The Crystal Palace on Alumni

Amelia Layne

April 10, 2020 9:50 AM

The Crystal Palace by Amelia Layne

Plant geography was, admittedly, not the subject she had studied in the greatest depth, but if Amelia had been asked to make a list of plants she would never expect to see in New Hampshire, she thought palm trees and tropical flowers would have occupied prominent spots near the top of it. When she thought of those plants, after all, she thought of islands and sunshine and tax havens, and when she thought of New Hampshire, she thought of granite and snow and being on her very best behavior one day every summer when her cousin, most likely through some complex system of debts to Uncle Geoff or Anne or both, invited her and Lionel and their grandparents to tea. The last one, to be sure, was probably only an association between New Hampshire and Amelia, rather than New Hampshire and the world at large, but it fit just as well as the other two into the category of ‘places one is unlikely to find a lot of tropical plants.’

Nevertheless, tropical plants had begun to abound within moments of Amelia’s being led through a walk lined with purple irises and then ushered inside what looked like a miniature palace made of glass. From the outside, the hundreds – it had to be hundreds, she thought – of panels of glass which made up the domed roof had glittered so in the sunlight that it had been nearly blinding; up close, it was only through squinting that she had been able to make out any detail at all of the more subdued stained glass frieze above the entrance – an affair of blue waves and leaping fish and birds in flight, beneath a peacock window – and she was still seeing enough green spots once she was inside that it took her a moment to realize it was far dimmer and cooler where she was now than she thought it should have been. She peered up curiously at the ceiling, and found that the panes which had appeared perfectly clear from the outside looked almost smoky here.

“The mistress has the roof enchanted to change the light in different places,” said her subservient guide, noticing where she was looking. “There is also piping under the floors – in winter, these make heat and humidity to keep the flowers happy. The mistress is happy when the flowers and the young masters are happy.”

Implication: and when the mistress ain’t happy, nobody is happy, possibly even including the flowers.

“Who’s there?” called a voice, its owner obscured by greenery. There was a click of heels (who wore high heels in a greenhouse?) and then her cousin emerged, removing a pair of sensible gardening gloves which did not at all match her grey pumps, blue-grey and white-flowered wrap dress, gold and amethyst bangles, or the pair of diamonds at her ears that flashed colors with the slightest movement of her head. “Ah. Amelia. Sorry – I was taking care of one of the girls, and I must have lost track of the time.”

For a moment, Amelia was not quite sure what had been said to her, and gave her head a slight shake. “The – the girls?” she asked, confused.

“Come here and I’ll show you,” invited Alicia, with one of her trademark smiles, though this one looked more relaxed than most of those Amelia had seen at the family Christmas parties. Though slightly wary, Amelia followed, and was presented with the sight of one of the ugliest flowers she had ever seen.

“Is it sick?” she asked, noting that though one petal, pointing downward, was a perfectly acceptable shade of blue, the other, upward-pointing petals looked black, with a few greeny streaks cutting across them like grouter.

“Not at all – it just takes a lot of upkeep to keep her that way. This is a Zygopetalum,” said Alicia, with the fond tone most people would have used for a pet. “The pseudobulbs aren’t spaced very well in this genus, so you have to take care to avoid fungal infections and water rot.”

“Wow. Sounds like a lot of trouble.”

“Ah, well. I have to pass the time somehow, and anyway – blue isn’t a very common color in orchids, so I collect any I come across. Though Thad might tell you I just collect any orchid I come across.”

This was added with a wry smile and so Amelia chuckled politely. She had, actually, met Alicia’s little sons once (more or less; it might have been more accurate to say they had been in the same room, as Alicia had been even more visibly tense than usual during that Christmas party, and had not let either of the then-creeping things creep very far from her before reeling them back in) , but the husband was a bit of a mystery to the family. Granddad seemed to think he didn’t want anything to do with them, which Amelia had to admit was plausible. Weird enough that he’d married Alicia, after all, no matter how much of a hormonal teenager he’d presumably been at the time.

“They’re extraordinary creatures, orchids,” said Alicia. Some of the panels above her head were bright and clear, casting a warm, golden glow onto her thick, shining hair, which was swept simply behind her ears. The light also fell directly onto her face, and Amelia found herself in the odd position of being jealous of the skin of a woman who was past thirty. Amelia did her best with her own, but she was eighteen and furthermore, spent most of her waking hours in a potions lab these days. It was not a recipe for a flawless complexion. She had assumed that being nearly thirty-two would have had at least some negative impact on Alicia’s, but this did not seem to be the case at all…

“They can grow in almost any environment,” Alicia continued, startling Amelia back to herself again. What was wrong with her today, she wondered. “You find different species from the Arctic to the equator and below. They adapt to almost anything – orchids are probably older than wizards. These might outlive me even if I live to be as old as Aunt Berta. I hope one of the boys learns to care for them, or else I might have to haunt them to make sure it’s done properly.”

“I might not tell them that,” said Amelia, and Alicia looked puzzled. “I mean – nobody wants their mom to die, right? They might pretend they don’t like your flowers just to get you to haunt them into taking care of them.”

“Interesting thought. I like the way your mind works,” said Alicia. “I can’t imagine they’ll be that attached to me – but it’s a long time before we have to worry about that, eh?” she added, now in a slightly too-bright tone. She gently ran one finger along the stem of the orchid, as though petting a cat, and said, “Well. Let’s not let the tea get cold.”

The conservatory appeared to be mainly functional, dedicated to plants, but an open space had been set up for having tea. The wickerwork furniture, covered in mauve cushions, had been painted white to match the ironwork holding the house together, and was perfectly acceptable for casual entertaining. Odder, however, was the combination of a mauve chaise lounge, a small bookcase, and what looked like a secretary desk, opened to show a small stash of stationery items – parchment and quills, what looked like greeting cards, wax and seals, bottles of ink in several colors – and a pair of what looked like childrens’ drawings.

“The boys have to do drawings every so often as part of their progress checks,” said Alicia, noticing Amelia noticing the oddity. “Alexander and Nicholas made those for me – that one is actually supposed to be me.” The indicated picture was mainly a sort of wild scribble-ball of purple, from which protruded stick arms; an uncolored face, featureless except for two dots for eyes, was topped with brown loop-the-loops that had yellow squiggles in them.

Amelia looked around, from the purple picture to the stones in Alicia’s bracelets to the polish on Alicia’s nails (a rather darker, moodier shade than Amelia would have expected; seemed a bit too rock for stick-up-butts like the New Hampshire Pierces) to the dominant theme of the orchids and other flowers on display. “You really like purple, huh?” she asked.

“Yes,” said Alicia, sitting. “And this place is entirely mine, so I indulge all I want.”

“I’m guessing that’s also why you’ve got bookshelves in a greenhouse?”

Alicia laughed. “No. Well, not exactly.” She picked up a small blue and white teapot with a wicker handle and began pouring from it. “When I was pregnant, they made me lie down almost all the time, but then they got worried I’d have winter depression, so that turned to lying down in the sun for an hour every day. Then after the boys were born, I was allowed to get up if I wanted, but they were still afraid I’d have baby madness, so it was back to lying in the sun for an hour every day. They really didn’t want me to do anything, but I let them know I’d go some other flavor of insane if they didn’t let me read – so, it’s still habit to pass the time out here with books and flowers. It’s mostly languages.”

“Languages, plural?”

“Mm. I started Latin and French before Sonora, even, so I have to keep those up – and reading ancient runes, I learned that at Sonora. Then I started Greek after the twins were born, since they both have Greek names…I think they were about a year when I picked up Gobbledegook, and I’ve dabbled in Hungarian recently, passing the time.”

Hungarian. Why would someone devote actual time to dabbling in Hungarian? Greek and Gobbledegook were excessive enough, but Hungarian? “Sounds like you have a lot of time to pass,” commented Amelia, politely taking the little handleless cup she was offered despite knowing full well that it was almost certainly jasmine tea and that she had never liked it – it tasted like drinking a cup of dusty grass clippings which someone had spritzed a bottle of granny perfume into to her. “I thought people were basically slaves to miniature tyrants by the time they had two kids.”

Alicia chuckled politely, and reached for her own cup in a way which sent her hair swinging forward, obscuring her face for a moment. “Yes. Well.” She straightened up and smoothed her hair back. She also, surprisingly, averted her eyes. One of Alicia’s more notable physical features – one of the ones Amelia suspected was why it was surprisingly easy to forget on an individual level that the family consensus was that Alicia was not as beautiful as her sister Rachel – was her eyes, which had a tendency to make Amelia, at least, feel something like a beetle pinned to a card. They gave her aspect an intensity which more than balanced out her somewhat (to Amelia, anyway; perhaps one got used to it if one spent more time with her, but she always expected a sort of imperious alto instead) surprisingly soft voice. “I think Thad prefers – well, they are nearly old enough for education now. It’s hardly a good use of their time to hang around with me anymore, is it?”

Oh, definitely not, thought Amelia’s brain. No point in hanging around someone with a degree in Transfiguration who knows like six freaking languages. Very bad for children’s intellectual development, that.

“They tell me preschool does take a lot out of you,” said Amelia’s mouth, somewhat pathetically, she thought.

“Quite. They’re up for it, though. They’re very smart,” said Alicia proudly. “They’ve been read to every night of their lives.” She pinned Amelia back to her card with her eyes. “I imagine you’ve been doing a lot of reading for yourself since the last time we talked,” she remarked.

“Probably less than you think,” said Amelia, thinking back to how odd it had seemed at the time, Alicia bothering to notice her presence at the family Christmas party and speak to her about her plans for after Sonora. “Uncle Geoff likes to make me learn by doing as much as he can.”

“Experience is a hard teacher.”

“No kidding,” said Amelia, holding up her arm to show a still-healing burn. Alicia, in turn, put down her tea and turned to pull her skirt up above her knee and show Amelia the back of her calf, which had a distinct thick white scar on it. “Damn. How did you get that?” she asked curiously. She had not yet, after all, gotten into anything so sticky that it left permanent marks, and she actually worked with volatile ingredients to earn her keep…

“I got lucky – I had my back to the explosion in question,” was the reply. “Magic is a dangerous business.”

“Yeah,” agreed Amelia. “Why would you even bother? You did the produce-heirs thing, right? You don’t exactly have to work.”

Alicia’s nigh-perpetual smile became less friendly, more doll-like. “There’s such a thing as self-respect,” she said, her voice hard. “You don’t get Sorted into Aladren because you can produce sons, and you don’t stop being what you are once you have.”

“Of – of course,” said Amelia. “I’m sorry.”

She remained under scrutiny for a second longer before Alicia’s demeanor shifted back to what it had been. “It’s all right. It’s a common assumption,” she said. “But teachers – even the best ones – would never let me go far enough in school, so I pass some of the time trying it now. I’m sure you understand that. Not being able to go as far as you want in your field, I mean.”

Amelia nodded at once. “Yeah. It’s frustrating sometimes.”

Alicia twitched her wand, and her desk’s legs defied all sorts of laws of the physics of wood to walk over to her. She withdrew a key from a well-concealed pocket and unlocked a little drawer, withdrawing a clinking bag. “Perhaps that will help you circumvent it a bit,” she said, tossing the bag at Amelia, who caught it and was surprised at its weight. She parted the drawstring just enough to see the contents and blanched.

“I can’t – “ she protested.

“Of course you can. It was supposed to be a graduation gift, anyway – Lionel got as much.” Had he? Amelia was sure she would remember if Lionel had gotten a bag of money from anyone, much less their relations who were the exact polar opposites of half of Lionel’s principles… “Sorry I missed the party – there were…difficulties, here, this summer.” Alicia had actually stopped smiling for a moment, though she was back up to her usual standard within seconds. “But despite that – we Aladren girls ought to stick together, don’t you think? Especially when it’s in the family.”

Amelia felt like there was some objection she should have, here, but her mind was quite blank, and another feeling was prompting her to not contradict Alicia – that she simply shouldn’t do that. So she nodded. “Of course,” she said.

Later, she remembered the point she should have objected to – the implication that this put her in Alicia’s debt, that it all felt rather like being put on retainer, despite only being an apprentice who’d gotten her office through nepotism. Thinking back, though, she couldn’t remember anything Alicia had said which could be reasonably construed as a hint that some future favor might be owed – or, indeed, much of the specifics of anything Alicia had said at all. Just a general impression of someone who was trapped in something of a gilded cage – or gilded greenhouse, as it were – without a lot of control over her own life (had she actually said, in so many words, that ‘they’ kept her away from her own children, or had Amelia just been reading too much into it?) and who didn’t get to use her rather impressive education in any meaningful way. It made sense that she might want to help someone else not end up in the same position, she reasoned. And anyway, it had been a planned gift for a logical occasion. Plenty of people had given her gifts at graduation; it was just that all the other people she knew hadn’t been rich.

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Alicia Pierce

April 10, 2020 6:38 PM

Role-switching. by Alicia Pierce

After Amelia left, Alicia sighed and stretched her neck out with the weary air of one completing a difficult job, glad it was over. Then she finished her tea and picked up her wand and muttered a charm to end the glamour charm she had cast over herself before her cousin arrived, avoiding looking at her pale, incomplete reflection as the spell wore off.

Silly, of course. It wasn't as if that charm actually made her look any different. That wasn't its purpose. It was more a sort of operation on the viewer - something that drew the eye to her, and caused her to seem more appealing, more authoritative. She thought she did a fair job of projecting confidence when she wanted to without any assistance, but it was curious, actually watching oneself become more...ordinary, without being able to point to a single thing that had changed. As useful as it could be, she didn't like the idea of using something that could separate her from reality as much as it did the people around her.

Removing the next charm she had placed on herself in advance of this conversation had even less affect on her external appearance, but was removed with significantly more reluctance. Supersensory charms had their downsides - the orchids were becoming a tad overwhelming - but...her intended use this time had mainly involved her ability to perceive small visual cues and changes of facial expression in her companion, but the spell didn't really discriminate like that. With it, she could perceive everything, and in so much more detail than usual. Letting go of that - colors becoming slightly duller, the exact weave of the cushions in her line of sight fading back into a solid, losing awareness of the slightest stir of the air against her skin - always felt a bit like becoming less alive. Still, she made it a point of discipline not to get too fond of any feeling, and it would be rather unpleasant should she forget herself and go to work on the bars later and take a tumble while extra-aware of everything. She had broken her ankle in three places once when she had been attempting exercises she was fifteen years too old for and Nicholas had pulled one of his nursery escapes and surprised her; that had been quite painful enough without anything to enhance the experience.

Idly, she wondered if there was any link between the mechanisms used in supersensory charms and those in the Cruciatus Curse. As far as her high school experiments on beetles had ever been able to determine, it wasn't actually possible to kill anything with it - there was, in short, no end to the situation until the person casting the curse lifted it, and while she had never had the curse cast on her, and had never cast it on anything that could describe the experience later, her understanding, mostly from books, was that while a simply overwhelming use could eventually strain the body to the point of damage, it simultaneously took a lot longer to stress the human body, at least, than any means of inflicting the same amount of pain would. That suggested that the senses were, in some sense, working at higher efficiency than usual, as they did under a supersensory charm.

Sometime, she thought, she might try to reverse engineer the spells, see if she could figure out which ancient elements had gone into their development, test this theory. Right now, though, she had other things to do. With a slight sigh, that of a task done and well over, she pulled a sensible pair of leggings out of the handbag languishing beside her chair, then pulled them on under the dress before untying it and putting on a gardening shirt.

She was not sure, yet, how successful this experiment had been; Amelia had mostly just seemed mildly confunded, but for all Alicia knew, she could always be like that. She'd have to await more data. She couldn't really compare to the data she had collected doing essentially this same thing to her sisters, after all, because the whole point had been to see how it worked on women who were - if not unrelated to her - at least further away from her than, well, her sisters. Next...she frowned slightly as she twisted her hair up into a ponytail. She could branch out into women who were not related to her at all now, she supposed, but at some point, she would have to run tests with male targets. She could start with Isaac and move onto her stepfather - much as the thought of the latter in particular made her mouth twist. Uncle Geoff might be an option, sometime; she preferred to build up one asset there, an inconspicuous one she or her uncle could jettison with relatively little fallout if necessary, but Geoffrey was an option.

Her husband, of course, was not. The very thought was repulsive. She finished putting up her hair and found her decent shoes. Maeve was supposed to bring the twins down after their nap; Nicky, for some reason, seemed slightly afraid of her orchids, but she would have them 'help' (to the extent four year olds could be said to do such a thing) her pull dandelions outside. She could give them an elementary lesson in herbology, get useful ingredients, weed the rose garden, and spend parental time with them all at once; it would all be quite efficient, really, until the boys inevitably started sticking the dandelions in her hair and pretending twigs were wands and whatnot. She smiled to herself just at the thought, and tied her shoe, data forgotten for the moment, so she could get to it.

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