Pale: 4.x - Interlude
Author: Wildbow

Interlude

Snowdrop lay with her arms stretched out overhead, legs stretched out the other way, mouth open, and eyes half-lidded.  The sun shone in through the window, warming her belly, where her shirt had ridden up.  The student guide and graphic novel she’d been reading had fallen from where they’d rested and lay at a diagonal, resting against her side.

A rustling at the door made her eyes snap open.  She flopped over, one hand holding the footboard of the bed to keep from falling off, while her head and hair moved off the bed, so she could look at the door upside-down, eyes wide.  Her hand gripped the rusty fork.

Having keen senses was essential to be a good guide of the Forest Ribbon Trail, and it wasn’t possible to survive in the wild if you couldn’t be alert and ready when something happened.

Not that she’d really done much in the wild.  She had been born, crawled her way to her mom’s pouch, and then her mom had stopped giving milk.  She’d made some basic attempts to bring food, vegetables and roots, then stopped entirely.  Snowdrop had had to go looking for food herself, when she had been small enough she couldn’t do much.  Bugs here and there.  Chewing on grass.

Then a cat had sniffed her out, picked her up by the scruff of the neck, and carried her away to a life of adventure.

She slipped from the bed, hand touching the ground first, feet following, her spare hand gripping her weapon, and crossed the room at a crouch.

She had her escape route, a grate that led into the ducts.  She checked it was there, loose.  Good.

Fork held out of sight, she hauled the door open.

It was a skinny guy, surly-looking, with a bit of a slouch, and a mop of red-brown hair.

“What do you want?  What are you doing?”

“Delivering.  Papers and stuff.”

She opened the door wider, then leaned over to get the papers from the little trough thing on the bottom part of the door.  She looked them over.

“Breakfasts are student’s choice, lunches are whatever is convenient, and dinners are served for everyone, with special exceptions for diet,” the boy said, sounding like he was reciting off a page.  “The first sheet gives students the ability to vote for future dinner items.  The second sheet informs students about the confirmed guest teachers for the coming week or weeks.  The third sheet informs students about upcoming field trips, and recommends things to bring, preliminary rituals, and other preparations.  Finally, there are some last-minute changes this semester, with Mr. Musser and Bristow doing some teaching, and in the back field-”

“No.  Not boring.  I’m-” She yawned again, cracking her jaw.

He stood a little straighter.  “Don’t let me keep you.  If you’d please just make sure your master gets those.”

Snowdrop snorted.  “Master?”

“I’d hope a minor Other like you wasn’t the controlling party.  No offense.”

Snowdrop frowned.  She tried to concoct a good swear, like Cherrypop had told her, and found herself floundering somewhere around calling him a wet noodle, which was Avery’s favorite, and telling him to put his man junk in a hole in the ground.

She opted to stay silent, sorting through the pages.

“While I’m at it, I’m sure the faculty will inform everyone who brought a familiar, but before construction in the back field even begins, we’ll be using some binding circles to keep pests out.  Bugs, mice, wisps, echoes, lesser goblins, and the like.  We go with very brute-force approaches early, then segue into subtler workings that are woven into the foundation and architecture.  Familiars should steer clear, or it will be like walking into a bug zapper and they’ll risk taking their master out in the process.”

“Oh.  What about non-familiars?” she asked.

“Why does it matter?” he asked.  “You know what?  Nevermind.  I’ve gotta deliver the rest of this.”

“Why don’t you guys have the staff do that?” she asked.

He was already on his way across the hall to the next door.  He picked out papers from the pile in his arms and looked back at her.  “Do what?”

She held up the handful of disorganized papers.

“Because I had to type it up, and the process of telling them to deliver isn’t that much worse than writing up the instructions for the staff.”

“Why not have them type it up?”

“Having the f-a-i-r-y type things write up papers to be handed out to everyone gets you problems with fascination, subversion, and really weird old languages.”

“Huh.  That’s cool.”

“It’s pointless busywork.  Keeping me occupied when a good ritual could do this.  Or an arrangement with the brownies.”

“You’ve got it worse than me.  Do you remember how you said I couldn’t be the controlling party in my partnership with Avery?  I feel bad because you’re the whipped one.”

He stopped sorting out the papers and turned around, frowning at her.

People got so weird, sometimes.  She couldn’t always predict how they’d react to stuff she said.  Questions were usually safe, though.  Questions didn’t get flipped around.  Other stuff did, though.  Even the ‘huhs’ and ‘ughs’.  It didn’t matter if she tried to reword it or fib, because it was based on what she meant, not what she said.

“I lost track of the pages I just put in.  Can you go back to doing what you were doing before?”

“It looks complicated, and annoying.  Sorry you’ve got it rough, Mr…”

“Seth.  You can do it.  Good luck.”

He turned.  “Of course I can do it.  I’m a Belanger.”

“And you’re annoying,” he added.  He crossed the hall, put a hand on her head, and forced her back a step.  He drew the door closed, stopping just long enough to say, “Stay put and be good until your master comes back.  Give her those papers.”

He shut it firmly after that statement.

“Good luck with your master too!” she called out.

He muttered something she couldn’t hear through the door, even with her good ears.

She placed the papers on the nightstand, tucked her fork into her waistband, and then sat down on the bed, stabbing herself in the belly with the fork.  She adjusted, lay back, and paged through her graphic novel.  It was in French, and had been left out in the woods for at least one bout of rainy weather, and the blue in the cover had faded away.  But it was a gift from Cherry.  Cherrypop liked the part where the one guy got someone else’s spine jammed down his throat, even though she couldn’t really read that well.  Snowdrop could recite it all by heart now.

She lay down in the sun, holding the book over her head, trying to get sleepy enough that she could sleep through most of the rest of the day.  At least until Avery got back.  Sleep escaped her.  The discussion, the strange place she’d once set on fire, and the annoyance of Avery being called her Master made it hard to relax.

They were partners.  Sisters in arms.  Like spotter and sniper, scout and runner, lookout and looter, trash and treasure.  There was no master.  Ugh.

She sat up.  If she wanted to get to sleep, there had to be something that helped.  Counting sheep was one thing, but that was boring and it seemed like a bad way to get to sleep in a way that let her have nice dreams.  It’d lead to boring dreams.

No, there were better ways.  Good things to get good dreams.  She shuffled through papers, moving things around until she found papers, then found paper that hadn’t been used yet.

With a broken pencil she’d found in a gutter once, she carefully wrote out her request.  Strawberry milk, warmed up.  Apples.  Carrots.  Red peppers.  A cinnamon roll.  It would work if she ordered it, right?  If she wasn’t human?

She was halfway to the door when she stopped.

Writing wouldn’t work, and it wasn’t because she was an opossum.  It was because things got flipped around.  Even in writing.

She held out the paper, squinting with her eyes and trying to squint with her brain too.

She had no idea what she’d really ordered.  What was the opposite of those things?  She could hope it was like, chocolate milk, but with her luck, it’d be congealed blood or something.

Which would be cool, except it wasn’t strawberry milk.

This was hell.  She really, really, really wanted strawberry milk now.  She wanted cinnamon rolls.  She wanted crisp foods that would snap in between her teeth.

Why had she started thinking about strawberry milk?  She was so stupid, getting herself started when there was no way to do it.

She kept the note she’d written, then placed it in the little ‘v’ shaped slot that sullen Seth had put the papers in.

This would be tricky.  She waited, watching by the door she’d left cracked open, peering through the gap.

If she could talk to the ‘staff’ face to face, then maybe there was a chance.  Faerie were smart, and fairy things were like Faerie.  Toadswallow had explained it all, a few weeks ago.  Fairy-with-a-y were things that had some glamour but they were old and followed more precise rules, or it encompassed things that were a bit glamour-y but also a bit goblin-y, or a bit abyss-y.  Every Faerie was a bit different but fairy things tended to be uniform and when they had kids, if they could have kids, the kids were like the parents.

So she had a bit of an idea of what to expect here.

Five minutes passed.  Her craving only got worse.

Milk was happiness and love.  It was one of the only things that was a giving food, not a taking one.  Meat was taken from dead animals, and sometimes, according to Gashwad, living ones, but she hadn’t tried that yet.  Fruit was the closest thing she could think of, but according to Toadswallow, fruits and vegetables were sort of like the sex organs of plants.  It was only sort of by weird design that they became delicious.  Animals ate the plant’s private parts, sort of, then they crapped out seeds and the plants got to spread.  Or the plants were made so they didn’t have seeds and it was kind of like eating a juicy dick with a condom on it, Toadswallow said.  That conversation had moved on to how flowers were also sex organs of plants, and Snowdrop was named after a flower, so she was sorta named something rude.

They’d all loved that.  Goblin brains were fun in how they worked.

Toadswallow was one of the smartest creatures that Snowdrop knew.  Avery and Verona and Lucy and Miss were smarter.  Not that she’d had a lot of time with Miss.

She opened the door and peeked around the corner, to see if the food had been delivered and placed off to the side.  Nope.

She considered for a moment, then closed the door.  She opened it after a second.

“I want my milk!” she spoke to the empty hallway.

“What?” Seth asked.  He was around the corner, further down the hall.

She ignored him, frowned, closed the door, and immediately opened it again.  She repeated the closing and opening a few times.

Maybe it didn’t work because she was Other?

What would she do if she was a Faerie-y type thing?  Faerie-ish.  Toadswallow had told her she should say Faerie-esque, but Bluntmunch had told her that to handle Faerie you had to be crude and Faerie-esque sounded too fancy.  She couldn’t play into their hands like that.  She’d never live it down with her goblin buds.

With her fork, she messed with the delivery trough, mailbox-esque thing, prying at it until it was a bit loose.  She made it rattle, then checked the coast was clear.

Then she took off her sweatshirt and slung the hood over the doorknob.  Lying on the floor, she looked through the gap for shadows.  Two ways she’d be able to notice if they came.  Seeing under the door and the rattle.

She closed the door, lying there with one fist still gripping her fork and the other holding the sweatshirt, which was hung on the knob.

Almost immediately, she heard it.  A faint screech and scrape.

She twisted, hauling on the sweatshirt, pulling the door open wide, twisting her body so it wouldn’t smack her face.  She hadn’t seen the shadows of any feet, but the creature hadn’t even touched the ground.  It hung on the mail slot, paper in hand, narrow eyes opening wide as the door swung, banged against the wall, and the partially detached mail trough thing dropped a bit more, the loose screw dragging against the wood.

She caught it by the wrist.  It was smaller than her, but only barely, with wiry hair that looked like copper wire, eyes that were more like knife slashes that made ‘x’s than regular eyes, ragged in their edges, with ‘lashes’ like frayed flesh, lined with red.  The orbs on the other side were liquid-y metal, like copper mixed with gold.  It had skin that was like thick leather that had been bleached white.  It was knobby, spindly, and beautiful, with what looked like fancy lacy stockings or fishnets trapping hair close to its arms and legs, and more layers of the same around its body and legs.  She wondered if it was halfway between goblin and Faerie, from how it was misshapen but a beautiful misshapen.

It fought like its life was on the line.  Long fingernails raked her arms.

Snowdrop fought like her strawberry milk was on the line, trying to get it to sit still long enough for her to put thoughts together and decide what to say.

It hissed in her face, its eyes widening.  There were dark pupils in that sea of coppery gold, so paper-thin they were easy to miss.

She hissed back, turning the tables on it, shoving it, and kept hissing as it landed on its rump, scrambling back.  It was fast, moving to the far side of the hallway in a second.

She hadn’t meant to hiss.  Instincts had taken over.

It reached for the line of mortared-in stones where the wall met the floor, touched a stone, turned it ninety degrees, and lifted up a trapdoor.

She’d caught up with it by the time the trapdoor was open.

It kicked her in the lower stomach, making her grunt and take a step back.  Then it flipped over, to go for the trapdoor.

She lunged forward, hooking a foot around its leg, and dragged it back.  It reached just inside the trapdoor, and came out with a mug of something like tea.  It sloshed it in her direction.

She shielded her face, best as she could, and the fact she was still holding her sweatshirt helped a lot.

It hissed at her, wriggling so its leg was free of where she’d hooked her foot around its leg.

She hissed back, on principle, and because instincts.  The thing threw a butter knife, maybe intending it as a parting gift.  It hit the side of her chest with enough force to get through fabric and break skin.  She felt a sharp twinge of pain as it stuck in, pulled, then dropped free, clattering.

It dropped to all fours, and she wasn’t sure if it was leaving, which was fine except she hadn’t gotten to order, or if it was getting more things to throw at her.

She returned the favor, stepping forward and soccer kicking it in the backside as it was on all fours, ducking back through the tunnel.  The soccer kick was a bit of something from Avery.  She’d been pure opossum once, but then when she’d gone to the Forest Ribbon Trail, she’d gotten the big Avery download from the universe or the ritual or whatever.  Everything she needed to be a companion on the trail.  Soccer knowledge came from that, and it maybe informed the kick, making it more efficient.

The target of the kick was scrawny and it didn’t really have butt cheeks.  It wore fancy, gauze-y clothing.  Gauze-esque?  Didn’t really offer much protection.  And so the effect of the kick was really to put the toe of her shoe in near-direct contact with Faerie-esque butthole.

Driven forward at an angle, the creature’s face slammed into the edge of the trapdoor it had been ducking through.

She stood there, as the Other member of the school staff member lay on the ground, one hand with long fingernails covering its face, the other hand gripping its butt.

It rolled over, writhing.  It tried to kick her, failed to get any strength, and clutched its butt harder.

She dropped her wet sweatshirt on top of it, then stood on the fabric, pinning it down.  She adjusted her footing so her feet trapped its arms roughly where they were.

“Can you take my order?”

It moaned something in a whispery, rapid-fire, air-light language, one hand at its face, the other clutching its butt.

“Do you have strawberry milk and can you warm it?  I want-”

Three narrow hands with long copper-gold fingernails reached out of the open trapdoor, grabbed the faerie-ish thing, and hauled on it with enough force that it was pulled from where she’d pinned it.  She dropped to her knees, reaching, and the trapdoor closed within a half-inch of her hand.

“Yeah, well, I’m sorry!” she shouted.  She reached for the stone the thingy had touched, and tried a few times to rotate it.  She needed fingers in the right position, and the divots were narrow and camouflaged.  She found the position, started to turn it-

Hands on the other side resisted her, turning it back the other way.  They were about as strong, and after a minute of struggle, she gave up.

She straightened, rubbed her stomach, repositioned her fork at her waistband, and checked her injury.  She was bleeding where the knife had gouged her before falling to the floor, and it was soaking into her t-shirt.  She picked up the knife and added it to her waistband.  She picked up the slip of paper and sweatshirt as well.

“You have my order,” she said, to the empty hallway, a bit unsure.

She hadn’t wanted to fight like that.

She returned to the room, and dug through Avery’s stuff.  She’d put her kit together before the whole thing with the Hungry Choir, and that whole thing had happened before Snowdrop, so Snowdrop had gotten it in the big Avery download.  First aid kit.

She poked and prodded at her wound a bit before sticking a slim bandage over the hole.  It was shallow, anyway, and the knife seemed clean.

She tried to decide what to do, and decided that with the pain and her heart pounding, she wouldn’t be able to sleep.

Without her warm milk, she definitely wouldn’t be able to sleep.

She paced on the spot, anxious, thinking about Avery, when a buzzing distracted her.

She crossed the room, went to the other bed, and moved stuff aside until she found the phone.

Dad:
I might need you to come home sooner than later.

Image: this image has corrupted and can no longer be retrieved.

Dad:
They’ve had me waiting at the emergency room for two hours now.  They say it’s serious but won’t move me ahead.  There’s a lineup of patients who are getting priority of the CAT scan machine.
Call me.  ASAP.
Ten hour wait and I only just got a bed.  Now I’m waiting for a doctor to be free.  Ridiculous.
I had to call a coworker to get a ride.  I’m humiliated.  He stayed with me for the first three hours but had to leave.  I would have liked you with me for part of this.
I need to get in touch with you ASAP.  CALL ME.
I spoke with a doctor.  I’m serious now: call me.  I’m going to need you to come home.  I called your mom and you know I hate speaking to that woman.  I wouldn’t do it if there was any other option.

Yeah.  She would need to talk to Verona and Avery.  The decision had been made for her.

Snowdrop switched to opossum form as she vaulted over the footboard of the bed, paused as she considered what she needed, then became human again, dropping into a sitting position on the little shelf-dresser thing at the foot of the bed.

Changing and becoming human again let her change clothes.  She’d wanted something that fit for school, literary or fancy or whatever, and the oversized t-shirt she wore was now crimson, with thick white letters wrapping around most of it, the text extending from shoulder to the base: ‘I may love garbage but that doesn’t mean I am garbage’.

She also had a pleated skirt, baggy socks, and sneakers.  She grabbed Avery’s jacket from the back of the door, sniffed it, and got Avery’s scent, along with the smell of grass and outdoors.  Good.  She pulled it on, for good measure, and to cover up her scratched-up arms.  A bit big for her, but many of her clothes were.  She combed at her hair, adjusted the utensils trapped beneath the beltline of her skirt, handles sticking up, and marched out of the room.

It was tricky, sometimes.  She could only carry so much.  Miss had told her what she needed to know, before leaving.  That being Lost made it hard to hold onto things.  Many Others, with a big exception for those that were specifically about having stuff, had a hard time holding onto things.  They had less connections, or connections meant for other things.

She probably wouldn’t hold onto the butter knife, or holding onto the knife would mean losing something she didn’t really care about or pay attention to, like her own personal dog tag.

Miss had had to use tricks to keep her stuff.  If she didn’t come back, then maybe Snowdrop would take over the same position.  Then she’d have to learn and use those same tricks, like juggling and lending things.  Miss had made deals with Others who didn’t come into Kennet, giving them things with power, then taking them back when needed, or calling in favors, to keep people busy.

So she only had her fork, the knife, the goblin lockpick she’d been holding, the phone, some spare change in her pocket, Avery’s raincoat-windbreaker, and the clothes that were as much a part of Snowdrop as her hair was.

There were other parts of being empowered by the Path that changed things up.  She didn’t have the best eyesight, especially in daylight, but her vision got very sharp when it came to seeing hidden things.  Things in shadows, things that were a bit around the corner.  Looking at something like the corner of a cover in a goblin’s rude magazine stash in the woods and having a good sense of what the magazine was about, and even when it was from.

Two x-shaped copper-gold eyes peered at her through the vents as she walked by.  She gave them a wider berth.

More eyes beneath a door.  A wooden plank in the ceiling lifted up, eyes peering down.

She counted them.  Ten in all.

Avery had gone this way.  She could smell it, checking the smell on the jacket for reference.  Not that it was really necessary, but she was nervous and…

And the hallway was a dead end.

She stared at the wall, with water running down it.  She reached out, touched it, and pulled away her wet hand, wiping it on her shirt.

This hadn’t been a dead end before.

She pressed an ear to the wall, and heard a muffled voice.  She could connect it to Mr. Sunshine, teaching.

Snowdrop turned and looked.  Ten glowing, narrow eyes watched her.

They emerged, sliding into the hallway from beneath doors and out of trapdoor spots.  A lot of them came from the direction of the kitchen.  They were roughly the same as the one she’d scrapped with, all with stooped postures, skin with some thickness to it, that could have made them look brutish if they weren’t so very slender and soft.  She imagined it was like those dogs that were huge balls of hair, but when the hair was shaved off, they had spindly legs.

These guys were very spindly, once you looked past the thick skin, pronounced, angular joints, and very triangular faces.

Some were apparently female, with long hair and more effort spent covering their breastless chests.  There were two older ones, with hair a wiry white gold instead of wiry coppery gold; one with a long beard and long hair, the other with muttonchops.

They carried various kitchen things as improvised weapons.  Some knives, a tenderizing mallet, a rolling pin, a steaming teapot.  One lurked in a half-open trapdoor wall, and the space behind the wall wasn’t a dorm room.  It was a kitchen, lit solely by dark red fires, filled with steam.

She drew the fork and knife.

They hadn’t come to serve her any milk.

They came at her, all at once, and all of them were fast.  She wasn’t a fighter, but they didn’t seem to be either.  It was possible she had more experience scrapping than them, but that was mostly play-fighting with goblins.

Which had to be a good thing when dealing with Faerie-esque things like this.

She focused on the ones with knives first, grabbing a mallet-holder and shoving him hard in their direction.  The rolling pin came down, and she became an opossum, scrambling between his legs, her nails struggling to get traction on the wooden floor for that first crucial second.

Goblin technique number one.  Aiming for anything that jiggled.  She became human again, with a thought spared to keeping the wardrobe from before, and soccer-kicked one of the kitchen staff between the legs from behind.  She backed away from a thing with a steaming teapot that seemed intent on sloshing her with the boiling contents, swiping out with the fork to keep another at bay.

She retreated into a corner, weird wet wall to one side, pressing against her shoulder, a wooden wall to her other side.  She’d have to move when sloshed.

The bearded one hissed, before spitting out some invective in a whispery, sing-song voice.

She hissed back, fiercely enough that he stopped.  They all stopped.

Their heads turned simultaneously.  Looking back the other direction, away from her.

They moved as fast as they had earlier, but their destinations weren’t her.  They were trapdoors, panels, and the cracks beneath doors that they should in no way have been able to fit through.

That Seth guy came around the corner, and walked a bit of a way down the hall before stopping.

“He’s still got it up, huh?” he asked.

She looked back at the wet wall.  It looked like something had been carved into it once, but the wet had washed most of the detail away, leaving only circular grooves and stuff.

“I hope none of those kids have to go to the bathroom,” Seth said.  “Rad Ray doesn’t like interruptions for trivial things, and having to shut down the program and let them through would drive him up the wall.  Is there any place you can knock?”

She rapped her knuckles against the wall, but there was no sound.

“Guess not,” Seth said.  “Of course not.”

“Can I come with you?” she asked him, looking around for any glinting eyes.  One peered at her from under a door, then disappeared as Seth walked up.

“I’m going to make a deposit in the men’s washroom, so no.”

“No.  Maybe if you were, like, sixteen and…” He looked her up and down.  “Actually, could look past the clothes.”

“Can you help me?” she asked, trying to keep to the question thing.  “What do I do if the kitchen staff are mad at me?”

He snorted.  “I don’t know, but I’m glad.”

“Someone’s gotta take the hit.  Now, excuse me.  Try not to become too big a mess, because Nicolette’s in class and I’ll probably be the one tasked with cleaning it up before we end up traumatizing a client.”  He fake-coughed.  “I mean student.”

He stepped into the bathroom and closed the door.  She heard it latch.

Yellow, ‘x’ shaped eyes lit up all down the hallway.

They slipped out of trapdoors and gaps.  Ten or twelve of ’em, silent.

She slid the knife into her waistband, then reached past Avery’s jacket to get into her pocket.  The things came for her, and she lunged, going for the bathroom door.

The Ratfink Key slid into the keyhole.  She twisted, pulled, and hit the handle, before scrambling back, hand cupped to protect her eyes.

The fairy things stopped just short of where Seth would be able to see them.

“Uhhh,” Seth said.  “I locked that.”

She kept her hand up, but as one of the things circled closer to the wall, peeking around the corner, she looked, and saw Seth on the toilet, pants around his ankles, reaching in a futile way for the door handle.

“Can you close that door?” he asked.

She put the key away and drew her knife.

“Unh,” he said, trying to use the plunger from beside the sink to push the door closed.  It swung in, swung back, only to get another push from the plunger.

One of the closer fairy-things took a step closer, as the door closed.  Snowdrop jabbed at the air with her fork.

“Unh.  Fuck.  What the hell?  Did you open that?”

Raymond, it seemed, was midway through a lecture.  She could hear the murmurs and use her Lost awareness to fill in some of the context.

He shoved, hard, and the door moved with enough force to close.

But the broken lock kept it from properly closing.  It swung open again.

“Don’t look,” he told her, pulling toilet paper from the roll.  “If I had a say in things, I’d be pushing to get you unsummoned, white trash girl.”

Snowdrop watched the spindly creatures prowl, pacing the hallway, Seth’s activities as he wrapped up his ‘deposit’ early in her peripheral vision.  The sink blocked most of the view, thankfully.

He hiked up his pants and came straight for her.  Which- he didn’t wash his hands?

Even opossums washed their hands, when they could.

The fairy things slipped away as Seth came storming her way.

The hallway had a bend in it, and the bend blocked Seth’s view.  As she rounded the corner, more eyes began to appear.

She knew the fundamentals of running from the Avery download.  Hands flat, pacing, breathing, good running posture.

She did all of that except the breathing thing, because the goblins said there was power in utterances and her best utterance was-

“Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!”

They came tearing out of every space nearby.

“Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!”

Narrow hands reached out from under doors and parts of the wall opened up for more of them to drop down.  She could only run harder, trying to get past them before they could recover from their landings.  She threw her pocketful of change down in hopes they’d slip.

She didn’t hear them slipping, but they didn’t catch up to her despite being quick.  Maybe there was something to it.

It didn’t help with all of them.

“Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!”

A hand clutched for her.  Long fingernails dragged against the slick material of Avery’s raincoat.  They caught at her hair and she was really glad it wasn’t as tangled as usual.

“Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!”

A woman stepped out of a nearby doorway.

“Miss, class is in session.”

Snowdrop practically tackled the woman, wrapping her arms around her.  Snowdrop’s chest jerked out and in more than it expanded and contracted, from the force of her breathing.

She looked back.  No creatures.  No change, even.

“This, right here?  It’s a library,” the woman said.  It was Zed’s summoning, but she didn’t have her hair in a bun.  She wore narrow reading glasses, a white blouse with a very light fabric, and a long black skirt that reached her ankles, her hair straight.

Snowdrop frowned, trying to get her bearings.  Was it?  It was.  “I knew that.”

“A class is in session at the back.  I’m going to kindly ask you to respect the space and be quiet.”

Snowdrop allowed herself to be led, with only the small protest, “I need to go out there.”

“Hush.  Come.  You’re agitated, and the right book makes everything better.”

She allowed herself to be led, mostly because she didn’t know what to do.  Through foggy windows, she could see the crowd in the big room at the far end of the library.

The woman gave Snowdrop a careful once-over, studying her, then went to a bookshelf, bending down.

The book had a mouse in knight’s armor on the cover.  It was titled ‘The Mouse’s Roar’.

No pictures.  Snowdrop flipped through.

“No pictures,” the librarian woman echoed her thoughts.  “But you’ll like it.”

Snowdrop read the first paragraphs.  Her legs kicked, impatient.

She closed the book.  “I want to read this but-”

“Everyone has time to read.  They convince themselves that other things are more important.  Do you drink tea?”

“I do love the taste of tea amid the smell of old books, cracking leather, and ink.  A guilty pleasure, cultivated in small European bookstores.  Just promise me you won’t spill any on the books.”

“As long as I can go out there soon,” Snowdrop said, eyeing the windows, looking for those yellow x-shaped eyes.  She hugged the hardcover book to her chest.

“I’ll put the kettle on.  Do you want treats?  Again, sticky hands-”

“My sticky hands will ruin the books.  Right.”

“Be careful.  You could read in the meantime.  Tell me your thoughts.  I’ve read most published works, but a new reader’s experiences are something special.”

“I was bored earlier, and this is a nice change, but-”

Snowdrop froze.  She saw two eyes peering out from beneath a bookshelf.

The librarian strode over, bent down, and dragged the fairy thing out from beneath the shelf.

“I’ve warned you lot,” Nina said.  She drew a piece of lined paper from her sleeve and flicked it.  It went rigid, like a blade, and pressed against the side of the creature’s throat.  “Not in this library.  I won’t brook any disrespect of this space while I’m charged with it.”

She walked the thing to the door, then deposited it outside.  The eyes glowed at Snowdrop as the door swung closed.  Nina stopped the door at the last second, to keep it from banging closed.

“If there were more people in this part of the library, I’d be quieter,” the librarian confessed.

The kettle was near-silent.  Snowdrop leaned in her seat on the stool, still hugging the book, getting a view as she looked around the corner.  She looked around at the computers, boxes, and stuff, then back at the class in progress.  She focused her vision, and the obscured images became clearer.  Was Verona in there?  It was supposed to be the enchanting person, who was a woman, and that was Alexander.

“It’s good we have an electric kettle,” the librarian said.  “But I must be careful about the steam.  Even that can damage an old book.  Tea is a once-a-day treat for me, and I’m glad to have company.”

“Glad to be here,” Snowdrop said, antsy.

“Can’t have a fire hazard,” the librarian said, as she unplugged the kettle and carried it to another part of the corner of the library.  “The library burned this spring.  They did a good job of repairing the damage, but damaged books are harder to replace.”

“It’s a cardinal sin in my eyes, to burn books.”

The librarian took the old hardcover novel from Snowdrop, setting it on a nearby table, then went to get the treat.  A slice of cake.  “Do you take milk in your tea?”

Was that even a question?

A bit more pressing, though, was another question: Do you poison book burners?

Snowdrop slipped from her position on the stool.

“I have to go back out there.”

Snowdrop fled, pushing her way past the doors with enough force to bowl over the fairy things that had stuck around.  She hurried around the corner.

“Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!”

Outside.  Into bright light, which always made her anxious.

There were picnic tables lined up under a long canopy tent, and some Others were sitting at those tables.

The fairys didn’t chase.

A burly guy with a thick, curly black beard, a mane of curly black hair, and elaborate curling horns as broad as Snowdrop’s arms were long turned to look at her as she huffed for breath.  It was hot outside, t-shirt and shorts weather, and he wore a heavy black coat that might have been wool.

“Did you thank the kitchen staff?”

She drew the knife from her waistband.  “It was given to me.”

“What if, hypothetically, I kicked one of them in the butt?”

“Why would you do that?” he asked.  His voice had a sharp edge to it, but the baritones were warm.

“He deserved it, probably.”  Snowdrop drew closer, keeping the table between herself and the guy.  A woman with gorgeous wavy brown hair that spilled out across the table and onto the ground at her feet had her arms, head, and part of her upper body resting on the picnic table.  A bottle rested by her hand.  She looked at Snowdrop with half-lidded eyes, seemed to need to focus for a few seconds, and smiled once she’d focused enough.

“It’s going to be a very long semester for you, then.  You’re an animal, aren’t you?”

“They serve high quality meals.  I wonder what they would do with opossum meat.”

“Don’t be cruel, Blackhorne,” a woman said.

Snowdrop felt a bit of relief at hearing a familiar voice. It immediately turned around when she realized why the voice was familiar.  Next to the sounds the girls had made before the ritual, Avery’s own voice, and the denizens of the Forest Ribbon Trail, Wolf included, it was one of the first human voices she’d ever heard.

“It’s true, Nicolette,” Blackhorne said.

“I’m not saying it isn’t,” Nicolette said, as she approached the table.  “Truth is crueler than lies.  If it wasn’t, we wouldn’t believe our own lies.”

The blitzed girl with the hair chuckled to herself, hearing that.

Snowdrop backed up a step as Nicolette walked around the table.

“Hello, little liar,” Nicolette said, stopping where she was, about ten feet from Snowdrop.  “I couldn’t help but notice you from a distance, with this cloud hanging over you.  If I may take a closer look-”

Snowdrop scrambled back another five steps as Nicolette took one more step forward.  She pulled out her fork.

“Ah.  Nevermind.  Forget I said anything.  The Brownies want your skin, huh?”

“Opossum meat makes a better meal than opossum hide,” Blackhorne said.

“I’d be way too tasty,” Snowdrop said.

“Yeah, well, you’d be an awfully small dish,” Nicolette said.  “I’d say it’s possible they’re trying to scare you, but… I have means of telling they aren’t.  What did you do?”

“All I tried to do was order in person.”

“That’s all, huh?” Nicolette asked, with a wry tone.  She looked around.  “I remember how terrified I was on my first day.  It was a few years ago, and the culture wasn’t as soft as it is now.  It didn’t help that the me of back then could be described as a massive, raw open wound, literally everything around me, material or immaterial, prodding at the edges of that wound.”

Snowdrop remained where she was, fork held but hidden from view, tense.

“Did you manage to order?” Nicolette asked.

“Answer.  I want to help.”

Snowdrop relaxed, but only a bit.  Helping didn’t mean Nicolette couldn’t hurt too.

“Why does it matter?” Snowdrop asked.

“Because they’re transactional Others.  And they’re fairies, but our interest is in the transaction.  They offer their services to any dumb farmhand or genius augur they can, always with a trick, a caveat.  Sometimes, it’s if you get curious and watch them work, you’ll lose your eyes.  And even when your eyes aren’t attached to your head, you’ll see through them.  Then they place the eyes somewhere you have to watch the most horrible things imaginable.  Or wearing the things they make for longer than one day or one night means you can never take them off.  From there, you become a beggar in tattered clothes if you’re lucky, an Other in rags if you’re not.  But the key is the contract.  They live to deal.”

“This doesn’t help much.”

“They keep countless dishes going in kitchens bigger than this institute, where time flows differently, to supply what people need in minutes.  They’re serious about this.  But a certain type of Other that runs contrary to that seriousness and discipline, maybe a chaotic little opossum with a trace of goblin around the edges?  Throws them off their game.  If they keep you running scared for long enough you can’t call them out on it, they can get away with a loose breach of the implicit deal, in retaliation for a loose breach of etiquette.  But if you call them out…”

“They’d chop me up into dinner.”

“They’ll leave you alone.  Really.  I really should be getting back to class, but…”

“I’d rather go to Avery and Lucy and Verona than fix this.”

“Come on,” Nicolette said.  “If you need help finding them, I’ll help you later.  I think the front door is locked, anyway.  I don’t have long before I should get back to workshop, so let’s go now.  No dallying.”

Snowdrop reluctantly followed.

They entered the school, and with Nicolette present, the brownies, as Nicolette had called them, were elusive.  Mostly, Snowdrop saw them when she looked back over her shoulder, or when she looked into places that even an Augur like Nicolette couldn’t see.

They traced their way back through the school, all the way to the cafeteria.

“Keep quiet, and don’t agitate.  Don’t thank them,” Nicolette said.

The kitchen was apparently empty, but pots were sitting there, simmering.

“You’re obligated to serve the residents of this school,” Nicolette said.  “Adapt to their needs.  For Snowdrop here, I think Avery Kelly should help figure out a menu or checklist, and you should take pains to not discard that menu or checklist, after you get her requests.  Workable?”

Nicolette was asking Snowdrop.

“Do you have any requests?”

Snowdrop moved further into the kitchen.  She saw a fridge with a glass door, and within was milk, in various flavors.  Lots of chocolate.

And a bit of strawberry milk.

She opened the fridge and then hesitated.  Taking was bad, wasn’t it?  “May I?”

“You may,” Nicolette said.

She opened the fridge, stood on her toes, and reached up, pulling down the bottle.

It wasn’t warm, like she’d imagined for naptime, but ice cold milk had its charms too.

She had the cap off in a second, then drank.

“Seems you’re satisfied,” Nicolette said.  She sounded a bit warmer than before.  “Food?”

Snowdrop gulped down a quantity of milk that made her throat hurt, gasped, and said, “I don’t need any Bonky Donks.  I know they’re a problem.”

All around the kitchen, in dark corners, on shelves, and from within cabinets that were ajar, x-shaped eyes lit up.

Snowdrop backed away fast enough that she bumped into Nicolette.

They came tearing out, hurrying forward.  Mostly they moved behind Nicolette.  Disappearing as she turned around, emerging elsewhere.  A plate spun as it came to rest on the ground.  Nicolette pulled on Snowdrop’s shoulder, moving her closer to the kitchen entrance, looking to make sure the coast was clear.  Fire flared to the side.

More fire scattered across the kitchen floor, in intense droplets.

A Bonky Donk, tidy, was deposited on the plate that had been dropped on the floor.  Chocolate sponge cake with preservatives and cream filling.

Surrounding it was a sea of melted plastic, some of which was on fire.

A Brownie with a massive beard sprinted from one cabinet to another, beard on fire, covered in burning melted plastic, chased by another brownie with a stenciled ‘Bonky Donk’ logo staining its hand.

More fires erupted.  Glass broke.

Snowdrop drank some of her strawberry milk, satisfied, then walked over, picked up the Bonky Donk from the plate, and bit into it.

Snowdrop spoke around a mouthful of Bonky Donk.  “They really did it.  They’re so good at this.  No plastic though.  Except the burny plastic.  Which-”

Nicolette clapped a hand over Snowdrop’s mouth.

Yellow eyes filled the kitchen, behind Nicolette.  Hiding as she turned her head.  Intense.

“If you keep telling them their work is inaccurate and terrible, they may lose their minds,” Nicolette said.  “They have something to prove, now.”

Snowdrop chewed, Nicolette’s hand still clasped over her mouth.

Together, they retreated from the kitchen.  The eyes followed them.

“Aaaaa!” Snowdrop cheered.

Avery, Lucy, and Verona were on their way back.  They’d gone walking while Nicolette and Snowdrop were sorting things out.  Away from school.  Now they were walking through the parking lot, coming back to school.

“Aaa!” Avery greeted her.  “Is that my coat?  I don’t mind, but-”

Snowdrop ran up and hugged her with enough of an impact that Avery stopped asking.

“Miss us?” Lucy asked, running fingernails through Snowdrop’s hair.  “Any problems?”

“Yes,” Snowdrop told them.  She dug in her pocket and handed the phone to Verona.

“Damn it,” Verona muttered.

“Also, kitchen blowup,” Snowdrop said.  “And angry brownies, and stuff.”

“And we’ve got a lunchtime appointment,” Lucy said, not sounding happy about it.  “With Alexander.”

“Is everything okay?” Avery asked Snowdrop.

“Nicolette?  Huh.  I guess we owe her one,” Avery murmured.  “Weird.”

“She found me when she said I had a dark cloud over me, then she took me to the kitchens to talk to the Brownies, and then we put out the fires, and cleaned up the mess, and Nicolette said I had to order a bunch of food and not act that unhappy about it…”

“You were busy,” Verona said.  “Want to come with us to the meeting?  It might be awful.”

Snowdrop’s eyes closed, as Lucy’s fingernails combed through her hair.  Hugging her partner in crime, the sorta-head-scratchy, sorta-petting of Lucy’s nails…

“What’s with the phone?” Avery asked.

“I wonder…” Lucy said.  “Snowdrop, you said there was a dark cloud?”

“Dark- Nicolette said,” Snowdrop answered, turning around.  Lucy pulled her hands away, and Snowdrop took them and put them back.  “Then she said nevermind, and to forget she said anything, so I think she realized she was wrong?”

“You’re great, Snowdrop,” Lucy said, resuming the fingernail hair-comb.  “But deciphering you makes my head hurt sometimes.  She said to forget it?  Did she say she realized she was wrong?”

“Yes,” Snowdrop said, “and no, to that last part.”

Lucy put a hand on Snowdrop and Avery’s shoulder, leading them back and away from the school.  “Ronnie.”

Verona looked up from her phone.

“Come on,” Lucy said.  “I’ll help you with that after if you need.”

Verona put her phone away.

They walked away from the school.  Snowdrop could see Lucy look around with her Sight, the whites of her eyes turning red, the irises turning white.  Seeing her do it, Verona and Avery did the same.

“What are we looking for?” Verona asked.

“We’re looking for signs that anyone’s listening, and I’m looking for that black cloud.  I think the stains are darker, but…”

“What are you thinking?” Avery asked.

Lucy’s voice dropped.  “I’m thinking Alexander works subtle.  And what Charles said.  He surrounds himself with strife.”

“You think Snowdrop’s thing is Alexander?”

“I think…” Lucy said, reaching out, touching Verona’s phone.  “That.  Ray picking on me in class.  Avery, I don’t know if you-”

“Some awkwardness around Jessica, but not too bad,” Avery said.

“Maybe you’re strife resistant, because of who you are,” Verona said.  “Or because you’re a Finder and that makes you more detached, or because it deflected onto Snowdrop.”

Verona sounded almost happy, saying that, which was weird.

Happy to have a puzzle, maybe.

“I don’t want to deflect onto Snowdrop,” Avery said, hugging Snowdrop from behind.  “I hope it’s not that.”

“Maybe he held off on going after Avery for now, with plans to do something later?” Lucy suggested.

“Pssht,” Verona made a dismissive sound.  “Simple boring answer.”

“What better way to put us on the back foot and make us dependent on him, than to make us think this school is rough going right from the start?” Lucy murmured.

“We can’t back out of the meeting,” Avery said.  “We said we’d meet him.”

“It would be a minor lie,” Verona said.  “And if we’re already being targeted by vague strife clouds-”

“It’s fine,” Lucy said.  “We’ll go, we’ll keep to the deal.  But now we’re going in with some knowledge.”

“You guys are so smart,” Snowdrop said.  “This is cool.”

“This is tough,” Lucy said.  “But we can do this.  Eyes open, okay?”

Avery and Verona nodded, giving a thumbs up.  Snowdrop joined them.

Verona reached down, putting Snowdrop’s middle finger down with the rest of the fingers, and adjusted her thumb.  “There.”

“Let’s go,” Lucy said.  “I think we have a sense of what we’re dealing with now.”

“We might,” Avery said, her forehead wrinkling a bit as her eyebrows went up.  “But it might not be that simple.  We might have a sense of what’s going on, but it was just over there-”

Avery pointed off to the side of the parking lot.

“-that Matthew said not to trust anyone.”

“You’re thinking Nicolette?” Lucy asked.

“I’m thinking… if we caught on, that’s too easy.  What if it was someone else?  Framing Alexander, or something?  Nicolette getting subtle revenge?  Or-”

“Or, to borrow from Lucy’s boring book,” Verona said, “it’s the simple answer and Alexander gambled with a big play, trying to mess with most or all of us, and lost.”

“When he can see the future?” Avery asked.

“We don’t need another whodunnit,” Lucy said.  “Please no.”

“It could be a small, less complicated whodunnit,” Verona said, trying to sound reassuring.  “We’re n- oh wait, yes we are learning practice from these guys too.”

“And there’s all this other stuff going on in the background?” Lucy asked.  She put her fingers to her temples, massaging.  “Bristow and the little civil war over leadership?  Him being interested in Kennet?”

“That might be tied to it,” Verona said.  “I guess it’s not uncomplicated.”

Avery nodded.  “It could be the strife thing.  Alexander indirectly encouraging interest in Kennet, to stir the pot.”

“You guys got this,” Snowdrop said.  “You’re smart.  You’re great.”

Lucy groaned.  “Please, Snowdrop.  I know it’s not on purpose, but that much negativity right now…”