Chapter Four Taissa
Chapter Four
Taissa
“Ticket?” the dour-faced clurichaun conductor asks, smelling faintly of alcohol.
His eyes are rimmed red, and there’s an old, crusty lipstick stain on the side of his pale, freckled face.
No doubt the faerie spent his whole night at some club or another and is now reaping the consequences of a brutal hangover at his day job.
It’s impossible to blame the poor man, though: Taissa has never once met a clurichaun who didn’t have a borderline-concerning addiction to chaotic nightlife.
The train is scheduled to leave Banallan Station on the hour, bound for Pinion-upon-Keat in England.
Extremely regulated high-level Unseen glyphs cover its entire exterior, hiding it from any prying lacker eyes, along with a few other sorts of glyphs.
The trains of the UKHC work differently from their UK counterparts.
For one, they fly.
It would be too complicated, too tedious, to etch glyphs into every single train track, to carve out the space for them within the world of the lackers.
So the trains of the UKHC take to the spacious skies instead, which provides noticeably fewer complications.
(Except for the occasional wayward plane, jet, hot-air balloon, and large flock of birds.)
Sitting in a small passenger coach across from Kion and bouncing her knee in anticipation, Taissa silently hands the clurichaun her slip of parchment, the ticket that Kion so graciously bought for her.
She’s brought a pair of suitcases with her.
How depressing that her life in the cottage could be packed neatly up into two bags.
How depressing that it only took her a couple seconds to decide to leave it all behind.
(Oh, fine. Yes, she’d known she’d take Kion’s offer the moment he uttered it. The chance to play carriwitchet again—Morgana, she’d have chopped off her left leg if he’d asked her to. But she’d enjoyed toying with him, anyway. Sue her.)
As the clurichaun checks Kion’s ticket, Estee Cho’s warm voice crackles in Taissa’s ear through the cellphone she holds.
“But the vegetables, darling, the vegetables,” Estee is lamenting.
“Who knows the state they’ll be in without you?
You get an abnormally large number of weeds!
And have you contacted the landlord? You know, I think putting in the patch added considerable value to the house.
Don’t let him tell you otherwise. Stomp on his toes if he does. ”
Taissa refrains from pointing out that the vegetable patch in question is only a small square prone to nibbles from wayward rabbits, and the occasional meager harvest by a hungry ghillie dhu.
(Many a potato has gone missing courtesy of the leaf-clad faerie Taissa had once spotted making off with a handful of her root vegetables.)
“This move,” Estee continues, suddenly sounding suspicious. “It’s all so very sudden. Are you sure this is a good idea? Will I have to bail you out of jail for killing Kion Locke?”
“Possibly,” admits Taissa.
“I would, of course, but I’d rather not have to waste any money on that terrible boy.
” There’s a slight shifting on the phone line, and Taissa can just imagine her mother angrily pacing in her hotel room.
“You know, maybe you should murder him. Somebody ought to put him in his place. I saw this fascinating documentary about this lacker murderess a few nights ago. She was a genius. So here’s what you should do: Cover his clothing in cow pheromones and lure him into a bullfighting ring. Oh, and make sure he’s wearing red.”
Taissa grins. Estee is the only one, these days, who can make her smile, really smile. “Okay…And where, exactly, shall I get cow pheromones?”
Across from her, Kion looks bewildered.
“You know, the documentary skipped over that part.”
“Right.”
“I would assume that you get them from bodily flu—”
“Mum.”
“What? It’s science, hummingbird.”
“I am going to hang up now.”
“Wait, Taissa.” Estee takes a deep breath, evidently collecting herself. When she speaks again, she’s serious. It’s a disorienting thing for Estee Cho to be. “Darling, are you sure this is a good idea?”
Her smile slips. “Mum,” she says, massaging her temples, “Mum, please, it’s carriwitchet.”
A long pause. Estee, of all people, knows what the game means to Taissa—knows what she lost when it all ended; knows what she would give to gain it back.
(Her soul. She’d sell her soul.)
It was Estee who enrolled her in those first riding lessons at the Witchery.
It was Estee who later insisted on Taissa trying out for the school’s carriwitchet team, convinced that Taissa needed something, anything, to do with her absurdly high energy.
At the age of eleven, Taissa had no hobbies except for being offended when people told her to get some, but as soon as she stepped onto that pitch, she was in love.
Carriwitchet is the most heavily gate-kept sport, thanks to the strict regulation of winged beasts by the UKHC’s Department of Magical Creatures.
The DMC is wary of allowing everyday folk to purchase Wingeds, trusting only highly trained breeders, handlers, coaches, and other authorized folk (including board-certified carriwitchet players) to treat them in accordance to UKHC law—and to be treated well in turn.
(The occasional Winged, after all, discovers an appetite for human flesh.)
The Witchery’s carriwitchet teams had used hippogriffs. Taissa can still remember running her hands over those downy feathers for the first time, breathing in the smell of the stables, suddenly wanting to excel at riding more than she’d wanted anything in her life.
So she did. She became the best rider in the entire Banallan Witchery.
And when she made the school carriwitchet team at twelve, it was the greatest joy she’d ever known. She was like Kion Locke, she remembers thinking, the first athlete—before her—to ever make an NCL team at eighteen. Her first carriwitchet crush.
(Truly embarrassing, now, that.)
Although she never officially glyph-bonded to the old Witchery hippogriff she’d rode, Taissa had loved ancient Faulk with every inch of her heart.
Only NCL players, the pros, are awarded the honor of the sport-specific Bonding glyph with their Winged.
Which is why only witches and warlocks can play carriwitchet—they’re the only ones who can use glyph-magic, the only ones besides Wingeds whose skin is tough enough to tolerate the inking of that ancient runic sorcery.
It’s supposed to be a lifetime link. When the player retires, the Winged does, too.
They’re bonded, and nothing breaks that bond.
Except in extenuating cases…like Taissa’s.
Her and Sansa’s bond was broken. Taissa had been shunted off and replaced by Elise.
She scowls and once again itches to leap over and murder Kion Locke.
Across from her, he’s watching her with an inscrutable expression.
She raises her eyes to his and mouths, Bugger off.
He makes a sound of irritation low in his throat.
So many ridiculous growls. What does he think he is, an animal? Taissa rolls her eyes as Estee sighs. “I’ll sort out the house for you, hummingbird.”
“Are you sure?” But with a sinking heart, Taissa knows she is. Her mum’s solution to Da’s death? To keep busy. Busy, busy, busy. Even two years later. “I could—”
“No, no. Let me. But we’ll give it a few weeks. You’ll have a home to run back to if you take my advice about the cow pheromones…”
Seriously considering it, Taissa says her goodbyes to her mum before ending the call and setting down her phone just as the train begins to rumble.
Trying to ignore the Warlock Annoyance that is Kion Locke, Taissa peers out the window as the wheels begin to turn, as the train begins to roll out of Banallan Station.
The tracks only go so far. In a few hundred feet, they stop completely.
Excitement—that familiar thrill of finally being in flight—tightens Taissa’s stomach as the train gains speed, the station rushing by in a blur of stone-gray, surrounding Scots pines becoming smears of rich green against the cloud-smudged sky, which looms closer and closer as the train rises into the air.
She digs her fingers into the cushion of her seat as their carriage, with a mighty thunking sound, slants vertically as the rest of the train drags it upward.
Oh, no.
She’s forgotten, between the call with Estee and all the talk about cow pheromones, to strap on her takeoff seatbelt.
With an angry screech, Taissa goes flying from her seat, tumbling down right onto Kion’s lap for the second time this day.
Her hands scrabble at his shoulders, desperate to find a grip, while Kion looks back at her coldly, with no amusement.
“You are ridiculous,” he grits out.
With another thunk, the carriage evens out, and Taissa rolls off his lap, hitting the floor hard. With what little dignity she can gather, she drags herself back up to her feet, huffing a curly lock of hair out of her eyes.
“Oh, leave off,” she grumps back, settling down into her seat and looking out the window.
The Hidden City of Banallan is a landscape of rolling greens and misty grays beneath them, and for a moment, Taissa pretends that she’s atop Sansa, soaring through the air, the wind whipping her face, tugging at her clothes.
Her lips quirk upward at the fantasy, and when she glances back toward Kion, his expression is too knowing for her liking.
Hastily, she flattens her mouth and crosses her arms as Kion reaches for his backpack and pulls out a weathered notebook.
“What’s that?” asks Taissa, trying to sound bored, tapping her fingers on her knee. She actually has a rather good inkling of what it is, and her interest is very much piqued.
Kion seems to be grinding his teeth. “A book of plays,” he grumbles. “And no, you can’t see it.”