Rakarthen Academy

by Clara Hartley

  The little girl’s gentle words made my heart quiver. She was always the sweetest amongst the tens of children who lived here. “It hasn’t been that long,” I said. “Only a month or so.”

  “Where have you been?” she asked, pulling her face from my neck so she could look at me. Come to think of it, her eyes were strikingly green. Just like Nemreth’s.

  “In a faraway place,” I replied.

  “Can I come?’

  “It’s different. Scary.”

  “I like scary. How so?”

  “The people there are mean.”

  She puffed out her cheeks. “Oh, mean people are scary. Have you been getting bullied, Lyra?”

  “Hm?” I didn’t want to admit to that. Especially since my bullies were standing right behind me.

  She tugged my ear. “I’ll beat them up for you. Just tell me who.”

  “That’d be really nice of you.”

  “Give me the names of those big, bad bullies.”

  “I can take care of myself,” I said, chuckling, thinking about cute little Embera smacking the sense out of Cendri and Nemreth. That’d be a sight to see. “How was your day?”

  Like most kids, the girl had trouble keeping her attention on one line of conversation. “Gyne got us coloring books!” Her face lit up.

  “Did she, now?”

  “They’re not as fun as your stories. I missed those.”

  “You want to hear another one?”

  She nodded. “Tell me—”

  Someone snatched Embera from me. A breath hitched in my throat as I lost my grip on her. I spun around, seeing Nemreth with a heated expression. His eyes were wide as he held Embera, shock written all over his face. “Vy… Vyni.” He kneeled to the ground, tears pouring from his eyes. They were tears of joy. “Vyni!” He shouted, as if the emotions were too strong for him to contain.

  The little girl quivered. “Brother?”

  Nineteen

  Madame Gynelire handed out stew in chipped bowls. The orphans gathered in front of the kitchen door, awaiting their turn as she called out their names. Embera—or should I called her Vyni—was given her food first. Cendri, Nemreth, and I watched her. We sat at a round table. It was one of the few tables the orphanage had, and it was pressed close to a corner. I spotted some cobwebs at the edges of the ceiling. Madame Gynelire mustn’t have had time to clean the place properly.

  Vyni slurped on her stew, getting bits of it on her mouth. She’d gone all quiet once she saw Nemreth. I was at a loss for words, too. Embera was a fae? What did that mean for the other children, then? Were all the orphans here fae, too?

  “I sensed something odd about this place,” Cendri said. “It felt distinctly unlike dragon-kind.”

  “I’m trying to wrap my head around this,” Nemreth added, his eyes trained on his sister. He looked like he was lost in a dream. “You’re alive. We searched everywhere for you. In Constanria, Beyestirya. We used our tracking magic, but nothing worked. We thought you’d died.”

  Vyni gestured to the ceiling. “Look.”

  We peered upward. Dangling from the ceiling were little stones. They had runic carvings on them that looked like the fae language. I’d seen those stones before, and whenever I asked Gynelire about their purpose, she’d always tell me not to worry about it. She had a casual way of brushing aside my concerns, and with me being distracted so easily, I thought little of those stones.

  “What are those?” I asked, squinting.

  “Gynelire tells us that they’re supposed to keep us safe,” Vyni explained. “That they’re supposed to keep the people looking for us away.”

  “They’re obsidian,” Nemreth said. “It’s supposed to block out magic of all forms. That’s why the tracking spells didn’t work.”

  I glanced around. Gynelire had told me once that the youngest child she had was three, the oldest fifteen. She’d been running this place for a good twenty years now. She’d started right before I was born. “What happened to your ears, Vyni?” I asked. “They’re not like—”

  “My brother’s?” she asked, cupping her hands over her ears. “Oh yes, they’re not. Gynelire makes all the newcomers chop off the tips.”

  My eyes widened. “She does?”

  “Yep.” Vyni wrinkled her nose, looking disappointed. “I miss my pointy ears sometimes, but Gynelire told us we have to do this. We’ll stand out too much otherwise. It was so scary. There’s a lot of blood, and it looked so painful. I cried.” She chuckled and covered her mouth, looking like she was guilty for crying. “Jone and Riri keep making fun of me for having cried. The rest of them were strong and didn’t make a sound.”

  “Did it hurt?” I asked.

  Vyni shook her head. “Not at all. Gynelire applied something before using her knife, and we heal quite quickly so when the numbing stopped, we were all good.”

  I inspected the children again, taking another look at their ears. They looked exactly like normal, dragon-kind ears. “All of you do this?”

  “Mhm.”

  “So you’re all fae?”

  “Yep.”

  “And your names? Why are you called Embera when you’re Vyni?”

  “Gynelire lets us pick our own names when we come here. She says its to signify our new start in a new place. Embera sounds pretty, doesn’t it?”

  “You’re not dragon-kind,” I said, having to re-affirm the notion. I just couldn’t believe it. I’d been hanging out with these kids for the longest time, thinking they were the same race as me. Did it matter? I’d had a lot of fun with them. I shouldn’t care whether they were dragon-kind or dragon fae.

  “We’re all from Thesnan,” Vyni said. “They took me away from Ma and Da. They didn’t want me.” As she said that, she shifted her glance to the table. She set down her spoon and the sides of her mouth sagged down. I had a sudden longing to give her a hug.

  “I didn’t know they were going to give you away,” Nemreth said, guilt sending a quiver through his voice. “I’m sorry. We looked everywhere for you and—”

  She brightened. “That’s all right. I’m very happy here.”

  Nemreth looked taken aback. “You are?”

  “Gynelire treats us well, and Lyra always comes over here and tells us stories all the time. She brings treats, too. The other children here don’t have magic. Same as me. They don’t look at me weird when I can’t cast a spell. It’s nice.”

  “You don’t have to be here,” Cendri said, completely missing how Vyni had just talked about being happy here. “We can take you home.”

  Lyra stiffened. “Home?”

  Nemreth nodded. “Yeah. To Thesnan. We have our own cottage there, filled with children with no magic, just like you. You don’t have to be with the dragon-kind anymore.”

  Vyni shrank back. “This is my home.”

  Cendri got up from his seat and kneeled in front of the little girl. He grabbed her tiny hand and held it with his. It was the first time I’d ever seen Cendri look at anything this tenderly. He appeared a completely different person. “We can take care of you there. You don’t have to stay in this old building with that woman—”

  “I love Gynelire,” Vyni said. “She’s not just any woman.”

  “Yes, but—”

  “I don’t want to go back to Thesnan. I hate that place.”

  “Why?” Nemreth asked, hurt showing on his face. “We were happy, Vyni. Amongst our own kind.”

  “They definitely didn’t treat me like one of them,” Vyni said, pulling her hand away from Cendri. She looked at me. “You’re right, Lyra. Thesnan is filled with mean people. They used to call me names and pull my hair. I didn’t feel like I belonged. I have friends here, and it’s fun every day. I want to stay.”

  Nemreth stood from his chair. “The dragon-kind—”

  “Are very good people.”

  I couldn’t help but smile at that.

  Vyni continued, “They always give us things when we need it, and we play hide and seek with our neighbors. Not
once have they called me ugly or useless. They used to do that all the time back home.”

  Cendri and Nemreth froze. It seemed like Vyni had completely knocked the words right out of them. A spark of victory zipped through me. I’d left them speechless.

  Nemreth fisted his hands. “Vyni, you don’t understand—”

  “You’re the ones who don’t.”

  In the midst of our conversation, Madame Gynelire strode up to us, wearing her charcoal-stained apron. Her shawl had little marks of soot, too. “I’m sorry for making you wait. The children were hungry and I needed feed them. Can we talk? In quiet, please?” she asked Cendri and Nemreth. “I’m not sure if I want the children to overhear our conversation.” I spotted a clump of obsidian in Gynelire’s hands. She didn’t trust Cendri or Nemreth. Rightfully so. They were capable of horrible things.

  Cendri pushed himself to a standing position. With a clenched jaw, he turned his head toward the madame. Vyni’s plea to stay had obviously left him in a bad mood. “Sure,” he said. “We’re your guests here. We should show some courtesy.”

  Gynelire dipped her head. “Thank you. Please, follow me. Will you be all right on your own, Embera?”

  “I’ll just be here,” the little girl said, swinging her legs. “Your stew’s really yummy today.”

  “That’s wonderful to hear,” Gynelire said, wearing a smile that dropped right after. “Come with me, gentlemen.” She waved us forward, her footsteps dragging as she headed out the back door.

  The sun had set sooner than I’d expected, dipping beneath the horizon and leaving space for the moon. A bat-winged form flew under it. A drerkyn, probably.

  The four of us stood behind the shanty, facing each other.

  When the moonlight appeared, it lit up the madame’s wrinkled form. She was a drerkyn, dragon-kind who had wings, but could not turn into a full dragon. Madame Gynelire was reaching ninetieth year, if I remembered correctly. She’d told me that she was the last remaining member of her family. Her daughters had died long ago in a tragic accident, and so, when she found these children, she’d taken it upon herself to create a sanctuary for them.

  She turned to me. “Why did you bring these two, Lyra? You’ve put all of these children in danger.”

  Had I? I didn’t think the consequences of my actions would be so heavy. Then again, the two men had shown that they were horrible beings, capable of the worst. “I… I’m sorry, I—”

  Gynelire turned her attention to the two men. “You aren’t here to take them from me, are you?”

  “These children do not belong to you,” Nemreth said. I saw the color drain from Gynelire’s face. “They’re fae. They should be in Thesnan.”

  “No, they shouldn’t. These children might be young, but they have keen minds. They know of how they’ve been cast out. They’re not welcome where they came from, and so I’ve built a new home for them.”

  Nemreth shook his head. “We have, too. We have a cottage back in the fae lands. We steal the Useless away from their parents before they are found by the elders, and they’re allowed to live in peace, away from the eyes of the other fae, but still close to their homes.”

  Gynelire blinked. “The Useless.”

  “That is what we call the children.”

  Rage flashed over her face. “They are not useless. They’re eager to learn, many with varying skills. Cooking, singing, dancing. They’re little bundles of potential that have a world of growth ahead of them. Some of them might even grow to become leaders. Rulers in Constanria.”

  I wrinkled my brow, considering the possibility of that happening. Those children were fae—strangers to my homeland. How were they to rule?

  Nemreth sighed. “The Useless is just a name.”

  “Names have power, fae. If you are called ‘useless’ every day, will that not erode your psyche?”

  “We don’t call them that back where we house them. They can come—”

  Gynelire’s eyes flashed yellow. “They are not returning to the fae lands. Not after how I’ve raised them, nurtured them, built this home for them. You won’t rip them from me.” She turned to me, accusation burning in her eyes. “Why did you bring them here?”

  “I wanted to show them that dragon-kind could be good. Like you.” I had not known that I would be putting the children in danger or that I’d hurt Gynelire’s efforts to care for them. I’d felt victorious when Vyni rejected Nemreth’s invitation to the fae lands. Looking at Gynelire’s fury caused that sense of victory to fade.

  “The children will be happier in Thesnan,” Cendri said, sounding almost too sure of himself. “They don’t need this place.”

  “Oh?” Gynelire put her hands on her hips. “Do you really think so? Because I call that horseshit.”

  “Why won’t they be happier there?”

  “Because they belong here. This is their home.”

  “But they’re fae.”

  “Not anymore. Over here, without their pointed ears, we consider them Darmars, dragon-kind who bear few dragon properties. They can blend in with the people here, be accepted as one of them. You fae smell magic too well. And their lack of magic brands them as outcasts. They’ve told me stories of how they were shunned and turned into social pariahs. Money is tight over here, yes, but the children have far more opportunities.”

  “This is nonsense,” Cendri said.

  “Then I dare you,” Gynelire said. “Ask any of those children whether they want to return with you. If they say yes, then it is not my place to stop them.”

  “We will,” Nemreth said. There was little resolve in his words. “You won’t go back on your word, right?”

  “Aereala curse me to the worst possible death if I do.”

  “Okay.”

  I watched Nemreth and Cendri stride back into the decrepit building. There was some hesitance in the way they moved. Nemreth’s own sister, Vyni, had refused to go back with him, after all, and that probably gave him second thoughts.

  I raised a brow at Gynelire. “You’re confident.” I’d seen for myself how much effort she put in to caring for these children. She made sure that each of them had a proper education, too, buying as many books as she could and teaching them herself if no tutors were willing to volunteer.

  “This place. The smiles I see on those children. They’re my pride and joy. I give them everything they need to grow properly. They won’t want to return to somewhere they’ve been rejected from.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  Gynelire turned to me, sighing. “You didn’t know about them being fae.”

  “I’m just… I think it’s amazing what you’ve done for those kids. How did you find them, anyway?”

  “It was twenty years ago when the first one came. I was just attending my daughters’ funeral, and I heard a noise from a nearby alleyway. I went there and saw one of those fae men—just like the two you brought here today—tossing a kid onto the streets. I’d just lost my two dear girls. I thought it was a sign. The first fae’s name was Mageria. She told me there were others like her, and that they probably felt as lost as her. I took it upon myself to take care of these children, and so I sought them out. It gave my life purpose and meaning again. Made me feel like a mother.” Gynelire folded her arms across her chest. “It was the fae men who left them here. I kept thinking that one day, they might return and steal these children away from me. They’re my family.”

  “Cendri and Nemreth just want their sister back.”

  “Vyni?”

  “They were mourning her before we came here. I… I didn’t know.”

  “Vyni’s a sweetheart.”

  We stood there together in the silence. Eventually, we returned, entering the orphanage. Nemreth and Cendri were crouched next to Vyni. The little girl was shaking her head vehemently.

  Nemreth turned his attention to me when I stopped beside him. The two fae scowled.

  “No luck?” Gynelire asked.

  Cendri drew Vyni into a hug. He squeezed her tightly befo
re pulling back to place a kiss on her forehead. “Reconsider it,” he said, looking into the little girl’s eyes.

  “Thesnan isn’t where I belong, Cen-Cen,” Vyni said.

  “You are fae—”

  “Not anymore. I choose to be dragon-kind.”

  Cendri brushed his hand down the top of Vyni’s head. He was trying to hide his frustration from the child, but I could feel it simmering off him. “We’ll come visit you often.”

  “I miss sugared mushrooms,” Vyni said. “Bring some.”

  Cendri smiled. “Of course. Anything for you.”

  The two men finished saying their goodbyes to her. “Nobody?” Nemreth asked, turning to the children once more. His question was met with nothing but silence. The children spared them brief glances before returning to whatever they were doing, whether it was stacking blocks or finishing dinner. Considering how much attention Nemreth got in Rakarthen, being ignored must have been humiliating for him.

  Cendri turned to Gynelire as she showed us the door. “Are you happy now?”

  Gynelire had one hand on my back. She couldn’t wait for us to leave. “Immensely. My faith in my own child-rearing abilities has been restored. Please don’t come back.”

  “We have to,” Cendri said. “We need to visit Vyni. Now that we know she’s here, we’ll have to check up on her.”

  “With my guidance, Vyni will grow to be a strong, independent lady. She won’t need you.”

  “Doesn’t mean I don’t love my sister,” Nemreth added. “I’ll still want to see her every so often.”

  “Make your visits brief, then.”

  Cendri, Nemreth, and I stepped out of the front door. Gynelire said to me, “You, however, are welcome with your stories anytime. Please don’t bring any more strange men. These two have given me quite the scare.”

  “Thanks for having us,” I replied.

  “Mhm.”

  She gave me a brief hug, then returned inside, eager to slam the door in our face. Another tile fell from the roof, cracking right next to my ankle. I really needed Father to get the new place ready soon.