“So much anger!”
I pivot and nearly thwack Arthur in the face. But the little turd actually ducks below the baton before tearing it out of my hands.
“Are you complaining because you can’t do EM with the others?” he asks.
I brush my hair out of my face, noticing Daniel and his gofers staring at us.
“No,” I say sourly.
Arthur raises his eyebrows, not buying it. “You should know hand combat. Many Fey use regular weapons, like we do. EM just allows us to level the playing field.”
Not knowing what to do with my empty hands, I cross my arms and glare at him. “What is it you want? You’re interrupting my class.”
“Class is actually what I came to talk to you about,” Arthur says.
I snort. “What is it, Mr. President? Did you come all the way over to a mere page to give detention?”
“Right on the dot! I see you’re not as stupid as some say.”
By “some,” I assume he means Jennifer. I grind my teeth together, waiting.
“I hear that you missed all your classes today,” he says, any trace of mockery gone, “but were not to be found in the infirmary. Is this correct?”
I nod, too annoyed to speak.
“Do you have a good excuse?”
Maybe that your girlfriend made me do cleanup duty last night, again, and when I was already dead tired and bleeding to death. I don’t think my mental diatribe is reaching him, no matter how much I may glower at him, not that he’d believe me anyway.
“No,” I finally say.
Arthur frowns, as if surprised at my response. “Very well,” he says. “In that case, you are to clean the showers and restrooms in the mornings, for two weeks.”
My mouth cranks open. “I have to what?”
“That means all eight sections of them, boys and girls, for each year,” Arthur continues as if he hasn’t heard me. “So I suggest you wake up a couple of hours early every day. Any questions?”
I’m positively fuming. “Yeah, did you have to come all the way here to tell me this, or did you only do it because you were dying to see my reaction?” I so do wish I’d smacked him in the head with my practice sword.
Arthur’s hazel eyes bore into me. “Rules are rules,” he says simply before stalking away.
“I really, really hate you,” I say under my breath. I think I see his steps falter for a second, but I can’t be sure.
“I did it! I did it!”
My class pauses to see Laura grow a wall of packed earth around her that’s getting taller by the second. The girl’s triumphant look morphs into one of panic as the wall grows higher than her shoulders.
“Control your gnome, Miss Adams!” yells Lady Ysolt.
“I can’t!” Laura sobs.
“Tell it to stop!”
Laura shrieks as the wall of earth closes over her with a loud crash, rocks shooting out in every direction. Everyone screams and drops to the ground, everyone but me. Lady Ysolt flings her hands out, and a long green flash zooms out to divert the projectiles away from the class.
Time seems to slow down. I watch the stones curve in midair, then tear through the air toward me. Something sharp pierces my calf. I yell and keel over in pain, only to see a black shape slink away.
The jets of stones soar over me and land in the stands like artillery shots. Within seconds, everything’s over. I look up from my bleeding leg to find the first three rows of benches demolished. I gulp. And to think that could have been me!
“Morgan, are you all right?”
Lady Ysolt races over to me and helps me up. She’s so worried she’s forgotten to call me by my last name like anybody who’s not a knight ought to be called.
“I’m so sorry,” she says. “I’d forgotten you were there.”
Forgotten? I bark out a mirthless laugh. Of course she would. People only remember me when they have no other choice.
I pull away from her. “I’m fine,” I snap. I wince when I try to put weight on my injured leg, but keep my mouth shut.
“Miss Kulkarni,” Lady Ysolt calls out, “go take your roommate to the doctor’s.”
I mean to protest, but Keva leads me back inside the school, and I use this moment to escape from everyone, too tired to deal with people.
“You’re shit out of luck, huh?” Keva says, leaning against a medicine cabinet as a nurse, an old man with a neatly trimmed beard and circular glasses, examines my wounds.
She chuckles. “I can’t believe your own brother gave you toilet duty!”
The nurse’s gentle fingers prod the ruptured skin until more blood drips down my leg.
I grimace. “If I could, I’d dunk him in it,” I say to Keva.
“A feline,” the man mutters in his graying whiskers. “How very odd.”
“It saved my life, that cat,” I say.
The doctor spreads a salve on my calf, some concoction of honey and other herbs, lavender perhaps and…
“Excuse me, sir,” I say, “but is that comfrey?”
The man looks up from his bandaging, his eyes owlish behind his glasses. He looks more shocked than when he examined the deep lacerations left by the cat.
“Why yes,” he says. “You’ve had this treatment before?”
“No,” I say. “But we used it as a slug repellent back…” My vision blurs, and I sway on my stool.
He grabs my arm to steady me. I breathe in deeply and slowly until my sight goes back to normal.
“You need to get some food in you,” the nurse says, “and some rest, or you’re going to get really sick.”
“No worries,” I mumble, getting to my feet with Keva’s help. “I never get sick.”
“Eat something!” the man says again before the door closes on him.
Keva and I make our way down the hallway toward the dining hall. We pull the doors back, and a couple of students shove past us. I nearly fall down, but catch myself on the door’s handle.
“You immature bastards!” Keva says. “If you think you can become knights with this kind of attitude, you’re fooling yourselves.”
I’m dead tired, famished, and filthy, but I’m quite sure that’s not why people are avoiding me. No, I realize as people turn away from me, avoiding eye contact, they’re staying clear of me for the simple reason that both Jennifer and Arthur have gotten on my back, and no one wants to feel their wrath by being associated with me. But at this point, I don’t really care.
I settle down next to Keva and practically inhale my dinner. Food has never tasted so sweet, and, before long, my three plates are as clean as if they’d just come out of the dishwasher.
Keva stares at me in disgust—her standards for ladylike manners are obviously wasted on me. “Slow down, or you’re going to choke yourself to death,” she says. “My Good Samaritan moment’s passed, I won’t be taking you back to the infirmary.”
I lean back in my seat, my bulging stomach threatening to pop my pleated skirt’s top two buttons.
“There’s no way they’re from the same family,” I hear some girls a couple of tables away whisper. “I mean, look at her.”
“She’s such a loser,” another girl says with a snigger. “I mean, she was even held back three years!”
“Poor Arthur. It mustn’t be easy to deal with a retard for a sister.”
I steal a glance in Keva’s direction, wondering how this is affecting her, but find her eating her chicken with all the airs of a grand lady; if it weren’t for her foul mouth, she’d fool everyone into thinking she were royalty.
“What is it?” she asks.
“Considering your star-seeking status,” I say with a yawn, “I’m wondering why you’re sticking with me instead of keeping your distance like everyone else.”
Keva lowers her fork and knife, then daintily wipes her mouth on her napkin. “First of all,” she says, “I’m affronted you should think so low of me as to compare me to everyone else around here. Second, I do know you’re dumb enough to have turned
Jennifer into an enemy, though I’m sure if she knew you better, she wouldn’t even bother. You’ve also managed to get disciplined more times in the few weeks you’ve been here than anyone else has in a semester.
“But one cannot get far in life if all one sees is just the surface of things.”
She links her fingers together and rests her head on them. “In your short time here, you’ve managed to befriend a number of KORT members, a rare feat for a page. You’re also on speaking terms with the dean and the school president, I’ve heard, and let’s not forget you’re Arthur’s sister.”
She raises her hand before I can interrupt her.
“I know he’s sentenced you to disgusting menial labor for a couple of weeks, but we all know he’s a stickler for the rules. And I also know that, before you showed up with Vivian, he was about to throw a search party for you.”
She crosses her arms on the table and leans toward me. “Which shows he cares about you. So you see, you’ve still got your uses.”
I shut my mouth with a resounding clap. Something’s very wrong with her picture.
“You could have waited,” Bri says, slamming her tray down on the table, startling me.
Keva shrugs. “You could have gotten here sooner.”
Bri glares at her. “We would have if we didn’t have somebody else’s gear to clean.”
“I was told to take care of this walking catastrophe, so I did.”
I barely manage to keep myself from nodding off onto my plate as the argument continues throughout dinner. Finally, Bri jerks me awake to head back to the dorms. I drag my feet after them up the steep staircase to the top floor, where Jack leaves us to go to the boys’ section.
“How are you going to wake up tomorrow?” Bri asks me. “We usually have the Lauds bells to help us, but they don’t ring that early.”
“Don’t look at me,” Keva says, pushing the solid door to our section open. “I’m so not waking up at three.”
“I’ll lend you my clock,” Bri says. “It’s the winding kind, so it works without a problem.
“You have one?” Keva says, alarmed.
Without bothering to answer, I head straight for the showers. If I go to my room now, I’m going to collapse fully clothed in bed and never wake up. And though Keva appears to be bearing with me thus far, I doubt she’d let me stink up the place without either pouring a pail of water on my face or throwing me out the window.
Before I manage to crawl into bed, two layers of skin dutifully scrubbed off, I make my nightly prayer.
Dear Lord, thank you for letting me survive yet another day. I apologize for all the bad things I’ve done and said, but really, if you were a little nicer to me and didn’t give me quite so many things to test my temper, I would be much kinder. Amen.
Every day seems to bring me closer and closer to death. I go through my daily schedule in full walking-corpse mode: up at three, clean bathrooms, Mass at six, classes, then training, with a few hours reserved for meals and study. By the time the freshman boat breaks the lake’s surface marking the beginning of the weekend, I barely notice that it’s raining.
“Ask if I can come over this weekend,” Keva whispers in my ear as I head to the car. “Just, uh…” She pauses, looking nervously at Dean. “Ask your parents instead of him. He doesn’t seem too nice.”
If I weren’t so exhausted, I’d laugh—if only she knew how things truly stood. Instead, I slide inside Dean’s car, where Arthur’s already waiting, and we make the trip back to the house without a single word crossing our lips.
When we arrive home, Arthur pauses on the front porch.
“Listen,” he starts, “about this week, I—”
I brush past him without waiting for the rest of his explanation, push inside, and head straight up to my room. I don’t care what he has to say for himself. I don’t care what anyone has to say to me. All I want is to be left alone to hibernate for the rest of the year.
My great master plan is defective, however, for I wake up a few hours later to a growling stomach. I stare up at the ceiling, making pictures of the tiny cracks and lines that spread out from the corners closest to the windows, wishing I’d been able to stay at my old school. At least there I had only one year left before I’d be free from this family.
My gaze slides down to the cross hanging over my door.
“I don’t know what to do,” I say to myself.
You could just continue with what you did last time, says my guardian angel, as if he’s been dying for me to ask that question.
“And then what? They won’t let me do any EM back at school, even if I did know how to handle elementals better than the rest of the class.”
But that’s because they don’t think you can do it.
“Or they don’t want me to,” I mumble into my pillow.
I know I don’t make any sense; they need as many knights as possible, and they’d never have sent me to Lake High if they didn’t expect me to pull my own weight at some point. My eyes drop even lower, and I notice a note has been slipped under my door.
I roll out of bed and snatch it up; it’s a message from Arthur.
Please come see me when you wake up. I’d like to have a word with you.
Arthur
“Don’t think so, you moronic-two-faced-sucker!” I say.
I crumple the piece of paper and toss it in the wastebasket, then reach for my backpack. Smiling, I pull out the Basic Dictionary of Runes, glad that, even in my stupor, I haven’t forgotten to bring this monster of a book with me. I’m still in my school uniform, but I don’t care to change out of it and head downstairs, the old glove in my jacket pocket.
“Good afternoon, mistress,” Ella says as I trot through her pristine kitchen.
I smile at her; Fey or not, the poor woman must not have an easy life, being in my mother’s employ. I grab a couple of apples from the basket by the window and head out into the backyard.
The weather in Wisconsin’s upper world is definitely not as peaceful as it is back in Lake High. The clouds rolling in from Lake Superior are the color of slate, promising rain by the foot.
“Better get to the shed before it starts pouring,” I tell myself, accelerating the pace.
It doesn’t take me nearly as much time to get through the broken window as last weekend, and I land in a respectable crouch without breaking anything. I take stock of the inside of the cabin. Nothing has changed since last I came here, which means nobody, not even a single spider, has gotten wind of my trespassing.
I sit on the spotless floor, close to the window, and take out my glove. Angling it to the gray light streaming through, I prod the ogham, its black surface silky smooth to the touch.
Wishing I knew how to differentiate gems, I riffle through the pages, looking for the rune that will match a black stone. Thankfully, there’s only one in the whole book related to elementals, an onyx.
“Hagalaz,” I whisper, reading the name off the page.
The stone seems to gleam, but the light disappears before I can ascertain whether it’s actually responding to its name or just a trick of the light.
My heartbeat kicks up a notch. “Hagalaz,” I say, louder.
The stone shimmers, and, for a split second, I can see a pale H form at its center, the horizontal bar droopy on one end.
“Saint George’s balls, I did it!” I exclaim, holding the glove to my heart.
I don’t think I’ve ever been this excited in my life, except perhaps the time I was allowed to hybridize my first iris.
I’m so eager to see what it can do that I nearly rip the glove to pieces when I put it on. I check the dictionary once more. The rune is a standard for ice. Does that mean I ought to practice outside? The pitter-patter announcing the beginning of rain makes the decision for me. I point my fist, stone first, to the empty wall opposite me.
“Hagalaz,” I say.
I wait for a second, squinting. Was there a slight condensation of the air?
“Hagalaz,” I
say, louder.
The wall appears to pulsate with a dull yellow glow that intensifies until I see the outline of a door form. A few moments later, it opens, and in walks Arthur.
If I hadn’t already been seated, I would have fallen down.
“Wh-What are you doing here?” I ask, quickly hiding my hand behind my back.
Arthur looks pissed, rainwater dripping off him onto the dusty floor. “What are you doing here?” he shoots back.
“Having a little fun,” I say, not daring to look him in the eye.
In two steps he reaches me, kneels down, and grabs my hand.
“Ouch!” I try to pull away, but his grip’s too strong. “You don’t have to manhandle me!”
Arthur rips the glove off me, stares at the small ogham, and turns livid. “Were you practicing EM on your own?” he asks, his voice shaking.
“So what if I was?”
His fingers tighten around my wrist, and I wince.
“You’re hurting me,” I say.
“Do you even realize what could have happened?” Arthur yells, practically slapping me in the face with my glove. “Morgan, didn’t you see what happened to your classmate?”
With a pang of guilt, I again remember Owen facing the fiery bull.
“Do you realize how dangerous it is for you to train like this, unsupervised? Not to mention this is the surface world, where any layperson can see you! I thought someone like you would’ve known better!”
I raise my chin. “I was in here, away from prying eyes. Nobody would’ve seen anything.”
Arthur shakes me so hard my teeth rattle. “Not if you’d lost control,” he yells. “Damn it, Morgan, somebody could have gotten hurt! You could have been killed!”
“Well I wasn’t!” I retort. Not my best comeback, I admit, but I never expected this kind of outburst from Arthur, he who’s always so controlled. “And yes, for your information, I do remember what happened to Owen. That’s his name, in case you care to know. And that bull-salamander Fey didn’t try to hurt me. He just wanted to go to the forest when they called him, and I happened to be in the way!”
Blood of the Fey (Morgana Trilogy) Page 15
