Conditioning

The Afternoon:

Mina and I were left at the front door of our home. We walked inside together, still without recasting the transformation magic to return to our original forms. Edward jolted awake from his place on the couch. “Ah! Don’t come closer!” He put his hands up carefully.

“It’s us!” Mina yelled, “No need to worry or anything.”

“Where were you? You weren’t home at all last night,” he exhaled slowly.

“Infiltrating the federal government,” I said calmly.

Edward stood still, the words quietly sinking in. He nodded, “Right on.”

“We were personally kicked out by President Dreammaker,” Mina bragged, “and, the person we were there to save was released. Partial success, right?”

“Well, we didn’t get killed or eaten or experimented on,” I said, “I was sure it was all going to be fine”

“She wasn’t sure,” Mina flicked her tail back and forth, “you won’t believe who she allowed to help us.”

Edward sat back down on the couch, his wings spreading out behind him, “Do you guys want to turn back to normal, or am I just going to have mice for sisters, now?”

“We need to go tell Bruno about something before we turn back,” I shook my head, “I don’t think he knows that we already left yet. And, once we turn back, we’ll pass out.”

“Where is he at?” Edward asked, “I’ll go tell him so that you both can get back to normal.” He stopped, “Mina, you were willing to work with him?”

“This might have to do with Mom,” Mina shrugged, “she’d forgive me for accepting his help if it turns out to really matter.”

Edward shook his head, “Who cares what she thinks about him? I’ve met him before, we even went to a movie once. He’s a nice guy.”

“You and Bruno went to a movie?” I asked.

“Poor kid had no friends,” Edward folded his hands behind his head, “I was worried he’d turn out like me someday.”

“I thought you hated him,” I said.

“I thought you did. No that you’d be wrong to, or anything. But I decided it wasn’t any of my business. I decided that it wasn’t wrong for someone in the entire world to be nice to him.”

Mina looked away, “Edward, I… He helped us a lot today.”

Edward grabbed a can of beer. He slowly sipped it, then slammed it down on the little coffee table. “I’ll tell you what. I’ll go find Bruno, and I’ll let him know you guys are back safe. Mina, should I say anything else on your behalf?”

“Tell him I said thanks.”

September 28
First Period:

I flew into class slightly groggy in the morning. Bruno rushed up to my seat, “You did it!” He folded his wings in front of him, then turned to Pippa, “and, and you too! I was so scared, Alice.”

“You were scared?” I lay backward across my desk, “What’s the worst that could have happened?”

“I mean, you guys were really tasty-looking little mice, you know. What if someone had seen you guys, and thought you looked really yummy. And then, what if they…”

My wings twitched behind me, but I forced myself to smile. “What if they ate us?” I asked him teasingly, “I guess that would have been really unpleasant, but what do I know?”

“Alice!” He covered his face with his wings, “I’m being serious, you know.”

“Oh?” Pippa grabbed the fold of his wing, “Were ya worried about her? Lovebird.”

Ms. Snowfox cleared her throat, “My friends in the front. We’ll be starting soon, can you pick this up at lunch? I imagine we should have a discussion about such things in my office anyway.”

“In your office?” I asked out loud.

“Indeed,” she said sharply, “I’d love to know what kind of trouble-making got so out of shape that I had the President visiting me at my home late yesterday evening. She took my dress from me!”

“That’s for the better,” Bruno walked back to his seat.

“It was finally growing on me,” Ms. Snowfox complained, “it was so pink and frilly, I’ve never really tried anything like it.”

“What is she talking about?” One student mumbled.

Pippa turned around, “You had to be at the party. Don’t ask.”

Terrance stood up, “Ms. Snowfox, what was that you said about the president?”

“Oh, President Dreammaker asked me some questions about some students in this class. They did something they really weren’t supposed to do. That’s all,” she grumbled, “for some reason the president hallucinated that I was somehow involved with or otherwise supportive of this plan. She must be a very paranoid woman to imagine such a thing.”

Bruno turned and whispered something to Terrance. Terrance beamed, “Wait, we did it? We did it!”

Second Period:

Mina and I had two whole desks to ourselves. They were made for humans, and we sat on top of them to do our work. There was no point in trying to use the chairs, even for a much taller fairy than ourselves. If she stood on the chair with her three and a half inches, quite tall beside me, she would still be far from seeing over the desk. I nudged her and whispered, “Ms. Snowfox said for us to come to her office during lunch.”

“All good things I hope,” she smiled.

Mr. Archstar tapped his foot against the ground. He wrote the word permanency on the board behind him. “Someone tell me what this means,” he demanded.

I raised my hand. He barely let it get over my head before he leaned over my desk, “Sparrowbane. I see you have wings again.”

“Oh, you heard about that,” I looked down slightly, “I thought it was a wonderful field study in the kinds of ways we could use magic practically. Permanency, in spellcasting, means any spell that lasts forever, or at least until another spell stops it.”

”My father wasn’t quite so amused with your independent research,” Mr. Archstar scratched his claws against my desk, leaving a long tear in the wood just beside where I was sitting. “he thought you never learned your lesson with the Stafford boy.”

Mina ran her fingers along the cracks. She jerked her hand away as a splinter passed under her fingertip, “Mr. Archstar, these are completely different incidents.”

”Hm? Yes, yes they were. Permanency, now resurrection is an example of that. Though it could be the least, truly permanent example if its subject caused too many disturbances. Transformation magic is also permanent, so long as it is cast properly, some kinds of summoning or conjuring.”

I looked away as he kept droning on, “Now, one of you two, tell me about the exertion of a permanent spell. Does it feel the same? Different?”

”It’s much more severe,” Mina answered, “when I tried casting one, and when I undid it later, I almost immediately fell asleep for the full night. I was worried both times.”

”That’s because any spell that creates Dames temporarily, for a fraction of a second at time, causes much less exertion than one that intends for those Dame to remain in place. Alice, write something on this page. Just anything.”

I used my writing spell, and wrote my name onto the paper. Mr. Archstar smiled at it, “Now, mechanically, this appears to be a permanent spell. So, somebody tell me why she’s still awake.” Nothing. He shook his head, and went on, hissing as he talked, “Because ink is unfathomably thin. A hundred pages of ink is nowhere near the volume of something that would require a noticeable amount of Dames. And, it is permanent. Permanent doesn’t mean special. It just means it won’t disappear as soon as it’s cast.”

“Anyway,” Mr. Archstar’s silver tail scratched against the ground below him. He turned around to the whiteboard, “we should focus on transformations, and on restoration today. Restoration is healing of any kind, though you’ll hear about resurrection most often. Some of you may still remember the basic healing magic they introduced in grade school, cuts, bruises, skinned knees. Even that is enough to be exhausting for one of you.”

He paused, looking around the room. “Thunderboy!” He looked across the room at Terrance, “The Chosen One,” he said sweetly, “if you must be having a discussion, surely this kind of magic is much, much too easy for you.”

Terrance stood up, “O-of course!” He beamed. He didn’t have a clue what Mr. Archstar had been talking about. The teacher strolled across the room and stopped beside Terrance.”

“The spell I am about to cast is one you won’t learn, hopefully, until high school. It is the inversion of a healing spell. While a spark or a flame would be a temporary spell, this is a permanent spell, and it is much more dangerous.” Mr Archstar winced as he softly ran his claw against his own palm. A hissing, open wound bubbled open between his scales. Blood ran down his fingertips, and the skin turned black and rotten.

Some students winced and screamed. Others covered their eyes. Terrance gulped, “Mr. Archstar! Are you okay?”

“Of course!” Mr. Archstar held his own wrist down against Terrance’s desk. “Now, this healing spell that is much, much too easy for you. Let’s see it.”

Terrance’s hand shook in front of him as he held them out over Mr. Archstar’s wound. Even if he could cast a healing spell, I didn’t know if he had the tolerance to stay awake after. His fingers twitched. He muttered to himself. Mr. Archstar cleared his throat, “Do you see that black in there, under all the blood? That’s necrosis. I’m going to die, Thunder.”

“I’m trying- I’m trying,” Terrance’s eyes narrowed on the wound. His fingers closed into two balled fists, and he winced. He leaned forward suddenly, slumping down. And, the blood between Mr. Archstar’s scales dried up.

Mr. Archstar clapped rather loudly, and he looked down over Terrance, “Very, very good. Now, somebody, accompany him to Nurse Var to make sure he isn’t too overexerted.” He looked over the scales on his hand more carefully, “Just like new. I like being surprised.”

“Now, something other than a C- for The Chosen One,” he walked back to the front, pushing back against his fingers until his wrist popped, “note the tax of exertion in the pull of a spell that physically changes the body of a creature somehow. Mine should have been just as exerting as his, we both created equal opposite changes to the same cells. Why is he being taken to the nurse while I’m hardly bothered?”

“Tolerance,” Mina called out, “he has much less tolerance than you.”

Mr. Archstar nodded, “No. That had some effect, I’m sure, but a small one. I changed my own flesh, while his spell was targeted against somebody other than himself. The body naturally resists a direct permanent spell, like that, cast against itself. It takes more energy for him to cast against me, than for me to, even though my spell is harmful and his is nominally helpful.”

He tapped his claw against my desk where he’d raked it before, “Principal Gray will not allow us to exterminate any participant, no matter how willing, as to experiment with the effects of a resurrection spell. Just think of it this way, resurrection exerts both the person casting the spell, and the person receiving it. The more of the body that needs to be rebuilt, the more dangerous the process is. In case studies where the entire body was irretrievable… for whatever reason… it took multiple attempts to bring breath back into the subject’s lungs.”

I slowly raised my hand and waited to be called on, “Mr. Archstar, if someone died in a transformation, take Ms. Snowfox’s for example, what would happen?”

He flashed his teeth, “I thought you’d ask, comment, who cares about something else. I suppose you get it already. For animals, they could be resurrected in the body they died in, but then getting their old body back becomes a pain somehow. It takes far more Dames than turning back normally would, far beyond any of your capability. Or else, I believe Nurse Var has had to try this before, they could also be given a whole new body as if the first was reduced to nothing.” He folded his hands behind his head, his claws poking out past his ears, “I haven’t experienced this kind of exertion before. I’d love to hear somebody’s account of it, if anyone here knew such things.”

Mr. Archstar waited for a moment. He sighed, “Unfortunate. No storytime today. I’ll tell you how awful that kind of exertion is. Nurse Var has better tolerance than even Principal Gray. People who have been through it often have the tolerance of kids several years older than themselves.”

Lunch:

Mina arrived slightly before I did. When I came in, she was still getting comfortable sitting on the edge of Ms. Snowfox’s desk. Our teacher was curled up in a fluffy white ball beside her. Ms. Snowfox noticed me as I came in, “How come people who can fly are so much more punctual than everyone else?”

“Because we can fly, Bianca,” Mina yawned.

“What was it like to not fly, just for a day?”
“It felt weird,” I said, “when I changed, I still felt my wings on my back for a moment, even though they weren’t there.”

“I still feel them sometimes to this day,” Ms. Snowfox admitted, “people who have an arm cut off keep feeling it for their whole life. The phantom limb. Mina, did you experience this?”

Mina shook her head, “If I did, it was only for a moment. I was trying hard to not pass out.”

Ms. Snowfox stretched her paws out slightly, her eyes pressing shut as her little arms twitched, “I’m going to wait for everyone to arrive before I get into the meat and potatoes. I have some mixed emotions.”

It wasn’t five minutes before Pippa came in. She gasped that Bruno and Terrance weren’t here yet, wildly laughing about herself being early while they were late. She wasn’t half done when Bruno came through the door. He had his wing under Terrance’s arm, and was helping him to walk. Terrance’s eyes were hardly open, his legs shaking under him. “I had to get him from the nurse,” Bruno said.

“Goodness!” Ms. Snowfox picked herself up quickly. She ran across the room and used her snout to nudge Terrance forward slightly, pressing her head against the backs of his calves, “Come in! Come in! Please, take a seat, don’t rush.”

Mina winced, “Mr. Archstar made him overexert himself.”

“Oh, Salix…” Ms. Snowfox hissed, “Terrance, are you feeling okay?”

“Y-yeah,” he slumped over as soon as he sat down, the words barely escaping his lips. “I’m f-fine,” he shivered.

“Alice, I’m going to turn the heater on high,” Ms. Snowfox said calmly, “do you want to step outside?”

I shook my head, “I think I’ll be fine.”
“Really?” Mina put her hand on my shoulder. She whispered, “You hate the heat.”

“I’ll be fine.” I demanded. I was only going to be here for a few minutes anyway, and if there was something important, I needed to know it.

“I didn’t know the heat bothers you,” Bruno muttered. And most of all, I didn’t want to run away from a simple heater. Not right in front of him.

“It always has,” I spoke quickly, the words almost coming out on top of each other. I looked away, “I thought I told you that when we were little.” I pinched my cheek, tugging at it until it hurt.

“Alice!” Mina stared directly into my eyes. She held her breath for a moment, not breaking eye contact, “At least, don’t lie.”

Bruno held his wing out to her, “Mina, I know. I already know.”

“Okay, good afternoon, everyone,” Ms. Snowfox cleared her throat. She waited for us to stop talking, “Let’s be extremely clear, now. What you did yesterday was reckless and stupid. It’s the exact plan I would have come up with.”

Pippa beamed, “We met the president, Ms. Snowfox!” She sat down next to Terrance, wrapping her tail around his leg.

“Oh, I’m sure she was beyond cheery that you all broke into a secure facility.”

“She praised us, Bianca,” Mina said softly.

Ms. Snowfox blinked, “Let me be awfully clear with you. President Dreammaker will sound all kinds of pleasant and helpful. Now, as a teacher it isn’t my professional responsibility to tell you what to think about politics,” she took a deep breath, “if anybody was opposed to Representative Sparrowbane’s project, dangerously opposed, that would be President Dreammaker.”

Mina took a deep breath, “Bianca, then… What was she…”

“You admitted to who you were, right?” Ms. Snowfox walked across the desk, “I doubt you had a choice. I owe you a piece of advice. Forget I ever told you about your mother’s project. Never pursue it again.”

“What?” I asked. I felt a bead of sticky sweat drip down my cheek as the heat increased. I shook as it tingled against my chin. My forehead was covered in it already. My breath was crooked and shaky, “Ms. Snowfox, what if this is important to saving her?”

Bruno flinched, “Alice,” he used one of his feathers to wipe the sweat from my brow. My shoulders pinched backward, my wings widening behind me. “be realistic.”

“What do you mean by that?” Mina stepped toward him.

“Don’t you two get it by now?” He bent forward, resting his chin against the desk. His shoulders sunk, “She’s dead. Even if you found her…”

“No,” I wheezed, “no, Bruno, no.” My hands were clammy. I felt like the sweat, glue against the folds of my clammy skin, was starting to burn me. I knew it wasn’t really hissing, stinging like it was. She wasn’t dead. If she was, did she die like this? That was impossible. It was wrong.

Ms. Snowfox walked over to me, “Find her, anyway. She had a a drug that can give people magic. If you find her, if she used it, she still can be brought back.” She stretched out, her back arching like a cat’s behind her, “The longer you wait, the harder it will be. If you don’t think you can pull it off, give up now.”

“You know we’ll do it,” Mina nodded.

“One more thing,” Ms. Snowfox said coldly, “if she’s really involved, Dreammaker knows what you’re looking for now. She wouldn’t be tricked that you were just looking for some high school student.”

“We were just looking for him though!” Pippa exclaimed.

“Please,” Ms. Snowfox laughed, “he was an ends to a means, even for your friends, Pippa.”

Terrance mumbled, “It was really to save him. Kill two birds with one stone, right?”

Bruno knelt to Mina like a knight, “I know you will try to stop me. I owe it to you both. I will help you find your mother.”

“Bruno,” Mina blinked, “Bruno, this won’t change anything.”

“I don’t care,” he said, “it’ll make at least one thing better.”

Pippa ran toward him, “Th-then I’m going, too! I’m not letting him be with you guys without me there!”

“Uh-huh,” Terrance jolted backward, barely keeping himself from nodding off, “I wanna go too.”

I turned around, facing the whole room. I forced myself to my feet, weighed down by the weight of my sweat. I coughed, “We’ll get it right this time.”

Ms. Snowfox lay back down, curling around her paws, “Oh goodness, and I was trying to talk you all down. What kind of a teacher am I?” She laughed.

“Come on, Bianca,” Mina buried her head in Ms. Snowfox’s fur, “You wanted us to do this, right?”

“I’m gonna hate myself if you all get in real trouble,” she looked between Bruno and me, “I trust you guys too much.”

I inhaled, the heat still pressing against me. I winced, but I lifted my hand up to my head. I wiped my hand across my forehead, casting the sweat away where it splashed aimlessly against the table. There wasn’t even that much of it. “We still don’t know what to do yet. Ms. Snowfox, is there anything you can help us with?”

Her eyes widened, “I want to see you all try to transform again. The heat will raise your blood pressure just a little, so it will be good for a little conditioning.”

“Ya thought that far ahead?” Pippa asked.

“No, I just turned the heat up to help Terrance, even just a little.”

Mina sat down, “I have a unit test in fourth period. I don’t think I can exert myself too much.”

“There’s like two hours of lunch left,” I said, “if we turn into something now, we still can sleep for a bit.”

“Alice…” She made a face, “fine.”

“I’ve only done slight transformations before,” Bruno chirped. He turned to the rest of us, “it should be you three, I mean… I couldn’t.”

Ms. Snowfox glanced at him, “Don’t you know about transformations more than anyone? A certain kind, that is.”

“M-Ms. Snowfox!” He yelped, “Ms. Snowfox, I would never turn into that, not again.”

“You will,” she said sharply, “there are magic users who could force you to. I think everyone will be more comfortable if you learn to control it rather than… this.”

Mina threw her arms up, “No, Ms. Snowfox! He can’t.”

“I’m speaking to Bruno now, Mina,” she said coldly, “in control, that form could be an extremely useful thing.”

I shook my head, “I’ve read about lycanthropes endlessly. One has never been in complete control before.”

“Then, there’s a way you could regain the element of surprise.”

Bruno shook his head, “No. No, she’s right. I couldn’t. If anyone can, it’s not me. Ms. Snowfox, I’ve lost control before.”

Ms. Snowfox’s tail flicked back and forth, “If anyone can, it is you. You know why you can’t lose control. And, if you can’t manage that kind of discipline, maybe you shouldn’t go.”

“I have to practice it alone, then,” he looked away from me, “somewhere I can’t get it wrong.”

“Meet me after class, then,” Ms. Snowfox challenged him, “we’ll go deep in the Maple Forest. If you go nuts, it’s me you’ll be up against. I’ve dealt with far, far scarier things without a scratch.”

“What if it doesn’t work?” He whispered, “What if you do get hurt?”

“Then I die,” she laughed to herself, “and the DOO signs a paper to get me revived. So what, right? When someone dies doing something painfully stupid, it’s not a tragedy. It’s a comedy.”

Pippa ran toward Ms. Snowfox, “Don’t die. Please.”

“I will someday,” she shook her head, “for a fairy, I’m lucky to have gotten this far. There will be a day when I’m too old to be revived, too. But, until I really gone, Pippa, it’ll be a long time.”

I looked up at Bruno, “Getting it right is for the best.”

“I thought…” he spun around to face me, “Alice, I’ll do it.”

“You wanted to stop taking the silver pills anyway, right?” I asked him. He nodded. I squeezed the side of my opposite hand. I didn’t believe a stupid word I was saying.

Mina, Pippa, and I practiced the same spell as before. This time, turning into a mouse didn’t cause such immediate exhaustion. The first time casting any spell was always the hardest. Still, we were far too sluggish to cast anymore spells, and we would be finishing the rest of the school day like this. Ms. Snowfox taught us a modified version of the writing spell she’d created. This one worked while in an animal form. Even if we spent our whole lives transformed, it’s not a kind of spell that would ever become easier, but Ms. Snowfox taught us some of her techniques for handling the strain of such spells.

Bruno left, leaving us and Terrance in the room. He returned with bits of food for each of us, “I know you guys didn’t get lunch,” he said quietly.

Fifth Period:

Bruno had to lift Pippa and I up to put us up on top of our desk in Ms. Verdant’s class. Even after sleeping for must of lunch, my head felt heavy, the world dragged itself alongside me a little too slowly, my eyes blurring. Ms. Verdant scratched her head, “Bruno, I know birdfolk have certain differences, but not in my classroom, please.”

He snapped his beak shut. “Uhh… Ms. Verdant, these are Alice and Pippa! They were practicing transformation spells!”

She snorted, “My mistake! Alice, I am so, so sorry. I didn’t mean to insinuate anything.”

I yawned, “It-it’s alright,” my voice trialed off.

She ran her fingers against the fur on my back, “Aww, you remind me of Bianca when she was younger. She was always sick from exertion, but she really did become a master of transformation magic. She’s greater, now, than even Fane was when he wrote his books back in the fifties.”

“Fane’s Transmogrifications?” I asked. It was the same book Ms. Snowfox had told us out a couple nights before.

“I helped Fane edit it! I was his research assistant.” Ms. Verdant laughed to herself, “I wasn’t even twenty then. I remember when Bianca came to me, and asked me why transformation magic wasn’t working well for her. I told her to just do it over and over again.”

Pippa flopped on her belly, lying flat across the desk, “I don’t get why she hadta make us be mice again.”

Ms. Verdant scratched her chin, “Each transformation is a unique spell. You said again, so you’ve done this one before. Anything else would have exerted you much, much more. But, that’s probably not the real reason.”

“The real reason?” I mumbled.

Ms. Verdant gently pet me under my round ears, “Because it’s adorable.”