“Well, sir. Thank you, sir,” he replied politely, not lifting his eyes from his shoes. Arthur was somewhat less prideful than Evelyn and looked ready to run from the class before it had even begun. Extra attention was apparently not something Arthur was angling for.
De Rigueur gave Arthur an unwelcome pat on the shoulder and moved on to the last name on the list. He paused on it for a moment before deciding to interrogate Kuro on it. “Kuro. Japanese name, isn’t it? It means ‘black,’ I believe. I speak a little Japanese from my time as ambassador to Takamagahara.” He paused so the room had time to be appropriately impressed.
The professeur was incorrect. Kuro’s name did not mean “black.” It was a number from some other language. Phineas had told him. It meant that he was number nine.
“Your family name is missing on the roster. Can I fill it in?” His eyebrows raised with inquisitive curiosity, but his skin was too loose for the effect to reach the rest of his face.
Kuro contemplated lying to De Rigueur. This was his chance to give himself a name and a family. He even thought for a moment about saying “Dubois” just to upstage Evelyn. But De Rigueur was so enamoured with the rich or famous students, and so boastful of his own prestige, that Kuro couldn’t stand the idea of pandering to him. “I don’t have one,” Kuro said flatly.
“Oh, now, that is unusual. I was once in Africa on safari in my youth, hunting ropen, and some of the wizards there don’t have last names either. They say it protects them from certain dark magics.” De Rigueur looked around the room to confirm that everyone was adequately interested in his story before turning back to Kuro. “Where are your parents from?”
“Don’t have any,” scowled Kuro.
That effectively killed Kuro in De Rigueur’s droopy eyes, though he tried one more angle. “An orphan, eh? Well done, then, making it to Avalon. Are you here on scholarship?”
“I’m here on parole.” Kuro glared, and De Rigueur choked on his next words before they emerged.
It was a stupid thing to say. He had just exposed himself as a criminal to his new friends. He’d probably have to lie to smooth it over, but he couldn’t help enjoying De Rigueur’s distressed expression.
That first class involved creating a salve for burns. As they powdered their weevil proboscises and stewed salamander toenails, Charlie scooted her stool closer to Kuro so she could talk to him privately. She looked as though she might explode if she didn’t ask him about what he’d said. “Is it true? Are you really here on parole? What did you do? Why didn’t you tell me before?” she whispered.
He didn’t like lying to Charlie. She trusted him implicitly despite his having done nothing to earn it. Misleading her made him very uncomfortable. “Well, . . . I . . .” Kuro stammered. “It’s not exactly true. I mostly just said it because he was fussing over the rich kids with fancy names.”
“Was he?” Charlie was surprised by the accusation. “I didn’t notice that. I kind of like him. He’s weird, and he has a cool wig.”
Arthur, who was sitting on the other side of Kuro, had overheard them and agreed with Kuro. “I was warned about him,” he mumbled. “He likes powerful people to owe him favours.” After two days of sharing a class, residence, and room with Arthur, this was the most Kuro had heard him speak. Arthur spoke only in single words most of the time, and he seemed to always be concentrating on something. At the moment, it should have been his pot of salamander parts, as it was boiling over.
De Rigueur appeared far more quickly than seemed possible for such a rickety old man. With a dash of beaver hairs and a stir of the pot, he had set it right. “There you are, young Mr. Wood. Keep at it. You’re doing well.” He gave a conspiratorial smile and then hobbled off to pay an excess of compliments to Evelyn.
The salve was a simple brew, and Kuro was near the first to finish, despite the shoddy equipment. He had a beaker of his sweet-smelling ointment sitting on display awaiting evaluation well before class ended. De Rigueur passed him several times as though he weren’t even there.
The withered teacher, however, noticed Evelyn’s brew the moment it was complete. “Well done, Miss Lemieux! Well done indeed. Everyone have a look at this.” De Rigueur was falling over himself to compliment her work, and Evelyn was basking in the praise. He held up a spoon of her goop to show the class.
He moved throughout the class evaluating the colour, texture, and aroma of each paste. When he came to the bench where Kuro, Charlie, and Arthur were sitting, he swept Kuro’s beaker off the desk and marvelled at it. “Fantastic, just fantastic. Top marks. Look at the clarity. Observe the creaminess. I daresay I’ve not seen such an excellent burn salve in years.”
Kuro noticed that Evelyn was furious someone in the class was receiving higher praise than she had. Kuro smiled smugly at her. His gloating was cut short, however, as De Rigueur continued. “Well done, Mr. Wood!”
Kuro’s heart sank. Arthur flushed and tried to correct the teacher, but he seemed unable to say anything at all. He just kept staring at the beaker and opening and closing his mouth. Charlie was so furious at the injustice of it that she appeared to forget how to sit up properly and fell off her chair. De Rigueur pretended to notice none of this. He just gave a congratulatory pat on the back to Arthur and moved away.
Arthur looked utterly abashed. “I’m sorry, Kuro. I didn’t mean to. You deserve the credit. Not me.”
“It’s all right, Arthur,” Kuro said resignedly. Kuro wasn’t overly bothered by being overlooked. He had a strong feeling that De Rigueur was one teacher who wouldn’t try to keep him after class. “Besides,” he continued, “I feel like I got something better than good grades.” Kuro looked back to Evelyn, who was still fuming. Kuro even thought that he saw one of her perfect curls fall out of place.
Ten
Mortar and Hassle
Things got better and worse in equal measure as the weeks went on. Kuro was making some friends, but he had said too much and been too strange in class, and many people were starting to get suspicious and wary of him. Rumours were starting to circulate, likely encouraged by the shoe thieves, Seph and Bella. He was said to be dangerous, violent, unhinged, and inhuman. Students became uncomfortable around him, choosing seats far from him at dinner and avoiding him in hallways.
His roommate was thankfully unbothered by the speculations. Arthur and Kuro had struck up a partnership in alchemy class, where Arthur was utterly hopeless. He had never so much as made a pot of tea at home and had difficulty keeping track of more than one thing at a time. Kuro helped Arthur brew his potions, and Arthur helped Kuro with his written homework, while Charlie provided running commentary. Arthur was also easy to spend time with. Being too shy to make eye contact or say more than a few sentences at a time, he never pried into Kuro’s past or noticed that Kuro didn’t look at him when he talked either.
Kuro’s most valuable advocate was Meredith Thrump, the half-ogre girl whom Pete had put in charge of the first-year students. She thought the idea of short, skinny, quiet Kuro being wicked or dangerous was laughable and scolded anyone she caught giving him a sidelong glance. Being bigger and stronger than most of the high school boys, she encountered few who would actively disagree with her.
Kuro also found an unexpected ally in Marie Akinwande. She was trying very hard to look and act like the students from the other residences, with neat clothes and rigid posture. She was cautious to speak, took diligent notes in class, and studied constantly. Kuro guessed that she was trying to stay out of trouble after getting arrested by the Hounds and not make the same mistakes that Kuro had in exposing himself. He was very mistaken.
He found her by chance one day down by the shore in the Autumn Quarter. He was well up a tree that he had climbed to get some peace and quiet when she appeared. She wandered up from the lodge and sat near the shore, watching the edge of the veil get pushed around by the salty waves of the bay. Kuro thought it best to just let her be and continued to watch the sky grow pink as the sun se
t over the water.
His relaxation was broken when Marie stood up and started angrily throwing rocks at the edge of the veil and cursing in French. Watching the careful and reserved girl let loose was fun, and Kuro found himself smiling. He watched her heft larger and larger rocks and toss them into the frothing waves on the far side, made blurry and indistinct by the edge of the veil. She chose one that was slightly too large for her, and as she spun herself to throw it, she lost her balance and went teetering toward the edge.
Before he realized it, Kuro had leapt from his perch in the tree and was dashing to catch her. He snagged the back of her cardigan before she tumbled into the water and managed to pull her back, but they were both off balance, and they crumpled into a painful heap on the rocky shore, just at the edge of the veil.
Marie threw him away from her and jumped to her feet. She looked the same as she had on the ferry when he’d first seen her, like a cornered animal. It took her a few moments to recognize him. When she did, she relaxed only slightly. “Kuro? You saw?” she asked.
Kuro nodded. “Yeah, it’s fine. I won’t tell anyone.”
She breathed a sigh of relief and faced the shimmering silky film that separated the worlds. “What would have happened to me if I fell through?”
Kuro wasn’t sure, but he told her what he knew. “You’d get wet and cold, for sure. And you’d be stuck out there unless you could find an entrance. Probably the one we came through on the ferry is the only way back in.”
She backed away from the veil and turned to walk back to the forest. She stopped after a few paces and looked at the clear expanse of leaf-covered grass between them and the nearest tree. “Where did you come from?”
“I was up there.” Kuro pointed to the large branch he had been resting on, nearly ten yards up.
Marie stared for a moment at the tree and the height of the branch. “How?” she started to ask, amazed at the distance he had covered in such a short time. “Magic,” she said with a glum realization that Kuro didn’t understand.
“Yeah,” he said. “It’s the only magic I can do. I can get the wind to catch me and throw me, but that’s about it.”
“I cannot do anything,” Marie mumbled and kicked a pile of leaves. “I think it is a mistake that I am here.”
Kuro laughed in embarrassment. He couldn’t imagine anyone being worse at magic than he was, or feeling less like they belonged at the school. “Like nothing at all? You’ve never done any even by accident?”
Marie fidgeted with the cross-shaped charm on her necklace and looked uncomfortable as they walked into the darkening woods. “I used to change the colour of my coloured pencils.”
“That’s way better than what I do. Was that out in the Blandlands?” asked Kuro. “You should be able to do it bigger and easier in the fey realm. There’s more magic here.”
Marie looked away and said, “It scared my parents.” She paused for a long time and then quietly added, “So they brought me to a priest and got me exorcized.”
Kuro wasn’t sure what that meant. It wasn’t something Father John had talked about. “Does that mean you can’t do it anymore?”
“It means that I never tried again,” she admitted. “I was afraid to. It’s not real magic like Ms. Crawley and Mr. Ogonov do, anyway. It’s just a dumb thing. I can’t do any of the things they teach.”
Kuro remembered what it was like when he didn’t think he could do any magic: how much his master had loathed him for it, how much he wished he could do something, anything, to prove that he wasn’t a complete waste. He rummaged in his pocket and pulled out the stump of a pencil he had and presented it to Marie. “It’s something, though. Go ahead.”
“I cannot.” She backed away from the pencil as though it were going to bite her.
“It should be way easier here.” Kuro tried to sound encouraging, as Ms. Crawley was in class. “Just give it a try.”
Marie kept backing up and found herself running into the huge trunk of a towering maple, slowly dropping its red leaves in perpetual autumn. She looked more like a cornered animal than ever. “I don’t remember how, and it won’t work anyway.” As Kuro tried to hand her the pencil, her hands retreated behind her, as if he were threatening her with a rabid animal. “It was cleansed from me.”
“You don’t remember what it felt like?” Kuro asked.
Marie shook her head vigorously. Kuro put away the offending pencil. He didn’t know why she was so scared, but he wasn’t going to push the point. He turned to start walking back to the lodge when an odd leaf at his feet made him stop. “Are you sure you don’t remember how it feels?”
“I already told you I don’t,” Marie said angrily. “Just leave it be.”
Kuro bent, picked up the leaf, and twirled its stem between his fingers. Marie’s eyes widened. It was purple. She turned and looked at the tree she had pressed herself against. Its bark and every leaf on it were vibrant purple, gleaming brightly in the last light of the setting sun.
From that night on they became allies at school. Marie knew very little of the magical world, and Kuro was happy to explain the oddities and practices where he could. Marie helped him understand what he was supposed to do on assignments and would explain difficult passages in books to him. They bonded over a mutual dislike of Evelyn and soon found that they had become real friends.
His best friend, though, was Charlie. Charlie had no time at all for the dark rumours about Kuro. “I’ve met squirrels more threatening than you,” she told Kuro as her way of comforting him. She didn’t care that he didn’t have parents, or that he came from Detritus Lane, or that he wasn’t any good at school. She never pried when he couldn’t answer questions, and her only explanation for why she liked Kuro was “Us weirdos need to stick together.”
The pair were nearly inseparable. Between classes they would play in some of the less carnivorous gardens outside. They would run through the halls between classes despite comments from people like Evelyn that “proper wizards don’t run.”
In the opinion of Kuro and Charlie, proper wizards were boring. None of the proper wizards had been to the top of the bell tower in a thunderstorm. None of them had climbed cherry trees in the Spring Quarter to watch the dawn, or searched for the entrance to the secret labyrinth beneath the island that Charlie insisted existed.
Their favourite thing to do was to race. Kuro was much faster and more coordinated than Charlie, but she was much bigger than he was. She was a tangle of limbs when she ran, constantly looking like she was about to topple over. Kuro would have left her in the dust every time except that on most days, his backpack weighed nearly as much as he did.
In their third week of class, something happened that helped dispel some of the rumours about Kuro, but not in the way he might have hoped: they started actually casting magic.
Kuro was terrible at it.
They were attempting to warm a cup of water. It was meant to be the simplest magic there was. According to Mr. Ogonov, their undirected thoughts were always being converted to heat by the magical field all around them. All they needed to do was learn to direct those thoughts and focus them on a single point.
An indecipherable series of diagrams and formulas filled the chalkboard at the front of the class. Ogonov explained that they described the precisely correct way to think to achieve the desired result, though it may as well have been Gaelic for all Kuro could understand of it.
The class sat silently with their hands encircling their cups of water, watching the thermometers inside do very little. Some of the well-bred students like Evelyn had their cups noticeably warming by the end of the first class. Most had them hot enough to steep weak tea by the end of the second. Kuro failed to get the water to heat at all until the third, and in that, he must have made some dire mistake, because while the water warmed slightly, his fingertips froze.
Mr. Ogonov held up Kuro’s frostbitten fingers for the whole class to see. He lectured the class on the dangers
of not precisely following instructions before sending him off to the school nurse for treatment. “You see, class,” he explained, pointing vigorously at one of the formulas on the board, “the energy for magic must come from somewhere. If you do not pull it from the environment, or transmute it directly from your thoughts through the magical field, the only source is your own body.”
The class did not wait for Kuro to master the skill. They moved on to the next easiest form of magic: telekinesis.
They started by trying to move peas, then pencils, then rings, then pieces of fabric. Ogonov explained that a single point, like a pea, was supposed to be easy to move. A line, like a pencil, was harder. A circle, like a ring, was more difficult still, and finally, a flat surface, like a piece of paper or fabric, was supposed to be quite challenging.
The hardest thing to move, he said, was a volume of liquid, as you had to keep grip of the whole of it at once with your mind. He showed off by lifting the contents of a glass of water into the air and hovering it around the room in an unstable mass.
Jennifer Tanaka excitedly asked if they could use telekinesis to fly but was shut down. “Oh goodness, no,” Mr. Ogonov said, waving the suggestion aside. “That’s terribly dangerous. You’re more likely to tear a vital organ out of place than lift yourself up. Even if you could grab hold of your whole body and lift it, doing so would likely stop your blood from flowing. Not to worry, though. Your minds are constantly working to keep your bodies safe from such things. Every living thing, even Blandlanders to some extent, is constantly protecting itself from the effects of stray magic. If that weren’t true, then a nightmare might turn you inside out.”
Most of the class progressed quickly up to moving a ring, having it hovering through the air or spinning on their desk, and a few could keep a piece of silk level in the air. Charlie was so good at it as to be embarrassing to watch. She could lift all three at once and showed off by writing notes on a hovering sheet of paper with a flying pencil. Her writing was neater using telekinesis than it was by hand. To make things worse, she seemed bored by it. She slumped lazily on her desk while she made the objects dance and spin in the air.
Volume 1: Pickpocketing Page 13