by C. R. Grey
Looking at Hal now—his skinny arms, his outdated haircut and formal attire, and the thick glasses that made him look constantly surprised—Bailey found it hard to believe that he lived so close to the edge of the Dark Woods. For most citizens of Aldermere, the Dark Woods were forbidden, and the only people brave enough to live within its shadow were Animas Bear or Wolf.
The dirigible suspended above the car caught a gust of wind and pulled the rigimotive forward with a start. Bailey waved to his parents. Roger huffed as he settled back into his seat. Behind him, Taylor and his friends returned almost immediately to their game.
“That must have been your folks I was speaking to outside,” Roger said to Bailey, as he returned to his seat. “Nice people.”
“Thanks,” Bailey said.
“So which are you,” Roger asked, “Horse or Hare?”
This was it: the one question Bailey had been dreading. His Animas. Most people inherited from one parent or another, though a few skipped a generation. Roger clearly wasn’t aware that Bailey was adopted, which meant that he didn’t have either a Horse or Hare Animas.
And that wasn’t the worst of it. He’d even considered lying about it, telling everyone who was sure to ask at Fairmount that he was a Bear or a Snake—even a Possum! Anything was better than the truth.
“I … ” Bailey could feel his palms begin to sweat.
“You don’t have to say, Bailey,” Hal jumped in quickly.
“Say what?” Roger asked, looking confused. “I merely asked—”
“Roger, he’s … ” Hal began. Roger looked from Hal to Bailey, blinking with confusion. “He’s the adopted one,” Hal said, looking down at his shoes.
Bailey felt himself blushing. Something about the hushed way that Hal had said “the adopted one” made Bailey think that Hal knew something more than he’d said. That was only to be expected, really. There was no way Hal wouldn’t have heard the rumors, the taunts on the school grounds. He just hoped that Hal, the only other kid he knew from his town, would be decent enough not to blab about it once they got to Fairmount—at least until Bailey had a chance to ask for help from Mr. Loren, the trainer he’d read about.
“Ah … ” Roger’s eyes grew even wider behind his thick glasses, and he fumbled in a pocket for a handkerchief. It was clear to Bailey that Roger had heard the same whispers. He reached out and patted Bailey’s hand. Bailey resisted the urge to pull it away. “I’m sorry, son,” Roger said. “Insensitive of me.”
At that moment, the bag that Taylor and his friends had been tossing sailed past Roger’s head.
“Sorry!” one of Taylor’s friends shouted.
“Ruffian!” Roger trumpeted, and grabbed the bag. He marched up to the front of the car and began shouting at Taylor, who was doing a very bad job of looking sorry. Dillweed curled into the shadows under Roger’s empty seat, emitting a soft snore. The boys were quiet for a minute as Roger lectured the students up front on rigimotive etiquette.
Hal was the first to speak.
“Listen, if I wasn’t supposed to say anything … ” He faltered. “It’s just that I thought everyone knew.”
“Not everyone,” Bailey said. Bailey turned to watch the fields and pastures of the Golden Lowlands slide by, hoping Hal would take the hint: he didn’t want to talk about it.
Riding the rigimotive turned out to be stranger than Bailey had imagined. Sometimes, when the wind was strong, the dirigible moved faster than the car’s wheels on the tracks, and the rigimotive would sway and buck, causing Bailey to feel a little nauseous.
Roger had been right about the long journey too. The prospect of an overnight stay onboard wasn’t pleasant, even though underneath the benches were narrow foldout cots for overnight journeys. Many of the overhead cubbies designated for traveling animals were being used for storage, so the raccoons accompanying one family on the second floor had come up to the third, and were blocking the aisles. The electro-current generated by the tracks was unreliable, and so, in addition to the electro-wired lights that occasionally flickered on and off, gas lamps had been hung every few feet along the central aisle of both the cars. Passengers had to duck as they walked to make sure they didn’t get hit.
A dining area on the ground floor provided wrapped sandwiches—cucumber and onion, spinach and cheese, and city trout and tomato for those who ate fish. But Bailey could hardly stand the thought of food as the rigimotive rocked with each gust of wind.
By sunset, most of the passengers had given up on polite conversation, and were claiming benches and cots on which to doze. Bailey at last managed to keep down a city trout sandwich, and then he unfolded the cot opposite Hal. Roger, claiming not to be tired, was pacing the aisles. Dillweed had awakened from his nap, and he sat on the floor nearby, scratching various itches. Bailey rolled over and closed his eyes, trying to sleep under the flickering gas lamps and the hum of the huge dirigible above them.
He did sleep, at last. He dreamed of becoming a bird, and then a fox; then he was an ant, crawling under the shadow of a great mountain.
Bailey woke as something fluttered against the window. The gas lamps had been dimmed, and the sound of soft snoring filled the car.
“What’s going on?” He sat up, balling his fists in his eyes. Roger was not in his seat. Hal was staring out of the window.
“It’s just a bat,” Hal said. “I couldn’t sleep. Nothing new for me.” He lowered his voice to a whisper, and leaned closer to Bailey. “We’re coming up to the mountains. The Velyn Peaks.”
Bailey shook off the haze of his dream. He squinted out the window. Beyond the glass, the trees of the Dark Woods towered above them. The moon hung high over the treetops. Through the tall branches, Bailey could see the tips of the legendary Velyn mountains, white and glimmering in the near distance. After another minute, there was a break in the tree line, and Bailey got a full view of the mountain range ahead, silhouetted against the pitch-black night sky. They looked empty and barren.
Bailey shivered. The Velyn Peaks stretched across the kingdom to the south of the Lowlands, and up toward the west, where the cliffs of Fairmount were. In the Lowlands, it was easy to think of the Velyn as very far away.
But as they drew closer to the academy, the looming, ominous presence of the mountains was undeniable. Boogeymen haunted the mountains. Ghosts and killers walked those white peaks—at least, that’s what everyone said.
“Do you believe all the stories about the lost tribes of the Velyn?” he asked Hal. According to the stories, the Velyn were a mysterious group of men and women who’d been tough enough to live up there in the mountains, mostly because they shared the Animas bond with powerful beasts like grizzly bears, wolves, and giant mountain cats.
Hal shrugged. “You remember the History teacher, Mr. Elliot?” Hal asked. “He always told us that the Velyn were real people—escaped criminals mostly, people running from the law. But I don’t know. My mom used to tell me that the Velyn men could turn into animals, and steal children who misbehaved. Only when I didn’t eat my sprouts, though.”
“My mom told me that one too,” Bailey said, smiling. He turned back to the window. When he stared up at the mountains, he felt a flickering in the back of his mind, like the fluttering of wings.
Bailey tried to shut out the chugging of the rigimotive, and focus only on the silence in the trees, the faintest whisper of wind. He closed his eyes. His dad had tried to teach him so many times to connect with the animals around him, never with very good results. You’re not so different, he’d said during those lessons. You just need a little focus.
He heard the branches of the trees scraping against each other in the breeze, and under that, a rustling, like the shuddering of dry leaves. It was a sound he was sure he hadn’t heard earlier, through the window. It seemed to be buzzing in his very ears, as if he wasn’t in the rigimotive car, but right out there in the trees, standing still, listening. He felt a leap of excitement.
“Something’s out there,” he said in a
whisper, opening his eyes. The sound in his ears immediately died away. “I can feel it.”
“What do you mean?” asked Hal. “Has that ever happened to you before?”
Bailey stood up. He had to get closer. He moved down the aisle to the back of the rigimotive car. Hal followed him.
He had felt something different, a stirring that had never happened when he’d been training with his dad. If he could just get outside somehow, maybe that feeling would come back … He reached the back of the rigimotive car and grabbed ahold of the brass handle that opened the car door.
“Bailey!” Hal whispered fiercely. “We’re not supposed to move outside the car!”
A couple of passengers stirred, and one bright-eyed raccoon popped up from a blanket to blink at him. Bailey ignored Hal and opened the door. The wind outside on the platform blew Bailey’s hair back from his forehead, and the machinery chugging below echoed in his ears.
If only I could focus, Bailey thought. If only I could get closer. He stepped forward onto the platform. The tops of the trees were lit by silvery moonlight; shadows raced and skidded across the ground. Only yards away from the tracks, the trees began to come together and form a thick, leafy wall—the beginning of the Dark Woods. In the trees, Bailey saw a flash of something white. He blinked. Was it a trick of the moon?
No. It was an animal.
At least, Bailey thought it was an animal, but it wasn’t like any animal he’d ever seen. It was huge, disappearing and reappearing in between the gaps of the trees, glowing in the moonlight. Like a ghost, he thought. It seemed to run along with the rigimotive as it passed the forest. Bailey felt his blood go cold in his veins. After a moment, the flash of white disappeared altogether.
“What in Nature do you think you’re doing?” a man yelled.
Bailey felt a hand on his shoulder, pulling him back through the door into the dim light of the car. It was a conductor in a worn uniform, with sharp blue eyes. Behind him was Roger, with Hal’s older brother, Taylor, close at hand. Dillweed the badger and Taylor’s dark, sleek cat skittered up the aisle behind them.
“You could have gotten yourself killed, going out there while the rigi’s in motion!” the conductor said as he closed the door behind Bailey with a loud whump. Bailey could hear the disgruntled murmuring of passengers who didn’t appreciate being woken up.
“Already in trouble, and we’re not even there yet,” said Taylor, who looked down at Bailey with a mocking smile. “Got something to prove?”
“Bark off, Taylor,” said Hal, appearing in the doorway behind his brother.
But Bailey was still reeling from what he’d seen. The animal he’d spotted seemed like something otherworldly, watching the train …
“You all right, boy?” asked Roger.
“I—I saw something huge out there,” he blurted out.
Roger narrowed his eyes at Bailey. Taylor, who stood behind him, laughed with a snort.
“A wolf?” he asked. “There are plenty of wolves in the Dark Woods.”
“No, it wasn’t that,” said Bailey. “It was all white … ”
“That doesn’t sound like anything in these parts,” said the conductor dryly. “Sometimes a bear will wander close to the tracks, but they’re your average brown or black variety.”
“Too true,” said Roger loudly, clapping a heavy hand on Bailey’s shoulder. “Must have been a trick of the light.”
“It was there,” said Bailey. “It was much bigger than a bear—and it was so bright. It almost glowed … ”
“Was it a gh-gh-ghost?” asked Taylor, wiggling his fingers in a mocking gesture.
“Go back to the front, Taylor, before you get on my last nerve,” snapped Roger. “And, Bailey, come sit down and calm yourself. You just saw a wolf or coyote, that’s all. Enough of these stories.”
Bailey hung back, angry and embarrassed, while Roger and Taylor returned to their seats. Other passengers in the car were looking at him. His ears were hot. He knew that he had seen something—hadn’t he? For a second, he wondered if Roger were right and he had mistaken a wolf for something else. But no. The creature he’d seen had been large enough to spot from several yards away, and had been a pure, snowy white.
“I know what I saw,” said Bailey quietly to Hal.
“Sure, I believe you.” Hal sat down on his cot, but didn’t climb in just yet. He was still fidgeting; Bailey could tell he wanted to say something more.
Around them, the excitement of Bailey’s scolding had died away, and the murmurs of their fellow passengers had been replaced with low breathing, snores, and the occasional rustle of feather and fur.
“Look,” said Hal. “I just want you to know … I’m not going to tell anyone about … you know. If you want to keep it a secret when we get to Fairmount, you can count on me.”
“Keep what secret?” Bailey asked, even though he already knew what Hal was talking about. But he wanted to know for certain just how much Hal knew about him. “What have you heard?”
Hal breathed in deeply, as if to steel himself against the words. He leaned in close to Bailey’s ear.
Then he said them, the words that hurt Bailey like a physical blow, like nothing but the truth could do:
“You have no Animas.”
Two
FAR FROM THE LOWLANDS and the dim gas lamps of the rigimotive, a small, dark shape circled the sooty factories of the Gray City, sweeping high over a stream of acrid smoke. It dipped past the far edges of the skyline, pulling its wings closer to its body as it careered over the rooftops, then spread them wide as it finally came within sight of the copper roofs of the palace, the home of Parliament. It let the air currents carry it straight to a window ledge halfway up the wall of a rickety tower on the palace’s western side. A scar of smoke damage from the fire that had burned down half the building almost thirty years ago still showed on the tower’s outer wall.
The owl settled on the sill of an open window, which overlooked a narrow, twisting staircase. At the bottom of the stairs was an archway that let in a shaft of light from the hall. Around the corner, a group of officials talked loudly about Parliament business. In a moment so quick that only the owl saw, a foot in a canvas shoe appeared in the shaft of light from the door, then was quickly pulled back into the shadows.
The owner of that foot, a thirteen-year-old girl named Gwen, stood very still in the dark corner by the archway and waited breathlessly for the Parliament members in the hall to move on. The owl on the windowsill cocked its head, but made no noise. The officials in the hall at last ambled away.
Gwen exhaled for the first time in what seemed like entire minutes. The members of Parliament were used to Gwen—she was apprenticed to the Elder, who had been in Parliament since the time of King Melore. But tonight, she needed to remain unseen. The Elder was leaving on a secret mission, and she was determined to go with him. She hoisted her rucksack onto her shoulder and ran her pale fingers through her short, flame-red hair. She’d tried to give up the habit a thousand times, but she couldn’t help it. She felt jittery, as though feathers were rustling in her belly.
The owl hopped once on the windowsill as she passed it on her way up the stairs, and then took off again into the night. She could feel, however, that it had not gone far. She was learning (slowly) to distinguish individual members of her kin when there were several of them around, even getting so close as to intuit their names. She felt a warmth, a kind of buzzing in her chest as she sensed the group of owls in the tower room above her, and one flying, buoyed by the wind, just outside.
At the top of the steps, Gwen lingered in the darkness by the open door to the tower room. Sure enough, a cluster of owls sat together in the rafters, looking down at the shelves and shelves of dusty old books, and at the room’s only human occupant: Elder, an old man with wild gray hair and shrewd eyes. He was busy stuffing objects into a canvas sack. His worn jacket and waistcoat had once been carefully embroidered with the patterns of wings, but those patterns were now an
almost illegible tangle of loose brown and silver threads.
The Elder had known her since she was just another ratty orphan of the Gray City. He was Animas Owl, like her, and when he’d caught her trying to pick his pocket one day in the Gudgeons, a grimy, crime-riddled slum in the Gray City, he hadn’t gotten angry. Instead, he’d taken pity on her, and brought her back to the palace to be his apprentice. Apprentices slept in clean, warm rooms downstairs near the kitchens, and attended morning classes until the age of twelve, after which their only charge was to serve a member of Parliament. But apprentices had fallen out of fashion since the days of Melore, and her classmates had been few and far between. Most of her learning came from the Elder himself. Before he took her in, she had been dirty, alone, and half-starving, with no companions except a small band of other child thieves. She’d known then that she was Animas Owl, but had never known how to connect to her kin, how to slow her breath and clear her mind so she could sense them and learn from them. The Elder had taught her that. He was the closest thing to a father she had. If he was leaving, then she would go too, even if it meant following him out of the palace in secret.
The Elder sighed. “Gwendolyn,” he said softly, without turning around, “if I were a pair of hardy boots, where in this study would I be hiding?”
Gwen exhaled. How could she have thought she would remain undetected? The Elder must have known she was coming as soon as the owls perceived her.
She stepped out from the shadow into a cramped, cluttered room. There was barely enough space for the two of them to stand next to the Elder’s claw-footed desk and the many shelves of books that lined the hexagonal walls.
“Did you try the closet?” she asked.
The Elder shook his head. “Would you believe, it’s only full of more books?”
