Chapter 9 In Which Sahir Demonstrates Startling Versatility #3
I sighed. “It’s an idiom.” I dropped the brush. The plastic handle bounced once, forlorn. Doctor Kitten mewled. Sahir relented and ran a hand down the cat’s back.
“An idiom,” Lene repeated, blinking sleep from her eyes.
“A… a saying that is so common everyone understands what you mean, even though it isn’t what you said.”
“You could talk about those?” Sahir suggested. Doctor Kitten hopped onto his lap, shedding white fur on his black suit pants.
“I don’t know enough about idioms to explain them right now.
” I watched Lene swing her legs over the side of the bed.
She nudged her head into Sahir’s shoulder, in exactly the same way Doctor Kitten had just done to his hand.
Sahir, who was occupied in petting Doctor Kitten, rested his head on hers.
“You could discuss human greetings,” he mused. “I struggled with human greetings when I first joined the bank.”
I stared at him with new eyes. “Sahir, you genius,” I said. “You’re the best person to talk to about these classes, since you’ve experienced the human world from a faerie’s perspective.” I resolved to lesson-plan with Sahir going forward.
He tilted his head. “Just so,” he said. “You may refer to me as a genius whenever it pleases you.”
I snorted. “Come on, let’s get down to the dining hall and set up.”
We left Doctor Kitten in the bedroom because Lene said he had found the pitch meeting “so disturbing to his rest that he required an additional nap to find composure.” I told him he was a weenie and a whiner, because he hadn’t even been on camera.
He then apparently told Lene that I was empowered to hang up at any time because the arrangement of my human phalanges meant I could easily hit the correct button on the keyboard or mouse, whereas his limited dactyl range meant that he could not hang up for me without significant trial and error.
Before I could ask a lot of questions about my cat’s knowledge of biological terminology, Sahir said we needed to leave for the lesson.
We left Doctor Kitten lying smugly in a nest of pillows at the head of the bed, the black patch on his side glistening in the twinkling light of our resident will-o’-the-wisp.
“Lene, did you make up the dactyl range thing?” I asked as we made our way down the hall. The tail end of the dinner rush was coming toward us. I knew from watching at my window like a tower-bound princess that many Court denizens would go outside in the evenings to enjoy the cool night air.
“No,” she said, sounding a bit offended. “I cannot lie, Miri. And ‘making up’ things, as you say, is just another way to lie.”
“Oh yeah. Sorry.” I pushed on the dining hall doors, gesturing for her and Sahir to enter. “I just don’t know where he learned that.”
“We can ask him later,” she said.
I followed the two of them inside and glanced around. A few stragglers were picking at trays of food. By the far wall, the cafeteria staff stood cleaning up their workstations. Kamare, the snake-lady, glared at me. Milo hadn’t noticed me yet.
“Begin with greetings,” Sahir advised, leading the three of us to the same table as the previous session. He sat to the left of the head of the table; Lene sat to the right. I knew where that left me, and took the seat reluctantly.
“What should we do for the rest of class?” I asked.
Sahir gave me a look that said You are not yet privy to the great mysteries of the Fae, but you’re about to be, and you won’t enjoy it.
“There will not be a rest of class,” he said, with perfect confidence.
Caraya and Kellen came in through the cafeteria doors together, Kellen’s angel-white wings tucked against his back.
Caraya wore a sparkling golden cape that draped from the points of her black horns down to the floor.
It blew out behind her in a clearly magically manufactured breeze—but the effect was stunning.
They sat together on Lene’s left. Neither of them said anything to me—which I supposed was Sahir’s point, actually. The Fae didn’t have greetings.
I had a fantastic view of the dining hall doors, which swung open again with force.
The Gray Knight stood between them, a glittering silver vision against the darkness of the hallway.
Beside her, the Princeling stood at parade rest. She stalked into the room, her clothing glimmering with every step.
He followed, a menacing solidity wearing a simple green tunic and made broader by the slight flare of his wings behind his shoulders.
The doors didn’t dare swing shut until he’d seated himself at the foot of the table.
Though the table had only had backless stools when he walked in, by the time he situated himself on his chair it had become the silver throne he favored. He shifted on it until he’d assumed his menacing lounge, one knee hooked over an armrest and his lower back pressed to the other.
I watched the way his iridescent green wings hung down and wondered for the first time if he sat that way for comfort as much as for how cool it made him look.
The Gray Knight remained standing behind him, hands clasped. Her tunic had flared sleeves that ended in a tight cuff at the wrists. Her mouth was thinner than usual, a grim unobtrusive line beneath the sharp slash of her nose.
My eyes flicked between them: He hadn’t come to the last class.
“Proceed,” he said, waving a careless hand. Emerald sparks flew when he gestured. He didn’t need to wear jewels when he dripped magic like gemstones from his fingers.
The door swung open again: Gaheris stepped through, the flames on his head slightly subdued and his hand clamped around Schubert’s wrist.
“I had planned to scream tonight,” Schubert informed us all. He then sat with great dignity and absolutely no deference to the Princeling.
Milo, having finished his food-related work, joined us at the table.
“Hello, everyone,” I said. “Today we’re going to talk about human greetings in America, the country I’m from.”
The Princeling raised an eyebrow but didn’t comment. I didn’t enjoy having him at the foot of the table, eyes intent on me.
“Right,” I said, realizing I’d expected some kind of response. “So, greetings are the way that humans…” I fumbled. “Greet each other.” I glanced at Sahir, hoping for a knight-in-shining-armor rescue.
He—unsurprisingly—sighed. “Humans cannot begin an interaction until they have signaled acknowledgment of each other,” he said.
“They have devised an array of incomprehensible rituals, which can be altered and adapted to declare mood, conversational intent, and even level of intimacy. If you do not greet a human in a way that they expect, they take it as a sign of rudeness or disrespect.”
“I do not believe I asked Sahir to lead this class, lady,” the Princeling said. He’d conjured a thin green vine, which he coiled and uncoiled around his fingers as he spoke.
I glanced at Sahir, who rolled his eyes.
“Thank you for that summary, Sahir,” I said. I wanted the Princeling to go away. “So, as Sahir said, we signal acknowledgment at the start of every interaction. That’s a greeting. I’ll teach you a simple one to start.”
I turned my attention to the Princeling. “May I involve Sahir in a demonstration, my lord?” I asked, a bit of bite in my voice.
He inclined his head. “As you wish.”
“Great. Sahir, let’s stand up.” I pushed my stool from the table and stood. Sahir stood, too, making the face that meant I regret giving you any support, moral or otherwise. I held my hand out to him and he shook it, once, like I’d handed him a dead fish.
“Hello, Sahir. How are you?” I glanced back at the table.
Lene and Kellen were both watching with lively interest. Caraya had engaged Schubert in what appeared to be a thumb war, though it didn’t look like either of them had exactly five fingers.
Gaheris was staring dreamily into the middle distance.
“I am well, Miri, thank you for asking. How are you?”
The Princeling was also watching his subjects intently.
“I am well, Sahir.” I turned back to the table. “So that’s how you greet someone. Once you’ve done that, you can start whatever conversation you want.”
Kellen, Lene, Caraya, and Milo all spoke up at once—
“But why would you do this?”
“What if you cannot say you are well?”
“Why did you touch hands in this strange fashion?”
“Do you use the greeting if you are challenging the human to mortal combat?”
My eyes met the Princeling’s. He inclined his head, indicating I should answer.
Sahir had been completely right: Greetings filled the entire two hours, and then two more class sessions after that. If this was all the Princeling required, maybe this wouldn’t be so bad after all.
The next two weeks blurred. I skipped breakfast, rolling out of bed bleary-eyed to be on the morning call. Lene lay on my bed and kept me quiet company, sometimes with Gaheris, and sometimes alone.
At lunch and dinner, I prioritized dessert and never finished my food, afraid to be away from the desk in case an email came in. I was sick a few more times, probably from stress, though never as badly as the first night. Maybe a faerie hadn’t poisoned me after all. Maybe it’d been psychosomatic.
At some time between midnight and two a.m., I rolled back into bed, asleep before Doctor Kitten could even curl into my side. Once I dreamed of Thea and Jordan, sitting together on Thea’s blue couch.
“Have you seen Miri since that dinner we had together?” Jordan asked.
“No,” Thea said, holding a glass beer bottle to her chest, her brow furrowed. “I think she might be mad at us for what we said about her job.”
I shot bolt upright, scrambling for my phone, and it took me several seconds to understand it had only been a dream.
I dreamed of my mother once, clutching her pillow and crying out for me. In the morning, my dad called and told me she’d woken him in the night with questions about me.
“Weird,” I said. “Maybe she’s also a Lady of the True Dreams.”
The title had begun to amuse me: I dreamed of stew for lunch and then laughed when a cafeteria worker plopped a bowl of stew onto my lunch tray. Three nights in a row, my dreams accurately predicted the type of cake Milo would serve me the next day. True dreams, indeed.
And every day, my mom called to ask if I’d taught human class, and if I was fulfilling the terms of my bargain.
One night, I told the Games Games Games group chat that I probably wouldn’t be playing with them for the foreseeable future. I had too much work to do.
I received and ignored a barrage of phone calls in response. Jordan sent me a series of Venmo payments labeled Emergency Cheese and Comfort Bagels.
I called Thea, and she told me a very involved story about a coworker’s misadventures while purchasing donut-themed socks. I cried until I laughed.
Every day that passed, it became harder to tell my friends that I wouldn’t ever see them again. So every day that passed, I didn’t.