Page 1 of By the Orchid and the Owl
1
The clock on my nightstand had ticked close to midnight when I finally abandoned my sheets and hefted open my rickety window pane.
There weren’t many times I’d snuck out—especially on nights where I damn well knew I needed as much sleep as I could get—but these rarities always involved my best friend, Quinn. Whenever she left a little painted rock on my windowsill, it meantmeet me at the HouseASAP.
The green-painted stone that squatted outside my window now had appeared there nearly an hour ago, but Fabian’s and Don’s creaking footsteps outside my door had only just faded into their own room.
My fathers wouldn’t punish me for sneaking out, not like Quinn’s strict, Mind Manipulating mother would. But I still had no desire to watch their faces sink into disappointment if they caught me dropping into our flower garden the night before my world changed forever.
Like I was doing now.
Lifting myself from my crouch, I brushed soil from my bare knees and eased my window shut behind me before creeping through the begonias and onto the street gilded with flakes of moonlight.
My nightgown swished around my legs as I hurried down the street, but it wasn’t the only sound. Frogs yelped to each other beneath waterlogged storefront porches. Bats swooped and clicked. A constant torrent of crickets reverberated off the canopies rising on either side of Alderwick’s line of houses, and distant thunder nearly always moaned from some corner of the island.
No lights were on, though, and I was confident nobody would see me as I stuck to the shadows, taking a sharp corner right after I passed the town square to sneak behind the apothecary and to a certain tree a few steps into the jungle.
I could smell Quinn’s smoke before I could even make out her silhouette, and I grinned despite myself as I climbed the rungs we’d nailed into the trunk when we were ten. The House, as we called it, was nothing more than some floorboards and a twining bamboo wall cradled within our favorite tree, and there were always a few too many scarabs scuttling along the bark. But we were still fond of the hideout even after all these years.
“What, no Lander?” I asked, plopping down beside her and curling my arms around my knees.
Besides Quinn and me, Lander Spade was the only other eighteen-year-old in the village of Alderwick. The three of us had been fast friends since the day we could play pentaball in the streets, but Quinn and Lander had been… well, sucking each other’s faces off, to put it bluntly, for the last two years.
Quinn angled her face toward me, her curtain of ruby-red hair parting around her faint smile. As always when she snuck out, one of her mother’s hand-rolled cigarettes (stolen, of course) dangled between her fingers, and she exhaled smoke in a perfect oval. She’d asked me if I’d wanted to try enough times for her to know I’d pass, so she didn’t hold the cigarette out to me as she said, “Nah. He’s sleeping like a big, dumb baby anyway. I knew you’d be the only one still awake.”
She’d gotten that right, at least. Tomorrow morning, a stranger would whisk us away to an institute that hulked by the edge of the sea, where every eighteen-year-old on the island would be gathered like a herd of sheep for the Branding. The Good Council would grant each of us one of the five sanctioned magics, and then we’d have five years of training to master our gift. To hone it. To prove our worth as citizens of the island of Eshol.
Only those who could pass a benchmark got to come home. The rest…
Quinn cut me off from those forbidden thoughts with a smirk as she said, “Did you say goodbye to Wilder?”
Wilder was my not-so-official kind-of crush who happened to be a year younger than us, and therefore wouldn’t be coming to the Institute until next year. Wilder and I had never let ourselves get serious, knowing that our age would inevitably break us apart come my Branding time. But we’d shared a kiss. Or five.
“If a quick fondle in his uncle’s barn can count as a goodbye,” I murmured, swiping at a flying insect near my face to hide the blush climbing up my neck.
“Rayna Drey, you naughty thing!”
Quinn smacked my arm, but when she took another drag from her mother’s cigarette, I could see the expression on her face tighten amid the smoke, and I knew she was about to divulge the real reason she’d summoned me to our little treehouse for the last time.
“I heard my mom talking while she was making me do her puppet work.”
Right. Mrs. Balkersaff used her Mind Manipulating gift both as a counselor for troubled villagers and as a way to make her children behave. It was always an uncomfortable visit at their house when Quinn was finishing up chores with a washed-out expression, her mother having cleaved through her mind to will her into doing them.
“Just because Mom forces me to quit talking doesn’t mean I can’t hear,” Quinn said now, rolling her eyes. “And God of the Cosmos, did Iheartoday, Ray. You know Mrs. Pixton, the one always burning pies at the bakery?”
I nodded. In Alderwick, even if everyone didn’t exactly know each other, we knewofeach other. I could picture Mrs. Pixton’s skinny legs and stout upper body, and I knew exactly why she’d be in the company of the village counselor.
“Her son didn’t pass his test, did he?”
The Final Test at the end of those five years of training. The pass or fail that would dictate our futures.
“He was exiled,” I went on when Quinn didn’t answer right away.
Because that’s what happened to those whodidn’tpass—to those who couldn’t demonstrate enough control of their gifted magic. Banishment. And considering the fact that bloodthirsty pirates circled our island’s domed shield of protection like vultures, waiting for each year’s offering of outcasts…
Well, I’d heard enough whispers about what those pirates did to the outcasts to know I didn’t want to join them.
Quinn blew out another cloud of smoke. “Actually, Mrs. Pixton is convinced her son is still on the island, locked up somewhere and waiting for her to rescue him. She’s in denial that he was exiled and wants to confront the Good Council about it.”
