Author: Christy Anderson
Date: November 4, 2002
You can contact me at christy1865yahoo.com or leave a review.
Author's Note: Okay, so it's been almost five months. I'm toiling at Yugakusee homework here in the basis for the Yamani Islands, and while this was written in June, I erased my disk in August and had no desire to rewrite it until about two weeks ago. I was really depressed. I lost three chapters, including the most important one, and there's no hard copy. But, the point is, I rewrote it, and here it is now. Enjoy! Maybe chapter three will be up sooner.
Disclaimer: Tamora Pierce owns them all. More technically, she shares joint custody with her publishers. As I am not included in that circle, I own nothing. Just the plot. :)
A solitary candle situated on the table was burning down to the last marks of the day. On the floor, a rare healer's manual a certain squire should have been studying laid carelessly askew, long abandoned for other cares. Its first chapter was wrinkled from thoughtless activity, pages blowing in the draft that rushed from under the door. Used to enjoying an honored spot on a shelf or long hours of hard study, it now shared company with yesterday's laundry and the dust bunnies from long ago.
Beside the table was an even more puzzling sight. The bed, carelessly thrown together, remained empty- its occupant mysteriously absent. The plain white sheets and flannel blankets were cold to the touch- the squire had not even resided here temporarily this night. While the rest of the castle was draped in the dreams of deep slumber, a flurry of unusual and frantic activity radiated in the air of this particular room.
As the dark clouds rolled away, the moon shone brightly through the window of the squire's rooms, illuminating the figure toiling into the midnight hours at the desk in the corner. Twenty-five candles, nearly one hundred sheets of paper, and exactly twelve quills later, a young man relentlessly pursued his literary goals, desperately recalling all the lessons he had ever received on the subject. Recently returning to the famous verse of old, Neal ardently composed romantic limericks to the vision who had so recently stolen his heart.
Roses are Red,
Violets are Blue,
Sugar is Sweet,
I'm in a zoo… Let's go canoe… I'll tie your shoe…
Frustrated and disgusted, an eager hand eagerly crumpled it and added the latest attempt to the mounds of wads that surreally glowed in the moonlight. I have no utter clue… that rhymes, he thought bitterly to himself.
It had only been a fortnight since Neal had found his 'true' love, the lady Yukimi. While they had never spoken, he had glimpsed her around the palace and in the courtyard. From the first moment he had seen her, he had determined to write her the poem of a lifetime, but at this rate, he would be a very old man before it occurred.
After two weeks of continual labor, Neal felt that he was no better off than when he had started. More than half of his attempts had been diversions of love poems he had learned as a boy, and his original attempts were no better than the latter. Practice makes perfect, a voice called in his head. Neal sighed and resigned himself to picking up yet another sharpened quill. Yeah, practice makes perfect, so start again…
When I saw you,
Life wasn't dandy.
But now you see,
I feel like candy… My hair is sandy… Practice ain't handy…
A second wad of parchment zoomed across the room in no particular direction. Neal put his face in his hands. Where could he even begin to describe the feelings he felt inside his heart? They were so obscure, that even he couldn't explain them to himself. Why was he so sure that he loved her? He had never even met her! Staring at his talent-less writing fingers, Neal felt utterly disappointed. He would never be able to do it- he was not cut out to be a poet. How many times had his own friends told him so? Even the Lady Adelaide had… but he was determined not to think of her.
Now Roald, on the other hand, could compose such beautiful poetry- poetry that moved people inside. While Neal had always felt the pinch of jealously when he had read the young heir's latest pieces, he had to admit that they were exceptional. Why was life so cruel to him? Was it a gene he had missed somewhere?
He could always ask for help. Despite his misgivings, Neal must have considered the idea a million times. With a little bit of direction and guidance, he was sure that he could accomplish a poem that befitted his lovely Yuki, but something inside was preventing him. It was something more vague than even his own feelings.
He thought back to the first day he had seen Yuki, in the Mess Hall, remembering in particular the teasing that had occurred at the table. It had been relatively mild compared to what he had daily endured as a page. What disturbed him in particular was a relative theme that his friends had been hinting at, an overall similarity that someone had put into acutely effective words- words that had cut into him- but something had interrupted their immediacy. Who had said it? Kel, perhaps?
A sudden, abrupt knock shook the door in the early morning hours' silence. Involuntarily, Neal jumped from his seat. What insane soul would be knocking on his door at this hour?
"Neal," Kel's voice came from the other side. "Neal, are you still awake?"
The sound of his good friend's voice unnerved him even more. It had been Kel… Face it, Neal, you're fickle… Shaky, Neal knocked over the porcelain paperweight on the edge of his desk. As it shattered into a few forty pieces, Neal ventured a very tentative, "Yes."
For a small number of moments, utter silence on the other side of the door met his reply. As Neal was beginning to wonder whether he had imagined it all, Kel's impatient voice came from the other side, a little louder and more demanding this time.
"Can I come in?" Kel asked as if her intentions had been completely obvious.
However obvious Kel thought her question was, it took him by surprise. For the first time in a fortnight, Neal took a good look about his palace habitat. Closest to the desk were monumental mounds of paper wads. While Neal had no knack for mathematics, he was sure that their volume might equal that of one of the palace's giant sequoias and that their surface area might pave all the roads in Corus, or at least all the roads in a seven mile radius around the palace. How could he have been so blind to them for the past two weeks? You could barely get around them to go to the bed and the door. Looking at the other side of the room, Neal regretfully noted that it was in no better shape. A fortnight's worth of laundry littered the floor, quite a good deal within itself, and his schoolbooks were scattered like seeds on the wind. Neal felt his heart rise into his throat. What if his knightmaster had seen this mess? It was too painful to even consider.
"Neal are you there?" Kel asked irritably from the hallway.
Now his heart started to pound. What would Kel think if she saw this mess? Or his poetry attempts? She already disagreed with his fascination over Yuki. Panic set in, and Neal immediately set to righting the shameful disarray. "Just a moment," he called softly, as not to awaken his fiery knightmaster in the adjoining room. With incomparable haste, Neal gathered up as many paper wads in his arms as he could and trekked them to the bath. Three loads, however, and the spacious bathtub was overflowing, but Neal continued to stack them on the floor until the whole floor was covered in a flood of them knee-high. Shutting the door, and vowing to do something about it in the morning, Neal commenced to shove the wads into the closet with the meager remnants of his clean wardrobe. Now gathering up garments as well as the hated paper balls, Neal tried to double his pace, especially as he heard what sounded like someone tapping their foot cantankerously outside his door. Precariously stuffing the closet until the door almost wouldn't close, he kicked the meager remainder under his bed and hastily stacked the schoolbooks he found in the corner. With a flourish of grace, Neal leaped across the room and swept the door open, acting as if he had been making his way over the whole time.
As the door swung back to reveal Kel, the tall young girl stepped into the room without instance. Her eyebrows raised suspiciously as she took in Neal's room, but other than that, her Yamani cool kept the emotions masked on her face. "What were you doing in here?"
Neal fumbled for an answer, stumbling over the sounds that were coming from his mouth.
Kel bent over to pick up an object from the floor. Neal went ashen white, certain it was one of his poetry attempts. Holding a book in her hands, Kel looked over to the desk where the candle was still burning. "Neal," she admonished, "did you even go to sleep last night?"
Her question pulled him out of his daze and he relaxed as he realized that Kel had only picked up the healer's manual that Lady Alanna had given him to study. He looked over to where Kel had sat on the bed, staring at him for his reply.
"I was kind of busy…" Neal stammered.
Flipping through the manual, Kel did not seem to notice how nervous he was. "I know how you worry, Neal," she continued, "about those tests the Lioness gives you. I'm sure you'll do fine tomorrow. You learn these things so easily. Certainly it wasn't necessary to stay up all night to study."
This time Kel's words sent him into a different sort of panic. His green eyes filled with horror. "She's going to kill me," he whispered in a choked sort of tone. How could he have forgotten to study for one of Alanna's notoriously grueling tests? Had she reminded him yesterday? Out of the corner of his eye, he could already see the first dreaded gray light of dawn. Where had the evening gone? His mind flipped quickly through solutions, but found only one. Immediately Neal fell to Kel's feet. "You have to help me," he begged with all his heart.
Kel was taken aback. "Neal, I'm sure you'll do fine. You shouldn't panic…"
Neal cut her off. "Please, Kel, anything! I'm going to fail!"
A smile crept over Kel's features. "I know you love dramatics, Neal, but it's a little over the top…"
The older squire grabbed her hands in petition, trying to look serious. "The Lioness won't let me live to complete my Ordeal, Kel…"
"Oh honestly, Neal!" Kel exclaimed. "If you're that worried, I'll ask you a couple of questions." His fellow squire flipped open the book, scanning some of the paragraphs. As her eyes caught on to one particularly interesting, Neal spotted something even more horrendous behind her. In the early rays of dawn, a discarded wad glistened a few feet from the door. There was no way that he could inconspicuously retrieve it. What was he going to do?
"A high fever and green boils indicate the presence of what disease?" Kel's clear voice asked.
Quite frozen-looking across the room, Neal didn't hear her. He was far away in his own thoughts, paralyzed by the possibility that Kel might discover the wad at any moment. Perhaps if he… no that wouldn't work… maybe if… no she would catch on… but what if… definitely not that…
"Neal?" Kel tentatively ventured towards her zoned out friend. She had never seen Queenscove so disconcerted before. She cautiously approached Neal and laid a hand on his arm gently.
Neal snapped out of the trance and he found himself looking into Kel's hazel eyes that were peering at him in askance. "Polka-Dot Frog Complex?" he shot off at once.
An immediate expression of confusion crossed Kel's face. "Polka-what?" she asked in reply.
"Maybe not," Neal amended vicariously. "Amazon Virus? Ivy Poisoning? Sloth Speed Sydrome?"
Still sitting on the bed, Kel continued to stare at him as if he had grown a horn in the middle of his head.
"I.M.A.?" Neal guessed again, only half applying himself. The other half was concentrating on growing telekinetic powers out of his healing Gift. If he could only push the wad into the shadows, then maybe she wouldn't see it on her way out.
"I.M.A.- what's that?" Kel questioned, screwing her eyebrows together in deep concentration. Beneath the apparent confusion, though, her eyes were lit with a touch of concern, as she watched Neal's face grow a pasty white. Was he breathing?
"Immediate Medical Attention," he recited back to her, pulling himself away from the sight of the paper wad. He could see the irritation warring on her features. Without her Yamani mask, she might have rolled her eyes.
"Did you study at all?"
Inside his head, Neal weighed how to reply. The truth would only start an argument, and outside his window, the sun was almost over the horizon. While Kel was an uncommonly early riser, he had perhaps half an hour before his knightmaster would rise. Knowing Alanna, she would be over immediately to test him. How could he shove a whole manual into his mind in less than half a mark? He hadn't even started to read it--- had the paper ball just moved? Keep pushing, he egged himself on. And Alanna had said that the manual was rare, which probably indicated that he had never encountered the material before. "Ask me another question," he begged instead.
True friend to the end, Kel complied and paged through to another chapter. "If an immortal touches this object, it can be used as a medium relief for Scanran winter headaches."
Still working on telekinetic powers, Neal racked the other half of his brain for the answer. He had never heard of anything like that before, had he? Scanran winter headaches- how did you get them? Scanra was really arctic in the winter and really sweltering in the summer. Alanna would know this one- she had spent a great deal of time in Scanransearching for that… that jewel thing that King Jonathan used. "A muffler?" he speculated without much hope. Maybe a hat, something to put on your head…
"Wrong," Kel's voice rang out loudly.
Neal winced at the volume of her voice. "Kel, you'll wake Lady Alanna…"
Nevertheless, the normally mellow Kel didn't seem to be listening at all as she rattled off another question instantaneously. "How do you treat Carthakian Dengue Fever?"
Flabbergasted, Neal's eyes could only grow wide. What the hell was that?
"Which end of Scanran Thistleweed is used for a dietary supplement, and which end is fatal to people with what complex?"
Great, I could kill somebody if I get this wrong… Neal thought to himself, continuing to sit motionless, the test and rejected poetry contesting for the attention of his mind. Either way, he was going to die.
"The growth of extra-sensory hearing might be the cause of what fatal viral attack?"
Batty Syndrome? Vampire Cooties?
"Treating someone with multiple fractures to the vertebrae often involves the use of what specialized aspect of the Gift?"
Still stunned in silence, eyes locked on some spot on the wall behind her, Neal had never more resembled a frightened deer. Kel slammed the book to get his attention. "I don't believe that you've studied at all. This is completely unlike you, Neal… And what are you staring at?" Just as he had feared, Kel fatedly turned around and caught sight of it, conspicuously sitting on the floor, unmoved despite his peripheral attempts at telekinesis. "What is this?" she muttered inaudibly.
In desperation, Neal tried to snatch it from her before she could get a good grip, but Kel deftly whipped it out of his reach.
"I love you Yuki,
You make me coo key,
And kind of loopy,
You're really groovy."
The sound of the discordant words hung in the midst of the sea of tension that accompanied their reading. As they softly faded away, the stress only grew worse. Kel's face became unreadable, a Yamani enigma before him, even though he had known her for many years. Neal could not manage to imagine what she might be thinking. They stared at each other for many moments, no one daring to make the first move. Suddenly flinching from the eeriness of it all, Neal's reflexive motion seemed to spur Kel into action.
"Neal, I thought… I mean, I said… that Yuki is my…"
"I heard my name?" A cheerful face popped her head around the corner. Ebony hair framing her face and falling closely about her ears, a stray strand near her eye, she seemed the most beautiful person in the world to Neal.
Kel started, as Neal made a move to the door. The sudden apparition of the one he was so besotted over enchanted him. "I- I'm Neal," he stuttered. "Squire Nealan of Queenscove, at your service," he offered, with a sweeping bow that he secretly hoped would impress her.
The corners of Yukimi's mouth twitched, the Yamani way of showing amusement. "Pleased to meet you," she replied. "My name is Yukimi, Lady in Waiting to Princess Shinko."
Neal took one of her hands and kissed it. "It's an honor." The twitching of Yuki's mouth grew more involuntary and she donned her fan in front of her face to hide it, but Neal could still see the twinkle in her eyes. "Can I be of service?" Neal asked in a gentlemanly way.
The lady in his doorway seemed to blush. "I was looking for Squire Keladry of Mindelan," she answered.
"She's… she's… she's in here," Neal stammered, volunteering her an arm to come inside, his attention focused only on her.
Yuki took a tentative step inside the room, wearing a white top and a scarlet hakama, most of the longer pieces of her hair swept up in a bun. "I know; I could hear her voice."
While Neal was still drooling, Kel took one look at Yuki and had a completely different reaction.
"I'm late!" she exclaimed. "Oh, Yuki, I'm so sorry… we should have started practice half a mark ago."
Yuki simply nodded her head.
Kel gave a rare smile. "I got sidetracked," she disclosed, pointing a noticeable finger towards Neal's direction.
As Neal offered a sound of protest, Yuki pointed to the crumpled parchment in Kel's hand. "Sore wa nan desu ka. What is that?"
Eyes flashing void of emotion, Kel re-crumpled the paper. "Nothing," she replied confidently, giving Neal a knowing look.
Across the room, an adjoining door swung open, and a very tired looking, but angry Alanna entered Neal's quarters. "What is all the racket?" the King's Champion asked, suppressing a yawn. As the sleepy figure plodded towards her miscreant squire, she snapped to attention at the sight of Yukimi and Kel.
Diplomatic as always before her idol, Kel gave a slight bow. "I'm sorry we disturbed your slumber, Lioness. Yuki and I were on the verge of leaving."
The anger in Alanna's eyes dulled. "You better be on your way. Since I'm up, I believe that my squire has a test to complete."
Neal visibly sagged to the floor, a puddle of despondency. Satisfied, Kel nodded and exited Neal's room, throwing a silent "Good luck, Mithros bless!" over her shoulder to her friend.
Yuki still stood reluctantly in the doorway, her eyes gleaming. "It was a pleasure to meet you, Squire Queenscove. I hope we get time to talk later." She leaned closer, and Neal thought and secretly hoped that she was going to give him a kiss on the cheek. "Did you know that your room is a shambles?" a hiss came in his ear. Neal started away and caught sight of the papers spilling out of the bath door, which had fallen ajar. From the sound of agitation behind him, Alanna had caught sight of it as well. Grinning a goofy grin, however, Neal couldn't care less if Alanna hung him on the spot or halfway through the first question of his test. At least Yuki had noticed his messy room.
To be continued...
