April 17th, 2987

Weather: howdafuh should I know?

Mood: As well as might be expected

Music: Some sort of beeping monitor

Dear Diary:

Remind me not to walk into any more fairy circles or… y'know, do anything else, ever again. I woke up this afternoon in a hospital bed in Wizard City, feeling chilly even by my low standards. A nurse in a chair next to the door looked up from a copy of "Reflections in a Glass Eye," saw that I was awake, and went scurrying to fetch Bob James. Dr. James, I guess, only no one calls him that.

He came in, realized he was still smoking a cigarette, and stubbed it out on the wallpaper. A little shower of ashes ran down the wall.

"How are you feeling today, Normie?" he asked. I took it as a term of endearment and ran with that.

"Like I'm re-dead. Oh, shit. I have—had class today!" Something told me that I had missed class. I looked around and found the clock. It said 4:00 and it sure as hell didn't mean "AM," so I definitely had.

"And yesterday, and the day before. Don't worry, your teachers and your drill instructor all know and all your absences so far are excused."

"What happened to me?"

"Believe me, I've been trying to find out for three days. Have you noticed a lack of your regular… um… monthly…. uh?"

"I don't have one. I'm undead. Wait, why?"

"Just a stab in the dark. There's something on your MRI that I can't explain. You remember how you barely show up on the machine and all of your organs are weird-looking? Hell if I know why. Well, listen, there's a splotch on the MRI in your lower stomach. I had wondered if that's what it looks like when your species are pregnant.

I laughed involuntarily. "There is literally nothing more impossible!"

"Well Jeezus, I don't know then."

"I do. I was stabbed through the stomach with some sort of magical weapon by a fairy!"

"Your friend told me. But I consulted magical experts! They told me that should have been harmless as long as you were outside the ZOI—sorry, that's the 'Zone of Interchange.' It's what PhD's in magic call fairy circles. Dunno why. Anyways, I'm going to examine you and keep you under observation for a little while, but your vitals have been strong and there doesn't seem to be anything else wrong with you besides the blotch and the whole… coma thing."

I stood up. "Probably just exhaustion. I'll tell you if I feel bad again."

"Sit down. You just laid down for a nap and slept most of three days. For your own good you're not going anywhere until… tomorrow. Let's say late tomorrow. That's pushing it, but if you still feel fine by five in the afternoon tomorrow I'm not going to hold you. I'll contact your teachers at once, or you can, whichever you prefer."

And that, diary, seemed to be that.

About half-an-hour later, Sue came in, wearing her sword with athletic shorts and a Sublime t-shirt, and I was suddenly feeling some more of those… hormones. She didn't say anything at first.

Under her arm was a manila envelope.

"Here to bust me out?" I said.

"I heard you were awake. I brought the prints."

Most of them weren't fantastic, I guess. I'm not great at judging light, and she's great at it but knows next-to-nothing about composition.

But there was one. You have to pretty bad for there not to be one. We had set her camera on a stump with a piece of bark under the lens to support it and set the timer. She'd never used the timer, so we didn't know how long we had. I started counting down from ten.

So then we went and sat together with our backs to the tree. Nothing happened when I said "zero," so I turned to her and she smiled at me… isn't that a Led Zeppelin song? And then with neither of us looking into the camera, we heard that harsh click of the mirror hitting the roof of the camera.

Like, on a totally detached, photographic level, it's a mediocre shot. It doesn't have a lot of contrast. I think her camera was set wrong for the type of film, which was century-old black-and-white from Iowa. And it's not very well composed. It's kind of slanted, and I don't like whatcha callem, Dutch angles.

But there, with her arm around my shoulder and both of us in night-shirts and chain-mail, there crystallized in silver inside the negative and there, on the two glossy digital prints, is the only picture of me, as an adult, happy.

I mean, shit, there probably aren't many of Sue smiling, either.

But what a little thing: it turns out that the timer runs twelve seconds, not ten. Only sometimes it doesn't, because it's a very poor copy with some loose wires and shit. But there, in the gap between ten and twelve I was fucking happy, and so was she. How easily it could've not happened.

That night she wouldn't leave. She actually threatened the nurses with a flaming fupping broadsword. She must've kept watch the entire night.

Three wise men visited me the next day while I was waiting to be released. I have no idea what that means.

First there was Sir Howell. He told me that he'd do his best to make sure I got to make up any tests I missed. He excused me from drill for as long as necessary.

"One last thing: You've earned a wound badge in combat last Saturday. That goes on your armor. Are you happy with the coat you were wearing at the time? I'll have it appliquéd now if you like."

"I'd like that very much. It's whatever women's Size 2 doesn't have the chausses with it. Those are them over there on the chair, by the way."

"It was in the rec room. You were very tired Saturday night, or Sunday morning, hell if I know," the old man chuckled. "I was drunk. By the way, I understand you were in the rec room when the siren went off. If I had my way, I'd give you a second wound badge for that."

He chuckled out of the room with my chausses under his arm, probably thinking he was doing me a favor by reuniting them with the armor they belonged to. From that point I had no pants within in a ten-mile's radius.

Then came Dr. Foxham.

"I have studied the archives of the Akashic maps," he said. That's a groovy thing to start a conversation with.

"They're real?" I asked.

"Maybe not in the sense you're thinking of. The wizards and the Grand Librarian of the Lyceum maintain these master charts, alright? And then every year the current charts are imprinted onto the magical fabric of the world at a one-to-one scale, holographically…"

"Holographically?"

"So that any part of the master chart is an image of the whole. Anywhere you are, you can pull up a local or global map in your inner eye, if you know such and such a spell. That's why powerful wizards never get lost. Now, I can't cast even Cantrip right most of the time, but I can read the paper copies they keep in the library, going back circa nine hundred years. They show leylines, places of anomalous magical power, and zones of interchange with other realms."

"Fairy circles?" I asked.

"The very same. Now, that well in the forest isn't even shown on recent maps. Supposedly it caved in a hundred years ago, but I have reason to believe that that was false. It's been several hundred years since a fairy circle was recorded around the well, though."

"People have even known about this?"

"It would seem," he said. He sighed. "The well is at the intersection of two very faint leylines. Normally lines wouldn't have anything to do with a fairy circle; it's two different types of geomancy. However, the Fair Folk—" he paused to cross himself "—may be able to force an artificial fairy circle to form around an object of magical power, such as a well somebody happened to build at the nexus of two leylines… or more likely a certain stone in that well, whichever one happened to fall exactly on the intersection."

"And people like to build things on leylines. It's subconscious, isn't it?" I asked.

He sat down on the edge of my hospital bed. "So the theory goes, and your friend Sue's studies of cattle-herding paths in the Near Wastes would seem to support that. She also claims birds migrate in patterns determined by the lines, which is harder to prove but no less likely, if you ask me."

"Oh, wow. I had no idea."

"Best geographer and best geomancer here. Don't tell Howell I said that. Anyways, the whole area is roped off, but I don't know how long it'll stay that way. By the way, I heard that the… person quoted Tam Lin at you. That, in my opinion, is damn worrying, as is the blotch on your scan—don't worry, I haven't blabbed about that."

"Yeah, everything that happens to me is worrying. I'm used to it."

"Yeah, Marcy, I still have to worry. Your fate is probably tied to the fate of this university in ways I can't understand. Your adoptive father was one of our founders, your real father tried to destroy the university, and these damn fairies seem to have marked you in some way."

"Wait, Simon was one of the founders?"

"Not just that, one of The Thirteen. They were some of the founders, the original deans, the original Knights, and the greatest champions of education of our age. Now only two survive, you know that? And if Charlie comes back and threatens what he built with them, I won't hesitate to make it only one, manu mea. But cripes, I'm late! I'm subbing for Mungey again. Be very careful and remember that we're in a time of signs and portents. Good bye!"

He ran out of the hospital room, looking at his pocket watch.

Then came Mungey, about an hour later.

"Hey," I said. "What are you doing here?"

"I'm too stoned to teach class, but I got some square filling in for me. Mach dir keine Sorgen, dude,it's a square I trust. I was coming up here to get more weed from the pharmacist, but I saw your name on the door and had to stop by. Your absences are excused, and we'll talk about making up the last pop quiz, but, uh, you wouldn't happen to know why the chancellor moved me to an office full of bats and shit, would you? And who's the new chancellor, anyways?"

Finally, they're releasing me from the hospital. It's starting to get dark and I guess I'll walk back to campus. Honestly, I might try flying. I finally feel rested up. It actually looks great outside and the birds are singing.

So, I guess ciao until tomorrow or whenever, Diary.

(Oh, shit, I'm not wearing pants.)