by C. R. Grey
Every night, Gwen fell asleep with the Seers’ Glass in her hand. She couldn’t yet control her visions, but her heart ached for some sort of guidance. On the third night, the warmth of the Glass against her palm woke her up, and when she looked down she saw the spectrum of colors emanating from it. Her vision grew cloudy, then the colors swirled into one, suddenly bright—too bright. She closed her eyes and a vision came into focus. She found herself running from shiny, metal horses that breathed fire. She could feel the heat on her skin, the tears streaming down her cheeks, as she ran for her life—and saw that real animals, propped up with a vacant look in their eyes, watched on. She snapped her eyes open, breathing heavily. Her friends were asleep still, and she was glad they couldn’t see her in such a state. Her visions haunted her, as did the memory of the last time she’d rushed to Fairmount with the Elder in the dark of night. He’d died shortly after.
After several days, they stumbled across the banks of the Fluvian River, and not long after that, the cliffs of Fairmount appeared to the north. Gwen saw the straight path along the river curve toward the familiar, imposing rock face. The night she’d arrived with the Elder, she remembered seeing him bow before the True King. She’d thought her troubles were over then. But they were only just beginning. Now they were here to find an army, and face the very king in Gwen’s vision who struck Bailey down.
She looked up ahead at Annika, Hal, and Tori. In the moonlight she could make out Bailey’s profile, and she hoped to Nature to keep him safe.
THE SUN SET AS they drew closer to the cliffs, and Bailey saw the orange glow of evening light reflecting off the marble façade of the library. His heart leapt. It felt as if he was coming home.
Still, the mood was tense. They didn’t know what they’d find as they dismounted their cycles and leaned them against a stone. Annika instructed them on how to cover the bikes with dead, fallen branches before hiking away from the river. Bailey and Gwen walked by the woman’s side with Hal and Tori close at their heels.
“What do you think has happened here since we left?” Hal asked. No one was willing to venture a guess, but Bailey couldn’t help but think the worst—that Viviana would never give up looking for him or Tremelo.
The pathway up the hill led them to the southwest edge of the school grounds, near the Scavage pitch and the tree house where Gwen had stayed that winter. He saw her glance toward it, and with her red hair pulled back from her face he could see her far-away expression. She was taking the separation from Phi hard, but Bailey knew there was something else. It wasn’t the right time to ask, and he wasn’t sure if he should press her again.
From there, the trees thinned, and the school came into view. On the crest of the hill lay the Fairmount Academy, its tall windows catching the warm light of the sun as it set.
“Would you look at that?” Tori said, a bit of awe and fear in her voice. The school gave off the eerie feel of a ghost town.
Silently, they walked up the hill with Taleth, protective and alert, in front of them. The quietness of the grounds disturbed Bailey—he hadn’t realized how the usual bustle of everyday school life had seemed so normal before. Now he started at the slightest crack of a twig underneath one of their feet, or the lightest breeze shuffling the branches in the trees behind them.
Tori ran ahead to investigate the Applied Sciences building. The upper floors had been entirely deserted. Tremelo’s office had been ransacked, with papers and tinkering parts hastily scattered across his desk and on the floor.
“There’s no one,” said Tori, scooping up a metal gear from the floor. “Where did they all go?”
“You think they were taken?” Hal asked, adjusting his glasses.
“Let’s look in the library,” said Bailey, fighting away images of his classmates rounded up and taken away by the Dominae, or worse, killed by uncaring Dominae soldiers. He led his friends toward the clock tower, slowly taking in the emptiness surrounding them. Bailey remembered it had all started here, on the night they found the Loon’s book in the library’s secret room.
Taleth padded up the marble staircase ahead of them, and Annika walked slowly with a knife in her hand. As they passed the glass bookcase on the second floor hallway, they saw it had been broken—shards of glass everywhere, and books ripped from their shelves. If the Loon’s book had been there, it would’ve been found and put right into Viviana’s hands. Bailey shared a look with Tori, who nodded stoically and held her bag to her chest tightly. Thank Nature for her quick thinking.
Just then, they heard a clatter from the other side of the atrium. A piece of wood that had been leaning against the walls of a study room had come tumbling down to the floor. Annika spun around, ready to release her knife on the person who’d snuck up on them, but Hal grabbed her arm and pulled it down. “No!” he yelled. Standing across from the study room was Taylor. He looked as though he was seeing the books behind them leap off the shelves and perform a ballet.
“I was on clock tower duty and had to see for myself,” Taylor said, his eyes wide.
“That’s my brother,” Hal told Annika.
Sensing it was safe, Taylor ran toward them.
“Hal! I was so worried about you,” Taylor said, squeezing Hal to his chest and knocking his glasses askew. Bailey met Hal’s eyes, which were wide with shock. “I thought you were dead! First, you just disappear for weeks, and then that terrible Fair….I saw Bailey, up on the stage, with Viviana herself—what was going on there, Walker?—but then everything was happening at once, and I couldn’t see if you were there too. Shonfield managed to get most of us out and onto a rigi back to school, but I had no idea where you were! Mom and Dad are worried sick….” He still hadn’t let go of Hal, who patted Taylor’s back.
“Well, I’m okay,” Hal said, his voice muffled by the sleeve of Taylor’s coat. “But what happened to you?”
“Me?” said Taylor. “I got a nasty bump on the head when the looters came. I fought them off!”
“You fought them?” asked Tori drily.
“Well, I helped,” Taylor said sheepishly, then caught himself. “And what’s that supposed to mean? You think I couldn’t fight off some Dominae scum?”
Tori only shrugged, and Bailey caught himself snorting.
“What was that, Walker?” said Taylor, his tone suddenly much more familiar to Bailey. “I pulled two students out of the clutches of the Dominae and got knocked on the head! What have you done, eh? You and your creepy lizard kin. Where is that stinking thing, anyway?”
Bailey felt almost relieved to see Taylor back in fighting form. If he’d continued being nice, the next moment wouldn’t have been half as satisfying.
“Bert the iguana does not stink,” Bailey said defensively. He was a good little guy, and he was with the Velyn back in the tunnels now, with good people who’d care for him. “I’m with my real kin now.” He stood back to reveal the archway where Taleth stood. She shook her head, causing her whiskers to tremble.
“Um…uh…” Taylor stumbled backward, his mouth opening and closing like a stunned fish. His tortoiseshell cat hissed and jumped away.
“Nature’s own eyes,” someone said. Ms. Shonfield, her face and hands streaked with ash, stood at the entrance to the atrium. “Mr. Walker, Mr. Quindley, Miss Colubride! And…and…” She looked between Taleth and Annika, shaking her head. “Where did your new friends come from? How have you—”
“I just found them, Ms. Shonfield,” said Taylor.
“What’s happened here?” Bailey asked. “Who did this to the school?”
“Why don’t you all come with me, and I’ll explain on the way,” Shonfield said. “It’ll be dark soon, and unsafe to be poking around in here. We’ve had a great many thieves come prowling around from Stillfall, and even farther, since the school burned. Come along.”
Bailey introduced Annika to Shonfield.
“You’re in charge?” Annika asked, the knife still in her hand.
“I most certainly am,” Shonfield said fir
mly. “Fairmount is my home.”
Annika seemed impressed, and tucked the knife back in her boot before shaking the woman’s hand. They fell into step, walking silently like two old friends, and it warmed Bailey’s heart to connect people who were for the goodness of the bond.
Shonfield kept looking over at Taleth with something between fear and tearful joy in her eyes. The girls walked just behind them, with Taylor in the rear, his arm around Hal’s shoulders.
“Where have you been, little brother?” Bailey heard Taylor ask. “You aren’t hurt, are you?”
“When everything went haywire at the Fair, I managed to round up most of our students and load them onto the last rigimotive leaving the city,” said Shonfield. “I’d had a feeling all morning that something unpleasant was in store. That assistant of mine—”
“Jerri,” Bailey said.
“Yes, Jerri—he skulked away just after Viviana came round with the judges of the Science Competition, and…well, I’m naturally curious, and entitled to know what my employees are up to, I think, when they’re meant to be chaperoning a school event….I followed him, and saw him march right up to Viviana’s private tents. Just a nod to the guard, as if they were old friends. My gut told me to get the students out, and I did the best I could on my own. By the time we were all lined up and ready to leave, the students’ animals had begun acting very strangely—”
“What happened here at Fairmount afterward?” Bailey asked.
Shonfield shook her head.
“Things were quiet for a time, but followers of the Dominae arrived that evening. By the following morning we were overtaken by soldiers and folks who fancied themselves part of Viviana’s army. They ransacked the school, looking for something or someone—and we were entirely occupied for several nights. Then, when at last they gave up finding what they wanted, they left the same way they came.”
She paused, and gestured around them. Bailey and the others slowed their steps, and Taylor walked forward to stand beside her.
“The Dominae seem to have a knack for destruction,” Annika said, her jaw tight.
“They’ve certainly done worse than this,” Shonfield responded. “In the town, rumors are they’ve turned neighbors against one another and encouraged reporting of family and friends if they’re Melore loyalists.”
“So they were looking for us—or for Tremelo,” said Tori, nodding. “They thought we’d come back to the school.”
“A storied institution, once the pride of the kingdom, looted from the inside out,” Shonfield said. “Not everyone is accounted for. Most of the students ran away, back to their homes, I hope. Most teachers too. Finch is traveling to neighboring towns to appeal for help and temporary shelter for the remaining students, and in the meantime we’ve been here.”
She pointed down the hill to the Scavage pitch. From here, Bailey could see what had been hidden from the bottom of the hill earlier: a makeshift shelter built onto the existing locker rooms of the Scavage field, with a cheery glow emanating from within.
“It’s perfectly positioned for an easy retreat in case more Dominae come again. We’ve got supplies from the dining hall down there, and while Mrs. Copse isn’t the most ingenious cook, there’s hot food to be had,” Ms. Shonfield said. “We take turns on clock tower duty, which is where Taylor was when he found you.” She led them down the hill and onto the pitch. Upon reaching the haphazardly nailed door on the temporary build-out, Shonfield knocked twice and called out:
“I sing a song of dear Fairmount…”
“Where the crow flies o’er the squirrel!” a voice sang back. The door opened, and Bailey saw at least two dozen faces of his fellow students peering at him and his friends.
“You’ll never guess who we’ve found up in the library,” Ms. Shonfield said, her voice taking an almost unnaturally cheerful tone. “Mr. Walker, Miss Colubride, Mr. Quindley, and…” She stopped at Gwen, and pursed her lips as though embarrassed to have forgotten a name.
“Oh, you don’t know me,” said Gwen kindly. “Miss Teller. Gwen.”
“I didn’t know you had a last name” said Hal.
“Everyone has a last name,” said Tori. Then, to Gwen, “It’s nice.”
The room was silent for a moment, long enough for Bailey to wonder if, after all, he and his friends weren’t welcome there. But then the shock on his classmates’ faces disappeared, and he heard several shouts at once as they all clambered up from their benches to greet him.
“Where have you been?”
“The school was on lockdown for weeks!”
“Where’s your lizard?”
“Where are you from, Red?”
“Did you fight the Dominae?”
“How did you get away?”
“What about Tremelo?”
“I heard he’s a spy! Is it true?”
Annika sat with Shonfield and a few teachers who had stayed. Bailey was swept onto a seat and handed a bowl of warm oat porridge with a slap of King’s Finger butter on top. As the porridge warmed his insides, he was able to make out individual faces and voices out of the melee—Arabella, captain of his Scavage squad, was there, as well as his teammates Alice, Terrence, and more. Two of Taylor’s Year Three friends were helping pass bowls of food. Even Hal and Tori sat in the thick of it, as if they’d been part of the team the whole time. He missed Phi now more than ever.
Gwen couldn’t seem to get comfortable, despite plenty of friendly faces—and when she got up to wander to the adults’ table, Bailey asked her to stay, and made room at the table next to him.
“Is it true that you’re the one the Dominae have been looking for?” asked Arabella, who sat at a bench opposite Bailey.
Bailey looked at Gwen, then back at Arabella, unsure how much to say.
“We didn’t have to lie when they were here—none of us knew where you were,” Arabella continued.
“But we would have!” squeaked Terrence. “They’re terrible.”
“Yes, we thought for sure they’d kill you!” said Alice. “But we don’t know why!”
“I’ll show you why,” said Bailey, standing. He walked to the door and looked out. Still sitting in the snow was Taleth. He held out his hand, against which she nuzzled her forehead.
“This is why they want to kill me,” Bailey said. “This is my kin. My real kin, Taleth.”
He stood aside to allow Taleth to enter. The students gasped. More than one bowl of porridge clattered onto the floor. Taleth sat down on the earthen floor of the shelter and licked her front paw, as though too humble to notice that she was being admired by an entire roomful of people.
“They’d kill me because of some prophecy about the last White Tiger Animas in the kingdom,” Bailey said. “That’s what the Dominae are really like. They don’t care about us, or our school, or our families. But we’re going to fight them.”
Bailey lay awake, thinking it strange to be so close to his dorm but unable to sleep there. Instead, he was sprawled across the hard floor with his friends at his side, wondering how he’d raise an army. Hal was sound asleep, snoring, and Tori looked at peace in the moonlight. But he saw a flash of red—Gwen shuffling in her spot.
“Are you awake?” he whispered, sitting up.
Gwen turned to him and sat up. She nodded, pushing her short curls out of her face. “You okay?” she asked.
“I’m worried,” Bailey said. “I’m glad to be back, and that most everyone is okay…but what about the symbol of peace? And the army?”
“I don’t know,” she admitted, rubbing her eyes. “I think about it too, though.”
“But you’re a Seer, you could…”
“I could what?” asked Gwen. “Rewrite it? Re-envision all the prophecies the Loon had?”
He could hear the defensiveness in her voice and tried to tread carefully. “No, I didn’t mean it like that. I just meant maybe there was something we were missing?”
“Maybe,” said Gwen, flinging her blanket up suddenly. “Obviously, I’m not
a very good Seer. I’m sorry I got it all wrong and led us all the way to the Dust Plains and back.”
“That’s not what I meant! I’m not blaming you or anyone!” Bailey said in a hoarse whisper. “I’m just frustrated. It’s been one riddle after the other. Sometimes I just want to know the answer is even there—like when they give you the practice answers in the back of the textbook. I don’t check it every time but just for some reassurance, you know?”
“I think so.” Gwen hugged her knees to her chest. “Not the textbook part, really—but I know what you mean. I’m worried too. Like, the more time that passes the more uncertain I am about the passage in the book. What if it’s just some goose chase?”
“But you have visions, don’t you? Can’t you tap into that again and tell us what our next move should be?”
“You think my visions can save us?” Gwen said loudly. Tori stirred. “As far as what will happen next, maybe I can see it and maybe I can’t. But some visions of the future are…” Gwen trailed off.
“They’re what?” Bailey asked. Tori was sitting up now, and she nudged Hal awake. He felt like he was on the verge of cracking Gwen open, seeing what had been upsetting her all these weeks.
It looked as though Gwen was ready to speak, but the clock tower rang out and Bailey’s blood went cold. They’d been told earlier that the bell had been disabled and only went off if the person on watch duty saw something in the distance.
“Is it the Dominae?” someone asked.
Suddenly, students were getting up in a frenzy, and teachers did their best to direct everyone in the dark as they fled into the woods.
“Hang on a minute,” Hal said, tilting his head as if he were trying to hear what his bats heard. Other students streamed past them. “There’s a mustelid coming.”
“A what?” Gwen asked. Bailey didn’t know, either.
“A short-legged mammal,” Tori clarified.
“I think…it’s a badger!” Hal said, weaving his way against the current of the crowd.