#78 by Khismer - Nov 9 2012
January 25th
So today something happened and I’m not supposed to talk about it.
It was
big.
I had just meant to deliver the mail, but I got roped into something instead.
Really really not supposed to talk about it though. I’m
distressed.
As an understatement.
I’m exhausted because of it. Been out all day.
But I can’t talk about it. I really can’t.
-I
ADDENDUM
No, you know what? Screw it.
Screw. It.
I’ll write whatever I want in here and there is nothing on this world or any other that is going to stop me.
It’s early morning, not even dawn. I am exhausted. This will not stop me. No, instead it drives me, and I cannot, I
will not sleep until I have gotten this sorted out for myself. You ready, diary? Here goes:
Today I got married.
Surprised? So was I.
It wasn’t anything planned, and it was
very rushed. I may be one of the few brides in history to get her husband to hate her
during the ceremony.
Let’s start from the beginning.
It seemed like a normal day at first. Got dressed quickly, dove back into the covers for another minute to regain a bit of lost warmth, finally dragged myself out and headed for the mail room… and that’s where things got screwy.
Inside, this morning, was Professor Grabiner.
But not looking dour and grim, today, oh no. This morning, he was laying unconscious on the floor, surrounded my runes and symbols, with a demon looming above him. I should have known then. I didn’t.
And I – I panicked.
You remember that school-girl crush, diary? May as well go ahead and call it like it is after today, diary; no chance of even friendship now. So, on to describing my mistakes.
I stepped across the runes. Are you wincing, diary? I am. I should have known. I really should have.
I tried to wake him. Shook his shoulders and started to drag him out.
Was concerned for his well-being. Should have looked out for mine.
As soon as I’d tried to move, as soon as I’d touched him and tried to help – I was frozen. Paralyzed. Not with fear, no, though I was scared, scared out of my wits.
Paralyzed by the demon. Without moving an inch, hovering there with that stupid, smug grin on it’s stupid blue face, it just laughed at me. Chucked darkly. Came closer and said I was foolish, foolish.
Started his villain’s exposition then, too. He said that Professor Grabiner, unconscious and vulnerable as he seemed, was protected within his lines. Me? I was dead the moment I stepped across them.
Or so it said.
I’m not, obviously. Not skilled enough to be a ghost writer. Heh.
Potsdam showed up then. How she knew, I can’t be sure. (The school has ways of telling?)
She commanded the demon – the manus, I’d learn later – to let me go. It only laughed, of course. Professor Grabiner stirred, waking then, it seemed, too late. The manus yielded not. ‘This is mine,’ it said. ‘Rightfully mine.’ I had crossed the containment lines and my fate was sealed.
A fate, it turned out. Not to be eaten, no, but something else. Professor Potsdam hesitated only a moment, her face growing sorrowful, and in that moment I thought I would die. But she clutched at her pendant and drew herself up. “She is of the house of Grabiner,” she said.
‘Of the house of Grabiner?’ I had thought. I was not blood, how could I be what she said? I admit that I was not thinking quite clearly -- mortal terror will do that to a girl – and so it wasn’t until Professor Grabiner began to stand and she clarified that I understood.
“She is his affianced bride, whom he has pledged to marry this very day!” Potsdam declared. And Professor Grabiner, only recently awakened and still appearing to retain a touch of his previous, disoriented, state, agreed. ‘It is so sworn.’
And then, oh, how the manus scowled! It made its displeasure quite clear, hissing and grumbling all to the Otherworld.
With its departure, a sort of weight seemed to be lifted from the room – and then a new one descended as Professor Grabiner whirled on me.
I was an idiot, he told me. Stupid and foolish. Professor Potsdam, dear Professor Potsdam, attempted to intercede on my behalf, reminding him gently that I was trying to save him and wouldn’t it be awful if I lost my magic over this? The solution wasn’t much better, he muttered, and of course, I could not keep my stupid mouth shut any longer.
From my mouth tumbled words, half-formed questions all centering on the one theme of: what exactly is going on?
He gave no explanation, only shouted that I should not meddle with things I don’t understand.
Professor Potsdam calmed him, and promised to meet again at noon. I was confused, I was tired, I was weak, I was hungry, and I did not understand. I let myself be led away. She nudged me into an empty classroom, away from prying eyes. This scene was getting familiar.
She explained that Professor Grabiner recently ‘came into possession’ of a manus demon, one that is bound to his family line – sworn into the service of his family – and had been experimenting with it.
It was this experimenting that I had unwittingly walked in on this morning.
The only way to save me, she had explained gently, was to get the demon to recognize me as a part of the family it serves. And a wizard’s word is binding, I learned, and because a manus cannot be fooled by trickery – I was to be married. Today. Really and truly.
My protests – and protest I did, desperately and frantically – fell on deaf ears. To break the promise would be to lose my magic, and to cost him his life. And besides – I had saved him, and now he was saving me. ‘Wasn’t it so romantic?’ she asked. It wasn’t, no, it couldn’t be, but I wilted. I didn’t know what I could do. A year and a day we would be joined. Whether this is the nature of traditional magical marriages or something else, I don’t know.
But he would hate me, I was sure of that. I had screwed up, and I had screwed up
bad.
I guess I was confused enough, or tired enough, or both to have actually vocalized this, because she gave me a sympathetic look and patted my shoulder.
No, he wouldn’t hate me. His bark is worse than his bits, hadn’t I noticed that?
I had noticed that, but I had also never seen him so angry as he was – certainly hadn’t messed up enough see that kind of displeasure.
She left me alone with my thoughts for a moment, then came bustling back in with her arms full of peculiar objects – and a dress.
I stripped down out of my robes – a little too numb to suffer through the usual embarrassments, though the fact that it was in front of Potsdam helped – and into the dress.
And honestly? If I was able to separate this fact from the rest of this mangled day?
It was lovely.
I can’t claim to know what wedding dresses are made of, but this was soft, smooth and creamy, and bordered with bright, shining green – which matched my eyes, Potsdam proclaimed cheerfully.
At first it sagged terribly – not fit for someone of my frame, though bone-skinny as I am, nothing is.
I must have looked like I was drowning in it, and as she was looking me over, seeing how it fit before she changed anything, it kept slipping down.
I was feeling vulnerable enough that even having my shoulders left bare seemed somehow dangerous.
She spun me this way and that, taking measurements and mumbling under her breath. As nervous as I was, I still wanted to know what to do, so I asked her question after question. Apparently, I was talking too much for her tastes, or the answers were making me fidgety, so she pulled an apple out from somewhere – she’s not the Green magic teacher for nothing, I suppose – and stuffed it in my mouth.
This dulled the edge of hunger that had been creeping in, and as long as I ate slowly, I could focus on the sweetness of the fruit, rather than letting butterflies swarm in my stomach when I thought about what was going to happen.
All good things must come to an end, and she soon pronounced it done. Black magic moves the process along quite a bit.
She let me peer into a mirror afterwards, and I looked… nice.
She had brushed my hair until it shined, and though I insisted on pulling it back into its usual, functional ponytail, it looked like gold. Fear of rumpling the dress, and her hard work, straigntened my back into something resembling elegance, and the green really did bring out the color of my eyes, which looked otherwise scared behind the frames of my glasses.
(That felt wrong, somehow. Like I wasn’t allowed to be anything close to pretty, not when I had been the cause of the whole mess.)
Before we left, and despite the situation, she expressed the desire that we would come to like each other. Seems impossible now.
The wedding was in the dungeons.
None that I’ve ever tested in, as far as I could tell, and clean enough for the task, but... well. Not what I would have dreamed of. Dark – lit only by scattered candles – and cold, too.
Minnie was there, to witness. She held my hand before it, whispered soft reassurances, offered sad smiles.
And then she stepped back, and he came into view.
Dress robes, I think they were. Red and orange and green. Looking back on it now, I can only draw a faint trace of humor from it.
He looked more open without his hat and ever-present book. Angry, tired.
And… vulnerable, like every time he shifted he was drawing into himself.
I guess I must have been staring, as if I wasn’t enough of an embarrassment.
And then it was time. We walked, step by step, to face each other.
She had murmured instructions to me as she made alterations, and as I stood there, I hoped against hope that I would not stumble.
Lifting up my basket – blue and orange ribbons twining around the handle, and within, an ear of corn – I drew in a breath – one of my last as an unmarried woman – and recited my part.
“I give to you my kindness and my courage.” A pity that I could not always speak as strongly that I did then. Even scared as I was, my voice did not warble, did not falter. A thousand people could hear my mistakes, and a handful of them hear me when I am clear and loud.
What happened next is a blur, her words lost in waves of trembling nerves as I struggled to recognize my parts.
“I give to you my wisdom and protection,” he murmured, and I took hold of his basket – his own ribbons black and gold, and carrying a branch instead of corn – and with our hands crossed and our promises made, Minnie and Professor Potsdam draped the ribbons over our hands.
I’m sure I’ll get he words wrong, but let me try to remember – “as two streams join to form a river, your two lives join to create something greater than they were before. One family and one future, for one year and one day are you bound.” More reverent and less jubilant than I’ve come to expect from movies, or from play-acting, but I suppose that fits, doesn’t it?
It finished off with the near-traditional “you may kiss the bride,” but, as this was not ‘strictly necessary’, he declined, as he did had no intention of demeaning himself further.
It would have been terrible if he had been made to kiss me because of that, but --
Demeaning. Demeaning...
I think he really might hate me now, even with what Minnie said about -- no, no, no, let’s go in chronological order to make sense of just how badly I screwed up.
He loosened his grip and stepped away, leaving me to stand there, unsure, holding both.
And then he smiled, and I don’t think I’d be wrong in calling it a nasty smile, with how much his voice sharpened. He’d see me in a year for severance, then.
Potsdam’s attempts to placate him met with the response that I was his wife in name only, and he was under no obligation to be kind, and that I –
I am to stay out of his way. I will receive no privileges, no special treatment. I cannot use his name, I may not enter his room, and I cannot tell a soul.
(And he hoped this would be lesson enough to teach me the cost of foolishness. Oh, it is enough.)
Professor Potsdam took Minnie and I to the Glen. Minnie handed me an envelope with my name written on it in beautiful, flowing letters. Inside, $25 – a wedding present, she muttered, flushed as if she made some misstep, but in that moment I wanted to wrap my arms around he and thank her until my voice went hoarse. I can’t – won’t – imagine what anyone else would have done in her place.
Potsdam went off to powder her nose – the first time I’ve ever seen someone mean that literally – and when Minnie asked how I was doing, I sort of... burst, under her encouragement. Told her that I wanted him to respect me, to not see me as some silly child, that I had ruined this in one move, that he hated me now, wanted nothing to do with me.
Minnie stopped me there, and said – she said that he didn’t hate me, just the situation. That I tried to do the right thing, and shouldn’t regret that – and said the situation was sort of his fault but I shouldn’t remind him of this. He’s proud, and he might really hate me then.
And she gave me advice. Told me not to let him frighten me off (though really, I’m not so much frightened as ashamed, abashed), that as long as I treat him with respect and patience, he’ll calm down.
Then Professor Potsdam came back and I could think of it no longer.
She did pretty well with distracting me, conjuring dancing toys and strange bits of knowledge, but not well enough to keep my mind completely off the subject. Every time she bounced around, every time she grabbed onto something new to bring up, there was something hovering in the back of my mind, dark and ugly and looming.
It doesn’t matter how hard I try, how much I ache for acceptance in this new world. I’m stupid and dense and unobservant, slow and utterly ignorant.
‘Miss’ Rashemi, he said as he left, the emphasis clear.
Mrs. Grabiner. Or Ms. Rashemi-Grabiner, if I took Potsdam’s suggestion.
Either way you spin it, it’s another reminder.
And it’s all because I couldn’t leave well enough alone.
Poor little Illia, always trying so hard to be a hero and save everyone, and just failing each and every time.
I’m pathetic.
-Ill.
A. I’ll enchant the pages later. Can’t have anyone finding out, can I?
Now I have said all that I could, and maybe I will find it within my power to sleep.
)
