Echo One by unknow

Author:unknow
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: WordFire Press

On the one hand, Vickie wished there were two of her, so she could spend time with Professor Higgins as well as with Heidi. On the other hand, at lunch, the Professor had been giving her very encouraging looks that she read as “stay with the child.” She was used to being extremely active—she not only took Staff Fighting, she was taking Folk Dance and Advanced Free-Running—and it was pretty obvious Heidi wasn’t, so by the time supper came along, Heidi was exhausted, and said she was going to go to bed early. After watching Vickie spend all day in the company of the much younger child, the Dean was evidently curious, and intercepted her on the way back across the courtyard to the West Building.

“You are up to something, young lady,” the Dean said, although in an amused, rather than accusatory tone. “I should like very much to know what it is.”

Vickie hunched her shoulders against the cold. “Heidi’s grandmother hates her. Or at least, that’s what Heidi says. Heidi says her grandmother never liked her father, and that her grandmother thinks Heidi is the reason why her parents died.” She frowned. “I didn’t say anything, but she must be the meanest, nastiest woman ever. She treats Heidi like a failing cadet in a military school, and you wouldn’t believe what she thinks is good reading for a little kid. Brothers Grimm. The original, unedited stuff, with kids eaten by bears, and dismembered, and drowned, and left to die in the woods.”

She glanced up at the Dean, and saw that the woman had been taken entirely aback. “Well … you have been busy,” the Dean said, finally. “That’s more than any of her teachers have been able to get out of her. All we knew was that she was quiet and very unhappy, as what child wouldn’t be, who’d been orphaned?” She pondered a moment, then shook her head.

“Is there any way you can figure out how to keep her here instead of going back for Christmas?” Vickie begged, then ran forward to open the door for the Dean. “What if you said she was sick? Like, bad stomach flu? If her grandmother dislikes her that much, wouldn’t she just hate having to take care of someone who was throwing up, or worse?”

She paused on the stair that would lead her up to her own room, as the Dean stopped at the foot of the staircase and pondered that. “It’s an option …” the woman finally said, but with some reluctance. “But I don’t have to tell you that it is a very bad thing for a magician to lie. Words have power for a mage, and what if we made her ill?”

Vickie felt crestfallen. “I hadn’t thought of that,” she admitted unhappily.

“The trouble is, this is very short notice, especially when we had already set a date with her grandmother when she could be expected home,” the Dean continued. “For future breaks, we can easily contrive some sort of excuse—that she needs to catch up on some subject or other, or that there is a school trip.

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