SWNOVELS Chapter Chapter Five
“Hurry up!” someone ordered in a frantic tone, their voice dim, as though spoken from a great distance. “We’re losing him.”
A few seconds later cold fury splashed onto Nick’s face. His consciousness returned; torn from the Dreaming, ripped from his astral form. He shook his head, sat up too quickly. Blackness crept in at the edges of vision. Within seconds it abated, and Nick opened his eyes to the sight of the class gawking down at him, a few dozen hungry young eyes taking him in with all the sympathy of a pride of lions on the prowl.
Priestess Carnivales however appeared quite mortified. “You’re okay, boy. Take a deep breath. Here, chew on this,” she handed him a sprig of rosemary.
“What happened?” Nick asked as a couple of students helped him up.
“You were like a frigging log, totally out of it, for like ever,” a pretty brunette said. She giggled. “And then you started screaming.”
“Like a girl,” one of the boys just had to add.
Priestess Carnivales took him by the arm and led him away from the others, over to another teacher. “This is Miss Quaffle, our gym teacher, Mageball umpire, and Head of Dorm Wicca. She’s going to take you to see the Dean.”
Miss Quaffle looked young for a teacher, maybe mid or late twenties. She wore yoga pants and one of those long orange tank tops exercise freaks are so fond of, this one with the words I DON’T SWEAT I SPARKLE printed across the front. Nick tried his darnedest not to stare at the words stretched across her chest.
Priestess Carnivales stood in front of him, gazing into his eyes with her own wild peepers. “Whatever you saw, wherever you went, don’t fear it. We must never fear the unknown. Eat up, boy.” She raised his hand—still holding the rosemary—to his mouth.
Chewing on the memory herb, Nick followed Miss Quaffle out of the room and down the hall. Despite Carnivales’ unsettling words, and his own discombobulated state, Nick still had enough of his wits about to follow slightly to the side and just behind the gym teacher. The tee came down to her thighs, but the shape of her booty was still clearly definable. This was worth getting his hat handed to him in the Dreaming.
They were strolling down an empty sunlit hall, Miss Quaffle’s hips swaying, Nick’s eyes riveted, when a spectral form emerged straight out of the wall and whisked by them both. Nick backed away, hugging the cold stone.
“Holy crap! What is that thing?”
The teacher darted around, scanning the immediate vicinity for trouble. “What thing?”
“That!” Nick pointed at the semi-transparent entity. Its head was the shape a human noggin might take, if it’d been blasted in the face with a flamethrower, features all sagging and scorched. Its limbs were likewise stretched thin and deformed into unspeakable hideousness.
“I don’t see anything,” Miss Quaffle said, looking suspiciously at Nick and approaching with her slender hands held out. She came up close. She was shorter than Nick, and gave off a scent of strawberries. “You poor thing. You’ve been through a terrible ordeal. Let’s just get to Dean Delacort. He’ll know how to help.”
Keeping a wary eye on the hideous specter, Nick nodded and followed close beside the teacher. The specter watched but did not follow.
Down on the second story, they came to a solid metal door, guarded by a gargoyle.
Miss Quaffle nodded at the statuesque mythic, pausing before knocking on the door, as if giving the mythic a chance to smell her and decide her intentions were innocent. A few moments later the sound of a long barrel bolt being slid aside preceded the door opening. The tall bald black man Nick had seen making announcements during the sorting ceremony nodded at Miss Quaffle. Much taller, he had to lean down to listen as she whispered something to him.
Dean Delacort nodded once, whispered, and then stood straight. He gestured for Nick to follow him. Miss Quaffle set a hand on Nick’s shoulder before walking away.
With a deep intake of air, Nick marched up to the door.
The gargoyle stirred on its perch. Like the one back at the entrance to Dorm Necromancy, this one climbed down and sauntered up to him. Petrified again, Nick held still as the mythic sniffed at his body, circling him, its solid stone claws clacking against the floor. Dean Delacort watched with eagle eyes. Apparently even he was powerless to stop the gargoyle from doing its thing.
It finally finished with a silent confused gesture and returned to its perch, immobilizing.
As Nick followed the Dean into his office, shuffling past a row of busts depicting (Nick assumed) former Deans, he asked, “Sir, why do the gargoyles do that to me but not to anyone else?”
Dean Delacort gestured for Nick to take the dark brown leather chair before the man’s table-sized desk. Nick sat, falling into the chairs’ plush depths.
Taking his own high-backed chair, a modern chrome affair that looked positively anachronistic in the castle, the Dean shrugged. “I imagine your genetic and magical nature confuses them. Gargoyles have never encountered someone like you. None of us here have.” He leaned across the desk and whispered in a conspiratorial voice, “The other students haven’t been sniffing you too, have they?”
Nick grinned. “No sir.”
“Good.” The man smiled back and then reclined in his out-of-place chair to stare over his steepled fingers at Nick.
In the silence, waiting for the Dean to ask questions, Nick’s gaze wandered over the room. One entire wall was devoted to rows of thin wooden shelves sagging under a ponderous collection of dolls and figurines. Some were simple rag doll types clothed in crumbling bits of linen and dust; others were complex poppet’s complete with real hair and designed to represent actual individuals. Some of them were burned. Others sat punctured by long needles and miniscule knives. Still others were encased in glass, preserved, protected, imprisoned.
Looking back at Dean Delacort’s stoic face, Nick said, “I didn’t know you were a Voodoo Priest.”
The Dean shook his head. “The connection between poppet’s and Voodoo is, shall we say, a myth-conception. I am a Shaman. I just happen to have a knack for object link magic.”
For the longest time Dean Delacort stared at Nick.
Eventually the door opened and another man entered. Dressed in a faded trench coat and sporting elbow-length dreadlocks, this dark man gave off an instant air of foreboding. The Voodoo sugar-skull face paint went a long way toward buttressing that foreboding air; it was not done up like a kid on Halloween. This was clearly meant to intimidate.
Nick shivered as the man passed him, piercing him with his black-eyed gaze.
“Ah, thank you for coming so quickly,” Dean Delacort stood and embraced the other man. Turning to Nick, he introduced him. “Nick Hammond, this is Anaximander, Head of Dorm Voodoo. He teaches Spells and Incantations. I asked Miss Quaffle to invite him here. No one is better qualified to help us figure out what happened to you in the Dreaming.” Together the two men circled the desk; Dean Delacort remained standing while Anaximander took the other guest chair beside Nick. When he was seated, he removed his ragged top hat and turned Nick’s chair so they were face to painted face.
The Voodoun was silent a long time, just boring into Nick’s eyes.
Finally Nick sighed. “Dean, sir, what exactly are we supposed to be doing?”
The Dean waved him down, spoke in a hushed reverential manner, “Just let him work.”
“Well what makes him so qualified? I mean, no disrespect, Adaxidaminader.” He hoped bungling the name wouldn’t reveal how nervous he was. Something about this man unsettled Nick on a deep level.
“It’s okay,” Dean Delacort assured him.
Anaximander, still not blinking, raised his hands—all ten fingers were decorated with talismanic rings and his wrists were covered in Voodoo jewelry—and placed them on either side of Nick’s head. Closing his eyes, the man hummed a tribal tune to himself. Before long he was weaving side to side. To save his neck, Nick was forced to move in harmony with him.
At length the man released him and stood back up. “I will spirit walk with the boy.” His mellow voice was heavily accented, Haitian born and raised and trained, no doubt.
“No,” Delacort argued. “I’m sorry, Anax, but he is too young to spirit walk. And given his . . . unique nature, there’s no telling what might go wrong.”
“He has already walked the Path. The boy can handle it.”
“Yeah” Nick said, not really sure what they were yammering about. “The boy can handle it. Let’s do it. I’m ready to spirit walk . . . or whatever you said.”
“Not today,” Delacort declared. “We haven’t got the supplies for a spirit walk here in my office. Besides, your experience in the Dreaming has seriously drained your chi; you must rest and recharge.”
“But my first bestiary class is after lunch,” Nick couldn’t keep the whiny tone out of his voice, but he’d been looking forward to seeing caged mythics all day. “I won’t have to use any magic in bestiary, right?”
Scratching his smooth chin, Delacort considered Nick’s words. When he spoke, he pointed a long finger directly at Nick’s chest. “Okay. You take your lunch, try to find some sugary foods to eat, they’ll help. Rest up, and then you can go to your bestiary class. But that’s all. I’m going to clear things with your other teachers. No other classes today. No magic whatsoever. I’ll apprise Duchaine of the situation.”
Nick nodded his gratitude.
“Chew some valerian root tonight and take a good ten minutes to meditate and clear your mind before you sleep. You’ll commune with Anaximander two days from now, Thursday evening. Well then, dismissed.” Delacort waved him out.
Nick stood and casually walked out of the office. When he was safely away from the men and from the gargoyle, Nick broke into a run. He’d forgotten everything that had happened in the Dreaming, but there was one word flashing clear as day in his mind’s eye. He needed to write it down before he forgot it. It was an unfamiliar term, but something told him it was the most important word he had ever encountered.