disadvantage to anything I did.
“So I did what I wanted to do. What I wanted to do was scare her. I mean, I could not hurt her in any other way, so I said, ‘Lamia, I know you. I call you by your true name. I deliver now to you my curse. Hear me! Unlawfully you have drunk my blood and taken it inside you. That blood I call upon now to curse and unmake you. It has the poisons placed in it by Dr. Fell, the poison that will erase your mind. He told me the minute and second that his poisons would begin to act. You told me that my powers and spells are helpless before his powers. But your powers are the same as mine, Lamia, and are bound by the same rules. You believe that Dr. Fell’s little molecular engines are beginning to dissolve your brain, don’t you? You are helpless.’
“She screamed and raised the scalpel, ‘Weep and shriek! Weep and shriek! It is what children do when they are about to die!’
“I laughed in her face. ‘Then part this shell of flesh that encumbers me, Mother of Vampires! The mortal part of me I always knew would die! Strike!’
“The knife came down toward my face, and it… jumped… out of her fingers, hung in the air before her face, unsupported, hovering.
“Then it moved and stabbed her in her eye.
“She flung herself backward, with blood and vitreous humor gushing from her ruined face.
“She screamed again, this time in anger, and started running toward the door, pulling hair ornaments out of her hair with both hands, and flipping them open into little throwing knives and hooks. She was running to the attack.
“I turned my head and saw what she was running at.
“Headmaster Boggin stood in the doorway, with Dr. Fell half a step behind him.
“Boggin had his hands clutching the doorframe, and his face was dark with wrath. His black robes started to billow around him, and his hair flew up out of its ponytail, came entirely unraveled, and started whipping around his face. His mortarboard went flying off. He braced his legs, and his chest swelled up to twice its size. Then (as his shirt was ripped into shreds) three times its size. Then he trembled and swelled up to four times his size.
“Dr. Fell, looking slightly bored, opens his third eye, and the little knives and sharp hair ornaments halt in midair, hang there a moment, and jump up to embed themselves in the ceiling boards, out of reach.
“And the Headmaster blows. Don’t imagine the puff-cheeks and pursed-up lips of a man whistling. Imagine a man opening his mouth as wide as possible, in a scream of utmost rage which is tearing out his lungs and guts and bowels. Now imagine a wind tunnel, one of those big ones that they use to test supersonic jets, with all its air compressed down and forced through an opening the size of the man’s mouth. Also imagine the temperature dropping to below zero in one second.
“That’s what happened. A hurricane exploded out of Boggin’s mouth, one of those tornado things that can pick up a piece of straw and impale it through a solid wood fence. The Lamia was picked up and thrown through the bank of windows on the far side of Dr. Fell’s office, knocking out concrete bricks as she went. Everything else in the room went flying up, too, including the table I was strapped onto, except Fell pointed his finger at the table and the metal bars bent out and grabbed onto the ceiling, and hung there while the hurricane blasted past.
“There’s not that much more to tell. Fell says, ‘Headmaster, that blow won’t kill her, not if that was Lamia.’
“Boggin says, ‘It was Lamia. Our Mr. Nemo would not be mistaken about such a thing. Get him down from there and untie him at once. We will have to organize a search for her. I don’t care if it takes all night; we must find her.’
“ ‘Are you worried that she knows what we are teaching our charges, here?’
“ ‘I take it you did not hear Mr. Nemo’s brilliant analysis of the situation. She’s not going to remember.’
“ ‘Then why worry?’
“ ‘Never mind what I am worried about, my dear Ananias. Just do as I say, there’s a good lad.’
“ ‘Do you think to keep this hidden? Everyone heard the sonic boom.’
“ ‘Not if they are using ears that hear sounds carried by the air. Only my brother, Corus, would hear it. Go! And use your molecular engines to rebuild this wall, while you are at it. As soon as Grendel’s hound finds a scent, I’ll come out and help look. I can see this is going to be a late night.’
“Here’s the epilogue to my story. Headmaster Boggin got me off of that damn gurney, and brought me to the kitchen, and woke up the Cook. He sent Cook out with the search parties, and stood there at the stove in his ripped clothes (even his pants were ripped; he had to borrow some jeans from Cook), and made me some chicken soup himself.
“I started crying in earnest then. And he put his arm around me, and told me what a good boy I was. He said not to worry about what she had done, because trying to humiliate a man’s pride is simply another form of attack, as much as stabbing someone. Unlike a knife wound, this cuts only as deep as you let it.
“And he said he was proud of me, proud of how bravely I had stood up to Lamia, and he only regretted that I would forget all this in the morning. He sat there and comforted me while I cried on his shoulder and ate soup.”
15
1.
As we continued to hike, my duffel bag got heavier and heavier with every step. The little white clouds of breath hanging before my lips began to turn into puffs. I asked for a break.
Victor called a halt for lunch. We sat in a circle on a patch of dry ground beneath an overhanging rock erected by some ancient peoples. We rummaged through our bags, trying to find the most perishable things to eat first. Unfortunately, the things every housewife knows, none of us knew, so we just sort of guessed that maybe the peaches should be eaten first, as well as some of the hors d’oeuvres, fish pate and caviar, and little spicy hot dog things.
“The most elegant escape ever,” commented Colin, passing me a cracker with caviar on it.
I bit into it. “Bleh. This might have gone bad already.”
“No, it’s supposed to taste that way,” Colin asserted.
Vanity said to Quentin, “So is Headmaster Boggin an enemy, or is he trying to help us, or what?”
Victor answered her: “He’s an enemy. An enemy who is nice and polite is a nice, polite enemy, not a friend. We have a tool to blackmail him, though: we can tell the other factions that Boggin intended to use us in the war against them.”
I said to Quentin: “What is your name?”
He smiled back at me. “Quentin Nemo.”
“No, I mean, you said Dr. Fell told you what your real name is.”
“If you promise not to tell anyone my real name, I’ll tell you. You all must promise.”
Four voices spoke at once: “Sure, I promise.” “I’ll do whatever you say, Quentin.” “I’ll never talk, Big Q. Bring on the naked torture girls!” “Not knowing what information is useful to the enemy, it is only logical to tell them nothing.”
Quentin said, “I was born Eidotheia, son of Proteus.”
Four faces stared at him blankly. Colin shrugged. “Are we supposed to recognize that name? Is it one of the women Zeus ravished or something? I lost track in class after the bull, the swan, and the shower of gold.”
“Proteus is a man. The Old Man of the Sea. The greatest of seers and magicians who ever lived. He could take any shape as pleased him, and his wisdom is as deep as the ocean.”
Vanity said, “Who is your mother?”
“Dr. Fell said I had three mothers. Do not ask me the biological arrangements, Dr. Fell did not go into details. Their names are Enyo, Deino, and Pemphredo.”
