The Necromancer

That night, I went back to my apartment feeling sick to the bottom of my stomach. I could not believe Father had agreed to hand me off like a sack of…a sack of cornmeal to that rude boorish moron.

What was wrong with him???

I laid on my bed, curled up into a tight ball with the covers over my head. I had not even changed out of the beautiful gown Mother had dressed me in. I hadn't even washed the makeup off my face.

I winced as I remembered the words I had shot at Father before running out of the house.

"I am renouncing the name Inanna Imara. My name from now and into the future will be Nana!"

I groaned.

In what sane world does a young female who has nothing to her name disown a powerful Lord of a major House of the realm? In normal situations, it would be the other way around.

I simply did not want to be the reason why Father had to pander to that moron Marcus. If he didn't have to protect me, he could fight back!

I fell into a troubled sleep filled with nightmarish visions of apocalypse.

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Morning came with the raucous calls of the crows outside my window. There was no better alarm clock than crows.

'Shut the hell up', I mentally berated them.

'Wake up, wake up, wake up,' they cawed back at me. 'Food, food, food.'

'Go find some worms, you flying rats!'

'Food, food, food!' they squawked. Just for emphasis they began pecking at my windowpane. 'Clack, clack, clack, clack'.

I sprang out of bed and threw open the window. "SHUT UP!" I screamed at them.

Of course, their only response was more 'food, food, food, food'.

I reached into the seed bin and spread several handfuls of sunflower seeds onto the tray outside for them. As they attacked their breakfast, I shut the window and began to get ready for the day.

Because of the stupid crows, it was barely 7 am when I finally rounded Garamond Circle to the top of the hill.

Judging from the way my parents acted over dinner, the meeting yesterday was a huge catalyst for some major change. I wasn't sure if it would affect the school in any way.

A quick check around campus showed business as usual. It seemed that the 'No' vote result from the Council of Mages had allayed any fears of disruption. There were students milling around everywhere waiting for their morning classes to start.

I scoured the crowd looking for two tall redheads on hover boards but there was no sign of them.

That wasn't a big surprise. They were not the type of students who would hang out at the coffee shop or the campus commons. In fact, they always seemed to be surfing the blast and hovering off somewhere in a big hurry.

And of course, because of the stupid crows, I actually caught Professor Nimitz unfashionably early at the front doors of the Necromancy Mansion.

Gone was his usual flamboyant dresses and fashionable shoes. His tall ripped body was on full display in the basic black mage bodysuit. The usual small crowd of admirers who hounded him everywhere he went was nowhere to be found.

"Professor Nimitz!" I called out in greeting. He turned to me, his long brown hair fluttering in the breeze.

"Inanna! What are you doing here so early?" He proffered a smile that did not quite reach his warm brown eyes. "I was hoping I'd be able to sneak in and out of the Necromancy Mansion but you caught me anyway."

"I was supposed to pick up the tektite protection stones and deliver them to the Alchemy Lab yesterday but we had that meeting and I ran out of time."

Professor Nimitz laughed. "Wasn't that meeting a hoot? I can't believe you're Asada's protégé, and I am completely blown away that you actually voted with your own chip and blocked that sure win from the Mage Elites."

Again, I noticed the laugh did not reach his eyes.

"Why are you in battle gear Professor?" I pointed to his black bodysuit.

"Inanna—why are you NOT in your mage bodysuit?" He threw back my question with his own.

"Mother threw my mage suit out. She thinks it's not feminine enough."

Professor Nimitz's eyes clouded over. It was clear what he thought of Mother's insistence on beauty over function or form.

"Well, come on in and grab the tektite stones, although to be honest, I don't see what the value is in those things." He turned and unlocked the door of the Necromancy Mansion.

"Aren't they supposed to protect against spirits?"

Professor Nimitz shook his head. "Not the kind of spirits we've been working with." He strode across the large reception area. "Wait here a moment. I'll be back with your tektite stones."

The interior of the Necromancy Mansion was just like the man. It was large and ruggedly handsome with lots of colorful touches. There was a light scent of verbena floating in the air.

Bold modern artwork with bright squares and lines of yellows and pinks hung in various conspicuous expanses along the walls. Hot pink seemed to be his favorite color but nobody ever said it was not a masculine shade—not when it had anything to do with the tight virile Nimitz. He transcended color and trends.

There was a circular rug at the center of the room in a hot shade of fuchsia with a deep blue daisy at the center. Within the boundary of the carpet, there was a seating arrangement with all the seats facing inward.

At the center there was nothing but space.

Everyone always thought he used the circular seats to do necromancy work but the truth was far more mundane than that.

Professor Nimitz simply preferred to teach his students in a circular fashion where each person occupied the first row. To him, everyone was important and nobody was allowed to sit in the back of the room.

Due to this highly irregular seating position, his classes were necessarily small and therefore highly coveted. Add to that his heart throb good looks, and waiting time to get a seat in Professor Nimitz's class could stretch out two or three quarters.

"Here we go. One large bag of tektite stones." He flicked a finger. A bag the size of a large watermelon obediently hovered over towards me.

I reached out my hand but as soon as I touched it, the bag fell to the ground and burst apart scattering the dark tektite stones everywhere.

My cheeks grew red as I scrambled to collect the stones.

"Inanna. Stop." Professor Nimitz reached out and pulled me away from the stones. "I will have these delivered over to the Alchemy Lab. You just go on and take care of whatever else you need to do."

I looked up, about to protest that I could handle this job, but the professor's brown eyes were warm and so kind.

I nodded. "Thank you Professor."

Professor Nimitz looked away, embarrassed, but then he turned back to face me. "Nana—have you ever thought about taking Necromancy classes?"

I shook my head. "I don't have a lot of magik skills, Professor. And besides, it's so hard to get a spot in your class…"

"Don't worry about going to class. I could teach you one-on-one, similar to what Magus Asada is doing with you."

I blinked. "Magus Asada? She's not teaching me. I visit her once a week because it's part of my job to make sure she gets whatever she needs from the Academy since she can't leave the Bamboo Forest."

Professor Nimitz gave me a curious look and then laughed. "No matter. We can treat it in the same way. You can come to the Necromancer Mansion once a week and I can teach you how to make contact with spirits. It wouldn't be a class, it would just be me showing you how to communicate with something higher than an animal or a bird."

I pressed my sweaty palms together. As exciting as that sounded, the truth was, I had always been scared of ghosts and ghouls and spirits of all sorts. But how could I say that to a man who spent his life talking to spirits?

Professor Nimitz saw my hesitation and thought I was concerned about my limited magikal ability.

"You can talk to animals. I honestly don't think it is much different. Perhaps you can try talking to spirits as well. I mean…really talk to them, not just yell out commands or put up wards against them."

"Is that what you do in Necromancy classes?"

Professor Nimitz sighed, nodding his head tiredly. "My only job now is to make contact with spirits."

"Is it hard to make contact?"

"No. They're everywhere." His eyes glazed over.

"How do you make contact with a spirit?"

Professor Nimitz was silent for a moment.

But then he gasped and took a deep shuddering breath and I realized he had been holding his breath as he thought about how to answer my question.

"They are everywhere but you have to find the right frequency to connect with them so they can hear you. Once you find the right frequency, you project your thoughts at them. If they are open to communicating with you, they will respond."

I nodded. This was fairly similar to reaching out for the mind waves of an ape or a dog. They operated on their own wavelength and one just had to connect to them at the level that they operated at.

"You really think I can do it? Communicate with spirits I mean."

He leveled a gaze at me. "Absolutely. You are a very strong person." His eyes glittered.

At my questioning glance, he continued. "I knew how strong your spirit was the moment I saw you walking across that stage holding Magus Asada's scry-visual bubble in your hand. You were so calm, so sure of yourself. There was no hesitancy in your actions." He started chuckling as if the thought tickled his heart.

"In front of that entire pompous cast of pretentious House Mages dressed in all their frippery—there you were, in your simple little blue dress that was stained and dirtied from an honest day's hard work. I was so proud of you." He swallowed, his face blushing with some emotion.

"You may think we professors do not see what you do and how hard you work every day but we do see."

My eyes glistened. It made me feel so much better about the whole experience now that Professor Nimitz had comforted me.

But he wasn't looking at me. He had a faraway look in his eyes as he continued musing. "Your face was shining and so pure when you cast that vote. I knew at that moment that you would be the one to throw this whole ball of wax into the void of chaos. You truly inspired me to do something that I did not think I would have the guts to do, and I am so glad I did it."

"What---what did you do?"

"The right thing. Always remember this. When you are faced with a decision in life---always do the right thing."

My ears grew red. "It was my mistake to come on stage looking so grubby. I should have thought about covering my dress with the yellow vestment of Augury."

"Why? None of us Professors wore our vestments. You saw what I had on—some summer dress I found in the dumpster that I salvaged because it was still usable."

He smiled. "And truly, we should not care about the image that we project. I want people to break out of the mindset that males and females have to look or act a certain way to be considered acceptable to society."

"Yes, I remember your dress," I grinned. "But Magus Asada is different."

He shook his head. "Not even Magus Asada wore the yellow vestment. She was actually trying to match with you to lend you strength. Do you remember what she wore?"

My eyes widened. "She wore a blue dress embroidered with pink and white orchids."

"Yes. She told me it was the only blue dress she owned."

"How did she know I had on a blue dress?"

Professor Nimitz laughed. "My dear, she is an Augurer First Class. She sees far better than any of us can."

I bit my lip. To hide my confusion, I asked the first thing that came into my head.

"What do you do after you make contact?"

"I usually assign someone to take over the conversation after I have made contact." He paused. "That's actually the toughest part of my job."

I said nothing.

Necromancy was a tough field, no matter how you slice and dice it. You can surround yourself with bright colors and false bravado but the darkness was always there underneath all the fuchsias and hot pinks.

Professor Nimitz gazed out into the distance. His eyes grew haunted. For a moment, I thought he would say something more.

His mouth opened, and then closed. He tried again to tell me something but it seemed to have gotten stuck in his throat.

He looked away, unable to face me. It was as if a huge weight was on his shoulders.

Professor Nimitz looked like he needed a hug, so I reached out and hugged him.

For a moment, Professor Nimitz stood still, but then he pulled me into his chest. His tall muscular frame shook slightly. I swallowed as I realized something momentous. This large man's heart was broken.

He was crying on my shoulder.