by S T G Hill
Sourcewell Academy
The Omenborn Book 1
S.T.G. Hill
Copyright ©2018 by S.T.G. Hill
Cover Illustration by B Rose Designz brosedesignz.com
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the copyright holder.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
This one’s for Tori.
Chapter 1
Ellie expected a bad day. It wasn’t unusual; today was her birthday. Her 15th birthday.
No reason to expect it to be like anything other than the 14 that had preceded it.
Not, of course, that she remembered them all. Who does? But she remembered enough of them to see the general trend of things.
She hefted her backpack strap back up her shoulder. The weight of the books inside pulled it down constantly.
Also, the sole of her left sneaker flapped. It had started to flap the previous week, but she could do nothing about it. Not for now, at least.
So with each step she took, the bottom of the sole flip-flapped against the bottom of her foot.
She had hidden it from the other students at school. Public School 117 in Brooklyn. That brick building with its cement playground lay a good 10 minutes behind her.
A piece of masking tape had disguised the flapping. But an accidental step in a puddle had swept the small sticky strip away.
In the palm of her upturned right hand she held a single cupcake, and in that cupcake a single wide candle seemed to shout “Happy Birthday!” with its loud pink twists of wax.
Ellie had never really liked pink. Or many of the other things that girls her age were supposed to like. Shoes and fashion and hairdos.
The other girls could keep all that.
Just like she wished that Mrs. Jessup had kept this cupcake. But Mrs. Jessup made it her business to try to befriend every student, and one way to do that was to give them each a homemade cupcake on their birthday.
Ellie figured Mrs. Jessup had a bunch frozen or something. Why make just one?
Ellie had come close to tossing the cupcake out, but held off when she remembered that Chauncy would love it.
So she carried it with her on the 40 minute walk from PS117 to the fourth story walk-up where she lived.
“Hey, pup!” Ellie said, stopping beside a floppy-eared mutt tied to the wrought iron railing at the foot of a brownstone.
It’s tail flopped back and forth. Ellie took a swipe of icing from the cupcake and let the dog lap it from her finger, leaving her whole hand covered in slobber.
“Good boy! Don’t tell anyone, okay?” Ellie said, wiping her wet hand against her jeans before moving on.
Some more of the frosting on the cupcake ran by the time she reached the decrepit converted brownstone.
It was an old building with steep stairs. The walk up to the fourth floor left her legs aching.
And even more of the frosting had run.
She took the cupcake in her other hand and then licked off the bit of sugary sweetness on the webbing between her thumb and forefinger.
Then she waited at the end of the stairwell, just outside the door. Waited and listened. She looked at but did not see the way the rusty-colored paint on the door had peeled and flecked.
Somewhere, a woman berated her husband in a language Ellie didn’t know. Somewhere else, the laugh track from some TV sitcom chortled through the walls.
Thin walls.
She listened harder for the thing she wanted to definitely not hear right at that moment.
She didn’t hear the sound of Mr. Fichtner screaming abuse at someone over the phone.
Mr. Fichtner was her legal guardian, assigned to her by the state of New York. He wouldn’t make her throw the cupcake away or anything like that, but he’d definitely shoo Chauncy back out into the alley.
He hated the cat, always getting red in the face if he caught Ellie playing with the creature on the fire escape.
No berating meant he either wasn’t home or wasn’t currently in the midst of one of his many dealings.
What did he deal? Ellie didn’t know and didn’t want to know.
So long as whatever it was went well, he mostly left her alone. Happy to collect his stipend from the government for fostering one of their wards.
If it had gone poorly…
Ellie dug her keyring out of her jeans pocket and started the awkward task of opening the door to the apartment.
Mr. Fichtner kept all seven deadbolts locked even when he was home. And a couple of them worked better if you pulled the door towards yourself when unlocking them.
And the bottom one worked best if you pushed the door inwards.
Finally, the door swung open. The front foyer was really more of a hallway. A narrow hallway with a threadbare rug and nothing on the walls.
She stepped inside, aware that even more of the cupcake frosting had dripped down onto her fingers.
“Hello?” she said. Her heart tapped out five quick beats before she took another step inside.
No one was home. Just the way she liked it.
The apartment was a single bedroom affair. The single bedroom belonged to Mr. Fichtner, leaving her with a tiny twin bed pushed against the outer wall of what was supposed to be a den.
She let the backpack slip off her shoulder. It made a thunk when it hit the bare floorboards. Said floorboards creaked beneath her feet.
“Chauncy?” Ellie said, rounding the corner that divided the small kitchenette from the den.
The counter in the kitchen was piled high with soiled copies of The Times, which Mr. Fichtner liked to use in place of plates. And often in place of toilet paper, too.
The den held an old stinky couch with a broken back, bowed heavily in the middle, as well as her lonely twin bed. Though it was more a cot than a proper bed. A bed required a mattress.
And beside the twin bed was that window that let out onto the fire escape. Behind the fire escape was a small courtyard, filled mostly with a few sorry blades of grass between piles of big black garbage bags with their sides split or torn open.
But Chauncy the tomcat waited for her on the other side of the pane.
“I thought you’d be there!” Ellie said, smiling for the first time that day.
She hurried over and crouched down on her bed, setting the cupcake on the sill to get it out of her way.
Chauncy let out a muffled yowl and pawed at the glass.
He wasn’t a typical tomcat.
“Come on in and see what I have for you,” Ellie said. She opened the window, which groaned and complained its way up the frame.
His eyes, scintillant jade, glinted and shifted with greedy glee.
Chauncy slunk in beneath the opened window and bee-lined for the cupcake. As he did, Ellie reached out and ran her left hand along the sleek and silky fur of his back, wrapping her fingers in a loose ring that swept down his tail for a moment before he yanked it free.
“I thought you’d like that,” she said. She noticed then how some of the frosting from the cupcake had ended up on the glass and the window frame.
I’ll get it later, after he finishes.
Chauncy was small for a tomcat, his fur sandy colored and fine, with reddish spots on his back.
“You knew just when I’d get home, didn’t you?”
He arched his back for a better rub when she put her hand on him.
He
always did seem to know just when she would get back.
They’d found each other just after Ellie had moved into the apartment, almost two years ago now.
One morning she’d woken up and seen him pawing at the window. When she opened it, he’d spilled in like liquid and settled onto her lap, a purring mass of silky fur and glinting eyes.
He scarfed the cupcake quickly and went once more to settle in her lap when she sat cross-legged on the thin and lumpy bed beside him.
“This isn’t such a bad birthday, is it, Chauncy?” she said while she scratched the short and fine hairs beneath his chin.
He jerked up to his feet a moment before the door opened.
“What did I tell you?” Mr. Fichtner bellowed as he stomped down the hall.
Chauncy bared his teeth. His fangs were quite white for a homeless stray.
Ellie stood up off the bed. Sometimes when Mr. Fichtner caught her sitting there or, even worse, laying down, he yelled at her.
“The one thing you should always do?” he said, his voice like a foghorn in the tiny apartment.
The man followed the voice around the corner. He was tall and thin, with a big, hooked beak for a nose and a pair of beady eyes that seemed much too small for him.
But just the right size for a rat.
“Always lock ALL of the… What is that doing here?” he said. He levelled an accusing hand at Chauncy. A hand currently clutched around a long, white envelope.
Chauncy’s hackles raised and his normally thin and whip-like tail poofed up.
“Don’t hurt him!” Ellie said. She tried to put herself between the man and the cat.
She didn’t need to, as Chauncy was too wily and quick for the angry but poorly timed kick that Mr. Fichtner threw at him.
The cat leaped out of the way and then scrambled out onto the fire escape to disappear in the pile of trash below.
Mr. Fichtner made angry noises beneath his breath while he shoved the window closed. It hit the frame so hard that the glass, already loose in the frame, jittered and shook.
Ellie, meanwhile, stood her ground. This close, Mr. Fichtner smelled of the beet soup that sustained him and the awful cologne he doused his clothes with in place of taking them to the laundromat.
“I told you I don’t like that cat.”
Three times so far Mr. Fichtner had tried to poison Chauncy since Ellie moved in. Once with tainted cream, then cat food, and finally a small ball of ground beef. Each time, Chauncy gave it a cautious sniff and kicked the dish over the edge of the fire escape.
Ellie had laughed the first time she’d seen Mr. Fichtner outsmarted that way. His reaction made certain that she kept her mouth shut the second and third times.
“I know…” Ellie started.
“I told you what dirty, filthy things cats are.”
“He’s not…” she tried again, pointedly looking down at the floor rather than the sty of an apartment.
“And especially not that mangy little brute. I’ve never seen eyes like that on a cat.”
“Green ones?” Ellie said.
Mr. Fichtner looked at her, the muscles in his jaw working and bunching up. “Smart ones, you little wretch. And what is this?”
He pulled a hand away from the frame and Ellie instantly saw the film the frosting from the cupcake had left on his palm.
“Icing,” she said.
He looked at it suspiciously. Then gave it a sniff, followed by an experimental lick. Ellie sneered and looked away. Mr. Fichtner never washed his hands.
“Why would you have frosting?”
“It wasn’t just frosting. It was on a cupcake. That a teacher gave me. For my birthday,” she said.
Mr. Fichtner squinted, and she could see the little cogs and wheels turning behind his rat eyes.
He was calculating how old she was. How many more months he’d have her before the system turned her loose.
How many more checks he might expect from the welfare department for taking her in.
“I’m 15,” she said.
“I knew that!” he snapped.
He wiped his dirty hand on her blanket and then noticed the envelope still gripped in his fingers.
“Happy birthday. It’s for you,” he said, thrusting the bit of mail out.
She took it gingerly, saw it had been opened and looked at him. He gave a ratty little smile.
“I’m your guardian. I need to know what you’re getting,” he said.
More like he wanted to see if it was money. Though Ellie didn’t know anyone who would send her anything in the mail, much less money.
She turned it over and saw the fine cursive of the address label, mentioning her by name. It looked so pretty like that.
Eleonora Ashwood
Though she hated her full name. Eleonora. It was an old lady name.
It also mentioned the apartment on Park, and Brooklyn below that.
No postage stamp, though. Had someone hand delivered it?
“It’s nothing, by the way,” Mr. Fichtner said.
“What do you mean?”
He took it from her without asking and pulled the twice-folded piece of paper within out. He unfolded it with an uncaring flick.
“Hey!” Ellie said.
“See? Nothing.” Mr. Fichtner said.
Then he turned the page toward her.
It had to be some kind of joke. Though she’d never known Mr. Fichtner to joke. And when he autographed the checks he got in the mail his signature held none of the flowing grace of whomever had addressed that envelope.
Because it wasn’t nothing. Far from it. It was a letter, though he shook it so much she could make out nothing but: Dear Miss Ashwood at the top and some sort of logo that looked like a tree inside a blue circle, but she couldn’t be sure.
“Who would waste money posting this?” he said, still shaking it. He turned it around to regard it again, “Nothing at all!”
“Can I have it? I’ll throw it out so that you don’t have to,” Ellie said, reaching for it.
He snatched it back out of her reach, his instinct being to deny her. Then he crumpled it up with both hands until it was a ball.
This ball he then used to clean the smear of icing from the window frame. He dropped the soiled letter onto her blanket. “Happy birthday.”
Then he stalked away. Ellie didn’t move until he flopped onto his bed, the old springs complaining at his weight.
She thought at first to just bin the letter. It couldn’t be anything important. But when she gingerly picked it up she instead found herself spreading it open carefully while she lay on her stomach.
No one ever sent her anything. She didn’t know anyone who would.
Somehow, despite the wrinkled mess Mr. Fichtner had turned the letter into, she could still read it.
Dear Miss Ashwood,
We at the Sourcewell Academy are pleased to offer you a midterm start date to ensure your timely training.
Please accept my personal apology for not getting in touch sooner.
There is no need to reply to this letter. One of our student representatives will be in touch with you shortly.
Yours,
A. Cassiodorian, Magister
Sourcewell Academy
Verum Interiorem, Exteriori Pace
She read the odd letter twice, the little line between her eyebrows deepening. The small logo at the top right corner was a tree in a circle. A leafy tree with a snarl of roots on a circular blue background.
Ellie wished at once that she was back at school. There, she could go to the library and Google some of this. Mr. Fichtner didn’t believe in computers or the internet.
“Why do you need that? I didn’t have any internet and I turned out fine,” he told her once when she’d asked about it.
That didn’t stop him from having a cell phone and a data plan. A data plan he cursed every month because he maxed it out.
It was actually the exact same argument he’d given her when she asked about a cell phone
of her own.
But she couldn’t use the school internet until tomorrow. And Mr. Fichtner certainly wouldn’t allow her to use his phone.
She didn’t know what to make of it.
Something tapped on the glass next to her. Chauncy sat on the other side, his long, sharp tail wrapped politely around his back feet.
He looked at the letter, then at her, then yowled. The glass muffled it.
Ellie went stiff and looked down the hall, listening carefully. The springs of Mr. Fichtner’s mattress shifted, but he didn’t get up.
She held her finger up to her lips. “He’ll hear you. Do you know what this is? Because I don’t.”
She tilted the letter at him. He glanced at it and yowled again.
“You want to lick all the leftover frosting off it, don’t you? Greedy guts,” Ellie said.
She listened carefully until she heard the sound of Mr. Fichtner’s susurrous snores. He often took midday naps to “restore his constitution.” Though as near as she could tell he didn’t actually do anything to tire himself.
Satisfied that he was asleep, she inched the window back open again until she could reach out and stroke Chauncy’s soft fur.
Chapter 2
The letter did something to her. She didn’t want to stay inside. She wanted out. It was her birthday!
So that was why when, after she and Mr. Fichtner had finished their meatball sandwiches from the deli down the street—he never made any food himself aside from that awful beet stew—she asked him about going out.
“I think there’s something playing at the theater tonight,” she said.
“There’s usually a bunch of things playing at the theater,” he said with a roll of his eyes. He wiped his finger across a streak of marinara sauce from his sandwich and then licked it clean.
“Do you think it would be okay if I went and saw something?” she said after a few moments of biting her tongue. She knew that if she gave him any lip it would be a definite no.
As it was it was an almost certain no, but she wanted to chance it anyway.
