FORTY-NINE: Words for Demons

On Day 152, Kibby woke Alden up with a shriek. It was one of those days when their sleep cycles were way out of synch, so she’d just awakened as he went to sleep. He rolled off his mattress, heart pounding, and saw her sitting on the floor in front of their current television staring at the chaos map.

Expecting the worst, even though he wasn’t sure what the worst would look like, he raced over and stared at it with her.

“Someone’s come,” she said, waving her arms at the tv wildly and looking from it to Alden. “Someone has come to fix it!”

Finally.

Far away, at the edge of the ever-growing wave of color, a chunk was missing. It was a smooth half-circle shape of clean map, like someone had carved the chaos away with a razor. Whoever or whatever had started repairing the damage had arrived. They weren’t exactly at the location Thenn-ar had shown Alden months ago, but they were in that direction.

“Why there?” Alden asked, excited and frustrated in equal measure to see help arrive at such a distant location. “Why not start here in the center?”

“People are in that direction maybe,” Kibby said.

“We’re people. We wrote that we were people on the roof!”

They’d painted a large message on the roof not long after Alden’s birthday. It said, “People living here. We politely request assistance.”

Not at all the urgent HELLLLLLP!!! Alden would have preferred, but Kibby was the one who’d chosen the logograms for it and she was sure polite requests for assistance were the proper way to earn the benevolence of any passing wizards.

“A city used to be there,” said Kibby, pointing a fair distance beyond the cleared zone. “Not anymore, but there are some people still I think.”

They spent the whole day watching the map. And then most of the next. It was nerve-wracking. Clearing the chaos must have been a two steps forward, one step back process. Their excitement peaked every time the cleared space expanded, and they fell into despair whenever the chaos filled it in. The map updated every sixteen minutes. It was a roller coaster.

“All right, that’s enough,” Alden declared, after he heard Kibby growl angrily at the update for the fifteenth time. “This is bad for our brain health.”

“Mental health.”

“That too. We are going to do math, figure out how long it’s going to take them to get to us, and then we’re not going to check it more than once a day.”

“Twenty-six times a day!” Kibby demanded.

“Twice a day!”

“Each,” said Kibby.

“Fine, twice a day each. How far away are they, and how long will it take them to get here at their average clear speed? I don’t know how to read the distances on the map well, but if you tell me—”

“I can do it. I can do the math. If you are quiet.”

Alden shut his mouth.

Kibby stared at the screen for a while, her bare toes wiggling like they always did when she was working on a problem. Then, her face fell. “Oh.”

Alden’s heart sank. He tried not to let it show. “We get to share a room for a long time, then?”

“It’s…it’s a long time,” she said in a small voice.

“Well, that’s all right. We’ll be each other’s company. We can watch a lot more shows. How long is it?”

“One hundred and six more Earth days. If they don’t slow down.”

The chaos raked its fingers against Alden. He took a deep breath and pushed it back.

“That’s not long at all! We’re over halfway there. And maybe they’ll send a ship ahead to look for people here.”

“Do you think they will?”

“I think I would. If I were in charge.”

He spent a lot of time staring up at the sky after that.

Ships never appeared.

In one class, Instructor Gwen-lor started the recording several minutes before the young children entered the room. She spoke to Kibby directly, offering her encouragement and reminding her that she would be happy to answer any questions Kibby might have if she called.

“I wish I could call,” Kibby said with a sigh.

“I wish we could, too,” said Alden.

It was Day 174. They’d watched this video a dozen times by now.

“Do you think Instructor Gwen-lor thinks I’m a bad student for never calling?”

I’m sure Instructor Gwen-lor thinks anyone who used to live here is dead. “I bet she thinks you’re mastering all the lessons you’ve got, and she’s looking forward to sending you more when communication is available.”

“I wish I could go there.” Kibby stared at the screen.

“To the classroom?”

“I could live there, and every morning at first meal, I could ask Instructor Gwen-lor a question.”

“Do students live at the school?” Alden asked curiously. He only ever saw the classroom, and it hadn’t occurred to him it might be a boarding school. “Even children younger than you?”

“Some of them do. If their family isn’t nearby.”

“I could live there with you.”

“You’re too old.”

Alden gave her his best wounded expression.

“You are,” Kibby insisted. “Someone as old as you has to attend a university instead. I can go to Instructor Gwen-lor’s school, and you can go back to LeafSong.”

“I’m positive they don’t accept human students. And I’d never pass one of Ro-den’s lab exams.”

She didn’t disagree with him. He was so terribly old that he didn’t get loving lies.

“At LeafSong there was a girl who could do that,” he said, nodding at the television.

The instructor had just stepped over to turn off the smart screen built into the wall behind her. She almost never used it for her lessons. The previous class using this room must have been more advanced, because the hand-cast spell steps displayed on the board were really involved. They showed the fingers wrapped with string, like the cat’s cradle spell Jel-nor had used to chop up Stuart’s foot.

“That spell?”

“No. A different one. But she used the string for it.”

“It’s a __________.”

“Ooo! New word. What does it mean?”

“A thing that helps you concentrate. And your authority sticks to it a little bit, so you can control more complicated spells.”

Maybe the new word was something like ‘focusing tool’?

“Sticks to it?” he asked. “Like glue?”

Kibby nodded.

“Can you use any string?”

“Of course not. They’re special. They have to be made —————— so that they tie to you and become only yours.”

Alden sighed. He’d suspected as much. It would have been too easy if he could just grab some random twine and start blowing up things that offended him. Like the thorny vine that had busted out of Hazmat Greenhouse Three and started sneaking its way across the compound a couple of weeks ago. It was purple and oozy, and though it was slow moving, it definitely had bad intentions.

Alden lit the day’s promise stick with a few strategic finger flicks, and they knelt on their cushions. Throughout the lesson, Kibby seemed subdued.

It was a chanting-focused lesson. Not something Alden could do, so during this one he usually cast the hand spells he’d memorized instead. Or, if he was in a masochistic mood, he tormented himself by letting his authority push and shove at the boundaries of his skill.

Now that he’d woken up to the way his power was wrapped within the intricate confines of the skill, straining against it was turning into a compulsion. Like wiggling a loose tooth. Sometimes it actually kept him from sleeping.

Unlike him, Kibby was always laser focused. She went through the motions of every lesson flawlessly as far as he could tell. The fact that she almost never actually cast anything was starting to bother him. She had power. Even if it was clumsier and stiffer than Alden’s, it was still there. She worked at it. She should have been blowing the kids on screen out of the water by now.

When the chanting lesson was over, she batted at the television quickly, trying to find another show.

“Is something wrong?” Alden asked.

“No.”

Maybe one more ask? She didn’t take pushiness well, but she was definitely off.

“If something’s wrong, it’s okay to tell your partner. We respect each other and help each other with class, don’t we?”

Stolen novel; please report.

“Nothing’s wrong with me!” Kibby said in a high voice. She jabbed at the screen, and it flickered out. She stared down at it.

Alden winced. “That’s all right,” he said. “We’ve still got a few more.”

They had long-since rescued every working screen in the facility, from tablet-sized to medium television-sized, and stored them here in the vault. It seemed to do a little good. The place was packed to the ceiling with supplies now, which made it less sterile and creepy. But they only had enough empty space to sleep and sit.

Instead of going to pick another television, Kibby just kept looking at her reflection in the dark screen.

“I can’t do both,” she said in a small voice. “I can’t even try anymore.”

Alden waited.

“I can’t do a spell and keep safe. I thought I could. I was getting stronger for a long time. But then I…I don’t think I am anymore. I think today I’m less me, instead of more.”

A uniquely Artonan word for “me.” An expression of identity that included one’s place in relation to everything else in the universe.

Alden knew what she meant.

He hadn’t known when it would happen. Or which of them it would happen to first. But he had known, ever since she told him it would be a hundred more days, that they would probably break down before help came for them.

He’d started to feel the impending disaster of it, lurking somewhere near them.

He could still assert himself. But his askew moments were worse. He kept pulling himself back together, and he thought that the process of wearing down and recovering was still making him stronger. But it was beginning to seem like a fragile state of affairs.

He was getting tired. One day, he would get too tired, and the chaos would start to win the battle it had been losing against him all this time.