“They finally showed.” The voice was a low, warm rasp, like gravel and sand. I jumped, and Frances let out a little squeak. Peter smiled.
Suddenly there was a mountain next to us, one with horns.
Mr. Dimitrios was a minotaur. A real minotaur; the hoofs, the horns, the tail, the nose ring, even the spear, it was all there. His horns were short, just peeking out of his floppy hair, which made him look young—well, youngish. Minotaurs don’t really like people knowing things like how they age and how old they get. I had never seen a minotaur before except on those shows where they interview movie stars; huge and hulking in the background are the minotaur bodyguards. Which is probably why Mom and Dad were smiling so much as they shook Mr. Dimitrios’s hand. If this school had hired a minotaur, even a young one, they were serious about security.
It also helps if you don’t get weirded out easily. Minotaurs are a strange race. They’re magical beings—they can interact with, or manipulate, or use magic, whatever the right word is. But they choose not to lots of times, and that freaks out some folks. I guess they think it’s simpler to just punch someone in the face, the old-fashioned way.
Before we could recover from that little surprise, Becky herded us toward the west side of the building. Mr. Dimitrios joined us, one of his strides eating up three of ours. He was big and muscular and hairy, but his fearsome beast image was ruined somewhat by his wide, lopsided smile.
Becky stopped at a door that was mostly bars and an enormous lock and hauled it open one armed.
It turns out we weren’t the only people at the school—kids were here tucked away in the dorm. There were doors open all along the first-floor hall, and we heard the buzz of conversation and music, and someone complaining loudly about having to do laundry. As we climbed up a flight of stairs to a bright-white hallway, three kids raced by us going the other direction. Becky barked at them to slow down.
“Can’t!” one of them yelled. “You don’t know what she’ll do to us if we’re late!”
The second floor was empty, with all the doors standing open. Each room was exactly the same—plain and white and rectangular. Entering one was like walking along the edge of a mirror. There were two perfectly identical halves, each with a small closet alcove and a narrow single bed. On the side opposite the door, a desk ran the length of the wall. Each half had one chair, one window, and a shared set of shelves overhead. It was nice and clean, but the furniture looked barely used, and the glossy floor had a freshly polished sheen. It had none of the scuffs and bangs that make a place feel lived in.
We only had a minute to look at our rooms before Mr. O’Hara appeared and whisked us on a tour. “We have to get this done quickly so we can get ready for the welcome-back dinner.” He was a big man, built like an oak tree but significantly shorter—so how did he move that fast? Up and down and around and around. He answered any questions we had, but he never slowed. We saw so many spiral staircases and white hallways I started to think that’s all the school was. He rushed us by teachers’ offices, the greenhouse at the very top, and the laundry at the bottom, and I’m pretty sure we stopped by some dark cave where the minotaurs lurked. Yes, I said minotaurs, because we paused long enough to see there was another one (bigger than Mr. Dimitrios, if you can believe that), and a holding cell with actual bars and locks. The classrooms were normal looking, thank goodness.
The way Mr. O’Hara ran us around, it seemed confusing, but the school was actually laid out simply enough. It was basically a giant U, with the dorm on one side and classrooms on the other, and everything else scrunched in between, with the courtyard in the big empty space in the middle.
Mom and Dad left after the tour. They had to leave, I knew they had to leave, but I still wasn’t looking forward to it. When they left it would be final.
Mom cried a bit, and I was crying too. Dad tried to keep it cheerful, but his eyes were bright as he swooped me up off my feet for a hug. I knew I would see them again, hug them again, but I’d always had those things whenever I wanted, and after today I wouldn’t. I couldn’t. Even the moment in the Guild when Mr. Graidy said I was an ord hadn’t seemed this huge or achy or final.
Eventually they pulled away. They said they would call and that they’d see me … we just didn’t know exactly when. Not until Fall Fest, probably, and that was forever. Well, eight weeks.
I wasn’t allowed to watch them fly away. We had to say goodbye in the courtyard, with Mr. O’Hara standing at a respectful distance until it was time to escort them out. I stood there, waving, as they stepped back onto the street, and the gates closed with a cold, solid clunk. Mr. O’Hara made sure the protection spells snapped properly back into place, and then stood off to the side until I had rubbed my eyes and was ready to join the others.
CHAPTER
10
There was barely time to be sad or even think after Mom and Dad left. Becky showed up the second Mr. O’Hara released us and roped me into helping out an older student who was in a rush to get his clothes put away so he could get to work. He snapped at Becky about foisting some newbie off on him instead of a kid who actually knew what she was doing, but then told me he didn’t mind stuff getting shoved in drawers as long as it got done. He was reedy, with sharp, tight features and a burn scar that reached up into his hair and left a little bald patch. When I asked him why he was in such a rush, he told me he was a “kitchen rat.”
“Cook Bella’s special staff,” he explained shortly at my confused look. “We help out in the kitchen. It’s hard work, but you eat better. Not that anyone eats bad here, but the rats get special attention. Whatever it takes to eat well while you can, you know?”
I didn’t, actually. I’d always eaten well.
Becky rapped on the door. “Time, Nate. If you’re late, Bella’s not going to ream me out over it.”
“It’s her fault,” Nate said, shoving me out of the way of the door. “Newbies always …” I didn’t catch the rest because he started running.
“Ignore him,” Becky said, taking my arm. “Come on, you’ve got to get ready. You don’t have colors yet, so wear nice clothes if you have ’em.”
“I do.”
“Good. See if you’ve got anything that’ll fit Fran while you’re at it. The poor thing’s barely got a change of underwear and a pair of socks.”
I had just finished getting dressed when the bell rang for dinner. Students poured down the stairs, dashing out across the sweet green-grass-smelling courtyard to the dining hall in the opposite wing. Frances, holding up the skirt of her borrowed dress so she didn’t trip, couldn’t stop blushing. But she didn’t look as silly as Fred, who had apparently taken Becky’s “nice clothes” comment way too seriously: he was decked out in a full-on formal suit, and looked completely uncomfortable and out of place.
The dining hall was one long rectangle, the walls the same dark-brown bricks as the outside. There was a bit of open space at the front, but the rest of the hall was filled with round wooden tables. Becky sat us toward the back, past groups of kids who snickered as Fred walked by, to a table with three other kids who looked about as confused and nervous as we did. There was a pair of Majid sisters who must have sailed across the sea to come here and would only speak to each other, their gorgeous language rippling quietly in the background the whole night. The other student was a boy swallowed up by an enormous high-necked shirt, and so still and quiet it would have been easy to miss him if he hadn’t looked like a tent pole. The only thing that moved were his eyes; there was something about the way they darted around the room—lingering on the doors and windows—that made you want to start checking the exits too.
Standing in the open space up front was Mr. O’Hara with two other teachers I assumed were the Mrs. Murphy and Ms. Macartney that Becky mentioned earlier. I was excited to see Alexa, off to the side, in her semiformals. Becky went to join them, moving around students so quickly and smoothly it was hard to keep your eyes on her.
There were also more minotaurs, an
d I’m sure there were more we couldn’t see, but you know what? I decided to stop being surprised by anything at that point. They were stationed around the room, with Dimitrios—as he told us to call him—by our table and a massive one with scarred horns up by the teachers. There were four teachers in all, including Becky, which I hadn’t expected because she was an ord. As far as I knew, ords didn’t have a lot of time to go to graduate school to get their teaching certificates.
One moment the room was buzzing and the next everyone quieted down so abruptly it took us by surprise. Fred was caught in the middle of a joke, his voice squeaking to a halt. Behind us, one of the double doors opened, revealing a huge kitchen. Heat rolled over our table in waves. There was a muffled clanging and clattering from inside, and someone hissed, “Dude, shut up, Murphy’s going to talk!”
One teacher stood at the head of the room. Mrs. Murphy, I presumed. She was slim as a willow branch, with shiny, springy, silvering copper hair cut close to her head. “Well, I see you’re all here. Again.” Her brisk, warm voice carried through the crowd. “Now, you know I don’t like to give speeches”—someone choked off a laugh—“but this is an extraordinary occasion. I could not let it go by without saying … how disappointed I am.” Everyone at my table sat up straight, shooting quick, worried glances at each other, but all around us the other kids were smiling. “Yes, another year has started, and we have exactly the same number of students as last year. Not one single student was lost.”
Amid the cheering and pounding on tables, Frances whispered, “Is that unusual?”
Mrs. Murphy held up her hands, and the room quieted down. “Wait. Wait—I’m mistaken. We don’t have the same number of students. With our new Year Ones”—she inclined her head toward our table—“we have more.
“Think of all the wasted opportunities,” she moaned dramatically. “The Red Lady from the other side of the river who wouldn’t leave us alone if we paid her. She wouldn’t leave us alone even when we paid her. Did any of you get eaten like good little ords? No-oo!” She pulled the word out as if it caused her pain. “You rallied together and fought her off. Then there was the chimera outbreak. Again: heroism, ingenuity, survival. What are we to tell the king? That his ord population is booming?”
“She’s not serious, is she?” Fred asked as someone from across the room shouted, “Hey, I broke my leg!”
“Oh, to be sure, there was one injury. We’re all very impressed, Mr. Naveen. I’m not even going to mention last winter,” Mrs. Murphy continued, throwing up her hands. “Don’t you laugh, Mr. Dane. You have gained at least twenty pounds since you came here. What have you done to help us out, hmm? Have you gotten kidnapped? Did anyone here get kidnapped over the summer?”
“She can’t be serious,” Fred said, and we exchanged another nervous glance before I caught Alexa watching me. She shook her head and fought down a smile.
“I have never met a more selfish, irresponsible … help me out here,” Mrs. Murphy called.
“Disrespectful!” someone shouted.
“Inconsiderate!”
“Ungrateful!”
“Precisely.” Mrs. Murphy let out a sharp sigh, a smile struggling at the corners of her mouth. “I suppose there’s nothing left to do but get through another year.”
More cheering. Somebody whistled.
Mrs. Murphy raised her voice over the noise. “Oh, for—I’m not done yet, you heathens! Has no one taught you any manners? Now, before we get on with all the celebration nonsense, I would like each and every one of you to think long and hard about the trials you are putting your poor teachers through. Look at Miss Corey there. Her nerves are strained to the breaking point, watching after all of you.” She gestured to Becky, who was standing calmly in the shadows with her hands clasped in front of her. “She is losing her mind.”
“She never had it!” someone shouted from the back.
“That is beside the point,” Mrs. Murphy said. “It is still tragic. As for our new students”—she looked at us, and her eyes were bright with suppressed humor—“on behalf of the entire school, which will join me, I know, we hope you have a very dull and educational year. Now, let’s eat.”
Behind us, kids suddenly rushed out of the kitchen doors, faces flushed and eyes focused. One student popped up over my shoulder and spun a basket of bread and a bowl of salad onto our table. Another plunked down a pitcher, water splashing around the rim and ice cubes clinking together. The teachers dispersed, each one edging a chair into one of the full tables. There was a tap on my shoulder and Alexa slid into a seat next to me. “I told you I’d come back.” She laughed when I threw myself at her.
Over crusty bread and salad Frances started talking in starts and stops. She tried to slip in comments when they’d be least noticed, like when we were talking about family and she mentioned she was the third of four girls.
Fred buttered another slice of bread with a sound that might have been hmm or aah and asked which sister was her favorite.
Peter looked up in what might have almost been surprise. “You have favorites?”
“Yeah,” Fred and I answered together.
“You do?” Alexa shot me a sly look. “And who, may I ask, is your favorite?”
I grinned. “You, of course.”
Alexa speared a tomato in her salad. “You’re a terrible liar.”
Frances nibbled on a roll until she thought we weren’t paying attention. “Susan. She’s nice. She’s the talented one. She wants to own a nursery. Plants, not babies. She, um … I haven’t heard from her since …”
Then Fred asked Frances how she found out about being an ord. Frances explained (her face slowly going pink) that she had been out with her family a week before her Judging. She crossed the street a little too fast. “There was a carpet, and the driver didn’t see me until the last second. He cast at me, to get me out of the way, but nothing happened. Luckily, I ducked. I didn’t even realize until later what it meant that the driver’s magic didn’t work on me.” She shrugged and offered a watery smile. “They had to call off my whole Judging.”
“So you didn’t get Judged?” I asked.
“No. I mean … there wasn’t any point,” she explained. “But Daddy got some of his deposit back. So it wasn’t … it wasn’t that bad.”
“Then you don’t know if you’re an ord? Not for sure,” Peter said.
“You’re an ord,” Becky said. She was standing just behind Peter.
“How can you be sure?” Fred asked.
“I’m sure.” She came over, flicking her dark bangs out of her eyes as she crouched in front of Frances. “When you’re an ord long enough, you can tell. You can see it in other people. No, that’s not right,” she corrected herself. “It’s more like you recognize it. There’s just a certain something that ords don’t have.” She took Frances’s hand, rubbed it between her own. “It doesn’t make us worse, Fran. Just different. Sometimes it takes a little while to figure it out, is all. It’s scary, I know,” Becky continued, to all of us. “But ever since King Steve took the throne, things for ords are better than they have ever been. He’s done a lot for us.”
Peter laughed, and looked up from his book. “Like what?”
“Like building this school,” Becky returned with a bit of an edge to her voice. “Like giving us a place to stay. A safe one, where we don’t have to worry about when we’ll eat next,” she added with a pointed look at Peter’s full plate. “Like standing up for us when that fool’s court starts yelling about ords being dangerous. He didn’t need to stick his neck out for us, and heaven knows it’d be easier for him if he didn’t. So I will not hear a word against him, Peter Whittleby. Not from you or anybody else.” She stared him down until he dropped his eyes. Then Becky glanced at Alexa. “He’s a good man.”
“Yes,” Alexa agreed. “He is.”
Around the fourth course, Nate, the boy I’d helped earlier, charged over to our table. “We need some help in the kitchen with the dishes. Murphy said to recru
it one of you newbies to lend a hand. Well?” he demanded before anyone could answer.
There was a brief silence when everybody looked at one another. “I will,” I said.
“Great. Come on. Come on,” he said, yanking me up out of my chair. He dumped a load of plates in my arms and pushed me through the kitchen door and into chaos—shouting and smells and people and a heat that nearly knocked me back. The place even looked like heat, with bright yellow walls and red tile floors and constant movement. There were kids wiping down counters and bending over a hot stove and slamming things into cupboards. “Hey! Watch that!” called a stout, hippy woman by the stove—Cook Bella, I guessed. She had round pink cheeks, and her hair was bound back tight and covered with a scarf. “You take those pans out and stack them again, and I’ll thank you to do it nicely this time. If you don’t take the time to learn, I’ll make you do this whole kitchen over again.”
The kid took the pans out, stacked them on the counter, and then put them back again, gently and neatly.
Nate led me to a great double sink on the other side of the room. To the right was a pile of dirty dishes, to the left a crowded drain board, where clean dishes sat drying. “Here, here, here, here.” Nate splashed his dishes down into the soapy water. “You ever wash dishes before?”
I shook my head.
He rolled his eyes. “Oh, for—Okay, pay attention. You take the dirty dish, you put it into the soapy water, you take the sponge—tie your hair back, newbie, nobody wants a hair on their plate—you put the soap on it. You following me? You take the sponge, wash all the gunk off”—he demonstrated—“then under the faucet, you have to turn on the faucet first, then scrub, and into the drain board. Got that? You use hot water, got that? Always hot water. I’m going to dry and put away. Any questions?” He tossed the sponge at me, not giving me a chance to ask. “Wash.”
I turned on the water (“hot water, hot”—he twisted the lever to the right) and poured enough soap on the sponge to turn it slick and bubbly.
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