6. Sam A Fiffle #2
Quinn smiled back. “Yes! A wonderful idea. Thank you.” He stepped back and closed the door.
Then, without so much as a pause, he retrieved the helmet and returned to the desk to resume his reading of Introduction to Appraisal.
Incredible! I glanced over his shoulder, half expecting to find some other fascinating text—perhaps a racy romance—in disguise.
But no. The familiar formulas lay there, obdurate as ever.
The noise from the fiffle on the second floor grew more raucous, and Quinn ignored it, enraptured by the dry text.
Now and then he made careful notations with a pencil in his notebook.
Some were in Spanish, and this surprised me.
Ojo! he wrote, before laboriously copying a description of decimal visualizations.
On the second floor, the fiffle had been well underway for nearly an hour.
There was no music, unless you counted the stamping of feet and the clinking of glass cups.
But there was a good deal of shouting and laughing, even more drinking and smoking.
The low ceiling was veiled by a cloud of grayish smoke, as if some evil genie had taken residence in the upper regions of the room, and the open windows did almost nothing to dislodge it.
I scanned the room, searching for familiar faces.
None as yet. Among all the shouting and laughing stood a tall young man in shirtsleeves who seemed to be the only one not engaged in conversation.
He looked distinctly uncomfortable. He held a blue glass, half full, which he glanced at every so often with distaste.
He gazed before him with an absent expression, as if waiting for the most unpleasant scene of the play to end.
Finally he put the glass down and threaded his way over to one of the open windows, murmuring apologies as he went.
He leaned over the sill and looked out over the yard, where lamps with spheres of yellow light stood every few feet upon the crisscrossing pathways.
“Hello!” A slight young lady with a brilliant blue dress and a pearl choker had appeared at his elbow.
“Hello,” the tall young man replied politely.
“You looked like you could do with some company.” She smiled. “I’m Vera.”
She had wide brown eyes, a heart-shaped face, and a pile of well-trained hair.
And yet…she wasn’t wearing a single token.
The glittering diadem in her hair, made smart with a pair of indigo feathers, was a mere trinket, and the pearls were indubitably false.
But neither piece carried enchantment. This made me suspicious.
It seemed unlikely that a young woman with so many natural advantages would have nothing better to do on a Friday evening than steal out to a party in a room the size of a kitchen pantry.
Then again, enchanters are desirable company in the commonwealth, and they are not always easy to meet.
“Walter Ainsley,” the young man said. “How do you do?”
“Very well, thank you.” She gave a demure nod. “Yourself?”
“It’s a lovely evening.” Walter turned back to the window. “Though rather noisier in here than out there.”
Vera gave a little laugh. “And you prefer quiet to noise, am I right?”
Walter was flustered. “Only in certain circumstances. I don’t mind noise when it suits the occasion.
An orchestra. Fireworks. But this kind of gathering?
Somehow a student dormitory, in a space that is meant for dedicated study and concentration, at an institution that with such a distinguished history…
It seems rather crass. A lack of respect, even, for the important work we are here to pursue.
” Walter stopped abruptly. I considered this paragon of sociability more closely to determine what Vera had seen in him: a tidy beard; sincere eyes; a rather willowy frame.
I thought he had an impractical, poetic look about him, but some young ladies like that.
Eyebrows raised, Vera gave a mischievous smile. “I see. So…why come?”
“I apologize.” Walter grew even more flustered. “And you’re right. I was invited here by a friend who hasn’t arrived.”
“Well, then.” Vera turned gracefully toward the room. “I’ll leave you to find your friend. Best of luck with your studies this term.”
“Thank you,” Walter said ruefully. “You’re very kind.
Enjoy the evening.” Vera sailed away, seemingly untroubled by the packed room and the darting glances.
Sighing, Walter leaned back against the window frame and took stock.
Well, here was one young man who had a thing or two to learn, albeit not about enchantment.
However tactless his comments, there was truth to them.
The room was beginning to unravel a little at the edges, tipping from merry to manic.
A couple of young men by the door were shouting, whether out of anger or necessity it was impossible to say.
A tall young lady in a low-cut dress was whirling with her partner to unheard music, colliding at every turn with one person or another, laughing wildly all the while.
Ah, and now I saw a few familiar faces in the crowd.
Simeon, with twinkling blue eyes and golden curls, was talking to Barney and Sikes, who were tossing back tumblers of some vile-looking pink drink like it was water.
Sikes laughed uproariously. Barney shouted something at the top of his lungs, his reddish hair sweaty and tousled.
Then he stepped away, presumably to acquire more of the noxious drinks, for he was elbowing his way toward the makeshift bar.
As he turned away, Vera walked past Simeon and Sikes, squeezing her way past them with some difficulty.
Simeon grew very still. He watched Vera hungrily, his eyes following her slow progress to the door.
Sikes took only a moment to catch up. He elbowed Simeon with exaggerated eagerness, smirking at Vera’s efforts to work her way through the packed room.
Quinn chose this moment to appear at the door, bright-eyed and eager.
For a few seconds he looked around the room, scanning the crowd for a familiar face.
And then he spotted Simeon. To my dismay, he waved energetically and started to push his way into the room.
But Simeon was focused on other prey. As Vera reached the door at last and disappeared into the corridor, Simeon and Sikes nodded to each other.
Silently, by unspoken agreement, they pushed through the crowd after her.
I pondered what to do. As the door closed, Quinn landed safely by the window next to Walter, and the two began prattling away amicably. Whereas Vera was unquestionably on the verge of a nasty collision with Simeon and Sikes.
I followed Vera.
She had gotten no farther than the pitcher pump at the entrance of the Brig.
Perhaps she’d gone out for a breath of fresh air—I would have wished to, had I been trapped for some time in the ghastly atmosphere of the fiffle.
But now her breath of fresh air had turned into a trap.
She stepped into the pool of light cast by the nearby lamp and stopped: Simeon and Sikes waited beyond the light’s perimeter, not quite cornering her but nearly.
The walkways on either side of the Brig were ominously deserted.
The men contemplated Vera in her luminous blue dress. I could see the indecision in her rigid neck, her body tensed for flight. Was it wiser to try for a sudden escape, or would that only make things worse?
“What a pretty birdie,” Simeon commented, eyes glittering.
It is especially vexing in such situations to consider that while spirit thews have such tremendous powers, the dead who remain trapped in the spirit realm have almost no powers at all.
We can’t slam doors or make ghostly footsteps on the stairs, we can’t throw objects across the room or make them levitate, and we can’t moan or shriek—we can’t even whisper.
How I wish we could. There’s only one way we can reach those of you in the realm of the living, and the means of it is fragile, uncertain, ambiguous.
If you’re ever walking placidly along a familiar road and feel, for no apparent reason, a sense of foreboding, you should take heed.
That is one of us. If you are ever on the verge of going out the door but something tugs at you to stay home, that is one of us.
If you are despondent, and cannot lift your eyes beyond the cracks in the floor, and the sudden warmth of unsought tenderness fills your heart, that is one of us.
We can reach you only in this way: mutely, through the pressure of a sensation, a sentiment that seems to come from nowhere, a burst of an inexplicable intuition.
A finger tapping a single key on the piano. When you hear it, listen.
I placed all my weight on Simeon, pressing anxiety upon him.
He frowned but didn’t alter his stance in the slightest. I was used to this.
I had been filling him with the most excruciating sentiments I could conjure for months, all to no effect.
Most people ignore their sentiments, and intuitions are a mere nuisance.
I tried again, this time with a sense of foreboding. His scowl deepened.
“Sikes,” Simeon said to him. “Do you think this little birdie has pretty blue feathers all over?” He reached out and plucked at Vera’s feathered tiara. She batted his hand away sharply. “I think they’re brown. Or perhaps…black.” Clearly my ominous suggestions had influenced him not one bit.
“I think,” Sikes said, practically smacking his lips, “they are soft as down and the color of new straw.”
Vera listened with an air of supercilious calm.
I admired her composure, but I could see that her heart was pounding.
If I couldn’t dissuade the hunters, perhaps I could yet assist the prey.
I urged fortitude upon her, and she lifted her chin.
“Fascinating conjectures,” she said coldly.
“But not to my taste. Good night, gentlemen.”