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alchemistc · 7 years

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The Price 4/?

Summary: Still not speaking to the Swan, Killian begins to grow used to his magic.

@artielu, this is not the angst I promised you, that’s for later, but I hope your terrible, horrible, no good, very bad month is made marginally better by my humble offering of love and fealty. <3

tagging @kmomof4 and @the-captains-ayebrows

Chapter List: One/Two/Three

Chapter Four

Nearly a month passes without a word spoken between them. He sees her, on occasion, rounding corners or passing by doorways with him inside of them, but she makes no effort to speak to him, shows no inclination to be anywhere near him.

As his anger cools, he hates her all the more for following his wishes. He has spent the majority of his life surrounded by people, by the quiet murmurs of conversations just out of earshot, and the presence of bodies full of life near his own.

The emptiness of the castle is stifling.

With the revelations of his strange new (new to his own knowledge, at least) powers, he spends a few days in sullen silence, wondering if he can will it out of himself, if maybe the Swan could take it from him - she’d quite literally stolen the thunder from him that night in the library, so it had to be possible, hadn’t it?

His curiosity piqued, he’d made a final attempt at mounting a siege on the damn tower, only to spend the entirety of his afternoon wandering a winding corridor that seemed to have no end, until he turned back and found himself at the bottom of the stairwell minutes later.

Eventually, he realized he could feel the power behind the spellwork, twisting into his mind, suggestive and conniving. There was nothing sinister about being driven to distraction every time he tried to enter the tower, but it concerned him, all the same, wondering what sort of casting could cause such a thing.

In the end, that was his greatest mistake. Letting his curiosity lead the way.

He’d retired to the solar in his rooms, intent on finding any sort of clue as to what, exactly, was at work there.

Finding nothing useful, he’d gone, one last time, feeling out the edges of the spell, and he’d felt his magic pushing back.

He should have recoiled. Should have closed his own mind to it, but instead, he’d reached out with the magic brewing under his skin, pressing and prodding at the spellwork, trying to find a way to breach it.

He never found a way, not a single hole, not a crack in the veneer, but his magic had rustled excitedly, focusing him this way or that, pushing him to let it build and well inside of him.

It curled into him, not quite frantic but insistent, at least, and so he’d gone back to his chambers once more, resigning himself to the reality of it, this thing he hadn’t wanted, and didn’t trust, but which he knew might consume him if he let it run wild.

He plays at spellwork - first with small objects, flinging books across the wide rooms, shifting frames across the space of the walls. It’s nothing like the tendrils of the Swans magic that he’s felt before - this comes to him like the lurch of a ship when the wind catches in the canvas, like the flash of light as the sun sets on the horizon, like the steady roll of the ocean beneath the deck.

Hers had felt earthy, full of quiet murmurings and cracking twigs, the sound of a muggy breeze through leaves, a babbling brook - different, uncomfortable, foreign. Stubborn, almost, like a willow planted firm in the dirt, ancient and unmoving, where his was all movement and flight.

Despite his constant wariness of anything magical, his tiny spells brought him small comforts. If he twisted his hand just right, if he moved his arms a certain way, and channeled his thoughts just so, the magic sang in his blood, and welcomed him in.

Eventually, he reached a doldrum, and his mind began to grow static beneath his skin, impatient, and he turned instead to the books in his study. A fair few were useless to him - in languages he’d never seen, with words he couldn’t quite grasp; others still were merely filled with what he assumed were the personal chronicles of those who’d come before him, and though some mentioned spellwork, the cantrips felt stale and worn, unwelcome against his tongue; there were yet more books filled with history of the realm, or recipes, here and there a childrens nursery rhyme or an old fairytale.

The spellbooks he could decipher were mostly tricks, and when he practiced them the magic prickled under his skin, unsatiated by the simple incantations.

Three weeks, the magic ebbed and flowed under his skin desperate to break free, as though the anger the Swan had stolen from him had escaped her grasp in fits and starts, slowly making its way back to him. He began to suspect that there was little chance of ever finding a way to be rid of it entirely.

On a restless night, a few days after he’d taught himself a spell for light (his shone like moonlight on water, flickering and cool, bright against the stone walls of his chamber) the magic crackled in his palms, nearly setting the curtains of the four poster aflame, and he’d clenched his fists against the onslaught, before it could overrun him.

This was why he’d never trusted magic. It was uncontrollable - an entity entirely within it’s own power, with few strong enough to wield it safely.

When he strode into the library an hour later he half expected (half-hoped) to find the Swan curled up in her chair, but the room was dark and empty of company, with no one to unleash the persistent tension behind his ribcage upon.

He considers scanning the shelves, as he’s seen the Swan do, but with no idea what it is he is looking for, it seems a wasted effort, and so instead he lets the magic flow swiftly from his hands, building in waves and rushing out across the expanse of the room, filling it like a basin.

He follows the leylines of the magic, riding the waves where they take him, until he lands on a small tome, tucked high up on a shelf, the spellwork nearly singing to him.

Killian pulls the magic back, letting it slide slowly back into his fingertips, terrified to pull it back in all at once and overwhelm himself, and as the last of it returns, he summons the book he’d found off it’s high shelf.

Without another breath, he tucks it under his arm and returns to his chambers.

------

He barely eats, and sleeps not a wink, three days drifting by in the quiet comfort of his rooms, eyes devouring the spellwork on the pages. There is a heady feel to it, like a sip of rum after a few pints of ale, the burn of it smooth and intoxicating.

The magic that had been building in him finds it’s release as he draws water out of thin air to dance across the tables, and masters a trick for changing the breeze outside the windows.

He hay have refused the Swan’s tutelage, but now that he’s felt the build and release of his magic, he wonders how he’d ever forgotten it was there.

It must have been, he realizes, for it feels familiar to him, like an old friend. Somehow, it had fallen away from his focus, and buried itself deep away, and now that he’s found it again he finds it difficult to let it lie still for a moment.

On the fifth night, with a salty breeze cooling his chambers and the sound of the tide lapping below his windows (a clever trick, he’d found the working inside the book, its winding, even writing explaining the power and the theory of the illusion), he sets the book down, and strips to his shift before retiring to bed, exhaustion sweeping over him the moment the cover of the spellbook is shut.

He is aboard a ship, the sky above him swirling and dark, the deck bobbing viciously, rain lashing at his face, and all around him men run to and fro, sliding with the force of the ships movements. They are yelling, but the voices are muffled, just as the storm is - he cannot make out the words or the patter of the downpour, only the frantic panic setting in.

This is a shipkiller, a maelstrom, and far above him the me struggle to tack up the sails.

It’s useless - he knows this, and wants more than anything to tell them so, but they do no acknowledge his presence. He is a ghost, an observer, nothing more.

Lightning flashes across the sky, bright and blinding, the thunder unheard over the force of the rain, but a few moments later he hears the crackle of timber. Glancing up, he sees men flinging themselves toward the deck, and raises his hands towards the sky as the mast comes crashing towards him, a silent scream on his lips.

He wakes with a cry, his hands held out from his face, a mighty gale catching the curtains of the four poster, a heavy rainfall tapping out a rhythm against the walls of his tower, echoing loud just outside his open windows. The ship and the men are gone, but in the pale light he can see flashes of lightning outside.

“Of all the lunatic -.”

The Swan is there, staring at him over her shoulder as she holds her hands steady at the sill of the windows.

She’s struggling to contain the storm, her hands shaking, her hair falling limp about her face as the rain streams in through the windows, a distant hum of words shifting across the stone walls.

“Help. Me,” she grits out between phrases of spellwork, and he leaps from the bed, his bare feet padding across the floor.

The rugs at the windows edge are soaked through, his toes squelching through the puddles as he reaches her, and without a thought he joins his hand in one of hers, their fingers linking together.

She stares at him, shock in her eyes for the barest of moments, before she turns her attention back to the storm raging outside. Her palm is soft and pliant against his own, and she grips his fingers more tightly, anchoring him to the here and now. Outside, a flash of lightning brightens the dark sky, and in the crash of thunder that follows he feels the calm of her magic seep into his bones.

The rain shudders, slowing for a moment as he lets the wandering creeks of her power shuffle against his skin, but then he startles at the sound of booming thunder overhead, ringing in his ears, and nearly drops her hand. She curses under her breath as the rain beats down fiercely again.

Killian focuses back in on the gentle patter of footfalls against mossy stones, tuning his gaze away from the storm to watch the Swan, the quiet brush of a soft breeze settling over him.

As she spreads the calm of her own magic, channelling it through their joined hands, she pulls at his own, digging hooks into the dark clouds, dragging static and shifting light out and away. The magic she pulls from him drifts lazily through the air, hovering inky black and viscous, momentarily mesmerizing him.

Another crack of thunder, more distant now, rattles the shutters outside.

“Focus,” she mutters, squeezing his hand again, and he does, imagining the way the clouds might lighten as a storm died, and the gentle dissipation of rain until it was nothing but mist against his face, the thunder rolling away behind them.

When he opens his eyes again, the sky is cloudless and clear, starlight glittering across it, and the Swan is staring at him incredulously, her hand still held loosely in his own.

She releases it in a rush, stepping away from him as though burned, and when the connection drops he feels exhaustion sweep over him.

Turning to the table in the middle of the room, she leans heavily against the back of a chair, unable to catch a breath, and Killian catches a glimpse of the black mist still hovering in the air between them. With a tired frown, she produces a small glass bottle, oddly shaped, and, with some effort, summons the remnants of the dream-spell inside of it, careful not to let it touch her skin. Once the last of it is inside, she stoppers it shut, shoving it into the depths of her robes.

The hour must be terribly late - for as he takes her in he realizes that for the first time, she is dressed not in the confinements of her dark leathers, but instead in a heavy dressing gown, pale, eggshell white in color, and her thick, silvery hair hangs about her shoulders, long and wild and shining wet against his moonlight lanterns, ones he’d apparently forgotten to snuff out before falling asleep.

Her appearance is so at odds with what he has grown used to, the rigid posture gone as she succumbs to the weariness he feels as well. The storm had sapped the energy from both of them.

He opens his mouth, not sure what it is he means to say, when her eyes land on the book on the table.

In a gust of wind from the storm, it must have been blown open, but it is a mercifully safe distance away from the window, and no water has touched the pages.

“Are you absolutely -.” She closes her eyes, not finishing the thought. One hand rises to her face, thumb and forefinger pressing into her temples, and she starts again, a warning tone in her voice. “Do you mean to kill us both?”

He has no answer for her.

In a move that shocks him, the Swan pushes herself up and angles the chair, collapsing into it with an uncharacteristic lack of grace, and returns to steepling her head in her hand, eyes never leaving the pages.

Whatever the storm had been, it was of his own making, and he stares at the open book, still calling to him even now, with his magic drained.

Still in naught but his shift, he turns his gaze on her, waiting, watching, wondering what she means to do.

The jumping electricity of his magic is not building, now, and with a clearer mind than he’s had in weeks, he realizes that she still has a hold on it - beneath the steady crash of the tide, he can feel birds shifting through leaves, the rustle of branches in trees.

“I thought I could control it,” he finally admits.

She snorts. “Perhaps if you were anything like my normal pupils, you could have. If you were a mere hedgewitch, or had but a drop of Fae blood in your lineage, you might have been able to.”

So they had all been magic. Centuries gone by with no one the wiser about the thread that tied the Chosen to one another. How? How had she kept it a secret? And why?

“They why is a question for another day,” she speaks, and this time he feels the shift in the air as she presses into his thoughts - it reminds him of the spell on the tower. “As to the how, I’ve just told you. They had power, but it was weak, malleable. Perhaps one or two might have made names for themselves, but they never moved beyond a few clever tricks.”

Killian feels a growing sense of dread. “That was no charm,” he tells her, as though she doesn’t already know that far better than he.

“No.”

“What am I?” It comes out a whisper, tangling in doubt, in rising horror.

“You’re a man. A man with a remarkable talent for absolute chaos, but a man all the same.” Finally, she turns her gaze up to him, a softness in her eyes that seems less out of place, with the tendrils of her hair curling against her forehead. There is some thought, itching for acknowledgement at the back of his mind, something about the look in her face that feels older than memory. But then, she’d already told him she’d known him for at least the majority of his life. “You also happen to be one of the strongest wizards I’ve ever encountered. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised this book somehow found its way to you.”

He hesitates to ask, and she levels him with an amused look.

Right.

Mind reading.

“A young sorcerer wrote this when he was an apprentice. He was remarkable, even in a time where magic was much more common than it is now. You see, by the time he was taken on as a student, he’d already mastered all the elementals.”

“Who-.”

“-was he? He’s been known by many names, over the years, most of them in languages long dead. Much like the one this is written in.” She gestures to the book, and with a queasy sense of wonderment, he sees the words on the binding shift into indecipherable symbols. “The book chooses the reader, not the other way around. There was a time when I could read it, as well. It’s a mischievous thing, just like its creator.”

She still hasn’t answered his question. In response to the unspoken thought, she sighs. “The people of Misthaven knew him as Merlin, before he disappeared.”

Killian blinks. There is not much he knows about the history of this land, but even far across the sea, the name Merlin held power.

She hums, as though in agreement. “You should get some sleep.” Eyes trailing over him, he watches as small splotches of color appear on her cheeks - her gaze darts away from his bare legs, focusing hard on the table in front of her for a moment before sliding up to his face. “If you are ready to begin your training, now, you may join me in the library after you have broken your fast. I’ll be there all day.”

It’s the most diplomatic she’s been since she appeared on his brothers ship, and with a heave, she pulls herself to standing again. She glances curiously about the room, and Killian wishes for a moment that he had any energy left at all to see if his magic would allow him to push back on the tendrils of her own, slip into her mind like she did his.

“How did you maintain the lamps while you slept?” she asks.

Killiann shrugs helplessly. “They’re just moonlight. I supposed as long as the moon was in the sky, they’d stay lit without my helping them along.”

She hums again, her brow furrowing, and continues past him to the doorway. The door is still barred, the key for the lock still sitting in the keyhole. Killian watches her go, turning to follow the trail of her dressing gown as it slips soundlessly across the floor.

She is halfway out the door when she turns, her hand flicking towards the middle of the room, and the book leaps into her grasp.

It’s just as well. Killian isn’t sure he could sleep with it still there.

Turning towards the bed, he loses sight of her, waiting for the telltale click of the door closing, but it doesn’t come.

“I tried.”

Her voice is barely above a whisper, but he hears the confession clearly.

“Your mother. I tried to save her.” She stops, and Killian doesn’t dare turn to look at her. There is a vulnerability in her voice he never thought to hear, and it pulls at his chest, makes him uncomfortably aware of how intimate the last few minutes have been. “The magic was too strong. The darkness, it took her and…” Another pause, a shaky breath. “I tried to use your magic to help mine along, but the darkness was… it was too strong. I nearly killed you.”

He remembers the pain of listening to his mothers breath grow weaker, remembers feeling drained and empty - much like he does now, and like he had that afternoon in the library.

“You weren’t ready,” she repeats, the words so soft they might have been feathers floating to the ground.

“Rest well, Swan,” he says after a moment, blinking away tears in his eyes, and with a shuffle of fabric, she is gone.

#the price #cs ff #one chapter of this is gonna be not painful #i swear #maybe #lieutenant dark swan #seriously though i am 90 % writing this for artielu at this point #the other 10% is for me

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thesedays-posts-blog · 7 years

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The State of the CPS • Decreases in Enrollment Numbers and Budget Cuts Lead to the Elimination of Programs & Funding

Special Report • Part 2 of 5

This week, TheseDays’ latest addition, Nicole Kreizel, dives into the current state of operations at Chicago Public Schools. CPS has a long history of budget shortfalls and school closings, and the back and forth between Springfield and Chicago has been contentious. The latest sparring between Rahm Emanuel and Bruce Rauner has caused the public schools’ situation heading into 2017 to become a flashpoint in the state’s agenda.

Politicians, along with teachers, parents, students and nonprofits, have all shaped, and are continuing to contribute to, Chicago’s educational landscape. Over the course of the next five days, we will delve into the key decisions and issues within this realm.

As 2017 eases in, CPS faces a budget shortfall of several million dollars that threatens both the welfare of the institutions the system is set-up to protect and the futures of the students within the system. While we often hear or see headlines describing budget cuts to CPS, the specifics often get lost in the conversations.

Brief Timeline:

February 2016: CPS reduced about $120 million from annual school budgets, leading to $85 million in cuts during the fiscal year.

Key takeaway: CPS was forced to slash the amount of money spent per student by about 5 percent.

August 2016: CPS laid off about 1,000 employees, including approximately 500 teachers, due to cuts in the 2015-16 school year.

October 2016: CPS let go of 250 more teachers and staff members, due to steep declines in enrollment.

Key takeaway: From 2015-16, CPS student enrollment fell by 3.5 percent (about 14,000 students). Over the last 10 years, CPS enrollment has decreased by 6.8 percent. This shows that about half of the drop occurred from September 2015 to September 2016.

These declines in enrollment have harsh repercussions, as CPS funds schools based on the number of students enrolled. First, CPS projects student enrollment, and in July, principals receive preliminary budgets based on these projected student enrollment numbers. Then, the board reallocates budgets based on how many students are enrolled in each school on the 10th day of class, and these changes must be carried out by the 20th day of class, according to the district. If CPS over-projects enrollment for a school, the school can kiss part of its budget good-bye.

According to CPS officials, in 2015, 262 schools with lower enrollment numbers than those projected lost about $36 million in funding, while 240 schools that had higher enrollment numbers than expected gained about $23 million in funding. To break this down further—26 schools lost at least $300,000 and only eight schools received that amount or more (Chicago Tribune).

Moving onto the following year, drops in enrollment were much steeper than district officials said they expected. According to CPS, about 300 public schools in Chicago lost about $45 million in funding due to under-enrollment falling below 2016 projections.

The district has put Title I and Title II grant funds toward schools with high populations of low-income students. For example, when there were midyear cuts in 2016, about $41 million of these funds were redirected to schools, instead of being directed by the Central Office for programmatic funding or held in reserve, according to CPS. However, the struggling schools need more than this in order to survive the waging political battle.

Budget Cuts Effect on School Programs

Oftentimes, extracurricular programs and outside-the-classroom support are the first to perish when budgets are sliced, and this happens more frequently at schools with higher populations of black and Hispanic, mostly low-income, students.

Stephen F. Gale Elementary Community Academy in Rogers Park, where 97 percent of the students are low income, lost almost all of its extracurricular activities last year and the year before. This consisted of all sports and arts programs, and most reading and math programs, said Shanelle Jackson, who has children in Gale. The only remaining programs were reading programs that teachers volunteered their time for. The school was hit especially hard last year, when Gale, which has a 60-percent black student body and 27-percent Hispanic student body, lost over $300,000.

“We have two libraries, one in each building, but we have no librarian. We have a computer lab but we don’t have a tech teacher. We have these rooms that are just sitting. We can’t utilize them because we don’t have enough money in our budget to hire these teachers; they were fired,” said Jackson, who is also the Chair of Gale’s Parent Advisory Committee and a parent member of Gale’s Local School Council (LSC).

Gale has a new principal who is contacting outside organizations to get back certain programs amidst the budget cuts. Concerning the $215 million veto, Jackson said, “That will put us in hot water. We are already an underprivileged school, like what more can you take away from us? We have nothing, we’re working on volunteers.”

Jackson and fellow LSC members are putting in their best efforts, pushing for programs like “Books before Breakfast.” This program is designed to help parents who must drop their kids off at school before school opens because of jobs or other commitments. Students then usually have to wait outside, unattended, and sometimes in the cold, until school opens. “Books before Breakfast” will allow children to come into school early and play education games and have snacks, with teacher supervision.

This program is also meant to boost the student enrollment rate. Sometimes when parents are not able to drop their kids off at school at the appropriate time, students end up staying home or wandering off. The LSC has succeeded in getting a “walking school bus,” or a program that allows for designated points where kids can meet volunteers who sign them off as being at that point and then walk them safely to school.

Jackson added that reaching out to schools in the surrounding areas, like DePaul University and Northwestern University, has also been part of the LSC’s agenda. These university student volunteers help out in different ways according to their majors—some tutor students in reading and writing, while others might assist with special education students.

There are many consequences of cuts, however, that cannot be solved by these measures—no shocker there. The school’s social worker, who conducted one-on-ones with students and was “really, really good with kids,” was fired due to budget cuts, Jackson said. Now, she continued, there is going to be a regional social worker who comes in for one and a half days during the week, but “kids need these services every day.” While the school’s social worker is not present on the other days of the week, the children’s issues still are.

The concept of these constant budget cuts is hard for many families with students in the CPS system to grapple with. “These are the kids that are going to be in charge of our future,” said Jackson. “Why not invest in them so that they can get the proper tools and education they need so that they can lead? To take away these aspects of their education is not only setting them up for failure, but setting us up for failure.”

Gale is just one school out of hundreds of schools that has faced, and is still confronting, budget cuts that lead to the eradication of countless programs. Corliss High School in Pullman, on the South Side, had a budget reduction of about $300,000 this fiscal year due to last February’s per-pupil spending cuts. This “limits the number of extracurricular activities a school might be able to offer students," said the school’s principal, Leonard Harris, according to a Chicago Tribune article. Even with CPS providing about $8 million in “program support funds” to help underutilized schools, budgetary constraints still cause schools, like Corliss, to make extreme cuts.

CPS officials’ announcement last week that they are freezing half of schools’ discretionary funds has only made the situation worse. This money is used to buy textbooks and technology, and to fund after-school programs, field trips and hourly staff, according to DNAinfo.

Pilsen schools are being hit especially hard by this $46 million cut across CPS, as schools in Pilsen’s 25th Ward have lost more than $7 million just this year, according to parents and education advocates. One parent, who has a daughter with special needs, said her child only has a special education teacher twice a week because the school cannot afford a full-time special education teacher, and the student’s grades have dropped from As to Fs as a result of this, she said, according to ABC7.

Drive up north to Logan Square, and there are schools suffering from $1 million emergency mid-year budget cuts (DNAinfo). Reminder: Chase, populated by mostly low-income Hispanic students, has already lost its art and music teacher and all after-school programs. Darwin Elementary School, with an 86-percent Hispanic student body and 81-percent poor student body, must let go of its reading and math extra-help aides (Chicago Sun-Times).

To harp on the connection between budget cuts, school programs and socioeconomic status one: Rice noticed all of these factors come into play during his time at CPS. Despite becoming more “clever” when applying for grants, the three schools he worked at on the South Side “all had a sort of lack of extracurriculars; there was a very small arts program, if anything, and their athletic facilities, to the extent that they had them, were not up-to-date…they just didn’t have as many programs offered, not as many physical resources, I don’t know that any of those schools had a dedicated computer lab,” he said. “The economic struggles of the [schools’] surrounding community were apparent.”

#Chicago #Chicago Nes #Chicago News #CPS #Chicago Public School #Budget Cuts #Chicago Teacher Union #City of Chicago #Rahm Emanuel #Karen Lewis #Nicole Kreizel

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