ALL NOVEL 44: Cut Short
Arnold met us at the library. His broken wrist was an inconvenience. He was there to see if Patchouli could make it heal faster. A fairy still had to guide him through the mansion, since he hadn’t passed the danmaku exam, so he was with the blue-haired and bespectacled Cerulean.
“I can’t just copy one of your wrists to the other,” said the librarian with a sigh. “Is this what I get for doing someone a favor?”
“Sorry!” I said.
“Why not?” Arnold asked with an appropriate amount of deferential curiosity.
“Arm bones aren’t perfectly bilaterally symmetric, for one thing. Do you know about articular surfaces?”
“No. What are they?”
“Also, your right arm is larger than your left,” said the librarian.
“No it isn’t,” said Arnold.
“It is.” She grabbed it to check, but the bicep, not the wrist. “Yep. I can tell. It’s immense.” Arnold was blushing. Patchouli forgot to let go of his arm as she continued to read her book.
Patchouli went on to describe how bones actually had manifold differences in shape and vasculature. The blood supply to each bone was unique, as was its shape against other bones. Kidneys, with their single main artery and their squishiness, were far easier to copy.
“If you had a hairstick fracture I could maybe do something with various kinds of symmetry to make it a bit stronger, but even that wouldn’t get you into fighting shape.” Patchouli finally let go of his arm. “The microscopic structure would be all wrong. Simply healing your bones is not really possible.”
“What about skele-gro?” interjected Maroon, looking up from her comic book. “Make his bones disappear, then he can grow new ones?”
“That is a fictional potion,” replied Patchouli.
“Oh,” said the fairy, scratching her head. Maroon sometimes struggled with the difference between fiction and nonfiction. “Wait, please tell me that butterbeer is real?!” she asked, her voice rising in horror.
“It’s real,” said a demon that Patchouli had on standby.
“...more research is necessary,” said the librarian. I was glad that she chose to spare the fairy’s feelings.
Maroon nodded and returned to the comic book like she was cramming for an exam. It made sense, because it was an exam. Patchouli would soon give her a reading comprehension test.
I was trying not to get too excited. I might soon learn to fly.
“Anyway,” said the purple librarian as she turned back to my muscular friend, “I haven’t even described the issues your nervous system would face if I damaged your carpal tunnel!”
“It’s okay,” said Arnold, with his hands palms-down. “I can wait for it to heal the hard way.”
“You’ll be fully healed by the time she is done explaining,” said Cerulean. Patchouli gestured and wind blew the fairy’s hair out of place, sending her glasses askew. Sarcasm received lighter punishment, because it was Patchouli’s preferred kind of prank.
“You could talk to Doctor Yagokoro about a solution,” suggested the librarian. “She’s got a pill for it, I’m sure.”
“She suggested I try to become ambidextrous instead,” said Arnold.
“Odd. That takes months of practice,” said Patchouli. It wasn’t a question, but it contained a question–wouldn’t you heal first?
“Not for what the doctor suggested,” he replied, his face turning even more red. I may have been imagining it, but Maroon seemed to read just a bit faster. “It’s just too bad, because Miss Hong wants me to be able to swing my ax when Miss Konpaku gives the guest lesson next week.”
“The swordswoman?” asked Patchouli. “Ah. That’s why Meiling asked me for so many radishes… it was for a trade.”
“You just duplicated a ton of vegetables for her without asking any questions?” I asked. If Arnold had asked me for four hundred pounds of vegetables, I’d want to know why.
“I never ask Meiling what she does with vegetables. Nor with martial arts students.” Patchouli was tapping her foot. “Well, Mister Thatcher, I might be able to find a solution for your wrist, if you give me a couple of minutes.”
“I’d appreciate that very much,” said Arnold.
Patchouli drew runes on Arnold’s cast with her free hand. The runes lit up, and the librarian glanced away from her book to see… something. She rubbed her chin thoughtfully. Then she vanished with a puff of purple smoke, teleporting to who-knows-where. I noticed that Patchouli’s book teleported with her. Whatever book she was reading happened to be part of her identity, I suspected.
Maroon continued to read. I picked up my own book. It was a guide to overlooked magical flora and fauna in Gensokyo, written by Patchouli herself. I wanted to prevent a repeat of the fairy incident, where thousands of unexpected youkai had come out of the woodwork to crash my party.
Arnold took some colored pencils and drew left-handed to pass the time. He didn’t have a library card; he wasn’t allowed to borrow any books. The watching koakuma would enforce the rule.
“Is that supposed to be a dinosaur?” asked Cerulean.
“A dragon,” he said. “What do you think?”
“I can see why you’re begging for help… have you tried drawing with your feet instead?”
“That’s not very nice!” said Maroon. She looked at Arnold’s drawing. “It’s beautiful!”
“Thanks,” said Arnold with a small smile. “I think so too.”
“Do you normally use a mechanical pencil?” asked Cerulean. “Something smaller, perhaps?”
The librarian returned before we could think of a comeback. In her left hand was a book, and in her right hand was a jar full of small red and white rocks. She had resumed reading.
“What are those?”
“Replacement wrist bones,” said Patchouli.
“Eww!” said Maroon, but in a half-excited way. The water inside the jar was red-tinged.
“Where’d you get them?” Arnold asked with some concern.
“The basement,” she said, as if it were an explanation.
“Are you… gonna put those inside me?”
“That’s too much, too soon,” said Cerulean.
“What?” I asked, foolishly.
“You should start with a couple of fingers before you go all the way to the wrist, you know?” Patchouli blew Cerulean right out of the library with the next gust of wind.
“I don’t get it,” said Maroon. “Are Mister Thatcher’s fingers hurt?” The fairy had started asking more questions, which was a good thing, but it did lead to some awkwardness with the other fairies.
“She was making a joke about invasive surgery,” I offered as an explanation.
“Cerulean is so sophisticated,” said Maroon. “You can tell from the glasses.”
“Is that it?” I asked, holding in a laugh. Patchouli had glanced at the fairy over her own spectacles.
“I want to wear glasses!”
“You can,” said Patchouli. “And no,” she said to Arnold. “These are just a template for repairs. I’ll be duplicating them without invasive surgery.”
“Do you have a bioprinter in there or something?” I asked. The technology was used to make artificial organs in the Outside World. That was a way I could have gotten a new kidney, if I still lived there, I was super rich, and I was opposed to organ donation for some reason.
“Yes,” she said, making me do a double-take. “Mister Thatcher, you’ll have to hold still.”
Patchouli began to repair Arnold’s wrist. It took some time; she was being extra careful, I thought, perhaps to protect the use of his hand. Maroon finished her comic book during the procedure, but she waited patiently while Patchouli did her own work. I was so proud of the fairy’s self-control. Needles would have stuck a wet finger in someone’s ear in the first idle minute.
“I’m ready for the test,” said Maroon as soon as Patchouli had finished vaporizing Arnold’s unnecessary cast. Arnold flexed his wrist appreciatively.
“Very well. Demon!”
“Yes?” said the demon.
“Oh, you’re right there. Well. Administer a test to Maroon about this comic book. Make it appropriate for a child that has just learned to read.”
“I’m a fairy,” said Maroon. I ruffled her hair.
The koakuma picked up the comic book, flipped through it, then set it down again.
“What is Superman’s weakness?” she asked in a sing-song voice that made my hair stand on end. The demon clearly had ideas about what was ‘appropriate for a child,’ but the effect was just creepy.
“Kryptonite!” Maroon was into it.
“Why didn’t he throw the robot into space?”
“He didn’t want to hurt anyone!”
“How many questions should I ask?” sang the demon to Patchouli, making the librarian frown.
“Eight more, or so.”
“What was the robot trying to do?”
“Deliver pizzas,” said Maroon. “But like way too many!”
It went on for a bit. Arnold stuck around, smiling at the little fairy’s antics. By the end I was convinced that Maroon could read, and so was Patchouli.
“Congratulations, Maroon,” said the librarian. “You can read!”
“Hooray!” said Maroon with a fist-pump. “Easy!”
“Shall I fetch the confetti?” asked the koakuma.
“No,” said Patchouli. She reached into her extra-dimensional space and pulled out a pair of crimson socks, which she then handed to Maroon. “Here is a special reward, just for you.”
“Clothes!” said Maroon. “Red clothes!” She seemed excited, but I wondered if she was playing it up for Patchouli’s sake. It felt a bit fake.
“You can wear these every day,” said the librarian. “They’ll be a little secret about you and how special you are. Or, you can show people your ankles whenever you want and they’ll know that you’re special.”
“How risque,” said Arnold, and I shushed him. Something definitely felt off about the situation. My heart was pounding and I didn’t know why. I noticed that Patchouli had put down her book behind her, and that her intense attention was fully on Maroon.
“Thank you!” said the fairy. She took the socks, but she didn’t put them on. A moment passed.
Patchouli continued to stare with a wooden smile on her face. My apprehension didn’t diminish. It felt like something heavy was about to fall on me, or like I was standing on cracking ice. I quickly looked around; nothing seemed out of place in the library. The shelves stoically stood still, the windowless walls watched silently.
I became conscious of a foul smell in the air. Some kind of metal, I thought.
The koakuma stood next to Patchouli and she stared placidly, looking straight ahead and up a little bit. Arnold was beside me. He was the only one still smiling in a natural way, except for maybe Maroon herself.
Or so I thought. When I looked at the fairy’s face I almost shrieked. She fluttered at head-height before us, clutching her new socks. To my normal sight she seemed happy and exuberant. However, to my illusory sight she looked like she was crying and gnashing her teeth, her head turning side-to-side. Maroon, or some part of her, saw me looking. A half-transparent gaze met my own, full of naked pain, and I stepped back involuntarily.
“Is everything alright?” Arnold asked me. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.” I wasn’t sure what I had seen.
“Arnold, does Maroon seem–”
“Mister Thorne,” said Patchouli, her voice serious as it came out around her smile. “The gift, please.”
“Yes,” I said. I pulled the bag of roasted chestnuts out of my pants pocket. “This is for you, Maroon. A reward for all your hard work. Arnold and I cooked them for you.”
“Thank you!” said the fairy. She took the bag and looked down at it. “I love… oh.” Her smile disappeared. “I love chestnuts,” she said, her voice flatlining.
“Maroon?”
To my dismay the fairy began to cry, but for real this time. I could tell because I could hear it, and because Arnold frowned unhappily, seeing the same thing as me. Maroon was whimpering, and my heart almost broke. What had I done wrong?
However, my discomfort was nothing compared to the fear radiating from Patchouli, which I could literally feel. The room filled with the smell, mechanical and sweetly rotten, a metallic taste that came in on the wind. Some distant part of my mind realized that I was tasting fear for the first time, and yes, it tasted something like blood.
The ability had to have come from Sekibanki’s blood donation. My stomach turned. Did she enjoy this nerve-wracking sensation? I shook my head, wanting it to go away, and wanting Maroon to stop crying.
“What’s wrong?” I asked Maroon, trying to keep my voice from trembling. If Patchouli was afraid, I was terrified. I was starting to worry that there were very good reasons that almost none of the fairies could read.
“I’m…” she sniffed. “I’m sad. I forgot about these things. They were my favorite. I used to eat them every day… but now…”
“Well, you can have them again,” I said. “There’s no need to be sad! It’s good to remember things we like!”
“My name,” she said. “My name isn’t ‘Maroon.’ It’s… Chestnut.”
“Chestnut?” asked Arnold, his brow furrowed.
“Chestnut,” said Patchouli. “In French that’s Marron.”
“I forgot my own name,” continued the fairy, looking down at her gifts. Her form began to flicker in my sight, like a lightbulb that was burning out. “My favorite color isn’t even red! It’s brown.” She hiccuped.
“Well… if you wanted Patchouli could change the socks–” said Arnold. He was unable to see the flickering.
“I used to throw these things at people’s heads.” She threw the bag of chestnuts in a random direction and they clattered out across the wooden library floor. When I looked back at her, she was closer to Patchouli than when I’d looked away. Maroon had shifted while out of my sight. “I stole food from open shelves… I tripped people! I made them get lost in the woods!” I tried to say something.
“That–”
“I broke their teeth! I was a bad person.”
I almost told her that it didn’t matter as long as she wasn’t bad anymore–as long as she’d changed–but I was afraid to speak. If she didn’t know already, what would the realization do to her? The cherry red color was fading from her hair. It was turning brown, or transparent.
“Now I work all day. I help around the house…. I want to wear red.” She dropped the socks like she was dropping a pair of leeches. “I don’t even want to go outside anymore… do I? What’s wrong with me?” She sniffed and turned to Patchouli, her face distorting, her skin pale. Dark rings appeared around her eyes, then disappeared just as fast. “I just want to stay here with you. Can I just stay here with you? Even if I…”
“You can, Maroon,” said Patchouli. She pulled the fairy into a hug. “You can stay. It’s okay.”
“I’m not really a fairy anymore, am I?”
“No, of course you are a fairy,” said Patchouli. She patted the smaller youkai’s back. “You’ll always be a fairy, no matter what you decide to do. If you do a thing, that’s what fairies do. That’s what fairies are like.”
Arnold and I could only stare and wring our hands. The demon continued to look at nothing in particular, her expression neutral.
“But I don’t want to be a fairy! Fairies are mean! They hate working.” She sniffed. “They hate me. They can’t read. Reading is for humans.”
“Cirno can read,” I said. Patchouli nodded. “She’s the strongest fairy there is. You’re strong, Maroon, just like her. Remember when you beat all the other fairies at the lake?”
Maroon nodded and sucked in a breath. “I’m strong.”
“Yes,” I said.
“I’m a good fairy.” Her hair color returned.
“Yes,” said Patchouli. She held Maroon tight. “You are the best fairy.”
“I’m a nice fairy. Can fairies even be nice?”
“No,” said the demon. “They aren’t nice, they do not work, and they live outside. You are nothing like a fairy.”
There was a silence punctuated only by the clatter of shoes hitting the floor. Patchouli turned around. She was holding an empty fairy maid’s uniform. I watched it slip from her trembling hands.
The koakuma gave her a level stare. A small smile formed on the demon’s lips.