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“You — are an absolute — idiot.”
Roslyn did not scream or shout. There was no anger. There was only disappointment, cold as ice… and honestly, that hurt worse.
Arriving at school that morning was a far simpler, quicker affair than it had been arriving by bus yesterday. We neatly avoided the deathloop by arriving well before the buses had arrived or the car riders lane had more than a few early birds, so we were at the drop off within almost immediately. By the time Mom had wished us a good day at school and left, I had a bit of free time before I was due to meet Mrs. Smith, and I absolutely, unequivocally had to make a pit stop by Roslyn’s classroom off of the computer lab.
I hadn’t asked Dani to tag along, but honestly, I appreciated the backup. And I did need it because Roslyn took one look at me and all but dragged us inside and locked the door shut.
“I have half a mind to take that tablet from you before you do any more harm.”
I reflexively took a step back, clutching my tablet to my chest. Behind and to my side, I could hear Dani’s hands fidgeting like mad.
Roslyn’s eyes slid shut, her breathing slow and steady, but it was most certainly not calm. She reopened them after a moment, refusing to meet my eyes. “I don’t want to do that. I do not want to. So please, for the love of all that’s holy, stop putting me in the position of bailing you out of your screw ups, so I don’t have to. Am I understood, Ervin?”
Dani whined, low and uncomfortable, and Roslyn tacked on for her benefit, “For what it’s worth, I’m sorry you got dragged into this, Dani. You should do your best to forget about it. As I’m sure Ervin here would tell you… the Price can be high.
“Now, I assume you’re here early for a reason, yes? It isn’t for my class. Your work with the loop has thrown off the A-B schedule, and the principal elucidated—” She paused a beat, throwing me a look “—that’s the term I was taught and use for ‘confabulation,’ so you know. Anyway, the elucidation is that the school was closed the last three days for emergency fumigation, so you’re on your B schedule today. Get to wherever you’re supposed to be, and come back here for lunch. Clearly you need your hand held a lot more than I thought. I’ll get you something from a vending machine in the teacher’s lounge, so come straight here, got it? Now go.”
Dani grabbed her trombone and scurried over to the door without needing to be told twice, but I waited long enough to use the TTS app to play Roslyn the message I typed up. “My name is Chanel, apparently.”
“Well la — di — da.” Roslyn sighed explosively, a weariness settling over her as if she just couldn’t continue radiating such disappointment. “Look, do you really want to do this? Abandon your entire life?”
I hesitated. I did want it. I wanted it so much that it hurt like nothing I had ever known to even entertain the idea of being ‘Ervin’ again. But…
Another sigh. “If you think you might… then remember ‘priming’? From that essay I made you write? Do that with everyone you can. It’s always better to guide elucidation however you can, whenever you can. Otherwise, you might unexpectedly find your mother calling you Chanel. Understand?”
I gave her a small nod then joined Dani at the door and left.
Dani clutched her trombone to her chest as I started leading us towards the ASL classroom, and after a half minute, she settled down enough to say, “You’re scared. Why’re you scared?”
I hesitated a moment then pulled out my tablet. I only had two minutes before I was due for my private lesson, but denying I was afraid would hardly take long. Except when I pulled up the notepad app to spin the lie, my stomach twisted itself in knots. Dani might be a bit much at times, but she had only ever been nice to me, and how had I repaid that kindness? Dragging her into this magical mess? And now I wanted to lie to her?
With shaky hands, I started typing, giving a half truth, [It’s a big change, of course I am.]
Except I couldn’t stop there. Before I knew it, I was spilling my guts, telling her things I hadn’t meant to say. I just couldn’t stop. [But also, Dad’s said things about gay kids, and they say worse at church. I don’t want to go to hell, but doesn’t God see our inner thoughts? I want this so badly! Am I damned no matter what I do??]
I bit my lip hard enough I was afraid it might bleed as I held out the message. I was so terrified, I had to force my hands to stay steady enough for her to properly read it. I couldn’t figure it out. Why had I admitted all of that?
When she finished reading, Dani’s eyes rose to my shoulder. At first she seemed almost as frightened as me, refusing to meet my petrified gaze directly, but then she nodded, jaw tight and a hint of steel dancing behind her classes. “I don’t know anything about your g-god, but I know a thing or two about having something you want to share and being scared to do it. That fear’s always gonna be there, Chanel. Take it from me, it is. But you said you want this, and no one’s gonna hear what you have to share if you don’t step onto the stage and let them hear it.”
I may have been a bit misty eyed, and Dani a bit flustered and flappy, by the time we got to the ASL classroom. Mrs. Smith’s eyes were on the clock over the door when we entered, but she didn’t show any irritation at me arriving a minute late. Instead, the soft, stocky woman gave me a warm, if confused smile, brushing a loose strand of her long, jet black hair behind her ear.
“Good morning. I was only expecting… uh…”
I hit the TTS message I had prepared that morning, “Hi, my name is Chanel Scrivens,” then the one I had prepared the other day, “I can’t speak, so I use my tablet to do it for me.”
“Oh! Chanel?” Mrs. Smith shook her head, eyes unfocused for a second. “Right, of course, Chanel. Sorry, I had the wrong name for you, for some reason!”
Dani looked mildly perturbed but jumped in to add, “And I’m Dani Skeates! Chanel and I are neighbors and friends, so I’m just here early. Do you mind if I listen in?”
Mrs. Smith gave her a big, theatrical wink and delivered the obviously rehearsed line, “As long as you’re ready to listen with your eyes!”
Returning her attention to me, she added, “And Miss Scrivens? I’m terribly sorry to hear about what happened. I’ll do everything I can to help you get ready for a life without speaking. The more you practice at home and with your friends—” She directed a significant look at Dani “—the more ground we’ll be able to cover here and in class, okay?”
I gave her a nodded, feeling a bit daunted but determined all the same. I didn’t want to have to use my tablet for everything if I could help it.
“Okay! Then let’s begin with the alphabet…”
----------------------------------------
Dani left at the first bell, so she could drop off her trombone in the band room before her German class. For me, my private lesson rolled right into the ASL class proper, and though I was still struggling to remember some of the more esoteric letters (Why was the letter ‘x’ so weirdly nonsensical??), I was already ahead of my classmates as Mrs. Smith reviewed the alphabet all over for the rest of them. She delivered as much instruction silently as she could and encouraged us to be silent wherever we could, which made for a uniquely quiet environment compared to my other classes.
Eventually the bell tolled again, and while the rest of the class finally luxuriated in the renewed freedom to speak, I quietly collected my book bag and made my way over to the Comparative Cultures classroom. The room was empty when I arrived, but for the teacher up front, a bald, lanky man with his nose buried in a book. He gave me a courteous nod when I entered, gestured broadly at the arranged desks, and returned his attention to his book without a single word. I felt a spark of kinship with him straight away. It wasn’t that I thought he couldn’t speak, but I had always been more interested in my books than socializing.
I claimed a seat close to the front but off to the side by the windows. I didn’t want to be the center of attention but thought it was probably be best to put myself close enough that the teacher wouldn’t have trouble hearing my tablet. I started to sit down but paused, remembering what Roslyn had suggested that morning. If nothing else, I decided it was probably good to head off any confusion about being nonspeaking.
“Hi, my name is Chanel Scrivens,” my tablet announced for me, drawing the teacher’s attention as another student entered in my periphery. “I can’t speak, so I use my tablet to do it for me.”
The teacher blinked, curious. “Miss… Scrivens, was it?”
I pressed the button for, “Hi, my name is Chanel Scrivens,” again, and as the teacher consulted a paper on his podium, the teacher who had entered took the seat next to me. I did a double take. It was Haven Atteberry, watching me with the same curious intensity he had that morning when Mom had stopped by the bus stop to speak with him.
“Good morning,” he said, each word exactingly enunciated, like he was more quoting someone rather than giving a casual greeting.
Unnerved by his unwavering stare, I took a second longer than was probably polite to trigger my tablet to say, “Hello.”
Haven’s gaze fell to my tablet, and I almost sighed in relief. “On Monday, you used pen and paper. Is this device to be your… voice in the future?”
I pressed the button for, “Yes,” then after a moment’s hesitation, I also pressed, “No.”
More students were filing in and filling the other seats, but Haven’s eyes returned to me, the amber rings holding me captive once again. “I don’t understand.”
My morning’s lessons with Mrs. Smith fresh on my mind, I pressed, “Yes,” again and followed it with the sign for ‘yes’ as well. His hawk-like gaze fell upon my ‘nodding,’ closed fist, and after a moment, recognition dawned.
“Sign language. You know it? Or you’re learning it?” he asked. I held up two fingers, and he thankfully got it. “Learning then. Understood.”
“Haven.”
The new voice me off guard, both because I had been fixated on Haven and also because the speaker had used his name like it was a curse. It was Elam Solomon one of the other Thachers, a boy with neatly coiffed brown hair and a gaze that might have rivaled Haven’s for intensity but for his comparatively plain, blue eyes. He was taller than Haven, who was sitting down, but if my sort-of neighbor had been standing, he doubtlessly would have towered over the newcomer. From what I had seen of him in the past though, I got the feeling Elam would always be looking down on Haven, no matter that he was shorter.
“Elam,” Haven levelly replied.
Elam looked almost insulted that Haven had dared to use his name. His disgust only grew when he looked past Haven to me, like I was something foul on the bottom of his shoe. His eyes flicked to the teacher, who was once again engrossed in his book, then back to Haven once more.
“Penitence ought be at the forefront of your mind,” Elam hissed, his voice low, “and yet you squander your final days.”
Final days? At first I thought the pretentious jerk was threatening Haven. And maybe he was, but there was something about his words I couldn’t put my finger on. And though Haven seemed mildly perturbed by Elam’s words, he didn’t seem threatened.
“… it always is,” Haven eventually replied.
Elam opened his mouth to say more, but the bell rang, dragging the teacher’s attention out of his book to his class. He wasn’t the only one; I also eyed the rest of the class, only now noticing the makeup of it. A full third of the class were Thachers, all clustered in the back corner opposite of where Haven and I sat. But why?
“Find your seat,” the teacher told Elam, who stalked off to join the other Thachers in the back. Turning his attention to the class as a whole, the teacher continued, “Good morning, everyone. My name is Mr. Jackson, and I will be your Comparative Cultures teacher. Let’s begin roll call: Haven Atteberry?”
“Present.”
Mr. Jackson continued down the list, and when he finally got towards the end, I could tell when he reached my name by the slight hesitation. The actual roll call no doubt said, ‘Ervin Scrivens,’ but I had primed him beforehand for elucidation, as Roslyn had referred to confabulation.
After taking a second to regain his bearings, he called out, “Chanel Scrivens?”
I felt the eyes of half the class on my back after the name ‘Chanel’ was used, and the rest joined in, whispering to one another, after my tablet answered for me, “Here.”
I had signed up for this class because I was it was a new offering and because learning about the rest of the world was likely the closest I would ever get to escaping Meckleville. It was starting to feel like I wouldn’t enjoy it as much as I had hoped.
----------------------------------------
“Do you know the etymology for the word ‘thaumaturgy’?” Roslyn asked me.
As requested, I had returned to the Computers classroom for lunch, but it hadn’t been as uneventful getting there as I would have thought. When the bell finally tolled to announce the end of second block and the beginning of lunch, my thought had been that I would wait for the rest of the class to file out first. Imagine my frustration when the Thacher contingent apparently had the same idea. Even Haven was clearly waiting on me, as well.
This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.
There was nothing I could do but leave, so with a quiet sigh, I hurried out the door. I wouldn’t say I enjoyed having Haven at my back, but it was nice to at least have someone between the Thachers and me.
I started towards the computers classroom, and after we passed the bend where I should have turned off, Haven remarked, “The lunchroom is this way.”
I had expected he might say that, and turned to face him, pressing the TTS for, “I understand,” and gestured for him to go towards the lunchroom.
He didn’t. “Where are you going?”
I gestured again for him to go, that time more fervently, but he still didn’t budge. So with a huff, I switched to the notepad and typed, [My Computers teacher asked me to see her over lunch.]
“I see. Would you like me to bring you some lunch?”
That caught me off guard. [Why?]
“I assumed you would like to eat.” I gave him a very unimpressed look, and to my surprise that got a ghost of a smile out of him. “I don’t know what the Waller-Gardeners will say to your mother’s offer to drive me to school in the mornings, but her offer was generous, as was your thinking to mention me to her. I thought I might repay the generosity.”
The fledgling thought that he might be after my non-existent (not that he knew that) lunch money in some kind of hustle crumbled. It hadn’t been a very serious consideration, since I hadn’t heard of Haven or any other Thacher doing anything like that before, but Dad had always taught me to be cautious when money might be involved. Behind him, the Thachers passed by, unabashedly watching us both as they rounded the corner and headed towards the lunchroom.
[You don’t need to do that.]
“Of course not,” he retorted, “but I want to.”
I bit my lip. A proper lunch did sound better than some vending machine snack, and he was being insistent. I switched to the TTS app and pressed, “Yes,” and, “Thank you!”
He gave me a self-assured nod, like it was a given I would eventually say yes. “I’ll be by shortly,” he said as he turned and followed in the Thachers’ wake now. That was vaguely worrying after his brief confrontation earlier with Elam, but there wasn’t anything I could really do about it, so I continued on to the computers classroom, where Roslyn was waiting and, unsurprisingly, Dani as well.
“No,” my tablet said for me, answering Roslyn’s question. I didn’t know the meaning of the word ‘thaumaturgy,’ much less the etymology of it. Dani didn’t seem to know either, politely shaking her head.
Roslyn nodded, seemingly having expected that answer. She opened her mouth to explain but paused, eying Dani. “Last chance, Dani. I was serious when I said earlier the less you know about this, the better. The more you know about this sort of thing… the more likely you are to Pay the Price.”
I shivered. Dani bit her lip, glancing my way, and I pointed at my throat, giving her a significant look.
“Exactly,” Roslyn affirmed, grim. “The Price doesn’t have to be Paid knowingly… only willingly. The more you know about this, the more likely you are to subconsciously turn to a ‘solution’ that creates dozens more problems for every one it solves.”
Dani took a long time thinking about that, fiddling with the bag of chips Roslyn had procured for her, and Roslyn seemed perfectly content to wait on her answer. I was of two minds as I quietly nibbled on my own bag of chips. On the one hand, I wouldn’t wish my Price on anyone, and I had Paid it completely unaware! My ability to speak had nothing to do with looping a day over and over that I could tell, so the thought that Dani might wind up in a similar situation, Paying a steep Price completely unrelated and disproportionate to some trivial problem… But on the other hand, I couldn’t help but selfishly want Dani with me as I went through this madness. She was far better company than Roslyn, as far as I was concerned!
I had half forgotten about Haven until the knock at the door. Roslyn shot me a look that I cringed away from, threw her hands up in the air, and went to answer the door.
Sure enough, Roslyn pulled the door open, and Haven was on the other side with a pair of individually plastic-wrapped sandwiches and single-serving juice bottles.
“Can I help you, Mr…?” Roslyn asked him, forced to look up because of his towering figure.
“Haven Atteberry, ma’am.” He gestured towards me with the sandwiches. “I offered to get Chanel lunch.”
“My my, got boys eating out of your hands already, do you, Chanel?” Roslyn shot me a cartoonishly exaggerated wink then held out her hand expectantly. “Alright, Prince Charming, I’ll take that for her, and you can go on back to the lunchroom.”
“I would rather stay.”
Roslyn looked like she was one step away from tugging her hair out, an exasperated energy in the way she held herself. “Well that’s too bad. I was just about to escort Miss Dani here out as well. This is a private—”
“No,” Dani interjected, quietly determined. “I want to stay too.”
That tripped up Roslyn, who threw Dani a bewildered look that lent a distinct ‘are you serious’ undertone to her rejoinder, “As I said before, Dani, the more you know…”
“I don’t care.” Dani stood, fists balled in her skirt, eyes burning holes into her desk. “This is important to Chanel, and she’s my friend! I want to be there for her, but how can I be there if I don’t know what she’s dealing with! You said it was my choice to stay or not, and I want to stay!”
“You don’t understand what you’re asking!”
“Is it the pot’s place to ask the potter why he shapes?” Haven intoned, his words heavy in the way our pastor’s always was when he quoted scripture. He had sounded the same yesterday on the bus, but just like then, I didn’t recognize the source. “So too it is not our place to know why the Lord acts, only that He does.”
“Gesundheit,” Roslyn deadpanned, eyebrows almost disappearing behind the bangs of her wispy hair.
I cringed at Roslyn’s brazen joke, and Dani took a sudden seat, fidgeting with her skirt to get it under her just right. Haven was not impressed, giving Roslyn a foul look much like the one on Elam’s face earlier. He stepped around where she had imposed herself in the door, and moved to where Dani and I sat with quiet purpose. Without another word, he placed a sandwich and bottle of juice on my desk before taking the seat on my right, opposite Dani.
It wasn’t the eccentric Roslyn that I had come to know who shut the door to her classroom, but a far more weary and resigned one. “Should I be expecting any other hangers-on, Chanel?”
I folded in on myself, shaking my head ‘no’ while fiddling with the plastic wrap on the sandwich Haven had handed me.
Roslyn locked the door and plodded back to the front of the room, pulling out her phone as he went, no doubt activating her sound dampener program. She jabbed a finger at Haven, telling him, “I don’t care if you don’t believe a word of what I’m about to say. I’ve got too much to say and not enough time left to say it in, so no interruptions unless you have a pertinent question, capeesh?”
She didn’t bother waiting for him to respond, instead jumping right back into her lecture. “Chanel. I told you before that there isn’t any widely adopted terminology or syntax for what we do, and that’s true. I used the term ‘magic’ because it’s a general catch-all that works decently, a concept that shows up all over in pop culture.”
Haven’s expression pinched at the mention of magic, but he didn’t interrupt.
“I’ve met people who only ever call it magic. I’ve also met people who call it ‘weaving,’ ‘witchcraft,’ ‘the craft,’ you name it. But as pretentious as it is, I’ve always been partial to the term my teacher used, thaumaturgy. I’ve seen it bandied about in pop culture too, but never in the way it was originally used. Thaumaturgy is derived from Greek, and it means miracle work. Thaumaturges, miracle workers, pop up all over historically. Heck, in Qabalah, their understanding of thaumaturgy is awfully close to how it really works.”
“We’re talking about… magic,” Haven asked.
“No, we’re talking about thaumaturgy,” Roslyn quipped, not missing a beat. “Do keep up.”
“You know what I mean.”
“I believe I asked for relevant questions only.”
“My question,” Haven pressed, sounding not… incensed, but certainly no longer calm, worse than he had earlier when Elam made his maybe-threat, “is whether this teacher to whom you refer taught you about miracles… or how to work miracles.”
“Ah, the Thacher boy wants a practical demonstration!” Roslyn exclaimed, the words reeking of condescension. “Faith in miracles no longer enough? Need to actually see one?”
What was going on? Up until that morning, it had seemed like Roslyn was incapable of being disturbed by anything. From Samuel’s sullen service at the Hub & Spoke all the way up to time literally looping for four days in a row, she had handled everything with the same eccentric, over-the-top aplomb from start to finish. This morning I could understand, since I had broken the one thing she had asked of me in exchange for gifting me with exactly what I wanted, especially when she had clearly hand tailored it.
But this…? Roslyn whipped out her phone so quickly I thought she might fling it from her hand by mistake. She didn’t look at it; she didn’t even unlock it, like I had seen her do every other time she had used it. Eyes on Haven, her expression twisted into something hard and cold, then her grip on it shifted in some way I couldn’t pinpoint from where I was sitting.
She vanished.
Dani started flapping her hands like mad, eyes wide, and Haven shot to his feet, his freckled cheeks suddenly pale, like the inverse of the night sky. The abrupt shift sent his thankfully unopened bottle of juice falling to the floor with a clatter and rolling away before coming to an sudden stop against nothing. The bottle hoisted itself into a loping arc that terminated in a sloshy thunk on Haven’s desk perfectly timed with Roslyn’s reappearance, bottle in hand with an expression equal parts pissed and smug.
“If we can return to my lecture now, Mr. Atteberry?”
For a moment, Dani’s panicked, twitchy movements were the only ones in the room. Haven and Roslyn stood stock still. Neither moved. They barely even breathed. But eventually the moment passed, and Haven sat with agonizingly slow, excessive caution, as if he was one wrong move from Roslyn spontaneously transforming the juice bottle in her hand into a sword and beheading him. When his butt was firmly planted in the desk chair once more, Roslyn finally released the bottle and returned to the front of the room.
I released a breath I hadn’t even realized I was holding.
“As — I — was — saying,” Roslyn said, spinning back around. She shot Dani an apologetic look, the first true softening of her demeanor in minutes, but she didn’t wait for her to recover. “Thaumaturgy. Working miracles.”
She pointed at me, and I reflexively straightened, afraid I was about to be the next demonstration. “Chanel. Do you remember what I told you at the diner? ‘If you want to break reality, then you can’t be a part of it.’”
I nodded, not quite relaxing yet.
“There was a second part,” she continued. “‘If you’re not part of reality, then you have limits on how you can interact with it.’ That explanation was the one with training wheels on. Really it’s one principle, the foundation of how thaumaturgy works. Do you get it?”
I frowned, confused. One principle? The two statements were opposites, weren’t they? One was about removing yourself from reality, the other was about staying in it. How could they be one principle?
I mulled it over, but when I came up nothing after a few seconds, Roslyn explained, “It’s all about perspective. You can’t break this reality if you’re in it, but you can’t affect this reality if you’re not. Think about what I just said: This reality. If there’s a ‘this’ reality, then there are other realities too.
“Now, one more chance: What is the foundation of thaumaturgy?”
“I think—” Haven started to answer, only for Roslyn to shove her hand in his face, finger held up to demand silence.
Fortunately for everyone involved, Haven took the hint and didn’t cause another commotion, but more than that, I realized what Roslyn was trying to say and started typing up a message in the TTS app. “You play by the rules of whatever reality you’re a part of.”
Roslyn’s silencing finger swung around to me, morphing into a finger gun that she ‘shot’ with a little pew sound. Was that her jovial nature shining through a crack in the mask of ire she had donned? Or was the cheerful, eccentric side the mask, beginning to slip back into place?
“Bingo. Different realities play by different rules, so if you want to do something in this reality that doesn’t follow those rules, you need a thaumaturge with a connection to one that does, and you need something to kick start the connection through them. Enter…”
One of Roslyn’s hands ducked into her pocket and plucked out her phone while the other gestured broadly at my tablet. “An apparatus.”
“Are there other kinds?” Dani jumped in, still jittery but calmed enough to speak. “There have to be other kinds. Loads. People were doing magic—T-Thaumaturgy?—for a while, right? Symbols and rituals and magic words and all sortsa stuff?”
If Roslyn was bothered by Dani’s abrupt ramble, then she did much better keeping her cool with her than she did Haven. “Exactly. That’s part of why there’s no real consensus on terminology. When every thaumaturge works differently, it’s only natural that they’d settle on varying names for things. If I work miracles by spinning tapestries, then I’m going to sound a lot different from someone who mixes potions and poultices.”
“How does elucidation work?” my tablet said, asking the question had been eating at me all day. I needed to better understand what I was doing to people by being Chanel and how to control it.
“Unpredictably, that’s how,” Roslyn answered without hesitation. “People who haven’t Paid the Price, who are Unaware of thaumaturgy, will confabulate and explain away anything that doesn’t conform to expectations. Think of it like an auto-correct that may or may not take your preference into consideration. You can attempt to guide it, tell people your name is ‘Chanel’ and act like it always has been—” Roslyn gave me a significant look “—but you’ll still get varying interpretations. Maybe they’re like your mom and think you’ve been a masc girl your whole life. Maybe they think ‘Ervin’ was a silly nickname you got saddled with when you were young. Maybe they remember you as exactly who you were, but they imagine you recently came out as trans and transitioned.
“That’s the problem. You can fill in all the details you want, try to guide people to the interpretation you want, but you’re still taking a chance. And that problem gets worse if there’s not a reasonable explanation. If your work is something with a perfectly reasonable explanation, it’s ‘bound’ and more predictable, but if you did something that just can’t be explained, like letting your mother discover you’re a girl now—” Haven joined Roslyn in shooting me a look at that, his amber eyes wide and sharp “—well, that isn’t so easily explained, now, is it? You’re pushing that person right to the brink of becoming Aware and Paying the Price by complete accident, likely for some insignificant trick they’ll never understand.”
“You keep bringing that up,” Haven said, far quieter than his earlier interruption. He was words were directed at Roslyn, but his eyes were on me and me alone. “‘Paying the Price.’ How did you lose your ability to speak, Chanel?”
I clutched my tablet to my chest, folding in on myself. It was answer enough. My churning, agitated stomach made me very grateful I had only managed to eat a tiny bag of chips.
“What were my exact words when I gave you the code for this work, Chanel?” Roslyn said, her lecturing tone giving way to something far wearier. “I strongly recommended you only look it over until we had a chance to talk about it. It wasn’t just because of how off the rails the elucidation could get…”
No. I shot upright, spine straightening painfully as my heart lurched into a terrified sprint. No, she couldn’t mean…?
“I meant for this to be a learning exercise, maybe a tool you might adapt into something less drastic, if you really thought it was worth it and decided on an appropriate Price… But you don't even know what Price you paid for it, do you?”