Page 100 of By the Orchid and the Owl
“How generous of them,” I said sardonically as we descended the steps into Mr. Fenway’s classroom, where the old man was shuffling papers at the front. “Considering they would have no interest in biting people if it weren’t for you.”
“Hey.” Rodhi lifted his palms. “They’d spare me and my team and absolutely mutilate the others.Ithink that’s a pretty good strategy.”
Maybe it would be, but I was still glad knowing that Kimber would rather pick a sloth than me. Pentaball was fun as a casual thing, but I shuddered to imagine myself on that field with thousands of eyes following my every movement. It would be like the Branding ceremony all over again, but with a ball instead of a tiger.
“At least you’re able to talk to mosquitos.” I took my seat while the rest of the class filed in and took theirs around us. “Whenever I try, they just whine.”
It was true. I’d been resorting to taking jarred insects back home to try to communicate with them in the study room—to no avail. I wouldn’t have been so concerned if it wasn’t for Coen’s insistent demand that I pass all of my next tests. Even Willa had taken to watching my failed attempts on the windowsill, audibly sighing whenever I cursed at the cockroach or maggot on my desk.
“You’ll get there,” Rodhi said, patting my hand. “I still can’t make those damned monkeys laugh—their fault, of course. They’ve got a shit sense of humor. I mean,Ithink my gorilla jokes are funny, but they just run away whenever I evenmentionsilverbacks.”
We went quiet when Mr. Fenway began shuffling about, returning our latest essays about the famous Wild Whisperers in the Good Council over the last few centuries. I breathed in relief when I saw my passing score, but Emelle groaned.
“Ugh,” she hissed under her breath. “Another fail.”
“Who’d you write about again?” I asked out of the corner of my mouth.
“Adal Wessex the Third. Apparently, I—” Emelle squinted to read Mr. Fenway’s notes at the top of the page “—didn’t properly detail his affinity for mushrooms and other fungi, which he thought deserved the same respect as the other plants and animals of Eshol. By the orchid and the owl.”
I tried not to glance in Fergus’s direction at that. He’d been morose, quieter than normal since Gileon had beat the hell out of him, and I hadn’t seen him conjure mold again … but that didn’t mean he didn’t have some kind of retribution up his sleeve. Had he learned some of his fungi skills from studying Adal Wessex the Third?
Emelle was still muttering down at her paper, so I yanked a smile onto my face and said, in an attempt to cheer her up, “I think you know why you failed, though.”
At this, a sheepish smile crept onto her own. “Yeah.”
Lander had gone after his queen, that was for sure. Emelle spent almost every evening at the Shape Shifter house now, slipping back into the bunkroom late into the night with her hair more ruffled than mine and a flush always tipping her ears.
Mr. Fenway gave a sudden cough at the front of the class, as if he’d heard.
“I was disappointed in a few of you while grading your essays, I must say. The Good Council is a crucial part of Esholian history, and it is always wise to know why, exactly, we must respect and cherish their presence at all times.”
He smothered a cough with his arm and turned, to my dismay, toward Fergus.
“Take Mr. Bilderas, for example. You were assigned the first ever Wild Whisperer on the island, young man, yet you forgot to mention one very important fact in your paper.” Another cough. “That Dyonisia Reeve herself branded him!”
Jenia rolled her eyes at Dazmine, but Fergus remained strangely impassive—even when everyone’s eyes flicked toward his face still shaded with the last yellow remnants of that bruise from Gileon’s fist.
“And why, sir, would that matter?”
He spoke like a skin-covered corpse. The back of my hands tingled.
“Because Dyonisia Reeve rarely does the actual branding, but when she does…” Mr. Fenway thumped his chest. “When she does, it is said that the magic is usually stronger. And while that might just be an old wives’ tale, it is still… it is still…”
Mr. Fenway gagged, and when he did—
I saw something in his mouth.
Something dark and blossoming and rancid. Something familiar that had tainted my nightmares on and off for months.
My feet moved before my brain did. I was already knocking past desks before Mr. Fenway gagged again, hurling toward him. Someone screamed.
Before I could reach him, the old man tilted forward and crashed into the floor.
With black mold billowing out of his mouth.
CHAPTER
37
