Pentagrams and Pomegranates
Part I: An Ideal Husband
Magical Diary
Heroine x Hieronymous Grabiner; Damien Ramsey
By Gabihime at gmail dot com
Chapter Thirteen: Con el aroma que amo / With the Smell that I Love
Before breakfast the morning after their harrowing episode in the school's dungeons, Amoretta found herself approached by the freshman student council president, who looked decidedly concerned, wringing her hands as she shifted from foot to foot. It did not take the acumen of a girl detective to see that Minnie Cochran was distressed about something, but seeing as Kyo Katsura had left Iris Academy in a huff, Amoretta really had no guesses as to what the other brunette was so anxious about.
Fortunately, Minnie was entirely unwilling to keep Amoretta on pins and needles, because she blurted her problems out all at once, like a kindergartner confessing that she's spilled tempera paint all over the bathroom floor.
"I forgot," she lamented, tugging on Amoretta's sleeve with urgency, "Or rather, we both forgot. It's just that with everything that's been going on since spring break, it's like my head has been in a whirl - "
Amoretta nodded sympathetically. Since early March she had solved a mystery, had a schoolyard brawl fought over her, gotten Kyo Katsura expelled (more or less), had her marriage revealed to the world, been assaulted by a close friend, become soulmates with a man who seemed only partially accepting of the situation, moved into her professor's quarters permanently, won the national lottery, and been down to a floor of the school's dungeon that included electrified floors and pit traps.
"I suppose we have been busy," she noted mildly, then shrugged. "So what is it we've forgotten, Minnie?"
"The second spring fundraiser," Minnie answered, biting the tip of her thumb thoughtfully. "We had the Valentine's fundraiser, but that money is allotted for other expenses: it's money that helps pay the spring tithe, and run the school. The second spring fundraiser is to contribute funds for the May Day dance, and we haven't done a single thing and the dance is only a couple of weeks away. We're due to turn in our contribution next monday so the juniors have time to buy everything they need for the dance. We're really in a pickle, this time."
Amoretta laid her finger against her lips thoughtfully. "Normally we're encouraged to raise money from sources outside the school, like parents, and people from the village, but there really isn't time for that now, is there? We've got to do something this week, which means it's got to be from the students."
Minnie offered both her palms up in distress. "But what are we going to do? We don't really have time to plan much of anything. I suppose we could take up a collection like paupers - "
Amoretta shook her head with some decision, "We won't," she said, "No matter how fine a dance we want to have. We've got to have some kind of fundraiser, otherwise it'll be dereliction of duty. Just because we've been busy is no reason to shirk our responsibilities. Anybody could take up a collection. We're supposed to do things." Amoretta could get easily fired up about 'the principle of the thing,' even on issues where very few concerned would have actually cared one way or another. A small smile crept up around the corner of her mouth, "Didn't you run in the autumn on the promise of giving everyone a helping hand?"
"I did!" agreed Minnie with renewed determination, balling up her hands into fists. "But what can we do in less than a week?"
Amoretta gave her a snappy thumbs up. "We'll think of something," she said. "We're the Brownies, after all. If we can't get things done in time, then no one can."
The afternoon that Petunia Potsdam had announced that the freshman student council would consist of the two sprightly brunette candidates, Amoretta had jokingly dubbed them 'the Brownies.' The name fit well enough, because besides being brunettes with thick manes of hair, Amoretta was as small and delicate as a pixie, while Minnie was tall and willowy, like a dryad, and they were both possessed with a strong sense of community spirit which made them likely to play elves for the shoemaker or mice for the tailor of Gloucestershire. If this were a different sort of story, they might have been the type of sanctimonious busy-body goody-goodies that naughtier people wish to see roasted over a fire by trolls. But both were rather more pleasant and friendly than they were dreadful and tedious, and as has been previously intimated, Amoretta followed the letter of the law only when it suited her and so broadly interpreted the spirit of the law that a career criminal might have been impressed by her ingenuity. Minnie also dutifully bent the rules when she thought the rules would do more harm than good. In the end, the freshman student council was like a combination pep squad, detective agency, and social services bureau.
As she was reflecting on their many Brownie-like qualities, Amoretta clapped her hands in sudden inspiration.
"That's it, brownies!" she cried out.
The president's forehead wrinkled in confusion. "What about Brownies?" she asked, folding her arms underneath her indigo cape.
Amoretta shook her head, laughing. "Not Brownies," she corrected, "Brownies! Let's have a bake sale! We've got just enough time to have one this weekend if we hustle. It's the perfect way to turn our reserves into a fortune. We can buy the ingredients with some of the money we have left in the coffers, and I'm sure the headmistress and cook will let us use the kitchens if we promise to clean up after ourselves. If we get on this today then we can bake tomorrow evening, after dinner has been served. Then we can have a sale on Saturday. I know it's short notice, but if we spread the word and sell in the quad, then I'm sure we'll get enough customers. And that way we'll be on time to turn in the class's contribution to the dance on Monday!"
Minnie was swept away by Amoretta's enthusiasm, but she couldn't help but be a little doubtful. "Have you ever baked before?" she asked. "I mean, in a magical kitchen."
"A kitchen is a kitchen," Amoretta assured her with infectious confidence. "Besides, baking isn't all that hard, so long as you follow a book. You're good at black magic, aren't you?" Amoretta asked. "Baking is just like that. You just follow what it says in the recipe."
"Someone will have to go for ingredients tonight," Minnie pointed out. "Which means we'll have to decide what we're making and make a list, and then hope that - "
"Oh, he'll do it," Amoretta assured her with a fluttering hand.
Minnie reflected that it was to their advantage that the proctor for the fundraising events just happened to be the freshman treasurer's husband.
"But that means we have to get a move on," Amoretta piped up, raising one finger and pointing toward the cafeteria doors. "Go and snag a couple of croissants for us, and I'll run to the library for some cookbooks. I've got green magic today, but we're just teaching our plants things, so I think I'll have time to make some lists out by the time school closes. Meet me in front of the library and we'll talk about it there while we eat. Oh, and tell Hieronymous that I'm very sorry but I won't be able to have breakfast with him today. Work to do," she sang out like a lark and then blew a kiss to the freshman president as she turned on her heel to rush down the hall to the library. "Thanks, Minnie," she called over her shoulder. "You're a doll!"
Minnie waved at Amoretta as she went and then made off in the other direction, towards the cafeteria. They had a plan and the will to succeed, along with the sort of peppy manic energy required to accomplish whatever goals they invented for themselves. They were captains of industry, the sort of creatures able to create something out of almost nothing, like spinning straw into gold.
When the freshman student council of Iris Academy got together on something, they were a force to be reckoned with.
Amoretta and Minnie met up in front of the library, and they pored over cookbooks together, picking out recipes that they thought would be easy enough for novices to make, and yet still would prove popular with the ravenous students who were facing down their final exams. After Amoretta had made a short list of a few kinds of cookies, sweets, and brownies, they agreed that they would have to hire a little additional muscle if they were going to get all of their treats made in one evening. Amoretta flew off to request help from Ellen and Virginia, and Minnie left to ask permission of the headmistress and the cook, guaranteeing that she would provide some special assistance of her own.
Ellen agreed to help with the preparations immediately, since she had never had the chance to examine a magical kitchen before, and was interested in observing how it worked.
"After all," she said, "Baking is really just chemistry, so making things for a bake sale is like a simple, practical chemistry experiment."
Virginia, who was much more interested in eating cookies than making them, agreed to help only when she was bribed with the promise of some of their finished bounty, free of charge.
With help secured, Amoretta bustled off to Green Magic class with a pile of cookbooks in her arms. By the time she got there she was quite exhausted, as all the running around had more than tired her out. She was happy that the rest of her school day mainly consisted of her teaching her small plant how to sing "The Farmer in the Dell."
She sat at a lone desk in the back of the classroom, making out lists of ingredients. It was more complicated than simply writing a grocery list like one she might have made for her home in New Hampshire because she had to figure out how much of everything they would need in bulk, because she and Minnie meant to make a lot of cookies. That meant tallying up totals and even making measurement conversions when necessary, so she scratched out a lot of numbers in the margins of her notebook. At Iris Academy she didn't have access to a pocket calculator, although there was an ancient mechanical adding machine in the accounting room. She couldn't exactly sneak out of class to use it, and she was sure it weighed at least sixty pounds, so she had not attempted to borrow it.
Maybe I ought to buy an abacus, she thought to herself with amusement. I bet they have one at Marvy. They have sextants and astrolabes, so they ought to have something as low tech as an abacus. Wouldn't I look cute dragging something like that around. Then I'd be a real beancounter.
While Amoretta was busy being impressed by her own cleverness, her geranium had begun singing about how the farmer ate the dell.
"How creative, my darling dewdrop!" Petunia Potsdam commended with mild amusement. "I had no idea you were going to regale us with such a gruesome song about a farmer devouring everyone in the countryside. That's very novel!"
The headmistress had come up behind Amoretta, who was buried in piles of cookbooks and her notes.
Amoretta flushed at being caught at something other than her schoolwork, because certainly the bake sale could not go forward without the headmistress's goodwill, and hastened to close the cookbook that lay open over her class notes. In her hurry to appear studious, she knocked the entire stack of precariously balanced cookbooks off her desk and the headmistress had to dance backwards, lifting her skirts as the books crashed to the floor.
As the books had gone tumbling, Amoretta had lunged forward to pull her geranium protectively to her chest. It survived the calamity with no injuries, so Amoretta let out a great sigh of relief before turning with embarassment to the headmistress to ask for forgiveness.
"Oh, it's all right my tipsy tulip," Petunia Potsdam assured her. "After all, a girl of your age has very many important things to consider besides her schoolwork. You are quite a good enough student as it is so long as you don't make a habit of attempting to break my toes with purloined library books."
"Yes ma'am," Amoretta chorused obediently, and resolved to keep at least one eye on her studies, even if she did still have the shopping list to finish.
Satisfied with Amoretta's progress, the headmistress moved on to assist Manuel Arias, who had chosen the unenviable task of getting his cactus to sing a very romantic love song. The cactus was not being entirely cooperative.
After she left, Amoretta continued to work on her list, all the while absently singing verses of the Farmer in the Dell to her small red geranium, Vivian. Vivian could generally carry the tune, but still had to be prompted to continue singing at the beginning of each verse, and sometimes became confused as to the order of the verses, having the farmer take a cheese before he took a wife. Vivian's voice was light and sweet, like the wind through a reed, a thoroughly ordinary singing voice for a geranium, Petunia Potsdam had informed her.
When Amoretta had asked if it were common for plants to be taught to sing, Petunia Potsdam had told her that generally the only flowers who were taught to sing were those that were planted in magical gardens.
"After all," she had chortled, "Just think what a turn a regular person would have if they stumbled into a patch of singing daffodils."
Fortunately, flowers generally had very short memories for remembering songs, and so forgot them within a few days if they were not continually coaxed with a vegetal memory charm and nearly endless repetitions of music and lyrics, so it was very unlikely that one might encounter a rosebush singing arias unless one were wandering around a magical property. But teaching the flowerbeds to sing was quite time-consuming, which is why the flowerbeds of Iris Academy were generally respectfully silent (with a few notable and often hilarious exceptions).
Amoretta privately thought the general reticence of the academy's flower beds also might have something to do with the fact that Grabiner, one of the two resident professors at Iris Academy - an individual who disavowed 'fun' as being worrisome - disliked noise and confusion. When all the flowers in the green magic classroom all began to sing at once it was a cacophony that would have put a rowdy kindergarten to shame.
"The thing about flowers," Petunia Potsdam had said with a sly grin, "Is not that they can't sing, but rather that they don't really feel like bothering most of the time, and even when they do, they never can decide what it is that they ought to sing. It's human beings that like to hear flowers sing, not flowers."
But it was a good practical exercise, she had said, caring for a plant of their very own: raising it from a seed or a sprout, nurturing it, and then building a good enough relationship with it that they could teach it something simple, like singing, or reciting poetry. They were forbidden from teaching daffodils any Wordsworth, however.
"One gets quite tired of hearing the same things over and over again, after all," Potsdam had told them, throwing her hands in the air.
So Amoretta made out her shopping lists, keeping a careful account of how many pounds of butter, sugar, and flour they were likely to need, while at the same time trying to remind Vivian that the cow took the pig, and not the other way around. In the end she got so muddled up that she had Vivian singing that the pig took a wife, which made everything on the farm in the dell seem very Orwellian, but at last the list was done and checked, and before the end of the day, so that as classes finished, she could deliver the list to the shopper, who somewhat begrudgingly went to the grocery store.
At a time when final examinations were so quickly approaching, and he had, at the very least, to lay the spell Infamy Cradle again on the twenty-fifth floor of the dungeon before the seniors could begin taking their tests, Hieronymous Grabiner would not have said that a Thursday evening was an ideal time to go on a grocery expedition to provide supplies for one of his wife's ill-advised student welfare campaigns.
And yet, he had done it.
He had taken her carefully ordered list, which divided up the dairy and eggs from the dry goods like flour and sugar, and deferentially requested his discretion in choosing an appropriate baking chocolate (within their budget), and had driven to the closest reasonably sized supermarket, which necessitated a drive of perhaps forty minutes. Then he had spent some time comparing prices and pinching pennies, because what had remained in the freshman class's coffers for the purchase of provisions was not substantial. In the end, he had filled a cart up with bags of flour, small tins of baking powder, dozens of eggs, and enough butter for a Rotary Club pancake breakfast (although perhaps not quite enough for the academy's Pancake Supper, given how much the younger students slathered up their hotcakes. Privately Grabiner thought that although the supper was meant to open the courting season, the students required no assistance on that count, and mainly used the Pancake Supper as an excuse to eat to gluttonous excess).
At the checkout counter, a little old lady with the odd, symmetrical curls of a permanent wave gave him a smile as she rang up his purchases.
"Planning on doing quite a bit of baking, I see," she observed. "It's always nice to see food made at home instead of bought in boxes and packages, isn't it? Is it you or the wife who's the cook in your house?"
Grabiner, who had been intent on watching the prices as they rang up on the small black screen that was turned in his direction, answered absently.
"My wife," he said, but then even as he said it he frowned as he reflected that he really had no experience one way or another. "Or rather," he corrected himself. "It seems as if she'd like to be good at cooking. I cannot say whether or not her wishes will turn into an unqualified success. I suppose time will tell."
"Two cooks are one too many to have in a house, is what I always say. They get underneath one another's feet and then quarrel about who scratched up all the teflon pans," she said cheerfully and knowingly. "Just married, then?" asked the cashier, who was uncommonly chatty, as most ladies past a certain age are.
"In January," Grabiner answered shortly. He was not in the habit of sharing his personal affairs with cashiers, but a moment of distraction had now put him in a position where he was required to converse to be civil. At least she was now nearing the end of the meticulously organized groceries on the conveyor belt.
"How nice for you!" the old lady said as she rang up several pounds of butter quarters, as if his fledgling marriage could be nothing else, and had not so far been filled with assault, scandal, and a rival claimant on his wife's hand. "Well, you just take a bit of sage advice from me, won't you? So long as your wife keeps trying, something is bound to come from all that effort, even if that means you have to eat cookies filled with egg shells for a while. Making food for someone is sharing your love with them, and don't you scoff young man," she warned, suddenly quite stern for a little old lady in a cashier's apron, "It's true. So just remember that every time you have to eat a fallen cake or some accidentally unleavened bread. Even those mistakes are born in love. Just think how you'd feel if you gave her some tragic cake you'd made. You'd want her to love it, wouldn't you, even if you knew very well how sorry it was. When we're learning, not everything we try is always successful, but it certainly always teaches us something. Mostly what it teaches is how little we know, how silly and ignorant we are, and just how much we have to learn."
The cashier would not let him be off with his bags of groceries until he had given her some indication that he had at least understood what she had said. Then she saw him off with a smile, and a request that he come again soon. As he loaded the groceries into the van, he grumbled to himself like a disgruntled dog. He had driven out of his way to a reasonably sized supermarket that was part of a chain of grocery stores just to escape the chance that he might have to make small talk (and also because there was no way the freshman budget would have survived a trip to the village grocery for supplies). In the end, he had been forced to talk about his personal life and received unsolicited advice from an old woman.
It was like every day of his life at a school run by Petunia Potsdam.
As he drove back to Iris Academy, taking the winding, switchback mountain roads slowly in the darkness, he put his frustration at being lectured out of his mind. If Amoretta turned out batches of cookies filled with eggshells, he could only hope that the student body was as understanding as the cashier had expected him to be.
Back at Iris Academy, he parked the van in the outermost protection circle and then began the trek back to the campus loaded down by groceries. He could not go straight up to his rooms, despite the fact that it was now nearly eight thirty, because the eggs and butter had to be put away on ice. He had just finished stowing the dairy goods away in the cafeteria's cold box when he was disturbed by the appearance of a familiar blue form at his left hand side.
"You're needed," Kavus advised. "I am afraid the mistress has been involved in an incident."
Grabiner had the presence of mind to pull the door to the cold room closed behind him before he was out of the kitchens in a dead run, questioning Kavus as he went.
"Where is she?"
In quarters.
"What has happened?"
She has fallen asleep.
As he climbed the stairs two at a time he reflected that it was ultimately surprising that this sort of dangerous situation had not happened sooner. Although he and Amoretta tried very much to keep in sync with one another, they were not the same person, and they were not on exactly the same schedule. Amoretta needed more sleep than he did, being that she was still growing, and because she was an invalid recovering from a serious assault. She had been up late the night before waiting for him to finish his work in the dungeons, and then she had been busy all day worrying about something as idiotic as the May Day dance and some silly bake sale she was organizing.
Considering how she had been running about all day like a fussy red hen, it was no surprise that she had exhausted herself. Because of their schedules, she had had no chance to rest or nap at all during the school day, and then she had sent him off on an errand as soon as the day was over.
She needed more rest that she was giving herself. She was determined to keep doing things exactly the way she had been doing them before she had been assaulted and marked, but she wouldn't be able to survive if she kept running herself into the ground. It wasn't as if she would simply keel over dead, but working herself hard when her body had been drained so thoroughly of magic could very well lead to a collapse that left her bedridden instead of simply weak and easily tired. He was going to have to put his foot down. She needed more rest. She would have to rest, but how could she when she was always being called upon to sort out one mess or another for one of her friends?
She was a busybody, and that, by design, meant she was busy.
And he had to admit to himself that at least some of the time, the reason she didn't get enough rest was because of him. He gave plenty of extra lessons and he worked her hard, but he worked himself much harder, she could not sleep until he was there to hold her hand, or night haunts would come snuffling after the burn on her shoulder. If he wanted her to be able to rest more frequently, then he was going to have to stop skipping lunches and working such long hours.
He thought through all of this in the time it took him to climb the stairs from the basement kitchens up to the second floor and reach the door to his quarters.
When he wrenched the door open, he was relieved to find her already awake, but sobbing, lying on her side on the floor, the desk chair overturned beside her.
He did not need Kavus's narration to piece together the chain of events that had led to this trial. She had been sitting in the desk chair, working at her homework, or perhaps simply trying to stay awake, and she had nodded off. A night haunt had found her, and her struggles during her nightmares had overturned the chair, dumping her onto the hard floor and presumably jarring her awake.
She was likely crying now from a combination of terror and physical hurt. He pulled the door closed behind him and moved to help her sit up. Her shoulder was bloody. The dream had perhaps opened the wound again, and then when the chair had tipped over she had fallen hard on her marked shoulder. It was clear to him that at least some of her tears were from pain, so he moved his hand to hover over her shoulder and began the first of his green spells to care for the wound and to dull the pain.
Amoretta seemed unwilling to speak at first, preferring to hang on his shoulder as her tears slowed and eventually stopped. She leaned against him for support and he finished the last of the green spells that would make the bleeding mark more bearable.
They sat together, leaning against the wooden bulk of the desk, his arm around her shoulders, and they were both very quiet. With a wave of his hand, he dismissed the manus, as he was in no mood to have an audience this evening. The djinni departed with a half-bow.
At last, Amoretta said, "I'm awfully sorry I caused so much trouble again, Hieronymous. I really didn't mean to. I kept trying and trying to stay awake, and I don't even remember falling asleep, but then I was in this very small place, like a canyon, but when I looked up, I couldn't even see the sky because the walls around me were so tall that they seemed to meet overhead, and the walls were made of doors, hundreds of different kinds of doors, more doors than I had ever seen in my entire life, and there weren't any windows, only doors. I could hear music - I guess it wasn't really music, but some kind of thumping, but I know I thought it was music at the time. It's funny how you know things like that in dreams even if it doesn't make any sense when you think about it. The music was like slow thumping and rattling, except there didn't seem to be any pattern to it at all, and it felt like the music was squeezing around my throat like fingers, or pressing down hard on my chest and I felt sick. But then I somehow knew the doors were going to start opening, all those doors that climbed higher than the sky, and I was terrified. I was terrified that the doors were going to open. I screamed, but I couldn't make any sound come from my throat. It was like my breath was stolen every time I tried to shout. I couldn't make any noise, no matter how hard I tried, and I shouted and I shouted until I thought my heart would burst, but I knew I couldn't do anything to stop it - what was coming - and I knew was going to be devoured. Then there was a noise like a gunshot and it felt like the world had been turned on its side. That's when I woke up crying on the floor."
"It's all right," he said with a sigh, "You shouldn't apologize. Ultimately this is my fault. I didn't make any time for you to rest today. You didn't seem very keen on resting, but I could have pressed the point, and I did not, as I was also busy. I told you before that you were my primary concern, and it isn't right that I not make you so, when it is possible." He frowned. "I've been thinking that finishing out the school year might be too stressful for you, considering the current state of your health. I can ask that the headmistress clear your schedule for the rest of the year so that you can rest and recuperate. You're in good standing as far as your merits are concerned, and in my opinion you have already met the requirements to be passed up to sophomore in the autumn."
"Oh no," Amoretta cried, pulling on his cloak and shaking his shoulder for emphasis. She was in the habit of disheveling his clothes when she was properly riled up. "Oh please don't do that. I only have a few days left of school this year anyway, and Vivian can't be trusted to sing 'The Farmer in the Dell' without some sort of social commentary on marriage equality for pigs and cows, and I've been trying very hard at everything. I'd really hate to quit now, when I'm so close to finishing. I like going to classes and learning things, even if you won't let me take any more blue magic classes this year. I like sitting in class with my friends and being a regular student. I know I made myself overly tired today from all that running around, but I promise to do better, and that I'll rest lots and lots during the summer, as much as you want, so much that you'll complain because you think I'm so lazy, but please, please, please don't ask that the headmistress clear my schedule. It's only this week and the next and then the dance, and then school's over for the year!"
Grabiner sighed again, feeling very put upon. She was begging very earnestly, and she did have several good points. The end of the school year was so close that it seemed almost silly for her not to finish out with her friends, even given the questionable state of her health. And he understood that it was important for her to feel like "a regular student" despite the fact that she had gone and had her soul torn open and married one of her teachers, which was quite unlike the school experience of most "regular students."
"Very well," he said tiredly, "But I've got my eye on you. You have got to rest more often, or this deal is off, and I will request that the headmistress clear your schedule immediately." His eyes flicked down to her bloody shoulder. Her robe and pajamas were stained with her own blood. They would have to be cleaned again. "Come along now and have a quick bath to clean yourself up and then I'll put you into bed. I did have some more work to do this evening down in the dungeons, but it will have to wait until tomorrow."
Amoretta nodded and they both stood, Grabiner helping her to her feet. At the door to the bathroom, Amoretta paused, biting her lip.
"I'm going to leave the door open," she said, "Just a little." She mimed a small space by raising both her hands in front of her. "Would you sit by the door and talk to me while I bathe? I'm just - " she gave him an awkward smile. "I'm still a little shaken up, is all. I keep thinking of all those doors. I know I'm safe here but - "
He raised both his hands before himself and shook his head to ward off her anxiety. "I'll sit by the door," he said.
She smiled then, a shy smile that was a little sheepish. It was the smile of a girl who knows she is too old to be afraid of the dark, but still is anyway. Then she disappeared into the bathroom and he heard the water being run into the clawfoot tub.
He picked up the overturned desk chair and carried it across the room to deposit it in front of the bathroom door, where he sat and waited for her to finish running the water. He pulled a book off the nearby shelf. It turned out to be Solzhenitsyn. He sat there with his hands folded over the unopened book and his eyes drifted to the plain face of the door. He was not in a mood to read even a few pages of Solzhenitsyn. The day had been difficult enough already, but it was still calming to have a book in his hands.
It was queer how the few minutes required to run the tub full of water seemed endless when one was staring blankly at the simple wooden door. He turned the book over in his hands once. Tomorrow he had Infamy Cradle to lay, and then he had to check all the other traps on the senior levels of the dungeon to make sure they were functioning properly and within appropriate safety margins. The seniors began their examination period at the beginning of the following week and were tested over several days, in a variety of dungeon environments, as their final examination was meant to be comprehensive. While the seniors were being tested, he had to make sure that the less arduous examinations for the sophomores and the juniors were in working order. Generally the headmistress left the arrangement of the dungeon examinations up to him, excepting when she became personally interested in particular students, or when she got the urge to set up favorite traps and puzzles. She insisted that she allowed him to arrange the dungeons because 'it kept him busy and out of trouble,' but he personally suspected the reason she left him to arrange things was because that meant she had more time to take luxurious baths in her Versailles tub and nose around in the business of her students: in other words, she made him do it because she did not want to. Doing practical work in the dungeon was generally much more tedious than it was interesting.
He realized with a start that the water had stopped running, and as his ears adjusted, he could hear the sound of the water lapping against the side of the tub as she went about the business of washing herself. As he leaned forward, putting his weight on his knees and folding his arms over Solzhenitsyn, he could not help but wonder when it was that everything had become so strange.
He could not really qualify it. If he had a string of beads on an abacus, he could not simply count them over, brushing them apart to create a clear space that represented 'the time that had come before' and 'the way things are now.' It wasn't a matter of counting days or weeks or months. He could not check his calendar to find out when things had ceased being that way and had become this way instead. (He certainly could not check Amoretta's school planner for such information, because he knew for a fact that it was pristinely blank after the first week's comments. She had, she had confessed, become too busy after that to write anything down in it. This fact was not really particularly surprising to him. She was the sort of girl who notes down her schedule very diligently for one week, and then loses interest entirely once the novelty has worn off.)
The truth was, he could not really say what 'that way' had been, at this point, except to contrast it to 'the way things are now.' The year that had begun in January had been full of changes, none of which had either come or gone smoothly, preferring instead to come 'higgledy-piggledy' as Amoretta might have said. It had been a mad rollercoaster ride - no, it certainly had been madder than that, since rollercoasters generally travelled along set tracks in clean, well-lit amusement parks. Life with Amoretta was more like being thrown into a cart with little in the way of steering and no brakes and then pushed off into an abandoned mine.
By now, he had accepted all the trouble and chaos she brought to his life. It had now become normal, something he expected, something he accounted for in his day. What he had learned since January was that like an Agatha Christie novel, when it came to Amoretta, what he least expected was probably most likely to happen next, and so his way of anticipating coming calamities had become completely inverted. Now he expected the unexpected. It was no longer particularly surprising.
She had won the national lottery after all.
That meant - well - it possibly meant a great deal. If he was truly ready to accept the absurd, then it meant a great deal. He wasn't certain yet, was not sure he was ready to entertain the notion.
It was something like deciding to believe in Santa Claus at the tired old age of thirty-two.
Suddenly the sound of her splashing increased. He tried not to imagine her turning around in the tub and folding her arms one over the other on the rim, leaning her chin on them.
"What do you suppose reincarnation is like?" she asked thoughtfully.
Grabiner frowned. "I don't mean to find out any time soon," he said shortly.
There was the exasperated sound of her blowing air out between her lips. "Well, I hope we don't either. I'm not keen on pushing up daisies just yet," she said. "I haven't even graduated from high school," she reminded. "I still have lots and lots of things I plan to do before I check out of this life. I just wonder what it's like, is all. I wonder what it's like to be yourself and somebody else at the same time."
It was his turn to make an exasperated noise. "You're never 'somebody else.' You're yourself. I could go into detail about the electromagnetic patterns imprinted on the soul by the living brain, but suffice to say that the current research indicates that reincarnated beings generally have very cogent and unified senses of self. You will simply be you. Your circumstances may change, but circumstances aren't the beginning and end of a person, they're simply the dressings that conceal our truly naked natures."
There was the sound of further splashing, as if she were flopping about in the water while digesting his answer.
"Well, that was certainly a thought-provoking response," she said at last. "I suppose I've never really thought of a soul as a kind of record."
"In many circumstances, it is easiest to understand a soul as a sort of data entity. The soul is postulated to have several discrete areas of focus, interlocked together and yet constantly shifting through and over one another. It's something like a liquid and something like a web, but it's really not much like either, honestly. It is a record of who you are at this particular moment, and in that sense your soul has already become different from the way it was when I first began speaking. A soul is change and motion. It isn't static. If you tried to record it in numbers, they would never stop moving, which is why souls are so difficult to measure. Still snapshots of a soul's activity are practically meaningless for all but very rudimentary experiments, so some researchers take lines of activity, like seismographs, although I don't really know that much about it, being as it is not my field of expertise," Grabiner remarked with a shrug, leaning back in his chair and stretching his legs out. Talking about complex magical theory was much less troubling than thinking about his relationship the girl who had been his student, become his wife, and was now his soulmate. "Of course, the soul is more than simply a confusing mess of contradictory data. The soul is obviously one of the body's indispensable organs. Its role as a barrier defining the individual as separate from the multitude is what leads to it being called 'the other skin.'"
"But what about us then?" Amoretta asked philosophically. "We've now got one soul between us. You said it that night: one soul in two bodies. If the soul is like a skin that keeps 'you' separate from 'me' regularly, how is it that we haven't become some sort of weird amalgam person, partly you and partly me?"
"Because we're individuals with strong senses of self. We have what is called a composite soul," he answered frankly. "Think of it this way: when two liquids of distinct densities are poured together into a glass, they eventually separate out, no matter how muddled together they are. In this case, our soul(s) are both the glass, and the liquid inside of it. Other people each have a separate glass filled with the stuff of their self. We have one glass half filled with you, and half filled with me. We're two separate people sharing the same container."
"That sounds pretty thrilling," Amoretta remarked. "Like we've been buried in the same coffin."
"Don't be melodramatic," Grabiner frowned. "In any case, our situation is certainly the rare exception, not the rule. Souls generally exist as a boundary between one person and another."
"And a being will die without a soul just as easily as they would die without their heart or kidneys," Amoretta recited obediently, then splashed about a little more. "That's what P. P. told us in white magic class at the beginning of the year," she explained. "She also told us that witches don't really understand souls, not the way they understand a lot of things, not the way they'd like to. She said lots of witches and wizards devote their lives to studying the soul, and that lots of little things have been discovered, and lots of old theories disproved, but nobody really understands how it works. People can see what happens, or at least some of the things that happen, they just don't know why. I guess it sounds a lot like quantum mechanics, or dark matter or something."
"Spoken like a girl who gets her science from television," he said dryly, and he heard her kick up a fuss in the water as a response.
"I'm not the person who teaches at a high school without one single science class!" Amoretta retorted.
"No," Grabiner responded evenly, "But you did elect to come here knowing full well you would not be taught science. You had an introductory packet with a full description of Iris Academy's curriculum. It is true that I did not design this school's catalogue of classes - the headmistress is solely responsible for those decisions, however, on this point I must agree with her. Given the state of the world, it would be very dangerous to teach reckless high school students even basic science at the same time as teaching them magic. That is why all technological devices are forbidden on this campus, and not simply because there is no electricity to be had. It would be too tempting otherwise. We'd soon have a whole school full of heretics, and then we'd have an empty school, because the Magistrates would see to keeping the law." He let his fingers tap smartly across the cover of Solzhenitsyn. "Let the students of Iris Academy pursue their own educations in science only after they have graduated, and hopefully have gained at least a little forbearance and wisdom." He laughed dryly, "One hopes."
"Why is it forbidden anyway?" Amoretta asked glumly, and he could hear the sound of slow splashing, as if she were kicking her feet meditatively.
"The short answer?" Grabiner asked with a frown. "Because it is a taboo."
She wasn't very happy with that answer. "That wasn't very helpful, Hieronymous," she complained. "You can't simply say 'it's forbidden because it's forbidden.' That doesn't make any sense. That's like saying 'you can't wear white after labor day because I said so.'"
He snorted, "That, my dear, is the essential meaning of the word 'taboo.' There are some reasons, quite a number in fact: research can be very dangerous, the velvet curtain must be maintained, witches and mundanes are generally discouraged from close interactions, there were some disastrous incidents in the past - but ultimately, none of those reasons really matter at all. The simple fact is that it is a taboo." He paused and his voice grew very hard. "It is not a taboo to be broken, Amoretta. It doesn't matter what you or I or anyone else thinks about it. To break it is to be discovered, and to be discovered means a fate worse than death. Tell me that you understand this."
A cold sweat had broken out over his body because he had suddenly had a rapid series of generally incoherent visions that ended horrifically for the girl in the bathtub. The last thing he wanted was for the Magistrates to take interest in her for any reason, let alone one of the five abominations.
When Amoretta's answer came it was reassuring in its simplicity. "Hieronymous, I don't really think there's much to worry about on that front. I know as much about science as you could learn in a children's museum in an afternoon. I can name all the planets and describe their general orbits, and I once made a clock powered by a potato, but I'm not really what you would call 'technically proficient.' Oh, I know a lot about plants and animals and biomes and things, but based on what I've read, knowing those sorts of things seems to be perfectly all right. It's just knowing how carburetors work where things begin to get sticky, isn't it?" The question seemed to be rhetorical, as she went on without waiting for a response. "Besides, it's not me you should be worrying about. It's not me that I'm worrying about." She paused meaningfully.
Grabiner took a deep breath and steepled his fingers under his chin.
"Are you indicating that you believe that Miss Middleton may be - "
"I'm not indicating anything, Hieronymous," Amoretta interrupted him, "But you said it yourself that day we went for a picnic. Ellen gets obsessive over collecting and arranging facts. She likes to understand how things work and why they work that way. She's also very good at figuring things out. You ought to know that well enough, considering that disagreement you had with her when she passed an examination without casting a single spell."
"She did not pass that examination," Grabiner interrupted crossly. "She merely completed it. Examinations at this academy do not exist to satisfy student vanity. I am sorry that Miss Middleton was so juvenile as to become angered that her purely logical solution to the test did not qualify her for merits, but it was an explicitly magical examination - "
"Hieronymous," came Amoretta's exasperated interjection. "We've already had this conversation. Three times, I think. It seems like every time it ends with you saying 'Dispensation of merits is at my discretion, and that is final.'" She sighed. "I'm just saying that Ellen is all on her own now. She doesn't have any family any more, and besides that, she can be really awfully stubborn and pig-headed about things if she thinks she's right about something. She won't accept some sort of weak 'taboo' answer, not unless you explain it so she doesn't feel like she's fighting the good fight against some corrupt, old-fashioned society. She's a Horse, remember? She sticks to her guns, particularly if she thinks she's got a cause."
Grabiner looked up at the polished boards of the ceiling. "I will speak to Miss Middleton," he said at last, "For as long as is necessary for her to be satisfied that certain lines of research are forbidden, and I will do my best to intimate why they are forbidden."
Yet another thing to do. Ever since the moment he had first let Amoretta into his life, things had begun to change: now his empty world was filling up with people. Caring for others was sometimes very bothersome. But she was right. He had no desire to see anything unfortunate happen to Ellen Middleton. She was Amoretta's friend, the only one he felt was competent enough to be trusted.
It was Grabiner's turn to sigh.
"Are you finished bathing?" he asked.
She was.
Amoretta studied dutifully during the next day's green magic class, as a sort of apology to Vivian for neglecting her the day previous. She sat with her desk pushed up against Minnie Cochran's, and watched with some admiration as the girl's pretty pink sweetheart rosebush sang the Tallis Canon in harmonic rounds so well and so beautifully that Amoretta devoted herself to Vivian's education with new resolve.
Minnie's efforts were quite splendid, and Amoretta half wished that she had spent more time studying green magic earlier in the year, but then, one couldn't make time for everything.
Except Minnie somehow seemed to. Like Ellen she expected to be passed to Sophomore year in all colors. Amoretta could only hope to qualify in blue and white. What could be learned in one month of devoted study was not enough to qualify for Freshman mastery of green, as was clear from the fact that Vivian was more of a starling than a starlet.
Of course, Amoretta had had dozens of lessons off the books: formal lessons in dueling and grammar from Grabiner, and then lots of informal lessons that seemed to come at the strangest moments, like when she was mulling around in a tub of steaming bathwater and turning her thoughts over and over. Additionally, the colorful headmistress never seemed to tire of showering Amoretta with her own unique insights into the world, so all in all, she felt she was receiving a very full education, even if it could not all be easily noted down on a final report card.
And besides, unlike most everyone else, she would be spending the summer holiday at Iris Academy. She had no illusions that she and Grabiner would be visiting the seaside or going to amusement parks during the break. She imagined they would spend each day much as they did during the school year, although during the summer he could count on her being his only pupil. Well, perhaps she and Ellen, if he felt charitable.
Still, despite the fact that she was guaranteed to have a summer full of scholarship, that was no reason to coast along now. She knew she couldn't count on Petunia Potsdam giving her any consistent lessons during the summer, since Grabiner had already intimated that during the summer the headmistress often departed the campus at a moment's notice to investigate matters she deemed either 'important or interesting.' The way Grabiner put it, it was very clear that he thought that the headmistress indulged in vacationing rather than investigation when she went off 'on safari' as she called it. Because the headmistress could not be counted on to give independent lessons during the summer, if Amoretta wanted to improve her understanding of green magic under a real master, now was the time to do it.
Amoretta was so preoccupied with her work that she didn't notice the murmur of excitement pass through the class when it did, traveling like a current of electricity. She was leaning over her notes, attempting to determine if she might improve the duration of the vegetal memory charm she cast on Vivian daily if she tweaked the wording of the spell a bit, when Minnie gently kicked her under the desk. Then Amoretta's head jerked up, startled, and she realized at once that Minnie was looking meaningfully over her shoulder, toward the door to the first floor hallway. When it came to curiosity, Amoretta was a cat, and so she tactlessly turned right around in her seat to see what it is that Minnie found so interesting.
Grabiner was standing silently outside the closed door to the green magic classroom, looking in on her in wordless observation. This was something he had never done before - to her knowledge - and she thrilled with embarrassment as her cheeks flushed and she turned around hurriedly to bury her face in Vivian. As she turned, she caught Professor Potsdam waving merrily to the professor who stalked outside her door like one of the restless dead.
Amoretta's cheeks burned like flame and she at last took notice of the ripple of interest that was passing through the class in murmured asides. She felt completely idiotic to be so flustered by his attention because she was married to the man, and they had been sleeping in the same bed for a month now, and the whole school knew it. They ate breakfast together every morning, and it was commonly gossiped that they spent an inordinate amount of time alone together in the school's dungeons. She had declared that she loved him in front of the entire student body with such passion and gusto that it might have been the slogan of her re-election speech.
And yet at this moment, absurdly, it felt as if her cheeks would never cool off.
It was the middle of the day, in the middle of a lesson, and he had left his class to walk down the hallway to look in on her.
It was as if all the stars had fallen from the sky, to thud into the hard earth like old pennies.
What had been a passive duty, a push for Farspeak twice a day to reassure himself of her condition, had now become an active one, and her entire green magic class had observed him at it.
She didn't think that she could be more embarrassed if he had brought her bouquet of red roses and then kissed her pointedly in front of the class.
As this reflection consumed her mind in vivid detail, she sank bonelessly down against her desk face first, her hair covering her like a shroud.
All of this happened in perhaps fifteen seconds.
"He's gone now," Minnie whispered, but Amoretta made no attempt to move from where she had sunk, totally inert. She was trying very hard not to think of the thing she could not help but think of, now that she had thought of it in the first place.
Roses. And then. In front of the class.
She was going to die.
"Pity he wouldn't come in," Petunia Potsdam lamented from near the front of the class, where she was offering hints to a boy who was trying to teach his bluebell to croon like Ella Fitzgerald. "I'm sure he'd have found the lesson most enjoyable."
Amoretta was grateful for this small mercy, because she worried she might have expired on the spot if he'd actually come in to speak with her.
Suki Sato apparently thought this might have already come to pass, because she piped up with, "Professor Potsdam, Amoretta seems to have died."
"Oh no, my rosy little robin, you will discover that she is perfectly fine: as fit as a fiddle, really," the headmistress answered mildly, continuing on with her instruction without interruption. "She's only twitterpated."
"That sounds very serious," Suki noted thoughtfully, one pale finger pressed against her lips. It was really impossible to know whether she was enjoying Professor Potsdam's joke, or honestly though that Amoretta might be in dire straits.
The headmistress though, found it all very droll.
"Yes," she agreed, "Amoretta's case is very serious indeed, and so far advanced that it is most certainly chronic."