by Unknown
I asked Michael for an update of his biography and got the following: "Working at the local library? Check. Singing and playing guitar at the local Catholic church? Check. Hosting a Sunday afternoon radio program at the local university? Check. Updating my two webcomics a cumulative seven days a week? Check. Looks like it's still me! I'll recommend folks check hyniof.livejournal.com or try Michael H. Payne on Facebook to see how it all comes together."
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From the breast pocket of Crocker's robe, Cluny heard Shtasith gust a massive sigh. Whiskers bristling, she looked up to tell him she was tired of his complaining...and got a face full of water, the firedrake's exhaled steam condensing in the summer afternoon air and showering down over her.
Not that Shtasith seemed to notice. "How can I present myself in this deplorable condition?? My scales haven't had a proper polishing in days!" Leaping from his perch on Crocker's shoulder, he brandished a needle-like claw at the human's nose, Crocker continuing to walk along without batting an eye. "I blame you, simian! If we fail to impress Lady Hesper's mistress at this luncheon, I shall hold you personally responsible!"
"First?" Crocker held up a finger. "It's just lunch, not a luncheon. Second? I kinda doubt polish'll matter; I've heard Mistress Evantrue usually shows up to her lectures ten minutes late without any shoes on. And third?" Fingers flexing, he pulled a handkerchief from the air and held it down to Cluny; she snagged it with her claws and started drying her fur. "You might wanna watch where you're breathing there, Teakettle."
"Mistress!" Shtasith bugled. He swooped down, his eyes swirling with reds and golds. "Forgive me! I didn't mean—!"
"Not 'mistress.'" Cluny didn't care that her voice came out as a growl—or at least as close to a growl as she figured a squirrel was ever likely to get. "Just 'Cluny.' And when we're in public, Crocker's your master, remember?"
The spines on his neck ridge drooped. "My ignominy is complete," he murmured, the blur of his wings slowing so she could almost see them. Drifting upward, he settled once more on Crocker's shoulder. "I am unfit to call myself your familiar."
Crocker's laugh stopped Cluny from voicing her agreement. "Oh, c'mon!" He poked the firedrake in the side. "You're way fitter for familiaring than I am, but you don't see me getting all gloomy, do you?"
Shtasith shrugged. "I have always attributed this to your basic lack of intelligence and self-awareness."
That got another laugh out of Crocker, and Cluny couldn't help smiling. Sure, they were trapped here on campus, but at least they were all three trapped together.
Homesickness welled up in her chest again at the memory of Master Gollantz scowling at them across his desk last month. "As it is vital that we preserve your secret," he'd said, "I had no choice but to corroborate the story you told the Familiars' Council. The faculty, therefore, now believing Crocker here to be a wizard both powerful and unbalanced, refuses to allow you to go out into the world unsupervised. So you will be remaining here under the watchful eyes of the summer scholarship program."
Part of Cluny had chittered for joy at the prospect of three free months in the various Huxley archives with fewer other students in the way. But the other part of her, the part that drooped at not being able to see her family, to smell the orchards, to scamper around the trees of home, that part had just grown since the start of summer session last week.
Getting to know Hesper had helped a bit: one of only three unicorn familiars in the world, she'd affirmed to the Familiars' Council that Crocker really was a wizard, that Shtasith was his familiar, and that Cluny was merely a fetish that Crocker focused his highly disturbed mind upon so he could perform magic. And when a unicorn pronounced something true...
Cluny had tried to apologize for forcing Hesper to lie, but the unicorn had brushed it off: "Truth is a medicine," she often said. "It must be administered properly to have its desired effect." Talking with her always made Cluny feel better, so she'd been overjoyed when a scroll had popped into their room this morning: an invitation to join Hesper and her mistress, the dean of Huxley's Healing Arts Department, for lunch.
"Can I teleport us?" Crocker had asked eagerly, but the map inside the invitation gave Cluny an excuse to say that they were obviously supposed to walk—Crocker loved the transport spell Cluny had designed for him, but, well, his payloads tended to arrive in more pieces than when they'd left....
So they set out on foot for the faculty housing, Shtasith grumbling about the condition of his toilette and Crocker whistling. At least it was a lovely day, this end of campus all picturesque villas and narrow lanes winding around manicured hills and woodlands; she directed Crocker left, then right, then right again and left several more times up and down streets named Agincourt and Duodeck, Twombly and Gurning and Burnside, and as Crocker turned the corner from Rialto Drive onto Berryman Court, Cluny blinked to see that the cul-de-sac only had one house, a little gingerbread cottage at the far end, set back and barely visible among a grove of pine trees and jacarandas.
She checked the address on the map, then shrugged. "I guess they like their privacy."
A grunt from Shtasith. "The privileges of power."
"Really?" Crocker jerked a thumb over his shoulder. "'Cause I'd hate to wait for a pizza delivery way out here."
The warm summer afternoon, the swishing of the branches, the buzzing of the cicadas, the birds singing merrily in the trees—not familiars, Cluny knew, and probably not even sapient since their songs had no words—it all made her think of Haverston, of her parents' nut farm, and the sigh she let loose then felt like it had started down around her ankles...
Crocker squished across the neatly-clipped grass and into the grove, the bungalow there whitewashed with blue trim around the windows. The door popped open before he could knock, and a woman a head shorter than Crocker and older than any human Cluny had ever seen beamed out at them, the round glasses on her button nose so small, Cluny couldn't imagine they actually helped her see. "Sophomore Crocker!" she exclaimed in a voice that caressed Cluny's whiskers like the scent of freshly baked cinnamon rolls. "And your familiars! Please, do come in!"
She stepped back and aside, her long blue and white gingham dress shuffling against the polished wood floor, and Crocker carried them into a room every bit as bright and overstuffed as the outside of the house had led Cluny to suspect: tables and chairs dripping with cozies and curlicues, blue chintz curtains drawn back, cornflowers in vases on every surface. "Sweetness!" Mistress Evantrue called. "Your guests have arrived!"
"Coming, Mother!" A light scrabbling of hoofs from down the hall, and Hesper trotted into the front room delicate as a young gazelle, the sunlight on her golden horn shimmering over the walls. "Welcome, my friends," she said, moving to stand beside the magistrix, her head barely reaching her mistress's waist. "It's so good of you to come."
Usually, Cluny would've felt the need to nudge Crocker, to remind him that he should respond, but here, for the first time anywhere outside Master Gollantz's office or their own room, she felt comfortable enough to sit up, bow to her hosts, and say for herself, "It's good of you to invite us."
Mistress Evantrue gave a huge snort. "Such a clever little beast!" She reached out a finger and patted Cluny's head. "You've trained her well, I see, Sophomore Crocker!"
"Me?" Crocker sounded every bit as confused as Cluny felt.
"Oh, of course!" Mistress Evantrue spun and headed for the doorway Hesper had emerged from. "No need for us to stand around like some damn cocktail party! Come in! Come in! I've got bowls of chili already dished out for you!"
Cluny stared after her, then shot a glance down at Hesper. But the little unicorn was already trotting to follow her mistress into the depths of the house.
"But..." Crocker said, and Cluny looked up to see his dark eyes wide in that bread-dough face. "Doesn't she know?"
"She must!" Shtasith hissed from Crocker's shoulder. "Lady Hesper would not keep such a secret from her own mistress!"
Which seemed right to Cluny,
too, but..."We'll play it by ear," she murmured. "Best not to keep them waiting, Crocker."
"Oh. Right." He picked up his feet and hurried through the door into a narrow carpeted hall. Stairways to their right and left led up and down respectively—even though the house had only shown one story from outside—but the shimmering gold of Hesper's horn limned a doorway ahead. Through it, they came into a blue and white tiled kitchen, the windows all around showing grassy hillocks spotted with wildflowers, the trees of a substantial forest settled just beyond.
Mistress Evantrue was taking a place at the head of a table, Hesper tapping up a little set of steps to a cushioned high chair on the magistrix's left. Bowls sat on the white lace tablecloth in front of them, and Mistress Evantrue waved a hand at the three lined up along the right side of the table, the steam that curled from them so spicy, it made Cluny's eyes water even across the room. "Have a seat, Sophomore Crocker!"
Cluny could hear Crocker swallow, but he moved to the only other chair, Cluny jumping to land on the table beside one of the bowls. The stuff in it bubbled, every bit as dark and twice as pungent as the pitch she remembered oozing from the pine trees back home—
But she didn't want to think about that.
"Dig in!" Mistress Evantrue urged. "Before it gets cold!"
"Uhhh..." Crocker stared like he expected the bowl to dig into him. "I don't think that's physically possible, ma'am."
A laugh like crystal bells from Hesper. "Oh, now, really!" The glow of her horn reached out like mist to lift her spoon. "Surely this appeals to your spirit of adventure!"
Shtasith slithered down Crocker's arm to the third bowl. "Your pardon, Lady Hesper, but adventure is greatly overrated."
Mistress Evantrue gave that big honking snort of hers. "You three!" She slapped the table, the various jars of hot sauce lined up in front of her rattling. "If you're not the living end, you're within spitting distance of it!" She took a spoonful from her bowl and sucked it down, sizzling beads of sweat bursting over her forehead. "I don't know why the faculty gets so twitchy when your names come up!"
Hesper sipped at her spoon. "Don't be disingenuous, Mother. Any wizard with two familiars would cause concern."
"Pish and tosh!" Mistress Evantrue waved her hand, drops from her spoon spattering the tablecloth and starting to smolder. "Two, three hundred years ago, that girl with the raven and the glass cat for her familiars!" She aimed the spoon at Hesper. "You remember, Sweetness! Loved my chili, and I've not heard one bad thing about—!"
"Esmeralda Stone??" Cluny stared at her. "She raised up an army of zombies, ma'am, and tried to take over the world."
"Really?" Mistress Evantrue blinked, then turned to glare at Crocker. "You wouldn't do that, would you, young man?"
Hesper cleared her throat. "Not him, Mother."
Mistress Evantrue did some more blinking, then started back in her chair. "This?" She crooked a finger at Cluny. "This is the squirrel sorceress you've been talking about?"
The unicorn nodded, Cluny swallowing against the dryness in her throat, the silence prickly as nettles.
But Mistress Evantrue just snorted and slapped the table. "Oh, mercy! I wish I could've been there when you dropped into Gollantz's lap!" She shoveled down more chili. "Not much for the wild magic, our magister magistrorum."
"Wild?" Cluny's ears perked. She'd come across references to wild magic a few times in her studies, but always as something to be avoided: 'the opposite of true wizardry' was the line she remembered from the Artifex Thaumaturgiarum, and—
A hiss from Shtasith interrupted her thoughts as did Hesper shouting, "Mother! That is entirely inappropriate!"
"Ha!" The magistrix slapped the table again, and this time, the whole house seemed to shake. "The truth is never inappropriate! A child of the forest like this one? Closed in by right angles, by steel and stone and brick?" She mopped her brow with a napkin. "This place is a shackle around you, Cluny, a weight designed to hold you back! Once Gollantz is done grinding you down, you'll be fit for nothing but dissection and display in some glass case somewhere!" The anger smoothed from her face, concern there instead. "Admit it, my dear: you want to be away from here, don't you?"
"Just for a day or two!" Cluny couldn't help blurting out. "I love Huxley, Mistress Evantrue, but I...I just...if you could talk to Master Gollantz—" She turned to Crocker, his eyes wide, to Shtasith, the spines of his neck ridge extended. "Haverston's so beautiful in early summer, and you can meet my folks and everything!" She wheeled back to the magistrix, couldn't keep from hopping forward on the table. "A weekend, ma'am: that's all! Then I'd be ready to buckle down and—"
"Now, now, dear." Mistress Evantrue reached out and patted Cluny between the ears. "I'm the dean of Healing Arts. Who's to gainsay me if I declare you need some mental health days?"
"Unwise!" Shtasith leaped into the air, his wings a blur, his claws extended. "Moving behind the magister magistrorum's back?? And this talk of wild magic—!"
"Familiar?" Mistress Evantrue's eyes glowed, and sparks crackled the air around Shtasith, froze him in place, dropped him to the table with a loud thump. "You overstep yourself."
Shakily, the firedrake bowed. "Forgiveness, magistrix."
"But—" Cluny's mind was still spinning. "I'd need to let my parents know we were coming and—"
"Pish and tosh." Mistress Evantrue dabbed the napkin at the corners of her mouth. "A crow of my acquaintance is currently perched in the branches of their jack pine. At my signal, he'll deliver a message telling them to expect you this evening with your friends and your faculty advisor." She gave a dimpled smile. "That last would be me." Setting down her spoon, she leaned back in her chair and spread her hands. "We'll stay the night, relax around the countryside tomorrow, and then return. Simply say the word, my dear."
Cluny blinked, her fur rustling. "Wait. Earlier, you were pointing at Crocker like you thought he was...like you didn't know about—" She had to stop, had to force herself to draw the only logical conclusion. "But you did know, didn't you? You and Hesper, you've just been pretending this whole time."
"Yes, yes." Mistress Evantrue flicked her fingers. "We can spend the next few hours arguing about who knew what when if you'd like. Or,—" The magistrix leaned forward, her aura, her manner, her voice, everything about her becoming sharper—like glass suddenly cracking, Cluny thought, but she dismissed the image immediately; Mistress Evantrue was trying to help her, wasn't she? "You can spend them journeying home." A crooked grin split her face. "The choice is yours."
And Cluny's heart wouldn't let her say anything but: "Home, please, ma'am, if...if you're sure Master Gollantz won't mind."
Hesper looked away, and the magistrix gave another snort. "No need to bother Gollantz!" A snap of her fingers caused a dozen suitcases to appear, spinning and scattering across the tile floor. "The crow's delivering my message now, and I've taken the liberty of transporting a few things from your rooms."
Shtasith hissed again. "I must repeat Lady Hesper's word," the firedrake said. "This is inappropriate."
Mistress Evantrue laughed and stood, not many inches taller than when she'd been sitting. "Such mistrust, Shtasith! I see the reports I have about you are accurate." She waved a hand at the table, the bowls of chili wafting up and into the sink. "Hesper and I shall see to our travel permissions. Come along, Sweetness." Waving again, she and the unicorn vanished, puffing away like dandelion fluff.
Cluny blinked, then turned to her familiars, Crocker with his arms folded, Shtasith with his tail twitching. "Well," she said, mostly to fill the sudden silence. "That was unexpected."
Crocker shook his head. "The chili was unexpected. This whole trip thing's just crazy!"
"Crocker—"
"Master Gollantz said we couldn't go!"
She raised a claw. "He said we couldn't go unsupervised."
"Sophistry." Shtasith spoke quietly, but his words bit at Cluny's ears. "Such arguments are beneath you, my Cluny."
"I'm not—!
It's just—!" Cluny stopped, took a breath. "You heard her: mental health days!" She couldn't keep the waver out of her voice. "Please, guys! I...I need this!"
Shtasith still scowled, but Crocker blew out a breath, rubbed a hand through his dark tangled hair. "Yeah, I know." He smiled, the warmth of their magical connection seeming to snuggle closer around her. "And I would like to meet your folks. The way you always talk about them, they sound great."
Which made Cluny blink and realize for the first time— "Crocker? You've never mentioned your—"
"Yeah." His chair scraped, and he stepped to the nearest suitcase, pushed it over, popped the snaps. "Let's see what's in these, huh?" He raised the lid, and Cluny saw a tangled mess of cloth and paper. "OK, that's pretty much ev'rything I own. But—" He blinked at the other suitcases. "You guys haven't started wearing clothes, have you?"
Cluny hopped down from the table, scampered to a case lying on its side, and tried the latch. It didn't budge, and the tendril of power she sent snaking into the keyhole snapped with the suddenness of a dry tree branch, the shock making her jump back a step. "I guess these are Mistress Evantrue's," she said.
"And yet—" Shtasith's wings flared, and a leap sent him coasting to the floor beside her. "The magistrix said she'd transported them from our rooms."
Crocker was trying another case. "Locked." He took the handle gingerly and picked it up. "And heavy. Shall I—?" He put his other hand on the bottom and gave Cluny a glance.
She nodded, and he shook it, solid things thumping together inside. "Books, maybe?" Cluny asked.
"I concur." Shtasith tapped a claw against the case she'd tried to open. "Perhaps I should burn my way in and check?"
"No!" Cluny forced the still unformed suspicions from her head. "They're...they're probably Mistress Evantrue's, and she just forgot to mention it! I mean, you can't expect her to—"
A wet pop, and Mistress Evantrue stepped from the empty air, Hesper next to her with eyes downcast. "All set!" the magistrix called, and she thrust a hand upward, the whole house shaking with creaks and groans, Crocker's arms pinwheeling as he lost his balance and fell backwards into the luggage.