Kuro just sat and tried to put the pieces together into some sort of shape that made sense. He explained the strange raccoon that had been turning up for months, and that it had twice led him to her.
“I know that raccoon,” she said. “I have seen it watching me. It keeps peeking out from behind a tree like it has something to say, and then running away when I notice it. Honestly, it reminded me a bit of you.”
Kuro felt the gaze on him again that had scared Bindal away, and he turned slowly to meet it. It was there, under a shrub, looking back at him with nervous, guilty eyes.
Kuro didn’t move. He just stared at the creature as realization slowly rolled over him.
“There it is!” shouted Marie, and it jumped and started to escape up a tree.
When neither of the children moved towards it, it cautiously descended and then shuffled into view at the edge of the glade. It stood on its hind legs, hands clasped like a beggar entreating a passing nobleman for coin, but remained tense, ready to bolt at the slightest sign of danger.
Kuro recognized that movement. He knew it intimately. He knew the feeling of standing at the edge of the light, hoping someone would offer him some comfort. He understood the fear of capture that kept him always just outside of view. “Of course it is,” Kuro said.
“What’s going on?” asked Marie, frustrated that once again she was an outsider, not understanding the situation.
“It’s my familiar,” said Kuro.
It was terribly obvious once he thought about it. Just like it was for everyone. Now that he was face to face with the thing, it couldn’t have been anything else.
Marie cocked her head and considered it briefly. “Since when?”
Kuro thought back to the first time he remembered being watched from the woods. It was way back when Azalea had chased him into a cave. That was the closest he’d ever come to summoning a familiar and was never able to get close again. He thought it was because the feelings he had were hard to reproduce without being in mortal peril, but it seemed it was because he had succeeded and couldn’t summon a second one.
“I think it was back in November,” said Kuro.
“I mean, since when is it a raccoon? Isn’t that your familiar?” She pointed to the dragonfey, which had climbed out of his satchel and started buzzing about at the end of its chain.
Kuro cringed. He’d been caught in his lies and had no hope of coming up with something Marie would believe. Even if he could think up something, he was a bad liar, and Marie could see right through him. The only reason anyone believed it was his familiar to begin with was that all Kuro had to do was nod along as people made up their own stories.
“It’s not mine,” Kuro admitted.
“Is it just a normal dragonfey?” Marie gave it some extra distance, remembering how vicious the creatures could be.
She had given him an escape hatch. All he had to do was agree, but she’d already caught him in one lie, and their friendship was fragile. “No,” he said. “It’s just not my familiar. I’m taking care of it.”
Marie narrowed her eyes, demanding more explanation.
“For someone who isn’t supposed to have a familiar,” he said.
Marie liked that. Now she had leverage. They had hold of each other’s secrets. “Whose is it?” she asked.
“I can’t tell you,” he replied.
Kuro could feel her guessing at possible owners and explanations. “It’s Azalea, isn’t it?”
Kuro laughed out loud at the suggestion. A first-year student made sense; they were the ones not allowed to have familiars, but that was the most ridiculous possibility. “Please don’t just ask every person at the school. I really can’t tell you.”
Marie agreed in the sort of way that made Kuro certain that he had not heard the end of it. She wasn’t yet willing to let up the pressure on Kuro. “So why has your real familiar been spying on me?”
The raccoon didn’t like the attention turning back to it and retreated into the shelter of a bush.
Kuro knelt and tried to coax the nervous creature out of the woods. “You were trying to help, weren’t you?” he asked of the raccoon. Now that Kuro considered it, the raccoon was making the same clumsy attempts at mending problems as Kuro. It was trying to connect Kuro and Marie, and to visit with his other friends, but was too scared to show itself and always had a path to escape if it needed one.
It was exactly what Kuro would do.
The small raccoon cautiously approached Kuro. It was so much like him: a bit too thin and a bit too small, filthy, scruffy, and it had trouble looking directly at him. It stopped just out of arm’s reach and fussed with the grass, looking fearful and ashamed. It was like looking in a fluffy mirror.
Marie knelt near the creature and put her hand out for it to inspect. It was less cautious approaching her than it was Kuro. After a couple minutes it even let her pick it up. She lifted it under its arms and pulled it in so it could rest against her chest but quickly thrust it back out to the full extent of her reach. “It smells awful,” she said.
“It’s a raccoon,” said Kuro.
“But most familiars don’t stink. I mean, except for Ali’s skunk. This one smells like it’s gone bad.”
Kuro sniffed the air near the creature. Marie was right. It did stink. Not like garbage and musk like a Detritus raccoon; more like a swamp. In fact, it smelled exactly like a swamp, and his little paws looked like the prints on the stolen goods that Arthur had thought belonged to a monkey. “It was you,” Kuro accused the raccoon. “You’re the one that threw the stolen stuff into our room over Solstice break. Did you steal them? Does that mean I really am the thief?”
The raccoon scrambled for freedom, then hid behind Marie’s legs for protection.
“What are you talking about, Kuro?” Marie did a fine impression of Ms. McCutcheon’s disapproving look. “That doesn’t make any sense.”
“It’s possible,” said Kuro. “Phin . . . My old . . . someone I used to know was really good at brain charms. Maybe I’m doing things without knowing.”
“Then why would your familiar dump the stolen things in your room and make you look more guilty?” asked Marie, not believing a word of Kuro’s self-accusation. “Maybe it was just living in the swamp and found them. What would you have done if you found them?”
“I would have put them somewhere else would find them,” said Kuro. “Not in my bedroom. Not unless . . . oh, for goodness sake.”
Kuro buried his face in his hands. “It was watching when Bella asked me to return Azalea’s stolen stuff. I said that I would have if I could. You are not very good at being helpful,” Kuro berated his familiar.
It hid its face behind its paws in shame.
“Even so,” Marie said. “I wonder if it knows who the thief is.”
It was a real possibility. If it knew where the stolen goods were hidden, maybe it had seen the thief. If Kuro unsummoned it, he would soak up the memories and find out for sure. He’d be certain whether he was the burglar as well.
Having helped Bindal learn it, he was now an expert in the ritual. Kuro began the unsummoning spell and could feel the ebb and flow of the magic as it started disassembling his familiar.
The raccoon squealed and grunted its dissent. It clung to Marie’s leg and cried against the pull of the magic. “Stop it, it’s scared,” she said, picking up the panicking creature and comforting it.
Kuro did stop. It wasn’t working anyway. A familiar should start to unravel almost as the spell began. Kuro wouldn’t have been at all surprised if he’d just failed, but he felt it. The magic was working, but the familiar was resisting. Kuro found himself apologizing to the traumatized creature.
He’d treated it like everyone else treats their familiars, just a part of themselves to be used however they like. That might have been true months ago when he’d first conjured it, but since then it had been free to think and grow. Kuro had been to the Blandlands several times, severing any connectio
n he had with it. Ms. McCutcheon had warned against this very thing. The familiar had ideas of its own rather than just being an extension of its creator.
“Are you going to pop it?” asked Marie.
The frightened raccoon clung to her for protection.
“No,” Kuro decided. He couldn’t bring himself to contemplate harming the pathetic creature in Marie’s arms.
“What are you going to do with it?” she asked.
Kuro thought about what he would want if it were him, since in a way, it was. “I should probably give it a bath,” answered Kuro. “And somewhere warm to sleep.”
“A bath is a very good idea,” agreed Marie. “Why was it living in a swamp?”
“It’s where I’d stay,” said Kuro. “Hardly anybody goes there, it’s not too hot or cold, there are lots of spots to hide and lots of things to eat. There are a few good logs that have rotted-out insides, so they’re hollow and soft. With a bit of dried grass from the Summer Quarter, they’d make a good place to live.”
Marie accepted the explanation and elected not to ask Kuro why he had spent so much time thinking about where he might live if he had to hide himself away on the island. That gave Kuro enough time to ask, “What are you going to do?”
Marie didn’t like things turning back in her direction. She’d been enjoying exposing Kuro’s secrets and insecurities but wasn’t eager for hers to take the spotlight again. “What do you mean?”
“Are you going to keep trying to change your familiar?”
Marie let out a long contemplative sigh. “I don’t know. I feel so stupid about the whole thing. Maybe I’ll just never summon it again.”
“That’s too bad,” said Kuro. “Did you at least try letting it fly around a bit? Everyone with flying familiars says it’s fun.”
Marie chewed over the idea for a moment before relenting. “I guess I should try it at least once.”
She gently let down the smelly raccoon and began the summoning spell. Her technique was flawless. She’d clearly done it so many times that every movement was written into her bones, and the words were rich with colour and meaning. Glowing purple feathers fell like snow around her, each drifting perfectly into place. It formed from largest feather to smallest, the tips of the wings first, and ending with the tufts on its head and chest.
As the spell concluded, the glow faded, leaving a large black bird behind. It stood proudly, carrying the same threat in its posture as Marie, a strength that claimed a readiness to fight. Its sharp eyes scanned the area, and it croaked out a greeting as it stretched out its broad wings. It waited for Marie to unsummon it again and seemed confused at having lasted in solid form for more than a few seconds.
“Go on,” she said. “Fly around.”
It took a few steps then a couple hops and took flight, climbing above the trees in a few flaps of its broad wings, and then soaring up into the night sky, disappearing into the starfield.
Twenty-six
Birds of a Feather
“Where are we going?” Marie demanded, jogging to keep up with Kuro.
He hadn’t expected her to follow him. After her inaugural flight, she’d seemed enthusiastic about having another. She’d unsummoned her familiar and was giddy from the absorbed experience. When Kuro announced he was going to go, however, he ended up with a train behind him. Marie was suspicious of his sudden need to leave, and the raccoon was reluctant to be left behind after finally being recognized.
“I need to take out a book from the library,” explained Kuro.
“It is closed for the night.”
Kuro shrugged off the complaint. He didn’t need a librarian to check out a book. He knew how the system worked, and he didn’t want to wait for the morning.
He reached the school in the Spring Quarter, climbed up to the roof, where the door was never locked, and then back down into the library. He knew both books that he needed. He’d seen them earlier in the year. One was the book Charlie had used to fail to predict familiars; the other was the one he’d needed for the alchemy project.
His initial plan was to just check the information in them, there in the library, but that seemed rude with Marie waiting outside without any explanation. He didn’t want to let on that anything was amiss until he was very sure of himself.
He signed, stamped, and filed the book borrowing cards. He appreciated that he didn’t need to make his own notes, and so he did his best to follow the orderly system for temporary theft at the library.
Stowing the books in his bag, he exited the school via the library window and rejoined his friend at ground level.
“You’re being weird,” accused Marie.
“I just need to check something,” he said. “You didn’t have to follow me.”
“I thought you were going to go tell everyone what I was doing,” said Marie.
“I wouldn’t do that,” replied Kuro.
Kuro started heading away from the school.
“Where are you going now?”
“Back to the lodge. It’s getting late.”
“Stop being weird.”
Kuro wasn’t being weird. He just wasn’t used to having someone follow him when he was being his normal self.
Despite her protests, Marie and the raccoon stuck with Kuro as he walked back across the island toward home, which slowed his trip considerably.
“How was the flying?” Kuro asked when they were halfway through Summer, thinking he should break the silence that had settled.
“It was fine,” said Marie, downplaying the experience. “I guess I see why people like it.”
“Think you’ll do it again?” asked Kuro.
“Probably,” Marie grudgingly admitted.
“Will you keep it a secret?”
“I don’t know.”
Kuro didn’t have much skill with carrying on a conversation that the other party wasn’t interested in maintaining, so he let their walk fall into silence.
Eventually Marie tired of the sound of pavement beneath their feet and started talking on her own. “What are you going to do about the raccoon?”
Kuro was worrying about that himself. The whole lodge knew about the dragonfey and thought it was his familiar. He couldn’t have two familiars. “I probably need to tell Charlie and Arthur,” he said. “They’ll find out eventually anyway. Arthur will think I’m doing crimes, and Charlie will just tell everybody if she doesn’t know it’s a secret.”
Marie nodded along. The next thing she said took her a couple of tries to get started. “Do you want to tell them together?”
“Yes!” Kuro agreed almost too enthusiastically. That seemed like an excellent plan. It would help take some attention away from his story and, hopefully, if he was right, help Marie feel better about things.
Marie rambled about the plan and what they were going to say for the rest of the way back to the lodge. There were parts of her story that she wanted to skip to avoid embarrassment, and things Kuro should and shouldn’t add to back her up. In the end, Kuro’s only real job was to nod and not contradict her. That was something he was well suited to.
They arrived at the lodge and lost a bit of momentum at the door.
The raccoon couldn’t get in.
The salt-laced bricks around the foundations of the building prevented magical creatures, including familiars, from crossing the threshold. That explained why the stolen goods had just been thrown into his room through a forced open window, but it left them with a problem. Kuro couldn’t unsummon it, which was the usual way to get them in and out of salted buildings.
They puzzled over it for a minute until Kuro remembered that he’d already smuggled a familiar into the building. He let the raccoon crawl into his book bag along with the currently napping dragonfey.
Marie fetched Charlie, who was up late reading, and Kuro woke Arthur, who always went to sleep early. They used the boys’ room for privacy and spoke in hushed tones.
Kuro went
first, introducing the raccoon and explaining away the dragonfey as best he could. Everyone assumed it was a first-year student, and Kuro didn’t do anything to dismiss that belief. He could see both Charlie and Arthur struggle to not demand to know whose it was: Charlie out of desperate curiosity, Arthur out of a sense of duty. Kuro didn’t know whether it was illegal for someone to summon a familiar early, but the way Arthur wrestled with it, he thought it might be.
The raccoon did a good job of breaking the tension. “It’s great!” Charlie squealed, failing to keep her voice down. “It’s so furry and cute. What are you going to name it? Can I name it? Oh, it smells terrible. We should give it a bath!”
She ran to fetch a bucket and a brush, lost in her excitement for animal care.
Arthur had almost the opposite reaction. He pulled out his notes on the burglaries and turned to the pages on the raccoon. He peered at the creature, and most specifically at its paws.
“Those paws are the same as the ones on the stolen things,” he said.
“Yeah,” said Kuro. “But I don’t think it’s the burglar. It didn’t exist until after Samhain. I think it just found the stuff.”
Arthur looked back at his roommate with renewed suspicion. Kuro could tell that he was thinking the same thing Kuro was worried about. To save his friend the accusation, Kuro offered it to him. “It might be me,” he said. “But if it is, I don’t remember.”
Kuro explained his fears as Charlie scrubbed the swamp funk out of the raccoon. Charlie thought the theory was preposterous but loved it anyway. Arthur took it much more seriously but did something that eased Kuro’s heart. He didn’t write anything down.
He didn’t make a single note of the possible confession to serial crimes, and his only comment was, “I haven’t seen any evidence to support that.”
For Arthur, that was the equivalent of giving Kuro a hug and a handmade pillow that had “best friends forever” embroidered in it.
That left Marie to make her confession. She fidgeted a bit and then put on her serious face to hide her fears. “I have a familiar too,” she said simply, entirely abandoning the plans she had made for crafting an elaborate story. “It’s not cool like yours, though.”
Volume 2: Burglary Page 28