Lightning thrashes the grounds of the Lethal Magnet School for Wayward Youth. A wise child would not stay out in it, but would retreat to bed \u2014 or better, to a cave \u2014 to wait it out instead.<\/p>\n
Bethany isn\u2019t a wise child. Nor yet are the enemies who come.<\/p>\n
She tosses Tom\u2019s hat back to him. He snatches it. He retreats.<\/p>\n
\u201cRed,\u201d Bethany whispers. \u201cI must wear red.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lucy and Edmund circle around her. The other two have fallen a bit behind.<\/p>\n
Bethany is distracted by a flash of lightning. In that moment, when her eyes are drinking in the nithrid\u2019s radiance, Lucy seethes at her as an evil mist of aerated prophet. There is no time to dodge, at least not properly; nor could she dodge, not with such dazzled eyes as these.<\/p>\n
Bethany vanishes, instead, in a swirl of red; it is like a fountain of rose petals and carmine smoke bursting upwards from the ground where she had been.<\/p>\n
Lucy condenses; Lucy, who has wickedly counted out three counts while dissipated into prophet foam with neither visible hands nor arms to count with, throws paper.<\/p>\n
Bethany is not there.<\/p>\n
Bethany has gone to ninja-space, and beyond <\/i>ninja-space, to Hans\u2019 wardrobe deep under the surfaces of things.<\/p>\n
She falls back into the mortal world clutching a hat that has no equal in all the world.<\/p>\n
It is that hat which reminds us: if we do our best, if we are good and strong and determined, then everything will end OK. No matter what. We are enough. It\u2019ll end OK.<\/i><\/p>\n
It is a miracle hat. It is a hope hat.<\/p>\n
But more importantly, it is red.<\/i><\/p>\n
She puts it on.<\/p>\n
\u201cNow then,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
Edmund moves at her, but she is gentle with him. She pushes him lightly to the side; he goes past her, stumbling. Lucy has stopped moving; Bethany is confusing her prophesying, and hence her very sense of reality, with careful thoughts.<\/p>\n
She grins at them.<\/p>\n
\u201cI am one thing,\u201d she says. \u201cNow, where I was many things before. Do you really think you can kill me?\u201d<\/p>\n
She turns. She disdains them. She disrespects them. She walks, with her back to them, towards her dorm \u2014 only, an evil feeling strikes!<\/p>\n
She dodges. She tries to dodge. She fails. Edmund hammers her into the ground.<\/p>\n
\u201cI am not,\u201d <\/i>he says, \u201cthat easy, you filthy splot.\u201d<\/p>\n
He\u2019s right. He isn\u2019t.<\/p>\n
He was<\/i> that <\/i>easy, but he isn\u2019t now.<\/p>\n
He doesn\u2019t let her get away just with transcending mortality. He doesn\u2019t let<\/i> that be enough. He draws full upon the strength of Fenris Wolf and he is mighty.<\/p>\n
It surges in him.<\/p>\n
It burns through him.<\/p>\n
He is strong as beasts are strong and fierce as a world-devouring wolf.<\/p>\n
In the face of her sainthood and her red, red hat, his stomach growls and he steps up his game; his pupils are devoured by an awful white.<\/p>\n
He slams her back. She is having trouble dodging him now; there is a fatal element to his punches, each has the weight of destiny to them, she finds herself in a world where the previously vast probability that she would dodge each one dwindles directly to almost nil.<\/p>\n
He eats the chance-lines where she escapes him.<\/p>\n
He hammers her back, back, back, he shoves her up against the wall and his teeth are bared and he says, \u201cShall I free you from your chains?\u201d<\/p>\n
She kicks. She fails.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019re not going to say it, are you?\u201d he asks. \u201cYou\u2019re not going to tell me what Peter told me. You\u2019re not going to tell me I\u2019m not to eat you. Because I am, aren\u2019t I? I can eat you, can\u2019t I? Hahahaha, I can!\u201d<\/p>\n
She dissolves into flower petals and mist but he shoves his hand through her dissolving form and grasps her shoulder muscle and she hisses and screams and she falls back to flesh.<\/p>\n
She sags.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you can beat me, you get to kill me,\u201d she admits. \u201cThat\u2019s my samurai code! But I\u2019m not done yet.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBe done,\u201d pleads Edmund. \u201cLet me free you.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNo way,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
She knees the air in front of his groin. (His actual groin is out of reach.) If you were a man, and also made out of air, you would probably wince in sympathy. But Edmund doesn\u2019t even move!<\/p>\n
She isn\u2019t actually a samurai at all.<\/p>\n
\u201cLet me free you,\u201d he says. \u201cYou are trapped into a hideous existence. I will cut you loose. Then I will eat you. That will be my payment. It is a small reward. I only ask the flesh.\u201d<\/p>\n
She doesn\u2019t understand for a moment what has happened.<\/p>\n
She doesn\u2019t understand why he won\u2019t just get on with it<\/i>, where his confidence and power went, until \u2014<\/p>\n
\u201cOh, dear,\u201d she realizes. \u201cThe slavering wolf-boy doesn\u2019t want to murder me.\u201d<\/p>\n
He pulls his hand out of her shoulder. The sound is awful. She goes absolutely white. He licks it off.<\/p>\n
He looks away, sulkily.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s important for someone to agree with your reasons for killing and eating them,\u201d he says. \u201cThat\u2019s democracy.<\/i>\u201d<\/p>\n
It bursts out of her as laughter: \u201cWhat?\u201d<\/p>\n
A flash of fury from him. He rips off her hat.<\/p>\n
It staggers her. It makes her mind all chaos and disorder because it is the nature of a Bethany to wear a hat of red.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019re in such an awful trap,\u201d he says. \u201cYou see.\u201d<\/p>\n
She is completely distracted. \u201cGive it back,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
He squints at her.<\/p>\n
She sinks down to the ground. She is begging. \u201cPlease. Give it to me. Give me back my hat. There is only one. That is the only one in all of unbeing beyond time and space.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI will trade it,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
She shakes her head. A dead girl cannot wear a hat.<\/p>\n
She reaches for it.<\/p>\n
He holds it back.<\/p>\n
\u201cDon\u2019t you want \u2014\u201d Her brain is in confusion. She scrubs her hands raw and red on the pebbles. She holds them over her hair. She can\u2019t think. \u201cYou don\u2019t want to do this. You want to give me your hat. Don\u2019t you?\u201d<\/p>\n
Bloody hands are not a red hat. She tries but it\u2019s not good enough. Maybe a little rock \u2014<\/p>\n
\u201cYou want to give me the hat,\u201d she says, \u201cbecause it\u2019s right. It\u2019s right and proper and important. Please.\u201d<\/p>\n
He\u2019s turned away from her. He\u2019s walking away. He has her hat<\/i>.<\/p>\n
He doesn\u2019t understand. He can\u2019t possibly understand. How can he understand what he is doing? He must just be mistaken.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s the one in your hands,\u201d she explains.<\/p>\n
He\u2019s gnawing on the edge of it.<\/p>\n
\u201cPlease.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n
Eating her hat is a bad thing to do. Probably. That is what Edmund suspects. It is probably a thing that only a bad dog would do. It is like killing people, only maybe it is better or worse. He isn\u2019t sure. He probably should not. Didn\u2019t she say there was only one of them?<\/p>\n
He is so very hungry.<\/p>\n
Maybe Sally will eat the girl, and then he can eat Sally to remind her that one should always get permission from people before killing and eating them. That would be a good and moral action. That would be the right thing to do.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhy do you make me think about things like this?\u201d he says, angrily.<\/p>\n
He is staring at her.<\/p>\n
She is staring at him. Her face has gone completely bleak and lost. He realizes after a moment that he has accidentally eaten the whole hat.<\/p>\n
He licks a bit of felt from his lip.<\/p>\n
\u201cSorry,\u201d he mutters. He looks at her arms.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy hat,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
\u201cYour arms,\u201d he says. She looks at him blankly. She won\u2019t miss an arm, will she? Hats, he thinks, are not very filling at all.<\/p>\n
It\u2019ll help him break Fenris\u2019 chain.<\/p>\n
She shouldn\u2019t be so obstinate! It is just one arm. And maybe another arm.<\/p>\n
She is crawling away. He should stop her. He should eat her. He shouldn\u2019t eat her \u2014<\/p>\n
\u201cGod damn it, Lucy,\u201d he says, because the evil prophet of space is about to kill and eat Bethany by murder; and he cuffs her and they fight and snarl for a bit, and then somehow they get into a rock-paper-scissors match and she creams him five times in a row even though he is head boy of the House of Hunger and she is just a space princess assassin who always throws paper, and he bites great chunks out of stone cherubim only to discover them practically indigestible and he staggers grumpily away.<\/p>\n
He is so very hungry. He is so very bad at cannibalism. This night has gone so very wrongly.<\/p>\n
Bethany so very badly needs a hat.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Lightning thrashes the grounds of the Lethal Magnet School for Wayward Youth. A wise child would not stay out in it, but would retreat to bed \u2014 or better, to a cave \u2014 to wait it out instead. Bethany isn\u2019t a wise child. Nor yet are the enemies who come. She tosses Tom\u2019s hat back […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4912,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"series":[47],"class_list":["post-5064","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-storm-that-saw-itself-chapter-2","series-the-storm-that-saw-itself"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/08\/Hat_3a_nobg.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5064","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5064"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5064\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6155,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5064\/revisions\/6155"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4912"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5064"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5064"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5064"},{"taxonomy":"series","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fseries&post=5064"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}