I awoke to the sound of a dozen hammers pounding sand right beside my head. I stifled a groan as I realized that, no, those hammers were actually in my head, and they pulsed to the rhythm of my heartbeat. My skin burned and tingled; my chest and face throbbed like a sore tooth; my entire body ached like I’d tumbled down one of the slopes of the High Reaches. I was alive, though, which was certainly better than the alternative.
“Absolutely, John.” I jumped slightly at the sound of Sara’s voice, but she ignored it. “You were severely injured by the undottyar’s last attack. Second-degree burns over much of your arms, face, and legs. You fractured your jaw, cheekbone, sternum, six ribs, and left arm in three places. You also had some internal bleeding.”
“Damn. I take it Aeld healed me up, then?”
“Someone did. They didn’t speak, so I don’t know who it was. They only healed you enough to take you out of danger, though. I patched you up as much as I could while you slept.”
“Thanks.”
“Of course. Before you do anything else, I suggest checking your notifications. You’re getting close to the twenty-four-hour time limit on XP.”
I pulled up the waiting notifications and read them quickly. Apparently, I’d been out for almost a day already!
Spell Created: Seeking Strike
Power Required: 19
You channel the power of the spirits to guide your next attack, reducing an enemy’s ability to dodge.
You have 6,793 XP that needs to be assigned.
This XP can be assigned to the following Professions:
Inquisitor, Spearman, Undkrager, Warrior
If this XP is not assigned within 24 hours, it will be randomly assigned.
“That much?” I thought in amazement. “Sara, how did I get so much XP just from that bull?”
“It wasn’t the beast, John. It was the elder spirit inside it. You wounded it badly, badly enough that it lost control of the creature and was forced out. I managed to reclaim most of the energy from the bond breaking and put it toward your XP.”
I considered putting the XP toward undkrager—that would certainly level it up at least once, and I could use the extra stat points—but instead, I pushed them all into inquisitor. The fact was, that was my most powerful profession, and I needed to try and level it every chance I got. It still needed 50,000 XP for the next level, which I suppose meant I needed to go find another eight or so elder spirits tied to the imbalance to push it up—which wasn’t very likely.
As I looked over my status, I realized that I had a shit-ton of skill points sitting around, unused. I’d been saving them in case I needed them, but between the rapid leveling I’d went through in Puraschim and the levels I’d gained in this world, I had 148 of the damn things stocked up. I could literally use them to make myself a master of just about anything I wanted.
“Actually, John, that’s not necessarily so,” Sara corrected with a regretful tone. “First, I don’t recommend using Skill Points to jump more than a single rank at once. Bringing you up a rank involves not only planting information in your brain but also altering your nervous system. For one rank, those changes are fairly minor, but for more than one, it could have some unpredictable physical effects, such as pain or a temporary lack of balance or coordination.”
“Okay, so no jumping from neophyte to savant,” I sighed. “If that’s first, what’s second?”
“Second, I can make you a savant in any skill without issue, but mastery is a different matter.”
“What do you mean?” I asked, honestly a bit confused. “What’s the difference?”
“The difference is that I don’t know what makes a master in every skill,” she explained. “With some common, universal skills, I have that knowledge, but for most, I’m learning how these skills improve by observing how you use them. I can extrapolate most things into the savant ranks easily enough, because a savant is just an adept who can perform the skill more intuitively and consistently. To make you a savant in, say, Unarmed Combat, I can improve your reflexes, more deeply embed the movements into your muscle memory, and strengthen the neural connections that let you respond intuitively. I don’t need to know more about your specific combat style.
“Mastery, though, is a different thing. A master understands a skill in a new and different way than a savant, a way that’s at least somewhat unique to them. Endurance is a good example: to you, it means enduring pain, injury, and disability, and fighting through that even when your body wants to shut down. That’s something that you believe fundamentally; as far as you’re concerned, things like being able to keep running longer are side benefits to the real point of Endurance. Because you understand that, so do I, and I was able to grant you mastery of that skill and an ability to match your belief of what it means.”
“So, if I want to be a master of Unarmed Combat, I have to—what? Create my own fighting style?”
“That might help, but what you really have to do is use it until you develop a deep belief in what it is and means for you uniquely. So far, you’ve mostly used Unarmed Combat as just another way of fighting, something that you have to do when necessary. You’re skilled at it, but it’s just another tool, like your spear.”
“Any suggestions on how I’m supposed to do that?” I asked a little sarcastically.
“Honestly? Use it. Use it whenever you can, and think about it when you do. You appreciate the Endurance skill enough that you consider it when you’re injured or tired; you kind of take fighting for granted. The more you consider how you fight, why you fight that way, and why you don’t, the more I’ll understand it, and the more I can help push you into mastery.”
That—actually made sense, I supposed. Martial arts was just a tool for me, a way for me to deal with threats in close. I knew people for whom it was their entire life; they made the philosophies of their martial art part of their outlook on the world and their behavior, and honestly, that never made any sense to me. I learned martial arts to know how to fight more effectively, nothing more. It wasn’t a way of life or an outlook, and it probably wouldn’t ever be. However, I could take Sara’s advice and think about it a little more, actually consider what the point of martial arts was for me and why I used it the way I did. Not immediately or anything, but I’d have to make an effort at it.
Sara’s admonitions put some hard limits on what I could do with my Skill Points, but I still wanted to spend some. “Okay, Sara, how much will it cost to bump each of my currently useful skills up a rank?”
“It depends on what you mean by ‘currently useful’, obviously,” she laughed. “However, judging from your intent, I could push Unarmed Focus, Spear Focus, and Tracking to Savant 1 for 18 Skill Points, plus advance Ritualism and Meditation to Initiate 1 for 5 more.” She hesitated. “All those changes at once aren’t going to be comfortable, though.”
“Can you spread it out a bit so that it is? Maybe bump one skill up an hour or something until they’re all ranked up?”
“Absolutely, although it might be better to take a full day to do it all. Some of your skills have to be advanced a lot further than others to rank up. If I spread it out over a day, I don’t think you’ll even notice it.”
“Let’s do that, then,” I decided. “I hurt enough right now that I don’t want to make it any worse.”
“Sorry, John. I’m doing what I can to accelerate your healing, but I can only push it so quickly without tapping your XP.”
“I’m not complaining, Sara. Back on Earth, the kind of injuries you’re talking about would have had me bedridden for months. I’m perfectly fine waiting for a couple days to finish healing instead.”
I closed my status and took stock of myself. My body was battered, but it sounded like Sara had that under control, so I turned my focus to my surroundings. I lay on something soft and yielding, honestly a little too soft for me to be comfortable. I’d spent every night in this world so far sleeping on a fur draped over something hard, whether ice, snow, or stone, and it seemed like my body had gotten used to the discomfort. The air around me was cool and dry, cooler than the Haelendi at noon but warmer than the middle of the night, with a faint, musty smell of wet stone that convinced me I was probably underground somewhere. Faint noises that I couldn’t quite decipher tickled my ears, soft sounds that even my enhanced senses couldn’t quite tease out. I didn’t have a sense of anyone or anything nearby, though, so I slowly opened my eyes…
And went from darkness to darkness. I sat up slowly, wincing as the pounding in my head intensified briefly before fading. Wherever I was, it was dark, dark enough that I couldn’t make out anything around me. I had a feeling that I was in a smaller space, just from the sound of the room. I reached to the side and realized I was on something like a bed, elevated off the floor by a foot or so. I swung my feet over and rested them on cold stone, which reinforced my idea that I was underground somewhere.
“You are, John.” Sara suddenly appeared before me, and I was grateful for her presence, even though I knew it wasn’t real. The unrelenting darkness and small space brought back unpleasant memories of an Afghan POW camp, where they used utter blackness and solitude to try and break the prisoners. Part of me wondered if Bregg had convinced the nearby valskab to capture and imprison me while I was out. I didn’t think Aeld would go for that, but I didn’t really know if the shaman was even alive, much less if he was in any shape to defend me.
“Any idea where we are, exactly, Sara?” I asked with a rising feeling of trepidation.
“Approximately ten of your Earth meters underground, judging from the change in air pressure. I’m also fairly certain that you’re in the valskab, as well. Beyond that, I don’t know. I can’t see the world around you when your eyes are closed, at least not in a way that I can use to judge landmarks.”
“Why do you think I’m in the valskab?” I rose slowly to my feet, reaching out with my hands to feel around me. I felt nothing but air, which at least meant that this room was larger than the fucking pit the Afghans had tossed me into.
“Try looking around with See Spirits, John,” she suggested. “It’ll explain—and it might help with your discomfort.”
I activated the ability and blinked as the world around me suddenly lit up. Waves of dull gray shifted and flowed beneath, above, and around me. A white mist drifted through the air above me, moving slowly in a figure-eight pattern that it repeated endlessly. A pale pink arch glowed to my left, one taller and wider than I was and that reminded me of a door. As far as I could tell, I was in a stone or dirt room about fifteen feet across with air circulating above me and some sort of door blocking my exit, which was more or less what I’d assumed already.
“Look closer, John. Here, let me show you.”
As I stared at the door, trying to decide if I should go try to open it or not, the edges of it suddenly brightened, drawing my focus to them. I looked more closely and realized that the outside of the door—or its spirit, I supposed—glowed with an odd coppery sheen, almost like an outline of the spirit. The glow flowed into the stone spirits around the door, tracing them, as well, and I followed the metallic radiance around the room. I quickly realized that every spirit in this room was linked by that coppery luster. It was faint, hidden well by the glow of the spirits unless I was looking for it specifically, but it was there.
“You think that glow means we’re in a valskab?” I asked Sara.
“The glow is a spirit linkage, John. Spiritual energy links and binds all of these spirits together, somehow. If I assume that linkage spreads throughout the entire valskab and binds every spirit here into a whole…” She shrugged. “Well, it certainly explains how Aeld is so powerful, doesn’t it?”
“Because he can draw on every spirit in the linkage for power,” I thought grimly, recalling how he’d suddenly blazed with energy when we’d sparred in the spirit world. “He basically has endless energy to draw on.”
“Not endless, obviously. It has to have limits.” She looked around thoughtfully. “In fact, if I assume that all the spiritual energy in the area is tied to the valskab and is of relatively uniform density, judging from the size of the valskab as we saw above, I’d estimate that the entire valskab has about 3,500 units of spiritual power to play with.”
“That’s still a lot, Sara.”
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“Not when you consider that you, alone, have around 400 units of power to draw on, it’s not. And you’re really just a fledgling letharvis, with a few spirits. You could easily reach half of the valskab’s power level all by yourself if you went around calling and melding powerful spirits for a year or so, and you wouldn’t have to share that with an entire valskab.”
“Which explains why Aeld is so excited to learn about melding,” I realized. “If the people of this valskab could meld all these spirits instead of binding them, they’d have a lot more power, wouldn’t they?”
“About three times it, I’d guess,” she agreed. “That could vary; I’m not 100% sure how much energy they can take from any bound spirit, but it seems to be around a third of its maximum judging from how much Aeld’s spirits had left when he said they were exhausted.”
“A lot of the ojaini would agree,” Kadonsel added softly. “Some of my colleagues dislike the necessity of trapping the ancients in orbs. They say it goes against the natural order of things. If we could bind a spirit’s energy into an orb but let the spirit itself remain free, they’d be a lot happier.”
“That kind of sounds like what the Menskallin say about what you do,” I noted. “That it’s unnatural, I mean.”
“That follows, since the ojaini who say that are usually members of the Luonni,” she sighed. “That’s a faction that holds that the Redeemed Elders aren’t just honored, they’re sacred. Since most Redeemed Elders dislike the practice of Henguki, the Luonni say that we should look at ways to change our practices to something more palatable for the Elders.”
“I take it you weren’t one of those, then?” I chuckled.
“No. I honor the Elders, of course, but I’ve spoken to enough of them to know that they’re no wiser or more insightful than we are. Most of them are descended from those who fled the Uprising and its destruction centuries ago, so they don’t have any insights to offer since they only know our way of life.”
“The Uprising? What’s that?”
“The bloodiest day ever of the war,” she said grimly. “When the savages gave away their souls to make the land itself rise up against us. Hundreds of thousands of us died that day, a tenth of our entire population.”
“How?” I asked curiously.
“I have no idea. No one among my people does because none of us who were there to witness it survived. All we know is that a great battle was being fought when the ground began to shake. The quakes were strong enough to topple buildings all over Almella, and the ground cracked open to form the lakes of Sura and the Storfyot River. Hills sank and sucked entire villages with them. The ocean swept in and drowned the city of Vittak, killing almost everyone within and leaving the Bay of Vittak, west of the Storfyot. And every Okithikiim on the battlefield that day vanished: every soldier, laborer, follower, and ojain. Fifty thousand people simply disappeared, and no one knows what happened to them.”
As she spoke, her voice grew angrier. “And that wasn’t the end of it. The changes to the world were just starting. The Storfyot’s appearance drained the water away from what had once been a fertile plain, leaving most of it dry and parched. Cities were abandoned as their inhabitants followed the water, but it turned out not to matter. Earthquakes rocked the region; steam fissures and lava vents began to appear, and over the next century, the Pitka Mountains rose from the ground, splitting Almella in half. The earthquakes and volcanoes that set off killed even more and set dry fields ablaze, which meant a century of famine and plague.
“In the end, millions of lives were lost from the Uprising,” she said coldly. “Some of the clans demanded retribution and sent their armies against the savages, but they retreated from our wrath to their Haelendi, and when our armies marched on them, they turned the spirits against us and slaughtered us.
“That convinced other clans that the war was pointless, and that fighting it went against the will of the spirits. About a third of the clans renounced the war, the doctrine of the Great Spirits, and the conflict of the world. They went west and formed the nation of Mellung, declaring themselves no longer part of Almella, stripping us of even more people needed to rebuild. It was another century before we began to recover, and even now, we haven’t returned to our former numbers.”
“That sounds like the result of a Grand Ritual, John,” Sara said gravely. “I have a feeling that the Menskallin performed one to defeat the Oikithikiim, and all of that destruction was the result.”
I didn’t reply, but I was thinking something similar. I wondered what had really happened; Kadonsel’s story was entertaining, but it made it sound like the Menskies had just decided to shake the shit out of the ground to kill as many Oikies as possible. That might have been true, but I assumed whatever hurt the Oikies probably did the same to the Menskies. I doubted they’d be willing to sacrifice their own like that without a dire reason—like keeping themselves from extermination. There was probably another side to this story; if Aeld was still alive, I’d have to do my best to drag it out of him.
It seemed to me that if one Grand Ritual had caused that much destruction, another could do the same or worse. If the Menskies could create a ritual that ripped open the ground and killed a hundred thousand people, the Oikies could do the same thing. If they could turn the spirits against the Menskies somehow, they could probably wipe most of them out in a single day and win the whole, damn war. I needed to know how the Menskies had done what they did in the first place, so I knew if there was any chance of the Oikies repeating it—and if they did, how it could be stopped.
“I’m not sure about that, John,” Sara said slowly. “The thing is…”
She fell silent as a flash of color caught my eye, and I glanced up to see a pale lavender shape slip through the pink door, surrounded by the familiar coppery sheen. It raced around me once, then vanished back through the door. I took a step toward it, but before I could, a new shape appeared behind the door. This figure was the deep brown of chocolate, speckled with gray and white dots. A menagerie of colored shapes swirled and danced around it, and I paused as I recognized the spirit of a letharvis—one that wasn’t Aeld.
The pink spirit of the door suddenly shifted, splitting in the center and sliding sideways like a parted curtain. I blinked as light rushed into the room and struck my face—real light, not the imaginary images of my ability. I lifted a hand to shade my eyes as a ball of light suddenly appeared above me, floating in the air and illuminating the room fully enough for me to get a decent glimpse of it.
The room was simple and plain. The walls, floor, and ceiling were bare stone polished smooth. It was roughly square, and the only features in it were a pair of low beds that looked like straw mattresses with rough furs covering them. The door was made of the same long, curling moss that covered the entrance to the valskab I’d seen before the bull attack, and it spread wide, allowing dim light from what looked like a corridor to shine inside. A figure stood in the doorway, looking around the room for a moment before stepping inside and letting the curtain shut behind them. As they entered, I turned off See Spirits so I could get a better look at them.
The newcomer was short, a few inches shorter than me and much narrower and slimmer. They had thinner fur that gleamed golden in the light from overhead, and large, dark eyes. They wore a dress or robe of some sort made of soft leather and decorated with stylized glyphs and sigils that I had a feeling were more for show than actual arcane symbols. She was also quite evidently female judging from the curve of her hips, and the swelling in the front of her chest. She moved with a sinuous grace, and as she approached, I felt a faint stirring down below, one that startled the hell out of me.
“What the fuck?” I thought silently as I stared at the fur-covered, utterly inhuman woman. Nothing about her really appealed to me mentally, mostly because of the fur all over her body. For some reason, though, my body reacted to her, and I had to work to ignore that reaction.
“It’s pheromonal, John,” Sara explained with a light laugh. “She’s giving off a scent that’s causing that reaction in your body. It’s nothing more than your biology reacting to hers.”
“My biology is messing with my head, then,” I snorted. “Any way you can shut that down?”
“Sorry, John, no. It seems to be a pretty fundamental part of Menskallin biochemistry. You’ll have to get used to it, I’m afraid.”
The woman stepped into the room and looked me up and down. I decided to return the favor, but rather than eyeballing her, I had Sara run a quick analysis.
Unknown Letharvis
Estimated Level: 8
Estimated Physical Stats
Prowess: 23 Vigor: 26
Celerity: 24 Skill: 31
Spiritual Power: 213
“So, you’re the rogue loralvis,” she finally spoke, her voice higher and more melodious than I’d expected after listening to Bregg and Aeld for so long. “The one who appeared out of nowhere in the High Reaches. Who a letharvis says is the most gifted potential he’s ever seen, but who a much more experienced hunter claims is a disaster waiting to happen. And the one who single-handedly killed an Elder undottyar and kept it from destroying a large chunk of the valskab. That’s you?”
I gazed at her calmly for a moment, meeting her eyes. Seeing them intensified the reaction my body was having, but I forced myself to deal with it. I couldn’t go around half-aroused every time I spoke to a woman, after all.
“I suppose,” I finally said as nonchalantly as I could manage.
“Too bad,” she said. “I’m definitely not impressed.”
I stared at the woman for a moment, unsure of how to respond. Her face had an impish grin on it, but her body language was at odds with that. I took a moment to examine her more closely; I’d been startled by my body’s response a few seconds ago, but I pushed that aside. It wasn’t hard to do; I’d had plenty of practice at ignoring female assets over the years, even ones that were deliberately on display. After all, if you’re too busy looking at a woman’s tits, you aren’t going to see the knife she’s about to stick in your back—or her partner aiming a gun at the back of your head.
A quick look over her gave me a few quick impressions. She seemed young to me, although I hadn’t really seen any older Menskies to compare. I’d gotten a similar feeling from Aeld, but if anything, she felt even younger. While she looked confident, the way she stood suggested that her assurance might be a pose. Her fingers tapped her thighs; her feet shifted about; her jaw was slightly clenched. A malicious sort of smile spread across her face, but her eyes seemed uneasy, maybe even fearful. This was a woman on edge, and she was trying to cover it up with playfulness and bravado.
I took a deep breath and forced myself to relax. I’d instinctively tensed up, ready to snap back at her. Waking up in a strange place in the dark had rattled me, and the weird reaction I had to her hadn’t helped. Snarking at this woman wasn’t going to help anything, though.
“You mentioned Aeld,” I said conversationally, choosing to ignore her taunt. “I take it that means he’s okay?”
She eyed me for a second, her gaze slightly suspicious. “Yes, he’s fine. I notice that you didn’t mention your hunter companion, though.”
“No, I didn’t,” I agreed. “Is there a reason that you’re here and he’s not?”
“You weren’t the only one injured,” she said, her grin crisping into a faint frown and her body growing even tenser.
“But I’m sure you healed him—or he healed himself. Is he busy?” I hesitated. “Or is this an interrogation? You’re here to make sure that Bregg’s not right about me.” I grinned at her. “And you don’t like that you have to do it, do you?”
She glared at me for a moment, then made a sour face. “You’re perceptive,” she said grouchily. “Too perceptive. Yes, I have to ask you some questions. Answer them honestly, and I’m sure everything will be fine.”
“Why?” I asked curiously.
“Why what?” Her face looked confused for a moment. “Why do I have to ask you questions?”
“No, why should I bother answering?” I gave her another quick smile. “After all, I don’t care if I impress you or not—or anyone, really. If I just decided not to answer and that I wanted to leave, would you stop me?”
“No,” she said with a frown. “Your path is your own. It’s not the valskab’s place to stand in the way.”
“So, why should I answer your questions—especially when they’re not yours, and someone else in the valskab is feeding them to you, hoping that I’ll be swayed into answering by the fact that you’re young and female?”
Her eyes widened for a moment in amazement, but she recovered quickly—admirably so, really, considering that I was deliberately trying to push her off-balance.
“You should answer because you want to travel to Aldhyor,” she said shortly. “A place no one who isn’t of a valskab has ever been. The rashi won’t allow it—and Aeld won’t be able to convince them otherwise.”
I almost asked why, then frowned as certain pieces started clicking in my head. “Aeld isn’t very popular with the rashi, then, I take it? Is that why he was sent up to the High Reaches on such a dangerous mission?”
“I wouldn’t know about that, but I do know that he has new ideas, and new ways aren’t very popular with the elders.” Her voice was faintly bitter as she spoke.
“Like what?”
“It’s not my place to talk about it,” she said shortly. “The point is, if you want to be able to travel there, you need to convince other letharvisa that you’re not what Bregg says: a danger to the people. You can start with me.”
I stared at her for a moment, then chuckled and sat back down on the bed. “Not bad,” I said conversationally.
“What?” she asked irritably. “What are you talking about?”
“That little spiel you just gave me. Not bad.” I closed my eyes, ignoring the irritation I could practically feel rolling off her as I lay back down. “Unfortunately, there’s a problem, and that’s that you already told me that I saved a bunch of your people by killing that undottyar. As I understand it, that means you owe me a debt already—and now, you’re asking to get deeper in debt.”
“Deeper?” she echoed.
“Yes. You see, I can see how this is going to go. You’ll ask a bunch of questions, but they’ll all lead up to the important one. Can I do what Aeld says I can do?” I laughed again. “I can, but when I tell you that, you’ll ask for proof—I assume that you’re hoping that if you see me do it, you’ll be able to copy it, despite the fact that Aeld no doubt told you otherwise.”
I opened my eyes and gave her a hard gaze. “And if I did that, I’d be giving you something pretty significant, don’t you think? Something that would put you even more deeply into debt with me—and you already need to pay me back for what I’ve done for you.”
“We healed you,” she said a little angrily. “Gave you a place to shelter while you recovered…”
“You healed me just enough to not die,” I countered with a touch of heat in my voice as well. “I’m still hurting—and I got those wounds by killing the undottyar that would have ravaged your valskab, so that’s not repayment, that’s just simple courtesy.”
I sat up and stretched. “No, here’s what’s going to happen. First, you’re going to let the three of us—Bregg, Aeld, and me—stay here until we’re acclimated to the Haelendi and can travel freely. Then, you’re going to arrange for passage for us so that we don’t have to walk to the Aldhyor. Finally, you’re going to tell the rashi what I did here. You don’t have to convince them of anything; just tell them the truth about what you saw happen, nothing more. Do that, and I’ll consider us even for me saving you all.
“As far as how I bind spirits is concerned,” I added, “I’ve been trying to show Aeld in return for his instruction in becoming a letharvisa. I’d be willing to show you as well…” I paused. “In return for a different kind of instruction.”
The woman’s eyes narrowed, and she took a step back. “What you suggest is inappropriate and vulgar,” she snapped. “I…”
“I said that badly,” I interrupted, rubbing my eyes. “Sorry. I meant, I never learned much about our people’s history. I’d like to learn more, so I can understand what’s happening around me. What is the rashi? What’s this Great Bargain that Aeld once mentioned? Agree to teach me that, and I’ll happily demonstrate what I can do for you.”
She made a face and opened her mouth as if to speak, but she paused, and her expression grew distant. I guessed that she was listening to someone else in the valskab, and when she grimaced, I figured that whatever they told her, she didn’t like it very much.
“Very well,” she said with a sigh. “We have a bargain. Instruction in the history of our people in return for your knowledge of how to draw the energy from a spirit.” I felt another surge of energy wash over me like the one that had when Aeld and I made our bargain. “I’m Fifa, by the way. Is Freyd how you prefer to be called?”
“It seems to work well enough, yes.”
“Good. Are you hungry?”
As she said the words, I felt my stomach growling. “Apparently.”
“Then come with me. I’ll show you where you can eat, bathe, and take care of other necessities.” She made a face. “Apparently, I’m to be your guide while you’re here.”
“Don’t you have other duties to tend to?” I asked.
“Yes, Freyd, I do. But I won’t be doing them for the next few days. I’m stuck with you.”
I gave her a sideways glance. “You mean…?”
“Yes. I’ll be your teacher.” She sighed. “And I hope you’re an excellent student because I’m a truly awful teacher.”