by Hal Schrieve
They sat on the floor and stared at the ceiling in Z’s room. There were mysterious flecks of blue on the ceiling, and Z had never asked Mrs. Dunnigan where they were from or what they were made of.
They lay in reverent silence, a tribute to the blue spots. They did not do any homework.
Aysel volunteered to cook when she saw that Mrs. Dunnigan was sitting on the couch with a compress on her head. Rice and corn and salt and tomatoes and carrots fried in butter. It was all right.
“So, Aysel,” Mrs. Dunnigan said at dinner, “Z tells me you’re gay?”
Aysel made a small coughing noise. She looked up at Mrs. Dunnigan cautiously. “Yeah,” she said. She looked at Z. When had that come up?
Mrs. Dunnigan smiled. “That’s so nice that you folks today can come out so young.” She looked very friendly, Aysel thought, very motherly.
“Mmm,” said Aysel. She looked at Z sternly, and Z looked away with an expression of embarrassment. Aysel’s mother still didn’t know Aysel was gay, and Mrs. Dunnigan knowing made her feel like it was only a matter of time before that uncomfortable conversation with Azra had to happen. Word would surely get around.
“When I was a girl it was hard. Lesbians weren’t supposed to have happy lives. It’s so nice that they can now.”
“I’m not so sure my life will be that happy,” Aysel said.
“New legislation is being passed all the time. That anti-gay bill last year failed. In ten years you may be able to get married.”
“Aren’t—I mean, weren’t you . . .” Aysel trailed off. “I mean, your name’s Mrs. Dunnigan, right?”
“Hmm? Yes, it is, dear. My first name’s Alondra, though, and you can call me that.”
“She wants to know why your name is Mrs. if you’re a lesbian,” Z said. Aysel glared at them.
Mrs. Dunnigan laughed. “Oh!” she said. “Well, that’s because I married a shapeshifter in Ireland.” She paused to laugh some more. “That was back in the fifties, and Ireland was getting sorted out, you know.”
Aysel didn’t know. “Right,” she said.
“What a story it is, when I think about it!” Mrs. Dunnigan grinned. “I had just moved to Ireland, and I met Cassie and fell in love. She was very attractive. Since she was a shapeshifter she couldn’t get very many jobs when Ireland was under British control, but the new government was very eager to hire people they thought represented Gaelic magic, and she helped scientists with some of the deep-sea diving work by becoming things like seals. All the people in the ecology department knew how useful she was so they paid her lots of money.”
“I never knew that,” Z said. They looked at Mrs. Dunnigan as if they were reevaluating her.
“I don’t talk about it much. Americans are a lot like British in how they look at fey,” Mrs. Dunnigan said. “Irish are better.”
“I didn’t realize they hired fey anywhere, especially back then.”
“Because of how new the Irish government was, and how much druidic magic was valued there as part of the Republic’s nationalism, they were passing some very progressive laws. People like selkies were getting citizen rights, you know.”
“Selkies?” Aysel asked. “What are those? I’ve never heard of them.”
“Like werewolves, in a way. Related to fey but not as powerful as shapeshifters. In reverse, though,” Mrs. Dunnigan said. “They live as seals most of their lives but come ashore and take on human forms and take off their sealskin. Usually only long enough to mate or to bask in the sun—once or twice a month or even less. If a human hides the sealskin from them, they can stay human the rest of their lives. If they get the skin back, they have to return to the water. It does of course make for a very complicated bureaucratic situation. Some selkies like to come ashore, and some avoid people and don’t want to be included in legislation. Selkies can live a very long time and come ashore for only a little while. Anyway, the Irish government tried to make it easier for them to live as humans if they wanted to.”
“Wow,” Aysel said.
“So you see it was very different than here. One of those things that sort of got thrown in with a lot of other things like that was that shapeshifters could marry either male or female people. Cassie and I just screamed when that one got through.”
“People approved that?”
“Well, yes. Shapeshifters can be male or female, you know, biologically, whatever that means to you, so even though Cassie spent most of the time living as a woman, the law said, oh, well, she could be a husband if she felt like it, so they let me marry her.”
“That’s so cool,” Aysel said.
“They don’t even have that in America, do they?” Z asked.
“Definitely not after Reagan,” Mrs. Dunnigan said. She had finished with her dinner, and stood up. “No, definitely not. They don’t even let shapeshifters walk around in the sun.”
“What happened to Cassie?” Aysel asked, looking over at Mrs. Dunnigan as she cleared her plate.
“Oh, well, we moved here to study the water dragons in the Pacific. We hid her past so she wouldn’t be incarcerated as a fey, even though things weren’t as bad then as they are now. She lived to be quite old. And then she passed. When we lived here we weren’t officially married, legally, but I still had her name because my passport from Ireland had it on there and we called ourselves Mrs. and Mrs.”
Mrs. Dunnigan stood at the sink looking sad for a few seconds, and sighed. Aysel thought she was just preparing to say something, but then the silence dragged on a moment too long, and Aysel realized there was nothing more to be said on the topic. There was something that couldn’t be talked about. Mrs. Dunnigan eventually turned the faucet on and began washing dishes.
Aysel helped to clear the table.
“Did the situation with Mr. Weber get sorted out, dear?” Mrs. Dunnigan asked Z as she pumped rosemary-scented dish soap onto the sponge.
Aysel turned away so that nobody would see her facial expression. She was worried she wouldn’t be able to control her face. She looked out the window instead, at the dark cold yard where several cats still circled, waiting until the last possible second to show humility and ask to be let in.
Z frowned. “He’s still not in school,” they said.
“He could be dead,” Aysel added in a monotone.
“Or he might have skipped town,” Mrs. Dunnigan said brightly.
After they cleared the plates, Aysel and Z finally started their homework. Aysel had gotten out her notebook and was looking at a page about Magical Summons of minor objects. She had to copy out the pentacle and practice summoning pencils from across a room. Magic homework was always just about the dullest thing in the world. Sometimes it seemed like school didn’t teach students magic so much as slow them down and mire them in busywork so they would never move on to the good stuff. Aysel tried to draw the pentacle. Her pen jittered and left splotches on the paper. She set it down, frustrated. Z was also having trouble.
“I can’t hold the pencil hard enough,” they said. “My handwriting’s barely legible.”
Aysel looked over. Z’s handwriting was indeed very faint on the page. “Maybe use a darker pen? A fountain pen?”
“I’d just spill ink everywhere.”
Aysel drew the pentacle again and tried to practice the spell they were learning in class. She summoned pencils and hair clips and bottles of clove oil from the bathroom. They made small buzzing noises when they appeared in the middle of the inky circle. A cat nestled on Aysel’s lap, and she smelled the clove oil. For a moment she was calm.
“They say they found evidence that Archie Pagan treated werewolves after all,” Mrs. Dunnigan commented noncha-lantly. She was reading the paper.
Aysel spluttered, “I didn’t know they were still investigating that.” She wondered if Mrs. Dunnigan knew about her. How would she have found out?
“It was covert, I suppose,” Mrs. Dunnigan said. She squinted at the newsprint. “Something too about a werewolf terrorist ring they’re preten
ding exists. Some kind of house of anarchist werewolves. Which is nonsense.”
“Wow,” Aysel said. She felt herself begin to sweat.
“It’s really going to put everyone on edge,” Mrs. Dunnigan said. “There haven’t been any new werewolves in the state for years because of the controls on that kind of thing. Nobody knows how to deal with it. They just shoot them all.”
7
“Where are the police going to be, though? The national parks, right?” Z asked on Saturday March 2nd, a week or so before the next full moon.
“Yeah, that’s what they’re saying,” Aysel agreed. “They said that they’re going to monitor the parks, and the patches of forest out by the winery and the archery range.”
“But that’s private property out there, right? The police can’t do that without a warrant.”
“I guess.” Aysel looked doubtful. She drummed her fingers on the hard ground next to her. They were sitting on Aysel’s mother’s back porch, looking out onto the garden, in which kale poked green leaves up despite the frost which had overwhelmed the ground. Azra was out somewhere doing errands and wouldn’t be back for a couple of hours, so Aysel had dug up a pack of Azra’s cigarettes and she and Z were trying to smoke them. Z was mostly using the cigarettes to burn marks onto their hands and lips.
“It’ll be okay,” Z promised, patting Aysel’s hand gently and then pulling it back, worrying it was more disgusting than comforting. Z’s skin flaked off in patches now.
Z felt themselves growing more and more tired every day. It seemed to take more energy to do things, and their joints were always stiff. They tried to sit down and rest as much as possible. They sometimes felt like something hot was leaking out of the spell mark on their chest, and was sure it was the spell unraveling. Mrs. Dunnigan also had them drinking huge amounts of salt water with garlic, in the hopes that it would pickle them or kill bacteria, but this made Z feel bloated and dehydrated and ill. They weren’t sure Mrs. Dunnigan really knew what she was doing. They looked at themselves in the mirror each day and every time felt more distant, more removed.
On the next Thursday morning, though, Aysel came up to Z with a look on her face that said something terribly important had happened. When Aysel’s moods were very strong, she did that to you. You could sense the magic coming off her in bright waves of heat that shot out right at your eyes and heart.
“Mr. Weber’s back,” Aysel said breathlessly. “I haven’t seen him yet, he must be in the staff lounge or something. But his car’s in the parking lot.”
Z leapt to their feet and hugged Aysel. “That’s fantastic,” they said. “Oh my gosh.”
Aysel seemed exhilarated and nervous. “I have to go talk to him right away,” she said.
“We have class,” Z said.
“I don’t care,” Aysel said. “I’m going to his room to wait until he comes in.”
“Aysel, he has class.”
Aysel looked disconcerted. “Well—I’ll talk to him anyway,” Aysel said. The bell rang as she started off toward the science room. Z watched her go. They hoped she’d be able to find him and talk to him and satisfy herself that he was okay and not dead.
But at lunch, Aysel looked morose. “He was on the way to his car. He’s gone already. He looked really bad. He said he just came to get papers. He barely said anything and he told me he couldn’t talk to me. He’s not teaching today. I wish I knew what happened to him.”
“Well,” Z said, “at least we know he’s alive. And you’ll see him tomorrow or whenever he comes back.”
Aysel made a face. “I don’t know,” she said. “It’s a fullmoon week, and it’s worse than usual. It’s because of the supermoon. I feel like I’m getting sick right now. Cramps and . . . I don’t know if I can come to school tomorrow.”
Sure enough, Aysel wasn’t there the next day. Z waited until lunch in case Aysel had just stayed home for the morning, but at eleven she still wasn’t there.
Mr. Weber was at his desk, grading student assignments he was slowly going through, moving papers from one pile to another as he went.
“Hi,” Z said. Mr. Weber looked up, and started. Z wasn’t sure if it was because he didn’t want to see them, or just because they looked exceptionally terrifying and dead now.
“Z. How are you?”
“I’m tired,” Z said truthfully. “Aysel wanted me to say hi for her.”
Mr. Weber gave a nervous, exhausted smile. “Tell her I say hi too. I’m looking forward to the robotics contest in June.”
“She wants you to call her. She’s worried about what they did to you.”
Mr. Weber looked up and frowned, and did not reply.
“I am too,” Z said. “I’m sorry for what happened. I never meant for it to. It’s why I tried to go on my own.”
“Shh,” Mr. Weber said. He looked around nervously, as if someone in the room might be watching him. “We can’t talk here. Z, I understand. I don’t blame you.”
“What did they do to you? Did they torture you? Are you hurt?” The questions spilled out of Z before they could think about what they were asking.
“I can’t tell you that, Z.” His voice sounded like it was coming from a great distance, from some cold pit in his belly. He was weaker-looking, too, his dark skin dry and unhealthy-looking. He was not chewing gum, for the first time ever that Z remembered. He no longer looked like he could survive anything, as he had the last time Z saw him—in fact, it didn’t look like he was strong enough to survive much at all. There were no fresh bruises on his face, but there was a long pink gash diagonally across it, from forehead to the left corner of his lip. It was healing, but still deep and nasty-looking. Z felt a profound terror the longer they looked at it.
“Why not? They let you go. They must know that you’re innocent. If they tor—”
“Please be quiet, Z. I’d rather not talk about this.” There was that nervousness again, as if Mr. Weber thought that one of the lizards in the cages around the room was a spy.
“Mr. Weber, what did they do to you? What happens when they arrest you?”
“I can’t talk to you about this, Z.” Mr. Weber’s voice was louder now, firm.
“Mr. Weber, tell me. Please.” Z felt a little hysterical but made themselves speak calmly. “You have to tell me. You owe me that much. I’m going to be taken eventually. I’m losing it, I’m going to go crazy.”
“Don’t talk like that, Z,” Mr. Weber said unconvincingly. He looked deeply pained. Somewhere in there is the nice teacher who’d do anything to protect me, Z thought.
“Are you okay?”
“I can’t speak to you, Z,” Mr. Weber said. “Things have changed. I’m being watched. It isn’t a good idea to talk to each other.” He got up and walked to the door and down the hall. Z watched him go and then got up and limped after him but couldn’t keep up. Mr. Weber walked quickly, as if he was escaping a monster. They thought of the long gash across Mr. Weber’s face again. It looked like it had been made by a single long, hooked claw. Z felt a pang of guilt.
Z had to go to the bathroom. They felt like they were going to be sick. They knew that all the bathrooms would be full of people, though, since it was lunch hour and lots of older girls would be gossiping and fixing their makeup and lots of the younger girls would be fixing their hair or hiding from friends. Z didn’t want to walk past them all to get to the stalls. They thought of the places in the school they could run to instead, and decided on the nurse’s bathroom.
Z turned around to walk back down the hall toward the nurse’s office, and was suddenly face to face with Mr. Holmes.
“Sorry,” Z said, and tried to walk around him, but Mr. Holmes advanced slightly on Z and they found themselves backed into the hallway that led to one of the janitor’s closets.
“I couldn’t help but overhear that exchange with Mr. Weber,” Mr. Holmes said.
“You were eavesdropping,” Z half asked.
“Anyone in the hall could hear you,” Mr. Holmes said. Th
is wasn’t really true, Z thought. If you were in the hall, the din of the distant lunchroom echoed down the linoleum floors and stopped you from hearing anything.
“I’m a student here like anyone else,” Z said. “I was just talking to Mr. Weber because he’d been gone. I was hoping he was okay.”
Mr. Holmes leaned one arm against the wall. “What concerns me about this, Susan,” he said, “is that you seem to be pulling people in positions of power onto your side to defend you, and involving the faculty of the school in your personal life. This feels deeply inappropriate to me, and I may have to discuss this with Mr. Bentwood. You have already managed to get one rather gullible member of the staff arrested on charges of attempted necromancy. This seems to go against your promise—your blood oath— to not practice necromancy while enrolled in this school.”
“He hasn’t been charged with attempted necromancy,” Z said angrily.
“Susan, I overheard your conversation just now, and it worries me,” Mr. Holmes continued. “What you said in there, about feeling as if you are going to lose it, go crazy, decay—if that really is the case, I do not think you should be coming to school. That really does present a risk to other students.”
“I’m not a risk. I’m just worried because the police do stuff like what they did to Mr. Weber to people who aren’t even monsters.”
“Susan, you have already begun to decay. I can see that. Everyone can. If you really are concerned with the welfare of humans surrounding you, you will remove yourself from school and seek institutionalization to control what’s happening to you.”
“I’m not dissoluting,” Z said loudly.
“Okay,” Mr. Holmes said. “I may still voice my concerns about this to Mr. Bentwood. My job as a teacher is to protect students. What I just heard, and what I have read concerning the library incident, suggests you may present a danger to other students. Now, perhaps that danger is not apparent yet, but you seem to already know it could grow.”
“I’m worried about falling apart, about losing my mind, not about killing anyone,” Z said. “I’m worried about my physical disabilities. I’m not going to eat anyone.”