by Aubade Teyal
Chapter Six - Aftermath
The Feliformia common room was similar to the Aves' common room, which Lennox had visited on her first fateful night at school. There was an odd assortment of dilapidated sofas, that could have been pulled from a junk yard, covered with collapsed, reclining boys, an enormous wooden table, almost as long as the room, with legs as wide as pillars and riven with divots and marks. Bookshelves wrapped round the full circumference of the room, and there were various hard backed, uncomfortable chairs, spread throughout the room, and a few cosy armchairs, all inhabited, pulled close to a grand and ancient fireplace with a roaring fire.
Lennox and Mannik seated themselves in a couple of uneven kitchen chairs, free, and far away from the fire. Duncan, sat deep in an impressive, velvet brocaded chair, was deep in conversation with Zac. His voice was deliberately low, their conversation private, but whatever he was saying, he was speaking vehemently. Zac did nothing but nod. Kellas, sat on the other side of Zac, could have been in another room. He was clearly not one of Duncan’s confidants.
Eventually Duncan looked up, and round, and straightened his back. He came straight to the point.
'I won't lie. Juniors, in your endurance today, you came last. It is our worst performance so far this year.'
He looked at Rick and Mannik and smiled,
'However, you two came first! The Caniformia boys could not believe their eyes when they ran into the courtyard and found you two, already there, sitting comfortably. That moment was priceless. Unfortunately, my glee did not last.'
He scanned the circle.
'So, everyone else, what happened?'
'What's the point in trying if you know you're not going to win?' Connel said. 'I'd already seen Henry. I knew he'd left Lennox behind.'
'I didn't.' Henry snapped. 'She left me.'
'Whatever.'
'Look, you weren’t there. You don’t know what happened. There were people after us!’ Henry was already on the edge of his chair. ‘What was I supposed to do?'
'You should have stuck together.’
'And she decided she would be quicker on her own.' Henry shouted, rising to his feet. 'I wanted to stick together but she was the one who left me.'
'She didn't even know the way back! Why would she leave you?' Connel shouted back, matching Henry, standing up as well.' You never wanted her in this house and you ditched her as soon as you could.'
'No I didn't!' Henry yelled. 'We were chased! Someone planned an ambush. It must have been Caniformia.'
'...Liar'.'
Henry's red face turned white, his mouth clamped shut. He could take no more. He turned on his heel and stormed out, watched by everyone in the room. No one tried to stop him. A senior wolf whistled as Henry charged past. Henry slammed the door so hard the frame shook.
Lennox sighed. Henry would never forgive her. She knew that for a fact. This was her fault.
'He won't leave anyone again,' Duncan commented to the suddenly silent circle. He had not interrupted the argument. He had wanted to hear Henry's version of events. 'And,' he continued, raising his voice, 'we won't come last again. Ever. This is Feliformia. We have a reputation to uphold. If we ever come last again, I will send you all back out to do it again, but in the dark.'
From Duncan's side, Zac cheered. That was the Calgacos way. Endurance and suffering until you got where you wanted to be. Duncan had been at Calgacos a long time, longer than most. He had arrived age 8, the youngest at the school. He had competed in his first marathon age 10. By 13, he had looked sixteen, had been told to train and learn with the seniors, and had been faster than most of them. Ambition not blood ran in his veins, and as head of Feliformia, Duncan was determined that Feliformia would be just as successful as him.
'Briefing over.' Duncan dismissed them with wave of his hand, but his grey eyes focused immediately on Lennox, and he was at her side in a few quick strides.
'And Lennox...' He towered over her. 'Kellas told me he found you in Hangman's Wood, on the far fringes, which means you were actually heading away from Calgacos. Have you looked at the maps of the area?' He waved at the maps on the walls. ‘At the school grounds, and the boundaries.’
'No.’
‘Have a look at the maps. Then go out... In fact I'll take you out myself. Show you around, make sure you know the area.'
'Okay,' she agreed, stunned. She had thought he was as fed up with her as Connel was.
'I'll catch up with you when I can,' he added and strode off to talk with more boys he felt could have done better.
She hurried to her room, peeled off her clothes, and burrowed into bed in her vest and pants. She closed her eyes but it wasn't Henry she saw, storming out of the room, or Connel, on his feet, shouting, or Duncan, singling her out, offering unexpected help; it was Kellas. Throughout the whole debrief, he had sat, impassive as a statue. He had followed the argument between Henry and Connel like a hawk, and said nothing.
He had been there, in the forest. He must have heard something. He could have helped Henry, supported Lennox, and yet he said nothing. Kellas, it seemed, disliked talking almost as much as he disliked other people. He was unreachable.
Unable to sleep, too full of anger, she rose, settled in her window seat, and pushed the tiny mullioned window full open. The wind gusted up her arms, sending cold shivers through her back. The truth was, she felt humiliated. She did now want to be at Calgacos, but neither did she want to be rejected by Calgacos. Connel’s anger smarted, even the way Duncan had singled her out as the weak link was painful, and Kellas' presence at her humiliation was salt in a wound.
Her thoughts were hijacked by a ripple in the darkness below her. On the dark slopes below she could discern movement. She pulled away from the window, shut it quickly, and ran back to her bed. There had been someone else in the forest today. Someone had chased her. And there had been something fast, and wild, on the moors, when she had been out alone. She had no idea if the two were linked.
Unlike all her previous schools, which tried to wall their pupils away from risk, or injury, Calgacos seemed to do the opposite. She had hated many of her previous schools; she had been bullied, sometimes badly, at a few of her previous schools. So she had learnt to fight back. She knew how to stand up for herself. It had been necessary to learn. But now, for the first time, she actually felt she was not safe. Someone was after her. She was going to have to watch her back, as the possible candidates were endless
She was woken after the longest night's sleep she had enjoyed since arriving at Calgacos, to find the sun burning through the windows. Her grey room was transformed into colour. It was so bright, it seemed ridiculous to fearful of her safety at the school. She sat with Mannik at breakfast on a tiny table squashed into a corner, and as they hunched over their bowls of streaming porridge, she heard snippet after snippet of conversation as boys walked past, most were talking about her.
For the juniors of Calgacos, her performance in Endurance was the most interesting event of the week. Whatever house they came from, it mattered nothing; everybody seemed to know that she had been hours behind the rest of the boys, and that Henry and Connel had argued. There were some, like Connel, who thought Henry had ditched Lennox as soon as he could, not wanting to be slowed down by her, and others, like Mannik, who believed Henry, and thought that Lennox had simply run away too fast for him to catch her.
There were only two people in the whole school who believed somebody else had been present, chasing them, and those two were Lennox and Henry, who couldn't bring themselves to speak to each other.
'Why are they still talking about the Endurance?' Lennox asked Mannik, as they made their way to the last lesson of the morning, Geography. 'What does it matter?'
They had just walked past Rick and Henry, who were still arguing heatedly.
Mannik shrugged.
'Because Endurance matters, that's why. Think of Endurance as a sort of world war, except there are four sides instead of two, and you'll begin to understand.'
'No, I still don't understand.'
Down the far end of the corridor, Lennox saw a flash of silver hair in amongst a crowd. A few people moved into a nearby classroom and in that moment Kellas was revealed, leaning against the wall, his head back, his profile pure, his body completely still. He was not talking to anyone, not even noticing the others around him. Connel had described him as superior and Lennox could see exactly what he meant. Kellas was haughty, but he was also radiantly good looking, a thoroughbred, genuinely superior. Lennox stared, fascinated.
'You know you said the teachers here were different?’ she asked Mannik, unable to take her eyes off Kellas. ‘Don't you think there are some students here that are also different?'
Mannik stared down the corridor as well.
'Maybe,' he agreed.
Their conversation was interrupted by the arrival of Connel,
'I've been thinking,' he said, looking sheepish. 'And talking to Henry' he admitted.
'Talking or shouting?' Lennox asked.
'Talking,' Connel promised. 'He says you ran away.'
'He's right. I did.'
'Why?' Connel looked bewildered. 'It was your first ever Endurance. You didn't even know the way back. Why would you run away from him?'
'Because we were being chased.' Lennox explained. 'Henry did try to tell you.'
'But who would chase you? Caniformia were in the lead, and you were far behind, nowhere near them. Perissodactyla would never bother giving chase, they just want to outrun everyone. And I've spoken with a few people in Aves, and they were dropped south of Calgacos, and we were dropped north, so it couldn't have been them. There's no-one else it could have been.’
‘Why do you think it was a junior?’ Lennox added. ‘It could have been anyone from Calgacos.’
From the far end of the corridor, Kellas was staring at her, and as she watched, though his lips remained still, his voice echoed in her head,
Behave.
Lennox stopped dead, and looked around, and straight at Kellas.
‘What?' she asked, though no one had spoken, not out loud.
'So who do you think it was?' Connel asked, ignoring her question. 'Who else would chase you?'
Down the corridor, Kellas turned his back and walked away. He had nothing more to say.
'I've no idea,' she told Connel, and she was telling the truth.
After their conversation, it was clear that Connel no longer held a grudge against her. The same, however, could not be said of Henry. Later, when Mannik and Lennox squeezed on the end of the lunch table of Feliformia juniors, Henry very soon picked up his tray and left.
Lennox wasn't surprised, or upset. She was used to this kind of behaviour. She didn't like it but she expected it. Henry's reaction to her made Calgacos feel normal.
She was picking at her food, half listening to the conversation further down the table, when Kellas appeared in the lunch queue. As soon as she noticed him, it was impossible to forget he was there. He was with Horace and the Head of Aves House, a senior with a sharp hooked nose like a scythe, and speckled golden eyes called Frank. Frank and Horace were the only people in the school Kellas actually seemed to converse with. Their heads were bent forward, and their conversation looked intent. Lennox forced herself to look away and tried to listen to what was happening at her table.
Rick was in the middle of an argument with anyone he could get to join in. He was arguing the case for Calgacos allowing pets.
'My tabby,' he was saying, 'has got more intelligence than some of those in Caniformia. She knows when I'm on my way home even before I'm through the door. If I was out there somewhere, and in trouble, she'd be more use to me than half the school.'
Lennox found herself staring at Kellas again.
It wasn’t only his looks which made him different. It was the way he moved, and his attitude.
He never appeared to hurry, yet moved deceptively quickly. He showed no interest in others, yet seemed to know everything that happened around him. As Lennox watched, she saw a boy beside Kellas drop a plastic mug to the floor. Kellas flinched before it hit the ground, and he wasn't even looking at it. Lennox shook her head in disbelief. There was something about Kellas that she had never seen before in anyone.
‘What are you doing?’ Mannik muttered from her side.
Lennox hastily dropped her head, stared at her food.
‘Don’t.’ Mannik warned. ‘Don’t look at any of them. Just in case.’
Lennox kept quiet. She didn’t walk to talk about Kellas. She didn’t trust herself.
‘He’s not a Head of House, but he could have been. He’s the fastest runner at Calgacos. Annoys Nighten. He wants all the best runners to be in Perrissodactyla, and Kellas can beat them all, and still not look out of breath.'
It was not only Nighten he annoyed, Lennox thought. When he had brought her back from Endurance, it was Kearns whose anger had filled the courtyard, and silenced everyone else.
'Just don't...' began Mannik.
He never finished his sentence. His words petered out in dismay as Gram appeared at their table and dropped into the empty space opposite Lennox. His protruding eyes were shiny and slick, dark as an oil spill, alive with intent. Behind Gram, like a battering ram, stood a line of his followers.
‘I’ve heard all about what happened to you in Endurance?’ he said, his mouth settling into a gloat. ‘Did you confused? Did you think it was an overnight camping trip?'
'Ignore him,' counselled Connel, looking up from further down the table. ‘They won. And he’s come here to remind us.’
'Or maybe you tried really hard, and you just couldn’t do it,’ Gram continued, as if Connel hadn’t spoken. ‘Because this isn’t the right school for you.'
Lennox snapped her head up at once. Gram's tiny mouth was stretched into a sneer on his sallow face.
'I didn't choose this place, you know. I didn’t want to come here. I was sent here.'
'...by mistake.'
Behind Gram, there was a chorus of ugly laughter from his cronies, three Caniformia juniors: Ritter, an unkempt stringy boy with hollow eyes, hair like lumps of matted bracken and who claimed to have no parents; stocky, dark eyed Hugh, the son of bankers, who'd had a personal trainer since he was 2; and Dennis, the son of Chinese climbers, who was determined to outperform his parents and climb the mountains they had, but on his to prove he was better.
'So?' Lennox demanded. She could see out of the corner of her eye Mannik had his hands on his tray, ready to leave. She wasn't going to cower the way he did. She would show Mannik another way to deal with bullies.
'I'm just wondering why you're still here, that's all.'
Privately Lennox wondered the same thing. But she wasn't going to tell Gram that.
'But since you are here,' Gram continued, 'I thought I’d give you a chance to redeem yourself. There’s going to be a card game, all the houses, including Feliformia. Juniors only. Saturday night, while most of the seniors are out.’
Connel suddenly looked interested. Mannik looked terrified.
‘Count me in,' Connel announced.
Gram nodded.
'On one condition.'
'Which is?'
'Bring her.'
And to Lennox's horror, without even looking at her, Connel stretched out and shook Gram's hand. 'You're on.'