Chapter 4

Using the calling card, Selene was back at the park wondering how things could change in moments as she dusted herself off. Stars above, I met the President in a threadbare T-shirt and ragged old pants, Selene thought. If it weren’t for the innocuous looking calling card, she would have taken the whole thing for a dream. She walked back to the apartment feeling hopeful. As she unlocked the door, she heard the loud clapping of slippers and inwardly groaned.

“Awfully later are we, dear?” the plump woman said in a nasal tone.

“I’m afraid so, Mrs. Marsh.” Selene replied.

Ruth Marsh was a beauty queen in her former years and went on to become a household name with a kitchen commercial that would be the high point of her career. She settled down later with a real estate agent, domesticity turning her once voluptuous body to rolls of fat. Overuse of cosmetics had turned her supple brown skin into a powdered, wrinkled and lifeless version of her youth. She wore a pink nightie that was two sizes too small for her. She had come over the first day with her daughter Mabel in the guise of welcome to establish her dominance as the wife of the landlord over the family that had moved in from the Empire. Mabel extended a saccharine invitation of friendship which disappeared at school due to the influence of Julie Myers. Mabel continued to spew vitriol with her against Selene. Ever since then, she had made it h habit to stay away from mother and daughter, leaving the small talk to her mother.

While she locked the door as she escaped nosy Maurice’s attention, she sighed at the mental picture of her evilly grinning at the juicy gossip she would spread about the girl from the Empire. She decided to go back to bed since she would have to meet Alpha at midnight the next day for a ‘refresher course in basic attack and defense’.

***

Selene took a swig of water from the canteen, taking a break from poring over the books Wheeler had managed to sneak in from the Imperial Army’s course study. She was vaguely familiar of the titles, having seen them in her father’s chest of books. Her father’s batch was the last one to be posted to Bantam from the Empire as part of the mutual treaty to protect the Alchemists after District Karta exit the Empire to form the Republic of Bantam. The government was stubbornly reluctant to allow the army to go back to the Empire even after the sixty years, citing one insipid reason after the other to hold on to the Empire’s Army funding. With President Saini at the top, the hopes of the small community to go back home had risen. With the practice of Alchemy all but prohibited over the years, the unit was now downgraded to manage heaps of endless paperwork and false alarms by paranoid residents.

There was some part of it she knew from memory �" putting up a shield, transfiguration to simple objects and apparation. There was a lot she learned through rigorous study and practical application with Alpha �" battle improvisation, endurance, integrating fire and electricity with weapons and shields in fights and so on. Alpha proved to be an unforgiving taskmaster, pushing her to the limits all night and stopping just before sunrise. Her mother was busy taking care of Michael to notice her. Selene had taken to wearing long sleeved school shirts and black stockings to hide her bruises from practice and was thankful for her exclusion from noisy cliques since it gave her time to read up on whatever Alpha assigned her, committing battle formations and strategies to memory as she raced through the texts. When she once questioned Alpha on the possible use of learning it all in Bantam which prohibited Alchemy, he simply smiled and said “Didn’t your father once say that knowledge is power?” and proceeded to launch an attack on her. Over the past two months. She had become adept at defending herself from surprise attacks and was able to launch some of her own, although the success rate against Alpha remained deplorably low.

She closed yet another tome with a satisfying thud. From what she had mapped out against her father’s course guide, she had unofficially completed three years of the five year Imperial training program. Sleep deprivation notwithstanding, training had given her an outlet to channel her frustrations leaving her too busy and tired to think about Julie Myers, Jaken Honda her brother’s illness or even her mother. School had also given her an opportunity to work on her evasion and defense techniques, drawing sun signs and star signs below her chair and table and channeling intent in them so that anyone who wanted to something particularly nasty like messing with her bag or trashing her place would feel a sudden urge to use the bathroom and forget the need to go to her desk after relieving themselves. She had transfigured the books Alpha had given her to look like plain notebooks which would reveal their content on her command and learnt to make disguised calling cards.

She smiled at her calling card �" a tiny sparrow that had hopped onto a book next to her. Designing calling cards to deliver information had been fun. It was a rarely used technique she had fallen in love with when she saw the little thing come to life. To any outsider it would look like a normal sparrow but to those who knew what to look for, the inconspicuously heterochromatic eyes would give it away. When the bird perched on her finger, Alpha’s face and voice sprang in her mind as he relayed the message “Ten o’clock, tonight.” The bird vanished in the air as it took off in the blink of an eye, its job done.

Her heart skipped a beat. The time to start repaying her debts was here.

True to his word, Alpha had Wheeler arrange the donor at a super-specialty hospital. As he had predicted, her father’s colleague ‘happened to know a doctor’ who then ‘found the perfect donor’ in Navin Sahai.

Navin Sahai was a businessman whose grandfather had moved his family moved from the Traders’ District of the Empire along the Eastern coastline to Bantam in light of the business opportunities in the new country and opened up a general store to fulfill the basic demands of the citizens. Sahai’s was now the largest conglomerate in Bantam with its presence ranging from retail to infrastructure. The family of Alchemists remained media-shy despite the wealth and power they had gained over the years. Navin’s son Jay had also been approached by Wheeler to join their crew and was instrumental in arranging the whole thing.

Michael’s treatment had visible effects. The transfer of energy continued to strengthen his Glyph and with the prescribed diet and medicines, he was soon able to go to school for more than a week at a time. As Selene went to the hospital to deliver a bag of essentials and bring back the laundry, she checked on Michael. With the light in his cerulean blue eyes and a color in his soft cheeks, the little boy looked almost normal and healthy. The Rathbone star sign was faintly visible on the back of his hand which was pale white having barely seen any sun.

“Look, Sis!” he cried happily and cupped his palms and concentrated hard. A couple of sparks burst in his palms. “Doctor says I’m getting well soon and then I can do magic just like you!”

She wiped the sweat off his forehead and fussed at the brown ringlets, commenting about a haircut. “I know! That was really great, but you have to rest like the doctor said. No more of that till he says so.”

He pouted as little kids were wont to do, but cheered up on seeing his favorite toys and comic books. After the spoils were thoroughly appreciated, he asked her with all the seriousness that only a kid could manage.

“Is that bully still being mean to you?”

She had to stop herself from bursting out laughing.

“He’s not being mean to you, is he? I’m getting better now, and when I get out, I’m going to kick his stinky butt!” he continued, waving a tiny fist.

She gave him a fierce hug and conspiratorially said, “You know, I think he found out you’re getting better, because he’s too scared to even look at me anymore. I think he’s scared that you’ll kick his stinky butt!”

They giggled as the nurse walked in with their mother right behind her.

“Bye, baby boy.” Selene said.

“Bye, Sis.” He blushed. She realized he would pretty soon grow up and she wouldn’t get to call him that.

She exchanged a glance with her mother as she picked up the laundry. Her mother looked like she wanted to say something but then abruptly turned to Michael.

All in all, Selene counted it as a good day.