Every Eternal within ten feet stops, furiously shaking their heads at me.
Tossing my pencil onto the table, I glare at my team of magical assistants. “Help me out here! Are you sure there’s nothing else available from previous events?” The Eternal librarian shakes her head mournfully and leaves me to the well-thumbed stack of notes before me.
“Oh H, I think the magic made a mistake. Look at me! I’ve been working on this, the very first step in the planning process, for hours on end. And what have I got to show for it? A paper cut, an inch of ash and an empty trash bin. Fate got it wrong. I’m not meant to be here.”
I bury my head into my arms, sniffling to hold back the fat tears that threaten to spill. H swoops down beside me, nuzzling his snout into my shoulder in solidarity.
“Listen ta me, Nat. I swear on my old stone at tha Bodleian, tha magic has never, ever, ever got it wrong. Look at tha past week. Ya left all yer friends and family in London and moved up ta Oxford. Ya found a dead body on yer first mornin’ at work. Then ya discovered yer cat is a wyvern, an’ yer grandpa’s fairy tales were real. Yer family has magic in tha blood. Ya barely batted an eyelash. Who coulda dealt wiff all that better than ya did?”
I wipe my nose on a scrap of paper, snickering when I realise what I’ve done. H is right, I’m being awfully hard on myself. I mean, my entire handover and training consisted of a single letter tucked into a locked desk.
Blowing my hair out of my face, I push back from the table, smoothing out my wrinkled top. “H, we need to get out of this library. When event planning block hits, there’s only one thing that solves it.”
“Sure thing, Nat. Wot’s that?”
“Ice cream. Ideally salted caramel, but I’m too desperate right now to be picky.”
“Yassssss! Iffen ya want ice cream, ya can’t do better than a G&D’s special.”
H and I head out onto the pavement. The sun is shining. The birds are singing. This is probably one of our last days of late summer before the autumn chill sets in. Perfect weather for a walk. I wander down the block, passing the entrance to my townhouse. There are four cars in the front carpark, I wonder if one of them belongs to my neighbour. I’ve heard him bumping around up there a few times but have yet to meet him. Another item for my To Do list. But not now. Now is for ice cream.
I pause at the corner, realising I’ve lost my partner in crime. “H? Aittcchhhhh??? Where did you go?”
He’s five meters behind me, sitting at the bus stop in front of Dr Radcliffe’s mansion. I turn back, marching until I’m facing him.
He looks at me, a picture of confusion. “Wot?”
I wave my hands at the idyllic scene around us. “What are you doing?”
“I’m waitin’ fer tha number six, should be here any minute.”
I glance upwards, checking again to see if there’s some black cloud looming on the horizon. For once, the sky is empty except for a few birds. If I squint my eyes, I can make out the city centre off in the distance. It can’t be that far to this ice cream shop. “We’re not taking the bus. The whole point of this little adventure is to get some fresh air and hopefully inspire some fresh ideas for the gala.”
H, still seated on the bus stop bench, looks up in confusion. “I thought tha point of this ‘ere trip was ice cream. ‘Ave ya thought about how short my little legs are? Or ‘ow tired my wings get flappin’ around? I can’t go that far.”
Right as the guilt settles into my stomach, I remember the scene I spotted from my kitchen window last evening. “You spent 45 minutes running laps around the college gardens last night. Your leg length and wing span didn’t seem to bother you then.”
“That ain’t a fair comparison. There was a mouse.”
“Well, now there’s an ice cream waiting. Come on.” I nod my head encouragingly a few times and move on. He’ll catch up if he wants his own cone.
After another couple of blocks, I remember that I have no idea where we’re going. “What was the name of the ice cream place? A&Bs? C&Ds?”
H huffs, reducing a small pile of autumn leaves into ash. “G&D’s. It’s an Oxford classic. There’s one not ta far from ‘ere… Can I ‘ave sprinkles on my cone?”
Brushing ash off my trousers, I give H the side-eye. “Do cats like sprinkles?”
Winking, he replies, “No, but wyverns do.”
We cross over in front of the Radcliffe Observatory. Oxford is so different from any other university I’ve seen. Rather than having a discrete campus, their buildings ramble across the city and even out into the countryside. Homes, shops, restaurants and schools intermingle with historic halls and modern departmental high-rises. The thirty-eight colleges which make up the university sit tucked away behind stone walls and iron gates.
I can feel the itch to explore crawling up my back. I probably should have ventured out over the weekend instead of closing myself in the library, but the weather was so dreary I couldn’t work up any enthusiasm. This is the problem of living a hundred meters from the office.
H’s shout snaps me out of my doldrums. “Oi, Sid! Gatherin’ up for tha winter yet?”
I follow H’s gaze, spotting a bushy-tailed squirrel scurrying up a tree trunk. After it deposits a nut, it turns around and waves an arm in our direction. Until that moment, I didn’t know a squirrel could give someone the finger. Hopefully, this is part of the magic that only I can see.
H flaps up, whacking my arm with his wing. “See, I told ya there’re more of us Eternals. Just think, ya coulda been stuck wiff
