TWO HUNDRED SIXTY-EIGHT: Snow X

 

268

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On the timer Alden had set to count down to the approximate date when Stuart would become a knight, seconds ticked away. He watched a minute disappear. Hours had passed since he’d last looked at it. And days had vanished since he’d set it.

His interface messaging window opened and closed, prompted by his indecision. Since their last call, he had a stronger urge to reach out than usual despite having less to say. He’d already sent three chatty messages today, which was about two and a half more than average.

Stuart couldn’t even respond. It was more practical to wait until he could call on Evul’s tablet so that they could have a two-way conversation.

The message window popped up again below the clocks and timers, and Alden forced all of it to disappear.

Maybe I’ll research grapes instead. I bet there are a hundred grape products I know nothing about, and I can buy all of—

“Astrid to Alden. Astrid to Alden. Come in, Alden Thorn. The dustlings need you.”

He came back to his surroundings—the MPE building’s laundry room—and looked down to where Astrid sat on the floor at his feet. “Sorry,” he said. “What are you saying?”

“I’m pretending to call you on one of the fallen-talkies from We of Dust.” She held the imaginary communication device up to her mouth and shook it like the users did on the popular television show she was referring to. “Since you were ignoring me.”

“I wasn’t ignoring you on purpose.” Just trying to bury my feelings of guilt with expensive texts and fruit. “I got distracted by something on my interface. What did I miss?”

They were in one corner of the noisy, bright room. Alden leaned against the cabinet that was cleaning his unitard and cuffs, and Astrid had seated herself with her back to the neighboring one. She was wearing a shirt she’d bought at Reindeer Selection this morning, signed by the evil Santa, whose team had won many hearts despite the traditional sleigh being the one officially selected as the school’s representative for the Anthropodrome race.

“That unicorn shower cap.” She turned a page in the binder they’d found in here when they arrived. It was filled with glossy pictures of enchanted gear. “It’s for me, right? Say it’s mine.”

The huge box of gifts Alden had brought was on the floor in the middle of the room, being guarded by Vandy, who’d decided to protect it along with her own collection of silver and gold gift bags and the coconut cupcakes that one of the other girls had made to celebrate their final class of their first term as Celena North students. Vandy was trying to make sure the entire class was ready before she let anyone touch the presents.

It shouldn’t be much longer. Alden wasn’t keeping a head count, but it looked like almost everyone was here, being hyper and loud. Vandy had already sent a group text ordering stragglers to hurry. Then she’d followed it up by sending Kon and Heloísa back into the locker rooms to encourage people to move faster.

“I’m sorry, Astrid,” said Alden. “There’s only one unicorn shower cap in there, and you’ll have to fight for it.”

It was more visible than most of the other gifts he’d loaded into the box because he’d put it near the top so that the horn wouldn’t be crushed.

“I’ll get it fair and square then. Feed me gossip while we wait! How did you end up with the Grand Senator’s people during the thing that happened at the Christmas market?”

The heads that turned to hear Alden’s answer mostly belonged to the girls standing nearby. The guys had already gotten their questions in when they were all suiting up before class earlier.

News about the incident was all factual but incomplete. Alden had finally brushed up on it so that he’d know what other people had been hearing.

Graham’s tragedy and his moment of rage were taking the lion’s share of attention. Alden’s interception of that rage was more of a side story. It was like nobody could figure out how to tie him in with the emotional narrative of a man who’d lost the love of his life and then tried to throw his own life away by attacking a wizard in a crowd in broad daylight.

Serious people talking about the aspects of the situation they cared about glossed over Alden’s involvement or neglected it altogether because, Alden was guessing, his presence in the Grand Senator’s entourage and him leaping to the rescue with an edible novelty item were distractingly funny. The most intense debates on Anesidoran news about the situation had little room for commentary on him.

Graham’s future, whether or not his violence was a symptom of the government’s failure to provide sufficient help to people affected by the disaster, Bash-nor’s fitness to be an ambassador, and criticisms about the response time of festival security were the major stories from major news outlets.

The pig, Alden, and Lute—in that order—were making their own entirely different splash in the social media sphere. They were like the stars of a separate incident for people who were into the Velras, people who were into Matadero Rabbit, and anyone who thought it was absolutely hilarious to see Alden catching a fist with the pig.

“Li Jean has Elites, but do they have this hero pig and its Rabbit sidekick?” had been the last comment he’d seen before closing Trime for the day.

Emilija was still deleting some of the insults that found their way to his page. “Attention hog” and its variants were the most common, but there were some xenophobic ones that she was dealing with.

“It was a coincidence,” he said to Astrid, before giving her and the eavesdroppers the same explanation he’d given the guys earlier. The truth, minus a few key details, could be made dull and reasonable sounding.

“So you ran into the Grand Senator unexpectedly, but because your commendation comes from an important wizard, other important wizards are more likely to be interested in you. And she decided that hanging out with you would be an appropriate thing for her to do.”

“Pretty much. I did introduce myself to her in the first place, but it’s not like Lute and I went to the Christmas market planning to do that. I was there to buy stuff, and her group stopped at the booth where we were shopping.”

“Did she pay you to be her tour guide?” Astrid asked.

“No. It wasn’t like a job. Just a casual thing.”

Except for the part where Zeridee-und’h asked him to do it, and he wanted to show everyone that Bash-nor was a jerk, and it all somehow blew up instead of being anything at all like what he’d expected.

It turned out that Drusi-otta had been glaring so hard at Zeridee at the end of it all because the ambassadorial assistant had tried to tackle Graham only to get in the votary’s way during the first split second of her response. There was no interest in that interaction on the internet. Alden supposed it was only interesting to him because he had a lot more background knowledge on those two than other humans did. He was sure Zeridee had been trying to protect Graham, and he thought that Drusi-otta would have blocked the angry Avowed before Alden could manage it if not for Zeridee’s badly timed involvement.

He hoped she wasn’t in too much trouble for it.

“If I go shopping with you can I meet a Grand Senator, too?” Astrid asked.

“Learn to morph into me and be my double. We’ll each take half of all strange encounters.”

“Ooo…good offer. You were fast with that pig, by the way. I thought the instructors might comment on your real-life moves today.”

Alden was relieved they hadn’t. The question of whether or not he’d been smart to try to stop the attack wasn’t one he wanted to have analyzed by the entire class.

“It was a very smooth response and accurate shield placement,” Vandy piped up. “And it was fast for someone with your foundation point allocation.”

“Vandy, do you know my exact foundation point allocation? I don’t think I’ve ever told you.”

Before she could rattle off what was probably a fairly accurate guess about how he’d divided his points, Jeffy bounded into the room, waving one of the gray fabric bags they’d all been given at the end of class. Their cleaned suits were supposed to go in there today. Over the break, they’d be inspected and loaned to the next cycle of prospective students coming in for combat assessment.

“Kon found it for me,” Jeffy said. “By the toilet. I’m here, so we can open presents now!”

“What about Olive?” Vandy asked.

“Got her!” Heloísa dragged Olive in. “Just tell her that her hair looks fine wet.”

“Your hair looks fine wet!” multiple people called.

“All right,” Vandy said. “My gifts to you all are in the bags. Everyone’s name is on theirs. For Alden’s, to make sure everybody has a chance to look through it and discuss what they want, we should devote a few minutes— ”

“Vandy, you’re so good at organizing us, but I’m an animal,” Alden said hastily. “There’s enough in there for everyone to have one toy and one snack. Maricel’s roommates can grab something for her. To claim what you want most, you must be swift and merciless. The first person to reach the box gets first choice.”

“I want the shower cap,” Everly said at once.

“I need that shower cap for a video I’m making.” Finlay spoke at the same time. “Nobody touch it.”

Astrid leaped to her feet. “I know what to do, you guys! Let me come stand beside you, Vandy. What we’ll do is I’ll count to ten, and then everyone can run or use their powers to get what they want from the box. And that way it’ll be fair. Okay? Let’s do that. One, two, foursixeightten!”

She dove toward the box. Finlay almost beat her there. Mehdi, who had been lurking around the presents for several minutes, was ahead of both of them. He plunged his hand into the box and held it up victoriously while Astrid was lifting up the shower cap.

“It’s the Off-color Eagle Mood Beast!” Mehdi yelled, punching the air. “I win!”

“My gorgeous horn hat!” said Astrid.

Did anyone else even want Off-color Eagle? Alden wondered, while Mehdi shook the Mood Beast at the crowd trying to get past him to the box and did a little dance. Finlay mourned the loss of the shower cap, and Everly called Astrid a cheater while they dug through the presents, looking for something else.

This is what I envisioned, thought Alden, as people traded gifts with friends and took turns wearing the masks and the unicorn cap for photos. This is so ordinary in a good way.

Vandy had given them all pocket notebooks and the new unisex fragrance her parents were advertising. Galeblaze was highly coveted according to the few people in their class who considered themselves experts on either perfumes or Vandy’s parents. Alden was an expert on neither. He thought it smelled good, but he was concerned by Jupiter’s revolted expression as everyone started spritzing it around.

He preferred the notebook. It had a brown cover with his name stamped on it and a matching pencil. She’d written a note on the first page of everyone’s. She complimented Alden on his diligence and wished him a rewarding 2041.

“Thank you, Vandy. I bet I use this as my preserved object sometimes. And the note’s good motivation.”

She had just finished swallowing her last bite of cupcake. She wiped her mouth with a paper napkin and nodded at him.

“I took this,” she said, holding up a water bottle with the word “GUTS” on it in all caps. Alden had added it to the basket because he was sure someone would think it was neat, but Vandy had not been on his mental list of people who might appreciate it.

“People keep drinking out of mine accidentally because our bottles look too similar. And Everly picked this for Maricel. We don’t think she has anything like it.” She showed him the blue and white scarf he’d gotten from Mrs. Nancy’s booth at the market, before he and Lute had joined up with Servin-ith’s group.

He looked at it maybe just a little too long. “I hope Maricel enjoys it.”

“I told her she should come today, but she’s at the dome village instead.”

“The one here on campus?”

“She’s on the team that helps people move out when they get a new living situation.”

While Alden bagged his suit and cuffs, he looked around at them all.

Finlay was nervous about his Elites decision, which he still hadn’t made despite a midnight deadline. He was talking himself into running over to Li Jean right now to ask any available faculty member final questions. Febri was listening to him and doing a terrible job of hiding the nerves that Finlay’s vacillations were causing him. Febri seemed to have decided that Finlay rejecting his own offer was the key to him moving from waitlisted to accepted status.

Winston was over in the farthest corner of the room from Alden. The worst he’d done since his loss during their duel was not take anything from Alden’s gift basket, which Alden might not have noticed except for Astrid asking if she could have Winston’s share of the loot.

Other than small patches of tension like that, this evening was a cheerful one full of cheerful teenagers getting increasingly goofy as they shoved junk food into their mouths and allowed their freedom from school to sink in.

Heloísa chased Jupiter around, trying to squirt Galeblaze on her. Lexi was attempting to toast coconut with Writher. Sanjay was convincing Søren to climb into the empty box that had held Alden’s gifts, because he looked like he would fit, which Sanjay felt was reason enough.

And Jeffy was telling anyone who would listen that he hoped they would fill the whole gym with water “several times” next term.

Alden headed over to watch Lexi toast. His eyes lingered on Haoyu, who seemed much more relaxed and like his normal self than he had earlier today. Kon and Max were observing Lexi’s efforts, too.

“You’ve got this,” said Kon, as the glowing tip of the thin chain approached an abused cupcake on the floor.

Alden sometimes wondered if he was imagining it, but since the Here-to-There, he thought Kon was dialing back his brotherly irritations. Definitely not all the way, but there seemed to be fewer of them.

I hope…

He didn’t want to finish his own thought because it felt like such a pointless one.

I hope everything works out for Kon, and he has a great life.

Naturally he hoped that. But hoping for it would have no effect on the situation. He wasn’t sure if he was avoiding looking for a final, official answer about whether Kon would be assigned to the Branch because he didn’t want to have to tell Kon a few days before Christmas. Or if it just hadn’t happened yet because he hadn’t had a truly private meeting with Esh-erdi and Lind-otta. He thought they might tell him if he approached the question well.

Kon was grinning. Haoyu was chanting, “Golden brown, golden brown,” like he was trying to plant the correct idea in Lexi’s head.

Writher touched the cupcake gently. Coconut blackened, and smoke rose.

“That’s just extra toasted,” said Kon, laughing as Lexi flicked the whip away with a thought.

“I don’t know why I agreed to try. My focus isn’t good enough after two hours of gym,” said Lexi.

“Pretend this one is Alden’s rug,” said Haoyu, setting down his own half eaten cupcake. “And toast it less than that.”

The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

Alden smiled with them all because it was funny.

Be here. On this layer. It’s been a good day.

There was a spaceship on Artona I that the boy beside him might be bound for.

And there was a boy on Artona I who got a countdown clock on Alden’s interface, but not enough truth.

Vandy was across the room, folding that blue and white scarf and putting it in her bag. Earlier today, Alden had received a reply to the message he’d sent to the scarf’s creator.

Of course Mrs. Nancy wasn’t rude. She also wasn’t warm.

She appreciated him letting her know he wouldn’t accept her invitation to come over this Christmas. But “all things considered” it was probably for the best.

Maybe, she said, some other year.

 

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On Saturday morning, Haoyu Zhang-Demir woke up before sunrise, put on a Scorpius shirt, and left the apartment quietly so that he wouldn’t bother his roommates.