The Brief and Extraordinary Times of Rybel deMille

1536

Rumor was, under her robe, Brindlestick Betty didn't wear a stitch.

Gossip like that had a way of flying down a mess table at supper and landing in every likely spot at once—none likelier than those furthest from the elevated row of lordly profs assembling over their vittles, back nearest escape, where the likes of Ry deMille and Andy Vandal held court thrice daily from chairs only freshers needed reminding weren't open to just anyone.

'Van,' said Ry, rifling loose a leg from a juicy roasted pheasant, 'know what I just heard?'

But Van was absorbed with his drawing. Without looking up he said, 'Shall I guess?'

The ball of the thigh popped free of its socket with a wet tearing of gristle and a pop like the fingertip levered through the cheek. It was impossible to excite Van. Ry chewed and looked round for someone else to tell.

Snow gushed from the unseen ceiling of the Hall, the ceiling itself obscured by a bank of fuzzy slate cloud, a ghostly amber pulse in it where the moon lurked, cloud as taut with snow as a sheep's teet with milk, and the snow vanishing at the level of the tallest student's outstretched hand raised.

Which would be Lindsey Penthrift over there at Ravenclaw, drooped over his goose like a line someone forgot to stop drawing. Rumor was Lindsey's grandmother was a spider. Which made his grandfather, what? Blind? Interesting?

'Unlucky,' spat Spurina Malfoy on his left, releasing hotly to the table an owl-delivered letter that had started at spouting blood with her nail's first incision.

'Not on the table, Spurina!' said a finicky soul nearby, bustling into action.

Ry noted his friend Van's subtle response: the eyes just, the hands shielding the page just, the way the pooling blood withdrew from his artwork like a grope deflected.

'What's parcel-stuffed-with-blood in Malfoy?' Ry asked, chomping.

' "Blessed with another child," ' she said, glaring at the envelope, 'what else?' The envelope disgorged the thick fluid in regular pulses like an organ freshly pierced.

Ry laughed such, throwing his head back, that a soft rain of pheasant pelted back down on his raw cheeks. (He'd shaved that day, for the first time.) Between wipes of his face he spotted Mary Potter glowering at him from Gryffindor, corralled, as was he, in a close knot of co-conspirators. The long delicate wave that rippled her sorrel hair, the hate in her eyes—exhilarating.

The thing that controlled Ry started up in his calves and surged into his belly and zinged round his brain a second before spurting from his mouth. 'My god!' he cried, rising unsteadily to his feet, beseeching with his arms the Ravenclaw regents, the Hufflepuff huddle, the Brindlestick bishops, and Mary Potter—Mary Potter most of all—'must we scheme so against one and other?' He grimaced tearfully. 'Must it end in slaughter?'

Force compelled him to his chair. It came with a searing heat, the force, and a bodilessness. It was as if, instead of being a being with will and resistance, acted upon by a peer, he had had the experience of a piece of snow dropped into melting submission.

But it was a peer, albeit one with direct authority over him: Warwick Warwind, Master of Slytherin, whose heavy warm hand pressed down now on his shoulder. 'It's nearly Christmas, deMille. Give us a fucking break, won't you?'

Looking round it wasn't terribly obvious anyone even noticed. So loud, the Hall. So many children being childish. He ate some more. Glanced at Van in time to see Van's eyes slip off of him—just.

'What was I saying? Ah yes.' He tosses the bone with a plop into the table blood—

—a spray from which dots Van's suddenly upraised face—

—and now Ry gets to see the drawing. Brindlestick Betty with her robe slid down: a scotch of armpit hair, an ink-nippled breast, a smooth span of belly fringed on bottom by a promise of wispy hair, the Dungeon Freak small in the lower corner, wandless hands flexed in some perverse enchantment: a tiny subject disrobing its mistress with merely his mind and hands of splayed fingers.

'Right,' says Ry. 'You heard.'

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After supper he follows a girl all the way down to the Common Room. There are three ways Ry can tell it's Caty Jax, even from a distance. First: she goes alone. Two: that inimitable gait, as if always about to trip, yet never tripping. And C: he is compelled to follow. He'd swear she charmed him some humid moment when they were eleven, some instant's distraction and bam. How else to explain it? He liked 'em thick; she was willowy. He liked 'em brooding; she was funny. He liked class extremes; she came from shopkeepers. But put her in the room and for Ry everyone else faded away into dull, soft, blurry noise.

'What is it with you?' he whispers into her ear.

She'd loitered a moment at the threshold of the dungeon, the way you do if you're picking a path of least resistance or most promising obstruction. She'd paused in her funny way—stumblebunny, fingers grazing lips—and Ry threaded one arm round her waist and the other up through the cocked crook of her elbow to palm the warm plane of her throat.

She gasped.

Pressing up against her, he said, 'Why do you let the other boys look at you, too?'

She hissed.

He inhaled her. 'How come you don't save every bit for me?'

He felt her laugh jump into his hand.

He said, 'Marry me, Catydid Jax, or I'll kill myself.'

The long taut neck went loose, her soft persimmon hair fell across his face like dry, fragrant water, the back of her head slotted into the root of his shoulder. Every cell of him for a moment swum in a suspension of half gratified desire.

Then Van crossed through and he saw, he saw her eyes click into focus on him. She extracted herself from him too quickly, too thoroughly.

Van—all freckles and cheekbones and the bluest eyes—framed them with his hands, dipped an imaginary brush into an imaginary palette, said, 'Lovebirds in the Dungeon.'

'He's not my lovebird!' Caty Jax corrected sniffingly, throat-clearingly, expression-oscillatingly.

The thing that controlled Ry became unsuppressable in his legs. He comprehended the state of the common room in a few gulps of looking;

One: the Quidditchers round the fire.

B: prefects, snoots and Baron, usual posts.

And third: 'Runny' Richie Dowsing Rod engulfed within a cloud of reverent witches.

Scorning a parting glance at his Cat, Ry descends the final bank of steps into the dungeon proper. 'What ho, Richie!' he says. 'Is it story time?'

It wasn't Richie's fault about the hairlip or the mucous issue or the fact that he'd been born into a family called Dusendrad. Wasn't Richie's fault he'd been minted at birth, delivered into a deep and well-defended fortune. That Slytherin witches of all ages and availabilities tended to herd round him in competition. That instead of innately greedy and hoarding he was guileless, affable and unassuming. But try telling Ry deMille that. See how much it moves him.

And neither ask Ry does he register the impact his arrival (descending, arms-spread, voice raised) makes on the coven collected round 'Runny' Richie. Chilly says part of it, priming another. He doesn't have to see them snarl and flare their nostrils to feel a hot tingling shiver straight up his spine.

Richie stutters too—ask Ry if he holds it against him. 'Rybel, what hey? Was just going on about Holiday plans and that. Will the deMille festivities be lovely?'

Or that's how the sentences should've come out, would've on a different tongue—one perhaps not made spectacle of by Ry deMille, teenaged, jealous, frustrated, and better at nothing than cruelty. He tripped and toiled and teased sounds out along with Richie, making each effort harder as he did. Festivities alone would've sunk a lesser man.

Poor Richie hadn't meanness in him enough to see Ry for what he was. They came to lovely together, haltingly and with visible relief.

A witch cast off, dispatching notes of scathing Ryward. Followed by another, and another. 'Runny' Richie's smile…how would you say it? He saw them go; it wavered not.

'Lovely as fresh daisies from a graveyard, Richie. Aren't they always? deMilles at their leisure everywhere you look, making conversation so tedious you want to break your own fingers for a change of pace. Know what I mean?'

'Sorry, d-d-d...Rybel?'

'What's it like home at Chez Dowsing Rod, then, Richie? Actually say nothing. I can imagine it quicker. Everyone carefully embracing among towers of gold. All the little Dowsing Rod brats playing hide and seek behind sacks of galleons. Am I close, Richie?'

Richie shook his head quizzically. His smile: it wavered not.

'What's that you've got there?' Ry asked, indicating with a poke the smaller boy's hands, cupped up close to his sternum.

Richie, with painstaking delicacy, revealed the tiniest owl Ry deMille had ever seen. The size of a saltshaker; muddy chocolate save a weird cream star on its forehead. Its minute head ticked left and right as everyone remaining cooed. Tiny, roe-sized eyeballs with much too much night in them: beads broken directly from the firmament.

'Say hullo, Otis,' said Richie. Laboriously he explained that the groundskeeper had 'found' Otis as a fledgling near the Forbidden Forest and made an early present of him to himself.

He hadn't venality or scheming enough to see the groundskeeper's gift for what it was (rank pandering), but ask Ry if that mattered.

Richie was beyond pleased with the little fellow. Naturally he already possessed an owl: a majestic barred ten-pounder worth on the open market what Caty Jax's old man brought home in a year…but he'd hand it off to someone needy once Otis had gotten the knack of fli—

The little saltshaker sailed up off of Dowsing Rod's palm. Ry's laugh sailed in formation. 'But see he can fly, Richie!' His wand bobbed and with it so did Otis, tethered by magic.

Richie sniffed. He looked from the bird to his empty palm to Ry. His smile: it failed.

For an instant a fraught silence froze the common room—then commotion consumed it: Slytherins made the most out of a good old fashioned bullying. Even the girls who'd showily flounced away in disapproval could not resist the summons of the adorable helpless miniature star-headed chocolate owl bounced aloft on waves of magic…mean mean Rybel deMille laughing over the giddy cackles and exhortations of his classmates…wand dancing in his slender hand, so naturally given to abuse, endowed for it, practiced at it, as to be wasted on decency…the fabulously wealthy Richard Dusendrad with his mangled mouth set in fear, face smoking hot with shame…the little shit's hands reaching out and up while his body shuffled, stumbled and hopped beneath the careering bird… Oh, they loved it. They got so much out of it. Like when a very fat person eats up every last crumb of a meal and then slathers all the salt from his fingers and belches and rubs his tummy and signals for seconds.

At some point he'd tire of it, sure. Maybe his wrist would grow sore, or he'd become weary of deferring the promised carnage. Kidding around with someone always carried that risk: that you'd become morbidly aroused to do the thing you were threatening. It was an aspect of the character of power—ask any bully. 80-percent of performing any crime was thinking it, daring it to be considered. Pushing someone off a cliff after all was mechanically very simple. And anyway it couldn't go on forever. Bullying was fun but even a bully needs to eat, sleep, swat a bludger over the pitch with his mates. Even a bully has to go to class and pine for the girl and try to think of something funny to say. No, sooner or later the thing loses its luster. Even watching how worthless and ineffectual the bullying's subject was grew tiring, souring, boring in a way that justified the action without tasting good. Which, let's be honest, was maybe 80-percent of the 80-percent part: once the bully started to feel put upon by the victim, annoyed by his torment, the nudge off the cliff was practically irresistible.

He became peripherally aware of the Quidditch team laying on bets as to the owl's lifespan. If not for the next thing, he'd likely have tried to gin-up some action for himself on this score, but then he saw—a minor opera of gesture and expression—back there by the entrance, Van and Caty Jax communicating to each other about him. She doing Oh there he goes again, your lost friend Ry. He doing What can I say, I'd try something but it's useless.

Psychotic calm overcame him. Fixing the pair squarely in his sight, he lowered his wand. He did: Sorry, have we met? You seem to have me confused with low-rent entertainment, when I'm the son of a bitch who splashes the bloody owl.

The room fell silent just in time for the sickening thud of the little guy to be audible to all. It was something like the muted splat of an unripe tomato, with just a sprinkling of snapped bone. Then it got noisy again.

Slytherins groaning, resolving bets, excoriating deMille. A single Slytherin trying without total success to hold back tears. A pair of Slytherins exchanging another wordless, pregnant look by the big doors. Slytherins in general reordering: Splendid fun but papers to steal, palms to grease, capers to hatch, et cetera.

But for one Slytherin, who along with the weepy lad and the bloke what provided the distraction wasn't ready to move on just yet. While Richie huddled snotty and glossy-eyed over the sad tiny shambles of Otis, unsure whether or not to touch it, and Ry deMille looked on, as was normal in these circumstances not knowing exactly how he felt and taking an active interest in it (am I bothered or not, and does it mean anything either way, and if so, what?) this third one emerged from the room's darkest corner and moved slowly to the scene of the crime and knelt down.

Dungeon Freak.

Otis had landed by the hearth, amid the Quidditch team. At the Freak's approach a few of them automatically made some distance. The Freak didn't smell or anything but it was bad form not to show distaste, as it would be to ignore a rat stepping onto your palm. Richie, of course, failed to abide by this manifestly sensible dictum. He wiped his runny nose for all the good it did and sniffed and let his glistening eyes find the Freak directly. 'D-d-do you think it's,' he said, 'd-do you think…?'

Ry couldn't tell if he was stuttering or just having a hard time finding the right word. He said, 'Dead? Gosh, I rather fear it, Richie. Why didn't you tell me he couldn't fly?'

The bird was on its side. Its head was at an entirely strange angle, a ribbon of blood had unspooled from behind its neck, and not one single part of its body had in it the faintest suggestion of motion. Ry thought: You've gone into the last room, little owl, and the door disappeared right behind you.

Trust the Freak to want to play with dead things. If his goal had been to further afflict Runny Richie, Ry couldn't have planned it any better. (It hadn't been; it had been to become more relevant in that moment to Caty Jax than Van was, but oh well.) The Freak held his right hand out toward the fire so near and for such a time Ry was surprised he didn't catch a whiff, then he brought said hand up to his face and breathed on his palm like a man cleaning his specs and then he waved said hand once over Otis and carefully lifted the broken package of the owl with said hand—

—and Otis was fine. Never better. He shruffed and wattled his plumage, like on waking. His very small head ticked left to take in Richie, right to take in the Freak, and rested forward eyes on Ry.

Those eyes with too much night in them.

Ry felt a sudden uncomfortable warmth on his face, as if someone had held him close to the fire. A bloom of nausea fanned up his gut. 'How'd you do that?' he asked.

And the Freak leveled his watery pale green eyes on him.

'I know where they hide the door,' he said.

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