Calico…?

  Calico!

  Her vibrant chirps yanked me from the sheets and sent me stumbling to the window in the complete dark of my room, blindly fumbling with the latch, struggling to unclip it and throw the shutters open but they weren’t there, none of it was there, the window didn’t feel like a window at all and the knife-slice rectangle outline of light across the room brought me back to myself. Back to the Institute. No Calico. No window. Not even a damned match to see by.

  I found my bedside table with that really helpful bit of your shin designed to locate hard pointy objects in a dark room, yelped, then got my hands on the door handle and cracked it open again, noises emerging, nascent life outside. Guessing someone had shut it while I slept. Not for them to know I was without matches. And when the light spilled in, I found my Calico, still chirping by the wall. A crafted model of a mystral chirping a wake-up alarm from its peephole below the shining face of an ornate clock. Seven in the morning. Gently I pressed the bird back into its nest, and its chirrups subsided.

  Wherever she was, I hoped Calico was okay. I hoped she was safe and surviving. I hoped she wouldn’t miss me too much. Eh. She deserved something better than me anyway.

  I couldn’t see any news coming early today and I didn’t want to be shut in the dark the whole time, and if there were any damned matches in here then they weren’t in the bedside drawers of any of the beds, nor the closets – I was familiar enough with those to know – and not even in the washroom shut away in the corner, barren as it was. So I pulled the cowl over my head and pulled it low, gritting my teeth. At least since my horns hadn’t grown properly, they were never too obvious. And I had to move before it got too busy. Keep moving, keep moving. The spirits can’t catch up.

  The door opposite mine was heavy to the point of leaden when I knocked, and sprang open far too easily. A cheery girl, a little taller than me, a pinkish face and a smile far too bright for this early of the day. “Hey,” I tried, “would you have any matches in your room, cos I, uh… I can’t find any in mine.”

  “Matches?” The smile dimmed a fraction. “Whaddya want matches for?”

  “To light the, uhm…” Wasn’t it obvious? “The candles. So I can see. Or else it’s dark. And I can’t.”

  “Oh, oh, those are all safety candles. They won’t light with match fire. Magic only.”

  “So… Wait, are we meant to know how to do that already?”

  She blinked. “Hold on. Are you a late-joining firstie?” she asked curiously. “Cos there wasn’t anyone in that room far as I knew, and if there was, they were real quiet about it. Gracious, did they put a firstie in there all on your own?”

  “They said there weren’t any empty rooms with windows…”

  “That’s why they put ya with a secondie and a thirdie! So someone can start up the lights for you. Tsk! Whole place really is going to shambles.” She wove around me quicker than I had chance to protest and slid into my room, and like it was no more effort than putting a hat on, tossed a handful of sparks into the air. All four candles ignited in the chandelier. “Firstie on their own! What next?”

  She’d done magic. Real magic. The kind you read about in books or heard a friend of a friend had seen someone do once upon a time. Real, actual magic. Like it was nothing. I suddenly felt small, so small, so inconceivably small. “I’m not a firstling…” was all I could say.

  The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  “Oh yeah?” She turned to me, looked me up and down. I was very quickly tiring of people doing that. “Then… still waiting on acceptance papers, huh? Why are you here already?”

  “It’s more than I care to say.” I bunched my cloak thicker around myself, only now realising I didn’t owe her as much information as she was trying to take. “I arrived yesterday. News is due today. That’s all.”

  “Lemme guess,” she said like a charging horse wouldn’t stop her, and I tried to hide my shudder. “Cos I like guessing! Hmm. So, let’s see – a thick, outdoorsy outfit and a hood that doesn’t hide your horns very well, and given we can barely move in the streets for those forsaken war wagons this past week… Ah. You’re a Forester trying to dodge a conscription? Am I right? I’m always right!”

  The sheer shock of being seen so clearly made me want to wilt where I stood. “It’s not like that!” I snapped. “I could be useful here. I could do something good with myself. Look at me.” I glanced around, but it was still just us out here in the hall this early. Since she already knew, there wasn’t much use in hiding it anymore, so I ducked my cowl down and showed more of my face, a momentary slip of myself, then brought it quickly back up. “I’d be mincemeat within a week on the war front. If not by shrapnel then by someone in camp spiking my waterskin for a laugh. Nothing good would come from that, but I think I could maybe be good at this. I feel… like something different. I know I do, and I know I can’t be what they all told me I should be.” I forced my mouth shut and seethed at the fact that so much had escaped already, but the fire of what she’d assumed about me still burned inside.

  She nodded with way too much enthusiasm. “Gotcha. Yeah, I’ve seen a few of your kind here. Dunno much about them cos they’re… They don’t talk. Not like you. Not to anyone else, anyway. Love talking to each other so it might be different if you tried it. I’ve seen them sometimes. They seem good enough at what they do so I guess they’re just left to themselves. Not seen a firstling Forester though, not so far. Maybe you’re the only one taken in this year? Oh – if you get taken in. Apologies. What are you gonna do till your news comes through?”

  I shrugged. “Don’t know. Sit in my room and wait.”

  “...And do what?”

  I shrugged again.

  “Sounds dreadful dull. Oh! I’ve got free study till midday if you wanna come along. Thirdie privilege,” she grinned. “I’ve never properly hung around with an actual real Forester before so y’know, it might be fun for both of us. I could think of so many questions to ask…” She stuck a hand out, waiting for me to tap my knuckles on hers the way you’re meant to. Mine stayed stuck firmly against my cloak. “Oh, sorry, didn’t realise that might be new to you. Lemme show you.” She tapped her other hand against her own. “Just like that! Anyway, I'm Holly,” she said, over-enunciating the name like she was chewing a wedge of thick bread, “and you are…?”

  Morrigan.”

  “Oh. Morrigan? Like the, uh…” She waved a finger about in the air as if she were trying to catch the stray memory. “Like the death spirit? That’s kinda a grim name.” She hesitated, but then the bright grin flooded her face again. “Let’s take thirty to get ready and then I'll show you where things are around here, hey, my new Forester buddy?”

  *

  I spent twenty-nine minutes of it waiting. I knew because the mystral wall clock told me so. The one I could now see because someone had used magic, actual blasted magic, as if it were nothing. I intended to thank her, but when my door creaked open again, she didn’t call my name but, “C’mon, Forester!” and I had to hold back from hushing her automatically. I didn’t mean to, I just…

  Knew I was sick of being the outsider everywhere I went.

  I emerged, cowl up. “Oh, I didn’t know you were already ready,” Holly said. She wore a robe like everyone had yesterday, hers glinting like yellow topaz. “I would’ve hurried.”

  “I don’t have anything else with me,” I said. “I’ll manage somehow.”

  “We’ll find you something then. I can ask my advisor. We used to have supplies of pretty much anything you could want on-site but then last year, it switched to on-request. Anyway, that’s boring logistics and technical stuff – bet you wanna come explore the castle, right? Fun guy like you!”

  “Yeah…”

  “Great! C’mon, Forester, lemme show you where breakfast is!”