Page 22 of By the Orchid and the Owl
“N-nothing,” the man stammered, and it was then that I realized this whole section of the crowd could understand Jagaros as well. A blush creeped up my neck.
Our conversation hadn’t been private, not from everyone.
Jagaros hissed out a curse once, the Wild Whisperers around me flinched, and I watched as the white tiger bounded off into the night.
I couldn’t even hear the results of the rest of Branding, what with how many Wild Whisperers—my new peers, I realized with a pleasant jolt—reached their hands out to congratulate me with thumps on my back, or hissed excited questions in my ear as soon as I had squeezed in between them all.
“What did the tiger say up onstage?”
“Have you everseenit before?”
“You’re so lucky! He was beautiful.”
I answered everyone to the best of my ability in a hushed voice. Before I knew it, Mrs. Wildenberg was hobbling away with the emptied sunflower hat, the other two instructors were hauling off the cart of used brands, and Mr. Gleekle was spreading his arms wide again.
“Now that you’ve all joined a sector,” his wind-carried voice cried, “you may go see your houses for the first time and meet the members of your new Institute family. And remember, classes start tomorrow at sunrise, so don’t stay up too late!”
His chuckle was lost in the rumble of the crowd as everyone sprang upward.
And began running.
I followed, forcing my legs into a jog as my sector streamed around the stage and onto Bascite Boulevard. I didn’t knowwhywe were running, but I wasn’t going to disrupt this newfound sense of belonging to ask stupid questions.
After a thousand stomping footsteps and a hundred cheers that sprang into the night, my sector split off into two different directions: the girls to the stone mansion on the left, and the boys to its twin mansion on the right. Behind and before us, other sectors were doing the same, rushing into their designated houses like forks in a river.
I hurried up the steps to my new home for the next five years, passing beneath that giant balcony overhead and crossing through the white-trimmed doorway. The foyer, as massive as my entirecottageback at home, split into two different staircases in the back. One spiraled upward while the other dropped down. Between them, a giant cuckoo clock seemed to watch the whole room.
No sooner had I made it into this foyer when someone slammed the double doors shut behind me, and I was pushed toward a lump of girls in the center of it.
The rest of the female Wild Whisperers, young women ranging from nineteen to twenty-three years old, surrounded us with clasped hands, forming a ring of connected bodies that drew us closer and closer together.
“What—?” someone beside me began.
The women around us sucked in a unified breath and began to chant:
We, the whisperers of the island
Welcome all who’ve heard
Any part of this great, big wild
From boundless bud to rarest bird
I jumped when something spiraled up my ankle. A vine, snaking from everywhere and nowhere at once, winding tighter and tighter around me and then spilling toward the girls on either side of me. Lacing us together. As the chant continued, more and more vines stitched us even closer, until we were nothing but a tangled knot. Until I couldn’t exhale.
Each plant sings a song of old
Each animal has a tale
Each creeping, crawling little thing
Speaks to us as well.
So we listen to each warble,
Each hiss and howl and growl,
We protect and care, this we swear,
