She spoke so fast that Kuro had to play it back to himself more slowly in his mind to understand it all. Once he realized what she was saying, he threw his arms around her in a tight hug without even thinking. He knew that he should be sorry that she wouldn’t be able to spend the holiday with her dad, but having Charlie around was probably the best present anyone could have given him.
That evening, hiding behind the enormous tree in the lodge lounge, they set about learning the returning spell in earnest. After several hours, they hadn’t gotten much past the starting gesture for how to hold their right hand. They were about to give up for the night when Meredith wandered past and took an interest in their activities.
“What are you two up to?” she asked in her usual boisterous way.
“Nothing,” replied Charlie much too quickly while slamming the book shut.
Meredith, while being very kind and protective of her first-year charges, was also no fool. She tromped over and grabbed the book they were working from. Charlie and Kuro waited nervously as they watched Meredith’s brow furrow and twist. “That’s a tricky bit of magic for a first year. What do you want this for?”
Charlie started making very bad and unbelievable excuses, but Kuro had another idea. If anyone was going to help them, it would be Meredith. Also, she was in high-school. She could probably cast the spell in her sleep. Maybe she could teach them to do it.
After a few tries, Kuro managed to stop Charlie explaining how she had accidentally brought a magical lamp with a genie inside back with her on the ferry and how they needed to return it to its rightful owner before the genie got angry.
He started to explain the truth. As he spoke, Meredith’s usually bright jagged grin fell, and her eyes grew dark. When he got to the part about Bella forging a note to mark Kuro as a thief, she exploded.
“She did what?!” Meredith bellowed loudly enough to rattle windows. “Kuro, come with me.”
Meredith grabbed Kuro’s arm and dragged him out of the lodge. “Where are we going?” he asked.
“To visit a friend,” she growled, pulling him through the darkened Autumn woods towards Summer.
Kuro wanted to protest, but Meredith’s determined fury kept him quiet as he tripped along behind her, stuck firmly in her strong grip. She pulled him all the way to the Summerhill Residence. She stomped up the intricately interlocking stone pathway and slammed open the massive wooden front door as if it were cardboard. The noise echoed through the expansive entryway of the nearly abandoned manor.
Summerhill was nothing like the warm welcoming cabin of Autumn Lodge. The entry hall had spotless marble floors and soaring arched ceilings. Every surface was crafted by a master woodworker’s hand, stained dark brown and polished to a mirror shine. Tapestries and paintings hung on every wall, showing great scenes of glory, from dragon slaying to battles with troll armies. Great golden candelabras and chandeliers lit the halls with warm lights. As beautiful as it was, it felt hollow, sterile. Kuro was afraid to touch anything for fear of leaving fingerprints. He hesitated to even walk on the floor and risk ruining the perfect mirror finish. “Are we supposed to be in here?” he asked meekly.
Perhaps he was too quiet, as Meredith did not respond nor show any sign of the reservations that Kuro had. She pulled him along the marble corridor to a grand gilded set of double doors. Meredith pounded on them and yelled, “Belladonna! Get out here!”
The door swung open a few moments later with Belladonna behind it wearing an expression of annoyance. “What’s with the racket, Mer?” Bella asked before she saw the boiling rage in Meredith’s eyes and noticed Kuro, half hidden behind her. Bella’s eyes went wide, and she slammed the door.
“Don’t you dare,” Meredith snarled. “You talk to me or you talk to McCutcheon. Your choice.”
The door slowly opened a couple of inches, and Bella looked out at them with her scarred eye. “What do you want, Thrump?” Bella asked, saying the name like a curse word.
“I want you to explain to my why, exactly, truthfully, you are not on the lacrosse team this year?” Meredith’s eyes had narrowed murderously.
“Didn’t he tell you?”
“I want you to tell me.” Meredith stood back, crossed her arms, and waited.
“Casting dangerous spells without supervision,” replied Bella coldly.
“That’s it?” replied Meredith, even more icily. “Nothing to do with burgling a nice old man’s shop?”
The two older girls glared daggers at each other for a long time, and Kuro desperately wished to be somewhere else. It looked like either one of them could explode at any moment.
Bella started in a hushed tone. “The Hound said he’d keep that a secret. No harm was done. The shoes went back; the shopkeeper forgave us. Just a stupid mistake. Then this monster shows up at school, probably telling everyone.”
“Tonight was the first I’ve heard of it,” replied Meredith.
Their voices started to rise, like a slow-burning fuse.
“He got me arrested.”
“You did that yourself.”
“He attacked me.”
“He’s twelve.”
“He’s a menace.”
“You framed him!”
“He deserved it! Look at what he did to my eye!”
“In self-defence!”
Their voices were cracking and echoing down the empty corridors. Candles sputtered, and the air temperature rose and fell sharply as their powerful thoughts interacted with the magical field. Kuro couldn’t believe that anyone would get this angry on his behalf. He couldn’t even get this angry on his behalf.
“He is a thief!” shouted Bella.
“So are you!” thundered Meredith.
“You don’t understand. You don’t know what it’s like. To be surrounded by rich kids and be laughed at just because you can’t afford fancy clothes and magic brooms!”
“You think that I don’t know what it’s like to be the butt of jokes?” A pair of nearby candelabras toppled from the force of Meredith’s anger.
“He got me kicked off the lacrosse team. It’s his fault. It’s the only thing I’ve ever been good at, and he ruined it.”
“He’s one of us, Bella. One. Of. Us.”
“Seph broke up with me.”
“Not. His. Fault.”
Tears were streaming down both girls’ cheeks, and their voices had turned very cold.
“I thought better of you, Belladonna”
“I thought we were friends, Thrump.”
“So did I.”
The waves of undirected emotion that had been causing havoc through the hallway stopped, and the air grew cold and still. Both girls raised their hands at each other and began to mutter spells.
Kuro didn’t want this. He didn’t want anyone to get in trouble, or get hurt or killed. He grabbed onto Meredith’s wrist with both hands, trying to stop her attack. He was little more than a nuisance to the huge girl. He dangled helplessly from her arm. “Please, don’t! Not again!” he pleaded. “I’m sorry, Bella.”
He waited for the spells to start flying but the girls just stood, frozen halfway through casting, tears flowing openly.
“You’re sorry? You are sorry?” Bella choked on her tears and anger. Slowly, she lowered her hands and hung her head in defeat. “You’ve made your point, Thrump. Go. Please, go.”
Sixteen
The Locket
Once safely back in the lodge, with tears dried and breathing back to normal, Kuro asked Meredith about something that hadn’t made sense in their shouting match. “Meredith, what did you mean when you said that I was one of you?”
“You’re an orphan, right? Like me and Bella.” She looked at Kuro with a sad sort of empathy.
“No, I’m not,” Kuro replied.
“What? I thought you’d lost your parents. You don’t even know your last name.”
“I don’t have parents,” Kuro informed her.
�
�What?” She shook her head and laughed at Kuro, as though he had just claimed to be a very talkative teapot. “You’re a funny kid. Of course you do. Everyone’s got parents. Even if you don’t know who they are. Doesn’t matter, though. You’re alone, like us. We don’t have anyone looking out for us, so we look out for each other. Or we’re supposed to.” Meredith sighed. “Bella forgets that sometimes. She’s got a good heart, when she remembers to use it. She just tries too hard to prove that she’s as good as the kids with rich parents.”
“Why is she in Summerhill, then?” demanded Charlie, inserting herself into their conversation. “Shouldn’t she be at the lodge with us weirdos?”
“She probably wishes she was, but she’d never say it out loud. She has the terrible luck of having a fancy family name with none of the fancy family that usually comes with it. The Spring Court sponsors her just cause of her heritage, so she’s stuck in that stuffy residence with the rich kids.” She smiled and ruffled her juniors’ hair. “Now get to bed you two. We’ll work on that spell of yours another day.”
The next day was Solstice Eve. Meredith refused on moral grounds to do any work at all and instead forced as many students as she could outside for a snowball fight in the Winter Quarter. She challenged a match of Autumn Lodge versus everyone, which went very well at first.
Witches and wizards, broadly speaking, never learn how to throw a ball properly. Athletics are thought to be for mundane folk who don’t have better ways to get things done. The couple of practised lacrosse players were the only ones who could really hit anyone, and the addition of Meredith to the Lodgers’ side provided an unfair advantage until the magic came out. Soon, the seven Lodgers were sorely outmatched by a battery of snow cannons and fortified walls of ice conjured by the couple of Vertheim residents, who had more experience with ice and snow than anyone. The battle raged on till late in the afternoon, when the sun sank too low to see clearly, and everyone was too exhausted and caked in snow to continue. They all went back to Autumn Lodge for hot apple cocoa soda and gingerbread.
Bella was notably missing from the battle.
Charlie kept Kuro and Meredith up as late as possible telling ghost stories. She was a very good storyteller, though some of her haunting climaxes were diminished by the fact that Kuro had lived with actual ghosts.
Far too late at night, Kuro climbed exhausted and happy into bed and went to sleep.
He woke earlier than he would have liked because of Charlie’s excited laughter echoing up from the lounge. He stretched, yawned, clambered out of bed, and nearly broke his neck tripping on a pile of junk and paper someone had left at the foot of his bed. He cursed and blearily made his way out to see what Charlie was so excited about.
“Presents!” she shouted. She was wearing an oversized red sock on her head and grinning furiously. “Happy Solstice! Get your presents so we can open them.”
“I don’t get presents.” Kuro yawned. “But I’d like to watch you open yours.”
Charlie looked affronted. “You had better have presents. I got you one.”
“You did?” Kuro asked in shock. “What is it?”
“I can’t tell you. You have to open it. Don’t you know how this works?”
“No,” Kuro admitted. “I’ve never gotten a Solstice present before.”
“Well, go and get them, and I’ll show you.” She shooed him out, back to his dorm.
Kuro returned to his room, and as he stepped inside, his jaw fell open. The pile of trash he’d tripped over wasn’t trash at all. It was a pile of packages. A pile. Some were neatly wrapped in shimmering multicoloured paper with bows, others roughly wrapped in brown paper and tied with twine for the post. He had to use his bedsheet as a sack to get them all back to the common room in one trip. By the time he got back, Meredith was there, too, groggily sorting through her pile of packages.
“What’s going on?” Kuro stuttered.
“Yule!” Charlie exclaimed as though that explained everything.
“But where did they all come from?”
“That’s what the cards are for. They tell you who sent them,” she explained patiently. She went on to describe the elaborate ritual for opening presents. They first had to be appreciated for their aesthetic qualities. One had to admire the paper and the bow and the effort that was put into wrapping it. Then each needed to be gently shaken so that one could guess their contents. Only then could they be opened.
They all had one matching package, a small square white box with a very neat red bow and a card with “L. M.” written on it in impeccable handwriting. “That’s from McCutcheon, same every year,” said Meredith. “Go on, pull the bow.”
Kuro pulled the red bow, and the box started to transform. It bloomed like a flower, each of the petals becoming thick and fully transforming into a beautifully arranged collection of lollipops, a rainbow of saltwater taffy and candied apples, with a small fleet of licorice witches flying in circles around it.
“She’s just showing off,” said Meredith, opening her own and picking out a taffy to chew on. “Word to the wise, the licorice witches are vile, but McCutcheon loves them. I think she gives them to us so we’ll share them with her.”
They started opening presents in turn. Marie and Charlie had both made him cards. From the looks of them, they had done them together. They were on the same thick paper and used the same red ink, but that is where the similarities stopped. The card from Marie said “Joyeux Noël” on the front in neat and careful script and had a simple message about peace and joy on Christmas inside. Charlie’s writing was as uneven and lopsided as she was. The front of the card just said “Solstice!!!” and the inside was an almost illegible mess of writing that started with her being sad to leave him behind and by the end talking about feeding cookies to a hydra.
Arthur had sent Kuro and Charlie actual presents, which must have been delivered by the lutin post in the night. Kuro’s included a cream that would cause beards and moustaches to grow. He had given Charlie a brush that changed the user’s hairstyle at random. She was distracted for the next fifteen minutes trying different hairstyles, all of them shocking and terrible.
Kuro was confused by the gift, especially the card, which said, “You might find this useful.” Kuro wondered if it was a joke, but he hadn’t seen any sign that Arthur had a sense of humour. He couldn’t actually imagine the stoic and shy boy laughing.
Kuro added Arthur’s card to the other two and started to feel very guilty. “I didn’t get you anything.”
“Course you didn’t,” Charlie replied while admiring her latest hairstyle, a large pompadour in the shape of a sailing ship. “That’s not the point, anyway.”
Kuro tried to hide his tears by digging out another box, a small and simply wrapped package. The card said it was from Sabine El-Assar. Meredith piped up again, though her jaw was mostly glued closed by toffee. “That’ll be a book,” she mumbled.
Kuro opened it, and it was, indeed, a book: Balthazar Saeed and the Mystery of the Sídhe Queen. “How did you know?” he asked.
“Sabine’s pretty predictable,” she replied, waving a new copy of Beyond the Veil—Adventures in the Blandlands.
“Do you know him, I mean, her?” asked Kuro confounded.
“Of course, she’s my case worker. Has been for years. She’s great. Tries really hard. Tough to get me adopted, though, when I’m bigger than most of the dads.”
Kuro had a sudden sinking feeling that he had been very mistaken in his suspicions of Ms. El-Assar. He doubted that Dubois would have been secretly working with all the orphaned children at Avalon for the past several years. He was left with a haunting feeling that she might actually be the compassionate person she pretended to be. He tried to banish that idea by convincing himself that she was, at least, reporting to Dubois, and that the strange and nonsensical answers he’d been giving her were not completely without cause.
Kuro had another mysterious package. It was soft and pliable, w
hich Charlie had taught him meant clothes. The card was unsigned but had a note in a sloppy scrawl: “Kuro, I hope you are finding a home at Avalon. School can be pretty heavy, but this might ease your burden.”
That didn’t make any sense at all, but he opened the package regardless. Inside was a familiar brown leather book bag with a brass letter K on the buckle. It was definitely the one he had picked up in the lost and found, but someone had polished the leather and fixed the worn stitching.
He stared into the cavernous interior of the sack in disbelief. Inside was a large dimly lit space filled with shelves and drawers, all cleaned and freshly varnished. He found that the mouth of the enchanted satchel could stretch quite wide, so he laid the bag down and climbed inside. He checked through the various drawers, finding them all empty, and found a place on a shelf to store his new book. He crawled back out of the bag to find Meredith and Charlie staring open mouthed at him.
The three of them played with the mysterious bag for a while. They worked to see what the largest thing they could put inside was. They managed a large potted plant and a wooden stool, but the armchair got stuck, and they had a hard time retrieving it. Meredith had to haul on the chair leg she could reach while the two other children pulled the bag in the other direction.
Volume 1: Pickpocketing Page 21
