“Careful. Don’t want to dunk that in there,” Lucy warned.
“Do you want to be still, I’ll come in and help you balance.”
“I think I’m good.”
Avery crossed to the far side of the river, walking on shallow rock that was a bit slimy with creek life and deprived of most of its traction by the passage of water. She ascended the bank, which was being pelted by the spray of the river. More water from more rain recently, she guessed. Bare toes dug into mud.
“Excuse me,” she said, setting the box, and her bag down. Snowdrop hopped down and became human.
“Not guarding this. That’s your job.”
Avery made her way back down the bank, then washed her feet, before grabbing a tree and using it to haul herself up a dryer section. She used her hands to wipe the worst of the moisture from her feet.
Verona and Lucy were slower in making their way across. John and the goblins lurked on the far side.
Avery’s head turned as she saw a splash downriver. Tashlit, fully clothed, rose up out of the water, skin not nearly as loose, eyes brighter where they peered through gaps. The water hissed as it touched her. She spat out a geyser of water, and it hissed and popped as it splashed down into the water.
“Feeling more yourself, Tash?” Verona called out.
Tashlit nodded, dipping her head in for a second and re-emerging, to fix her hair.
Avery felt like she needed to make conversation, so Tashlit didn’t feel left out. “Do you spend a lot of time in the water back home?”
“Too shallow?” Avery guessed.
“Sometimes it’s way higher. Though lately I’ve been wondering if it was that much higher, or if my imagination is playing tricks on me. Everything’s bigger when you’re little.”
Verona and Lucy, holding each other’s hands, made their way over to the far bank of the river. Avery put her hand down, grabbing Verona’s, and hauled her up. She did the same for Lucy.
“Can you not cross running water, John?” Verona asked.
“I can. It doesn’t bother me. But there are people following us at a distance.”
“I don’t know. They aren’t moving like they’re trying to catch us. They only seem concerned with where we’re going. Maybe they want to keep us from finding a place to get settled.”
“So we can’t make a circle and camp out at night?” Avery asked.
“Maybe. Best to do what you need to do, before they decide to interfere or develop a better means of figuring out what we’re doing.”
“I’ve got a few tricks I put together last night,” Toadswallow said, more to John than to Avery or her friends. “The local trash helped. If they want to look, we can give them a jolly eyeful.”
“If we had a tight swimsuit, we could have you wear it and put you front and center,” John said.
“John, good sir! How delightfully diabolical!”
“You’re not using anything of mine!” Lucy called out.
“Not it!” Verona called out, a second later.
“Not- damn it,” Avery muttered.
“Do you even have a swimsuit?” Lucy asked.
“I do not,” Verona said. “In my defense, I’m horribly disorganized.”
“Fight that impulse for now,” John said. “Now’s the time to be more organized than our pursuers. Talk, but do what we need to do while you do it.”
“Got it,” Lucy said. “Thanks, John.”
He gave her a curt nod in response.
“I’ll go ahead, then,” Avery said. “Scouting locations.”
“Yo, goblins!” Verona called out. “How do we get you across?”
“Get the bag I lended you.” Toadswallow’s voice was a croak as he raised it. “Get the pages, and lay them in a circle.”
“I’ll do it,” Lucy said. “You did the goblin hole yesterday. So if this gets messy, at least we’re sharing the mess.”
“Not complaining,” Verona said. She raised her voice, “You’re doing the next one, Ave!”
“We’re trying to be stealthy!” Avery hissed, as she lifted the box.
Snowdrop and Avery made their way through the woods. There weren’t many good ‘paths’, so to speak, and it involved some ducking and pushing through branches.
“We can’t stay out here tonight,” Snowdrop proclaimed. “I don’t know anything about surviving in a place like this. We’d get eaten alive by the ticks and mosquitoes.”
“Yeah, no, I’m not sure that’s an option, Snow. Maybe if it was for one night, but the rest of summer? I can just imagine going back home.”
“What a refined lady our daughter has become! Shaped by her expensive summer trip we put so much money into! So much time spent with high society lads and ladies!”
“Yeah, exactly. Help me look?”
Snowdrop broke away, stomping through the woods.
Avery shifted the box to her shoulder, grunting a bit, then nearly dropped it as it grazed a branch.
After five minutes of walking, she found a hillside, and as part of that hillside she found a grouping of rocks. It wasn’t really a cave, not in the sense that she normally thought about caves, but one shelf of rock sat at an angle, creating a wedge shaped recess into the hillside, starting at about chest height and disappearing into the ground about ten feet in.
“Snowdrop, Snowdrop, Snowdrop. Lucy, Lucy, Lucy. Verona, Verona, Verona.”
“Avery, Avery, Avery.”
The words weren’t audible with her ears, but tickled the back of her neck.
“Avery, Avery, Avery.”
“Okay, yeah,” she said. “Unless you’re doing that because you’re in trouble?”
“Avery, Avery, Avery.”
“Okay!” she raised her voice.
Verona’s distant laugh could be heard.
Avery set the box down, then rubbed at her shoulder.
“I found a spot,” Snowdrop declared, as she caught up.
“Thanks, Snow,” Avery said.
“And this spot isn’t occupied.”
“Occu-” Avery started. She backed away a bit, nudging the box with her toe to move it a bit back and out of the way. She pulled out her phone and turned it onto flashlight.
Five pairs of eyes reflected the light at the far end of the little wedge cave. Goblins?
No, some small animal. Maybe weasels or skunks.
“Grrr!” Snowdrop growled, raising her hands.
The black-painted box growled, louder, and more sinister. The eyes at the back of the cave disappeared. Crawling out through some hole or deeper into that recessed space than the wedge seemed to suggest was there.
Aveyr started on drawing the diagram, while Snowdrop cracked the box open.
Lucy and Verona caught up.
“Dang, you cover a lot of ground,” Verona complained.
“This spot works, I think?” Avery asked.
“Aye, lassie,” Alpeana said, as she crawled out, into the darkness of the cave. “Sorry fur the inconvenience.”
“It’s cool. Just want to make sure you’re safe,” Avery said.
“Best way is if I git as far fae here as I can. It helps if ye send me. Tis harder tae travel in the day.”
“Okay,” Verona said, clapping her hands together. “I’ll do the ritual circle. Lucy, you want to work out the bit that points the way? And Avery, write down the details for the target?”
“With my handwriting?”
“We are dispatching a nightmare, so your handwriting would be best,” Verona said, locking eyes with Avery. Her expression was serious for about three seconds, before it started to crack and she smiled.
“What if I do the main body of the diagram?” Avery asked.
“That might be better,” Lucy answered, “but if you want to chase that idealized self that Guilherme’s been working with you on, you might want to consider how handwriting plays into it.”
“Bah!” a voice croaked.
The goblins had caught up. John followed behind them.
“Fakery and glitter. Real growth comes from being able to clench your gut and take a strong punch,” Toadswallow said. “Clench your fists, throw a punch. A faerie can’t teach that.”
“Well, I am trying to get lots of exercise.”
“I’m talking about grit and gristle! Getting proper fat-”
“Gettin’ mean,” Gashwad growled.
“-and getting more red in your red meat, for when you need it.”
Gashwad added, “Twist and knot muscles in your back into shapes that could be mistaken for a cornered rat, then reward those muscles with some pretty piercings. Good rat muscle, how nasty you are. Have some claws and teeth.”
“Yeah, see, I don’t want to be ugly or twisted,” Avery protested.
“You’re already the ugliest duckling,” Snowdrop told her, reaching up to pat Avery’s cheek.
“Bah,” Toadswallow grunted. “Twisted is useful.”
“Stop pressuring the girl, Toad,” John said.
“I have an image in my mind’s eye about what I want to be, and I think I’m taking baby steps to get there. I don’t know what big steps I could take, except the Paths, and they’re… nonspecific. Less like I’m chiseling or adjusting and more like I’m throwing random objects at a statue of myself.”
“You want to get the girls, am I right? I could teach you ways.”
“Getting girl advice from Toadswallow?” Snowdrop asked. squeezing Avery’s arm. “How far you’ve come.”
Avery shook her head. “Okay, how about we send Alpeana where she’s going? You guys are doing a terrific job of backing us up, I think all three of us are grateful. But things got sour, so let’s make sure you’re secure in your vulnerable moments. We’ll send Alpy away in daylight hours, make sure Goblins won’t be bound while sleeping-”
In response to that, Gashwad yawned.
“Not objecting, dear girl,” Toadswallow gruntled the words. “All I’m saying is I could tell you ways to handle yourself that would turn the heads of hundreds of winsome and woesome dames.”
“I only want to turn the one,” Avery said. She looked at the image on the phone Verona was holding, then began pouring the chalk with care. Lucy was doing her own part. “One cool, nice, awesome girl. But there aren’t any standing around with flashing signs telling me where they are, so I want to work on me. Being the me I think would be coolest.”
“Then use my methods, and turn that one girl’s head hundreds of times.”
“That kills the girl,” Gashwad whispered loudly. “Twists the head off.”
“Okay, enough. Seriously!” Avery raised her voice. “No goblin advice wanted. No snarky comments from you…”
Snowdrop clapped her hands to her heart.
“Drawing a diagram. Thinking a bit about the steps you could take on self image that aren’t baby steps. Or super dependent on glamour.”
“You’re doing fine standing up for yourself, and I’m stuck figuring out how to draw with my earring as a factor. The books didn’t really explain this, so I’m having to feel it out. If you ever want advice, if there’s no imminent crisis, then I’m happy to help you brainstorm.”
“Might as weel seize the moment,” Alpeana cut in. She was lying on her belly in the cave, chin in the dirt, hair all around her, bleeding into the darkness. “Tae tell ye all.”
“I wrapped up late lest nicht, ye were knackered. Then ye had tae kist me up, ah haven’t had th’ chance tae report.”
“Please, do tell,” Lucy said.
“Ill dreams flow fae an uneasy mind, aye? Tae mony are uneasy. Mair in th’ school noo than thare are in a’ oor toon, some nights.”
“Somehow that’s not too surprising,” Verona said.
“I was focusing on this, sorry Alpeana,” Lucy said. “What was that?”
“Lots of uneasy minds.”
“Ah put feet tae th’ fire tae see wha couldnae take this. How tha lads and lassies couldnae take it, too.”
“Were there any?” Avery asked.
“Oh, aye. Wabbit links. Kinch is, a dinnae ken th’ names. In a nightmare, the written word is a right fankle. Thay dinnae oft hear their names, either.”
“Could you draw? In the dirt?” Verona asked.
Alpeana reached out, shying back from direct sunlight. Verona moved her bag to provide more shade.
Avery focused on the diagram.
“A’ve been thinking. Aboot my gift fae ye three.”
“Didn’t want to bring it up, but there’s a scrap of paper in one of my notebooks that’s missing a checkmark in a box,” Lucy said.
“Had a thought. Teuk some contrivin’, bit I think I hae th’ means. Worked oer it wit oor Tashlit. A wey tae gab at one anoher.”
“Ah will need a bawherr of payment, or ah’ll be boggin’ fur anythin’ else, bit if ye’ll want tae blather at someone in yer dreams, ah kin see aboot puttin’ ye’n thaim in th’ identical steid in th’ dreamscape.”
“Wait, what?” Lucy asked. “I think I got ninety-five percent of that, but I’d like to one hundred percent it.”
Toadswallow spoke up, “You’ve got to cross her palm with silver or some such, give her a bit of power. She’ll play the part of the old telephone operator. Connect the dreams.”
“And then we can talk to them?”
“Shuid be someone who haes ‘greed in advance, aye?”
“So like, us to any of the hometown Others?” Avery asked, avoiding using ‘Kennet’, just in case they were being watched.
“Aye. Write it doon oan a scrap o’ paper. Seal some power intae wax or summat, ah’ll take note.”
“How easy is that to trace?” Lucy asked.
“Nae’t a clue. Bit ah can keep watch some.”
“And if we talked to someone here, and got permission, would that work?”
“Aye. But th’ wrong body cuid decipher it, trace hings back tae me, or th’ auld hometoon. Especially oan a secoint ca’. Micht be inevitable oan a third.”
“So it’d have to be someone we trust,” Verona said. “Or someone who can’t share if they do find out.”
“That’s a short list to go over,” Lucy said. “Nicolette, Zed, and Alexander.”
“You keep adopting Alpeana’s accent when you’re around her too long,” Avery said.
“Says you, calling people wet tubes. It’s a mental mode switch. I’m the best person here at understanding Nat, after Doglick chewed most of her tongue off, and understanding Alpy, and all that. But as in so many things Practice-related, it comes at a price.”
“Of sounding like a tryhard?” Lucy asked.
“Ow. Okay, first picture. Round face, except maybe that’s how Alpeana draws faces.”
“Na, tis round. Black locks, wore a bunnet.”
“Bunnet? Bonnet? Hat?” Avery asked. “Kass? Part of Yadira’s crew.”
“They were kind of on the outs even before this thing happened.”
“Then a lassie, youngest o’four. Ah’ll hain ye th’ drawin’.”
“That’d have to be Mccauleigh Hennigar, wouldn’t it?” Avery asked.
“Probably. There could be other students who are youngest of multiple siblings, who just don’t have those siblings at this school. About our age? In the same room as two other siblings?” Lucy asked.
“Mccauleigh, then. We haven’t seen much of her, despite the similar ages. Sticks pretty close to her siblings.”
“What were the dreams?” Avery asked. “This feels icky.”
“Icky but necessary,” Lucy said. “We can be sure they’re prying at every secret or vulnerability of ours they can find.”
Alpeana walked them through the dreams.
For Kass, it was set at the end of term. Kennedy got everything Kassidy tried to strive for, including letters of recommendation from teachers, from Bristow, boys, and even things from their room that Kass had brought, including a stuffed animal and some magic items. When she complained, teachers and the family that came to pick them up told her to quiet down and be civilized.
Culminating in Kennedy getting into her family’s car and everyone driving her off, leaving her on campus alone with Durocher.
For Mccauleigh, it was being home, with a red light shining under an ominous door. People’s voices in various rooms, and Mccauleigh chased Alexander’s as Alexander talked about all sorts of practices. But each time Mccauleigh completed the circuit of maze-like rooms, that door with the red light shining out from the other side was open a bit wider, Mccauleigh a bit more nervous about slipping past, even crawling under furniture and passing through other rooms to avoid passing the door.
Until there were no escape routes, and the door was wide open, the sounds and screams from within too loud for Mccauleigh to hear Alexander’s voice.
Then every step, no matter the direction, took Mccauleigh a few feet closer to the door, then inside.
“Alexander was her way out?” Verona asked.
“Maybe,” Lucy replied, making eye contact with Verona.
“Th’ seers an’ augurs were restless, aye? No kip for tha wicked, but I thought tha’ it was best if I strayed well clear.”
“Yeah. Be safe,” Avery said.
“And the last one, aye? The teacher? Th’ yin with techy-boo. Ah couldnae git close fer he haes protections. Patrols, gates, riddle-ways an’ traps protectin’ th’ dream roads ah’d hae tae tak’ tae get claise. Bit I culd see from afar, he daesn’t sleep easy either.”
“Raymond Sunshine,” Lucy said.
“Sorry ah wasn’t muir help.”
“It’s a starting point. Cracks in Bristow’s faction, people to talk to.”
“Aye. I’ll leave ye ta that, then.”
“What name am I putting down?” Verona asked.
“If ye have any suggestions, ah could go tha’ way. If nae, ye could put doon tha name Douglas ‘Douga’ Fritch. Teuk his ailing grandfather’s dosh n’ motor-carriage-a-doo. Willnae take the auld man’s calls. Stewin’ in it, he is.”
“Douga Fritch,” Verona said. “Which direction?”
“Actually, is there a chance you could take a request?” Avery asked.
“Aye. Could. Easier if they’re troubled.”
“A message more than a nightmare.”
“Augh, och, ah’ve my duties, it’s not so easy as that. What I’m offering ye lot, a gift ta connect ye, that’s different. Builds oon tha bridges and connections, dinnae?”
“If you could find a way. We don’t have a great way to get in touch with that group, especially if Bristow is keeping tabs on all of them. But… Daniel Alitzer. His sister is a huge problem as long as she’s here. Daniel might be the only person she listens to.”
“Messing with Daniel, even talking to Daniel, might be justification for her to come after us,” Lucy said.
“She’d never!” Snowdrop chimed in. “No matter what!”
“The piercing girl?” Toadswallow asked. “Snowdrop’s right. She’ll come for you eventually.”
“If your enemy is ill-tempered, provoke them,” John said.
“Really, John, my boy?” Toadswallow asked. “Art of war? You quoting that isn’t so different from college douchehole quoting Nietzsche. You’re so much better than this, don’t degrade yourself so.”
John failed to hide a smile before turning his head away, looking in the direction that the group tracking them was coming from.
Gashwad commented, “What if- what if we take a hot poker, and we do the provoking by sticking it-”
“The principle is sound, I dare say,” Toadswallow interrupted. “It’s a question of the man’s udder-fudging presentation.”
“Can we deal with her?” Lucy asked. “If she comes at us mad?”
“John might be able to. Depends what she has.”
“She’s pretty well equipped. Makes her own weapons and things.”
“Snowdrop, wee been, ye ken this lot better than ah. Ye traipse around tha woods with John ‘n ye cackle and git up tae no ends of mischief wi’ tha cadcow lot. Ye ken howfur it’s, bein’ a cratur o’ the nicht, kept up in yer sleepin’ hours. Hulp.”
“Can it wait? Shellie?” Snowdrop asked.
“When would you be visiting Daniel?” Avery asked Alpeana.
“Tonight, ok. Umm. And if you did it tomorrow, that’d be delayed until tomorrow night. Meaning we’d have to get through the rest of today, then tomorrow?”
“You’ll be back tonight?”
“She scares me, and I think as long as she’s here, Jessica won’t return.”
“You like this Jessica, do you?” Toadswallow asked.
“I don’t- not like that. Not as a crush. Or even as a friend. She’s hard to befriend. But I think she’s-”
“You look up to her,” Lucy said.
“Yeah. I don’t want to be her, but I… respect her. I can’t really fault any decisions she’s making, even if I wouldn’t make the same ones. If she were on our side, a senior student, I’d be really happy to have someone who knows what they’re doing and what they want.”
“Especially now that Elizabeth’s gone,” Verona mused.
“Yes,” Avery agreed. “I think Bristow got rid of everyone who could organize us, and now students are harassing us. We can’t go anywhere without being followed, or confronted, or watched. They’re going to try stuff when they think they can get away with it. It’d be nice to bring someone in who’s a bit older. Like Brie, but capable of actually getting involved.”
“A team captain?” Lucy suggested.
“Our nightmare is ready and waiting!” Snowdrop cut in.
Alpeana was face down in the dirt, arms draped on the ground ahead of her.
“I’ll be honest. I can see the line of thought. Remove Shellie, it’s easier to get Jessica back in. But I can sympathize with Jessica here. Shellie’s move was nuclear tier, as I see it. Making Shellie go away makes things worse.”
“Worse?” Avery asked.
“Jessica would want revenge, if she thought she could get away with it, or revenge by proxy, or I would, in her shoes. You can’t get revenge on someone who isn’t here.”
“We have contact details for Clem and Daniel. Why don’t we try contacting them in a secure way. If we want to do something about Shellie, let’s save it for tomorrow?”
“Douga Fritch, then,” Verona said, putting chalk down on wet, black dirt. It stood out in the gloom.
Alpeana rose to her feet, as much as the cave overhang allowed. She pointed again, and Lucy finished the triangle, with its extended elaboration.
“Can we make sure she lands in secluded darkness?” Avery asked.
“Easy enough,” Verona said. She created an extension with a ‘darkness’ crescent in it.
“You’re getting good at this,” Lucy said.
“Studied up during your implement ritual. Brought a ton of books in with me. I think this looks good,” Verona said, standing up and tilting her head. “Good work. You’re playing into the earring a bit more.”
The diagram was a triangle, aimed at pointing to a distant point. Lucy had handled the pointing and targeting, Verona the writing, time and place, and Avery the basic framework.
Alpeana ventured out from darkness to gloom, touching the circle, then huddling in it. She looked down and around, wary.
“It’s not a binding,” Avery said.
“Just needs a bit of power,” Verona said.
Each of them took a different point on the triangle, touching it. Lucy stood to the side of the extended point.
“Ah’ll check back home, be back in the wee hours. Watch yerselves.”
“To your target,” Lucy whispered.
Alpeana’s darkness boiled up and swallowed her, the darkness darting off into the distance, zig-zagging to keep to shadows.
“To do that offensively, we’d need a real crack in the defenses, right?” Lucy asked.
“Coup and claim. Or coup and justification,” Verona said. “Beating them down or having a justified revenge motive.”
“Maybe Jessica’s thing?” Avery asked. “We could have her help send Alpeana.”
“Reveals too much,” John said. “About Alpeana. About our methods.”
“We’ll leave the diagram here? It should be mostly okay without rain.”
“We can protect it,” Verona said. “If Alpeana’s going back and forth, having a tidy way of her leaving is good.”
“We’d have to change the target, unless we want to really ruin this Douglas guy’s summer,” Avery said.
“Where are we with the pursuers?” Lucy asked.
“Tashlit’s keeping an eye out, she says she’s comfortable in the water, she doesn’t think they could get her.”
“She might not be wary enough,” Lucy said.
“I hung back for a minute, to see. They stopped about two minutes’ walk from the water. They didn’t want to cross. They were worried about her, I think.”
“Okay,” Lucy said. She paused, and Avery frowned as she watched Lucy stare off into space a bit, in the direction Alpeana had gone.
“What are you thinking?” Avery asked.
Verona bent down, and off to the side, she drew a connection breaker. The circle around the edge was broad.
“There are major forces keeping an eye on me,” John said. “Nothing related to this. Do you need me to be part of this conversation?”
Major forces? The judges?
Verona looked at Avery and Lucy.
“I don’t think so?” Avery guessed.
“Okay. Carry on, I’ll stretch my legs a bit.”
The circle was drawn around them. The goblins and Snowdrop remained.
“I’m thinking a lot of things,” Lucy said, quiet. “I don’t like this. In my implement ritual, my earring told me to be confident about my gut feelings. My gut tells me this is bad. Being in a hostile place, dogged at every step, the dirty looks, the stuff they’re doing to other students…”
“We came here to learn what we needed to know to be good practitioners for Kennet, and because being students means Alexander can’t mess with us. He’s content to wait, but Bristow isn’t,” Avery said. “And they’re both horrible, but… everyone in the anti-Bristow camp is hammering him on being a bad headmaster.”
“Making messes,” Gashwad muttered. “Turning people against him, making him tired, making him distracted. Making Warren-holes.”
“We’re laying the groundwork for later,” Verona said, looking down at the diagram, watching it slowly erode. “The goblin holes that bridge the river and enable more movement across the campus, like what we just made. Stuff to get Alpeana in and out. I’ve let her in once and I carted her out after. If we do that little trip three times then it might make it easy for her to slip in and out in the future.”
“That blade cuts both ways,” Toadswallow said. “That third opportunity is a prime chance for them to foil her.”
“She’s being subtle.”
“Even with that,” Toadswallow told her.
“We’ve got the way into the building in progress, but that place is- Bristow’s heavy hitters are there,” Lucy said.
“We’ve got to draw them out,” Avery added. “We need to draw Alexander in and we need to get Bristow to start showing up and stop hiding behind his people.”
“Like a coward,” Lucy said. “Spirits are listening, let’s make it absolutely clear, whenever we can. He’s weak, he’s short-sighted, he’s selfish, he’s a bad teacher, he’s a bad headmaster.”
“And I agree. But how do we draw them out?” Lucy asked.
Avery shrugged. “We were thinking about this like a siege. And we had Elizabeth’s workshop to hole up in until things got better. Or we could find a way to work for compromise. But now we don’t have that spot.”
“This man sounds like some goblins I know,” Toadswallow commented. “Can’t do the ol’ reach for someone who won’t reach around back.”
“Oh yeah,” Verona said. “I get that.”
“Yep,” Avery said, thinking of her more stubborn siblings.
“Yeah,” Lucy said, her voice soft. “It’s why it’s so easy to fall into the trap of hating that man. Bristow doesn’t budge and Alexander seems to accommodate, he invites you in, or puts himself in situations where you invite yourself in…”
“Did that with Seth and he forswore Seth, apparently,” Avery said.
“It’s like he reaches out and you reach back, he shakes your hand, then doesn’t let go, as he marches off and drags you behind him,” Verona said.
“I wouldn’t go that far.”
“It’s like as in similar-ish, I didn’t mean exactly like.”
There was a gunshot in the distance. All three of them froze. The sound echoed in the woods, and it was followed by a silence like what John had described before. A lack of birds, a lack of insects.
“Go!” Toadswallow called out. “To the warren-hole!”
“The diagram-” Verona said, “If we don’t protect it from the elements and connections-”
“Can you catch up?” Lucy asked
Verona pulled her shirt up, showing the feathers in her pocket.
“Be safe! Gashwad, protect her?”
“I will,” Toadswallow said. “Wad can fight.”
They ran, without Verona. Gashwad wasn’t that fast, and neither was Snowdrop, who took Avery’s hand and became opossum-sized.
Avery pulled out the black rope.
“Communicate what you’re doing. I can hear you,” Lucy said. “It’s clearer if you whisper.”
Avery nodded, wrapping the rope around her hand.
As she pulled ahead, she began to weave through the trees, to present a harder target. Here and there, she used tricks she’d learned from hockey and soccer. A turn of the head and a twist of the shoulders did a lot to suggest she was going one way. It had taken two years for kids she was playing against to pick up on that.
She turned on her Sight. “Sight on. Looking out-”
Another gunshot. She saw the bullet’s movement through the air. She couldn’t tell where it started, but she could see the mist parting. She could figure out the general direction of it.
“-and it’s big,” Avery whispered.
Snowdrop hissed. Avery turned her head, looking, and saw a pointing paw.
A grouping of magazines in soggy plastic bags, arranged in a loose circle. Most of the warren-holes around Kennet had started out like that, but had become overgrown. Telltale things pointed to their presence. The way trash seemed to accumulate around them, the apertures, the way vegetation twisted, or died after it reached a certain height, to decay into stuff like the material of a nest.
“Taking the warren-hole! Circling around!”
It smelled like compost and mushrooms. Pages from the magazines were stuck to the walls. If a random kid stumbled onto a spot like this, they might not think too much of it. It was vaguely unpleasant enough they wouldn’t come back.
But she had to dive in deeper. There was a dip, a space only wide enough for her to pass through, the muck scraping at her sides.
But it led to another, darker tunnel. Here, the kid would begin to panic. Stuff didn’t add up, like the light from above finding its winding way here, or the way light shone through more pages that were stuck to the walls. An angry note, a stick figure with boobs.
She picked up Snowdrop and tossed her.
Snowdrop landed, skidding on the slope.
A lone goblin in the middle of the tunnel saw them coming and scampered off.
They ran for a few seconds, then Snowdrop grabbed a fistful of roots and stopped. Avery’s feet skidded in mud, kicked up a pacifier with a tack in it, and she bumped into Snowdrop.
“You know your way around these back-alleys better than I do.”
“If we go much further down we won’t be able to get far enough,” Snowdrop said. “Don’t touch that page up there.”
Avery snatched it away from the wall. There was a hole. “Up?”
Avery wrapped an arm around Snowdrop, glanced around, and then black-roped them up to and through the hole to the far side.
From there, it was a climb up a tangle of roots that were wound around a rusty bike wheel.
The Warrens were one of the spaces that overlapped reality. Actually getting inside wasn’t always easy, but if there was trash, decay, or debris, then there were often ways in and through. Opening up a new hole was doable, but took power. They, at least had power to spare. The others would have spent the day’s use of the hot lead to open this up, and then some.
The more of these Warren-tunnels there were, the more goblins there were. The more goblins there were, the more tunnels there were.
Upside: a bit of distance covered in the Warrens was a larger amount of distance covered aboveground. Ten paces here could be thirty, fifty, or a hundred aboveground. There were goblins here, and making or making use of a warren-hole, big or small, could make summoning or bringing more goblins in that much easier.
Downsides: there were goblins here and the further down one went, the more goblins there were. They could lay traps, like making a bit of floor collapse, dropping the unwary into strategic zones. She had the black rope for that. They could also wound. Some Others fed or preyed on goblins and traps were meant for those Others. She couldn’t prevent that so easily with the black rope. It wasn’t always a clear route, either. What looked like a short tunnel could be a winding one that carried the person within to some point outside of the city limits, instead of into the city heart.
And there were dangers here. Darker realms opened up into the warrens, sometimes, and the things that escaped those realms could reside here. Meaner goblins could rule over areas, scaring away or enslaving the lesser ones who just wanted to make fart noises all day. Some were barely more than animals, and, others were clever.
What she’d thought was a clear way up wasn’t, but Snowdrop seemed confident, crawling forward.
Her experience to date had been with the shallower warren-tunnels in Kennet, and only if and when she knew she could take a shower or bath after, without having to interact with siblings or parents directly after. She’d borrowed Lucy’s shower twice, dipped into the river twice, and black-roped into her family’s bathroom for another three times. But Kennet’s warren-holes were relatively, well, sanitized. Goblins could come up but not through, and the most dangerous goblins didn’t even bother getting close. Here, the longer she was present, the higher the chance there would be some snake-shaped goblin sniffing her out.
She was still in a shallow place, a step down from the uppermost level of the warrens, here. A step down meant the compost and mushroom smell were that much worse, that mushrooms oozed like blisters on the darker tunnel walls, and there were more random objects here and there, hidden beneath the wet mud of walls and floor, or poking out of the ceiling to scrape at her scalp. The moisture here smelled like old fast food, or household chemicals, or it had an oily, rainbow sheen that emphasized the oil and sheen and downplayed the rainbow.
Avery felt a bit of relief, hearing Snowdrop say that. Still, she held a finger closer to her lips without actually touching. Her hands were muddy and the mud had green streaks in it that refused to blend in with the diarrhea brown.
There was light, and it felt too bright as she emerged.
She heard another gunshot.
She’d picked the warrens as a route because it kept her down and out of the way, while any bullets were flying. She was pretty sure John was being careful not to put any bullets in their direction, but she wasn’t going to be dumb about this.
“Surfacing. Checking…” she whispered.
There was a crackle to the air, a buzz that wasn’t from insects, but more like bad electronics, and that crackle put a filter over everything, like there was no straight black, white, brown, or green anymore, but those colors with a layer of television static over them.
They set something loose?
A man, stuttering and jumping in a way similar to how an Echo did, crossed the path. The effect was more pronounced near him. He had a plastic bag over his head, and it sucked in around his nose and mouth with every attempted breath. There was too much condensation to make out his features as anything except shadows. The rest of him was draped in the layers of a homeless person.
The bag made audible, wet crinkling sounds as it sucked in, puffed out, sucked in, puffed out.
If he saw her, he didn’t act. Instead, he walked up to a tree, examined it, and then reached out for a branch. He pushed it, and the tree swiveled, rotating ninety degrees, and with every degree it moved, the light level did too.
It was like the sun went out, and there was only the static.
Everything returned. Avery gasped for that air.
The hole was gone, and so was Snowdrop. The trees, path, and everything had moved, and the temperature had dropped. It looked like the trees were more organized. Rows and columns, now.
He turned, head roving, and found what he was looking for.
She adjusted her bracelet, found her hockey stick, and paused to think for a second, watching him walk.
She’d meant to slip in behind, to get to the rear, maybe interfere with the practitioners. Maybe. Or just to flank any problems.
But she’d gotten caught up in it, somehow.
She pulled the hockey stick away, and shook the glamour free of it.
The Other looked at her, and she went still, crouching, muddy, stick in hand.
“Can we talk?” she asked.
He shook his head, plastic bag crinkling. It sucked in around teeth, lips, nostrils, and drew close enough to the eyes to reveal the deep black shadows of the eye sockets.
It shuddered like that, straining, but refusing to tear, the moisture wicking away to reveal faint details, and then he exhaled, and it all went foggy.
“Do you mean us any harm?”
Then he fast-walked toward her.
She backed away, and he sped up, running.
“Here!” she hollered, at the top of her lungs. “Attacking it.”
She heard John’s distant reply.
She swiped him with the stick. She felt the heavy impact, the movement in the air, and the momentary pause in the static.
He didn’t hit the ground, he didn’t follow through. He was gone.
She spun, turning a hundred and eighty degrees. Nothing behind her.
She turned again, and he was there, grabbing her wrist with one hand, her throat with the other.
His weight pressed her down to the dirt path with the rows and columns of trees on either side. She struggled to move her hand with the stick, struggled to breathe, and reached up to claw at his face, to try to tear that bag. Because it had worked with the pig-dog man.
He pulled away, still gripping her throat.
She couldn’t move the hand with the stick, and his grip was tight enough her hand threatened to go numb, but she could adjust her grip, turn her hand, and move the length of the stick to where her other hand could reach overhead and grab it.
She hit him, in an awkward swing. The rune flared, and he disappeared.
She tried to climb to her feet and fell, dizzy. She turned, looking this way, that-
Again, she tried to stand, and fell. She huffed for breath, trying to suck in enough to shout, give directions.
He did something in the trees, moving a stone in the woods.
In the middle of trying to catch her breath, she was left without air again, and the lack hurt. No ground beneath her, nothing to hold onto except herself and her hockey stick.
Avery was plunged back into this noisy, hostile reality again.
The area had rearranged more. Stone, concrete walls cut through trees and framed the path, the trees were closer together, and the visual noise was worse, limiting vision to maybe twenty paces in a given direction.
Huffing for breath, hand at her throat, she used the black rope, stepped forward, and jumped ahead in the path.
Another jump, another- she used her Sight as best as she could to peer through mist and see the angle of gunshots, so she wasn’t just jumping into John’s way.
Somewhere off to the side, she heard Lucy and Snowdrop.
Then it all went dark. She realized it was happening, gasped in a breath, and braced herself.
This was the pattern. It moved, it went after some specific targets, things that moved that shouldn’t, in ways they shouldn’t. A tree that rotated, a rock that slid like it was some adjustment dial on an instrument or toaster.
“He keeps adjusting this reality,” she whispered, struggling.
And then they were plunged back into this world it was editing. After longer and longer periods of darkness.
She re-emerged into reality. The trees to her left were so close to one another she didn’t think she could pass through them. Well beyond what was reasonable in reality.
“Avery here!” she called out.
She heard the other shouts. John’s. Gashwad’s, Snowdrop’s.
Was this space getting smaller and smaller?
She black-roped her way through.
Catching up to the others. Gashwad and Snowdrop were attacking the man, Snowdrop stabbing with the fork. Gashwad doing… about ten times more damage.
The man was taller, bigger than before.
“Rip the bag!” she called out.
Even with a young girl and a goblin clinging to him, the man with the plastic bag over his head wasn’t really hampered. He was making a beeline for a section of wall.
Snowdrop stabbed him in the neck. He hit Snowdrop. She fell, and he didn’t.
Avery went for the legs, since Gashwad was perched between his shoulders, going for the spine, periodically clawing at the back of the plastic bag. It didn’t seem to do much.
She swiped at his legs, and he disappeared.
Gashwad hit the ground on all fours.
Avery did much the same, dropping to the ground by Snowdrop, glancing around. She touched Snowdrop’s face. “Snow. Are you okay?”
The man emerged from the trees by the wall. Avery pointed. Gashwad ran for it.
The man touched the cracks, pressing in three sections.
The darkness swept over them.
There was no Snowdrop beneath her hand when she reappeared.
The walls were as tall as Avery was, now. Even many of the trees toward the center were close together in an impassable way. The dirt paths narrower.
“He gets bigger and stronger every time!” John called out. “The arena gets smaller!”
“Snowdrop’s hurt! Is there a way to get ourselves out!?”
John opened fire. He kept shouting, but the gunfire was too loud.
Avery moved toward the sound, ducking low.
Yeah, plastic-bag head was getting a few inches taller each ’round’. A bit harder to budge, a bit stronger. The difference from one time to the next was subtle, but the difference from the first time she’d seen him to the most recent was drastic.
He wrestled with Tashlit, holding her against a wall as he walked. Tashlit struggled to find a way to arrest that. The bullets sank into the Other.
“Do what you did to the Elemental, for the hot lead!”
John put three bullets in each of the man’s knees.
Tashlit found a grip near the top of the wall, where the concrete was jagged, and instead of feet sliding and failing to get beneath her, flesh and eyeballs being ground against the rough concrete and stone walls, she found enough leverage to stop him from dragging her. One hand at the top of the wall, the other at the Other’s throat, she strained, and lifted him off his feet, slamming him into the wall in a single motion. He bounced off, stumbling, and John kept shooting out the knees as the Other recovered.
Gashwad almost got shot himself as he dashed out of the trees. He jammed a black spike of wood into the knee-wound.
The fact they were all able to ‘reunite’ like this… it was because the arena was getting so small.
Avery gripped her stick, found her grit, and started forward.
“Don’t!” John called out.
“Look for a way out! Or find what he’s after and do the opposite!”
The Other was building momentum. Getting faster.
Avery looked for the direction it was going.
She found a bit of wall to duck behind, then black-roped her way there.
“He’s fuzzy, he’s static-y, I think he’s a techno-Other. Like Zed would use. He keeps shrinking this place. It’s like the arena- John called it an arena, it’s as much a piece of him as anything. Um-”
She kept talking, whispering, hoping Lucy could hear.
Searching the tree, touching branches, checking roots. Nothing moved.
She looked up, then black-roped her way there.
A nest. With a red bird in it.
She reached for the bird, and it didn’t fly away.
Holding it, she jumped down.
The Other tracked her, changing direction to follow.
She kept her distance. This bought them time.
“He has a plastic bag over his head, he gets stronger every round. No face, no features, but he doesn’t get hurt, we can’t tear the bag like I did with Pigdog man’s mask. Could do with some help, Lucy. Please.”
He broke into a run. She ducked behind a tree and moved to the far end of the clearing.
John reloaded, then kept shooting. It slowed the Other down, but it didn’t stop him.
It felt like minutes were passing.
“You made arrangements with other practitioners? That you were leaving to see to business, if you didn’t return, they’d come?”
“Yes!” Avery replied.
“We could use their help!”
As the Other got closer, she black-roped her way to safety, as far away as possible.
It reached down, as if annoyed, then pulled the black spike of wood from its knee.
“More where that came from!” Gashwad called.
He sounded like he was enjoying this.
The Other plunged the black spike of wood into its own throat.
Avery black roped immediately, cradling the bird. Black-roped, looking, searching- black roped again, to be safe.
A hand grabbed her from behind, seizing the wrist with the bird.
“No!” She shouted. “That’s not-”
His other hand gripped the hand that held the bird in it. She tried to move her fingers to push it free, but instead, he crushed her hand closed, the bird in it. Sawdust bulged between her fingers.
Blackness swallowed them.
Can’t be scaredy-Avery. Can’t be hesitant.
The arena that unfolded around her was so small that she could see all four walls at the same time. Like a room, twenty paces by twenty paces across. Walls of concrete that looked like it had been slapped between the trees, mortaring them together.
Snowdrop lay unconscious on the ground, Gashwad crouched by her, patting her head. John was in one corner, Tashlit in another, Avery in the other.
Other in the center. The Other bulged with as much muscle as adult Guilherme had. Its head was large enough the plastic bag was permanently strained.
“Does anyone see a red bird?” Avery asked.
“No. Why?” John asked.
“Because there’s a sequence, it seems to know the sequence, but if we can turn it back against it we can-”
The Other moved. Straight for Tashlit, who still had wet hair and clothes from swimming.
She charged in, meeting him, and swung a punch.
It wasn’t as strong or as fast a move as what she’d done before. He caught her.
She pulled at one side of the loose-skin face, then spat on him. It sizzled violently.
Red bird- or anything? Anything odd that wasn’t what he was after?
He reached the wall, where cracks formed a triangle, and pressed inward. It sank in.
They plunged into darkness.
Into an arena ten paces by ten paces wide. The Other stood close to Gashwad, who snarled and hugged Snowdrop’s head, putting his body between her and the Other.
“Close your eyes!” she shouted.
Tashlit’s eyes winked out. John shut his. There was only the Other, who had eyes for a branch that stuck out of the wall.
Avery ignored that. She headed to a point where the Other couldn’t see.
Then black-roped her way across the space, searching.
A triangular stone, near John.
She black-roped there, then stomped on it.
And back to the twenty-pace room.
She was good at being fast, and she had good eyes.
She darted across the room, searching.
A bloodstain near Snowdrop’s head that wasn’t actually from Snowdrop.
She got to it before he got to the triangle.
But he’d caught on. Now he was ignoring the targets, coming for her. She used the black rope, which only helped a little. He was fast and she couldn’t see when she was moving too fast.
And there was too much ground to cover.
She found the three bricks in the wall. One had to be pressed in before the other would move.
He interrupted, coming for her, and she used a flash of glamour. Blinding him for a moment while she could figure out the order.
Stepping back and out again.
He changed tacks, deciding she was too hard to catch. Instead, he went for Snowdrop.
And she couldn’t allow that. She had to fend him off. Had to swat at him, had to endure the fact that every time she landed a good hit, he’d disappear, reappear, and either grab her or hit that combination of three stones to pull them down a level, into a smaller arena.
Was it only three or so times that she had to fight to get away? That John or Tashlit or Gashwad were stepping in to pry her free? Two or three times that they plunged into darkness and she had to make that split second decision to either defend Snowdrop or get to the bricks before he got to the bird? He varied it up, feinted. She was running on instinct and adrenaline, fighting in the moment.
Trying to survive, to preserve her friend.
It all dissolved into static that ran through her body.
“We got you,” Lucy said. “Oh geez.”
“Had to go back to the dorm room for the big red button,” Verona said.
“We should be carrying that,” Lucy said.
“I’m a little worried about bringing everything essential, after the party thing.”
“That’s not a good reason. Keep the essentials and small things.”
“Snowdrop,” Avery said, rubbing at her throat.
Snowdrop lay on the ground. Tashlit stroked Snowdrop’s head, and the girl became an opossum. She crawled to Avery, then curled up in her lap.
“That was a real attempt at killing us, wasn’t it?” Avery asked, her voice a little hollow.
“Or trapping,” Lucy said. She held up a black cartridge.
“They can’t get away with that. We’re students.”
“I have no intention of letting them get away with it,” Lucy said. She pushed Avery’s hair back from her face. “No way.”
“I bet they have an excuse,” Verona said. “Like, ‘we put that out there to let it power up, we were going to go back after lunch.'”
“Come on,” Lucy said.
“You did good,” John said.
The words felt weird. She didn’t want to be in a situation where this was good.
“You going to be steady on your feet for this?” Lucy asked.
Avery stood, testing herself, then nodded. She kept two hands on Snowdrop.
“Pretty intense, from what you were saying,” Lucy said.
“I want to know who pulled this.”
“So do we,” Lucy said. “Absolutely. Look, they’re going to be looking for us. If you want to sit this one out, take a break, that’s cool, but if we show up, we’ve gotta look strong.”
“You’ve done awesome,” Verona said. “Snowdrop’s okay? Okayish? And Tashlit?”
Tashlit nodded, rubbing at her arm.
“I’m fine,” John said.
Lucy was fussing with Avery’s hair, which had mud in it, and it was simultaneously the last bit of nitpickyness that Avery wanted to dwell on, and it was a bit zen, fingernails running against her scalp as a makeshift comb. Lucy dropped it as they left the trees.
Gashwad hung back, hiding. If he was recognized, that would be bad.
The other anti-Bristow kids were out, sitting by the field in damp grass. Some stood as they saw them.
Avery pulled on all the golden checkmarks and everything else to keep her head up, to avoid looking as emotionally wounded as she felt after all that. As sore and scuffed- those weren’t as bad. She’d gotten battered during practice, before.
“They tried and they failed. That counts for something,” Lucy murmured.
“They hurt Snowdrop,” Avery said, voice hard.
“That counts for a heck of a lot, too, yeah.”
They took the path to the side door of the school.
“We’re not talking to the others?”
“After,” Lucy said. “For right now… our room. You need a shower and a change of clothes. For mental reasons as much as anything. I need it. Even Verona.”
Verona reached out to touch Tashlit’s arm at the same time Lucy did with John.
They entered the school premises. John and Tashlit looked around.
“Tashlit was saying before that she missed civilization. John, Matthew and Edith have been able to give her some, but… not a lot of people?” Verona asked.
Tashlit shook her head. Loose skin slapped her cheeks.
We’re making small talk? Talking about regular stuff?
After that? Do you guys realize?
But Avery didn’t want to whine. She wanted to look strong. So she focused her attention on keeping her head up and being gentle with Snowdrop.
Students stared. She found herself looking back, searching for an iota of guilt.
Was it worse if she found it and she felt the need to act right then? Or that she might never find it? That some of the people here could be so messed up they’d pull that crap and then not give a damn about it after?
They returned to their room.
“They’ve been inside,” Verona said, as the door closed. “But they weren’t willing to mess with the nettlewisp.”
The nettlewisp they’d put on the locked chest at the foot of the bed had grown just a bit.
Lucy rubbed at her arm. There were still some yellow and blue stains in the skin, like how lips got after a lemon or blue raspberry icee crush.
Avery ventured over to her bed as Verona shut the door. Her move was in part because there were five of them and one opossum in the one room and it wasn’t that big a room.
Verona sat down next to her.
“John will remember our little car ride with Sharon.”
“And I had a chat with Bristow. Funny little thing, that.”
“Not so funny that you’ve got that game of whether he’d regret his move on Kennet going,” Lucy said.
“Yeah, no,” Verona said. “That’s not great.”
“I kind of just want to nap instead of talking about this,” Avery said. “I know that sounds super lame, but-”
“It’s not lame,” Lucy said. “Believe me. I’ve been feeling low too. But at least just listen and talk this out with us, as we discuss our next moves. We had to wait until we were inside, with this protective diagram.”
“Moves?” Avery asked.
Verona flipped through her phone until she brought up some images.
“Text messages?” Avery asked.
“Oh, look at that, emails from Bristow to Sharon the horrible skeptic,” Verona said. “That I just so happened to save, just in case.”
“Yep. Long winded in emails too.”
“Oh, look at that,” Verona said, again. “Regards, Lawrence T. Bristow, esquire.”
“Regards, Lawrence T. Bristow, esquire.” Verona said, plucking her feather from her sleeve. She ran the tip along the screen. “What do you think? Do you think we should pass his regards on to the brownies?”
“It wouldn’t be just yet,” Lucy said. “A few other things to sort. We need to strategize with others.”
“He’s going to come for us, you know. If he hasn’t already. Shellie, Ted…”
“If you want to say no, or change what we’re doing-”
“I want to nap. To shower, change…”
“Try an afternoon class?” Verona asked.
Avery grit her teeth, considering. Then she remembered they were here for a reason. “Maybe. Yeah.”
She looked down at Snowdrop.
Tashlit navigated between the beds and their knees, bent down, and gave Snowdrop another stroke.
Snowdrop stretched, paws reaching out, trying to claw the hand back for more strokes.
“I think she’s just being a lazy butt. This is like, three in the morning, nocturnal time,” Verona said.
“It’s okay if you want to back off, wait, see what happens,” Lucy said. “It’d be tough. I think he and they would keep making moves against us.”
Avery shook her head. “I don’t want to. I don’t want to declare war either, or start doing anything big, but… we might have to.”
“My feeling exactly,” Lucy said.
“Don’t say sorry. You’re doing fine,” Lucy said.
“I mean- John. Tashlit. You guys are getting dragged into this.”
“I’m no stranger to conflict,” John said.
But John looked as tense as Avery had seen him, outside that moment he’d held Lucy at gunpoint.
In the midst of that tension, a sharp rap sounded at the door. John’s hand was at his hip and resting on the gun in as much time as it took Avery to turn her head.
Granted, she was wiped out.
He kept the door between himself and the person on the other side, hiding the now-drawn gun as he opened it.
“You’re okay, after the nettlewisp thing?” Avery asked, quiet.
Nicolette nodded. She looked past John to the bristling flower on the wooden chest. “Is that what that monstrous thing is called? I’m okay, a device I borrowed from Zed to act as a buffer isn’t. I owe him one. I owe him a lot.”
Guess that explains the black goo and zappy electricity, Avery thought.
She gave Snowdrop a stroke.
Of the three of them, Tashlit, and John, none volunteered to fill the silence.
“Can we talk seriously?” Nicolette asked.