Lucky Rabbit

Eleanor liked the pants. She liked the pants, and she liked her room, and she liked eating the stale bread and butter Isidor brought home from the market because it was all that was left by the time he got there. She slept in Pandy’s bed with Hazel, and she liked that, too.

Isidor was less pleased with the situation, in no small part because he had to be the adult when Pandy wasn’t there. Pandy thought about pointing out that Empress Glory was technically an adult, too, but the Empress was picking her teeth with a knife at the time, so she didn’t. Fortunately, Eleanor was a well-behaved child, so as long as Isidor kept playing games with her, she was fine. He slept in his room, on top of anything soft-ish he could find, which included any number of ratty old sheets that had once been draped over furniture that Pandy had used to repair the house.

Empress Glory had apparently spent a good deal of the time since Pandy was last home prowling around the house, poking her nose into every nook and cranny. She was quite disgruntled that Nox appeared whenever she found something interesting or tried to figure out how to get into the office. She didn’t even bother to make up an excuse for why she wanted to get in, just shrugged, as if daring Pandy to comment. Pandy did not.

As it turned out, the new clothes were actually old ones, because Glory had raided the walk-through closet attached to the master bedroom, which was also where she found a rather elaborate sewing kit someone had shoved to the back of a shelf and forgotten.

“There are silver scissors, just like the ones the ladies use at court,” Eleanor said, miming cutting fabric. The kit and the scissors sounded expensive, and Pandy was absolutely certain she would never see them, even though they probably technically belonged to her. That was all right, because Eleanor was happy, and Pandy only knew how to sew a button back on and stitch a hole closed for someone who didn’t care that their clothes would forever look like Dr. Frankenstein used them for practice before the Big Day.

There was only one thing in the closet that Pandy knew and cared about, and while she had never been the type to confront anyone about anything, she somehow found herself staring straight at Empress Glory and saying, “I want my dress back.” The words didn’t even stick in her throat. They just slipped out like she’d meant to say them, which she only kind of did.

Empress Glory gave her a flat, disinterested look. “What dress?”

Pandy had been sitting on the floor in the main room of the servants’ quarters, listening to Eleanor and Isidor – mostly Eleanor – talk, but now she stood up. Glory was leaning against the frame of the door to her bedroom, and Pandy crossed the space between them as if it didn’t exist. She’d never noticed before that she was slightly taller than the other woman, but now she found that she could look down her nose at the Empress, and she did exactly that as she said, “The white one. The beautiful one. The one that doesn’t belong to you.”

It didn’t belong to Pandy, either. It belonged to Clara, and even though Pandy would probably never get to see the heroine wear it to the Midwinter Ball, it was Clara’s, and while Pandy actually liked the Empress, she couldn’t have it. Someday, Pandy would give it to Clara, and then Clara could do whatever she wanted with it.

Empress Glory’s chin hitched up, the slim knife she’d been using as everything from a toothpick to a dual fingernail trimmer and cleaning device once again coming into play as she gently twirled an artfully draped strand of hair around it. How she didn’t cut through the hair, Pandy had no idea. Eventually, however, one corner of her mouth hitched up, and she gave a grudging nod. “All right. You should take better care of your things, though, or people will think you don’t want them.”

Pandy didn’t point out that she’d literally owned this house for a week, and had still spent less than a cumulative twenty-four hours in it. Instead, she tilted her head, channeled Augustus, and said, “Noted.” Internally, she made a little squealing noise, wishing Keros was there so he could see how cool she was. Wasn’t she? She felt cool, possibly for the first time ever.

Of course, it was ruined the moment she turned around and saw Eleanor staring at her with huge eyes. The princess hadn’t quite been leaning up against Pandy the way Thaniel usually did, but she’d been getting closer and closer as she excitedly spoke about her adventure. Now she held herself as stiffly as she usually did at school, face and body tightly under control.

Pandy wanted to go over and hug her, but instead she said, “Have you seen Hazel’s pile of, um, plants?”

Eleanor had one hand on Lord Winston’s back, and now she started to stroke the dog as she nodded. “I don’t know what she’s doing with it, though. Is she weeding the garden?”

Pandy almost laughed at the idea of the little Dragon doing something so helpful, but she could tell Eleanor meant it, so she just shook her head. “I think she thinks they’ll grow there, because an atrium is a place for plants. She doesn’t understand what they need or how to care for them. If I get some pots and seeds, would you be willing to help her?”

The princess’s face absolutely lit up, all suspicion or fear burned away by excitement. “Of course! Though I don’t know how well anything will grow in there. The trees are blocking all of the windows.”

Pandy grimaced. “I’ll have to cut them back.” Though she had no idea how she would do that. Well, no, she did have one idea, but it involved Hopping into the trees and Biting through branches as thick as Isidor’s leg, so she hoped she could come up with a better one.

“You could get plants that like low light, too,” Eleanor said, obviously already Making Plans. “I can make a list of some good ones.”

“I think Hazel wants plants we can eat,” Pandy told her, and Eleanor looked thoughtful.

“Toothwort and Hog Peanut like lots of shade, if we can get even an hour or two of sun in the morning. Perido roots are used to make poultices, and you can make tea from the leaves. Spinach and lettuce like shade, too. But maybe,” she looked hopeful, “we could grow some flowers, too?”

Pandy smiled. “All of those. Now-” she looked at her stats. She had less than ten minutes remaining as a human, and for the first time in a while, it really felt like she’d left a lot undone. She’d meant to fix some more of the house, and talk to Isidor about school, because she had no idea when Augustus would manage to pull the necessary strings to get him into Kestrel, but she wanted him to be ready, and she had no idea what he had and what he needed.

With a small sigh, Pandy admitted to herself that this was going to be how it was. Hopefully things would settle back into some kind of routine, but… She pulled up the description of the spell and re-read it for what felt like the thousandth time.

Shifting Faces – A spell you aren’t supposed to have, but whatever. Allows user to shift face and form to that of a saved individual. Levels one through nine increase spell duration, to a maximum of five hours. At level ten, gain an additional saved individual. Costs sixteen Mana or ten Corruption Points to cast. Can only be cast once per day.

That was it. As far as she could tell, when she reached level nine of Shifting Faces and got five full hours of human-time, she was done. She might well have to make do with those five hours for the rest of her unlife, and it just wasn’t enough, especially if… if she and Augustus…

Yes, well, she would make do. That’s what Pandy did. She took what she was given and made the best of it. After all, five hours of pseudo-humanity was better than being a rabbit twenty-four hours a day, wasn’t it? Rather than being sad about the nineteen hours she would spend on four paws, she should be grateful for the five she spent as a biped. Besides, if she was human all the time, she wouldn’t be able to snuggle up with Thaniel so often, and people would expect even more from her than they already did. No, this was fine. More than fine.

With a nod and a bracing puff of air, Pandy smiled around at them all and said, “Tomorrow, I’ll see about getting proper mattresses and fixing up the pipes. I have to teach Small Group in the afternoon, but before and after that I should have time to go shopping, um, somewhere.”

Where, though, she had no idea. Pandy had only been to markets here, and she knew there were stores, but the only ones she’d really paid attention to were restaurants and dressmakers. Somehow she didn’t think she’d find mattresses and scrap metal at any of the booths in Lanthorne Court.

In Gacha Love, Clara could go to other shops, but they were literally called things like ‘Armory’ and ‘Weaponsmith’, and were just icons she could click on from the home screen, not real places. None of that helped Pandy know where to go or how to request an enormous bag of iron filings.

“Mr. Blackwood will help,” Isidor said, and there was a hint of amusement in his eyes that reminded Pandy a little too much of Professor Beeswick. “Or if you give me more gold, I can go shopping again. I need to get more food, anyway.”

She folded her arms across her chest. “I know bread and butter didn’t cost ten gold,” she told him, trying to sound as severe as possible.

He shrugged. “I got some milk and cookies, too.” Pandy just kept staring at him until he sighed, though his lips did twitch just a bit. “All right, I’ll see what I can do with what I have.”

“I know someone who can get you almost anything you need, as long as you don’t mind if it’s, ah, second-hand,” Glory put in, making them all turn to look at her. She grinned. “I know someone for everything, for that matter. Tell me what you need, and I can get it. A few hundred gold should be plenty.” She put out her hand, as if she expected Pandy to just start pouring money into it.

“You’re not allowed to leave the house yet,” Pandy reminded her. She really needed to talk to Augustus about that, too.

Glory’s lips flattened. “Then tell your creepy butler to let me out. What do you think I’m going to do?”

Run away? Tell the entire city where Princess Eleanor was hiding? Pandy honestly didn’t think Glory would do the latter, but the former was a distinct possibility. And if someone was offering enough money, who knew?

The flood of tasty Corruption Points Pandy got whenever she was around the other woman – along with a certain admiration for her devil-may-care attitude – made Pandy inclined to like her, but what did she actually know about the Empress? Well, she knew Glory went back for her fellow prisoners and then fetched the guards, even though it would certainly have been easier and safer not to do either of those things. So Empress Glory could be depended on in a pinch, but this wasn’t that, and Pandy couldn’t risk Eleanor’s safety.

With a sigh, Pandy shook her head. “I can’t. I really am sorry. Augustus brought you here for a reason.” She still wasn’t certain exactly what that reason was, other than the fact that he and Glory had both needed healing at the time, but she trusted Augustus.

“All right,” Pandy said reluctantly, watching her time tick down. “I have to go for today. I’ll be back after school tomorrow. Isidor-” she hesitated, biting her lip, wishing she didn’t have to depend on him so much. As far as she could tell, he, like Pandy in her first life, had been forced to grow up far too quickly. She wanted to be able to give him at least a few years of the childhood neither of them had gotten.

She would, just as soon as everything settled down. As soon as she found two missing gods and figured out who was trying to abduct Thaniel, who else was trying to kidnap Eleanor, and how to stop the bad guys so Clara could go to school and have a nice romance with somebody – at least as long as Clara wasn’t the current incarnation of Demon Queen Ascyra, which would definitely make things more challenging. Did Demons even have romance?

“Thank you,” she said finally, and Isidor nodded, a look of surprised pleasure crossing his face before he shut it down. Did no one ever thank him for everything he did?

Turning to Eleanor, Pandy crouched, then said, “If you ever… If you’d like a hug, I’d like to give you one. I-” Whatever else she might have said was cut off as the little princess threw her arms around Pandy and squeezed her, holding on as she buried her face in Pandy’s shoulder. Pandy hugged her back as tightly as she dared, and they stayed like that until the girl’s arms loosened, and Pandy let go.

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” Eleanor said, eyes on Winston as Pandy straightened.

“See you tomorrow,” Pandy said, her voice rough. With a small wave, she turned and exited the room. Rather than heading for the front door, however, as soon as the door closed behind her, she dropped Shifting Faces and Hopped for the stairs, landing on the first curve as it went up. She needed to do a little snooping of her own, and she didn’t need opposable thumbs for most of it.