Plutarch’s face grew fierce, his lone eye glinting dangerously. “I don’t want a child, Junior. I want a student. An adult. One who understands he needs to listen to what I have to say if he ever wants to be an Ultra in more than name. One who understands he is not equal and will not be equal until I have decided that he is equal.”
“Go. Fuck. Yourself.”
Plutarch nodded like he expected the reaction. “You want out? Ask me to let you out.”
“Ain’t gonna happen.”
“It will happen,” Plutarch said firmly. Like it happened every time. Maybe I wasn’t the first. Maybe he did this with every Artificer. Wonder how many of them gave up in the first day? Wonder how many of them gave up in the first hour?
“So the tortured becomes the torturer.”
Plutarch grinned at that. “I like you, Junior. Reckless, but strong. The right kind of metal to make a tool with, I’d say. But first you have to melt down the metal or it’s just a useless clump. Maybe after you’re a useful tool, I’ll tell you what real torture is like. This? This isn’t even as horrible as a stay in the stockade. This is vacation.”
“Ain’t asking for your help,” I decided.
“Get out on your own if you can, but I think you’ll ask eventually.”
Sorry, Vicky. Guess you have to wait awhile. Guess I got to win the war with Pappy to even fight the war with the Three Queens. Be smart enough to stay with your friends and don’t go to your stupid ass brother. Maybe she’d ask Pocket where I was and he’d help her. She couldn’t handle them on her own. Vicky Welf wasn’t that type of person. Val could. Hope maybe. Wasn’t even too sure about Pocket’s odds.
One day and Class ’09 was already too busy to keep each other informed.
That’s why the Three Queens waited until this year.
And I’m in a hole.
Unable to do anything about it.
“The concentrates will tell me if you’re misbehaving, so keep the anima under control,” Plutarch told me before he started walking back into the house.
“You’re just leaving me?” I growled at his back.
“Got some Murder, She Wrote to watch.”
“Fucking asshole!” I called as he mounted the stairs to the back porch.
“Don’t worry, eventually you’ll have to urinate,” Plutarch called across the yard, “that’s what breaks most of them. If not that . . . well, you know what comes out of the other hole, right?”
“Fucking asshole!” I repeated, hoping someone would hear me next door and call . . . I don’t know . . . Rescue Rangers or Batman or someone.
Plutarch shut the backdoor.
All alone.
Covered neck down in dirt.
No way to pool without the sharks getting agitated.
No strength to work myself out.
Just my will left.
My will to hold on.
Earthquake versus the Stone Sage.
Round Two.
[CLICK]
After Murder, She Wrote, Plutarch came out with a doggy bowl and put it down in front of me.
It was filled with water.
“Thought I’d give this bit of assistance on the house.”
“You’re just trying to make me piss myself faster.”
“A pleasant side-effect if it gets you to accept your state in life, Junior, but no, I’m just trying to keep you hydrated. That sun overhead is going to get very hot as the day wears on. Deceptively hot these mountain summers.”
“Why don’t you just slather some sunblock on my face while you’re at it?”
“Would if I had some, but tanning has never been my strong suit.”
“Cuz you’re black, har har.”
Plutarch went back inside without any other comment.
I studied the water in front of my face, within tongue’s reach. If I lapped it up just like the creature the bowl was designed for. Fuck this. I refused to use it just like I refused to ask for his help in getting out of the dirt.
The fact that everything Plutarch said was true didn’t sway me at all. The fact that his words matched some of my thoughts on rebellion against and acceptance of the Asylum system swayed me even less.
Maybe I deserved to be in the dirt like this. Maybe it’s what I needed. Only way I could give in was to be forced into it. Can’t choose it. Can’t accept the string. Need the string tied around my throat like a noose.
Ain’t learned nothing in four years, have you?
Friends, girlfriends, anima. All those new connections, but still—at the heart of it—I’m that Scotch-Irish borderman that’s pissed off at the crown. Gonna kill him some redcoats. Gonna kill him some yankees. Just want a piece of land to call my own, even if the land is shit, with crags and mudholes and poisonous snakes.
If he’d just been in that classroom. Could’ve had a mouthy little back and forth for the rest of the three years if it just took place in that room the first day. But really . . . Plutarch wanted something deeper between us. Wanted a thicker and tighter string than what a cogworker throwing me the info the Asylum needs me to learn would have. He wanted to link us. Master and student. Master and apprentice. Master and fucking Padawan, though given the fucktard is watching Murder, She Wrote I doubt he ever got around to that particular bit of geek culture.
Knows me. All this time I thought he was ignoring me, but he’s been spying for four years now. Sending out fairies to listen in and report, however it’s done. Guild’s Golem Crafter once upon a time. Guess the golems belong to the Guild, but the anima concentrates . . . those could stay ‘friends’ with a specific person. Give them statues to live in and you have your own little army of spies.
I could give a shit about it all compared against artificing, but . . . consider me impressed by something I never thought I’d be impressed by. All them scars, missing an eyeball, the fairies spying for him, friends with Fines Samson. Shit, I should’ve been begging the guy to teach me what he knew.
Sane person would.
A person that ain’t damaged-beyond-all-repair would.
Not me.
Not now.
Not now that he put me in the ground.
I’d stay here until I figured a way out or until Plutarch had to call in Miss Strange to treat me for heat exhaustion.
Plutarch came back out with a plate of potato chips and a can of Dr. Pepper. He sat down in his lawnchair again after repositioning it so it faced me directly. His workshed was behind one of my shoulders, the big ass dragon statue behind the other. All around me, them statues buzzed. In the ground, I could feel them. Even if I was a novice and frankly not the most sensitive anima user in the world, I could feel them. Strength, pool size, and control are what I’m good at, even great at. Sensing I’m at best middling for an Ultra.
Yup, just like everything else we’re generally better at it than Intras.
It’s a rigged game, kiddies.
But not my game.
In Ultra Class ’09, Miranda is the best at it. Raj, Debra, Eva, and Robin White are right behind her. Generally, girls are better at senses and speedily pooling while boys are stronger and have larger pools. Control is a bit of a toss-up. See, even the fucking Mancy is sexist! Why you expect me to be fair about it?
In the dirt though, I guess you could say I was amplified. Had me a little piece of tinfoil to pick up the reception. Felt them fairies in the statues and those swimming around in the dirt. Had to be dozens of them. The ones in the statues were the largest. Fairies need natural anima to keep on living; it’s why you usually see them in specific places. Sipponnii in the Mississippi River as an example. These living in the statues weren’t like her. Weren’t ancient. They were young by her standards. Maybe a few decades old. Kind you’d expect in the wild to have a big huge rock to hang out in, but here it was only statues, with the smaller, younger fairies feeding on the anima that leaked down into the ground.
“What you do to the statues to make them hold anima like that?” I asked.
P
lutarch took a sip of soda. “You would be a bright and wonderful student to have around if you weren’t so petulant, you know that, Junior?”
“You’d be a wise and knowledgeable teacher if you weren’t such a fucking asshole to bury me in the ground like I’m a fucking tulip, know that, Pappy?” I rebutted.
Plutarch studied me for a time before finally answering, “Has one of the books you’ve stolen from the Library mentioned anima vials?”
“Transfers anima from a person to an artifact,” I answered.
“The statues use a similar design to draw natural anima inside of them, giving an anima concentration a suitable home.”
“Like a potted plant,” I said, thinking of Keith Gullick’s classroom and the many times he’d demonstrated anima transfer for the class. “But it’s just nature anima; we can’t do anything with it.”
“Exactly . . . but for our more insubstantial brethren it’s a requirement of existence if they want to continue past a few months, to say nothing of seeking higher intelligence.”
“Golems work the same way?”
“Comparing a potted plant to a Chevy, but more or less.”
“Huh.”
Had to be twenty statues of various sizes in Plutarch’s backyard. Each of them had a fairy inside? “How intelligent can they get?”
But Plutarch smiled slyly, his lips pulling the leather-like skin of his face tight. “Enough of a lesson, I think . . . until you’re out of the ground, Junior.”
“Guess we’ll talk in a few days then,” I growled back
“All you have to say is ‘help me out,’ I’ll even let you use one of your favorite words at the end of the sentence.”
I spat into the bowl of water.
[CLICK]
At lunch he came out with another bowl, this one with dry cheerios piled high. He sat it down beside the still untouched water. Which was getting really hard to ignore as the summer day wore on.
“Didn’t have any Alpo?”
“Haven’t had a dog in years. Never had time for one,” Plutarch answered as he settled into his lawn chair. “Plus, you get my age and you start to worry about dying suddenly, leaving the poor thing behind for someone else to care for. Makes you think about long term entanglements.”
“Chat time, is it?”
He leaned back, eye on the sun. “Is your skin peeling yet?”
I could’ve told him to ‘fuck off’ again, but instead I motioned behind my head. “Why is it that the dragon statue doesn’t have a fairy living inside of it?”
After a time, he still answered slowly, “It’s just a statue.”
“Lot of work on just a statue.”
“Not that difficult for a geomancer skilled with stone.”
“Like Michelangelo.”
“Among others . . . although he often liked to do things the traditional way if Guild sources are accurate.”
“Miss Dale told me once that dragons used to be a thing . . . Guild got any sources on that?”
“Further back than recorded history, nothing but hearsay the Dale girl should keep away from students.”
“Why a statue of one then?”
“To remember.”
“Remember what?”
“That’s a good question, Junior.”
“For all your complaints about Miss Dale, the two of you sure do have the same vocabulary.”
Plutarch grinned down at me. Looked a little bit too much like my own predator’s grin for comfort. “I taught her parents Elementalism, you know. Had given up the wider fields by the time she came through this school. Taught one of her friends artificing however . . .”
“Bury him in dirt too?”
A shake of a white-haired, balding, scarred up head. “No need. He was the most attentive pupil I’ve ever had. Very brilliant too. More than you are.”
“Brilliant or attentive?”
“Attentive. Geomancers are very pragmatic people as a whole; we don’t rebel, we don’t fight against the system. Most of my students have been as eager as can be to come in here and learn at my knee—do what needs to be done to please me, sacrifice to do things the right way, the Guild Way.”
“Then an asshole comes along and fucks it all up by pointing out what a bunch of douchebags you all are with those skullcaps.” Started to hurt to talk, my lips cracking. That water looked good.
Even with spit in it.
“You’re the first I’ve had to do this to in twenty-five years,” Plutarch pointed out. “I don’t like it, but it is needed on occasion. In most cases it’s as a punishment—an ancient punishment for geomancers older than the Guild itself—but for you . . . let’s call it initiation, shall we?”
“We gonna get matching tattoos after this? I’ve always wanted a tramp-stamp with a butterfly in it.”
“I see you’ve managed to cup yourself about an inch of space around you hands,” Plutarch changed up the conversation like we’d finished with weather and were moving on to baseball scores.
“One inch ain’t a lot,” I agreed, “but I make it work.”
“How about thirty seconds?” Plutarch suddenly declared.
“What?”
“Thirty seconds of anima. Anything over and the concentrates tell me and I come out and bash you over the head, anything less and you’re fine.”
“That’s not even enough for a personal conjuration!” I complained. “Why don’t you just help me by throwing some more dirt in my face?”
“Maybe tomorrow, Junior. Want some milk with your cheerios?”
[CLICK]
The second I started pooling anima my connection to all the fairies around me amplified even further.
One unintended consequence of my sojourn in the dirt was that I’d gotten really good at picking out fairies moving against background nature anima. These small blips of concentration. Couldn’t use either of them, both were no help to me, but one was more there. Sight really doesn’t work well to describe the feeling. Neither does smell. Maybe taste works best. Kind of like tasting a chunk of brownie in chocolate ice cream. It’s pretty much the same, but that texture, that density; it’s an added pop on your tongue.
Or maybe I’m just really hungry.
Hadn’t had a bite to eat in twenty-four hours. Burning in the mountain sun. No breeze. The dirt against my body was cool, but my face felt so damn hot. Ice cream sounded really good right about now.
I’d waited for Plutarch to go back inside before pooling.
Let him think I was throwing away another olive branch. Just like the bowl of water and the bowl of cheerios. But thirty seconds of anima . . . I could work with that, right?
But no.
All I could do was feel.
Couldn’t affect a single part of my situation.
Like trying to move one of Plutarch’s statues by throwing a pebble at them.
Couldn’t form any conjuration with that miniscule amount of anima.
Worthless.
Just faded away from my fingertips.
Sucked up by the dirt, where it could decay over the years into nature anima. Feed the next generation of troublemaking fairy, but for now: good for nothing.
Feels.
Nothing but feels.
Feels of the whole damn world under my feet.
Fairies circled around Plutarch’s house like it was a hive. Small ones most of them, worse than drones, no intelligence to them at all. Here and gone the next day, the next hour. Those closer to the surface would last months, while those in the statues could last for years. I could feel the veins in those pieces of stones . . . for lack of a better word. Feel how the anima was sucked upward and into the stone, stored in a way it could be eaten over time instead of mostly lost in a frenzy of excited gluttony.
I felt that whole afternoon in thirty second windows. Occasionally a statue fairy would leave its home to rush out into the greater Asylum, its place taken by a smaller, more starved number of its brethren. Less occasionally a very large concentration of anima woul
d return and push out a weakling.
Might be nothing but magical energy, but it’s the law of the wild up in this place.
They were wary of me, all of them, even the bigger ones. Didn’t like the taste of my anima, I guess. Been trained to notice that solid Plutarch presence for too long. I was only agitation, only rage and earthquake. Don’t want to cultivate a statue garden, want to break them all to pieces.
That backyard mimicked the question of domestication. Better to cultivate a companion animal and give them a longer, easier life or let them go free and live free for a much shorter time?
Dogs you keep at your side.
Wolves you let run free.
No idea which way is more ethical when it comes to fairies.
Don’t know enough about fairies, even learning at the knee of a Golem Crafter.
Don’t particularly like them.
At all.
Mostly due to what happened next.
[CLICK]
Not sure how long into the afternoon it was.
The milk in the cheerios had gone sour and smelled like a leaky nipple.
. . . What?
Breast-feeding women need love too, kiddies.
It was one time.
. . . ehm.
I never thought of my little thirty-second-pools as a beacon, but someone heard the SOS.
It was like . . . this tendril. Reaching up from the depths of the earth. Starting massive and then shrinking with each foot, being worn away. It reached from so far and yet by the time it neared me it was nothing but a pinprick. Only it didn’t reach for me but for the dirt in front of my glazed over, sun-stroked eyes.
WE MEET AGAIN, LITTLE MANCER.
“Fuck my life.”
PLEASE DO NOT, YOUR LIFE AND WELFARE CONCERN ME GREATLY.
I felt like pussing out and just crying into my cheerios.
Meteyos.
That great piece of earth, that ageless mountain that had helped me along during my Camping Test the first month at the Asylum. I hadn’t taken a single camping trip since. Stayed as far away from the mountains around the Asylum as possible. Stayed on the school grounds where I thought I was safe from weird dreams and the dirt speaking for itself.
The Foul Mouth and the Mancy Martial Artist (The King Henry Tapes Book 5) Page 30