As the small figure ran frantically through the snow away from the burning
building, stumbling through the two feet of snow, her only thought was to
keep herself and her dæmon safe.
"Little one, little Zan, what shall we do now?" she sobbed into her dæmon's soft white fur. " What will we do?"
At the time the little girl, ashes smeared across her face and her only belongings stuffed hastily into the pockets of her black fur coat, had no idea just how special she really was. For she was the key to a secret society, and she herself a medical wonder. She would not find out how special she was until she was 14, ten years later.
#1
"Zanhoriel! But you said! That's cheating. I'm not going to play with you if you cheat." The girl flounced from the room, her blonde ringlets bouncing as she ran.
"Don't do that, you know it's the way we always play! I always cheat, and you always complain that I always cheat."
"Well there should be exceptions from the rule." The girl flopped onto her white goose feather bed and rolled onto her stomach, facing the tiger that had just entered the palace of white and silver that was her bedroom.
"Cecilia, when are you going to redo this room? It's dreadful!" changing from a tiger to a small white mouse, the dæmon scurried along the skirting board and up the hanging curtains of the girls bed.
"I've already told you, you naughty thing, I'm not. I like it this way. It's lovely. Any way, I'm tired of playing hide and seek. It's no fun when I always lose."
" Then let's discuss what everyone in the college is discussing, your mothers wedding." The kitten had done this deliberately, she knew how much it annoyed her friend that her mother was getting married. As one of the only female scholars and explorers at Sanc College, Elzabeth often got a lot of attention. Her young daughter was also regarded as a worthy topic of conversation, since Cecilia was the youngest ever scholar of an english college, never mind the fact that she was female. She had begun attending lectures by sneaking in at the age of seven, when she came to live with her mother. She had no real memory of life before that, but understood that she had stayed with relatives until her mother came back from an expedition and decided to settle down with her daughter. When it was discovered that she was sneaking into the lecture halls and hiding inside the desks of the scholars, she had been punished and told to stay away. But she kept coming back until they could not think of any way to punish her. So the college masters (showing for the first time the affection they held for the girl) allowed her to become a student. She was eight years old.
Now, six years later, Cecilia was still hopping back and forward from London, where she stayed with an aunt and learned how to be a young lady, to Sanc College where she learned to argue with men twice her age, and come off better in the argument.
"Oh don't!" Zanhoriel paid for her little bit of fun by having a pillow thrown at her. But since it was stuffed entirely with baby duck feathers, and wasn't all that heavy, she just batted it to the side and pounced on it, her kitten nature of the moment getting the better of her. "You're beastly zan-zan, really you are! But about mothers wedding, it's just too bad isn't it? I didn't even know that she'd met someone in the north while she was away. It's just ghastly, and that man! He's an utter brute! Isn't he? I said 'isn't he?'"
"What?" the now Black Panther cub spat out a mouthful of feathers and gave her friend an apologetic look. "Yes, yes, quite."
"Zanhoriel!" Cecilia shrieked, throwing another pillow at her dæmon, "I'm going through a crisis, and you're eating my cushions. Beast!" she giggled and threw another pillow at the cub.
"Grrrr!" she laughed back, before quickly changing into a butterfly, her multi-coloured wings fluttering about the head of the blonde girl.
"Cecilia! Is that you I hear child? What are you doing in your room at this time of day?"
"Oh no!" groaned Zanhoriel. "We're supposed to be downstairs, learning horrid history with the librarian. If she catches us, we're done for!"
"Then we'll just have to not let her catch us, wont we?" Cecilia gave her friend a wink before scooping up the white ferret and bundling it inside her cardigan. She ran to the window and climbed onto the window seat, pushing up the window in one quick movement. Looking back only once, to make sure that she still had a little time to pull off her complex mission, she scampered through the window and onto the roof of the colleges sleeping quarters (not an easy task considering she was wearing standard college uniform of poodle skirt with patent shoes and a fluffy cardigan that her mother insisted she wore. And carrying her dæmon with one hand.). She pushed the window so that it slid down, and made sure it stopped on the pencil that she had left there to make sure she didn't get trapped outside. Once sure that she wasn't going to end up living on the roof permanently, she gathered up her skirt and released her dæmon, who promptly turned into a goldfinch, so that she wouldn't have to carry her over the tiles. Together they made their way to the top of the roof, and down along the West Side until they came to a reinforced gutter. It was reinforced because Cecilia was best friends with he tiler who cared for the gutters, and as a special favour he had put supports under the gutters and edges around them so that she could walk the roof without danger. Cecilia pretended to be balancing on a tight rope hundreds of feet in the air, in front of a huge audience. If it hadn't been dinnertime, she would have had quite a large audience, there would have been scholars bustling from class to class, discussing politics in the autumn quad, above which she roamed. She loved this part of the college, it was hers, only she had walked this part of the school, only she had seen this insect or that bird sitting on the chimney, cocking it's head the way all animals did when they sensed Cecilia. No living thing feared her, for they sensed that like them, she was a thing of the wild, she didn't belong inside, with the scholars and professors, she belonged outside, with the birds and the stray cats that fed off scraps in the kitchen. No one except for the birds and the animals knew that she would come up her and play her pretend games if the world got too much for her. No one that is, except her mother.
It had happened in winter one year. Cecilia was thirteen, and she had woken in the middle of the night. She had looked out the window to see snow falling gently past the window, feather light and soft as air. She decided there and then to go onto the roof so that she could make snow angels her father in heaven could see. She climbed onto the roof, with only her white slippers and white fur coat to protect her from the biting cold, only to find that it wasn't cold. The air, although tinged with frost, had been warm. She discarded the coat and climbed to the top of the roof, while Zanhoriel ran ahead as a snow fox. Her yelp and the cry of alarm from a figure sitting on the flat part of the roof behind the chimneys had sent Cecilia running to her aid, only to find her mother sitting there.
"What're you doing here?" the question sounded rude, but only from shock.
"I might ask you the same thing. It's almost two in the morning!"
"I came to make snow angels for daddy." She hadn't expected to tell her mother the truth, but once it was out of her mouth, she couldn't take it back. The thought didn't make her sad, as she had never known her father, he had died before she moved to the college. In fact, that was why her mother told her she had moved back. The thought of her daughter knowing neither of her parents had scared her.
"Me too honey, me too. Come here and give me a hug." Cecilia had gone to her, and together they sat in the snow for a long time, laughing as their dæmon's played together. When Cecilia had awoken, she was back in her bed, and it was morning. The snow had melted in the too warm air, and so had the knowledge that the night spent on the roof had been more than a dream.
But for now, all Cecilia knew was the freedom she felt when she stood on top of her chimney, with Zanhoriel flying above her in large, sweeping eagle circles, singing 'oh I do love to be beside the seaside' into the wind. She imagined it carrying her voice to another land, another world, where a boy just like her was doing the same thing. She would even yell questions into the wind, then silently wait for an answer. When she received word of a new event from the boy on the other side of the world, she would quickly discuss it with her imaginary friend.
And it was in this way that Cecilia learned of something that would change her world forever.
"Little one, little Zan, what shall we do now?" she sobbed into her dæmon's soft white fur. " What will we do?"
At the time the little girl, ashes smeared across her face and her only belongings stuffed hastily into the pockets of her black fur coat, had no idea just how special she really was. For she was the key to a secret society, and she herself a medical wonder. She would not find out how special she was until she was 14, ten years later.
#1
"Zanhoriel! But you said! That's cheating. I'm not going to play with you if you cheat." The girl flounced from the room, her blonde ringlets bouncing as she ran.
"Don't do that, you know it's the way we always play! I always cheat, and you always complain that I always cheat."
"Well there should be exceptions from the rule." The girl flopped onto her white goose feather bed and rolled onto her stomach, facing the tiger that had just entered the palace of white and silver that was her bedroom.
"Cecilia, when are you going to redo this room? It's dreadful!" changing from a tiger to a small white mouse, the dæmon scurried along the skirting board and up the hanging curtains of the girls bed.
"I've already told you, you naughty thing, I'm not. I like it this way. It's lovely. Any way, I'm tired of playing hide and seek. It's no fun when I always lose."
" Then let's discuss what everyone in the college is discussing, your mothers wedding." The kitten had done this deliberately, she knew how much it annoyed her friend that her mother was getting married. As one of the only female scholars and explorers at Sanc College, Elzabeth often got a lot of attention. Her young daughter was also regarded as a worthy topic of conversation, since Cecilia was the youngest ever scholar of an english college, never mind the fact that she was female. She had begun attending lectures by sneaking in at the age of seven, when she came to live with her mother. She had no real memory of life before that, but understood that she had stayed with relatives until her mother came back from an expedition and decided to settle down with her daughter. When it was discovered that she was sneaking into the lecture halls and hiding inside the desks of the scholars, she had been punished and told to stay away. But she kept coming back until they could not think of any way to punish her. So the college masters (showing for the first time the affection they held for the girl) allowed her to become a student. She was eight years old.
Now, six years later, Cecilia was still hopping back and forward from London, where she stayed with an aunt and learned how to be a young lady, to Sanc College where she learned to argue with men twice her age, and come off better in the argument.
"Oh don't!" Zanhoriel paid for her little bit of fun by having a pillow thrown at her. But since it was stuffed entirely with baby duck feathers, and wasn't all that heavy, she just batted it to the side and pounced on it, her kitten nature of the moment getting the better of her. "You're beastly zan-zan, really you are! But about mothers wedding, it's just too bad isn't it? I didn't even know that she'd met someone in the north while she was away. It's just ghastly, and that man! He's an utter brute! Isn't he? I said 'isn't he?'"
"What?" the now Black Panther cub spat out a mouthful of feathers and gave her friend an apologetic look. "Yes, yes, quite."
"Zanhoriel!" Cecilia shrieked, throwing another pillow at her dæmon, "I'm going through a crisis, and you're eating my cushions. Beast!" she giggled and threw another pillow at the cub.
"Grrrr!" she laughed back, before quickly changing into a butterfly, her multi-coloured wings fluttering about the head of the blonde girl.
"Cecilia! Is that you I hear child? What are you doing in your room at this time of day?"
"Oh no!" groaned Zanhoriel. "We're supposed to be downstairs, learning horrid history with the librarian. If she catches us, we're done for!"
"Then we'll just have to not let her catch us, wont we?" Cecilia gave her friend a wink before scooping up the white ferret and bundling it inside her cardigan. She ran to the window and climbed onto the window seat, pushing up the window in one quick movement. Looking back only once, to make sure that she still had a little time to pull off her complex mission, she scampered through the window and onto the roof of the colleges sleeping quarters (not an easy task considering she was wearing standard college uniform of poodle skirt with patent shoes and a fluffy cardigan that her mother insisted she wore. And carrying her dæmon with one hand.). She pushed the window so that it slid down, and made sure it stopped on the pencil that she had left there to make sure she didn't get trapped outside. Once sure that she wasn't going to end up living on the roof permanently, she gathered up her skirt and released her dæmon, who promptly turned into a goldfinch, so that she wouldn't have to carry her over the tiles. Together they made their way to the top of the roof, and down along the West Side until they came to a reinforced gutter. It was reinforced because Cecilia was best friends with he tiler who cared for the gutters, and as a special favour he had put supports under the gutters and edges around them so that she could walk the roof without danger. Cecilia pretended to be balancing on a tight rope hundreds of feet in the air, in front of a huge audience. If it hadn't been dinnertime, she would have had quite a large audience, there would have been scholars bustling from class to class, discussing politics in the autumn quad, above which she roamed. She loved this part of the college, it was hers, only she had walked this part of the school, only she had seen this insect or that bird sitting on the chimney, cocking it's head the way all animals did when they sensed Cecilia. No living thing feared her, for they sensed that like them, she was a thing of the wild, she didn't belong inside, with the scholars and professors, she belonged outside, with the birds and the stray cats that fed off scraps in the kitchen. No one except for the birds and the animals knew that she would come up her and play her pretend games if the world got too much for her. No one that is, except her mother.
It had happened in winter one year. Cecilia was thirteen, and she had woken in the middle of the night. She had looked out the window to see snow falling gently past the window, feather light and soft as air. She decided there and then to go onto the roof so that she could make snow angels her father in heaven could see. She climbed onto the roof, with only her white slippers and white fur coat to protect her from the biting cold, only to find that it wasn't cold. The air, although tinged with frost, had been warm. She discarded the coat and climbed to the top of the roof, while Zanhoriel ran ahead as a snow fox. Her yelp and the cry of alarm from a figure sitting on the flat part of the roof behind the chimneys had sent Cecilia running to her aid, only to find her mother sitting there.
"What're you doing here?" the question sounded rude, but only from shock.
"I might ask you the same thing. It's almost two in the morning!"
"I came to make snow angels for daddy." She hadn't expected to tell her mother the truth, but once it was out of her mouth, she couldn't take it back. The thought didn't make her sad, as she had never known her father, he had died before she moved to the college. In fact, that was why her mother told her she had moved back. The thought of her daughter knowing neither of her parents had scared her.
"Me too honey, me too. Come here and give me a hug." Cecilia had gone to her, and together they sat in the snow for a long time, laughing as their dæmon's played together. When Cecilia had awoken, she was back in her bed, and it was morning. The snow had melted in the too warm air, and so had the knowledge that the night spent on the roof had been more than a dream.
But for now, all Cecilia knew was the freedom she felt when she stood on top of her chimney, with Zanhoriel flying above her in large, sweeping eagle circles, singing 'oh I do love to be beside the seaside' into the wind. She imagined it carrying her voice to another land, another world, where a boy just like her was doing the same thing. She would even yell questions into the wind, then silently wait for an answer. When she received word of a new event from the boy on the other side of the world, she would quickly discuss it with her imaginary friend.
And it was in this way that Cecilia learned of something that would change her world forever.