Chapter Four
She turned and there was Arthur Taliesin, his eyebrows arched.
He stood outside the office, since it was already too cramped for him to fit inside.
He wore a turtleneck sweater, the sleeves bunched up to his elbows, and there was a slight sheen of sweat on his brow, as if he’d been moving furniture with his colleagues.
The silence dragged on between the four of them, so awkward it physically hurt.
“Dr. Linden, can I speak with you, please?” he finally asked.
Maggie had been wrong earlier. Her face absolutely could turn a brighter, hotter shade of red. Dr. Linden. Not Maggie, was the only absurd thought in her head.
“Of course.” She pretended for her own sake that he hadn’t heard a word she’d said about him. He might not have known who I was talking about, she reasoned. How long had he been listening anyway?
Maggie joined him in the hall and stared at him expectantly, her arms crossed.
He looked as uncomfortable as he had onstage on Saturday.
“I would prefer to go to your office, where it’s a little more private,” he said, throwing a look at Jim and Dahlia, who were now shuffling file folders around as if they’d had no part in the conversation. Traitors.
When they arrived at her office, he looked around appraisingly and then said, turning to her, “We’ll have to remove the couch, but I think we can make this work.”
It took her a moment to understand what he was saying. “What—” she began.
“It will still be a tight fit, of course, but—”
“What are you talking about?” Maggie finally managed to say.
His presence in the small office was overwhelming. In an effort to reclaim some of her space, she sat down in her desk chair. He followed her lead, sitting on the weathered couch. He was so tall, though, his knees nearly pushed up into his broad chest.
“Didn’t Dean Clearwater email you?”
A lump formed in Maggie’s throat as she angled her chair toward her ancient computer.
It had finally turned on while she was in Dahlia’s office, its power rune glowing with a dim light, so she jiggled the mouse and logged in.
As it came back to life, she saw the dean’s email with its absurd little exclamation mark indicating its importance.
Maggie,
As you are aware, the Applied Linguistics and Incantation Translation, Runology and Sigil Studies, and Alchemy and Transmutation Departments will be sharing offices while the pall on the third floor is dissipated.
Both Dean Bobbin and I appreciate your willingness to open your space to your colleagues.
You will be sharing your office with Dr. Arthur Taliesin, director of the Alchemy and Transmutation Department.
As if she didn’t know who he was. As if he wasn’t sitting in her office, already taking up a ridiculous amount of space. She suddenly felt like there was less air in the room.
I trust you will make Dr. Taliesin feel welcome and supported as he completes the important tasks he needs to succeed in his position, including meeting with students as the term ends, completing his grades, and working on important research.
What was Dean Clearwater going on about? Making Taliesin “feel supported”? What was she, his assistant? It was insulting.
If you have any questions about this arrangement, please don’t hesitate to reach out, though I trust you will make it an easy transition.
Best,
Dean Clearwater
“I see,” Maggie managed to say, her voice gravelly around the lump that was still lodged in her throat.
“So, as I said before, we will need to remove the—”
“Absolutely not,” Maggie interrupted, finding her voice again. “We will put my desk in the corner and yours can go there.” She gestured to the space underneath the window. She was being downright generous.
“Wouldn’t it be easier to just remove the couch?”
“No, it wouldn’t. That is my fainting couch, and I won’t be getting rid of it,” she insisted.
The couch made her office, the place she spent more time in than her own apartment, feel more like a home.
But more importantly, it made the space significantly less intimidating for the students who came and asked for help.
She knew it was ridiculous; she knew she sounded petulant, but she couldn’t stop herself.
Did she actually call it a fainting couch out loud?
Gods above. Usually she only called it that in her head.
“Do you…” He paused and looked at her as if he were trying to determine whether he’d heard her correctly. “Do you do a lot of fainting in here?”
She groaned. “It’s an expression.”
“Is it?”
“Yes,” she insisted, and began pulling dusty computer parts and books off her desk, piling them wherever they would fit on her bookshelves.
Taliesin simply watched her, and when she grunted in his general direction about getting a little help here, he came over and lifted the desk until it was snug in the corner, flush with her shelves.
“I didn’t want to get in your way.” He sniffed, his nose twitching against the dust that had blown in the air. “You seem to have it all figured out without me.”
As she rearranged her belongings and gave everything a thorough dusting, Taliesin returned with a desk, its other end supported by a sheepish-looking Jim, who escaped the office as soon as he dropped it beneath the window, leaving them alone again.
Taliesin sat in the creaky chair he rolled in.
The desk was too small—it had to be to fit in the minuscule space she had offered him—and he looked like an adult playing with a child’s furniture set.
Everything seemed miniature in front of him, and he sighed as he pulled a laptop out of his bag.
It was late afternoon, and the sun was shining through the sliver of a window, casting a solitary sunbeam on Taliesin’s new desk.
“See,” Maggie said, gesturing toward the sunbeam. “I’m being generous. You’re getting the only sun this room will see over the next twenty-four hours. You’re welcome.”
“Yes,” he said as he scrolled through what looked like endless emails. “That’s exactly the word that came to mind. Generous.”
—
Maggie lasted exactly thirty-seven minutes.
Thirty-seven minutes of distraction. Thirty-seven minutes of frustration.
Thirty-seven minutes of Taliesin shuffling through his bag, scratching his pencil across student papers, and tapping his foot up and down in near-constant motion.
Finally, she stood up, told him to lock the door on his way out, and left without another word.
There were plenty of other people, people she respected and liked, that she would rather be sharing her office with.
Instead, every time she looked up from her computer, there was the back of Taliesin’s head, and she found herself getting angry all over again.
About the pall and that awful email from Dean Clearwater. About the budget cut.
She knew she should let it go. It wasn’t personal; she knew that.
And if she wasn’t going to let it go, she should confront him about it.
But whenever she thought about bringing it up, thought about having to defend the scholarship she had carved out for herself and was so proud of, she also thought she might cry.
She knew from experience what men thought of women who cried out of anger.
Unprofessional. Immature. If you’re going to cry about it, maybe you’re not ready for a position in this program after all.
No, she refused to cry in front of Arthur Taliesin.
She shook her head as she walked down the hall, trying desperately to convince herself that the burning in her eyes was residual pall dust seeping through the floors.
Lost in unfortunate memories, she almost ran into Dean Clearwater coming around the corner. She stopped abruptly, nearly losing her balance in the process. “Ah! Maggie.” He steadied her with a hand on her elbow. “I was hoping to run into you, though perhaps not quite so literally.”
“Sorry, Richard. I’m a little distracted today.”
“The pall is affecting us all,” he admitted, a slight twinkle in his eye alerting her to the fact that his rhyme didn’t go unnoticed. The delight fell away, though, and he gestured to the empty, sunlit classroom to their right. “Would you mind sitting with me for a moment?”
Maggie followed him inside, and they both sat at empty desks. Dean Clearwater angled his toward her like they were students working on a project together.
“I imagine you have read your email by now?” he asked, clasping his hands together.
“Dr. Taliesin has already moved in.”
“Oh, wonderful!” There was far more excitement in his voice than Maggie felt the situation warranted. He tapped his desk, a pensive look on his face. “Maggie, I know I don’t have to explain to you how important it is to keep Dr. Taliesin happy.”
Maggie thought she needed an explanation very much, but she didn’t say that.
The dean wasn’t bad, as bosses go, but he could be painfully out of touch, and what he wanted for Hawthorn didn’t always align with what Maggie thought the college should prioritize.
He was so focused on growth and numbers and funding, and she was glad someone was, but she had little patience for chasing those abstractions at the expense of her students’ education.
“As I’m sure is clear,” he went on, “a pall of this size will take some time to remove. A few weeks, at best.” Maggie ran her hand up and down her arm against the chill.
It was warm outside, and Maggie wore a short-sleeved blouse, but the temperature inside Ilex Hall had been dropping all day thanks to the pall.
She would have been more comfortable in a turtleneck.
“The good news is that Dr. Taliesin managed to keep his wits about him to control the spread of the pall.” Maggie barely suppressed her huff at that incomplete assessment of what happened on Friday afternoon, but the dean didn’t notice.
“Unfortunately, negative effects are already being felt across campus, and we expect there will be some consequences for Galloway as well.”
“It’s already attracting banshees,” Maggie pointed out. The piercing, crystalline shrieks of the wailing beasts had kept her up the past two nights.
Dean Clearwater nodded grimly. “The important thing is that our students and staff remain safe. With a few more weeks of classes and the immediate need to host families for graduation, we thought it best to fortify the campus wards early.”
Typically, this was a project for the last week of summer, when professors returned to campus.
They worked together to ward the buildings, including the student dorms, going door by door.
It was always one of Maggie’s favorite weeks of the year.
Something about the task, the quiet campus empty of students, and the lingering sweltering heat made it feel like summer camp.
“Dr. Li had the brilliant idea to have students completing their capstone projects fortify the wards for us. They’re getting started tomorrow.
“In any case, I appreciate your flexibility.” He paused for a moment, his impressive eyebrows drawing together. “I can’t stress enough, Maggie, how important Dr. Taliesin’s program is to the college.”
Maggie’s lips pressed together, but she nodded as Dean Clearwater went on.
“Enrollment at Hawthorn has been down for years, but this year we saw a threefold increase in applicants. I attribute that growth to having someone like Arthur on our faculty. It would be a shame,” he said pointedly, tapping his finger to punctuate each word, “to lose the momentum.”
She had so many questions she wanted to ask the dean—and so many things she wanted to clear up—but they all died on her tongue as she realized what he was implying.
He would never come right out and say Maggie’s own tenure hung in the balance, depending on the happiness of the famous, sour alchemist. Of course he wouldn’t.
But Maggie was a smart woman who could read between the lines.
“It would certainly be a shame to lose Dr. Taliesin so soon after he joined us,” Maggie finally responded, and that, at least, was something close to the truth. “Isn’t there somewhere else he would be more comfortable, though? It’s an awfully small office. And damp.”
“I made the same suggestion to him, even offering up an empty suite in Ferox Hall. But Dr. Taliesin wouldn’t hear of it,” he said, shaking his head and chuckling softly.
“He didn’t want to receive any kind of special treatment or inconvenience his students by making them walk all the way to the administration building. ”
Of course he didn’t. “Well, that’s admirable,” she muttered, but then added with a conciliatory voice she barely recognized, “We’ll make it work.”
“I knew I could count on you,” the dean said, giving her hand a friendly pat. He stood, stretching easily. “I have another meeting on campus and must dash, but thank you again.”
Maggie watched the dean disappear through the classroom doors. When he was out of sight, Maggie put her head down on the desk, letting her arms block out the light, and sighed.