Volume 1: Pickpocketing

by R. A. Consell

  There were fewer than ten of them, and all looked about as lost as Kuro felt. Half stared in amazement as the ornate carriages and sledges passed them by. The rest regarded the passing transports with jealousy, as it was quickly becoming clear that they were going to have to walk to wherever they were going.

  “Oh, good grief, we’re one short,” the big girl exclaimed. “I hope they’re not on a sledge to Vertheim. I am not trudging through the snow to fetch them. Hey, Pete, do you have the list?”

  An old and disinterested-looking man stirred on the bench of the wagon. He had a white beard long enough that he’d thrown it over his shoulder and a wide floppy brimmed hat that sagged down over his tired eyes. He rummaged in his brown oilskin coat for a moment and passed a crumpled piece of paper to the girl.

  “Okay, say something when I call your name,” she started, squinting to decipher the list in the fading light. “Marie Akin. . . Akinwade?”

  “Akinwande,” Marie corrected automatically. “Present.”

  “Oh, sorry,” she replied earnestly as she turned to find Marie and fixed the name in her mind. “Sean Cassidy,” she called next.

  “Here!” He was a pale boy with startlingly orange hair and green eyes. He would look every bit the part of a prince of the Summer Court if it weren’t for his poor posture and crooked teeth.

  “Charlotte Cook.”

  The name wasn’t even out of her mouth before Charlie’s hand shot up and she shouted, “Hello! You can call me Charlie. What’s your name? Are you in charge? When do we find out our roommates? Will there be dinner?”

  “Hold on.” The big girl laughed. “No, I’m not in charge; Pete is. My name is Meredith. I’m a student like you. I’m just here to do the shouting. Now, let me get through this list. Morgana Greenwood!”

  “Here,” replied a raven-haired girl quietly.

  “Do you go by Morgana?”

  “I prefer Morgan, if that’s okay.”

  “Yeah, that’s great,” replied Meredith. “Our other one goes by Anna. Oliver Kagen.”

  A rather round and frightened boy sputtered out something approaching an affirmation. Kuro guessed him to be a firefly, and he wasn’t acclimatizing even as well as Marie.

  “Magna Singh.”

  “Here.” She appeared cool and confident, purposely ignoring the passing parade and fidgeting with her long dark braid. She looked a bit of an oddity, with the features of an Alfheim elf—tall and broad, with bright golden eyes—but her skin and hair were much too dark. Mixed heritage, Kuro guessed. That was probably why she wasn’t in one of the sledges with the other children of the Winter Court residence.

  “Jennifer Tanaka.”

  “Uh huh,” replied a girl who was too distracted by the beautiful white horses trotting by to be paying much attention.

  “Ali Khaldun?”

  “Here!” a broad boy beside Kuro quickly responded.

  “Arthur Wood.”

  Nobody replied.

  “Arthur Wood,” Meredith repeated.

  Still there was no reply, but Pete mumbled something from the wagon to which Meredith replied, “Arrived last week? Why didn’t you tell me? Well, whatever. That explains the missing one. I guess we should get going. We’ll see you at the other end.” She waved off Pete, and he rolled away, the sleepy grizzly pulling the overloaded wagon along the road into the woods.

  She called the group of first years after her. “Keep close and stick to the side of the road as we walk. It’s no good getting run over on your first day. There’s food at the other end, but we’ve three seasons to get through before that.”

  They began their march up from the docks and into the cool green woods. Flowers bloomed all around, and pink petals from cherry trees danced in the breeze. It was the most beautiful place Kuro had ever been; however, he was too distracted by another concern to attend much to the scenery. Meredith hadn’t said his name. She’d stopped after Arthur without finishing the list, and Kuro had the nagging fear that he was going to the wrong place, or that there wasn’t a place for him at all. He thought he should ask but couldn’t bring himself to raise his voice. Something about the fantasy of living in a place with people like Charlie and Marie, with food and beds, was too inviting for him to destroy just yet. He could walk with them a while longer believing that he belonged.

  After a few hundred yards, the thick woods broke to reveal a wide lawn with reflecting pools, blossoming topiaries, and fountains. Beyond them stood Le Chateau du Printemps, residence of the Spring Court. It was white walled, with arched windows that stretched multiple stories. Narrow spires reached up to the sky, competing for majesty with the willows that surrounded the grounds.

  The horse-drawn carriages pulled off the road and up the long driveway to deliver their passengers. The Autumn Lodgers grumbled about having to walk clear across the island while the Acadians rode like royalty for a tiny fraction of the distance. Someone pointed out that some of them were royalty, which was met with more grumbles.

  Charlie struck up conversation with anyone who would listen as they marched on. She hadn’t the manners to not ask questions that shouldn’t be asked of people. They quickly learned that Meredith was half-ogre on her mom’s side. Magna’s mother was an elf, but her father was a wizard who had emigrated from India. Jennifer was from Vancouver and was worried that she wasn’t really a witch. Oliver had a terrible stutter when he was nervous, and they couldn’t get anything useful out of him. Charlie’s exuberance helped relax Kuro. She walked like a marionette on strings, bounding along, lanky limbs flapping in big exaggerated motions. She also did a fine job of keeping attention away from Kuro, which he appreciated. There were a lot of questions that he would rather not answer, and Charlie was too interested in the others to ask.

  The cool spring breeze grew steadily warmer and more humid as they walked. To make matters worse, as the heat climbed, so did the road. “Welcome to the Summer Quarter,” said Meredith. “It’s dreadful hot, but it’s better than trudging through the winter side of the island.” Everyone peeled off their cardigans and sweater vests as the heat became stifling on their exhausting trip up the hill.

  The last of the limousines had passed the students a while back, but their destination became clear as the troupe crested the hill. The forest was replaced with a high brick wall. Halfway along it was a wide gate, which the limousines were turning into. A bronze plaque embedded in a brick pillar by the gate read “Summerhill Residence.”

  Summerhill was a manor of limestone blocks. Where the Chateau du Printemps had been palatial, Summerhill was stately. It was all hard lines and crisp corners, which matched well the rigid posture and reserved bearing of the students filing into its main doors.

  They walked on. The summer heat began to break, and the green leaves shifted to vibrant hues of red and yellow. Fallen leaves crunched beneath their feet as they hiked the last mile to Autumn Lodge. A chill autumn wind cut through their now sweaty shirts, and they quickly wrapped themselves again in their woolly overclothes.

  Everyone in the company except Kuro was complaining of cold, sore feet and hunger by the time they finally saw the outline of Autumn Lodge through the forest. Not that Kuro wasn’t feeling most of those things, but compared to life in Detritus Lane, this had been a pretty easy day.

  The lodge was large but nothing so grand as Summerhill or Chateau du Printemps. It was wooden, top to bottom, a great log cabin nestled deep in the woods and surrounded by ancient maples locked in perpetual autumn.

  Meredith pushed open the heavy wooden door to deafening cheers. Kuro winced and covered his ears as he followed his fellow first years into the hall.

  He was surrounded by a cacophony. Students were laughing and shouting at each other around a roaring fire in a stone hearth. A pair of girls were duelling with swords on top of long tables. Two boys batted a flaming ball back and forth across the room. A panoply of familiars—birds, bats, cats, dogs, and rabbits—chased each other around
the room. The grizzly bear that had pulled the luggage wagon dozed amid the pile of unclaimed bags. A collection of tiny people, even smaller than Kuro, clambered through the rafters and dangled from the chandeliers. They dressed in brightly mismatching colours, and their long beards and moustaches were knotted and decorated with wooden beads and acorns. They looked down on the first-year students with curiosity, pointing and chattering to each other excitedly about the new arrivals.

  “Thrump!” shouted an older boy to Meredith, as he claimed his winnings from a game of cards he had just finished. “What kept you? We’re starving here.”

  “Some of the new kids have really short legs.” Meredith laughed as she herded her charges toward the dining hall. “And if you’re so impatient, you could have helped. Don’t you have a flying carpet, Park? You could have carried half of them here yourself.”

  A bell rang out, and the room attained something approaching quiet. All heads turned to Pete as he shuffled out from the kitchen in a grease-stained apron and surveyed the assembled students under half-open eyelids. He took a deep breath, as though he were about to say something, but just let it out again in a slow wheeze. Giving a small nod to the boy with the winning hand, Pete wandered back into the kitchen.

  Park climbed onto a sofa so everyone could see him and cleared his throat. “Okay, you mostly remember the drill. Any Blandlanders who don’t will be getting their memories returned in a couple hours. I’ve been assigned house spokesman for the year. Meredith is looking after the new kids. Breakfast is at seven. Lunch is usually at noon. Dinner at six. Curfew is at nine for the junior high students and eleven for the high schoolers, but then we don’t have any working clocks in here, so all that is pretty much moot.”

  That got a round of laughter from the student horde. He continued to talk as everyone filed through the doors from the lounge to the dining hall and found seats by the long rows of picnic benches.

  He explained about chore duty schedules, laundry, and bathing times, warning everyone not to keep any food inside dorm rooms in case the bear, which they called Margret, got hungry. Kuro didn’t catch much of it, though. The room was growing noisy again as people continued to pour into the dining hall. The tiny people had vanished from the rafters and were now walking along the dinner tables, handing out plates of salmon, pickle, and marmalade sandwiches to students. The servers were so small that each could carry only three plates, but the moment they put their last one down, they would vanish and be replaced by another fully loaded server.

  Kuro was interested in the diminutive waitstaff but was far too distracted watching Marie to pay much attention to them. She had been a combination of awestruck and mortified since entering the lodge. Seeing the odd little people appearing and disappearing on her table, while a fairly large bear sidled up to take a seat one bench down, seemed entirely too much for her. She gripped the cross on her necklace as though it were trying to escape, and her eyes were so wide that a bright rim of white was visible all around the dark irises. “What are they?” she managed to squeak out.

  “They’re lutin. They work here,” answered Meredith.

  Kuro knew of lutin but had never seen one. They were a kind of fey folk who ran the postal service, supposedly very shy and rarely seen. Mail would just get picked up and delivered when nobody was looking. He had never heard of them taking other jobs, but he supposed some might not like delivering mail.

  Meredith waved one over. He wore an ornately sculpted beard and moustache and a scarlet red hat. They greeted like old friends by bumping fists, which looked ridiculous given their mismatched sizes. “This is Welk. He’s been here since before I started. Welk, this is Marie. She’s new here, just in from Montreal.”

  Welk’s eyes went wide with excitement. “Oh, that is exciting,” he chittered in a voice like a chipmunk. “It is so wondrous out there, I hear. Have you used a telephone? How about a computer? Have you been on a spaceship? Have you gone under the ocean, scuba driving, I think it’s called? Are there really fish as big as a house under there?”

  Marie just sat staring, her mouth opening and closing without any words coming out. Welk leaned over to Meredith and said, “I think this one might be broken?”

  Kuro’s attention was pulled from Marie’s suffering by one of the other first years, Magna, asking one of the other lutin why they were working as servants instead of delivering mail.

  “Servants?” The tiny woman blew out her cheeks in offence, making her bushy moustache flutter. “We’re no servants!”

  She vanished and was replaced by another lutin, who continued the conversation without missing a beat. “We are no servants. If you want servants, talk to the strays they employ at one of the other residences.”

  He stuck his nose high in the air, took a step, and was gone, but another appeared to take his place, straddling Magna’s plate and wagging a finger. “We work here because of an old and sacred vow to the Autumn Court.”

  “Also the weather,” another cut in.

  “And the money,” said yet another.

  “And the food,” chimed in one serving a sandwich to Kuro.

  Sean Cassidy was inspecting his sandwich with deep skepticism. “About the food,” he said, interrupting the lutin chorus. “It’s a bit . . . weird.”

  “Is it?” said Welk, reappearing in front of Sean and joining the inspection of his lunch. “It is all things that wizards like.”

  Sean examined the contents of his sandwich. “Yeah, I guess,” he said. “But not all at once. I mean, salmon and marmalade?”

  “You get used to it pretty quick,” said Meredith, already on her second sandwich. “Just don’t think about it too much.”

  Kuro’s attention was pulled from the conversation by Charlie loudly apologizing for spilling her neighbour’s orange juice. “Oh, I’m so sorry,” she said as she fumbled for a napkin. “I’m Charlie, by the way. You must be Arthur. You’re the missing boy, well, not missing, but you weren’t on the boat. You got here early, right? Did you get to do any exploring before we got here? Is there anything cool to see?”

  The boy was frozen in place as Charlie clumsily mopped up the juice. He appeared petrified by any attention at all being paid to him. Arthur was a thin boy, rather tall, and unusually well groomed compared to the rest of the residents of the hall. His uniform was neat, his hair was carefully combed and parted, and he even wore his tie. He stared committedly at his plate and took several seconds to work up the courage to say “Yes.”

  Yes to what, it didn’t matter, as Charlie was back to wondering aloud about their classes and teachers and monsters hiding in caves beneath the island, guarding ancient treasures.

  Kuro sat quietly and did his best to be invisible. He still had no real assurance that he was in the right place, and the uncertainty was slowly retying the knot in his stomach. A knot that got tighter and tighter as he grew to like the lodge. It was warm, and the people were rowdy and common, and he couldn’t help but like Charlie. He knew he’d have to find out for certain eventually, but that could wait at least until after he was fed. Perhaps he could sleep under a couch by the fire and avoid the whole topic for a few days.

  As lunch cleared, the older students hauled their luggage to their rooms. Once the dining hall was adequately emptied, Pete waved the first years over. He then handed Meredith a list of room assignments, sat down, and promptly fell asleep.

  Meredith took the sheet and started reading off names. “Singh and Tanaka, room one, over that side.” She pointed to the door on the left side of the hall clearly marked “girls.”

  They nodded to each other in approval of their assigned pairing and moved off.

  “Cassidy and Kagen, you’re in room two on the boy’s side.”

  The pair shook hands and grabbed their suitcases.

  “Cook and Akinwande, room two.”

  Charlie burst with delight, threw her arms around Marie, then bounded off to their room. Marie followed in a much more subdued f
ashion.

  Meredith continued through the list, pairing off roommates and sending them to their dorms until Kuro stood alone. The only remaining boy besides him in the hall was Arthur, the shy boy with the neat clothes. He was still meticulously eating his sandwich with a knife and fork.

  Kuro fidgeted nervously and considered hiding. He felt exposed. Despite the friendly glow in Meredith’s eyes, her smile of jagged, pointed teeth and towering size did nothing to put Kuro at ease. He swallowed hard and felt the wind building around him, ready to push him on if he dashed for the door. A door he now saw was guarded by a dozing bear.

  Meredith looked to Kuro and back to her list of rooms several times and scratched her head. “And you are?” she asked.

  “Kuro?” he replied, voice wavering with dread.

  She went over the list again, checking over the pages of room assignments for seniors and then double-checking through the girl’s list. She mussed her hair with confusion. “Last name?”

  “Haven’t got one.”

  “Eh?” was all she could say in response. “Well, you’re not on the list.”

  The confirmation of his fears crushed his spirit, and the urge to run died. The fear faded, and he slumped in defeated resignation. He knew it had been too good to be true. Of course he didn’t belong in this place, probably not in any place. Maybe he could find a nice shed to sleep in.

  He moved to get his trunk and wondered if the bear would eat him on his way out and save him from his misery.

  Meredith didn’t move to stop him, but as he grabbed the handle, Pete roused from his slumber and mumbled something. Kuro couldn’t hear it but he could hear Meredith’s response. “Well, you might have told me sooner. The kid probably thinks he’s sleeping outside. Kuro, hold on, we do have a room for you.”

  “You do?” A lump started to form in Kuro’s throat. A cruel moment of hope that threatened to bring tears.

  “Yeah, see.” She held up a piece of paper written in the same hand as his acceptance letter.