Tag Archive | prompt: allbingo

LadiesBingo: Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics

Written for my ladiesbingo card and my Second Finish-It Bingo Card for allbingo. Genique is the title character of my Space Accountant setting.

Background: Genique just wanted to go on a nice cruise. She never anticipated being kidnapped by pirates… and when that happened, she never really expected to become their accountant. Now that she is, though, she’s going to do a good job as a matter of course.

Genique had been working all day on a particularly tricky set of paperwork, pausing for a ration bar at noon but not really tasting it. It was well into the evening, but she wasn’t sure, still, about this contracted husband she’d ended up with, the problems were particularly thorny–pirates might be awful at accounting but they were far too good at hiding money–and, besides, she was having fun.

“We don’t actually pay overtime, you know.”

Genique looked up to see First Mate Cleonorayen Clyd standing in the door of the closet Genique was using as an office. “You should,” she answered absently. “Maybe then three-quarters of your crew wouldn’t be embezzling.”

“We don’t have time cards,” came a voice from behind Clyd. From the accent, it had to be Quatermaster Marist Irio. “They’d just embezzle time, then. I mean, if we had paychecks.”

“I don’t quite understand how this place works as a business.” Genique stared at the tablet in front of her. “That is, by all rights, it ought to. I mean, according to most of your books, you haven’t repaired the ship in twenty-five years.”

“Come on, we’re going out for a beer.” Clyd stepped into the small room and took Genique by the arm. “Before your poor husband comes to claim you again.”

“About that…”

“We’re not talking about him, not yet.” The Quartermaster shook her head. “We want to talk about the books, first.”

Genique let herself be led out. “I thought I didn’t get paid for overtime.”

“Oh, but this isn’t work.” Clyd was smiling with too many sharp edges. “This is… well, gossip.”

“Gossip,” Irio agreed. “And some explanations that will probably make you want to pull your hair out.”

“So also we brought you a new cap,” Clyd offered. “And we’re going to buy you some beer.”

“And a pair of shipsocks,” Irio added. “You don’t look like you have any yet, and you really need them.”

Genique looked between the two of them. “How badly am I going to regret this conversation?”

“Wellll,” Irio offered slowly, “Donnye the ship-boarder and engineer owes me a really good haircut…”

“Okay, so you really do want to talk to me,” Genique twisted her lips thoughtfully. “All right, beer and a conversation. And those shipsocks.” Her hand went to her hair. “We’ll hold the haircut in reserve, mmm, because if it’s important for you to tell me, chances are it’s important for me to know, too.”

“I told you she was a smart one,” Clyd commented.

“Who told whom, mmm? She’s a bright bulb, best thing Basi’s done so far.”

“Standing right here,” Genique reminded them.

“Well, why are you doing that?” Clyd mock-scolded with no shame. “The beer’s this way.”

“Ma’am, yes, ma’am.” Genique let herself be steered, listening but not paying too much heed as Clyd and Irio discussed various crewmates.

It wasn’t ‘till the beer was poured, they’d sat down, and Clyd and Irio had both gotten halfway through their mugs that they looked over the edge of those mugs at Genique.

“You’re brilliant at paperwork. You find missing numbers nobody even knew were missing.” Clyd took another swig of her beer. “That’s good. We need that. Problem is…”

“Well, two, maybe three problems. First problem,” Irio picked up, “is that you’re going to find numbers someone did know were missing. It’s some junior officer who’s skimming the till, yeah, we want to know. But, uh…”

Clyd picked up. “If it’s the Captain, you don’t want to know and neither do we.”

Genique considered that. “All right. So there are lies in the numbers. And some of those lies, I need to find. Some of them, it’s okay if I find. Right so far?”

“Right so far. I mean, we do need the ship to run, and we need it to keep running. And, well, you found our first lie right off — the ‘wages’” she explained to Irio. “She figured out first thing that if you work the way we hire on new captives, you’ll never be free.”

“Some people take years to get that one.” Irio smiled. “Well done. But,” and her smile vanished, “that’s the problem. You’ve got your lies and your damned lies. And the damned ones can kill you.”

Genique frowned. “Right, so, I want to be careful what I ‘find’ and where I find it. And then there’s stuff I need to be very sure nobody finds…” she sipped her beer and found herself smiling. “Well, that part’s easy. I mean, once I don’t find it, then it’s damn simple. I’ll just hide the numbers.”

“You can do that?”

Genique smiled broadly. “Of course I can do that. Text summaries, statistical analysis, double booking… I’m an accountant.” She lifted her chin. “And, it appears, a pirate. Of course I can hide a little booty.”

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Hidden History and Misplaced Beads – a continuation of Aunt Family for Finish It! Bingo

Sep12

After Estate and Three Glass Beads, Peacock Blue for my second Finish It Bingo Card for allbingo

Myrlie knew she wasn’t supposed to be in the attic without adult supervision, but Aunt Lilyah had been squirrely about the whole thing ever since Aunt Kelly went missing, and Aunt Lavey was trying to pretend everything was normal, and her mother was the sort that ignored the Aunt House unless she needed something, and then it was all about what the Aunt could give her, right there, right then.

Besides, the house’s wards liked her, they always had. She’d been five years old when she’d first snuck over to have tea with Aunt Kelly, and the wards had let her in even then. She didn’t want to stop sneaking over just because Aunt Kelly was missing, and as long as she was sneaking over unsupervised, she might as well go into the hidden corners of their Aunt House, which, despite not being all that old (so said everyone), was still sufficiently creepy and mysterious for her.

She’d heard the Root Family had attics bigger than the house itself. She wasn’t sure if that was exaggeration or truth, but what her family’s Aunt House had was a very nice office-like room that just happened to have an archive hidden in what looked like a closet on first glance.

She’d been six or seven when she’d first discovered that Aunt Kelly’s house had secret passages, and nine before anyone else had realized she knew. They were useful for getting out of a room you weren’t supposed to be in, that was for sure. And they were useful for finding things you weren’t supposed to know about, too — like the archives.

She knew there were diaries in there. There were even a few carefully hand-written copies of The Really Old Diaries (That was how Aunt Kelly talked about them, like they had capitals in them) and a few photocopies, folded into journal-sized pages and sewn together with robin’s-egg-blue embroidery thread.

Myrlie liked those best, the old diaries that weren’t so old that she was worried about handling them, the copies where you could still see the specks and ink-blots. She had known just where they were, but the archive looked like someone had been in here since she’d last snuck in. The old chest had been moved, the old file cabinet had been unlocked.

It had to be Aunt Lilyah. She hadn’t seen any of the other grown-ups come and go since Aunt Kelly had disappeared, and she’d heard her great-aunt Sylverie mention how the wards had seemed “temperamental” lately.

She knew that word. It meant “not doing what we want,” and she’d heard it applied to Aunt Kelly, Aunt Lilyah, and herself more than a few times.

Myrlie squatted down on the floor to open the chest Aunt Lilyah had moved. It was unlocked and the books inside had been moved — not disordered, just piles shifted around a bit. The topmost book was one of her favorites, a photocopied journal from an Aunt-in-waiting in the Civil War era. She picked it up, and something slid from under it, falling deep into the chest between stacks of books and hat-boxes.

Why the Aunts needed so many hats, Myrlie had never figured out, but Aunt Kelly had told her in no uncertain terms that she was never, ever to undo the ribbons that held boxes closed, never, unless there was an Aunt present and telling her to do so.

She couldn’t reach to the bottom, and she wasn’t sure even her hand could get into the little crevice where something had fallen. So she moved the boxes carefully as she unpacked the chest, keeping her fingers off of the ribbons.

The oldest books had been wrapped in newspaper or butcher paper, folded up like she covered her school books or wrapped like presents, some tied with loop after loop of silk ribbing. She avoided those ribbons, too; when she slipped and her fingers brushed against a faded yellow bow, she could feel the tingle of magic leaking out of the book.

Her uncle Fred, in a moment of irritated drunkenness, had once muttered that the Aunts kept more power “locked up away, tied up in pretty bows” than most people would ever dream existed in the whole world. Myrlie had thought he was angry. Now she wondered if he was right.

She wasn’t supposed to know about power, now, and Aunt Kelly’s tolerance of her snooping and sneaking ended anytime she started poking at the things of magic, no matter how nice it smelled or how good it felt. Myrlie kept moving books and boxes, ignoring — or pretending to ignore, at least — all the little suggestions that were travelling up her fingers.

Down there, way down at the very bottom, lodged between two packages wrapped up in paper and silk, Myrlie found the little envelope. She dumped the contents into her palm, but all it turned out to be was three glass beads in a sort of bright blue.

Oh, there you are. The voice brushed against her mind like a purr. Not Tansy, though. You’re new. How interesting!

🍃

Lilyah had spent an informative hour downtown in the central library. The book she’d been looking for, Limits on and Protections from Witch-Craft, had actually been available, much to her surprise. She had learned quite a bit about Burke, Rhoda from her style of writing and the points she chose to make — no wonder someone in the family had called her out!

The biographical note in the end matter had given Lilyah even more material, and a good half of her time had been used perusing the local history section, from birth notices to obituaries.

Rhoda Burke had lived a quiet life, if the history was to be trusted, no matter what her book suggested. She’d never married, never had any children, and gone to her grave quietly and alone, her fortune unspent.

Lilyah found that unlikely. There were parts of Burke’s book that were directly in conflict with the family’s ideals and motives, and there were parts that would quite effectively foil any number of plans the family had made over the years. That sort of thing — readily available in a book printed by a well-known publisher — would not have gone unnoticed or unpunished.

But exactly how? The card had said something about three beads from a fringe. There hadn’t been any beads attached but, knowing the family, the beads had to exist somewhere in the vast archives — either in Aunt Kelly’s attic or in the root family’s, or lost in some branch family. The question was: which one? And were three beads significant enough to go looking in all the family archives?

We really ought to computerize, she was thinking as she let herself back into Aunt Kelly’s house. The wards tingled at her; maybe they didn’t like computers? She’d certainly heard crazier theories.

Three beads. Three beads from a fringe. And a biography that was completely innocuous, after a book that was nothing but. Lilyah let herself be drawn back to the secret rooms of the attic, not quite knowing what she was looking for. More information on Burke, Rhoda? The beads, lost among the floorboard cracks?

She opened the door on her niece Myrlie, sitting among the journals and the hat-boxes. Her eyes were glowing an eerie peacock blue. She opened her mouth, and a cheerful, malicious, adult voice came from her child’s lips.

”Oh, and you must be the adult, the proper Witch. I was hoping you’d get here soon. Myrlie and I have been having such a nice chat…”


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After the Night

Aug19

After A Couple Helping Hands, Littermate, and Strange Favors, for the Finish It! bingo

Begley was out of the doctor’s office in an hour, an hour Cúmhaí had spent pacing the waiting room and irritating all of the other nervous or unhappy people who’d filled and over-filled the room. Some she recognized as other new students, others were upperclassmen. One of those, Brontes, leered cheerfully at Cúmhaí and reached out for her, only to find his hand slapped down by an invisible force.

“He’s got ideas,” she faux-apologized. “Whoever he is.”

“That’s all right. If all he has is ideas, I’m sure I could come up with something more interesting.”

“That’s definitely a possibility. But, on the other hand, you’re here because of someone, aren’t you? And it’s probably not your little brother…”

“You’re here because of your brother? On Hell Night?” Brontes’ brow wrinkled. “Seriously? I mean, You’re pretty cute, nobody—”
An invisible clearing throat caught Brontes’ attention. “Oh, you did? Why didn’t you say anything?”

“I did not. But the young lady here — young woman,” the voice corrected, at an angry glare from Cúmhaí — fought very well, and her brother did as well.”

Cúmhaí’s glare — which was pointed at the sound of the voice, so it did not matter that she could feel the space he took up in the room — lessened only faintly at the praise. “I’m glad you approve.”

“You really were impressive. After four years here, I’ll be interested to see — from a distance, preferably — what you can do.” The voice chuckled. “But I’ll be going now, before Brontes’ slow brains finally figure out who I am, and he gives away the game. Miss Cúmhaí, I assume I will be seeing you, if not the other way around.”

“It’s a small school.” It might not have been the most encouraging reply, but she wasn’t all that sure that she wanted to encourage this guy.

She watched his shape leave the room and gave Brontes a thin smile. “I should go check on my brother. I hope whoever you’ve got here, you’re good to them.” She found her voice growling a bit at the end, but hey, if he’d been chasing people down like she’d been being chased, he deserved it. “They deserve it, if you landed them here.”

Brontes had nothing to say to that, and she had nothing more to say to him.

He might have been the only one with nothing to say to her in the next few days. The first thing she got was angry accusations — why had Begely rescued her, what was her relationship to him, why wasn’t she wearing his collar?

Cúmhaí’s patience was wearing thin. She had barely managed not to punch the last guy who’d asked her about a collar, and she had shown her teeth to several. It seemed to be making them back off, but the questions kept sneaking in, in between classes, during class, in the lunch room. Over half of her Cohort was wearing collars, maybe a quarter of them had a spooked look, some had bruises. And people wanted to ask her what she’d done?

Worse still, they were getting in her way. She could feel all the people filling up space, but when they got too close together, they became one amorphous space-blob. It was like the closer people’s faces got together, the more they faded, until they were one unidentifiable mess.

Her new power, Cúmhaí thought, might not have been the prettiest thing.

“So, what is it with you and this Begely kid?” another unfortunate soul asked. “I hear he helped to rescue you, and you him, on Hell Night?”

Cúmhaí turned to answer with a snarl already twisting her lips. “He’s my brother… oh.”

The man asking was tall, handsome in a slightly-creepy way, with pale skin and black hair, and too well-dressed for a school. He was raising one eyebrow inquisitively at her. “Oh?”

Cúmhaí grinned. She’d checked out the expression in a mirror, and with her new Change, it was pleasantly terrifying. “You know, if you’re trying to be all sneaky and hidden, it helps if you don’t sound like the husband in some gothic novel or something. I mean, nobody else here sounds quite that full of themselves.”

“I’m afraid I have no idea what you’re talking about.” He looked, she thought, offended.

She smiled even wider. “So, I’m not sure if I should thank you for the help or yell at you for hurting my brother. ‘Cause I wouldn’t have needed help if you hadn’t attacked me and thrown him across the room — but, on the other hand, everyone was attacking everyone.”

“I heard that you were quite impressive Saturday morning. I — nobody expected you to hold out that long, or to fight that hard. Or to be able to fight an invisible opponent.”

Cúmhaí found herself grinning. He thought she was impressive, did she? She let the teeth show and turned the grin into something more like a snarl. “Something everyone here should know about my family — since we’re talking about rumors and stuff people ‘just heard’ here — we don’t give up and we watch our own. Begely might be a pain in the ass, but he’s my brother, and we watch after each other, no matter what.”

“I am certain everyone will be keeping that in mind,” he answered solemnly. “Especially after his defense of you, especially after the way you reacted when he was attacked in turn.”

Cúmhaí eyed him cautiously. “I can’t tell if you’re making fun of me,” she admitted.

He smirked. “I am not. Generally, that is accompanied by some sort of snicker or chortle.”

“…do you always sound like this? I mean, come on, it’s a school, you’re a student. Unless you’re secretly a professor in disguise? That would explain a lot.”

“What would it explain?” He raised his eyebrows in such a perfect fashion it had to be magic.

“Well, the fact that everyone else was trying to cause damage or put a collar around someone’s neck and you, well, didn’t — you helped us out. Or the way you talk. Or the fact that you’re pretending it’s not you, when I can… smell that it’s you.”
“Smell?” His nostrils flared. “That’s certainly a useful set of Changes you’ve gotten there.”

“Yeah, yeah, dogbird. Call me a puppy and I’ll make sure you need a rabies shot.”

“You know what happens to dogs who bite humans, don’t you?”

“You were much more charming before you started in on the threatening.” Cúmhaí showed her teeth. “Now you’re just like everyone else here.”

“I hate to sound juvenile, but… you did start it.” He didn’t look like he hated it. He looked amused by the whole thing.

“I’m the one with an animal Change. What’s your excuse?”

“My excuse? I have none. I was simply trying to gossip with you about your luck on Hell Night.” His smile looked slightly wrong, too sharp or too big or too thin or maybe all three.

“We both know it wasn’t luck. It was Begely, anger, and you.” It grated on her to credit him, yet, at the same time, he had helped more than a little.

“You keep insisting I was there.”

Cúmhaí growled as she stepped up into his face and grabbed the collar of his shirt with both hands. He was taller than her by almost a whole head, but when she pulled him towards her, it leveled the playing field a bit. “I keep insisting,” she snarled, “because I know it was you. The question is why you keep pretending you weren’t there.”

“Ah.” He looked down at her, eyebrows quirking, and coughed. “Maybe I wanted you to have to work a little harder to find your rescuer. Perhaps I wanted a chance to observe you when you weren’t under stress. It is possible I just like being mysterious.”

She narrowed her eyes at him. “And it wasn’t because you were trying to figure out how to get a collar on me without having to permanently incapacitate Begely?”

“Miss Cúmhaí, I am fairly certain that, if I wanted to collar you, incapacitating your brother would only then mean that I would have to incapacitate you as well. No, I — can we speak somewhere more private?”

“About you collaring me? I don’t think so.”

“No.” He cleared his throat and shrugged his shoulders forward. “I was thinking more about talking about not collaring you,” he whispered. “But that’s a conversation that will anger people more than, say, your good relationship with your brother or the way you managed to survive Hell Night free and intact.”

“You seem like the sort of person that can take care of yourself. And I…”

He quirked an eyebrow, seeming to guess what she hadn’t said, and why. “You did, once. With support. Can you handle yourself against a whole crew of upperclassmen intent on putting you and your brother in your places?”

“Can you?” she countered.

“Ah, well, that is the question, isn’t it? And a quite important one for both of us.” He nodded and gestured down the hall. “Shall we talk?”


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A Discovery in Depth

Aug2

After Discovery, Part Fnarg and Discovery, Part Snarg, for the Finish It! Bingo Round Two

Content Warning: This describes a ritual that led to dozens of skeletons being buried under a mountain. It includes death and violence.

In the end, Aetherist Ovanobina dragged Tekemuzh down deep into the mine, to look at the place where the miners had found the bodies and where every archeologist in the land was now busily pulling out more bodies.

“There are so many…” Tekemuzh had seen death before. It was the nature of what his did, his “parlour trick”, that he could see the strongest emotion that had touched any given thing. His work was not always admissible in court, but that did not stop him from seeing the visions. “I think…” He sat down, because he did not want to fall down. “If I put enough of the visions together, I may be able to determine what the ritual was for. But this level of ritual murder…”

“It gets worse,” Ovanobina interjected, voice solemn and sepulchure. “I’m sorry, but they found a second site.”

Tekemuzh worked around a lump in his throat. He had done so well, so far, in not disgracing himself, but if he had to look at another site — if Ovanobina was saying it got worse — then he was not sure he could keep going as he had. He bowed his head and sought peace. “One thing at a time, then?” he offered through a dry throat. “First, we finish with this site. We see if we can put together the purpose of the ritual. And then we can move on to the next site. And we can put these bodies back to rest.” He touched the brow-bone of the skeleton nearest him with careful fingers. She had been barely an adult… most of them had barely been into adulthood, although the thoughts that came through were scrambled on that matter, strange.

The bones had been down there a long time, that much Tekemuzh could tell. How long, well, that led to some interesting questions, because the numbers he was getting — the weight of centuries — told a story that his history books denied.

It wouldn’t be the first time his history books had been found to be in direct conflict with the evidence of his Tekemuzh’s senses. He ignored the question for the moment. Right now, his work was as he had said it was. “Can you get me someone in here to transcribe, Aetherist? If I have to stop and take notes, it goes much more slowly.”

“I think if I send young Kalaket in here, he likely won’t vomit too often. Uzhnar, on the other hand…” The aetherist headed out into the light, coming back a few minutes later with a scholar so young he probably should still be in an Academy somewhere. “Aetherist Tekemuzh, this is junior scholar Kalaket. Do be nice to him. Kalaket, transcribe as Aetherist Tekemuzh dictates to you, and do not waste his time with questions right now nor any of your theories. That can wait until after dinner. Play nicely, you two.”

Tekemuzh wasn’t all that young, but he was still easily young enough to be Ovanobina’s son. “Yes, ma’am.” He looked at the boy. “Get comfortable. This is going to take a while. I’m going to start with impressions, and some of what I say might make little or no sense. Write it all down anyway. We can sort it out later. Got it?”
Kalaket swallowed and nodded. “I don’t have to be near the skeletons, do I?”

“You only have to be near enough to hear everything I say without asking me to repeat it.” He thought the boy might be younger even than he looked, but perhaps if he had been in the towers of an academy his whole life, he might not be used to the darkness the world could provide.

Tekemuzh waited until Kalaket was settled, and then he put his hand on the forehead of the nearest skeleton.

What followed next was in many ways a blur. Tekemuzh knew he was speaking, and he knew he was seeing, but the images and the words flew too quickly for him to notice them other than as a stream.

“It was one at a time. They took the body and laid it against the stone — not here, on the other side of the wall, oh, the wall — and they started the death out there, so that the first blood, so many lines of blood. There’s a circle around the valley and it’s all death, all of it, a line of blood and then here, all of the caches, where they bled into the stone to enforce the seal. What a seal. So many people, slaves? Captives. They forced them against that stone and they spoke some words. I can almost hear them, A-ee-oh-ne-an, Yen-ah-lee-lee-o?” The words came awkwardly off of Tekemuzh’s Calenyen-trained tongue; he kept reaching for consonants that weren’t there.

He repeated the words; on the third try them came smoother, almost as if spoken by another. “Aheoneyan, yenalilioh, thalshailiohlioh. It was an unwilling sacrifice. ‘Pain will do,’ they told her, ‘if the spirit won’t provide.’ And… oh. Oh, the aether was already in the stone. How did they do that? They laid her against the mountain and the mountain held her there. And then, when it had drunk its fill, then she was carried down into the caves. So many caves. All around the valley…” Tekemuzh whimpered quietly. “They pinned them to the ground here, see the way her wrists are, her ankles? And they let them die. The twelve of them, alone here in the dark. And twelve more and twelve more and… twenty-four caves. So many of them.” He gasped and fell back. “Here sister was here, and her niece, and her cousin. She was still alive when they killed her lover. But…” He closed his eyes, so the remaining impressions came to him as clearly as he could.

“They’re not Bitrani, they’re not Calenyena. Not Arran. They’re short and pale, with hair that is white and yellow. Or orange, like the edges of a fire. They’re hairier than the Bitrani, and their clothing is strange, made out of pelts and… I don’t know what it is. She thinks of her wrap as i-ah-o-a-shee, iaoashi, but I don’t know what it means, just that it’s soaking up the blood, how will I wash that out, she thought. But she thinks of the man stabbing her as — foreigner, stranger. They’re not the same people, even though they look the same. They’re…” Tekemuzh gasped and opened his eyes. “They’re in the valley. There’s a valley there, why have we… oh.”

His throat worked and he stared at the skeleton in front of him. Whatever iaoashi was, it had long ago rotted away. She was small and broad-hipped, with a wide forehead and a large crack in her sternum. “They locked the valley,” Tekemuzh whispered. “All those bodies, all that blood. They sealed themselves in.”

He looked up at Kalaket. “Do you think they’re still there?”


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Searching for Answers, Chapter 3 of The Portal Closed

Jul19

After: http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1007793.html and http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1007910.html – for the Finish It! Bingo. Not technically a finish, per se, but another chapter.

“If there are other portals, it stands to reason that someone has heard of them.” Clarence came into their hide-out with his arms loaded down with books and his backpack heavy with more.

Barbara set up the camp light and cleared the main table to give them a workplace. “Like that old woman, oh, dear…. Dorothy. Dot Garrington. The one who told us when she had been to Ombrion, and we thought she was putting us on for the longest time?”

“Or,” Diane said more softly, “Donald Jackson, the one that Verdana told us about. Went missing here — I still have the clipping. Because he died in Ombrion.”

“Do you think there’s another portal here? In [town?] If we have to go further out, it’s going to take some doing, especially with the school administration getting so concerned about us.” Barbara wrinkled her nose. Mr. Richardson was doing his best to intervene on their behalves, but the school administration had started paying far too much attention to the four of them.

“Well, that’s the first thing to look into. We know about Mrs. Garrington, and we know about Donald Jackson. Verdana confirmed those. So we have to find anyone else. I’ve got twenty years of old newspapers from old Mr. Dellard’s garage, and gloves, because old Mr. Dellard is not the tidiest.”

“How is that not going to bring suspicion?” Ralph demanded.

“Because Mr. Dellard paid me to clean out his garage,” Clarence shot back. “Because we need spending money, and we’re not old enough for jobs — and besides, I’m too short for the counter of anything retail here, and I don’t think they’d hire me as a fencing instructor.”

Barbara did not giggle, although she did smile a little bit. They were all shorter than they had been, but Clarence, they had discovered, did not have his growth spurt until eighteen or nineteen. He, of course, found the entire thing completely unfair, but there was not much one could do about biology in Ombrion, and less here on Earth.
“Jobs are a good point. I could pick up some babysitting work. The Hardessy triplets are nothing after dealing with…” Barbara trailed off softly. There were things they never talked about. That was one of them. “Well, anyway. I could babysit.”

“I think the branch library needs someone to work afternoons,” Diane offered, “and there’s more research time. After we read through Clarence’s papers here.” She slid on a pair of gloves and picked up a notepad.

Barbara did the same. “So, we’re looking for Dots and Donalds. Strange stories and missing people?”

“And maybe missing time. You remember when we made the paper and all got grounded for a month and a half?”

“Urgh. Yes.” Barbara glared at the paper. That one had been Clarence’s fault, but it was ancient history in so many ways now.

Ancient or not, it probably didn’t stink as bad as these papers. Barbara opened a window after the first thirty-year-old paper, but that didn’t help much until Ralph opened another one on the other side of the building. It meant they had to be quieter — their little hideout might be out of the way, but people did still walk by here — but since all they were doing was reading, that wasn’t all that difficult.

“Got it!” Ralph crowed out. “Look, here…” he dropped his voice to a whisper as all three of them glared at him. “Here. I mean, probably not the only one, but Millie Dioli, here. She was missing for a week, and they assumed she’d fallen in the river.”

“People fall in the river all the time,” Clarence argued.

“Yes, but they don’t come back talking about strange things she saw in the library. The Dolan library,” Ralph added, with heavy emphasis. They looked around the building they were in — the “old, abandoned library” that had “Dolan” carved very clearly above the front door. “She said she’d been in the library the whole time, and that she’d only been gone for an hour.”

“Nnng.” Barbara curled her knees to her chest. “They didn’t institutionalize her, did they?”

“No, although she was, um, ‘soundly punished for her lies’ and eventually told them she’d been off playing pirates and lost track of the time.”

“If she’d been ‘playing pirates’ in the Bay of Sorrows…” Clarence pursed his lips. “That would explain the time shift.”

They all shuddered. The Bay of Sorrows seemed to work differently from the rest of Ombrion in all ways, and it was infested with pirates that they had never been able to get rid of. “So what happened to her?” Barbara leaned forward. “If she didn’t get institutionalized…”

“I brought some phone books.” Clarence pulled them out of his bag. “Although if she married…”

Diane shook her head. “After ‘playing pirates’ with those pirates?”

They all shared another shudder, and Barbara pulled Diane close to her in a sisterly hug. “Probably not,” Clarence allowed. “Dioli… Dioli… All right, she’s in the phone book. But we should keep looking, too. If she’s only been to Ombrion, she won’t be able to help us find someplace else.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1143339.html. You can comment here or there.

Finish It! Bingo Card

Jul11

I’m filling this in slowly from the below list, but this is my allbingo card for the “Finish It” challenge.

Rin’s parents, and Rin’s father, and … (II)	Carrying the Spirit. (V)	Arisse and Chress (V)	Take Me (V)	The Hazards of Magic (V)	Fated (III)	Edally (α)
Robbie meets Radar (V)	B is for Beryl and her Boys. (VI)	How The Family Does things (IV)	Fifty Years. (I)	King(maker) Cake. (III)	Aetheric Cleansing. (II)	Novella(α)
You’d Better Watch Out. (IV)	Rin & Girey (V)	Unicorn-Chaste (I)	Discovery (IV)	The Enemy’s City (IV)	Æ is for Ash. (II)	Landing Pages (3 big) (α)
The Portal Closed (III)	Bjorn (I)	Mikary (III)	Over the Wall (IV)	The Cat’s Paw. (III)	Far Weston. (VI)	Ghost Story I(α)
Daxton and Esha (II)	Jin (III): Hostage Situation	A Locked Chest is Locked for a Reason (VI)	Wild Card(IV)	Legacy Cat (VI)	Charming (I)	Kickstarter(α)
The Strength (VI)	Shahin and Emrys (VI)	Unicorn Strokes (II)	Gremlins/Junie’s kidnapping (I)	Aetheric Cleansing. (I)	Three Glass Beads, Peacock Blue (II)	Submission(α)

working on

completed

next

Partial Finish

At any point, I may sub out one of these for another suggested one or something else I need to finish.

The numbers (those that remain) correspond to the list below. This was arranged from the allbingo public card, your suggestions, and Random.org’s list randomizer.

The Roman numerals are another way of getting a bingo – do, say, all of the (I) instead of a line or a square or such.

see links here – http://aldersprig.livejournal.com/1197753.html

The list
1 Gremlins
2 Unicorn Strokes.
3 Mikary: http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/507478.html
4 How The Family Does things — at resting point/chapter break, but there could be more.
5 Robbie meets Radar, discussed in comments.
6 B is for Beryl and her Boys.
7 Unicorn-Chaste.
8 Rin’s parents, and Rin’s father, and …

9 Jin and the hostage situation: how did he nab the guy long-distance, and what fallout came from it to Jin or anyone else?
10 Over the Wall
11 Carrying the Spirit.
12 Shahin and Emrys
13 Fifty Years.
14 Æ is for Ash.

15 King(maker) Cake.
16 Wild Card.
17 Rin and Girey, and more Rin, with research.
18 A Locked Chest is Locked for a Reason.
19 Charming.
20 Three Glass Beads, Peacock Blue.
21 Fated.
22 The Enemy’s City.

23 Take Me

24 Legacy Cat.
25 Aetheric Cleansing.
26 Space Accountant: A Reason – and Accidental, and bunking arrangements, etc (Genique got Married?) – http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1092113.html

27 The Portal Closed.
28 Discovery.
29 The Hazards of Magic.
30 The Strength.
31 Bjorn: http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/566245.html
32 Daxton and Esha
33 The Cat’s Paw.
34 You’d Better Watch Out.
35 Arisse and Chress
36 Far Weston.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1103171.html. You can comment here or there.

Unicorn Truths – a story of Unicorn/Factory for Finish It! Bingo

Jul6

After Stroke the Unicorn and Unicorn Strokes, for the Finish It! Bingo

Blanket content warning for Unicorn/Factory: This setting involves unicorns using their horns for both violence and sexual violence, although none of that is directly described in this story.

Jakob took the woman to his home for the night. She deserved better than an anonymous inn bed, after the story she had given them, and, what was more, Jakob found he wanted the rest of the story.

His wife and second-oldest daughters put her to bed. They were not rich, but every home had some small corner that could be made up for guests. In the town, they whispered that the Administrators might come to visit. In the Villages, it was said that you never knew when a guest would turn out to be a unicorn in disguise.

She wore his wife’s second-best nightgown and was wrapped in a quilt Jakob’s mother had sewn for them. She seemed to fall asleep quickly, but Jakob himself lay staring at the ceiling for a very long time before dreams took him.

She ate breakfast with them the next morning, polite as a gentrywoman, appetite as small as her capacity for whisky had been large the night before. She helped Jakob’s wife Elin wash up after, and then, and only then, she asked Elin politely “May I?”

What Elin thought of this woman, Jakob might never know. She looked at this stranger, dressed in widow’s weeds and carrying such pain, and she knew what she’d wanted before Jakob did.

“Of course,” she said. There was a tone in her voice that Jakob had never heard, and it occurred to him that he was intruding on matters most often private to woman.

The woman tilted her head at Jakob. “Let us walk,” she offered, “down by the green.”

“As you wish.” She had gone to the river. She was a Village girl. What had changed in her that she carried herself so nobly? Or was it Jakob, that he wanted her to be noble, because of what she had done?

She said nothing until they were meandering the town green, sidestepping the sheep that grazed there. “You want to know what the unicorn’s answer was.”

“Lady, only if…” She cut him off with a hand.

“You were kind to me when I was being unkind. You brought me into your home when all you know of me is that a unicorn rejected me. For your kindness, I am going to repay you with harsh truths that are too much for me to bear alone. And yet, I can tell that you want me to do so.”

Jakob swallowed. “I want to know what the unicorn’s answer was,” he admitted.

“Unicorns are a mystery to men. That it was it is. They are a mystery to everyone, but the women walk to the river, and so the men think we know something they do not.”

Jakob nodded his politely, but forced the words out. “Women see the unicorns,” he offered, “and they… touch them.”

She raised an arch eyebrow at him. He thought she looked nearly amused. “Does touching someone tell you about them?”

Jakob coughed, thinking of a misspent youth. “Ah. No.”

“Indeed.” She leaned against a tree and looked pensive. “But… Sometimes, the unicorn will answer a question. Sometimes he will answer two. I asked two.”

She was leading him into the story, he knew, but he couldn’t bring himself to resent it. She had been wounded, he thought. She may be lucky to be alive. Few of those who were so wounded ever married, ever bore children.

He cleared his throat yet again. “You said you asked what you’d done wrong.”

“..I did.” She sighed. “And the unicorn told me a secret. But, you see, it’s a secret nobody wants to believe.”

Nobody, Jakob thought, meant no-one where she came from. He thought she might be challenging him, and then he thought of the days in the tavern and amended his opinion. She was challenging him.

“And the unicorn said?” he offered. He did not want to know. He did not want to hear. It was the only thing he could do, to hear.

She eyed him. “You will not want to believe.”

“Lady,” he answered, naked in sincerity and in terror, “I cannot do anything but believe, not after what you have survived.”

She bowed her head for a moment. Jakob thought, perhaps, she’d wanted him to refute.

“He said,” she whispered, so softly he had to step forward to hear him. “He said ‘sometimes the river needs the blood.’ He said,” she continued, while Jakob struggled not to rear back, “that they insisted on purity because then, then there was someone to bleed when the river needed blood. He said,” she was no longer whispering, but Jakob did not move away. “He said that he was sorry, but the unpure ones no longer came down to the river. He said,” and now she was shouting, sobbing, “he said I had done nothing wrong! And he would try to not kill me, but the river…”

Her voice broke. Jakob held her, not knowing if she wanting it, knowing only that he needed to do something. “…the river,” she whispered. “It demanded the blood. I’ve stroked a unicorn.” Her eyes went to Jakob’s. Even now he had to fight not to flinch away. He held her shoulders, feeling like he was holding so much more. “They made a bargain.” Her voice was cracking, growing weaker. “We only thought it was the one we made.”


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Dragons Next Door: Released, a story continuation for “Finish It” Bingo.

Jun22

After Hostage Situation, Ketchup, and Salt, for the Finish It! Bingo

There were too many things to do, and Sage and I were still frozen for a moment in indecision. Our child had passed out. Our child had just performed focus-less magic at a distance, using a TV as his scrying bowl. He had taken a hostage-taker hostage. He had sent an unregistered magic signature into the heart of a tense police stand-off.

He had saved the day.

Sage and I shared a look. He picked up the phone and dialed, as quickly as the old rotary phone would let him. I got Jin comfortable on the couch, pillow behind his head, half-sitting up.
While Sage got the chief of police to acknowledge him, I brewed tea. I dug into the canisters I kept locked away, the ones I did not want my children getting in, whether by accident or by purpose. Jin would need something a little stronger than the norm after that feat, and Sage and I… we would need something strong to deal with the aftermath.

When I went back into the den, Sage was drawing circles on the floor and scattering bones. I pulled up the throw rug to give him more room, sparing my oldest child another glance. Jin was still out. I imagined he would be out for some time.

“I’m trying to figure out how he did it,” Sage admitted. “He has power, that we already knew.”

“Of course.” We tried not to say too much about that anywhere the children could hear — and in this case, the children included Jin. “The question is, where has he been getting it trained? I know the Tower wanted him, but…”

Sage shook his head. “I’d have known if they’d have touched him. No, this isn’t their style.” He looked at the circles and the bones thoughtfully.

I sipped my tea and did the same. The patterns spoke of intent — that, we’d already known. The ritual was different from anything I’d ever seen before, and from Sage’s expression, neither had my husband seen such things. The results… the phone rang again, and Sage hurried off to answer it.

We were going to have to have quite a few conversations in the next week.

Four days later, we had spoken to the Chief of Police twice, the Fire Marshall once, and the head of the bank three times. Jin had been present for half of these meetings, remaining quiet, saying little more than “my parents speak for me.”

That was just about as much as he’d said to us. I’d gotten an “it’s nothing,” three “it’s no big deals,” and one loud “I don’t want to talk about it, okay?” Sage had, from all his reports, gotten about the same.

There were, of course, no charges being pressed against Jin — he had done nothing against the law except a little bit of directed magic that could, with the wrong lawyer and the wrong judge, possibly be considered against a couple statutes. But the police chief and several others were very interested in his quick action, and a whole line of people after them wanted to talk to the hero of the day.

Jin wanted to hide in his room with the curtains closed.

In desperation, I turned to that which had never failed me before — cookies. I baked up a huge batch of Jin’s favorite snickerdoodles and brewed him a cup of his favorite milked tea, an affectation hw must have picked up from his father.

The cookies and tea got me in the door to his room, but, gauging from the expression on his face, the rest was up to me.

I considered and discarded several lines, which either sounded too uselessly motherly or too ridiculously chummy. Finally, I decided on the truth. “We’re still trying to figure out how you did it.”

He looked up, took a cookie, and ate it, as if considering that. I waited, wishing I’d brought tea for myself. Something calming.

“‘We,’ the city, ‘we’, the police, or ‘we…’”

“We, your father and I,” I confirmed. “Whatever the results, they’re a family matter.”

He stared at a second cookie. I stared at the cookie, too. Perhaps it held answers.

“I don’t want to go to the Tower, and I can’t go to the Pumpkin.” He lifted his chin and stared at me as defiantly as Junie ever did. “If I can do magic, proper spells, I’ll have to go somewhere, right? And Dad went to the Tower…”

Things began to fall into place. “You don’t have to go to the Tower if you don’t want.” I hesitated. He’d mentioned the Pumpkin, which was, of course, a girls’ school… but it also dealt in a different style of magic than the Tower. “You’ve been getting instruction.”

It wasn’t a question, of course. I tried hard to not make it an accusation, either.

“Yeah. I, uh.” He looked out the window, although his curtains were closed tightly. I wondered if he was hiding from Jimmy and the other Smiths. “Once it started coming in, a guy from the Tower stopped by. I… Iwas a bit rude.”

Someone from the Tower had spoken to my son without asking me? I swallowed my immediate rage. “Which realm of rude are we talking about?” In our family — in our neighborhood — rudeness could come in many forms.

“Words.” Jin wrinkled his nose. “I wasn’t good enough to target a curse at that point, and I know better than to wield anything I can’t aim.”

“Good! Well, if they were trying to talk to you without discussing the matter with your parents, they deserved every rude word you gave them. So…?” I fished shamelessly. “You went looking for tutelage?”

“Well, I knew I didn’t want to deal with those Tower people, at least not for a while. And I knew I needed help. So, uh.” He still wasn’t looking at me. I tried not to to take it personally. “Mr. Brown, he’s been haunting this neighborhood for a long time. And I went to talk to him.”

Learning lessons from an angry lost soul could be effective… and it could be amazingly dangerous. I thought about my answers for a moment.

Too long. “I knew you’d be mad.”

“Jin, you saved an entire bank of hostages. I am not angry with you.”

“The police are.” He finally looked at me. “They want to find some reason to blame me.”

“They want to find some reason to blame magic.” I leaned against the foot of his bed and studied him. “Remember how we felt, when we realized that the bad guy this time was human? Normal, everyday human… the police realized he wasn’t even a spell-user, he just had a magical item. That’s how they feel. They want magic to be at fault. They want something strange to be at fault.”

“..People suck sometimes,” Jin muttered.

I didn’t call him on his language. It wasn’t the time for that. “Sometimes people really suck,” I agreed, and endured his shocked look.

“So…” He shook his head, as if to clear the sound of his mother using a bad word. “You’re not mad at me?”

“No, I’m not. I would like to meet Mr. Brown, if he’s willing, but I’m not angry that you took the responsible step of finding a teacher.”

“And I don’t have to go to the Tower?”

“No.” I felt my jaw set. “I’ll speak to Sage, and we’ll talk to the Tower people about this breach of etiquette. I do want you to go to a proper school… but it doesn’t have to be the Tower.”

He relaxed and, for the first time in weeks, I saw my oldest child smile. “I might enjoy the Pumpkin.”

“I’m quite sure you would.” I let myself smile in return. “But maybe we’ll see if there are some other options, too.”

He allowed me to hug him, and I let myself release a little tension. “Thanks, Mom,” he muttered into my shoulder.

“Thank you, Jin,” I replied. Today, there were many things to thank him for.


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Even a Locked Chest Must be Unlocked – a story continuation for “Finish It” Bingo.

Jun10

After A Locked Chest is Locked for a Reason, a story of the Aunt Family. To the Finish It! Bingo.

If it weren’t for the angry cat sitting on top of the chest — currently in the form of a juvenile marmalade tom — the chest would not have stood out in the Aunt’s attic. This corner of the attic, furthest from windows, chimneys, and the two entrances, was stacked to the roof with such chests, leather-clad and metal-bound, each of them locked and the keys all hung on a ring downstairs. Aunt Eva had been cataloguing and numbering them, one giant chest of diaries at a time.

Beryl studied Radar. She’d started thinking of him as her cat, foolish as she knew that was. He was an Aunt cat, and she was not the aunt.

“Can I move the chest?” she offered. “By the handles, I mean. Or on a cart?”

Radar bristled again, and then settled down, grooming every bit of his fur straight, all without answering at all.

Beryl knew from experience that fur-smoothing could take hours if not the entire day, depending on exactly how ruffled Rader felt, so she headed to the far corner of the attic for a cart.

The Aunt-house attic was something to behold, even after Eva had been sorting through it for the last few months. There were boxes in here labelled in years that began with 18—, their contents not so much detailed as broadly described. “Vases, from church picnic,” one read. “Caution: May be cursed,” read another box. Beryl avoided that one; anything an Aunt thought deserved a caution was not something she wanted to mess with casually.

“This chest isn’t labelled ‘danger’,” she pointed out to the still-grooming Radar, as she dragged the cart over to the chest. She’d grabbed a pair of silk gloves from the open box by the near stairway, and pulled those up to her elbows while she waited for an answer.

None appeared forthcoming. Radar was working on a tricky bit by his tail and didn’t even glance at her.

Beryl touched the handle of the chest; nothing changed in neither chest nor cat. “How do you know, then? g’Aunt Sarah’s been gone for, um, a while.”

Once again, Radar ignored her. Beryl picked up the chest carefully, both because you never knew how the trap-charms might be lain and because Radar was not moving from his perch, and moved it onto the hand-cart. “This is going to be a bumpy ride,” she warned him. “Um.. Hold on?”

Getting the chest to the stairs was the easy part, and Radar rode along, giving off the air that he meant to never speak again, just an ordinary cat, look, another bit of fur loose. The bumpy part came when Beryl carefully let the hand-cart down the stairs; Radar slid towards the back, shifted position without looking at Beryl, and kept grooming himself. He did the same thing as they went down the back stairs into the kitchen, where he leapt off onto the table.

Aunt Eva looked up. “Beryl, honey, I told you to bring those down a handful at a time, not a handcart at a time.”

“I know, Aunt Eva, but Radar, here, is bound and determined that nobody except you should handle these diaries. He nearly took some flesh off.”

“I barely tapped you,” Radar answered primly. “Evangeline, these books are not for childish consumption.”

“Who are you calling a child?” Beryl glared at him, no longer feeling like indulging his little tantrum. “Besides, you said only Aunt Eva should touch them!”

Radar groomed his face for a moment. “Nobody should read them. But, since the diaries of each Aunt should be read by the new Aunt, Eva must.” He looked out the window. “Bad things happen when the diaries are not read. They exist for a purpose.”

“I know that, Radar.” Eva gestured at the piles of diaries that they’d been cataloguing for months. “That’s why I asked Beryl to go get Aunt Sarah’s books.”

Radar’s tail swished angrily. “Beryl should not read these.”

“All right, all right. I tell you what. I’ll start on these while Beryl finishes up on Aunt Asta’s stuff. But if I decide she can read it, Radar, then she’ll read it.” She picked up the cat, who seemed to be getting larger the more uncomfortable he got, and held him up until she was looking him in the face. “Do you understand?”

Radar tried to stare her down, the more fool he. Finally he glanced away, as if looking out the window. “You won’t. But you’re the Aunt.” Suddenly, he was twisting and squirming. “Put me down, woman. I’m not some kitten you can manhandle like a toy!”

Eva was laughing as she set him down but when her eyes met Beryl’s, she’d gone solemn again. “You heard the cat. You get working on Asta’s early journals, and I’ll see what’s so exciting about Aunt Sarah’s stuff. All right?”

Beryl wasn’t going to win this argument. “All right, Aunt Evangeline.” She drew her aunt’s full name out like some sort of formal title, as if Aunt Eva wouldn’t have known she was sulking without some obvious cue like that.

As was probably completely fair, Eva ignored her to turn her focus on the chest. Beryl, a little embarrassed by her sulking, tried to focus on Aunt Asta’s journals, but she kept peeking up at Eva’s progress.

Aunt Asta as a young woman — pre-Aunthood by quite a while, and should Beryl be keeping a journal, too? Eva was deep in concentration over the chest, a crystal floating over the lock and one more held over each front corner. If the chest was booby-trapped, now was not the time to ask her about — well, anything.

She had gone to fight in the war! Well, to “support the war effort,” but the women of their family were fighters rather than supporters. The family had been against it. Of course. Beryl made a face at the pages and the grannies-who-had-come-before. Even Chalce was having trouble with that. Family stayed close, until it was time to split. Never mind that Berkeley had the program she wanted and wanted her in return.

Aunt Eva had the chest open, the crystals put away. You never knew when a nosy neighbor might stop by. But she hadn’t moved from her seat on the floor; she was holding the old book carefully, squinting at the handwriting.

“Aunt Boo’s journal has a cantrip for reading better,” Beryl offered. “Journal three, the blue one… what?” Eva had glanced up at her, not quite meeting her eyes. “You’re blushing.” Aunts didn’t blush! …did they?

Eva cleared her throat. She looked away, took a sip of tea, and cleared her throat again. Even old Aunt Sarah’s books couldn’t have been that dusty. There were cantrips and embedded charms for that, easy ones.

“Ah. Well… it appears…” She looked around the room, so Beryl looked as well. Radar was nowhere to be seen, and no grannies or cousins had snuck in. They were alone in the kitchen.

Eva took another sip of her tea. “It appears that Aunt Sarah has a very active life. And she was, um, quite detailed in her descriptions.” She glanced down at the page, her blush darkening. “I wonder how Radar knew.”

“I was there when Asta opened them.” Radar strolled in, tail high and looked as if he’d never had his little freak-out. “And Elenora. So you see?”

Beryl held her breath. She didn’t even know if she wanted to read Aunt Sarah’s dirty diaries, but complaining that she was old enough to would just prove that she wasn’t.

Eva glanced down at the diary and sipped her tea again. “I do see,” she agreed slowly. She looked up at Beryl and winked. “Annd… once she’s done properly cataloguing Asta’s journals… Beryl should read them as well. There are preconceptions about Aunts that I think it’s best she lose early on.

Radar’s tail fluffed up and his back started to arch. He shook himself, although his tail stayed puffed out like a chimney brush. “As… you… say,” he grated out.

It probably wasn’t kind to laugh at him, but Beryl’s hand was still stinging from where he’d smacked her.


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The Uncle’s… Pet? – a story continuation for “Finish It” Bingo.

May27

After Uncle, a story of fae apoc. To the Finish It! Bingo.

They’d named the creature — the fae, the sentient being Bruce was now Keeping — they’d named the thing Bjorn, or, at least, Bruce’s niece Kikyo had offered the name and it had stuck.

Bruce couldn’t get another name out of the thing, but, then, he hadn’t been able to get much at all in the way of language out of — out of him, out of Bjorn.

That made it harder to remember that the creature, that this Kept Bruce had now, that it was sentient, human-ancestried just as Bruce and his kids were. The fur everywhere didn’t help, either.

Bruce counted children three times, and then got them lined up in front of — in front of Bjorn. “All right. These children here…” He rattled off their names one by one. “You are not to hurt them. You may stop them from hurting you, but as gently as possible. Do you understand?”

Bjorn nodded. It cleared its throat once, twice. “Not hurt,” he offered.

“Good. Bobby, start filling a tub. Not for you,” he added before the children could start whining. “But I don’t think Bjorn should wait until our Saturday baths.”

Bjorn twisted its face into something that looked like a grimace. “Bath…” it started.

Bruce cut it — him, he was fairly sure the thing was a he — off, perhaps too brusquely. “If you live under my roof and my name, you bathe at least weekly. More if you end up stinky from something. And we start today, because I don’t want fleas in my house.”

Bjorn wrinkled its nose but did not complain. “Good boy,” Bruce muttered. What was he supposed to do with a semi-sentient housepet?

“Kikyo, Dolores,” he called. “You wanted to bring him in. You’re going to help get him clean. Kiya, go get a comb. Dol, get the scissors.”

The thing flinched away at the word scissors. Bruce waited until the children had run off on their errands before he patted Bjorn lightly. “To trim your hair — fur — whatever,” he explained quietly. “It doesn’t hurt if I cut it, does it?”

Bjorn stared at him, clearly trying to follow the words. “Fur.” It tugged on the hair on top of its head. “Fur doesn’t hurt.”

“Good, see? So. You understand children? They’re children, Bjorn, so be very careful what you let them know. They’re safe here, and their mothers trusted me with them. Don’t… I don’t want you to betray that trust.”

Bjorn was watching his face intently. SLowly, he nodded. “Children,” he agreed softly. He seemed to be remembering words as he went. “I… I’ll? I… will… be careful.”

“Good. That’s the right comb, Kiya, good. Bjorn, she’s going to comb you, all right? I’m going to go check on the tub.”

Bruce felt like every sense was on high alert, listening, even sniffing for trouble as he left his nieces alone with the creature.

The tub was filled, room left for Bjorn to slide in, and Bobby had added a couple drops of oil. “Is he… Is he a person?” he asked softly.

“That’s what we’ve got to find out,” Bruce sighed. “Come on, Bjorn, clothes off, get in the tub.”

Cleaned, his hair trimmed and away from his face, and dressed in a pair of Bruce’s cast-off pants, Bjorn looked — not human; he had a tail and his pointed ears were tufted — sentient and aware. He was gentle with the children, and protective, like a sheepdog, enough so that after a few days Bruce was comfortable leaving him alone with even the younger girls. But he had to be taught even the most basic table manners — the kids found it hilarious — and preferred grunts and gestures to words.

Bruce tried for patience, but when he caught Ryuu and Cherry communicating in grunt-and-gesture while they were supposed to be learning math, his temper had reached its limit. He held it in — he didn’t yell at the kids unless they were in danger, by long-established precedent and a lot of practice — but when Bjorn answered a basic question with a shrug and a whine some hours later—

“You,” Bruce said, his voice carefully quiet, “were born human, same as the rest of us. You are a person, not an animal. Talk like a person.”

Something lit up in Bjorn’s eyes that had not been there before. He ducked his head, and for a moment Bruce thought he was going to have to deal with a whimpering, miserable Kept. Then Bjorn turned the head-duck into a bow, deep and very precises.

“I Belong to you,” Bjorn said carefully, as if picking the words out of his memory. “You wish me to be a person?”

Bruce rejected the formula. “You are a person.”

Something that could have been relief came over Bjorn’s face. “Then I will be a person again.”

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Alder's Grove Fiction

The Worlds of Lyn Thorne-Alder