FORTY-SIX: Life

FORTY-SIX: Life

What is this ugly thing? Kibby asked, wrinkling her nose at the results of an entire mornings work in the kitchen.

Kibby stinks. Shes mean-mean, Alden said brightly, jabbing a few of the sacred burning chopsticks into the top of his concoction.

You stink! Humans stink the most. Go climb in the launderer and wash yourself!

Alden laughed. Insults were coming along nicely. Kibby really liked being friendly-mean.

-! - ! . Sometimes she got a little too into it though.

This is my special birthday meal, he said. He didnt know cake yet, and anyway, it was more like a seven layer dip made with colorful vegetable mash. Yum! Delicious! Its a human custom.

Why are you putting my promise sticks in it?

For beauty.

Youre dumb. Promise sticks arent -. Theyre important.

Alden paused. Are you feeling bothered? Seriously?

Seriously was a good word. Kibby would stop joking around to answer him thoughtfully whenever he used it.

No. Its fine. For your birthday. Your shirt is .

Alden held out his arms and spun so that she could admire the garish Hawaiian shirt. Oh, she really does like it, he realized, examining her expression. That must have been a compliment then.

Today we eat on the top of the building.

Roof, she reminded him.

Shed shown him the way up there about a week ago. Theyd both agreed that it was a bad place and a good place.

It was good because the lab lacked windows, and the only way to see the surrounding landscape and not feel a little claustrophobic was from the rooftop. And it was bad because the landscape didnt look like it once had. The endless sea of grass was all wilted, rotted, or just plain missing. It smelled funky.

And in the distance, visible through a set of very cool binoculars Alden had found, hed spied some kind of trail through what was left of the grass. Like something about the size of the armored car had ambled drunkenly around out there. It was a pretty chilling idea. Hed asked Kibby about it, and shed said one of the three words she liked to use for the demon bugs.

Soyeah.

The roof was good and bad. That had been a complicated conversation to navigate. But Kibby really enjoyed her new role as Aldens language tutor. Managing his word choices pleased her. She had extremely bossy tendencies for someone who was the equivalent of eight years old by human standards.

Artonans aged a little more slowly.

Every day Kibby gave Alden brain-breaking tests by taking him around the lab and pointing at things, demanding he come up with the name. In addition to the three words specifically for the bugs, shed made him learn six for what he thought of as simply chaos. Hed memorized them, but he wasnt sure what the nuances were yet.

When the cake was finished, they headed up to the wide flat roof, where Alden had already set up the party spot. Surprise! he shouted, gesturing to the two reclining chairs, the ball-shaped lamp, and the table hed hauled up while she was sleeping yesterday afternoon. Hed called it strength training and counted it as his workout for the day.

A pitcher of the same blue tea Joe had served him on his last evening at LeafSong was on the table along with cups. Kibby examined it all thoroughly.

Why are we eating on the roof? Its . Do humans have to do it for their birthdays?

Alden resisted the urge to make up some insane tradition on the spot.

No. I just thought it is happy to eat outside while we can. There arent many demons now, and night is coming.

Theyd been living in the lab for twenty-eight days. By his math, give or take a few hours hed lost track of on the first day, he was now sixteen. And in a few Alden-days the real Thegund day would end, and a very long night would come. The light shining through the cloud cover seemed like it was already growing dimmer.

He was a little hung-up on it. Kibby, whod lived here her whole life, thought it was strange that he was nervous about it.

There are lots of everywhere, she said, pointing at the tall lightpoles on the grounds of the complex. Some of them will be broken, but not all of them.

Youll keep me safe, Alden said.

No.

You will. Inside, youre all friendly.

You are the Avowed. And youre old. You have to keep me safe. - embarrassed.

Alden held out his mushy veggie cake. Make fire for my promise sticks, he demanded.

She groaned and stomped like it was a terrible imposition, but she pulled her little lighter disc out of her pocket and lit the makeshift candles. Alden set it on the table and sat beside it in his recliner.

Now, Im going to say lots of words together for beauty, he announced. Its part of the birthday custom.

Hed totally launched himself into the wall the last time he tried this. But today he managed it just a little awkwardly. Also, the concretey-looking roof here was ground, so that was fun. He could leap off of it with enough force to land on top of the neighboring shed.

Kibby thumped her feet against her chair and applauded.

#

Magic class happened in the vault now.

Alden had finally found something his tiny roomie wanted badly enough to persuade her to spend significant amounts of time there.

The authority-control exercise that resulted in the existential fist bump was very important to her. So important that she was willing to explain it in exhaustive detail when she realized Alden was open to the idea of practicing with her.

Apparently shed assumed he wouldnt be at first. Because he was a great and awesome Avowed, and she imagined him to be well beyond this point in his education. He found this assumption almost as mind-blowing as she found his total lack of talent for the fist bump.

But you can do things with your authority, she kept insisting. You have to understand.

I dont understand things. I only do things. And I can only do them at all because of the Contract.

Why?

I dont know.

Why dont you know?

Becausehumans are different than Artonans. Avowed are different than wizards. We dont feel our authority. So we dont have to learn magic to do our skills.

She looked baffled. He was baffled. There was a lot of mutual ignorance going on.

Maybe it would have been different if Kibby had had a normal magical education. Apparently she was behind where she should have been, which was why the children on her video class looked a few years younger than her.

Alden had pieced together enough to understand that Joe had advised her father not to send her off for formal training when she was a toddler. He thought she shouldnt pursue wizardry, because she was ungifted. It wasnt easy to read between the lines, but it sounded like Joe and Kibbys father both believed that life as a bottom-rung member of the wizard class was harder than life as a highly educated and important member of the non-wizard class.

But a while back, Kibby had decided that she wasnt going to accept that, and shed refused to learn calculus until she was allowed to study magic, too. Joe had caved, had a teacher he knew record the little wizard lessons for her, and bought her the cushions.

Two of them. Because you were supposed to have at least one partner for the fist bump.

Distinguished Master Ro-den gave me eight lessons, Kibby said seriously.

It was a relationship dynamic Alden hadnt expected. He was curious about Joes reasoning. And he wanted to ask Kibby if maybe she was a genius in the traditional, non-magical sense of the word, since shed been learning advanced mathematics at age seven, but he didnt want to out himself as someone who could not have done that.

If she realized she was smarter than him at magic and math, how was he ever going to persuade her to brush her hair and chew her tooth gum and sleep in the vault so she wouldnt be constantly irradiated by chaos?

Today you will be better at this, Kibby announced. She was carefully measuring the distance between their cushions with the promise stick while Alden cleared some of her toys away. Because it is your birthday.

Ill try, Alden said. As always.

He wondered if she thought birthdays actually had the power to transform humans into natural mages, or if she was attempting psychology on him.

Theyd done the beginners exercise at least once a day, and more often twice, for the past eighteen days. Alden would have given up on it by now if he wasnt using it as a bribe, but Kibby wasnt a quitter. She wanted a partner like the children on television, and if Alden was willing, she was going to keep patting at him until he finally figured it out.

She lit a promise stick that still had birthday veggie residue on it, and they said the special pledge. Alden had memorized it properly after a few repetitions, and it made him glad that the little girl got such an obvious thrill out of hearing it said to her.

They promised to be respectful to each other during their lesson and patient with each other. They promised to honor the sacrifice of their teachers time by bringing their - to bear.

Alden was pretty sure that word he hadnt gotten the hang of was something like acuity, but he hadnt committed to defining it that way yet.

And they ended by saying I promise I will give my -, to you, my partner.

Alden was still working on that word, too. He thought it was too much of a coincidence for it to really be what hed been privately thinking of it as in his head: sincere best.

Youre smiling, Kibby said as she knelt on her cushion. Its a . Because youre going to do better today.

Oh shes definitely trying to psych me up.

Maybe I will.

He didnt.

And he didnt the next day either. Or the one after that.

But finally, shortly after the first long night had fallen on them in truth, Kibby reached out with a determined pat-pat-pat.

And a part of Alden that had been straining against the encroaching chaos for weeks and feeling its own presence for the first time evera part of him that had never known it could move as it pleasedreached out toward the small, kind existence that had been trying to get its attention for so long.

And it patted back.