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THE STORM RACE
by Jean

Marianne wondered for years if she had created Irene. On the face of it, it didn't seem that likely. You can't just create people with whole histories and lives into existence. Marianne amended that thought. You couldn't do that without ending up with a few religions fighting over you. And Marianne did not have any followers, unless you counted her cat Amelswit. And her Cat. 

But the fact remained that Irene had first existed to Marianne as Princess Irene in her story.

Marianne still wrote, the chance she was possibly secretly a woman-creating god was no reason to stop. But she also hadn't had one of those stories that burbled up in her and demanded to be told like Princess Irene's had.

At least, she hadn't had one until three months after her fifteenth birthday when she was supposed to be studying some mathematical theory or other to help her understand how a particular bit of magic worked in abstract. Maybe it was the boring subject. Maybe it was because there'd been talk of sailors discovering a strange unnatural city rising from the waves at dinner, but in her mind there was a sea captain named Jeremiah whose story needed to be told.

She had made peace with her father ages ago, much to the relief of everyone who had to deal with her father's sulking, and for her fifteenth he'd made her one of his special creations for her room at the castle. It was like her desk with the hidden drawers back at home, but scaled up and for a proper lady going up in the world, her father had said gruffly. And it did. It exuded class and seriousness, but it also had secrets.

She was only a little embarrassed that one of those secrets was a hidden drawer full of toffees. She kept her stories hidden away from view. They were her personal stories, and Janet often asked kindly if she could read them and Marianne felt awkward turning her down. They were too personal to her still. She'd let her father take a look and his response had been to tell her what was wrong before giving his opinion. Her mother sighed and said 'well, fathers are like that' but it had left an impression. 

Worst, what if Janet did see problems and wouldn't tell her, just saying 'well, it's very nice, Marianne' and then nothing else? She trusted Julia to tell her all but Julia had also never asked after the first refusal. Julia and Roger being maddeningly good at leaving people to their own devices.

Joe was out of the question.

This story was a big one. She could feel it. And a big story required a new notebook. She collected them with her spare coins like Joe collected sports cards. She slid a finger over the drawer that hid her stash and it popped open with a satisfying click. 

She selected a blue notebook, with gold trim on the pages. Perfect for a sea captain.

Flipping open to the first page, she picked up her pen and wrote in her best handwriting:

<blockquote>Far away from the ocean there was a sea captain named Jeremiah Sage.</blockquote>

The story flowed out of her. He was on the run from a card game gone terribly wrong, on the path to fortune as he followed a rumour about a beautiful woman of the fae who lived in an forlorn loch in Scotland. If he could win her, he'd be rich beyond his dreams. But she had a sinister secret. One that may cost him his life.

She ate a celebratory toffee once the story reached page thirty and she had to take a rest for her hand. Amelswit had long ago given up trying to get her attention for pettings and was sleeping curled in a tight ball on Marianne's bed.
#
In the morning Marianne had written Captain Jeremiah Sage's disastrous card game, his meeting with a mysterious old witch who sent him seeking the fairy woman, and his journey to Scotland. What she had not written was a word on the mathematical theory she should have been studying.

Pulling her hair into a braid as she stared tiredly into the mirror she wondered how abject her apology should be and when she could start writing again. There was a chance to work on it over breakfast, which meant she could at least get some done in time before class. She added a ribbon to the braid in the colour Cat had said he liked last week and nodded to her reflection. Then yawned.

Breakfast was a noisy affair. Janet and Julia had been present for an accidental Klartchening of the rose garden and were teasing the loudly protesting griffin about it. A Klartchening is what happened when a very large griffin happened to objects that were in the way. Klartch looked like he might still have some thorns stuck under his fur and feathers. He was ten now and the size of a horse. The doors in the castle had been spelled to open wider for him wherever he went, then return to their normal size. 

Breakfast for everyone but Klartch was standard fare. Klartch's was a freshly butchered cow's leg. The children of the castle had long ago gotten used to what a griffin ate so it didn't put them off. Marianne absently shoveled egg into her mouth as she scribbled down her schoolwork.

Joe tapped her elbow. "Marianne," he sing-songed. "Someone's asking you a question."

Startled she looked up from her work. 

Cat gazed at her earnestly. Well, he gazed at a point near her head. He didn't seem to enjoy eye contact, but what worked for Cat worked for Cat and Marianne didn't let it ruffle her.

"Yes?"

"Are you coming with us for the spring holidays?" asked Cat. "Joe said you've both been asked."

"I said no," said Joe. "I've got things to do, more important than dreary old Scotland." 

"Oh!" said Marianne. "I was still thinking--" she thought back to her story, were Jeremiah had just set foot on the heather muirs of Scotland, with empty pockets and a false treasure map he'd drawn up to trick a local into giving him the boat he needed. It would be excellent research, she told herself. And worth the argument with her father about skipping out on going home.

"Yes?" said Cat, hopefully. Cat was the first person who'd really believed in Marianne, and he hadn't stopped. She wasn't surprised he wanted her along. Not surprised, and very pleased.

"I think I'll say yes," she said with a quick smile at Cat. "It'll be a good change of pace." 

"Brilliant," said Cat, letting out a breath he must have been holding. "I mean, it'll be good to have you there. More the merrier."

Janet leaned in, giving Klartch a break from teasing. "I'm going to be on the hunt for the Loch Ness monster." She had a grin like she was holding in a secret.

"The what?" said Marianne. Was this another part of her book coming true?

Janet nodded, the grin getting wider. "It's a huge dinosaur that lives in the Loch Ness. It's famous in my world and if there's <i>anyplace</i> it could be, it would be this world." Marianne relaxed, definitely not part of her story.

"We've got a camera and mum's agreed it'll be a stop," said Julia. "Cryptozoologists, that's us."

"We already live with a crypto," said Janet, "so we've got the experience already."

"I'm not a crypto," said Klartch. "I'm a griffin."

Marianne finished up her homework with a flourish of her pen. It was good enough. She set it aside to really finish off breakfast, when she noticed that Roger had been doing the same thing as her and still wasn't done. 

"Want help?" she said.

"Huh? Oh, it's fine. I'm just... really onto something, I think," said Roger in a distracted way. "Joe, when we're on class break..."

Joe nodded and poured himself more cocoa. "Meet you in the workshop?"

Roger nodded. "I've got an idea." He went back to scribbling in the margins of his assignment. 
#
On the train ride to Scotland, Marianne wrote very little of Jeremiah's story. It wasn't a long trip, but a half page was still laughably short. Part of it was the mood she was in from the words she'd had with her father about taking a trip with the Chants instead of coming home. The other part was that she was wondering again about whether or not she had supernatural powers. Other supernatural powers.

Irene had been at her house when she'd come home for the weekend to talk about the trip. And Marianne had remembered what it had felt to write about her. How it had felt like nothing before. Until the story Marianne was working on now.

It made her afraid.

Not of Irene, Irene still made Marianne's stomach feel warm and happy inside (a trait she shared with Cat and they had, surprisingly, bonded over) but of what this could mean about Marianne. 

Janet and Julia shared the traincar with her, with a map on the table in front of them as they plotted out what to do during the legs of their trip around Scotland. Marianne stared gloomily out the window. Roger and Cat had wandered off to get snacks a while ago, and Klartch due to a wide variety of reasons from size and including just wanting to take a nap had a whole car to himself.

Part of Julia and Janet's talk of the trip, which Marianne was beginning to realize was spearheaded quite a bit by them, was focused on postcards they'd gotten of the localities they wanted to visit. Each one corresponded to a mark on the map. 

Marianne, bored of worrying she was the maker and destroyer of worlds, moved over to sit with them. 

That's when she saw it. 

A lonely lake, penned in by tired-seeming trees, a small island in the middle. The reeds were high and there were no animals to be seen. It was the lake the fairy lived in, in her story.

She looked at where it corresponded on the map, not breathing.

"That's Loch Tuatha. There's been sightings there, so it's definitely on our list," said Julia. "Father said we might as well get it all in when it's as small as Scotland."

"Why aren't you two satisfied with all the creatures that live around the castle?" said Marianne, eyes on the postcard. She hadn't named the lake in her story, but... Loch Tuatha seemed to fit it perfectly.

"This isn't about magic, Marianne," said Janet in her kindest tone. "This is about science and the chances of prehistoric creatures living throughout Scotland."

"So there's a dinosaur in this lake?" said Marianne with a sigh.

"Oh no," said Julia. "A horse."

"A horse?" said Marianne.

"A <i>prehistoric</i> horse," said Janet. "Or at least one drastically different from a normal horse."

"Well, that's not so bad," said Marianne. It wasn't a darkly beautiful fairy woman, which was good. But at the same time it started to pull at her mind, new lines for her story unfurling.

"Amazing what Scotland hides," Julia said agreeably. 

Marianne sat down on the other side of the car and rummaged through her travelbag, pulling out the blue and gold notebook. Janet brightened.

"You're writing a story?"

"It's not finished," said Marianne quickly. "It might not get finished."

"I'd like to see it when it is," said Janet.

Marianne squirmed and just nodded. Then began writing. The story had changed on her.

<blockquote>Jeremiah's boat floated towards the island, when an animal scream rent the air. He whipped his head around to find the source. On the shore was a horse unlike any he'd ever beheld before, black, with impossibly long limbs and an arched neck that seemed uncommonly beautiful. It had gotten trapped in the shore's mud and was sinking.

Jeremiah began to row back to shore.</blockquote>

Marianne knew as she wrote it Jeremiah had to keep away from that horse, but she had to put it down on paper. Captain Sage was not a good man. Not a violent or cruel one, but he would trick you out of your money and never faced responsibility. She had no idea why she'd come up with this man to write about. But his adventures were in her hands and she felt a sort of kinship for him. Jeremiah Sage wanted only to get ahead in life, he just, Marianne felt, wasn't good at doing it in the honest way. 

She tapped her pen against the paper. His story was going out of control, ever since the card game at the beginning. He was a sea captain who'd lost his boat and livelihood. If he didn't succeed, he might never be a captain again and that was as bad as dying to Captain Sage. 

Even if he knew that the unearthly horse was disaster, if he thought it would help him get to the treasure, or that it was a sign of the fairy lady or even a fairy horse, he'd face it head on. And what, Marianne realized about a loose thread, about the man Captain Sage had given the fake treasure map for the rowboat for the Loch Tuatha (oh no, thought Marianne, it really was named that now) when he realized that the map was certainly false. 

"What's wrong?" said Cat, sitting beside her. He had a bag of snacks in his hand that he handed out, giving Marianne a chocolate marshmallow last, which was her favourite kind of treat. "You're frowning."

"Writing troubles," said Marianne. 

Cat nodded. He didn't write, but he'd listened to Marianne tell him how it just seemed to get more complicated the older she got and the more she learned about doing it.

Marianne bit into her treat with a happy sigh. "How's Klartch?" she said.

"He likes his car fine," said Cat. "Says he's traveling in style. Wonders what dinosaur tastes like."

"I don't think those two will ever forgive him if he eats their dinosaur," laughed Marianne. 
#
By day six of their trip, no advances in prehistorical animal knowledge had been made. 

Chrestomanci and Millie seemed to be enjoying themselves avidly as they watched Janet and Julia explore every corner of their stops, with Chrestomanci calling out anytime he saw something that might be a footprint or a leaving. Watching other people be busy while he relaxed seemed to be just his speed. 

Janet and Julia were being scientific about it, writing down and measuring every hint they saw. Roger's head never left his own notebook as he puzzled over the same thing he and Joe had been working on up until the moment they left, and Cat, Marianne, and Klartch were simply sight-seeing. 

Marianne was dreading the trip to Loch Tuatha. She hadn't been able to bear putting another word in her story since Captain Jeremiah Sage had started rowing back to the strange horse.

It wasn't like Princess Irene. Irene had been a princess, Marianne hadn't been writing about her day to day life as a designer. There was still room for her to be surprised about Irene. But every word Marianne put down about Captain Jeremiah Sage felt realer and more present than her tales of Princess Irene.

The notebook was under her hotel bed, where she'd kicked her bag so she didn't have to see it.

But she knew there was more she had to write. Around Loch Tuatha, in her story, she now knew that the reason Captain Sage had been so quick to believe the tales was that news of the strangeness there had come to him from a crewman who swore he'd escaped an evil influence there before joining Sage's crew. The lake ate men, they said. They'd go in and never be seen again. 

The old witch who had told Sage that his fortune would be found there had not said what that fortune was. Perhaps, Marianne thought as she let the words she knew she'd write run through her head, fortune had meant fate. 

"Now what's this then?" a shopkeeper was asking Cat. "Can it do tricks?"

Klartch bent down, and looked the shopkeep directly in the eyes. "I do sic 'em," he intoned.

"That's a good one," said the shopkeeper. "Taught my dog that one." 

Klartch sighed. Marianne patted him on the flank.

And then, quite suddenly, it was time to go to Loch Tuatha. 

Marianne quite firmly turned down invitations to go look at the Loch, saying she felt ill and would stay in her hotel room. Cat volunteered to stay and feeling a little guilty about not being entirely truthful, she agreed. It turned out that Cat had known just fine that the ill she felt wasn't in her body.

"I know you," he said. "You're easier than other people. You haven't been well since the start of the trip." He was practicing his conjuring with two passable bowls of ice cream. Marianne's was Cat's best flavour, 'vaguely strawberry.'

"It's... complicated," said Marianne, taking a spoonful of ice cream. "I don't know how to explain it. Thank you for staying. I'd felt lonely otherwise." I might have written otherwise, she thought to herself. 

"It's fine," said Cat. He glanced out the window. "Huh, look at that."

Marianne looked out and froze. In the street was a large man, dark and with a big bristling beard. He wore gold and navy blue clothes. He was yelling, loud enough for Cat and Marianne to hear from the window, about needing good strong men to capture... Marianne wrinkled her forehead at the neck part. 'Glory' the man yelled.

The man was Captain Jeremiah Sage, as he had looked exactly in Marianne's mind as she'd written.

The people of the town were avoiding him, and some were jeering. He didn't let up.

Cat touched Marianne's arm lightly. "You look like you've seen a ghost."

"I've seen a character," said Marianne. "We have to go down there."

"He doesn't look like the sort of person we should be talking with," said Cat, but he was already getting up.

"I know. But we need to. I know him. Sort of. I think I created him. Or knew about him. It's complicated. Let's go." She tugged on her boots at the door, lacing them with a spell and hurried down, followed by Cat.

Captain Sage was still in the street trying to recruit. "Your sons, your fathers, your brothers, they would want you to do this!" he yelled. A woman burst into tears. 

Marianne realized that most of the people she could see in this town were women and children. Cat and Captain Sage stood out like sore thumbs.

She cleared her throat.

"Sir," she said.

"What's that, girl?" said Sage, turning around. "You've got some gumption in you?"

Marianne nodded, before Cat could say anything. "I do." Cat squawked in surprise behind her.

"Good. What about your boy? They're thin on the ground here, and I plan to do something about that," said Sage.

"He's not my boy--" began Marianne.

"Don't matter. You up to a challenge? Up to facing impossible odds? Up to dragging glory from the clawed fingers of evil?" 

Marianne knew this speech. Or one like it. This was the sort of way that Captain Sage had recruited his crew. The same crew that had tricked him into a rigged card game to take his ship after they grew sick of him.

"I am, sir," she said.

"Marianne!" said Cat.

"Good lass, good lass. Can you hold a gun?"

"I'm a witch, sir," she said.

Sage's face broke into a huge grin. "Perfect."
#
"Marianne," said Cat in a whisper as they walked to the Loch. "When we run into the others, what are you planning to say about this man?"

"We might not run into them," Marianne replied hopefully.

There wasn't much hope around them. The closer they got to the loch, the darker and colder it seemed to get. The sky was dimming and it felt like the trees were closing in. Marianne repressed the urge to grab Cat's hand. In practice, the reality of her story was a lot more gothic than the adventure she had been spinning.

And it looked like Captain Sage had seen something, but hadn't run into the strange horse. 

The wind had begun to whip up. Cat's hair flew around his face and he moved closer to Marianne.