All That Lives Must Die - Eric Nylund [189]
Fiona hid her surprise. So now he was actually inviting her to join the class? She didn’t understand, but she wasn’t going to question it, either.
As she joined them, though, the other students shuffled away. Not one of them offered their congratulations or would look her in the eye. Not even Robert.
Fiona stood by herself.
Mr. Ma showed them how to stand and fight, how not to lose one’s balance as they shuffled their feet.
She watched and listened and learned, but felt hollow inside, as if she were alone in the world . . . as if she’d severed much more with that one little cut than she had meant to.
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“Robert! Wait.” Fiona jogged after him along the trail through the grove, catching up. She grabbed the sleeve of his jacket. “Robert, please. What’d I do? Is it because I’m the only girl in the class?”
Robert stopped, looked at her, but didn’t say anything.
It felt weird trying to get Robert to talk to her, almost pleading, after working so hard to put some distance between them. But he was in her class now. They’d have to talk, wouldn’t they? Not talking would be weirder.
She waited for Robert to explain, but instead he turned and walked away.
He stopped after two paces, sighed, and turned back to her. “It’s not that.” He shook his head, but then seemed to decide something. “You cut him, Fiona.”
“That was the point, wasn’t it? Show him I was good enough to get into the class? It’s the same thing you did.”
Robert paled. “I didn’t fight Ma. I wouldn’t have the guts to try.”
“Okay, so one little paper cut.”
Robert stared at her, unblinkingly. “You really don’t know, do you?”
Fiona shot him the look that she usually reserved for Eliot, the obviously you’re being too stupid for me to understand look.
“I guess not,” Robert said. “It’s in The Mahbhrata.”
“East Indian mythology? Miss Westin hasn’t covered that yet, so how could I know?”
Robert blinked. “It was a movie. Pretty cool one, too. Look, sorry, I just assumed everyone knows this stuff. . . .”
Fiona crossed her arms over her chest. “Did you forget that until last summer, Audrey kept Eliot and me isolated? As in a total-vacuum-of-all-things-diabolical-and-divine type isolated?”
“Okay, it’s just that Mr. Ma is an Immortal, and has the power to choose when he dies.”52
“So what?” Fiona demanded. “No kidding: he didn’t die today.”
“He’s not supposed to,” Robert explained. “Not until the end of things. He’s not supposed to get touched. Not a bruise, not a chipped tooth . . . not even one little cut.”
“One little cut . . . ,” Fiona echoed, and her stomach twisted into knots. “I still don’t see the big deal. So I caught him off guard with—” She stopped. “Wait, what do you mean ‘until the end of things’?”
“Mr. Ma is supposed to get hurt only at the end . . . of everything.”
That sense of wrongness was back. As if when Fiona had cut Mr. Ma, she’d broken something unbreakable . . . that couldn’t be repaired.
“The end of days,” Robert whispered. “Ragnarok. Armageddon. That’s what everyone’s freaking out about. They think because you hurt him, well, maybe you might have started it.”
52. Benjamin Ma (aka Bhishma and Mr. Ma), gym teacher and combat instructor at the Paxington Institute before the end of the Fifth Celestial Age. May be the same Immortal warrior from the Sanskrit epic, The Mahbhrata, who took an unshakable vow of celibacy and was thereby gifted by cosmic forces with the power to choose the time of his death. Reputedly killed in the climatic battle of The Mahbhrata, however, similar warriors and yogis appear later in history, and this famous death may have been faked (certainly he did nothing to dissuade the useful rumor). The prophecy of his death triggering the end of things, of course, was proved true—foreshadowed when Fiona (ironically sent with permission slip in hand by Death incarnate) drew his blood that fateful day. Gods of the First and Twenty-first Century, Volume 11, The Post Family Mythology. Zypheron Press Ltd., Eighth Edition.
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MUSIC TO END THE WORLD