Page 28 of By the Orchid and the Owl
I scrambled up the slope, and my crocodile sunk back beneath the algae.
Mr. Conine cocked a bushy brow at me.
“Clever to offer him something in your stead, but make sure to follow through with that promise. Otherwise, you’ll never be able to return to this swamp again without him ripping you to shreds on sight for what he’d consider a betrayal.”
I nodded.
“Yes, sir. Thank you.”
Great. Now I’d have to figure out how to catch a crab who could talk back. The thought of a little crustacean snapping its claws at me, begging me to let it go while I hauled it to a crocodile marsh… it made me sick to my stomach.
Later. I’d dwell on it later. For now, I watched the rest of the class slowly but surely make it to the bank, soggy and reeking of rotten eggs, until only one was left: the greasy-haired boy who had scoffed at Gileon in History.
“C’mon, Fergus, you’ve got it!” Jenia cried.
Emelle, huddling close to Rodhi and me as she shivered from head to toe, passed me the faintest of smirks—probably at the sight of Jenia’s perfect figure drenched in just as much filth as the rest of us.
In the swamp, Fergus was saying, “No, I don’t want to pick moss out of your teeth, you ugly brute.”
Within half a second, the crocodile was surging forward with an open jaw.
Within the next half second, tree roots shot from the ground at Mr. Conine’s feet and wrapped the crocodile from snout to tail, holding it back, before—snap.
The crocodile tore from the makeshift ropes and lunged for Fergus…
Who was already clawing his way up the bank, cursing.
“What kind of a teacher do you think youare,” he seethed, raising himself to a stand before Mr. Conine, “sending us into that nightmare on our first day?”
Mr. Conine just observed him calmly.
“I’d hardly say calling it an ugly brute is anyone’s idea of praise. That was a female, so she took particular offense to that.”
“I never wanted this,” Fergus said, clenching his fists, and even Jenia held back to bite her lip. “I never asked to be a stupid crocodile whisperer. I would have picked any other sector besides this one.” And he stomped off.
Rodhi whistled. “Too bad for him we have to go back through the swamp to get home.”
“No.” Mr. Conine tracked Fergus’s trek deeper into the jungle. “EvenIwouldn’t want to mess with the crocodiles twice in one day. We’ll go around. And remember.” His eyes skipped over each of us. “Our blooddoes not choose what form our magic takes. None of you had any talent like crocodile whispering lurking in your veins before Branding. Rather, the magic itself decided, the moment it merged with your blood, to make you a Wild Whisperer.”
He paused, and the creak of the jungle, the thickness of the humidity, the chit-chatting monkeys and high-pitched birds high up in the treetops, pressed in on us.
“Do not,” Mr. Conine said, “disappoint the magic that chose its shape within you.”
Befriending Prey was aloteasier than Befriending Predators.
Once we’d returned to the classroom and made our way inside, Mr. Conine had an Element Wielder colleague come by to magically swipe the water and grime off our clothes and bodies.
I still felt an invisible layer of filth on me anyhow, but I couldn’t complain. Not when we all spent the next hour of class sprawled on the floor, playing with capybaras.
At dinner that night, we told Wren about Fergus’s meltdown.
“Ahh, I’ve seen guys like him before,” she said, digging into her coconut bowl filled with fruit and seeds. “He doesn’t just think he’s better than everyone else. He expects everyone else to think it, too. I mean—” She swallowed thickly “—take me, for example.Ithink I’m better than everyone else, but do you seemegoing around demanding everyone to bow to me? No. That, my friends, is for guys like him.”
“You know,” Emelle said, “I’d love to have your self-esteem, Wren. I really would.”
At that moment, Rodhi returned from wherever he’d been (I was learning not to question it when he scurried off, since he seemed to have friends in every corner of campus) and thumped his hand down on our table.
“Guess what, all you pretty little darlings? Including you, goth girl,” he said to Wren, who scowled at him. “You can go ahead and thank me right now, becauseIjust got our whole sector into the coolest party on campus tonight.Weare going to the Manipulator house.”
