Cutting Class – 6.1

Lucy

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Please let her be a better teacher than Raymond, Lucy thought.

They’d worked so hard to get back in time for this.  Class was still getting settled, and the lucky sons and daughters of bitches who had gotten a good night’s sleep were filtering in, many with damp hair, many smelling like breakfast foods.  Some held tea and coffee, finding seats with shelves and surfaces nearby to rest their drinks on.

Mrs. Durocher was standing on the narrow stairs by the stage, leaning against the wall, one foot on a stair and the other propped up on the stage’s edge. She wore a sleeveless blouse with a folded collar, printed with very colorful… tentacles?  And a knee-length black dress to match.  Charles had been pretty judgmental about her appearance but she was… relatively normal, if a bit on the thin, awkward, not-very-imposing side.

Mrs. Durocher alternated between chatting with Amine and giving him periodic instructions.  He was one of her apprentices, and was being put to work drawing up diagrams on the stage.  Eloise, off to the side, was pulling on ropes.  A mirror mounted on the ceiling was rotated, so the students in the class could look up and see a bird’s eye view of the diagrams being drawn.  Three different ones.

Some girls in the class, Lucy couldn’t place them to name them, were elbowing each other and whispering, their attention so fixed on Amine that they didn’t look away as they leaned in to whisper to one another.  He wasn’t attractive in the same way Ulysse was.  Ulysse was the kind of attractive that took Lucy’s breath away, a bit.  If he said something nice to her, she was pretty sure she’d feel gushy and weak in the middle for a while after.

She hated that because it meant he had this power over her without even trying, but it wasn’t bad either, especially from a distance where that downside wasn’t going to happen.

Amine straightened up, and pushed the long, chin-length locks of hair that framed his face back and out of the way.  The rest of his hair was pulled up into a braid that ran down the middle of his head, down to the nape of his neck, with charms binding it at the end.

Amine was very deliberate, very serious, like he put attention into everything he did.  His expression was stern, as he listened to Durocher.

She decided she liked that more than she liked Ulysse’s careless hair and careless half-smile of an expression.  When she got married she’d want someone who she could trust and carelessness didn’t make her feel trusting.  Not that Amine was even close to being a contender.

But he was nice to look at.  She’d leave it to those whispering girls if they wanted to go after the older boy.  She was betting he’d say no, anyway.

“My mind,” Lucy said the thought aloud, “is wandering all over the place.  I’m so tired.”

“Don’t fall asleep,” Verona said, her head in Lucy’s lap as she waited for class to start.  “I want you to make sure I’m awake when class starts.”

“Why is that my responsibility?” Lucy poked Verona’s cheek with one finger, and Verona puffed out her cheek.  Lucy pried Verona’s eyes open as wide as they would go, and Verona squirmed.

“Where’s your mind wandering?” Avery asked.

“Food,” Verona said, her eyes pried open as she looked up at Lucy.  “I can hear your stomach rumbling.”

Snowdrop, dozing, sneezed.

“Yeah, I hear you, Snow,” Avery said, giving the opossum a pat on the side.

“We’ve got class, no idea how long it’ll be, then we can eat, maybe sneak a nap…”

“We might sleep through afternoon classes if we aren’t careful.”

Lucy scrunched Verona’s face together, pushing eyebrows down, lips up, and cheeks together.

“Noo,” Verona protested.

Avery twisted around.  “What are the afternoon classes?”

“Ray teaching Realms, Durocher teaching Practical Language, and Graubard’s still around, doing some tutorials on basic Alchemy.  Not her specialty, but she’s grounded enough to cover the basics, and she’s not a bad teacher.”

Lucy turned, and Verona sat up, wiping at her face with her hands as if it’d still be scrunched up or something, and she had to get it back in order.

The girls sitting behind them were a white girl with chopsticks in her straight blonde hair, a girl with an expensive looking sleeveless top with a high neck, and a brunette with an unironic bowler hat, dense freckles, and wild eye makeup that included sky blue eyeshadow and heavy eyeliner.  A bit Clockwork Orange.  They looked just a bit older.

“This is rough.  I want to take so many of these,” Verona protested.

“Realms for me,” Avery said.

“Of course,” Lucy said.

“Maybe Alchemy,” Verona said.

“I’ll hold off,” Lucy said.  “See how Durocher is as a teacher.  If she’s good, I’ll take that language class.  Then we can share notes.”

“Great,” Verona said.  “You should actually take notes, Avery.  Don’t doodle all over the page.”

“I don’t doodle that much.  Keeping the pen moving when I don’t have notes to take keeps my mind moving.”

“You guys are really close,” the chopsticks girl said.

“Pretty close,” Avery said.  “Is that weird?”

“No, not weird, that’s the wrong word,” the chopsticks girl said.  She had just a bit too perfect of a way of pronouncing words and inflecting that Lucy couldn’t help but notice.

“Some siblings aren’t as close and trusting as you three seem to be,” the girl with the nice top said.

“She’s speaking about herself and her family,” Bowler Hat whispered loudly, hand cupped by her mouth.  The girl with the nice top gave her a push, so she fell sideways onto the bench.

“I’m Lucy,” Lucy said, in hopes of getting names.

“We know.  And Verona and Avery,” Chopsticks said.  “I’m Yadira Kennedy, that’s Kassidy but we call her Kass, and that’s Raquel Musser.”

Kass was the bowler hat girl.  Raquel had the nice top.

“I notice you left my last name out of the introductions.  Classist,” Kass said.

“Is it classist if I’m being practical?  Your family doesn’t matter.”

“Be nice in front of the new practitioners,” Raquel said, closing her eyes for a moment.

“So Yadira Kennedy… the Kennedys are a big family?” Avery asked.

“A good size,” Yadira said, smiling.  “We’re not the Kennedys, but we have a presence.  After the Oni Wars, my family was the apparent first to successfully re-establish a working relationship with the new Others out East.”

“That’s a lot to digest all at once,” Avery commented.

“You’ll learn about it if you read essentially any history at all on practitioner-human relationships,” Yadira said.  “My family’s name gets a passing mention in many of the textbooks.”

“Okay, sidebar,” Kass said.  She leaned over the back of the bench, resting her arm there with enough forward momentum that Verona had to move out of the way of the incoming elbow.  “Yes, the Kennedy family is a big one.  Spread out all over the place.  But Yadira is from a small, forgettable branch of that family.”

“Hey,” Yadira said.

“It’s my job to keep these two from puffing themselves up too much,” Kass said, indicating the other two on her bench with a swish of her thumb.  “They talk fancy and dress nice but they lean too much on the family name.  You aren’t defined by the family you come from.”

“You’re a little bit defined by the family you come from,” Raquel said.  “If you try, you can be the best bits of it.”

“You’re going to have to try awfully hard, Raquel,” Kass said, sitting back against the bench.  “You’re not a boy, and only boys get the best of what the Mussers have to offer.”

“Do you know who get even less than girls born to the Musser family?” Raquel asked.  “Venomous little bitches who attack their friends to try and look cool for strangers.”

“Oookay,” Yadira said, even as Lucy’s mouth opened in a wordless approximation of the very same sentiment.

Kass turned.  “I don’t care about looking cool-”

“Obviously.”

“-Bu- fuck you.  But I do care about keeping you grounded.”

“Okay,” Yadira said.  “I’m getting up, I’m sitting between you two, and you two should stop talking to each other until after class.”

Yadira did as stated.  Both of the other girls scooted over to separate.

“Was it your dad that was a school founder?” Avery asked.

Raquel looked over, still clearly very pissed, and pissed in a way that made her look hostile even as she turned to Avery.  “Uncle.  But he raised me, more or less, after my mother was removed from the family.”

“That’s pretty heavy,” Lucy said.

“You aren’t lying.  And, I’ll say this, there’s way more to things than gender, like me beng a niece, and not his actual kid,” Raquel said.

“Stop.” Yadira put a hand in the way of her face.

“You keep telling yourself that,” Kass said.  “At least twelve times, maybe seventy-seven times.  Maybe you should try gunning for one of the higher magic numbers, like one hundred and forty-four, put a little practice into it, and see if it comes true.”

Yadira pulled Kass’s hat down and pressed it against Kass’s face.  She gave Raquel a dangerous, angry look.  “Don’t talk to each other for a bit,” she said.  “Please.”

Raquel deflated.  Kass just sat there, slumped a bit, arms folded, watching the rest of the room.  The three girls on the other side of the classroom were still ogling Amine.

“You’re a collector?  Two of you are collectors?” Verona asked.

“You studied us, did you?”

“Isn’t that normal?” Verona asked.

“Kass picked up a family practice,” Yadira said, since Kass and Raquel weren’t volunteering anything.  “Collectors pick up magic items and arrange them in tableaus and diagrams, transfer power between them.  But it’s very cutthroat.  A lot of the time, if you need something to complete a set, you have to take it from someone else.  Without getting into details-”

“Oh, why not get into details?” Raquel asked.  “Sparing her feelings?”

“-these two became unlikely friends.”

Kass retorted, “Raquel’s family and their friends made like they wanted a marriage to unite collections, then reneged, took my family’s shit and killed my grandfather when he tried to stop them.”

“He was an abusive scumbag, Kass.  You shouldn’t expect the marriage to go through when that comes to light.”

“Then start from square one, maybe?  Figure out another marriage.  In what reasonable world is the next logical step theft and murder?  Taking everything?”

Yadira seemed to have given up on mediating.

“You shouldn’t hide that stuff about a guy like that when you damn well know what he is.  Why should we figure out a marriage with people when we can’t trust that they’ll offer up a good candidate?”

“Then walk away.”

“We made deals and plans that accounted for objects and effectiveness we’d get in the union.  With your family’s blessing and encouragement.”

“Are they like this all the time?” Lucy asked.

“No,” Yadira said.  “No, this is a new-ish thing.  At least at this intensity.”

“Sorry if we poked the bear,” Avery said.

“Speaking of animals,” Yadira said, leaning forward as Kass and Raquel continued in the background.  “Fox?”

She was looking at Lucy.  For a second, Lucy had to remember if she was still wearing her mask.

“What about it?” Lucy asked.

“Kitsune,” Yadira said, laying a hand over her heart.

“I don’t know… what’s the significance of that?” Lucy asked.

“Fox… spirit… thing?” Verona guessed, halting.

“Ayakashi, or Mamono.  Others of a particular stripe, close to the Oni,” Yadira said.  “You really had no idea?”

“No,” Lucy said.  “I did the fox thing because I like foxes.”

“And here I was hoping I could compare notes.”

“What’s with the Oni stuff?” Verona asked.

At the front of the class, Mrs. Durocher cleared her throat.  Most of the room fell quiet with just that.  The rest followed suit as they realized it was her.

Verona visibly deflated, disappointed, then revived as she remembered she wanted to attend this class.

“We’ll begin in a moment,” Mrs. Durocher announced.  “Please settle.  Notebooks out if you want to take notes.”

Students who weren’t already sitting hurried to do so.

“I have,” Mrs. Durocher addressed the class, walking along the stage’s edge, her voice too loud considering the relative quiet, “bound an Other to the Seal of Solomon.  More than a hundred Others, in fact.  Through this seal, they are stabilized in form and disposition, brought in line with humanity and human civilization, and they are compelled to order and truth.  From that point on, they cannot lie and they are bound to their word.  An Other that is not bound by the Seal is more free, more volatile, but often finds that humanity and civilization are very hard to approach and interact with.  Some get it easier, especially if they maintain appearances that can be explained away, but the costs are steep.  Many unbound avoid mankind and stick to the deep wilderness, deep earth, and hiding places.”

She paced, standing over the class as she walked the stage’s edge, hand moving.  It hadn’t taken long for her volume to feel more normal.

“On the other hand, if they are bound by the Seal, that binding will usually bear provisions about how they may interact with humans.  Unbound, they have difficulty approaching and instinctively sense the karmic danger of breaching order.  Even the dumbest ogre may recognize that mankind is bright and mighty and interconnected, and hunt elsewhere.  Bound, they are restricted from hurting man, and still pay some karmic penalty, if they get caught, not simply for approaching or risking that capture.  And man thrives, the innocent protected on both fronts.”

Amine stood off to the side, book open.

Verona was up and taking notes, so Lucy relaxed a bit, notebook open, more prepared to ask questions or focus on things relating to the Carmine Beast and Kennet.

“I have bound an Other to a certain course of action.  Many, in fact,” Mrs. Durocher addressed the room, with a slightly different tone of voice.  “Bound them to servitude.  Bound them to hunt and kill a threat.  Bound them to refrain from hurting people.  The Seal of Solomon was already in place.  All I had to do was make them promise.  Karma guaranteed that promise.”

She paced all the way from the far right corner of the stage to the far left, looking as though she were lost in thought.  She was halfway back before she paused.  “I’ve bound an Other in rope and tongue.  Mundane, physical bonds, and less mundane, physical bonds.  I’ve had a summoning I controlled nail an Other’s feet to the floor.  That is in fact another sort of binding.  Limiting their movements.”

She walked over to Amine, and he handed her a textbook, blue with a black bar down the cover, embossed with a gold image Lucy couldn’t make out.  She held the book in both hands, as if holding it firmly closed.

“I’ve bound humans in many of these same ways.  To their word.  In chains.  So, let me ask you… what is binding?  What is it to be bound?  Are you bound if I invite you to my office here in the school, other people arrive, and you can’t find a polite moment to leave?  What if you find yourself staying five, fifteen, or thirty minutes longer than expected?  Is it me and my status that binds you?  Social pressure?  Convention?  Is it yourself?”

She slapped the book against her hand as she paced.  Lucy couldn’t shake the feeling that she was seeing someone barely restrained.  She might have described it as a very angry person who was doing a great job of holding back their anger, but it wasn’t.  Anger was the wrong emotion.

A very intense, dangerous restlessness?

Mrs. Durocher didn’t speak.  It was as if, just after citing an awkward social situation, she wanted to create one, letting the silence hang, and challenging a student to break that silence.  To ask if the lesson would continue, or to answer those questions she had posited.  She opened the book and turned pages.

Mrs. Durocher’s voice was quieter, and everyone listened.  “We use the term ‘bind’ in so many ways, but we really mean one thing.  Taking control of another.  And to those ends, when we say we want to bind an Other, we often mean we want to do this.”

Still pacing, book open in one hand, she raised a hand over her head, finger pointing up to the mirror, which was angled to show the three diagrams painted on the stage, as if indicating it.  The three fingers that weren’t pointing struck off the thumb to the meat of the palm in a rapid fire trio of ‘snaps’ as audible as if she had thrown the book down to the floor three times in the span of a second.

With each snap, something came to life in the diagrams.

In the smallest, a man rose to his feet, dressed in a sleek black suit with white gloves and shoes.  It didn’t appear that he had a human head or a human neck, but instead, a mess of yellow flowers with gray leaves and petals spilled up from the neck and chest, a large, coiled black serpent resting on that bed of greenery.  The poise and posture were precise.

In the medium-sized circle, about ten feet across, a chest freezer, old television, and what could have been a computer server rose out of the floor.  They were all gathered together, the freezer left partially open, the television cracked, and the computer server a bit battered.  Within the freezer, dark behind the television screen, and in the gaps of the server, Lucy could see pink, translucent, skinless flesh threaded through with blue and canary yellow wires, periodically with dull illumination, as if a faint, flickering lightbulb had lit up in the recesses.  She could see something curled up within the television, with an exaggerated, outstanding spine that threaded out of the television and into the server, the ridges and points of it exaggerated and tangled up with the blue and yellow wires.  The machine hummed audibly and the organic part of it breathed, a part of the server expanding and contracting, bodily fluids running out of one part to the floor as one gap widened.  A single red light on the server blinked regularly.

Not turning on and off, but blinking as an eye might.

And in the large, exaggerated circle, a young woman stood, smaller than the man in the suit.  Her hair was wild, and the headscarf she wore wasn’t capable of containing it, instead becoming something that exaggerated and complemented it.  Her skin was dark, but it was dark like a thundercloud was, her eyes bright and gold, and her body decorated with lines, like she’d been cracked open but had maintained her shape, more of that bright gold light shining from within.  She didn’t wear clothes so much as she had cloth wrapped around her, decorating her like the headscarf did her hair.

All of her was tense, her head, arms, legs, and upper body unmoving, but for hard breathing.  Her hair, headscarf, and the wrapping that was poised around her body were all in constant motion, whipping around in a wind that didn’t leave the circle.

Lucy took all of that in, and she realized she wasn’t breathing.  She didn’t resume breathing right away, at the realization, taking it in a second time as if to check, before she began.

“With a circle, we can contain.  Our diagrams address the spirits, and spirits relate to all things.  With the right design and message, theoretically, anything can be bound.  Finding the appropriate design and message?  That, students, is the true challenge.  It requires a firm grip in all things I’ve talked about since class started.  What exactly are you doing, and what does it mean if you do that?  It requires that you know beyond a doubt what it is you’re binding.”

As she paced, this time, the man in the fine suit with the snake and flowers instead of a neck and head turned to stay facing her, one hand casually behind his back, the other fiddling with a button on his suit.  He was very still, but for the fact that he gave her his full and unerring attention, turning his body to keep her in his focus.

“Each of these Others would, if unbound and given a matter of minutes, remove the Blue Heron institute and those within it from play.  Dead, gone, worse.  When I-”

The young woman in the big circle had floated up to a point midway between the floor and ceiling, her hair and the cloth that bound her extending in length and twisting in the wind around her.  A blindingly bright flash filled the circle, and a rumble shook the building.  Books fell to the floor.

Lucy had to squint to see, and there were still spots in her vision.  She saw Durocher walk past the fleshy-techy Other and over to the circle where the flashes were coming from.  She bent down and wrote something on the floor, some additions to the diagram.

The flashes lost their painful brightness.  The shaking of the building ceased.  Lucy continued to blink away the spots of light in her vision.

“When I bound them,” Mrs. Durocher spoke, turning away from the diagram, “I didn’t have more than moments.  Every fraction of a second mattered as I sought to close the snare.  Each of you in this room, I would guess, will have at least one such scenario in your lives.  At least one instance where you must bind, or you and everything you have worked for, everything you built, and everything you dreamed of will be gone.  Blasted away in a flash of lightning from a Jannah, absorbed by a Compiler Error and extruded, brain damaged, into the nearest appliance or container…”

As she walked by the techy Other, the freezer jerked, sliding toward her, and cracked open, fluids bubbling from one corner.  Mrs. Durocher reached across the circle and gave it a full-bodied shove, putting it right back where it had been.

Lucy had inadvertently risen up out of her seat at that sudden movement, and hung there, in a sitting position but not sitting.  She sat as Mrs. Durocher resumed talking.

“…Or facing possession by something like Mr. Rudbeck, a snake slithering into you, nestling into a part of you deeper than biology goes, and squeezing you out, because he can occupy the vessel of your body more easily than your Self and Soul can, just as his flowers and grasses will grow through every place and everything nearby, making it his.  There is no mundane defense to this lightning, no easy recovery or being saved from the absorption, and no way to fend off the snake yourself.  With a very quick friend, perhaps, but it could just as easily take them.  What then?”

She stopped pacing, and stood, the appliances that barely encased translucent and leaking biology to her right, the man with the coiled snake and flowers for a head to her left, and the flashing, furious Other poised above her.

“What then?” she asked.  “Except death, wanting to die, or being a lost soul who couldn’t hope to take their body back from the serpent that occupies it.  Most likely it’s you or an echo of you watching as this Other takes people you care about.”

She turned a page in the book she held.

“This is a beginner class.  Your takeaway, however, should not be that this is easy, simple, or boring.  Early in our lives we learn not to touch hot things.  That is a fundamental lesson we carry with us, but sometimes we must learn for ourselves, and it doesn’t matter how much our mothers tell us or warn us.  My problem as a teacher is that to be responsible and kind I must instill upon you that no, this is not something where I can say stay away, do not touch, and let you make your mistakes.  The analogy does not work.  The lesson is difficult to impart in its gravity, even if I introduce you to some terribly dangerous Others and describe what they do.”

“Hey,” Avery leaned in close, whispering.  “Amine is tense.”

Lucy looked.

Amine was tense.  Lips pressed together, hands behind his back as he stood at the far end of the stage.  Like he was ready to spring to action.

“A better analogy than the hot stovetop would be, instead, me trying to convince you that someone will try to set you on fire sometime in your life.  That is the kind of life you are likely to walk, here, where someone or something much stronger than you may come after you.  And it will hurt and it will be terrifying, and you will have seconds to act, if you are lucky, before you suffer lifelong scars and disability or death.  Are you prepared?  Will you take the right actions in that panicked moment?”

Mrs. Durocher stood there, looking at every student in the class in turn.  She made momentary eye contact with Lucy as part of it.

Then the woman smiled for the first time.

“I will let one of the Others on this stage loose toward the lesson’s end.  I will not intervene.  Amine may try and he is very competent, but you should prepare to either help him or protect yourselves.  You will need to pay close attention to what I say next and remember what I have already said, to have a good sense of what to do.  My other apprentice and his Fiancee are taking lessons with Alexander, so it really is up to him and the collective of you.”

“What the fuck?” a guy asked, from the back of the class.

“No interruptions.  I will talk fast, pay attention, and think of everything I say through the lens of how it may apply to these Others.”

There was chatter across the room.

“She’s not allowed to hurt us,” Verona murmured, joining that chatter.

“But we’re responsible for our own well being in practical lessons,” Lucy murmured back.

“I bet she pulls a fast one on us, and one of the Others on the stage is like, that book growing legs and walking at us,” Verona whispered.

Durocher spoke, “Binding is your primary defense against Others and it asserts control.  If the situation is too far out of control, then you have little to no recourse.”

Durocher was tense, hyperfocused.

“Bet not,” Lucy whispered, before she started taking notes.

“Identify the Other you are facing.  If you don’t know you won’t know what to do.  You should know who your enemies are and what they do before they strike.  If you’re facing an enemy this strong and you don’t know what it is, you should question what brought you to this situation.”

I’m questioning why I’m taking this class, Lucy thought.

“This is an unfair setup, so I will tell you, I’ve already identified her, and that should be enough for you to start with, if you’ve been keeping up with your studies.”  She indicated the woman with the glowing cracks running across her blue-black body.

Lucy penned down a note.  ‘Janna?’ and then elbowed Verona.

Verona pulled out her phone.

“This is a Compiler Error.  It results from a failed attempt at transplanting or translating an Other or a Self to a system.  There are different kinds in Alchemy, like Seethes and Boils, and there are other kinds in ritual circles gone wrong, like the Dark Design or Umbrage.  Variants on the Compiler Error include the Overflow Error and the Resource Error.  It is material, feral and corrupts.”

She gave the chest freezer a pat in passing.

“Mr. Rudbeck is a Fancy, an old version of a Bugge or Buggane, or an old version of an Urban Legend, though I despise how imprecise that particular term is.  In an era before the printing press, certain ideas or glyphs would take hold, recur in the public consciousness, and find something to latch onto or manifest within.  The recurring story or idea feeds the Fancy, and the Fancy can, on rare occasion, become crafty enough to perpetuate the story that feeds it.  Mr. Rudbeck is one such Fancy, and attained a level of influence approaching that of a lesser divinity.”

Lucy scribbled down notes in short form.  Fancy, divine.  Recurring story.

“When deciphering an Other that you can name or can’t name, it’s good to start at the fundamentals.  Material or immaterial make a fine starting point.  Do they have bodies?  Is that body solid and consistent in form?  I’m not speaking of shapeshifting, but of biology, or if the head remains a head.  If so, they’re material, visceral if you want to use correct terminology.  If they don’t touch ground, their forms are mutable, or they don’t exist primarily in this realm, they may be immaterial.  This can be deceptive.  Our temporary school librarian, for example, is an Anima, and Anima straddle the line in such a way that they can be bound by both the visceral and the immaterial.”

Lucy took notes.  Jannah, immaterial?  Compiler, material.  Rudbeck, ????.

She paused, thinking about John Stiles.

“As a loose rule, you match your diagram to the type of Other.  Either you’re putting something physical down to block a material Other, you’re using symbol or the diffuse to block an immaterial Other, or you’re going to turn to the old standbys.  Fire keeps many things at bay.  Chalk, if you know what to write, is always reliable.  Again, the trick is knowing what to write.”

Verona passed over her phone.  Jannah.  Spirits of the garden, eden, heaven, related to genies.

Lucy penned down some more quick notes.  Heavens/storm/angry.

“Where do they come from?” Mrs. Durocher asked.  “In working out the nature of Others, their point of origin is key.  Do they come from a realm?  Knowing they do immediately hands you a wealth of information, provided you know your way around that realm.  If you know it’s from the Faerie, and I do love this lovely term for a made-up realm, by the by, to refer to it by the plurality of those Others that make it up… if you know, you know you have some basic options, such as iron forged without heat, burning hair or something suitably tainted.  They cannot abide by corruption.  If you know your courts, then you can know what specific items have particular power, for or against.”

Avery had chalk in her bag.  She drew a line across the back of the bench in front of them, which made the guys sitting in front of them twist around, annoyed.  When Avery couldn’t reach any further, she passed it to Verona.  Lucy kept taking notes.

“Which brings us, at long last, to the fundamentals of binding.  You have three primary options.  The positive binding, the negative binding, and the hallow.”

She paused.  Students were paying rapt attention.  The Jannah was muted by her diagram, but the Compiler Error wasn’t, and made wet sounds as it throbbed against the devices that housed it, breathed, and made the machinery strain to work.  Cold air fogged out around the cracked-open lid of the freezer.

“Positive binding.  Surround the Other with something it has an affinity for.  To return to our Fae courts, the Fae of High Spring have an affinity for gold and delicate pieces of art.  They like fine blades and the trappings of aristocracy.  Lay the blade of rapier over the handle of another until you have a circle and you may have something that will keep them in place.  Or gather up jewelry and arrange it so there are no gaps between them.  But be mindful, for the basic principles of diagrams and circles hold.  A lopsided arrangement to your blades or one piece of overvalued jewelry in the set and your circle may fail.  Positive bindings will not be an affront to the Other.  They are, if you’ll remember my earlier hypothetical, much like a case where you’re invited to my office and you cannot find a moment to leave, nor can you easily leave without asking, because of my station.”

She gesticulated with the book in hand.

“Be careful.  Positive bindings do not make effective prisons.  They can be battered down if you are not much stronger than the Other, and if the Other is much stronger than you, the slightest flaw or imperfection may be enough for them to shatter your circle.  They do, however, make good starting points for negotiation.  In essence, we make the Other feel at home.  We surround the Bogeyman with entropy, the Ruins dweller with sentiment, the God with appropriate iconography, the goblin with aggression and damage, the spirit with representative spice, crystal, myrrh, oil, or the tropes of whatever it is that spirit represents.”

Lucy took note of those, deviating from the focus on the three Others as she thought about Kennet Others.

“They will often stay until given cause to leave.  Should you put power into the positive binding, it feeds the Other.  Akin to inviting them to dinner, sparing them from having to find a meal.”

It was hard to imagine something like Alpeana surrounded by tokens of nightmarestuff and being okay with it.  Even if she were invited to dinner.

“Negative bindings are the near opposite.  We surround the Other with unbroken circles or diagrams composed of things opposed to them.  These are the same things that can also take some strength out of the Other if we use them as weapons.  The things a Goblin finds familiar and comfortable are anathema to the Faerie.  Lesser goblins can be bound in circles of flowers, as amusing as the thought is, but most often we use tropes of civilization and refinement.”

Verona had her own notes and showed Lucy.

Goblins: metal with elements in it.  Wires, water pipes.

Lucy nodded and copied down that note.

“For Bogeymen we might use old things in fine condition.  For Ruins dwellers, we want light, clarity, and clear messaging.  Reverse a divinity’s iconography, oppose a spirit’s essence with the contrasting elements or the countering animals or other forces.  If the Other isn’t already hostile, it will be made so by this treatment.  This is, to some, much the same as nailing someone’s feet to the floor.  It is unpleasant, often painful or draining, and it is aggressive.  It is also a good way to ward off the right Other.  You are, essentially, forcing a fish to bash down a door on dry land, or a chimpanzee to bash down a door in deep water.”

Lucy took down notes.  She wasn’t sure how they were supposed to deal with any of the three things, using this information.  This wasn’t like Mr. Lai or Mr. Sitton’s classes, where everything on the test was said out loud in class.  They were expected to listen, take notes, take that information and make a leap in logic for how they were meant to stop one of these things?  It would be hard enough if they knew which of the three it would be.

“Hallows.  Making a place for an Other.  They can occur in nature and may have been the foundation for the very first practitioners to learn how to deal with Others.  Others, like us, need sustenance.  The nature of that sustenance varies wildly, ranging from food, sleep, and drink for the most visceral Others, to specific sentiment or faith for the immaterial.  The Hallow is a shelter that is intended for the long term, and spares most Others the need for sustenance, as the Hallow supplies.  It is, if one dwells on the positive bindings, a place made into a long term home for the Other, within a person, place, or thing.  The place must be hollowed out, treated, and the correct signposts must be set, to guide the right inhabitant to that space.”

Lucy wrote down: Rudbeck, set up a hallow, guide that snake inside?

“Immaterial Others are most inclined to inhabit a hallow.  Spirits, echoes, and incarnations are diffuse enough that they could inhabit anything.  For many visceral others, such as your common goblin or bogeyman, they may require that you break the body first.  The goblin becomes its own hallow.  The bogeyman can be slain, then trapped in an appropriate vessel.  The negative binding, using opposites, then applies to seal the hallow, should you want to trap the Other within.  Put the Bogeyman or echo into a container that suits them and their nature, then seal that container appropriately with something anathema to them, so emerging is harder.  A rusty box surrounded by fine silver chain, an old fashioned syringe of emotional significance, buried in salt.”

“Isn’t Kennet a hallow?” Avery asked, hushed.

“Some of the same ideas,” Lucy whispered back.

“Heads up,” Verona said, sitting up straighter.

Mrs. Durocher was smiling, hands clasping the book in front of her.

Their teacher looked over the room.

“Thus ends the lesson.  Would you like a minute before the practical?” she asked.

Lucy flipped through pages, searching.  What did they have?

She had the weapon ring.

She was pretty sure a good shot would ding the meaty freezer Other.  Would it be contrary to this story Other?  They didn’t know enough.  She didn’t feel like it would do something to the Jannah.

She felt uneasy.  She hadn’t come to this class expecting a disaster.

Some students were moving benches, clearing the way to draw on the floor.

Lucy reached into her bag and dug up a soda can.

“If we use more benches, and extend this diagram…” Verona said.  “Can lightning be fire and light?”

Lucy gripped the can.  Sea Cucumber, which was a carbonated seaweed and cucumber drink in actuality.  Avery had bought it, handing it to Verona in hopes Verona would drink it without checking the brand.  No luck.  Lucy had kept it as a vile thing the goblins might like, or as a possible use of her ring.

She slipped on the weapon ring and ran her hand along the can.

To get closer and see, Kass threw herself at the back of the bench, making it bump into the back of Lucy’s legs.

“I’ve got the hot lead this time around,” Verona said.  “If I’d known you were arming yourself, I’d have got it already.”

“I’m okay.”

“We’re tired, so be careful.”

“Yeah,” Lucy said.

“Hot lead?  You’ve got more gun stuff?” Kass asked.

“This is a binding class,” Verona said.  “Not a shoot the thing class.  I think she’s looking for a specific answer, not firepower.”

“Slowing down the monster until Amine can act could be the answer,” Avery said.

“The answer is taking control,” Lucy said.  “I’m too tired.”

She had to slip past Verona to get out to the aisle.  She approached the stage.

Finger off the trigger, she kept the gun pointed a bit off to the side, ready to aim and shoot if she had to.

“What if I say I’ll shoot you if you let any monsters loose?  Does that bind your actions?” Lucy asked.  “Seems a lot more manageable than dealing with a random monster that scares even an expert practitioner.”

A bunch of students had stopped.

“It’s a good thought.  Commendable.”

“Is it the answer?” Lucy asked.

“Blue Heron Institute students signed deals and are forbidden from harming staff or other students, barring some practical and minor cases.  A gunshot isn’t minor.”

Lucy didn’t waver.  She could feel so many eyes at her back.

Someone touched her shoulder, and she flinched.  It was Avery.

“We didn’t sign anything,” Avery murmured.  “We didn’t submit anything.”

“I know,” Lucy replied, quiet.  “I think she knows.”

“I also did say I would release one of the Others on stage toward the end of class,” Mrs. Durocher said.  “Here we are.  I won’t be called a liar.”

She turned the book toward Lucy.  There was an image of a fairy, small and winged, on it.  She gave the book a shake, and the fairy came out.

It traced a lazy, dazed path around the classroom.

“Thought so!” Verona crowed.

Lucy gave the thing a wary eye.  Small didn’t mean it wasn’t dangerous.

A slam made her jump, and she was glad she didn’t have a finger on the trigger.

“Heads up!” one of the boys from the front row shouted, scrambling back to put the diagram others were drawing on the floor between himself and the stage.

The book had been tossed aside, crossing a diagram.

The fridge thing jerked, then dragged itself forward.  It rose up, bulged with flesh, and popped, a printer or something bulging out the side.  Something that looked like intestine with wire running through it spilled out of it, pooling on the floor.

Lucy aimed and shot.

She couldn’t get over how loud the damn gun was.  She hated it.

“My students may never trust me if I don’t follow through,” Durocher said.

What were they supposed to do?

The thing loomed, growing, and touched the wall.  Wires behind the wall were ripped out, veins and wires snaking along their length, flesh expanding around the holes that had been left behind.  The chest freezer had opened, and flesh-tainted computer parts were spilling out on a tide of ambiguous, translucent flesh.

It approached Durocher, reaching.

“No,” she told it, with an edge to her voice.

It backed off, approaching students instead.  Durocher remained on stage, unflinching, watching.

Parts of it were sectioning off, flesh bridging gaps as it grew.

Lucy backed off, bumping into other students.  There were a few flashes of light, and Kass threw some toy at the thing.  It was a wooden helicopter, and spat out an endless stream of tiny, machine-gun gunshots, cutting off one narrow limb.

More limbs were circling around the walls, films of skin reaching over windows.  The door- she looked back and saw it was already sealed, a hand growing out of the flesh, pressing against it.

It smelled, now that it was out of the circle.  Like meat that was a little off, like burning, and like there was metal in the air.

A bright light washed over everything.  Lucy felt her skin tingle.  Bright, but it didn’t blind.

“Remain where you are.  Amine has it paralyzed, and he’ll trap it in a diagram.  The others are unsummoned,” Durocher addressed the students in the midst of the light.  She walked among and between the students now.  “What you’re feeling right now?  What you felt as you saw it surge?  Hold onto that feeling.  Let it motivate you to never feel that way again.  The next time may well be the time you face something like this in reality.”

“This wasn’t fair,” Raquel said.  “No right answer, you wanted to scare us?”

“I told you the right answer early on.  If you face something this big and you’re not certain of what it is and how to deal with it, you should question how you got to that position.  The first rule of self preservation, even if you’re as capable as I, Mr. Belanger, Mr. Sunshine, Mr. Bristow, or Mr. Musser are, is that you should run when outmatched.”

“We should’ve walked out?” Avery asked.

“Why not?  Some of the older students did.  I think I scared them in prior classes, the poor souls sat in the back row as if they expected this.”

The light was fading.  The Error was just a chest freezer now, and it was shut.  Amine wrapped it in a chain, and with each loop he wrapped it, it sank further into the floor.

“Class dismissed.  If you’re interested in any particular aspect of the process of binding, I can point you toward reading material,” Mrs. Durocher addressed them.

Lucy pulled off her ring and carried the can over to her stuff.

“We learned stuff,” Verona said.

“I’m so tired,” Lucy said.

“You used the weapon ring without a power source.  I know you’ve been working on that with your trainer, but that’s a lot,” Avery said.  She scooped up Snowdrop, who was guarding the bags with half-lidded eyes, now that the danger had passed.

“I think I’d be tired without that.  Let’s eat?” Lucy asked.  “And nap?”

“So long as we don’t sleep through classes,” Verona said.  They left class, heading toward their room, looking back at Durocher having a casual conversation with Amine, while he bound the freezer.

“Eating and napping sounds good,” Avery said.  “Oh, hey, Raquel.”

Lucy looked.  Raquel and Yadira were trailing behind.  Kass had left out the other door.

“What’s up?” Raquel asked.  “You guys smell like blood, you know.”

“Maybe eat, nap and shower,” Lucy murmured to Verona.

Avery talked while walking backward, “I wanted to ask, you’re a magic item collector, right?”

“I got some training.”

“Was that training with Bristow?  Or was Kass’s?”

“Uhh… yeah?  I awoke at ten, spent a year with family, got training with him for a year after.  Families as big as mine find it useful to have at least one person with the know-how for magic item handling in-house.  Why?”

“Trying to figure out how things connect here,” Avery said.  “How was it?”

“He rambles, but he’s a good guy.  Knows his stuff.  If you end up studying with him, either as an apprentice or as a student in classes here, be prepared for him to get distracted for chunks of time.  When I was apprenticing, it was new tech, errands, passion projects.  Try to keep asking what you should be working on next, so you’re ready if he forgets about you for a bit.”

“Good to know,” Avery said.  “I think I’ll stick with the Finder stuff, though.”

They were only halfway down the hall, and Raquel indicated a room.  “My stop.”

“Talk to you again, maybe?” Avery asked.

“Cool,” Raquel said.

They continued on to their own room, at the end of the hall.  Lucy gave her arms tentative sniffs.  Did she smell like blood?  Was that from Guilherme’s wound?  Or the Dark Spring Faerie?  Or setting up wards?

“Good line of thought,” Lucy observed, when there were no more other students in earshot.

“Charles said Bristow used to be a collector.  Stuff here’s all interwoven,” Avery said.  They entered their room.

“It’s not just us, then,” Verona said.  “The strife thing?”

“Yeah,” Lucy said.  “Okay, so… that’s worth looking out for.  Yadira, Kass, and Raquel are in Bristow’s camp, then, and Alexander is messing with them?”

“We could use that,” Verona said.

“Maybe.  But I’d really rather try and stay neutral,” Lucy said.

“You?  Neutral?” Verona asked.

“They’re both jerks.  Alexander and Bristow.  And being on the fence makes us less of a target and gives them reasons to encourage and support us,” Lucy said.  “Let’s get the information we need and work from there.  We have a good starting point on binding.”

“We’ll need to look up the specifics.  And figure out what it takes to bind various Others,” Avery said.  “Cover the bases.”

Dog of War, Goblins, Faerie… we’ll have to look up the Faerie courts…

Matthew and Edith.

Where to even begin with those two?

“And, to throw a wrinkle into things,” Lucy said, stretching out on the bed, “how do you bind something that’s technically already bound?”

“Bind the binding?” Verona asked.

Lucy nodded, but pressed a finger to her lips.

“Want to write down your order?” Avery asked, holding up a piece of paper.

“I’m too tired to get- to want to get up,” Lucy protested.  “Write it down for me?  Make it a deli sandwich.  Roast beef, mustard, fries.”

“Vitamin C,” Verona told Lucy.

“…and salad, I guess.”

“Got it,” Avery said.  “Ronnie?”

“Same.  Why not?  Make it a half sandwich.”

“Cool.  I’m not that into eating meat, so veggie fajita for me and Snowdrop.  Milk for Snow.  Anything else?”

That was a no.  Avery put the slip of paper into the door, then collapsed back into the bed.  Snowdrop unfolded into human shape.

“Hey Ave, did you manage to stop in at home or figure anything out about the situation with your dad?” Lucy asked.

“Nah.”

“I feel like that would eat me alive,” Lucy admitted.  “Wondering.”

“It doesn’t feel great,” Avery said.

“Way to remind her,” Verona bapped Lucy.

“Rip off the bandaid?” Lucy suggested.  “Not trying to boss you around-”

“Nah, you’re fine,” Avery said, turning over onto her belly.  She had her phone out now.  “Hrm.”

“-I just don’t want you getting twisted up over the summer and then having the weight of an entire summer’s wondering hitting you on top of the usual anxiety.”

“Yeah,” Avery said. “Okay.  Okay.  Cool.”

She tapped on her phone for a minute.  Then she placed it on her bedside table.

“Asked Sheridan to put out feelers to dad.”

“Sheridan?” Lucy asked.  “Huh.”

“She got a bunch of big sister points before I left.  Depending on how she handles this, it’s sorta double or nothing.”

“Feel better, knowing it’s out of your hands?” Verona asked.

“Yeah.  Yeah.”

“Good luck,” Lucy said.

“I hope I don’t need it.”

Lucy smiled sympathetically, looking over.  Snowdrop was conked out, and Avery fiddled on her phone without much aim, going to the same page three times.  Lucy shut her own eyes.

All four of them were fast asleep when the food arrived.  Lucy dreamed, and the last waking thought that led the way in that dreaming was a riff on what Durocher had tried to instill.

Did they really belong out in front of this imminent disaster with the Carmine Beast?

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