The Strangely Beautiful Tale Of Miss Percy Parker (7 page)

Outside, Alexi took a deep breath. Irrepressible chortles and a smattering of “Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind” could be heard erupting inside.

“Infidels,” he muttered, taking the alley toward the Theatre Royal at a purposeful clip. “Will they forever be children?”

The third floor of Promethe Hall, not often used, was a basic yet stately affair; an open foyer with wide windows looking onto the school courtyard yet draped in white fabric, making the whole area softly but generously lit by the dawn. Two weeks into classes, Headmistress Thompson was ascending to this area when she stopped abruptly at the top of the stairs. The sight that greeted her had never before been there.

Shimmering and flickering like a candle, a large, transparent feather made of glittering wisps of blue flame floated two feet above the seal of Athens Academy, which was engraved on the floor below. Rebecca approached in awe. As she moved close, the feather brightened and seemed to dance, almost as if it were happy to see her.

The room had arches at either end, leading to the north and south wings of the hall, and the usual trickle of morning students began to pass through. A rush of nerves caused Rebecca’s skin to moisten, but she took care to mask her amazement and maintain her composure. The students passed by with a nod of deference and nothing more. As their headmistress hoped, they could not see the large, hovering feather that spontaneously burst into flame.

Rebecca exhaled slowly. “Things like this are supposed to stay relegated to our sacred circle and the chapel, thank you very much,” she muttered, scolding the phenomenon.

She glanced down at the seal of the academy, a golden eagle bearing a lit torch in its great claws. The school’s motto was inscribed below, first in Greek, then translated:

AS THE PROMETHEAN FIRE WHICH BANISHED DARKNESS, SO KNOWLEDGE BEARS THE POWER AND THE LIGHT
.

The feather, ephemeral as smoke and delicate as spider’s thread, gave off no heat or sound, but its blue flame was instantly familiar to her, as it would be to all her coterie. Slowly returning down the stairs, she eyed the feather to the last before scurrying to her office. She had often wondered if there was more to the building than it cared to tell. Urgently, she sent Frederic to fetch Alexi.

“Your English has improved greatly, Marianna.” Percy sat at the feet of the courtyard’s statuary angel, twirling the water in the fountain’s basin with distracted fingertips.

Marianna reclined beside her, finishing her picnic breakfast. “I am trying. I wish we spent more than one class together, but I have made a few friends.”

“Wonderful,” Percy replied in earnest, before glancing away. “You remain my only friend. At times I see that Edward boy. Every now and then he nods a greeting. Everyone else is afraid. I can’t blame them. I do look like a ghost—”

“No, Percy. Do not make excuses,” Marianna said. When her friend stayed silent, gazing at the angel above, she declared like an elder sister, “I accept melancholy for one moment, Percy, but that moment has passed. So. Are language classes still your favourite?”

Percy smiled. “I wish they were more challenging, but they do provide lovely escape to different worlds. It makes me forget myself—how I am, what I am—if only for a moment.”

“Ah! Doth I hear melancholy again, my dear Hamlet?” Marianna chided. Percy laughed. “There. Much better. Is that Alchemic—what is it called?—class still giving you trouble, despite your ‘magnificent professor’?”

Percy groaned. “Oh, that class remains my bane! I pay at
tention, take countless notes, but all I remember is the sound of Professor Rychman’s voice. Every syllable he speaks is like a hypnotic delicacy, like dark velvet. I try to grasp his explanations, but all I can see is how his robe sweeps as he moves, how his presence commands the room, how his brow furrows in thought, how his eyes blaze, how he calmly brushes a lock of dark hair from his noble face…” She trailed off, horrified by the vividness of her descriptions. With a fearful glance at Marianna, she folded her hands in her lap.

Marianna’s eyes gleamed as she whispered in Percy’s ear, “Someone is most certainly smitten!”

Percy swallowed. “Marianna, you mustn’t say such a thing—even a suggestion could get me expelled! This institution, in its unique position, cannot be too careful with the men and women under its protection. While I admit I may be…intrigued by him, this man is my professor, Marianna, and nothing more. You must realize that! Perhaps one day”—it was Percy’s turn to take a sage tone—“you’ll realize that there is a supreme delicacy to such matters.”

There was a long pause, and Marianna bit back a grin. “Does he wear a ring?”

“No,” Percy replied.

Marianna smiled. “I see. Who is this dashing hero? Have I met him?”

“You’d know if you had, I assure you. Wait! Oh, why, speak of the devil!” As if on cue, from Apollo Hall strode an impressive figure. Engrossed in his thoughts and ignoring the students sure to dive clear of his path, he strode briskly toward Promethe Hall. His academic’s robe and dark locks billowed about him, giving him the appearance of a great, swooping bird, and he looked up as if sensing Percy. His dark eyes pierced her to the core and all breath flew from her lips. “There,” she whispered.

The two held each other’s stares for a moment, student and teacher, and Percy was paralyzed, unable to break from
his eyes until he led the way, snapping his head to the side as he moved across the courtyard.

Marianna shuddered slightly. “Goodness, Percy!”

“What?”

“Well, he is striking indeed—but grim!”

“Distinguished, regal, elegant, fascinating…”

“Eerie,”
Marianna argued.

Percy turned suddenly, removed her glasses and pinned her friend with a stare. “Eerie, you say? ‘Eerie’ should daunt me, should it? What am I, then?”

Though the light hurt her eyes, the desired effect occurred. Percy’s irises flashed in the sunlight, the tiny blue and white slivers of colour glowing. Marianna gasped. Percy replaced her glasses and closed the lids of her eyes, favouring them from the pain to which she’d just subjected herself.

After a moment, Marianna spoke. “Well, Percy, I will give you this. There is certainly
something
about the man.”

“Yes. But I cannot know more of him.”

Marianna sighed. “My dearest Percy, welcome to the ranks of the unrequited.”

Percy turned, grave. “You must refrain from such statements. Such talk is scandal. The only reason he affects me so is that I feel…strange around him. I sense he knows something that I need to know. I’ve had such an odd sense of things my entire life, Marianna, such dreams while awake, such beautiful and haunting images! It must lead to something.”

“And you think your professor of science may have answers?”

“That’s just it: the thought is absurd! Of course this could just be a fascination which I dare not foster, but nonetheless I wonder…Please, Marianna, never one word of this.”

Her friend held up a hand, her obligation to duty clear.

Professor Rychman continued walking, and the two girls continued watching. Just outside the arch into Promethe
Hall, Headmistress Thompson waited. Percy and Marianna observed as the professor held out his arm. She took it, and they fell into immediate, intense discussion.

“They know each other well,” Marianna stated, watching closely.

Something the headmistress said must have irked him, for Rychman glared at her as they turned to go inside. She patted his hand, to which the professor responded by lifting his head high.

“Very well indeed,” Marianna continued, giving Percy a grimace. “By the look of them, they deserve each other.”

Percy found she could not argue. She watched the professor’s great, robed arm open one of the tall doors of Apollo Hall, and he motioned his equally severe companion inside with a familiarity that surely only great intimacy could create. Percy yearned for his intoxicating stare one more time, but she wasn’t so lucky. Indeed, she felt oddly abandoned.

Marianna anticipated her, and gave a gentle inquiry. “Are you all right?”

“Of course I’m all right. Why wouldn’t I be?” Percy retorted.

“Indeed. Come, my dear girl, let us bemoan your fate over tea and cookies,” the German lass offered. She giggled. “Loneliness should never be faced on an empty stomach.”

Percy whimpered. “Marianna, look at me, then remind yourself not to joke in such a manner. A lonely fate is all too probable, thank you very much.”

“Somehow I do not think so. I think fate will provide.”

“I can only hope.” Percy chose to adopt her friend’s optimism. “Come, then, tea and biscuits! Then, on to our mountain of studies.”

Alexi and Rebecca stared at the feather of blue fire floating at the center of the foyer.

“Incredible,” Alexi stated, approaching. “What an omen.”

“Indeed,” Rebecca murmured, following.

“And here we were worried about signs being too subtle to detect.”

Alexi drew close. The transparent feather responded to his proximity, its fire leaping higher. The image danced and shimmered, inviting Alexi to reach out a hand. Rebecca steadied him, cautious, but he shirked her warning and allowed his fingers to tickle the edges, to pass through the phantom image.

Rebecca clamped her hands across her mouth to hold in a cry of surprise. Though she knew her students could not see what she saw, she would not take chances; she had cordoned off the entire floor, claiming repairs. But…Alexi had turned into an angel. Huge, phantom wings burst from his back, made of that same bluish, wispy flame, and he was snapped into place atop the school seal by a force unseen, the feather emblazoning his torso. He stared, wide-eyed, at the gossamer wings and robe whipping about his ankles with great force.

“My God,” he declared. “Perhaps that myth of ours is true after all…”

It was past time for their meeting as they assembled. Five of the six Guard entered the chapel at intervals, filing past the amber stained-glass seraphim in the windows, whispering devotions and phrases in a tongue long unheard and long forgotten. A warm blue glow grew in the air, beginning as tendrils of mist upon the marble floor before lifting like a breeze to the rafters above and hanging there like a cloud.

The five figures soon stood silently at the altar beneath the white bird of peace and closed their eyes in meditation. The stained-glass guardian angels glowed. The blue cloud of power trembled.

The door of the chapel was thrown open, and the formidable Professor Rychman swept in, his black garments accented by a flourish of burgundy at his throat. Six candles upon the altar immediately burst into flame. Alexi’s voice
broke the silence. “Good evening, friends. To our sacred depths,” he commanded, “where I’ll tell you of our omen. And perhaps the goddess will return to tell us more!”

With a slight rending sound, the altar became their large black door, bluish light dancing around it, a corridor and staircase beyond. The Guard filed past and down, into their sacred space. A strange music, a low chant of mysterious vintage, floated up through the air.

Closing, the door once again gave way to a plain altar, and the chapel was left empty.

From the far reaches of the Whisper-world, there came a pounding sound of organic matter against stone. The woman in the silver moonlight winced as the shadows rumbled in anger.

“What to do, then, if she cannot be found?” asked the tolling voice of Darkness.

“Give us time, dear,” the woman answered. “You’ve been without her for many mortal years. You could do with a bit of patience.”

“They. Are. Protecting. Her.”

“I rather think she’s protecting herself,” was the woman’s muttered reply.

“Then we must shake down the city. The world. Until we find her. Undo it. Take down the barrier, rip it open.”

“Really?” The woman brightened, her lips suddenly wet. “Loosening the pins? Why, Master, that’s quite bold of you after all these years.”

“Desperate. Times.”

“So it would seem!” the woman breathed, excited. “I’ll tell the Groundskeeper to attempt the Undoing. Chaos, heed the cries of waking war!”

A doorway surrounded by light. A wispy ring of feathers floating at the center of a portal before shifting into flame. There were glyphs, like those in Egypt…Behind the door, music—

Percy’s mind returned to class.

She had been soaring through all her courses except one. She had endless pages of notes in Mathematical and Alchemical Studies, but nothing to show for them save a loss of breath whenever she beheld her professor. She was certain she was failing the class. Failing and falling…

Her eyes narrowed on Professor Rychman, who had momentarily paused at the chalkboard midscript, an equation in progress. Subtly he cocked his head, as if sensing something or catching a note of faraway music. His lecture began again soon enough.

Percy realized she had no idea where in the lesson she had left off, or where she might pick back up. Looking hopelessly at her lesson book, she wanted to cry. Worse, the vision refused to leave her mind. Seizing a piece of paper and a bit of hardened charcoal that she kept in her pencil box, she began to purge the image by transcribing it onto paper.

She ought to have waited until her drawing class for such a flurry of creation; she knew that. But even then, all she was allowed to do in Professor Bryan’s class was sit with a tedious still life while the woman moved about the room with her thumb in the air measuring perspective. This searing image could not wait.

Class ended and students began to file from the room, but Percy remained oblivious to even her professor’s unmistakable presence.

“Miss Parker?”

That stern, rich voice was so sudden and startling. Percy jumped, staring up in horror. How long had he been watching her scribble? “Oh! Yes, Professor?”

“Meet me in my office at six, Miss Parker. Room sixtyone, upstairs.”

“Y-yes, Professor.”

Professor Rychman stared at her, his noble face expressionless for a moment longer; then he strode out of the room, his robe billowing behind him.

Percy shed a few anxious tears, chided herself and left the classroom. She stepped into the lavatory to adjust her shawl, dry her eyes, apply a bit of rouge and attempt to stop trembling, but it was no use. She went back to her bedroom and paced and shook until it was time.

RYCHMAN
was carved in bold golden script across the large wooden door above the number sixty-one. Percy knocked hesitantly. “Come.” The resonant voice emanating from the other side was impossibly both monotone and melodious. Percy opened the door.

The professor’s office was large, filled with tall bookshelves and decorated with paintings and relics. He sat across the room at a marble-topped desk, a fire blazing behind his throne of a leather chair. Twilight shone through a narrow stained-glass window that stretched nearly floor to ceiling on the left wall, and faint slivers of light fell upon the charcoal-coloured frock coat he’d donned outside of class. Two candelabras bearing flickering ivory tapers sat at either end of the desk. The room was filled with a warm, antique light.

An inscrutable yet pervasive power emanated from Professor Rychman’s person like a scent, something heady and alluring, almost magical. Percy stared at him in wonder for a very long time until at last he looked up.

Her face coloured; Percy could feel the mottling, rosy patches burst forth upon her cheeks in a patchwork blush, and she stared, mortified, at the floor, knowing that her
skin’s deformity was now further evidenced. Out of the corner of her downcast eye she noticed a spirit hovering by the window, staring at nothing in particular, and she wished that she, too, could vanish through the wall.

The professor removed thin wire reading glasses and beckoned Percy sit across from him at the desk. She sat, but did not dare remove her glasses in turn. Instead, she chose to examine the art on the walls. There were angels, figures in robes—some looking heavenly, others dark—and a few ancient religious icons. Percy stared at a stately bird against a bloodred sunset for a long moment, seeming to forget where and who she was. A spirit appeared via one of the professor’s bookcases just as another wafted in, then out through the window, merely passing through. She couldn’t tell if they regarded her with interest or pity, and they didn’t say.

“I see you fancy art, Miss Parker,” Professor Rychman scolded quietly.

Percy fixed her eyes on the patterns in the marble desk before her. “I-I am so terribly sorry for drawing in your class, Professor. It will never happen again.”

There was a long pause. Too timid to glance up past her tinted glasses, she could feel his intense scrutiny. She shrank into her chair and began to count the tiny specks of tea leaves scattered about the desk.

“You fancy art. You do not, it would seem, fancy the sciences?” His tone was snide, and Percy bit her lip. “Please, Miss Parker, do be honest,” he continued. “You won’t be graded—yet.”

“It isn’t that I dislike the sciences, Professor. It is more that I don’t have the mind for them.”

The professor frowned, looking disappointed. “Well, Miss Parker, it is true that you are doing rather poorly in my class. Am I, perhaps, unclear in my lectures…?”

She dared glance up. “Oh, no, Professor, it isn’t you. It most certainly isn’t you!”

“Then what, Miss Parker, happens to be the trouble?”

Her cheeks burned hotter. “Me, sir. I-I cannot make a bit of sense of the subject,” she fumbled, and a tear escaped her cheek to splash on the marble desk. She tried to wipe it away before he noticed, but she was certain nothing escaped him. “I want so badly to learn. I’m just—”

“Preoccupied?”

Percy cleared her throat. “Perhaps. I—”

A flash of pain suddenly worked its way through her. She saw herself in the middle of a stone hallway, immersed in a shaft of bright light. The light transfixed her core, as if she were a butterfly on a pin. She heard anxious voices far away, and something very angry, growling.

“Miss Parker?”

As quickly as it came, the intense vision vanished. Percy’s head snapped back as she focused again on her professor, whose angular features sharpened as he stared at her.

“Oh, goodness—forgive me, Professor!” Percy panicked. “Heaven knows what comes over me, these little flashes. I’m terribly sorry, pay me no mind, please don’t think me rude! It’s never happened when someone is near, speaking to me. I don’t know what’s wrong, but—”

“Slow your tongue, Miss Parker. Flashes, you say?”

“It’s nothing, Professor, please forgive me.”

“Miss Parker, you seemed in pain for a moment. Please explain.”

“I’m…I’m fine, sir. There are moments—tiny dreams, no, I mean to say a splitting headache, and then gone.”

“Visions?” he posed quietly as Percy wrung her hands. “Do you have the gift of visions, Miss Parker?”

She shook her head. “I’m not mad, Professor. I dream. Headmistress Thompson said dreams are not ‘gifts.’ Gifts mean academic excellence or one keen particular talent—”

“I know what gifts are, Miss Parker, for heaven’s sake.”

Percy shrank back in her chair.

The professor drew a measured breath and leveled his tone. “Miss Parker, I’d rather not remove you from my class
for your poor grades. However, I demand that you pay better heed to my words. No drawing! I am, in addition, forced to begin a private tutorial so that I may more directly monitor your progress. If I see no improvement, I will have to remove you from my class and the headmistress must determine what is to be done with you. Such are our rules.”

“Yes, sir.” Percy nodded, commanding her tears to remain at bay.

“Look at me please, Miss Parker.”

Percy looked up, and she was sure her glasses only half hid her fear. Neither the professor’s rigid expression nor his dark eyes—as inscrutable to her as her own dark lenses must be to him—softened.

“A series of tutorials will commence, dependent on your progress. We will begin tomorrow at six in the evening. Do I make myself clear?”

“Yes, Professor.”

“You are dismissed.”

“Yes, Professor. Thank you, sir, for your gracious patience with my inability.”

“Try not to test that patience, Miss Parker, for it does not run in ample supply,” her instructor offered blandly, returning to his paperwork.

Percy rose, attempting to be as unobtrusive on her way toward the door as possible, but Rychman’s voice halted her. “Trying to make yourself invisible is to no avail, Miss Parker, no matter how hard you try,” he declared. She did not turn around, for she was at the exit. But then he added, “You have to know the correct spell.”

Percy raised her eyebrows and spun, expecting to perhaps see that he was joking, which she would have found very odd. But his face was stoic as ever, which was just as disconcerting.

“Also, Miss Parker, it would…seem you have good eyes.” He tilted his head as if to invite a challenge of his assumption. “I merely ask you not practice other visionary work in my class.”

“Th-thank you, Professor. I promise I’ll try, I—”

“Enough. Stop stammering, we both have work to do. Tomorrow at six.”

“Yes, sir!” Percy opened the door to his office and felt a cool draft tickle the hem of her dress.

“Miss Parker,” Professor Rychman called, just before she fled. “Before you go, answer me one more question.” His voice was careful.

“Of course, sir.” Percy turned back into the room, but she kept herself pressed against the exit.

“What was that door you were drawing?”

Percy wrung gloved fingers together. “I do not know, sir. I saw it in a…dream.” There was a long pause. The weight of the professor’s stare was heavy. “If you don’t mind, Professor, why do you ask?”

Rychman leaned back in his chair, tapping his fingers upon his desk. “It reminded me of something.”

Percy smiled timidly. “Well, if you could decipher the meaning, Professor, I’d be much obliged.”

“Indeed.” He held her with his stare a moment longer. Percy hoped she had calmed her blush, but she couldn’t be sure. The professor returned his attention to his paperwork. “Good day, Miss Parker.”

“Good day, sir.” She curtseyed and left the room.

Alexi watched the door close slowly behind his student and listened to her darting footfalls recede. He unlocked a drawer in his desk and pulled out a notebook. As usual, he ignored the spirits wafting in and out of his office, even if they were trying to speak to him in words he was unable to hear. He wished he could hear them for just a moment, enough to determine if they knew about Prophecy or had a message from his long silent goddess. But, to his infinite chagrin, since that first day in the chapel she’d never again been seen. Still…this girl had just drawn a door. That was the sign.

And yet, this wasn’t an actual portal he’d seen or would
see; it was just a picture. He couldn’t base the fate of his world on the sketch of a young woman, however unique. Prophecy decreed the seventh would be his peer.
This
girl was his student not his peer, and there were rules. It was his job to teach here, not to look for his destiny; he had to set aside foolish notions.

Opening the leather-bound volume he’d withdrawn, Alexi hummed a melancholy little tune as he thumbed the pages. Finally arriving at a blank one, he scrawled a few hasty sentences into the book before closing it. He then stared at its cover, black and plain save for a tiny circle of feathers, and demanded his heart slow its uncharacteristically brisk pace.

A man in a dusty coat bent with a hammer and chisel over a particular piece of rock on a distant coast. A remote and once sacred place, it was now unguarded, and the Groundskeeper hummed, brushing stray locks of multicoloured hair from his weather-beaten face that was both old and young. The only unchanging thing about him was his caste; his voice shifted and melded into every servile accent of the ancient and New World, with a few conquered dialects between.

“So much work to do. Loosening the Sepulchral Seals! My sweet, milky white lady…I work for you now that Majesty’s gone! Loosening, loosening, to slit the seal!”

He threw his weight against the stone and it turned like a screw in a piece of wood. A wet exhalation sounded, and vapour lifted from the rock like a puff of tobacco smoke from an ancient pipe. A sound of glee gurgled in the man’s throat. “Only a few more, my dear!”

The Groundskeeper pressed his head to the stone. A sound rattled from behind it. A skeletal finger shot from the crevice, but the Groundskeeper swatted at the protruding digit. “Patience, you’ll have your time! But give me leave. So much work to do for my lady, and so many seals yet to break!”