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Experiments in Cooking, Writing, Stuff
Well, I'll update this later with info on the apartment hunt, and my new Monday feature of writing (rather than posting the writing to share every day). For now, though, I was in fact able to start my cooking plans last night, and I made salmon for the first time. In fact, I made Pepper Crusted Salmon, sans the sesame seeds and soy sauce, (I don't like sesame, and I couldn't find the soy sauce) and peas and corn to go with it, and it has been well received by two eaters. :) Yay!
Shockingly (or not) I'm not rather too tired to do a good job on writing anything. The apartment hunt is proceeding. I've discovered I'm incredibly easy to please, which is why I've put in an application for a place already; I'll know in a few days if I've gotten it. It's kind of expensive, but it's very nice and the location is simply unbeatable, on 72nd street between Broadway and West End. We'll see what happens, I guess.
Mom and I have been talking a lot - and not fighting! - and seem to be getting through a lot of stuff, which is very good. I've been playing with more recipes, too, which'll be fun. We planned out a nice Christmas dinner which I'll be attempting to make tomorrow (roast Chicken, steamed spinach, roasted potatoes, and a pumpkin pie) and which will hopefully turn out good.
I'm real sleepy, so I'm off. One of these days, I really will write more. ;)
I posted the Hogwarts Story daily, but it was a bit annoying for me, and I think it might have been boring for everyone else as well. So instead of posting daily, I'm going to post this project weekly, and I probably won't post everything I write for it each week. It's not my primary project, so I won't be writing on it every day anyway.
So yeah. This is the Changeling story I mentioned. The first week's entry is pretty big, and contains the first couple of chapters. I'm actually pretty unhappy with how things have gone the last 5k words or so, and I'm not yet sure what I'm going to do about - I think I might now how to fix it, but I haven't decided if I should rewrite or just delete and start over. I'll probably decide tomorrow.
Part 1: Dreams of Autumn
6/10/05
Dear Diary,
I don’t even know where to begin. No. There’s no way I could begin. I think it’d be better if I just didn’t even try! No, that’s not fair either, you deserve to know, and if I can’t tell you, who can I tell? I have to start somewhere. But I don’t even know where! So much has happened, and it’s so late, and you wouldn’t believe me even if I told you. It’ll just have to wait until tomorrow. Maybe tomorrow I’ll understand it all better. But I finished the sword I’ve been writing about, and I met all kinds of amazing people, like a princess and a baron and a nocker – what’s a nocker?? – and a leprechaun and I don’t even know what else! Some of them were really, really scary, like the redcaps, but some of them were nice. And now I’ve written some of it, but not enough to make any sense, but I just can’t make sense right now, I can’t wrap my head around it all. Tomorrow. I’ll definitely try again tomorrow.
Chapter 1: Life, Less Ordinary
I woke up in the morning all excitement and happiness. I had been looking forward to that very day for months. Well, I hadn’t know it would be that day, precisely, months ago, but I’d been looking forward to it is a hypothetical day that I hoped would happen sometime soon. I’d only known it would be today since, well, since yesterday.
My high school, I should say, is the coolest high school anywhere. It didn’t used to be that way; it used to be a really ordinary high school. Then the building got destroyed, and rebuilt, and the new one really has to be the most awesome high school anywhere in the world. It has everything any kid could want in it, everything and more. I don’t even know most of what it has, I’m not really exploratory, but I know it has all kinds of things I don’t even know about. In particular, though, what it has that I do know about is tech rooms like you wouldn’t believe, with all kinds of equipment for working with metal. Really expensive, hard to come by equipment, like stuff you don’t normally see outside of industrial workshops. My set up at home is pretty impressive, I mean, mom has been really supportive in helping me to build a forge in the garage, but there was still no way we could have some of the bigger pieces of equipment, stuff for engraving and advanced welding and stuff. But Bloomington High School South did. And as of yesterday, after months of trying, I had gotten permission to use that equipment even though I wasn’t in one of the tech classes.
Last night, I had lovingly wrapped up the sword that I would be trying the engraving machinery on. I had finished the sword the previous week, and I was pretty certain it was the best work I’d ever done. Mom saw it and I think she thought so too; I had a hard time convincing her not to sell it at last weekend’s Renaissance Faire. She took all the other swords and daggers I’d made recently and only brought back one dagger, and that one not very nice, and she told me again that she should have brought the sword I had just finished, she would have been able to sell it for a lot of money. I was glad she hadn’t taken it; I intended to ask her if I might not, for once, be allowed to keep one of the weapons I made. After I finished engraving it, it would be extra special to me; my best work to date, and the first decorative piece I’d finished. Once I got the hang of doing the embellishment, she’d be able to sell all of those swords for lots more than the plain ones. I hoped, with that in mind, she might relent and let me keep it.
Of course, it’s not normal to let a 11th grader bring a sword to school, not normal at all. That’s why it took me so long to get permission. Even then, it was all going to be closely supervised by Mr. Brown, the shop teacher. He was going to meet me outside of the school and take the sword – which I had wrapped in a blanket and tied with cord – and then he’d take it in. I wouldn’t be allowed to work on it until after school hours, either, and then only when Mr. Brown was in the room. I didn’t care. It was so worth it! I was very excited.
The day seemed to pass in fits and starts. Breakfast was very long; mom mentioned she’d promised Mr. Ulrich, her contact at the Faire, that I’d have 6 more swords and 5 daggers finished for the following weekend. I blanched; I would have to pull an all-nighter to finish that many in time, and even then I might not be able to. She pointed out that it’d only be 5 swords, if…and she stopped with a glare at my wrapped package. I couldn’t bring myself to disagree, but I resolved in my heart that I’d make her 7 swords, and she could take all of them, as long as she didn’t try to take that one. Dad had changed the subject then, and while I ate my breakfast silently they talked about the pool they were having installed in the back, and the deck that was being built.
I tried not to listen to what they were saying. That’s not normal, I know, most kids my age would have been thrilled that their parents were putting in a pool just as summer was starting. I wasn’t happy about it at all, though, but I didn’t want them to know it. I knew I was being unfair, and that I was surely misunderstanding what was going on. I mean, all I knew was that neither mom nor dad had gotten a raise, and that we’d been struggling to make ends meet, and now suddenly we had enough for a pool. All I knew was that mom told me that the money from my swords being sold was going into my college fund. It was very wrong of me to even begin to suspect otherwise, and so I didn’t like to hear them talk about the pool, or the deck, or mom’s new necklace, because it made me feel like such a bad person to be suspicious that I couldn’t bear it. I hated feeling that way, and I hated that I couldn’t make myself stop. I wished my brothers had never left home. Things were different before they left. I thought breakfast would never end.
The ride to school, on the other hand, and the periods leading up to lunch, passed like lightning. Mr. Brown met me at the entrance just like we’d planned right after dad dropped me off. He took the bundle from me and looked surprised at how heavy it was; years of swinging a hammer had made me much stronger than my size would suggest, but I never did anything at all in school that would show that so no one really knew. Classes were, as always, boring, and I, as always, didn’t pay any attention. Math and science I liked, but those were in the afternoon; English and history and French and all didn’t interest me at all. Usually, I tried to pay attention anyway, I didn’t like to be rude to the teachers and mom wanted me to do well, but today I just couldn’t. Instead, I looked over the plans I had drawn up of what decorations I was going to put on the sword, made some minor changes, changed them back, and was generally twitchy and fidgety, my mind entirely on the afternoon.
Lunch was the first time I had to myself, and it was very nice. It was a lovely day outside, so I took my food and found a bench outside and sat in the sun drawing. As a result, I was late to math. I shouldn’t have gone at all; after the freedom of lunch the rest of the day’s classes passed so slowly that I thought I could feel every single second as a distinct and extended moment. The tension seemed to build and build until I thought I would explode from it, and then somehow it would build still more, until, suddenly, the three o’clock bell rang, class was out, and I was free.
Mr. Brown wasn’t at the door to the tech room like we had discussed, but I found him easily enough, he was having a smoke outside. I practically bounced on my heels while I waited for him to finish his cigarette, and, noticing, he grunted.
“Listen,” he said to me, reaching in to his pocket, “the principal and all those,” he made a vague gesture, “those other people told me that I had to keep an eye on you.” He barked a laugh. “As if a little girl like you – especially like you, everyone knows what you’re like – was gonna do anything even with a sword. Me? I don’t think you’re gonna do nothin’ except what you said you were. So here’s what I’m gonna do. I’m gonna give you this key,” he held up a key which he had pulled out of his pocket, “and I’m gonna go home. And you can play with that metal stick of yours to your hearts content. Just make sure you lock up when you’re done, and give me the key in the morning.”
“Are you sure?!” I looked up at him hesitantly, unable to contain my shock. “Won’t you get in trouble if I’m found like that?”
“No trouble at all,” he replied, taking a long drag on the cigarette, “just tell them I went out to the bathroom.”
“But what if they wait for you to come back?” My mind was concocting all the ways that this suggestion would result in Mr. Brown being fired. I hardly spared a thought for what might happen to me, though in the recesses of my mind was the vague sense that I would be in trouble too.
“Look,” he said firmly, and I squeaked inadvertently and fixed my eyes back on the ground, “nothing is gonna happen. No one’s gonna care. Believe me. Here, take it,” he took one of my hands and pressed the key in to it.
“Thank you,” I stammered gratefully.
“Now you listen, though,” he continued more gently, and I glanced quickly at his face; his expression was sympathetic. “Don’t you stay here too late. It’d be dangerous for you to head home by yourself real late, especially living out in the middle of nowhere like you do.”
“Oh, it’s fine,” I replied, “but thank you for worrying, for your concern and stuff. My dad’s gonna come get me when I call him. On my cell phone. So I won’t have to get home alone.”
“Good. Now you get going,” his tone went back to being gruff, even more so than before, as if to make up for the sympathetic moment.
The key in my hand, I hurried to the tech lab. This was even better than I had hoped! I had been worried about inconveniencing Mr. Brown by asking him to stay late at work, and I had convinced myself that I would stop at 5 no matter what so that he wouldn’t have to stay too terribly long on my account. Now, though, I could stay as late as I wanted. Well, not exactly; my mom would be very angry if I didn’t get home in time to do some work in the forge, and dad would complain about the price of gas and making an extra trip if I wasn’t ready by the time he finished work at 6:30, but even so, I could stay until 6:30!
Determined to make the most of my time, I wasted very little of it. Normally, if I’d had leisure, I might have spent a whole long time just gawking at the long-dreamed of tech room which I now finally had access to. But there wasn’t a moment to waste! So I went directly to the equipment that I needed, put on safety goggles and gloves, and pulled out my plans. Unwrapping the sword, I laid it out on the work table I’d picked out to use.
It was a very plain, but kind of well made, blade. The hilt was a simple affair, and the sword undecorated – so far – but the steel shined faintly from the time I’d taken to polish it, and the blade was sharp enough to cut unless one was making an effort not to. I wasn’t really supposed to sharpen the blades, at least not this much – if mom decided to sell it I’d have to dull it again – but I had been so excited with how it was turning out that I hadn’t been able to resist “finishing” it as I so rarely was able to finish my swords, by actually sharpening it and honing it and any number of other little touches that marked the difference between the sort of thing that people in the 21th century might buy at a Renaissance Faire and the sort of thing that knights in the 15th century would have used to hack each other to bits. Not that I had any interest whatsoever in hacking any one to bits, but that wasn’t the point. I was a weaponsmith, not an artist, or at least I wanted to be a weaponsmith, and it was important to me, however rarely, to get to make a weapon as a weapon, not as a souvenir. Not that there was any call for weaponsmiths in 2005. Mom said I was wasting my time learning how to make them in to weapons; that’s why she was as pleased as I was that I had access to the tech room – now I could start giving her real decorative pieces instead of just hunks of steel, was how she saw it I think, with the added bonus that we wouldn’t have to buy any equipment. And this would be the first one, and it would be perfect, because it would be a weapon AND it would be decorated. And all of that was part and parcel of me wanting to keep this one. It was different. I knew it was.
The plans for its decoration were simple enough. Though I knew all about the theory and the equipment I was about to use, I’d never actually USED it before, so I thought simple was best. I would just be doing long vines of leaves down one side of the blade, like on a willow, and on the other side, right up near the top, I’d put my makers mark. All my blades had my mark on it somewhere, but I usually just branded it into the wooden parts of the handle. This one would be different, though, it’d be etched right in to the steel.
I set to work at once, unhesitating, with all the confidence I usually felt when I stood at the forge. I should probably have been worried, doing something new, but it didn’t even occur to me. I just set to it. Time blurred as I worked, and for who-knows-how-long nothing at all existed except the sword in front of me and the tool in my hand. I didn’t need to look at the plans; I’d memorized them. And there was nothing at all except the work.
I knew the moment when I was finished. I could have added more, lots more; I hadn’t done as much as I had originally intended, even. But even so, I knew it was perfect, and there was nothing else to do. The leaves and branches twined their way down nearly to the tip; the makers mark glinted in the light, my initials – KM – intricately knotted in a vaguely Celtic motif, and I set the tools down, and pulled my goggles off, and went about shutting off the equipment. There was no need to wait; I wouldn’t ever add even another line, there was no need. I didn’t know how I knew this, but I was as certain of it as I was certain that I drew breath. The feeling, in truth, was utterly exhilarating. I wanted to laugh from the pure delight of it.
I had just finished shutting down the various machines in the room – most of them I hadn’t even used, but I was certain it wasn’t safe for them to be left on overnight even if I didn’t know at all who had turned them on – when the door burst open. I jumped and spun around. “Mr. Brown went to the bathroom!” I blurted before I’d even looked up.
The man who came in didn’t reply in any way to this statement, though he was speaking. “2!” he exclaimed. “2 in one day! 2 in one day in one place! Unbelievable! I’ve never heard of anything like it,” he looked me dead in the eye; I wasn’t in the habit of looking people in the eye, but I was so completely astonished that I hadn’t remembered to avert my gaze. “Have you?”
“Have…have I what?” I stammered, trying to break eye contact but somehow not able to do so. The man had very intense eyes.
“Have you ever heard the like? 2 in one day! 2 within minutes of each other! It’s unprecedented,” he paused thoughtfully. “No, that’s not entirely the case, I suppose you’re right. You’re no fun, you know.”
To this I had no reply whatsoever. The man was clearly insane. If what he said wasn’t evidence enough of that, what he wore and what he looked like would have been all that I needed. Most of the time, he looked perfectly normal – a whole lot older than me, taller than I, and thin and quintessentially nerdy (not that I was one to throw stones!) and dressed in plain jeans and a button up shirt that managed to clash violently with suspenders that served no discernable purpose, since they clearly didn’t hold his pants up. However, ever few moments his entire appearance seemed to…change. I’d blink, he’d seem 6 inches shorter, and his ears would be pointed, and his cheeks bright red, and his outfit even more violently colored. Then he’d be back to normal. Only, I wasn’t sure which was normal. And, I realized, I wasn’t sure why me seeing things caused me to think he was insane. That hardly seemed fair, really.
“Right, then,” he continued while I had all these thoughts, “so what have we here?” He looked me up and down, and I assumed the incredibly self-conscious pose of a girl who knew she was being scrutinized, and didn’t wish to be – hands clenched in each other in front me, eyes on the floor, cheeks blushing slightly. I didn’t like people looking at me, because I knew there wasn’t much to see, and I was never comfortable when people did so. Fortunately, I had little to worry about. People almost never paid attention to me, a fact for which I was infinitely thankful. It had its downsides, too, though, for now for the first time in my life – outside of a doctor’s office! – I was being examined very carefully, and I didn’t know at all what to do accept stand there in dejected embarrassment. It was just too much!
“Um, can I help you with anything?” I asked hesitantly. “The school’s office is just down the hall, I’m sure they can help you find whatever it is that you’re looking for.”
“No,” he replied, “not at all. Anyway, I’ve already found it. Both ‘its.’ 2!” He muttered to himself.
Unable to get his attention off of me, I did the only other thing that I could: I diverted my own attention. Maybe if I pretended I wasn’t there, he’d go away and leave me alone. And for the first time, I noticed that this man wasn’t the only thing weird about my surroundings. How had I missed it before? Those machines, for one thing, the ones I had so casually turned off before to protect the school, I realized I hadn’t seen those when I came in. But they were huge! And clanky! And one was brightly, violently, colored to compete with the strange man’s suspenders! How could I have missed them? And who on earth would paint a machine that way?
There were things, too, all over the room. There had been some interesting items when I came in, though I hadn’t paid them any mind – other students’ work-in-progress. Now, though, there seemed to be many more of them, and they were everything from utterly normal to impossibly odd. Next to a little model built like one of Da Vinci’s flying machines was a mobile from which dangled brightly twinkling stars, with the mobile suspended perfectly unsupported in midair. In one corner of the room, a hulky piece of metal seemed to breathe in and out rhythmically, and on the floor a little robotic snake chased its own tail. A half-finished sandwich lay atop a slightly less finished drawing of an odd Rube-Goldberg device which, I thought, was designed to take the egg shell off of a hard boiled egg; next to both was a perfectly peeled egg, though the device was no place evident. An ornithopter hung from the ceiling with a cat in the pilots seat. An electronic device of no apparent nature periodically made a sequence of LEDs light up. Next to it, three LEDs connected to nothing at all also lit up. Looking at it all, some of it normal, some of it utterly impossible, I still knew with a certainty what it all was – even the things I couldn’t identify. As naturally as I knew that a tree was a tree or a chair a chair, I knew that all of these things were created from the inspiration of the students who worked in this lab, that these were all the things they did make, all the things they hoped to make, all the things they feared making, all the things they dreamed of making. There was a snap, and I jumped with a startled, bitten off exclamation; the snake had caught its tail.
And, after taking all this in, after wondering what on earth was going on and had someone slipped me some kind of drug and how could I know something like that about dreams, my eyes returned to the man who had triggered this craziness. He, meanwhile, had been distracted thoroughly by the egg peeler, and was muttering something; I could have sworn I heard something about copyright law, but it was too indistinct for me to be sure. He was no longer flickering – he had affixed, firmly, on the shorter, pointy-eared, red-cheeked version. “What’s going on?” I looked askance towards his face, darting my own eyes away when he once again started to scrutinize me.
“Oh, right, right,” he nodded sagely, though I couldn’t imagine why. “I’m not the one to tell you. You should come with me.”
“What?” I exclaimed. Now the crazy man wanted me to go with me? No, that wasn’t what was shocking. What was shocking, to me, was that I was thinking about doing it. Clearly the insanity was my own; I’d NEVER go any place with a strange man, any more than I’d EVER see an ornithopter. The snake had eaten most of its back part and seemed utterly unphased.
“I’ll take both of you there,” he continued, as if he’d already told me where and I’d already agreed, “it’s the best place, really.”
“Where?” I asked, hesitantly, feeling distinctly that by asking where I was going I somehow tacitly implied that I would go. “With who?”
“To Willowgrove,” he answered as if it was the most obvious thing in the world, “with me. Come on, then. Kaye’ll know what to say to you.” He added special emphasis to the word you, as if Kaye might not know what to say to others. I wished I knew what the heck he was trying to say to me!!
Ignoring the panoply of the astounding around me, I hastily gathered up my sword and bag and sketches, stuffing the drawings into my bag with one hand while I held a precarious grip on the hilt with my other. The sword seemed bigger than I remembered it. And, indeed, as that thought occurred to me, I realized that actually the entire world seemed a bit bigger, a bit taller, then I remembered it being. Utter. Complete. Insanity. The snake’s tail had cycled around in a fashion that was only possible in an M.C. Escher picture. The man didn’t even notice; he was already outside the room.
“You are coming, right?” he asked, sticking his head back in. “Hey, what’re you bringing that for?”
“It’s mine,” I replied defensively. “I made it.” I was so used to everyone around me knowing I was the weird sword girl that it felt strange to say that I was the crafter.
For the first time since he came in, the man seemed to actually focus on me, or maybe it was on what I held. The effect was dramatic; gone was all of the spaciness, and instead was an intensity, and a curiosity. It was an intensity I recognized well; any craftsmen recognizes another who appreciates the trade. “Did you really?” he asked. “I’d like the chance to look at it later. There’s a forge at Willowgrove; depending on how things go you might be able to use it.”
“Oh…ok,” I replied, glad that something normal had happened. It was a sign of how incredibly strange things had become that a short – no, he was still taller than I was – pointy eared man with red spirals on his cheeks telling me that there was a forge at a place called Willowgrove that I for some reason might be given permission to use…all of that, well, it was a sign of the jolt to my world view that THAT counted as normal.
Yet, I realized – just as I had realized what the things in the shop were –it did feel kind of normal. And that, I think, was when I really got scared.
The man led the way to the outside of the building as if he’d been navigating BHSS his entire life – impossible, since the building was less than a year old – by a route that I’d never even known existed but which was definitely faster than any other way I knew of out of the building. I wondered uneasily if the route existed any other time. The strange things hadn’t ended in the lab. One classroom I passed was made up like a romantic boudoir complete with satin sheets on a heart shaped bed; a locker had sprouted tentacles which waved menacingly at us as we went by. The whole world seemed to shift constantly like the waters of the ocean, colors swirling on themselves like paints mixed together, little things constantly changing, elements coming and going and then coming again. I looked at everything and nothing and felt like I didn’t catch any of all of it, and wondered that things were weird enough that that phrase made any sense. Except it did. It encapsulated it perfectly.
I’ve been fed LSD and this is the man from the hospital. That’s why I’m willing to follow him. Even though I think he’s babbled some nonsense about a forge and a willow, he’s actually been telling me that he’s taking me to the hospital for help, and the part of my brain that’s still rational understood him even if the rest of me couldn’t, which is why I’m going. It had a nice sound to it, except that I couldn’t seem to find any part of my brain that was still rational, and I couldn’t believe that anyone who wore such a tacky shirt could be from the hospital.
Meanwhile, at some point while I was busy looking at everything around me, my…host? Guide? Interpreter? Discoverer? Escaped asylum inmate?...had shifted his entire demeanor. And his entire wardrobe. He had gone from looking and carrying himself like the nerd he resembled, to being dressed in the height of 70’s fashion. Though his appearance was still the same, now he moved with a cocky kind of grace that I found utterly terrifying in the same way that I had, despite myself, found the previous behaviour endearing enough that I’d consent to follow him.
“Hey,” he said to me, and his tonality was all different to. He said it…suavely. I wished I could hide. “So do you know this cat, Petros?”
I nodded very quickly, eyes glued to the ground, but remained silent. Petros and I had absolutely nothing in common, but he was still one of the only people in the school who I actually considered a friend. He made an effort to talk to me from time to time, to draw me out, even, and he wouldn’t accept my silence in reply to his questions. He made me speak up, and I’d come to realize that, due to his good humor and friendliness, I didn’t actually mind doing so. He was a good guy, even if he was all punk and part of a band.
“That’s handy,” continued the changed man. “Saves trouble. And what’s your name?” He asked it in a tone that suggested he was astonished that it hadn’t been asked already. Which didn’t make sense, since he was the one who hadn’t asked me.
“Kathryn,” I managed, only stumbling on my own name a little bit. “Kathryn McCullin.”
“Is that with a C?” he asked, pulling out a little black book and a pen.
“Yes. Two of them,” I answered.
“How do ya get 2 C’s in Catherine?”
“No,” I replied, at an utter loss, stumbling slightly, “I meant my last name. My first name doesn’t have a C, it’s spelled with a K, and a Y.”
“Oh, one of those ‘hip’ spellings, I read ya,” and he winked.
I nearly fell over my own feet. Guys do NOT try to be suave with girls like me. I’d seen guys be suave with other girls, and I’d seen it in movies, so I had an idea of what it looked like, but that’s not the sort of thing that ever happens to girls like me, I was too short, too fat, and far too awkward. I didn’t see anything else he did, because I was too busy staring at the space directly in front of my feet. Even noticing the opalescent grass growing out of the tiles of the schools’ entrance foyer wasn’t enough to make my eyes go elsewhere.
“Hey, Petros,” I will refrain from commenting that his voice was suave after this, because it was ALWAYS suave, I was noticing quickly.
“Hey,” replied Petros, sounding nearly as hip. “Hey, Kathryn,” his tone became more surprised.
“Hi,” I replied. My voice barely came out at all. We had stepped out of the building and onto the grassy area in front of it; next to me was a perfect 1 by 1 meter square in which grew nothing but a profusion of 4 leaf, 5 leaf, 6 leaf, and 12 leaf clovers. A small, frantic part of my brain, trying to make sense of it all, wondered if it would still be good luck even if they had been planted so carefully. I was terrified to raise my eyes, and not just because of my inexplicable discoverer; if the school had so much in it that was strange, what might the outside world be like?
“Isn’t this, like, the coolest shit ever?” Petros asked enthusiastically. “You should look up, you wouldn’t believe the shapes of some of the clouds!”
I smiled weakly and took his word for it. “Yeah, they’re…they’re really something,” I lied. I had the sense of resigned shrugs being exchanged, though I could never have explained how I had that sense any more than I could explain how I knew that that one particular blade of grass was looking at me.
“Well, my cars right over here,” I looked up enough to see where the man was pointing. I was glad I did. In a world that had completely lost its mind, the car was a bastion of sanity. Despite my fears that this was an abduction, or god-knew-what, I eagerly climbed in to the car. It was a perfectly normal, late 80’s model Toyota. It was not a strange color, it had no protrusions of any kind, and it took two tries to start. Oh, blessed normalcy! I almost wept for joy.
It was surprisingly awkward to try to get my sword in to the car, but with the whole back seat I managed. Petros, meanwhile, took shotgun, and moments later we were cruising – I don’t know how such an un-hip car could be made to cruise, but it truly was the only appropriate word – cruising down Walnut Street, disco music blasting. Petros and the stranger were talking, but I couldn’t make it out over the bass, so instead of even trying I began, hesitantly, to look out the window.
At first, all I seemed to be able to notice were the ways in which reality had gone bananas. In place of one house was a beanstalk that would have done Jack proud. An entire strip mall had been replaced by a sink hole. Outside a car dealership, the cars were piled one on top of the other like a giant had been playing with them. Another house appeared to be built entirely of Lincoln logs, and the flowers outside of it were Lego. Two clouds were jousting. A winged cat darted by, or I should say flew by, pausing to wave cheerfully at our escort, who made a click with his tongue and shot a thumbs up back. On and on. Still, as I made myself look, I started to notice that there were ways in which it was the same world as I had always lived in. Many structures were exactly as they normally were. I could see people, in other cars, in parking lots, on the sidewalks, and nearby businesses, and most of them looked just like regular people. They also seemed blissfully and completely unaware of the things that I could see all around. Maybe it really was drugs. But I didn’t think so. Indeed, the more I looked, the more I started to think that what I saw NOW was normal, and that the way life had always been up to today had been…not normal. A pale, lifeless imitation of normal. I could almost see both things, the world I knew before and this new…new place, I suppose it was…as they were layered on top of each other. In the reflected vibrancy of now, the other looked utterly inhospitable. I shuddered and hid again. It was a sobering thought to realize that I was starting to not want things to go back to “normal.” It was a sobering thought to realize that I was afraid that they would do so, and I’d never again experience this sensory overload, this wash of colors, this jumble of sensations.
And with the understanding of that fear came a sudden and mostly complete acceptance of this world around me. It was shocking in its intensity, but left behind it almost no sense that anything strange had happened at all. Quite the contrary. Most of what was happening seemed rather utterly normal. No, that wasn’t quite right either. That would never be quite right. Nothing about it was normal at all, and that was what was normal about it, that was what it was supposed to be. A little window in to chaos, or perhaps a shadow of the chaos that was already there, and I had found the X-ray goggles that allowed me to see it. Except I had no idea what I’d done, or what had been done to me, or what was different now than had been an hour ago.
We stopped at a red light. By this point, I was no longer flinching and hiding behind the door, but was instead looking out constantly, interested in what other sights I might see. I’d seen so many things, normal, fantastic, wonderful, terrifying, and thought I’d need to see a lot more before my curiosity was satisfied. There was one thing, though, I hadn’t seen, and now that I did see it, I feel back from the window with a shocked gasp. Reflected in the window of the car beside us through a happy trick of the light, I saw myself.
That morning, in the mirror, I’d looked perfectly normal. Indeed, in a nut shell the word normal described what I looked like perfectly. I had short-cropped brown hair, I had dull brown eyes. Despite being 16, I was very short, several inches below five feet, and I despaired of growing any more. This might have been alright if I wasn’t somehow also built like the only female professional football player. I won’t go so far as to say I was square, but I was broad shouldered and was heavily built. I wish I could blame it on swinging a forge hammer, too, but that would be to reverse our chicken with our egg; a part of why I took up the forge when I was young was that I was the only 7 year old strong enough to heft the hammer at the county fair. Indeed, the only feature I had that wasn’t utterly designed to not impress was my bust size; at least with that I could, with work, put on the appearance of having some feminine curves. Lastly, I’ll conclude this self-portrait with the admission that others might have painted it more flatteringly; in particular my brothers, on the rare occasions that they visited these days, were always correcting me when I said something self-deprecating. That’s what brothers do, and I thought it was a very nice gesture, for all that it couldn’t change my fundamental lack of appeal.
Now, not to give the wrong impression, I should add that the reflection that now gazed back at me was, to my mind, no more appealing than before. It wasn’t even all that different. But it was different enough! I was shorter, I realized, putting together why the sword and the world in general had seemed a bit larger. Indeed, the sword was almost the same height as me, now, which put me at just over 4 feet tall. My hair was still brown, but it was quite long and wavy. I wondered if that was what my hair would have looked like if I let it grow; I never did so because long hair was such a nuisance in the forge. How had I not noticed all this hair before? Disconcertingly, I wondered if maybe it hadn’t been long until I saw that it was long. I thought that might be possible. And I certainly could tell that it was long now, feel it brushing on my neck and back. My eyes were also still brown, but they seemed to have something of a twinkle to them instead of their usual lustreless sheen, and they were shaped slightly differently, too. And over them were not one, but two rows of eyebrows, both very bushy. My cheeks were rosy like I’d come in from the cold – though they didn’t have the spirally motif like the unnamed man’s did – and all my features looked more rounded, plumper. I wasn’t really plump, normally – no, normally was the wrong word, before was the right one – rather, I was just built large, but now there was a distinct plumpness. As we started driving again, and I tried to catch my reflection again somewhere, to get another chance to figure out if I had gained anything or lost something in the transition. Finally, I decided that it was about the same in terms of appeal, just different. It didn’t matter anyway; no one ever looked at me that way, and I think if someone did I’d just curl up and hide.
Shockingly (or not) I'm not rather too tired to do a good job on writing anything. The apartment hunt is proceeding. I've discovered I'm incredibly easy to please, which is why I've put in an application for a place already; I'll know in a few days if I've gotten it. It's kind of expensive, but it's very nice and the location is simply unbeatable, on 72nd street between Broadway and West End. We'll see what happens, I guess.
Mom and I have been talking a lot - and not fighting! - and seem to be getting through a lot of stuff, which is very good. I've been playing with more recipes, too, which'll be fun. We planned out a nice Christmas dinner which I'll be attempting to make tomorrow (roast Chicken, steamed spinach, roasted potatoes, and a pumpkin pie) and which will hopefully turn out good.
I'm real sleepy, so I'm off. One of these days, I really will write more. ;)
I posted the Hogwarts Story daily, but it was a bit annoying for me, and I think it might have been boring for everyone else as well. So instead of posting daily, I'm going to post this project weekly, and I probably won't post everything I write for it each week. It's not my primary project, so I won't be writing on it every day anyway.
So yeah. This is the Changeling story I mentioned. The first week's entry is pretty big, and contains the first couple of chapters. I'm actually pretty unhappy with how things have gone the last 5k words or so, and I'm not yet sure what I'm going to do about - I think I might now how to fix it, but I haven't decided if I should rewrite or just delete and start over. I'll probably decide tomorrow.
Part 1: Dreams of Autumn
6/10/05
Dear Diary,
I don’t even know where to begin. No. There’s no way I could begin. I think it’d be better if I just didn’t even try! No, that’s not fair either, you deserve to know, and if I can’t tell you, who can I tell? I have to start somewhere. But I don’t even know where! So much has happened, and it’s so late, and you wouldn’t believe me even if I told you. It’ll just have to wait until tomorrow. Maybe tomorrow I’ll understand it all better. But I finished the sword I’ve been writing about, and I met all kinds of amazing people, like a princess and a baron and a nocker – what’s a nocker?? – and a leprechaun and I don’t even know what else! Some of them were really, really scary, like the redcaps, but some of them were nice. And now I’ve written some of it, but not enough to make any sense, but I just can’t make sense right now, I can’t wrap my head around it all. Tomorrow. I’ll definitely try again tomorrow.
Chapter 1: Life, Less Ordinary
I woke up in the morning all excitement and happiness. I had been looking forward to that very day for months. Well, I hadn’t know it would be that day, precisely, months ago, but I’d been looking forward to it is a hypothetical day that I hoped would happen sometime soon. I’d only known it would be today since, well, since yesterday.
My high school, I should say, is the coolest high school anywhere. It didn’t used to be that way; it used to be a really ordinary high school. Then the building got destroyed, and rebuilt, and the new one really has to be the most awesome high school anywhere in the world. It has everything any kid could want in it, everything and more. I don’t even know most of what it has, I’m not really exploratory, but I know it has all kinds of things I don’t even know about. In particular, though, what it has that I do know about is tech rooms like you wouldn’t believe, with all kinds of equipment for working with metal. Really expensive, hard to come by equipment, like stuff you don’t normally see outside of industrial workshops. My set up at home is pretty impressive, I mean, mom has been really supportive in helping me to build a forge in the garage, but there was still no way we could have some of the bigger pieces of equipment, stuff for engraving and advanced welding and stuff. But Bloomington High School South did. And as of yesterday, after months of trying, I had gotten permission to use that equipment even though I wasn’t in one of the tech classes.
Last night, I had lovingly wrapped up the sword that I would be trying the engraving machinery on. I had finished the sword the previous week, and I was pretty certain it was the best work I’d ever done. Mom saw it and I think she thought so too; I had a hard time convincing her not to sell it at last weekend’s Renaissance Faire. She took all the other swords and daggers I’d made recently and only brought back one dagger, and that one not very nice, and she told me again that she should have brought the sword I had just finished, she would have been able to sell it for a lot of money. I was glad she hadn’t taken it; I intended to ask her if I might not, for once, be allowed to keep one of the weapons I made. After I finished engraving it, it would be extra special to me; my best work to date, and the first decorative piece I’d finished. Once I got the hang of doing the embellishment, she’d be able to sell all of those swords for lots more than the plain ones. I hoped, with that in mind, she might relent and let me keep it.
Of course, it’s not normal to let a 11th grader bring a sword to school, not normal at all. That’s why it took me so long to get permission. Even then, it was all going to be closely supervised by Mr. Brown, the shop teacher. He was going to meet me outside of the school and take the sword – which I had wrapped in a blanket and tied with cord – and then he’d take it in. I wouldn’t be allowed to work on it until after school hours, either, and then only when Mr. Brown was in the room. I didn’t care. It was so worth it! I was very excited.
The day seemed to pass in fits and starts. Breakfast was very long; mom mentioned she’d promised Mr. Ulrich, her contact at the Faire, that I’d have 6 more swords and 5 daggers finished for the following weekend. I blanched; I would have to pull an all-nighter to finish that many in time, and even then I might not be able to. She pointed out that it’d only be 5 swords, if…and she stopped with a glare at my wrapped package. I couldn’t bring myself to disagree, but I resolved in my heart that I’d make her 7 swords, and she could take all of them, as long as she didn’t try to take that one. Dad had changed the subject then, and while I ate my breakfast silently they talked about the pool they were having installed in the back, and the deck that was being built.
I tried not to listen to what they were saying. That’s not normal, I know, most kids my age would have been thrilled that their parents were putting in a pool just as summer was starting. I wasn’t happy about it at all, though, but I didn’t want them to know it. I knew I was being unfair, and that I was surely misunderstanding what was going on. I mean, all I knew was that neither mom nor dad had gotten a raise, and that we’d been struggling to make ends meet, and now suddenly we had enough for a pool. All I knew was that mom told me that the money from my swords being sold was going into my college fund. It was very wrong of me to even begin to suspect otherwise, and so I didn’t like to hear them talk about the pool, or the deck, or mom’s new necklace, because it made me feel like such a bad person to be suspicious that I couldn’t bear it. I hated feeling that way, and I hated that I couldn’t make myself stop. I wished my brothers had never left home. Things were different before they left. I thought breakfast would never end.
The ride to school, on the other hand, and the periods leading up to lunch, passed like lightning. Mr. Brown met me at the entrance just like we’d planned right after dad dropped me off. He took the bundle from me and looked surprised at how heavy it was; years of swinging a hammer had made me much stronger than my size would suggest, but I never did anything at all in school that would show that so no one really knew. Classes were, as always, boring, and I, as always, didn’t pay any attention. Math and science I liked, but those were in the afternoon; English and history and French and all didn’t interest me at all. Usually, I tried to pay attention anyway, I didn’t like to be rude to the teachers and mom wanted me to do well, but today I just couldn’t. Instead, I looked over the plans I had drawn up of what decorations I was going to put on the sword, made some minor changes, changed them back, and was generally twitchy and fidgety, my mind entirely on the afternoon.
Lunch was the first time I had to myself, and it was very nice. It was a lovely day outside, so I took my food and found a bench outside and sat in the sun drawing. As a result, I was late to math. I shouldn’t have gone at all; after the freedom of lunch the rest of the day’s classes passed so slowly that I thought I could feel every single second as a distinct and extended moment. The tension seemed to build and build until I thought I would explode from it, and then somehow it would build still more, until, suddenly, the three o’clock bell rang, class was out, and I was free.
Mr. Brown wasn’t at the door to the tech room like we had discussed, but I found him easily enough, he was having a smoke outside. I practically bounced on my heels while I waited for him to finish his cigarette, and, noticing, he grunted.
“Listen,” he said to me, reaching in to his pocket, “the principal and all those,” he made a vague gesture, “those other people told me that I had to keep an eye on you.” He barked a laugh. “As if a little girl like you – especially like you, everyone knows what you’re like – was gonna do anything even with a sword. Me? I don’t think you’re gonna do nothin’ except what you said you were. So here’s what I’m gonna do. I’m gonna give you this key,” he held up a key which he had pulled out of his pocket, “and I’m gonna go home. And you can play with that metal stick of yours to your hearts content. Just make sure you lock up when you’re done, and give me the key in the morning.”
“Are you sure?!” I looked up at him hesitantly, unable to contain my shock. “Won’t you get in trouble if I’m found like that?”
“No trouble at all,” he replied, taking a long drag on the cigarette, “just tell them I went out to the bathroom.”
“But what if they wait for you to come back?” My mind was concocting all the ways that this suggestion would result in Mr. Brown being fired. I hardly spared a thought for what might happen to me, though in the recesses of my mind was the vague sense that I would be in trouble too.
“Look,” he said firmly, and I squeaked inadvertently and fixed my eyes back on the ground, “nothing is gonna happen. No one’s gonna care. Believe me. Here, take it,” he took one of my hands and pressed the key in to it.
“Thank you,” I stammered gratefully.
“Now you listen, though,” he continued more gently, and I glanced quickly at his face; his expression was sympathetic. “Don’t you stay here too late. It’d be dangerous for you to head home by yourself real late, especially living out in the middle of nowhere like you do.”
“Oh, it’s fine,” I replied, “but thank you for worrying, for your concern and stuff. My dad’s gonna come get me when I call him. On my cell phone. So I won’t have to get home alone.”
“Good. Now you get going,” his tone went back to being gruff, even more so than before, as if to make up for the sympathetic moment.
The key in my hand, I hurried to the tech lab. This was even better than I had hoped! I had been worried about inconveniencing Mr. Brown by asking him to stay late at work, and I had convinced myself that I would stop at 5 no matter what so that he wouldn’t have to stay too terribly long on my account. Now, though, I could stay as late as I wanted. Well, not exactly; my mom would be very angry if I didn’t get home in time to do some work in the forge, and dad would complain about the price of gas and making an extra trip if I wasn’t ready by the time he finished work at 6:30, but even so, I could stay until 6:30!
Determined to make the most of my time, I wasted very little of it. Normally, if I’d had leisure, I might have spent a whole long time just gawking at the long-dreamed of tech room which I now finally had access to. But there wasn’t a moment to waste! So I went directly to the equipment that I needed, put on safety goggles and gloves, and pulled out my plans. Unwrapping the sword, I laid it out on the work table I’d picked out to use.
It was a very plain, but kind of well made, blade. The hilt was a simple affair, and the sword undecorated – so far – but the steel shined faintly from the time I’d taken to polish it, and the blade was sharp enough to cut unless one was making an effort not to. I wasn’t really supposed to sharpen the blades, at least not this much – if mom decided to sell it I’d have to dull it again – but I had been so excited with how it was turning out that I hadn’t been able to resist “finishing” it as I so rarely was able to finish my swords, by actually sharpening it and honing it and any number of other little touches that marked the difference between the sort of thing that people in the 21th century might buy at a Renaissance Faire and the sort of thing that knights in the 15th century would have used to hack each other to bits. Not that I had any interest whatsoever in hacking any one to bits, but that wasn’t the point. I was a weaponsmith, not an artist, or at least I wanted to be a weaponsmith, and it was important to me, however rarely, to get to make a weapon as a weapon, not as a souvenir. Not that there was any call for weaponsmiths in 2005. Mom said I was wasting my time learning how to make them in to weapons; that’s why she was as pleased as I was that I had access to the tech room – now I could start giving her real decorative pieces instead of just hunks of steel, was how she saw it I think, with the added bonus that we wouldn’t have to buy any equipment. And this would be the first one, and it would be perfect, because it would be a weapon AND it would be decorated. And all of that was part and parcel of me wanting to keep this one. It was different. I knew it was.
The plans for its decoration were simple enough. Though I knew all about the theory and the equipment I was about to use, I’d never actually USED it before, so I thought simple was best. I would just be doing long vines of leaves down one side of the blade, like on a willow, and on the other side, right up near the top, I’d put my makers mark. All my blades had my mark on it somewhere, but I usually just branded it into the wooden parts of the handle. This one would be different, though, it’d be etched right in to the steel.
I set to work at once, unhesitating, with all the confidence I usually felt when I stood at the forge. I should probably have been worried, doing something new, but it didn’t even occur to me. I just set to it. Time blurred as I worked, and for who-knows-how-long nothing at all existed except the sword in front of me and the tool in my hand. I didn’t need to look at the plans; I’d memorized them. And there was nothing at all except the work.
I knew the moment when I was finished. I could have added more, lots more; I hadn’t done as much as I had originally intended, even. But even so, I knew it was perfect, and there was nothing else to do. The leaves and branches twined their way down nearly to the tip; the makers mark glinted in the light, my initials – KM – intricately knotted in a vaguely Celtic motif, and I set the tools down, and pulled my goggles off, and went about shutting off the equipment. There was no need to wait; I wouldn’t ever add even another line, there was no need. I didn’t know how I knew this, but I was as certain of it as I was certain that I drew breath. The feeling, in truth, was utterly exhilarating. I wanted to laugh from the pure delight of it.
I had just finished shutting down the various machines in the room – most of them I hadn’t even used, but I was certain it wasn’t safe for them to be left on overnight even if I didn’t know at all who had turned them on – when the door burst open. I jumped and spun around. “Mr. Brown went to the bathroom!” I blurted before I’d even looked up.
The man who came in didn’t reply in any way to this statement, though he was speaking. “2!” he exclaimed. “2 in one day! 2 in one day in one place! Unbelievable! I’ve never heard of anything like it,” he looked me dead in the eye; I wasn’t in the habit of looking people in the eye, but I was so completely astonished that I hadn’t remembered to avert my gaze. “Have you?”
“Have…have I what?” I stammered, trying to break eye contact but somehow not able to do so. The man had very intense eyes.
“Have you ever heard the like? 2 in one day! 2 within minutes of each other! It’s unprecedented,” he paused thoughtfully. “No, that’s not entirely the case, I suppose you’re right. You’re no fun, you know.”
To this I had no reply whatsoever. The man was clearly insane. If what he said wasn’t evidence enough of that, what he wore and what he looked like would have been all that I needed. Most of the time, he looked perfectly normal – a whole lot older than me, taller than I, and thin and quintessentially nerdy (not that I was one to throw stones!) and dressed in plain jeans and a button up shirt that managed to clash violently with suspenders that served no discernable purpose, since they clearly didn’t hold his pants up. However, ever few moments his entire appearance seemed to…change. I’d blink, he’d seem 6 inches shorter, and his ears would be pointed, and his cheeks bright red, and his outfit even more violently colored. Then he’d be back to normal. Only, I wasn’t sure which was normal. And, I realized, I wasn’t sure why me seeing things caused me to think he was insane. That hardly seemed fair, really.
“Right, then,” he continued while I had all these thoughts, “so what have we here?” He looked me up and down, and I assumed the incredibly self-conscious pose of a girl who knew she was being scrutinized, and didn’t wish to be – hands clenched in each other in front me, eyes on the floor, cheeks blushing slightly. I didn’t like people looking at me, because I knew there wasn’t much to see, and I was never comfortable when people did so. Fortunately, I had little to worry about. People almost never paid attention to me, a fact for which I was infinitely thankful. It had its downsides, too, though, for now for the first time in my life – outside of a doctor’s office! – I was being examined very carefully, and I didn’t know at all what to do accept stand there in dejected embarrassment. It was just too much!
“Um, can I help you with anything?” I asked hesitantly. “The school’s office is just down the hall, I’m sure they can help you find whatever it is that you’re looking for.”
“No,” he replied, “not at all. Anyway, I’ve already found it. Both ‘its.’ 2!” He muttered to himself.
Unable to get his attention off of me, I did the only other thing that I could: I diverted my own attention. Maybe if I pretended I wasn’t there, he’d go away and leave me alone. And for the first time, I noticed that this man wasn’t the only thing weird about my surroundings. How had I missed it before? Those machines, for one thing, the ones I had so casually turned off before to protect the school, I realized I hadn’t seen those when I came in. But they were huge! And clanky! And one was brightly, violently, colored to compete with the strange man’s suspenders! How could I have missed them? And who on earth would paint a machine that way?
There were things, too, all over the room. There had been some interesting items when I came in, though I hadn’t paid them any mind – other students’ work-in-progress. Now, though, there seemed to be many more of them, and they were everything from utterly normal to impossibly odd. Next to a little model built like one of Da Vinci’s flying machines was a mobile from which dangled brightly twinkling stars, with the mobile suspended perfectly unsupported in midair. In one corner of the room, a hulky piece of metal seemed to breathe in and out rhythmically, and on the floor a little robotic snake chased its own tail. A half-finished sandwich lay atop a slightly less finished drawing of an odd Rube-Goldberg device which, I thought, was designed to take the egg shell off of a hard boiled egg; next to both was a perfectly peeled egg, though the device was no place evident. An ornithopter hung from the ceiling with a cat in the pilots seat. An electronic device of no apparent nature periodically made a sequence of LEDs light up. Next to it, three LEDs connected to nothing at all also lit up. Looking at it all, some of it normal, some of it utterly impossible, I still knew with a certainty what it all was – even the things I couldn’t identify. As naturally as I knew that a tree was a tree or a chair a chair, I knew that all of these things were created from the inspiration of the students who worked in this lab, that these were all the things they did make, all the things they hoped to make, all the things they feared making, all the things they dreamed of making. There was a snap, and I jumped with a startled, bitten off exclamation; the snake had caught its tail.
And, after taking all this in, after wondering what on earth was going on and had someone slipped me some kind of drug and how could I know something like that about dreams, my eyes returned to the man who had triggered this craziness. He, meanwhile, had been distracted thoroughly by the egg peeler, and was muttering something; I could have sworn I heard something about copyright law, but it was too indistinct for me to be sure. He was no longer flickering – he had affixed, firmly, on the shorter, pointy-eared, red-cheeked version. “What’s going on?” I looked askance towards his face, darting my own eyes away when he once again started to scrutinize me.
“Oh, right, right,” he nodded sagely, though I couldn’t imagine why. “I’m not the one to tell you. You should come with me.”
“What?” I exclaimed. Now the crazy man wanted me to go with me? No, that wasn’t what was shocking. What was shocking, to me, was that I was thinking about doing it. Clearly the insanity was my own; I’d NEVER go any place with a strange man, any more than I’d EVER see an ornithopter. The snake had eaten most of its back part and seemed utterly unphased.
“I’ll take both of you there,” he continued, as if he’d already told me where and I’d already agreed, “it’s the best place, really.”
“Where?” I asked, hesitantly, feeling distinctly that by asking where I was going I somehow tacitly implied that I would go. “With who?”
“To Willowgrove,” he answered as if it was the most obvious thing in the world, “with me. Come on, then. Kaye’ll know what to say to you.” He added special emphasis to the word you, as if Kaye might not know what to say to others. I wished I knew what the heck he was trying to say to me!!
Ignoring the panoply of the astounding around me, I hastily gathered up my sword and bag and sketches, stuffing the drawings into my bag with one hand while I held a precarious grip on the hilt with my other. The sword seemed bigger than I remembered it. And, indeed, as that thought occurred to me, I realized that actually the entire world seemed a bit bigger, a bit taller, then I remembered it being. Utter. Complete. Insanity. The snake’s tail had cycled around in a fashion that was only possible in an M.C. Escher picture. The man didn’t even notice; he was already outside the room.
“You are coming, right?” he asked, sticking his head back in. “Hey, what’re you bringing that for?”
“It’s mine,” I replied defensively. “I made it.” I was so used to everyone around me knowing I was the weird sword girl that it felt strange to say that I was the crafter.
For the first time since he came in, the man seemed to actually focus on me, or maybe it was on what I held. The effect was dramatic; gone was all of the spaciness, and instead was an intensity, and a curiosity. It was an intensity I recognized well; any craftsmen recognizes another who appreciates the trade. “Did you really?” he asked. “I’d like the chance to look at it later. There’s a forge at Willowgrove; depending on how things go you might be able to use it.”
“Oh…ok,” I replied, glad that something normal had happened. It was a sign of how incredibly strange things had become that a short – no, he was still taller than I was – pointy eared man with red spirals on his cheeks telling me that there was a forge at a place called Willowgrove that I for some reason might be given permission to use…all of that, well, it was a sign of the jolt to my world view that THAT counted as normal.
Yet, I realized – just as I had realized what the things in the shop were –it did feel kind of normal. And that, I think, was when I really got scared.
The man led the way to the outside of the building as if he’d been navigating BHSS his entire life – impossible, since the building was less than a year old – by a route that I’d never even known existed but which was definitely faster than any other way I knew of out of the building. I wondered uneasily if the route existed any other time. The strange things hadn’t ended in the lab. One classroom I passed was made up like a romantic boudoir complete with satin sheets on a heart shaped bed; a locker had sprouted tentacles which waved menacingly at us as we went by. The whole world seemed to shift constantly like the waters of the ocean, colors swirling on themselves like paints mixed together, little things constantly changing, elements coming and going and then coming again. I looked at everything and nothing and felt like I didn’t catch any of all of it, and wondered that things were weird enough that that phrase made any sense. Except it did. It encapsulated it perfectly.
I’ve been fed LSD and this is the man from the hospital. That’s why I’m willing to follow him. Even though I think he’s babbled some nonsense about a forge and a willow, he’s actually been telling me that he’s taking me to the hospital for help, and the part of my brain that’s still rational understood him even if the rest of me couldn’t, which is why I’m going. It had a nice sound to it, except that I couldn’t seem to find any part of my brain that was still rational, and I couldn’t believe that anyone who wore such a tacky shirt could be from the hospital.
Meanwhile, at some point while I was busy looking at everything around me, my…host? Guide? Interpreter? Discoverer? Escaped asylum inmate?...had shifted his entire demeanor. And his entire wardrobe. He had gone from looking and carrying himself like the nerd he resembled, to being dressed in the height of 70’s fashion. Though his appearance was still the same, now he moved with a cocky kind of grace that I found utterly terrifying in the same way that I had, despite myself, found the previous behaviour endearing enough that I’d consent to follow him.
“Hey,” he said to me, and his tonality was all different to. He said it…suavely. I wished I could hide. “So do you know this cat, Petros?”
I nodded very quickly, eyes glued to the ground, but remained silent. Petros and I had absolutely nothing in common, but he was still one of the only people in the school who I actually considered a friend. He made an effort to talk to me from time to time, to draw me out, even, and he wouldn’t accept my silence in reply to his questions. He made me speak up, and I’d come to realize that, due to his good humor and friendliness, I didn’t actually mind doing so. He was a good guy, even if he was all punk and part of a band.
“That’s handy,” continued the changed man. “Saves trouble. And what’s your name?” He asked it in a tone that suggested he was astonished that it hadn’t been asked already. Which didn’t make sense, since he was the one who hadn’t asked me.
“Kathryn,” I managed, only stumbling on my own name a little bit. “Kathryn McCullin.”
“Is that with a C?” he asked, pulling out a little black book and a pen.
“Yes. Two of them,” I answered.
“How do ya get 2 C’s in Catherine?”
“No,” I replied, at an utter loss, stumbling slightly, “I meant my last name. My first name doesn’t have a C, it’s spelled with a K, and a Y.”
“Oh, one of those ‘hip’ spellings, I read ya,” and he winked.
I nearly fell over my own feet. Guys do NOT try to be suave with girls like me. I’d seen guys be suave with other girls, and I’d seen it in movies, so I had an idea of what it looked like, but that’s not the sort of thing that ever happens to girls like me, I was too short, too fat, and far too awkward. I didn’t see anything else he did, because I was too busy staring at the space directly in front of my feet. Even noticing the opalescent grass growing out of the tiles of the schools’ entrance foyer wasn’t enough to make my eyes go elsewhere.
“Hey, Petros,” I will refrain from commenting that his voice was suave after this, because it was ALWAYS suave, I was noticing quickly.
“Hey,” replied Petros, sounding nearly as hip. “Hey, Kathryn,” his tone became more surprised.
“Hi,” I replied. My voice barely came out at all. We had stepped out of the building and onto the grassy area in front of it; next to me was a perfect 1 by 1 meter square in which grew nothing but a profusion of 4 leaf, 5 leaf, 6 leaf, and 12 leaf clovers. A small, frantic part of my brain, trying to make sense of it all, wondered if it would still be good luck even if they had been planted so carefully. I was terrified to raise my eyes, and not just because of my inexplicable discoverer; if the school had so much in it that was strange, what might the outside world be like?
“Isn’t this, like, the coolest shit ever?” Petros asked enthusiastically. “You should look up, you wouldn’t believe the shapes of some of the clouds!”
I smiled weakly and took his word for it. “Yeah, they’re…they’re really something,” I lied. I had the sense of resigned shrugs being exchanged, though I could never have explained how I had that sense any more than I could explain how I knew that that one particular blade of grass was looking at me.
“Well, my cars right over here,” I looked up enough to see where the man was pointing. I was glad I did. In a world that had completely lost its mind, the car was a bastion of sanity. Despite my fears that this was an abduction, or god-knew-what, I eagerly climbed in to the car. It was a perfectly normal, late 80’s model Toyota. It was not a strange color, it had no protrusions of any kind, and it took two tries to start. Oh, blessed normalcy! I almost wept for joy.
It was surprisingly awkward to try to get my sword in to the car, but with the whole back seat I managed. Petros, meanwhile, took shotgun, and moments later we were cruising – I don’t know how such an un-hip car could be made to cruise, but it truly was the only appropriate word – cruising down Walnut Street, disco music blasting. Petros and the stranger were talking, but I couldn’t make it out over the bass, so instead of even trying I began, hesitantly, to look out the window.
At first, all I seemed to be able to notice were the ways in which reality had gone bananas. In place of one house was a beanstalk that would have done Jack proud. An entire strip mall had been replaced by a sink hole. Outside a car dealership, the cars were piled one on top of the other like a giant had been playing with them. Another house appeared to be built entirely of Lincoln logs, and the flowers outside of it were Lego. Two clouds were jousting. A winged cat darted by, or I should say flew by, pausing to wave cheerfully at our escort, who made a click with his tongue and shot a thumbs up back. On and on. Still, as I made myself look, I started to notice that there were ways in which it was the same world as I had always lived in. Many structures were exactly as they normally were. I could see people, in other cars, in parking lots, on the sidewalks, and nearby businesses, and most of them looked just like regular people. They also seemed blissfully and completely unaware of the things that I could see all around. Maybe it really was drugs. But I didn’t think so. Indeed, the more I looked, the more I started to think that what I saw NOW was normal, and that the way life had always been up to today had been…not normal. A pale, lifeless imitation of normal. I could almost see both things, the world I knew before and this new…new place, I suppose it was…as they were layered on top of each other. In the reflected vibrancy of now, the other looked utterly inhospitable. I shuddered and hid again. It was a sobering thought to realize that I was starting to not want things to go back to “normal.” It was a sobering thought to realize that I was afraid that they would do so, and I’d never again experience this sensory overload, this wash of colors, this jumble of sensations.
And with the understanding of that fear came a sudden and mostly complete acceptance of this world around me. It was shocking in its intensity, but left behind it almost no sense that anything strange had happened at all. Quite the contrary. Most of what was happening seemed rather utterly normal. No, that wasn’t quite right either. That would never be quite right. Nothing about it was normal at all, and that was what was normal about it, that was what it was supposed to be. A little window in to chaos, or perhaps a shadow of the chaos that was already there, and I had found the X-ray goggles that allowed me to see it. Except I had no idea what I’d done, or what had been done to me, or what was different now than had been an hour ago.
We stopped at a red light. By this point, I was no longer flinching and hiding behind the door, but was instead looking out constantly, interested in what other sights I might see. I’d seen so many things, normal, fantastic, wonderful, terrifying, and thought I’d need to see a lot more before my curiosity was satisfied. There was one thing, though, I hadn’t seen, and now that I did see it, I feel back from the window with a shocked gasp. Reflected in the window of the car beside us through a happy trick of the light, I saw myself.
That morning, in the mirror, I’d looked perfectly normal. Indeed, in a nut shell the word normal described what I looked like perfectly. I had short-cropped brown hair, I had dull brown eyes. Despite being 16, I was very short, several inches below five feet, and I despaired of growing any more. This might have been alright if I wasn’t somehow also built like the only female professional football player. I won’t go so far as to say I was square, but I was broad shouldered and was heavily built. I wish I could blame it on swinging a forge hammer, too, but that would be to reverse our chicken with our egg; a part of why I took up the forge when I was young was that I was the only 7 year old strong enough to heft the hammer at the county fair. Indeed, the only feature I had that wasn’t utterly designed to not impress was my bust size; at least with that I could, with work, put on the appearance of having some feminine curves. Lastly, I’ll conclude this self-portrait with the admission that others might have painted it more flatteringly; in particular my brothers, on the rare occasions that they visited these days, were always correcting me when I said something self-deprecating. That’s what brothers do, and I thought it was a very nice gesture, for all that it couldn’t change my fundamental lack of appeal.
Now, not to give the wrong impression, I should add that the reflection that now gazed back at me was, to my mind, no more appealing than before. It wasn’t even all that different. But it was different enough! I was shorter, I realized, putting together why the sword and the world in general had seemed a bit larger. Indeed, the sword was almost the same height as me, now, which put me at just over 4 feet tall. My hair was still brown, but it was quite long and wavy. I wondered if that was what my hair would have looked like if I let it grow; I never did so because long hair was such a nuisance in the forge. How had I not noticed all this hair before? Disconcertingly, I wondered if maybe it hadn’t been long until I saw that it was long. I thought that might be possible. And I certainly could tell that it was long now, feel it brushing on my neck and back. My eyes were also still brown, but they seemed to have something of a twinkle to them instead of their usual lustreless sheen, and they were shaped slightly differently, too. And over them were not one, but two rows of eyebrows, both very bushy. My cheeks were rosy like I’d come in from the cold – though they didn’t have the spirally motif like the unnamed man’s did – and all my features looked more rounded, plumper. I wasn’t really plump, normally – no, normally was the wrong word, before was the right one – rather, I was just built large, but now there was a distinct plumpness. As we started driving again, and I tried to catch my reflection again somewhere, to get another chance to figure out if I had gained anything or lost something in the transition. Finally, I decided that it was about the same in terms of appeal, just different. It didn’t matter anyway; no one ever looked at me that way, and I think if someone did I’d just curl up and hide.
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