Volume 1: Pickpocketing

by R. A. Consell

  He squinted to read it. “Special arrangement for a late addition. Please put Kuro in the second bed in room one.”

  “You’re in with Arthur Wood,” she said, patting Kuro on the back and spinning him to face the shy boy, still at the table. “Hey Arthur, meet your roommate.”

  Arthur dropped his cutlery and went stiff as he looked in horror at his ragged new roommate.

  Meredith slapped Kuro on the back and said, “Welcome to Autumn Lodge.”

  Nine

  Avalon Junior High

  School started the very next day with an assembly for all students. Kuro had to run to catch up with his classmates, as he’d taken too long struggling with his buttons and tie. They still weren’t right, but he didn’t want to be late.

  Being a little late had some benefits. It was the first time Kuro’d had a chance to run since his arrest. He laced up his running shoes and let the wind push him along the path, sweeping up a flurry of leaves in his wake. He caught up to the other stragglers and blew past them, his oversized backpack bouncing against him as he ran. He was so engrossed in the exhilaration of moving his legs and breathing fresh air that he hardly noticed the heat of the Summer Quarter, or someone shouting his name.

  “Wait up, Kuro!”

  The frustrated shout pulled him from his reverie. He skidded to a halt, turning to see who had called. Half a dozen Summerhill students were looking at him with disdain. They apparently did not consider running an appropriate activity for young people. In stark contrast to their perfectly groomed snobbishness, Charlie was loping up the trail, a tangle of clumsy limbs. Her hair looked like a bale of hay. She wore her uniform skirt over her uniform trousers. Her tie was tied in a single overhand knot, and she was positively thrilled with all of it.

  “You ran right past me and Marie,” she accused Kuro as she skipped to a stop beside him.

  Kuro had clearly done something to earn a reproachful scowl but wasn’t sure what. “I guess I did,” he replied.

  “But we are friends,” she asserted as if it were the undeniable truth. “And friends should walk to school together.”

  Kuro didn’t quite know how to respond. Were they friends? He didn’t really know how friends were made. Maybe a boat ride without any thefts or violence was enough. He did think he liked the strange girl, but he couldn’t imagine it being that simple.

  “Okay,” he said slowly. “So do we walk now that we’re together?”

  “No! Gosh!” Charlie flung her hands up in exasperation. “We have to wait for Marie. She didn’t run to catch you. You’re really fast, by the way.”

  Marie approached them slowly up the trail, looking very carefully put together. Her explosion of wiry black curls was tied back in a tight bun. Her clothes were neat, her shoes freshly polished, and she walked at the same unhurried pace as all the other students.

  Marie stayed quiet as they walked. Kuro guessed that she had been given about as much choice as he had in befriending Charlie. She seemed uncomfortable with how loud Charlie was and how much she stood out from the crowd.

  Kuro liked that Charlie drew attention. She was boisterous and never stopped talking. That meant fewer people were paying attention to him. Kuro also quickly found that he liked her stories. As they walked, she told three separate and conflicting tales about the founding of Avalon.

  She concluded her earnest explanation of how Avalon was a giant sleeping turtle that might wake any day and drown them all just as they reached the amphitheatre where the assembly was being held.

  It was a grand limestone basin deep in the Spring Quarter, with tiers of stone benches carved into it. The rows of benches radiated out from a broad central stage, where a dozen or so adults milled about shaking hands. Teachers, Kuro guessed.

  Charlie pushed them onto a set of benches next to Arthur, who was already waiting quietly and became flustered at having people sit near him.

  Arthur had been in bed with his curtain drawn long before curfew and was dressed and gone before Kuro woke. Kuro wasn’t sure if the boy was actively avoiding him or just very responsible. His current behaviour made Kuro think that Arthur might be trying to avoid everyone.

  They sat together, but Marie jumped from the stone bench and shouted in surprise. “The bench, it squishes,” she said pointing to her seat.

  Her reaction earned a chorus of laughter from the other students around her.

  “Well, of course it is,” answered Charlie. “They wouldn’t be very comfortable if they weren’t.” She bounced a couple of times on her stone seat to illustrate how soft and yielding it was.

  Marie lowered her head and her voice to try to shake off the attention of the students around them. “But rocks don’t squish. Not where I am from, anyway.”

  “Oh, most don’t here, either,” said Charlie. “These are enchanted.”

  The explanation did little to comfort Marie. She cautiously returned to her seat but kept shifting as though trying to find a way to make the bench less comfortable and more stonelike.

  Two swift claps echoed from the stage, cutting through the chatter and quieting the crowd. Principal McCutcheon stood at the podium at centre stage. “Good morning, students,” she began, her voice easily filling the large amphitheatre. She sounded as though she were speaking from only a couple yards away. “It is my pleasure to welcome you to this, the ninety-eighth academic year at Avalon Academy.”

  “I thought you said the school had been here forever,” Marie whispered to Charlie, calling her out on her tall tales.

  “Not the school,” Charlie corrected her. “The island. It used to be something else before it was a school.”

  McCutcheon continued her welcome speech in her crisp and precise manner. “For almost one hundred years, Avalon has been home to all students of the four kingdoms. Everyone is equal in Avalon. Here, the students of every court can come together and forge bonds that will last a lifetime, strengthen the ties between our kingdoms, and become productive citizens of the Confederated Kingdoms.”

  Kuro scoffed at that claim, which was clearly untrue. They may all be in the same school, and everyone may wear the same uniform, but who came from where was obvious. The students from Vertheim were universally taller and blonder than everyone else, and all arrived with warm cloaks over their uniform cardigans. The Summerhill kids, while much more varied in size and colour than the elves of Vertheim, all wore short sleeves, light vests, and a look of dismissive superiority. The Chateau du Printemps residents simply looked altogether cleaner and better ironed than the Autumn Lodge lot. They lounged and chatted like the Lodgers but somehow managed to look like they were posing for a portrait or waiting to be served while doing it. The Lodgers, however, just looked like poor mismatched leftovers, which is what they were.

  The students from each residence sat together, hardly mingling with the others. They were all in the same place, wearing the same uniform, but Kuro was no more their equal than he had been on the streets.

  McCutcheon wrapped up her welcome and then introduced a man she called Principal Thrymson, which confused Kuro as he didn’t know why there needed to be two principals. Thrymson looked like a man hewn from stone, his face and hair grey with age, his skin chiselled with wrinkles like crevices. His stony grey eyes seemed to stare into every student at once as he took the podium.

  “A brief reminder of some rules.” His voice was arctic cold, cavernously deep, and his Elvish accent made each syllable sound like a threat. The whole audience stiffened as though worried that they had already done something wrong. “No student should be outside the grounds of their residence past sunset without special permission. Familiars are never to be left unattended or out of sight of their masters. The Blandlands are entirely out of bounds, and crossing the veil is extremely ill advised. Junior students are not allowed on the Avalon High plateau unless escorted by a teacher.”

  Charlie let out an audible sigh of disappointment while Kuro sat relieved but confused. “If we c
an’t go to the plateau, how are we supposed to go to school?” he asked.

  “There are two schools,” said Arthur in a quiet and almost mechanical tone.

  Kuro started. It was the first time Arthur had said anything in his presence.

  “The junior high is on the ground,” Arthur continued. “Because junior students can’t get on the plateau by themselves.”

  Kuro examined the plateau. It rose like a pillar almost straight up, but the granite walls had cracks and crags that he could grab onto and jump off. He was pretty sure that he could climb it if he tried.

  Mr. Thrymson was still talking when Kuro turned his attention back to the stage. “Lesser transgressions will be addressed by our vice principals, Mr. Flint and Mademoiselle Lefay.” He gestured to two heartless-looking figures on the stage to his left. “It is preferable for everyone that no offences warrant the involvement of myself or Principal McCutcheon.”

  Kuro understood why McCutcheon had let Mr. Thrymson deliver the rules. When she spoke, Kuro worried that he was about to be punished. When Mr. Thrymson spoke, he worried that nobody would find his body.

  When the assembly ended, the older students were quick to head up to the high school. They were not eager to attend class. Rather they enjoyed the opportunity to show off to the new students.

  Each had a different means of getting themselves to the fortresslike school on the towering plateau at the centre of the island. A stream of them flew on brooms, carpets, and giant mortars—wooden bowls with iron rims. One rode a winged horse, another a griffin. Some enchanted their shoes to allow them to walk up as though it were level ground, and Meredith appeared to be climbing it without any magic, just using her brute strength.

  The younger students cheered at the spectacle as they walked the substantially more level route to their school.

  The junior high was deep in the Spring Quarter, not far from the ferry. That meant the Lodgers would have the longest walk, having to pass through either Summer or Winter to get there, making it all but impossible to dress for the weather.

  As they neared the school, the thick spring forest yielded to a broad lawn. The single-lane pathway of interlocking bricks they had been walking on split and wrapped around a wide marble fountain before leading up to a concrete staircase to the school.

  The school itself was not as ancient or imposing as the high school on the hill and not nearly so incredible as Charlie’s stories had suggested. It certainly wasn’t “hewn from the stones at the heart of the earth by the hands of giants.” It was instead a tall red brick building with many windows. A large clock was built into a bell tower, which rose above the big wooden doors of the main entrance. The clock’s black iron hands indicated how little time they had before classes started.

  At the doors stood Ms. McCutcheon. Kuro wondered how she had beaten them all there without messing up her hair, but there she was, still and fierce as a gargoyle. She was evaluating every student as they passed, her lips pursed and her left eyebrow raised in disapproval as they approached.

  Kuro tried to hide behind his compatriots, but he did not escape her glare. She cleared her throat as they passed. Kuro winced, expecting punishment for some unknown offence.

  “Ms. Cook,” she said in a voice so sharp that Kuro nearly apologized. “That uniform is entirely unacceptable.”

  “Is it?” asked Charlie, inspecting herself. “It’s the trousers, isn’t it? I don’t like wearing skirts without something underneath.”

  The principal took a deep breath to steady her nerves. “It is not that you are wearing trousers, Ms. Cook. It is that you are wearing both trousers and a skirt. You are required to wear only one or the other. Not both. I should say the same for the cardigan and the vest. You are wearing nearly two full uniforms.”

  “I don’t have to wear a skirt?” Charlie said in astonishment. She practically tore it off and jammed it roughly in her backpack. “Thanks, Miss!”

  Ms. McCutcheon furrowed her brow at the rough treatment of the clothing. “And the state of your ties,” she continued.

  Charlie shrugged. “I don’t know how to tie one.”

  “Then perhaps you should ask for the assistance of some of your capable peers at the lodge.” The principal gestured towards Marie and Arthur with a slight tilt of her head. “In the interest of time, though, I shall demonstrate today. Now hold still.”

  Kuro tried to pay attention to the intricate series of movements needed to create the flat and symmetrical knot as Ms. McCutcheon tied Charlie’s and then Kuro’s ties. He was distracted, though, by the other students passing by. They all seemed relieved to have escaped the principal’s scrutiny. An older girl with a much shorter skirt than the others even gave him a small salute and mouthed “Thank you” as she passed through the school doors.

  Once finished correcting their uniformity, she ushered the four of them through the doors before turning back to interrogate the next student who did not meet her standards.

  The school was much larger than it appeared from outside. This was entirely normal for buildings as far as Kuro was concerned. Pretty much all the buildings behaved that way in Detritus Lane and he thought nothing of having a class on the fifth floor of a four-story building.

  Such architecture might not be as common as he thought, though, as almost all the other first years stopped dead as they crossed the threshold and found themselves in a foyer almost as big as the building. It took considerable corralling by Ms. McCutcheon to get the group moving and headed in the correct direction for their first class: Elvish.

  As the class began, Kuro quickly realized that he had absolutely no idea how school was done.

  The teacher, Ms. Frigard, was as elven as could be: tall, strong, and blond, with golden tan skin and bright golden eyes. She seemed nice but dove so quickly into the intricacies of the Elvish alphabet that Kuro was left hopelessly behind. She had already erased two chalkboards full of letters and words before Kuro even realized that he was supposed to be writing things down.

  Numerology followed Elvish. The teacher, a Tirnanogian woman called Mrs. Lovelace, was enthusiastic and animated but appeared to also be completely unhinged. She walked only in straight lines and pivot on the spot to turn at very specific angles, which she would frequently stop the class to double-check with a large brass protractor.

  She wore a vibrant crimson dress with patterns traced all over it in gold. Her clothes matched the decoration of the classroom such that if she stood too close to the wall, she could easily be mistaken for one of the many tapestries. She had arranged the desks according to a complex set of mathemagical rules, resulting in them being scattered inconsistently throughout the room and facing in all different directions. Kuro got stuck with a bad desk and had to sit backwards on his chair for most of the class to see the teacher.

  Mrs. Lovelace spoke only in sentences with a prime number of syllables. “It is the most effective method of recollecting whole concepts, as they cannot be easily subdivided,” she explained.

  Whether or not that was true was hard to say, but the way she was constantly counting syllables on her fingers as she spoke was very distracting.

  Despite Mrs. Lovelace being energetic and encouraging, the subject matter was impenetrable. They spent their first class learning the circumstances under which one plus one could equal three and were promised that the next lesson would go on to cover the various ways one could add two and two together.

  The students left with their heads spinning.

  Evocations seemed promising in comparison based on how the class started but quickly proved otherwise.

  The teacher wasn’t in the class when the bell rang. Just as the students began to get curious about his absence, he appeared at the head of the room in a fiery explosion. He paused to pose dramatically as the smoke cleared to reveal his figure.

  He was a rather small man, thin and balding, with pointed features and a crooked nose. What hair he did have was groomed so that it
stood straight out to the sides, and his beard was greased into a fine point, giving his whole head the look of a triangle balanced on end. Perhaps to distract from his unimpressive stature he dressed flamboyantly, wearing a long black coat with red with gold trimmings and a tall upturned collar.

  Just before the shock of his entrance began to fade, he began to speak in a deep, resonant voice. “Who among you have the bravery and resolve to master the subtle powers of evocation?” He raised both his hands dramatically, as though holding a weighty globe in each. “Who can bend the world with the force of their will?”

  Two desks at the front of the room raised off the floor, startling the students sitting at them.

  “Who has the inner spark to master the elements?” he challenged as he drew an amber rod from his jacket. Lightning danced along its length and arced out into the room in a dazzling cascade of blinding light.

  “Who has the grit and mettle to move mountains?” He pulled a stone from another pocket and slammed it down onto the wooden floor. As he drew his hand up and away, the stone grew into the shape of a great peaked mountain, rising almost to the height of the teacher.

  “Who can fan the flames of their passions into life?” He thrust his fist upwards and the stone erupted like a volcano, sending a great bird made of fire into the air. It soared around the room, leaving a trail of smoke in its wake.

  “Who would wade into the tempestuous torrents of the soul?” He dropped his amber rod, reached out towards the back wall, and pulled as if tugging on a long rope with both hands. He pulled forth a river of water shaped like a dragon, which splashed around the room. The water dragon chased down the bird of fire, dousing it and releasing a burst of steam. The dragon then turned and charged violently towards the teacher.

  “And who dares delve into the icy depths of their psyche?” His voice had grown to a bellow that reverberated around the class. He drew in a deep breath and exhaled a cold mist. The mist froze the steam dragon from nose to tail, leaving a sparkling sculpture of ice.