Judgment of the Elders

  When she was a silly girl of only fifty or sixty summers, Esmeralda indulged brief relationships that amused her, but the year she turned seventy-five she met the love of her life. He was handsome, witty, and attentive to her in every way. She knew beyond doubt that she would bondfast with Caswel Esmar te Willowwalk.

  When he was elevated to Knight of Whiteleaf she was so proud of him, but it was their undoing. The duties of the position consumed his time. He’d invite her to social functions held by the Council, but would spend only minutes in her company during the festivities. Drilling with weapons left him too tired for love making. At last, he came to her and begged forgiveness. He said he’d become a slave to duty and was no fit partner anymore. Caswel declared that she deserved a companion who would give her love and attention beyond measure and he could not be that person. He released her to find another.

  She cried for a week, but thought his gesture very noble. Until, that is, she found out about the humans. She heard gossip that Caswel was frequently away from Crescent Mound; his whereabouts unaccounted. She secretly followed him on one of his excursions and learned the truth. His “duties” kept him from her side, but left plenty of time to waste with lowly, ungifted primitives. She was livid.

  Esmeralda brought Caswel’s crimes before the Elders, fully expecting satisfaction from publically humiliating him. But when the Council imposed greater punishment, trapping Cass here in an unfamiliar body with no abilities, she seized on the chance for real revenge.

  Wigout was just stage one of her retribution plan. Not that she’d planned stage two yet.

  ##

  The Grimel Kin, for his part, considered this a decent deal. He’d intended to tinker with many human toys in this community. It made no difference to him if he started with the Alfaran crazy woman’s enemy. Cooperation was easy and sensible. No point getting a Fae magic wielder angry by asserting independence, especially if she paid him in puzzles. Still, the whole Christian school thing was troublesome to the Dream Dweller.

  Wigout, like all Grimel Kin, was a creation of human frustration with their inventions. Every time you have nightmares about your computer, your car or your cell phone, a Grimel Kin is born. Wigout came from the Realm of Dreams. Intense wishes and emotions migrate into dreams and sometimes take on lives of their own; free to wander about other Realms causing pleasure or havoc, joy or fear. A very intelligent (but somewhat eccentric) human named Carl Jung called the Realm of Dreams the collective unconscious. Wigout never heard of Jung and avoided words with many syllables.

  He was also wary of cross bearers. We humans have a life force tied to the Realms Beyond and are capable of knowing those Realms in ways that Dream Dwellers and Fae can’t. Still, Christians tended to unfairly lump creatures like Grimel Kin in with devils and demons. Wigout was no devil. He just liked to play with gears and levers.

  It was full dark now, so Wigout was visible to the naked eye. The lack of moon and numerous shadows gave him places to hide, but he was only truly invisible in daylight. He cautiously approached OLAM hoping to spy his target, but found the place empty. That meant delaying his mission until tomorrow. The library clock tower caught his attention. It would serve as a night’s amusement.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  By Wednesday, both Cass and I were relatively familiar with his schedule. He had American history, geometry, religion, world literature and Spanish every day. On Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays he had chemistry lecture, with lab being Tuesdays and Thursdays. Health was once per week on Mondays and physical education happened on Wednesdays and Fridays. He had art four days per week and one study hall on Thursdays.

  At first bell, he fell in next to Joan for a conversation. “Do you have gym with me today?”

  “Probably. Do you have it last period?”

  “Yeah, right after Spanish at two-fifteen.”

  “Then I guess we share gym. I suppose I can tolerate your presence three times in one day. But please try not to talk in gym, especially to me.”

  “Does the instructor discourage talking?”

  “In your case, talking should always be discouraged. Gym is for running, sweating and wheezing. Talking isn’t necessary.”

  Cass nodded. “I take it you are no more fond of physical activity than you are of lectures.”

  “Actually, I prefer being bored in class to feeling uncoordinated at volleyball. At least it’s at the end of the day, so the humiliation of showering can be avoided.”

  “How’s that?”

  “You can go home smelly at the end of the day. When gym is earlier you either have to shower or overdose on deodorant.”

  “So we’re not showering.”

  Joan shook her head. “No. I can’t see why you’d want to.”

  “I was hoping to get out of this Ace bandage for a while.”

  “Why are you wearing an Ace bandage?”

  “I have bra issues. Okay, no shower today.”

  Cass found this news disappointing. He was anxious to test his reaction to other girls in the class. His new body was excited by the presence of men. He considered Peter attractive. Even Rodger had some potential when he was being helpful and scientific. But Cass’s experience with other female students was muted, given he was trying to appear unpopular, and he considered Joan just a friend. Well, a friend in progress. Even in his male form, he wouldn’t have given Joan a second glance. In addition to being ordinary-looking, she was a sourpuss. That rendered her less attractive. Still, he was curious to see if his male sensibilities transferred to his current form. He’d have to wait for Friday for his group nudity experience.

  “Speaking of being naked, what do you think about Peter Goodkin?”

  “We were speaking about Ace bandages.”

  “Gym. Last period. Showers. Naked. Peter Goodkin.”

  “It’s good to know I’m no longer the weirdest person in the sophomore class. I’ll catch you later.” Joan entered her classroom and Cass continued on to geometry.

  ##

  Because Cass showed interest in Peter, I decided checking on the senior’s possible impact was prudent. This led to an interesting revelation. I found him waiting outside the school’s music room in the late afternoon.

  The instructor was gone but Katrina Petrov repeated the exercise until she struck every note correctly. When it came to piano, she was a perfectionist. The girl was not athletic or academic in temperament. A passion for music was the focus of her being.

  Needless to say, boys were not on her radar either. Though a sophomore, her fifteenth birthday was still a few weeks away. She’d decided there’d be lots of time for romance after she was a famous concert pianist. Her hormones weren’t always down with that notion, but she kept them in check. She was, therefore, taken by surprise when Peter caught up with her as she left the music room and headed for the front doors.

  “Hi there Trina. I thought it was you playing.”

  “Peter, what are you doing here? It’s almost five-thirty.”

  “You aren’t the only one with after-school activities. I was clearing up the Chess Club room and heard you playing. You’re really good.”

  “Thank you, it’s nice of you to say.”

  Katrina had trouble taking this in. One of the cutest and most popular seniors at school was talking to her about piano. For the first time in her life boys and music were intersecting. Peter continued talking.

  “I took piano lessons for a while when I was a kid, but my father decided he couldn’t stand my practicing any more. Chess and track are much quieter avocations. You, on the other hand, have magic fingers.” He lightly brushed her left hand with his. A chill ran up her spine and blood rushed to her face. She broke eye contact with him.

  “Now I’ve gone and embarrassed you. Look, if you can hang out for a few more minutes I’ll walk you home. I just have one more thing to do. Okay?”

  She accepted readily. Trina’s presence in high school was largely defined by her performances in orchestra. In a school as small
as OLAM, that got her acknowledgement but not broad popularity. Her sense of self was tied to the piano. But if Peter Goodkin noticed her, she had a shot at a social life. She’d follow him anywhere he wanted to go.

  Peter hoisted his duffle bag and led Trina back to the main office. They stopped in front of the supply closet and Peter produced a set of keys. Unlocking the door he strode in like he owned the place. “Can you give me a hand Trina?”

  “Sure. How can I help?”

  He’d opened the duffle revealing a collection of chessboards and timing clocks along with his books. Trina received an armload of the chessboards and Peter directed her to a middle shelf on the far wall. Meanwhile, he stacked the clocks on a higher shelf.

  He turned to her saying “Thanks, you’re a real peach.” Then he did an oddly juvenile thing for an exalted member of the senior class. He reached out and pinched Trina’s nose. Pulling his hand back, he displayed his thumb sticking out between pointer and middle fingers.

  “Got your nose,” he said with a crooked grin on his face.

  Trina smiled back. “Don’t be a goofball. I’m not two years old. Let’s go.”

  In spite of her half-hearted protest, Trina was charmed by the playfulness of Peter’s gesture. Her older brother teased her on a regular basis with equally silly ploys, but that felt like a brother belittling his sister. Somehow, this felt better than that. She was at a loss for words to describe it. Had she realized Peter’s true motives, she would have found some choice words, I’m sure.

  As they exited the school and reached the sidewalk, Peter continued to feign interest in classical piano and the winter orchestra performance preparations. In truth, he was just waiting for the eucalyptus salve to kick in. He didn’t wait long. Before they’d even lost sight of OLAM, Trina’s eyes began to water.

  “Do you smell that?” she asked, wiping a hand across her eyes.

  “No I don’t smell anything. Is something wrong?”

  Something was very wrong. A stinging sensation flooded her nose and her tear ducts responded with copious amounts of cleansing fluid. Her vision was blurring so she could barely see where she was walking.

  “I must be allergic to something here. I need a tissue. I need lots of tissues. Please help me get my pack off.”

  Peter played the gentleman and assisted Trina with her backpack, asking where he could find the tissues. She told him to look in the front pocket and he rummaged about for a few seconds.

  “I’m not having any luck. I’d better let you do it.” He held the open pouch in front of her. She plunged a hand in feeling for the cellophane package, but her fingers closed on something cold, rounded and hard. Jerking it out of the pack, she squinted to see what she was holding.

  “It’s a bottle.” she uttered incredulous. She hadn’t put any bottles in her bag that morning.

  She looked up through swimming vision to see fuzzy images of Peter and the Meeks Twins snapping cell phone photos of her. “What’s going on?”

  “If you’re going to have a beer Trina, you really should have brought enough for everyone.”

  “This isn’t MINE! I’ve never SEEN it before.”

  More pictures were taken.

  “If you wave it about in the air while shouting like a wild woman, I’m sure everyone will believe you. The red nose and hysterical crying should clinch your argument.”

  Trina lowered the bottle to the sidewalk and used her sleeve to wipe her face. “You set me up.”

  Tom Meeks piped up with, “Wow! She figured it out, Peter. I guess piano players are smarter than we thought.”

  Trina ignored the Twins and focused on Peter. “What did you do to me?”

  Peter stepped closer and looked down on her. “Well, besides telling you exactly what you wanted to hear, I smeared a little cold remedy on your nose. It’s good for clearing the sinuses, and reddening the eyes. We have plenty of pictures of the incident, so you will be a cooperative little sophomore, won’t you?”

  “No one who knows me will believe I was drinking.”

  Peter clucked his tongue. “I wouldn’t be so sure. A few seniors mention that they saw you napping in the music room or staggering in the corridors. Then pictures like these show up on Facebook. People who don’t know you ask questions. People who do know you start to wonder. You are of Russian ancestry and everyone knows Russians like their vodka. It could snowball on you.”

  Trina knew that her parents were particularly careful about drinking precisely because of that ethnic stereotype. If they thought for once second she was sneaking beer behind their backs…

  “What do I have to do?”

  “You’re a lowly underclassman and now you’ll embrace the role.” said Peter. “We periodically need errands run, messages delivered or light cleaning done.”

  Tim contributed, “She can do homework assignments.” But Tom noted, “She isn’t all that bright, but she could play piano at our next party. What do you say, Trina? Can you tinkle the ivories for our senior friends?”

  Tim leered. “I’d like to tinkle her ivories.”

  Peter restrained him. “Careful now. She’s not just under the drinking age you know. Excepting blackmail, we don’t want to cross any legal lines here.”

  Katrina wanted to second that notion. She could bear up under being a lackey to these three all year, but she didn’t want any of them touching her… anywhere.

  “So I come when you call and do what you say and you delete the pictures.”

  “We keep the pictures until we graduate and don’t need them anymore. You play nice all year and we swear not to show them around. ”

  Tim and Tom placed hands over their hearts and intoned, “On our honor as seniors at Our Lady of Abundant Mercy.”

  Trina shoved the bottle back in her pack and retrieved the tissues. “Your honor doesn’t reassure me.”

  “Rest assured”, said Peter, “that lack of cooperation will get these pictures posted online. As long as you do what we ask, we have no incentive to smear you. Spend the year polishing your reputation as ‘boring girl’ and we’ll have no cause to release the pictures when we’re gone. See you in school tomorrow.”

  Trina walked away with tears still running from her eyes. She blamed it on the eucalyptus, but part of it came from feeling like a fool for letting Peter charm her. She dropped the beer bottle into a trash bin before she got home.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Wigout managed to slip passed Magolyn as she brought groceries in from the market. Observing her briefly, he’d determine she was Fae. She had long, tapered fingers and jewel-toned eyes. She smelled of loam and sap, so he guessed she was an earth mage, unlike his Mistress who played with air.

  The Grimel Kin scratched his nose in confusion. I’d watched him tail Cass home, all the while sniffing the air and darting into sunlight for concealment. Wigout smelled the ink, dust and perfume on Cass which confirmed the teenager’s humanity in his mind. Cass, for his part, was busy committing landmarks to memory and never noticed his shadow. Now bothered by the mystery, Wigout wondered why the girl child was living with a disguised Alfaran and what Cass had done to anger the Mistress. He worried this Cassandra had more magic about her than first appeared. Grimel Kin are paranoid by nature, given the unpredictable conditions in the Realm of Dreams. He decided extreme caution was his best option, because it always worked in the past. Then he disconnected the toaster spring and quietly slunk upstairs.

  While Cass assisted Magolyn in the kitchen, Wigout searched out what looked like a teenager’s bedroom and began looking for machines. He loved tinkering with clocks, so he started with the nightstand, only to be disappointed.

  “Digital! Bah!”

  Wigout was an old dog in Grimel Kin years. He’d slipped from the Realm of Dreams into the Mortal Realm when automatic dishwashers were innovative. His generation appreciated gears, sprockets, levers and springs. Tracking electrons through circuits, figuring out where to interrupt the flow of power, or how to corrupt data were all
beyond him. Furthermore, these circuits kept getting smaller and smaller and his eyesight wasn’t what it used to be. The gears, springs and cogwheels he preferred were rapidly becoming obsolete. When they were gone, he feared he might fade away.

  Wigout found Cass’s laptop computer, but left it alone. He tried seeking out something more mechanical. The poor creature had little success. Cass’s relatively short hair didn’t require hair clips or a blow-dryer. The casual clothes in the closet consisted of pullover hoodies and sweatpants, so no zippers. Wigout kept looking until he heard footsteps on the stairs. He retreated out the window, descending the downspout. He looked for a way into the cellar. The dryer vent was a tight squeeze, but Grimel Kin have flexible bones.

  He was going to disable the dryer, when a thought occurred to him. Though his grasp of electronics was minimal, wires were something he could manage. Computers relied on electricity. So did washers, dryers, refrigerators, and those blasted digital clocks. “Heh, heh… batteries are not included.” He chuckled to himself. “Now where is that fuse box?”

  ##

  Cass, for his part, seemed happy with his first two days at OLAM. He was still debating whether to crush on girls or on boys. He was hanging out with unpopular kids. Well, one anyway. The vice principal considered him a foreign interloper and he was already overburdened with homework. Topping it off, Magolyn had forgotten to purchase white bras again. All in all, it was very productive in the misery department. Still, he had to stop smiling about it, or the Elders would catch wise to his plan. It hadn’t occurred to him that someone might observe him using a telepathically endowed crystal ball. Silly boy.

  He dashed off his art assignment with a few quick strokes of a charcoal pencil. Basic sketching was a common Alfaran pastime and creating passable landscape was nothing new to him. The geometry proof took effort, but he eventually worked it out. Then he powered up the laptop to start his essay on the different approaches France, England and Spain used in Colonial America. He’d just typed the first sentence when the power went out. “Silvanus’s leafy nethers! What just happened?”