“It was weird. I could not remember school very well. I missed you guys, but I didn’t remember why.” She adjusted a pair of thick-rimmed glasses as she spoke. “And my parents didn’t notice really. They got a report card from the school that made it look like I did really well in normal subjects and didn’t ask much else. My brothers and sisters, they asked questions, but mostly they wanted to tell me about their year. The strangest part of the whole thing is that I didn’t notice either. The big holes in my memory did not bother me. My brain just filled them in with something believable.”
“What about your other friends?” asked Kuro. “The Blandlands ones. Didn’t they notice?”
Marie chewed on her lip a little before replying. “Not really, no. Have you found Charlie and Arthur yet?” She changed the subject sharply, making it clear that she was quite finished with discussing her Blandlands life.
“Not yet,” said Kuro. “But I think I saw the truck Charlie’s dad drives.”
It hadn’t been hard to find in the crowd. In a lot full of elk-drawn sledges, unicorn-drawn carriages, and magic carpets, a rusting red pickup truck stood out.
Charlie wasn’t much harder to find; her voice carried through the din of chatting students and rumbling luggage; wild gesticulations made her easy to spot among the crowd. She was speaking to a small collection of amused onlookers whom Kuro recognized.
As a stray and a farmer, Charlie’s father stood out in the crowd as much as his truck. He was broad and sturdy, built up from a lifetime of labor without the aid of magic, and wore as much dirt as he did denim.
Arthur’s mother was also there, a mirror opposite of the farmer beside her. She was half his size, and yet her presence dwarfed him. She dressed in a stiff, impeccably tailored grey wool, which looked more like armour than clothing and probably was. She was a Knight of the Sun, a true noble lady and warrior sworn to defend the kingdom of Tirnanog. Even while smiling and laughing along with Charlie’s stories, she maintained an imposing posture: a challenge and a warning to anyone who might approach. Kuro noted her left hand habitually moving to rest on the hilt of a sword, but since she had not come armed to drop off her children for school, the hand just fell to her hip.
Beside her was Arthur’s sister. She was tiny, barely taller than Kuro. Yet she seemed entirely unaware of the fact and stood as though she were towering over everyone around her. She was like an unpolished miniature copy of her mother. She had the same auburn hair and light eyes, wore a similar grey coat over her new school uniform, and struck the same pose, while carrying none of the grandeur. She was like a kitten beside a tiger.
Absent from the gathering was Arthur’s father. Kuro was grateful, as he had no interest in meeting Dubois again so soon.
Also, there was a second Charlie.
Two girls with entirely the same features stood side by side. Both had the same haystack of untamed hair, the same bright eyes, and the same deep tan from a life spent outdoors. They even had matching pimples. They wore the same school uniform clothes of dark grey slacks and sweater vest over a white button down. Despite looking identical, however, they could not be mistaken for one another. One was talking loudly while grinning like an unzipped backpack. Her hands were telling the story as much as her mouth, and her arms seemed to have to rush to keep up with the rapid motions.
The other Charlie was standing quite still and attending to the pavement just in front of her toes.
As Kuro and Marie approached, the Charlies caught sight of them, and both turned to greet them. “Hi, Charlie,” Kuro said to the storyteller. “Hi, Arthur,” he added to the quieter girl.
“How could you tell which one was which?” demanded the more vocal of the pair, apparently expecting the duplicate standing next to her to confuse her friends.
Kuro stuttered to respond, but Marie stepped in to rescue him. “We are your roommates, aren’t we? Would you not be more bothered if we could not tell the difference?”
“But we look identical!” Charlie insisted, pointing between her and Arthur, though it was rapidly becoming less true. His features were drifting. His jaw squared; his hair faded from Charlie’s wheatfield yellow to a milder mousy blonde and fell into a neat part; his eyes drifted to a paler blue; and his lean lanky limbs softened and plumped slightly. Arthur didn’t look all that different from Charlie in his normal state. He was a milder, less vibrant version of her.
It wasn’t what Arthur really looked like, though. As a changeling, he didn’t really look like anything. His familiar appearance was more a matter of habit than anything. “I told you they’d be able to guess,” he said flatly.
His contribution to the conversation fell on deaf ears as Charlie had already forgotten her upset at being so easily identified. “Why didn’t you answer my letters?” she abruptly demanded of Kuro.
Kuro, who had prepared himself for a lengthy and clever interrogation of his friends and their writing habits, hadn’t considered that he might be the one being questioned. “I didn’t get any letters. Did you get mine?”
“You didn’t send any letters to me,” she replied as though it were an undeniable fact.
“I did, though,” Kuro found himself pleading. “I sent lots to both you and Arthur.”
Arthur added his small contribution. “I didn’t get any letters. Did you have the address wrong?”
“Maybe,” said Kuro, starting to be less certain of himself. He had copied their addresses from notes that Arthur and Charlie had written themselves. He couldn’t imagine that they were both wrong or that he’d made a mistake every time he copied them.
None of it made any sense, but Charlie refused to give him time to investigate any further. She was distracted by a much more urgent and pressing matter. “Hey, Marie, you got glasses!”
Marie removed the pair of blocky, thick-rimmed lenses and sneered at them in disgust. “Yeah,” she said. “I hate them.” Her loathing was washed away by an epiphany as her brain detangled some of the memories that had just been returned. “Is there someone at the school that can fix my eyes with magic? Can the school nurse do that?”
There was an uncomfortable silence as nobody was immediately ready to crush her hopes. The silence drained her optimism and was quickly replacing it with anger.
Kuro swallowed his fear first. It wasn’t an act of bravery. He was just better practiced at cowardice than the others, and he could sense a fast-burning fuse and didn’t want Marie to get upset. “Magic can’t do that,” he said as apologetically as he could. “Half the teachers wear glasses.”
A wave of disappointment threatened to crush Marie, but Arthur’s mother steadied her with a comforting hand on her shoulder. “Doing magic like that on a person is much more likely to pop out their eyes than to fix anything. I’m very sorry, dear.” She spoke gently, with kindness, and her noble bearing and polished Tirnanogian accent made it feel as though she were apologizing on behalf of all wizardkind.
“I think they make you look smart,” encouraged Charlie.
Marie returned them to her face so she could glare at Charlie through them. “I don’t need to look smart,” she snarled. “What is magic even good for?”
Arthur’s mother tried to comfort Marie. “Well, we could use magic to change their shape or colour to something you prefer.” She said it with a smile and a tilt of her head, making it sound like an opportunity and an adventure.
Marie removed her glasses again so she could face the offending object. She wrestled with the suggestion for a few moments, and then, seeming to have made some tenuous peace with her glasses, she started to change their colour. They fluttered through a few shades of red and blue before settling on a dark purple. She returned them to her face.
“Well, now, how did you do that?” Arthur’s mother brought her hands to her mouth in astonished delight.
“It is nothing special,” said Marie. “It is just the thing that I learned to do on my own. It’s not like Arthur and his shape changing or Char
lie and her moving things with her mind.”
“I rather disagree. If I could do that, I could reduce my wardrobe by two-thirds, and none would be the wiser.” Arthur’s mother tapped her lower lip in thought for a moment before adding, “I do wonder if I could kidnap you for a day or two. My office is painfully drab, and I could use your remarkable talents.”
Her gentleness and good humour seemed at first at odds with her knightly role and imposing presence. As she spoke, though, Kuro realized that it was quite the opposite. She was so confident in her power that she had the luxury of kindness.
Her encouragement seemed to ease Marie’s frustrations. A hint of a smile even crept into her face, though she fought it ferociously.
The brief stillness in conversations was interrupted by an exclamation from Arthur. “Ow,” he said, though it was more of a statement than a cry of pain. “Oh, right, sorry,” he continued in the same inexpressive voice. “This is my sister.”
He gestured to a young girl standing beside him who had just punched him as a means of eliciting the introduction.
She thrust out a hand in greeting. “Lady Moira O’Muirias, daughter of Dame Aine O’Muirias, defender of the Sun Throne. So pleased to make your acquaintance. Arthur has told us so much about you. I must rely on your generous kindness as my seniors as I begin my first year at Avalon.” It sounded rehearsed.
She repeated the greeting with Marie, but in perfect French.
The ferry whistle blew, signalling imminent departure. Arthur’s mother quietly said her small farewells to her two children with the propriety and reserve expected of a Tirnanogian Lady.
Charlie and her father, feeling no such obligations for maintaining appearances, exchanged a vocal and tearful parting as they embraced and promised to write and worried over the animals at the farm who would miss Charlie’s presence. They were so overcome with emotion that Marie and Kuro had to separate them to keep Charlie from missing the boat.
The four friends climbed to the top deck of the ferry to their favourite seats, with Moira following close behind. It was where Kuro had first met Marie and Charlie, and despite the cold and damp passage across the bay, they returned to the benches out of an odd sense of loyalty, and a confidence that nobody else would want those seats.
They were disappointed to find that the seats were not empty. The benches of the upper deck were occupied by a group of wary and distrustful individuals much like the year prior. There was a brown-haired girl with a braid so long and thick she probably had to strain her neck to keep her head upright, a tall dark-skinned boy struggling to hide tears, and a black-haired girl with her nose buried in a book.
Kuro turned to leave, or rather to retreat, but Marie and Charlie pressed on.
“You must be new fireflies!” Charlie exclaimed and bounded up to the girl with the braid. “I bet you have questions.”
Marie approached the boy on the opposite bench more delicately and said, “I’m from Montreal. How about you? Will you be staying in Autumn Lodge with us?”
The two children seemed grateful to have guides offering comfort and advice. The third, the one with the book, ignored the goings on and just pulled the book closer to her face. Her behaviour didn’t surprise Kuro in the least. In a way he should have expected to find Azalea out here. It was quiet and isolated. If Bella was with friends, then Azalea was with books. That was the way of things.
“Should we go talk to that other girl?” asked Arthur, feeling the obligation to follow his friends’ lead but lacking the skill or conviction to do so.
“No,” answered Kuro. “I know her. She’s not a Blandlander or a Lodger. She’s a first-year Summerhiller.”
“She’s like me then!” exclaimed Arthur’s sister.
She pushed past Arthur and Kuro as if they were a pair of swinging doors and marched up to Azalea. She gave a polite curtsy then put out her hand to the reading girl. “Lady Moira O’Muirias, daughter of Dame Aine O’Muirias, at your service. I’m certain we’ll be great friends.”
As Azalea let down her book and returned the greeting, Kuro had the feeling he had just witnessed the beginning of something terrible.
Six
Lodging
The Princess crashed through the veil around Avalon to gasps of relief and wonder from the first-year students on the deck.
Kuro considered how quickly he and his friends had grown accustomed to the ferry’s habit of driving at full speed towards shorelines. They all sat with absolute confidence that the boat would pass safely through the thin spot in the veil and not wreck itself on the barren rocky shore of the Blandlands side of the island.
What they had not gotten used to, though, was the assault on the senses that accompanied the return to the fey realm. After hours in the dull, muted world of the Blandlands, the return to vibrant colours, crisp sounds, and distinct aromas was overwhelming. The fact that they were pulling into the Spring Quarter of Avalon made it even more so.
The rainbow of flowers in bloom dazzled the eye, and each scent took up individual residence in the nose. Every leaf sang out its precise location as it rustled in the gentle breeze. It was so staggeringly beautiful that Kuro was glad he was sitting down. Even Azalea expressed a measure of delight and inhaled as though it were the first real breath of air she’d had in hours.
Charlie jumped from her seat and started dragging the new students around the deck to show them features of the island. She explained the fortress-like high school perched atop the massive pillar of stone that rose from the centre of the island. She pointed out the gently falling snow just visible to the north, in the Winter Quarter. She talked about the school crest, which was worked into the pavement by the pier in interlocking coloured bricks, representing the four kingdoms: an intricate interwoven pattern for Tirnanog, a fleur-de-lis for Acadia, a raven for Alfheim, and a maple leaf for the Autumn kingdom, which wasn’t really a kingdom at all, but it sort of was, and so they needed something. Then she explained how the collections of elk-drawn sledges, horse-drawn carriages, and fancy cars lined up on top of the crest were there to bring all the students to their residences. All the students except, of course, the Autumn Lodgers, who had to walk.
Charlie did a fine job of making it sound like they were the lucky ones because by walking across the whole island, they got to experience more of it than they would through the windows of a car.
Kuro was eager to disembark when the ferry finally settled at the Avalon docks. He had spent his summer trapped within the concrete confines of the orphanage. Now on the school island, he finally had a chance to properly stretch his legs. The others on the deck of the ship were slow to move and responded negatively to Kuro’s eagerness and urging to hurry.
Charlie—who would normally have joined him for a dash across the island—said she needed to stretch out her limbs after several hours in the Blandlands. She had wrapped herself in blankets and propped herself against some railings to keep upright but hadn’t moved an inch for the whole Blandlands portion of the trip across the saltwater bay. She had been paralyzed by a childhood injury, and without the magic of the fairy realm to help her, she’d been stuck in the same position for hours.
Arthur also excused himself from the run, claiming that he would only slow Kuro down and that he should help his sister get to her own residence. Marie explained that the two fireflies still needed a guide, and it would be rude to leave them behind.
At their urging, Kuro abandoned his friends. He avoided the jam of students clogging the ramp by leaping from the deck of the ship onto the pier. He landed softly on all fours, cushioned by a pillow of air, and started to run. He sprinted through the hustle and bustle of the parking lot, past the waiting footmen and chauffeurs of the other houses, past old Pete on the baggage cart waiting for the Lodgers’ luggage, and into the woods of the Spring Quarter. He let the wind build to push him even faster through the woods.
His elation was quickly interrupted by an attack from above. A falcon do
ve out of the sky, screaming. It swooped low over him and stopped just short of gouging out his eyes. Kuro threw his hand up in defence and tripped to a standstill as the bird flapped and screeched at him angrily, barring his path.
As he tried to fend off the falcon, he heard footfalls pounding up the road behind him, accompanied by a desperate cry. “Hey! Hold up!”
An older boy staggered to a stop just behind Kuro and struggled to catch his breath. The falcon settled in a nearby tree but looked ready to strike again if Kuro made a move. Kuro surmised that it was the winded boy’s familiar.
Kuro recognized the boy, a Lodger a couple of years older than Kuro. He was unremarkable: neither tall nor short, dull brown hair, well fed, and unaccustomed to running, as most wizards were.
After several attempts, the boy managed to get enough air in his lungs to choke out, “I’m Willis Nguyen. I’m in charge of walking you first-year students to the lodge.”
Kuro rolled his eyes as loudly as he could and waited for the new minder of the first years to recognize him.
“If you’ll just come back to the cart with me, we’ll all go together,” Willis continued. “Don’t want anyone getting lost.” He gestured toward the baggage wagon, still in sight, with nearly a dozen children gathered around it.
“I’m not a first year, Willis.”
Willis cocked his head in surprise and examined Kuro more closely. “Oh! You’re Kuro, aren’t you?” he said. “Sorry, didn’t recognize you with the different hair. Also, well, you’re kind of small, you know. My mistake.”
Kuro looked back at the new students around the cart. They were, just like the year previous, either gaping at the wonders of the island or pretending to be too cool to gape at the wonders of the island. Also, just like the year previous, they were all bigger than Kuro. Noticeably so. Their heads all cleared the top of the wagon wheels.
It hadn’t bothered Kuro being the smallest at the school when he was a first year, but still being the smallest annoyed him. “I’ll be going then,” he said curtly.
Volume 2: Burglary Page 5