Magic University Book One: The Siren and the Sword (21 page)

Are fraught with fear and pain,

Ye shall be loved again!

No one is so accursed by fate,

No one so utterly desolate,

But some heart, though unknown,

Responds unto his own.

Responds,—as if with unseen wings,

An angel touched its quivering strings;

And whispers, in its song,

“Where hast thou stayed so long?”

Kyle stared at the poem. He was using his phone as a flashlight, huddled in the stacks near where he’d lost Jess that
very first day she’d shown him around.

He was certain, quite certain, that he’d felt or heard something. He’d forgotten it entirely until tonight, when he’d been wandering through the dark building, wondering where the best place to tempt the siren would be. Then it had come back to him, as he’d approached the spot. Someone, or something, had touched the back of his neck, caressed his ear...

At the time he’d thought it had been Jess, playing around. The assumption that it had been her was one of the reasons he’d been bold enough to ask her out to dinner. He counted himself lucky, then, that she said yes, and that things had worked out so well between them.

But now he knew something strange was afoot in the library. His reasoning went something like this. If there was a real siren haunting the place, who stayed hidden and only revealed herself at night, if she had been the one who attacked Alex, then he wanted to catch her, and if she hadn’t—well, wouldn’t she know something about the attack? Dean Bell was definitely hiding something, and maybe this way Kyle could find out what.

This was, of course, all supposing that the amulet he’d made would work, and that the siren would actually emerge.

Kyle’s plan was quite forgotten, however, as he found himself absorbed in the poem of Longfellow’s. He had goose bumps reading it. The feeling that this one connected somehow to the first Avestan cycle was unshakable.

He took out his own notebook and began to write a commentary.

The main gist of most interpretations of the prophecy is that a great cataclysm is coming, and that only a prophesied pair of lovers can avert the disaster. It’s rather unique in that you just never ever see prophecies predicting two people to exist. They’re pretty much always about one individual, one king, or one hero, or whatever. But perhaps that’s a large part of why the first cycle is so popular. The implication of the lovers is that the power of love is somehow one of the qualities this pair possesses in order to save the day.

Each of the poems I’ve encountered and noted here, beginning with Eliot, feel to me like poetic riffs on the mystery, bringing the prophecy out of the realm of the prediction and down to the level of the personal, the characters and people to whom this great story would have happened. Or will happen to, if one believes there is any actual prediction taking place.

He heard a sound. Yes, definitely a sound. Would a siren wear boots? It was the sound of boot heels hitting the floor with a determined stride.

Kyle pressed himself under the desk at a study carrel, wondering if holding his breath would be of any help or not.
Probably not. He tried to breathe very softly but couldn’t do anything about how hard his heart was beating. Hopefully only he could hear that.

The boots went right past him, and the trailing hem of someone’s traditional robes.

Dean Bell?

The boots went back and forth a few times. Then a voice: unmistakably Bell. “Faust’s swollen left testicle.” Kyle heard a thump, as if he’d banged his fist against a shelf.

The sounds of him stalking about faded. Kyle forced himself to wait a half hour crammed under the desk before he emerged, straining to hear any sound that might mean he was still in the building. But nothing and no one jumped out at him, and after another minute of standing stock still, he sat in desk chair and let out a relieved breath.

So what was Bell doing? Was he looking for the siren, too? Or something else? Whatever it was, it sounded like he didn’t find it. And he didn’t find Kyle either. Kyle wondered what kind of spells Bell could use to find someone. But maybe he would have had to know who he was looking for? And wasn’t he supposed to have some kind of powers as dean—or assistant dean, anyway—that were supposed to let him commune with the buildings somehow? Maybe that was exaggerated. More questions Kyle wanted to ask Alex.

He seemed to be alone again, and soon grew bold enough to walk up and down the stacks again. By most accounts, a siren needed to have sex at least once a month. A true siren would think nothing of having sex with someone against their will if she needed to, though typically they were more seductresses than rapists. Their victims would think that they wanted to have sex with them. And certainly if there were one here, she would have no shortage of horny students who needed help with their exams who would offer themselves up?

Suddenly Kyle had an idea. He unzipped his fly slowly, the metallic sound of the zipper seeming to disappear this deep in the stacks.

Anxiety that Bell might swoop around the corner any second transmuted into illicit thrill as he came quickly to full hardness.
Come on...here you go...
he thought, as if trying to coax a scared cat out from under a couch with an enticing bit of tuna.

He dropped to his knees, his shoulder bag coming to rest on the floor, as he stroked himself. When he closed his eyes, he could see the goddess Diana, bending down to bestow an unasked-for kiss on mortal lips—

His eyes flew open.

Nothing. Just his imagination. He kept stroking himself, looking around in the darkness and trying to be silent to listen, waiting to feel that phantom touch on his neck, to hear that whisper.

A half hour later, he backed down from the brink of orgasm for the umpteenth time, biting his fist. Should he stop?
He didn’t want to stop. He wanted to come like Mount Vesuvius. But he didn’t want to make a mess, and he didn’t want to give up. He could find the restroom and do it in there, but he would have to turn the light on in there to keep from just making the mess worse, and he was convinced that would somehow give him away. The wisest course of action was probably to just leave his cock alone until the erection went down, then find some corner to fall asleep in for a few hours before going back into hiding just before the building opened again in the morning.

Yeah, right.
Falling asleep while as horny as Merlin’s third cousin’s goat sounded about as doable as levitation right now.
Alex, you pigfucking son of Circe, this is all your fault...

The restroom it was. Using only the light from his phone he managed to make himself a large wad of toilet paper, which he used in both hands to wank himself quickly to a silent but heart-stopping orgasm. It hadn’t taken long, but he felt somewhat chafed. He stuffed the wad down into a trash bin and wondered what to do next.

* * * *

Four nights later, he had seen Dean Bell twice more, but Bell had seemed unaware of his presence each time. And perhaps it was a good thing Kyle hadn’t found the siren yet, since it wasn’t until that fifth night that he read another account of the amulet he’d made and finally realized the siren wasn’t the one who was supposed to wear the amulet at all. Of course the siren wasn’t supposed to wear it! How would you get something like that around a Sphinx’s neck?

Kyle looped the chain over his own neck, feeling foolish in the extreme.

A few days before term started again, students began to trickle back into the house. The dining hall reopened, which was wonderful, since the weather had continued to be nasty and slogging out once a day to see Alex had been enough of the great outdoors for Kyle’s taste.

He told Alex all about making the amulet and almost breaking his neck getting back into his room, and about Bell stalking the library every other night. “I can’t help but feel he has it in for you somehow,” Kyle said. “At least, that was the impression you always gave me, and nothing I’ve seen has improved my opinion of him.”

But Alex never answered. The stocking was still hanging on the window, even though it was well past the Christmas season now. Kyle didn’t take it down, and neither did anyone else.

At least he had some friends to eat with and hang around in the common room with. The Glads seemed a lot more relaxed and less clique-ish when there were only a few of them around. One night Kyle and Nichols were playing cards
when the door burst open and Frost came stumbling into the room, swearing about the sticky door.

Kyle chuckled under his breath, and when Frost had gone through to the stairs to his room, he remarked to Nichols, “I guess I’m not the only one who has trouble with that door.”

Nichols looked at him funny but said nothing, just placed his next card on the table between them.

Kyle examined his hand, then asked, “You’re a year ahead of him. How did he get ahead of you in the pecking order?”

Nichols gave Kyle another look, but one without any malice. “Well, if he hadn’t rescued me on Halloween, you mean. I owe him big time for that.”

“But besides that.”

Nichols shrugged. “I know what you’re thinking. And he’s a foundling too, and not even dating someone in the house. But he always does things that gain him status. That includes top grades in all his classes, for one thing.”

“But there are plenty of people who get good grades.”

Nichols shrugged. “More likely people just respond, consciously or unconsciously, to the amount of power he has.”

For a moment Kyle though Nichols was using the word “power” as a synonym for “status,” but then realized that wouldn’t make sense. “Wait. You mean magical power? How can you tell?”

Nichols winced. “Some of us can just tell. He’s like...dripping with it.”

“Dripping?”

“Just a metaphor. Some people sense things palpably, others see them as if they were visible to the naked eye.”

“You can see how powerful he is?”

Nichols wouldn’t meet Kyle’s eyes. “Yeah. He glows.”

Kyle had to make a conscious effort to close his mouth. “Um.” And then opened it again, seizing the opportunity. “What about me?”

Nichols was forced to look up at him then. “Oh. You...not many people come close to the kind of raw power Frost has, you know.”

“This isn’t about me feeling inadequate next to Frost...”

“It isn’t? But you were just asking me how he got such high status...”

“Nick, come on. Just tell me what I look like.”

Nichols dropped his eyes again. “You’re not easy to get a sense of, and sometimes you seem like you’re almost not there at all, but I can’t tell if that’s just that you’re not projecting? Your power is more like heat to me. It’s kind of like there’s a light bulb inside you, but when it’s on, you can’t actually see it, in there, but you can feel if it warms up. If I just passed
you on the street I wouldn’t say, there goes one of us. But that doesn’t mean the power’s not there. Does that make sense?”

Kyle slumped. “I guess. And I suppose to a lot of people I just...don’t seem magical at all?”

Nichols shook his head. “You can’t think that way. But magically speaking, I mean...you went to a normal school until you got here, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, there was a pecking order there, too, wasn’t there? How was it set? Like in gym class, someone had to be picked last for teams, right?”

“Well, you could tell some kids were more athletic than others, some were more coordinated, or they played more sports...”

“Right.” Nichols folded his cards. “And the ones with the most ability tended to do the most sports, reinforcing that image. Well, magical ability is like that, too, and human nature’s the same. So you’ve got to show what you’ve got sometimes, or how is anyone going to know? No one’s got a very high opinion of you, but it’s nothing personal if everyone else is just ahead. You started late, didn’t make the dean’s list, never have performed for tea or anything...”

“I’m organizing the Masque, though,” Kyle put in.

“Which is good. And hanging around with Speyer helps. I never would have gotten on a broom if it hadn’t been for her. Remy never would have picked me.” Nichols shrugged. “Until I came here, I always was the last kid picked for teams, and I never wanted to distinguish myself academically either, because I was afraid I’d be accused of cheating and somehow this would lead to my magic being exposed...It’s been kind of a challenge, learning not to be a wallflower.”

“But doesn’t someone have to be the wallflower?” Kyle mused out loud.

“Not in this house,” Nichols answered seriously. “Honestly, though, you’re doing what you can to move up. You’re smart to just ignore the other freshmen. You’re on a social committee with Speyer. Get Master Brandish to laugh out loud at dinner—as long as she’s not laughing
at
you, that is—and you’ll gain some respect from the others. If you really want to be bold, take your tray right over to Speyer’s table and sit down with her. Claim Masque planning talk or whatever. If she doesn’t kick you out, you’re golden.”