Chapter 18: Blueberry Muffins

(True-but-unseen account)

If you are searching for a story about a ghost who rattles chains and wails in corridors, close this book now. Dear Reader, Mr. Fred haunted his classroom the way a very kind grandmother haunts a kitchen, and the only thing he had ever frightened was a diet.

It had been, by every measure Arthur could think of, a great training session.

Nurse Wren, who came out of the infirmary just after two that afternoon wiping her hands on her coat, did not agree. She was small, gray-haired, and tired the way a lamp is tired after being left on all night. Voss rose to meet her. Arthur stayed on the bench, swinging his legs.

"He’ll live," she said.

"Out of spite?" said Voss.

"Out of spite. A berserker will refuse to die purely to be difficult."

Then she turned and looked at Arthur, and he sat up a little straighter.

"The better a healer knows what she’s fighting, the faster she can pull it out," she said. "Without a name, I’d have been fighting a ghost with my eyes shut. You gave me a name and a dose, and I had him stable inside two hours."

"I did use the whole box," Arthur said. "And half of another."

"He was proud," Wren told Voss. "He recited the dose like a recipe."

"Thorough is a virtue," said Arthur.

"It is. And it would have worked, if the stuff hadn’t been long past its date. Age weakened it." She folded her arms. "Fresh, Mr. Sac would not be on my table. He’d be on a different table, in a different building."

"Oh," said Arthur.

He nodded gravely, like a man told his lottery ticket had missed by one number. It was the logical result. It was even, technically, a good thing. It was also, privately, a small and shameful disappointment.

Voss waited until the corridor was empty.

"Combat 101 is cancelled," he said. "Its only instructor is suspended for three weeks. He does not know yet. He will take it poorly."

"So I’m free."

"You are fined."

Arthur’s legs stopped swinging.

"One hundred coins," said Voss. "Docked from your account, effective immediately."

"For the cars?"

"For Beatrice."

A chime rang inside Arthur’s skull, bright and bureaucratic.

[COINS: ?100.]

[BOOPHONE WOULD LIKE YOU TO KNOW THAT THIS IS A LOT OF COINS.]

[BOOPHONE WOULD ALSO LIKE YOU TO CARE.]

Arthur read it twice. He did not care.

He remembered Sac on his knees in the parking lot, clawing at his own throat. A hundred coins was a very reasonable price for the best morning of his life.

"Worth it," he said.

"I know," said Voss. "That is what troubles me." He straightened his coat. "On Monday, you will attend Mr. Fred’s class. I will know if you skip it."

"Muffins?"

"Blueberry."

"I’ll be early."

A debt is cheap when you’ve got your way;

the bill comes due on a different day.

On Sunday afternoon, the roof stairs were quiet for the first time all week.

Nobody was chasing anyone. Carter held a book open on his knee, but he hadn’t turned a page since they sat down. Hadjer sat two steps above him with her arms around her knees, and the little potted fern someone had left by the railing was slowly curling brown at the edges. It did that near her. Nobody mentioned it anymore.

Nobody mentioned Friday, either. The whole Academy had watched the video. Carter had watched it four times, for research.

"How do you answer texts," Hadjer said at last, "without a phone?"

Carter’s thumb stopped on the page.

Arthur looked at her. Then he smiled, wide and delighted, like a man whose dog had just learned to open doors.

"That’s my girl," he said. "Finally asking the right questions."

"That’s not an answer."

"No. And I won’t give you one. You’ll figure it out on your own one day, and you’ll enjoy it much more." He tapped his temple. "Here’s a hint, though. Where the phone is isn’t the question. The question is what you’re calling a phone."

Hadjer stared at him for a long moment. She was not a girl who stared lightly.

"I watched you do it in Combat 101," she said. "Both hands empty. You answered me before I finished typing."

Slowly, Carter lowered his book.

"He answered me at three in the morning once," he said. "In under a second."

"And?"

"I thought he just didn’t sleep."

"That’s not better," said Hadjer.

"It shows dedication," said Arthur.

Carter shut the book. "Is there a version of this where I’m not the last to find out?"

"No."

Hadjer rested her chin on her knees. "Fine. Keep your secret. I’ll work it out myself."

"I’d be disappointed if you didn’t."

On Monday morning, Hadjer was waiting at the foot of the main stairs with her arms folded.

"I heard Voss put you in Fred’s class," she said.

"You heard?" Arthur put a hand over his heart. "Already asking around about me? I’m flattered."

"Don’t be. Half the Academy watched you wreck a man’s parking lot."

"Mm. But only one of them walked me to class."

"I’m going that way."

"Of course. For the muffin." He smiled, and did not make a big deal of it.

She fell into step beside him anyway. "Let me explain this class before you embarrass yourself. There’s no attendance, nobody checks the homework, and everyone gets a perfect score."

"That sounds illegal."

"He can’t give less. I think he’s tried." She shrugged. "Half the Academy comes by for a muffin and leaves. The other half won’t walk down his hallway at all."

"Because of the muffins?"

"Because he’s a ghost." She said it flatly. "Some people here would cross a parking lot to avoid his door. A few of them have good reasons. Most just don’t like what they can’t kill."

"And you?"

"I have my reasons." Her fingers tightened on her sleeves. She did not say what they were, and Arthur, for once, did not ask. "I still take the muffin."

She stopped at the yellow door.

"One more thing. When you see him, he’s going to look about ten."

"Ten?"

"Don’t let that fool you. He died as a child. He’s over eighty."

She pushed the door open.

The room was painted yellow, with a small chalk ghost wearing a scarf by the doorframe. Beneath it, in careful handwriting: MUFFINS INSIDE. EVERYONE WELCOME.

It was warm. The windows were open to the autumn sun, and a long table by the wall held three trays of blueberry muffins, steaming. On the windowsill, a small brass gadget under a glass dome ticked softly, like a very patient clock.

"Oh! Oh. Good morning!"

A boy shot across the room, so fast his glasses slid down his nose.

He looked about ten. He was small and pale, with a faint blue-white glow, like moonlight on snow. A brown cardigan three sizes too big swallowed his hands. His round glasses were crooked, his hair stuck up in a cowlick that ignored gravity, and his bare feet hovered a foot above the floor. A smear of flour, still somehow wet, clung to one sleeve.

"Hadjer! And you must be Arthur. Oh, I’m so glad. I’m Mr. Fred."

Arthur had never been called "dear" by a ten-year-old before. It was an experience.

"Morning, Mr. Fred," said Hadjer. She took a muffin, bit into it, and closed her eyes for exactly one second.

"Did you finish level three of the ghost game?"

"...Maybe."

"Wonderful!" said Fred, glowing a shade brighter. "Take another for Later."

She took two. She nodded once to Arthur, and then she was gone, and the yellow door clicked shut behind her.

Nobody asked how a ghost baked. It was considered rude, and also the muffins were excellent.

Fred stood very still.

He looked at Arthur. He looked at the empty doorway, at the clock, at the empty rows of desks. Then he looked back at Arthur, as if checking he hadn’t imagined him.

"Are you... staying?" he asked.

"Voss said I had to."

"Oh. Of course." Fred smiled quickly, folding his hands inside his sleeves. "Well, you don’t have to. I’d never force anyone."

"Then why does everyone get a perfect score?"

Fred went quiet for a moment, which was not like him.

"Because I hate grading," he said, softly, as if the blackboard might overhear. "Who decides what a seventy-eight is worth? Whoever wrote the test. Every test is just its author’s opinion with a number stapled to it."

"That’s... true."

"Nobody should hand a child a number and call it their worth. A person ought to decide that for themselves, by how much they’ve changed the world around them. Not because some system, probably built for somebody else, said they didn’t measure up." He smiled, small and crooked. "So everyone gets a hundred. That way, nobody has to wonder."

Arthur, whose entire life was currently measured in Levels, found he had nothing to say.

"And the games?" he asked, finally.

"The ghost game! You’ve heard!" Fred drifted to his desk and opened a drawer, which was full to the brim. "I’ve tried everything, dear. Paper handouts. Video lectures. Audio, for people who walk to class. Puppets, once."

"Puppets?"

"We don’t speak of the puppets." He lifted out a small, battered disc. "The game works best. It’s a little role-playing adventure. You’re a cadet, and every level teaches something real about ghosts. How to read one. How to calm one. How to fight one, when you must."

"Does anybody play?"

"Most of them love it!" Fred’s glow flickered, pleased. "Not all. Some people hate games. And some won’t open anything with my name on it." He closed the drawer gently. "I don’t ask. That would feel like pressure."

"Why bother?"

"Because a hunter who doesn’t understand ghosts doesn’t come back, dear. Somebody has to teach it, and I’m the only one who’s seen both sides." He shrugged, a tiny rumple of cardigan. "So I try everything I can think of, and I hope one of them takes."

Arthur thought of Sac on the first day, locking the doors from the inside. Nobody leaves.

Gentle, he thought, means the strongest person in the room choosing not to prove it.

"Can I ask something else?" he said. "Why is a ghost teaching at a school for the Awakened?"

"Ah." Fred settled onto the edge of his desk. "The Academy was built for the Awakened, dear. But Awakened teachers don’t stay. The pay is poor and the cadets bite. So the Academy hired whoever would. A mummy. A witch. Me."

"That’s not very reassuring."

"No," Fred agreed, cheerfully. "But the muffins are."

Arthur sat in the front row.

He did not decide to. It simply happened, the way weather happens. He sat, and he looked at the small, glowing, rumpled boy by the blackboard, who had spent every day of his afterlife holding a door open for people who would not walk through it.

Then he said it.

"I’ll come."

"Hm?"

"To your classes. All of them. Every one."

Fred stopped, chalk in hand.

"Full time?"

"Full time."

For a moment, nothing happened. Then the small ghost’s glow rose from a candle to a lantern. The windows rattled. A tray of muffins sang softly against its rack, and a shaky, astonished sound escaped him that was half a laugh and half something else.

"Oh," Fred said. "Oh, you don’t have to—"

"I know."

"I haven’t had a student stay in..." He pressed his hand to his chest, where a heart used to be. "Do you know how a ghost like me stays here, Arthur? I’m anchored to friends. Frank Abernathy comes for tea on Fridays. Dr. Nox beats me at chess. It’s rare, but it works."

"That’s possible?"

"Rare," Fred repeated, wiping his eyes under his glasses. "But yes. And as of this morning, I seem to have one more."

Arthur looked at the table and said, in a very gruff voice, "I’ll have another muffin, then."

Fred laughed. He laughed so hard the chalk fell through his hand.

Some ghosts are chained to grief or gold;

the kindest stay for friends they hold.

Then Fred straightened his cardigan, picked the chalk up again with great dignity, and floated high enough to reach the top of the board. He wrote in careful, trembling letters:

GHOSTS — LESSON ONE: HOW A GHOST GROWS.

"A ghost," he said, "is a story that didn’t get to its last page. Now. Does Arthur know what makes a ghost stronger?"

"Feelings," said Arthur.

Fred blinked.

"That’s... exactly right. Most students say fighting."

Arthur realized, a half-second too late, that he had answered without thinking. It is hard to unlearn a thing you have lived.

"I read ahead," he said.

"Did you? The games, I hope?"

"...The games."

"Wonderful!" Fred beamed, and tapped the board. "We grow on feelings. Anything anyone feels toward a ghost goes into it. Fear. Grief. Anger. Even a little embarrassment. And anything a ghost does, if it makes someone feel something, a fright or a laugh or a tear, that comes back too."

He held up two small fingers.

"Directed at us, or caused by us. Both count."

Arthur thought of the parking lot. The warm rush. Distress, multiple sources. Two whole levels, from a crowd watching a car die.

"So scaring people works," he said.

"Oh, very well. Fear is quick." Fred’s smile dimmed, just a little. "It’s also lonely. A ghost who grows on fear teaches everyone to fear ghosts, and people remember that, dear. They remember it for a very long time."

Arthur glanced at the empty rows.

"Is that why they don’t come?"

"Partly." Fred set down the chalk. "I chose the slow way. Kindness takes longer than fear. But it doesn’t run out."

Arthur took a bite of his muffin.

He had chosen the quick way, three days ago, with a camera and a parking lot. He decided it was not the moment to think about that.

Dear Reader, there is one thing Arthur did not see.

When the lesson ended, he left with a muffin in his pocket and a lightness in his chest he couldn’t explain. The yellow door swung shut behind him, and Mr. Fred, still smiling, drifted to the windowsill.

The brass gadget sat under its glass dome. Muffins were only Fred’s second job. His first was guarding the Academy from ghosts that meant harm, a duty he never mentioned, because it did not suit a cardigan. He was very good at it. The ghosts of the city kept clear of this school the way sailors keep clear of a reef, and they feared a polite boy in round glasses far more than every hunter in the building put together.

For as long as he had kept the gadget, it had ticked once, steadily, for himself.

That morning, it had ticked twice.

He watched the needles now. One sat where it always did, beside his own faint glow. The other swung slowly toward the corridor, and then, quite steadily, began to move down it.

Two ghosts, in a school for the Awakened.

And no ghost alive, or dead, was dumb enough, brave enough, or crazy enough to come here on purpose.

Fred did not discriminate. He had never turned away a friend. But a stranger in his halls, unannounced, was not a guest.

It was an alarm.

His smile did not fade. It simply stopped reaching his eyes.

TO BE CONTINUED...