Last fall, Apex Book Company put out a call for submissions for "Upside Down," a sure-to-be-awesome anthology of short stories that invert and/or demolish popular tropes in storytelling.
As it happened, I had a work-in-progress inverting the trope of a child getting admitted to magical boarding school. What happens to the parents of a kid who gets whisked away to a world of fantasy and danger--especially loving parents who've given them a happy home life?
I knew this was a perfect opportunity, and my wife kindly let me block out a few hours on Actual Christmas to finish the draft while the kids played with their toys. I was, and am, really really happy with the final product. Sadly, it wasn't selected for inclusion in the anthology.
Though the trope of Magical Boarding School had been around for many decades before Harry Potter
, I think "Admission" didn't sufficiently grapple with that series' total crushing dominance of the trope. Either I needed to satirize HP specifically (which fit neither the story I wanted to tell, nor the call for submission), or adjust the story to fit a broader/different trope.
I learned the hard way that when you write a piece speficially for a themed market (anthology or special issue), it can be really difficult to place elsewhere. Nevertheless, I got a lot of positive feedback from pro editors on this one, and I think it deserves to see the light of day. Editor Jaym Gates gave me permission to share it, along with this anectode about the submission process.
So A) please go buy and read "Upside Down" because it's got a lot of great stories from some of my favorite authors, and B) please enjoy "Admission."
Jen tried to lose herself in the warm brown
grain of what had once been her grandmother’s dining table. Her husband Blake
shifted uncomfortably in one of the matching high-backed chairs.
"Remember when we had that fight about
dinner?" he asked, trying once again to break the tension. "Every
vegetable in the house transubstantiated into pizza."
How could she forget? Throwing open the
refrigerator’s French doors, only to see every crisper and container oozing with
stuffed-crust Meat Lover's. Spraying it all down and wiping it all out had
taken the cleaning lady hours. Jen mumbled something and nodded.
Blake snorted softly, the closest he could
come to laughing. She smiled that kind of one-sided, pursed-lip smile you smile
just before a wedding or just after a funeral: wet-eyed acknowledgement that
everything’s going to be different forever.
"I guess," he said after a pregnant
pause, "we should have seen this coming."
Jen grabbed the envelope off the table again,
the parchment grain foreign against her fingertips. The red wax seal with an
inscrutable symbol, the shaky, florid script of a wizened hand, the
inconceivable proposition to which they’d somehow agreed.
It had all happened so fast: A goblin on the
doorstep, the laws of reality rewritten in an instant, a little girl jumping up
and down with boundless joy. How could they say anything but yes? Every fairy
tale, every bedtime story, every crayon-doodled daydream of their daughter's
had come impossibly true.
Trips to tiny, musty bookstores and out-of-the-way
ethnic markets in neighborhoods she'd never even heard of. Pulling up to the
security fence at the far end of the airport with their Porsche Cayenne stuffed
with pickled animal parts and cast-iron pots was strange enough; watching their
daughter disappear into the blue on the back of a winged horse was even
stranger.
Strangest of all, though, was coming home to
an empty nest. Every inch of the condo had been prepared just so for a picture-perfect three-person family. The nursery for
which no expense had been spared was now Brielle’s reading cave, the
eleven-year-old’s books crammed into oaken shelves and figurines mobbing every
horizontal surface.
Jen's home had been so perfect, everything as
she’d always wanted—but without Brielle in the center of it all…it hurt. Jen stood up from the table and
wandered pointlessly. She felt Brielle’s absence everywhere, gnawing at the back
of her mind. Every step on her Brazilian cherry floors echoed an accusation:
she was a terrible mother.
How could she let her daughter go?
#
Jen rubbed her gloved hands together, even
though she'd set the climate system for her side of the car to something north
of French Roast. She stared out window at the snowy airport field, desperate
for the first glimpse of her daughter. Blake was staring out the other window; whatever
temperature his side was set at, the air between them was freezing.
A rainbow flash pierced the layers of gray
sky above. From the bloom of colors emerged a white speck, which grew into a
winged steed and tiny riders. The perspective made it look as though they
weren't descending but growing, massive feathered wings unfurling to brace
against the driving wind. With an impossible speed and, effortless grace, the
hooves reached for the ground and the great beast hit the ground running. Within
seconds the animal slowed to a halt, just yards shy of the chain-link fence.
The cloaked figure clinging to the beast's neck sat up; blue eyes flashed from
beneath the hood. Jen threw open the door and ran.
"Brielle!"
Blake shouted after her. The car bonged
angrily out of its left-open door. The three-inch heels on Jen's leather boots
sunk into the snow-soggy ground with every step, but she had eyes only on the
little girl taking the hand of a goblin porter and stepping down off a gleaming
brass stirrup. The only thing between them was the eight-foot fence, topped
with snarling razor wire.
"Mom!"
Brielle ran towards the fence, threw open the
invisible cut-out gate and they hugged as tight as either of them could stand.
Jen threw back the hood of her little girl’s
cloak, and, well. Her golden hair, curled so beautifully on the day she left,
was dirty and pulled back in a simple ponytail. Her skin was pale and smelled
faintly of ash, but her big eyes and wide smile had never gleamed so brightly.
"Merry Christmas, Mom!" From under
her cloak she produced a small box, wrapped erratically but with gorgeous paper
and what appeared to be golden thread. Jen gently put her hand over the gift,
holding back tears.
"Oh, thank you, sweetheart, but you can
put it under the tree when we get home, okay? Let’s open all our gifts as a
family tomorrow morning." Brielle nodded happily, and together they walked
back towards the car. The goblin walked ahead, carrying Brielle’s designer
luggage set without even leaving prints in the snow. Jen tried to ignore the
layer of dust on them, as well as a conspicuous, suspicious purple stain.
Blake was standing in front of the car,
having a smoke—Really? Now?
"Hey Daddy, check this out!"
Brielle produced a wooden wand from beneath her cloak. She steeled her eyes on
the back of the SUV, held up her open left hand as if gripping the vehicle from
afar, flourished her right wrist and bellowed "APERTA!" The tailgate
popped and lifted all the way up. Jen clapped with glee, Brielle bowed
dramatically, and the little green porter wordlessly loaded the luggage into
the back. Blake pulled out his key fob.
"Hey, I can do that too, you know!"
He pressed a button, and the tailgate started closing. The goblin-thing ducked
out of the way, shot him an annoyed look and trudged back towards the sleigh.
Brielle made a great show of rolling her eyes and "Da-aaaad"-ing him.
Jen sighed, and they all piled in.
The drive home was non-stop Brielle, a
breathless recounting of everything she’d seen and done in no particular order
or apparent relevance: Spells, studies, student-body drama. Jen grew
increasingly worried as the dark and Spartan details of their daily life
emerged. There was wonder and magic, yes–but dirt and grime and danger and
terror.
They toiled over hot cauldrons, wrangled
noxious and terrible things, scrubbed old stone walls and polished tarnished
fixtures as punishment. Jen and Blake traded alarmed glances when Brielle
described sneaking out of bed with a handful of friends and trying to magically
domesticate the bats in the old bell tower.
"Oh, you guys," Brielle sighed as
they pulled into their building’s private garage, "it’s everything I’ve
ever wanted."
#
A knock came at the door. Odd; Jen hadn’t
buzzed anyone in. She cautiously opened the door to see one of those freaky
goblins from the school, holding his hat sheepishly in his clawed, knobbly
hands. Jen froze.
"Pardon, ma’am." it croaked. "I’ve
message from school."
For months she'd woken up every day expecting
to miss her less. She'd gone to sleep every night crying that it wasn't true.
In between, she'd dreaded something like this.
A pallor somehow fell over already gray-green
skin as the goblin looked up into her eyes. "I’m afraid there’s been
safety issue, ma’am. Dragon n’at. Plumor the Defiler’s prophesied return.
Terrible bad luck, it is." Jen’s stomach fell through the floor.
"What—what are you saying? Is she—"
Her voice cut out. Her body shook. She clapped her hand to her mouth as hot
tears poured out of her. No.
"I don’t have a list, as such. The
Headmaster and staff are doing all what they can to fight him off, ma’am. There
have been casualties, I’m afraid."
"I knew it!" Her husband shouted
from down the hall. "I knew we never should have let her go!" She
spun around, saw him advancing on her in spite and rage. "This magic shit
was a horrible idea. Our daughter is dead
because you—"
Jen slapped him across the face.
Blake recoiled in shock.
Jen wheeled on the goblin.
"Take me," she said, leaning into
his hairy, warty face. "Take me to her. Now." The creature stepped
back, shaking his head.
"A-afraid I can’t, ma’am," he said.
"Teleported here magically, I did. Can only take myself, y’see."
"Then where is it." She grabbed the
lapels of his uniform vest and hoisted him up onto his toes. "Where. Is.
It."
"I-I can’t say. Major violation of
protocol, that—"
"WHERE."
The goblin gulped, removed his hat, somehow
reached in all the way up to his elbow, and produced a weathered sheepskin map.
"Follow
this to the mountains, ma’am, and the old man at the cave." He pulled out
a golden coin, with an eldritch pattern framing a pentagon in the middle. "Pay
the token and recite to him the Druid's Prayer." Jen grabbed her purse
from off the hook by the door.
"
Duw dy nerth—URK!"
She snatched the coin out of his hands and
stuffed the artifacts into her purse. "I’ll figure it out."
#
Jen hadn’t been upstate since she was nine. A
family vacation to some stuffy resort—the kind with mothers lounging by, but
not in, pools while fathers went off to play golf. Now she was winding her way
through the hills with the Scepter of Irrevocable Reckoning strapped into the
passenger seat and an obscenely large ruby ring on her right ring finger. Her left
ring finger was bare.
Her phone complained the cobblestone drive
she was looking for didn’t exist, but the forboding plume of black smoke rising
to the sky was orientation enough. She passed under a massive stone arch carved
with runes, and—oh.
The stone castle loomed above, perched on the
edge of a rocky promontory. One tower lay in smoking ruin, stones and bricks
and shingles scattered across the campus. To her horror, she saw robed
people—bodies?—among the wreckage. She floored it, tires squealing and slipping
up the rocky path.
Then it rose, bronze and terrible: a scaled
demon stretching leathery wings and lifting above the roof line of the castle.
It saw her instantly, jeweled eyes whirling as they stared through silver
bullet Jen was piloting.
The monster glided forward, lit on the
ground, dug its claws into the turf. Smoke floated out of its flared nostrils
as the SUV rumbled up the steep stone path. It reared back as if to draw
breath, and suddenly Jen realized she had absolutely no plan whatsoever.
As the hill flattened out, the SUV jumped the
stone path and tore into the grass. The ground between her and the monster
shrank at a breathtaking rate as the dragon thrust its head forward and a
brilliant flash of purple came from her right and the dragon turned its head in
surprise?
For an instant Jen felt utterly at peace:
everything had happened as it was supposed to.
Then a world-collapsing sound, the side of
the dragon’s skull disappearing in a curtain of shattered glass and white
fabric and an excruciating pain in her legs and then black.
#
Brielle’s voice woke her up.
Jen was laying in grass, both legs and lungs on
fire, body aching all over and head ringing like a bell. The gray sky was still
far too bright for Jen to open her eyes, but she pawed in the direction of her
daughter’s voice and made what sound she could.
"Mom!" Brielle’s joy and relief and
laughter was the best sound Jen had ever heard. The arms that wrapped around
her head and squeezed shot fire up and down her spine, but it was fine. It was
worth it. It was all worth it.
"Curationum!" boomed a graveled
voice, and suddenly the pain eased, breath flooded into her lungs. Jen opened
her eyes, sat up, re-embraced her crying daughter, and a gathered crowd of
witches and wizards roared in jubilation.
"How?" Jen asked her daughter. "What
happened?" Brielle smiled.
"My friends and I read a little bit
ahead in our spells book. We’re not supposed to know fireworks yet." They
both burst out laughing.
Helping hands reached under her armpits,
lifted and held her up off her feet, let her see the children and students and
teachers she’d help save. First among them, a beautifully robed old woman
resplendent in jewels and baubles.
"Jennifer Dragonslayer," he said. "As
Headmistress of this hallowed institution, the bylaws compel me to not only
offer you all the restorative and ameliatorive care you require, but any
compensation you so desire. Of course, it is much more than my solemn
obligation—it is my personal honor and pleasure."
She looked at the wreckage of her husband’s
stupid car, the great monstrous bulk of the still-cooling beast, and at her
daughter’s brilliant, shining eyes. She knew she was home.
"Would you consider my application for
admission?"
