Page 44 of By the Orchid and the Owl
“Oh. Right. Wild Whisperer now, and all that.”
“Yes.”
This was not at all how I’d imagined our reunion would go. Even after what had happened with Lander, I hadn’t expected her to go from obliviously carefree with me the night before Branding to… whatever this was.
I gestured at her dry hair, desperate to return a sense of normalcy to our conversation.
“It looks like you’ve got good control of the rain already. That’s so cool!”
“What?” Quinn looked down at herself. “Oh, yeah. I can make the water sort of… skirt around me, leave me alone. I’m not advanced enough to make an umbrella for you, too, though, I’m afraid.”
“It’s okay.” I waved a hand. Breathed.
She said, “Well, I’d better—”
“Will you go hunt a crab with me?” I cut in.
Quinn’s mask didn’t reveal a flicker of surprise, but she said, “What?”
Briefly, I explained the deal I’d made with the crocodile.
To my relief—and terror, as if part of me had been hoping she’d say no—Quinn shrugged. “Sure, I guess. I’ve been meaning to visit the beach anyway.”
Silently, we began walking side by side toward the Testing Center. Behind it, I’d heard, there would be a stone staircase leading down to the shore. Although we weren’t allowed to mess with the shield, we were allowed to dip our toes in the sea.
I spent the entire ten-minute walk there trying to come up with a way to broach the subject of Lander, constantly wiping the rain from my eyes. But even that subject dropped from my mind when we finally rounded the enormous Testing Center and came to the top of that staircase sandwiched between wrought-iron lampposts.
“Wow,” was all I could say.
I’d known there was a drop down to the ocean, but I must not have gotten a good enough look from that carriage in the sky. I saw it now, though. Stared down at it and felt a swoop of dizzying fear. Because the Esholian Institute campus was truly perched on the edge of a cliff that went down and down and down.
Even the staircase had to zigzag as it descended, hugging the cliff’s edge with little more than a flimsy wooden handrail. And down below… Quinn and I had always mused about the white, sandy beaches we’d get to lounge on at the Institute, but down below was the furthest thing from white and sandy you could get.
Rocks, sharp and spiky, cluttered the ground. Only a narrow strip of gritty sand, dark gray in the rain, separated those rocks from the clash of the sea.
Beyond it, of course, the air shimmered with the domed shield, and even from here I could see the pirate ships dotting the waves past it. Was my mother out there with them, wondering what had ever happened to her lover and daughter? Or was she still somewhere on Eshol, avoiding me on purpose, keeping her identity hidden?
A streak of lightning in the distance made me blink. Made me remember myself and who I was with and what I had to do.
“Element Wielders first?” I said, in an attempt to get Quinn to smile.
She didn’t. She just began the march downward, and I followed.
When we were near enough to the bottom that I could breathe again, I finally said, “So who’d you spend the night with?”
Not that it was my business, but… we had once told each other everything. And maybe it would be a good way to segway to Lander.
Quinn shrugged.
“Some Object Summoner, I think. I woke up in the Summoner house, at least.” She stepped down from the last ledge of the staircase and nodded out at the shimmering dome. “Someone from my house tried to mess with it last night. The shield. He shot a spear of ice at it to see what it would do. It only rippled for a moment, but the princess of my house electrocuted him twelve times as punishment. In front of everyone.”
“Oh. Wow. That’s horrible.” I stepped down after her, wondering why she’d told methat, of all things. We began picking our way through the rocks, toward the ebbing tide. Down here, a thick mist clung to even Quinn’s clothes, and the rain came down harder than ever.
“Why…” I cleared away the accusation in my voice. “Why didn’t you at least break up with Lander before moving on?”
Without looking at me, Quinn said, “I couldn’t find him. The three of us stepped out of that carriage and got separated immediately, remember?”
Now the accusation crept back up my throat, because what kind of an excuse was that?
