More Cursed than Blessed

• The Second Kiss
• Next

Fabrizio Verrecchia

In magazines, I had seen sleek shuttles, spacious vans that looked half like limos and half like tanks, bringing the blessed to the Academy.

Those transports were for when the Academy was starting afresh, when most of the blessed were going, when they wanted people-- regular people--lining the station in hero worship of teenagers who had done nothing more but be born "lucky." There was not supposed to be a transport of a new student tonight. The pageantry would have been wasted.

The Interlocutors had commandeered the last car of a sleeper train scheduled to pass through my town. Nondescript. Some people already on the train might know that someone was going to an Academy, but not all would. There would be no need to make a fuss about it.

It was at least a comfortable and nearly private car but for a few other teenagers. An Interlocutor escorted me to a compartment with a place to sit and a foldout bed above. Then he turned to leave.

"You aren't staying?" I asked. I had expected that I was under surveillance as this was all happening explicitly against my wishes.

"I see no need," he said, almost bored by me. "I trust that you will do nothing untoward. I would like to rest."

"How long is the trip?"

He furrowed his brow as though unable to parse my question. "You should get some sleep yourself."

"I'm hungry," I said automatically. Did I not want to be left here to my thoughts? Did I not want to be left at all?

"You aren't," he said, "but you can order food from the intercom. Goodnight."

He shut the door behind him. I did not bother watching him leave the car. He was an Interlocutor, no different from the rest. He was tall, close-cropped brown hair and dewdrop spectacles he seemed to use only to look over disapprovingly. He had been with me in the car on my way here but had seemed disinterested in me. I had sat there quietly, having no other need for arguments that would go unheard, hands folded in my lap, watching the town of my birth grow more distant. I would one day see it again, but no one would tell me when.

It was embarrassing to be still wearing the dress my father had forced me into when he thought we were only celebrating Trevor. I did not have a change of clothes or any toiletries, but I thought better of calling the Interlocutor back. I could sleep in my dress. There would be something waiting when I arrived. Some Academies had uniforms, but they were not universal, both the cut of the uniforms and having them at all. There was a chance that the Interlocutors would have at once gone through the bags my father had packed, and I would have my clothes waiting in some strange room. I still felt semi-catatonic from the last few hours, horrified for my brother and myself (I wasn't sure yet which ranked higher), but I accepted that there was nothing I could do tonight.

As for the toiletries, a night of unbrushed teeth was likely not fatal.

In my cabin, I found a small college-ruled notebook and a few pens, which I took more for generosity. I needed to focus on something other than the Naming. I began a letter, but I lost the motivation only a few words in, even as the view out of my window turned from green and blue to pink to khaki to black, only islands of light in an ocean of darkness.

I heard the other people in the car, but I didn't care to make introductions. Still, it would be a long ride without any curiosity, so I peeked out of my compartment when I heard another door open. There was the fire girl, fidgeting with her circlet. It seemed strange that she still wore it, especially as she had changed into jeans and a hoodie for the journey. She seemed smaller without the stage under her and the promise of attention. I managed to hate her a little less. Not enough that I wanted to speak with her, but enough that I didn't need to scrutinize her for further flaws. Up close--or as close as I was apt to get--she managed to be even more beautiful, though I saw that she had accentuated some of it with makeup to appear older. She didn't need it. I wondered if she knew this, if one of her parents had made her wear it for the Naming. So much pressure was put on the blessed. If I had manifested sooner, I am sure my father would have insisted that I doll myself up, much against my will.

But why was she on the train? At the earliest, she should be going to the Academy this August (though likely the next), not the muddy beginning of spring. I understood how the Interlocutors felt I was a special case, but what was her excuse?

Before she could notice me and possibly toss a fireball over my head in warning, I ducked back in to slump on the bench.

I felt the bracelet the Interlocutor had fixed to my wrist, a filigree of silver and gold that would clash with literally everything I had ever owned. They held this out to my brother at the Naming before yanking it back. I didn't deserve it or want it.

I could not find the clasp to remove it. I wasn't certain that they meant me to, making it feel more like a shackle. Was there a tracker in here? Some way of monitoring? I couldn't figure out how something like that could have fit in it and marked the idea down as paranoia brought on by stress.

I could not stand the idea that this bracelet would mark me as one of the blessed. There was the suggestion that the gods of antiquity had themselves been blessed, and those who manifested were named for their forebearers, but this was nonsense and superstition. There had been no gods before, only stories, only myths that the ignorant and superstitious told. Or they knew as well as we did that these were stories, existing just for entertainment and moralizing, which made us picayune for making such a big deal over it. With what some of us could do, it was ridiculous to name ourselves for gods when we could make up better stories. But we didn't. We just perpetuated the names of myths because Karen of Johnson didn't have an epic ring to it.

I saw no contradiction in my atheism. Whatever these abilities were, they did not occur because some discorporate spirit had touched my forehead. I was not truly blessed--and not merely because I did not know what my ability was or how to spur it to action. I was just enabled in every sense of the word.

"What are you in for?" asked a wiry boy with a mop of unruly hair. He offered his hand. "Where are my manners? Taliesin of Aengus."

I looked hesitantly at his hand. Skin-to-skin contact with the wrong blessed could be unwise.

"Oh, don't worry," he said, dismissing my concern with a small wave of his hand. "I can't do anything like that."

I took his hand. "I'm Cassandra of Le Fay, apparently."

"Not a fan of your name?"

"Not a fan of the Naming," I said. "The name would be fine if the Interlocutors let me keep my old one."

"They took it?"

"Blocked, I think. I don't feel like I can remember a lot right now." I listened to the tracks speeding past outside and felt lonelier. "Side effect, I assume."

He leaned back onto the seat, mulling this over. "Sucks," he finally decided. "You must be the dangerous one."

"I am so not."

He leaned forward, his eyes sparkling as though my potential danger could not be further from a worry. "What do you do? Nuclear explosion? Personified plague?"

"I don't know."

His eyebrows shot up. I thought he moved a little away as though his teasing about my danger might be too accurate. I understood. If the Interlocutors had made me unable to recollect that, what I could do without the Academy's shaping had to be horrible.

"Nothing like that." I told him the story, seeing no reason not to: about my brother, about the Naming.

He nodded along, finally saying, half a minute after I had finished, "Sucks."

"You like that word."

"It's versatile. Many things suck."

I could not disagree.

"I've never met a Cassandra before," he said.

"I've never been a Cassandra before."

"Clever," he said, with real feeling behind it. Not a compliment, but an observation he was filing away. "So, do you imagine that you tell the future, but no one will believe you?"

"Not that anyone has mentioned."

He nodded, another fact about me going into the vault of his mind. "Your clan name, though. Le Fay. They're setting you up to be a witch."

"Morgana Le Fay wasn't a god," I said. I may not have swung straight A's in Myth and Legend, but the Arthurian canon was very elementary school. In the whole of it, there wasn't a solitary god but the ones the character may have worshiped.

"Isn't that curious," he said, amused, "although who decides who is and isn't a god?"

"The Interlocutors, it seems. Are there other Le Fays?"

"There weren't any in the Academy I came from. The Interlocutors would tell you to trust them in naming you. Maybe there are others where we are going." He raised an eyebrow at me. "Are you going to cry?"

"I don't think so. I'm not sad," I said. "Maybe I will be later, tomorrow. For now, I'm mostly pissed."

He gave a broad grin. "You got fire in you, kid." He chucked me under the chin, patronizing me as though he had twenty years on me. "Won't do you any good, mind you, but it is better than moping. Builds character and burns calories." He paused, looking me over. "Not that I am implying that you need any help in either department."

"So, what's your deal with talking to me?"

"You looked like you needed to talk," he said, but a little hollowly. His voice was not yet the one he would carry into adulthood. Small cracks around the edges, places where he was trying to exaggerate, gave him away.

"No, really."

His jaw tensed. "Sizing up the competition and trying to set the foundation for getting in your pants at the Academy." He closed his eyes, shaking something free of his head. "Aletheia, what the Hell?"

A dark-skinned girl popped her head around the door, her expression mock innocent. "I'm glad you came right out and admitted it to a girl for once."

He looked back at me. "Aletheia can make you tell the truth."

"But, as a rule, I don't. We're not meant always to be honest." I liked her a little on sight, more than I liked him. Boys like him always made me nervous, even when I didn't know they were blessed.

"She's my ex," Taliesin said. "Aletheia of iNyanga."

"And he is a cheater," she said brightly, taking a seat beside him.

"Looking is not cheating," he said with the tone of a routine; they had had this conversation enough to have the beats down.

"It bloody well is when the girl is taking off her shirt because you suggested that you might want her to."

He gave her a side hug, smiling. I had barely dated anyone, but I didn't feel that I had a reason to hug any of them, particularly if they happened to be ogling a topless girl.

"I'm competition?" I asked, feeling they would forget that I was still sitting here if I did not. "For what?"

"He doesn't mean it," Aletheia said. "You know how the Academy is. Prep schools think everything is about being better than everyone else. Dopes take that to heart. Taliesin, you will find, is a dope."

He shoved her playfully, with affection. I've received kisses less affectionate than that shove. "The rest was accurate, too," he said. "Not in your pants, of course. I'm not that crass. But you are attractive. I assume I'm not telling you anything you don't already know."

She put on a pout when I looked to her for confirmation. "I didn't make him say that."

He shrugged this off. "Cat's out of the bag. What's the point in denying it?"

This was the confidence of the blessed like they could get away with anything. And they weren't wrong. I couldn't even be too bothered by what he had said, even if Aletheia had amplified its directness. At least I knew his intentions now and would not forget.

I pointed outside the cabin to the girl who had played with fire. "What do you know about her?" I asked Taliesin.

"Pele of Agni. Just named."

"I was there. She was trying to be flashy," I said. "Those gods together? Fire and fire? A bit on the nose."

He shrugged. "Eh, I suspect the Locks lack creativity."

"Is she going with us?" I asked.

"I doubt there is another stop for any of us," Aletheia said.

I glimpsed around the door more, wanting to observe her more closely without her noticing. "She shouldn't be going yet."

"Maybe she needed shanghaiing too," Taliesin suggested.

"You didn't get that info out of her?"

Aletheia snorted. "He was too busy trying to get her contact information and relationship status."

He acted affronted, yet another game. "To be fair to me--as we always should be--I have a fairly good idea what she can do, so serious competition."

"Speaking of, are you into Taliesin?" Aletheia asked me suddenly. "They say a girl knows in the first ten seconds if she will ever invite a guy back to her room. You've seen what we are working with here. Beddable?" She squinted, scrutinizing me "...Are you the age where you think people are beddable?"

My eyes went wide, unsure what my truth would be.

Aletheia leaned forward, stifling a laugh. "I'm just messing with you. I wouldn't do that." She sat back, hands on her lap. "But are you?"

"Beddable?" I asked, preparing to be horrified and hoping to stop Taliesin from answering.

"No, no. That's not for either one of us to decide," she said. "I mean, how old are you?"

"Fourteen."

He took in a sharp breath through his teeth, then looked at Aletheia out of the corner of his eye. "To be fair, I am only sixteen, so I'm not a huge creeper, right?"

She furrowed her brow in consideration. "Still a huge creeper, but not necessarily because Cassie is just a tiny baby."

Wanting to get them off the topic of my attractiveness and his creepiness, I asked, "Why are you going to the Academy so late?"

"He was transferred," she said for him.

"That's euphemistic," he said.

The first Academy student I had met, and he was a delinquent. There were only a few reasons the Interlocutors transferred a student. "Were you expelled?"

He smiled, shaking his head a little. "Oh, nothing so sordid as that. One of the Lock's daughters had taken a shine to me and--"

"He found her 'shining' something, all right," said Aletheia, under her breath but just loud enough to hear.

"So," he finished, "we all agreed that it might be better if I continued my education elsewhere."

I didn't know the culture of Academies, other than rumors and hypotheses from those who would never attend one. The blessed tended to play it close to the chest. Allying oneself with a horny guy with loose boundaries and poor self-control didn't seem guaranteed to make my life there any easier.

"Aren't you scared of pissing off the Interlocutors?" I asked him.

"We don't call them that," he said. "Too much of a mouthful when Locks will do, don't you think?"

It took them down a notch and better demonstrated how I felt about them. They had trapped me in this situation against my explicit wishes. I was in a dark cell, told I was blessed when I couldn't see why or how, and they were the locks on the door.

"Are you happy," I asked, "being at the Academy?"

He laughed. "What a strange question!" He then frowned as it sank in. "Happy doesn't come into it. We are blessed; this is what the blessed do."

"But can't you say no?"

She put a hand on my knee. "why would we? This is prestigious. If you go to the Academy, the entire world bends to you. Why would we give that up?"

"Apparently, you would if you wanted to make out with a Lock's daughter," I said.

She shook her head, and I could tell that she thought I was being naive. "Taliesin knows exactly how far he can go. He wouldn't break a cardinal rule if there were any other way. Neither would I." She looked out the window at the dull scenery that could be any number of states by this point. "So, what is your story, Baby Cassie?"

I told her as much as I did Taliesin. He did not interject, and I knew I ought to be grateful for that.

"So, you are telekinetic?" Aletheia asked when I finished.

"I don't know. I don't seem to be."

Before she could ask another question, Taliesin had crumped a piece of paper and thrown it at my nose, where it bounced off.

He winced apologetically. "It was worth a shot, no?" He flounced down next to me, shoving himself from Aletheia. "So, your brother must hate you."

I didn't want to remember that, though I allowed that this was possible.

"He won't forever," Aletheia said.

"Give him a month, and this will be the new normal."

Taliesin was fine, I decided then, almost despite myself. Not handsome by any stretch. Not charming enough for his swagger, but attractive enough that he wouldn't be kicked out of any party he had crashed. I would never say any of that aloud, I thought, but it was accurate. With her delicate features and expressive eyes, and athletic figure, Aletheia was the more conventionally attractive one, maybe more so because she didn't seem to care about being pretty. I wish I had that confidence.

Taliesin motioned to the wall beside the window. "Hit the button. I think we deserve a little something, don't you?"

I didn't, but I pressed it all the same.

A crackle that might have contained a voice under the stating broke over the speaker.

"Tres cervezas, por favor, garcon," he said.

"No" was easy enough to make out.

He slumped, his shoulder a shake of his head, making clear that he did not expect this to work and thought it was roguish to try.

"Then two hot chocolates, one mint, and a caramel macchiato."

The crackle gave assent to this.

"Who pays for that?" I asked.

"The Academy, I assume," he said. "I would not put this onerous burden on your shoulders so soon."

"You could have asked me what I wanted," I said.

He put his hand to his chest, his eyes wide with melodrama. "Gosh, Cassie, did you want something?

A steward walked into our car in minutes, the three drinks on a cart. He handed me the plain hot chocolate, Taliesin taking the macchiato.

"You'll never sleep tonight if you drink that," I said.

"Oh, he absolutely will sleep like the dead," Aletheia said. "Caffeine makes him drowsy. It's the damnedest thing."

"One of many damnedest things about me, as a point of fact," said Taliesin.

I sipped from my mug. "What's it like at the Academy?"

"Boring," Taliesin said automatically.

"Pedantic, more like it," Aletheia corrected. "They want you to know exactly how special you are and will shove it down your throat until you either slurp or vomit."

"And if you vomit?"

"They shop you to a different Academy," she said. "You can't just rebel and be free of this if that's what you were hoping."

"It is also boring," Taliesin said as though he had felt slighted by her contradiction. I watched for a moment as he glared into his cup before realizing that this did bother him. This was not another page of their script but something she had said off-book.

"You're going to be fine," Aletheia said.

I thought better of asking if they would be there for me. I did not want to hear that lie tonight.

"I'm sleeping here tonight," Aletheia announced, her gaze on him. He rolled his eyes at her.

"Excuse me?" I asked. "You're sleeping where?"

"In your cabin. I'll take the bench, of course."

I looked to him for clarification, which he did not give. "Don't you have your own compartment?"

She gave a bemused half-smile. "Of course I do, but Taliesin is going to spend the night bothering one or both of us if we don't team up against him."

He outright laughed at this. "Oh, you do think highly of yourselves. Maybe I'll go pester Pele."

"She might burn your eyebrow off your face," said Aletheia, just as teasing. Everything between them had the texture of a rehearsed skit. If I had that sort of connection with someone, I don't think they would remain an ex for long. "Better not chance it. They are your best feature."

He stood, wide-legged before her. "And here, I thought my best feature was--"

She stood as well. "Finish that thought, and I will make you tell Cassie honestly what your best feature is."

He pursed his lips. "Well played, Alethie. Well played indeed." He bowed and left my cabin.

"He really is a player," I said.

She waved this off. "He's a moderately cute teenage boy who is shameless. He isn't trying to add notches to his bedpost. He does like you. Maybe not as a romantic prospect, but he wouldn't have sat here annoying you this long if he didn't see promise. He talked to Pele for all of three minutes before she clammed up, and he conceded defeat."

"You are magnanimous for an ex."

"We've had a few honest heart-to-hearts," she said, "with is permission. Otherwise, he is a darling young man who loves me and is sorry he can't be better for me. He can't help himself."

"And you love him?"

She gave a smirk that contained just a touch of condescension. "I love several people, most of whom deserve it. I won't be dating him again, but I understand him. I don't regret our time together."

She settled onto the bench in my room. I can't say that I was sorry for her presence, anything to feel less alone.

They were presumptuous, and that might have put me out in other circumstances, but I could do with someone presuming my friendship. I didn't imagine we would be friends at the Academy, and I didn't mind that. Coddling me (or trying to sleep with me in both senses) was only some way to pass the time on the ride.

"Why are you going to this Academy? He was getting friendly with a Lock's daughter, but what about you?"

"I caused the wrong person to be honest at the wrong moment," she said.

Before I could ask, her eyes warned me it was better not to if I wanted this to be a peaceful ride.

"Any theories on what your overlap means, Cassandra of Le Fay?" Aletheia asked. I imagined to distract me.

The names followed a logic. Power or personal attribute, the latter snatched from a Lock at the Naming, whether we wanted it or not. They tended to be kind of obvious. For instance, Hercules wasn't going to be much of a thinker. It was pretentious, but it wasn't our pretension unless we let it go to our heads--which most did.

The clan name was another matter. They could be like puzzles, figures chosen at random, it could seem. At the Academies, you were supposed to cleave to others with that name or perceived attribute. As I heard it, that lasted a little while, then people grouped as they wished. If there were not of your clan, you figured out who was closest, usually in the pantheon. It wasn't as though there was formal direction from the Locks. Everything from them seemed a test that the blessed were on the cusp of failing.

You were meant to mull over what these two names meant together, who you were supposed to be in that overlap. It felt demeaning, particularly when you had been named after a woman whom no one believed and a deceitful witch, neither gods, more cursed than blessed. Within the special, the blessed, I wasn't twice over. Being named Cassandra was almost an insult, a woman who refused to have sex with a god in exchange for powers, so her prophecies went ignored.

I doubted what I could do had the slightest bit to do with predicting the future, or I would not be here. I would have known to run. I had no confidence in myself now, but that seemed weak reasoning for the name.

As for Le Fay, I knew magic wasn't real. What else did Morgana Le Fay do? Betray her brother. Could the Locks have been that cruel to name me for something they had caused? There was nothing else to her. There was little more to me.

Her brother, the once and future king. The chosen one. It was a stretch to see her as anything more than the villain. I wouldn't follow in these footsteps. No Lock, no Academy, none of the blessed could change that. I had betrayed my brother as much as I ever would.

Or I didn't know the meaning yet. No Lock was going to clarify. I could drive myself crazy playing that game, though not as crazy as trying to remember my old name. Cassandra, for all its baggage, at least sounded pretty.

Not only would I be starting midway through the spring semester, but I was two years younger than most other students. I would have a roommate, a girl (it would have to be a girl, right? The Academies couldn't be that different) who had already established herself, on whom I would be intruding. She was sure to hate me because I would hate some mopey brat forced into my room. I had not even shared a room with my brother, and we were--or had been--twins.

I fluffed a pillow--the train was not generous with these--and Aletheia did the same, seeming to fall asleep in ten minutes. I couldn't.

I wrote a letter to my brother, nothing but apologies and statements that I loved him until the fatigue of the day grew too much.

I never liked trains or planes. They took me out of control of my destination. Not that I could drive, but I could order my father to pull over it if I desperately needed to pee or if Trevor--I still felt unease about thinking his name--saw some roadside attraction that as desperately needed his money for souvenirs.

On a train, I was going where they wanted to take me, more so given that it was taking me to an Academy. People knew if there was an Academy in their town, but they tended to keep this information to themselves; I could be headed anywhere in the country. Even once I arrived, I was not confident that I would know where I was.

The chu-chung of the tracks was enough of a lullaby after the day I had.

It was not long after dawn that the Lock roused me from a dreamless sleep.

"Are we here?" I asked needlessly. He would not be waking me--would not be talking to me--otherwise.

"I wrote him a letter, my brother."

The Interlocutor looked at me, at the letter, and I didn't need him to say anything more. He put out his hand, and I deposited the letter there, knowing that it would be summarily shredded. In time, the Locks might grant me mailing privileges if I were an obedient little girl to whatever they said, but that time was in a future I could not imagine yet.