More Arms Needed

Have you ever tried to change a teleporting baby's diaper? She’d vanish as soon as I got the special transportation-blocking diaper undone, and then pop back into visibility on the floor six feet away, and then on top of the dresser drawers, and then near the doorway, cackling gleefully and leaving little poopy butt marks all over the place.

I lunged across the room, snagging the baby just in time and whipping the transport-blocking diaper around her hips. Sweat dripped into my eyes and I muttered at the chubby cheeked giggler, “Magistar’s The All Purpose Sorcerer, Volume 1 says that all a beginning sorcerer needs is two arms and an inquiring mind! Magistar has no idea! I need at least six arms!”

Just when I’d gotten out the bleach and was dabbing the poopy stains with a rag, one of the three-year-olds came in, his hair sticking up all over the place, and his face sticky. “Snack?”

“Not snack time.” I muttered, looking wistfully over at my textbooks open in the corner. I had managed all of fifteen minutes of study this morning. Would I ever get back to my books? But the child turned beet red, shouted, “I wanna snacky!” burst into tears—and, more alarmingly—also burst into flames.

Apparently, I would not be studying any time soon.

In desperation, I dropped everything and ran to the kitchen to rustle up a granola bar for the flaming toddler—and found Simon Clemp sitting on the floor, munching on the last loaf of bread, the granola bar box lying empty beside him.

Now, Simon was the oldest in the home at fourteen, the most soft spoken, and well behaved child in the place. But I had just gone grocery shopping the day before yesterday, and he had been raiding the cabinets for weeks. I was already at my absolute limit.

He looked up wide eyed as I swelled up, ready to spew forth all my frustrated rage upon him. And then a familiar, snide voice came from across the kitchen.

“Some sorcerer you are. You can’t even change diapers.” A redheaded thirteen year old girl was standing by the fridge, smirking at me, and I immediately whipped my ire around, furiously pointed finger and all.

“Where were you just now, when I needed help with the baby?! You talk all the time about how great it is to pull water out of thin air; I’d think you’d want a chance to show off!”

This was Adelaide. My nemesis. Maybe a nearly-adult-almost-sorcerer shouldn’t have a thirteen year old nemesis, but I did. I’m not proud of it.

She was the oldest girl in the home, confident in her magical pedigree (two sorcerer parents who had died in some kind of magical experiment) and her talent with magical manipulation of water. Whatever her talents with water, her true skill was forthright speech. And her snub nose and disdainful little sneer had me remembering her name when I couldn’t yet recall if the fire-throwing three year old was called Davis or if that was the nine year old who could see ghosts and liked to describe them in horrific detail to the younger children.

“Oh, I was too far away.” Adelaide assured me, flipping her braid over her shoulder and sashaying away. “Besides, you obviously had the situation in hand.”

I went mad. Forget Magistar’s repeated warnings about not doing unsupervised magic until you have reached your second year of schooling. Forget his smug assertion that you “only need two arms.” Whatever high grandness of magical ability this Magistar had reached, he surely hadn’t ever tried to run a houseful of magical orphans by himself.

I threw down my cleaning rag and I went upstairs and locked the door. And then I frantically poured through my books until I’d found it. That one spell. The spell I’d run across the night before, barely remembered in the clutter of my brain. It was exactly what I wanted. Small, elegant, easy to remember. I gathered my ingredients, recited the spell, and…

Perhaps this all sounds like a foolish overreaction. Perhaps you might think I should not have taken a job beyond my capacity in the first place. Well…with the benefits of hindsight—you would be right. But I have an excuse, anyway. You see, I’d had dreams, and when you have been planning your life in dreams, getting down to reality can be an extremely hard bump.

I had applied for the job of running a Magical Orphan’s Home because I thought it would provide board, food, an income, and a flexible schedule to study for my Sorcerer’s Degree. I’d care for the little angels during the daytime, and when they were all in bed at night I would sit at the kitchen table and study for Sorcery School. I’d figured I would get in some studying during the day while they were napping or playing independently as well.

From my employers’ perspective, I was a sorcerer in training and would therefore be equipped to handle magical children, and also, since I was not fully trained, they could pay me a full half of what they’d need to hire a qualified sorcerer.

I realized later that this second point was the primary deciding factor in their hiring decision.

The reality was a hard bump indeed. Daytimes with nine children ranging in ages from one to thirteen was a long succession of chaos, talking, shouting, tattling, mud-printing, making meals, cleaning up after meals, making snacks, cleaning up after snacks—you get the picture. Most nights I woke up in the wee hours of the morning with the table edge pressed into my face and the words on the pages swimming in front of me.

Looking back, I probably should have resigned. Every time I came to the point I heard my mother’s derisive laughter when she heard my plans for paying for college, and decided against it. Surely if the experts who hired me thought I had enough magical training and personal acuity at eighteen to manage nine traumatized, magically gifted children ranging in ages from infancy to mid-teens, I could do it. They were experts, weren’t they?

So there I was, woefully stubborn, completely clueless, and poised to make a terrible mistake. I suppose the most surprising thing was that I actually thought I’d gotten away with it at first.

I did the spell, watched to see that it took, gathered my schoolbooks and boldly marched out the door for school and my test, letting the door slam on the Magical Orphan’s Home and all its insanity.

I passed the test, though I did have a strange compulsion to answer all the questions on each page in random order and consequently forgot to answer a few questions even though I knew the answer.

But those were small things, and what occupied my mind as I walked back to the Home for Magical Orphans was what state I might find it in. When I rounded the bend, there it stood in its white, colonial glory, even the raggedy boxwood bushes in the front were still intact. I was tense, walking through the door, waiting to be bombed by flying dirty diapers or worse, but I found the entire hallway clean. One of the older girls, probably around ten or eleven, with her thick black hair done in braids stopped on the stairs when I came in and looked relieved. (Francesca? Felica? These magically abled parents had strange taste in names…)

“Oh, Miss Allen! Good, you’re back. Can you put yourself back together now?”

“Let me see,” I said, putting down my bag and heading for the stairs to go up and check on the youngest children. “How have I done?”

Francesca/Felicia seemed to find the wallpaper very interesting. She dug a hole in the carpet with her toe. “Well…” She said, “It is very clean.”

“But?” I walked through the house, noting the clean windows, the pillows neatly placed on the couches, the swept floors. We went upstairs.

“But,” Francesca said, opening the door of the bathroom on the second floor. “I don’t think this is really…okay.”

Six children sat in the bathtub. Tear streaked, shoving each other, pinching, pushing. The baby was standing at the side, crying. “She put them in here to keep them from making more mess.” Francesca said very quietly, folding her hands together and looking pointedly at me. I was supposed, I gathered, to understand that this was not a good way to treat children. “She only let me and Angelica and Simon stay out because we promised not to touch anything.”

But the house was so neat…I looked up the hallway to enjoy it once more before letting the children out, and I saw myself.

“Oh dear.” I said. My double, or rather, the part of me that liked things nice and tidy, was hustling down the hallway with a duster, frighteningly efficient, blank faced, glaze- eyed and ever so slightly translucent. I went into the bathroom scooped up the crying baby.

“Shh, Grizelda.” I cooed. “It’s okay. ...I suppose she is a little frightening, after all.”

“You’re going to put her back inside you, right?” Francesca (after thinking about it, I’m pretty sure she was Francesca) asked. “She’s really creepy. Also, the baby’s name is Jermaine, not Grizelda.”

I glanced down the hallway. Everything was clean. I could see the ends of made beds. As myself and myself alone, I had too many priorities piling on top of me to be a very good housekeeper, but when I magically separated the neat and orderly part of myself out and left that part to handle things…Maybe what I needed was not to take away my helping second self, but to add another, milder presence to help calm her down. The two parts of me could manage things while the rest of me did schoolwork.

“Miss Allan?”

“What?” I jumped, and remembered Francesca, still waiting on my answer. “Oh…yes…” I said. “I’ll put myself back together.”

But something about Francesca’s worried face made me feel guilty. Also, I didn’t like how the younger children wouldn’t look me in the eye for several days afterwards. So, virtuously, I stayed away from that spell. For about two weeks.

And then, yet again, the perfect storm hit. This child wailing, this child making toys vanish, those two twins, Davis and Dani, going invisible and pulling things out of cabinets, and nothing, nothing in the kitchen. I suspected Simon again of eating the last half pound of lunch meat again but he’d made himself too absent to go to the trouble of lecturing.

I convinced myself that I alone had to go to the grocery store, though in all honesty I could have sent one of the older children. So I split myself again. Twice, this time. The neat, tidy part of me started cleaning the bathrooms (a chore long overdue) and the studious, intelligent part sat down to finish my homework.

The rest of me went grocery shopping.

It was lovely. I swanned down the aisles tossing food products in my cart, blissfully child-free. It took me extra long because I couldn’t keep track of my list; the words seemed to rearrange themselves and it just seemed so boring to go straight down the list. Plus, there was a great sale on blue icing. We didn’t need blue icing, but hey, a sale, right? Blue icing would make a fun dessert.

When I returned, Francesca was waiting for me, her hands clasped in front of her, her lips bitten.

“Miss Allan. Please put yourself back together. Your clean self is…mean. All the babies are crying, and us older girls can’t get them to be quiet. And your studious self won’t do anything but study and when we try to get her to help she gives us lectures on magical theory!”

“I’ll just…” My gaze drifted to the wallpaper. “I do like this print. It’s kind of outdated, but it’s getting almost retro.”

“Miss Allan!”

“Oh. Yes. Putting myself back together.”

But the ability to split myself was not an easy temptation to resist. A week later I split myself into four: one to clean for an upcoming visit from the Board, one to study for a massive test, one to double check my financial report for the Board…and one to finish the T.V. show I’d started and not had the time to finish.

And then three days later, I split myself into five—one to clean, one to cook, one to study, one to mind children, and one to go on a date!

I enjoyed myself thoroughly on the date…but my date did not seem to have nearly as much fun. In fact, by the time I got home I couldn’t even remember what his name was or why I’d wanted to go out with him in the first place. He dropped me off at the door, looking disgruntled.

“I had a lovely time!” I cooed, wondering if he would kiss me.

“You did.” He said, stuffing his hands in his pockets. “Well, that’s one of us, anyway.”

Both Francesca and Angelica met me at the door this time. Francesca looked worried, as always. That child needed to lighten up. And Angelica, the cause of the whole thing, looked disdainful and smug.

“It’s all falling apart!” She announced. “You’re really going to get it now, practicing complicated spells without a license!”

“Please, Miss Allen,” Francesca put her hands on my sleeve, possibly to stop me from spinning in the hallway. “Please, just put yourself back together. I’m sure you can sort it out when you’re altogether.”

“I don’t see why!” I sang, pulling out of her grasp. “This horrible job is so much better when I’m split up! I think I’ll just stay this way!”

Francesca looked hurt. I couldn’t figure out why.

With a sportive leap, I bounded through the hallway, through the French doors that led into the main living area of the house—and into chaos. The first thing I saw was my own self, standing on top of the table, screaming as four small boys pelted me with dirt. I was carrying a cleaning rag and frantically trying to rub away every speck of dirt that was thrown at me. Another me was huddled in the corner bent over my books like a frantic tiger while a five year old huddled against my back, pawing at my shirt and begging me to play. The third me was in the kitchen, cooking.

And was I ever cooking. The spaghetti was slopped in bowls on the counter, every burner on the stove had a pot on it and was full of some kind of soup or sauce or something else boiling away. The sink of dishes was mounded high, and I was in the middle of it, rolling out what looked like pizza dough on the only clear space of countertop left.

At my shoulder, Francesca said, “We haven’t eaten yet because she won’t let us eat until she’s finished but every time she gets almost done, she starts a new side dish and stops the other one.”

My cheerful bubbliness dimmed. “Oh. Okay. I guess I’ll get myself back together again!” I opened my mouth to say the incantation—and stopped.

Francesca began knotting her hands together. “Is everything okay?”

“She’s forgotten it.” Angelica announced from the other side of me. “Told you she would. She spread herself too thin. Doesn’t have enough of her own brain to remember the words, and probably wouldn’t have enough magical essence left in her body to do the magic anyway.”

“What do you know about magical theory?” I growled, my hands to my head. “You’re thirteen.”

Angelica put a hand on her hip. “If you actually had bothered to know anything about any of us, you’d know that I lived with my parents until I was ten, and they were the Senior Mages at Redwick College.”

“But Angelica!” Francesca blurted. “She can’t do it anymore?”

“Of course I can do it!” I said. “I’ve done it tons! Listen—Ah….boogidy…rumty…um…Those…those weren’t the words…were they?”

Angelica rolled her eyes. “They weren’t words at all. That’s the problem. Overexertion. Mummy said all the freshies did it all the time. She said if a freshman could ever get through the first year without overexertion, she’d—”

“Angelica!” Francesca snapped, suddenly fierce. “Shut up about your magical pedigree! This is a problem! We have to get Miss Allen back together! How are we going to do that?”

Angelica looked at the mess of crying children and barely functioning me’s. And sighed. “Alright. Let’s go up to her attic. I can’t think in this mess.”

They led me upstairs to my room. I’m afraid I was not doing well by this point. Apparently, all my emotional stability had gone into, I’m assuming, Cleaning Emily and Studying Emily and I’d left none for me. To be blunt, I was blubbering too hard to see the stairs. “I’m so sorry, I never meant it to get like this, I should have listened…”

Francesca patted me on the shoulder. “Just take the next step, Miss Allan. We’ll get you fixed up.”

“Probably.” Angelica said darkly, two steps higher.

In the attic Francesca sat me on my bed and the two girls surveyed me. “I know the words,” Angelica said. “I heard her practicing them. So we’ve got that.” A shade of—could it be unease?—entered her expression. “I don’t think there’s enough left of her to make the magic…go. I can do water, but…”

Francesca gave her a smug little smile. “But you can’t do anything but water. Well, I can do more. I tested off the charts for magical ability.” She looked at me sternly. “I’m going to sorcerer’s school too, someday. But I plan on listening when I’m there.”

And with that gentle little lecture from Francesca, they set about fixing me. Then we consoled the younger children, I put everybdoy in bed, and then I went back down to the kitchen to clean up my horrific mess, stuff most of the sauces and spaghetti into ziplock containers, and scrub the splatters off the wall. I didn't get to bed until one in the morning.

I woke the next morning physically whole and emotionally bruised. How could I have been so foolish? How could I have been so selfish? I couldn’t bear to face them. I’d leave. I’d write my letter and leave as soon as the superintendents sent a better, more qualified house manager. As I crept to my table, self-pitying tears streaking down my nose, bidding an internal farewell to my dreams of paying my way through sorcerer’s school, there was a quiet knock—and then the door slammed open.

Angelica and Francesca were framed in the morning light.

“You could have waited for an answer,” grumbled Francesca, the one who had knocked.

“She wouldn’t have answered.” said Angelica, the one who had kicked the door open. “She’s busy giving up.”

“Oh, don’t give up.” Francesca clasped her hands together.

“You see,” Angelica said to Francesca as if explaining something to a dim-witted child, “it’s that she doesn’t want to read our profiles. It’s too much to bother with.”

“It’s a little bit more than reading your profiles!” I spluttered, irritated all over again. “It’s just all too much. You all need me constantly. I have to finish my studies!”

“It’s not just reading profiles,” Francesca said, with a warning glare at Angelica, “but it would help if you would learn our names. Sometimes the kids won’t do what you say because you call them by the wrong name and they don’t know you’re talking to them.”

“And if you think this job will hurt your sorcery skill, you don't know much. Mummy used to always say that half of magic was knowing potions and energy and stuff, and half was knowing people. You can’t just force things to go your way with magic; it doesn’t work like that. You can’t tell me you’d have a better on the job training than raising small magic-users.”

"But I can't--"

She carried on over top of me. "Also, you’d find out Simon’s dad had super strength. He’s got a teenage growth spurt and his powers are coming in at the same time. That’s why he’s eating all the time. He literally can’t help it.”

“Davis gets panicked about snacks because they were neglected and almost starved before the Home took them in.” Francesca added.

I sat there, feeling remarkably small before these young girls. Finally, I said, “I’ve been pretty selfish.”

“Too right you have!” Angelica added, enthusiastically and unhelpfully.

“So why do you want me to stay?” I said, looking down at my feet. “I barely even remember your names. I’ve said horrible things about what it’s like to stay here with you.”

“You did at least come up with a solution instead of leaving us in the lurch.” Angelica said. “Some others just leave. They don’t say anything. You just wake up one morning, and the kitchen is dark, and nobody’s there, so you pull out the cornflakes and hope the milk hasn’t gone bad.”

Francesca beamed at me. “I think you could be a good house manager. If you’d just slow down and listen, some. We like you. We want you to stay.”

Francesca was gazing at me but instead of seeing her worry, I saw hope. Angelica , of course, was looking out the window and not at me at all, but I had heard the pain beneath her matter-of-fact explanation of being abandoned. Clearly, I was not good at this job. But just as clearly, this was a job worth doing, and at least trying to do well.

I stood up, put on my robe. “Okay, well. If I’m staying…what do you want me to make you for breakfast? Eggs and bacon?”

“Oh yes!” Francesca cried.

“Not eggs.” Angelica said. “Simon fried the last of them up yesterday afternoon. How about cold spaghetti? There’s a lot of that left over.”

They bounded down the stairs ahead of me, and I followed; towards chaos, towards difficulty, and maybe, towards happiness.