Poisoned Garden

by Tracy Korn

  "I'll take you on a tour of the grounds later," Leo said as we washed our hands in an antique bowl. "Though some of the buildings won't open until classes start in a few days."

  "A few days?" I blurted, surprised classes started so soon. I thought there would be time to get acclimated like the 3-D tour said. Not to mention, I hadn't even seen what official programs they offered here.

  Uri chuckled. "Don't worry, Halsey. These aren't the program classes you might be expecting—you'll still need to decide that path," he said, and I sighed in relief. "The classes Leo is referring to are the honing classes, designed to help you acclimate. Some say it's the best part of the year." I must have given him a strange look because Uri chuckled again, but this time, so did everyone else. "Now, shall we eat?" He held out an arm, gesturing for everyone to have a seat at the table. "The soups are getting cold."

  ***

  I barely knew where to start with the array of choices from the buffet.

  "Try these," Leo said, spooning some dark, heart-shaped berries onto my plate. I also opted for a bowl of stew that smelled nothing like cabbage. He sat next to me while Sylvie and Uri sat across from us at the table. The number of attendants had nearly doubled in the time it had taken to get our food, but I wasn't sure why if it were just the four of us who were eating.

  One of the attendants poured water into our glasses, and I immediately took a drink, not realizing how thirsty I was until I saw it sparkling in the glass. I was astonished at how unreal it tasted, which is to say, it tasted like nothing at all—and that was what made all the difference. In The Grind, the water always had a metallic taste that I'd apparently become accustomed to. This water made me look intently through the glass…the perfectly translucent glass.

  "Comes from a spring right here on the island," Uri said, apparently noticing my fascination. I put down the glass quickly, a little embarrassed.

  "I can tell," I said sheepishly. "The water in The Grind doesn't taste anything like this. What are these called?" I asked about the berries Leo put on my plate in the hopes of changing the subject.

  "Hurricane berries," he answered with a small grin. "They're native to the island as well. Try one."

  I did as he suggested and was shocked by the explosive flavor. It was tart, but also sweet, and nothing like I'd ever tasted.

  "Why do they call these hurricane berries?" I asked, barely willing to stop chewing long enough to form the words.

  "Because dey ripen at de beginnin' of hurricane season," Sylvie answered, and it took me a second to process what she said. This, then, must have been the beginning of hurricane season, just like Max had mentioned.

  "Then storms are coming soon?" I asked, swallowing.

  "We have a little time yet, and plenty of experience under our belts." Uri nodded, then seemed to study me again. Why was everyone watching me?

  In the same second I registered their odd attention, my fingers and lips started to tingle, and my throat felt like it was starting to swell.

  "I think…I'm allergic," I said, dropping the next berry I was about to put into my mouth. "My fingers are prickling, and my—" I stopped abruptly and clutched at my throat.

  "All perfectly natural," Uri said, still beaming his megawatt smile at me as several of the attendants rushed toward me. "No, wait for the rest," he said to them.

  I tried to respond, but my voice was crushed, and I was only able to emit a few gasping shrieks. Why wasn't anyone helping me? They were all just sitting at the table staring at me with stupid, patient smiles like I was over here just having a temper tantrum or something.

  I tried to scream for help, but it came out as a deafening screech like when Jen's goons tried to drag me off back in The Grind.

  "Oh! Maybe a hawk?" Sylvie said, pleasantly surprised at the sound I'd just made. I stared at her in disbelief until a searing pain ripped down either side of my back, making me fall out of my chair with the feeling of being yanked backward.

  "I think bigger than a hawk," Uri said, leaning forward a little as Leo got to his feet. I stared at them, imploring, but they didn't move. Leo's dark brows furrowed as he crossed his arms over his chest, his jaw clenching. I tried to yell for help, but again, I only heard the ear piercing screech I'd made a second ago.

  After a ripping sound and a final burst of pain that radiated down my spine, I was pushed forward, face first into the planked wooden floor. I landed on my hands and scrambled to push up to my knees, stopping in horror as I watched my fingers shifting again, my fingernails growing and curving as the rest of my hand was covered in…feathers.

  I got to my feet only to fall backward, my center of gravity somehow having shifted like I was carrying a pack full of lead. It wasn't until I was on the ground again that I saw why. The shadow that loomed overhead made me scramble forward, as if instinctually trying to escape a predator.

  But the predator was me.

  Huge, dark brown, half-formed wings folded in around me, stretching out several feet in either direction once I took notice. All the breath left my lungs, and the air suddenly felt thin.

  "What…" I breathed, and to my utter surprise, I actually heard my strangled voice.

  "Eagle," Uri said. "Definitely an eagle. Marvelous. Sylph, then."

  I shot him what I was sure must have been a crazed look because I was afraid to move, to speak, to do anything. I was paralyzed by the innumerable possibilities of what the hell was happening to me.

  "Leo, give her da water," Sylvie said, prompting him to cross to me with a cylindrical glass bottle. He stopped several feet away from me and splashed the contents of the bottle over my head and face. The water cooled my skin, which up until now had felt like a fresh sunburn. The feathers I'd developed returned to fingers, and it felt like the weight had been lifted off my back several minutes later. When I turned to look over my shoulder, the enormous brown wings were gone.

  "You're OK," Leo said, looking at me with an equal mix of pity and apology in his wide, brown eyes as he helped me up.

  "What—?" I started again, but didn't have the chance to finish my question before Uri came from around the table and took my hands in his. I stumbled trying to move several steps back from everyone.

  "There was really no good time to explain everything on the trip here," Leo offered, his expression still pained.

  "What just happened?" I finally managed, my throat feeling raw and scratchy.

  "The world isn't as you've come to know it, Halsey," Uri said gently. "At least, not for you. Not for anyone on this island. That's why we recruited you."

  "What are you talking about?" I nearly yelled, but my throat was too dry and sore to push out the words with any force. Leo handed me the rest of the water in the bottle.

  "Drink that," he said with a kind nod. I glared at him, but did as he said. The water was impossibly salty, and I nearly gagged, but in one swallow, the dry, swollen feeling was gone.

  "That's seawater?" I glanced up at Leo again, who offered a small smile this time.

  "It reverses the change. Makes it dormant again until, well, until you call it back."

  "Call it back?" I asked, incredulous.

  "You've undoubtedly heard of the virus known as Red Fever, haven't you, Halsey?" Uri asked, jerking my attention back to him.

  I narrowed my eyes. "Yes, it makes people violent."

  "Only those not of the blood." Uri smiled. "Elemental blood—Sylph, of the air, Salamander, of fire, Undine, of water, and Gnome, of the earth."

  I looked at him for a long time, waiting for the words he'd strung together to make sense, but they never did.

  I shook my head. "I need to know what just happened to me. What were those wings!?"

  Uri arched a white-blond eyebrow. "It seems you have Sylph blood, Halsey."

  Chapter 13

  I glanced from Uri to Leo, then to Sylvie. They were all watching me with the same pitiful expressions on their faces, like I'd just missed winning the legacy lottery by a few numbers.

 
"Very soon you'll feel quite a bit better. In the meantime I know it's a lot to take in," Uri said. "But that's what the honing period is for—a week or so where you'll learn about not only your particular ancestry, but also about the bloodlines of your cousins."

  "My cousins?"

  "Well, not really your cousins, given how many times removed they are, of course, after all these centuries." He chuckled. "But in principle, the newly born Sylphs, Salamanders, Undines, and Gnomes are all descended from the four sisters—the Elemental Queens who preceded humanity here on Earth."

  My head was spinning as I looked for the door. I turned to Leo. "Did you drug me? The wings, the way my hands turned into feathers, that was all a hallucination, wasn't it? The antidote was in the seawater? What did you—?"

  Leo moved toward me, stepping in front of the others and blocking my view of them.

  "I know it all sounds insane, Halsey," he said in a quiet voice. "Just take a walk with me. Let me just give you a tour of this place, and it will all have a chance to sink in, I promise. I went through the same thing—thought the same things two years ago."

  "What was the drug in the food?" I said through my teeth.

  "That's just what Hurricane berries do. They strengthen our physical states," Leo said. "It's all part of the honing—you'll learn to control it."

  I glared at him. "You knew this would happen to me if I ate those berries? You gave them to me!"

  He lowered his voice again. "They thought it would be better if you had your first transition here with support than in front of mixed company. This is the procedure for all new students," he said quietly, then turned back to Uri and Sylvie. "I'll take her to get settled. She's starting to fade," he added with a nod.

  I just stared at him when he turned back to me, his dark brows drawn up, his jaw clenched again, his entire expression almost pleading, and I suddenly felt like I was losing all hope by the time we got into the corridor.

  "It wasn't the medicine Jen gave me? It didn't cause the screech, or the running speed, or my hands?" I said to myself, staring at my fingers, which looked perfectly normal again.

  "Jicambi can't do that, no," he said, which startled me.

  "How did you know about that? You know Jen?" I asked.

  Leo took a deep breath and sighed. "They work through several people when they're scouting for potential students."

  "She tried to drag me into a van!"

  "She is not one of their associates," he said, shaking his head. "They just keep tabs on her work like they do for all the medics and researchers looking for a Red Fever cure." Leo checked over his shoulder. "The virus has a catalytic effect on some people, Halsey. People like you, me, and the others on the island. It's why they created this school."

  "Catalytic of what?" I asked, barely able to accept any of this.

  "Like Uri said earlier, in people with Elemental ancestry, it reactivates the dormant genes."

  "And in people who don't have the genes?" I asked.

  Leo sighed. "The person who bit you had Red Fever, but not enough Elemental blood to shift like you did, Halsey," he said, watching me like he was just waiting for me to figure it out. "For people like that, catching on fire happens when the virus can't push the shift all the way. It gets stuck, kind of. Everyone else just shuts down after a while, their systems exhausted from trying to eradicate the virus."

  "She was infected…" I finally whispered to myself as the pieces started fitting together. "She caught on fire because of it," I said, then quickly looked up at Leo. "And she gave me Red Fever? How many people have this kind of blood? Why is this just now happening if it's in our DNA?"

  I pressed my back into the wall, trying to let it all sink in.

  "I'm sorry, I don't have all the answers, Halsey." He sighed. "But as far as your bite wound, yes. Your body began transitioning at the cellular level the same day. Her's couldn't, and it just redlined with the effort after a little while."

  It all started to make sense, at least, as much as such a thing could. If what Leo was saying was true, it would explain the rest of the physiological changes I'd been attributing to the jicambi bark enzyme.

  "Come on, before they hear us. Any minute now, I'm sure you'll feel a lot better." Leo said. "I'll take you to your dorm, OK? It will help to meet Alita, your roommate. She just arrived last week, so it's all fresh for her too."

  I wasn't sure what else to say since I didn't quite believe anything he'd just told me. I didn't even believe what I'd seen with my own eyes, but there didn't seem to be another explanation. I needed to talk with Max, to tell him what happened and get his opinion. If nothing else, I needed to let him know my plane hadn't been ripped out of they sky and plunged into the ocean, which we'd both joked about when we learned I'd be flying over the Bermuda triangle to get here.

  "I need to let my family know I made it here," I said, hoping dropping the family card would hold more weight than just saying I needed to call my best friend.

  Leo looked at me wide-eyed, as if I'd just started speaking in tongues or something. "Oh, well, Tia actually already sent a landing confirmation to your aunt and uncle, so you don't have to worry," he said, and my stomach sank. All right, there was another way to do this.

  "Thanks," I said in the most pleasant tone I could muster. "I guess I should just get some sleep then. I'm suddenly really tired," I said, wanting nothing more than to get behind a closed door, away from him. I started walking faster.

  "Hey, what's the rush?" Leo called up to me, almost laughing. "Slow down, you don't even know where you're going."

  "I need to find a restroom," I said bluntly, not even caring what he might have thought about the urgency in my tone.

  "OK, well that's right here," he said, and I immediately turned around. He cocked his head to the door on his right, toward which I made a B-line, and his face lit up again. "Halsey, your queue won't work here," he said softly. "It's the fog around the island. Nothing gets through."

  "All right, thanks?" I said, trying to make it seem like I didn't know what he was talking about. The second I was behind the door, though, I touched my temple and scrolled for Max's queue number. I pressed it, and a wave of relief washed over me when I saw the spinning arrow and the word connecting appear in my field of vision.

  But any hope I had of hearing Max's voice, of getting his opinion on this whole insane thing was dashed when the arrow stopped spinning, and the words connection failed appeared in its place.

  My stomach sank again, but I took a deep breath and decided I'd try again outside, later tonight after my shadow was gone.

  I crossed to the sink and washed my hands, the water feeling like soft fabric running over my skin. It was such an odd sensation I had to look down to make sure it was, in fact, water. I looked around for a dryer, but there wasn't anything like that on the wall, nor were there any towels to be found. How did they expect anyone to dry their hands here? I thought, but as soon as I turned the water off, my hands were immediately dry. I took several steps back from the sink, stopping only when I ran into the divider post of the stalls behind me. I caught my reflection in the mirror and gasped… My short blonde hair was now purple.

  I pushed open the door and bolted into the corridor. Leo's face was calm, but I'd definitely caught him by surprise.

  "Halsey, I told you your queue wouldn't—"

  "Why is my hair purple now?" I asked, trying to bite back some of the fury that was surely the result of more than just my stupid hair color changing, but I was too exhausted to rein any of it in.

  "I guess it is purple," he said, raising an eyebrow. "Though, I've never seen anyone be able to get a gradient like that."

  "Why is it purple?"

  Leo restrained a laugh. "It just happens sometimes after your first shift—eye colors change, hair colors…" His dark brows relaxed as he gave me a slow smile. "It looks good on you," he said, brushing a strand from my eyes. Heat rushed up my throat and into my cheeks, and small tingles started in my fingertips. I pulle
d back, immediately worried my fingers were shifting back into feathers, and that any second, searing pain would rip down either side of my back again. I looked at my hands, then over my shoulder, but there was nothing there. Yet.

  "The wings?" I said breathlessly, clawing at the shoulder of my shirt and bringing it forward.

  "Whoa, it's OK." Leo let himself laugh this time. "The seawater will suppress any shifts until it's out of your system tomorrow. But we do need to get you a new shirt," he added, nodding to my hand. I reached back and felt my skin through the two holes in my shirt and sighed. Leo looked over my shoulder in the direction we'd just come, then waved for me to follow him.

  We went out a different door than the one we came in through at the front of the house, this one leading to a path lined with flowering bushes—the intoxicated, spicy-sweet smell almost too much to handle. The sun was low on the water in the distance, casting a strange glow over everything. It was all so beautiful I almost forgot about the gaping holes in the back of my shirt until I felt the cool breeze darting through them, sending a chill through me.

  "This is the way to my dorm?" I asked, wrapping my arms around myself. Leo looked over his shoulder one more time, then nodded to me. He started to pull off his black T-shirt, and I immediately started shaking my head. "No, that's OK," I said. I mean, points for the gesture, but eww.

  Leo laughed and shoved as much of the shirt into his pocket as he could, the muscles in his chest and arms catching every ray of the setting sun as they jumped.

  "Don't panic, all right?" he said, holding out a hand to me. "Come with me."

  Do not stare at his abs, I thought. Do not stare at—

  "It's OK," he insisted, interrupting my mantra. "I promise I won't hurt you." In the same second, two enormous, featherless black wings unfurled behind him. They looked like the wings of a bat or something—an unfathomably huge bat with armored plating. "Hold onto me, and we'll be at your building before you can ask me why I have wings like this." I shuddered again as my shirt billowed behind me, but I was pretty sure the prickle over my skin wasn't from the sudden breeze. I took his hand, and he pulled me closer. "Sorry, safety first," he said in a low voice, then pressed me against him, his arms folding around me as we rose into the air, the beating of his wings low and so palatable I felt it in my chest. The ground fell away as we rose higher, far above the trees and buildings. I clung to him, suddenly not sure this was the best idea now that the initial shock had worn off.