Dean points toward the lake with his chin, and I turn around. Though there aren’t that many lights about, I manage to see a dark figure wading into the water. The wind picks up, and I shiver.
“Arthur!” I yell out. “Arthur, what are you doing?”
But that little twerp doesn’t even bother to answer. I pull on Dean’s coat sleeve. “We’ve got to help him!”
I remember the knife, the stupid-looking belt, his boots. I feel the weight of my own uniform as it settles around me like some armor. With all that metal…
“He’s going to drown!” I exclaim.
I hear a few splashes as other people get into the water, but whoever they are, they’re too far from Arthur. I spare one last look at Dean, but the tall man is just shaking his head.
“Fine!” I spout. I should’ve known my brother was mental. All the signs were there: the kooky look, the knife, the mental institute. But being wacko is not a good enough reason to let him die. If that was the case, people would have lynched me ages ago.
I make to go after Arthur, but Dean grabs my arm.
“Let go of me,” I say, trying to pull away. “We can’t let him die!”
But he shakes his head and points to a long, slim wooden boat that’s appeared and into which other kids are now climbing. I stare back at Dean, round-eyed.
“Seriously? What is a rowboat full of crazy kids gonna do?”
I manage to free myself from Dean’s death grip. I run before he can stop me again, then jump into the lake.
“Saint George’s balls!” I yelp. “It’s freezing cold!”
After the first shock, I hurry after Arthur, who’s now an indistinguishable dot in the distance.
“Arthur, don’t do this,” I yell.
I try to go faster, but my uniform is dragging me down. All I can do is watch helplessly as Arthur dives and disappears beneath the lake’s dark surface.
“Arthur!”
I dive after him, forcing my numb limbs to move, kicking my feet in what’s possibly the worst swimming style the world has ever seen. I pause where I think I last saw him and try to feel for his body. Nothing, nothing but water.
“Arthur,” I gasp as I emerge to the surface again.
I take another look toward the shore. Nobody seems to care about what’s happening, just Dean waving frantically at me. But I can’t go back, not until I find that brother of mine. A lump as fat as two years’ worth of cat hair balls forms in my throat.
Before I can let myself truly panic, I take a deep breath and plunge down into the cold water again. I concentrate on my strokes, keeping my movements regular. Down here, where I can’t hear or see anything, I lose track of time and distance. The only thing present in my mind is that I have to save Arthur.
I try not to think about Agnès as I continue swimming down, deeper and deeper. I don’t know how much longer I can hold my breath. My lungs are burning. Something grazes my arm, going from my wrist to my elbow, then back. I jerk away and open my eyes out of reflex.
It’s all I can do not to gasp and breathe in water. I see two white-blue orbs head in my direction, followed by an elongated jaw the size of my hand and filled with sharp teeth. I make to swim away, but something grabs my ankle and yanks me farther down into the lake’s aphotic depths. I try to kick at whatever’s holding me, but my head feels heavy, and my limbs are barely responding to my fuzzy brain’s commands. If only I could get some air…
More of those strange glowing orbs appear, like the antennae of anglerfish I’ve seen in biology class. And there’s a lot of them. Fancy meeting so many down here…
I giggle, and water rushes into me. I want to cough, but only manage to swallow more water. I make one last attempt to free myself. I reach for my feet, feel around my ankle…Something slick and bony is wrapped around it. If this is one of Arthur’s jokes, he’s so going to pay…for…it…
Something then grabs me around the middle, and I give up. I let go and let it take me away. I’m weightless, free. Soon, all my worries will melt away as well. No more deaths, no more accusations…no more rejection…just…peace.
A punch to the sternum wakes me up, and I cough out water. The coughing doesn’t stop as I gasp in air. I roll onto my stomach, a loud roaring sound in my ears, or is that heavy purring? More water spews out of me, and I shudder. I feel like I’ve just been pulled out of a washing machine and wrung out to dry. I hear someone laugh.
“Morgan!”
I groan as someone pushes me over and I roll onto my back, my drenched clothes squishing beneath me.
“Morgan!”
Someone slaps my cheeks.
“Ssstooooooop,” I croak.
I blink through thick strands of hair stuck to my face and find myself staring into a pair of ever more familiar hazel eyes. I slap the face away. Definitely not the first thing I wanted to see upon dying.
That laugh comes back. “Well, she’s alive an’ kickin’ at least.”
Alive? My hand falls back onto my chest, and, despite my labored breathing, I can feel the quick thump-thumping of my heart. By all that’s holy on this earth, I am alive!
For a moment, all I can do is look up at the inky sky above, where a few stars manage to wink at me before disappearing again.
“Probably should get her to the infirmary,” Arthur says.
I shift my gaze to the four people around me, their profiles lit up by a lantern hanging somewhere behind them—Arthur, a couple of other boys, and a girl, are all staring down at me. I really, really hate always finding myself being looked down upon. I push myself up into a sitting position and immediately regret that decision, as my head feels like it’s about to split in two.
“Whoa there,” says the laughing boy, reaching for me before I can crumple to the ground again. “Take it easy now. You just had one hell of a swim!”
Swim. Right. I glare up at Arthur. “I almost drowned because of you!”
“Who is this, Arthur?” asks the girl. Her voice would’ve sounded divine if it hadn’t been filled with disgust.
“Morgan,” Arthur finally says after a long pause. “My sister.”
“You had a sister, and you never told me?” the girl exclaims, outraged.
Arthur pulls her off his arm. “She was away all the time. What was there to say?”
The girl sniffs. “Well, you’ve checked up on her, and she’s fine. Let’s get out of here then.”
Without another word, the three of them turn around and head down the hill, leaving me alone with the last boy who’s still propping me up. I sigh. So much for family ties.
“So why didn’t ya come on one of ’em freshman boats?” the guy asks in a low drawl. “Woulda been a lot dryer.”
“Thought Arthur…was gonna…drown,” I say, still trying to catch my breath before I manage to process everything he’s said. “Boats?”
“Yeah, they’ve just landed, see?”
A few hundred paces away, two wooden boats are discharging a slew of students onto the grass to the flickering light of torches. Waiting before the gleaming keels is a woman, her short red hair whipping about her face with the wind. But what draws my attention aren’t her strange clothes that seem an amalgamation of dark leather and silver plating, nor the very long scabbard at her waist from which a dark hilt is clearly protruding, but the fact that she’s directing a longboat down from the air, onto the ground, next to the other two. I shake my head; the lack of oxygen must’ve affected me more than I thought.
“Boats, of course,” I say. Falling from the sky, how quaint. “And, where exactly are we? The hospital? Did I suffer a concussion by any chance?”
The boy smacks my back, and I nearly swallow my tongue. “Looks like ya had a lil too much to drink is all! This is the International School of Lake High, o’ course.” He gets up then, with a wide grin, holds out a callused hand to help me up.
“You mean that our”—I pause, picking my words carefully— “school is on a lake?”
“Under would be more
precise, miss.”
“It’s Morgan,” I mumble automatically, taking his hand. “Did you say under?”
With much reluctance, I let go of him, the only thing that tells me this may not be a dream after all. Looks like America truly does have some impressive technology.
The boy, a head shorter than me, brings his hand to his forehead as if he’s used to wearing a hat. “Pleasure to meet you, Morgan,” he says, drawing out my name so it sounds like More-Gun. “My name’s Percy, at your service. Now ya better get back there, or Lady Ysolt’ll skin ya alive.”
I look back toward the group of students that’s now filing in two perfect rows down the hill, toward what looks like one gigantic five-sided stone honeycomb cell and some kind of shrub at the top that makes the building look like it’s wearing a toupee.
“With the freshmen?” I ask, confused. “Shouldn’t I wait for the seniors?” There’s no way I’m going to be sent back three years—I was never that bad a student!
Smile glittering in the waning darkness, Percy points to the embroidered cross on my drenched uniform. “Not accordin’ to yer blazon.”
“What, this doesn’t mean I’m going to another Catholic school?” I ask.
But Percy just gives me a small bow before rushing down the grassy hill.
I watch him disappear in the ever-growing throng of people herding toward the strange-looking school, their way lighted up by so many torchlights it looks like some of the constellations have sunk beneath Lake Winnebago as well. Maybe it is a madhouse, after all.
Behind me are empty fields with the dark outline of a forest cut out against the lightening sky-lake. If I want to escape, now’s the time to do it. I take a few rigid steps toward the unwelcoming expanse, then stop, eyes blinking rapidly. Did I really just see a fish poke its head out of a cloud? I breathe in deeply, letting the chill air fill my lungs and hopefully clear out my obviously delirious mind.
“Miss Pendragon!”
I whip around, sheepish. Poking from over the hill is the face of the red-haired woman.
“If you don’t hurry,” she says, her tone sharp, “you’ll miss Mass, which means you won’t get breakfast.”
I hesitate only a moment longer before following her orders. Better the devil you know, I suppose. Besides, with food in the equation, how can I refuse?
I join the last rank of freshmen, behind a boy with a severe limp and next to one with dark hair.
“You ask her,” another boy with short black hair says, nudging the one next to me with his elbow.
My neighbor pokes him back in the ribs, and he yelps. I roll my eyes—not only have I somehow been held back three years, but on top of that, I’m a full head and a half taller than everyone else, which makes me stand out like an ogre amongst children. How utterly humiliating.
The tall torches fizzle and crackle on both sides of us as we march down the gravelly path toward the school.
“My name’s Bri,” the boy next to me whispers to my shoulder in a high-pitched voice—a girl then. “What’s yours?”
“Morgan,” I whisper back, keeping my eyes trained on the teacher’s back. She strikes me as the type of person one does not want to cross, and in this crowd, I make a very obvious target.
The black-haired boy in front turns around, and it’s clear now that he and Bri are twins. “So how come we’ve never seen you here before?” he asks. “I can’t believe you swam all the way down here, by the way. That’s so rad! Didn’t think people could do that without the use of oghams.”
I blink at the boy’s dialect, completely unsure what an “owe-em” is.
“Don’t be rude,” Bri says, kicking him in the calf before adding for my benefit, “That’s Owen, and the other’s Jack.”
Very violent siblings, it appears, which reminds me of Arthur. For a very brief moment, I wonder where he is and whether he can help me clear things up so I can avoid the torture of going through high school all over again. But seeing how he’s already abandoned me to my own devices twice now, I seriously doubt it. All thoughts of my brother, and any subsequent murderous intent, disintegrate the moment I take in the full massiveness of our school.
The granite building rises five stories high, straight out of the ground, and stretches the span of a stadium. Dotting the ramparts like gaping wounds are arches and windows, soft light glowing through them. As we pass through the titanic wooden doors, I can’t help but gawk first at the hunting scene carved into them, then at the rows of colorful standards hanging along the high walls of the entrance hall.
“There’s over seven hundred of them,” Bri says. “But the most prestigious ones are hung in the KORT room.”
She pulls on my sleeve to force me to accelerate. We turn left into a narrow hallway, then engulf ourselves in a dark staircase where the din of voices is amplified tenfold. On the third landing, we encounter a young woman, dressed in an old-fashioned full-length black skirt and apron, who bows to us as we pass by before we head up another set of stairs.
“Just a servant,” Bri explains when I ask her, but she’s too engrossed in her brother’s conversation with his neighbor Jack to pay much attention to me and I have to quell the thousands of questions warring in my already overtaxed brain.
“Didn’t you see the news?” Jack asks, limping ahead. “They had to close all the schools in the Bayou Bartholomew area of Louisiana”—he lowers his voice even further—“for frog invasion!”
“I’m sorry, did you say frogs?” I ask.
“I would love for that to happen to us,” Jack continues as if I’m not there.
“You’re crazy,” Owen says. “This is the week we finally get to practice EM!”
“That’s exactly why,” Jack says.
I have absolutely no idea what these people are saying, and the farther up we go, the more lost I feel.
“We’re in the mental hospital, aren’t we?” I finally ask Bri.
She looks askance at me. “Does it look like we’re in an asylum? Am I wearing a straitjacket?”
“The asylum’s next to the church,” Owen says as we arrive at the final landing, which does nothing to reassure me. “So I know that they usually start off with sprites,” he says, switching topics, “but I want to try a salamander first!”
Bri chortles. “Right, like they’d let you. You nearly turned our yard into a swamp when Hadrian let you play with his ogham this summer.” She turns to me and adds conspiratorially, “Mother had a fit. You should’ve seen how he tried to hide behind the chicken coop.”
“Do you eat salamanders here?” I ask.
All three turn to me, shocked into silence, then burst out laughing.
“Not unless you want your intestines to burn,” Owen says.
I nod and try not to let the smile melt from my face—the fewer questions I ask from now on, the less I’ll stand out. I’ll just figure things out as I go along.
“Right then,” Lady Ysolt says, her voice ringing out around the rafters, “time to leave your school material here. And perhaps get a little cleaned up.” Her eyes linger on me for a moment. “Miss Pendragon, I believe you are not yet acquainted with the layout of the grounds or school proper. Your room’s the third door to the right, which Miss Kulkarni will be glad to show you.” She raises her voice over the din. “Miss Kulkarni? Come over here, please, and show your new roommate around.”
A dark-skinned girl with plaited hair makes a short curtsy, then heads straight down the left hallway. The room we are to share is small, with bunk beds set over their respective desks, and two large trunks lying at their feet. One side of the room has already been claimed, as I can tell from the slew of pictures hung over the bed and around the desk.
Most of them are of a set of three boys, and it doesn’t take me long to recognize them. Percy I can very well understand why; his easygoing manners have already won me over. The second boy is the tall, devilishly handsome but moody boy who’d been with him when they rescued me from drowning. But the third…
&
nbsp; “Looks like someone’s got a crush on Arthur, eh Kulkarni?” I say, braying out a laugh.
The girl draws near me, her perfume hanging in the air behind her. She doesn’t look too pleased with my reaction. “My name’s Keva,” she says, “and he’s the head of KORT. Who wouldn’t like him?”
“Is that right?” I mumble.
The girl darts me a malevolent glare; she clearly can sense sarcasm, and does not appreciate mine.
“Great,” I hear her mutter, “now they give me a Sudra5 to live with. Next thing you know, they’ll pick a frigging untouchable!”
Before she can gouge my eyes out, I promptly head for my side of the room, where I rummage through what I assume is my trunk for a change of clothes. Thankfully, amongst a slew of very battered books that constitutes the majority of its contents, I find what I’m looking for. But before I manage to get more than my skirt on, the lights go out, and the door slams shut.
“What the—” Great. Just great. Not only does my roommate have poor taste, but on top of that, she’s vindictive. Couldn’t have hoped for more luck than that.
Not wanting to trip on anything, I feel my way over to the door and try to find the light switch. But my fingers only encounter the coolness of the stone wall.
“Are you done?” Bri asks, slamming the door open smack on my face. “Oops, sorry. What are you doing in the dark?”
“Looking for the light,” I mutter, rubbing my sore nose.
“Oh, here you go.” She taps on the wall, and the light fixture on the ceiling, a glass ball, turns red to display a creature stuck inside it.
Rooted to my spot, I point a shaky finger at the incandescent lizard still clearly visible. It stares at me for a second with one large eye, sticks its tongue out, then becomes too bright, and I’m forced to look away.
“I think we just killed a lizard,” I say.
Bri stares up at the ceiling. “You mean the salamander?” She slaps her hands together. “Cool, huh? But don’t worry, the elemental’s well controlled. It won’t set fire to this place. Come on, let’s get to Mass, or we’ll get detention. Besides, you definitely can’t miss the oath taking,” she adds, tapping the wall so the light shuts off.
Blood of the Fey (Morgana Trilogy) Page 3