CHAPTER FIVE
ELLIOTT’S BARE FOOT RESTED AGAINST James’s boot underneath the hunter’s moon of coppered October.
The phosphorous fog receded in the distance of the silent mountains.
James had stripped down to the waist beside him, his chest dampened from exertion, his roughened breath briny from the brackish river where he’d rowed for five thousand meters.
Elliott’s shirt rested beneath his head.
He star gazed beside him in the serenade of the crickets, the campfire warm against their cheeks, the earthy resin of cedar bark redolent of rained soil.
He’d fallen asleep against Elliott’s shoulder, his lips parted in the dark. He’d always fallen asleep that way.
Elliott savored the moment. The rare moment they were truly alone.
The sky was awash with brisk stars above the vast canopy of the Nixon Forest. The clouds heavy, rich with petrichor; the wind bowed like an archer.
Despite the threat of death that encroached them in the winter ritual, the autumn was Elliott’s favorite time of year.
AEscwulf College for Statecraft and Art came alive in autumn for recondite purposes.
The College spared no expense for the dark celebration of the death of nature.
Earlier that night, the violinists soared as the arias of the opera singers lilted above the strings of the cellists as if by magic.
Even hours after dinner, Elliott was drugged with the intoxicating, illicit, sensation of its enchantment.
He always drowned in their dramatic descant as opera students practiced their late October performances fortnight after fortnight.
Their symphony of Tchaikovsky’s The Enchantress and Marschner’s Der Vampyr ensorcelled the ears, spreading warmth throughout his chest in its heavenly sound.
Entranced, Elliott ran his tongue over the edge of his teeth, which still stung from three hours before.
At the autumntide reception, AEscwulf College served Macbeth hell-broth with the full expectation that the students would sip every last drop. The final drop, of course, was dredged in arsenic. Not enough to kill, poison, or injure, but enough to scald the tongue lithely in a touch of faint acid.
The complimentary sweets were delicately drizzled with chokecherry extract.
The air was perfumed with blood-hued mist as the students were gifted rare, first-edition publications of The Vampyre by John William Polidori. The airs of achingly pure, silvery sopranos and thunderous, magnificently deep basses coalesced in perfect mellifluous euphony at the annual dinner.
The seniors devoured the formal soup of newt eyes and raw lizard without hesitation, acclimated to the eccentrics, as the sophomores ravaged their plates of owlet meat down in their throats, eager to impress the faculty.
Frightened, the freshmen retched into their serviettes before the perfectly seared fillet of fenny snake could be served with wool of bat.
As always, northern long-eared bats were apportioned, for the dark-winged bat was the insignia of AEscwulf College.
Every autumn, the Baneburians refused normality at every opportunity. The College was populated by the children of the nouveaux riches by then, and therefore modernity had attained victory over traditional rites and raiment in the end.
Nevertheless, the College prided itself with its peculiarity.
Enchanted, Elliott loved how strange and exciting AEscwulf College became in the fall term.
He was enamored by the rich, rarified air that rose with notes of cognac, complemented with the aged scent of old compendiums. Walnut oil paintings of myths were hand-brushed by artisans across his dormitory ceilings in vivid, impassioned strokes.
Its archaic beauty left Elliott drunk with admiration.
He was sobered only when the first snowflake descended from the depths of the serene sky, reminding him that his idyllic haze was over.
On the brutal week of Samhain, Elliott tensed. A snowflake rested against the freckled bridge of his nose. The hardened earth bore the early marks of the winter solstice.
At twenty-one years old, James was eligible for the sacrifice ceremony that December. He was deemed old enough to die for art.
Uncaring of his fate, James laid on the mottled deadfall of the Nixon Forest with the leafy soles of his boots besmirched with pine needles and mud.
They’d slept through the warm ups of the choir singers and the clarion notes of the classical orchestra ensemble.
They’d fallen asleep that way since they were young.
Their limbs twined, twisted.
Their breaths exchanged.
Whenever the air smelled of James’s masculine, cypress scent, Elliott could drift to sleep with ease.
They’d become best friends. At night, James practiced for the winter recitation deep into the late hours, until his eyelids could no longer lift.
James was the star of the Platonic recitations and the provost would be present, therefore he mumbled with concentration. Even in his sleep.
James Wilde’s rowing captaincy had been killed with Mr. Newton.
The matter was ruled a weather-related incident instead of vehicular manslaughter. Knox Pearson damaged his left wrist irreversibly and Finch Hudskin had to be mechanically removed from the wreckage, lucky to be alive.
James’s right eye was slashed open in the collision, scathed with violent scars. His right arm went through the windshield, needing seven surgeries, and effectively removing his position as the coxswain.
Each boy was immediately tested with breathalyzers, urine drug examinations, and blood alcohol content evaluations to check if there had been illegal drunk driving involved in the death of the teacher.
Each of them were cleared, except for James Wilde, who tested positive for a low alcohol level.
Due to the early March freeze, he often sipped from his grandfather’s metal Scotch flask to keep himself warm before he rowed towards Massachusetts for practice.
The underage drinking scandal nearly resulted in a charge of involuntary manslaughter, and James’s future disintegrated in his hands.
Elliott, haunted by the graphic imagery of his dead biology teacher, became dependent on slumber to forget everything.
Elliott couldn’t sleep alone without seeing punctured eyes, the gashed throat, the blood-smeared chest. James slept beside him at night to help with his night terrors, outdoors in the trackless forest or indoors in the dormitory, it didn’t matter. James was there for him.
James barely bothered to ever make it to his own dormitory regardless, he was a tornado of theoretician textbooks, rhetoric pages, and socialist materials. There wasn’t an empty inch of space left on his crowded mattress to sleep, so he’d had a habit of sleeping in everyone else’s bed.
Elliott’s bed most often.
In the wake of the scandal, James’s father nearly lost his position as high commissioner due to the relentless British press. He blamed James and he would’ve murdered him if he could have. AEscwulf College was a pagan-founded institution, established for the purpose of the hibernal ceremony.
His father sent him to die there.
He hated his father, he loathed himself more.
Elliott didn’t want to breathe in hopes of not stirring the upperclassman. He kept his skin an inch apart after a minute. His mind was a war of chaos; he’d had the horror dreams again. The aftermath of the vehicle obliteration. It left him soaked in sweat.
For the entire night, Elliott’s breaths came fast and hot, panicked.
Elliott’s hands ached for a brush. To paint until he wasn’t left breathless, gasping, terrified. He tried to brush to keep calm and centered as he was taught. He tried to forget the harsh, wintry weeks Mrs. Ledgerman abandoned him outside.
At dawn, the ducks, the geese, and the waterfowls chorused on the millpond, and James left the pine woods for the cramped dorm to fetch coffee.
He treaded intemperately through the dim corridors.
Barely awake, he drank the maple coffee straight from the pot in the Winterthur Hall Common Room.
Examination papers were strewn over the oak floors with various stains of espressos, teas, and bourbons.
He stared at a rowing oar someone had left behind.
The Common Room surrounded him with the fine smoke of Cuban tobacco.
The caliginous haze settled over the dark, vintage artifacts that predated the establishment of the country itself.
A second skin of bergamot and amber musk emulsified the atmosphere of refinement and class paradigmatic of Banebury.
Brass embellishments reinforced the nineteenth-century furniture situated below the reticulated windows, impressively walled by ceiling-high burnished bookshelves, and adorned with decadently translated literatures of Latin, Old Norse, Old High German, and Old English.
The antique fireplace churned warmth throughout the massive gathering area.
Despite its magnificence, the dormitory was encompassed by almost nothing but prairies and mountains outside.
People often confused AEscwulf for a small, rather empty college.
There were almost no buildings in sight. Not much more than a bell tower and a handful of established architecture–such as the dormitories, the amphitheater, and the refectory.
Not many citizens believed there was a college there at all, let alone confidently knew about it.
However, AEscwulf College was where the generational decisions in the country were surreptitiously decided–if their children would be fed in hard times, if their taxes would be raised, if their communities received adequate funding.
The campus was split cleanly apart—the visible campus and the concealed campus.
There was an intricate labyrinth beneath the campus. Tens of dust-laden lecture halls; scores of ancient libraries; thousands of ritual wine barrels. Concealed entirely from sight.
James returned to Elliott’s dorm room with hard Scotch steeped in the coffee. Elliott’s dorm was a disaster of cassettes and bundled clothes.
As always, Elliott had left the window slightly open, and a spindle of autumn leaves of honeyed-golds, blazing scarlets, varnished auburns, and browned coppers had breezed across his teak floors. Nature flooded the room with its cedar scent.
James undressed, leaving his clothes in a pile. He rifled through the disorderly closet.
Buttoning himself, James was already reaching for a tie as sleepy, messy-haired Elliott finally stumbled through the dormitory when James offered an idea to him. “A student ran away from the College last night. Do you want to break into the office of the registrar with me?”
Elliott’s bloodshot eyes widened. “What?”
Once one was admitted into AEscwulf College, one was never permitted to leave. Not without explicit approval from the provost. The obsidian gates were a hundred feet high. Approvals were never given.
“I heard they climbed the gates to keep from being chosen for the hibernal ceremony. The secretary locked their file, but we could expunge the record.” James’s eyes landed on Elliott with mischief. “Will you come with me?”
As always, Elliott was pulled into the charismatic magnitude of James’s eyes. He would follow him off of a cliffside, if James wanted. He nodded.
There were very few things Elliott Archway loved on this earth. His sister, Halle Mercer, and the stars were most of them. His best friend was essentially the rest.
Yet Elliott braced himself for the unwanted attention ahead. He grasped James’s hand on second thought. “Everyone will see us. We could be reported.”
“Not if we move fast enough,” James smirked and fastened his belt for him with his palm on the leather. Sometimes Elliott forgot how deeply comfortable James was in the attention of the masses. “Get dressed.”
Elliott tugged on a woolen sweater over his head. “I’ll be seen then.”
James pressed his mouth against Elliott’s ear and Elliott was taken back to the crisp, cold afternoon in the whitewater rapids where they first met. “You’re always in your head, Elliott. Don’t you trust me?”
Of course, Elliott was in his head.
Whenever James was in the science annex of AEscwulf College, hundreds of eyes found him.
A flock of students gathered around him like waves of hiereus.
Which meant hundreds of eyes would be on Elliott as well.
It didn’t help that James and Elliott were of patrician height.
Elliott dressed himself all the same. Will a student be publicly punished even during midterms?
Elliott nodded. “I trust you.”
Elliott wore his normal fox-shaped pendant the same color as his wavy, smoke-brown hair, a herringbone tweed blazer patched at the elbows, and a linen shirt underneath buttoned with a crested tie and, last, a pair of pleated trousers.
AEscwulf students were required to dress in the classic attire of the old century era of University of Cambridge in England with crewneck sweaters, starched ties, pleated trousers, and formal oxfords.
English countryside attire was further expected as though they were on the hunt for pheasants and foxes throughout the year.
The irony of the sartorial requirement of Cambridge did not escape Elliott when the English of the time would’ve despised AEscwulf College.
An institution that sent their own students to death.