SL Huang - Up and Coming - Stories by the 2016 Campbell-Eligible Authors

Ramona pinched her lips together. “I have no way of knowing…she goes everywhere.”

A small smile hovered on Dean Sophie’s mouth. “Yes. We’re all aware of her little adventures in the underworld. We’ll discuss those in a moment.”

So there was to be a discussion , then. Ramona shifted in her seat. “I can’t really tell you what she does down there. I don’t know anything about it.”

“No. I don’t expect you would,” said the Dean, dismissively, “we’re not even entirely sure which entry-point she’s using.” The girl spun on, showing no signs she knew her secret was being talked about. At least, Ramona thought, with a look over at the poor seal-boy squirting juice down his front, Kora hadn’t dragged this one down into the steam-tunnels.

Dean Sophie continued, eyebrows high. “What I’m asking is, how long were they at the window? How much time had elapsed before you…‘noticed’ Miss Gillespie outside your classroom, unsupervised, with a very young child?”

Unsupervised! Of course Kora had been unsupervised! She was a campus rat, a hurricane. When was she ever anything but unsupervised! As to the young child, well…she always seemed to find one to follow her into chaos when she wanted one.

Ramona searched to find a tone of voice that was adult and undefensive. “I was lecturing. I was in the middle of a lab.”

“Well, of course. But…you didn’t hear the pounding? People in surrounding classrooms seem to think it was going on for some time.”

“I had no reason to think they were capable of breaking the window.”

“Yes, so you’ve said. You didn’t feel it necessary to go out and see to them at all?”

Bernadette lifted patient eyebrows. Dean Sophie leaned over her desk expectantly. Did Ramona really need to explain? Did she really have to tell them that this was exactly the sort of thing the Cambion girl lived for, to create enough of a disturbance that someone somewhere would fly into an entertaining rage and drag her back to her schoolbooks?

“My students are behind on the selkie birthing material. We’ve only just started the MacRitchie treatise on preparing natal salt-baths…”

(At this, Kora whispered something in the seal-boy’s ear, and began to spin her chair so flamboyantly that its pivot screamed, until Bernadette clamped a firm hand on the back of it.)

“I am aware that you have obligations, Ramona. I’m not asking you to neglect them,” said the Dean, “but this is not the first class of yours our Miss Gillespie has disturbed, is it?”

“It certainly is not,” said Bernadette, before Ramona could answer. “The Seminary finds her lurking at least once a day.”

Ramona gave an unsurprised snort. The Union Theological Seminary next door took in as many of the ancient College’s orphans as it could. The place was full up with halflings, sweet little half-selkies, and half-fauns, and half-swan maidens, but it was just too idealistically Christian an institution to effectively keep anything that didn’t really want to be kept.

The Dean ignored the snort. “It would seem she seeks out your classes with a certain amount of regularity. Any idea why that might be?”

“I don’t know!” Ramona threw up her hands before she could catch herself. “Who knows why she does anything she does, or breaks anything she breaks? She’s bored, and malicious, and nobody tells her not to.”

“‘ Salus pro totus creatura prognatus ,’” Dean Sophie apparently felt the need to remind her. “I think you understand, and I hope you’ll remember, that at Theogony we are not interested only in the welfare of those Superum children presently being born, or the human mothers presently giving birth to them.” She turned to Kora. “There’s a reason for every behavior. Isn’t there, Miss Gillespie? Miss Gillespie?”

Kora, who had been trying enthusiastically to tilt her chair now that she found it unspin-able, went suddenly still when the Dean addressed her.

Kora Gillespie’s face was exactly a seven-year-old girl’s face, and not a striking one; there were no horns pushing up through the pale hair. The pupils of the pale, browless, puddle-gray eyes were almost disappointingly round and human.

But it was always unsettling to Ramona how quickly Kora could pull back from manic bursts of fiercely determined activity, to sit in almost unblinking silence.

And then there was a kind of fluttering smirk that never really left her mouth when she was silent, that made her face look not much like a seven-year-old’s at all.

“Can you tell me the reason you told Davie to bang on Ms. Ramona’s window?” the Dean asked.

“I don’t know.”

“I don’t think you meant for him to break it, did you?”

“No…I don’t know.”

These were the same answers she’d given Ramona half an hour earlier, the smirk fluttering even as she stared sullenly at the floor. What more was the Dean hoping to get out of her?

“I think you do know a little bit. He wouldn’t have done it if you didn’t tell him to. What were you trying to do?”

Davie began to weep again, and was removed to the hall.

Kora’s gaze shifted around the room for a long moment, and then she suddenly decided to answer. “I wanted Ramona to show him how he was born,” she said.

Dean Sophie looked sideways at Ramona. “Is that all?”

“He’s too stupid to listen when I read it to him out of the book.”

Ramona blinked. So Kora had been pawing through textbooks already. Whose, Ramona wondered? “But Kora, you know I don’t birth babies in the classroom,” she said, “I’ve discussed that with you before. We allow women to give birth to babies in their houses.”

Kora went silent again.

“I think, Ramona,” said Dean Sophie, “that you were correct in your assessment that Miss Gillespie requires more stimulation than she has at present.”

Ramona tried to remember when she had made such an assessment. Some terrible punishment for the broken window was forthcoming.

The Dean came out from behind her desk to swing the axe. “How would it be, I wonder, if she were to sit in on some of your classes?”

Ramona’s mouth fell open.

“It would be the natural place for her. We’ve known for years that she would most likely enroll in the College when she grew older.”

“When she’s older ,” said Ramona hoarsely. “I can’t imagine that she’d be anything but a distraction at this…age. I don’t think it would be fair to the students.”

“The students will need to experience what it’s like to be in close contact with Superum children someday . They can’t go into birthing a demi-god completely blind.”

“Kora Gillespie is not a demi-god.”

The Dean nodded, though not relentingly. “I know she’s a challenging presence, Ramona. I wouldn’t ask you to do this if I didn’t think it would be beneficial to all concerned. Do you know how valuable a little time spent with you would be to her? You could completely re-direct her energies. You’ve been with us longer than any other student, Ramona. Is it any wonder she wants to learn from you?”

Now Ramona understood. As the resident hanger-on, she was to keep the Cambion out of the bowels of the campus, and out of the way of anyone who actually meant to do anything useful.

“What about my dissertation, my program design? How am I going to get my fieldwork done?” She looked at Bernadette. Surely her own advisor would remember that she was a grad student.

“Well, as to fieldwork,” said Dean Sophie, also directing herself to Bernadette, “I wouldn’t be surprised if this experience proved immensely valuable wherever you chose to set up your practice.”