by C. R. Grey
“She uses machines that look like animals,” she said, thinking of the Clamoribus. “They’re not alive, made of metal and wire.”
“Oh, sure, we’ve seen those,” said Tori. “They were all around the city during break.”
Gwen shook her head. “But she thinks of living animals the same way—easy to control. Easy to kill.” She paused, and took another deep breath. “She murdered the Elder’s life-bonded kin, Grimsen, right in front of me.” She broke off.
“I could never forgive that,” murmured Phi.
“No,” said Gwen, her heart aching at the memory. “Me neither.”
As twilight crept over the campus, Gwen hurried silently around the school buildings, back to her tree house. The lamps flickered on along the campus pathways, but Gwen stuck to the shadows. As she passed the guesthouse, a grand brick structure near the teachers’ quarters, she glanced up at the lit windows. Viviana was in there—so close. Gwen wondered how difficult it would be to sneak through a window and into the guest rooms, how easy it might be to end Viviana’s short reign with a vial of poison or a slash of a quick knife. Easy for someone else, perhaps—and not how the Elder would have wanted this fight to end. Gwen shuddered and scurried on her way.
As she left the lights of the main campus behind, Gwen began to feel a mounting anxiety the deeper she moved into the forest. She sensed the owls of the woods, especially those close to the tree house, hopping and tittering with concern. She quickened her pace.
Entering the clearing where the tree house stood, she felt the eyes of dozens of owls watching her. The windows of the structure were dark, and something told Gwen that she should be careful. She felt in the pocket of Phi’s jacket for the Glass. Certain that it was safe, she began to climb the footholds nailed into the trunk.
She paused a few rungs from the trapdoor. No sounds came from inside the little house except for the nervous fluttering of owls’ wings. Carefully, she lifted the door and climbed up.
Her pallet bed was overturned, and her books were scattered across the room. With a cry, Gwen noticed the piece of wolf pelt that had protected the Glass was on the floor, rather than tucked safely in the trunk of the tree. Whoever had been here had found her hiding place—she thanked Nature she’d brought the Glass with her. She picked up the pelt, wrapped it around the Glass again, and tucked both into her rucksack.
Next, Gwen looked around for Melore’s harmonica. Righting the bed, she found it tucked underneath. The leather box that housed it was scratched, but to her relief, the instrument was unharmed. She held it to her heart, thinking about the Elder. Only then did she notice how loudly her heart seemed to be pounding, and how her hands shook.
Whoever had been here tonight hadn’t found what they’d wanted—but Gwen knew that they’d be back. She and Tremelo had spoken about this moment—the moment the Glass was no longer safe at Fairmount. She knew what she had to do.
She did not have much to pack. She changed out of Phi’s school clothes and back into her own pants, boots, shirt, and traveling cloak. Leaving the books and the bedroll, she shouldered her rucksack and took up the bow and arrows Tremelo had lent her. She paused, looking at the cozy little tree house that had been her home since the Elder’s death. She felt another tug of grief, just as she had gazing at Fairmount earlier. She didn’t truly belong here, no matter how kind Phi and Tremelo had been. With the Elder gone, her mission was solitary. She’d been chosen by him, and now by Tremelo, to do what the others could not: to disappear.
For one small, terrible moment, it seemed unfair. She wished she were just a regular student, with no long journey ahead of her except the one across the commons to get an egg tart for breakfast. But the moment passed.
Owls perched on the rafters, watching her. One of them, a scruffy brown owl—young, like her—sounded a low hoot. She felt a seed of encouragement bloom inside her. She fished the beetle-back coin out of her pocket, and dropped it in the knot of the tree in the Glass’s place. She began to walk away, but then something pulled her back. She fished the harmonica out of her cloak, and left it too in the hollow trunk for her friends to find.
She climbed down out of the tree house and made her way in the darkness, across campus to Tremelo’s garage. She whipped the cover off the motorbike he’d only just finished building, and cranked the starter—once, twice, three times before it sputtered to life. As she wheeled it out of the workshop, she thought she saw a light come on in the teachers’ quarters. She sped away, before she was caught—or before Tremelo could come find her, and she’d have to say another good-bye.
“FIRST OF ALL, DON’T just grab him like a dinner roll; let him come onto your arm in his own time, like this.”
Bailey watched as Tori demonstrated the proper way to hold Bert by reaching out her arm and letting the iguana crawl sluggishly to the nook of her elbow. The two sat alone on a pair of overturned crates in Tremelo’s workshop, away from the weekend energy of the rest of the campus. Hal, Phi, Tremelo, and Gwen were due to join them at any moment to continue working on the machine. Tori tried to impart some wisdom about bonding with reptiles, but Bert wouldn’t so much as crawl a centimeter toward Bailey, even when he held a fresh bite of broccoli in his fingers. Tomorrow would be the first Scavage scrimmage of the new year, and they’d need to convince everyone that Bert was his kin.
“See how he settles right in?” Tori asked, feeding Bert a nugget of broccoli. “He’ll be most comfortable like this, resting along your arm, with his tail at your elbow.”
“I see,” said Bailey. “Let me try again.”
Tori set Bert down gently on the ground between them, and Bailey reached out his arm.
“You have to sort of ‘think’ an invitation,” Tori suggested, “like I do with my snakes. Let him know he’s welcome.”
“But he isn’t actually my kin,” Bailey said as Bert relaxed his scaly limbs and closed his eyes. He felt frustrated, and his nerves were still raw from his interaction with Viviana the day before. “Even if we could communicate, he’d rather just nap.”
“He is sluggish. Maybe he’s not getting enough sun?” asked Tori. “You set up those special lamps Tremelo gave you, right?”
Bailey nodded.
“Those lights are on all night, and through the morning too. The humming from the bulbs is driving Hal crazy,” Bailey answered. “And people talking about Bert is driving me crazy. I can’t even count how many people have said, ‘I didn’t know you were Animas Iguana! Why didn’t you ever say so?’ Bert was supposed to help me blend in, not stand out more.”
Bert flicked his pink tongue between his lips, dreaming.
“At least the other students think you’re normal now,” said Tori. “I mean—not that you weren’t normal before, but there were rumors.…”
Bailey leaned his head on his hand and studied the way Bert’s scales surrounded his perpetually closed lizard eyes.
“Yeah, but if anyone’s paying attention, it’s obvious Bert isn’t really my kin. Viviana will be observing the scrimmage tomorrow. What if I mess up? What if Taleth gets curious again, and wanders onto the field? I don’t have anything except an iguana who won’t even crawl onto my arm!”
Tori shrugged. “You have us,” she said. “And if I hear anyone gossiping about you and Bert, I’ll set them straight. You’re Animas Iguana, always have been.”
She glanced down and began to laugh. Bailey saw that Bert had crept toward him across the desk, and was gripping his shirt sleeve with an unsteady claw. It almost seemed affectionate.
“I don’t know everything,” said Tori. “But that’s a good sign.”
The workshop door swung open with a loud creak, and Phi entered. She was out of breath, and she rushed to them without bothering to close the door behind her.
“Gwen is gone,” she whispered. “The tree house is empty!”
“What?” asked Tori. “Where did she go?”
“I don’t know,” said Phi. “But at least she got away safely. Look!” Sh
e held out her hand. In her palm was the beetleback that Gwen had shown them. “She left this too,” Phi said, revealing the harmonica in her other hand.
“What’s that?” Tremelo entered the workshop, with Hal following right behind him. He must have seen the unease on their faces, because he slowly closed the workshop door behind him.
“Gwen’s left,” said Phi.
Tremelo inspected the beetleback, then handed it back to Phi before glancing around the workshop. “Hmm. On my favorite motorbike too, it looks like.” He pointed to an empty space between his motorbuggy and a mounted bike frame that seemed to be missing several key components, like an engine and tires.
“I walked out there this morning with a week’s worth of food,” said Phi, “and when I saw…I thought she might be dead! How do we know no one followed her? We’ve got to look for her. We don’t even know what happened!”
“Calm down,” said Tremelo. “We can’t know until she sends word back to us. But we must trust that she can take care of herself.”
Phi’s chin crumpled as she looked down at her shoes.
“She knows what to do,” Bailey said. “She and Tremelo had a plan. I’m sure she’s already safe with the RATS.” He wasn’t so certain this was the truth. If anyone had followed Gwen to get to the Glass, then she could lead them straight to the RATS or be captured on her own, with no way to let anyone know. “Maybe we can try sending a message, to be sure.”
“I can’t believe she left the harmonica,” Phi said. “It stopped Sucrette’s Dominance of those animals last fall—what if she needs it for protection?”
“Maybe she thought we needed it more,” said Hal, who held out his hand. “Can I see it?”
Phi handed the harmonica over to Hal, who squinted at the embossed images of a boy and a fox on the instrument’s leather case. Opening the case, he shook out the rusty instrument.
“I still don’t know how it works,” Hal wondered aloud.
“Vibrations—a positive frequency,” said Tremelo. “Music is a lot like the bond itself, an energy that can be projected outward as well as felt inwardly. It can even intensify the bond.” Tremelo paused and pursed his lips in thought.
“We know that music stopped Sucrette’s Dominance before,” he continued, plucking the harmonica from Hal’s open palm. Hal shrugged. “But what if Viviana was using the same principles to make her Dominance stronger—projecting it outward on a higher frequency.…” Tremelo began stroking the ends of his dark brown mustache, and Bailey knew that the teacher was developing an idea.
“May I hold on to this?” Tremelo asked, looking at Phi.
“Of course,” said Phi. “For all I know, you’re the one Gwen meant to leave it for.”
“I’ll tell you one thing,” said Tori. “I’d love to be Gwen right now—at least she gets to miss the Scavage game.”
That afternoon, the Scavage team met on the snowy field to practice for the big scrimmage the next day.
Coach Banter clapped a huge hand on Bailey’s shoulder as he entered the warm-up area. Bailey winced a little at the soreness that remained in his arm. Coach was accompanied by his usual stocky bulldogs, who jumped and pawed at Bailey’s legs, barking excitedly at Bert.
“You’ll be warming up with your kin today,” Coach said. “Take some time to let him get used to the field.”
Bert was lying along Bailey’s arm the way Tori had instructed, doing his best impression of a lifeless stick. Bailey saw Taylor Quindley and the other Year Three players out of the corner of his eye, straining to get a better look at Bert.
“Sure, we’re ready,” said Bailey, hoping no one could hear the nervous crack in his voice. He had to figure out a way to play alongside Bert—his life depended on it.
“What is that thing?” one of the Third Years shouted, pointing at Bert.
“You mean that weird little creature with the lizard?” laughed Taylor. “That’s Walker!”
“Get in gear, Quindley!” Coach shouted back, before thumping Bailey on the shoulder and walking off.
After gearing up into his kneesocks and pads—royal blue to signify his squad—Bailey took Bert out to the edge of the field. He knelt and tried to concentrate on how the field must look from the lizard’s point of view. Much of the snow had been shoveled away, leaving a slick, muddy terrain underneath. It would be a messy game the next day.
Bert opened his eyes and stretched out a scaly claw. He sniffed at a piece of mud. Bailey leaned down and sniffed it too. Even if Bert wasn’t his kin, maybe everything he’d learned in the last few months would help him feel something. Bailey closed his eyes and focused.
And for one overwhelming moment, an aroma of pine filled his nostrils, and he felt crunching snow beneath a heavy paw. His ears were perked, alert—someone was looking for him. Hunting him.
Bailey opened his eyes, his heart pounding. He’d been inside Taleth’s head, an experience so much more intense than the low humming he normally felt. It was like Tremelo had said—jarring. Jarring, but wonderful.
Bert gnawed at the piece of mud, which crumbled in his mouth. Bailey grimaced. He wished he could be with Taleth right now, exploring the mountains and growing more powerful together. School and Scavage seemed very small in comparison—and with a giant white tiger, away from Fairmount and Viviana, he’d no doubt be safer.
With Bert in tow, he found it difficult to run and jump the way he used to. Halfway through practice, he tucked Bert inside a hollow log near the forested end of the field.
“Stay there,” he said to the lizard, who immediately fell asleep. Bailey took off, in pursuit of a Gold Squadron Sneak who’d just spotted the Blue Squad’s flag. He aimed his Flick and lobbed a glob of paint. It struck the Sneak’s left knee, coating her leg in bright blue, but she kept running.
The power Bailey had felt through his brief connection with Taleth had stayed with him. As he ducked under branches and barreled over the wooded terrain in pursuit of the Gold Sneak, he realized how much he’d missed playing. He tackled her just yards from where the flag hung, suspended from the limb of a huge oak tree.
“Good tackle, Bailey!” called Arabella, captain of the Blue Squadron, who was guarding the flag.
“End of play!” Coach called.
“Good practice,” Phi said to him, as they found each other near Bert’s napping spot. “You can’t show off tomorrow, not with Viviana watching.”
“You’re probably right,” Bailey said. “But it sure is fun today.”
Bailey grabbed Bert, and together they went to run drills with the rest of the team, who were gathered near the stands. Taylor approached with a smirk.
“Ants’ antennae, that thing stinks!” Taylor said, pointing at Bert. “This is your kin? What in Nature is it?”
“He’s an iguana,” Bailey said.
Taylor lifted Bert up by his tail straight out of Bailey’s grip. He held the iguana at arm’s length.
“Creaking frogs, it looks like a giant insect. Is it dead?” He shook Bert slightly.
Bailey took a step forward and reached for Bert, but Taylor stepped backward and swept him out of Bailey’s reach.
“Watch it, Walker,” he said. “Or I punt this dumb piece of leather so hard, you’ll feel it in your own gut.”
As if to respond, Bert twisted himself up and nipped at Taylor’s finger. Taylor let out a high-pitched shriek and dropped Bert onto the ground.
“Ants! Oh, anting roach-ants! Creaking frogs!” he cursed, sucking at his finger. A trickle of blood ran down his hand.
Bailey couldn’t help but smile.
“This ‘piece of leather’ goes by Bert.” For the first time, he was proud of being “Animas Iguana.” Even if it was a lie.
The next afternoon, Bailey and Phi returned to the Scavage pitch in nervous silence. Bert slept in the crook of Bailey’s arm, completely unaware of the frantic worry that Bailey felt. They were about to be put on display before Viviana, in the first Scavage scrimmage of the semester. Bailey was tem
pted to reach out and grab Phi’s hand as they trudged through the snowy campus, just to calm his buzzing nerves. As for Phi, she was steel-eyed, staring straight ahead. Only once did she glance up to watch the skies, and then she shook her head, as though remembering something she’d forgotten.
Bailey followed her gaze, and realized: Carin, Phi’s falcon, was nowhere to be seen.
“Where is she?” he asked as they trod down the hill to the field.
“Hunting,” Phi answered.
“Are you nervous about playing without her?” he asked.
She shook her head. “Nope.”
Bailey smiled. “I wish I felt that confident.”
Phi matched his stride and moved closer as they walked. She bumped his shoulder with her own, and Bailey felt his heart leap in his chest.
“It’ll be okay,” she said.
Bailey wished he could be as certain, though it felt good to hear her say it.
As they approached the pitch, Bailey’s heart began to beat faster. The entire school—students, teachers, and even Mrs. Copse and the kitchen staff—was lined up outside the gates to get in and watch the scrimmage. Bailey heard shouts of “Let’s go, Fairmount!” The teachers wore blue-and-gold neckties and scarves in support of what wasn’t even a real game.
“Oh, ants,” Bailey sighed as they made their way to the locker rooms. Viviana was already seated in the dean’s box, high in the stands. Her slim maroon coat was buttoned all the way up to a high collar that hid her chin, and the large, round hat she wore looked like beaver fur. Graves, Finch, Shonfield, and a few other teachers sat bundled against the cold, chatting dutifully. As Bailey watched, Graves stopped talking to Finch and peered over the bundled folds of his massive scarf, directly at Bailey. Viviana, sitting next to him, followed his gaze. Bailey’s skin prickled all over as their eyes met, just for a second, before he ducked into the locker room.
