Legacy of the Claw

by C. R. Grey

  However, he did notice something else that was odd: a door ajar at the end of the hallway. Had it been closed, the wooden door would’ve blended seamlessly with the wall. It swung slowly on iron hinges, as though it had only been flung open moments ago. He went in.

  Bailey let his eyes adjust, surveying the dark room. His foot knocked against something, and he reached down. It was a dynamo lamp—and it was warm.

  Bailey spun the crank and the lamp sputtered to life. He seemed to have stumbled upon a librarian’s workshop of sorts. Everything in the room seemed to be covered in a thick layer of dust. Worn books were stacked in neat rows, pots of glue lined a central worktable, and binder’s thread and thick needles lay scattered. It was a room for books to be repaired, though by the looks of it, some books were well past the possibility.

  On the worktable, a large map lay unfolded. It was the only thing in the room that looked like it had been read in the last twenty years. In fact, there wasn’t a speck of dust on it. The dynamo lamp had been on the floor next to an overturned stool. It looked as though whoever had been reading this map had brought it here to read in secret, and had just narrowly escaped.

  Bailey leaned over the table and held the lamp above the map. The Unreachable Road: The Migration of the Velyn Mountain People was written across the top. In smaller print beneath it said, By Thelonious Loren. The title and name sent shivers of recognition down his spine. It wasn’t the answer to Tremelo’s riddle, but it was something: the Velyn tribes, revealing themselves to him for the second time in less than a week. He wondered who had been in here, reading this map in secret.

  The map showed the whole of the Dark Woods that stretched from Fairmount to the southern half of the kingdom, over the Golden Lowlands. The Velyn Peaks had been rendered in white chalk, and lovingly drawn black flowers marked each spot where the Velyn had been known to dwell. A list on the side of the map explained the significance of each marker, and the year that the Velyn had settled there.

  The Unreachable Road, he learned, was a pathway that the Velyn used to travel from one location to another. The dense terrain and steep mountainsides of the forest made it nearly impossible to pass—but the Velyn, it seemed, had created the road and were the only ones ever to use it. Except, Bailey assumed, this Thelonious Loren, the man with the same last name as Tremelo. He wondered if Loren might be the same man that the bartender had told him about—the Loon. After all, how many people in the kingdom were this interested in the movements of a lost tribe?

  Bailey leaned forward in the chair and followed the chronological key by dragging his finger from place to place. He imagined the mountain people, whole families, trekking up and down the range on their own secret pathway. The stories he’d heard as a child, about the Velyn turning into animals and prowling the mountainsides, all came back to him as vividly as when he’d heard them as a little boy.

  As he traced the Unreachable Road with his finger, he noticed one was marked only as the Velyns’ “Annual Autumn Dwelling Place,” which was at the very end of the path. Bailey noticed the curve of the Dark Woods around the mountains, and a nearby set of cliffs. He saw where the Fluvian was drawn in with a thick blue ink pen, and was certain he was looking at the woods outside of Fairmount Academy.

  He came to the final marker at the opposite end of the Unreachable Road. As he traced the map, his finger landed on a perfectly drawn flower … near his own hometown in the Lowlands. The forest was thin there, and the Lowlands were separated from the mountains by only a dozen miles of woodland. He noted the number—the last location—and found its description on the adjoining list.

  The Lowland Pass, it said on the side, is the last known settlement of the Velyn tribes. Chosen for its proximity to available goods and trade with the Golden Lowlands, the Pass also made the tribes vulnerable to attack. The Dark Woods grows thin in this area, which, in our recent history, became a noted disadvantage to them. The accessibility of the area gave the Jackal King’s soldiers an opportunity to attack. This was the last place where the Velyn tribes were seen alive—and even more surely the place where they were most cruelly murdered.

  Bailey traced his fingers over the words with a shaking hand. Thunder roared outside and the clouds darkened ominously. He moved his finger back to the flower marker, and looking closely, noticed that in neat handwriting, Loren had written The massacre of the Velyn and a year. It was one Bailey knew well.

  It was the very year he was born.

  Twenty-one

  THE LIGHTS OF THE Autumnal Soiree shone across the commons as Bailey ran back to the Towers. He saw a flash of lightning over the mountains, and a sprinkling of rain began to fall as he entered the dorm.

  He needed to think. It seemed like he’d come across nothing but mysteries and questions since he’d come to Fairmount, but was no closer to answering the one question he’d started out with: that of his Absence.

  The year of his birth, written carefully on that map, burned in front of his eyes as though it had been branded there.

  He’d grown up never knowing who his real parents were, only that he’d been found near the pass marked on the map, on his own in the Dark Woods. Was it possible that he belonged to the Velyn? They were a cursed people, hated and reviled. Whether they had been shape-shifters, criminals, or just on the wrong end of the history books, their legacy was marked. Being a Velyn would make him more of a freak than he already was.

  And what of the marker that lay directly on top of the Fairmount forests? Bailey thought back to the night Tremelo had saved him and Tori from the wolf, and the two men he’d seen. Was it possible that someone was now using the Velyn’s Unreachable Road to spy on Fairmount? What if it was this Dominae party that everyone was so afraid of? Could Tremelo know more than he was letting on?

  Bailey climbed the steps to his tower bedroom and changed out of his drenched clothing. He laid in bed, anxious over all he’d uncovered.

  His dreams that night were of a kind king. He wore an overcoat with pockets full of herbs and a grand top hat. With his hand on Bailey’s shoulder, the king led him through the Dark Woods and to the edge of the mountains.

  “Look,” the king said, pointing. A falcon circled the top of a snow-white mountain with an object clutched in its talons. “What is it bringing us, Bailey?”

  But as the falcon grew closer, so too did a terrible roar. From the trees emerged ferocious beasts that bared their teeth. Bailey and the king plunged into darkness, running away as fast as they could.

  Behind him, he heard a menacing growl as something huge pursued him.

  “Bailey!” the king shouted. His top hat had fallen, and he’d been overtaken by the oncoming beasts.

  “Bailey!”

  He woke—someone really had said his name.

  “Hal!” The same faraway voice called out again, accompanied by a flash of lightning. Bailey sat up in bed. Hal was awake too, polishing his glasses on his pajama top.

  “Who is that?” Bailey asked.

  “I’m not sure,” Hal said, “but it came from outside.” He and Bailey opened the window and leaned out. A heavy rain pelted down on them.

  Tori stood shivering in her pajamas, rubbing her thin arms. Thunder echoed from across the river, headed their way.

  “What are you doing?” Bailey called from their second story window.

  “You have to come down, you have to help me!” she said. She was soaked, and wiped the rainwater from her eyes.

  Bailey’s skin prickled. She sounded truly afraid.

  “What’s going on?” said Hal.

  “It’s Phi!” Tori said, trying to keep her voice low over the rain, which was next to impossible. “She’s trying to fly!”

  “What?!” said Hal.

  “We’re coming down!” said Bailey. “Just stay there, and stay quiet!” He pushed away the image of Phi on the ground, hurt from a long fall. Trying to fly? What was she thinking?

  He and Hal got dressed quickly. Bailey grabbed the claw and careered down
the stairs, through the front door. Tori waited just outside, pacing back and forth. The three of them huddled out of the rain under the door frame of the Towers’ main entrance.

  “She’s been gone for hours,” Tori said. “I didn’t know who else to tell. She’s on scholarship—if she gets caught, she’ll lose it. But I can’t find her by myself. She could be anywhere!”

  “Start at the beginning,” Bailey said. “What do you mean, she was trying to fly?”

  Tori looked down at her hands.

  “I thought I knew everything about her—we’re together all the time. But lately she’s been out of the room, early in the morning and sometimes late at night after Scavage practice. She said she had an independent study with Tremelo. When I asked what it was about, she said”—Tori paused and slowly rubbed her scar where it hid under her sleeve—“she said I wouldn’t understand.”

  Bailey thought back to Phi’s words at the opera house—maybe a bond between humans and animals wasn’t enough, she’d said. Not for someone who truly wanted to transform into an animal.

  “Tonight, when she left the soiree, she was acting strange,” Tori continued. “I heard her sneak out after we went to bed. I didn’t think much about it, we’ve all snuck out”—she shot a knowing look at Bailey—“but after she left the room, I was really curious and … I snooped around.” Tori whispered this last part.

  “And when I found this, well … ”

  She reached into her pocket and took out a palm-sized notebook, bound in red linen. Hal reached for it and snapped it open.

  “So, she wants to fly? That’s normal for an avian Animas,” he said, flipping through the pages. “I’d be more worried if she didn’t want that, frankly. Hmm. Some nice poetry.”

  Bailey winced. If Phi found out they’d passed her diary around, she’d be horrified.

  “Don’t read that stuff,” he said.

  “That’s not it, anyway. Keep going,” whispered Tori, reaching to turn the page.

  Hal held the book closer to his chest and flipped forward a few pages, then stopped short.

  “Oh,” he said, suddenly sounding very serious.

  Tori nodded.

  “What? What is it?” asked Bailey. Hal held the notebook open and handed it to Bailey. Next to a page of hastily scribbled notes was a detailed drawing. It was a set of wings, made of thin metal rods and fabric—meant to be attached to a human’s back by a buckled harness. Two smaller harnesses were drawn on either side, meant to wrap around the wearer’s arms. At the end of these were two handles that resembled a clutch. The setup looked familiar, and all at once Bailey remembered where he’d seen the same machinery before: Tremelo’s motorbuggy.

  “You think she’s actually going to try to make this thing?” said Bailey.

  Tori forcefully turned the next page of the notebook and pointed to a checklist written in different handwriting. It was a list of materials, all accompanied by hastily drawn check marks. At the bottom it read, Do NOT attempt until you’ve alerted me.

  “She’s already made it,” Tori said, her voice shaking. “She’s already put it all together—and now she’s out there, about to break her neck, if she hasn’t already.”

  “Okay,” said Bailey. The sounds of the night around them had vanished into some kind of vacuum, and his own voice sounded very far away. “We’ll split up. We’ll find her.”

  They made a plan. Hal took off toward the edge of the cliff, where he’d pass the clock tower and the farthermost campus buildings. Tori left to circle the Scavage fields. Both would try their best to learn what they could from their kin who inhabited those areas.

  Bailey decided to search the dorms and the stables, and fan out to the teachers’ quarters and Tremelo’s workshop. He had no doubt whose handwriting had been in Phi’s private notebook.

  The cold rain fell as Bailey made his way around Garrett dorm and up the hill to the Applied Sciences building. He took extra care to glance up at the windows of Tremelo’s office. They were dark, but one window hung open and its shutters beat against the stone exterior wall. Just next to the building, Bailey noticed the gnarled oak tree; its branches reached like a bridge to that same open window. Phi, Bailey thought. What are you thinking?

  He turned. Opposite the Applied Sciences building was a knobby hill that sloped downward to the forest proper. Bailey could tell that with a running start and a bit of wind, the hill would be the perfect launching place. He ran toward it, and the landscape opened up as though curtains had just parted on either side of a stage. He saw something large and white in a tree at the bottom of the hill—it was Phi, wearing the wings, which extended at least four full feet from either shoulder. They were caught firmly between two large branches, and Phi was half dangling, half crouching at the top of the tree.

  “Phi!” he called, as he ran down the hill to her.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked, sounding both relieved and angry.

  “Never mind that,” Bailey said. “Are you hurt?”

  “I’m fine, I think,” said Phi. “But I’m stuck and the harness is jammed!” Bailey saw that the right wing had a branch through it. The wires attached to the controllers at each of her wrists were tangled hopelessly with leaves. One raw wire swung down freely and swayed as she struggled. A few bright sparks crackled from the end of the wire.

  “Just stay still! I’m coming up there!” called Bailey. As he began to climb the tree, the rain fell harder. The trunk and branches were slick, and he scraped his hands trying to find his grip, but finally he made it to the top. Phi and her contraption were pinned like a specimen under a microscope. It was a creaking mass of wires, rods, and canvas—badly stuck and badly broken. Phi’s tears were mixed with the rain pelting her face.

  “Don’t worry. I can get you out,” Bailey yelled over the rain. “But I don’t know how we’ll get it down.”

  “What? No, we have to get it down!” protested Phi.

  Without responding, he climbed up to the branch above her head and began trying to lift the impaled wing off the sharp wood. Fat raindrops seemed to attack him from every direction.

  “Phi! Raise your right shoulder.” He saw her back rise as he’d asked, but also shake with a small sob.

  “Okay, I got the wing free. Hold on to the branch below you,” he warned, grabbing hold of the closest branch to him as well. “I’m going to unbuckle you, and I don’t want you to fall.”

  Phi nodded and did as she was told.

  Bailey slipped his hand behind her and tried to undo the back buckle—but it was stuck. Below them the raw wire swung, still snapping sparks at the branches. Bailey thanked Nature for the rain, keeping the tree from catching alight. He took the claw out of his pocket, and began cutting through the heavy strap of Phi’s harness. It took only a few seconds, and she was free. With the release of all that weight Phi fell suddenly, as if grabbed by the tree branches below. Bailey lunged and reached for her hands, wet and slick. With some effort he managed to hoist her up to steady footing. He could see her matted hair through flashes of lightning.

  Getting down from the tree was difficult. The bark was slippery and it was hard to see. Bailey slid more than once as they made their way to the ground. “I’ve ruined everything,” Phi kept saying. “Tremelo will never forgive me.”

  “Tremelo will just be glad you’re okay,” Bailey said.

  “But I’m not,” she said, shaking her head. “Not if I have to leave it. It’s not okay!”

  “Phi, everyone’s worried about you, not that machine. Tremelo will understand.”

  “Nobody understands!” Phi said, an edge to her voice that Bailey had never heard before. “No one does. All the time, I just wish I could be up there.” She looked up at the sky, which bombarded them with raindrops. “If I’m not really flying, then what good am I? I feel like only half a person.”

  Bailey’s heart went out to his friend. He hadn’t wanted her to know why he wouldn’t tell—in class, in practice, in the dining hall—what his
Animas was. But now, it seemed important that she know.

  “If anybody understands that, it’s me,” he said.

  Phi went quiet and stared at him.

  “I know that feeling,” he continued, trying to cover the silence between them. “Like you’re only a part of what you should be. I feel like that all the time because … because, well, I don’t have an Animas.”

  Phi took his hand.

  “I know,” she said.

  “You do?” Bailey asked, but even as he said this, he knew that she’d recognized his Absence almost as soon as they’d met—and instead of feeling exposed, he felt grateful. “Thank you for not telling anyone,” he said.

  “I would never do that,” she said, looking sincerely into his eyes. “I know what it’s like to be … different. You get good at spotting it in other people too. I could see on that first day at Scavage tryouts that there was something special about you.”

  “But you don’t think it’s weird? Or that I’m weird?” Bailey asked.

  Phi shook her head, and raindrops ran down her face and hair. “At home I’d blend into the background so they wouldn’t pick on me. You did the same here. How could I think that’s weird?”

  Before Bailey could respond, the loud baying of dogs sounded over the top of the hill.

  “Who’s down there?” someone shouted. The light of a swinging lantern broke through the trees. It was Mr. Bindley, the night guard—and tonight, he and his dogs were wide-awake. The light came closer and the silhouettes of the hounds appeared at the top of the hill.

  “Phi, run!” Bailey said, pointing away from the hill toward the Scavage field. “Tori and Hal are out there somewhere … ”

  With one last look up at her collapsed pair of wings, Phi darted into the trees and disappeared.

  Bailey ran around the side of the hill, in the opposite direction, but the hounds were closing in.

  “Stop right there!” Bindley called from behind. The reflection from his lantern flashed off the lens of the night-vision monocle Tremelo had made him.