That did seem like something Marie would do. She was kind of stubborn and probably wouldn’t want to ask for help after she’d turned it down, but it had been weeks since they’d first offered.
He left the lodge and went to wander the swamps of the Spring Quarter. He found a wide selection of amphibians, but he didn’t know how to distinguish a bilious tree frog from a venomous branch toad, so he left them be. He also found a wide variety of blackflies, horseflies, and mosquitoes, all eager to make his acquaintance. He did not, however, find Marie. It wasn’t surprising. There was a lot of swamp and only one of her. Wandering aimlessly in the deepening mud and darkness wasn’t a sensible plan, but even with the swarms of stinging and biting bugs, it was more comfortable than staying in his room with Arthur.
After two hours of sulking in the mud about his crumbling relations and failures as a friend, he returned to the lodge, where he was assaulted by Charlie, who wielded her overwhelming cheer and enthusiasm with brutal efficiency. “Great news, Kuro!” she squealed as he crossed the threshold into the lounge. “You’re coming to my place for Solstice!”
The news hit Kuro like a brick of congealed glee. “I am?”
“Yeah! It’s gonna be great! My dad already said it was okay, but me and Arthur were fighting over whose house you were going to because his dad said it was okay too, and we didn’t think we should make you choose ’cause that would be rude, but we totally know that my place is gonna be more fun. Even if Bytown is cooler than a farm, it doesn’t have any wyverns at all, and sure Moira is cute and would be fun to hang out with, but she did try to kill you that one time, so you probably don’t care and also we have new litter of criosphynxes, and they’re gonna be so adorable right now. Anyway, Arthur finally admitted that it would be better at my place, so you’re coming home with me for break!”
Charlie took no notice of the brutal emotional whiplash she’d just inflicted. She interpreted Kuro’s stunned silence as an invitation to continue talking, which she accepted with enthusiasm.
Kuro didn’t hear much of what she said next, however, as he was still processing the long queue of thoughts and feelings. Had Arthur and Charlie really fought over who would get to take Kuro for Solstice? His first thought was that they were fighting over who would have to take him, who would be burdened with feeding and housing him. That didn’t make any sense, though, as neither had to take him. He could just stay on Avalon as he had the year before. The only possible conclusion was that they actually wanted him to go home with them and wanted it badly enough to argue about it.
Also, their fathers had agreed to it. Why? It was a strange idea that someone would voluntarily have Kuro inside their house, particularly Arthur’s and Charlie’s fathers. One had arrested him, imprisoned him, and forced him into Avalon Academy. The other’s wife had been kidnapped to raise Kuro and then murdered after she escaped. He couldn’t think why either would let him spend a week living with them. He imagined that he’d be chained to something or locked in a dark basement for safety.
He thought it might be better to stay on Avalon, but Charlie was clearly excited about it, and he wasn’t ready to damage a second friendship that night by refusing her.
As Charlie continued her lengthy explanation of all the exciting creatures he’d get to meet, the food they would eat, and the books she would force him to read, their missing comrade finally wandered into the lodge.
Kuro had clearly been looking for Marie in the wrong places, as she was not covered in mud and mosquito bites. “What is going on?” she asked in a way that made Charlie stop talking. It was a remarkable ability that Marie had developed, which Kuro had yet to master, to distract Charlie just as she was taking a breath, derailing her endless flow of words, or at least getting it to switch tracks.
“Oh, Kuro’s coming to my place for Solstice!” Charlie said. “Isn’t that great?”
Marie looked at Kuro with a weary sadness Kuro didn’t like. He was used to Marie having a fire in her eyes, but that had been replaced by something dark and soggy. “Yeah, that is fantastic,” she said without enthusiasm.
Arthur was right about Marie acting strangely, but her behaviour made Kuro worry more for her than about her. “Did you find enough bile for Monday?” he asked, hoping he could offer help if she needed it.
“Yeah,” she said and held up a glass jar filled with a liquid that was best not to describe if it could be avoided.
“Awesome!” shouted Charlie with enough vigour for all three of them, and then forced a high-five on her roommate. Henrietta whinnied a congratulations. “I knew you could do it!”
“Thanks,” said Marie with a weak smile. “I’m gonna go to bed.” Then she wandered to her dorm without another word.
“Do you think she’s okay?” asked Kuro.
“Oh yeah, Marie’s super tough,” said Charlie. “The frog puke was just getting her down. She’ll be back to normal in no time.”
Charlie might have been right if it weren’t for Professeur De Rigueur’s skill at ruining things. He started class the next day with “Congratulations on everyone finding their assigned ingredients, even if some were a little later than they should be.” He sent a wink in Marie’s direction, to which she refused to react. “Today we will finally create and use the elixir to turn lead into gold. I like to schedule this for the last week of class before the holidays so that you have something to show your families at Solstice.”
“How are we supposed to get the gold off of Avalon?” demanded Gregory.
“Ah, very astute.” De Rigueur pointed a bony finger in Gregory’s direction. “Even if young monsieur Zimmerman did not raise his hand. You are quite right that gold cannot cross the veil; however, you can send it by lutin post; and there is plenty of time for it to arrive before you get home.”
Through a general clamour of delight from the class came a few grumblings. Kuro noticed that the few fireflies in the room were all in various states of sulking, Marie most of all. Of course, the lutin couldn’t deliver to the Blandlands, and after months of searching, she wouldn’t even be able to bring her gold home.
The professeur expressed his disappointment in Marie’s final product as well. Where the rest of the class had turned their egg-sized lump of lead into a piece of gleaming gold, hers was still half grey and misshapen.
Kuro hoped that he would be able to find some way to cheer her up over dinner, but that proved challenging. Charlie’s previous certainty that Marie would go right back to normal after the project was over was disputed by an empty chair. She hadn’t come back to the lodge after school. Nobody had even seen her since the end of alchemy class.
The three agreed that they should go look for her. She was obviously upset that after months of work, she wouldn’t even get to keep her gold. Yet, Arthur gave Kuro a look as if to say, “Suspicious, isn’t it?”
Kuro fought against the slightest possibility that Arthur might be right. Nothing about this was suspicious. Marie was upset. That was normal. She was annoyed that as a Blandlander, she didn’t get some of the stuff that fey realm natives did. It was perfectly understandable. And no matter how high Arthur’s eyebrows raised, Kuro refused to think that any of those feelings would lead her to rob a bunch of rich kids. Just the fact that Kuro had thought of that possibility, however, meant suspicions had taken up residence in his mind.
The three of them split up to search. Charlie took the Winter and Spring Quarters. With Henrietta’s help, she’d be able to cover a lot of area more quickly than the other two. Arthur took Summer, since if he encountered the Avalon Royal Defence League, he might get his sister to help, rather than being tied up or electrocuted. That left Autumn to Kuro.
Kuro didn’t know where to begin. There was a lot of island to search. He’d have trouble finding her even if she wanted to be found. If she were hiding, he could wander the forest for weeks with no hope of spotting her. He didn’t have the advantage of a familiar to help him look, either. It would have been h
elpful to have eyes in the sky like Charlie, or the sharp nose of the anteater Arthur had managed to summon. All he had were quick feet, and so he ran.
He checked the paths first. There was no sense clambering through the underbrush and leaf litter if she was just taking a walk on marked trails. When that failed, he started searching the popular places where couples went for privacy. Kuro had a small hope that Marie had developed a secret romance, which would explain a lot of her behaviour. He checked the abandoned tool sheds, secluded clearings, and beautiful lookout points, but nobody there had seen Marie, either, though Gregory and Sean offered to help search.
With dwindling ideas, he went to the graveyard on the off chance that Bindal had seen her. Kuro didn’t know if he would be around, as Bindal had never given Kuro any reliable way to find him. Kuro just had to show up, and Bindal would appear if he felt like it and he wasn’t too “busy.” Of course, if Bindal had shown up and Kuro hadn’t, Kuro would hear no end of it the next time they met.
Bindal wasn’t in the graveyard, and Kuro had a pretty good idea why: someone else was. Kuro didn’t see anyone, but he felt their eyes on him. It was just a flicker of unease at first, then his spine stiffened as he felt the gaze settle and stay fixed on him. Kuro scanned the overgrown graves and the forest beyond for the watcher until his eyes met theirs.
They were low to the ground and nearly invisible under the cover of the forest and the dark of night. It was just the faintest glint of the stars off the beady little black eyes that caught Kuro’s attention.
It was a raccoon.
Kuro stood frozen in its stare, uncertain whether to try to catch it, chase it back to its master, or run away himself. The creature made the decision for him. It blinked, turned its back on Kuro, and scampered into the woods.
A serious doubt crept over Kuro as to whether there was anything suspicious at all about this raccoon. It was likely that the island had a large and healthy population of raccoons of which Kuro and Charlie had just seen a few ordinary members. It was behaving as raccoons do, being curious, and then leaving once it found nothing to eat.
Kuro was about to let the creature go; he had more important things to worry about. But a terrible thought invaded his mind. Kuro didn’t like the thought. It was unwelcome, and he blamed Arthur for planting the seeds of doubt in him. What if that raccoon knew where Marie was? What if she and the raccoon were connected? What if they were partners in crime?
“What if” were two terrible words that, put before any statement, made it seem plausible no matter how silly it was. Having fallen into that trap, Kuro couldn’t help but follow the raccoon through the woods.
It would find a pile of trash to dig through, Kuro thought, or a burrow to hide in, as raccoons do. And, in doing so, it would dissolve Kuro’s shameful suspicions and allow him to return to the search for his friend.
Kuro stalked the creature, staying silent and keeping it at the very edge of his sight. It scampered in much too straight a line for a normal raccoon, moving with purpose toward the island shore, away from the cover of trees and the promise of food. He stalked it for several minutes without it seeming to notice him, but he lost track of it in the thickets at the edge of the forest.
He might have found it again if he kept looking, but a stream of multilingual complaints called his attention away. The raccoon, purposefully or not, had led Kuro to Marie, who was standing by the shore throwing her misshapen lump of lead and gold against the veil over and over. It was a familiar scene. Kuro had joined her the year before for some therapeutic hurling of rocks into the bay. It looked as though her method of launching her grievances into the frothing waters across the veil wasn’t working as well as usual.
Each time she threw her partially golden lump, it would bounce off the veil, creating a small shimmering ripple where it struck. Marie clearly did not appreciate the subtle beauty of the effect. She was too annoyed by the hunk of metal failing to pass through and expressed her frustration vocally.
Kuro watched her for a while, hiding in the thickets at the edge of the forest. It was clear that Kuro should do something to make her feel better, but he was ill equipped to do so. His vast experience in the areas of running, hiding, stealing, and being very quiet were of no use in the realm of sad friends. A lifetime of watching from the shadows was hard to overcome.
He was saved from having to do anything himself by the approach of Sean and Gregory, who had also heard her cursing at the veil.
She was not immediately glad to see them. Her first reaction was that of a startled deer, bracing to run. But soon her panic melted into a surly slouch. “Hey,” she said.
“Are you okay?” asked Sean.
“Fine,” she said.
“You definitely look fine,” replied Gregory.
Sean elbowed Greg and offered a more sympathetic tone. “Kuro asked us to look for you. He said you were missing. We can leave you alone if you want, let him know you’re all right?”
“It is okay,” she said without conviction. “I should probably go back anyway.”
She looked at her lump of metal on the ground with disdain and left it there as she started back toward the lodge with the pair of boys, taking a much clearer path than Kuro had used.
Kuro moved to the shore and the lump of metal she’d left behind, wondering if she really did want to leave it. The sinking moon glinted off the uneven surface of the abandoned experiment. As he turned to head back to the lodge himself, his eyes caught another glint of gold; a pair of yellow dots shone back at him from the underbrush at the edge of the forest. Kuro felt a shiver of being watched before the little lights faded back into the dark of the forest. He hurried after the others.
Kuro followed the three, just out of sight, watching and listening. He tried several times to get closer, to just step out from the woods and greet his friend with all the relief he felt at her safety. He struggled against his instincts, but the hurdle was too big. The longer he waited, the harder it became, until revealing himself felt like trying to push gold through the veil. Despite his best intentions and efforts, he was doing exactly what Arthur had wanted: he was spying on Marie.
She was unusually quiet. It wasn’t unusual for her to be quiet, but there was a different feeling to the air around her. She wasn’t patiently waiting for a good moment to deliver a clever comment, or calmly ignoring whatever Charlie was rambling about. Instead, she was sullen and kept taking a breath as though she had something to say, but then just letting it out again. It was like she had some confession or secret to share but couldn’t bring herself to say it out loud. It was an experience with which Kuro was intimately familiar.
Sean filled some of the space by complaining about De Rigueur and commiserating about being a firefly. Gregory added comments clearly meant only to annoy; intentionally misunderstanding the idea of telephones and mispronouncing “Quebec” served, at least, to make Marie scowl instead of sulk. Mostly, though, they left her to her silence, giving her the space to say what she needed.
It turned out that the time she needed was greater than the time it took to return to the lodge and be set upon by Charlie, who had returned with Arthur not much earlier. She took an entirely opposite approach to the boys, taking up all the possible space to speak so that Marie didn’t have to. “Oh gosh, I’m glad you’re okay. I thought you would be, but you know when someone is gone, and you don’t know where, and then you start imagining all the worst things? Well, I just had this image of you being eaten by a shark out in the bay, and I know there aren’t any sharks there, but once you get an idea in your head like that it’s hard to shake, you know?”
Charlie didn’t stop talking, but her rambling provided a comforting background noise. It relaxed Marie and gave Kuro an opportunity to slip into the lodge without raising a fuss, but not without catching Arthur’s attention.
“Where was she?” whispered Arthur, his inexpressive voice hiding whether he asked out of concern, curiosity, or suspicion. It wa
s probably all three.
“Throwing things at the veil,” Kuro said.
It was true enough. He didn’t include anything about the timely appearance of the raccoon or the nature of the thing she was throwing. The former would make Arthur more suspicious, and the latter was Marie’s business to share. Even so, Kuro felt the rift between him and Arthur grow as he hid things from his friend.
Marie thanked Sean and Gregory for their concern before muttering about being tired and that she was heading to bed. Charlie followed, wishing Kuro and Arthur goodnight and unsummoning Henrietta in the same breath.
Arthur, too, turned in for the night, also tired from the search. He wasn’t used to spending his evening wandering the island and didn’t have the help of a flying unicorn to do the legwork.
Kuro, still jittery from the events of the evening, went back outside to let the cool quiet of the night air calm him. He made it just a few steps from the door of the lodge before encountering the slouched silhouette of the vice principal. Flint didn’t even bother speaking. He just gave Kuro a weary look, and Kuro understood.
“Again?” Kuro groaned. He’d been out, by himself, running around the woods all night. He didn’t have the slightest hint of an alibi. “Who was it this time?”
“Ragnar Hildason,” Flint said. “Vertheim,” he added as though he’d be staying anywhere else with a name like that.
“Never met him,” Kuro replied. It didn’t matter, but it had become a habit at this point. He had heard of him, though. He was one of the names on the diagram Mr. Widdershins had made with all the royal connections.
The vice principal shrugged and continued the interrogation. He knew as well as Kuro that it was pointless, but it was easier to go through the motions quickly so they could both get to bed. “Where were you just after dinner?” he asked.
Volume 2: Burglary Page 19