“We’ve already discussed this. Strike here.†Proserpina tiredly raps Ernestine’s first two knuckles. “Keep your left hand out to guard and uncurl your right arm as you extend it–”
“I’ve told you, I’m left-handed.”
“Not yet you’re not. You’ll learn to do this the proper way first, and then you’ll be able to switch if you must.”
“When do I get to spar with the two of you?” Ernestine complains. “Why do I have to spend all my time just hitting your musty oatmeal bag over and over?”
“Because over the last fortnight,” Proserpina grates, “the bag has learned more than you.”
But Ernestine doesn’t really listen, which is why she hasn’t locked her wrist when she punches Iala’s mouth. The fight goes quickly floorwards, and ends more quickly still, as teachers wade into Iala’s piled-on entourage: clammers deep in shrieking surf. When they finish prying, everyone’s silent about who hit whom; but there are twenty-six vengeful eyes on one side of the hallway, and one hurt wrist on the other.
Proserpina hears only later, thirdhand. Leaving her dorm to investigate, she finds Iala in her way.
“I need you to teach us some things,” Iala says, fat-lipped, bright-eyed.
“If you need me to teach your entire coterie how to pulverize one tempermental milksop,” says Proserpina dryly, “she must have hit you harder than I thought.”
“That’s not what we want!” snaps Iala. “It’s the–the way they look at you, everyone. The fear. The respect.”
“I’m sure you’re fantasizing, and in any case, I can’t teach it.”
“Then show me how to earn it!”
“How? Hurting Ernestine?”
“If necessary!”
“No.”
“Then why do you love fighting so much?” Iala sniffs.
“Because boxing isn’t a weapon,” Proserpina says, smiling, as the idea begins to light her up. “It’s a sport.”
“Do I have to wear the gloves?” Iala frowns.
“They’re for your hands, not her head,” sighs Proserpina. “Stop tucking your thumbs inside your fists or I shall break them before you do.”
“Swish swish crack!” mutters Ernestine, in the other corner, making little swipes as she stares at the sand-marked edges of the ring. “Pop swish pop!”
“Keep your hands up,” says Radiane, “and please don’t try to pull her hair.”
“I won’t if she doesn’t,” Ernestine lies.
“Eep!” says Georgette, upon accidentally dinging the bell. The chatter of the assembled first-years spooks the pigeons in the rafters.
“They’re going to end up on the floor,” says one of the watchers dryly.
“Have a little faith.” Proserpina smiles. “Iala will want to mess up her face a little first, and this way they can’t use their fingernails.”
“So what are their sandwich board names? Messface McRichiegirl and the Scratcher?”
Proserpina realizes, with a motionless shock, that her interlocutor is a boy–around her age, long arms draped over the scaffolding, dark shirt and suspenders blended with the shadows of the large and dusty hall.
“You’re not supposed to be here,” she says.
“Neither are you,” he points out, correctly.
“Elijah,” he says, and sticks out his hand.
“A gentleman, Elijah,” says Proserpina, “would take my hand first.”
“You’re not one for the gentle,” he grins.
“That’s an ugly assumption,” she says. Behind her, Radiane hammers the bell and yells for the combatants to break their clinch.
“I’ve seen you at the fights, in your smudge and breeches. Not fooling everyone.”
“Don’t follow me again,” she says coldly.
“I don’t have to, now.”
“You’re displaying an unseemly interest.”
“Another thing we have in common,” he says, and attempts to disappear into the shadows, except she watches him all the way out.
Few in history are the referees who have resorted to striking the contestants in order to persuade them to abide by Queensberry rules, but Radiane is not exactly a veteran of the position.
Fewer yet (if not by many) are the boxers who have found this situation a first bit of common ground, and who have siezed the newfound bond to turn their gloves upon the referee in question.
But unique to this match is the interruption of a teenage girl named Georgette: shrieking, leaping from the rubbish bin-cum-cornerpost, defending her friend with the world’s first flying elbow drop.
Thursday, August 14, 2008
Miss Havisham waits expectantly.
“We had, um, a midnight feast, is all,” explains Iala. “In the dorm.”
“Which dorm?” Miss Havisham asks quietly.
“2B!” says Iala. “3A!” says Ernestine.
“It was sort of in both,” says Iala. “Or either.”
“Only,” says Ernestine, “there was a fight. With food. A food fight.”
“No one was hurt,” says Radiane. “It was all in fun. Gentle fun.”
“Well, to be perfectly honest,” says Iala piously, “someone did get hit with a sausage.”
Miss Havisham’s eyebrow can climb no higher.
Proserpina sits in the back, grumpy, cheeks red and left eye puffing up quite nicely.
Thursday, August 28, 2008
“Knew you wouldn’t miss tonight,” he says, as mustachioed men circle and sweat. “You’ve got a thing for Black Jack Sullivan.”
“I came to tell you I won’t be attending these fights anymore.”
“Oh, I see,” says Elijah, “now you have your own league in there to keep you entertained.”
“In fact, it’s because you made clear the risks–”
“Which risks in particular?” he says crookedly.
Proserpina’s pulse pounds in her healing eye. “Don’t try to be coy.”
“The risk of getting chased around by some squint-eyed cinema boy?”
“The risk of getting caught and–” she hesitates. “By some what?”
Thursday, September 11, 2008