Vita and the Monsters of Moorhouse

by Jillian Karger

  His eyebrows rose when he noticed Vita, and he moved away from the window, out of sight. Vita stared at the chocolate fountain, wishing its creator would reappear, but then she heard someone clear his throat on her left.

  She looked up to see the furry yeti monster from the other table. Standing he was three times as tall as Vita. He stood fine in the high-ceilinged hall but would have bumped his head in Vita’s apartment for sure. His fangs were thick but razor sharp, and he had pointy teeth besides. He held a tray in his hands, long black claws curving over the edges.

  He bowed his head. “It is my honor to welcome you to Moorhouse, Vita, since it seems my colleague is too busy stuffing her face to do so.”

  Vita glanced Fironella’s way and saw she had moved on to a plate of donuts slathered in frosting and sprinkles.

  “You may call me Mazkin,” the monster said with something of a bow.

  “I’m Vita,” she replied. “Though I guess you already know that.”

  Mazkin nodded. He looked at the chair across from Vita then at Melina. “Would you perhaps be more comfortable on the floor?” he asked the caterpillar.

  “Like a common cat?” Melina spat in disgust. “How dare you? I am a caterpillar of the highest order, and—”

  “Melina doesn’t like being on the ground,” Vita cut in, eying Mazkin’s long fangs in fear. Her friend would have to watch what she said around these creatures.

  But Mazkin just chuckled. “And why should she? That dusty floor is no place for a caterpillar of the highest order,” he said with a smile. Though his teeth were sharp, the smile still seemed kind.

  He pulled out the chair beside Vita and sat in the only space Melina left available. On his tray was a bowl of chicken noodle soup. It seemed a bit boring compared to the chocolate peanut butter fountain or that dog monster’s abundance of caramel and candied apples.

  Melina’s head jerked up when Mazkin set his tray down. “What is that?” Melina asked, slinking closer to Mazkin’s tray.

  “It smells delicious, doesn’t it?” Mazkin replied.

  Vita sniffed at the air. “I don’t smell anything.”

  Mazkin continued to smile at Melina. “You can try it if you like—I don’t mind.” He tipped his bowl and a bit of the soup splashed onto the tray.

  Melina licked it up and purred. “Oh, Vita, it’s wonderful! You must try it.”

  Mazkin dipped his spoon into the bowl and held it toward Vita.

  After a moment of hesitation, Vita gingerly took the spoon from Mazkin. She didn’t know what could be so exciting about chicken noodle soup, but she’d never heard Melina purr like that before.

  Vita tried the soup and immediately wished for another spoonful. The chicken was tender and the noodles fit the spoon perfectly, rather than hanging over the side and creating a slurping mess. Even the cooked carrots, which Vita usually despised, were delightful. She wished she’d ordered this rather than strawberry soup—she couldn’t imagine a more satisfying dish.

  Just then Fidoreekio arrived with a blue bowl for Vita and a smaller, identical one for Melina. The broth was a rosy shade of pink and topped by fluffy whipped cream, blackberries, raspberries, and chocolate shavings. Vita’s ice cream soda sat on the tray as well. The glass was very tall—its rim almost reached Vita’s chin when Fidoreekio set the tray in front of her.

  She tried the soda first and sighed. It was the best she’d ever had—miles beyond the ice cream sodas at the neighborhood diner. A bite of the strawberry soup told her she hadn’t picked the wrong order after all. It was like a hot mug of cocoa, only the flavor was of the ripest strawberry, though a hint of chocolate was there too.

  She glanced over at Mazkin, who was eating his soup in silence. She took a spoonful of her own soup and held it over to him. “Would you like to try mine? It’s strawberry.”

  The monster raised his bushy eyebrows, startled. “Why, thank you, Vita. Yes, I would.” He took Vita’s spoon very carefully so only his furry fingers, and not his long claws, touched her. He slurped the soup then grinned. “That’s lovely. Is it from your Whirlyton?”

  She gave a wide-eyed nod. “How … how much exactly do you know about Whirlyton?”

  “Not very much as of yet. But our recruiter has told me you show a great deal of promise.”

  “Peebles?” she asked.

  “Mmm. He’s one of our best. He’s recruited many of our most skilled teachers as well, from all over Drozlin.”

  She looked around the dusky hall, at the many monsters hunched over brightly colored cakes and quadruple-decker peanut butter and jelly sandwiches with three different kinds of jelly. “Are all these monsters teachers?”

  “A lot of them are in training. Our training process for teachers at Moorhouse is quite extensive.”

  “Where are the other students?”

  She looked back toward the order window and met a pair of copper eyes. They and the top of a black-haired head were all Vita could see—the owner of the eyes was barely tall enough to clear the counter behind the order window.

  For a second Vita saw the head of a beaming little black girl pop up behind the window, her braids flying this way and that. A moment later the head appeared again and the girl waved.

  Vita waved back hesitantly. The girl’s head seemed human, at least.

  Mazkin followed her gaze. “I see you’ve already found them. That’s Rosie, our youngest student.”

  “You make the kids work in the kitchens at this school?”

  “Only on special occasions. And besides, it’s good world-building practice.”

  “I saw a boy make a chocolate fountain out of some gray clay-stuff…” she recalled. She glanced down at her strawberry soup. “Is my soup made out of that too?” It didn’t seem possible something that so closely resembled mud could taste that good.

  She looked up to find Mazkin giving her a proud smile. “You catch on quickly, Vita. The material of which you speak is called Base, though your soup isn’t made out of it. Base provides our students with a starting point in their world-building, much like a canvas would for a painter or a blank sheet of paper for a writer. I know world-building may look like magic but it is really the finest art there is, and one we take a great deal of pride in teaching here at Moorhouse.”

  Vita turned back toward the order window again but was disappointed to find no one there. No matter what Mazkin said, that boy’s stunt with the chocolate fountain had certainly looked like magic to her. “And kids compete to build the best stuff?”

  “The best world, yes. Creating food, that’s just a tiny piece of what we’ll teach you.” He lifted his bowl to drink up the last of his soup. “Would you like to see the prize you shall receive if you win our world-building competition, Vita?”

  Finally someone here was willing to give her some answers about this mysterious school. At their table across the aisle it seemed Fironella and her henchmen had finished eating, and now leaned conspiratorially toward each other. Fironella and Ruckles spoke in hushed whispers while Skrillus listened and smiled.

  At Vita’s table, Mazkin patted Melina’s head. The caterpillar only purred in response. The iciness Melina had shown every other monster had thawed around him.

  Vita finished her own meal and stood. “I would like that very much, yes,” she replied.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  THE CROSSING CLOAK

  Vita and Melina followed Mazkin into a room that looked exactly like the front hall, but it was as though the room had undergone a black-and-white treatment. The armchair and hangings over the windows were deep gray rather than scarlet, as were the roses on the wall. The dusky blue of the wallpaper had become nearly black. The wallpaper was in far better condition than it had been in the front hall but Vita would have taken tattered vibrance over well-tended gloom any day.

  Mazkin strode through the room to a beautiful old chest that stood in the center where the grand piano should have been. Out came Mazkin’s key ring again and he slipped a brass key into the
chest’s lock. He opened the lid of the chest to reveal a swath of silky purple material. A hint of golden cord peeked out of the plains of violet. The colors looked so brilliant against the dusky room Vita had to blink tears out of her eyes. She felt a nearly irresistible urge to press her fingers to the grape silk.

  Mazkin removed the cloak from the chest and held it up so Vita could see its hood and the way it would drape down to the floor even on someone as tall as Mazkin. “Before I can show you the prize, I need to show you something else,” he said. “Outside it will be quite wet, and cold as well.” Without another word he extended the cloak to Vita and let go of it.

  The girl caught the cloak so it wouldn’t fall and sighed at its softness—it was even nicer than she’d imagined.

  She and Melina moved to catch up with Mazkin at the other end of the room. On the way Vita noted a desk against each of the two southern walls, pushed straight up against the rows of shaded windows. “Is this someone’s office?” she asked.

  “Mine and Fironella’s, yes,” Mazkin replied.

  “You share?”

  “The headmonsters of Moorhouse have always shared this office. It’s tradition.” He said it a little begrudgingly, as though he wished this weren’t the case.

  “Oh! Fironella didn’t mention…”

  “That there was any other headmonster but her? She has a habit of that.”

  Vita giggled, relieved to know the decaying doll at least didn’t run things alone around here.

  She looked closer at the desks, trying to guess which belonged to which monster. A plate decorated with brown crumbs and a curdling, half-full glass of milk on the right-hand desk answered her question. Hulking Mazkin should have been the sloppier of the two monsters but Vita remembered how carelessly Fironella had devoured her medley of sugary treats in the Mess Hall.

  Mazkin’s desktop revealed only a few sheets of yellowing paper, a pot of ink, and a feather quill. It appeared Mazkin had quite lovely penmanship despite his long, ungainly claws.

  They reached a set of double doors embedded into the far end of the diamond, just like the ones that had led Vita into Moorhouse. Mazkin pulled a handle and let in a gust of icy wind. The girl shivered and flung the cloak over her shoulders. The hem pooled on the floor in a luxurious puddle at her feet.

  She looked up to find Mazkin gone and rushed after him through the darkened doorway, blown wide open by the furious wind.

  She halted her pace with a small scream as soon as she stepped outside. This door didn’t lead into a set of ruddy, litter-stained grounds, or any grounds at all for that matter. Instead she found herself on a gray stone ledge that ended a mere foot away from the doorway in a stark and sudden drop.

  She lifted the hem of her cloak and took a few careful steps around the school’s narrow façade so she could lean her back against the cold stone wall. She took a few deep breaths and looked out at the desolate, colorless land several stories below. Overgrown, unhealthy grass blanketed the hills and black water filled the depressions in between in dozens of large, oily puddles. The spindly branches of the barren trees twisted and turned in the wind. A misty fog crept through the trees and Vita would have sworn a large oak attempted to grasp the fog with clawlike twig fingers.

  She had expected sunlight but it was closer to nighttime out here. Actually she couldn’t tell what time of day it was when she looked out at the gray horizon. It could have been nearly night, or it could have been a morning or afternoon sky darkened by a storm. For the first time Vita wondered long had it been since she and Melina had arrived at Moorhouse. The absence of any sunlight made it difficult for her to ascertain the passage of time.

  It rained, though not hard. Instead it was the soft, misty sort of rain that always managed to drive Vita madder than a torrential downpour ever could—it was the sort of rain that convinced her she didn’t really need an umbrella, only to shift into a torrential downpour the moment she left her building.

  She grimaced when her ears picked up a mournful screeching noise over the howl of the wind. Was it the creaking of the door’s hinges? No, it seemed to be coming from above her…

  She turned to look back at the stone building and gasped. Rather than a mix of rust, gray, and sea green, Moorhouse’s dormers and towers were alternating shades of gray. The gargoyles were still harnessed to the walls by their stone haunches but their necks writhed this way and that and their eyes glowed bright red. The screams of the gargoyles on the other side of Moorhouse had been silent, motionless. But here she could hear the stone creatures’ cries, and the sounds they made were the screech of fingernails on a blackboard infused with equal parts rage, fear, and the deepest of sorrow.

  For a moment the girl felt a lump in her throat at the terrible sadness of it all—trapped on a steep cliff in this rainy, foggy, frightening world with a monster she barely knew and her still somewhat imaginary friend.

  Melina! Vita remembered. She looked back and forth, searching for the caterpillar.

  “It would have only taken a moment of your time to say, ‘Oh, Melina, there’s a terrifying cliff of doom right outside this door here,’” a voice grumbled, barely audible over the wind. It was familiar in that uncanny way strangers’ voices can be—so similar to a friend’s yet absolutely, rationally not.

  “So you might want to watch out for that!” the voice droned on. “Or perhaps you might have thought to share that cloak with your supposed friend before rushing out into the freezing rain!”

  Vita almost lost her footing on the ledge when the damp, furry creature brushed by her legs. Then a sharp poke in her left leg, and another.

  “Ow!” she exclaimed and looked down. Yellow-green cat eyes gazed back at her, the largest Vita had ever seen. The caterpillar blinked beads of rain out of her long lashes and onto her even longer whiskers. The girl watched the scowl slip off Melina’s face.

  She reached down to pat Melina’s head and grinned wide, the pain in her leg forgotten. Everything Melina had become through the various rooms of Moorhouse—little more than a ghostly shadow in the North Wing while nearly opaque but not quite so in the Mess Hall—paled to what she was here.

  At last Melina was really and truly real, just as Peebles had promised. The stabs in Vita’s leg had been Melina’s claws—she’d never had to consider the hazard their sharpness might present back when Melina had been a mere phantom. Vita could still feel how soft her friend’s peach fur was despite the dampness, and Melina pushed her head into Vita’s hand, purring.

  Vita knelt down as far as the narrow ledge would allow and Melina climbed onto her shoulders and cuddled entirely under the cloak. Melina was heavier here but Vita didn’t mind one bit, not now.

  “There’s Mazkin,” Melina said in Vita’s ear so the girl could hear her over the wind and the howling gargoyles above.

  She followed Melina’s gaze to the tall, shaggy monster. He stood near the opposite corner of the wall, his elbows resting on a carved stone railing that wrapped around the corner of the ledge. If he was bothered by how high up they were, or could feel the cold or rain through all that fur, he did not show it.

  Vita and Melina met each other’s eyes for a moment, each silently marveling at the fact that Melina had seen something Vita hadn’t—had been able to tell the girl something she didn’t already know.

  The railing Mazkin leaned against appeared to be the only one on this side of Moorhouse—nothing stood between Vita and Melina and a ten story drop but a slim ledge. So Vita made a very slow, nervous way across the ledge to meet the headmonster. She was grateful for Melina’s warmth as a barrier between the rain and the cold, uneven stone at her back.

  She was grateful for Melina’s warmth for a lot more reasons than that, really.

  Mazkin turned away from the railing and crossed his arms when they arrived. “It took you both long enough,” he said, though without any annoyance in his deep voice.

  Vita brought her hand up to pet Melina and looked from her to Mazkin. “I got, well, distr
acted,” she replied, stumbling over her words. “Melina…” she trailed off.

  Mazkin nodded, signaling he understood. “She appears real at last to you, though she looks no different to me. The way Melina looks to you now is how she and your other Figments have always appeared to me and my fellow Drozlinians. It’s how we recruited our other students, and now you.”

  That word: Figment again. Peebles had used it as well. “So this is Drozlin?” Vita asked. “Is that why Melina is real? Because we’re outside?”

  “A good guess, but no. As long as we remain on the grounds of Moorhouse, we remain on the border between Drozlin and your world—in the shades between real and not.” He pointed down at the cliff wall to their left. A set of stairs was carved right into the wall, snaking back and forth all the way down to the dirt ground. The rail stopped just short of the stairs, making Vita’s trip across the ledge seem like a picnic in comparison to the terror a climb down those steps would be. “The steps take you down to Drozlin Proper. There Melina would be real.” His face looked grave. “Yes, she’d be real all right.”

  Vita stayed silent for a moment, expecting him to continue on, but he didn’t.

  “So then why am I real now?” Melina asked. The twist of her mouth showed she felt as odd about the question as Vita did. Melina’s imaginary status wasn’t something either of them much liked to discuss.

  Mazkin’s hazel eyes moved down to Melina’s. “Because of the cloak around your friend’s shoulders, Melina. It’s called a Crossing Cloak and was woven by a mix of silkworms from both Drozlin and the human world a very, very long time ago. If you were to cross the border back into the human world while wearing that cloak, you would be as real as Vita.” His gaze returned to the girl’s. “Forever.”

  Vita thought of it, and as she did she couldn’t feel a hint of the icy wind pricking at her face. She imagined cuddling up with Melina on the pillows in her classroom’s Reading Corner, and the caterpillar swinging on the monkey bars and over the jungle gym at recess. Melina hissing and defending her in front of Erica Simmons, the way Vita wished Jen would have.