Madrigal: Book 1 of the Bel Cantos

Cynthenia: Daydreamer

St. Lucero's School for Girls was as hot and stuffy as the inside of a wool sock. The girls fanned themselves with expensively embroidered hemp fans and tried not to be caught looking out the windows. A girl coughed delicately into a lace-gloved fist and Mrs. Carmody gave her a narrow look.

Mrs. Carmody carried a switch cut from the tall willow trees outside the classroom windows. Sometimes she used it to point at the chalk-board, and it made a sinister swishing sound that set the girl's teeth on edge. Cynthenia's eyes followed Mrs. Carmody out of sheer force of habit, even as her mind returned to the past.

She sighted down the barrel of her blunderbuss pistol. The cool, oiled scent of the grape-shot wafted to her, along with the familiar spice of blackpowder. She had measured and poured it herself.

A hideous flying creature, dusky pinions flung wide, dove at her from the dazzling blue sky. At seven meters, it pulled up and again swooped into the sky, circling. Golden wheat soughed in the breeze, rustling against her muslin skirt.

She waited, arm steady, breathing through her nose. She forced her breath to match the waves of prairie breeze that rolled across the fields. Her heart beat steadily to match. Her mind cleared, the cobalt blue dome of the heavens blurring into a featureless screen upon which the flying beast whirled and spun. The sun was at her back, and beads of sweat trickled unnoticed down the back of her slender neck. The flyer shot seven meters up, and she waited. Sagebrush sang in the breeze, and she waited. The sun reflected like illusory fire from the flared bronze barrel of the Dragon pistol—and still she waited. Her field-skirt pockets bulged with paper shot-cartridges, all poured and packed with her own hands. She had ammunition to spare, but still, she waited. She only breathed, and watched, and didn't shoot. The beast, its clawed hands outstretched, maniacal green eyes blazing, spun and menaced above her.

After two minutes, her father sighed and gently pressed the barrel of the Dragon down. She turned to look at him.

"That's enough." Jonas Monroe smoothed his mustache with a hand the color and texture of a walnut. It was a gesture she knew of old; something her father did whenever he was vexed. "Normally, Cyn, you'd have had had that thing brought down, burned and buried by now." He looked up, where the menacing figure still circled. After a moment, she raised her head as well. The figure swooped and turned, describing a looping figure eight in the air—the sign of infinity, a good omen. Years later, crying to herself at night, Cynthenia cursed that false symbol, and the empty promises it had made.

"What in the Earl of Hell's ashtray was you waitin' for?" her father asked. His eyes were the color of cold water, like hers—at that moment, they were as chilly and deep as a quarry lake. "You get a shot like that one—you take it! Ain't that what I always taught you?" The flying figure now dropped like a stone toward them, speeding closer every second. Its face was a hideous caricature of screaming eyes and ravenous teeth.

"Sometimes I really wonder why I bother to teach you this stuff, girl. Really, I do."

Cynthenia's eyes stayed on the creature. Eight meters. Five meters. Four. Three. Two.

BOOM. The black beast exploded in the prairie air like it had been dynamited from within. The paper it had been crafted from fluttered down like confetti and caught in her hair and on the rim of his poke-hat. A direct hit—pieces of its shredded wooden kite-frame fell like hail. She had swiveled, raised the Dragon, and fired, all in one motion.

"Wait until the target's in your house," she said, flicking her eyes at her father, and then down to examine the barrel. The brass showed no damage. She felt a flush of pride—her design had worked. "And when it's too close to turn away—kill it. That's what you taught me." Cynthenia dumped out the remnants of the flash pan, scraping it until it was clean. Her fingernails were stained black with powder, which always engendered a lecture from mother. But that would come later. Now, there was only Cynthenia, her father, and the Dragon. The barrel flashed again in the sun, as if to remind her that while it was her mind that had designed, her hands that had built, and her eyes that had aimed—it was the Dragon that had fired the fatal shot.

She placed the smoking pistol back into its tooled leather holster. Her father chuckled and clapped her on the shoulder.

"That's my girl."

A bright splash of laughter shattered her reverie, and Cynthenia snapped back to the present to find herself trapped like a bug under Mrs. Carmody's imperious gaze. Cynthenia's fan lay closed on her desk, and she quickly picked it up and pushed the spring-button. With a click the fan opened like a startled butterfly, and the other girls tittered. Cynthenia had built the fan herself, and the other girls treated both the fan and its provenance with horrified amusement. Mrs. Carmody said nothing, only raising one delicately drawn eyebrow. Cynthenia fanned herself vigorously, careful not to drop her gaze or look away. Finally Mrs. Carmody moved past her, moving down the row, and Cynthenia blew out the breath she hadn't realized she'd been holding. She carefully folded the fan back into shape, and set it down on the desktop. A cloud of black bees buzzed soporifically outside of the windows, and Cynthenia's mind threatened to wander again.

Mrs. Carmody's switching-stick whistled down and cracked across the back of Cynthenia's hands. Cynthenia yelped and jumped half out of her seat. The switch broke, and the willow-piece clattered into a corner. Laughter popped like corn through the classroom.

"Cynthenia Monroe. Tomorrow, by Nine AM at the latest, you will have delivered to me a five hundred word essay on the importance of paying attention—and respect—to your elders and betters. This—" She rapped each of Cynthenia's hands again, each strike sending flares of pain up her forearms, "—will serve as a reminder. And until those awful marks go away, you will wear your gloves like a proper lady. Is that understood?"

"Yes, Mrs. Carmody." Cynthenia's blonde hair hung in her burning face. More giggles from the class, but Mrs. Carmody silenced them with a glare, and resumed her lecture.

As Mrs. Carmody swished back up the aisle to the front of the room, Cynthenia sighted down her barrel...