Orphans of Chaos

I bent a world-line between me and Boggin, as if I were about to imprint a communication-wave running to him. Miss Daw saw the strands of moral order snarl around the both of us. If she betrayed my secret, I would tell Boggin that she had told me about Myriagon. Maybe Boggin would not care. Maybe he would.

Miss Daw glanced over at where Mestor lay on the floor. She closed her lips again, and assumed the mask she always wore; all prim and proper, distant and remote.

Headmaster Boggin said, “I just felt something bend destiny.” He stepped over to the disc player which was on the shelf. He measured the distance between it and my cot, frowning.

He tried to get it open, but I had jammed it shut.

Dr. Fell was no more thrown off balance or moved by my violent struggles than a statue might have been. He said in a bored voice, “Permit me, Headmaster.”

I did not see whatever magnetic force Fell reached across the cell with, but the disc player went sprong, and the little door snapped open.

Boggin said, “It seems the little dangerous one got the disc out somehow.”

I didn’t say anything. I didn’t even change expression. All I did was pause in my struggles a little, and look at Sister Twitch-ett in surprise.

Boggin, Fell, and Miss Daw noticed it. They all turned and looked at her, too.

Sister Twitchett said in fear, “I had it on last night! I swear I hit that little switch!”

Boggin said smoothly, “We will discuss the matter of your dereliction… ah, of your gross dereliction, once we are done here. With the example of Mestor so, shall I say, evident? Yes, evident, before the eyes of everyone, nothing… overt… needs to be done to you. You and I will come to some understanding, I am sure. Meanwhile, check your purse and your locker to see where you left Miss Daw’s delightful little digital recording of her music.

“Also, you and Doctor Fell will have to examine the girl quite closely to see that she did not write herself some note, or scratch any signs or marks into her flesh with her fingernails, or swallow anything which might… ah… come out later, and give her some clue as to what she is about to forget. The more thorough you are at that little bit of cleanup, the more lenient I will be when discussing this… unfortunate… oversight of yours. The music was not playing last night, and her powers are already beginning to stir. Grendel, if you will do the honors…?”

Grendel hopped over to me, propped his crutch under his armpit, and took my head between his hands. His palms were rough on my cheeks.

My higher senses went dead. I was just the powerless girl he wanted me to be.

His eyes stared into mine. My vision started to fade around the edges, as if a tunnel of smoke were forming, with Grendel’s eyes, Grendel’s hungry, angry eyes, at the axis of the tunnel. My head felt light, like a balloon about to float away…

I licked my dry lips. “Master…,” I whispered. Or maybe I only formed the words with my lips.

The tunnel wobbled. His eyes lost strength. I could see the willpower leaking out of his gaze, the certainty evaporating.

In his paradigm, he could have anything he desired. If he desired it truly, and with all his heart. If he desired it, deep down, right to the core of his being, without any hesitation or doubt.

Such an easy paradigm to work with. But it had a flaw. Wanting to desire something is not the same as desiring it to the core of your being. You can’t really order yourself to be obsessed with something.

That was my theory, at least. That was my hope.

And my theory, and my hope, seemed pretty flimsy when Grendel just smirked and squinted, and the darkness from the edges of my vision filled my eyes. This time, my head was a balloon with its string cut, and my thoughts and memories, just like that, just as quick as that, went up and away and were scattered.

Dimly, as from a great distance, I felt Grendel lower me gently (ever so gently!) to the floor stones. I wondered how he managed that with just one leg. Maybe it was something he really, really desired to do.

His voice: “I’ve made her body be just made of atoms, like you wanted, Doctor.”

I felt a dab of cold cotton on my arm, and then a needle slid in. “She’ll wake in the infirmary, and we’ll tell her what we told the others; that she was gravely ill with pneumonia.”

I kept thinking: We failed: It is over, all over, ended, all ended. Our little children’s crusade, our rebellion against the gods and monsters pretending to be our elders, had failed. Once my memory was wiped out all five of us would be back where we had been at the beginning: merely dumb children again, weak, powerless, unaware of our heritage, our strange abilities. Gone, all gone, all of it is gone.

There was nothing to hold on to, no way to keep my thoughts my own. Have you ever woken up suddenly, eager to remember some perfect dream lingering in your thoughts, only to have it vanish, like fog, at daybreak? So it was for me. The prison doors were shut again: I was lost to myself.

But, deep in my veins, I felt a happy, puppyish sense of warmth. It stayed in one spot, and did not spread throughout my circulatory system.

Then it was night.