Rather than fold the clothes as she got sorted, Verona smoothed them out and rolled them into tubes, then stacked the tubes together, side by side.
“This was in my bag,” Lucy said, handing Verona a monster sock. “Why is your stuff in my bag?”
“Dunno, spillover?” Verona asked, putting her acid-washed jeans under her chin while she rolled them from the bottom of the pants leg up to the waistband, tight as she could get.
“I’ve got a sock of yours in the gap between mattress and the footboard of the bed, here,” Avery noted, throwing it at the side of Verona’s head. “How?”
Verona laughed and put it in the pile.
Snowdrop was sitting cross-legged on the bed, folding shirts and handing them to Avery. She was smiling too much to not be up to something. Cherrypop was stuck inside a spare sock with a hole in it, one foot sticking out of the hole. It served to restrain the little goblin’s movements and formed a kind of sleeping bag for the little goblin as she slumbered.
“How’s your stomach?” Verona asked.
“Hurts when I bend over. But it’s superficial. Thanks for asking. You don’t usually ask so much.”
“Yeah well… I got to have my little freak-out the other day, in front of everyone, I’ve hashed stuff out, I’m mostly worried about you guys.”
“I think your judgment of how okay you are is a little suspect, Ronnie,” Lucy said.
“Just saying. Maybe all of us are bad at that. My old therapist told me that just because you have an emotional outburst, it doesn’t mean you’ve actually handled that stuff. It’s still there.”
“That might explain a lot about my dad,” Verona said.
Caught up on the folding, Snowdrop moved the covers and found shorts and socks that Avery had worn to bed and kicked off in the middle of the night.
Snowdrop picked up a striped sock and held it up. Verona raised her hands to catch.
They were a matter of feet apart and Snowdrop’s throw was still insufficient, the sock landing at Verona’s feet.
“Not a strength, huh Snow?” Verona asked.
“I don’t know, opossums are supposed to be really good at throwing. We have the muscles for it,” Snowdrop replied, handing Avery more shirts and folded socks.
“This isn’t a color of shirt I wear,” Avery said. “What…?”
She shook the dull grey shirt out to view the front. It had a print of the hanged man tarot card with an opossum instead of a man, hanging upside down. Instead of the number at the top or the title ‘hanged man’ on the bottom it was just ‘aaaaaaaa’.
“How many of these did you give me?” Avery asked, checking. “God.”
Snowdrop laughed, which woke up Cherrypop, who looked around bewildered before joining in with the laugh.
Lucy high-fived Snowdrop.
“Mannnn, I thought I was nearly done,” Avery said, unpacking and picking through her shirts. She set some of the others aside, which were similar enough to the green, orange, and teal colors of her other shirts to slip through. She held it up and read off it, “Live free, be bizarre, make whoopee, get hit by a car. No, Snowdrop!”
“It’s no way to live,” Snowdrop said, raising a hand as Lucy went in for another high-five.
“Hey! Ey!” Cherrypop raised her voice. She strained, arm reaching as if trying her utmost to sit up and reach would do more than add another inch to the distance Lucy had to close. Lucy gave her a one-finger high-five.
“You didn’t even do anything, did you, Cherry?” Verona asked.
“I did everything! I saved the day yesterday!”
Snowdrop found the sock to match the one Cherrypop was lying inside and pulled it down over Cherrypop’s head and the other sock, bundling them. Cherrypop squirmed until she could stick her face through the hole that her foot had been sticking through. “I get credit!”
“You get chip,” Verona said, heading to the desk in the corner and getting the bag of chips from their last stop in town, where they’d grabbed some stuff for taking care of Avery’s stomach and her own headaches and stomachaches. She gave Cherrypop a chip bigger than the little goblin’s face. Cherrypop, with her entire body still within the sock, unable to reach through, bit, then started flopping around, trying to get into a position to eat the chip. Mostly she rolled over it.
It was kind of amazing at how bad she was at it. It was the experience of watching an old person trying to parallel park for five minutes, captured in less than a minute of the little goblin rolling around.
Verona tore her eyes away from the sad little spectacle, looking over the desk. There were still notebooks and various writing implements, from when they’d had their turns sitting at the desk while the others were in bed. “Yellow pencilcase?”
“Mine,” Avery declared.
Lucy took the pen as Verona held it out.
Verona sorted out the library books, which included what she’d grabbed from the library to do some digging on the new types of Other who’d moved to Kennet. She stacked them from largest to smallest. She then turned to her own notes.
“This is it,” she said.
“You sounded ready to go home, the other day.”
“Field trip later,” Avery said. “I’ve been looking forward to the field trips from the beginning.”
“There are more later we won’t get to see,” Verona said, hopping up to the desk to sit on it, feet on the chair.
“Alpy could maybe take us places again,” Avery said. “Or the new Others could.”
“No,” Lucy agreed. “Different tone, we won’t have to watch our backs in the same way, but we can’t learn from the experts, either. We’re learning from the natural residents.”
They’d had the whole disaster, with classes cut short, then a day of recuperation, which had included a class on healing.
Then a day of elemental stuff, which had capped off in Wye turning up to mention Alexander was dead. Avery had missed a lot of that.
Yesterday had been a day of minor stuff on deal-making Others, touching briefly on Faerie as a prelude to today, but the instructor hadn’t been much good, and had been that much worse when moving on to the afternoon class, which had been two and a half hours of droning about Djinn, Envoys that operated like the Hungry Choir but who were smaller, and other things that were really hard to get to grips with when they really just… didn’t interact with those Others, and might never. They probably wouldn’t ever go to those Djinn who had roots in angels and had helped build the universe and make wishes.
And, like, if they ever did, they’d do their own research, they wouldn’t need what was taught in a snooze-inducing voice for two hours in the middle of summer. The room hadn’t been hot but somehow when imagining it her mind revised it to have them all dripping in sweat, slumping in their seats, slack jawed and wanting to die. It had been that bad.
Turns out that people who both know about the practice and who can teach are few and far between.
She looked at the picture on the wall of the barn with the cat, deer, and fox in it, and remembered the one it had replaced, with the hunting party, mass of dogs, and the dead cat.
We kind of offed one of the teachers who knew their shit and who could teach half decently, too.
She put that out of mind.
They’d fled the classroom and gone swimming, aiming to make some allies and have some fun to counter the dreary lessons, and that swim had been crashed by America and Liberty Tedd.
Last night had been restless, not helped by Cherrypop being in the mix. They’d spent a couple hours trying to sleep while a small, abrasive voice piped up with random commentary about the placement of buttholes on various animals, whether kitchen sponges should be edible, that one show about a cartoon dog she’d seen once, and how she was absolutely, undeniably positive there was a spider under the covers. They’d made Snowdrop take Cherry for an hours-long walk so they could sleep.
“You never explained this shirt,” Avery said, turning around to show Snowdrop the shirt she’d worn the night-
-the night Bristow had gone the way of the brownies. That Alexander had died.
It was pink, with a winking opossum with makeup caked over its face, holding its paws over its nose. ‘Eyes over here.’
“I’ll tell you, the goblins that aren’t Toadswallow won’t,” Snowdrop declared.
Cherrypop twisted around, looking, then burst out laughing. “The shirt!”
“Tell me, Cherry,” Avery said, eager.
“Don’t!” Snowdrop called out, then slapped her hand against her palm.
“It’s the nostrils! Opossum dong! Bahaha!”
“What?” Avery asked. “That makes no sense.”
“They- the stupid people, they came over and they saw opossums the first time! The guy opossums have two- two heads, forked! So clearly, bahahaha, they think it has to go in the nose!”
“It wasn’t the first invaders in America,” Snowdrop sighed.
“I was wearing this?”
Verona smiled, turning her back and making sure she had all of her pens, markers, watercolor brushes, colored pencils and the various rulers, stencils, and compasses for drawing, putting them in the battered and scuffed fabric pencilcase. She collected all of the papers, then knocked the stack against the desk to make the pile even. If she had some of Lucy or Avery’s stuff in the pile she’d sort it out later.
“Snowdrop, can you unsummon all this extra clothing?” Avery asked, holding up the ‘wet aaaa possum’ swimsuit. “I shouldn’t pack it all, and it can’t be good for you if it’s made out of your lifeforce or whatever.”
Verona picked up the chair with her feet on either side of the seat, trying to balance it. “I’m curious, did you actually spend the time to make the clothes, pull them off, become an opossum again, and stack them that way?”
“Nope,” Snowdrop stated.
“Love that,” Verona said.
“You should have! That would be great!” Cherrypop raised her voice, because she was small enough that she had to shout to match the rest of them in volume.
“You know what else is great?” Verona asked. “Chips.”
She put the chair down, took more chips, stacked them, and gave them to Cherrypop, who opened her mouth wide to take in as much as possible.
“Check the drawers?” Lucy asked.
Verona went through the drawers of the wooden desk in the corner. Spell cards, more pens, some failed drawings of earrings and lanterns… she collected it.
Getting so they were ready to go home when their ride arrived. Which would be after this field trip.
“You’re getting potato chips all over my sock,” Avery noted.
Cherrypop proceeded to try to roll in the potato chips, which happened to also put her face in closer proximity to the chips on the bed than she’d been managing before.
“Want to be a vacuum?” Snowdrop asked, picking up the sock-ensconced goblin, and holding her just over the bed. Cherrypop laughed, tried to suck up and lick up the bits of chip as she was moved into proximity with it, and coughed when the two actions conflicted.
“Go easy, Cherry,” Avery said, wincing a bit.
“Nev-” Cherry coughed, licked, mid-cough, then hiccuped. “-ver!”
It was honestly sort of funny to see how Avery ratcheted up that initial wince, arms folded, shoulders drawing together, as Cherry added talking and hiccups to the mix of coughing and eating.
“She’s a goblin,” Lucy said. “She’s tough.”
“I’m just imagining the brownies reacting to a pile of goblin vomit as they sort out our room,” Verona said.
“Don’t encourage her,” Avery said, still wincing.
“Take-” Cherry managed. “a crap-” Cough, cough, eat, hiccup, “-on the floor!”
“Hey, hey, stop for a second,” Lucy said, reaching over and lifting Cherry to an upright position. She faced the goblin down. “No.”
“One goblin plop and three human plops and one opossum plop all on the floor!” Cherrypop declared, grinning wide. The grin was interrupted with a hiccup.
“No. We’re trying to wrap this up with as few enemies as we can manage. I don’t want the brownies following us home.”
“No, Cherry,” Verona said.
“No,” Avery stressed. She looked at Snowdrop, pointing.
Snowdrop clamped her mouth shut.
The smile dropped from Cherrypop’s face.
“Okay?” Lucy asked. “You made promises during awakening. This is serious.”
“Vacuum?” Snowdrop asked.
“If you agree not to make enemies,” Avery said.
The little goblin, still with only her face sticking out of a sock, looked around at the three of them, then nodded. “Okay.”
Avery moved the curtain, then looked outside. “We should go.”
“I’ll nettlewisp our stuff and catch up,” Lucy said.
Verona looked at her friend’s arm, which had shed the lingering effect of the one night spent with the nettlewisp activated. They’d used it again at the shore of the river with no issue for Lucy.
“Okay,” Verona said. “We’ll drop off stuff at the library-”
“And drop off Cherry too,” Avery added. “She can’t stay in our room.”
They split, Verona collecting the books, Avery taking the three schoolbags they were bringing on the field trip, and Snowdrop taking Cherry, while Lucy stuck behind. They’d been conserving glamour from the start of summer and the shift in schedule meant they didn’t have to anymore.
Room all packed up, stuff sorted, they had the field trip pulling them away today, and then they’d come, grab their stuff, and go back.
Avery jogged off with Snowdrop, as Verona turned to head into the library. She pushed the door open, and came face to face with the entire library of books she hadn’t been able to read.
Nina approached, stopping a distance away, and then turned, holding her tea and saucer, apparently taking in the books in a very similar way. Nina wore a vest over a top with a frilly collar that was fixed in place with a ribbon. She also wore a knee-length corduroy skirt, platform heels with a marked patina to the leather that matched the tones and patina of her belt, had her hair tied back, and thick-rimmed glasses.
Not quite Verona’s style, but she took mental note, all the same. If she had to grow up, there were worse cues to take than this distillation of librarian chic.
“Might be the last time I grab a book,” Verona told Nina, as she dropped off the books, wiping the cover of one clean with her hand. “We’re expecting an email about some Others later, and we don’t know when we’re taking off with Zed, so I might try to cram something in.”
“I do love that you’re a reader,” Nina said. “Do you want to stay for tea and a chat? I want to ask what you’ve read and enjoy it vicariously.”
“Sorry,” Verona answered.
“Field trip to the Faerie.”
“I should pay more attention to the world outside.”
“Or live your best life and get us to fill you in.”
“I feel… melancholy, leaving this behind. Lame, I know, I’ll have mixed feelings about this school but this library won’t be mixed.”
“Always, when you leave unread books behind,” Nina answered. She stroked the back of Verona’s head. It felt like a big sister or mom thing, and that made Verona feel weird, because she’d never had much of either.
She could hear running in the hallway, and turned, “Bye.”
“We may see each other if Zed stops in to see you outside of summer,” Nina told her.
“Maybe. That’d be neat. I’ll have to find a good bookstore to show you.”
“You should be looking for good bookstores regardless.”
“True!” Verona called out, as she hurried off. She smiled as Nina shushed her.
Lucy was running to catch up.
“You’re don’t want to exhaust yourself, running before a trip where we might be walking around a lot,” Verona told her friend.
“From a minute of running?” Lucy asked. “I’m not you, Ronnie.”
Verona wanted to laugh, but the hallway wasn’t entirely empty, and she could smell the food brownies had cooked for students who weren’t having the food that was being delivered or catered.
The laugh died in her throat.
“The joking about Cherry puking made me want to ask…” Lucy ventured.
“I’m fine. I don’t- I mean, I know I’m bad at knowing if I’m fine, but I think I’m fine. I should be good, unless something specific gets thrown at me that pushes specific buttons.”
“I’m just asking. You were involved.”
Lucy shrugged. “Booker’s home. I can look forward to that.”
“And his girlfriend?”
“Trying to be nice,” Lucy said, a bit sing-song. “Trying to be nice.”
Verona smiled, and joined Lucy in pushing the door open.
Avery had run off to the edge of the woods to drop off Cherrypop, and carried an animal-form Snowdrop as she ran back.
“Watch out for America,” Verona said.
“Yeah. We got the warning from Liberty, and it seems like she’s timing something to happen at the field trip? Which is weird?” Lucy asked, not sounding very confident.
“Weird,” Verona echoed.
“Tons of supervision, controlled environment, it’s not her… I don’t know the word. Battlefield? Middle of faerie land and she specializes in goblin stuff?”
“No idea,” Verona said.
“We’ll watch out. Watch each other’s backs,” Avery said.
As a group of three, they approached the students who had already stepped outside.
Estrella and Silas Vanderwerf were at the head of the class with Raymond and some of the apprentices. Zed stood off to one side with Brie.
Verona gravitated toward Zed. “Heya.”
“Estrella, huh?” Verona asked.
“She’s the BHI’s best contact when it comes to Fae. Next year she might start teaching classes.”
“Estrella’s kind of cool,” Avery said.
“Is she?” Verona asked.
“Don’t be a goblin, seriously. I’m so goblined out after the stunt at the river and Cherrypop all night.”
“I liked how Estrella handled things the other night,” Lucy said. “I wonder if she’s a good teacher.”
“This might be a bit of a test run,” Zed noted. “Seeing how she handles herself and the younger students.”
“Nicolette shares a bathroom with Estrella,” Brie added. “We could ask her what she thinks.”
Saying Nicolette’s name seemed to get her attention. She was standing between Tanner and Fernanda, and approached, eyebrows raised.
“What’s your take on your bathmate?” Zed asked.
“Organized but not inflexible. Day one, she had a schedule for us to use the bathroom.”
“To use the bathroom?” Verona asked.
“For showers, in the morning. And blocking out time for baths in the evening.”
“Cushy, you get bathtubs?” Lucy asked.
“You can ask for the brownies to put one in, and Estrella asked. Scheduling those wasn’t much of a concern, I don’t take baths,” Nicolette said, folding her arms. “If she brings that kind of organization and conscientiousness to managing students, I think she’ll do fine.”
“The guest teachers have been a bit hit and miss. Or hit and miss and miss, if you want to get the proportions right,” Verona said.
“Your standards might be high,” Zed noted. “A lot of these students are like… Sol, he had six years of lessons with his mom, awakening partway through those lessons at ten or whatever. So even a teacher like Mr. Mace yesterday might be a step up from what he’s had in magical teaching, half his life.”
“You three are leaving later?” Nicolette asked.
“That’s the plan,” Verona whispered.
Why was she whispering. She frowned and looked around.
Estrella, at the front of the group, was slowly lowering her hand. The volume of the crowd dropped. Like a conductor, she flourished, then straightened.
I bet a lot of teachers wish they knew that trick.
“Alexander indicated that the students that won his approval in the class on coup and claim would get to choose our destination, and the three wild practitioners made their choice with my and Silas’s advisement. We felt it was hard to go wrong with a trip to the High Fall. Christmas is a little over six months away and there is only so much time to shop.”
“She’s real serious about Christmas,” Avery whispered.
“If you have a mom like Sol or Talia do, you stress about gifts,” Zed whispered back.
Verona nodded, though Christmas hadn’t been a time to get excited or happy for a few years now. Mostly it was just stress over gifts.
“High Fall is focused on transaction and transformation,” Estrella explained. “I know some of you have expressed some interest in visiting the Shedding Tree, the Corridor Market, the Doll Alley, and other landmarks. We will not be doing that. As appealing as the idea of visiting key locations is, I have taken on the responsibility of guiding you, and I am focused on safety and stability. Those landmarks are tourist traps of a sort, emphasizing the traps. Acceptable?”
She asked that last bit of Ray. Raymond nodded, his expression serious.
“The Faerie is exciting and interesting enough I don’t think you’ll go wanting for things to see, do, or learn, if you take my prescribed route. I will lead the way, Jarvis will hold the midpoint, and the teachers and apprentices who are coming will follow up the rear and watch the group from behind. You’ll be paired off as I see fit, and you’ll stay with the group.”
“We can’t pair ourselves off?”
“No you may not. We’ll be visiting locations where the locals go for their food, resources, trinkets, and materials, instead of locations intended for tourists. The deals are better there, and the residents less predatory. Less. There are still predators in their number, and as Faerie they prey on you on a social level. Your long and storied experience with siblings or friends is more material for them to work with, the nuances between you are subtler, and you will lose in that subtlety. No, I’ll pair you off with people you barely know. Focus on improving that relationship and getting to know them better, and that’s a much simpler matter. It is harder to interfere with without the fae being forced to be blunt.”
She began listing off names.
“I guess we won’t get a date in the Faerie?” Brie asked Zed.
“I think phrasing it that way is like wanting a date in shark infested waters,” Verona remarked.
“We’ll do something another time,” Zed told her.
“It’ll have to wait almost a week. You’re dropping these girls off, I need to redo my binding… then you’re helping teach a class?”
“Lucy Ellingson, Tymon Leos,” Estrella called out.
“Could be worse,” Lucy said. “I sorta wanted to hang out with him more.”
“Does mean you’re not mending fences like we wanted to, though.”
“Careful,” Zed warned, as Lucy walked off.
“You said that at the beginning of the semester, about the Leos,” Avery commented. “To be careful.”
“Their families. Their methods. They dabble in alchemy and you do not want to fall victim to that alchemy.”
“They were told to be good and they’re being good, it seems.”
“Zed?” Estrella asked.
“Can’t I supervise?”
“Huh,” Zed frowned. “I wonder if we can work in some gentle talk about tricky parent stuff.”
“I hope he doesn’t,” Brie said, quiet.
“I only ever see Zed truly unhappy if he’s upset with Ray or he starts talking about his childhood, and he’s already upset with Ray. The two things together…”
“I said too much already. Forget I said that,” Brie said, before departing.
“Zed’s rubbing off on you,” Nicolette said.
“Of fucking course,” Avery said. “Don’t you say anything.”
Verona threw up her hands, the picture of innocence.
“Raquel? With Verona Hayward.”
“Huh,” Verona made a bit of a face. “I don’t get the logic.”
“She’s faerie-adjacent. I wouldn’t try,” Nicolette said. “Damn, was hoping to have a word in private.”
The rest of their group had been called away.
“How come?” Verona asked.
“Doesn’t matter. Maybe later.”
“But wuh?” Verona asked. But Raquel was signaling, and Nicolette walked off.
Because of the thing the other day? The interrogation?
Something else? A warning about the field trip?”
The rest of the students got sorted. Verona walked over and met Raquel halfway.
Raquel looked her up and down. Verona raised her eyebrows, thumbs hooked into the belt-loops of her denim skirt.
“I like your top,” Raquel said, with zero passion or goodwill backing the words.
Verona rubbed her hand across her stomach, smoothing the fabric. The brownies had done their laundry just after the implement ritual, and it was less wrinkled than it might otherwise be. Textured black fabric with bands of lace and more lace along the top and straps.
Raquel was wearing a dress, her hair up in a swirly sort of bun that wasn’t super neat, but seemed un-neat in a way that was very designed, with locks of hair peeling off intentionally. Strands of hair ran down in front of her ears, which had pearl studs in them. She was tall, slender, with brown hair that had a natural wave in it, and something about her made Verona think she was a girl with money who just happened to ride horses, because she had that look. Straight-backed. Sort of reminded her of Lucy in some general ways, like the same skeleton or general blueprint, filled in with something very different.
“I’d compliment your stuff but you always look great,” Verona said.
“Hey, Raquel, I don’t know. Outfit and more? Cut me some slack.”
“Are you getting a headstart on the homework with that compliment? Improving our relationship starting with this?”
“Not really,” Raquel said. “Faerie make me nervous.”
That was jump from one idea to a seemingly random topic, but whatever. “Only sensible.”
Raquel smiled a little, and it was a tight, contained smile. “Seems I don’t have to worry about you being an idiot and dragging me into it.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t say that,” Verona replied.
Raquel gave her a look. Scandalized. Alarmed.
“I mean, we all do dumb stuff sometimes, don’t we? We’re teenagers. You and I are the same age. The whole point is that our brains aren’t fully put together yet.”
“In my family, and families of those close to me, twelve or thirteen is the cut-off point. You need to figure things out by then. You own whatever happens after that.”
“Yeah well… I think that’s dumb. We should get to figure things out by making mistakes and figuring out what we do well, and sorting it all out like that.”
“Maybe. But for most of us, we don’t get to ‘figure out’ anything. It’s decided early.”
Verona wrinkled her nose. “And you think that’s good?”
“I think it just is, sometimes as much as gravity is something that pulls us down and fire is warm.”
Estrella kept on pairing off students.
“Do you know if your uncle or whoever is going to end up headmaster?” Verona asked.
“I’m not allowed to say. They’ll make an announcement, and me hinting one way or the other could be seen as changing the result.”
“Okay, so is there anything about all this that you get excited about? Practices you love? Stuff you’re into?”
Raquel gave Verona a look, a bit puzzled.
“If an Other cooperates with me, that’s as cool as it gets.”
“Oh my god. Okay, new tack. What gets you up in the morning? What gets you excited or makes you happy?”
“There’s a boy I like back home. I think he likes me back. I’m looking forward to seeing him again, maybe asking him out. But are we really going to descend into boy talk? Have we already sunken so low?”
“I think that’d be a pretty awkward convo. I’m not interested, or I guess I’m not interested in the sense you’re talking about. I’ll hear you out if you want to talk about your guy though.”
“Not without reciprocity.”
“I suppose we’ve sunken further than even that level of conversation. We don’t even have boy talk as the low bar.”
“I guess so, frig,” Verona sighed.
Estrella wrapped up the naming. It helped that a small handful of students were apparently sitting out on this field trip. Verona was curious why.
“I’ll tell you now, this is the time to work on your poker faces,” Estrella addressed them all. “We’re going shopping. We’ll model some bargaining for you, so you can do your own if the item is very minor. If the item isn’t minor, then find me or Silas, and we’ll barter. But if you indicate any interest or let your gaze linger too long, then you’ll find that by the time we go back, the product will be inferior in quality and much higher in price. If you find your sellers whispering among themselves before or while you buy, walk away. If there’s something you want and you know in advance, talk to us before we get there.”
Estrella’s hand was bent at the wrist, fingers apart and posed like she had them on strings. As her hand relaxed, she signaled that they were free to ask questions. Nobody had any.
“We walk four astride, don’t walk with your friends, or you invite what comes. Mind your partners, keep them on course. Silence is friendly, rudeness may be a necessity, don’t fall victim to convention, implied or otherwise. Treat them as you would the school’s brownies.”
All students were ready, standing straight.
“I have work to do, so I’ll be leaving you to this,” Raymond said.
“I’ll exclude you,” Estrella told him. She reached into her blouse and pulled out a series of what looked to be seven keys. She selected one, copper, held it in front of herself, raised one slender arm over her head. Then she snapped.
As if shaken free, wood layers, paint, and translucent peels of glass drifted off of the cabins and buildings nearby. They fragmented and caught in the air, drifting like blossoms in the wind.
She snapped again, arm still outstretched overhead.
More of the scene fell away, including details. The leaves on every tree on the far side of the workshop buildings, shingles, wood, glass… there were places which were almost impossible to see on the other side of the now-storm of blossom-like fragments that stirred in wind, dark and distorted. The group of them was caught on the inside of the storm, but the blossoms nearly blocked the view of Raymond.
Third snap. The remnants of the Blue Heron Institute scattered into the wind. The fragments found their place, settling in among fallen leaves. The smell of dried fruit and vegetables was heavy in the air, and there was little to no smell of mold that normally accompanied fallen leaves.
Dappled sunlight stabbed down through the foliage overhead. Trees were squat and strong, with dense branches that met and knit overhead, turning the avenue they were on into a corridor of sorts. Verona turned her face skyward and looked through the leaves and branches, and it looked like there were more and more things that filtered that light. More branches that made it all dappled, or cave roof with holes in it, or clouds and mist. For the light to get this far and be this strong, with beams warming the fallen leaves, it would have to be a hundred times more intense than their sun. Or it was allowed or made to get this far, for this very effect.
Raquel sighed, the breath heavy.
“Are you okay?” Verona asked. “Want to hold my hand?”
One side of the avenue had a stone wall that looked like it had been raised around the trees, with apertures for branches to reach through, and it had been painted with a mural. On the left side of her, houses and apartments were arranged together, in a way that made it hard to tell where one ended and one began. Who owned that archway over a path? What about that house where the second floor bled into the first, but had a totally different style?
Old fashioned buildings, quaint, white plaster reinforced by dark wood, or stone masonry, or brickwork with rough-hewn bricks and greenery woven into the masonry.
Fae children ran by, all wearing masks. The girl at the tail end was covered in dark fur that drew together into styled tufts, her feet tufts suggesting that her feet were curled up at the toes. A boy was so slight and thin that he appeared weightless, using the shawl-like top he wore over a bare upper body that had been painted to help him glide. His feet only touched ground once for every ten steps any of the others took.
The masks were haunting. A skull, a man’s face screaming in rage.
They turned, twisted, but lost no momentum, practically dancing as they eyed the collected Blue Heron students mid-run. Verona met the eyes of a girl with wild hair with branches in it, and those eyes, behind the eyeholes of a bird mask, were coins wedged into empty eye sockets.
This was a feast for the creative mind. The clothes the children wore were things she wanted to photograph and make herself. The mural was something she wanted to spend an hour with. The trees- could she ever own a house and make the trees do that? Did that take generations? Would she have to have kids and pass on the task to them?
She’d never wanted kids and she’d definitely never wanted to pass on a random responsibility to kids like that. She still found her mind doing somersaults, straining to find a way to get… to get here.
“Silas has just reminded me,” Estrella said. Silas stood next to her. “This is so elementary to me it didn’t occur. Don’t get baited. Don’t be led astray. You’re Blue Heron students. Don’t disappoint us all and get… I don’t know. Seduced by promises of a cure for what ails you or by the appearance of an animal that resembles some dead pet. Really. Now follow. Don’t let your eye get so caught you lose sight of who you’re following after.”
Verona refocused. America Tedd was still in the group, paired up with Silas’s friend Jarvis. It seemed they were keeping her close to the middle of the group, while Verona and Raquel found themselves in the tail end.
Estrella touched a point on the mural, and it opened. A door.
Passing through, even with a bunch of other students leading the way, felt a bit like intruding into someone’s backyard. The space was more of a community garden in actuality, with a cobblestone path cutting its way between irregular plots, which weren’t marked out so much with wood or fences as with where the perpetually falling blossoms and fruit had settled. Houses on either side framed and looked in on the corridor-like space. A very normal looking woman leaned out of a windowsill with about fifty birdcages behind her, the birds silent and watching. Her fingers tapped out a rhythm against the side of the house just below the windowsill, like she was playing an instrument, or tapping out a code.
As Verona looked, she saw that some of the ‘fallen leaves’ were bushes, the leaves of those bushes cultivated to be various hues of amber, crimson, and even black.
An old woman by the side of the path was sweeping another cobblestone pathway, narrower. Her wrinkles had wrinkles, her skin was a deep brown, and mouth and downswept eyes disappeared into the detail. She looked almost wooden, except she moved with vigor. She completely ignored them.
The community garden past the houses and into a more open street that looked out on a river. It reminded Verona of Kennet. Of Avery’s house, and how there was her house, then the street, then a patch of nature, then the water. Fae folk were washing themselves and clothes in the water, some were doing something with dyes, and the dye was coloring the skin or hair of some of the younger folk who seemed not to care in the slightest. One slender, feminine figure had tattoos all up and down her body and the dye was absorbed by the tattoos without doing anything to the rest of her, so blue they almost glowed in the gloom from the trees, clouds, and cave roof overhead.
A pretty little child in a dress at the water’s edge was stripped of skin like it was a suit she wore, revealing something vaguely humanoid but insect, which the mother brusquely proceeded with a stiff-bristle brush on a stick. The dye in the water from upstream made the suds blue.
They went over the bridge, and there were interesting people on both sides.
“What do you want to buy?” Raquel asked.
“Uhh… probably everything. But some art stuff would be nice.”
“I think she might have paired us off like she did so we’d temper each other. Each of us being impatient with the other’s shopping.”
“Questioning the other’s picks? So you aren’t interested in art stuff?”
“No. No I’m not.”
This wasn’t a world made for cars, Verona noted. It was for pedestrians, winding, and probably she could live here for the rest of her life and keep finding paths. The obvious paths were maybe the trap Estrella was guiding them past. The way that would lead them to more and more obvious, common routes that would eventually take them to the tourist destinations and major landmarks, where some Fae knew to wait for visitors.
There was art to it and that simple fact made her ache for what her world lacked. That nobody would pave the footpath of a bridge with colored stones in a way that made it beautiful. That murals like that one they’d left behind didn’t exist except maybe as graffiti. Booths on the far side of the river had fae hawking wares. One had things in cages, and let a spine-covered centipede free of one heavy cage so it could wind up an eerily tall woman’s body, settling around her neck like a boa. So she could try it on.
The masked children from before were on the far end of the bridge, sitting on a wall like they’d been there for a while, even though their trajectory had to have been more roundabout. Five sitting, that other boy balancing on one foot, swaying in the wind, hands gripping the shawl.
Past the bridge, the foot traffic was a little more dense. Verona’s head whipped this way and that as she tried to fix images of people into her mind’s eye, saving them for later.
She kept her poker face on, avoiding betraying any fear at a glimmer of something behind a mask or hood, avoiding too much interest when a man walked alongside her, naked and barely covered by the cloth he’d draped over himself and belted close at the waist. He raised a hand in a wave to someone distant, picked up speed, and then became wind-scattered pages, browned at the edges with age, the wind of his initial momentum carrying the pages over the heads of people in the crowd.
The market spaces here were so often haphazard, wedged in, so that one had to squeeze by, or almost squeeze through. More buildings, more like apartments than the vague homes of their starting point, framed all of this, and they walked down a street that one car might have passed, that had booths on both sides and fae navigating between.
A hand took Verona’s, firm. She turned and saw herself face to face with a man shorter than she was. He held up her hand, adjusting his grip to hold her middle finger. “How much?”
“For the finger?” she asked. Raquel’s hand rested on her back.
“Fingernail. It has glamour beneath it. Two second process, I put it between my teeth and pull. It’ll grow back. I’ll…”
He reached into a pocket, He tried to push fat golden coins into her hand. She didn’t let him.
“I’d take the finger if you’re offering,” another man said, leaning into the other guy like he was a friend. “Like biting a carrot in two.”
“No, I’m not offering.”
“These coins are real gold, a small fortune. No strings, no obligations, nothing I do comes back to you.”
“No,” Verona said, disquieted. She pulled her hand free of his grip.
The group had slowed, so they hadn’t fallen behind, but there was a Fae wearing very similar clothing and similar-ish hair to Melody Kierstaad, walking a matter of feet from her. Verona wondered if she should call out a warning to Erasmus. How easy would it be for Melody to get snatched up, that Fae walking alongside Erasmus instead?
“Art stuff,” Raquel said.
“Are we shopping?” Verona asked, wishing they’d gotten further from the fingernail guy before finding the art.
“I think so. Hey! Are we shopping!?”
Her voice carried, and drew a lot of eyes.
Rather than Estrella answering, it looked like Silas answered, and others along the line passed on thumbs up.
Art stuff, in this case, was a series of little portraits, each with brushes that had a single hair. Writing Verona couldn’t decipher seemed to note what the hairs were from.
Oh, the art also suggested it. Hair from lovers reaching hands together but unable to touch. Hair from a horse with a fish tail for a back end. That seemed impractical steedwise, but the hair had a blue tint.
“Come on,” Melody called back.
They were urged forward, and Verona gave the stones a longing look before hurrying to catch up.
Estrella was negotiating at a table. “Seventy five Canadian dollars.”
“You betray ignorance, girl. We don’t trade in your money. Do you have any baby’s sighs? Untold jokes?”
“Seventy Canadian dollars.”
“My dear… what are you doing? Do you want this?” the merchant asked. he wore a simple, crude clay mask over a face that, just from the little that could be seen, looked ten kinds of beautiful, with skin marked in thousands of fine lines ranging from silver to gold to ruby, overlapping and interlocking. A hooded cloak covered most of the rest of him.
What he held was a bottle with what looked like a miniature baby in it, pale blue in greenish water.
“Sixty-five Canadian dollars. We can keep going or you can give up the act.”
“I am all act, and this is a treasure. Worth far more than-”
“Seventy-five. I suppose I can find some use for your currency. Let’s not keep your audience waiting.”
“Fifty-five. I have a responsibility to my audience, and backing down now would fail them.”
The cowled man held out the bottle. Estrella didn’t take it, instead counting out the money. She made sure he had a grip on it before taking the bottle, then let go.
“Fae love our currency,” Estrella said, putting the bottle into a bag. “High Fall Fae come to our world to bargain and barter, to purchase things to bring back here. They maintain connections that way. Go shop. Come to me if you have questions.”
“What was that?” Talos asked.
“A potion. Something to gift away come Christmastime.”
Verona caught a glimpse of Avery hanging out with Fernanda, looking at a top. She was smiling, animated.
She caught Verona looking and flipped the bird at her. Verona laughed, which got a look from Raquel.
“My friend. She’s sorta asking for that fingernail guy to come for her, giving me the finger like that.”
Avery was doing better at this random partner thing than Verona was. Figured.
Verona resolved to give this a better shot.
“What do you want to buy?” Verona asked Raquel.
“Tools. I spent a little while getting power, I’ve spent my whole life learning to most efficiently and subtly use the power I do have, but the last week taught me there are some gaps.”
“Gaps?” Verona asked. “You’re a collector, right?”
“Indirect use. Like your friend’s earring. Or chalices, or talismans, or books. Less swords and wands, which are good at doing.”
“Ahh. So to fill the gap, you’re looking for a weapon?”
“Something I can put power into, in a bad situation.”
Some dude and his female companion were getting undressed in the middle of the street, which was woah, simultaneously getting draped in other outfits that they were trying on. Further down, a man was so unrealistically tall he couldn’t feasibly see the things in the booth or talk to the seller. He used his cane to stab at an oil lamp in the display window, indicating it. He banged it twice in short succession to confirm or deny something.
In another booth, two kids roughly Verona’s age, a boy and a girl, were modeling modern clothes, while a crowd pressed in tight, invading personal space to squint, peer, and stare, not at the clothing but at them. Their skin and their hair.
Verona peered at that one, curious, and someone saw her looking, hurrying out of her way. That same person grabbed Raquel, one hand at Raquel’s upper right arm, the other at her upper left, and snatched her up off the ground.
“Hey!” Verona shouted. She kicked him. His leg was hard beneath her toe.
“Here, here!” the man said, not even seeming to care about the kick. “An expert!”
“Two of them, let’s see, let’s check!”
“Do not manhandle me,” Raquel said.
Verona had to fight to keep up, pressing forward, pushing some Fae aside.
Raquel was pushed to the front of the crowd, many hands turning her around, and she was placed face to face, more or less, with the children, who were a bit shorter than her.
“Assess!” a man said, in a heavily accented voice. “Tell us! Does it fit? Are the details right?”
“Details about what?”
“Skin! Hair! The glint in the eye, the sound of their breath!”
“Pay us,” Verona said. “In common currency, no curses, no tricks. Expertise is worth something.”
“Yeah,” Raquel said. “Deal.”
Verona pushed her way forward until she stood next to Raquel.
It took a few seconds of haggling, but some of the Fae of the crowd made their agreements.
Verona joined Raquel, leaning her face in close to the boy while Raquel checked the girl.
“How do they put it on?” Raquel asked.
“A bit of glamour to grease the fit, any point of entry works but the top of the head is common.”
“Bend over?” Raquel asked. “Show me the top of your head?”
The girl did. Raquel poked at hair. Verona arched an eyebrow, watching.
“Whorls to the way the hair flows away from the crown are weird. But you wouldn’t notice that unless you went looking,” Raquel said.
“I think there’s some link between hair whorls and autism,” Verona mused. “But I don’t think you’d want to jump to using autism as cover for being nonhuman. That’s gross.”
“Better to just hide it,” Raquel said.
“Folds and little creases around the eye look good,” Verona said. “Those are tricky. And eyes vary. I had to study a lot of models for my drawing and I’m still awful at it.”
“We should pay you less then,” said a man in the crowd.
“Taste and ability are different things,” Raquel said. “We can have refined taste and not have the ability to replicate it. You’re paying for taste.”
“Nicely said,” Verona answered. “Teeth?”
The boy smiled, showing his teeth. She motioned, and he opened his mouth wide.
“Mouth opens a bit too wide.”
“An accommodation for some types who would wear the skin,” the seller said. “They must eat, after all.”
“And those who don’t will need to restrain the movements of their mouths to make sure they don’t unnerve people.”
“Buyers are informed. Part of the package includes lessons in acting.”
“Clothes are nice,” Raquel noted.
“We asked a merchant on the Earthside to pick.”
“So you don’t know enough to include that in the classes? That’s tricky,” Raquel said. “If you’re wearing clothes in a particular style, you’ll want to stay consistent to that style.”
“We’re Fae, we understand style better than you could in a lifetime.”
“Sometimes the people who invest the most in fashion are the most out of touch,” Verona commented. “Being too fancy or innovative is going to throw people off. You have to match the times, the area, the personality of the person picking.”
“Being a little below-board is better than being perfect,” Raquel said.
What would Jeremy wear? What would Jeremy look like, if he swapped places with this boy?
“Oh,” Verona grunted the word. “One thing jumps out at me.”
The seller, a slender guy with a faint point to his ears, seemed intrigued by that, but she had the vague sense he was a little nettled.
“He’s not blushing. Girl in his face and he’s not blushing or bothered.”
“He may not be attracted to you,” the seller said. “Boys vary, as do those pretending to be boys.”
“Maybe, sure, I’m okay but I know I’m not anything special. But can they blush?”
“Makeup, glamour, and tricks can indeed put a blush on the cheeks.”
“But he can’t blush on his own? I think that’s where the uncanny valley is coming from.”
“Just… so close to reality it should work, but it doesn’t and it feels vaguely creepy. The lack of reaction and the lack of blush…”
“Skin not matching temperature and circumstance,” Raquel said. “You’d be a bit paler with this breeze flowing through.”
“They did get goosebumps, though. Gotta tie whatever they did to do that to subtle color changes, mottling,” Verona said. “I think that’s all I got.”
“Payment,” a man said. He got what looked like some marbles out of a pouch, pouring them into his hand. She’d seen something like those in the Shellie vision.
Dealing with brownies, which reminded her of Bristow, which… the people around her weren’t un-brownie-like.
The area suddenly felt very claustrophobic.
She glanced through the crowd, reminding herself of where America was. She saw America staring at her.
“Silas!” Raquel called out.
“They’re paying us for a review. One-twentieth the stated value of one of these.”
Silas counted out the marbles. As they caught the light, images were reflected in them.
“Three sweet sorrows, four severed bonds, eight bursts of inspiration, twenty baby’s sighs.”
“How would we split this in half for Verona and me?” Raquel asked.
Silas organized it. “I can change it for bills, if you want. Or I can change bills for more Fall currency.”
“Are they useful on their own?” Verona asked.
“For manipulating glamour? Yes.”
“Can you point us to tools? Weapons?” Verona asked.
“Tools yes, I don’t think they sell weapons here.” He pointed.
They headed down to the far end, and in the doing, they passed Lucy.
“Talked to Estrella about what we were interested in. Catch you when she gets back to us.”
“Great,” Verona said, before following Raquel.
At the far booth, there were some artisan-style objects that looked like they were high quality, but a quick check confirmed that the only magic they held was from them being here, absorbing that dust that filled the air and soaked into things. At the next table, there were some objects that were explicitly magic items, and Raquel immediately set to checking each with an expert eye, haggling. She didn’t seem too focused on one, and Verona hoped it kept her from being cheated.
An old woman with a child’s proportions and amber eyes endlessly studied a simple hammer.
“Pen. Every means of dying you pen down can’t find you in the next sixteen hours.”
“How clear is that? If I put down fall, will it save me from the fall, or will I still die from the landing?” Verona asked.
“You would need to specify both.”
“And if I put down stabbing, would that block out kidney failure?”
“It could. It could.”
“Meaning it could not?”
“I don’t want a pen, and I don’t want another defensive item,” Raquel said. “Tell me about the knife.”
“It’s a key, it’s a way in, you see.”
“I don’t want a key.”
“A violent means of entering the person stabbed. You’ll get one breath to do as much harm to them as possible, while walking around in the temple of their Self.”
“Seems more efficient to use a regular knife and stab them more than once in that same breath,” Raquel noted.
“If you want them to die, yes. But if you have an enemy you want to destroy…?”
“I might’ve had enough destroying for one lifetime, thanks,” Verona said, uncomfortable. “What about that hammer?”
She indicated the hammer the tiny old woman had.
The woman startled, slapped some of the marbles down on the table, and then fled, carrying the hammer.
“Right. Okay, cool. And this needle?”
“Whisper a name to it, then let it go,” the seller stated. “Salamanseu.”
The needle twisted around, quivering as it pointed back over the seller’s shoulder.
He let go, and it flew into the head of a wooden bust on a shelf behind him, impaling one eye. Fifty needles exploded out from within, extruding from face, ears, chin, and the back of the head.
“You named the bust?” Raquel asked.
“After a cousin. I had custody of my child’s child, after my son was lost in war. This scion of my scion… a rare thing for us, you call them…”
“Grandkid?” Verona guessed.
“Yes. Grandchild. We have so few children and fewer grandchildren that we exist long enough to see. And my cousin turned her into a fish and fed her to me. I smile when we meet but I’ve named the bust after him. Perhaps one day he will chance upon this market at the same time I demonstrate how the needle is used.”
“Good luck with that, I guess,” Verona told the seller.
“Seems too simple,” Raquel noted.
“It can’t kill, you see. Permanently blinds, deafens, wounds the mind, but it won’t ever finish a man nor fae off. And you mustn’t ever say the name of someone you don’t wish to destroy while you bear it on or near your person, unless you’re willing to accept the collateral damage.”
“I see, I see,” Raquel said.
“If you want a killing weapon you may have better luck beyond this market. It’s against laws to kill, you see. That earns us exile or the predations of the Hunt, depending on who dies.”
Verona felt uneasy, and she had a hard time putting her finger on why. She stepped a bit back, surveying the crowd and keeping an eye on America, as America held out something that was clearly goblin-made.
The children from earlier sat and reclined on the rooftops on either side of this market, the girl with the bird mask and coin-eyes draped on the downslope from a roof’s peak, on the verge of tipping over and falling the full way down, the lightweight boy standing on a peak.
A small hand clutched at her, startling her. She pulled back, more uncomfortable. People were so grabby.
She turned, and saw a child, about ten, of indeterminate gender and shaggy hair, inside a birdcage. The person carrying the cage on a pole tugged, and the child hung on, resisting.
“Help,” the voice was reed-thin, sonorous.
The seller gave Verona a sharp look, expression twisting.
“I didn’t think they sold children in these markets,” Verona observed, her heart in her throat.
“Not for sale,” the person with the pole barked. He was covered in curly hair, but he had eyes that made her think of a dog, not a person. Too wide an iris, not enough white. And burly enough to carry a ten year old child in a metal cage on a long pole without really straining much.
She could see a bit of Daniel’s expression in the child’s face, behind that long hair. A bit of Shellie, after everything.
The child tugged, pulling Verona closer, and the other hand gripped her shoulder, fingers catching on the lace strap of her top. She didn’t know what to do, but was caught between holding on and extricating her strap from his grip at the same time.
“Did you come here by deal or bargain?” Raquel asked the child.
“Shush!” the owner barked. “Don’t answer!”
The child fell silent, but pressed forehead against thin wire bars, grip tightening.
Something in his eyes, wide-
He spoke, quick and rushed, and it reminded Verona of leaping off of that bridge. “I didn’t. My name-”
The owner pulled, and his grip came free, lace strap tore, and the cage thunked hard against the ground as he was dropped. Silencing him for a moment. Then the owner was off, pushing through the crowd, which blocked Verona as she stepped forward. Raquel gripped her arm, tight.
“Bill Her-!” the boy shouted. The noise of the crowd and possibly some other interruption from the person carrying him cut him off.
“A ruse,” Raquel said. “It’s bait on a hook, I think. To pull us in. It’s good you care, but don’t fall for it.”
“How would you know?” Verona asked.
“The voice. It sounded too perfect. The timing of the details he released. A hint of a name, and you have to chase to get the rest? I don’t think you’d find your way back.”
“I met someone who had a voice like that. Perfect and weak at the same time. It wasn’t a ruse for him.”
Raquel’s expression darkened at that. Like she’d been sure, and now she wasn’t.
“I don’t think you’d find your way back,” Raquel repeated herself.
Verona nodded, but she felt unsure.
She tried to fix her strap, which had slid off her shoulder, but it had torn or stretched some, and slipped off her shoulder again.
“Your friends want you.”
She gave that road the boy had disappeared down a long look, then went to find her friends, Raquel following.
A woman sat in a booth with skin that looked like it had been painted like a fine plate, except it wasn’t paint. Some books and papers were arranged in front of her, but they were for her, not any buyers.
“Here she is,” Lucy said.
Lucy, Estrella, Avery, and their partners were all gathered around.
“Keeping an eye out for America?” Avery whispered, leaning in close to Verona and glancing back.
“Hopefully we’re okay, between all of us,” Lucy said.
“Are the questions and answers both for all ears present?” the woman asked.
Avery and Verona exchanged a glance, while Lucy made a pained expression.
“Do you want to go for a short walk, Fernanda?” Raquel asked.
“I guess, is that okay?” Fernanda asked.
“Yes,” Estrella told them.
This still wasn’t super private, but…
“You want a decisive means of dealing with the High Summer and Dark Fall Courts?”
“Yes,” Estrella said.
Verona’s heart, already heavy, felt heavier. In this claustrophobic space that reminded her of Brownies, of what had happened to Bristow… that boy, it felt worse.
She could hold herself together, and avoid betraying weakness, but there was a feeling nagging at her, like this was bad, and it was a bottomless sort of bad, that bothered her and ate at her.
And all that needed was something more, a push over the edge.
She looked for America in the crowd once again.
Absent. And Jarvis, her partner, looked bewildered and alarmed.