Lucky Rabbit

Everyone turned to stare at the princess, and Geraldine blurted out, “But you can’t be!”

The person Pandy noticed, however, was Isidor, who turned a sickly yellowish color and looked like he might vomit. Quickly, he stood and moved toward Eleanor, saying, “You haven’t even had your-”

Eleanor’s head lifted, her eyes flashing fire at her bodyguard. “I have!” She looked around at the others, and said, “A few days after my sixth birthday, Lord Winston showed up in the garden. I thought he was just a puppy who had wandered in somehow, but when my mother saw him…” She trailed off, and tears rose to her eyes.

“She said I couldn’t tell anyone I was a Nature mage. That people would think she did something really bad. So I couldn’t go to school after all, and I’d probably have to go live somewhere else – somewhere really far away, where no one would find out.” A tear trickled down her cheek, and she sniffled. “I was really sad, but Mother said that as long as I pretended to be someone else, maybe I could go to school after all.”

Clutching at the necklace that altered her appearance, she said, “But it’s really, really hard. And I don’t want to keep lying to everyone. So…can you…not tell?”

Everyone nodded immediately, though Isidor had his face in his hands, so Pandy couldn’t tell what he was thinking. She was fairly certain part of his job was to keep Eleanor from doing exactly what she’d just done, so he was probably wondering just how much trouble he was in. Abbington, for his part, just looked very confused. He was the only one of the group who didn’t already know Eleanor was the princess, so his bewilderment was understandable.

“Why canchabe Nat’r?” he asked. “‘S nogood?”

Eleanor bit her lip, then, apparently deciding that she might as well reveal all of her secrets at once, she lifted her necklace over her head. As the chain slipped free, the sturdy, brown-haired girl sitting there changed into the ethereally lovely princess, her hair falling in a natural cascade of platinum silk that made Pandy reach up to tuck a few strands of frizzy hair back in the general direction of the bun perched precariously on top of her head.

Abbington’s eyes almost bugged out of his head, and he pulled off his glasses, rubbing them with his handkerchief as if he thought they might have turned into funhouse mirrors. “Who’satnow?” he demanded. “Ellie?”

The princess nodded. “My real name is Eleanor. I’m…the princess.”

The Valley boy blinked. “Princessawhat?”

Eleanor giggled. “West Altheric. The country. My mother is Queen Regent Louisa, and my brother is Prince Kaden.” Pandy noticed, as none of the younger children did, that she didn’t name her father. Was that because he was dead, or because some part of her understood that there was a possibility that he wasn’t actually her father? Not her biological father, in any case.

Abbington pointed at her. “Yera princess? Wi’acrown ‘n all?”

Another giggle escaped the girl as she pulled her necklace back down over her head. In an instant, fluffy brown curls surrounded her small, freckled face, and she could have been Geraldine’s slightly smaller sister.

“With a crown and all. I’m also seven,” she told them, lifting her chin. “Not six. I would have been a first-year last year, but then Winston showed up. Mother decided it was best if I pretend to be younger, to make it less likely anyone will guess who I am.”

“But your name is still Ellie,” Thaniel burst out. “Why didn’t you change it?”

Eleanor’s cheeks turned pink. “I kept forgetting,” she admitted. “So we had to leave it. But there are plenty of girls named Eleanor and Ellie. Mother says that after I was born, lots of people named their babies after me.”

The same kind of thing happened in Pandy’s world, so she believed it. There weren’t any other Eleanors at Falconet that Pandy knew of, but they would be the princess’s age or younger, so the full onslaught would probably show up in a year or two.

Abbington sat back, shaking his head. Pointing at Pandy, he said, “Yer dead?”

Pandy winced, but nodded. “Probably?”

The finger shifted to Thaniel. “An’yera Darkmage.” This was not a question, but Thaniel nodded as well. He looked almost disappointed that everyone was taking his big revelation so well.

“An’ aprincess.” Eleanor, of course. She gave a regal tilt of her chin.

At last, he pointed at Geraldine, squinting slightly behind his glasses. “An’ what’reyou?”

The girl’s cheeks grew pink, and she set her shoulders. “Miss Geraldine Reedsley, daughter of Lord Captain Corbin Reedsley, and Lady Alice Reedsley.”

Abbington puffed out his breath in a sigh of relief. “Jussa normal noble’en? Goodon. ThoughtIwas s’rounded.”

Geraldine looked as if she wasn’t sure whether she should be insulted, but then laughed, her boisterous good humor clearing a good bit of the tension from the room. At least it did until she turned to Isidor. “Who are you, then, Izzy?”

For a moment, Isidor’s face had lost that sick look, but now it came back, along with pinched, tight lips. “Nobody,” he muttered.

Eleanor opened her mouth, probably to explain that he was her bodyguard, then closed it. They were sharing secrets, yes, but only their own. If Isidor wouldn’t – or couldn’t – say anything, she was enough of a diplomat to leave it alone, and Pandy wasn’t going to throw Isidor under the bus, either. After all, while she’d been run over by a truck, not a bus, she wasn’t going to force anyone else to have the same experience, however metaphorical.

Pandy released Thaniel, clapping her hands to draw their attention back to her. “Well,” she said, as cheerfully as possible, “that will help quite a bit with today’s lesson!”

All five children turned to stare at her. Thaniel’s face fell. “You mean there’s actually gonna be a lesson?” He flopped back, splaying out his arms. “My brain’s tired already!”

Pandy didn’t quite laugh, but it was close. She knew exactly how that felt, and while this little secret-sharing session had gone better than she’d hoped, it was also exhausting. It almost seemed like she should let them relax, but she really did have something she wanted to try.

“Well,” she said, “if you don’t want to learn a spell today, then-”

Thaniel shot up like he’d been pulled with a string, and he stared at Pandy. “You mean a Dark spell?”

She shook her head. “Unless an elemental is involved, spells don’t have any alignment.” At least according to Notes from the Far Side of Dawn, they didn’t, though the user’s natural affinity could certainly affect the outcome. “The problem is that all of you already have elementals. That means you’re using their – our – power without even being aware of it.”

Isidor looked down at Tempest, who was poking her head out of his pocket. “I thought that was only if you’ve formed a contract with them,” he said.

You mean like you have? Pandy thought, but she certainly wasn’t going to press him on that. She nodded. “It certainly becomes easier and more obvious after a contract, and the more elementals you contract with, or the stronger they are, the more they’ll influence you. I think that’s the real reason nobles don’t use spells like the commoners do. All nobles have elementals, which means their spells are much more likely to go wrong when a powerful affinity gets involved. It’s easier to just tell an elemental what to do, anyway.”

Looking around at the fascinated ring of little faces, Pandy explained a little more of the fundamentals she’d gleaned from the very helpful little book. She wasn’t even sure if some of the things it said were still common knowledge, or if, as Isidor had told Thaniel, spells were now seen as ‘common’ and therefore avoided. Of course, there was always the possibility that the book was wrong, but Pandy didn’t think so.

“Elementals are drawn to people who already have magic that’s attuned to their own,” she told them, paraphrasing the book. “Whether it’s similar or complementary depends on the elemental. There are some elementals that will never choose to come to certain people, no matter how hard they try, or what offerings they make. That means that all of you have magic that’s already perfectly matched to that of your companions.”

Thaniel frowned. “So I’m usin’ your magic?”

Pandy bit her lip. This was the bit she really wasn’t comfortable with. Reading all of this in the book was one thing, but it didn’t really make sense when it came to her and Thaniel. Had Thaniel healed her with her own magic? She’d barely had any Mana at all back then, so wouldn’t she have run out if he’d used it? But if he wasn’t using her magic, then why was his so definitely Dark? According to the book, his own magic shouldn’t be that strongly aligned. But other than the foggy and, yes, slightly creepy light Isidor had helped him with, everything he’d tried had gone…badly.

“I think so,” she said. Maybe. If he wasn’t being influenced by her – or rather, Ascyra – then what was going on? But now wasn’t the time to worry about it. Right now, she just needed to get him past his fear.

“So,” she said, settling back and drawing herself up, “I want you all to try not to use anyone’s magic but your own. Think about building a wall around yourself, or covering yourself up with a blanket, or just standing alone in a room, without anyone or anything else nearby.”

All of the children squinched their eyes shut obediently, and it was incredibly difficult for Pandy to resist booping all of their noses. Somehow she held herself back, though, focusing on their elementals instead. Meeting brown, then yellow, then reddish-orange eyes, Pandy shook her head, lifting her finger to her lips, and wiggled herself away from Thaniel.

Miss Cupcakes flicked her tail, but rolled over on her side, no longer touching Geraldine, though she acted as if moving had been entirely her own idea. Lord Winston drooped even more than usual as he took one step away from Eleanor. He definitely wasn’t happy about it. Not that he ever really looked happy about anything, unless he was chasing something. Only Tempest gave Pandy a dismissive glance and retreated back into Isidor’s pocket. Which, honestly, was only to be expected.

“Now, repeat after me,” Pandy said, her voice as quiet as she could make it. “Twist of lip, sharp and true, whistle through.”

Four voices echoed her, with Isidor mumbling along. As they finished, a loud tweet cut through the room, completely covering what Pandy thought might have been at least one short, breathy puff. Everyone turned to look at Abbington, who turned bright red.

“C’nwhistle,” he said, scratching his cheek. “Call’n th’sheep. Know what’slike”

Everyone laughed, and Pandy said, “All right, this time just Ellie, Thaniel, and Geraldine.”

Once again, the three said the little charm, and this time they all heard the sound of something that wasn’t quite a whistle, but wasn’t any other natural expulsion of air, either. Pandy looked over at Abbington again. “Can you whistle for us? Just an example.” She put her lips together and blew, achieving nothing but an embarrassingly moist sound. He laughed, but whistled, the sound almost as piercing as the one produced by his spell.

“Think about that,” Pandy told them. “Just focus on it, but keep the wall up, or the blanket over your head. Just a whistle, nothing else.”

This time Eleanor got it, and then it was Geraldine’s turn. No matter how many times Thaniel tried, however, he couldn’t seem to produce more than a distant, hollow sound that could have been a moan, or wind passing between stones. And the more times he tried, the more his shoulders sank, until eventually he had his arms wrapped around himself, fingers twisted into his shirt, looking miserable.

Pandy just didn’t understand. Why did it work for everyone else, but not for him? Was it because she was his elemental? The book had skimmed over this whole thing so quickly that it had seemed like it was simply stating something so obvious that it really didn’t even need to be said, and that was borne out by the ease with which the other children picked it up.

“I don’t wanna do this any more,” Thaniel said, after yet another failure. Everyone else could make whistles easily by now, with Geraldine and Eleanor almost as good at it as Abbington. Even Isidor had done it once, with an ease that only made Thaniel pull himself in even tighter.

Pandy swallowed against the hot burn of tears. What had she been thinking? She didn’t know what she was doing. She should have stuck to pretending, to letting the children play and have fun, and left the teaching to the experts. Now she’d made Thaniel feel a hundred times worse. Instead of just hiding his magic, now he felt like he was a failure, and it was all her fault.

“I’m sorry, Thaniel,” she told him, desperately trying to keep her tears at bay. She was supposed to be the adult, and adults didn’t cry in front of children. Right?

Thaniel’s small body was curled in on itself, and it was obvious that he, too, was holding back tears with everything he had. His shirt was pulled taut by the grip of his trembling fingers, and when Pandy reached out to hug him, he flinched away.

“Thaniel?” she asked, feeling the other children crowd closer as well, equally concerned.

Thaniel jerked back away from them all, and as he did, Pandy caught a hint of deep red where his collar button had pulled apart. Had he actually scratched himself? Quickly, she cast Minor Heal.

Minor Heal successful. Healed Thaniel for 20 HP.

Twenty? There was no way that was right. If Thaniel was hurt that badly, he would be screaming. Wouldn’t he? Pandy’s hand darted out, grasping the collar of Thaniel’s shirt and tugging it to the side. In her urgency, she pulled harder than she meant to, the many points of Strength she’d acquired causing the fabric to tear, and pushing Thaniel’s hands aside. Everyone froze.

Thaniel’s chest was covered in scars. In fact, it was more scar than skin, with the shiny tissue pulled and twisted along long, deep lines that had to have gouged or even shattered his ribs. Rather than long-healed pink or silvery skin, however, the whole thing was inflamed, burning a deep, angry red. And there, just over his heart, sat a hard, black lump, half-buried in his flesh.