by Cora May
“What? You think the new students have been Blessed by the Dorcha?”
“Think about that one dude from last quarter. Douglass? Remember him? And no one heard from him again, huh? I bet you anything either the headmistress has him locked up somewhere, or the Dorcha took him back.”
The boys had walked too far away now for Brin to hear any of the remainder of the conversation. But what she heard was enough to justify the fear that had suddenly set in.
Brin also remembered Douglass. He had come into the school and begun his classes as a Celestite student alongside Brin herself. He had a knack for picking up communication when he claimed he hadn’t wanted to hear anyone. Brin had a distinct memory of him sitting in his desk, day after day, rubbing his temple and staring at the floor. He would occasionally whisper something harsh sounding, seemingly to no one in particular. He was an oddball, that was for sure.
He was only in class for a week. At the end of that week, he had completely broken down. He began preaching to the Burners to take down the school, and to the Jasper Warriors to go after Headmistress Prisanni. He would yell and scream conversations with voices that only he could hear. It all ended on a Monday morning with Douglass standing in the middle of the Jasper field, a knife in his hand and his wrist spilling with blood as the bell rang for the beginning of class. Faculty rushed out to remove him, canceling school for that day and the day after. The blood on the field was washed away immediately, and no one heard from Douglass after that.
Today was the first time Brin had even heard anyone speak of the student since the incident. It made her wonder how much of it could be connected with the Anam killings. Perhaps if someone had managed to change the rules of Death, as Jace had claimed, perhaps it had all begun with Douglass.
But nothing truly connects, she thought to herself.
She tried to shake the conversation. She tried to think of anything other than the connections she couldn’t make, but her mind wouldn’t let her. As she walked further and further away from the mysteries, her mind became more and more burdened with what the possibilities could have been.
She felt like she knew those boys. She had barely gotten a glance at the back of their heads. They were a strange mix. One of them was a bit chubbier and she pictured him with glasses for some reason, and the other was shorter, and she felt like the front of his face would have been covered in craters from healed acne he once battled. She wasn’t sure why she imagined that, though, when truthfully all she saw was the back of two brunette heads, with fairly typical haircuts for a couple of boys, too. Plus the red hoodies that were typical of the school. She didn’t need her imagination to tell her that they both bore the insignia.
Their voices didn’t sound familiar at first, but the more and more she replayed the conversation in her head, the more and more she felt like there might be something she wasn’t remembering. Something was tugging at the back of her mind, a memory begging to be recalled. When she thought of the memory, though—when she pulled on that string and tugged it harder—the memory seemed to fight harder and harder as it shrunk deeper into her mind.
It was frustrating.
She was suddenly self-conscious about what was on her mind. It shouldn’t bother her as much as it did. She had overheard a conversation that was spoken in the halls. She could have just as easily missed the conversation. She should have missed it—she should have still been in Jace’s room, finally having a long-neglected date night. She should have been having a good night with her soulmate, not wandering the halls alone and replaying strangers’ conversations in her head.
Doesn’t everything happen for a reason, Brin?
Not everything is fate, though. She had to remind herself. As much as she wanted this to be something bigger, she was making mountains out of molehills. She was, wasn’t she? She should just go back to her room. She would just mope around all night until it was time to go to bed and wake up to a new day. That’s what she had to look forward to.
A new day.
Where is your faith, Brin?
Her thoughts were jumbled. She wasn’t even sure why these thoughts were coming to her—why any of them were coming to. She also wasn’t sure why she was suddenly hesitating, turning around to the direction in which she had come from. It was too late now to find the boys, she was sure of it. They were gone.
Have a little more faith in fate, Brin.
“Mom?” she asked under her breath, the word coming out in an unwitting reflex. She hadn’t meant to say it out loud—she knew she didn’t need to, either. If her mother had been opening a communication channel with her, she would hear her just fine without using words.
My Brin, came the soft, loving voice inside her head. To others, she would have seemed crazy. But to the Communicators, the feeling of having your loved Anam in your head every now and then was a welcome surprise. Have you no more faith in the world? What would I have done if I were there with you?
You wouldn’t have let them go, Brin thought back, really pondering what her mother would have done. She knew, though—her adventurous, curious mind would have had her jumping down every rabbit hole she could find. At one point, Brin had been mad at her for that. She had blamed the accident on her mother. She had come to terms with it long ago, though, long enough to listen when her mother spoke to her.
You wouldn’t have let them go, she thought again, this time more to herself than to her mother. She looked back in the direction they had gone.
She couldn’t believe she was about to chase after them. Her mother was right, though. She was supposed to be with Jace, but instead she ended up walking down the same halls that two oddly familiar and not familiar at the same time were walking down. She had to go find them.
She was walking much more briskly as she went this time. She turned the first corner slowly, then continued to her brisk pace again. Each time she turned a corner, she cautiously peeked around it first, not wanting to seem too eager. She had to make it look like an accident that she was bumping into them again.
Should I talk to them? She asked her mother.
You’ll know what to do when the time is right, was the only response she got.
She growled in frustration. It was just like her mother to send her on some wild goose chase without any kind of guidance whatsoever. Her mother’s motto had been Follow your heart. It seemed like she had carried that philosophy with her into the afterlife as well.
The problem was, Brin wasn’t sure she would know what to do.
As she turned another corner, it was clear that that decision had already been made for her.
The boys were waiting for her. They were leaning against the other side of the wall, the skinnier one looking at his nails as if he were bored, and the fat one looking directly at Brin. She had been right about the glasses and the acne scars. She wondered if that, too, was some sort of message her mother had given her.
She realized she was staring in shock. She tried to wipe the surprise off of her face as she stepped out from behind the corner. They had led her to a place with no windows—and that was hard to find down these halls where the windows stretched from floor to ceiling. Whether that had been on purpose or not, she wasn’t quite sure. They were alone, though, and no one would know of this meeting. She would have to make sure she used that to her own advantage before they used it to theirs.
“Who are you?” she asked abruptly.
“Two simple boys,” said the skinny one right away, speaking on behalf of both of them. “Just taking a stroll down the halls. Who are you, chasing after us like that?”
“You knew I was going to,” she stated. Accused? Questioned?
“Sure,” he said. “I know a whole lot more than you think.”
“Why? What’s your stone?” She had a bad feeling that she didn’t want to know the answer to that question.
The skinny boy grinned.
That grin, made with chapped pink lips, dimpled on one side, told Brin all she needed to know—which was that she
didn’t want to know. That he must have had a stone she was afraid of. She wondered if he was in her mind now.
She wondered if it had been her mother who had spoken to her at all, or if he had managed to forget that, too. That didn’t seem right, though. No one could possibly possess that kind of power.
“Fine,” she stated, trying her best to act like his silence, and the implication of the unspoken words didn’t bother her. “Why are you waiting for me? You can’t tell me this is a natural spot for you to just wait. You wanted me to follow you. You wanted me to hear you, didn’t you? This was just a setup, wasn’t it?”
The boy let out a small chuckle. He finally let his hand drop to his side, and he turned to face her full on. His blue eyes were smoldering and took her aback momentarily. She unconsciously sucked in her bottom lip. He let her recover before addressing her.
“Yeah,” he told her, as if the revelation meant nothing to him. “I knew you’d follow us. Not many people can stay away once you mention Douglass.”
“You knew him,” she stated. This time, it wasn’t an accusation. It was definitely just a question.
“I knew him very well,” the boy said. “More than I would have liked to know him, really. That was the mistake. I think that was the mistake for everyone who got involved with him, honestly. Even Prisanni herself. I think she would have preferred to leave him where he had been in the human world until the Unfamiliars did something with him. Until they locked him up or killed him or whatever. Instead, she got involved. How unfortunate. For all of us, huh?
“I’m Creggor, and this is George,” he said, finally introducing himself. George nodded his head in greeting at the sound of his name. Brin barely acknowledged him at all, choosing instead to focus on the one that was clearly the leader… And one that liked to hear himself talk, it seemed. “We found you on purpose. Sort of.”
“Sort of?”
Creggor chuckled.
“I was actually looking for your roommate.”
“Addy?”
“No,” he said, as if the idea of looking for Addy amused him somewhat. “She’s got enough on her plate. Besides, I’ve already given her everything I can give her. No, we were looking for your new roommate. The skinny blonde one.”
“Oh,” Brin said. She was unable to disguise her disappointment.
“A little tension between you already, huh?”
“No!” she said with a little too much vigor. She cleared the expression on her face—and the thoughts in her mind, just in case—and tried again. “No, of course not. We just met, actually. And I think she is a very nice girl with a sad story. That’s all. Why do you need to find her?”
Creggor’s stupid grin deepened. Her words meant nothing to him. He already knew what was going on in her mind, and she was well aware of that fact, too. He was a Gypsy. Her gut was telling her more and more that that was the case.
“Look,” he told her when he was able to finally wipe the amusement off of his face. “You’re not as unique as you want to be, I get that. You’ve fought long and hard to win the affection of your head of house, haven’t you? We all do it. We’re all just a bunch of brown-nosers, a bunch of fakes who can’t ever seem to be happy with the gift they’ve been given. Aren’t we?”
“I don’t know about you,” Brin said, somewhat defensively and somewhat condescendingly, “but I’m grateful for what I have. I get to speak with my mother. She gets to watch me grow up, and I get to keep my relationship with her throughout these years, even though she died a long time ago. I’m pretty damn grateful for that. I’ve never complained, and I’ve most certainly never brown-nosed.” She spat the words as if they tasted disgusting to say. “I’m more than happy with where I’m at, and I’m more than happy with the progress all of my fellow classmates have made, too. So, no, we are not all just a bunch of ungrateful brats, and I’m sorry you seem to see it that way.”
Even as she spoke the words, though, she fought images. Images of Addelai, training by herself long into the night and keeping her awake as she learned techniques before anyone else had the chance to be taught. Images of Jace, as he researched wars and weapons to impress Nessi with his knowledge. Images of Ciara, who stayed as close to Sahira and the Second Healers, inserting her knowledge as often as she could to prove what she knew. Images of Maleka, who insisted on putting out a façade of apathy and anger, but in truth, she vied to be the new Head of House Pyrite.
Images of all of her friends and classmates, slyly demeaning each other, raising their hands and fighting to answer, and training behind everyone else’s back—fully knowing everyone else was doing the same, but also fully believing they were the only ones smart enough to have thought of such a thing to begin with. She fought the images of herself doing the same thing harder than she fought any other image. She forced forward an image of innocence, thinking every thought she could to project that into Creggor’s mind.
But every word she spoke only brought back his amusement and deepened his grin. She was growing angry. She didn’t think she was going to win this conversation.
And she was an ungrateful brat who wanted to win everything—who wanted to come out on top of any little skirmish she might find herself in.
“What do you want with Chanta?” she demanded, sidetracking anything he was about to tell her.
She wasn’t going to tolerate any more comments on her own ethics.
“I want to help you both out, actually,” he told her. “You see, that’s what we do, George and I. We help the students here who have not been given accurate information… Those who want a deeper understanding of their Blessings. After all, the headmistress only gives us… skin deep explanations.”
At that last bit, even George had to chuckle a little bit. Brin lost her focus for just a moment as her eyes slipped to him and back to Creggor.
“None of us are ever truly satisfied, are we?” he continued. “That’s because we are never given true access to our abilities. Some of us, though, are given such inaccurate information from the get-go that we never stand a chance to understand ourselves at all.”
Brin raised a brow.
“Is that what you think happened to Chanta?”
“Think about it,” Creggor challenged her. “A Communicator? Really? You’ve learned enough about her by now, surely, that you don’t think that’s fitting, do you? Not as a Communicator yourself, by any means. She doesn’t quite fit in with your class, does she?”
“Headmistress Prisanni wouldn’t lie to her about that.”
Creggor threw his head back in a full gust of laughter.
“You’re smarter than that,” he told her when he was done. “What if Chanta has a secret so terrible, even she doesn’t know what it is? Do you think Prisanni would tell her?”
“Yes,” Brin said with fervor. “I do.”
“Hm. Maybe you’re not as smart as I thought you were. Prisanni isn’t such an angel.”
“She’s taken us all in when most of our families were about to throw us out,” she argued. “She trains us free of cost and shows us who we really are.”
“Most of us,” he agreed. “But for most of us, she understands our abilities. She can tame us through the training. There are times, though… certain students that have gotten out of hand. Certain experiments gone wrong. There have been students that instilled fear even in the heart of our fearless headmistress. It’s happened before.”
“Douglass,” she breathed. Realization sank in. He had drawn her in with talk of the strange boy, caught her attention by reminding her of the freak that got out of control. Douglass had terrorized the whole school. And now Creggor was telling her—telling her what?—That her roommate was potentially the same? That Chanta was going to go postal on them? If that were the case, then why would she want Chanta to know whatever secret Prisanni knew?
“How do you know the secret?” she suddenly inquired as the thought occurred to her. “If Chanta herself can’t even know it, how can you?”
“I’
ve seen many things,” he told her. “And George here has… felt many things. Kept many things.”
“He’s an Emerald Keeper,” Brin said, trying to rush along his explanation.
Why did men always have to drag out this part?
“He’s an Emerald Keeper,” Creggor confirmed. His grin spread. Brin was beginning to wonder just how far it had to spread before his face split in half. This boy was really proud of himself for the apparent success he’s had in whatever dealings he was in. “He’s had a taste of more than just his fair share of cake every night,” he chuckled, gesturing to his own belly. George reddened a little bit at the nasty joke but didn’t make a comment in his own defense. “He’s tasted your stone already. He’s tasted mine, too—though he didn’t quite care for that one. He’s tasted all seven of the earth stones that Prisanni’s School for the Blessed trains its students in.”
He paused then, looking meaningfully at Brin. Brin only stared back at him. He obviously wanted her to put two and two together now, but she wasn’t able to quite grasp what he meant. He was clearly stating that George knew the feeling of each stone, that he had already tried out each of them from other students in the castle, but there was a deeper meaning there that he was trying to insinuate. Brin just couldn’t pick up on it.
Creggor sighed.
“Man, she really has you brainwashed, doesn’t she?” he asked no one in particular. She assumed he had meant the headmistress was doing the brainwashing. “Think about it. We have knowledge of seven Blessing and stone pairs, right? But how many other types of stones are in the world? And how could we really be limited to the seven Blessings when we don’t understand the limitations of the Anam?”
“You believe there are more Blessings than this?” she asked him, trying to disguise the incredulous tone in her voice.
“Why else would we all go through the tests we do when we first come to the school?” he asked. “It’s because they know that our abilities can fall in some sort of general category, and these are the seven that they understand. I’ve heard it in their minds, as much as they try to hide it. They know there are other Blessings, other abilities, that have been gifted from the Anam. They know there’s more to the picture than what they’re telling us. But they’re afraid of those other abilities. That’s the problem, don’t you see? The heads of the houses are scared. They don’t understand the other stones; they’ve never tried to. Well, until recently.”
