Page 88 of By the Orchid and the Owl
“Ew,” Emelle said.
“Scolding Jenia?” I asked, ignoring everything else that was wrong about that statement.
“Yeah.” Rodhi sighed dreamily. “Jenia was bitching about how Gileon is a ‘brute unfit for civilization’ or something idiotic like that, and Ms. Pincette said, ‘the only one unfit for civilization is standing right in front of me, Ms. Leak.’ God bless her.”
Gileon frowned. Despite everyone’s continuous congratulations and Wren’s continuous gloating, I knew he was still feeling guilty about sending Fergus to the sick bay yet again. And I had a feeling thatJeniaknew he was feeling guilty, too.
Which was why she’d called him a bully, loud and clear for him to hear. To hurt his feelings. And that made my blood hiss in my veins.
When would it stop?
After a few more of our failed attempts to draw out the pill bugs, Ms. Pincette came trudging our way in her high-buckled boots, her chestnut hair tucked neatly behind her ears as always.
She didn’t even ask us if we’d succeeded before snapping, “Class dismissed. Please practice over the weekend. These things are wrecking the root systems around here.” I lifted myself off the trunk of the mangrove along with the others, but Ms. Pincette added, “Not you, Ms. Drey. If you’ll follow me back to the classroom, I would like to discuss something with you.”
Rodhi’s head jerked our way. “I’d be happy to volunteer in Rayna’s stead.”
“I’m sure you would, Mr. Lockett.” A wry smile slipped through Ms. Pincette’s pursed lips. “However, this is a discussion relating to Ms.Drey’sdeficiencies, not yours.”
Deficiencies? I guess Ihadn’tbeen doing too well in class ever since the cockroaches—none of the insects ever seemed to want to listen to me—but I’d been listening and practicing andtrying, so…
When Emelle quirked a brow at me, I said, “Go ahead. I’ll meet you guys back at the house,” and followed Ms. Pincette back toward the classroom.
She didn’t speak the entire way there, her posture arrow-straight as she picked through the undergrowth until we’d reached weed-cracked cobblestone again. It was only when we came to the classroom door that she glanced back—but not at me. Over my head, as if to make sure nobody had followed us.
Then we slipped inside. She closed the door behind us and clicked her way to her desk.
“Here.” She rummaged through her drawers and brought out a massive tome, which she thumped onto the desk. “Extra reading for you, Ms. Drey.”
I inched forward and angled my head to read the gold-gilded lettering beneath its thick coating of dust:Creepers and Crawlersof the Past, Present, and Future.
“Oh. Thank you?”
Ms. Pincette’s attention latched fully onto my face. “Open it.”
I did so, reaching out to grab the edge of the cloth binding. The pages crinkled as I flicked through them, finding insect diagrams and pages upon pages of miniscule text. Ms. Pincette cleared her throat.
“Open it to page nine hundred and ninety-nine, I should say.”
Feeling like I was definitely missing something by now, I sifted toward the back of the book and stopped, breathless. The entire text had been whited out and inked over with…
“A map,” I whispered.
Ms. Pincette inhaled through her nose.
“I do love my spiders, but I’m capable of talking to birds, too. Specifically the seagulls who just migrated back to the island a couple weeks ago.” When I continued to stare, she added with a sigh, “They’re immune to it. The shield.”
There it was again, that word.Immune. What could Coen and a seagull possibly have in common that would warrant their safe passage through the dome?
Before I could ask that or squint too heavily at the whorls and lines of ink and the tiny descriptions scrawled in the corner of each page, however, Ms. Pincette slammed the cover shut right in front of my nose.
“As I said, extra reading to make up for your deficiencies in class. If you dare tell anyone else otherwise,evenyour very best friend in the whole wide world…”
“I won’t,” I said quickly, not wishing to hear the tail-end of that warning. Even as I said it, though, I felt the words dry much too quickly on my tongue.
How could I keep this from Jagaros the next time I saw him, when he’d been the one to suggest such a thing to me? How could I keep it from Coen, whom I’d allowed back into my mind after the formal?
Worse yet, how could I keep it frommyself? From that obsessively churning, constantly buzzing part of me that wouldn’t be able to focus on anything else with a map of the world imprinted in my mind’s eye?
