The Foul Mouth and the Cat Killing Coyotes (The King Henry Tapes) (21 page)

“Well
. . .
of course
I’m not good at
everything
, what does that have to do with caring about grades?” Miranda asked.

“Do you care how well you do in PE?” I asked back.

She wouldn’t answer.

“Right
. . . thought so.”

Isabel giggled again, making Miranda blush red enough that you could see it in the moonlight.  “PE doesn’t count towards class rank though.”

“Right,” I agreed, “Only that’s
your
goal.  Not
my
goal.  My goal is the Mancy.  So math problems?  Fucking
Languages
even—if Smith picks a sucky novel?  I don’t care.  It’s not in my goals.”

More silence
.  No howls, no nothing any longer, just the three of us strolling along. The arrows kept up, leading south and south and more south.  Apparently Meteyos
could
hear me when he wanted to.  How, I had no clue . . . ground vibrations or something maybe?

“Then why did you get Pocket elected, how is that yo
ur goal?  Why care about your single friend if he isn’t the Mancy?” Miranda asked, still Miss Nosy after getting burned once.  “Obviously more than just the Mancy matters to you.”

I shrugged.  “I didn’t plan for more than the Mancy to matter
. . . but shit happens, I guess, when you bring other people into it.”  I kicked a rock out of spite.  Wonder if that offended Meteyos?  “Grades . . . that’s just me, don’t affect other people none.  Unless it’s group and you might have noticed I try
not
to screw someone over then.”

Miranda seemed to think back on our month together.  “Huh.”

“Yeah,” I said.  “So if it’s just me . . . I don’t give a shit if it’s not something to give a shit about like the Mancy or fighting or any of the other things I like.”

Isabel giggled again.  “What kind of other things?” she asked.

I ignored her. 
Maybe if I push her at a werewolf next time she’ll take a hint?
  “But people . . . people screw me up.  Like Ceinwyn Dale making me care about the Mancy in the first place.”

“Annoying woman,” Miranda growled.

“I like her,” Isabel put in.  “She recruited me personally, you know; I wasn’t even thirteen yet.  She called to check on me every month and then when the time came she had a nice Recruiter meet me at the airport and he helped me through customs.”

“My mother was a few years older t
han her at school,” Miranda expounded, “and she said Dale was always a show-off.  All the teachers fawned over her and she had absolutely perfect grades.  She used the Mancy whenever she wanted and no teacher punished her for it.  All because she’s the Last True Dale.”

“What’s that mean?” I asked.  I’d have smacked Miranda for disparaging Ceinwyn, but if anyone can take care of themselves it’s Ceinwyn.

“She’s from an old family . . .”

“Oh.”

“Anyway,” Miranda continued, hand pushing up her glasses again.  If she broke the things I was leaving her blind ass behind.  “Total showoff.”

“She’s that,” I agreed, “Still a badass though.”

Miranda snorted.  “What did she do to convince you to come to the Institution?”

“Walked through a locked door.”

Miranda froze for a step.  “I . . . she had to trick you somehow.”

“Can’t say I saw it, but pretty sure she didn’t.”

“That’s . . . I don’t think that’s possible, even for Winddancers.”

“Guess we’ll see if you can do it one day.”

Miranda might have paled a bit.

“You never did answer about helping Pocket,” Isabel pointed out.

I shrugged once more.  “Guy decided I’m his friend, so I helped him out.  Plus . . . it made Welf look bad, that’s always a plus.”

[CLICK]

Isabel saw the message in the dirt first.  Ugly, but good eyes.  Actually
sharp
eyes might be a better description, cuz they were kind of bubbled and that’s not good . . . moving on . . .

CAVE AHEAD.

The three of us stared at the words.

“I don’t trust it,” Miranda finally said, like the scrawled letters in the dirty might jump up and bite us.

“You do realize we still haven’t been caught, right?”

“It’s a fairy, Mother and Grandmother always told me never to tru
st fairies . . . they’re dangerous.”

All around us the forest had never seemed darker.  Clouds
fought with the moon, taking what little light we had away and the moon itself arched across the sky as night kept on.  Other than the little nap, I’d gotten no sleep—Miranda and Isabel not much more, but at least there’s hadn’t included visions for two days running.

Miranda went on, “History is filled with mancers being led astray or a fairy making a false deal with them.  We shouldn’t trust it.”

DO NOT TRUST THE WORTHLESS WIND OF AIR.

I laughed as Miranda’s expression grew outraged.

Isabel giggled along.  “It has a sense of humor; it can’t be all that bad.”

“Oh yes, the sprite or golem or
whatever
made fun of me, let’s follow it into a cave
where it can trap us inside
,” Miranda got on with the sarcasm herself.

I thought it over.

Meteyos wasn’t some little fairy like Miranda thought, or like the ones at Silver Lake Ceinwyn had mentioned.  Meteyos was old.  Thousands, maybe millions of years old.  I somehow doubted he got off on killing kids.  But why help? 
Just cuz I’m a geomancer?  Or an Artificer?

“I don’t know
. . . he seemed like he wanted to help when I talked to him and then there was all this bit about meeting him in person, so I doubt he wants to hurt me.”

Miranda’s jaw
dropped to her first layer of plumpness.

“What?”  I shrugged.  “I say something?”

“You
talked
to it?” she asked, jaw working its way back into a place where it could motor-mouth.

“Twice
. . . it was like this weird dream thing.”

CAVE.  SLEEP.  REST.

“Gets Pocket elected, has a fairy dream, but won’t do his homework,” Miranda murmured to herself, walking off towards the direction of the cave.

“I thi
nk you broke her,” Isabel stage-whispered.

“But I didn’t even touch her
. . .”

Isabel batted eyelashes that were short, three different colors of brown, and crooked.  “You can to
uch me or break me, either one . . . any time you want, King Henry.”

I cleared my throat.
“I’ll keep that in mind.”

[CLICK]

We reached the cave just in time.  Above us those clouds let out a crack of thunder and rain began to drop through the trees.  “Hurry!” I yelled, but shouldn’t have even bothered.  The girls
went ahead of me for once.

For all Miranda’s complaints, choosing between getting soaking wet or fearing Meteyos, she jumped into the cave to save herself a drenching.

There was no light, no way for us to make a fire.  It was dark, filled with shadows and blackness and hopefully no grizzly bears.  We didn’t go far, only a few yards, enough to get the roof over our heads and keep the water off.  Plenty of space to stand if we wanted, but instead the three of us huddled inches apart on the ground, backs against the hard rock.

“Touch any part of me and I hurt you,” Miranda reminded with a
glass-covered glare.

“I didn’t even say anything,” I complained.

“You were thinking it.”

“Having a friend is bad enough,” I grumbled, “I don’t need a girlfriend too.  Especially not one who knows more than me and is always trying to prove it.”

“Like you could get a girlfriend,” Miranda laughed.  “There’s not a girl in class who would take you.”

Isabel might have raised her hand; I was too busy glaring
back at my nemesis to notice.  “I
had
a girlfriend before I came here.  Her name was Sally . . . her fun-bags aren’t as big as yours, but hey, at least she wasn’t a ginger, ya know?”

Miranda burst into tears
.

“Oh
. . . shit,” I muttered.

Burying her head in her white aeromancer coat, which had gotten serious
ly grungy from all the dirt and the nature of the last few days despite her best attempts to keep it clean, Miranda’s whole body shook.  “
Why did you have to be the one who saved me?  Why couldn’t it have been someone nice?
” she sobbed.  “
There’re plenty of nice boys in class and it’s you!”

I looked
to Isabel for help.

“
Your
mess . . .”

Reaching out to pat Miranda’s shoulder or head or somethi
ng, I thought better of it halfway and crumbled my fingers into a fist, which I buried under my own armpit, trying to keep warm.  Shit, was it cold.  Rain, thunder, cold . . . people chasing us; what’s next?  Lightning?  A blizzard?

I let ou
t a sigh.  Friends, girlfriends: not exactly a champion at.  But a crying girl?  I had two sisters, I’d seen tears in my time . . . I could manage.  JoJo’s the more emotional of the two but she’s quick at getting over things.  Susan . . . that’s where my real practice came from.  When big sis got hurt she hurt for days if not weeks.  Crying girls . . . those I can fix.

“You’ve never had a boyfriend, then?” I asked her.

“What does that have to do with you being an
asshole
?” Miranda snapped, still not showing her face.

“But I’m always an asshole, so I don’t think that’s the problem.”

The sobbing stopped a little.  “I went to an all-girls school.”

“That sucks.”

“We had dances with a local all-boys school but . . . I knew I was a mancer.  So what was the point?”

“Well, kissing is kind of awesome,” I pointed out.  “Then there’s s
ex . . . and that’s even more awesome.”

“You are such a pig
. . .” came the muffled reply.

“You’re not actually ugly,” I tried
to be nice, “I just don’t have a thing for the fire-crotch.  You got yourself a nice figure, Miranda, and when you’re not talking and listening instead . . .   I’m sure some guy here will be interested in you sooner or later.”

There was a snort
from somewhere inside her coat.  “That’s the worst compliment I’ve ever been given.”

“Yeah,
I’m good at those.  One of my sisters used to throw the pillow at me all the time when I’d try to cheer her up,” I confessed.  JoJo.  Susan made me watch chick-flicks with her.  Give me the pillow beatings any day.

“I have brothers
. . .”

I chuckled.  “Think you’d be used to the cursing and jokes about your bra size then.”

Miranda’s face finally peeked out of her coat.  Her glasses were frosted over and snot hung from her nose thanks to all the crying.  “They’d never dare.  Women run my family.”

“Scary.”

“We’re the mancers.  Always aeromancers, nothing else, and none of the boys.”

“Double scary.”

“Aeromancers don’t like one another . . . even family; Mom, Grandmother, we always fight and bicker over every small little thing.”

“Triple scary mixed into a malt shake
.”

“Do you think the others are okay?”

“They’re fine . . . why you make me keep saying it?”

Isabel finally added into the conversation and it was enough to shut us all up, “So she’ll believe it,” she whispered.

The three of us—who didn’t say three
words
to each other on a normal day during that first month—huddled in the cave, waiting for the rain and night to end, begging the Mancy not to hear a single howl.

[CLICK]

The world was upside down again.

I would have complained about it, but there wasn’t enough of King Henry Price in one place to form words.  Instead I moved through the rocks and the soil, stretching out, driven and pulled by geo-anima.  I twisted myself around the conduits, carried like a ship upon the sea of dirt.

Above me
. . . not below me as it should have been . . . I heard the patter of raindrops, the sweep of wind, and the thud of footfalls. 
This is starting to get so annoying
, I managed to think.  Through these noises I heard others, the barest of whispers, the sound of voices as they struck the earth and rebounded.  So very faint . . . like through a malfunctioning cell-phone . . .

“How many have we rounded up?” one asked but there was no answer.

“Run!  Run!  They’re behind us!” a scream not unlike a lightning bolt.