Swordplay

Part 17

Half past nine, the parlebol rang until Moira woke. Tired, she shuffled into the living room and asked her nerl to accept the call. Franka's face appeared on the water's surface.

"We've been waiting for you for two hours, Moira. The movers will arrive any moment."

Moira blinked. Her brain seemed to work slow motion. Movers?

"What's wrong with you?" Franka's voice sounded concerned.

"I'm just tired. I only came back at five this morning."

"Really?" Franka's eyes widened. "When are we going to get to know him?"

"Who?"

"Well, the young man you spent the night with."

Moira smiled. "I worked. Abut if you insist, I'll introduce you to my colleagues."

"You're hopeless." Franka snorted. "Now, hurry back to bed."

"No way. I promised to help you move and that's what I'll do."

"Don't you dare. If someone looks as knackered as you do, she has to sleep. We'll talk later." Franka ended the call.

Gratefully, Moira climbed back into bed although she felt a little guilty forgetting about the move. Franka would tease her for years to come. Moira's head had hardly hit the pillow when she slept again.

Shortly before eleven, she woke fresh and well rested. After a short jogging round in the nearby park, a long bath, and a late breakfast, she felt great. She looked at the clock. There wasn't enough time to visit Franka and Tord before her next shift started.

"I could try to find out why Madame Suzanka was so afraid of me." She had a nerl activate her Magicuter, opened the worldwide infonet, and searched for "Katie Féroce".

She was very surprised when her Surfer only found eight entries, none of them helpful. All took her to spam sites, useless forums or non existent pages. But Moira didn't give up easily. She tried translations. "Ferocious Katie" got her no results but "Wild Katie" rendered two useful articles.

The first one was from a hobby author introducing his newest writing project. With interest, Moira read the few lines he had posted about his main character.

"Due to legend, Wild Katie was the princess of a wandering clan of the early Iron Age. It is said that she could tame wild magic and was therefore banned from her clan. Presumably, she beheaded her whole tribe in a bout of craziness and killed herself right after.

Historically, the legend cannot be proved, but in traditional stories of today's Wanderers, Wild Katie shows up again and again. Many mothers use it as a warning for their children, similar to the boogeyman in our culture."

Moira ignored the rest of the page which was dedicated to other characters of the novel. The second article was hardly more than a side-note on the website about the dig of Hern's smithy.

"Romanic Historic Turodot stated that legendary Wild Katie had been Hern's lover, and that she banned a monster with his help. Since no other source backs up his claim, the existence of Wild Katie stays unconfirmed."

Moira leaned back and stretched. Hern's smithy is Tord's specialty. Maybe he knows something about Wild Katie. I should talk to him.

As if she had read Moira's thoughts, Franka called at just this moment an. She was agitated. "Imagine, Tord has hardly been released from hospital when the Gendarmerie fetched him. And we meant to organize the chaos in the new flat."

Moira talked until Franka calmed down. Simultaneously, she turned off the Magicuter. When her friend felt better, she asked, "Do you know why they fetched him?"