Autumn Rose

by Abigail Gibbs

  Thankfully, I am about to embark upon my last year of compulsory education as far as humans are concerned, and all I have to do is endure ten more months of torture before I am free of the system and the required two years as a guardian. Yet, despite my hate of the place, you insist on my continuing to A-level at Kable. But I assure you: the Damned will set down their knives before that occurs.

  Moving on. I have blond hair. Auburn streaks. Natural, I might add. Liquid amber eyes. My legs are too short. My skin burns far too easily. (There, I will point out, are the simple sentences you complain my writing lacks.)

  And the worst thing? (I have inserted a rhetorical question. Am I ticking the grading-rubric boxes now?) The thing that means as a Sage, I can be singled out and targeted? The thing that means I am instantly identifiable as not belonging to the human race?

  My scars.

  All Sage bear them on their right side, and each Sage’s scars are different, like a fingerprint, serving as a reminder of what we are, what we possess and what we wield.

  There. That is my life.

  P.S. I refuse to type my work, so you, sir—and the examiner, if my work is called for moderation—will have to, as you put it, “decipher” the elegant, curling script I was tutored in from age six. Furthermore, I found this whole exercise to be offensive to my intelligence. In its entirety, the coursework could have been written in half a lesson; setting it as summer homework was unnecessary.

  I scanned through the sheet again, feeling my lips flatten. Drivel. It was drivel—albeit truthful drivel, but such a rant would earn me a detention, or at the very least a caution. Yet the lure of causing a stir remained, forcing me to slide it into a plastic envelope and place it into my schoolbag, ready for the first day of the new academic year.

  Returning to my mirror, I grabbed a brush and roughly pulled it through my thick hair, wincing as it tugged on the blond tangles. Deciding I could not be bothered with straightening it, I mumbled a few words and watched as it smoothed out. After running an eye pencil around my eyes, I grabbed my satchel and jumped the stairs in one, knowing I was verging on being late.

  “Mother! I’m flying to school, so you don’t need to drop me off at the ferry.”

  Hearing no answer, I rounded the corner into the kitchen, which turned out to be empty. I grabbed a freshly made piece of toast and stuffed it into my mouth.

  “Mother!” I attempted to yell, the sound muffled by my stolen breakfast.

  The call of “Living room!” came back and, hurrying into the hall, I pushed the door open to see her curled up on the divan with her laptop, busy typing away. I frowned at the figures and symbols spread across the screen.

  “I’m flying to school.”

  She sighed, placing her laptop aside and standing up to peck me on the cheek. Noticing my expression, she shut the lid on the laptop. “It’s a work assignment. Speaking of my job, you know you’ll be home alone for most of the week while your father and I are working in London, don’t you? So no wild parties. Understood?”

  I sighed in exasperation, a habit I had around my mother. “It would be fruitless to plan a party. Nobody would come.”

  “Hmm,” she hummed, casting a cynical eye over me. “Be good, either way. I’ll probably be gone before you get back, but there is plenty of food in the freezer and I’ve left some pizzas and some meat stuff in case you want any of the girls around, okay? You shouldn’t need to go shopping; we’ll be home on Thursday. Autumn, are you even listening?”

  Busy creating a spell to transport my satchel to school, I clearly wasn’t. “I’m positive I can survive for four days. It’s not as though you haven’t been away before.”

  My satchel disappeared into thin air and I retreated into the hallway, grabbing my scabbard off the rack, feeling the familiar weight of my sword balanced on my left hip as I fastened it on. I wouldn’t normally take it, or the knife that joined it, but this was the first day of the term: I might as well keep up appearances and make an impression on the new students. Tugging on my blouse and rolling my skirt up a couple of inches, I slipped my flimsy little dolly shoes on, teasing a strand of hair back into place.

  “Oh, Autumn, I don’t know why you do all of that,” my mother said, peering into the hallway after me. “You’re beautiful without all that makeup and when you let your hair curl you look just like your grandmother.” She placed her hands on my shoulders and rubbed them in circles. I shrugged them off.

  I’m a match in the darkness compared to her beacon of elegance and decorum. Strike me and I’d struggle to even fizzle; she would burn for hours.

  “It’s what all the other girls do, so don’t fuss.”

  She backed off. “You know you don’t have to wear makeup and short skirts to fit in, Autumn. Just be yourself and they’ll accept you.”

  I scoffed then, ignoring the mirror because I knew it would reflect the scars that encased the entire right side of my body. Twisting and turning beneath my tights, they were a bright red, tapering to burgundy along the tips. Like the blood grass in the garden, my grandmother always said. Imperata cylindrica. Learn your Latin. They faded to ochre and yellow on my arms, before lapsing into pale gold across my face.

  “Except being myself is being a Sage, and no one around here likes a Sage.”

  Rolling my skirt up even further just to emphasize my point, I placed a hand on the door.

  “Then at least take a coat, it’s supposed to rain today.” She unhooked one off the rack and held it out to me. I stared at it like it was an explosive object until she let her hand fall, allowing me to glare at her instead of the coat.

  “It’s not going to rain.”

  “You should take one anyway.”

  “It’s not going to rain,” I repeated, still glaring.

  “But the weatherman predicted—”

  “Mother, I take my magic from the elements; I’m sure I know whether it’s going to rain or not!” I snapped, a spark of fire flickering to life on the tip of my index finger. Quite used to my volatile emotions, my mother simply placed her hands on her hips and I knew I was in for a lecture on fire safety. Not wanting to stop and hear it, I opened the door and navigated my way between the overgrowing fuchsias alongside the path, neglected over the past weeks.

  “I do not want such an attitude in this house, Autumn Rose Summers! I’m tired of your lack of respect!”

  Closing the low, whitewashed garden gate behind me, I stepped out onto the oak- and maple-lined pavement, leaves already surrendering to my namesake. I paused as the latch dropped and clicked shut.

  “My name is Al-Summers, not Summers.”

  She disappeared behind the maple tree in our front garden, the slam of the door telling me she had heard me.

  Your mother is not like us, Autumn. She is human. Sagean blood does not run in her veins like it does in your blood, or your father’s blood.

  But Father cannot use magic, Grandmother.

  Carrying on along the sidewalk, I felt my spirits drop. The prospect of the first day back to school was not a happy one.

  Magic sometimes skips generations.

  Castigation was the name of the game at Kable, and it had left me despising every jibe-filled hour, flourished and garnished with stares, whispers, and an aura of fear that followed me like the wind chases the rain.

  But why, Grandmother?

  The curriculum was slow, too, but I had learned one thing: adaption was a means to survival.

  It has good reason, child.

  “Red sky in the morning, shepherd’s warning!” my batty neighbor Mr. Wovarly called over his fence, gesturing to the peach-tinted sky. “It’ll rain later. Be careful you don’t catch a chill, m’dear!”

  I forced a smile and nodded my head with unneeded exaggeration. “I will, Mr. Wovarly.”

  I dodged his tiny terrier, Fluffy, who was leaping at the gaps in the fence, barking his small head off. Letting the smile fade, I ran the last few steps of the street and leaped into the air, feeling the familiar
thrill of taking to the skies. Gaining height, wind whipping my hair back into a mess, I soared higher and higher, leaving the trees of my road far behind.

  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollins Publishers

  ..................................................................

  CHAPTER THREE

  Autumn

  Dropping into a crouch, I steadied myself as I made a less-than-graceful landing in the school parking lot. I straightened up, brushing myself down, gazing toward the entrance. I must have made good time; the school seemed to be quiet. Deciding I had better go examine the damage done to my hair, I set off in the direction of the girls’ restroom. Astounded stares followed me—from a few of the new students, judging by their height and white socks, still adorned with frills, hair pulled back into regulation buns. They gawked as I walked past, shuffling back as though I carried an infectious disease, but I knew better: if they weren’t local, this could be the first time they had seen a Sage, let alone seen one fly.

  Bless their oversize school jumpers.

  Yet as I skirted the edge of the school, I began to feel uneasy. Pent-up nerves I had stifled all summer began to surface, reminding me of just what I was returning to. I was also drawing more unwanted attention. Girls, almost always girls, were watching me with disdain as I passed by, their lips curled until they turned and muttered furiously to their friends, glancing at me when they thought I was not looking.

  Feeling self-conscious and a little sick, I wrapped my arms around my middle, knowing that the sword balanced on my hip and the barriers around my mind and the magic in my blood couldn’t protect me from the words that would come.

  Spotting the restroom, I dived into it, noticing that for once it did not smell like an ashtray. Neither did it smell of blood, although only a Sage would ever be able to detect that scent. Instead, it reeked of bleach, an aroma that was not much more pleasant.

  I gripped the sink tightly, staring into the mirror, endlessly analyzing my hair and makeup. If it wasn’t perfect, they would notice. They always noticed. They would not notice the pimples on Christy’s forehead, or the sunburn across Gwen’s collar, but they would notice my fallen eyelash, or the chipped nail polish on my right thumb, or the scent of the cheap perfume I was now using because I had spent the money I had saved up from work in London.

  I sighed. I had to get a grip, and fast. The new school year was beginning and it was my duty to protect all the humans in this school, even if the dislike was mutual.

  I needed to be vigilant: I had heard the whispered rumors while I was in London. We all had. The Extermino were getting larger and bolder, and their attack on my town had proved it . . . why else would they bother with a tiny rural outpost?

  And then what of the rumor about the dark beings of the second dimension: people were saying the vamperic kingdom had kidnapped a human girl. The second dimension was the only one where the existence of dark beings was kept secret from the humans . . . keeping a human hostage threatened to out us all, and then what? Even in the other eight dimensions, the dark beings lived uneasily. The Damned had lived through years of genocide by the humans just because they used blood magic and there were hardly any of them left; the elven fae suffered because of the climate change the humans were creating; and we, the Sage, were constantly having to negotiate other dark beings out of difficult situations because a diplomat had said something stupid.

  Yet at the moment, unrest gripped the dark beings in a way I had never known in my short life.

  I sighed once again, pressing my forehead to the mirror that on this rare occasion was not covered in lipstick graffiti. Things were changing; any dark being could feel that. We were losing ourselves, drowning in velveteen tradition and microchip technology, caught between one world and another—figuratively, of course, because each kind of being firmly belonged in their own dimension, whether the humans liked sharing or not.

  Change was brewing, and I feared this was just the calm before the storm. If things did get bad, no amount of treaties could protect us from our enemies . . . ourselves, the Extermino . . . the humans.

  Shaking my head, I realized what I was doing and pushed aside all depressing thoughts as my grandmother had taught me to do. Dwelling on what has and will come to pass is as good as kicking the stool from beneath the future, she always said.

  Assuming that the buses would not be far away, I made my way back out after sweeping one last coat of mascara over my lashes. I cursed myself as I left, wishing I had kept my phone with me rather than casting it to school within my bag—now locked in my homeroom. At least then I could have texted one of the others.

  Wandering around, parting the crowd, and doing my best to ignore the stares of the younger students, I did not notice when my feet came to rest at the foot of a dull bronze plaque. It stood beneath a large cherry blossom tree, planted in the center of the concrete-and-plastic-clad courtyard we called the quad. The words on it were clear for all to see and each and every letter reminded me of why there were no Sage in the area.

  THIS TREE IS PLANTED IN LOVING MEMORY OF KURT HOLDEN,

  WHO DIED ON APRIL 23, 1999.

  STUDENT, FRIEND, AND BROTHER.

  TAKEN TOO EARLY BY MAGIC.

  I knew the story. Everybody knew the story. He was killed by accident when the guardian at the time failed to use proper shields when using magic. The school ceased to host a guardian for years, until the rumors about the Extermino had started and they decided they needed one again. Six months later, fresh out of the Sagean St. Sapphire’s School and still grieving the loss of my grandmother, I arrived.

  But everybody remembered my predecessor’s failure . . . and they assumed I was the same.

  “You can’t change what happened, you know.”

  I sighed, a small smile just upturning the corners of my mouth. “It doesn’t hurt to wish I could.”

  I turned and came face-to-face with the one of the few people who had never uttered a bad word against me: Tammy. Nevertheless, she contradicted everything I said, thought my taste in everything from music to boys was strange, and hated my ability to read her thoughts. We were apples and oranges, but she didn’t judge and I appreciated that.

  I gave her a quick hug. She withdrew before my hands had even met behind her back, a very visible shiver passing up her spine.

  “So how was your summer?” I asked, rueful, knowing I would not have to ask that question if I had spared the time to meet up with her.

  “I have so much to tell you.” She didn’t wait for me to answer, but continued, her words merging into one excited gush. “I kissed someone.” She snatched the sleeve of my blouse, tugging me beneath the privacy of the tree, lowering her voice. “I didn’t just get my first kiss though.” She pointed to the top button of her blouse, resting on her totally flat chest and petite frame.

  I inhaled a sharp breath, sensing images from her consciousness of what she and this guy had been up to.

  “And look.” She swept aside her tight, dark brown curls from the back of her neck, revealing several blotchy red marks, coated in what looked like powder. “I tried covering them with foundation, but it hasn’t really worked, has it? It just felt so, you know, nice, when he kissed my neck, I didn’t want to stop him.”

  “Sure he wasn’t a vamp?” I asked, intending it to be a joke.

  She shot me one of her glares and a sarcastic smile, her shoulders hunching like they always did when she was getting defensive. “I think I’d know a vampire if I met one.”

  “Not necessarily,” I replied, but let the subject drop as I heard the high-pitched cackle of Gwen and the quieter chuckles of the other two, Tee and Christy, as they weaved their way between the benches toward us. Gwen’s dark hair shone against the late summer sun, a grin spread across her face from ear to ear as she made squeezing—and not very subtle—motions with her hands in the air, opening her mouth to speak as she got close.

  “So how is our deflowered girl today then
?”

  Tammy blushed bright red. “I didn’t actually do it with him! Honest!”

  “Sure.” Gwen nodded, proceeding to make crude gestures with her fingers that I hoped the younger students could not see.

  “I didn’t! Gwendolen, stop it!”

  Gwen stopped immediately and scowled as she always did when someone used her full name.

  The two of them descended into bickering, their circle closing. I gladly stepped back, focusing on filtering the chaotic thoughts of hundreds of teenage humans and allowing the barriers I had relaxed over the summer to rebuild, brick by brick, back around my mind. I did not even notice my eyes close as my thoughts cleared and I was able to break past the excited chatter of students and the coffee-fueled grim resolve of the teachers. I felt my consciousness skim the green pasture of the fields that surrounded the school and rush like a torrent down the rolling hills toward the river that separated me from home. In the town, perched on the mouth of the river, the cobbled streets were lined with tourists and a second ferry had been laid on to cope with the rush. On the railings that lined the embankment, the gulls waited like vultures, knowing an easy feast was on its way.

  The sound of my name forced me to release the image my conscious had formed, and like the tide rushing out to sea, I returned, opening my eyes.

  A hand much darker than my own tugged at my fingers, and round brown eyes stared up at me from behind a mass of tightly curled black hair, partly twisted into braids.

  “Tee,” I said, greeting the younger student beside me. The girl, barely twelve, wrapped her wiry arms around my middle, clutching me like I was a sister—sometimes I felt like I cared for her as though she were a sibling. I might be inadequate at preventing the bullies from taunting me, but I hadn’t been able to stand the racist remarks that were casually thrown at Tee by the older students. In return for my sticking up for her, Tee’s cousin, Tammy, had sought me out as a friend and steered me toward Christy and Gwen.