Page 54 of By the Orchid and the Owl
Jagaros dipped his head.
“You’re athousandyears old? Whatareyou?” Definitely not a typical tiger, with that lifespan. My next whisper cracked through me. “Are you a faerie?”
Jagaros lifted his head to face me, so close that I could smell his breath—a waft of sky and earth and blood. “Not anymore.”
A bite of fear bolted through me, but then Jagaros had closed his eyes again and settled his massive head in my lap. I resumed my pets, my heart scampering.
“Why you?” I was still whispering. “Why did you answer my Branding instead of—well, any other animal?” Not that I could call him an animal anymore, but still.
Jagaros took some time to answer… so long, in fact, that I could hear Mrs. Wildenberg releasing our class through the thickness of the foliage. I’d have to go soon, before Emelle or the others realized I was missing and started to worry.
“They were afraid,” he said finally. “Afraid of that deeper power they sensed imprisoned within you, scrabbling for a way out. But I was not, and so I came to you. I am still not, and so I will come to you again and again, no matter how much your power shifts and grows and tries to break free.” He opened a single eye to peer up at me. “Your power does not scare me, Rayna Drey.”
I swallowed the swell of tears in my throat.
“It scaresme, Jagaros. I don’t understand it. I don’t know where my mother and the other pirates got it from. Surely, they had to have sailed in from somewhere—another island, maybe, or another continent. Surely, they didn’t just drop from the sky? If I could just learn more aboutthem, maybe I could understand myself and where that part of my ancestry came from.”
None of the schools back in Alderwick had ever taught us much about the world beyond Eshol except that it was full of monsters, and Mr. Fenway, too, kept his history lessons contained within the island.
A small, skeptical part of me had begun to wonder if that domed shield existed to keep us in just as much as it existed to keep those monsters out.
Jagaros arched his back in a sudden, lazy stretch.
“I think,” he said, “your best bet would be to start with a map.”
The next day, all of us first-years lined up outside the Testing Center, waiting for the last of the second-years to finish trickling from the building so we could go in.
After hours and hours of waiting, my toes were curling in my shoes at the anticipation, until Coen’s voice flitted in my head.
I can feel your stress from the other side of campus, little hurricane.
I know you breezed through your test this morning,I thought back,but that doesn’t give you the right to judge others for some nice, proper nerves.
He chuckled darkly.You just don’t want me to leave next year.
I’d been trying not to think of it actually, but—
“Is he in your head again?” Emelle asked.
“Unfortunately,” I said, hoping he’d hear.
He did, sent me an image of his middle finger, and slipped from my mind.
Rodhi sighed, bouncing on his tiptoes to see over the jumbled mass of first-years between us and the front swivel doors of the Testing Center.
“If you two would just get a room already and spare us this grotesque amount of flirting, I think I’d get my appetite back sometime within the next month.”
“Oh, please.” Emelle ripped her wandering eyes from the crowd around us—to find Lander, a sly part of me suspected—and rounded her attention on Rodhi instead. “As if you don’t flirt with every human being with boobs. And sometimes ones without boobs, too.”
Rodhi flexed his knuckles. “I’ve got to practice for Ms. Pincette. By the time I make a move on her, I’ll be so good at it that she’ll be physically incapable of resisting me.”
Gileon, who’d been watching the Testing Center without tracking our conversation in the slightest, suddenly said, “Hey, Wren, over here! Right here!”
I couldn’t see over all the heads like Gileon could, but sure enough, Wren had barged through all the bodies and found us moments later. Her usually black clothes were dusted with lively yellow pollen, and some kind of mucus coated her hair in a slippery sheen.
“How did it go?” I dared ask.
“I passed, but barely.” She raked off a handful of mucus from her hair and lobbed it to the cobblestone. “It was Ms. Pincette’s test that did me in. That was probably worse than the fourth quarterly test last year, where I had to sit in a private testing room with Mr. Fenway and pretend I didn’t smell his digestive issues.”
