Chapter 11
CHAPTER
Emelle side-eyed my dress the next morning on our way to History. Today, I’d chosen a longer one that would hide the various scrapes, bites, and pin-like puncture wounds from the sundew yesterday, so it swished around my calves with each step.
But I still felt self-conscious as I tried to brush off the weight of her glances. If Dazmine had noticed my knives, maybe I wasn’t being as subtle as I thought I was. Maybe Emelle had noticed, too, and was just waiting for me to broach the subject myself.
“How was the party last night?” I asked before she could change her mind and start asking questions—not just about the dresses, but about why I hadn’t come to bed until well past midnight.
My hand still stung with blisters from all the knife-throwing I’d inflicted upon myself after Jagaros had left.
“Oh, let’s see.”
Emelle sighed as we weaved through the Wild Whisperer sector. Wren had been running late and told us to go on without her, and none of us had any idea where Rodhi was, so only Gileon trailed behind us, once again deep in conversation with his rhinoceros beetle.
“I actually managed to teach Lander how to grind,” Emelle said.
“Pierson Kadder got so drunk that he invited a gang of howler monkeys inside to play mini pentaball—trashed the boys’ house completely,” she added.
“And then a few Element Wielder girls had a fight and ended up electrocuting the crap out of each other’s hair. ”
“Wow.” I bit my lip. “That sounds… fun.”
Emelle smiled sadly at me as stray drops of rain peppered the stone pathways.
She took a deep breath and said in a lower tone, “Look, I know you’re not ready to tell me what’s going on, but Lander’s house is having a party on Friday.
And I really think it would be nice if you joined us for real this time.
” She paused. “Not just to go through the motions, but to let loose. Like you said, have fun—even if it’s the dumbest, most senseless fun you could ever imagine. ”
Fun. Could I have fun with the thought of Lexington arriving on Saturday for an update? Of the memory I had to show him—how I’d only nicked Steeler’s jaw and needed help catching him when he came back to force-feed me another pill this Sunday?
Emelle was just inhaling a breath to say something else when we descended the stairs to the old History classroom. And both stopped dead in the doorway.
Gone was the musty, moldy scent that had accompanied Mr. Fenway. Gone were the cobwebs and swirling dust motes.
Now, the desks and chairs glistened with new polish, and—
“What the hell?” I yelped.
On every wall where old chalkboards and posters had once been, displays of dried insects faced us instead, their various wings spread wide and pinned in place.
Stuffed animal heads glowered down from massive plaques nailed to the wall: red brocket deer and hippos and even a leopard.
There were pairs of tusks and canines and rattlers and…
I closed my eyes against the onslaught of all the images, just as fresh gasps bloomed from behind me. The rest of the class had filed in, their cries of shock echoing the shriek of my magic within me.
“Don’t look, Nuisance,” Gileon whimpered.
“Settle down now, settle down,” came a rasping hiss of a voice.
An instructor plunged through the jam of bodies near the doorway and stepped to the front of the classroom, her hair like inky quills sticking out of her head. I blinked. Then blinked again.
Because I knew her. She was the same hunchbacked woman who’d passed out our fourth quarterly History test last year…
Except she wasn’t hunchbacked anymore. Her spine was straight as a spike now—almost too straight—and her nose looked less hooked.
The instructor surveyed us with undersized eyes rimmed in too many layers of kohl.
“I have assigned each of you a desk for the year, so please find your nametag and take a seat,” she said in that same hissing tone.
We all glanced at each other. Assigned seats? We were all nineteen, for God’s sake. I couldn’t remember sitting in an assigned seat since I was five years old at the Alderwick schoolhouse.
“Now,” the instructor said.
Glancing at Emelle, whose face had drained of all color, I edged toward the nearest row of desks to peer at the nametags placed neatly on each one. Norman. Mitzi. Dazmine. Pierson. Cilia. Gileon…
A minute later, everyone had found their seats and settled in, muttering under their breaths. Emelle was on the other side of the classroom from me, but thankfully I’d been placed next to Rodhi…
Who barreled in a few seconds later.
“I’m not late!”
He skidded to a halt before the desks, his mouth popping open at all the taxidermy. I tried to catch his eye and urge him to that empty desk beside me, but his eyes stayed glued to the nearest plaque of otter tails.
“No, you are not late,” the instructor said, “but…” Her undersized eyes strayed to a clock between stuffed heads. “Now you are. Please sit in your assigned spot before you become even more so.”
Rodhi mouthed the words “assigned spot” with a dazed expression, but stumbled toward me and lowered himself into his chair.
I nudged his foot in an attempt to break him from his stupor. Rodhi did a double take, leaned in close to me, and whispered, “Looks like someone got some Shape Shifting work done over the dry season, huh?”
Thankfully, Mr. Fenway’s replacement hadn’t heard. She was too busy staring down her no-longer-hooked nose at Gileon in the front row.
“As you all may know, this is History, not Spiders, Worms, & Insects. There shall be no flying or buzzing things in here.” She smiled at Gileon. “Please take your little pet back outside where it belongs.” Before I nail it to the wall, too, she didn’t have to say.
I’d never loathed an instructor before, but now my fingers actually twitched on my desk, begging me to grab my knife in case she got too close to my friend and the beetle he cared for.
Throat bobbing, Gileon hefted himself up with Nuisance perched on his outstretched finger. Every eye followed the trek of his heavy footfalls to the door and back.
Maybe it was for the best that Nuisance wasn’t in a room with all his murdered and pinned-up peers, but I still hated the way Gileon slumped back into his assigned seat, empty-handed and looking as if he’d like to curl into something so much smaller.
“Very nice.” The instructor returned her attention to the entire class. “Now, I’m sure you all remember me from last year. I am Mrs. Smetlar, and I am here to teach you about the Esholian biome—the flora and fauna of our island over the last few hundred years.”
She didn’t pace, but her eyes did—swinging this way and that as if to keep track of everyone all at once, a smile still stamped on her face.
“However, I would like to start off the year with a different piece of history that is crucial to our understanding of our jobs as Wild Whisperers of Eshol. And that is the topic of the Final Test… And the fraction of you who will be exiled in four years’ time.”
Rodhi’s jittering knee fell still. On the other side of Emelle, Dazmine jerked her head up, and nobody else dared breathe.
Mrs. Smetlar pretended not to notice the reaction, but I saw the way her eyes had stilled. The way her lips had pulled up even more.
“You see, when Dyonisia Reeve first founded the island and learned how to recycle the discarded faerie metal at the top of Bascite Mountain, there were no tests or exiles at all. There was simply the domed shield of protection, the monsters beyond it, and the Esholian pilgrims safe and sound within.”
Monsters beyond it—monsters as in Steeler. I pressed my fingernails into my palms to keep my hands from shaking as pain unspooled in my head. Rodhi glanced over at me, his forehead creasing with questioning concern, and reached out with his leg to tap my foot with his. The message was obvious.
Calm down.
Easy for him to say. This was only the second or third time he’d been calm in his life. But I dragged in a deep breath and willed my hands to uncurl.
Rodhi gave me a short nod and returned his attention to Mrs. Smetlar up front. Hesitantly, I followed his lead.
“—that kind of protection was vital,” Mrs. Smetlar was saying, “But then the first unworthy citizen was gifted with Wild Whispering.”
She waited for someone to make a sound, maybe a gasp of shock.
When nobody did, she said with a bit more impatience, “The new Wild Whisperer was given the simplest of jobs after her Branding: to protect the children of the settlement from predators while they played outside during the times their parents were busy.”
I could see where this was going, and I didn’t like it. Not one bit. Especially since it seemed like all those dead animal eyes were zeroing in on us. Watching our reactions to what came next.
“A leopard,” Mrs. Smetlar said, nodding up at the stuffed feline head above her, “stalked a few of those kids and waited until all the other villagers were gone. Until only the Wild Whisperer remained to guard them. And then it pounced. And the pathetic waste of life who was supposed to be protecting them had no idea what to say or do to get the cat to stop its attack.”
I tried not to look at the leopard head, so similar to Jagaros’s.
“Afterward,” Mrs. Smetlar continued, “the parents were so angry that their own powers began to malfunction. Magic-made storms and plagues and infestations threatened to destroy the entire island… until Dyonisia Reeve came up with a brilliant solution to ensure that nobody would fail their magic or their fellow villagers again.”
The Esholian Institute. The Final Tests. Banishment.