Of Fate and Freedom

Chapter Seven

*Three Years Prior*

"Good morning, everyone. Please take your seats; we're starting an exciting new subject today," Professor Sutter announced cheerily to the room. As the other students noisily took their seats, I exaggeratedly rolled my eyes at William Bates, another first year I'd befriended in my Introduction to Human Affairs course before the winter holiday.
He leaned over and whispered, "What's it this time, Professor Nutter? Dragons? Ghosts? Oh wait, I know... Americans!" He wiggled the fingers on his hands in the air and wavered his voice at the last one, and I couldn't help but to laugh out loud. I did my best to quickly stifle it, but Sutter heard me and focused his eyes on me questioningly.
"Is everything alright, Miss Conall?"
"Yes. Sorry, Professor," I replied hastily.
Will snickered quietly beside me once Sutter turned his back to set up for the lesson for today. "What does it say about you, that Nutter Sutter already knows your name after only two weeks in his class?" I made a face at him and jokingly slapped his arm with the back of my hand for getting me called out. He just opened a browser on his computer and typed away for a few seconds, then turned his screen ever so slightly to show me a crudely assembled meme from Twitter of one of the former American presidents. It was all I could do to hold my laugh in that time, but luckily I didn't make a sound.
     Sutter finally finished setting up his slideshow for the day and tapped his pointer against the overhead projection at the front of the room. "Today, we're talking about the will-o'-the-wisps. Now, most of you know these to be a part of human mythology," he begins, raising his voice over the collective groans emitting from the class, "but to every myth there is some truth. See, humans believe these are phantom lights leading them to something ominous, which isn't exactly false: most humans who seek these out end up dead. And, for the past few centuries, the same can be said of most of us in the supernatural world who seek them out as well."
     "Aren't you a human, though, Professor?" a particularly brutish-looking guy from a few rows in front of me questioned him in a lazy Barmston accent. A couple students, myself included, chuckled under our breath because he said what we were all thinking.
     "Not exactly, Mr. York, but I understand the confusion of a primitive existence such as yourself," Sutter responded without even turning around. Without a beat, he continued on over the outright laughs from the class at his retort. "Now, prior to the sixteenth century, will-o'-the-wisps were the 'calling cards' of the Sìthe, so to speak. The Sìthe — that's pronounced 'she' by the way, but spelled s-ì-t-h-e — are the most underrepresented and misunderstood members of the supernatural species because they are so reclusive and paranoid, but we'll talk more in depth about them as a people later on in the semester. All you need to know right now is that they are extremely solitary creatures.
     "The good thing about this subject is that the Sìthe have been all but forgotten by the modern world, so I don't have to un-teach anything to you lot. Anyway, one of their biggest fears was getting discovered by humans, but they had to enter the human world to get to other sìtheans, which are their dwellings. So, if they need to visit these other dwellings but no one was home at the time, they wouldn't just wait around. Instead, they left a small, luminous orb that was a dim, reddish color near the entrance.
"These weren't discernible to the human eye, but the Sìthe themselves were. If the Sìthe thought they might be discovered by a human, they would leave similar orbs in a trail behind them, but this time they were a blue color, and much brighter. These would lead the humans to any number of fatal situations for them; most notably to their 'cousins' of sorts, the rogue BaoBhan Sìthe. These, of course, are of no relation to our Upír community, though by description they seem to be similar. Now, open your textbooks to Chapter 14 and let's dive in a little more to will-o'-the-wisps in modern day situations."

* * * * *

After the most dreaded hour of my day came to a close, the long awaited words of dismissal came from Sutter at the front, followed by the chaotic sounds of my classmates scampering to gather their things and hurry out of the room. As Will and I neared the front, sights set on the glorious "Exit" sign, Sutter's voice rang out from the far side of the room: "Miss Conall, a word, please."
"Wait for me," I muttered, and he nodded in understanding. Irritated, I turned to face my professor, not bothering to close the distance between us. He walked towards me with an ancient-looking book in his hand, seemingly unbothered by my indifference.
"Hey, your sister's name is Moira, right?"
"Yeah, that's her."
"Perfect. She asked to borrow this book from me for a project she's working on but she didn't come to class yesterday and her next class isn't until Tuesday. Could you take it to her for me?"
"Yeah, Professor. No problem," I replied emotionlessly as I took the tattered hardcover from him and turned to leave the room again.
"Oh, Miss Conall? One more thing," I heard from behind me. I stopped but didn't turn around, effectively annoyed that he was holding me over on a Friday afternoon. "Try to refrain from mocking me on your own time. I have better hearing than you might imagine."
"Sorry," I said, turning just enough to see him in my peripheral before I walked out.
Like the perfect friend, Will was waiting for me against the wall opposite of Sutter's class. "What was that about?" he inquired as he joined me in walking out of the building.
"He just gave me this book that Moira asked him for and told me he could hear us making fun of him," I shrugged. "I can't say that I care; it's not like we're the only people who say these things. Hell, I even heard Dean Girard call him the same thing we do the other day. Besides, he kinda asks for it with the way he obsesses over his classes. He's still young so he'd actually be kinda hot if he was normal."
"Yeah, I don't figure it helps his case any that he's one of maybe three human professors here, but he's absolutely obsessed with everything he teaches. It feels a bit like he tries to overcompensate for being just a regular person. But he's quite smart, I'll give him that much," Will said. "So what's the book?"
I looked down to the dusty cover of the book he handed me earlier. "'A Complete History of the Creation of the Conroicht,' by Elspeth Conall," I read back to him simply. "Hmm, I didn't know she wrote a book. Elspeth was one of our first Alphas."
"Really? Your lineage is that pure?" he asked, seeming genuinely interested. "Do you mind if I give it a read?"
"Yeah, the Conalls date back to the very beginning. And personally, I don't care if you read it, but Sutter said Moira asked for it. I figure she'd be more than happy to talk to someone about it if you wanna come over, though."
He beamed a smile at me, and I think he might've been blushing? It wouldn't surprise me. Like most of my guy friends, I was pretty sure he had a crush on Moira. "Yeah, that'd be great! I'm not doing anything anyway."
"Cool," I replied as we finally reached my Beemer in the parking lot. "See you at eight, then." He waved at me, then headed off across the lot to his motorcycle.

* * * * *

At eight on the dot, Will shot me a text saying he'd made it to the house. Moira was in the kitchen, so I stuck my head out down the hall and let her know he'd arrived. I was finishing getting ready to meet a couple of my friends from my first year combat class, so I didn't feel like getting up to get the door. Orrin, my six month old pup, suddenly leapt up and scrambled out of the bathroom where I was getting ready, no doubt hearing the high-pitched squeak of the hinges.
"Hey, Saoirse," Will called down the hall, and not long after, Orrin came lazily padding back in to take his spot on my big rug in front of my bathtub. Fifteen minutes later, I was all ready to go, so I grabbed my purse and headed for the door.
"Sis, c'mere for a second," Moira said excitedly the second she saw me. She and Will had the book from Sutter in front of them on the kitchen table, along with their laptops and a ton of papers scattered about.
"What's up?"
"You know how we started learning about the will-o'-the-wisps?" I nodded my head, and she continued. "So turns out the people who conjured them, the Sìthe, actually created the conroicht gene! They used to live in our communities early on and helped us develop our affinities and wrote a lot of our doctrines. Apparently they were being hunted by humans, and one human and her four children found a family of them and protected them, so the Sìth Priestess at the time gave them supernatural strength and power and pretty much everything we have today, and one of those children was our super old ancestor Elspeth's grandmother!"
"That can't be accurate. There were only three Elder clams in the beginning," I replied, thinking back to the stories Mother told us as children.
"Not according to Elspeth," Will chimes in. "Apparently the Elder Alpha had four children, three girls and a boy, who was the youngest. After a few years he resented having to stay separated from the rest of the world protecting the Sìthe, so he left the family and got in with some violent humans who'd been looking for the Sìthe. When he led them back to the family, the sisters and their mother had to face him, but before they could get rid of him or warn the Sìthe, he killed their mother."
"Yeah, so they killed him out of anger but the only one who could actually banish his soul was their mother so Elspeth says his soul has been lurking around, waiting to find a strong enough conroicht to inhabit to end his sisters' bloodlines," Moira finished, looking up at me excitedly.
I just stood there in silence, blinking at them repeatedly. When they kept looking at me expectantly, I finally spoke up. "Well... if I wasn't drinking before, I definitely will be now. You guys have fun with your dusty old book from the Dark Ages. If I can't sleep tonight I'm blaming you!" I shouted from over my shoulder as I walked out of the door.