Shery's Story - Prayer

[CONTENT WARNING: Bullying.]

Everyone knew the school was in a bad area if even one of its classes was being taught by a Mage. And Shery’s school was taught mostly by Mages, or Hedgewitches—people who could have gotten away with pretending to be Norm, who had no magic at all, but who were marked by the unfortunate genetic predisposition of having half-glowing eyes or some other thing that set them apart. Often, these people had no choice but to take up teaching recalcitrant children in one of Smoketown’s slums, where the pay was very scant: the Autarchy did not seem to believe very much in the value of teaching its citizens how to read and write. 

Shery’s parents lamented this, that she attended such a deplorable school, and they strove to work harder to get Shery into a better academy, maybe a special grammar school. (The money from their business always seemed to go somewhere else, though; it certainly did not go towards improving their shabby home, with its drafty rooms, threadbare rugs, and leaky faucets.) But Shery didn’t mind it so much. Her teachers, in her opinion, were very kind, knowledgeable people. They were never allowed to teach the students anything about magic, of course, or “Diminished nonsense,” as the headmistress called it—but they knew quite a lot about the world outside of Haven, and even the deep history of the city itself. Once or twice after class they let things slip, things about Haven’s past as a Mage city—and then they would glance at her, mouths quirking in a small smile, as if to say, But let’s just keep that between us, eh Shery?

It made her feel special and trusted: as if she were the keeper of all the secrets of the school. Her favorite teacher in particular was a yellow-haired, lanky man in his twenties that the children called “Mr. Scarecrow,” after his straw-like head and slouching, gangling posture. In reality his full name was “Abandinus Achall,” a name which brought Shery no end of delight and pleasure. She liked to roll the name around on her tongue as she ate lunch alone under one of the shriveled apple trees in the schoolyard. It was like a magic spell, a protective chant; often it seemed to summon Mr. Scarecrow out of thin air, and he would say cheerfully, “All right, Shery?” And she would nod, as if everything was, in fact, all right.

She was a lonely child, quiet and demure. It often irked her auctioneer parents, who were loud and blunt by nature. They believed in getting straight to the point, in laying it all out on the table, and Shery—who often stammered or lost her train of thought, or spoke so softly that no one could hear her—knew that she disappointed them. But they all soldiered on, and her parents tried to take an interest, even when they were mostly preoccupied with their other child: the pawnbroking business. They did save her soft-paged books they came across, at least, realizing their daughter loved to read; and once or twice, while they all sat around the table recording finds in the great account book, they would ask Shery how school was.  

“Mr. Scarecrow—I mean, Mr. Achall, gave me a book on, um, exotic pets,” Shery said, her feet dangling from her high chair. She was also very small for her age: at eleven she looked like she was eight, and once her mother had slapped a nosy neighbor who had implied that the Acquells were not feeding their only child well enough. “About the kind of animals people in other countries like to keep. It’s very fun.”

Her father, examining a rough-cut gem under a magnifying glass, only grunted absently; he wasn’t listening. Ursa, her mother, made a humming sound and said, “And which one is Mr. Achall, again? Not that dreadful fat man, is he?”

“No, that’s Mr. Wymott. Mr. Achall—” She blushed, though there was no reason to blush; she did not want her mother to tell Mr. Achall offhandedly that Shery had called him a scarecrow. “He’s… blond.”

“Oh.” Her mother lost interest. “Well, that’s nice. Don’t go losing that book, now. If he comes sniffing around asking us to pay it back, we won’t.”

Shery said nothing, slightly offended by this. She had never lost or damaged a book in her life.

At lunch and in class she kept to herself, only speaking when called on by her teachers. Whenever there were breaks in learning, she still kept a book under her nose, finding it easier to bury herself in some hoarded text rather than looking around and drawing anyone’s attention.

Unfortunately, it had the opposite effect: it gave the other children a reason to bully her. There was no time for reading in the slums. They noticed her for her meekness, her silence—but they singled her out for the books.

“Hey, Shitty. Whatcha reading about? How to get a brain?”

This was Loretta Stungart, the local terror of the neighborhood. The insult was simple, even moronic, but it stung Shery nevertheless—she shrank into herself, shoulders curving upward for protection. Her book clamped down on her knees. She looked around for help, but this was the schoolyard, the one place where the teachers never came. And she had no friends, no one willing to stand up to Loretta for her sake. 

Loretta sneered down at her. She was a snub-nosed girl, stout, grubby-kneed, inexplicably popular—probably because she considered anyone who didn’t worship her a target. She leaned down and snatched the book out of Shery’s hands, dangling it a few inches from her nose.

“Shitty Shery,” she taunted. Her face was doughy and sly, framed by mousy hair that had been chopped off at the ears. Shery had heard a rumor once that Loretta had lived in a manor, before her mother had done something to displease the Autarch and they’d lost everything, their money and their lands. But that could have just been a fantasy, a dream spread by Loretta herself. It made her look like a hero and a victim, when she was anything but. 

“Can you read me some words?” the other girl asked, her voice high and mocking. “What about this word? Can you spell it out for me? I-D-I-O-T.”

Shery rose to her feet, shakily, but her eyes stayed locked on the ground; she could not drag them upward. “Please give that back.”

Loretta’s laugh was like a physical blow. Already there were children gathering around them, lured to the scent of a fight like a shroud of flies drawn to a carcass. Clouds skidded overhead. Shery could feel their shadows passing over her face.

Shame and fear swept through her in a dark acidic wave. She was thinking, Why me? 

But she knew why. Mr. Scarecrow had told her as much, very gently and kindly. “You need to talk more,” he said once. “Stand up for yourself. Sometimes you look like the weak link—you stand out—and those kids are animals. They’ll come after you if you don’t find back, Shery.” 

She knew he was right. But speaking meant drawing attention to herself, and heightening the chance of conflicts like this. She was used to being invisible, the way she had been since she was young. Invisible—unnoticed—meant no trouble, even if it was lonely. Invisible was manageable. Invisible was safe.

Loretta was wagging the book in her face now, tapping Shery’s cheek with the cool, hard spine. She was sensing what the crowd wanted and was looking to give it to them. She said, wrinkling her nose, “Why don’t you say something, Shitty Shery? Read so much you forgot how to talk?”

Shery pressed her lips together and thought, It’s not fair. I’ve never hurt anybody.

She reached up and grabbed hold of the book. Her grip was loose, but the action alone was enough to make Loretta pause. Shery raised her eyes and said creakily, “Why are you doing this? I’m not hurting anybody.”

She thought of Mr. Scarecrow’s words. Stand up for yourself. She gathered a breath.

“Why don’t you just leave me alone?”

She saw Loretta’s eyes go hard. She saw her hand flash up. She felt the sharp sting of the other girl’s hand, the connection of flesh against solid flesh. But she did not know when she reacted, throwing her skinny body at Loretta’s, arms and legs flailing with all of the slight strength she could muster. She attacked with about as much strength as a sickly kitten, but it was enough surprise momentum to send them both tumbling to the hot, cracked dirt. The other children shrieked and cheered. 

“Get her! Get her! Teach her a lesson!”

For a moment all she knew was red stripes of pain; Loretta’s nails were long and sharp, and they raked at her soft skin like a tiger’s claws. She knew, then, that violence would never be for her; that even as pain was being inflicted on her, she could not inflict it back. Striking at another—feeling the shock of bone and muscle colliding—appalled her to her core. Her entire existence had been timid movements, phantom living. Violence was…too real.

“Stop!” she screamed, even as she grabbed a fistful of Loretta’s shorn hair. “Stop it!”

Then, as quickly as it had begun, the fight was over; Shery was lying on the ground, trembling as if she had a fever; a fiery pain in her side told her she couldn’t get up. 

There were ripping sounds, somewhere above her—but Shery’s glasses had thrown off somewhere, everything was a blur of light and color and pain. Pieces of paper drifted down and touched her face, as light as feathers. Loretta made a spitting noise and then walked away, straight-backed. 

Shery lay there in the hot dust for some time, waiting for the onlookers to drift away. Eventually she managed to move a little, biting back a whimper; her entire right side felt inflamed, tender. She groped around in the dirt for her glasses, put them on, then wished she hadn’t found them. The wreckage of Mr. Scarecrow’s book lay all around her, the pages torn out and scattered, the thick cover lying like a dead bird with its wings outspread in the dust.

Shery bit back a sob. Oh God, oh God—he was going to be so disappointed in her! He was always telling her to stand up for herself, and she hadn’t, and now his book—surely expensive, surely rare—was ruined. Certainly he was never going to lend her another one again. She felt bile roil in her stomach and thought, Don’t cry. Don’t let them see you cry. Or else it would make everything worse.

A shadow passed over her, then. Shery looked up, squinting through a swollen eye: a tall girl was standing there, a bit older than Shery, maybe thirteen or fourteen. 

Shery’s heart jumped in her chest, and she let out an embarrassing squeak. She knew this girl: Senna, one of the school’s few “prefects”. She often saw her helping out in the school’s tiny library, or helping the teachers clean their classrooms after school. Shery had thought about striking up a conversation with her, more than a few times—they were always in the same spaces, after all, and Senna did what Shery wished she could do when she was older. But she’d always balked at the last minute, as was her habit. It didn’t help that Senna’s shining brown hair and thin, graceful hands were often—distracting.

“Oh,” Senna said, leaning over Shery and blocking out the sunlight with her head. “Oh, you poor thing—who did this to you? Are you all right?”

She reached down, offering one of those delicate hands to help Shery up. Shery felt heat swamp her face and allowed herself to be eased to her feet; she felt clammy all over suddenly, which she told herself was just the bruises. 

Senna said, very business-like, “Do you want to me to get a teacher? Maybe Mr. Achall?”

How did Senna know which teacher was in charge of Shery’s class? She shook her head miserably. This was Smoketown; no one cared if a few urchins picked a fight with each other. That was merely the way of life. As long as no one was killed—Norm children were precious, after all—there would be no consequences.

“Why not?” Senna asked at her head shake. “He’d punished whoever did it, I know he would.” She propped her hand on one of her bony hips, then followed Shery’s gaze to the tattered book on the ground. She paused, the thoughts seeming to connect in her head. “Oh. That’s his, is it?”

Suddenly the tears began to rim Shery’s eyelids like hot glue. She tried to hold them in, to shove them down, but that only made them come faster—like water breaking out of a poorly-made dam. Senna made sympathetic noses and stroked Shery’s shoulder as she cried, the two of them sinking back down to the ground again. Shery, hiccupping desperately, thought, Why is she being so kind to me? Is she like this with everyone?

When the storm of tears had abated a little, Senna rose to her feet and dusted off her knees. “Come on,” she said briskly, helping Shery up. “I’ll tell Mr. Achall you went home sick. Let’s get you home.”

Dumbly, Shery followed her—though not after Senna had gathered up all of the fallen pages of Mr. Scarecrow’s book and tucked them under her arm. For the entire walk home, she could not speak. She no longer had adrenaline crowding her heart; now there was a dull, vinegary emptiness. Things she never thought about crept across the surface of her mind: the state of things in the world, the cruelness of the other children, her loneliness, the fact that the kindest adults in her life were not paid enough while Loretta’s parents had apparently been rich. The humiliation of the day. The Autarchy. She had been reading about life before the Castigation, and she could only wonder why she had been cursed with the misfortune of being born after it. What good would any of it do—fighting Loretta, learning in school, helping her parents with their business—if all she had to look forward to was an adulthood in… this world? What was the use of any of it?

She began to weep again, silently, the tears trickling down her face as they marched their slow way home. Around them, Smoketown was continuing its steady decay. Tendrils of green showed through the worn cracks in the street. Diminished with drowning eyes watched them from behind rusty workyard fences. A howling mother and her children stood watching as red-uniformed Inquisitors threw their belongings out of a shack; some Vice-Guards carried out an old bald woman in a tin bathtub, soapy water and all, and dumped her onto the street. 

Shery couldn’t stop crying. “Why?” she asked in creaking sobs. “Why? Why? Why?” 

Finally, a miraculous thing happened. They reached Shery’s house—her parents were at their pawn shop and would not be home until dark—and Senna turned to her, her eyes gentle. She had not spoken a word since they’d left the schoolyard. She said, tucking the ruin of the book against her chest, “I’m going to take this home and try to repair it. I might not do a very good job, but my father’s got tools—he repairs shoes, and that’s not so different, is it?” She offered Shery a smile; her pink lips curved fetchingly. “You can come by tomorrow and pick it up. Or we can go to Mr. Achall together and give it to him. All right?”

Blinking rapidly, Shery nodded, feeling uncharacteristically stupid. Senna gave her an address—a home a few blocks away—and then began to turn away before she stopped, digging around in her pocket. She pulled out her closed fist; at her gesture, Shery held out her palm and felt Senna drop something round and heavy into it. She stared. It was a little red pebble, worn smooth and laced with veins of darkness. She thought it was a dense, tiny heart; it seemed to throb hotly in her hand. Her fingers closed around it. “Wh-what… what is this?” she managed. 

“It’s a bloodstone,” Senna said cheerfully. “I’ve been studying minerals—stone meanings—at the library. It’s better than flower meanings, I think. Stones last longer. This one means…” She paused. “Well, courage, for one thing. And healing and love.” 

Love? Shery flushed. But Senna, heedless, put a hand on her shoulder. “Don’t take shit from anyone, okay?”

Then her hand dropped, and she was walking off by herself down the street, back towards the school, and Shery was bringing the bloodstone up and pressing it to her heart. Later, she would save that moment, tucking it away in her memory, to draw it out and take slow sips of it during hard times, making sure that she never drank it too fast or had it all run out. She had to save it, to tide herself over—it would be a very long time before anyone did anything like that for her again. But she didn’t mind. Looking back, she understood it better: life in the slums, the subtle hardness of everyone around her. If you were in danger of drowning, a soft squishy thing was no good to hold on to. You needed to have something more solid, or else you would be lost to the waves. 

#

Shery’s parents, predictably, were furious with her. She didn’t tell them about the book, or even really about the fight, but it was obvious from her battered face and cracked glasses what had happened. 

They were angry. Why hadn’t she stood up for herself, defended her good family name? Luc and Ursa were proud people: they could not tolerate the indignity of some child attacking their own with impunity, of having the reputation of raising a coward. They did not punish her—but they did not sympathize, either.

The next day was a rest day from school, the only one they got all sennight. Shery went to church in the morning, giving her parents the excuse that she would be there all day. It was a plausible enough lie: she did often stay after prayers and auguries, volunteering to help clean the statues and shrines to the One-God. Her father grunted over his table filled with odds and bobbles; her mother, in the kitchen, didn’t answer. Shery thought that, at another time, they would have been excited—as excited as they could be, anyway—over the prospect of her going to a classmate’s house. But right now they weren’t in the mood to be happy for her. And besides, there was something… furtive, illicit, about going to the older girl’s house. Shery didn’t quite know what it was—but she knew that, for whatever reason, she wanted to keep it a secret.

During prayer, she gazed up into the golden eyes of the One-God. This rendition—situated in the middle of Diminished-filled Smoketown—was supposed to be intimidating, imposing, severe. But somehow she’d always felt a sense of comfort when she gazed upon it. The One-God was so strong that xe almost felt protective; there was the sense of a guardian watching over her, powerful enough to drive anything away, rather than a force meant to terrify her into compliance. And she’d read, extensively, over the Doctrine of the One: the only book that was universally cheap and easy to access. She’d noticed how those scriptures differed, even slightly, from the teachings of the augurs and priests. There was a quite a lot about equality and love in the Doctrine of the One, if you looked closely enough—but you had to read carefully, and be searching for it. Few ever really did: it was easier to listen to the augurs and receive their blessings rather than comb the passages of a very ancient text.

So she felt comfortable praying to the One-God. Even safe. On this day she prayed that Mr. Scarecrow’s book had been repaired; she prayed that her parents forgave her. And she prayed that Senna—even in some small measure—could be a friend. 

In that context, she thought, perhaps Loretta attacking her had been something like divine providence; intervention on her behalf. It had led her to this kind soul, hadn’t it? And if something blossomed from it, wouldn’t that make everything—even the destruction of the book—worth it?

Afterwards, she slipped her hand into her pocket and cradled the bloodstone, which seemed to heat and pulse in her palm like a living organ. It infused her with confidence, and hope; she felt it knock encouragingly against her thigh as she made her way down the street to Senna’s house. 

Senna, when she opened the door, smiled brightly when she caught sight of Shery’s face. “You look better,” she remarked, standing aside to let Shery into the entryway of a mid-sized house. Shery looked around carefully. It was a fairly well-furnished place, at least for Smoketown; there were a few small luxuries here and there. A polished cigar box on the mantle. A painting—presumably of Senna’s grandparents—hanging on the wall. Senna said, brushing past her, “Let’s go up to my room. The book’s there—I actually managed to fix most of it.” She smelled dizzyingly of cedar and sunlight. 

They went up to her room without encountering anyone else: Senna’s parents were at lunch with some friends, she explained, and her sister was busy somewhere outside. She plopped down onto her colorful bed without much aplomb and looked expectantly at Shery, who went over to the window and leaned awkwardly against the wall.

Senna said, “You’re a shy little mouse, aren’t you?”

Shery nodded.

“I’ve seen you around, at the library, and with some of the teachers. Don’t you have any friends?”

Shery shook her head.

“Well, you seem very nice,” Senna said with a coaxing smile. “Can’t imagine why anyone would pick on you, even if you are very quiet.”

“Thank you,” Shery said then, figuring it as good a place as any to say it. Her voice sounded thick, phlegmy, as if someone else was talking. “For—um—helping me, yesterday. That was very kind of you.” She patted her pocket. “And for the bloodstone.”

“It’s no problem,” Senna answered breezily. “I’ve got loads of them. I gave one to Mr. Achall, too, and he knew the meaning right away. Isn’t that impressive?”

They spent a little while, talking about school, the teachers and the other students. Senna asked Shery about what she liked to read, which so startled Shery—who had never been asked that before—that she fumbled badly and said, “Oh—the Doctrine of the One.”

Senna’s eyebrows shot up, and then she laughed. It was a very pleasing sound that sent prickles running down Shery’s back. “Church books? Oh—it figures.” She lowered her voice conspiratorially. “I like romance novels, dashing tales of love. It’s all very sappy, but it’s fun. You should try one: I’ve got loads.”

Something in Shery’s chest loosened. So Senna expected to keep talking to her, to the extent that she’d let Shery borrow one of her books? A little bubble of joy grew in her heart, dangerous and hard to tamp down. She fought to keep the smile off her face. Don’t get excited; this doesn’t mean anything.

But she watched the easy way Senna had of talking; the way she lay on the bed at her leisure, her legs kicking lazily in the air. The fact that she didn’t mind Shery being there—or even seemed to be enjoying her presence. 

And that meant everything. 

Suddenly there was a knock at the bedroom door, impatient but still respectful. Senna rose from her bed and said over her shoulder, “You can look in that cabinet, over in the corner—your book’s in there, along with my others.”

She went to the door and opened it a crack, speaking to whoever was in the hallway in a murmur. Shery went over to the cabinet she’d indicated, which was really more like a wardrobe. She’d only managed to just open it when Senna whirled suddenly from the door and shouted, “Not that one!”

Shery jumped, and the wardrobe door flew open with a sound like a rifle crack. Shery inhaled sharply in surprise and nearly choked on it; heart thrumming, she stared at the wardrobe door and felt the blood drain from her face. A hot quicksilver rush flashed through her veins; she felt as if she had little hearts thumping hard in her fingertips. She gaped.

At the same time, someone barreled their way into the room. “What is she doing here?” a familiar voice cried. Shery whirled and was confronted by a terrible sight: Loretta standing there, in Senna’s room, practically steaming with anger. Shery’s eyes widened, and she backed away, into the wardrobe; Senna gave a cry of protest.

Loretta lunged forward and grabbed Shery’s arm, hard enough that Shery felt as if she might break it. “What are you doing with my sister?” she shrieked, spit flying into Shery’s glasses. “Sharmooti! Kisich! Why are you in my house? Get out! Get the fuck out!”

Shery ducked past her and fled down the corridor, Loretta’s screams chasing after her like hounds nipping at her heels. No one stopped her; Senna did not follow. 

Shery ran. She ran and ran, out of the house, into the bright sunlight, past the church, all the way until she’d reached the river that wound its way through Haven. There, she sank back against a dirtied wall, hugging her knees and sobbing for breath. The bloodstone sat heavy and cold in her pocket.

Shery closed her eyes, but she could not erase the memory of what she’d seen inside the wardrobe.

Mr. Achall’s face staring back at her. And staring back at her. And staring back at her. Dozens of pictures, hand-drawn or otherwise, pinned up all over the interior of the closet, all of them of Mr. Achall. Mr. Achall teaching. Mr. Achall reading a book. Mr. Achall standing while an Inquisitor looked into the classroom, folding his arms and frowning. A painted portrait, of the kind that lovers kept in pockets, that Shery had seen before it went missing: a tiny painting of Mr. Achall and his family, with half his arm cut off because it had been wrapped around his wife’s shoulders.

Shery was trembling. Loretta’s sudden arrival had sent a disturbance like a strong wind into Senna’s room. All of the pictures had fluttered and rattled, like the untidy flapping of a prayer wheel.

A shrine to a god who had never noticed.