Secret Novel Chapter 41: Groundskeeper (Patreon)

It was really strange walking arm in arm with Sarah. Back in Lexford Madeline had been too shy to really walk like this with other women. She was worried they would look like a couple where she was the man, not just two women being friendly. That might have been the one thing she felt she really missed out on growing up being of switched hearts. She couldn’t just have casual physical affection with a friend. Well Sophie and her would do it, but that was because Sophie forced her, and since everybody knew Sophie was married there was no fear of it being misconstrued. So it was really nice to have an interaction like this with another woman in a body that felt right. It also felt bad because Madeline was tricking Sarah, and, of course, Sarah was a mage.

“So,” the aforementioned mage started. “I know you aren’t on good terms, but did you and Flora somehow come into the Maze at the same time? I know it’s normally one offering at a time, but I’ve heard two can go at once on rare occasions.”

How should Madeline respond? She didn’t want Sarah to get suspicious, because the one lie she had been able to tell was small, and any lie about Flora would be big and noticeable. Maybe just telling the truth was the best option. Well the selective truth. “N-no. We didn’t come in at the same time. She came in first five years ago, and I only came in this fall.” Madeline wondered what would have happened if they both came in at the same time. Would Flora have stayed by her side back then instead of joining the mages since they wouldn’t accept Madeline? Or would she have abandoned her sister to become a mage? Flora had always wanted to study and go to a big well known school. It was her dream, so maybe Flora would have abandoned her…

“Really?! You’ve only been in here since the last offering? Wow, you must be just as much of a natural as your sister.”

Madeline raised an eyebrow at Sarah. “What makes you say that?”

“Well, you’ve already replaced your eye with a crystal.” Madeline almost tripped on the flat even ground. Sarah had seen her eye. Panic flurried in her, and only now did she notice that Sarah was on her right side. So whenever she looked up at her, she would see Madeline’s beyonder eye. “You know they don’t allow that sort of alteration until at least your tenth year, and even then I don’t think many people are brave enough to do it. So since they allowed you to do it, you must be a pretty amazing mage.”

It felt so wrong for Sarah to call her a mage. With her free hand, Madeline reached up and pulled the brim of her hood down further. “I wouldn’t say that.” She gave a nervous chuckle. At least Sarah didn’t recognize it was real and not a crystal. Hopefully that meant if anyone else sees it, they would think the same.

“But they let you do it. How did you get them to agree?” Sarah looked up at her with brimming curiosity.

“I-um…” She didn’t know how to answer this without lying. Shit “It was uh…” What could she say? “It was the result of a ritual I made.”

“Ritual?! You’re already at a level of making rituals? How can you say you aren’t a natural?”

“I just try to keep quiet and hidden,” Madeline said with true honesty. “I don’t like confrontations with people.” Especially mages.

“Oh. I can kind of understand. I heard Flora used to get asked a lot of times to tutor people, until she cursed another student to forget everything she had just taught him.”

That didn’t sound like her sister at all. Flora loved talking about studies, and loved to help other people learn… The Flora Madeline knew, her sister, really was gone.

“Well, I wouldn’t do anything like that.”

“That’s good,” Sarah giggled, then peered at her eye again. “It looks so… Organic.”

“It was made that way,” Madeline practically spat out. “I worked really hard for it and it was meant to look like a beyonder’s eye. I guess it really does look organic.”

“A beyonder? What’s a beyonder?” Sarah’s curiosity only kept growing.

“You don’t know what a beyonder is? But we all hear stories about them as kids. You know like they bargain for your—” Madeline cut herself off, remembering one of her first studies into beyonders, or as she knew them then, demons. “Right, most people just think they’re demons.”

“A demon? You modeled your eye after a demon’s? Is a beyonder a kind of demon?” The questions just kept pouring from Sarah’s mouth, and it was surprisingly helping the time pass as they walked, in a nerve wracking way.

Lie or honesty? Technical truths had gotten her this far so why change that. “No. Demons, like actual demons that fought against the Goddess are extinct. Most of the stories we know of demons are actually of beyonders. They apparently like that we mistook them for demons and just let us keep calling them that. It’s really almost a joke to them at this point.” At least that was what she gathered from Victor’s family, though maybe that was just because they don’t like mages.

“Wait, really?”

“Yeah. I was surprised by it, too. Also found it surprising that mages didn’t know that either.”

“Mages?”

“Oh! Sorry, I, uh, mean other mages. It’s strange to think of myself as one.” The panicked outburst might have just saved her if Sarah bought it, but it felt so wrong to call herself a mage.

“I completely understand,” the mage giggled. “It's still crazy to think I’m a mage.” Right now, with how kind Sarah had been to her, Madeline really wished she wasn’t. “But why don’t other mages know that demons are actually beyonders?”

“I found it in a really old book that was hidden away. Definitely not a book lots of people ever really look at. It was some really advanced stuff.” None of that was a lie. “I also asked a beyonder if it was true, and he said it was.”

“You’ve met a demon?! I mean beyonder?”

“Y-yeah.” Maybe that was a step too far for even and advanced student as Sarah believed her to be, but she was here now so she just kept going with it. “He did try to kill me at first, but we worked out a deal.” And while he could be a pain in her ass, literally in one instance, she honestly just wanted to get back home to him.

“And they say Flora is a prodigy, huh.” Sarah giggled. “I don’t suppose you can help me study, can you?”

“I don’t live on this campus, remember?”

“Rats, I forgot. Oh well. Maybe we could be pen pals at least.”

“Uh, maybe.”

The conversation fell out for a short time as they continued walking. Over the course of the conversation they had already walked through another slightly bigger group of builds. That one had been bustling with other mages, and thanks to being by Sarah’s side, Madeline didn’t look out of place or strange. She was passing off as any other mage just walking around with a friend.

“Did it hurt?” Sarah said after a little while

“Did what hurt?”

“Your eye. Did it hurt?”

Madeline paused in her walk for a second, and Sarah noticed. “I have never felt pain like that before. And I have felt a lot of excruciating pain.” Her ears hurt so much that she passed out, but her eye… She felt like she could go mad if she remembered just how painful that was.

“Didn’t they make you feel numb first? Was it really that bad?” Sarah gave her a look of mixed horror and awe.

“No,” the Witch said harshly, getting sucked into the memory she honestly tried not to think about too much. “I wasn’t numbed. I didn’t think ahead to do that and I felt all of it.”

“They didn’t make sure you were numbed when they cut out your eye?!” Horror filled Sarah’s face

“Melt.”

“What?”

“They melted my eye out.” Madeline’s face was blank as she remembered it. She didn’t blame Victor for hurting her like she had never experienced before. She had literally asked for it, and as far as she could tell, what he did was the only true way to give her a beyonder eye. A simple shift like he had done for her tail wouldn’t have worked. “I can still remember the feeling of my eye running down my cheek.”

“Fuck…” Sarah’s face was turning a little green.

“Sorry. Probably didn’t need to tell you that part.” Madeline felt a little embarrassed she got herself caught up in that memory. “Maybe we should talk about something else?”

“Y-yeah. I think that would be good.”

Though they said that conversation fell out again for a little while. How do you come back from telling someone you can remember your eye melting down your face?

“We’re almost there,” Sarah said, pointing down the path they were walking to another small collection of buildings. This time the buildings were close to the hedge which gave Madeline a sense of relief she hadn’t realized she needed. Also around the buildings were a large number of flower plots and small gardens. Madeline found it a little strange that this was where Planter was. Two of the three buildings were more like sheds than anything. At least the bigger building looked like it could house Planter if he was sitting down. There were even double barn doors at the front of the building to get him in and out.

This was it. This was what she had come here to do. She felt her heart start to pick up, though this time it wasn’t from nerves, it was from anticipation. Anticipation of getting this done, and going back home. Back to her Garden. Back to her cozy home. Back to her beyonder.

“Are you okay?”

“What?” Madeline looked at Sarah and did her best not to keep glancing at the building slowly approaching.

“You look a little on edge.”

“I… I am a little.” There was no harm in admitting that right? “This is what I came all the way here for.”

“You’re really that nervous to meet the groundskeeper?” Sarah chuckled. “I haven’t met him, but I hear he's nice so I’m sure there’s nothing to worry about.”

Nice because you turned him into a mindless slave who followed your every command. Her heightening opinion of Sarah stopped at her saying that. How could she think he’s nice after taking away who he was? Now there was another issue. Was she going to do this in front of Sarah? Even if her opinion had dropped she didn’t want Sarah to get hurt in this, or worse try and attack her. In truth she really hoped that she wouldn’t have to hurt or fight anyone here.

“Well, thank you for taking me this far.” Madeline said, trying to sound as nice as she could. “I think I can take it from here.”

“Oh no,” Sarah said, shaking her head. “Like I said I haven’t met him, and how can I leave after taking you all this way. I’m dying to know what you want to meet him for. So you’re not getting rid of me that easily.” The smile on her face was genuine and the hold she had on Madeline’s arm grew tighter.

Madeline gulped nervously. This could be a problem. “Okay,” was all the witch said.

After two minutes of walking the pair found themselves at the large, almost barn-like building. Madeline felt her heart in her throat, and didn’t want to risk speaking. Luckily Sarah was all too happy to open a more human sized door set in one of the barn doors. Waving her in, Madeline stepped inside, her human eye took a moment to adjust, but her beyonder eye was already ahead of the game. Inside the building, Madeline found that the entire place, or at least as much as she could see, had a dirt floor. There were raised plant plots lining a central walkway, and towards the back the building looked to be made out of glass and the flowers grew right out of the floor. Where the hell was Planter? Looking around she did find that on either side of the building before it turned to glass, it looked like there were rooms set into the walls.

“Hello?” Sarah called out stepping inside after Madeline. Madeline wished she hadn’t called out like that. It would be easier if no one else was around. Safer, too. Hearing some crashing from behind a door set into the left wall, Madeline slipped her hand into the pouch under her cloak. She needed to be ready.

“Hello,” a voice called out, just before the door opened. Out stepped an almost elderly man, with tied up long gray hair, and a neatly trimmed beard. His winter cloak was a dark blue, but clearly stained with a ridiculous amount of dirt running down the front and coating the bottom. “Can I help you?”

Madeline looked at Sarah, not knowing what else to do, but Sarah just gave her an encouraging expectant look as if to say ‘go on’. Slowly she turned back to the man approaching them. “Hello, I was um, wondering if you might know where the groundskeeper is? I’m looking for him.”

“Well you’ve come to the right place,” he said proudly. “I’m groundskeeper Monet. Not many students come out here to see me,” he said, chuckling. “So this is a nice surprise. What can I do for you young ladies?” As he said that, he leaned down trying to peer a little bit under Madeline’s hood.

He wasn’t Planter, Madeline thought as she pulled the hood down again. Why would Sarah bring her here, and why was he calling himself a groundskeeper— Oh… He was the groundskeeper of the campus…

“Oh, no. I’m really sorry, I wasn’t looking for you,” she said, feeling her nerves rise again. She really should have specified with Sarah before letting her guide her all the way to a dead end. “I was looking for the groundskeeper here on this campus.”

The old man narrowed his eyes at her, as if she was an idiot. “Like I said, I am the groundskeeper on this campus. Have been for thirty years. Now what can I help you with?” The joy in his voice when he first spoke to her had quickly faded.

“No, I don’t mean you the groundskeeper, I mean the Groundskeeper,” she said trying to emphasize the last word. He just looked more convinced that she was an idiot, and turning to Sarah for help only showed her that Sarah was confused. Surely they had to know what she was talking about… “You know the groundskeeper that’s been caught here.” Still nothing. And then it dawned on Madeline that maybe they didn’t call them Groundskeepers. “The big hedge giant person,” for some reason Madeline found it necessary to point high up over her head, as if hedge giant wasn’t clear enough.

“You mean the hent?” Monet asked, looking confused himself now.

Right, Madeline remembered them calling the groundskeeper a hent while outside her garden. “Yes! The hent.”

“Why do you want to know where the hent is?” he asked with his eyes narrowing just a little.

“Oh, um, it’s part of why I came to this campus. I need to ask him a few questions for a, um, paper I’m doing.” Madeline was starting to have a bad feeling about this, but would he also not expect her to be anything other than a bumbling mage?

“He? It’s not a ‘he’. And why would you call it a groundskeeper?”

Did they really have to call Planter an ‘it’ now that he’s enslaved beyond repair? “Because that’s what they're called. What they call themselves. And he is a he, at least he was before,” Madeline saids with a bit of an edge in her tone now as if the groundskeeper was the stupid one.

“They can’t speak and they don’t have sexes,” Monet said.

Madeline just looked at him, stunned and frustrated. Groundskeepers were people. “Yes, they can speak. They have sexes. I think. I know they have preferred pronouns at least. They even have names, and families. What, do you really think they're just mindless walking pieces of hedge?”

“What nonsense are you on about?” The groundskeeper was clearly getting annoyed now. “That’s exactly what they are. No sexes, no names, no family, and certainly no language.”

“Really? You’ve never had one try to speak with you? They always start an encounter by trying to see if you can understand their language.” Madeline did also realize that since mages weren’t friends of the Maze they couldn’t understand groundskeepers, but surely they must have picked up on the fact that they do in fact speak!

“What mushrooms have you been eating and what forest folk books have you dug up in some tucked away corner of the library, young lady?”

“Forest folk? You mean sylvins?”

“What’s a sylvin?” Sarah asked, once again curious but confused.

Madeline felt the frustration and anxiety of the day overflowing inside of her. “They’re sylvins, not forest folk. Like how demons are actually beyonders, and hents are called groundskeepers. Do you mages really know nothing?” Madeline looked between the two of the mages. Sarah was just confused, but when her eyes turned to Monet, she saw them harden. Saw his whole body harden. Madeline then realized what she had just said.

With a flick of his wrist and a single strange word, the mage created a tunnel of air that shot towards Madelin. Fear and instincts kicked in, as Madeline willed the dirt ground beneath her to sprout roots to hold her steady in the strongest gust of wind she had ever known. Luckily her training with Victor had kicked in. With crossed arms in front of her, Madeline did her best to push up a shield of her own magic against the wind attack thrown her way. Thanks to both that and the roots, Madeline wasn’t thrown back into the wall a handful of feet behind her. However, the wind was strong enough to break the clasp of her stolen cloak, and it flew off of her with force.

There was a moment of stillness as Madelin’s ears shot back up, free from the confines of the hood, and she couldn’t help but feel relieved. Her ears were starting to get sore under the hood. The relief didn’t last long as she noticed the mages looking at her in shock. She had just been exposed.

“Fuck,” was all Madeline could muster before the groundskeeper reacted again. This time there was no wind, but a ball of pulsing blue energy that grew from his hand. Madeline could hear it crackle and fizz with power, before the mage threw it at her faster than she thought an old man like him could. Still, Victor was faster in his training. In the split second before the ball hit her, Madeline pushed her hands out as if to cushion the blow from it. But instead she could use her own magic to create a reflective force, and with her her new eye could see what kind of magical mist floated from the orb it gave her just a little more edge on making the perfect reflective force. It all happened in a split second. Her hands came back with the ball, almost all the way to her chest, before she pushed and deflected it right back at him with more speed than he had used.

He obviously wasn’t expecting that, since not only were his eyes wide in shock, he wasn’t able to stop it from hitting him. As it did, his form twitched and crumbled to the floor. It wasn’t a lightning spell to shock and hurt like the ones Flora and Marcus had used. If Madeline had to guess it was more of a spell to stun her long enough to capture her or whatever he was planning. Not wanting to find out how long the stun lasted for, she willed the roots to let go, ran up to his side, and knelt down as she reached into her pouch. It didn’t take her but a moment to find what she needed thanks to the magic enchantment on her bag. Pulling out a nightcap flower, the one she used to help herself sleep, she leaned into close to him. She could see his eyes looking at her with both hate and fear. Before she could think about it too hard, she blew the pollen into this face. It only took a moment, before his eyes drifted closed and he fell into a deep sleep.

She stared down at the sleeping mage for a second, before elation filled her. “It worked,” she whispered out. “It worked!” Now the words came out triumphantly as her tail wagged excitedly. A mage had attacked her and she was able to defeat him with her own magic. She had won!

The sound of a footfall to her left, brought Madeline’s attention back to the other mage in the building. Slowly she turned to find Sarah looking down at her with fear running rampant through her eyes. Their eyes locked on each other, as both thought of what to do next.

In a clumsy flash, Sarah spun on her foot and began for the door. Only… she didn’t get more than one step closer before Madeline grew roots to grab onto Sarah’s leg. The young mage fell hard to the ground, and Madeline did feel a little bad for that. She hadn’t wanted to hurt Sarah. However she couldn’t just let her get away and alert other mages.

As Madeline rushed back up to Sarah, she turned over to look at her and cried out, “Please don’t hurt me!” Hearing that felt like her heart had just been stabbed. She didn’t ever want to hurt anyone, even when she had to, and she most certainly didn’t want people to think she would hurt them. To be afraid of her like she had been of Marcus. Still she created more roots and tied Sarah’s hands to the ground, afraid what she could do with her hands free.

“I’m not going to hurt you, Sarah.” She said, kneeling down beside the girl sitting and strapped to the ground. This close she could see Sarah had tears brimming in her eyes, and she could smell something coming off of her. It took a second before Madeline realized she could literally smell the fear Sarah was giving off.

“You killed him,” the mage said with such a shaky voice Madeline could barely make it out. Sarah’s eyes were flicking between Madeline and Monet.

“I didn’t kill him,” Madeline said very firmly. “I put him to sleep. He’ll probably be asleep for at least half a day, maybe a whole day even, but he will wake up feeling really refreshed. Trust me, this is what I use to help myself get to sleep, though I don’t use nearly that much…”

Sarah looked up at her, still not fully convinced by Madeline’s words. “What are you?”

“I’m human,” Madeline said, a little confused as to why Sarah would think otherwise, then she remembered she wasn’t fully human. “Eye, ears, nose, fangs, and tail excluded.” The woman didn’t seem convinced. “Sarah, I need you to tell me where the groundskeeper is.” Her eyes just darted over to Monet who was now snoring on the ground. “No, I mean the hent. Where is he?”

“I-I-I don’t kno—”

“Sarah, think. I need you to tell me.”

“I-I-I think professors do t-things like that out the b-back of their laboratory.” She was still so clearly afraid but did manage to look mildly confident in her answer. Hopeful might be the better word though.

“Where is that?” She need to know or she would be wandering around aimlessly again.

“It's by the lecture halls.”

Well that wasn’t helpful, since she had no idea where those were. Thinking about it, Madeline pulled open Sarah’s cloak, and the woman squirmed and squeaked in fear. Grabbing what she needed, she pulled out the map Sarah had. “Where on here is it,” Madeline asked, opening the map and showing it to her. Of course she then realized both of Sarah’s arms were tied down, and she wouldn’t be able to point. After a short time was spent by Sarah trying to explain where it was on the map, Madeline figured it out. “Thank you. Also sorry for scaring you. I hope you’ll feel better after you wake up.”

“What? No!” But it was too late. Madeline was already blowing pollen in her face.