Page 106 of By the Orchid and the Owl
There had been so many dangerous memories Kitterfol could have snatched. The cockroaches. The cave. Fabian’s letter. Lord Arad. The maggots. If enduring a false bondage scene was the price to pay to protect those memories, then so be it.
Even if I’d never be able to shake that image from my memories, now: myself, chained up and spread wide open for Coen to mock and tease and lord over.
“You saved me,” I repeated, pressing my face against his chest, telling myself that what I’d seen, what Coen had done to me, wasn’t real. Wasn’t real. Wasn’t real. “Thank you.”
Slowly, his shaking subsided, and we all four fell into a quiet huddle.
But none of us slept until the Good Council left at dawn.
CHAPTER
39
Whether Kitterfol Lexington and his henchmen had caught on to Fergus or not, nothing seemed to change after their departure. Fergus still showed up to Predators & Prey the next day, a greasy half-smile barely concealed behind his twitching jaw when Mr. Conine announced that the Wild Whispering sector would get to skip our third quarterly test in honor of Mr. Fenway’s death.
While I felt horrible for Mr. Fenway himself, I had to admit this was a relief to hear. My progress with insect communication was going dismally compared to everyone else—Emelle had started to request specific songs from the crickets outside our window at night—so this would give me extra time to practice.
But I couldn’t shake the feeling that even extra practice wasn’t going to help me at this point.
“I just don’t understand why I was able to talk to those fire ants during the first week of school but no other insect since,” I told Emelle and Lander as we squeezed into the stadium during the first game of the official pentaball tournaments: Shape Shifters versus Element Wielders.
Coen, as his house’s prince, sat in the front row with the other class royals. I kept half an eye on his back as the referee lined everyone up.
“Well, let’s think.” Emelle blushed as Lander’s hand rested on her knee, but she stuck to the conversation resolutely. “What was different about that time? You were saving our asses, for one. And you were… what—scared?”
“Scared. Angry. Desperate.”
I mulled it over, chewing on my bottom lip. It didn’t seem to fit. I had also been scared and angry and desperate with the cockroaches and maggots, and they hadn’t done anything more than laugh at me.
Lander cleared his throat with a fist to his mouth. “I know I don’t know anything about Wild Whispering, but have you tried talking to the ants again? Maybe that’d give you a clue as to whytheylistened to you.”
Emelle turned shining doe eyes upon him. “That’s actually a good idea!”
Someone gagged. Wren and Gileon had just sidled in, each carrying a bucket overflowing with snacking peanuts. I would have asked where Rodhi was, but I knew by now that it’d be pointless—no one could keep track of that kid.
“I’d offer you some,” Wren told Emelle and Lander, “but I wouldn’t want you drooling all over the buckets. You two are worse than Rayna and Steeler.”
“Hey!” I exclaimed, nudging her. But my attention had snapped to the field, where Mr. Gleekle was trudging out to face the crowd, right between the two opposing lines of the chosen Element Wielders and Shape Shifters.
“Ladies and gentlemen!”
Once again, a thousand different branches of wind seemed to carry his voice directly to our ears.
“It’s time for the first pentaball game of the season! I ask that you remain seated for the entirety of the game, no matter how long it takes, and don’t interfere with the happenings on this field. Players.” He half-turned to the ten crouching men and women behind him—all fifth-years, by the looks of them. “If you touch anyone in the crowd with your magic, your team will be dismissed immediately and the title will be granted to your opponents. Do you understand?”
I couldn’t make out if they nodded from this distance, but Mr. Gleekle turned back toward the stadiums a moment later, apparently satisfied.
“Now, a moment of silence, if you will, for one of our dear instructors in the Wild Whispering sector, Frank Fenway, who tragically passed away last week due to a fungal infection.”
From this far away, Mr. Gleekle’s glasses made his eyes look like glinting gray orbs. The sky, the stadium, the very spinning of the world seemed to pause its breathing, waiting for someone else to break first. Gileon fidgeted.
I couldn’t have moved if I’d wanted to. Fungal infection? Really? It was one thing to keep such sensitive information from the entire campus, but to blatantly lie about it? Although I supposed, as the corpse-quiet seconds ticked on, perhaps a fungal infectionwasthe best way to describe what Fergus had done.
“Thank you,” Mr. Gleekle said mournfully… although his face stretched tight with a smile. “Now, I’ll hand this off to our referee, and may the best magic win!”
He pumped a fat fist into the air.
The referee held up a neon green flag. Again, the entire stadium seemed to pause. All ten players were crouched like Jagaros had been in the abandoned classroom, poised to mutilate their opponents. Each of them held a ball, too, although I made note of the differences in their grips. One Shape Shifter clutched the orange spiked one between two vise-like hands. The Element Wielder across from him, however, simply pinned her warty green ball in the crook of her arm.
