Chương 4: Day Four

Dear Diary, I've been holed up in my room for a couple days now. Classes haven't restarted after the attack at the aquarium. On the bright side, I've got a place to sleep and Marie brings meals around, so I can't complain too much. Where was I? Oh, yeah, fainting when I looked in the mirror. I mean, I'm not sure I fainted, exactly. I know I thumped back onto the pillow, mirror still clutched in my hand. I guess it seems a little extreme, but thing is, it wasn't really the shock at my eyes or ears being inhuman.

It was the rest of everything. My hair isn't black, it's more of a medium brown. My nose is a little too big, kind of a lump in the middle of my face rather than the aquiline blade in the mirror. My skin is dark enough to look like a white person with a tan, it's not 'the beacons are lit' white. My face, overall, is a forgettable oval, not the faintly foxlike one staring back at me. Still, I wasn't going to complain about an upgrade, especially if I could work it to get free money for going to school.

Also, my brain was still my brain, and staring at my face like that wasn't going to help me blend. Fortunately, my stomach came charging to my rescue and let out a growl that would mortify me in any other circumstance. I pushed myself back up, handing the mirror back to the Sister.

"I'm sorry, I think I'm hungrier than I thought." She took the mirror, already speaking to Marie, "water and anything more substantial that you've got in the cart, Marie." Again Marie's weird hands forked over a loaf of unsliced bread. Sister Siobhan set the mirror down before taking the bread and passing it to me. While I tore my way through it, someone poured something outside the curtain, and Marie handed in a weird glass stein. Weird or not, I took it from the Sister and washed down the first half of the loaf.

As I did, the Sister looked at Marie and said, "needs must, that's fine." Marie handed in a small platter with an honest to god domed lid. I took it, setting it on my lap while I polished off the heel of the loaf. When I lifted away the lid, the aroma of freshly cooked chicken hit me. I think the lid fell to the floor, but I'm really not sure. Something metallic dropped away, but my full attention was on tearing the chicken apart and cramming it into my mouth as fast as I could chew and swallow.

Frankly, I'm not sure I chewed all that much. I'm also pretty sure I ate a couple of the smaller bones. I know I picked up all the bigger ones and sucked any remaining meat or meat adjacent bits off of them. I didn't stop until nothing remained on the plate except clean bones. The compulsion to eat dying down, I looked around for more, spotting the glass stein lying on its side next to my leg.

The top had sealed itself when I dropped it, clever design for an infirmary, where the folks might not be able to hold it reliably. I picked it up and looked back to Sister Siobhan kind of sheepishly. For her part, she just stared, eyes a little wide, her mouth twisted in a bit of a smirk.

"Very, very, healthy appetite, I see. Whatever you did to survive the attack must have really taken it out of you." She looked back at the stack of papers.

"Only one or two more things to fill out. Place of Birth?"

"Camden. Uh, Camden Yards." She paused a moment before shaking her head and writing a few words on each of the pages in front of her.

"Cheryl will be insufferable," she muttered.

"Still and all, it looks like she was right. Now, not to be indelicate, dear, but do you have any bequests from your parents, or any property they've left you?" I sighed. It always came back around to money.

"Nope. I had a purse with most of my belongings in it, but I think I dropped it at the aquarium. It's probably at the bottom of the river now." Also probably at the bottom of the Delaware River, not at the bottom of whatever river ran between Camden Yards and Phileo City, but I wasn't about to go into that at this point.

"Oh. Oh, my. Where have you been staying since your mother passed?" I really doubted my sister wound up here too, so I just shrugged, "Here and there. Wherever I could find a roof."

"You poor dear." She wrote a few things on the papers in front of her, then pulled a small bowl out of the rolling desk and sprinkled sand across the three of them.

"Well, until I'm told otherwise, I'll assume you're going to receive a bursary dispensation not just for your tuition, but for room and board as well. If they don't like it, they can tell me so later." She nodded and squared her shoulders, as if preparing to fight anyone who told her I wasn't a full-ride scholarship student.

"Now, there are some additional rules and restrictions that dispensation students must follow, but most of those are just about keeping your nose clean, not slacking, and not embarrassing the school. I'm sure those won't be a problem for you, right dear?" I blinked, still taken aback at the idea that someone I'd just met would actually fight for me. I mean, I'd read about people like that, but generally they don't come to Camden much, or if they do they don't survive long.

Before she could change her mind, I muttered, "no, yeah, I can do all that." I'd never managed to keep my nose clean, I'd always slacked, and I was pretty much a terminal embarrassment to Eastside, but I wasn't about to tell Sister Siobhan any of that. A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

"One final item, then. Patron?" I didn't have a patron, and I'm pretty sure we'd just discussed why. Something must have shown in my face, because she smiled a conspiratorial little smile and whispered, "It's fine, dear. It mostly goes to which day you have off for Devotions." I'd never been fond of getting up for school on Monday, so I went with that.

"Monday?" I said. She frowned a little, more confusion than disapproval, then turned back to her papers.

"Patron: Diana. Just a moment then." The Sister stood, walked around the bed until she stood about where my waist was, then bowed her head and muttered something too low for me to make out the words. It sounded almost like a prayer, and the way she folded her hands as she spoke only reinforced that assumption. As she prayed, a faint light emanated from her hands; by the time she finished it was clear the glow wasn't a trick of the light.

She knelt next to the bed and, starting with my head, moved her hands across me, a few inches from touching me. I felt something as her hands passed; not painful, but definitely uncomfortable. In a few moments, she finished, and smiled as she stood.

"There's still something odd, but that might be your father's blood coming through. I've never Diagnosed a half Bag, or even Bag before. But you seem healthy other than that. Are you feeling up to walking a bit?" Other than feeling like I'd been sleeping on a board, I felt pretty good. I nodded, then spun my legs out of the far side of the bed and pushed myself to my feet.

"Good to go whenever, wherever."

"That positive attitude will serve you well with most of the instructors. Marie, show Tabitha... show Candidate Diaz to an available Dispensary Student room. See to it she has a full set of uniforms. She'll also want to know where the Dining Hall, the Library, and the Practice Yard are." She looked back to me, a wry smile on her face.

"I'm sorry about the uniforms, but they're the only thing the school has in terms of clothing, and you'll be wanting to get out of those sooner than later, I'm guessing. Please follow Marie, she'll show you to your room and get you settled."

"Thank you, Sister." I wanted to give her a hug, but the bed stood between us, and I had no idea what the norms for hugging were here. I didn't want to screw up by being too physically affectionate. Instead I turned and pushed the gauzy curtain aside and got my first good look at Marie. I'm proud of the fact that I took my first look at her in stride, because she was definitely living in the Uncanny Valley mining Nightmare Fuel. The most normal thing about her, the maids uniform she wore, hung oddly on her frame.

She had to be at least seven feet tall, and by the width of her arms, her wrists, and her face, I'd guess she weighed less than me. Every bit of skin had that translucent look to it; I could see veins beneath the skin and almost thought I could see bones beneath that. Her hair, mostly pulled back into a bun and hidden by her maid's cap, seemed well cared for, but still somehow looked lank and greasy, despite being the lightest shade of platinum blonde I'd ever personally seen.

Her eyes had the slit pupils I'd seen in the mirror, and when she spoke I saw fangs instead of teeth in her mouth. Not, like, pointed canines, but nothing but canines from edge to edge.

"Follow." she whispered, her ragged voice pulling me after her like a magnet when she turned and walked toward the door. I followed, not even turning to say good bye to Sister Siobhan. Despite being creepy as fuck, Marie was an efficient, if not talkative, tour guide. First she led me to a huge, empty room with a vaulted ceiling. Long trestle tables had been pushed back against the walls, with the exception of three at one end of the hall and a pair near the door where we entered.

"Dining Hall." She rasped, "Closed."

"If it's not too much trouble, can you bring me food?" Too many chances for me to screw up in a way that stood out with a small group. I'd wait to socialize until there was a crowd I could blend into. Marie just nodded her response and led me back out of the room. Next she led me through some halls and up some stairs to a huge room that, what with all the shelving, had been turned into a series of rooms more than one single one.

Books lined the walls, the shelves, and some even stood in stacks on the tables scattered about.

"Library." I nodded my understanding and, despite my urgent desire to read every single book in the room, followed when she led me out. I wasn't certain, because my direction sense is far from perfect, but I think she led me up to a courtyard directly above the library. Huge stone slabs covered the floor, and a few sheds stood at either end.

"Practice Yard." I nodded my understanding once more, and she led me on. This time we stayed on the same level, but I'm pretty sure we wandered back in the direction of the Infirmary. At one point we passed under an arch with a pair of heavy wooden doors standing open. There was something written across the arch; I had no idea what language or even alphabet it was in, and yet I could tell it said 'Ladies Dormitory', which freaked me out a little bit.

Marie led me to a room at the very end of that door-lined hall, which proved to be filled with clothing hanging from poles strung just below the ceiling. Most were bunched together and wrapped in what looked to be opaque plastic, but a fair number at one end hung separately. At a glance they looked a little worn, especially a rectangular spot on the left breast of each. They reminded me of the ROTC uniforms, with that bare patch where the nametag would be.

While I'd been looking over the uniforms, she'd been doing something at a worktable at one end of the room. When she finished, she scooped a half dozen of the uniforms from the rack, pulled some linens from a table that had been hidden by the uniforms, then pointed with an elbow at a hole in the wall behind the desk she'd worked at.

"Laundry." She led me out of the room and about halfway back up the hall, where she stopped and opened a door. I followed her in; she hung the uniforms in a small wardrobe, made quick work of putting the linens on the bed, then returned to the wardrobe. I watched in undisguised awe as she hand-sewed an embroidered nametag onto each of the uniforms, her fingers moving faster than I could follow.

I decided right then to be as nice as I could to Marie; I didn't want anyone with claws like that mad at me if she could make them move faster than most sewing machines. A moment later, she finished. She waved a hand as if to indicate the uniforms, the room, and the furniture in it.

"Yours." She turned to go.

"Marie?" She stopped and turned back to me, face expressionless.

"Thank you for showing me around, and for the clothes." Marie's face rippled through emotions faster than I could easily track. Surprise, calculation, wariness, then resignation.

"De Nada." she said, then turned and left me in my new room.