Lucky Rabbit

Small Group that day was run by Ms. Davenport, who seemed quite pleased by the change. The first thing she did was inform them that Ms. Wellington absolutely wouldn’t be returning. “I’m certain this comes as a shock,” she said briskly, brushing her hands together as if to clear away any traces of the former teacher, “but we shall bravely continue on. Now, who can tell me what you were learning?”

The children, of course, were well aware that ‘Ms. Wellington’ was right there, listening, so they weren’t actually all that upset. At this, however, they glanced at each other, until Eleanor tentatively offered, “Innate magic?”

Everyone nodded, and Abbington added, “Wh’stlin’.”

Ms. Davenport frowned at him. “I shall need you to make an effort to speak more clearly, Abbington. I realize that you’re starting from something of a disadvantage, but you are not an unintelligent child, and I expect you to do better. What do you mean by ‘whistlin’, if you please?”

In response, Abbington placed his fingers into his mouth and gave a short, sharp whistle that was loud enough to draw the attention of every other student nearby. “Whistle-ing,” he said carefully.

The hall supervisor blinked, and then her brows went up. “I see. Well, since whistling isn’t on the school curriculum, and therefore your parents do not expect us to teach it to you, I shall not continue that particular lesson. Instead, I want each of you to sit with your elemental companions, and we shall attempt to deepen your bonds. This is something the other students will learn when they have elementals of their own, but as you already have elementals, there is no reason to delay. By the end of the semester, each of you should be able to use your companion’s elemental power to cast at least one simple spell.”

Her gaze swept around them, pausing on Thaniel. “Thaniel, I understand that you are not to attempt any form of magic until Mistress Rose says you may. Therefore, you may read, do homework, or practice for your other classes. I do want you to listen to my instructions, because this will be relevant for you eventually.”

Thaniel’s face fell, and he reached up to straighten his jacket, knuckles brushing against the stone beneath his shirt. Not looking at Ms. Davenport’s stern face, he nodded. He was seated in his usual place on the stone bench, and Pandy sat beside him. She couldn’t wrap a reassuring arm around him, but she leaned heavily against his side, and he blinked, focusing on her as the teacher began to speak, walking the other students through what Pandy could only think of as a short meditation.

The rest of the class went the same way, with Thaniel on the sidelines, practicing his kata from Swordsmanship, using Pandy as a miniaturized stand-in for his pony, Buttercup, in the routine he was supposed to learn for Horseback Riding, and generally being bored out of his mind.

The other children didn’t actually seem that much more invested in the lesson, which focused around ‘becoming one with your elemental’ in a way that all of them had already surpassed. Internally, Pandy had to admit to a tiny pang of satisfaction that the real teacher didn’t actually seem to be doing that much better than she had.

Dinner was some kind of meat wrapped in some kind of bread, which looked vaguely familiar to Pandy from some cooking video or other in her past life. All of the children ate it with evident enthusiasm, while Pandy munched fruits and vegetables from a bowl beneath the table. Honestly, the leafy greens and sweet berries tasted so good that she didn’t even mind not getting people-food.

They were assigned to the stable that week for chores, all except for Isidor, who had to go attend an etiquette lesson he almost certainly didn’t need. Or at least that’s what he was supposed to do, but Pandy was almost certain she actually saw his wobbly stealth spell lurking in the shadows at the back of the stable, while the other students – including Princess Eleanor – scooped horse droppings with flat-bottomed shovels and swapped out dirty hay for fresh.

Once Pandy was certain the children were settled in and as safe as they could be – especially with that blur watching over them – she waved a paw at Thaniel and hopped back to the library. There, she found another group of first-years helping put books away, while students from Kestrel watched over them. There was even another pair of students who looked like older and younger siblings, so apparently Professor Beeswick was in the habit of bringing families together in the library where possible.

The professor was at the circulation desk, speaking to a crestfallen boy of perhaps nine about the importance of returning books on time so that other students could borrow them, but cut his lecture short when he saw Pandy slip in through the open door. The boy slunk away as soon as he realized the conversation – if it could be called that – was over, and Pandy found herself scooped into the arms of a dragon.

“Castus, I’ll be upstairs if you need me,” Professor Beeswick said to a blonde boy who looked older than any of the others. The boy nodded respectfully before turning his attention back to a pair of Falconet students who listened to him with rapt attention.

Up and up they went, until Professor Beeswick gently placed Pandy on the table at which they’d once shared a pleasant dinner. He then produced a long, pointed metal tube and several dozen pouches made of a familiar, nubbly cloth, and laid them on the table as well. Pandy eyed the tube with suspicion, since it looked far too much like an absolutely enormous hypodermic needle to her.

“As I mentioned before, few mages have elementals who can track bodily fluids,” he said, lifting the tube and examining the sharp end. “There are two reasons for that. First, those elementals simply aren’t common. The circumstances under which they arise rarely occur naturally, and reproducing those circumstances unnaturally is both difficult and immoral.”

Laying down the tube, he picked up the bags, opening them one by one and placing them back on the table, mouths open, like little, scratchy baby birds cheeping for worms. “The second reason is that they’re Dark elementals, and using them requires advanced certification in Dark magic. Only elementalists who have received specialized training and have sworn to use these elementals only to assist the crown as needed are allowed to form contracts with them.”

Satisfied, he glanced up at Pandy, eyes glittering with some indefinable emotion. “Interestingly enough, Lord Conroy, Killian and Nathaniel’s father, was one of the rare mages who had the required training, and had contracted with at least one of these elementals.”

Pandy had been trying to figure out which one of the six known Dark elementals the professor was talking about, but now her mind locked up. Lord Bryan Conroy, Viscount Dunning, The Father, one of the most suspicious people Pandy had ever met, had once been trusted enough to be allowed to have an elemental that could track people’s blood? That didn’t seem like a good idea to her, especially given the large numbers of bodies that had been dragged through the halls of his home. Unless, of course, he was actually a carpet connoisseur and had a secret stash of rolled-up rugs that he ranked rigorously by rug-ness.

“Ah, I didn’t think to ask if you still have some time left as Ms. Wellington,” the dragon admitted with a grimace. “Though I would actually like to have some of your blood as a rabbit as well. Just for a few small experiments.”

Pandy’s first instinct was to shrink away, but Professor Beeswick had yet to do anything to hurt her. Frankly, it seemed more likely that giving him her blood might benefit her in some future way, so she laid one paw over her clenched eyes and held the other paw out, furry toes up.

A surprisingly gentle poke caused a single point of LF to float away, and Pandy uncovered one eye to see the dragon bent forward over her paw, the metal tube delicately touching a few drops of blood swelling from her toe. The blood rose up through the tube through some magic unknown to Pandy, and then the professor returned it to his robe, where it absolutely would have been a hazard if he wasn’t actually putting it into some hidden cache. Another tube emerged, and Professor Beeswick looked at Pandy expectantly.

Pandy hopped off the table, this time remembering to get far enough away that she wouldn’t be in his personal space when she got bigger. she thought.

Shifting Faces successful. 01:36:28 remaining.

Pandy held out her hand, but the professor shook his head. “Hair first, if you please.”

She blinked. “You need my hair, too?” This was starting to sound an awful lot like something she’d once seen in a horror movie – based on the title, she’d thought it was a docudrama about architecture, but once she paid, she was determined to stay – and Pandy wasn’t at all certain she was down for that.

He chuckled, spinning a finger to indicate she should turn around. When she did so, she felt something tug at her hair, and several strands of long, light brown hair fell to the floor around her. She turned back to see him holding an enormous hank of hair, and when she lifted her hand to her head, she found that she now had what could only be described as a very unfortunate undercut.

Turning back to the table, the dragon ignored Pandy’s outraged meep and began distributing hair into each of the bags. They were about the size of a velvet jewelry bag, so he was able to stuff them quite full before he seemed satisfied.

“There’s no way to truly break the link between blood, hair, and person,” he said, tamping down the hair that was trying to fluff out of the last bag. “But we can confuse the elemental by providing so many targets that they can’t focus on any one of them. Fortunately, Echowretches aren’t particularly intelligent, so if you know what you’re doing, it’s fairly easy to lead them astray.”

Back to Pandy, and now he held out his hand. Absently, she laid hers in his, palm up, but she was thinking about what he’d just said. The Dark Magic primer had named each of the six Dark elementals, but focused on Umblinks and Duskins, which were the two a beginner elementalist was most likely to meet. As tier-one elementals, Umblinks were so ephemeral that they barely counted, and certainly couldn’t be contracted. The tier-two Duskins were actually the most common Dark elementals, for some definition of common that wasn’t common at all. They were also relatively benign, so the book urged young elementalists to focus on them.

Tenebron were tier-three elementals, as were Echowretches and Apparitions. The book mentioned Tenebron were the most intelligent of the three, while Apparitions were driven by little more than instinct, pushed up to tier-three by their power alone. Presumably, that left Echowretches somewhere in between, but the book hadn’t really said much about them other than their name.

Pandy looked away as the pointed tube pierced her flesh, but that didn’t mean she missed the hit to her Life Force. This time it went down by four, so Professor Beeswick had definitely stabbed her quite a bit harder. He quickly applied blood to each of the little bags of hair, then filled the tube with blood once more before tucking it into his robe again.

“Give me a few hours, and any elemental hunting for you will only get a vague general feeling of ‘somewhere around here’,” the dragon said with satisfaction, holding up the last pouch before tucking it away into his robe as well. “They can still track you, but only down to a general area, and with this much blood and hair, I can make sure that area includes most of Knightmere. They’ll be forced to send in human beings to search, which will take time, and hopefully it simply won’t be worth the effort.”

“But won’t they know that I’m at Falconet, no matter what the elemental says? Not that it’s easy to search for me here, with all the security, but it’s a lot smaller than the entire city.” Pandy said.

He sighed softly. “Which is why you can’t appear here as Ms. Wellington. Not until we’re certain this is over. In fact, it would be best if you left Falconet entirely,” he held up a hand as she opened her mouth to protest, “but I understand that’s not something you’re willing to do.”

Pandy nodded vigorously. There was no way she was going to abandon Thaniel, or any of the other children, for that matter. Or Augustus. “I can be Bunny, though, right?”

He nodded. “I believe so. Falconet has a fairly complex series of spells governing who can go where, and open which doors. They recognize Ms. Wellington and Bunny as two separate beings.” Which meant that once Pandy got another shape when she reached level ten of Shifting Faces, no one would be able to track that version of her without getting fresh blood or hair. That was only thirty-two days away. She could avoid being Ms. Wellington on school grounds for thirty-two days.

“What happens if I leave Knightmere?” Pandy asked.

“You’ll be trackable again,” he said bluntly. “You can certainly do it, and in fact it might well throw off whoever may be after you, if there is anyone at all. Just make sure you don’t stay in one place for more than a few hours.”

Pandy thought about everything she needed to do over the next few weeks. The Fall Festival took place entirely within Knightmere, so the dragon’s spell should keep her safe, at least as long as she didn’t do anything to draw attention to herself. After that, she would need to leave the city, but since she could only be Ms. Wellington for a few hours a day anyway, there shouldn’t be any real risk of anyone having time to track her down.

She nodded, looking down at her hands. She would really, really miss having hands. She still had to trigger Shifting Faces at least once a day, so she could continue working toward that tenth level, but that wasn’t the same as being able to hug Thaniel, open doors, or talk to Aug… anyone! Which reminded her of a question she wanted to ask before she went into her bunnishment…  rabbexile… hopstrangement…

Shaking her head, Pandy pointed to the gracefully draped front of Professor Beeswick’s robe. “What are those little pouches made of?”

“Hmm?” He took one back out, holding it up so they could see the scratchy brown fabric. It was either the same stuff as the bag the Duskin gave to Pandy in exchange for freeing their trapped friend, or a very convincing – and itchy – replica.

“This is kivit,” the dragon said. “It’s made from goat fur, and its one and only positive attribute is that it resists Dark magic. It will keep your hair and blood hidden from anyone trying to find you until I’m ready to perform the spell. It’s best if they have no idea what we’re up to, since they could conceivably send someone after you in force before the spell can take effect, if they chose to do so. That wouldn’t be good for the school or the students.”

Oh. Well, yes, that made sense. Still, she had one more question. “Someone told me the fabric’s from East Altheric. Is that true?” The links to East Altheric were starting to pile up, and since it sounded like tensions remained high even two hundred years after the war – which also involved a Demon – ended, it seemed reasonable to Pandy that they should be the prime suspects.

A shadow flickered across Professor Beeswick’s face. “It is, but I wouldn’t read too much into that, if I were you. Dangerous Dark elementalists are far more common in East Altheric than here, and so its people have developed their own defenses. Certain portions of our own society, from highest to lowest, have also found value in those defenses, and so while things like this,” he waved the bag, “aren’t common, they’re also far from unknown.”

That made sense, too, and Pandy’s shoulders slumped a little. She definitely didn’t want to find herself facing the resources of an entire country, but she did want to know who their true enemy was, other than possibly Ascyra. Having no idea who or what was coming for them was kind of terrifying. Pandy was probably the next best thing to immortal, but none of the people she’d come to care about were.

As if reading her mind, Professor Beeswick patted her shoulder gently. “I’ll begin the spell at midnight tonight. If you have any time left in this form today, I suggest you use it before then. It will likely be a while before you have another opportunity.”

Pandy nodded, dismissed Shifting Faces, and hopped back down the stairs.