18. The Rook Checks
"Not a word!," Adelaide whispered furiously, "and use Occlumency right now!"
Her companions reached for amulets and pieces of jewelry on their person, and whispered a few nonsensical words. Meanwhile, Benoni's smile just widened.
"Giovanni, come here at once! Quickly, now!," Adelaide barked loud enough for Johannsen to jump a little. The Furies suddenly adopted a very scary and aggressive stance. Wozniak once again was frowning, looking rather menacing.
Giovanni took a few tentative steps towards them, but Benoni simply put his arm out and blocked him as he was passing. To Giovanni, the arm across his chest felt like a steel rod.
"Whatssa matta? Scared of li'l ol' me? Look, you can use your asinine British cousin's tricks, but I don't need to read your thoughts to know what you're thinking. I can smell the fear and the confusion and the anger coming off you in waves! In case you didn't know, humans' bodies are quite the miasma of chemicals. Your body signals what it tells your brain to think, not the other way around, see? Johannsen, there, he's discovered something that he's shown you, and you all are preparing for violence. I shall assume that you saw me upturning Giovanni's belongings. I make no denials. What would be the use? Hmm, some new technological toy, Johannsen? Well done!" Benoni didn't seem too worried to have most of The School staff set to attack him, and his sincere tone seemed to highlight the mockery dancing in his eyes.
"We don't care what you were looking for, but we saw you using some sort of dark Magick that allows you to move faster by far than anything in this natural world! This cannot be allowed in our School! You cannot be allowed! And…," Tabitha said heatedly; she couldn't help herself. Adelaide just gave her a look, and Tabitha closed her mouth.
"Ah, dear Tabitha, always obedient, even when you disagree! Maybe you should have raised your voice all those years ago, when you also disagreed with your fellow Furies, and then maybe Margaux Wingrove would have been spared…" A look of pain and grief crossed all three elderly faces. Benoni smiled even wider. "But none of that matters anymore, look: things are not as they seem. I was not using any magic of any sort. I was only using one of my natural abilities, is all."
The moment that Benoni said, "… things are not as they seem," Giovanni remembered the question put to him by Benoni: what would be the world's true appearance, if there were no Magick?
Thinking back also to that moment when he sensed the malice pouring out of Garret Feldman and the Thompson Twins in the form of a hex, he realized that they had indeed cast Magick against Circe, and he had denied it any reality. His will alone was enough to counteract the hex. In a world without Magick, Circe was not affected by the ill intentions of spoiled children. With these thoughts swirling in his mind, as Benoni finished speaking, he thought very loudly and very clearly one single word: "No."
Just as before, when he was little and he would form a wordless denial in his heart whenever there was a situation which did not suit him, strange things started happening. He remembered having been eleven years old. He remembered being ridiculed by the girls in the cheerleader squad of his middle school, because he was short and skinny and liked one of the girls in the squad, and asked her out on a date. So, during the final football game of the season, the cheerleader squad was going to unveil a drill that they had practiced all season long. It was a very difficult and complex maneuver where two girls would be launched high to do a split in mid-air, while another would be hoisted up to stand on a one-legged pose. As they set up for the climax of the move, Giovanni walked up to them, stood a few feet away, fists on hips, and very clearly and loudly said, "You. Will. Fail!!"
Even now, several years later, nobody knows what happened exactly, but one of the cheerleaders stumbled, another felt suddenly weak, another slipped on the grass, another's shoelaces broke, and small things like that caused, in an instant, the squad formation to be reduced to a pile of pre-teenage girls with broken arms and legs sticking out in weird angles. The coaches, the parents, the crowd, they all blamed Giovanni. Hell, he even blamed himself. He must have startled them. He must have pushed them. He must have done something to them. There were threats of legal action and threats of bodily harm. And, in the end, although there was no proof, everyone blamed Giovanni for the freak accident. The principal expelled him, and one of the parents, chairman of the PTA and of the local Chamber of Commerce, managed to have the Independent School District ban Giovanni from their public schools, for life.
It was true that Giovanni caused it all to happen, but he did it by denying the reality of their deeds.
This time, standing slightly behind Benoni in this sort of Mexican stand-off with the Furies, he said, "No!," and immediately noticed that the endless hallways of the lodge seemed to be shrinking into regular-sized hallways. The wood-panelling suddenly seemed aged and tacky, and the lights flickered on and off along the entire lodge. The teachers also noticed these changes and looked around in blinking consternation. Then they looked at each other and the Furies gasped and Johannsen yelped in surprise. Next to him, a large and tall woman stood in Wozniak's clothes, still glowering at Benoni.
But the most amazing change had come over Benoni. His appearance didn't change much, but the quality of his features was completely different. There was an unnatural smoothness and sheen to his skin, as if it were made of skin-colored stainless steel, and all his facial features seemed sharpened, with rough edges. It was as if someone had carved a piece of marble into an approximation of a human shape. He was clearly not alive. Clearly, he was not even human.
Benoni looked around, looked over at Wozniak, looked at his own body, and laughed for two minutes straight.
"Not a word!," Adelaide whispered furiously, "and use Occlumency right now!"
Her companions reached for amulets and pieces of jewelry on their person, and whispered a few nonsensical words. Meanwhile, Benoni's smile just widened.
"Giovanni, come here at once! Quickly, now!," Adelaide barked loud enough for Johannsen to jump a little. The Furies suddenly adopted a very scary and aggressive stance. Wozniak once again was frowning, looking rather menacing.
Giovanni took a few tentative steps towards them, but Benoni simply put his arm out and blocked him as he was passing. To Giovanni, the arm across his chest felt like a steel rod.
"Whatssa matta? Scared of li'l ol' me? Look, you can use your asinine British cousin's tricks, but I don't need to read your thoughts to know what you're thinking. I can smell the fear and the confusion and the anger coming off you in waves! In case you didn't know, humans' bodies are quite the miasma of chemicals. Your body signals what it tells your brain to think, not the other way around, see? Johannsen, there, he's discovered something that he's shown you, and you all are preparing for violence. I shall assume that you saw me upturning Giovanni's belongings. I make no denials. What would be the use? Hmm, some new technological toy, Johannsen? Well done!" Benoni didn't seem too worried to have most of The School staff set to attack him, and his sincere tone seemed to highlight the mockery dancing in his eyes.
"We don't care what you were looking for, but we saw you using some sort of dark Magick that allows you to move faster by far than anything in this natural world! This cannot be allowed in our School! You cannot be allowed! And…," Tabitha said heatedly; she couldn't help herself. Adelaide just gave her a look, and Tabitha closed her mouth.
"Ah, dear Tabitha, always obedient, even when you disagree! Maybe you should have raised your voice all those years ago, when you also disagreed with your fellow Furies, and then maybe Margaux Wingrove would have been spared…" A look of pain and grief crossed all three elderly faces. Benoni smiled even wider. "But none of that matters anymore, look: things are not as they seem. I was not using any magic of any sort. I was only using one of my natural abilities, is all."
The moment that Benoni said, "… things are not as they seem," Giovanni remembered the question put to him by Benoni: what would be the world's true appearance, if there were no Magick?
Thinking back also to that moment when he sensed the malice pouring out of Garret Feldman and the Thompson Twins in the form of a hex, he realized that they had indeed cast Magick against Circe, and he had denied it any reality. His will alone was enough to counteract the hex. In a world without Magick, Circe was not affected by the ill intentions of spoiled children. With these thoughts swirling in his mind, as Benoni finished speaking, he thought very loudly and very clearly one single word: "No."
Just as before, when he was little and he would form a wordless denial in his heart whenever there was a situation which did not suit him, strange things started happening. He remembered having been eleven years old. He remembered being ridiculed by the girls in the cheerleader squad of his middle school, because he was short and skinny and liked one of the girls in the squad, and asked her out on a date. So, during the final football game of the season, the cheerleader squad was going to unveil a drill that they had practiced all season long. It was a very difficult and complex maneuver where two girls would be launched high to do a split in mid-air, while another would be hoisted up to stand on a one-legged pose. As they set up for the climax of the move, Giovanni walked up to them, stood a few feet away, fists on hips, and very clearly and loudly said, "You. Will. Fail!!"
Even now, several years later, nobody knows what happened exactly, but one of the cheerleaders stumbled, another felt suddenly weak, another slipped on the grass, another's shoelaces broke, and small things like that caused, in an instant, the squad formation to be reduced to a pile of pre-teenage girls with broken arms and legs sticking out in weird angles. The coaches, the parents, the crowd, they all blamed Giovanni. Hell, he even blamed himself. He must have startled them. He must have pushed them. He must have done something to them. There were threats of legal action and threats of bodily harm. And, in the end, although there was no proof, everyone blamed Giovanni for the freak accident. The principal expelled him, and one of the parents, chairman of the PTA and of the local Chamber of Commerce, managed to have the Independent School District ban Giovanni from their public schools, for life.
It was true that Giovanni caused it all to happen, but he did it by denying the reality of their deeds.
This time, standing slightly behind Benoni in this sort of Mexican stand-off with the Furies, he said, "No!," and immediately noticed that the endless hallways of the lodge seemed to be shrinking into regular-sized hallways. The wood-panelling suddenly seemed aged and tacky, and the lights flickered on and off along the entire lodge. The teachers also noticed these changes and looked around in blinking consternation. Then they looked at each other and the Furies gasped and Johannsen yelped in surprise. Next to him, a large and tall woman stood in Wozniak's clothes, still glowering at Benoni.
But the most amazing change had come over Benoni. His appearance didn't change much, but the quality of his features was completely different. There was an unnatural smoothness and sheen to his skin, as if it were made of skin-colored stainless steel, and all his facial features seemed sharpened, with rough edges. It was as if someone had carved a piece of marble into an approximation of a human shape. He was clearly not alive. Clearly, he was not even human.
Benoni looked around, looked over at Wozniak, looked at his own body, and laughed for two minutes straight.
To Be Continued…
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