by C. R. Grey
For the next week, the school was abuzz with talk of the killed bear—rumors flitted through the halls like fruit flies, landing on one ridiculous theory after the next.
“There’s only one thing that could do that kind of damage to a black bear of that size,” said one of Hal and Bailey’s dormmates, Pete, sounding very serious. The rest of the boys gathered in the Towers common room waited for him to continue. “And that’s a Liwolf. Part lion, part wolf.” Laughter erupted, and another boy tossed a chess piece at Pete’s head.
“Hey!” Pete said, ducking out of the way. “It’s not impossible!”
Bailey’s curiosity about Tremelo’s riddle had been powerfully overshadowed by the mystery of the bear, but both these concerns soon faded in the wake of a full school schedule: Latin, Flora and Fauna, History, Introduction to Tinkering, and of course, daily Homeroom with Tremelo. And after a two-hour break each day, the Scavage team met at four for two hours of running, jumping, and Flicking. He’d never felt this busy in his life, even during the harvest seasons back in the Lowlands.
Scavage would have been a much pleasanter release for Bailey if it hadn’t been for Taylor, who picked on Bailey at every turn. He’d unofficially made it his mission to prove that Bailey would fail as a Scavage player. When Taylor and his friends weren’t trying to body check him on the field or Flick him in the face with paint, they were loudly talking about why Bailey’s kin never followed him around.
“Maybe he’s ashamed,” Taylor taunted before warm-ups for Thursday’s practice. His friends grinned and listened in, which made Bailey’s blood boil. “Maybe he’s Animas Worm.”
“Or Animas Roach!” one of Taylor’s friends interjected. Taylor cracked up and patted him on the back. Bailey sat on the bench putting on his kneepads and gloves, trying his best to ignore them.
“Or maybe there really is such a thing as Animas Ant,” Taylor said. “Though I guess that’s better than nothing, isn’t it, Bailey? An anting ant.”
Bailey bristled, and he wondered just how much Taylor had guessed about him. Just don’t say anything, he heard his dad’s voice tell him. Don’t let it on that it bothers you.
“You know what happens to people who are Animas nothing?” Taylor crowed. “They go stark raving bonkers. Like their brains are just wiped out.”
“There’s no such thing,” said one of the other Year Four players. He gawped, slack-jawed, at Taylor. “Is there?”
Taylor grinned.
“You’ve never heard of an Absence?” He spoke to his friend, but his eyes were trained directly at Bailey, and there they stayed as he continued. “There’s only been, what? Three known cases in the history of the kingdom? And all three went so insane they had to be locked up. Tried to rip their own hair out, tried to kill themselves, even. And wouldn’t you? I mean really, if you were just … nothing. So dull Nature didn’t even want anything to do with you? I would.”
Bailey’s face burned red. He’d have given anything to be able to punch Taylor in his obnoxious grin.
“It’s a good thing Bailey here isn’t one of those, huh?” Taylor said. “We’d have to lock him up for everyone’s good.”
Bailey clenched his fists and rose from his seat on the bench.
There was no telling what Taylor knew for sure—but it was clear that he’d heard the rumors in the Golden Lowlands and would make sure that those rumors followed Bailey all the way to Fairmount.
“Bailey!”
He turned and saw Phi walking toward him. She looked down at his fists and arched an eyebrow.
“I thought we could warm up together,” she said, pointing her thumb to a spot on the other side of the benches. “Over there.”
“Uh-oh, saved by the girlfriend,” Taylor crowed, and the other boys made cooing noises. They stalked off toward the field then, where Bailey knew he’d have to prove himself even further if their taunting was ever going to stop.
“He’s such a creep,” said Phi. “It’s amazing that he and Hal are even related.”
The two finished putting on their gear and stretched by the edge of the field. It turned out Phi wasn’t having the best week, either—the falcon Carin, the one who had caused so much havoc in Ms. Sucrette’s classroom on the first day, had flown off after the bear’s funeral and hadn’t returned for several days.
“She does that all the time to hunt,” said Phi as they lined up to take the field. “And I hate when she goes away. It makes everything even worse.”
“What do you mean?” asked Bailey.
Phi lowered her head. Her dark eyes were hidden by her brown, curly hair.
“I don’t know. Sometimes I don’t really like having such a close bond with Carin. I mean, it’s who I am. But no one told me how much the Animas bond changes you. It changed me, at least. I don’t know if that’s how everyone feels.”
“What do you mean, it changed you?” Bailey asked. He was surprised by how open Phi was being was him. Normally, she hardly spoke at all. But now she couldn’t seem to stop.
She gripped the sides of the bench so that her knuckles were little half-moons. “I want to fly the way Carin does,” she blurted out. Then she looked away. “I know it must sound stupid. But when she flies away, I hate it. Wherever she is, I can’t fly with her.”
Bailey had never thought about the Animas bond that way, that it might actually pain Phi to be separated from her kin. He didn’t know what to say except “It doesn’t sound stupid.”
Phi smiled at him.
“Thanks. I haven’t told anyone that besides Tori. But I know I can trust you,” she said. Bailey felt a rush of warmth through his whole body.
Phi looked up at the sky again, searching it for Carin.
“One nice thing about her flights, though,” she continued, “is that when she comes back and we’re near each other again, I feel like I’ve seen something new, even though I haven’t. It’s like when you go on a trip and come back and tell your friends about it, or when you write home to your parents. There’s a crisp air that I can feel, or I remember seeing a flash of pine trees … ”
Bailey listened, fascinated. He longed for a bond like the one Phi described. That she was unhappy made him feel a tightness in his chest.
“The woods are so different from the Dust Plains,” she said. “When the bear was killed last week, I felt something from Carin, like she wasn’t just scared for herself, but for me too. I couldn’t see anything clearly. There are things in the woods that she fears, but I’m not sure what they are. I just feel an echo of what she felt when she saw them.”
“That’s incredible,” said Bailey. “So you think Carin knows what might have killed that bear?”
Phi nodded.
“I didn’t say anything that day because I wasn’t sure what the feeling meant. But … ” She hesitated.
“What?” asked Bailey.
“Whatever it is, it’s still out there,” she whispered. “It’s waiting for something.”
Eleven
THAT SAME EVENING, VIVIANA stood in front of a freestanding mirror in the center of her apartment as two tailors took her measurements. Her personal rooms were the former foreman’s quarters in what had once, during the Melorian Age of Invention, been a factory. The space was plenty grand, with tall windows that faced the docks. The factory itself was filled with defunct bits of half-finished machinery, the bones of a more progressive time that she hoped to revive.
Outside her window the Gray City spread before her, and even from here, she could feel it broiling. Her Clamoribus birds were doing the trick—perched all over the city, they spewed her campaign slogans and incited shouting matches in the streets. Just the day before, a riot had broken out in one of the richer neighborhoods of the city, near Parliament—poor men and women from the Gudgeons, urged by the calculated wrath of the Clamoribus, had begun throwing rocks through shop windows.
Through her own open window, she saw a dark shape approaching the Gray City skyline.
“Leave,” she sa
id coldly.
“Only another moment, miss, and we’ll be finished,” the Animas Squirrel said. He was just fitting the sleeves of a new coat to her arms, while the other tailor made measurements around the cuffs.
Viviana whipped herself around to face him.
“I said leave. I will tell you when you may come back in.”
The two tailors retreated quickly. The metal door slid shut behind them with a satisfying clang. Viviana turned back to the window, where one of Clarke’s massive Clamoribus birds now stood. This one was a messenger.
She watched as it hopped down from the sill and settled in the center of the room. Even with its wings retracted, the raven was impressively large. Viviana pressed a shining golden button on the raven’s temple and a red light in the bird’s left eye blinked on.
The raven opened its beak, and somewhere in its gleaming innards, a recording spoke.
“I am here, Viviana, securely in place.” Joan’s voice flowed from the beak of the raven, and calmed Viviana’s nerves, as it so often had over the years. Her reliable assistant. They’d both cleaned up well since their days as Dust Plains chattel. “No one suspects me,” Joan’s voice echoed. “I believe I have found the person who possesses the book, though I have yet to see it. We’ll soon know the exact words of the prophecy.”
Viviana was immensely relieved. On some days it seemed silly, this fixation with the so-called prophecy. But then again, the Jackal, the man who had killed her father, was as intelligent as he was ruthless. His obsession with the prophecy had driven him mad, and in his weakened state, he was overthrown. Was he driven by the fear of a threat to his throne? Would she contend with the same threat?
Upon returning to the Gray City, Viviana had solicited information from her spies in Parliament. She wanted to know what, exactly, the Jackal had learned to drive him to obsession. Viviana discovered that in the years after he’d violently stolen power, the Jackal first heard of the rumors that had begun to circulate among the people of the Gray City—rumors of a prophecy that foretold the emergence of a true king.
The prophecy was perpetuated by a man called the Loon, but he was untraceable. It was said he moved from the city to the mountains frequently with his son, avoiding detection—but the Jackal had managed to capture and question a member of the RATS, a resistance group of Melore loyalists who was associated with the Loon.
The man was tortured, and though Viviana’s spies were unclear about the exact wording he used, she was clear on the message he conveyed: that a king would return, leading his army from the mountains. The Jackal had become enraged and killed the prisoner then, but not before he spoke his dying words:
But the tiger! the man had whispered with his last breath. The white beast!
Though the man had spoken no more after this, Viviana found it very telling that every white tiger in the kingdom had mysteriously died while the Jackal was in power. The entire species had become extinct. Viviana knew the Jackal was to blame—and judging by the amount of crudely painted white beasts she saw on Gray City alleyways, others in the kingdom felt the same. Although the Jackal had tried to keep the eradication of the tigers a secret, the RATS had spread their suspicion of him throughout Aldermere. The white tiger had become a symbol of the resistance against the Jackal, and it was only a matter of time before that resistance moved against her as well.
Her task now was to find the exact language of the prophecy in order to convince these loyalists, these believers in the white beast, that she was the answer to the rumored prophecy.
There was just one thing that bothered her: a true king. His army. She was the daughter of a king, and yet the prophecy insisted on a son. But once she learned exactly what the full prophecy said, she could—more successfully than the Jackal had—make certain that no other ruler could claim the throne. She was one step ahead of the Jackal already: he may have killed the Loon but learned nothing, whereas she had found the Loon’s book, where the prophecy was sure to be written.
She waved the Clamoribus away and returned to her position in front of the mirror, admiring her new high-collared fur coat, which seemed almost to shimmer in the yellow evening light. Fox fur, beaver, mink, and rabbit—all together in a patchwork of perfectly cut pieces that fit her slender body like armor and framed her face magnificently. She had no idea who the animals had been whose pelts had gone into the coat, and she didn’t care.
She smiled at her own powerful reflection in the mirror. It would do nicely for a queen.
Twelve
BAILEY SAT AWAKE IN one of the broad armchairs in the common room long after Hal and the other Tower boys had gone to bed. He mulled over what Phi had told him earlier, about the fear Carin felt out in the woods. Bailey felt certain there must be a mysterious beast out there, responsible for the gruesome death of the bear.
At the bear’s funeral days before, Bailey hadn’t wanted to mention the animal he had spotted from the rigomotive. It was clear that even Hal hadn’t believed him at the time. But the memory of it crept up often, and the more he thought about it the more he couldn’t shake the feeling that whatever was out there was dangerous. Perhaps it even had human kin who were equally as dangerous. The animal he’d spotted from the rigimotive had been the largest thing he’d ever seen. If that beast and its kin had followed them to the school, then Fairmount needed to know.
He was sure that if he went to the administration with talk of a mysterious, ghostly beast, he’d be laughed out of the office. He needed proof—and if Phi’s words were any indication, that proof might be closer to the school than he thought.
He made a sudden decision. He’d go out and see what he could find now, tonight.
Bailey was extra quiet as he slunk along the wall of the dorms, after a quick and silent trip to his room to grab a jacket and shoes. He held his breath as he shimmied past the resident assistant’s door. A floorboard creaked underneath him, and Bailey froze. He couldn’t see anything in the dark hallway. He heard a rustle from a neighboring room, and said a silent prayer to Nature that no one would discover him. He waited for a whole minute, frozen. No one came. He kept moving.
Downstairs, he made his way to the cloakroom, where a smaller side door, less likely to creak noisily, took him outside.
He knew he had to hurry across the grounds. Bindley and his night-vision lens could be just about anywhere, and no one had put myrgwood in his tea tonight. He ran due west, around the back of Treetop, toward the bottom of the vast hill where the Scavage fields sat, its stadium seats illuminated by the moon. The patch of trees that backed up to the fields looked ghostly in this darkness. He veered south, to the path that led into the woods, and to where the bear was found. He took a deep breath, and prepared to enter into the shadows.
“Hey, wait!” a voice called. Bailey spun around, half expecting to see a pack of Bindley’s hounds charging after him. But it was Tori, hastening down the hill with a cotton robe thrown over a silky button-up pajama top that looked a few sizes too big for her, and boy’s pajama bottoms. She had a hand-powered dynamo lamp in her hand, with a crank that made the lightbulb sputter to life.
“Shh!” he said.
“What are you doing out here?” Tori asked him as soon as she caught up. She looked excited to see him, as though she’d just been sitting around in her pj’s, waiting for an excuse to sneak out of the dorms. Bailey saw the flash of a slim, black snake around her arm.
“What are you doing?” Bailey whispered.
“I saw you run past the window,” Tori said. “I wasn’t tired, so I followed you.”
Bailey felt anxious all over again.
“You should go back to bed. You don’t want to get in trouble. Two people are easier to catch than one.”
“Ants to that!” she exclaimed. “It’s so dull around here I could scream. I’m dying for a little adventure. Lead on.”
“Fine,” Bailey said, hoping that she’d get bored and turn back before he found evidence of the white beast or its kin—he wasn’t r
eady to share that theory with anyone yet. Then again, he thought, having a witness if they did come across anything would be useful. “Just try to keep quiet, okay?”
Bailey ignored her as she fiddled with her dynamo lamp, which didn’t seem to crank properly. “Ants to this thing!” seemed to be Tori’s favorite thing to say. Each time she cursed, he shushed her, and they pressed on in the darkness.
A thick line on Bailey’s campus map represented the border of the Fairmount grounds. It was drawn at the westernmost edge of the lower cliffs that led down to the waterwheel, and marked the point of the forest where students were not allowed to cross. Bailey had assumed that the line was only symbolic, and that forest wouldn’t change from one side to the other. But as he and Tori walked steadily on past the dirt road, the trees grew closer together. The ground became more uneven, and large rocks jutted up between the roots. When Bailey heard the churning and crashing of water in the distance, he knew that they had crossed that thick line drawn on the map, and were no longer on school grounds. As Tori and Bailey stopped to get their bearings, he heard a low hissing that seemed to come from many creatures at the same time. The sound was all around them.
“Is that … ?” he began to ask.
“Thamnophis cyrtopsis, maybe even a few Elaphe obsoleta,” Tori said in an excited whisper. She looked at Bailey, who had no clue what she was talking about. “Snakes.”
“Oh,” he said. No wonder she thought of Ms. Sucrette as a drip—Tori’s Latin was already pretty good.
“Where are we?” asked Tori. The tone of her voice made Bailey wonder if, for all her desire to come, she was actually afraid. As excited as she was to find so many of her kin around, Tori must have inferred from them that something was not as it should be. Her black snake crept out of the neck of her pajama top and settled onto her collarbone.
