”
“Guu Ou, Baa!” I told her.
“Yes, yes. Fuck you, bitch, I know. That mouth is going to get you killed one day, King Henry. You’re thinking, what do I care? But that’s only from the assumption on your part that the world is as safe as you assume it is. Safe to steal, safe to have a girlfriend giving you those mighty three minute grunting and humping sessions, safe to get into fights with whomever, whenever.
“A world where all you have to worry about is a mother that wants free from her psychosis and a father that has never been able to control you. What the world really is . . . is a dangerous world most never bother to see, a one in ten-thousand world, a one in a quarter million world. A world where a woman can vaporize herself past a door and five minutes later stick a ball of air into your mouth to . . . Shut. You. Up. For. Once.”
Douchebag showoff aeromancers.
Fourteen-year-old-me stayed silent—not by choice—and considered what she’d said. Strings be multiplying.
Ceinwyn Dale flipped a page of the comic with a nimble finger. “The Institution of Elements is a neutral faction within that world, King Henry. It seeks to find the special few and train them for the world as a whole. This includes a normal education and a one in ten-thousand education. It is not an easy ride but if you survive it, you’ll survive quite a lot. You’ll be able to make something of yourself and . . . you’ll be able to escape your parents’ fate. Stuck in a small life with little money and shackled by children you hate just as much as you love.”
The ball of air in my mouth dissolved in a puff of smoke. “What’s it like?” I asked, finally interested.
Maybe if I’d been older I’d have questioned her more about ‘magic’ existing, but after the demonstration I took it at face value. There is something in the Mancy that calls us to it. I could escape a crappy life but I couldn’t escape it. The Mancy is the biggest string of all.
“It will change you.” Ceinwyn Dale smiled. Least reassuring smile I’d ever seen up to that point. It’s still top ten. “You won’t like all of it, but certain lessons will open you up like a butterfly, something new and beautiful and true to itself.”
I got up on the bed and sat next to her. Butterfly . . . not exactly the best metaphor to use on me but I got the image. “So it’s like Hogwarts kind of?” Between three minute grunting and humping sessions as Ceinwyn Dale called them—though to my credit they were actually five minute grunting and humping sessions—the girlfriend liked to read books aloud to me, usually as I smoked a post-sex cigarette out her window.
For the first time I heard Ceinwyn Dale laugh, a short and quick ‘ha!’ That’s all I ever hear from her. A quick ‘ha!’ A bark, you could call it. Never real laughter you can’t control.
“I’m not some friendly giant, King Henry. The Institution of Elements isn’t a fairy castle. There will not be magical duels or trips to town to try steaming candy or Christmas vacations. You may write your family, that’s all. Other than that, you’ll be stuck. Seven days a week without a way to escape us for four years if you’re a one in ten-thousand kind of person, seven years if you’re a quarter million kind. We’ll break you . . . we’ll forge you . . . we’ll make you a mancer.”
“A mancer?” I already liked the name. Like she’d said, it made you feel special. Every kid wants to feel special. Every grown-up too. Of course, I was already imagining many things about the Mancy which didn’t happen. Spell after spell, throwing around fire and lighting.
Bullshit.
It takes about a minute to focus enough anima into a ‘conjuration of magnetism’ on yourself, more for something outward, usually much more. As a weapon in a straight up fight the Mancy is often useless. Preparation is its weakness, but over the years stories get spread and imagination goes bonkers. For example: over 1500 years ago in Britain you might have some Irish and Welsh facing off in a battle line, shouting and drinking and waving ass and peckers at each other trying to work up the courage to charge, all the while druids on either side are gibbering and screeching and acting like a bunch of fucktards.
But one guy doesn’t. One guy is calm and focused and after about five minutes of staring down his enemies he raises his arm and sends down one bolt of lightning. One bolt of lightning. In five minutes, with lots of set up. That’s what the Mancy will get you. Let’s name the guy who shot the lightning Merlin. Merlin would cause my expectations to soar and eventually they’d crash to the ground. Sooner rather than later. In the end, a mancer is a fucktard just like everyone else and Ceinwyn Dale is weird.
She looked at me as if judging my ripeness. Is it harvest day yet, little lamb? “Let’s get back to your parents and finish the paper work.”
Session 105
I’ve looked at this recorder quite a few times over the last twenty years and thought about doing what I’m about to do. At first I was just too busy; running a shop, falling in and out of love, trying not to get myself killed. Then . . . then the regrets and the lies began to pile up like cast off spare change and even though I never picked it up, the idea of the recorder felt heavy in my mind, a growing mound of metals. It gained a density beyond its size. A nickel here, a penny there.
It’s fitting, I suppose, that once again I feel forced into doing it. This time you have my daughter to thank or to blame, depending on your view of my distinctive place in mancer history. I don’t know how exactly she found them. They’d been locked away in one of my oldest storage cabinets for years, dragged from the old shop to the new shop and then yet again to my home office, but she found my old tapes—little SD cards, most computers don’t even have slots for them nowadays, but she found one that did.
My own inventive genes slapping me in the face.
King Henry Price as a disgruntled young man thinking about being a broken angry teenager. That’s bad enough, the idea of your teenage daughter learning about your antics in that way. Listening to her father curse and curse and curse some more just for the fun of it, because he likes the sound and the fe
el of those violent words on his lips . . . coming up the back of his throat and out of his mouth—back before I’d even started to get creative with the cursing as a way to win myself a smile or laugh in dangerous situations, back when it was only to put a person off and repetition after repetition to blast the senses, to create a wall. Listening about her mother as an object of sexual desire, and about the women besides her mother. Listening about her favorite uncles getting into fights and breaking rules that you’ve told her not to break a dozen times.
It’s bad enough she listened to them.
It’s rather amazing she treasured every moment . . .
But then she made copies.
And then she handed them out during the first month of her schooling at the Institution to her new friends.
And then I got a phone call from the Dean.
If it wasn’t my kid responsible I’d be laughing about the woman getting caught in her own webs. How funny the whole mess would have been then. Instead, I drove to the Institution stern faced and disappointed in my little girl, just a bit angry that she’d stolen from me, and just a bit more ashamed about what she’d heard from me, and just a bit fearful that Dad’s curse ‘you have one just like you’ came true. It was the same drive that takes place in the first tape, or near enough to it. I even stopped to have lunch at the same place. I found it nostalgic.
Once I finally arrived and had my meeting with the Dean about the damage that had been done, my anger and shame and my fear only grew. The tapes were copied into a million forms of information and no matter how many times the teachers confiscated a copy, more seemed to show up, spreading at the speed of rabbits breeding. The kids loved me. I’d already been a legend for my deeds and misdeeds, now I’m a folk hero from my own telling of it all. A twenty-year-old graduate student asked me for my autograph . . .
My little girl had the guts to give me what I call her why-am-I-in-trouble-daddy-don’t-you-love-me? face. And the damn thing worked . . . I was ready to ground her, to banish to stay alone at the Institution for the summer off-month like I had to experience seven times, to put my foot down, lay down the law, and suddenly I felt like I was the one being unfair, that I’m the one really at fault for not destroying the tapes in the first place . . .
The Foul Mouth and the Fanged Lady (The King Henry Tapes Book 1) Page 2