The Foul Mouth and the Cat Killing Coyotes (The King Henry Tapes) (4 page)

My hand flew up.

Some of the kids in my class rolled their eyes; others looked embarrassed about what words would be coming out of my mouth.  After Mrs. Ambrose nodded to me with an encouraging expression, I asked, “What’s the point of this class?”

Her smile went away.  Had a thing or two to learn from Ceinwyn Dale.  “Excuse me?”

“Is it history about the Mancy?”

“That’s another class
called
History of Elementalism
,” she explained to me.

“Right
. . . so . . . what’s the point, then?”

She nodded like she understood.  “This is more than just a school for the Mancy, the Learning Council feels best that you learn the same as those in the normal world as well as our more specialized skills.”

“Okay, but . . . I mean . . .” I think it reflects how hard I tried since fourteen-year-old-me didn’t call anyone a
bitch
or a
fucker
during this whole conversation.  “I’ve broken a table in half and some other stuff too . . . so against that . . . why do I care about Napoleon being King of England?”

“Napoleon was Emperor of France,” Mrs. Ambrose corrected me, doing what I would eventually call the ‘
Asylum-Watcher
’ with her face, like she could study my sanity level.  All the teachers must have classes for practice. They all did it to every single kid in my class at least a few times a year.

“Again
. . . what’s that matter?” I asked.  “Seems like a waste of time.”

“Kid needs to learn to shut up,” the big black kid mumbled to himself a few rows to my left.  Welf had a s
atisfied little smile.  Guess he thought I looked like a retard . . . like I ever cared what he thought or ever cared about how I look.  A few other faces nodded along with me though, including brown-haired green-eyed kid.

Mrs. Ambrose kept on with the Asylum-Watcher expression.  “You broke a table?” she finally asked.

I shrugged.

“On purpose?”

“Accident.”

“I thought so
. . .” she murmured, finally turning away from me and to the class as a whole.  “Everyone who has accidentally used the Mancy, please raise your hand.”  About ten kids raised their hands, including Welf and Valentine.  Mrs. Ambrose nodded at the number.  “As you see,” she said to me, “you aren’t special and you have no ability to base what is normal unless you study what is around you and what has happened before you.  Hence . . . history!”

[CLICK]

Getting to your second class is probably the scariest moment of your first day. 
Depending on the teacher’s personality, you have anywhere from ten to five minutes.  If you’re an Ultra like me, then that means you’re getting the very best teachers the school has to offer; if you’re Intra, odds are you’re having Pent and Hex Ultras teaching your
normal
classes—that’s a lot of room for personality swing, so be prepared to run.

Once you are prepared to run, you duck out of your room behind your student-advisor and are greeted with a wall of students—some confused, some glidi
ng along peacefully.  Stick to your advisor like glue, don’t get lost or you’ll never find your way on your own.  At least a few kids do get lost—don’t be the idiot.  Ours were Robin White and Patrick ‘Rick’ Brown.  Yeah, wet dream boy, you really need to let that go though.  They tumbled into the room five minutes after the group did, Hanks hanging onto them like a mother-dog, a hand on each neck.

Second class was
Math
, which I’ve mentioned my completely logical hate for a few times in these tapes.  It didn’t help that it was taught by Delores Dingle, all of sixty-five and so old-fashioned she used a chalkboard.  Fourteen-year-old-me would have described her as fat around the middle, fat around the side, and fat around the ass.  The woman took up some serious space when she moved, but she wasn’t mean, she just wasn’t up to date and expected you to act like she had as a student.  Which I think was back when they walked to school uphill in the snow and got whipped by sexually-repressed nuns or something.

The one cool thing about Dingle’s
classroom was she had a pair of hunting birds sitting inside it on a stand, their heads covered in leather and their claws tied down with leather straps.  She’s a faunamancer, just like Hanks, but not an Ultra.

One other thing about her
. . . she’s about as different from my third period teacher as you can get.

Jethro Smith.

We walked through the door and there he was, wearing a leather jacket emblazed with a band name—
the Madness
—over a giant Ultra emblem.  The guy was barely older than Hanks, probably the same age as Russell Quilt.  Mid-twenties.  If the jacket wasn’t a give away to his personality, he had
Nirvana
blasting from a beat up boombox by his desk and played air guitar with his hands.  He waved at us as we came in, motioned for us to take a seat, but never stopped with the air guitar.

Sitting down
, I noticed the skulls for the first time.  Not even animal skulls. 
Human
skulls lined the whole classroom, about seven feet off the ground.  Jethro Smith was tall, nothing but limbs, and the skulls were at the right height for him to reach up and bring down.  Necromancer, surprise . . . surprise. As far as anima and the Mancy went, he’s Ultra strong but doesn’t have the special abilities of the Bonegrinder apparently . . .

What are the
special abilities of a Bonegrinder?

I
ask the questions, you little assholes.

This ain’t
the tape for Bonegrinders.  Keep listening . . . we’ll get there.

The
Nirvana
kept playing right up until the bell rang, Jethro Smith wailing full circle arm cranks on his air guitar.  Few of the boys started nodding along.  Few the girls watched on in disgust.

When the music stopped the classroom seemed empty, Smith
putting his finger to his lips for silence.  He went to a wall and brought down one of the skulls, placing it on a metal holder that sat on his desk.  His fingers left his lips to hover over the skull, swaying and passing over it in a piece of show.  He was using the Mancy . . .

Then the skull
talked.

To be exact, the skull actually quoted us some
Julius Caesar
.  I don’t remember the quote, had something to do with Antony, but not the words, so I guess you’ll have to do without, kiddos.  Still . . .
the skull fucking talked
.  Not jaw-moving talk either, but a freaky ass voice from the beyond coming from inside its dome.

When it
finished, Smith walked it back to the shelf and returned it to its spot.  “
That
will be happening a lot in this room,” he told us in a rough voice sounding like rules or not, he smoked something regularly, “so if you don’t like it . . . you can leave.”  He raised his eyebrows, motioning for the Hispanic girl with the nice ass to say something, since she’d crossed herself about three times through the Shakespeare.

She only shook her head.

Smith shrugged, walked back over to his desk, pulled out a bottle of Scotch and a shot glass, and poured some of the liquor into it.  “You can’t have any,” he told us.  “I tried to share my first year but someone tattled, so no
mas
.”  He sipped at his glass, licking his lips.  “So . . . Ultra class of ‘09.  Heard some things about you.  Got yourselves a
High Five
.  How ‘bout that?”

No one was quite sure what to make of him.  I actu
ally doubt most even knew about the
High Five
.  A minute of silence went by with his eyebrow raising and Scotch sipping before he asked, “Who were your first two teachers?”

An
Indian boy with a turban put his hand up.  “Mrs. Ambrose and Mrs. Dingle, sir.”

Smith started chuckling.  “And did Mrs. Ambrose and Mrs.
Dingle
go over some information with you?”

The Indian boy was very polite.  “Yes, sir.”

“Ambrose gave you some rules of conduct and Dingle told you about some of our clubs, yes?”

A number of us nodded.

“Thank the
fucking
Lord,” Smith growled in his rasp.  He smiled at us.  “We get to have the fun part!  All of you stand up by your tables, don’t sit until I’ve talked with you!”  He motioned at the Indian boy with his mostly empty glass of Scotch, “Name!”

“Raj Malik, sir.”

“Ahhh, if I remember our uniform system correctly then you’re a cryomancer, yes?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Hmmm, from now on you’re not Raj, you’re
Ice Cube
.  Tell us about yourself, Ice-cube!”

Malik looked like he
might run but eventually manners got him.  Fucking manners . . . the first ones to die in the zombie uprising will have manners.  “I’m from Oregon,” he said.

“Th
at’s too bad,” Smith grumbled.  He pointed at the next in line, an Asian boy I didn’t know who looked very nerdy.  “What about you?”

“Miles Hun Pak, sir,” the boy said, sounding very nerdy too.

“Stop
siring
me, Miles.” Smith waved at all of us then pointed at himself.  “From now on I’m ‘
Jet
’ or at worst ‘
Jethro
’ and anyone who calls me ‘
Mr. Smith
’ with get a fail for the day.” He went back to his desk and poured another glass of Scotch.  “Miles, you’re a sciomancer.”

“Yes
. . . Jethro.”

“How much you know about the Mancy?”

“Nothing.”

“Ever have you’re an accidental discharge?”

“Umm . . . I . . . I . . .” Pak frowned.  “I . . .”

“I’m not talking about what happens at night when you’re dreaming about touching a girl’s breasts, I’m talking anima!”

Pak’s face went so red it was crimson.

“On account of your lack of answer,
” Smith declared, swinging his glass around like he planned to baptize Pak, “you’re not Miles any longer, you’re
Shifty
.”

A tall platinum-haired girl in the front row gasped.  “That’s racist!”

“Is not!” Smith growled.  “It’s Mancist!”  Instead of interrogating the girl with the almost-white hair, he motioned at the girl next to her.  “Name?”

It was the rainbow girl who had laughed at me earlier.  “Quinn Walden,” she said
with a bit of a northern accent, “spectromancer, daughter of two mancers, sister of two mancers, from New Haven, Connecticut.  I like horse riding and speak four languages.”

Smith’s smile got larger with every bit of added information. 
“Indeed?  And what are the extra three?”

“French, Spanish, and Italian.”

“Blah!  Same language, different dyed muff, you speak two languages.”  He pointed back at the platinum-haired girl.  “What’s her name and how do you know her?”

Quinn gave a cute little smile.  “She’s Hope Hunting and our fathers are friends from their time at the Institution.”

“
Institution?
”  Smith whispered with sudden menace.  “This is the Asylum, sister!”

“Most teachers don’t like—“

“I
do
like it!” Smith told us, taking the rest of his Scotch in one shot.  “The Asylum!  One word expressing more than that long phrase they made up back when this place was founded.  The Asylum!  Greatest name a school could want!  From now on, all of you say ‘
Asylum
’ in my class.  You say ‘
Institution’
and I’ll mark you as a fail for the day, you say ‘
Institution of Elements’
and I’ll make you clean my skulls, and God forbid you say that ‘
Nature Camp’
bullshit they added in the 80s for grant money . . . I don’t know what I’d do to you . . .”

Platinum-
haired girl—Hope—crossed her arms over her chest.  There wasn’t a bit of tit to her, so nothing got cupped.  “You can’t fail us unless we do badly on our tests; it’s in the school guidelines.”

Smith stared at her for an uncomfortably long time.  “From now on you aren’t Hope, you’re
Storm Cloud
and your friend is
Sunshine
, clear?”  Not waiting for an answer he got up and ran around the edge of the room, stopping right next to me and pointing at the brown-haired green-eyed kid.  “Name!”

“Preston Landry!”

“Where you from?”

“Pismo Beach, California, Jet!”

“See that?  Pismo Beach . . . now that’s a good place to live, Ice Cube!”

“It is,” Preston agreed.

“You surf?” Smith asked.

“I do.”

“And a floromancer . . .”

“That’s what they tell me.”

“You’ve been really nice about this, so I’m going to let you stay as Preston.”