Section F: Fairy Tales & Physicists

Chapter 7

Darkness. All-encompassing.

Cold. Intense, piercing, yet strangely welcome.

Numbness. Sweet, blissful numbness.

Movement. Slight, but troubling.

Fields' eyes flicked open, as his consciousness attempted to sputter back into life. It took a quick look. It processed. It came to a decision.

Nup.

Darkness. Glorious oblivion.

But then, more movement.

Nup, nup, nup!

Movement where movement really should not be.

Groan.

With slow reluctance, Fields' consciousness settled back into residence. Steeling itself, assuring itself that what it thought it had glimpsed, surely could not be, it grudgingly ordered his eyelids to open.

Bugger.

"Peregrine?"

"Yes, Fields?"

"Why are your hands down my pants?"

"Ha! If only I had a buck for every time I'd heard that question."

Fields waited for further elucidation. Further elucidation was not forthcoming.

"Okay. But why, in this particular instance, are your hands down my particular pants?"

"You'd be surprised how often I've heard that one, too."

"Peregrine!"

"Okay, fine—keep your pants on, ha-ha. I'm just rearranging your icepacks. Can't have you getting frost-bite, can we?"

"Frost-bite?"

"Yeah. That'd be a sure-fire way to make your wand ineffective. And, no offense, but it's already not really the best colour."

"My wand...?" With a sickening lurch, Fields' memory re-joined his consciousness on active duty. There were so many things so very wrong with Peregrine's words, on so many deeply disturbing levels, that his poor, scrambled synapses hardly knew where to begin. "Embers! She kicked me. Again! In the...in the..."

Peregrine grinned. "In the basement?"

"No! Well, yeah." Looking around, Fields found himself lying on a couch in Featherstone's living room. "How did I get here?"

"We carried you up. After you passed out. I tell you what, that Embers may look like a slip of a girl, but she's a strong one."

Fields grimaced. "Tell me about it." He cast an anxious glance around the room. "Er, where exactly is she?"

"Don't sweat it, partner. I set her straight about your dabbling in the dark arts, or more precisely, your lack thereof. Turns out she's quite the literal-minded princess, so you might want to watch what you say around her. Anyway, she's currently in the kitchen, playing with the microwave. She seems to think it's even more magical than Featherstone's box downstairs. Ha!" She recommenced her rearranging.

Fields grabbed Peregrine's wrists, before cautiously extracting her hands from his chilly—but thankfully, more or less numb—nether regions. "Thanks, but I think I've got it from here." With a little judicious jiggling, keeping his movements slow and deliberate, he managed to sit upright. "Okay—what did I miss?"

Peregrine vigorously rubbed her frigid hands together. "Let's see, where were we? Oh yeah, Embers was just telling us about the witch, when she took exception to you getting your wand out—"