Hurricane #34: The Choice (Patreon)

The doctor leaned over Sarah, examining her, then checked the monitor by the wolf’s beside.

At least, Serrano presumed it was a monitor. It looked more like a magic mirror from a fairy tale—weirdly appropriate, perhaps—and its display frequently shifted from very medical-looking charts and text to glowing runic shapes and geometric figures. The campus clinic looked more like a traditional hospital, until you looked up, and realized the floor for the “little” facility was on a countertop at a similarly furnished giant-sized one. Serrano, the doctor, and Irsaw stood around Sarah’s bed; Mrs. Webb and Professor Snep did, too, but stood looming over the clinic floor.

“I don’t know what’s going on,” the doctor announced after a moment. He was lanky even by ferret standards, and dressed like neither a physician nor a wizard. In cargo shorts, socks and sandals, and a loud multicolored button shirt, he mostly looked like a beachcomber. At least a less generic look than the Mensura College logo shirt Serrano had been given to throw on; it was a little too loose, while the cargo shorts were a little too tight. Coyotes who kept growing out of their clothes couldn’t be choosy, though.

Irsaw raised their brows. “What does that mean, doctor? You seem to have stabilized her well enough.”

“No, you stabilized her. I’ve just been able to shore up what you’ve done. I think. But whatever damage was done to her isn’t…” He sighed, looking back at the monitor. “It’s not only melodramatic to say it isn’t just physical, I’m not sure that it’s technically correct. It’s as if the iron is poisoning her. And I don’t understand what to do to address it.”

Serrano swallowed, then looked up at Snep and Webb. “You both know about faerie magic and myths, right? What do we do?”

Webb shook her head fractionally. “I’ll have to go back to the library and do more research to be sure, but there aren’t any folk tales I’m aware of about anything like this.” She looked at Snep.

“Faerie magic is…frequently not within mortal ken. I have no explanation for why cold-worked pure iron affects them so, and I’m aware of no magic that might diagnose Miss Wylde’s condition.”

Serrano nodded weakly, falling silent. So what now? She looked back up at Mrs. Webb. “So go back and do that research.”

“Miss Layotl, I have—”

The coyote clenched her fists, letting just a bit of real thunder work into her voice. “Go back!”

Fear flashed in Mrs. Webb’s eyes. She nodded and hurried out. Good. She didn’t want to scare her, but she wanted her to feel a little sense of fucking urgency, given what was on the line.

Snep looked after her, then down at those on the table. “Dr. Garcia, how long do you believe Miss Wylde will stay stable in her current condition?”

The ferret shrugged, sounding dejected. “Hard to say. Days, I would think, but I don’t know how much longer.”

The snow leopard nodded. “Then we shall endeavor to have an answer sooner.” He focused on Serrano. “Miss Layotl, let’s have a chat.”

“Now’s not a good—”

The world blurred around the coyote for a moment, and resolved into an entirely different room: Snep’s decidedly Victorian office. She stood on his wide, pockmarked wooden desk, with the magic professor taking a seat behind it.

“Dammit, Professor Snep, send me back right now!”

He rested his crossed arms on the desk’s surface beside her. “Or you’ll do what?” His tone wasn’t challenging or confrontational, but quietly conversational. Maybe a little reproachful.

Or I’ll… She clenched her fists, then relaxed. “Is this about me being sharp with Webb?”

“Is that what you choose to call it?”

“She knows I’m not going to hurt her.”

“Based on every report I’ve received of your actions, including from Mrs. Webb herself, I find your confidence on that point unwarranted. I saw the way she looked at you. And the way Professor Irsaw did. And the way Dr. Garcia, who’d only just met you, did.”

Had the hyena been looking at her that way? Maybe a little back at the studio. (The ruins of the studio.) Had she even looked at them a few minutes ago, when she was talking to Webb? (Threatening her.)

Finally, she closed her eyes. “So this is a ‘stop before you become a monster’ speech?”

“No. More than one of my colleagues and students are arguably monsters, and some might say I am as well. This is a ‘take care that you understand what you are becoming’ speech, Miss Layotl. The gift of Ulohne’s power does not require you to adopt her attitude toward mortals.”

“Yeah, well. How’d you just put it? I find your confidence on that point unwarranted.” She ran a hand through her hair. “When I let her power loose through me, in some way I’m…I’m literally her. Yeah, in some way I’m still me, but I’m a storm. I want to sweep things away, to throw gale force winds and lightning, rain and hail and snow. Right now, I can look back at swallowing somebody whole and alive and be terrified by myself, but in the moment? I think about that first picture of Ulohne, rampaging over a battlefield, swallowing mortals smaller than a single one of her teeth by the handful. And I think: that’s me, and that’s them, and that’s the way it should be.” She looked up at Snep and took a deep, shuddering breath. “Maybe that’s what I’m becoming.”

He looked down, expression impassive as ever. “And is it what you want to become?”

“I don’t know.”

“Then find that answer, Miss Layotl. No matter what you decide, make it a conscious choice.” He rose to his paws. “We should join Mrs. Webb in the library as she tries to find a way to save Miss Wylde.”

She climbed onto the leopard’s offered hand again, then onto his shoulder, staying silent. Make it a conscious choice? What kind of advice was that?

The world blurred again, resolving into the library steps just in front of the giant-sized door. Professor Snep walked inside, heading toward Mrs. Webb’s reference desk, then—finding it empty—past it to the shelves Serrano remembered from what seemed like years ago.

The mouse stood there, turning dials and pulling levers, then finding new books from the sets that appeared and adding them to a small (for her) stack. “I confess I’m growing frustrated,” she said to Snep as he approached. “Most of what’s available on the Fae, even here, are folktales written by mortals or rituals from magicians trying to find ways to exploit faerie magic. Or faeries themselves. I…” She trailed off, finally catching sight of Serrano, and cleared her throat.

“Mrs. Webb, I’m sorry.” The coyote did her best to look up into the mouse’s eyes; even considering her growing power, it was disconcerting to stare at an iris substantially bigger than her whole head. “I don’t—I mean—” She sighed, looking down. “I know everyone helping me is kinda doing it out of a sense of obligation. Even Sarah. But she’s still the closest to a friend I’ve gotten through all this. And I’m scared. But that’s not an excuse to be a monster to you.”

It took the librarian a few seconds to respond. “I understand, and thank you for the apology. However, I have been thinking of you as—someone I am friendly with, Ms. Layotl. A potential friend.”

“You’re still calling me by my last name.”

“I still call Professor Snep by his last name,” she pointed out. “At least on campus.”

“Sure, but he doesn’t seem like a first-name kind of guy.”

Snep cleared his throat.

The mouse half-smiled. “Point taken, then, Serrano. I’m Julia.”

“Okay. Julia.” She smiled back. “So, uh. Are you having any luck at all figuring how to cure faeries of iron poisoning?”

She sighed, shaking her head. “I still have these books to search through,” she nodded toward the pile, “but the truth is, I’m not hopeful. We don’t have any primary sources, and the few passages I’ve found that touch on the topic don’t focus on saving faeries from iron—only on the dangers to faeries, or on protecting one’s self from faeries.”

Serrano winced. “Great.”

“A ‘primary source’ such as a book written by a faerie?” Snep rumbled.

Webb nodded. “Or even a book that claimed to be an interview with a faerie on the subject.”

Serrano’s ears lifted. “A faerie would be a primary source.”

“Are you suggesting summoning another one?”

“Yeah.”

The mouse blinked behind her glasses. “As I recall, it wasn’t clear whether your summoning ritual truly worked last time, except to the degree that it caused Sarah to directly intervene with you.”

“I know. We need a better magician than I am to do it. Maybe like the best magician we know.”

Snep grunted. “Are you suggesting I summon a faerie and attempt to compel them to assist us?”

“I’m suggesting you summon a faerie and ask them to assist us. If Sarah is the big deal there that she says she is, they’re going to try to save her.”

Seconds passed in increasingly uncomfortable silence. The urge to push, just add a tiny clap of thunder in the distance for emphasis, became a palpable itch.

“Very well.” The snow leopard sighed heavily. “Mrs. Webb, if you would be so kind as to bring the appropriate books, we shall meet you in a ritual room in the back.”