bonfire of blazing splendor for a few minutes before fading.
Melee brought the dragon down gently on the well-worn pad above the garage. The sign declaring the ancient shop to be that of JAMES & DAUGHTER, MAGITECHNICIANS gave a tired creak in the downdraft from the dragon’s wings, and she made a mental note to oil it. It was a game she played sometimes: chronicle all the little things that needed fixing, order them neatly in her mind, and then carefully, meticulously ignore them. There was always something more important to worry about, but she liked to keep up the fiction that she would get to them all someday.
Between her and the dragon, their maintenance routine was up to half an hour now. How her father managed it in ten minutes was beyond her, and she liked to take her time. The dragon stood patiently on the pad, one wing outstretched, then the other, as she inspected every inch of alchromium. Scouring steel in hand, she brushed and burnished anything with the audacity to look like a blemish. Rust was met with all the fury of her sander, grease rag, and several coats of wax. The two dents on the dragon’s front foreleg, however, she scrupulously avoided. She touched them lovingly as she passed. It had been a good day, the day her dad had let her drive for the first time. She’d bumbled into everything, of course, but he’d only laughed, squeezed her shoulder, and gently corrected her. No, the dents stayed.
Its exterior scoured clean, she checked the dragon’s fuel levels and fed its chemical tank all the remains of yesterday’s organics. It rumbled, gurgled, and belched a short blast of fiery exhaust before settling into the steady churn of digestion. Melee’s eyes smarted and the smell stung her nose as she risked a peek into the tank, but everything seemed to be in order. Satisfied, she sealed the tank and patted the dragon on its side. It didn’t have a name—that would be silly, her dad had always said—but that didn’t preclude endearments.
“Rest up, buddy. You did good today.” She slung the satchel with her textbooks over her shoulder, signed the symbol for power down on the thaumium panel, and shut the chassis door up tight. “Sleep well.”
It was an awkward scramble down from the garage roof, what with the bag knocking into her ribs at every ladder rung and her vision swimming when she was halfway down, but she made it in one piece. Melee avoided the shop’s main entrance, unlocking instead the side door that led to the flat upstairs. She had to stop twice on the stairs to quell the sudden rush of dizziness, regretting her altruism with Carl’s token. Forget the first year; she needed food.
The lights were on in their flat, burning a cheerful yellow between stacks of novels, old journals, maps, schematics, empty drakeoil canisters, gears, and miscellaneous parts even she didn’t recognize.
“Hey, Dad, I’m home,” she called.
She deposited her satchel on the nearest stack and pulled the primer out. Not for the first time, she reflected on how unlucky it was, given the state of their flat, that her dad didn’t already own at least one of her textbooks. He had never been one to learn his trade from books.
A stack of papers swayed dangerously in her peripheral vision. She steadied it without looking, as a hideous cat, or something that had probably once been a cat, tumbled out from the piles of domestic detritus. It landed, paws splayed, on the mail heap in front of the door, and after it had assured itself that Melee was watching, arched its back and began the dreadful endeavor of coughing up … something.
“Oh no you don’t,” Melee said, and snatched the cat up before it could deposit a hairball or the remains of a house goblin onto the day’s mail. The cat gave her a look of profound distaste and wriggled free, only to disappear again between the pillars of books. A moment later the coughing began again. Melee sighed. Add that to the list.
She picked up the pile of letters and flipped through them on her way to the kitchen. Bills. Bills. An advert for organic wolfsbane. A notice from the World’s End Homeowners’ Association. Another bill.
“I saw Carl today, Dad,” she said. “Sends his love. He said to—”
The envelope at the bottom of the stack stopped her. It was thinner than she expected, warped by a journey in the mail carrier’s damp bag and half sticking to a flyer from Count Luigi von Tressor’s Deli (“a meating place for friends and enemies!”), but the stamp and seal were still readable: University Institute, Technical Branch.
With trembling hands, she pulled it free, letting the rest of the mail flutter to the ground unread. The cat leaped out from its hiding place and batted the bills aside before burying its claws in the HOA flyer. Melee reached for the ancient armchair behind her and sank into it without bothering to move the piles of her father’s old shirts draped over the armrests. The words were ordinary and there was nothing magical about the paper or ink, but it might as well have been a senior lexomantic hex for all the good it did her. To her bleary eyes, the words burned like black fire against the Finance Department’s cheap office paper.
Dear Ms. James,
Due to recent events connected with the Independent Sphere’s rally last week, we regret to inform you that the Institute is unable to accept the contribution from the Young Magitechnician’s Guild and Scholarship Fund toward your tuition payment for this next term.
Please find your final bill below. Payment must be remitted no later than the first day of classes.
Kind regards,
M. Nauda Nakvispirms, MtPhD, CPA
University Bursar
Institute Liaison, Technical Branch
Melee read it again, then once more, giving particular attention to the number below the bursar’s note. It did not change.
There was a snuffling sound and the cold touch of a nose against her ankle. She folded the letter. Her hands had stopped shaking. “You’re hungry, aren’t you?” she said quietly, and leaned down to scratch the cat’s chin. “So am I. You hungry, Dad?”
She didn’t wait for an answer. Breakfast. Breakfast sounded good. It would be overhard eggs for her, sunny-side up for him, frozen hash browns zapped to a crispy death in their ancient microwave and smothered in cheese, bacon barely browned so she could pull off the extra fat, and as many pancakes as she could make before her appetite drove her to the table.
The cat followed her into the kitchen. Melee left the letter on the armchair.
They didn’t have any pancake mix, and the milk was starting to spoil, so she settled for toast with pepper-and-nightshade jam. The rigors of frying bacon and unsticking the eggs from the cast iron skillet proved a worthwhile distraction for a while. She could still feel the letter, hanging like a wraith in the crowded doorway between the kitchen and front hall, the silent presence presiding over their tiny table. Three skillets in she ran out of bacon. She scowled at the empty fridge as she set the table for the two of them and pulled her father’s wheelchair up to his customary spot.
“Eat up, I made enough for twenty,” she said.
The cat meowed at her feet. Melee picked off a few strips of bacon fat and tossed them to the floor. For a long while the sound of chewing filled the room.
“They’re not taking the YMG scholarship,” she said at last.
The cat nudged her leg.
“Something
