by Kara Silver
“I mean, why are you not carrying out your college duties?” He sighed at the look on her face. “They begin today! Have you not collected your assignments and instructions from the Porter’s Lodge?”
She hadn’t. Oh, her sadist of a tutor was enjoying this. “Why couldn’t someone phone me?” she enquired. “Why all the carrier pigeon crap?”
“There is a tradition here! This—”
“Is Oxford,” she finished for him, Aeth saying it along with her. Kennedy bit back a smile.
“We wouldn’t want anyone in authority to suppose you demonstrate no real commitment to Heylel, would we?”
Kennedy longed to wipe that smirk clean off his face. In her dreams, it was via her astounding academic work. In her fantasies, it was with a custard pie.
“And I strongly suggest you hurry along to the Lodge now, where your group is awaiting you!” He stood straight and tall, shaking back his hair and raising an eyebrow as she took her time standing and gathering her bag and long duster coat. “Interesting garment,” he commented. “Let’s hope you can cycle in it.”
“Why would I…” No. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction.
“And I rather think your instructions detail the type of outfit you should be wearing for these liaison duties,” came his next observation, accompanying his pained up-and-down onceover of her jeans and shirt.
“Thank you, Dr Berkley. Nice to see you around the college bar to, erm, check out students’…clothes.” Lame, but she was on the spot here. Her fake smile hurt her face. “Bye, everyone,” she added. “See you later.”
She felt a little grateful to her tutor for making it possible for her to duck out of the Aeth-Tris confrontation. Huh. Saved by the bellend. Must be a first.
“Nothing wrong with my clothes,” she muttered, hurrying to the bike shed. “And what’s all this about an outfit? Well, as long as it’s not sub-fusc.” She shuddered, recalling the formal black skirt, thick tights and clumpy shoes, teamed with the white blouse and black ribbon tie, not to mention the black gown, required of students for special occasions. “Anything but that.”
And, of course, it was that, or supposed to be that, earning her a second black mark for failing to wear it, her first being for her late arrival. Tutts from the porter, who’d no doubt been nagged at by those waiting, followed her as she snatched an envelope from her slot and tore it open for her official lanyard, which she threw over her head as she pushed her bike out into the street. Good thing this duty came with one as she couldn’t find her actual college ID. She must have lost it sometime between showing it yesterday when she arrived and now.
The group waiting outside took her aback. “Erm, hello.” Kennedy looked over the kids about her age and the older people, all on new, shiny basket-and-panniers bikes. She held up her new badge as proof she was their leader. Ha. “So you are…”
Potential college students, up for their interviews, their parents along for the ride, literally, she learned, suppressing a groan. Thank God her hangover had gone—leading a group on a tour of the city and showing them its beauties, bouncing over cobbles and edging down alleys would have finished her off, the delicate state she’d been in earlier.
A redheaded boy sidled over to her. He had a skateboard instead of a hired bike. “Like your duster. It’s rad. That the Heylel College version of a gown?”
Kennedy was just about to say yes, when a young woman caught up with him. She was on a scooter.
“Henry!” she reproved, her tone showing her to be the guy’s mother. “No one says ‘rad’ any more. It’s ‘sick’ now.” She shook her head.
Kennedy, shaking on her bike with her laughter, introduced herself to start the tour. It wasn’t actually that bad, as the group was all in a good mood, particularly when she apologised for not checking her pidge in the plodge, and had to regale them all with Oxford slang. Henry’s mother, balancing her scooter, was taking notes on her phone and trying to pretend she wasn’t.
Kennedy didn’t know why the woman didn’t just record her. Practically everyone else was, including random passersby who saw the adults with their devices trained on Kennedy and assumed she was someone worth filming. It was funny, actually, especially when their prospective student children stood behind them, doing helicopter impersonations and rolling their eyes at Kennedy. They were lucky to have parents so invested in them. Lucky to have parents. She got busy taking them to the first stop and delighting the kids by leading the group on a whizz around the Radcliffe Camera, doing a full circuit of the oval that housed the dome, the oval that was called a square.
“We’re booked for lunch here now,” announced one, pointing to the olde-worlde pub opposite the museum they all traipsed out of a little later.
“Fine. I’ll see you outside after… No?” The pre-paid lunch reservation included their guide, she learned. Wow. She’d never have afforded a meal in the well-known bar, else. Nice. If she did a tour and got a decent meal everyday… It was even better when the adults loved the famous pub, with its wall-to-wall memorabilia of TV shows and movies set in Oxford, and its choral-singing staff, and decided to stay on for a sit-down and mulled wine, leaving their little darlings in Kennedy’s hands.
She was still laughing at one father describing deciding when to let his son loose as knowing when to hold ’em and when to fold ’em as she took the group to an ice-cream parlour and candy shop where the products were made not only in-house, but before customers’ very eyes and noses. It smelt delicious.
“It’s not really a day out unless a body part turns blue,” commented Henry outside, busy staining his tongue bilberry-coloured with a lurid ice cream, despite the weather.
“Gween,” corrected his mother, who’d come along with them and who was speaking around an enormous gobstopper. “Bwack now,” she observed, using her phone as a mirror, grinning like a loon as she then selfied it.
“Owww! Brain freeze!” Kennedy explained, holding the crushed ice fruit drink she’d been persuaded to have at arm’s length, as if that would help.
“I like your purple shade too.” And Henry’s mum snapped a pic of Kennedy’s mouth.
What a bizarre day. But nicely so, rather than the screamingly scary so she’d experienced in her first term. Kennedy was musing on the different families in her collection when one of the kids called out, “Can we go over to that square, see what’s going on?”
“Sure.” She was mellow. “Oh,” she said a minute later when she reached the square in the wake of the excited kids. It was the theatre ensemble, showing a sample of what they’d be performing later, at the fair. She didn’t think they’d seen her, over the small crowd, but she enjoyed watching them. Not the pantomime so much as just their interaction, Isabella and her mother acting together, their affection obvious, Giacobbe coming in, his protective care directing his actions. And Tristano!
The small huddle of spectators ooh’ed and ahh’ed at the appropriate intervals and watched, rapt. Then Tristan spotted her and beckoned her forward. Initially shaking her head, Kennedy found her feet carrying her to him, the knot of people parting for her to enter the scene. She stood still for her aunt to tweak Isabella’s long cloak from her and wrap it around Kennedy. Kennedy with a last look around at the troupe, took Isabella’s overlarge fan from her, and took Isabella’s place on the low bench, placing her higher than Tris, who, instructed by his doctor grandfather went through a series of gestures and actions designed to win his beloved’s heart, hindered by Harlequin and sighed over by Pierrot, pining for his Columbine.
Her heart thumped and panic seized her in its jaws, but she needn’t have worried. As if she knew the play, as if she’d rehearsed it, Kennedy’s fingers used the fan to convey her emotions, her reactions, pausing for the spectators’ reactions, their laughter and encouragement, before going on to her next set of movements. The crowd’s goodwill, or the players’ will, or the magic woven by a collective piece—something—lifted her, carried her, took her to the end of the skit.
She jumped from the bench and took a bow, basking in both the audience’s applause and the warmth and kinship she felt in the presence of the company. It was hard to believe she’d only met them that morning. It was an affinity, she supposed, handing the props back. A belonging. Her kith. Her kind. Something she’d never felt before, its lack a dull, nagging pain every day of her existence. But now she’d felt the bonds of family, she wanted to experience them again. “I’ll come back,” she promised, pointing to her group to convey her obligations and hugging her uncle and aunt. “I vow,” she added, to Tristan. It was what he’d said, wasn’t it?
In the silence, she slipped back to her charges, to be showered in praise and bombarded with questions, which continued after they rejoined their parents and explained and showed them film of the performance. She was shallow enough to be pleased. She liked the buzz of this group too. After returning her flock to Heylel, she needed to feel less of a hypocrite by actually seeing some of the town’s sights she hadn’t had the chance too yet, despite pointing them out and enthusing over them on her tour.
And when she entered the covered market, curious about the massive structure with its variety of old stalls and shops, enjoying the vibe and energy of the shoppers and browsers, waiting for her was Aeth, his tall, implacable form reminding her of her real life, her true calling. Her heart sank. Whatever decision she made would hurt someone, and her most of all.
8
“What is it now?” Kennedy went on the offensive. “What charge am I up on? Loitering near a souvenir shop? Looking in the window of a handmade soap and candle store? You caught me—I was contemplating getting an artisan sandwich and a vegan cake for dinner.”
She sighed, pulling him into a recess between two stalls, out of the way of a family with a pushchair, whose occupant kicked her red-booted legs and swung her small arms against her confines. As always, being with him created a silence and stillness, an out-of-timeness that they inhabited. She’d never understood it, but she did feel it.
“Look. I’ve only just finished work. Yeah, I have holiday duties in addition to term-time ones. Those are the breaks. I’m hardly goofing off. And I think I put in a good day’s labour.” She’d know soon enough, after having to hand out feedback forms to her tour group.
“I’m sorry.”
“Wh— No. I’m hallucinating.” Hallucinations could be through the ears, couldn’t they? Kennedy pinched her nose and blew air down her ear tubes to clear them.
“I said, I’m sorry,” Aeth repeated, his scowl slipping to half-mast as he watched her antics
“Wait.” Kennedy cast a wild glance around and spied a table outside a nearby café. “May I?” she asked the young couple there, indicating the metal holder of paper napkins. At their startled nods, she plucked one free, wrapped bits around her index fingers and made a show of waggling those digits in her ears. “Because it sounded like you said you were sorry, so, of course, I assumed my ears are playing tricks on me.”
Aeth’s reluctant grin warred with his attempt to keep his frown in place. “I’m sorry about earlier.”
“Before we get into that, how sorry?”
“What?”
“Are you…a freshly baked cookie sorry?” Kennedy walked him down the row to the kiosk in question. “Or if you’re sorrier than that, could it be measured in one of these printed scarves?” She pulled him to the shop with its lengths of brightly coloured fabric.
“Kennedy—”
“Or, if you’re super-sorry…” She led him to the engravers, and tapped her finger on the glass at the medals and trophies. “There’s always the commemorative cup option.”
They were forced to move back as a middle-aged man led a small gaggle of schoolchildren inside, all nattering on about their debate medals.
“Yeah.” Kennedy agreed. “We should save the engraved apology option for something bigger. So, what are you sorry about, in particular?”
“I didn’t…react well, this morning. Handle it well, I suppose you’d say.”
“I say a lot of things,” Kennedy muttered. “Not all of them complimentary.” They walked down a row Kennedy thought must lead out onto Cormarket. “So what made you behave like that?”
“I’m concerned about you.”
Wow. She blinked as they emerged from the tunnel-like section of market to a shopping alley, mainly restaurants and cafes, like a small plaza.
“Can we sit?” Aeth indicated a bench. “I suppose because we hadn’t seen each other for a couple of weeks—”
“But we heard each other. Or at least, I heard you. At Wyebury Cathedral,” Kennedy reminded him.
“Oh. That.” His mouth turned up in a grin. He looked…proud? Of himself, she supposed, confirmed when he said, “I didn’t know if that would work; that I’d be able to pull it off.”
“Did you know your avatar, your cut-out, whatever the term is, gave me a soaking?” Kennedy told him what the gargoyle on the side of the building had done. “And he got a friend in on the act! Only that one, I managed to dodge. I advise you to stop that sniggering. At once.”
“Sorry again,” Aeth wheezed out. A woman plonked herself down on the bench with a heavy grunt, and Aeth moved quickly up, crowding Kennedy. She was close enough to see the shades of grey making up his eyes. Not shades so much as rings, shading from almost jet to pewter. She hadn’t noticed before.
“I was worried about you, with you away. And now, with this travelling fair here...”
“Look, I appreciate your concern…” She broke off as the woman, their neighbour, craned her neck to look. Ah. She couldn’t see or hear Aeth and assumed Kennedy was talking to herself? “But this is my life and… Well. Do you know how hard I’ve longed for a family? So, to meet kinfolk…”
Was there any point? Aeth couldn’t possibly get it. “It’s someone, some people, I don’t know and maybe a chance to bond? I don’t know. I don’t even know what I don’t know, you know?”
“No,” he replied, but the look on his face bore more traces of compassion than any other emotion.
“That was a weird sentence. If I’d written something like that in an essay, or spoken it at a tutorial, I’d be cast into Oxford student jail, or clapped into tutorial group stocks or something,” Kennedy tried to lighten the mood. She liked making Aeth laugh anyway. And close like this, she now knew it changed his eyes to platinum with tiny dots of ash in them.
“Come on.” She got to her feet. “Let’s get a tea so we can say we’ve been to that trendy Chinese place.” She jerked her chin at the hatch to the café. “Don’t suppose you know what you want?” she queried as they joined the small queue.
“Do you?” He turned the question back on her with spin. She understood he wasn’t referring to the menu board.
“I suppose we have to talk about the travelling fair, even though it gets you so mad.” She ordered, selecting the two bestselling flavours, and paid.
Aeth took his cup and shook it curiously, making the fat pearls inside swirl. “Do you know a good part of the reason the fair is so popular?”
His question came out of the blue, catching Kennedy by surprise.
“Erm, the champagne kiosk? The fried dough strips? I’m guessing it’s not those old wooden rides, although the helter-skelter looked pretty good fun. Until you get a splinter in your unmentionables, of course.”
“Kennedy.” His seriousness caught her on the raw, as he’d no doubt meant it to.
“Popular with whom?” she asked.
Aeth cocked an eyebrow. “Oh. Good question.”
“Thank you. Now, do I get—” A cookie, she’d been going to say, but this was no time to kid around. “An answer? Hang on…” That reminded her of something from last term, her asking questions and Aeth giving answers. She’d had to ask the right—
“The main reason the fair is so popular is because it’s alluring and makes it easy to give into temptation.”
“For—?”
“It deals in things that cause humans t
o forget their dark secrets are secrets.”
“You lost me, sorry.”
“It’s just not a good place. Can’t you trust me?”
Oooh. And that was the biggest question of all. “That’s not the issue,” she hedged. Rather well, she thought. “I’m, well, still thinking about my kin, the players and everything. But I know one thing. I want to carry on training. Both physical training and the kind to help with my…” She shrugged.
“Powers. Abilities. Skills.”
At least he hadn’t used the D word.
“Yes. If you’re still inclined to help me. To guardian me.”
His smile came reluctantly. “That’s not the correct word.”
“Sor-ry. Hey, swap cups, try each other’s tea?”
Aeth looked confused, but did as she suggested.
“I’m only a first year,” Kennedy ventured. “Still learning. I need your help. I haven’t used my powers in a while. So, training. Ready whenever you are.”
Three teenagers half-ran through the plaza, yelling and gesticulating as they raced, and Kennedy steadied herself against the wall, out of their way. Aeth reached out and put his arm round her, drawing her into the protection of his body, and after a few startled seconds, Kennedy looped hers around Aeth too. She’d forgotten his weight and solidity, so different from a human’s. It was nice to be reminded. Nice to feel close, however transient the feeling—and however illusory.
When Aeth spoke, his voice was a whisper, the quietest she’d ever heard it. “I…just don’t want anything bad to happen to you.”
Illusion shattered. It had been good while it lasted.
9
“I…think…I’ve broken…my lungs. At least one. Probably both.” Kennedy heaved herself from the canal and flopped dripping on the bank, lying facedown despite the cold stone of the towpath and the chill of the winter morning. She gestured, her feeble movement dislodging a bunch of smelly weeds clinging to her wet sleeve. “Go on without me. I’ll wait here, catch you on the flip side.”
