Bite!



  Bite!

  By Muppy Heingardt

  Copyright 2013 Muppy Heingardt

  Once upon a time there were three friends at Clydesdale Elementary School for Magic and Stuff, and one of them was having a bad time of it. It wasn’t Mitsky, the recent transfer student from some distant temple of magic, a girl raised within the Order of Light. She was born cheerful, had a smile that would only disappear if she had something to cry about, and was destined to die cheerful. Wooster was possibly too thick to have a bad time, or maybe he didn’t let things bother him. For his age, he was a very powerful enchanter, not to mention strong enough to heft two boys his size into the air by their collars, so none of his classmates were likely to give him a bad time, either.

  That meant Natalie was the goat. Poor, poor Natalie, coming to school late, wearing disappointingly clean robes. They shouldn’t be clean, because she was a nature witch, and nature witches worked in the dirt, getting intimate with the elements, which not only sounded dirty, but was, because of the dirt.

  There were three people in the classroom. Mitsky and Wooster, two of Natalie’s friends, were playing cards together for the lunch hour. In the back corner, next to a window, a girl from the Order of Darkness had fallen asleep at her desk with a pencil between her teeth, whistling every time she exhaled. Her name was Violet.

  Violet was the problem. Rather, she had been the root of the problem, which had grown into something like a really, really bad hair day for Natalie, and Natalie had a lot of experience with bad hair days. It was the dirt, usually, but nevermind that. It was unforgivable, what Violet had done to her! Just looking at the dark witch, resting peacefully here in the classroom at lunch…

  Getting a grip on herself, somewhat, Natalie pulled up a desk. She threw her pointy, purple hat to the ground and sat down hard. Groaning, she collapsed with her head in her arms.

  Wooster and Mitsky watched, motionless. They sat, holding their cards, until the silence became too boring.

  Mitsky leaned forward, her perfect, black hair outlining in shadow a radiating look of concern. “What’s wrong, Natalie? You look a bit…something.”

  “It’s terrible!” Natalie whined, almost crying. Pointing a finger, she belted out blame. “And it’s all her fault!”

  “Who? Violet?” Wooster looked over one broad shoulder to the girl at the window. “What’s her fault?” he asked.

  “Everything.” Natalie leaned her head to one side and showed them her neck. “It’s underneath. I’m undone!” She felt, and certainly looked, wretched.

  “Well what’s the problem?” Mitsky demanded. “It’s just a bandage. Were you hurt? You weren’t here all morning. I know a few spells if you’re hurt. Violet didn’t hit you, did she? Violet wouldn’t hit anyone. She’s too lazy.”

  “Just…just shutup, here, look.”

  Natalie lifted the bandage, revealing two tiny, red punctures. They evoked powerful indifference in Wooster and Mitsky

  “I don’t get it.” Wooster declared. He sat back in his chair, looking at his hand.

  Mitsky turned away and arranged her cards. “We’re in the middle of an important game, you know.”

  And these were her most dependable friends. That’s how Mitsky was. You had to bait her with something exciting immediately or she would lose interest. “I’m in the middle of a crisis! Stop your game!”

  They coolly avoided her angry gaze and continued playing. Mitsky chimed in. “I think you’re over-reacting.”

  “I didn’t even tell you anything yet! How do you know I’m over-reacting, dummy? You stupid, stupid dummy, would you just listen to me?”

  “Well!” Mitsky threw down her cards and folded her arms. She turned away from them both, cold-shouldering like it was an apprenticeship.

  Wooster sighed and threw down his cards as well. “You may as well tell us now.”

  “Sorry. You’re not a dummy, Mitsky,” Natalie lied. “I’m just really worried.”

  Wooster chuckled. “She is a dummy. I know she was going to lose that hand. That’s the only reason she’s pretending to be angry.”

  With that, Mitsky turned around, all smiles. “True.” She mixed up the cards before Wooster could stop her. “What’s up, Nat?”

  Natalie stared at her desk. “Don’t call me that. Anyway, it happened over the weekend at Seedy’s slumber party. I woke up, and she was right there.”

  The dam was breaking under her eyes, and she buried her face once more, sobbing lightly. Wooster and Mitsky looked at each other, then back at Natalie. Mitsky leaned over both desks, taking a handful of Natalie’s hair and pulling her head upright.

  “Ow! Ow-ow-ow...!”

  “Go on,” said Mitsky, sweetly. Natalie wiped away her tears and muttered, “Well, before I knew what was going on, I felt it on my neck. She bit me! She bit me hard, and it hurt so much I couldn’t move!”

  “And?” they both urged, suddenly intrigued. Mitsky stood up, knocking her chair back. This was cool. Oh, she’d never say anything was cool. Wasn’t proper for a temple maiden. But she thought it really, really hard.

  “I don’t know. I think I was so shocked that I just stared at the ceiling until I fell asleep.”

  Mitsky and Wooster’s heads swiveled. Violet might have been a dark witch, but she looked harmless enough. She had never struck anyone or shouted ills, or even raised her voice. She was usually dozing at her desk. When she was conscious Violet always seemed sleepy, and she smiled a lot and was polite. There were rumors about her being a vampire, but every dark witch gets that. Only two centuries ago vampires and the dark orders went hand in hand, frolicking in the sunflower fields and so on.

  But Violet had bitten someone. It was no longer completely presumptuous. There weren’t many vampires since the Great Defanging, but stories still cropped up about them on the television news. There had been at least three instances of vampires in the kingdom of Clydesdale in the past twenty years, and it was certainly possible that there could be one right here in the school.

  Mitsky turned to examine Natalie’s eyes for some hidden clue. She got really close to Natalies face. Then, speaking to Wooster, she said, “I don’t know. What should we do?”

  “What do you mean ‘what should we do?’ She turned me into a vampire!”

  “Are you sure?” Wooster asked.

  Natalie paused, slightly surprised at Wooster’s suggestion. Of course she’d considered it. What was surprising was Wooster’s doubt. Tell that plump, dirty idiot you had a pocket full of ghosts and he’d spend the rest of class trying to exorcise your pants. It must have been an off-day for him. Natalie got a bit angry.

  “Shutup! She bit me! Of course I’m sure! Why do you think I’m so depressed here? I don’t want to be a vampire! You know why? Because they bite people, and make more vampires!”

  “Calm down, calm down.” Mitsky waved a hand. “There’s ways to tell. How about garlic? Vampires can’t stand the stuff. If you’re a vampire, you won’t be able to go near it.”

  This was more like it. Mitsky, as well, was a gullible girl, who believed almost anything, raised as she was in a temple of magic, with little to go on about how things worked in the world outside of her Order. Of course she’d know vampires; sitting at home as a kid with no toys but the books of light magic, with stories of monsters and how to destroy them. What a creepy childhood…

  Nevertheless, if Natalie held a ball in her hand and pretended to throw it, Mitsky would run into traffic. Wooster and Mitsky had always been like that, and if their combined inattentiveness was a point-particle, they had already assigned it twenty-six extra dimensions of distraction.

  “Do we have any garlic?” Wooster asked. With Mitsky a
board, he was jumping right in to this vampire thing. Despite having cried about it, Natalie now felt she may have been wrong to tell them.

  “I don’t have any garlic.” Natalie said.

  “Of course not! Who carries garlic around?” Mitsky batted Wooster on the back of the head with her palm. He ignored it completely, because dandelions cannot bruise redwoods. Instead, he leapt up and clenched a dutiful fist.

  “Right! Leave this to me!”

  He darted out of the room. Natalie and Mitsky watched him go. They were quiet for several seconds. Mitsky shook her now bruised hand and hissed air through her teeth.

  “He’s like a battleship…” She planted the thick part of her palm in her mouth probably on the assumption that hiding it would take the pain away. “Utt ig ee ooing?”

  “I don’t wanna be a vampire!” Natalie whined.

  Mitsky’s mouth made a popping sound as she yanked her hand away and used it to comfort Natalie. Natalie thought that was a bit gross. She could have wiped it.

  “Don’t worry! You’re probably just overreacting. You’ll see. Oh… Oh my…”

  Mitsky suddenly pulled her hand away.

  “What? What is it?”

  “Your hands are cold.” Mitsky gazed suspiciously at the offending appendage. Natalie wanted to thank her for the depressing reassurance, but at that moment Wooster returned with something round in his hand.

  “Tada!” he