by Eric Nylund
Robert looked at the ground, unable to meet her gaze.
The prickly heat on her neck spread across Fiona’s chest. Anger or embarrassment or both-she wasn’t sure.
It was completely unfair. Just because Robert had gotten here a few minutes earlier and passed Mr. Ma’s stupid test? A test she was sure she could pass, too.
“Miss Westin said I could challenge your prerequisites.” Fiona had wanted to say this calmly and logically, as if Mr. Ma had just overlooked some bookkeeping error, but it came out sounding petulant.
“I’m sure she did. But Miss Westin’s influence stops at the entrance of this hall.”
Fiona pursed her lips. Something solidified in her. . a titanic, immovable mass of stubbornness.
“I will challenge your prerequisites,” she told him. She had made that sound exactly as she wanted this time-as if she were contesting Mr. Ma personally.
The other students collectively inhaled and held their breaths.
Mr. Ma narrowed his eyes slightly as he took her in, and then after a moment said, “A challenge, is it?” He chuckled. “What would be the point, Miss Post? You need a signed permission slip first.”
He turned back to the others.
“I have one.” Fiona got out the piece of paper and handed it to him.
Mr. Ma looked at the permission slip-which covered all the things she had expected: a dozen hypothetical near-fatal injuries, and the four Ds (death, decapitation, dismemberment, and disembowelment). . as if there weren’t already a million different ways to get beaten, broken, or killed in Paxington.
What was absolutely fascinating to Fiona, though, was that Audrey had signed it.
Fiona had gone back and forth on the best way to approach her mother-how learning to fight would actually increase the odds of her graduating-it was better to learn in a structured and supervised environment where there were medics nearby rather than doing so outside of classes where anything could happen.
Audrey hadn’t listened. She had simply taken the permission slip and signed it.
On the signature line of the page, her mother had printed Audrey Post, and then next to it she had drawn an infinity symbol with a line stricken diagonally across.
Mr. Ma gazed upon her signature, and his face crinkled so hard in concentration that it looked like a prune with two deeply set dark eyes. As he continued to gaze at it, Fiona saw the ink was thicker than she recalled, almost bulging off the page. . and it scratched deeper into the surface than it ought to have without tearing through.
He ran his thumb over the symbol. Mr. Ma then folded the paper and tucked it into his warm-up jacket.
“So be it,” he whispered. “I accept your challenge.”
One of the older boys stepped forward, but Mr. Ma held a hand up at him and shook his head. “I will do this.”
The other students looked amongst themselves, confused.
Robert’s eyes widened. “Don’t fight him, Fiona,” he said. “It’s a trick.”
A smile creased Mr. Ma’s wrinkled lips. “Listen to your friend, Miss Post. He is correct: I do intend to trick you.”
Fiona saw real concern on Robert’s face. But Robert was always overprotective. . and he didn’t know what she was capable of anymore. Besides, if he had done this to get into the class, so could she.
“You can try,” she told Mr. Ma.
Mr. Ma looked her over and gave a snort.
He stalked to a rack of weapons, considered the sticks and shields and practice swords, and then selected a pair of wooden samurai swords, bokken, and tossed one to Fiona.
She hefted it. Heavy.
From her studies of kendo, she knew these solid wooden swords couldn’t cut. They had a simple chiseled simulated edge, but nonetheless had enough weight to bruise quite effectively, break bones. . or even bludgeon a person to death.
Her confidence flagged and her stomach flip-flopped.
What did she think she was doing? Mr. Ma had a million times more fencing experience than she had.
No. She’d sparred with Uncle Aaron and did okay (and she bet Aaron could have walloped Mr. Ma). And when she had fought the Lord of All That Flies, Beelzebub, she’d held her own. . for a while. At least the Infernal had treated her as a real threat.
Not like a joke, as Mr. Ma did.
Fire sparked inside her and the fear evaporated.
Mr. Ma held the tip of his bokken up. “Come at-”
Fiona lunged.
He deflected her point and whipped his sword around.
She blocked-but the force of his blow sent her skidding sideways in the dirt, and pain shuddered up her forearm bones.
The old man was stronger than he looked. Faster, too.
She feigned high, drop the tip of her sword-thrust up toward under his chin.
Only Mr. Ma wasn’t there. He’d sidestepped a split second before, and his sword was a blur coming toward her.
She twisted out of the way.
Too slow.
The bokken hit her side. Ribs shattered. Every particle of air blasted from her lungs.
Fiona crumpled. . although somehow stayed on her knees and didn’t sprawl facefirst into the dirt.
She also managed to hold on to her bokken. A small victory.
Necessary, too.
Because Mr. Ma didn’t show mercy. He swung his bokken in a double overhand stroke.
Through a haze of agony, she lifted her sword to block-barely. The impact sent new lightning strikes of pain shuddering through her bones.
She fell, dropped her bokken, and panted in the dust. Helpless.
Mr. Ma stood over her.
Fiona couldn’t breathe, it hurt so much. She couldn’t move. He had her.
“That,” Mr. Ma said, looming over her, “should be quite enough, I think. Go away, Miss Post. . or you will lose your head.”
His tone was irritatingly polite with just a hint of pity. He turned and walked back toward his students.
No one, but no one, ever turned their back to her in combat. She was Fiona Post, daughter of Atropos and Lucifer-daughter of Death incarnate and the Prince of Darkness. She was a goddess in her own right. . and more.
The world tinged red through her eyes. She welcomed the pain of her broken ribs. Let it set her mind aflame. Let it burn.
Fiona grasped her wooden sword.
She stood.
There was more pain, but it didn’t matter. The pain was in some other Fiona Post, one she’d pushed deep inside. Some new Fiona surfaced. This other Fiona said: “You should’ve finished me when you had the chance, old man.”
Mr. Ma halted and cocked his head.
The other students, even Robert, stared, astonished. . and backed farther away.
Mr. Ma slowly turned, his eyes narrowed, and he nodded. “Perhaps I should’ve at that.”
He lunged at her; she met him.
He struck three times. Her arms moved on their own-without thought-and parried. She riposted, but he just as effortlessly deflected her blows.
Mr. Ma slipped inside her guard and struck her dead center in the chest. The force shattered his bokken into splinters.
The impact pushed Fiona backwards into a crouch.
It had force enough to shatter a person’s rib rage and liquefy a human heart.
Fiona gritted her teeth. Fortunately, she wasn’t feeling very human at the moment. She smiled. His strike hadn’t even bruised her.
The world to her looked as if it were on fire-all brilliant ruby red and tinged with the blood that pounded through her, blazing with anger.
Mr. Ma backpedaled as she approached. He grabbed two new bokkens off the weapons rack.
Fiona swung with wild abandon, screaming her rage.
He parried each blow. His defense was solid. . perfect, in fact. She would never get through. She would beat on him until he wore her down, and then she’d make a mistake, or collapse from exhaustion, and she’d lose.
Her anger doubled and redoubled, and it felt as if her worl
d would explode.
But the other, submerged Fiona started thinking again. She had to get around that perfect defense of his somehow. . from behind? Under? No, those wouldn’t work.
Maybe the way around his defense was straight through.
Fiona stepped back and gazed upon the chiseled wooden surfaces of her bokken, and forged her hate into something stronger: resolve.
The planes and fibers of the wood stiffened, and the length of the bokken hummed with power. The rounded notched surfaces smoothed to a clean edge, a line that seemed to slide in and out of her vision, it was so fine.
A cutting edge.
Her rage subsiding, she strode toward him, her bokken held high-and brought it down.
Mr. Ma must have sensed a flaw in his perfect defense, some danger-even before her bokken touched his, because his ever-calm expression puckered and she saw the tiniest flicker of fear in his eyes.
Her bokken passed through his as if it weren’t there, cleaving the wood in two.
Mr. Ma leaned back.
Not far enough, though.
The tip of Fiona’s bokken crossed his face. . and she felt resistance along her cutting edge-something hard, so she pushed harder with her arms and her mind-and his flesh yielded.
It was nothing serious. She hadn’t wanted to cut off his head. It was just a reminder that he should never turn his back on her again: a nearly microscopic slash curved from his cheek to chin.
She stepped back.
Mr. Ma felt the wound, and his fingers came away a tiny smear of red. He stared at it for the longest time.
The other students stared, too.
Fiona no longer felt the anger; she wasn’t even glad that she’d given Mr. Ma a taste of his own medicine.
Something was wrong.
It felt as was if she’d broken a rule-and not just some Paxington rule that might get her expelled. This rule felt like it should not have been able to be broken, like gravity. The entire universe felt as if it might unravel because of what she’d just done. . starting from where Mr. Ma stood. . from that one tiny cut.
Mr. Ma curled his fingers into a fist and took a breath. The wound on his chin stopped bleeding.
He moved toward Fiona.
The bokken slipped from her grasp. She started to say she was sorry-but halted herself. She wasn’t sorry, and she wouldn’t lie about it.
Mr. Ma gazed into her eyes. He wasn’t angry. It was as if he were searching for something that he’d misplaced a thousand years ago.
And then he blinked and nodded. “Very nicely done, Miss Post. Come, we were covering the basic fighting stance. . which I note you could use some improvement on.” He motioned for her to join the other boys, and very much made a point of not turning his back on her.
Fiona hid her surprise. So now he was actually inviting her to join the class? She didn’t understand, but she wasn’t going to question it, either.
As she joined them, though, the other students shuffled away. Not one of them offered their congratulations or would look her in the eye. Not even Robert.
Fiona stood by herself.
Mr. Ma showed them how to stand and fight, how not to lose one’s balance as they shuffled their feet.
She watched and listened and learned, but felt hollow inside, as if she were alone in the world. . as if she’d severed much more with that one little cut than she had meant to.
________
“Robert! Wait.” Fiona jogged after him along the trail through the grove, catching up. She grabbed the sleeve of his jacket. “Robert, please. What’d I do? Is it because I’m the only girl in the class?”
Robert stopped, looked at her, but didn’t say anything.
It felt weird trying to get Robert to talk to her, almost pleading, after working so hard to put some distance between them. But he was in her class now. They’d have to talk, wouldn’t they? Not talking would be weirder.
She waited for Robert to explain, but instead he turned and walked away.
He stopped after two paces, sighed, and turned back to her. “It’s not that.” He shook his head, but then seemed to decide something. “You cut him, Fiona.”
“That was the point, wasn’t it? Show him I was good enough to get into the class? It’s the same thing you did.”
Robert paled. “I didn’t fight Ma. I wouldn’t have the guts to try.”
“Okay, so one little paper cut.”
Robert stared at her, unblinkingly. “You really don’t know, do you?”
Fiona shot him the look that she usually reserved for Eliot, the obviously you’re being too stupid for me to understand look.
“I guess not,” Robert said. “It’s in The Mahābhārata.”
“East Indian mythology? Miss Westin hasn’t covered that yet, so how could I know?”
Robert blinked. “It was a movie. Pretty cool one, too. Look, sorry, I just assumed everyone knows this stuff. . ”
Fiona crossed her arms over her chest. “Did you forget that until last summer, Audrey kept Eliot and me isolated? As in a total-vacuum-of-all-things-diabolical-and-divine type isolated?”
“Okay, it’s just that Mr. Ma is an Immortal, and has the power to choose when he dies.”[52]
“So what?” Fiona demanded. “No kidding: he didn’t die today.”
“He’s not supposed to,” Robert explained. “Not until the end of things. He’s not supposed to get touched. Not a bruise, not a chipped tooth. . not even one little cut.”
“One little cut. .,” Fiona echoed, and her stomach twisted into knots. “I still don’t see the big deal. So I caught him off guard with-” She stopped. “Wait, what do you mean ‘until the end of things’?”
“Mr. Ma is supposed to get hurt only at the end. . of everything.”
That sense of wrongness was back. As if when Fiona had cut Mr. Ma, she’d broken something unbreakable. . that couldn’t be repaired.
“The end of days,” Robert whispered. “Ragnarok. Armageddon. That’s what everyone’s freaking out about. They think because you hurt him, well, maybe you might have started it.”
54 MUSIC TO END THE WORLD IF THOU DESIRE
Eliot sat cross-legged on his bed. He had a lot to do. He’d tackle the hard stuff first: tonight’s music homework.
He had to play his violin for fifteen minutes without repeating himself. Ms. DuPreé said he had to or “the bit of creativity that hadn’t been sucked out of him yet would solidify like concrete.”
But repetition was part of the music Eliot knew. Self-taught with “Mortal’s Coil,” “The Symphony of Existence,” and “The March of the Suicide Queen”-those pieces had ordered stanzas and repeated phrases that built on each other.
How did you make music without repetition?
He pushed his violin case away. Maybe he’d get to that later.
The next problem on his list was Fiona. He’d hardly seen his sister this semester. She came home late from her Force of Arms class, showered, slept, and then got up at 3 A.M. to do homework. She was such a zombie by the time they walked to Paxington in the morning, he barely got a grunt or two out of her.
Which normally would’ve been great. . except he had a feeling they’d need to work together more than ever to survive the rest of the school year.
Any free waking moments Fiona had between classes, she spent with Mitch. Not that it was any of Eliot’s business, but Robert was hanging out less with their group because of it. He couldn’t decide if Robert and Fiona not being together was a good or bad thing.
Which brought him to the next problem to solve: gym class.
Team Scarab practiced like their lives depended on it. Sarah was great. She’d learned how to harmonize with Eliot’s music, and together they could shatter a three-foot-thick beam halfway across the course. Fiona and Robert were just as impressive, stronger and faster than they’d ever been. . although there was definitely some unresolved tension between Mitch and Robert. The only one who didn’t seem to be trying so hard was Amanda. Jeremy shot h
er glances that could kill, and occasionally he’d lose his temper and stomp out of practice.
The problem with gym wasn’t them, however, or even the competition. It was the unfair ranking system.
The lowest-ranked team had been dissolved: Team Soaring Eagle because of a disastrous accident during their first match this semester. Six deaths.
He’d thought about quitting that day. No school-no matter how fantastical or magical-was worth dying for.
But Fiona convinced him it was just an accident, a terrible accident, but one that could happen anywhere.
Maybe. But it wasn’t just anywhere where you had to dodge spears and swords sixty feet off the ground.
The result of Eagle’s dissolution hadn’t been a review of safety rules, a suspension of play, or the academic bell curve normalizing. Instead every team slipped down in the ranks one notch (sliding the entire freshman population that much closer to flunking). To make the cut and graduate, Team Scarab had to win two of their remaining last three matches.
Of course, gym would be a lot easier if they had their strongest player. Jezebel’s presence, however, would generate a whole new set of problems. . but they’d be problems Eliot would want.
He dug through his pack and found Jezebel’s handkerchief, still stained with the blood from when she kissed him, still smelling like vanilla and cinnamon.
She hadn’t been at school since the start of the semester. Two weeks and no trace.
How long before they kicked her out?
It’d be the least of her worries, though; it meant the war in the Poppy Lands was still on.
Where she’d be fighting. . or hurt.
Or dead.
His blood chilled at that thought.
So why was he here? He should’ve been back on the Night Train and helping her-whether she wanted it or not.
Was it because he knew they’d get in a big fight and she’d just try to get rid of him again?
Or was he just the world’s biggest chicken?
He swallowed, remembering the swarms of Droogan-dors that had enveloped Queen Sealiah’s knights. . and left only frost and shadow in their wake.
Eliot made a fist, crushing her handkerchief, and then tossed it over to a corner of the pack.