Welcome to Welton

by Marie Brennan

  The words pursued Julian to his bedroom door, and there the wilder stopped. Robert saw, with the sudden clarity of adrenaline, his roommate’s hand on the door frame, and the tensing of his fingertips against the wood. He had time enough to note, treat black clothing as a warning sign in future, before Julian dropped the bag and pivoted sharply to face him.

  “I have had enough,” he said, in an uninflected voice that sent Robert’s adrenaline spiking, “with being questioned about everything in my life, and the answers being treated like some kind of report from another planet.”

  It wasn’t that he was angry.though Robert had no doubt he was, under that frigid self-control. It was the way humanity almost seemed to drop away from him. In that clothing, with that expression and that voice, he might have been something out of the Otherworld. Wilders in the ordinary way of things were unnerving enough . . . but that, Robert now realized, was what they looked like when they were trying to be normal.

  His mouth opened, but all his conversational gambits lay in pieces on the floor. “I.”

  The tendons in Julian’s neck leapt into relief as he clenched his jaw. “I am not an insect under the microscope. I am not a performing dog. I’m not here to entertain you, or anybody else. My life is none of your business. Get that through your head, and leave me in peace.”

  He bit the last words off and turned to go into his room. Before he could close the door, though, Robert was on his feet, and hot from head to toe. “Wait. We aren’t done yet.”

  Julian didn’t look back, but he did stop.

  “You bloody pillock,” Robert said, furious. “Do you think I don’t know how everybody’s been treating you? They chase after me, too, because they know better than to come after you.some of them. It’s a three-ring circus out there, with you as the main attraction. I get that. But you know, not everybody who asks you a civil question is doing it because they want to run and gossip to their friends. Some of them are doing it because they’re your roommate, and they’d like to go on being your roommate, rather than letting you drive yourself off a cliff in the first quarter of your freshman year. Which is what you’re on track to do, unless you find some kind of life outside of class, studying, and dodging the bastards that want you to dance for their amusement.”

  Silence. Robert couldn’t tell what Julian thought of his tirade; he was still in the doorway, one hand on the knob. His roommate might have been about to slam the door, break down crying, or transform Robert into a toad.

  He did none of the three. He turned.the other direction, so that Robert could only glimpse the hard edge of his expression.and went to shove his feet into his boots again.

  “Give us a chance, at least,” Robert said. “Not everybody here sees you as an insect or a dog.” But he got no chance to say anything more. Julian was out into the hallway, sliding past a fellow who leapt to clear his path, and the door swung shut behind him.

  Kim

  A bout of shivering seized me, and my jaw ached as I clenched it to keep my teeth from chattering. Minnesota was not Georgia: I knew that, and yet here I was, soaking wet and outside late on a windy and none-too-warm night. All because I couldn’t let go of tradition.

  It started when I was twelve. My gifts had manifested about a month earlier, and were still volatile enough that, although I’d enjoyed my birthday party, I felt twitchy and less than fully in control of myself. After my friends left, I went for a swim in our backyard pool, and ended up floating there for a good hour, thinking about everything in my life: manifestation, how I’d changed, where I was going. The next year, although I didn’t need the calming, I decided to to do it again. And every year since then, the same.

  Unfortunately, the swimming pool here was indoors, and striped with lane ropes. Really not what I was looking for. The creek that ran through the Arboretum was deep enough for swimming . . . but it was also freezing by comparison. I hadn’t meditated for very long.

  If only I lived somewhere closer, like Wolfstone. Shushunova lay practically on the other side of campus from the Arboretum. I had to cut through the middle, passing administrative buildings and classrooms, not to mention several dorms that made me think of those ads on apartment buildings: If you lived here, you would be home now. Next year I was going to have to find a better place to dunk myself. Maybe the pool wasn’t so bad. Or a bathtub.

  Up ahead lay the First Manifestation monument, my halfway point to home. I wrapped my arms more firmly around my body as I crossed it, wishing I’d worn my winter coat, and never mind that it was only the end of September.

  Then every hair on my body rose, in a way that had nothing to do with the cold wind. I wasn’t the only one passing through the monument. I looked up at the other person, and froze where I stood.

  Grey eyes. They drew me in and trapped me, windows to something not quite human. I was sidhe-blooded, like everyone with psychic gifts, but his eyes . . . they held all the numinous wonder and terror of the sidhe themselves. Every muscle in my body shuddered. I was a mouse transfixed by the gaze of a hawk, a moth flying too close to the flame, and I couldn’t look away.

  It was the cold that saved me. Not all of my shivering was because I’d just met a wilder’s eyes. I shuddered hard enough to break the deadlock, and wrenched my gaze down.

  Never look them in the eye. My mother had taught me that when I was a child. Avoid skin contact; avoid eye contact. The presence of a wilder was enough on its own: a reminder that the sidhe had been more than simply a species with different abilities. They were the source of our gifts, and alien in a way that did not belong to this world. Wilders, having more of their blood than most, gave off that skin-crawling feel wherever they went.

  Like, for example, the campus monument on a late September night. How long had I been standing there, frozen? It could have been five seconds or five minutes, but either way, “frozen” was becoming less and less of a metaphor. Okay, so I’d found our resident wilder. Good for me. But he probably didn’t appreciate me gawking at him like that.or had he met my gaze on purpose? To see what I would do?

  What I should do was act normally. The way I would if he were any other person. Now if only I could remember how that went.

  Just keep on walking.

  So I did. Across the marble of the monument, its polished green surface black and reflective in the moonlight. His dark clothes blended into that background, against which his skin and hair stood out shockingly pale. We’d been about twenty feet apart when I looked up, and he’d stopped when I did. Now he started again, along the same course he’d been following.which was to say, straight toward me. As we drew near, I avoided his eyes, but smiled and gave him a nod. As if he were just another student, passing in the night.

  “Are you all right?”

  It jerked me to a halt again. But the weirdness of his voice was just an echo from all the stone around us; beneath that, his tone mingled curiosity and concern.

  “You’re shivering,” he added. “And wet.”

  I hadn’t expected him to say anything, not after that appallingly rude staring match.whoever’s fault it had been. I touched my dripping hair and blushed. “Oh. It’s my birthday.” As if that were any kind of answer to his question. “I do this every year.it’s a tradition. I think back over the past year.kind of a meditation.and, well, go swimming. So I jumped into the Copper Creek.”

  He nodded, as if I had said something perfectly reasonable. Was I breaking the promise Liesel and I had made? No; he was the one who started this conversation. The polite thing would be to find something sane to say, but between my incipient hypothermia and the disorientation of meeting his gaze, my brain was in no state to help.

  Glancing down, I saw he had a fistful of late roses. “CM assignment,” he said, when he noticed me looking. Then, after a brief hesitation that seemed almost like he was arguing with himself, he handed me one of them. “I’m Julian. I’m sorry to have startled you.”

  I took the rose, dumbly, and stared at it.”What’s this for?”<
br />
  “Your birthday?” he said, as if he’d heard somewhere that normal people gave each other gifts on such days. “And an apology. I shouldn’t have done that.”

  Shouldn’t have met my eye. Maybe he had done it on purpose, though I couldn’t guess why. He spoke politely but stiffly, like he was edging his way out onto thin ice, waiting to fall through. Afraid of how I would react, maybe.

  I was afraid of the same thing. What I could say that wouldn’t sound weird? When in doubt, be polite. “Thanks,” I said, and stopped the twitch of my arm before it could turn into an offered handshake. Skin contact would only paralyze me again, and we’d had enough of that for one night. “I’m Kim. Freshman; I live over in Shushunova. What.”

  I was about to ask what dorm he was in, but a giant shiver cut the words off. My laugh was equal parts embarrasment and chattering teeth. “Sorry. I’m freezing to death.”

  “You should get home, then,” Julian said. Still with that wary courtesy, but I thought I detected a hint of relief underneath it. Maybe he wasn’t any more sure than I was where this conversation should go.

  “Yeah. I’ll see you around,” I said, wondering if I would. We’d missed each other so far. Possibly we just moved in totally different circles, but from the gossip I’d heard, my money was on him playing hermit. I couldn’t really blame him. Not when people like me turned into twitching idiots at the mere sight of him.

  Julian hesitated, then walked onward. I glanced over my shoulder, once, trying to guess where he was headed. Earle, maybe. I could look it up easily enough. But I wouldn’t do that to him.

  With the rose clutched in one icy hand, I hurried back to my dorm.

  Liesel

  Liesel could tell, even before she settled into her seat for the Cairo Accords lecture, that the guy who always sat next to her had something he wanted to say. No empathy needed; she could read it in his posture, much more upright than his usual slouch, and the way he kept looking at her sidelong. But she’d been delayed on her way to class by a call from her mother, and there was no time for him to say anything before Professor Banerjee brought up the display and began lecturing.

  She hoped he wasn’t going to ask her out. Robert wasn’t the type of guy who interested her.and besides, Michele’s flirting had continued well after Carmen stopped eating lunch with them. They’d gotten together the previous night to talk about the possibility of forming a Wiccan circle, if they could find enough other students they wanted to include, but the conversation had continued for a good hour and a half after that, long after Liesel should have gone home.

  Well, if he did, she would do her best to let him down gently. So she made a point, when the lecture was over, of packing up her things slowly enough that he wouldn’t feel rushed to get the words out before she walked away.

  “Er,” Robert said, and cleared his throat. His eyes were on the students in the row in front of them, plainly waiting for them to move and give him a bit of privacy.

  Liesel did her best to seem neutrally pleasant, not too encouraging. “Yes?”

  They’d spoken enough before and after this class that she knew the uncertainty he showed now wasn’t usual for him. “I . . . have a favor to ask,” Robert said, with the tone of one placing a heavy weight very carefully on a table, and waiting for the legs to break.

  It piqued Liesel’s curiosity. This didn’t sound like the start of a proposition. “I’ll help if I can,” she said cautiously.

  Robert let his breath out in a gust. “It’s my roommate who needs the help. No.wait.that doesn’t sound right at all.” He caught Liesel’s expression, and threw his hands up to fend off the conclusion he probably assumed she was drawing. “This is a friendly favor, nothing more! Only dinner. Gods and sidhe.that still sounds wrong.”

  Liesel suppressed a laugh; it wouldn’t help Robert any. “Deep breath. Start at the beginning.”

  He took her advice literally, at least where the breathing was concerned. “My roommate. I am attempting to broaden his social horizons, and he.after a certain degree of, shall we say, resistance.has agreed. I wondered if you might join us in Earle tonight.”

  “Just me?” Liesel asked.

  “I thought to start small,” Robert admitted. “Though if you have another you’d like to bring along, I defer to your judgment.”

  She clipped her bag shut, thinking. Three could be awkward; if they didn’t hit it off, there might be too much silence. Or she and Robert would spend the entire time talking, leaving the other guy out. “I could invite my own roommate.”

  The fall quarter was young enough that a lot of freshmen were still sitting down to meals with random people, hoping to make new friends. Kim had made some connections through the Divination Club, but she probably wouldn’t object to this experiment. Robert asked, “What’s she like?”

  “Mature,” Liesel said. “Her parents are kind of high society, so she’s used to making small talk with strangers. It sounds like that might help.”

  Robert’s sigh of relief told her she’d hit the mark. She doubted she was the only person he knew well enough to invite to dinner; it therefore followed that he had a reason for choosing her. And the most likely reason was her empathy. She could smooth over any rough spots in the conversation.and Kim, she thought, could do the same.

  “That sounds excellent,” Robert said. “Shall I see you both at seven, then? Splendid.” He grabbed his bag, gifted Liesel with a florid bow, and fled.

  Kim

  Earle’s dining hall was a low and sprawling place, claustrophobic enough that I’d avoided it until now. I preferred Hurst, whose floor-to-ceiling windows made it feel more open and pleasant. But Liesel had recruited me for a social project tonight, and it wouldn’t kill me to eat here once, before I swore off it for the rest of my undergraduate life.

  The space didn’t make it easy to find people, though. Liesel rose up on her toes to scan the room, then dropped down and shrugged. “I don’t see him. Let’s get food, then try to grab a table.”

  That would be easier said than done. The tables here were mostly small affairs, seating four or six people at best, and most of them were full. It looked like there were a few empty places off in the corner, though, where the room bent around into an L shape. I joined Liesel in the serving line, collecting a plate of lasagna and a slice of cake from the dessert table. “What’s your friend’s major? Or his name, for that matter?”

  “CM,” she said, and I grimaced behind her back. So much for having things to talk about. “And his name’s Robert Ó Conchúir.”

  Nobody I’d heard of, but if he was a CM major, that didn’t surprise me. “Freshman?” I’d assumed so, but hadn’t asked. Liesel nodded. “And the roommate is . . . .”

  “Awkward, apparently. He didn’t say more.”

  Around the bend of the L and near the windows, a tall, lanky student with a shock of red-gold hair stood up, one hand hovering in the air, not quite waving. He looked our age, and that hair could belong to somebody named Ó Conchúir. “Is that your guy?”

  Liesel turned to look, and the hovering became a full-blown wave. “Yes! They must have a table already.” She wove through the crowd, balancing her tray, heading for Robert and his companion.

  They not only had a table, they had what looked like every empty seat in the dining hall forming a ragged half-circle around them. And as I came into that buffer zone, I understood why.

  “Good evening, Liesel, my lady,” Robert said, with a distinct Irish accent and an honest-to-gods bow to us both. “May I present my roommate, Julian?”

  The wilder half-stood as well, but I didn’t think it was because he had the same old-fashioned habits of etiquette as Robert. He stood as if it was reflex, putting himself on his feet so he had more options for movement as Liesel and I drew near. As if some part of him was perpetually ready for trouble, and didn’t want to be sitting when it came.

  Were we trouble? No more so, I hoped, than your average pair of freshman girls, and nowhere near enough
to concern a wilder.

  The sunset coming through the windows painted him with false color, transforming him from the silver statue I’d met last week. It helped that he was wearing blue, not black, and the light gilded his fair hair gold. But nothing dented the shiver of his presence, and Liesel hitched a half-step in front of me, so that I almost ran into her.

  “And you are?” Robert asked me with that same antique courtesy, as Liesel set her tray down across from him.

  “Kim,” I said. Nothing for it but to take the chair across from Julian. And why shouldn’t I? He was just another freshman guy. Okay, one with a Krauss rating through the roof, but that was no reason to be rude.

  Like everybody else in the dining hall was being, treating this like a plague zone. No wonder Robert was soliciting dinner companions.

  Liesel had recovered from her own surprise, and was going into full seelie mode, smoothing over the awkward pause. “Robert’s in my history class,” she said to me, using the reminder to get the conversation started. “CM major. Julian, are you.”

  She didn’t finish the question. Julian wasn’t staring at me; that was a mistake we weren’t going to repeat. But for all his impassive demeanor and impeccable shields, he couldn’t hide everything from my perceptive roommate. “Have you two met before?” she asked, startled for a second time.

  “Last week,” I said, while Robert gaped openly. “I had no idea Julian was Robert’s roommate, though.”

  “We ran into each other on Wednesday,” Julian said. His voice didn’t raise the hairs on the back of my neck this time, maybe because it had to compete with the racket of the dining hall. No marble to echo off, and no moonlight to set the stage. “At the monument.”