“Bully for me,” Teine grumbled, not sure if he was happy or annoyed. Down at the other end of the room, one of the other boys was waking up from his anesthetic as well. Teine could hear him retching into the basin provided. The very sound made him a bit nauseous, and he grabbed his own basin as a precautionary measure.
The other boys in the room cheered as their favorite team placed the egg for a two point goal. Although the radio reception was dreadful, it didn’t seem to matter. After all, it was the bowl game!
Teine tuned them all out and eagerly began reading the story where he’d left off and Leis had begun.
“Mirriam knew better than to venture into a cave by herself…” Leis had written in her neat, feminine hand. It began a response to Teine’s cliffhanger about Mirriam finding the cave while she was running away from a party of evil foreign horsemen that were terrorizing her village. Mirriam was a half-breed, bred to be the personal guard of her Sire, their Lord and Master, when she grew up. She was bright and resourceful, even though she was a girl and half Human. Usually her best friend Davy was with her, but since he was an Aiofe and rather bookish, he’d been captured by the raiders earlier. It was up to Mirriam to either find help or save him herself.
Teine turned the page just as Seymour clambered unceremoniously onto the foot of his bed. “What in the world are you reading, Man?” Seymour demanded. “It can’t be schoolwork.”
With a sigh, Teine closed the book reluctantly. Any of the other boys would leave him alone if he asked, but not Seymour.
“I thought you had money on this game, Man?” Seymour prodded, trying to get a response out of the bigger, auburn haired boy. “For someone who claims to like Fabal as much as you do, you sure seem disinterested.” In the room full of tanned blondes and freckled redheads, Seymour stood out like a cornstalk in a field of beans. The dark haired youth, with his fair complexion and blue eyes, had a level of tenacity and fire that Teine admired but didn’t emulate. It was common knowledge that Seymour had been purchased from Cartierscross as a potential stud prospect. His stock was said to possess incredible concentration and ambition. But his health certificate never arrived, and by the time they got the child back to Solmurry, it was evident why. Seymour suffered from hemophilia, a rare blood disorder that made him bleed profusely with every cut that breached his skin and made him more prone to internal damage as well. Due to his condition, Seymour not only ended up with a green diamond tattooed on his left hand, signifying his status as an AM, or “altered male,” but he’d also required that a healer from the Church come and oversee the vasectomy and circumcision surgery that effectively removed him from the gene pool and marked him as an adult. The sweet nun had even held Seymour’s other hand, while he was receiving his green diamond tattoo, healing him with divine magics as needed.
“I love playing Fabal,” Teine reminded his friend, for perhaps the thousandth time. “Listening to it isn’t nearly as interesting.” Tossing his writer’s journal aside to save for a time when he could enjoy it in peace and quiet, Teine pulled out his sketch book and had Seymour trade out his pen for a pencil of charcoal and a blending stub out of his book bag. He’d be able to draw and still keep Seymour entertained. He considered it a community service, because if Seymour wasn’t entertained, he’d flit from bed to bed, engaging anyone who seemed conscious in exhausting, rapid-fire conversation. Teine supposed that Seymour was feeling so chipper because he was the only one of the bunch that had the benefit of any sort of magical healing. As an “intact male,” Teine’s own procedure had been very minor- circumcision only- and it was turning out the affected area was nowhere near as painful as he’d feared it would be. Just like the other IM’s in there- like Marcus, Victor and Robin- the only reason Teine was still in the infirmary was that it was tradition. It seemed to Teine that the newest batch of AM’s, excepting Seymour, were moving far more slowly and gingerly than their comrades who’d remained reproductively intact.
“What are you going to draw?” asked Seymour. The dark haired boy scooted up closer on the bed with Teine so he could see. “A still life? Some Fabal players? A landscape?”
Teine opened his sketchbook, moving past some of his finished pieces with a deliberate and somewhat grand slowness, taking a secret delight in his friend’s fascination. Ever since the spring before, when Teine’s best friend Vosh had been taken to Capital City to play Fabal for the Solmurry team in the minor leagues, Seymour had instantly stepped up and attempted to fill the role. While Seymour was a poor substitute for Vosh in the roughhousing and sports and had no artistic or poetic talent himself, he was capable of discerning good work. Teine had come to appreciate his active mind and was finding him to be an excellent sounding board for some of his creative attempts.
Although Seymour could drive him completely insane, Teine showed his appreciation of their friendship whenever the opportunity presented itself. “What would you like me to draw?” Teine asked. “You can pick, and I’ll draw whatever you want.”
"Naked women!" Teine and Seymour looked over at the three cheering boys a few beds over who had suddenly chimed in to their conversation. After a moment of blank stares, the entire room erupted in hysterical laughter.
Once Seymour stopped giggling, he gave the matter some serious thought. “Can I see the rest of your sketches before I decide?” As the game had been interrupted again by a commercial break, a couple of the other boys had wandered over to look over Seymour’s shoulder.
Teine nodded, handing over the book with what he hoped was a show of confident nonchalance. In actuality, his heart was pounding all of a sudden and his mouth felt like it had been stuffed with cotton packing. He’d actually be less nervous if he were showing his works to a teacher or some other professional critic. But somehow, his peers were much more frightening.
Seymour held the book and flipped the pages while the others boys looked on. Teine flushed pink with embarrassment and pride as Seymour paged slowly through the book, giving himself and the others time to truly study the work. Then they got to the section from the figure drawing class he’d gotten to take. Usually Human students were excluded from figure works classes unless they were sixteen or more years old, on mere principle. But Teine had been an exception, as he’d managed to wrangle a note from the instructor, and was backed up by his excellent marks in two other Artistic disciplines. When he’d gotten word he’d been accepted into the class, Teine had hoped for naked women as models.
The boys all laughed when they turned the page to the start of his figure studies. “Hey Teine,” Seymour said, elbowing him playfully. “I was so jealous you were getting to take figure drawing! Looks like the joke was on me!”
“Believe me,” Teine said, extracting his sketchbook from his friend’s hands. His ears burned as if they’d been held to the steam radiator. “The joke was on both of us.” Fortunately the announcements had just ended and the knot of art critics broke up and drifted back toward the radio to hear the last of the game.
On the other end of the room, Clinician Nocdoramis entered the infirmary and began making her rounds with the patients nearest the door. Her musical Aoife voice was soft and feminine in the background of all the rowdy boys and their jeering. To Teine’s way of thinking, the delicate Aoife woman in the infirmary with a bunch of Human boys was as out of place as a beautiful flower growing in the middle of a vegetable garden. Her eyes were larger, proportionately, than those of a Human woman, set wide and slanted slightly upward at the corners. The planes of her face, like all of her kind, were drawn more sharply with visible cheekbones and jawline under ageless, creamy skin. Her hair was a deep, rich gold, a shade the Human blondes never seemed to match, and it waved gently as she tucked it behind her delicately pointed ears. He’d always longed to draw some of the Aoife, to catalog and sketch out the myriad differences between them and the Human models he’d had, but the opportunity had never come up. Teine hoped he'd eventually be brave enough to ask the Clinician if she’d mind if he took a couple of quick sketches, but any day which included an ice bag on his privates was not the day for courage.
Teine sighed, lamenting his cowardice. He was about to tuck his artist’s journal away until he realized that Seymour hadn’t left yet. Good old tenacious Seymour. “What, you still want a picture?”
Seymour nodded eagerly, reaching out for Teine’s book. He turned the page to an action scene that Teine was particularly proud of. Horses and hounds, leaping across the countryside on a cold winter’s morning. The fields were turned under and snow lay thick as the hunter’s delicate legs churned it up beneath their hooves. Teine hadn’t been completely satisfied with the horses, but overall, he thought it was one of his better pieces.
“I want one kind of like this,” Seymour gestured to the sketch. “But can you show what they’re hunting? I’d like to have one where they are hunting a dragon!”
Teine thought about it, mentally blocking out the scene in his mind. “What kind of dragon?” he asked.
“Just a brown. I want it to be believable.”
Flipping the book open to a blank page, Teine started by sketching out the roughs where the main elements would be.
“Is that going to be the dragon?” Seymour asked, pointing at one of the shapes Teine had blocked out.
Teine nodded wordlessly. His charcoal pencil danced over the thick, creamy sketch paper, while Seymour got comfortable by tucking his legs under him and resting his elbows on his knees. With a wicked playful grin, Teine flipped the page and started sketching in a quick doodle of a silly looking, brooding gargoyle, sitting in the same position as Seymour.
Chuckling to himself, Teine obediently flipped the page and went back to work on his commission.
Time seemed to have no meaning as Teine began filling in the details of the landscape. He wondered if God felt that way, as She created everything. This time, he vowed he’d do a better job with the hunter’s ponars. That breed of horse was difficult to draw, even for an experienced artist. They were long bodied, leggy and elegant, yet somehow managed to look sinewy and strong instead of fragile.
Later that day, when the Aoife teacher asked him how he’d liked the merry-go-round, he’d shared his uncensored feelings on the horses. She’d marched him right to the superintendent as soon as they'd gotten off the train. Teine was terrified, thinking he’d be in trouble, but as it turned out the teacher only wanted to be sure he was signed up for an Art credit the next semester. As Teine had never drawn anything before then, he was very grateful for that tutor’s watchful eye. Over the years as she’d returned to teach other classes, Teine had made a point of staying in touch and showing her his work. After all, she was the cause of it.
As his mind wandered, his hands worked by themselves and by the time he really looked back down at what he was doing, Teine’s sketch for Seymour had begun filling out nicely.
Clinician Nocdoramus was standing over him with a fresh ice bag, a pitcher of tea with real ice in it, and some funny looking liquid in a vessel resembling a shot glass. “Good afternoon, Teine,” she said, moving his possessions from the table to a chair. She then set her tray down to check his chart.
Teine reluctantly closed his sketchpad and waited for instructions. He liked Solmurry’s resident Clinician a lot, but he didn’t know what to expect and was a little bit worried. “And a pleasant afternoon to you, Clinician,” he replied.
She gave Seymour a stern look, and the other boy decided that he’d better find something else to do. With a smile, Nocdoramus wrapped a strange device around Teine’s arm and began inflating it using a rubber bulb attached with a hose. “Are you feeling any pain?”
“A little,” Teine replied, a bit distracted by the strange thing on his arm. It pinched slightly, and pulled the hairs on his skin. When it had taken all the air it possibly could, she slid her stethoscope into the crook of his elbow and held up a finger for him to be quiet. As he watched, Nocdoramus turned the valve to let the air slowly escape while watching her pocket timepiece intently.
Then she nodded to herself. Apparently whatever that was, the result was satisfactory. Without explaining, she took the shot glass off the tray and handed it to Teine. “Drink up. It tastes awful but it will keep you comfortable. How is your Amagorra? ”
“She’s doing quite well, thank you,” Teine answered, then threw back the shot. Immediately, he made a face. “Awful is a bit of an understatement, don’t you think?” he remarked, holding up the empty glass. “Rather like vanilla flavored paint thinner.”
“Yes,” Teine said solemnly, making sure his eyes betrayed none of his mischief. “Yes, I do. And my comrades need some, too. We’ve all had a rough day.”
Leaning forward to pinch his cheek, the Clinician laughed. “Now, there’s the sweet talker I remember. I’ll make you a deal, how about that?”
“What’s the deal, oh Mistress of the Medicines?” Teine countered.
“The deal is, you go down there-" She tossed her head, indicating the other side of the room where one of their number lay in bed with his back to the group. “-and have a go at cheering up Marcus. He really took this hard.”
Teine was momentarily alarmed, doing his best not to think about the kind of accidents that could happen during the surgeries like they’d all had. “What happened?”
“Oh, nothing so drastic as you’re imagining, I’m sure,” Nocdoramus replied airily. “He wanted to be an AM and was disappointed to not have gotten his green diamond.”
Nodding sagely, Teine glanced around her at the morose figure laying in bed. “He’s got a girl, you know. If he’d been cut, they could have-”
“Yes, yes,” she scolded him. “I understand how it works, and really I do sympathize. I know you IMs lead a much more disciplined life, but it’s not without rewards. He needs a little help in seeing the silver lining of this particular cloud.”
“Speaking of clouds?” Teine interjected. “Will we all be out of here tonight, before this light show rolls in?” He gestured to the window, where the storm clouds to the West loomed ominous and threatening. Teine could see that several carriages were being hurriedly readied. “I bet it’s going to be quite a howler, since it’s already disrupting the radio broadcasts.”
Nocdoramus turned to look and froze in place, completely transfixed by the incoming weather. Teine wasn’t surprised. He’d noticed long ago that all the Aoife reacted differently to these magic storms than the Humans did. It awed them and stilled them, and made them flush with… what? Energy? Passion? He didn’t know, but he was sure there was an amazing poem or song in it somewhere. Teine spent a good two years pondering that mystery, before bringing it up to Vosh to ask his opinion. "It's just a storm." Vosh had replied. "Who knows why the Aoife do what they do." Teine hadn't brought it up to anyone since.
“Clinician?” he asked politely, trying to break into her reverie in the least intrusive way possible. “Can I stay and watch it from here? Or will you be discharging us?”
Shaking herself to break her concentration, she pulled her attention away from the window and turned to face Teine. It was a second before the faraway look in her eyes was replaced with her usual genteel good humor. “We’ll be keeping all the AMs overnight as a precaution. Yes, you too, Seymour,” she added, waving the other boy away as one might shoo a pesky fly. “But you IMs are on a case by case basis.” She gestured to Teine’s pajamas. “Drop those trousers, young Man, and let’s have a look.”
“Oh, sheesh…” Teine complained, reaching for the drawstring. Nocdoramus had been there to cut his umbilical cord and wrap him in blankets when Amagi had given birth to him. She’d been the one that had been there for him when he was six years old and had shoved a bean up his nose on a dare and couldn’t figure out how to remove it. She’d tended him during every childhood scuffle and sniffle, and he trusted her and loved her as if she were his own mother. She’d even saved his Amagorra’s life when she’d had a minor heart attack the year before. Everyone agreed that Nocdoramus was the best Clinician anywhere in the Empyrean- and for all of that, Teine was suddenly embarrassed about taking his pants off in front of her.
“I suppose you’re of the age now when you could see Clinician McIlroy,” she said, as if reading his mind. Since Teine was standing, she crouched to examine his wound, putting the top of her head about level with his belly button. The other boys, watching the scene out of her field of vision, were trying not to laugh. Seymour went so far as to make a gesture suggestive enough that even the fragile hemopheliac could have earned some stripes across his back if anyone that wasn’t one of their Cohort saw.
“Whatever you think is best, Ma’am,” Teine answered, giving his friend the sternest look he could muster. The next thing he knew, the Clinician was standing up and shoving a tube of ointment into his hand.
“Apply that for pain and itching whenever you need it, until it runs out. We’ll probably release you tonight. Now,” she said, reaching into her pocket…
Teine couldn’t help but wince, dreading what new pinnacle of embarrassment came next.
“Don’t forget our bargain, you cheeky boy.” Nocdoramus swatted him playfully on his bare rear with her examination gloves and tossed him two barley lollipops shaped like animals. She turned to face the other boys and began handing out candy while Teine pulled up his drawers. By the time he was decent again, the Clinician was selecting a new victim. They'd all get a turn with their pants down around their ankles in front of everyone. Teine just wished he could have gone last instead of first.
While the other boys were distracted by the candy and the spectacle, Teine padded barefoot down the aisle between the two rows of beds until he got to where Marcus was lying.
“Hey, Marcus,” he said, trying not to be too quiet as he crawled up onto the next bed over. “I got you a barley pop. Which do you want? A lime deer or a strawberry pig?”
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The Gilded Shackle is the first book in The Evermancer Saga, a series of online serial novels. Go go right to the most recent chapter, go to www.evermancer.com.
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