Anne Ursu: The Shadow Thieves

Charlotte found it all extremely annoying. She had been able to get through her school years without attracting attention either way thus far. She, as a practice, raised her hand in class once a week- enough so the teachers didn't get suspicious that she wasn't doing the work, but not so much that they might actually expect anything of her. It was a delicate balance.

Charlotte did a good portion of her schoolwork usually, whatever was required to keep her out of trouble, which was all she really cared about. Last night, of course, Charlotte hadn't done a lick of work because of all the kitten-related excitement. There'd been so much to do! She'd had to call her friend Maddy and take pictures to send to Caitlin (which would probably arrive next summer), and then she'd had to watch the kitten as she played with some invisible something that went darting all around the living room, and then she'd had to provide a lap for Mew to snooze on once all that darting around was done. It was a lot of responsibility and did not leave time for doing algebra equations or reading about the causes of World War I. So Charlotte simply approached her teachers and told them the truth.

"Mr. Crapf," she told her math teacher, "I didn't do the homework last night. My mom sprained her ankle and we took her to the emergency room and it took forever, and by the time we got home, it was really late and I had to help Mom."

"Your poor mother!" said Mr. Crapf. "Is she all right?"

"Yeah. She's elevating it. It should be much better in a few days."

"Well, tell her to feel better. You can make up the assignment when you have time."

"Oh, of course! Thanks a lot!"

As for history, Ms. Bristol-Lee had taken to giving them pop quizzes, which seemed awfully un-American to Charlotte. So Charlotte turned the quiz over and wrote a long letter to Ms. Bristol-Lee about how her parents were fighting and it was a really hard time for her right now and she just wasn't able to focus on her reading, but she was trying, she was trying really hard, and she was seeing a counselor to help her through this difficult time, but reading about world war was more than she could take right now

Okay, so not the truth, exactly. To Charlotte, truth was a flexible instrument, one that could readily be shaped to fit her needs. Charlotte may not have been, in her own estimation, good for much else, but she could talk her way out of any situation. It was a useful skill in a world that was constantly expecting more out of you than you wanted to give. And usually a good story was so much more interesting than the truth.

As for her classmates, Charlotte had been cutting an even wider swath around them than usual this year. Charlotte did not think much of existential angst or artificial hair color. She would certainly never alter her own hair; Charlotte was not one of those redheaded heroines who bemoaned her fiery locks. She had no desire to fake blond highlights or, as her mother's stylist had suggested, tone down her color with some nutmeg shades. If you were to ask Charlotte for one adjective with which to describe herself, she would say, "Redhead." And that was that.

She was a redhead, and she did not truck with teasing boys or tinting girls. She and her friends could not be bothered with social structure; they had their own pursuits – Caitlin (when she was still there) had her music, Maddy had her straight A's, and Charlotte had her hair.

In a week Charlotte would also have a cousin from England, which would be interesting. Zachary was black, too, and that would confuse everyone for a while, as Charlotte was not. ("Is he adopted?" people would always ask when they saw pictures. No, silly. Her uncle had married a black woman, see?) And perhaps a new arrival with a British accent would give the blond girls something to focus their attention on, and maybe then their molecules would inch back together and they might be slightly less boring.

Or so Charlotte was thinking while sitting through English class at the end of the school day. English had once been Charlotte's favorite subject (back when she had such a thing); she read quickly, actually liked learning vocabulary words, and had a peculiar fondness for rules of grammar and usage. It made a good defense against teasing-when Chris Shapiro would tell her that when you had red hair, it meant you were part mutant, she would simply tell him his modifier was dangling and would stalk away, leaving him looking quite bewildered. Plus she just loved stories. They were always full of strange and interesting worlds, so far away from the one she lived in. Charlotte could not help but feel that the great tragedy of her life was that it would make an absolutely terrible story. What, then, was the point? Once upon a time there was a girl named Charlotte. The end. She had to make the rest of the stuff up to make the story any good.

Anyway, her English teacher, Mrs. Dinglish, had retired. Charlotte had raised her hand many times a week for Mrs. Dinglish. Her replacement was Mr. Metos, and Charlotte couldn't help but think there was something funny about him. He was the tallest man she'd ever seen; she came up to about his belly button (not that that said much- Charlotte was still waiting for her growth spurt, and she was beginning to think it would never come). And he was really pale and thin, paler than Charlotte even, with hair so black it was blue. He always had the shades drawn in class, and she never saw him eat anything in the cafeteria. Charlotte thought he was probably a vampire-while she'd never actually seen anyone who drank blood, she was sure if she had, that person would certainly have looked like Mr. Metos. Charlotte took to covering her neck with her hands so he wouldn't get any ideas.

Mr. Metos certainly took to the new teaching style with the glee of an unabashed bloodsucker, and most of the students found that during his classes their general torpor was mixed with an overriding feeling of terror.

But, for the time being, Charlotte could relax a little bit; they were doing a unit on Greek myths, and Charlotte was rather knowledgeable about that subject. She hadn't had to do the readings all week. She loved Greek myths; they were all such good stories. When she was young, she had had a big atlas-size book of them that she read again and again. She would lay the book flat on the ground and trace over the illustrations with her fingers. She could still see the pictures when she closed her eyes-of poor vain Arachne, who was turned into a spider by Athena, crawling across the tapestry that had offended the goddess; of foolish Pandora, who opened the box that let all the world's evils out; of Perseus flying away triumphantly with the Gorgon's head. The only ones she hadn't liked were the pictures from the stories about the underworld-grim Hades opening up the earth and dragging beautiful Persephone down to the shadows; the endless, dark landscape of the underworld, dotted with drooping trees; the dour king and reluctant queen standing like grieving stone in the cold, colorless cave of a lair, with their three-headed dog, Cerberus, grimacing awfully (with one of his heads, anyway).

The underworld, appropriately enough, was the topic of the day's class. Charlotte thought Mr. Metos looked like he would know a lot about it. Too bad there were no vampires in Greek mythology, at least as far as she knew.

"The underworld," he said, "is ruled by Zeus's brother Hades. When the Olympians began to reign, Zeus, Hades, and Poseidon divided up the world. Zeus became the lord of the sky; Poseidon, the water; and Hades got the realm of the dead, which is sometimes called Hades as well. No one knows where the underworld is-some say it's over the edge of the world, others say it lies just beneath us and there are secret entrances everywhere.

Now, what do we know about the underworld?" Mr. Metos' eyes soared about the room for a moment, then quickly alighted on prey-in this case, the unfortunate Brad. Mr. Metos stared at him, waiting.