The students shifted uneasily, looking around at each other. Seth leant in towards Gabriel, ‘What does he mean “as long as you stand to be in there?”’
Gabriel replied, ‘I don’t know but I certainly don’t like the sound of it!’
They didn’t have long to wait to find out.
Willow was the first to attempt the task. With some hesitation, she slowly opened the door and made her way down the short hallway. At the other end she glanced nervously back towards the class, which were peering at her through the narrow, circular windows in the doors. Cautiously she reached out, grasped the handle of the laboratory door and pulled it open. Almost instantly her free arm shot up to shield her mouth and nose and her head rocked back as though she had been punched by an invisible fist. She made a few attempts to enter the room, before turning and sprinting back along the hallway. Her classmates leapt aside as Willow slammed through the doors and headed off in the direction of the girl’s toilet, looking a sickly shade of green.
Victor did little better. Although he managed to enter the laboratory, he raced back out of it several seconds later, heaving and hacking heavily as he slammed the door behind him. When he re-joined the group, all of his usual bravado and confidence had evaporated. He slumped down against the wall, breathing slowly and deeply, his crimson skin, now much paler.
Verbera entered the room and after only a few minutes emerged successfully wielding the flower. However, she too was looking quite discomforted by the experience. Master Procyon retrieved the flower from her as she re-joined the class and replaced it within the room. He exited the laboratory completely unfazed by whatever lay inside and ordered Tamera in next. Tamera stayed in the room for several minutes but she too emerged successful. However, after passing back the flower to Master Procyon, she too made a similar dash for the toilet, clutching her stomach and cupping her mouth.
Seth entered the room with reluctance and after a few brief moments shuffled back out wiping his mouth and looking quite ill. Sattan performed similarly. On the whole, almost all of the students left the Scent Laboratory looking and feeling rather unwell and performing equally poorly. After the early success of Verbera and Tamera, it was only Rostrum who completed the task successfully. And so it was with a great deal of trepidation that Gabriel approached the laboratory, opened its door and stepped inside.
Instantly it felt as though he’d walked into an invisible wall. A wall of vile, putrid stench. The room was dimly lit in order to hinder the students’ vision in the task and cluttered with various different containers out of which erupted a nauseating concoction of the most disgusting odours he’d ever encountered. The stink was so intensely hideous that Gabriel found it difficult to focus on anything other than fighting the overwhelming urge to wretch violently. He detected a mixture of decaying meat, rotten eggs, festering compost and other smells too horrible to even contemplate. He closed his eyes which had begun to sting and weep in the noxious air. He took in a deep breath through his nose hoping to detect even a remote trace of the flower. The toxic odours poured over the sensory glands in his nose and he suddenly felt the uncontrollable urge to vomit racing upwards from the pit of his stomach.
Relieving himself in the corner of the room, Gabriel realised he had just provided yet another awful smell to contend with. He tried to calm himself and this time decided to move around the room making small sniffs instead of one big one. It didn’t help; his mind began growing foggy, his stomach was churning fiercely. Gabriel accepted his fate: the hearing test would be his only success of the day.
Gabriel stumbled out of the laboratory and quickly slammed the door shut behind him. The instant relief from the fetid air was immeasurable. He let out a deep breath that he had not realised he had been holding and drunk in huge gasps of the sweet, stench-free air. It had never felt so good to breathe clean air.
As the students began tiredly packing up their belongings at the end of the lesson, Master Procyon voiced his disappointment.
‘Well, well, well,’ he said wearing a look of disdain, ‘generally unsatisfactory performances all around. It is abundantly clear that much more practice is needed. I think it prudent that I consult with your other Masters about the possibility of running this class at least once a week.’
The entire class groaned.
‘Complain all you like, but with the limited progress you have thus far made, additional lessons are clearly required.’
Mentally and physically exhausted, and now depressed over the prospect of extra Heightened Senses lessons, the students trudged away.
Master Procyon called after them, ‘Oh yes, Mr. Millar, before I forget, Grandmaster Bysonn asked me to pass a message onto you.’
Gabriel looked up and privately cursed himself as he allowed himself to feel a glimmer of momentary hope that his punishment had been called off. It was more likely that his wings would grow back.
Procyon continued, ‘You are report directly to Mr. Daw’s workroom in the basement. You will be undertaking your detention with him.’
‘Oh, OK. Thanks for telling me, sir,’ he replied and sloped off miserably in the direction of the school basement.
CHAPTER TWELVE
THE CARETAKER AND THE MYSTERY VOICE
Cuspis Daws of Erinaceidae was the school caretaker at Wingtail Academy and had been for more years than he cared to remember. In fact, he had been there for more years than anyone else could remember either. He, himself, had once been a student at the school many decades ago and, having so enjoyed his time there (and being a rather below average student) took on the role of caretaker when his predecessor passed on.
Much like the teachers and many of the students, Daws resided on campus, albeit separate from everyone else, in a room off of the janitorial office in the depths of the school basement. His bedroom was small (some would have described it as claustrophobic) but he preferred to call it “cosy.” He had laid a mattress on the floor, next to which stood an old wooden chest and in the far corner of the tiny room was a small stove. Above his mattress he had affixed a shelf which was where he stored his books. He owned only ten books, all yellowed with age, but they were stories he had enjoyed as a child and so refused to part with them.
Daws led a relatively solitary existence, but it was just as he liked it. He rarely ventured up to the school canteen, preferring to prepare his own meals on his stove. During school hours he was seldom seen by anyone, opting to fulfil his duties before the students started lessons and then again after they had finished.
It had not always been this way; he could recall the first years of his employment when he would complete his duties whilst the students filled the hallways. But now as an old man he preferred to work at his own pace and to be alone with his thoughts. Nevertheless, he did still enjoy the occasional visitor that would stop by, whether teacher, student or even those sent to work with him as a punishment. Which was exactly how he met Gabriel Millar.
***
‘Come in,’ a voice croaked from the room as Gabriel knocked at the door. The voice sounded cracked and broken, as though it were out of practice in being used.
Gabriel opened the door to the caretaker’s office and peered inside. Sat on a high rickety stool, his arm leant on a dusty workbench affixed to the rocky wall, was Daws the caretaker. Behind the old man stood a wide cupboard which touched the ceiling and filled the entire length of the back wall. The cupboard doors were partially ajar and inside, just visible, were what appeared to be all manner of tools and cleaning supplies. The little office was filled with the faint whiff of old tea, sawdust and stale toast, not hugely unpleasant when compared to the Scent Laboratory from earlier, but not particularly enticing either.
‘So you must be young Gabriel Millar,’ the old man said.
‘Y-yes, sir,’ Gabriel stammered uneasily, he had been thinking about what horrible punishment awaited him since his clash with Bysonn earlier in the day.
The old man clambered down from the stool with some degree of dif
ficulty, supporting his weight on the wobbly workbench. Gabriel instinctively moved to help him but the old man declined.
‘Don’t you worry about me none, son. There’s fuel left in the old boiler yet!’ Gabriel wasn’t quite sure what he meant but nevertheless obliged and backed away slightly. ‘The name’s Daws, Cuspis Daws of the family Erinaceidae. Nice to meet you!’ He held out his hand for Gabriel to shake.
The skin on Daws’ hand was rough and leathery. The calluses of his palm indicated a lifetime of manual labour. Bristly hairs poked out of the rolled-up sleeves of his overall and ran all the way down the lengths of his arms to his knuckles. He was a short man, barely reaching Gabriel’s chest. His stumpy limbs and bulky torso, made him look like a barrel on legs. His chubby head sat neatly on top of his round body, with his spiky, salt-and-pepper hair and wiry beard framing his circular face. Daws’ black, button eyes looked up at Gabriel with kindness and more than a little intrigue.
‘I must say, you don’t quite appear to be the troublemaker that Grandmaster Bysonn made you out to be,’ Daws observed. ‘Can I interest you in a nice mug of blueberry tea before we get started?’
Gabriel felt himself relax. ‘That would be great, thanks.’
Daws filled his ancient copper kettle and shuffled off into the back room to boil it. He returned a few moments later with two steaming mugs. Gabriel took one of the mugs from the old caretaker and breathed in the delicious blueberry aroma.
The old man motioned for Gabriel to take a seat on a second equally rickety stool, as he climbed back up onto the first. ‘Far be it from me to talk badly about the Grandmaster,’ Daws continued between sips of his tea, ‘but he can be quite temperamental sometimes. Hot-headed some might even say.’
‘Yeah... that’s an understatement!’
‘Hmm,’ Daws mused, ‘that’s not for me to say. But you can’t deny he’s successful at what he does. He brings the best out of his students.’
‘The best...? How can living in fear possibly bring out the best in people?’
‘Granted his methods are certainly different to Grandmaster Alces, but fear can be an excellent motivator too.’
‘Grandmaster Alces?’
‘Grandmaster Bysonn’s predecessor. He was the one who hired me in fact.’
‘What happened to him?’
‘He died.’
‘He... died...?’ Gabriel replied, his voice heavy with suspicion. ‘How?’
‘Now I can see where this train of thought is headed, son, but you’re way off course. Grandmaster Alces was an old man when I started here. He lived a long happy life and passed on surrounded by his loved ones. Grandmaster Bysonn may be a lot of things, but he is not a murderer.’
‘I never said he was,’ Gabriel said defensively.
Daws let out a long sigh and looked into his mug. In one quick motion he chugged back the remaining tea, then set the mug onto the dusty workbench. ‘I’m not comfortable with this line of conversation. Maybe we should get started with your punishment.’
The old caretaker clambered down from his stool and shuffled over to the cupboard at the back of the room. He opened the creaky door and took out a long ladle, a dented funnel and a small barrel. Oddly, each of the items was made from wood. ‘OK, we’ve got our supplies, let’s start at the bottom and work our way up.’
The punishment, as was soon revealed, entailed Gabriel aiding Daws in extinguishing the lanterns in each of the classrooms and refilling the oil where needed.
In the first room Daws gave Gabriel a brief demonstration of what needed to be done. First he unlocked the lantern, opened up the hinged lid and extinguished the flame with the stem of the ladle. Next, he placed the funnel into the well of the lantern and motioned for Gabriel to pass him the barrel. Daws opened up the barrel and gently tipped it towards Gabriel for him to see the contents inside.
‘Now you’ll have to be very careful that you don’t spill any of the oil on yourself,’ Daws warned as he demonstrated how to refill the lantern, ‘if you do... well, best not to think about that. Just be careful.’
‘Ee-urgh! What is this stuff?’ Gabriel asked peering in at the contents. ‘It doesn’t look like any kind of oil I’ve ever seen before.’ Instead of a clear, smooth liquid sloshing back and forth against the sides of the barrel, Gabriel saw only a translucent, slimy blob which to him looked more like mucus.
‘Well, I’m not surprised it doesn’t look familiar,’ Daws replied, ‘I’m pretty sure the humans have never even heard of grizzly-oil, not to mention used it! Are they still using that stuff they mine out of the ground?’
‘Yes,’ Gabriel said and added, ‘Grizzly-oil, do you mean they get this from bears?’
‘Goodness, no! That would be disgusting! This oil comes from grizzly grass.’
‘Grizzly... grass?’ Gabriel repeated sceptically.
‘Why yes! Have you not learnt about this in school yet? It’s one of the crops that’s harvested in the fields of the western chambers.’
As they continued on with extinguishing and refilling lanterns, Daws explained how grizzly-oil had first been discovered. It was clearly something the old man was passionate about because as he was telling the story it was the most animated Gabriel had seen him. Although quite why it excited him so, Gabriel could not imagine.
Grizzly grass, Daws explained, had been discovered quite by accident several generations ago by one of Archimedes Flattail’s ancestors. Up until that point, various different plant and vegetable extracts had been refined and used for lighting Sanctuary. However, the mixtures burnt out quickly and gave off insubstantial amounts of light and heat. One day whilst exploring the western catacombs with a friend, Julius Flattail stumbled across the grizzly grass, quite literally, as he and his friend unknowingly wandered into to a field of it. The encounter cost Julius his leg and his friend his life because of the highly toxic, sticky, jelly-like sap secreted by the aggressive plant as a defence mechanism. In the months that followed, as Flattail examined the plant that had crippled him, he discovered that the toxic sap that could cause paralysis within minutes and death soon after was also an excellent fuel. It burnt very slowly, but at the same time emitted huge amounts of energy. It even burnt underwater! Consequently it became the staple fuel used throughout Sanctuary.
With well-practiced finesse Daws spooned up a glob of the oil and dropped it into the funnel. The slimy substance oozed its way into the lantern like a giant slug. When he was sure the funnel was free of any last globules of oil, Daws removed the funnel and locked the lantern back up, before moving onto the next.
To some, including Gabriel, refilling lanterns may have not seemed like a particularly taxing punishment. However, when considering the school was stretched over dozens of different floors, each housing a mind-boggling number of classrooms, it became clear that this was an incredibly time-consuming ordeal indeed.
In a route forged over his many years of service, Daws led Gabriel from room to room, never passing the same place twice. For the first time, the immense scale of the school became clear. Up until this point, Gabriel realised that he had only seen a tiny fraction of it. Every room was different, but all of them were formed from natural caves. There were some rooms that could be instantly associated with a specific subject, such as the Anthropology classrooms which included an array of different human memorabilia, and the Habitat Geology classrooms which were adorned with large schematics of the different Colony dwellings across the world. Then there were an uncountable number of specialised classrooms whose purpose was absolutely baffling: in one classroom the furniture was affixed to the ceiling, another was filled waist high with water and could only be accessed by crawling down a long, damp tunnel. In yet another classroom the desks and chairs sat atop enormous towering stalagmites.
Despite Daws’ in-depth knowledge of the school passageways, it was still very late into the evening by the time they had finished. Before heading home, Gabriel had to report back to Bysonn in his office. Physically and menta
lly exhausted, Gabriel was in no mood for yet another verbal battle with the Grandmaster. Bysonn, visibly swelling with delight, took this as a personal victory and acted even more obnoxious than usual.
‘Well, well, well,’ he gloated, ‘my, how the mighty have fallen. And so soon. How does it feel to do some real work for a change, cub? I should think a few more weeks of such punishment and all fragments of that ego of yours will have been completely eradicated.’
Without meeting Bysonn’s glare, Gabriel said, ‘Yes, sir.’
Bysonn snorted indignantly, ‘It’s almost a pity you’ve crumbled so rapidly. You’ve put up even less of a fight than that miserable waste of space that was your father.’
Gabriel knew Bysonn was baiting him. His fists clenched so hard they throbbed, through gritted teeth and whilst fighting to keep his temper in check, he repeated, ‘Yes, sir.’
With an arrogant smile, Bysonn waved his hand indifferently, ‘Away with now, cub. You bore me.’
Gabriel turned and headed swiftly out of the office. In the corridor he panted hard and strong as he regained his composure. He looked at his red palms. Fingernail imprints again wept blood as they had done earlier in the day. He breathed deeply for several minutes. Having calmed himself down, he set out for home, blissfully unaware of the secret conversion taking place in Bysonn’s office.
***
Over the next several days, despite the detentions which stretched on for hours on end, Gabriel actually began to enjoy himself, for the most part.
Of course, checking in with Bysonn at the end of each evening was less enjoyable than an hour spent in the Scent Laboratory, but even this Gabriel was managing to bear – just. On occasion, the Grandmaster declared that Gabriel hadn’t toiled for long enough and so ordered him to polish his ornaments or scrub the floor of his office. Sometimes he would simply leave Gabriel standing there in silence for up to an hour before he would even acknowledge his presence.
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