The Grim Adventure, page 3
Aster clicked his tongue. “You, young lady, were breaking the rules. Without you around to be a bad influence, things followed protocol.”
“And that protocol . . . was to allow me to disappear for a month?”
“Well,” Miss Amanda replied, “if you were at the Seelie court, you were perfectly safe. You didn’t need rescuing.”
“Pray tell,” asked Magnolia, the pink-cheeked, gentle tutor of the elves and elemental fae, “why did you go there?”
“I didn’t,” Rosemary said. The frustrated flame continued to burn deep in her belly, but she had questions to answer. “Not on purpose, anyway. One moment I was in the Lost Woods with the others, and the next, I was being dragged before the Seelie Keeper.”
Una squeezed her hand in support. The teachers exchanged glances, many lifting their hands to cover their mouths as they murmured to one another. But Dante kept his eyes forward, studying Rosemary’s face as he sipped his hot chocolate.
“Dragged because you were trespassing?” Miss Amanda asked at last.
“No.” Rosemary’s hands clenched into fists. “The Keeper is behind all of it. He’s the reason everything is going wrong at Fern’s. He wants to learn to navigate the Lost Woods so he can get to every realm. He—”
Boisterous laughter cut her thoughts short.
Her angry flame evaporated into something closer to horror. Not only had they not looked for her, but the teachers were laughing at her.
Their faces were not cruel, but Miss Amanda, Magnolia, and even Una beside her giggled and wiped at jolly tears. Una was the first to apologize. “Please forgive us, dear, but my, what a misunderstanding. The Keeper is one of the most powerful beings in the fae realm. The idea that he would concern himself with our tiny school of demifae . . .”
“It’s a splendid joke.” Magnolia’s nose was red from his honest, happy laughter. “Positively rollicking. None intended at your expense, of course.”
Miss Amanda made an apologetic face. “I was born in the human realm like you were,” she said. “So maybe it would help to have an example, like . . . if you had said the president of the United States was the reason the sprinklers at your elementary school didn’t work. Do you see why it’s silly?”
Rosemary’s fists became so tight that her fingernails bit into the palm of her hand, threatening to draw blood. She freed herself from Una’s attempts at comfort.
“I’m telling you,” Rosemary insisted, “he’s behind it.”
“If he’s the villain you claim,” Aster said, voice low and snake-like, “how, pray tell, did you manage to escape such an ancient, powerful being?”
Rosemary’s mouth went dry. She looked at Dante—the only person who had not laughed when she’d shared her news. His reaction now was so subtle, she could scarcely see it, but the prophet shook his head once.
Don’t tell them. That was Dante’s silent warning.
She blinked rapidly as her gaze darted between the tutors. So, as she’d done with Trym, she said something that wasn’t quite a truth, nor was it a lie. She said, “There’s a tree behind his throne. I ran for it and grabbed the knob.”
Miss Amanda looked at Magnolia. “You’ve visited the Seelie court a time or two, haven’t you? Did time pass differently when you returned?”
“It did not,” Magnolia said. Something about his tone sounded like he was saying he was sorry.
None of them believed her.
Rosemary wrapped her arms around her stomach.
It seemed from the teachers’ quiet chatter that they found this answer acceptable. They’d never have to know that she’d mistakenly hopped to a strange stone house after the Seelie court, that she’d met a dog made of bones, or that she’d taken a sweatshirt that made her invisible—a sweatshirt currently stashed behind her pillows.
She was merely an unlucky student who had stumbled into a fortunate outcome.
Nothing more.
The sky was still pink with early-morning sun as Rosemary marched toward the school building. She ignored the neighing unicorn and sleepy chirps of waking birds as she let herself in and began climbing the stairs.
Dante looked up from an array of papers the moment Rosemary opened the door. “Good,” he said as a greeting. “I was tired of getting up early.”
Rosemary rubbed the sleep from her eyes as if it might help her better understand his sentence.
“I wasn’t sure what day you’d seek me at sunrise, so I’ve been setting my clock for the break of dawn since you got back to the school. I’m glad it didn’t take you long.”
“You knew I’d come?”
“I did. I just didn’t know whether or not you’d miss autumn exam before you returned.”
“What are we being tested on?” Rosemary asked.
“Right now? Nothing. But in a few weeks, every student will submit a subject they believe is most important for testing. Fae-born students often want to be quizzed on human culture so they don’t appear suspicious in the human realm. Human-born kids often want to learn about magic or powers. But, on the topic of powers, I have something to show you.”
Dante gestured toward the table. The floorboards creaked beneath Rosemary as she approached her tutor and bent over the assortment of papers.
“Look at this.” Dante pointed. He’d kept the drawings that Rosemary had done over the weeks of their lessons and had scattered them about the table. His finger rested on one Rosemary had made in the first week after her arrival. He tapped against the picture of a young man with dark tan skin wearing an olive-green tunic. The lights and velvet tents and cotton candy had seemed unimportant when she’d painted them so long ago. She hadn’t been painting a vision—at least, she hadn’t thought so. She’d just been doodling for the sake of art. But there was no denying it. The scene depicted Essie at the carnival.
Dante looked up at her. “Do you recognize it?”
Rosemary’s mouth dropped open. “How did you . . .”
“I didn’t,” Dante said. “I think there are parts of your gift you understand, and other parts you don’t.” He flipped the papers to something new. “What about this one? Why did you paint this?”
Rosemary looked down at the image and tried to remember the assignment. Dante had asked both her and Trym to think of something terrifying. Rosemary remembered how disappointed she’d felt about her drawing, as if she’d done it wrong. For some reason, she’d used her watercolors to paint a tray of fruit in front of a sparkling fountain, with a single, pointed knife.
“What happened?” Dante asked.
Rosemary swallowed. “You’re a prophet,” she said. “Don’t you know?”
Dante shook his head. “I’ve had three visions about you, Rosemary Thorpe. None of them made sense at the time, but being a prophet has taught me patience. In the first”—he pulled out the picture with the lights and rides and a circus tent—“was this. You painted Essie long before he went missing. You were meant to be there.”
Rosemary shook her head. “But I only see—”
Dante’s expression softened. He echoed something Rosemary had heard once before as he said, “Seeing bad things is not the same thing as making bad things happen.” He gave Rosemary’s shoulder a reassuring pat before he said, “On your third day here, I had a vision of you and me talking at sunrise. You had this scab on your cheek, just here.” He pointed to the tiny cut Rosemary had acquired in her escape from the statue. “I knew the vision wouldn’t be relevant until I saw you with this wound. But I didn’t know how important any of it would be until I saw you with her.”
Dante leafed through the pages and pulled up an image of a winged fairy with hair as red as flame. “When you drew this, I assumed you were just painting the person who recruited you. Fern brings all the waywards to the school. She has a knack for these things, as annoying as she is.”
Rosemary took the page from Dante’s hand and frowned down at the freckled fairy. Fern stood in the painting near a wall of ivy next to a yellow blob clad in green. Rosemary looked back at her tutor and asked, “Why don’t you like her?”
Dante grumbled. “Because as annoying as she is, she’s always right. Even if I haven’t seen the future yet, Fern always comes out on the correct side of history. I’ve learned to trust her judgment, even when it’s obnoxious. Besides, she’s courtless, and it’s not easy to be courtless. I should know.”
“Courtless . . .” Rosemary tested the word. The world had been split down the middle twice over. Humans versus fairies. Seelie versus Unseelie. This was her first time hearing that maybe, just maybe, there was another option.
Dante settled into his chair across the table. “There aren’t a lot of Seelie fae who defect into courtlessness. People call them anarchists. Do you know that word?”
Rosemary shook her head.
“An anarchist is someone who wants to destroy the order of things. But that’s not why I became courtless. I just don’t believe in the divide between the Seelie and Unseelie fae, and I have no desire to be a part of their politics.”
Rosemary gripped the table. “But I thought you were . . . Didn’t the others say you were . . .”
“People make assumptions. But no. I was born Unseelie, and I chose to leave my court. Most of the famous courtless fae were once Unseelie.”
She chewed on her lip, lost in thought. “If I choose to live in the fae realm when I turn sixteen, will I automatically be a member of the Unseelie court?”
He rubbed his chin. “It’s typical for students to join whatever court their parent belongs to. I suppose that makes your situation a little unclear. If you choose to remain in the fae realm, that is.”
Heaviness squeezed her chest as she thought of her parents. Eleanor Thorpe, who hadn’t wanted to be her mother, and a fae who hadn’t bothered to step up and reveal himself as her father. Perhaps she was courtless by default, simply by being unwanted. Jealousy stabbed her as she thought of Iris and how she bragged about having a Seelie angel for a father. The girl loved her court and her parents alike. Iris would probably giggle herself to death at the thought of Rosemary’s situation.
Rosemary suppressed the angry twitch of her lip when Dante broke her dark, spiraling thoughts.
“I’d like to talk about why you’re here,” he said. “Long ago, I had a vision of you visiting me at sunrise. In that vision, we were discussing the Grim Reaper. Long before Fern’s—many, many years ago—Grim and I were classmates at the old Unseelie school. Before things . . . changed.”
“A school before Fern’s?” she asked.
“Not before.” He cleared his throat. “Students used to be separated. It was a different time. A worse time. But I saw the future, and I knew what changes to make to ensure that I became the person I needed to be. I don’t know if the same can be said of my former classmates.”
Trym’s comments about an Unseelie campus sprang into sharp focus. Rosemary’s curiosity was squashed by a sickly, sinking feeling. She’d spent her life seeing death, but she’d never caused it. Visions of skeletons and robes and ghosts filled her with dread.
Her hand flew to the shoulder where a stick and curved piece of metal had been embroidered onto a sweatshirt. Now she recognized the symbol. It was the Grim Reaper’s scythe.
“The Grim Reaper is dangerous,” she said. “That’s why you didn’t want me to talk about him. He’s a murderer.”
Dante asked, “Did you meet him?”
She shook her head. “I . . . I think I . . . took something from him. I didn’t mean to. I didn’t know it was him. I had to escape, and his clothes—”
“Made you invisible,” Dante said, finishing the thought for her. “As one of the courtless fae, he’s the ultimate threat to both realms, human and fae. He’s responsible for the deaths of mortals and fairies alike. He can move among humans and fae without being seen. I haven’t seen him in years, but it can’t be a coincidence that we’re hearing about him now that there’s a power struggle.”
Her blood chilled at the thought. It was terrible enough to see unwanted visions of death. She couldn’t imagine being evil enough to cause it.
“Do you think they’re working together? The Keeper and the . . . um . . . Grim?”
Bright morning light filled the room. Dante’s face was awash with gold as he said, “If the Keeper really does want access to the realms, then no. I suspect that the Keeper would have a much easier time navigating the realms if he abandoned his court, or had someone courtless on his side. I think he’d be fighting against Grim, not with him.”
“Does that make the Keeper . . . our ally?”
Dante gave one low, humorless chuckle. Rosemary shifted uncomfortably at the thought. Of course the Keeper was no ally. Things were rarely so simple.
Rosemary looked out the window. The information pressed down on her like weights on her chest and shoulders. The sun was high enough now to cut through the window and hurt her eyes with its piercing morning light. She lifted her hand to shield her eyes, catching her teacher’s worried gaze as she did so. “None of the tutors believed me when I told them what happened. Why are they on the Keeper’s side? Is it because they’re Seelie?”
Her tutor rubbed the scruff on his chin as he took a moment to think. “Whether they’re Seelie may influence their views, but that’s only part of it. No one wants to believe you because they need you to be wrong. If you’re mistaken about the enemy, if you’re wrong about who’s turning the school upside down, their lives can continue as normal. If you’re right, everything has to change.”
“The school is no match for the Keeper,” Rosemary said. “Especially if the teachers aren’t on our side.”
Dante considered the statement for a moment. “Teachers aren’t perfect. Many of them have fallen into the trap of court politics. They’ve been told that Seelie fae are good fae, and since they themselves are good, they’re inclined to believe the narrative.”
Rosemary was about to ask what he meant by narrative when he explained.
“Narratives are stories we tell ourselves about the world. For example, the narrative about certain tough dogs is that they’re dangerous, when in fact, they just have owners who have mistreated them. Or the narrative that some students who graduate from fancy human colleges are smarter people who get better jobs, even if they haven’t earned a dollar in their life. The story in the fae realm is that Seelie fae are good, and—”
“Unseelie fae are bad.” Rosemary hmphed.
“I didn’t say it was a good belief.” He clucked his tongue. “But if you’re right about the Seelie Keeper, it means not only that a lot of teachers have to examine their thoughts on the Seelie, but that they’ll have to reflect on what other lies they might have told themselves. Like I said, it’s easier to believe you’re wrong.”
Rosemary looked at Dante. “But you know I’m right. You know about the Grim Reaper.”
Dante sighed and revealed an old painting of Rosemary’s. Blotches of red and orange and yellow dotted the page as twisted trees filled the space. There were people—though who, she couldn’t be sure—and a few interesting creatures that she didn’t remember painting. In the corner stood a tall, dark figure, cloaked in shadow and gripping a tall wooden stick with a curved piece of metal.
The once-innocent painting stared back at her with two glowing red eyes in the center.
The Grim Reaper.
Rosemary looked at her painting, then at the stack of evidence of her gift—her curse—which forced her to think of death every single day. She looked at her teacher, and for a moment, all of the walls within her heart fell to the ground.
His smile was kind, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “Something is coming, Rosemary. You’ve already foreseen it—though what it is exactly, we don’t yet know. And it’s up to us to be ready for it by the time it finally arrives.”
Dante, as it turned out, had been patiently waiting to show them how challenging class could really be. His gift for prophecy had informed him from day one that Rosemary was already on the right path, and that her thirteenth birthday was to be a turning point.
“Then shouldn’t I get time off until I turn thirteen?” Rosemary asked unhelpfully.
“And get out of class for three weeks? Nice try,” Dante grunted. “The clock is ticking, and for all I know, it’s my responsibility to ensure that you’re ready by Halloween.”
“Is that what you saw in your prophecy?” Rosemary asked.
He folded his arms across his chest. “I think everyone in this room knows that visions of the future aren’t that clear. Now, back to it.”
Trym leaned back in her chair. “This isn’t fair,” she said definitively. “I should not be forced to change my lessons just because this one had a few successful visions. Shouldn’t we be preparing for the autumn exam?”
“That’s not something you can prepare for,” Dante said. Then to Rosemary he explained, “You’ve been gone long enough to miss a few important announcements. Your autumn exam will take place on Halloween Eve.”
Rosemary groaned. “What are we being tested on?”
“I’m afraid I can’t tell you.”
And she didn’t know why, but she found his answer unsettling. Then again, her life had been tilted on its side since she’d returned. When she left, she was a new student in the late-summer heat, and she’d come back a mystery, surrounded by dying leaves and Halloween decorations.
The classroom, at least, was a welcome monotony. Everyone else had been acting so strange since she’d returned, students and teachers alike. The tutors tried to reassure her that everything was normal, but the nervous glances between them confirmed what she knew: they were lying. They were every bit as upset and bewildered by her strange loss of time as she was.
Instead, she focused on the wooden table, the rickety attic where lessons were held, the square window, the creaky floorboards, and the piles upon piles of art materials. She had even missed Dante and his endless supply of plaid shirts, the sleeves always rolled up to the elbows. She so desperately wanted to be a normal student in a rather abnormal school.
