The group was smaller than it had been at the start of the week. She wondered how much of that was because it was crazy to jump from that high up, and how much was because of the current social climate around the school.
She stepped out of the way as a few guys came tearing through on their way back to their rooms, shirtless and wearing swimsuits or wet shorts. They left trails and puddles of water all along the hall.
She slipped into her room, secretly glad to be away from the chaos. Avery was awake. Saying Verona was working on it might have hurt her, karmically.
“Hey,” Avery said. She’d started showering when Lucy had, and her hair was already mostly dry.
“Welcome back,” Verona mumbled, from her cocoon of sheets.
“Having a nice vacation, V?” Lucy asked.
“Yeah,” Lucy said, taking a seat at the desk and unwinding the shirt from her wet hair. She began combing her fingers through it to detangle. “It’s chaos out there.”
Avery nodded. “I saw two girls nearly walk into one another just outside the showers, and I had a very vivid mental picture of a shower stabbing.”
“That seems a little extreme,” Lucy said.
“It was Sawyer Hennigar and Liberty Tedd.”
One of the gore-streaked kids and the younger goblin princess whatever.
“That seems less extreme a possibility, then.”
“Sorry I missed it,” Verona said, curling up around a pillow.
“You do need to shower, or are you going to sit beside me for half the day, smelling of B.O.?”
“You’ll miss the start of class if you get caught in the rush of students having last-minute showers,” Avery said.
“While you’re here, then, did you manage to look over my notes?”
Verona patted her hand on the bedside table. Avery reached across and picked it up, then went to hand it to Lucy. Seeing Lucy was busy, Avery put it flat on the desk.
“Thank you,” Lucy said.
She had slept too many hours in the last day, with the long nap from eleven until four yesterday, then the three of them had crashed last night and slept most of the night. Lucy had woken up early and done some self-care. Avery had been right after her.
The paper was a brainstorming sheet. They had put down notes, including highlights from the Implementum text and a preliminary read of Famulus, about implements and familiars, and then notes about themselves, as they’d taken turns reading aloud.
On the reverse side were their names. Beneath each were keywords, key traits, and random thoughts that each of them had had about themselves. They’d dozed off in the middle of the process, Lucy pulling a sheet around herself while Avery read aloud and Verona took notes, then promptly falling asleep.
“Is it me, then?” Lucy asked.
“I don’t want to lock myself into anything until I decide what I want to do,” Verona said. “And Avery…”
“I have Snowdrop, and the Paths, and I’m patient. Not that Snowdrop’s mine as a possession, and she’s helpful to all of us but-”
“But she’s closest to you,” Lucy said.
“I want her close to me,” Verona said, stretching beneath the sheets. “Hand her over? Let me snuggle her.”
“She’s out,” Avery said. “Has been for most of the night.”
Verona groaned, burying her face in a pillow.
Lucy used a super-wide-toothed comb to go through her hair once more for good measure, then picked up a thing of spray-on refresher. She leaned away from the others and turned around to spray her hair so she didn’t catch them with the mist.
To Lucy, Avery said, “I want to try some more paths and figure out what I need to improve on before I decide.”
“Okay,” Lucy said. “Someone said something last night about maybe balancing it out. We could do one thing each, each of us doing one of the big rituals.”
“I want to do two or three,” Verona mumbled.
“It was me who suggested it,” Avery said. “We could each do one, then each of us do a second. Balance out our group like we balanced out the Awakening ritual.”
“I like that,” Lucy said, taking a seat. She started doing her hair up into a ponytail. “We should read the demesne text later.”
“Later,” Avery said. “It seems like it locks you to one place, which doesn’t seem super fantastic to me…”
Verona groaned, stretching. “But how are you going to round out the implement-familiar-demesne balancing act if Lucy takes an implement and I take Alpeana as a familiar? You gotta-”
Avery threw her pillow at Verona’s face, prompting a grunt. The pillow remained where it was, over Verona’s head, and Verona didn’t move or move it.
Lucy looked over the brainstorming list. In Avery’s handwriting, which was more terrible than Lucy’s, was ‘Sense of Justice’, but Verona had crossed out Justice and written, in her own cursive script, ‘Injustice’.
Which she had to consider for a second, debating internally if she should feel bothered by that or not. Sense of injustice.
Conscious, which she hoped meant alert and aware of stuff, and not just awake. Protective. Frustrated. ‘More clearheaded when upset than anyone I know‘ – Verona’s handwriting.
Verona hadn’t seen the Paul thing. But Avery had and Avery hadn’t scratched out that line like Verona had with the ‘justice’.
‘About the student guide: I don’t think faerie swordfighter fits, but it feels like the right direction.‘ Avery’s thought.
“You wrote you don’t think faerie-style swordfighting thing fits,” Lucy mused.
“Am I wrong? Sorry if that’s unfair.”
“No,” Lucy said. “No, not unfair. I feel the same way, about it not fitting but being the right direction. Can you expand on it? It might help me figure it out.”
“I, uh…” Avery floundered.
“Was it Miss who said that you mixed Faerie stuff with goblin stuff in a neat way?” Verona asked.
“That’s kind of it. Gotta make your own style.”
“Sort of,” Avery said. “I feel like using Faerie stuff requires you to be really loose, free in how you interpret stuff, and willing to let stuff wash over and around you. Think of Daniel. And goblin stuff…”
“It’s ugly,” Verona chimed in. “You’re not ugly. But you fit in the good aspects of both and it really works.”
“The coolest moments I’ve seen with you and the practice is when you shine through,” Avery told her. “It’s great when you… I don’t know the term. Illustrate yourself? Exaggerate yourself? With the duels you’ve been doing with Guilherme. Even when you’re not actually using the practice, you’ll do this thing where you seem to decide ‘oh, it’s on’, like with Sheridan and my family at dinner. A lot of people who aren’t used to it would run away screaming or get stuck. I go quiet with all that. And you just tackled it. Or the party.”
“I loved seeing you at the party,” Verona said, sitting up, looking interested now.
“If you could do the faerie swordfighter thing but more ‘Lucy’ than faerie, that’d be cool,” Avery told her.
“Now I’m even more stuck,” Lucy said. “Because my issue wasn’t with the Faerie thing-”
“Wait, wait,” Verona said. “Do you feel like the Faerie stuff is your vibe?”
“No,” Lucy said. “But I feel like the ‘swordfighting’ part of it isn’t me.”
“Non-sword?” Avery suggested. “Spear?”
“That was a whole conversation with Guilherme,” Lucy said, “and no. I mean… I think I definitely don’t want a weapon. I don’t regret using it for awakening, but like… if I used it for awakening, and then I used it in the Paul thing, and I choose it as my path for the future…? Is that me? I don’t want that to be me. Does that make sense practice-wise? Based on what we read in the book?”
“I think so,” Verona said.
“Whether it does or not, you should follow your instincts,” Avery said.
“Speaking of instincts, food?” Verona asked. “Breakfast.”
“You need to shower.”
“And come back to food.”
“Write it down,” Lucy said. She got a spare piece of paper.
Verona wrote some stuff down, grabbed her basic toiletries and towel from the foot of the bed, and then hurried out. “Back soon.”
The door didn’t close all the way behind Verona. Out in the hallway, Jorja was with Tymon. The Drug-spirit callers. Jorja inched behind Tymon, using her big brother for cover as a herd of loud students speed-walked past.
Lucy nudged the door closed with her toe without rising from her chair.
She looked at the other stuff on the sheet. A lot of it was random. Likes: music, horror movies, weird movies, swimming, the color red, family.
This whole thing was asking her to do a lot of introspection. At the same time, she was opening herself up for the analysis of her friends.
Touchy ground. She was secretly grateful that they hadn’t said anything that would stick with her.
“Words,” she murmured, putting something down in the word cloud next to her name.
“Words. Good or bad, they matter to me. Yours, Verona’s, Booker’s, my mom’s. Paul’s, and the other shitty people.”
“I could see Verona taking the pen. But with my handwriting, I’d worry taking the pen would be like someone choosing the sword when they can’t lift a regular one.”
“I’m not like… crafty in the same way Verona is, rattling off sentences while telling technical truths. But I can think of all the most important moments in recent memory, and… I put a lot of stock in what people say. The promises, the awfulness, the whatever.”
“Sorry if I’m boring you.”
“No, no. This is cool. Just… thinking.”
Lucy dropped the pen, gesturing without anything clear. Then, thinking again, she picked it up, wrote down her breakfast order, and passed the paper to Avery.
Avery talked while writing down her breakfast order, “I remember, I think it was the first weekend we knew the practice, we were at the back of Matthew’s car, and we debated ways to protect ourselves. Deals we could make. So like… along those lines, can we take a step back?”
“Definitely,” Lucy said turning the chair and leaning back, putting her feet up on the foot of Avery’s bed. “Step back is good.”
“Then do you really want to do this? Or are you doing it because you feel you have to?”
Lucy thought about it. Avery rose to her feet and walked to the door, dropping the breakfast order into the slot at the front.
“Verona wants to wait to figure out her practice. You haven’t one hundred percent figured out yours.”
“I think Verona…” Lucy paused, letting the sentence hang while she tried to frame it in her head. “…Verona can figure out the practice, no problem, and she’ll figure the other stuff out later. She holds it close to her heart, I guess, and was always going to.”
“I’d rather figure myself out first, then do the practice stuff that serves that. This feels right.”
The door swung open, and Lucy rose to her feet, reaching for her bag at the foot of her bed. It meant getting closer to the door, but-
It was Snowdrop. Lucy relaxed, withdrawing her hand from her bag.
Some students in the background were exchanging some heated words. Heated enough that if it had been them talking like that while in the doorway, Lucy might have felt better with the knife close by.
“I’m dangerous and horrendous,” Snowdrop said, standing in the doorway. “Here to kick your ass and take your stuff. I don’t have any interest in that food just outside the door, though.”
“You can order your own food, you know,” Avery said.
“Ahem,” Snowdrop said, turning her back to Avery, showing the print on the jacket. It read ‘Leftover’, with ‘-vore’ printed below the last five letters. Leftover-vore.
“It’s not really leftovers if you eat my stuff before I’m done.”
“And I’m not cunning or deceitful like that, so there.”
“Do us a favor and bring the food in while you’re standing there, and you can have some,” Avery said.
“Bah,” Snowdrop almost spat the word, before going to get the tray.
Lucy cut into the thick-cut french toast, which was one sizeable slice of homemade bread, with faint spirals of cinnamon and icing sugar on it, neither spiral touching the other. Real maple syrup, some bacon, an arrangement of sliced fruits in a half-flower arrangement, and a glass of O.J..
She gave Snowdrop some of her bacon. “Productive night?”
“Sorta,” Snowdrop said. “Are we okay to talk?”
“As okay as we can hope for. Close the door?” Lucy asked.
Snowdrop did. A second later, Verona came through, hair wet, wrapped in a towel she hadn’t even used to fully dry off. There were beads of water on her shoulders and arms. Verona closed the door behind her.
Lucy pushed the plate in Verona’s direction, glancing at the drawing they’d put on the floor. It was supposed to ward off prying eyes, and if that didn’t work, it would at least ‘go off’ in a way that would let them notice. She’d thought about linking it to Nettlewisp, but they sort of had to ration out their glamour until they swung by home again.
Which would only be if things got especially disastrous back home.
“What’s the dirt?” Avery asked.
“I jumped right into the middle of things,” Snowdrop said. “Stayed away from a few of the student’s familiars and helpers and stuff, hung out.”
“Who?” Lucy asked. “It’s not super important, but I’d like to know before we talk to any of those students.”
“Everyone except Dreg, Talia’s doll, and Lallie.”
“Lallie?” Verona asked.
“She’s very human, with no antlers, fangs, claws, fur, or bloody screamy bits. She’s so cute, and small, and very chill. Which isn’t the best pun, considering who her master is.”
“Uhhh…” Verona started moving books, “Student directory, where did I put you?”
“Get dressed,” Lucy said, taking a bite and rising to her feet. She took over for Verona, grabbing the little pamphlet with the room numbers and names. She checked the female students. “That was a cold pun? Vanderwerf? Winter Faerie person?”
“Scobie, then. Snowfall elementalist?”
“Nah,” Snowdrop said, blatantly stealing from Lucy’s plate.
“Were you getting along with the familiars?” Avery asked.
“Nah,” Snowdrop said, around a mouthful of food. Lucy gently moved her aside to take her seat by her plate again, and Snowdrop progressed to taking food from Verona’s plate before she’d even swallowed the food from Lucy’s. “They’re jerks. Anyway, after that, I got right into the middle of things.”
“From the familiar hangout to… keeping an eye on people?”
“So Bristow’s not staying in that building they’re putting up, right? He doesn’t have any practice or whatever to make it comfortable. He doesn’t get along with people like Graubard or his Aware, so he’s alone and I can’t really see what he’s doing.”
Bristow’s strategizing, meeting people.
“And?” Avery asked. She was sitting at the foot of her bed, her food on the little dresser there, using it as a very low table. Verona was pulling on clothes, watching the ongoing conversation.
“And he met with all the Belangers except Seth and Tanner.”
“Both at the same time?”
“Anyone else?” Lucy asked.
“One of the other Familiars that wasn’t Blackhorne.”
“Blackhorne is the scary guy, right?” Verona asked. She was dressed, and the water she hadn’t dried off was bleeding into the fabric of her shirt, making wet spots from the inside.
“He’s a cuddlebunny,” Snowdrop said, dead serious. “Weak and dumb and fluffy.”
“And he’s the familiar of Reid Musser,” Lucy said.
“Makes sense,” Avery said. “Musser was one of the school founders, wasn’t he? But he sorta isn’t a part of things anymore. Which makes it sound like he was pushed out by Alexander.”
“Hey,” Verona said, picking up her cinnamon bun,which had lost about a quarter of its spiral to their leftover-vore. “Did you decide while I was gone? Implement?”
“Sorta glad I didn’t miss that moment. If it’s cool, can I try something? I’ll run it by you closer to dinnertime. We’re not in a rush, right? And you’d want to do that ritual on the weekend, since it takes three days.”
“No objection,” Lucy said.
“You have an idea?” Avery asked.
“I’ll need your help.”
“Glad to help,” Avery said.
“I don’t think Mr. Bristow took anything from the boys or gave anything to Blackhorne,” Snowdrop said.
“You could have mentioned that,” Verona said.
“You’re right, I could have. I definitely didn’t have my mouth full of stupidly delicious food.”
“Are you going to sleep after your all-nighter, or are you coming to class?” Avery asked.
“I can’t do both, right?”
“I’ll wear something with a pocket so you can hang with me, then,” Avery said.
They wrapped up their meal, gathered up their stuff, then ventured out into the hallway. The earlier argument had ended, but there was a trickle of students, and they looked like they were trickling because they were distracted. Melody and Corbin were among them. Melody had been attacked by the curse friend of Fernanda yesterday afternoon, just before dinner, and she didn’t look great today.
“Heya,” Avery said. “I wanted to ask, is the sports thing from yesterday a regular thing?”
“It could be. Usually we pick it up if we have nervous energy to burn,” he said.
“Cool. I’d like to do more of that. I’m missing soccer camp this summer.”
“Huh. What’s that like?”
“Like? Uhh. Ever do soccer after school? Or hockey or anything?” Avery asked.
“No, never. We have obligations after school,” Melody said. “And our school isn’t the type that has that stuff. We have sports teams, but if you’re going to our school and you’re in the sports team, it’s because you’re really good. Going-to-be-a-professional good.”
“Do you have gym class, then?”
Corbin shook his head. “Not really. I don’t think our school thinks we should do that stuff if we can use that time to study”
“What the hell kind of school is that?” Avery asked.
“The kind that runs six days a week, eight to five, with study sessions in the evenings and on Sundays. If you aren’t part of a study group the teachers will give you very disappointed talks and call your parents until you focus appropriately on your studies.”
“Unless your parents need you to learn the ropes for the family business. Or, y’know, practice,” Melody added.
“That sounds so miserable,” Verona said. “This must be a heck of a vacation.”
“It’s not feeling much like a vacation right now,” Melody said, looking back over her shoulder. Off in that direction was where she had been attacked.
“Sorry,” Lucy said. “That didn’t look fun.”
Melody shook her head. “It wasn’t. Apparently there was a whole crisis two years ago, sort of like this, but we were overseas and weren’t around to see.”
“What happened?” Lucy asked.
“One student forswore another. It was pretty controversial.”
“How? Why?” Verona asked.
“Uhhh, I won’t name names, because the teachers might have magical ears set out to keep us from dredging up too much of that stuff, but student A asked student B to look after a fragile and really important dryad. Student A’s dad offered access to some places that are warded off to anyone that isn’t from A’s family, if B would complete the job.”
“What made the dryad so special?” Verona asked.
Corbin answered, “The tree was used in the killing of a lot of people, and all of them became strong Others who could sort of practice. But it was a lot of death energies, the tree had its own intelligence and a feminine body that acted separate and she got sick with the death energies. Anyway, that’s beside the point. Student B got a better offer than A’s dad was giving them, and took the dryad and her tree apart for materials and raw power, gave the materials to the rival of A, took the raw power, got a bunch of favors and stuff.”
“That’s got to be a big hit to karma, at least, right?” Lucy asked.
They’d stopped short of joining the main classroom, where things had yet to start, and remained where nobody was in direct earshot.
“Apparently the offer B got was way way better. Anyway,” Corbin said, shrugging. “B collected. Then they claimed A couldn’t forswear them because they were a student at school and school rules forbid that.”
“Yep,” Corbin said. “Which, you know, normally wouldn’t be a huge issue, because you can wait until the school year ends, except B stayed for three semesters and started making claims that since A hadn’t taken action, they weren’t claiming their right to forswear and it was only a mere gainsaying.”
“A forswore B, and then A got expelled,” Melody said. “And friends of A and B were up in arms, fighting over who was right. This feels like that.”
“Sounds like B was playing with fire,” Lucy noted.
“I think if I were to draw an analogy,” Corbin said, “it’s as if if you were living in poverty, and someone offered you ten million dollars and a position in Hollywood with the ability to get a say in the movies that get made for the next twenty years.”
“This is worse though,” Melody said. “Because you know what’s happening, right?”
“It’s about the leadership of the school,” Lucy said.
Melody nodded. “Some are thinking if they side with the right people they’ll be positioned way better further on. Kind of like that made-up deal with Hollywood. But it’s with Durocher, or Alexander, or Musser.”
“For others, they already have that position and they don’t want to lose it. Or they’re friends, or any number of things.”
“Class is starting soon,” Corbin said.
“Which class are you taking?” Verona asked. “It’s supposed to be a choice of Bristow’s class on Visceral Knots or Alexander’s Possession class.”
“Visceral Knots,” Corbin said. “We’ve never had a class with Bristow.”
“And we overheard Fernanda talking about taking the possession class so we’d rather avoid it,” Melody added.
“I’m going to be in that one,” Verona said. “I’d say I’d keep an ear out for them, but we sorta want to be neutral.”
“Friendly but neutral,” Avery said.
“We wanted that too,” Melody said. “We didn’t get the chance.”
“If you want us to get lost so you don’t get the backsplash of whatever gets thrown at us…” Corbin suggested.
Lucy shook her head. She glanced at Avery and Verona. “We’re not that careful.”
“It’d suck to avoid all friendships for the whole summer just because things are hairy,” Avery said.
Corbin nodded, and indicated the classroom.
They walked the rest of the way. There was a clamor of students talking over one another. No ‘homeroom’ like there had been on day one, with other teachers lurking nearby to offer their presence.
Bristow was up on stage, wearing a tweed vest with matching pants, with a shiny silk tie done up properly. His only apparent recognition of the fact it was summer were the short sleeves of the shirt he wore under the vest, and a faint sheen of sweat on his forehead.
Corbin went to go talk to a friend, while Melody sat with Avery and Lucy. Melody smiled at Snowdrop, who took the possum form to curl up in Avery’s lap.
Verona bailed, off to learn about possession. It wasn’t exactly the right topic to cover stuff like Matthew’s doom, but they figured it was best if they got some grounding in stuff like that. Just in case.
“My dad says I can’t get a familiar until I’m older,” Melody said, scratching Snowdrop. “I have to turn sixteen, then live with it for two years before I seal it with the ritual.”
“Strict,” Avery said.
“Little does he know, I already have one in mind. He’s a gentleman habiliment.”
“I have no idea what that is, aside from possibly the gentleman part,” Lucy said.
“He’s an outfit, without the person to occupy it. Walks, does stuff, smokes a pipe and the smoke sorta… it fills in where his head and hands would be. I love the smell of pipe smoke.”
“I suppose if he’s always smoking, you’d better love it,” Lucy noted.
Avery elbowed her, and Lucy fell silent.
“He’s been looking after me since I was nine. The posh boarding school Corbin and I go to was pretty scary at first, especially when I was younger and half a country away from my parents.”
“Is that still a thing?” Avery asked.
“No, my mom is fussy. She likes to micromanage us. So she moved to the school. She comes over every afternoon and either takes us out or makes sure we’re doing our work. I don’t think she’s seen my dad for more than a few weeks at a time in the last two years.”
“Oh wow,” Lucy said. “That sounds hellish.”
“It’s nice!” Melody said, protesting. “It’s nice to know she loves us that much.”
Avery elbowed Lucy for a second time. Lucy gave up, letting Avery take over, and scratched Snowdrop’s body while Melody scratched her head.
“What does your family do, practice-wise?” Avery asked. “My friend Verona would’ve wanted to ask, she’s curious about all that.”
“We do a bit of everything, and we research the various ways to explore and improve practices as a whole. So for me, I have a good instinct for practices that hold up well against attacks, or against time, which, really is the same thing as an attack… and there are a bunch of different factors you can draw on to support that idea.”
Lucy listened, but tuned it out in part. She eyed Shellie, who had waltzed into the room from the side door, and through the window she could see Ted, who was outside, exercising in a Tai chi type style. He had a big mess of gouges on his back that looked like they had puckered and maybe even gotten infected before scarring over. He didn’t seem bothered by it.
Shellie took a seat at the stage’s edge, lit up a cigarette, and began smoking, which prompted some students to relocate. She was all agitation, leg bouncing, hand gripping the stage’s edge, looking around at everything and nothing.
Bristow walked over, dabbing at his forehead, and said something to her.
She didn’t even respond, acting as if he didn’t exist.
Is that our chance? Is that a possible regret Verona can call on?
Problem was, using that might poke the silver-laden, skinny, agitated bear that was Shellie.
Corbin was talking to his friends, and he was largely drowned out by the noise of the room.
“…the wild practitioners,” he told his friend. “But I don’t know how dangerous they are.”
“They’re showoffs,” one of the friends said. “You could use them…”
He said something else, but the sound of a girl laughing at the back of the room made it impossible to make out. Someone moved a bench and the leg of the bench squealed audibly against the floor.
Lucy fixed her eyes on the stage and Ted, visible through the blue-tinted windows at the far end, but she listened as best as she could.
“…they’re new to this. Rescue them after, you have an ally,” the friend finished.
“I don’t want to be a dick,” Corbin said. “But I get more of a Hennigar vibe from them. Half-cocked, moving forward. Not that I have anything against Hennigars, but those three…”
The front doors banged closed as some students rushed from the east hallway to the door, making their exit. Kids who’d put off their showers to the last minute.
“…d new,” Corbin said.
“If you got any information about them…” one friend said. He lowered his voice and Lucy couldn’t hear the rest.
“Again,” Corbin said, voice clear. “I don’t want to be a dick. They’re talking to Mel and that’s great but…”
Bristow clapped his hands.
“…just worry,” Corbin finished.
“If you want to learn about implements, then you should talk to Mr. Sunshine,” Melody said. “There’s Mr. Musser, but he’s rarely around and Mr. Sunshine is way more approachable-”
“We’re ready to begin,” Mr. Bristow raised his voice. He stood at the foremost part of the stage’s curve, close to the students.
“-and he knows a lot about material things, enchanting, tools, and stuff,” Melody finished.
Lucy wished Avery hadn’t mentioned the implement. They’d have to work out ground rules. There was too much room for sabotage, and too many things being said behind their backs, like Corbin’s friends.
She bent down, digging into the bag she’d deposited by her feet for her notebook and pen, then leaned back, folding one ankle over her knee to use her leg as a surface to write on.
It took another minute for the classroom to quiet.
Bristow seemed to wait until there was silence. Even the rustling of bags got a glance from him, his mouth remaining shut beneath that thick mustache.
“Visceral Knots,” Bristow spoke. “Visceral, meaning our material practices, tangible, rooted in our world, in solid things, in meat, in stone, soil, nature, and construction. Items, men, and things like men are visceral. Bogeymen, goblins. If it bleeds, it is often in this category. You, student, are visceral.”
He didn’t really move from his spot, and he wasn’t especially animated. He spoke clearly, theatrically, but it felt somehow more like a monologue than a lecture.
Shellie’s unending agitation off to the side was visually distracting, compared to Bristow’s stillness.
“The Knot, then, is what happens when this visceral thing or process is twisted. When incarnations such as time, death, violence, or dream run through the visceral, they have processes. Twist the process in an unnatural way, and you twist that which is solid. When you twist it enough, you get the Knots. These can be people, Others, places, and things. Isolation from the rest of the world is often a prerequisite, or the things that would knot them would be tied down by outside connections.”
Lucy nodded a bit to herself, at the same time she studied Bristow and his mannerisms. Did his confidence slip at any point? Not really. Did he have any tells? Not really.
“Twist bloodlines enough, and you get subhumans. I’ve met three of these groups. A little island close to Greenland, the population center small. Toothless, wide-eyed devout worshipers of an opportunist Other they were unwittingly elevating to godhood. This is remarkably common, mind. They are often Aware, which can be fascinating, and they may resemble early practitioners. In this case, it was early worship.”
He nodded, as if he were pausing to agree with himself.
Lucy took a brief note, one word.
He resumed. “The second was a family living in a dilapidated tenement in Europe. Afraid of the outside world, they inbred, moved in and out of various apartments, and subsisted on rats, their sickly, and their rooftop and balcony gardens. Their language had mutated as much as their features- all of them appeared eerily similar, chinless, wide-hipped, and small-eyed, their language a nonsense mishmash of nouns. Civilization found its way to them, they were split up and given care, their existence was hidden by practitioners and a city council that had ignored too many warnings about their existence. I was invited to help at a late stage, but damage had been done, their world unraveled as they were taken from one another, and they died soon after they were separated.”
Lucy made another one word note. This wasn’t the kind of thing she needed much notes to keep tabs on, really. It’d stick with her.
“The third, I won’t elaborate much on. A group of miners found something dangerous underground. Fossils relating to practices we do not teach about at the Blue Heron Institute. They coveted them, they occupied the mine and its immediate area, contrived to hide it, and invited families to come to them. They never left. They were twisted by those fossils and by their bloodlines. The reality is that few categories we give Others are tidy. Knotted-up societies do not fit among those few. Whatever drives the knot tends to loom large and influence them. You almost never get a subhuman that is only subhuman.”
She scribbled a bit more onto her page.
“That’s the first case. For the second, you can twist diet and environment enough, and you can get feral subspecies. Men with spirits and bodies changed by time and need. Eyeless men deep underground, those who live in shallow water. I know of a group of Russian offshoots who lived above the arctic circle. Gross distortions in sleep and isolation from society saw them sleeping for weeks at a time, waking to hunt with ravenous hunger. Again, whatever forces create the isolation needed for these things to happen without self-correcting, they will taint this rapid or distorted evolution. We rarely find feral variants on humanity who aren’t touched by other categories or other ways of becoming Other.”
“That would be our second case. Third? We have the altered. Others target humans. Some powerful ones target groups of human. It is far less common today than it once was, but some succeed or succeeded. They take a distant or hard to reach village. On the rare occasion, they take a city. I was personally involved in one case where an Apsasû, a divine servant and protector of humanity, took it on herself to shelter a group of humans. She kept them in what you could describe as a Garden of Eden, curing all that ailed. Faith, physiology, and mind twisted and knotted despite or because of her efforts.”
Mr. Bristow smiled, and his mustache was big enough that most of that smile was visible as a turning up of the leftmost and rightmost ends of the mustache than any lip.
You threatened my family and my hometown, and you’re messing with Verona over that stupid contest over regret, Lucy thought. Don’t smile.
“Balance is often maintained here. The knotted variations of humanity still use the same amount of material, but it is exaggerated in places, stretched thin in others. This can be messy, with subhuman groups having a large number of the weak, slow, stupid, and lesser in every respect, dotted with the periodic child who is incredible in one facet, strong or fleet of foot or keen in intelligence. It can also be ordered. The tenement group I mentioned had found an equilibrium, to the point they could be called something entirely different than the other.”
Mr. Bristow worked his way to a sitting position, then sat on the stage’s edge. He wasn’t so stiff anymore, and he looked like he was getting comfortable. “Places. A place, through isolation and these same factors, can be twisted. Through these twists and knots, they become harder to find with a map. Specific routes may be needed. The tenement I described was one such place, standing tall in the middle of the city, visible from a distance, but no postal worker or checker of electric meters found their way there for over a century. There are twisted places where the natural things a place needs are upended. There are places where things are inverted, undercities and mirror cities. Which reminds me of a story I don’t think I’ve shared in this school, as it only happened two years ago…”
He leaned to one side, mustache turning up again. His head turned as Shellie rose to her feet, stalking off to the back of the stage and away, presumably to see Ted.
“…I was in one place in America, if I remember the facts right, Ontario California. I have no idea how it came to be, but it refracted, mirroring to six locations around the world, with echoes of the same layouts, tied to this city through contracts, trade, and promotion. Six locations, but if you go looking, you’ll struggle to find the sixth. It is a Knotted place, a countersink and trap for some forces of the other locations, and a residence for many Others and less reputable practitioners. The things I saw walking down the street there, I couldn’t even say without issue when so many of you are minors. A woman threw a baby at me so my hands would be preoccupied, while she and some children rifled through my pockets and stole away with my luggage, haha! They didn’t get much, and I could have sold that baby for more than they earned if I had less conscience.”
“And he’s gone,” a student two rows behind Lucy murmured. There were some faint sounds from annoyed and amused students.
Wait, was he not going to get back on topic?
“But the reason I share this anecdote, aside from the illustrative aspect of it, is that while there, I found a man, dweller of this undercity, who resembled me! Same outfit, but in different colors, a similar mustache, but his hair and mustache were black, and he wore glasses. So naturally I invited him for drinks, curious about what he thought… and he pulled a gun on me. I had to tell him I’d already been taken for everything I had, and I was on my way to do a spot of work to pay my way for shelter for the night. He demanded my clothes, from my tie to my shoelaces. I was able to manage, but I do wish I could have had that drink with him, to find out if there was any great connection…”
He chuckled to himself, shaking his head.
“But I digress. I’ll share more once we’ve covered more of the lesson…”
Lucy penned down an ‘He’s going to share more? oh no’ on her notebook, before moving it to where Avery could see.
Lucy’s notes consisted largely of ‘yikes’ ‘frigging yikes’ ‘huge yikes’ ‘yikes and yikes’… and ended with the ‘oh no’ line.
Subhumans? Wow and yikes.
Avery underlined the first yikes twice, and then the ‘oh no’ once.
There was some small satisfaction to be had in heckling their teacher and enemy in note form as they followed along.
Class ended, and Lucy was left with a confused combination of pity for the man, frustration with him, and a deep-seated dislike.
Lucy waited for other students to get sorted out, remaining on the padded bench for a minute. She watched as Bristow made his exit, seeming as happy as she’d seen him after a lesson that had zig-zagged from the dense to the rambling anecdote, with the lengthier ramblings seeming to make him more prone to condensing the information, squeezing it in to catch up with where he wanted to be and what he wanted to cover.
“Actually, I wanted to borrow Avery.”
“Why?” Lucy and Avery asked, in near unison.
“Because I want to talk to her about stuff.”
“About my implement? Without my input?”
“About your implement, yes. But we won’t do any big steps on this without consulting. Do you trust me?” Verona asked.
Lucy made a face, making a show of having to consider it.
“Really,” Verona said, serious.
“I do. Melody suggested I go talk to Mr. Sunshine though, and I’m very on the fence about that.”
“Understandable,” Avery said. “You’d want backup.”
“It’d be nice,” Lucy said.
“There’s a bunch of students doing projects, so time slots are limited,” Verona said. “I’ve got fifteen minutes at the workshop, so I figured we could go over some basic stuff, talk about plans and possibilities, then come back to you.”
“What if you took Snowdrop for backup?” Avery asked.
Lucy looked down at the sleeping opossum.
She did have to learn to stand on her own. If she did this ritual, she would be doing it alone. And she didn’t want to run from Raymond.
“Awesome. Ave, let’s hurry, we don’t have that long.”
Avery handed over Snowdrop, who was blinking her way to awakeness.
The two girls hurried out the front door.
Lucy puffed up her cheeks, then made a bit of a raspberry.
Snowdrop clambered around her hands, gripping Lucy’s fingers with weird opossum toes, dangled, and then turned human, shoes slapping floor.
“You’re my backup, apparently.”
“I don’t suppose you have any insights on where Mr. Sunshine is?”
“Yep. Got all that info stored up in this noggin of mine.”
“Let’s try his office?”
“Just what I was thinking.”
They left the classroom, and Lucy had a glimpse of Bristow, outside the window, talking to Shellie and Ted.
Setting up a building, teaching a class, and going on post-midnight walks that saw him meeting up with students in private, getting stuff he was handing off to a familiar of another prominent student.
Did Alexander see that stuff? Miss had said Alexander had protections against the normal weaknesses of Augury. But was it possible that Bristow was good enough to penetrate those protections? Or were Ted or Kevin or Kevin’s girlfriend Rae somehow a defense against Alexander’s attention?
Alexander seemed to be letting Bristow do an awful lot, without really fighting it.
Lucy wished Verona hadn’t fucked off like she had, so she could ask how Alexander’s class had been.
“Do you like it here?” Lucy asked Snowdrop.
“I hate it. It’s so stifling, being around Avery all the time. You too.”
“I’m homesick,” Lucy said, speaking the thought aloud as she had it. The dwelling on who she was and all the things she liked made her miss her room. Having been in Kennet but unable to go home… it drove that home. “I miss my mom, as horribly lame as that sounds.”
“I don’t miss my mom.”
Lucy put a hand on Snowdrop’s shoulder, giving the kid a rub.
“I think… I feel most at home when I’m at home. And I know that sounds obvious, but if you pressed them, I think Verona never feels at home when she’s at home. I wonder if she even has a place she feels at home.”
“I don’t know,” Snowdrop said. “It’s any random patch of reality that she happens to stumble on.”
“Any…” Lucy had to filter that a bit, and as she worked to interpret it, she compared it against her image of Verona. “…Imagination?”
“Any random patch of reality, yeah.”
Finding ‘home’ in her head.
“Avery likes being on the sports field, but I think that’s only part of it.”
“I don’t think I agree,” Snowdrop said.
“Yeah. But anyway… I feel at home when I’m at home and it feels like it’s going to be a while before I can go back. Depending on what happens with everything Bristow and Alexander have done… will it look different?”
They had to walk down to almost the furthest end of the west wing of the school. Raymond’s area wasn’t especially large.
She hesitated to intrude or knock, but…
She rapped her knuckles on the door.
The interior dimensions were larger than the rest. There was a bookshelf along one wall, but instead of books, it looked like an arrangement of hard drives and tablet computers. A few of the shelves were reserved for some limited paperwork, a few others for wires and computer parts.
“Sorry to intrude,” she said.
“I’m at the disposal of my students,” Mr. Sunshine said, stepping around the corner, his eyes on a tablet. His red sunglasses were pushed up to his forehead, for the first time Lucy had ever seen. He looked at her. “Lucille Ellingson?”
“My apologies. I remember we got off on the wrong foot the other day. I’ve wanted to apologize about that, but you were absent, or there were other things. I know that sounds weak, as excuses go.”
“Super weak,” Snowdrop chimed in.
Raymond raised an eyebrow.
“There might have been interference, causing that,” she said. “Strife. Maybe making it harder to, uh, apologize.”
It felt weird, just taking for granted that he’d said he wanted to apologize.
“I ran a diagnostic yesterday, and noticed something resembling that had caught on me and hit my perimeter. I took it to be students making mischief or a sloppy ritual’s aftermath.”
“I’m pretty sure it’s more than that.”
“Yes, it is. I’ve found that out since, and I was looking into it before you arrived.”
“It could only capitalize on what was already there. Zed talked to me about it, and I really should be better, so I can’t be exploited like that. I’m sorry for what happened.”
She opened her mouth, then closed it, shaking her head. “Thanks. It’s not even the most intense thing that’s happened this week.”
“No violence at least, or crazyness, or fire, or blood, or super-firecrackers,” Snowdrop said.
“I know the feeling, even if I don’t think I’ve run into super-firecrackers yet. Did you come about the earlier incident, or for something else?”
“Okay. Do you want to sit?” he asked, gesturing.
She turned, and she saw two armchairs that hadn’t been there a minute ago.
“Is this a demesne?” she asked. She sat. Snowdrop sat in the chair next to her.
“An extension of it,” he said. “Those who specialize in the various realms practices can tap into their knowledge of spaces to extend the demesne through those spaces. I come here often enough that it’s worth having a bridge to my place of power, here. Are you interested in demesnes?”
“I see. That’s a big decision.”
“I read the book. I like the idea. I just don’t know how to go about it. I was brainstorming but I didn’t figure out anything specific.”
“This is the place to do it, if you want to. We have the materials, equipment, and while the workshop spaces are busy, the sub-buildings and ritual materials are all top quality, protected against the minor pollutants that would make a ritual harder or messier.”
“I think if I could answer that for you, I wouldn’t have mishandled our prior situation. That’s really for you. I can answer any questions you have that the book didn’t, if you’d like.”
“I want a way to express me.”
“Unfortunately, the ways a Self can be expressed are as varied as the number of implements that can be matched to that Self. I’d need more information. When have you felt the most ‘you’?”
“My friends said it was when I was at a party. Uh, times I’ve challenged people. Including Alexander Belanger.”
“Were you wearing or doing anything particular?”
“I don’t think so.”
“If you were to draw a picture of yourself, no context, in the utmost quality, meant to hang in a gallery, what would you be doing?”
“Would you be dressed up? Like the party? Ready for a confrontation, like what you faced with Alexander?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. I like red, and I was wearing a killer red dress I borrowed. I did my hair nice. But I wouldn’t want one dress that’s my implement forever. And I don’t want to mix my hair and practice. I don’t know what I’d even do there. A hairpin? Ugh.”
“The implement is the hardest to decide.”
Lucy raised her head a bit at that. “Really?”
“The people who find us and the places we find ourselves in tend to come more naturally. The implement requires a deep search. Your friend’s boon companion is helping, I see.”
“I’m a big help,” Snowdrop declared.
“More than you’d imagine, I’d think,” Ray said, folding one knee over the other.
“My other friends are helping too,” Lucy said. “They’re working on a secret project. I told Verona I trust them. So maybe I wait and see what she comes up with. Sorry, if I’m wasting your time.”
“No. If I’m honest, I prefer this to the classroom. One on one, puzzles and problem solving. Groups are my weakness, as is my need for control.”
“If-” Lucy started. Sensitive ground. “Do you remember Charles Abrams?”
“Alexander mentioned seeing him in passing.”
“While running afoul of us, or we ran afoul of Alexander and Nicolette, depending on how you say it.”
Raymond Sunshine nodded, but he didn’t speak.
“It seems like he was an acquaintance of yours, and considered a lot of your group to be his friends.”
“There are many kinds of friend,” Raymond said. “Some who would help you move. Some who would save your life. Others are good for a memorable conversation once every few months. Charles and I were friends, yes, but Charles was someone who kept to his own, and I’ve always been bad at keeping in touch with people. Especially people like him.”
“People like him? How?”
“Those who are in and out of prison. If you think to reach out once in a blue moon, only to find they’re out of easy reach, then it’s easy to drift apart.”
“Prison,” Lucy said. She looked at Snowdrop.
“We knew that,” Snowdrop said.
“What did he do?” she asked.
“Theft, some violent crime. He dealt with some criminal groups as a youth, only a few years older than you are now. To them, he was a lucky charm, a ‘fixer’. He did very well for himself, until he didn’t. It caught up with him. He went to prison for two years, turned eighteen, and had his record wiped clean. They didn’t let him stay on the straight and narrow. They maintained the expectations and no longer treated him as unabashedly ‘lucky’.”
“He didn’t mention that.”
“He told me, years on, that he was embarrassed of it. He tried to turn his life around and fix his karmic debts. He moved to a rural area to steer away from his old clientele, and started to dabble in being a ‘fixer’ for the sorts of people who could make a difference. I remember it was hard for him, because one task didn’t easily lead to the next, the way it had when he’d worked alongside organized crime.”
“Oof,” Lucy murmured.
“He worked on projects, protecting areas, creating watchdogs, and creating sendings. He still helped us, but it was hard for him. It made it easy to backslide.”
“Were you criminal?” Lucy asked.
“At times. Unavoidable. I’m sure you, your actions all put together, have done something very criminal, or aided and abetted in it.”
“All clear,” Snowdrop said. “Absolutely nothing.”
“But about Charles, from what I remember, he was doing good work, and he would have been easier to reach, then, but I was preoccupied. I was the one who was hard to reach. Then he was forsworn, and I thought I could call or visit, but… what then? All we ever talked about was the work, problem solving. But he couldn’t work and we couldn’t solve his problem. If I offered support alone, without the old working friendship, then that seemed like it would make things worse.”
“It’s a strange thing, Ms. Ellingson, to have a lot of regret and have no idea what you could have done different.”
“He says it was Alexander who forswore him.”
“And you’re okay with that?”
“The fact I’m here suggests I am.”
“Why, how?” Lucy asked.
“That’s not an easy question to answer.”
“Well, yeah. It seems indefensible. Ruining a life for personal gain?”
“For one thing, Alexander saved my life during my darkest period. I may owe him a lifetime debt.”
“Does that include letting him get away with Charles’s life? Or his fate or fortune or whatever karma is?”
“No. Charles, with his past, played a part in keeping criminals free and many lives were ruined that way. Charles was desperate, frustrated at his inability to render any real help, and at risk of backsliding.”
“But he hadn’t backslid yet?” Lucy asked.
“The answer to that question depends on who you ask, and how they knew him. People have varied memories and feelings about the subject. In the end, near the start of our acquaintance, I had come to terms with Charles and his past and looked past it as I helped him do better things. It’s the same when I forgive Alexander for his actions against Charles. It would be ugly to forgive Charles but not Alexander, simply because I know Alexander’s victim but Charles’s were anonymous. It would be even uglier if you count that he saved my life.”
“I can’t say I agree with that take,” Lucy said. “Sorry.”
“I can’t agree with it either. Not completely. I think about it a lot, and I wrestle with it, but I don’t know. I took a good few years off from staying in touch with Alexander, then watched him, and then decided to re-establish that contact. I think, like with your implement question, there are no easy answers.”
“Except maybe I trust my friends to handle it,” Lucy said. “My brother said, a few weeks back, that if I was stuck on something, I should ask myself what he or my mom would say, if they had all the facts. Maybe you could take that approach?”
“What would my family say? I don’t have any blood family left.”
“If they were around. Or… I dunno. Does Zed count as family?”
“Closer to family than not. I don’t know what he’d say, because he might support me no matter what happened. As for my family member by blood, I thought I knew what they thought and what they valued in right and wrong. I was the furthest thing from correct.”
Ray’s expression darkened, and his eyes, without the sunglasses over them, were very sad.
His voice had a bit of a creak in it that it hadn’t had earlier in the conversation, as he said, “Maybe that’s why the question about Alexander is so hard to answer. I don’t know anymore. I just don’t know.”
Lucy looked across the sitting room at Mr. Sunshine, heard that last sentence, and felt a bit rocked.
She’d seen her mom, sitting on the edge of her bed, devastated.
She’d seen Verona’s dad, so deflated as a human being in that one moment that she almost couldn’t believe he’d ever stood fully upright and actually functioned as a human.
But she hadn’t ever seen a human being, especially an adult, who was so far off from having any clue at all about the stuff that should really matter.
“I’ve- I really appreciate this conversation,” Lucy said. “And I know this sounds awful, but maybe if it’s that hard to tell right from wrong, maybe you shouldn’t be teaching?”
“I took a lot of time off. It’s a struggle, and I’m having to relearn how to teach, but I’m glad I chose now to do it.”
“I’m betting it’s not because you get to meet awesome opossums,” Snowdrop chimed in.
“Because things are in a bad way?” Lucy asked.
“They may end up that way. Alexander and Lawrence can’t be objective, and Mrs. Durocher has many great and impressive qualities, but calm and a level head are not readily found among them. I can at least try to give this school that.”
“Ah. Okay,” she said. She nodded. “Thank you for your time. Sorry to spitball aimlessly like I did, and to quiz you about tough stuff.”
“No. You’re welcome to come back if it would be more of the same. I appreciate it more than you might know.”
“I should go, before there’s no time for lunch.”
“Is it that time already?” he asked. “Of course. Yes, I should prepare for this afternoon.”
She nodded. “C’mon, Snow.”
Snowdrop, dozing a bit, rose to her feet, stumbled into Lucy, and clutched her arm. She became opossum sized and climbed up her arm with needle claws. Lucy gave her a helping hand up to the shoulder.
“Goodbye, Lucy. Sorry again.”
She gave him a momentary smile before the door closed between them.
She picked up her pace, hurrying to catch up with the others.
If you’re the most level head among the staff here, and you can’t even say it’s wrong to ruin a man’s life, where does that leave us? Lucy thought.