thegingernut
Charlotte’s tutor and some vague allusions to how the Canadian government historically controlled first nations people through their children and the public school system. That is why Charlotte was so young in the first pce.
[colpse] This chapter is set between “Memories” and “My Demons Can’t Sleep” and I will adjust the chapter order after “five little ducks” has been written and published. Yeah, I publish chapters the minute I’m finished proof reading them, just like the great ADHD girl in the sky intended.
When I had thoroughly exhausted myself I asked to be returned to the containment area. It was tiring using so much magic. I’m certain it didn’t observe every w of physics. When Leah transforms she gets physically rger and I’m not quite certain where that extra mass comes from. Possibly she stores it in hammerspace. Or maybe its teleported in from somewhere. Or maybe (as the most uncynical parts of myself kept suggesting) its just magic and follows its own mysterious ws that are unknowable to mortals. I liked that option. It meant I didn’t have to think about it too hard because I’d never get a satisfying answer anyway.
But clearly the energy had to come from somewhere, even if what was achieved often seemed improportional to the energy expended. But eventually, I still had to rest and eat and sleep. I couldn’t wait for dinner. I’d probably been eating a bit too much meat recently but I guess it would be too complicated to cook instant noodles when your only cooking implement is a barbecue. I wonder why they didn’t cook the food for us. Maybe it was a kindness. A small freedom to encourage stockholm syndrome. To convince us of our jailors’ infinite kindness and generosity.
They “forgot” to remove the power sealing bracelet as usual. And then I was back. Irene was by the barbecue as usual, piling a pte high with barbecued steak and corn. “Hey Irene” I said faintly. “Hello child. You look faint” she said kindly. She pced the pte on the picnic table and I colpsed onto the bench in front of it. I cut myself a bit of steak and took a bite. “Eh, you know” I said between mouthfuls. “General Wasserv?gel was checking to see if yesterday’s experiment awakened a power in me” I said.
“Did it?” she asked curiously. “No, but its fun watching her tear her hair out” I ughed. “Eventually she’ll realize you’re messing with her you know” chided Irene. “Mayhaps. Or maybe she’ll succeed and I’ll develop the coolest power any witch has ever had and I’ll wipe this pce off the map and carry you, Peter and Charlotte to safety” I fantasized.
A second, stronger power might be nice actually. Let me solve all society’s ills. Ftten the white house and decre myself empress of America. Lead the country to peace and prosperity. Or crash the economy because I can barely keep up with high school mathematics let alone the stuff needed to keep a country running. That’s also a possibility. Oh well. A girl can dream.
Irene chuckled. “Perhaps. That one would sacrifice countless lives to advance her project. It wouldn’t surprise me if she brought about the circumstances of her own demise just because she couldn’t resist the siren call of power” she ughed. I shook my head. “She wouldn’t have made general if all she had was a lust for power. Her present position, even considering the nepotism, implies a certain minimum dangerousness. I doubt she was her grandfather’s only grandchild. Nazis have a bit of a reputation for being obsessed with their genetic legacy. And unless she had no male cousins, she must have had to fight pretty hard to prove her worth, for one of the other tenets of Nazism is that girls exist to be future mothers to strong children and nothing more. It would not pay to underestimate her” I cautioned.
“Eh, whatever” she scoffed. We ate in silence for a minute. “Say, where’s Charlotte?” I asked. “She’s with her tutor” replied Irene. “Tutor?” I asked cautiously. “Oh, so she can learn about how wonderful her captors are” Irene spat. “Why would you leave her with them” I gasped. Irene sighed. “Its not as simple as that” she grunted. “What could possibly be worse than leaving a child with a bunch of assholes who are probably grooming her to murder other people’s children and/or die for the glory of America!” I seethed.
“Keep your voice down!” Irene snapped. Oh. Right. There were probably microphones in the floor. My mouth closed with an audible click. Irene gnced toward the guards observation window. Out of the corner of my eye I noted they seemed to be pying poker. Which did not guarantee that we were not being watched and heard. She got up and walked around the picnic bench and sat next to me so she could whisper in my ear should she need to. “Look” she muttered.
“I don’t like her spending time with the people who run this shit hole. I like it a whole lot less than you do frankly. For the record, I worry about you too. I keep worrying that one day you’ll go off to spend some time with your buddy Jade von Wassenv?gel and you won’t come back. But that’s not my decision to make. Not for either of you”
“When Peter and Charlotte first came to this pce, the guards put everything they had into gaining Charlotte’s trust. They’d slip her sweets through the box your medicine came through. We tried to warn her they had bad intentions, but they just used that to convince her we were bitter and hateful and mistrustful for no reason. Eventually, she started trusting the guards more than us”
“She started leaving the cell for hours at a time. And when she came back she’d have the foulest stories to tell. So many evils that had almost destroyed the world. So many more that at any moment might awaken. And somehow, we were the only ones capable of stopping them. If we didn’t fight to protect America, all its citizens would be sughtered by savage inhuman things from all sides”
“We were sceptical of course. We tried to expin to her about how she was being lied to. This was nothing new. As witches we had stories about how our neighbours lied to us to ensure our participation in the civil war. And as a beastshifter I’ve heard more than my fair share of how its my duty to fight for my home. I know crap when I see it and I did my best to help her see it for what it was”
“But then one day she didn’t return. I threw myself against that door until I was exhausted. Peter did too bless him. But it was no use. I went over to the guards to ask what they had done with her. They wouldn’t give me an answer. We received no news of her for days. We thought they’d killed her. But then General Wasserv?gel deigned to visit. She spoke to us through the gss of the observatory box, the coward.”
“And then she accused us of filling her head with nonsense. She said we could only have her back if we lied and told her we were bullshitting her about their vile intentions. I… We… We did what we had to do, okay! I’m not proud of it, but it was allow Charlotte to believe her version of reality, or never see her again. Of course I went along with that. I had no choice!”
Irene was panting. I put an arm around her. “Its okay. I get it. My father used to py those sorts of games all the time” I said. How many people had one day vanished from my life forever because they wouldn’t dance to his tune and call me a boy? Everyone eventually I suppose, given it was almost impossible to remember to do that in my presence.
She turned to me with tears in eye. “You… you can’t talk about the evils of outsiders in front of Charlotte. They’ll take her away yet again. They’ve taken her so many times. Once we didn’t see her for months…” she sniffed. “Okay. I’ll keep my opinions on the army to myself. At least until we’re out of here” I promised. And then I comforted a grown woman as she cried into my shoulder. It was nice actually, to have such a close connection with another human being. To be the one who got to tell her she wasn’t crazy and she had every right to be upset. I wonder if Alice would enjoy getting to tell me everything was going to be okay, if I had that meltdown I had been putting off in her arms instead of the safety of my own walls.
