Trapped

As I stuffed the purse back into my pocket, I checked that Fisherman Nathan was still breathing. He was. A trickle of blood seeped out of one nostril, but nothing too alarming. I arranged his unconscious body in the classic Recovery Position, designed to make sure drunks don't choke on their own vomit when they're sleeping off a bender.

"Thanks, Phil," the Caryatid said, coming up behind me. Her five tiny flames flickered excitedly, bouncing in a circle around Nathan's fallen pistol. "Now, now," she told them, "leave that nasty thing alone." She knelt on the pavement and held out her arms to the little fires. "Come here, darlings."

All five flames bounded back to her with the enthusiasm of four-year-olds who want a treat They leapt into the Caryatid's hands, then bounced up higher, brushed past her face with happy little kisses, and vanished into her hair. The sight made me queasy-I once set my hair on fire in a university chem-lab and still had nightmares about it. But no fire would be so presumptuous as to singe the Caryatid.

"That woman is spooky," Myoko whispered to me.

I rolled my eyes. "Says the person who is holding up Impervia by willpower alone."

"Sorry. Forgot"

Myoko let Impervia drift feet first to the ground.

"Thank you, Myoko," Impervia said, adjusting her clothes with casual briskness… or at least attempting to. I couldn't help noticing the good sister winced as she moved; the fishermen had been too drunk to land any truly solid kicks, but there are inevitable cumulative effects of being used as a human soccer ball. Still, Impervia's voice was strong as she told the rest of us, "I found that most invigorating."

"The levitation or the fighting?" I asked.

"Are you suggesting I enjoy fighting?"

"I know better," I answered-and I did know better than to suggest Impervia enjoyed fighting… especially to Impervia's face. "It just seems odd," I said, "how often fights arise in a quiet little town like Simka."

"The Lord provides for his children," Impervia said. "Our Heavenly Father knows my skills would get rusty if they didn't receive constant polishing."

Without another word, she slapped open the door of the tavern and went back inside. As she passed the bar, the tapman handed her a cup of tea. "Longer than usual tonight" he said.

The holy sister sniffed with righteous indignation.

2: A NIGHT IN THE LONESOME ZUL-HUJAH

My pocket watch said it was one o'clock. In the morning.

Under cloudy black skies, I walked up the drive of Feliss Academy, gravel crunching beneath my boots. Alone, alone, all alone-my drinking companions boarded in rooms off campus, and didn't plan on returning to musty F.A. till the weekend was over. I, however, occupied a don's suite in the school's residence wing… which is why I was still on my feet, trudging a full kilometer past the town limits, when my friends were already snoring in their beds.

Let me list the pluses of don-ship: cleaning staff emptied my wastebaskets, washed my linen, and occasionally removed the dust coyotes that had long ago devoured the dust bunnies under my bed. Let me also list the minuses: long late liquorized limps from the pub, back to a place where I was required to serve as shepherd, mentor, and surrogate father to twenty teenaged boys, all either wealthy brats, wealthy wallflowers, or wealthy nice-kids whose eyes glazed over at the word "geometry."

The academy seemed peaceful as I approached. The calm was due to the season-in the official calendar of the Spark Lords, it was the Month of the Quill, but in the classic calendar still observed by my family, it was Zul-Hijjah: the ash-end of winter, leaving muddy clumps of snow mixed with snowy clumps of mud all over the school's campus. That night, the vernal equinox was a single day away… and while the weather was unlikely to change just because the almanac turned to a new page, I fondly looked forward to the moment I could shout, "Spring, spring, spring!"

Everyone I knew was sick of winter. The students had long ago lost interest in icy midnight frolics (diving naked into snow drifts or stealing trays from the refectory to go tobogganing down the greenhouse hill); every last kid in our dormitory was now a sweaty stick of dynamite, just waiting to explode in spring madness. One breath of warm wind and kaboom, the school grounds would be littered with teenaged bodies, wriggling under every bush, sprawled on the banks of our local creek, or snuggling in more imaginative trysting spots (up a tree, down a storm sewer, on top of the school roof)… but for now, it was still too cold, too muddy, and too much the middle of term. As summer approached-as holiday separations loomed, and, "Who knows if we'll both be back in the fall?"-the antics and romantics would sprout behind every bush, and I would…

I would…

I would seethe with envy at their feverish innocence.