To live or die at loreli.., p.21
To Live Or Die At Lorelight Academy, page 21
She reaches up and tugs at my hair.
“Everyone knows the quality of a bowl cut is inversely proportionate to the love and affection of the stylist. It takes a lot of love to give someone a bowl cut this bad—I’m actually kind of jealous. Okay. You ready to get your ear pierced?”
I lie down on one of the desks, and, though she grimaces and almost hesitates while doing it, she pierces my ear.
In a painful moment, it’s done, and the pearl earring is in.
I wait for some “magical” feeling, but none is forthcoming. I twist myself around to sit on the desk and watch as Farah walks to the back of the room and frees the second small patch with a handful of rods.
She takes her own earrings out—small amber jewels I hadn’t noticed before—and puts the second single pearl earring in the ear opposite where I put mine.
Then there is pain.
True pain.
“Ueeagghh!”
I roll off the table involuntarily, crashing to the ground.
My right foot pounds—no—hammers—no—
I don’t—
My right foot is obliterated with pain. Bone shards and fragments break, skin rips, turning blue and purple, swelling, freezing—it hurts so much. I groan again, shut eyes involuntarily leaking tears.
“Will! Will!” Farah says, right in my ear.
The pain starts to subside, slowly.
I look down. “Is it still there?” I moan.
“Is what still there?”
“My foot?”
I open my eyes and gingerly move my foot up so I can see it.
It’s in its boot, still. Nothing looks unusual.
“It must be sharing the pain,” Farah says slowly. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s starting to fade. Starting to go away, just a little,” I say, and turn to look at Farah.
Only Farah isn’t next to me.
“Farah?” I say.
“Yes?”
I jump, spooked, and turn the other way.
Except Farah isn’t there, either.
I ease myself up and put some weight on my foot. It’s better now. Almost completely fine. I scan the room. Farah is nowhere to be seen.
“Farah?” I call, louder.
“Yes, Will?”
I spin to my right, my heart pounding. Still no Farah. But I can hear her voice—I can hear her like she’s speaking directly into my right ear.
The doorknob at the far end of the room twists, and the door opens.
It’s Farah, smiling mildly.
She’s been in the hallway. She must have moved out into the hallway after putting the earring in.
The earring.
“We can talk,” Farah says, and I hear her twice. Her voice overlaps with itself and doubles with a fractional, almost unnoticeable delay. “And we can hear each other, no matter how far apart we are.”
“No matter how far?”
Farah shrugs. “I mean, it’ll strain the magic if we go crazy far apart. But I’ve heard of generals and military commanders using earrings like this to communicate with lieutenants across battlefields. It’ll work fairly well as long as we’re on Lorelight campus.”
“If you and me are ever off this campus,” I say, “I doubt we’ll be able to hear each other over the sound of all those champagne bottles popping.”
“Cheers to that,” Farah grunts, pantomiming the raising of a glass, and I hear it twice again. She takes the earring out and pockets it. I do the same.
“Kind of nauseating to do when we’re in actual earshot of each other,” she explains, and I agree.
She hops up and down slightly, eagerly, on her left foot, with the aid of the cane. “I’m excited to show you my idea.”
“I’m excited to see it—hey, listen, are you really in that much pain?”
Farah’s expression turns suddenly dark and distant.
“Yes,” she says mutely.
I whistle. “I knew women had better pain tolerance than men, but—”
“It’s not that,” she says.
“Experience with pain, then? Something from when you were a kid climbing trees?”
“Something like that,” she says distantly. “Will?”
She looks at me, and there’s the sudden sensation that I’m looking at a mask.
Like I’ve been looking at a mask the whole time.
Who is Farah Kitt?
I try not to let the sudden unnerving feeling show on my face. I hope she doesn’t see the goosebumps rising on my arm.
I am overcome with the sudden, strange sense that Russ, Farah’s friends, and anyone else who thinks they know Farah Kitt have been looking at a very carefully moderated human being.
That they don’t know Farah Kitt at all.
That no one does.
Farah speaks.
“I think what we’re going to go through—if we’re going to survive, it’s going to be…intense. We need to focus. We need to be able to communicate flawlessly.”
“I agree.”
“Okay.” She nods. “Then I need you to do something for me so that we can get through it alive. And it’s not your fault, because I haven’t told you not to, but…”
I wait.
Farah bites her lip.
Even that seems like a rehearsed motion.
“Please never bring up my childhood, or ask me about it if I say something that prompts it,” she says finally.
“Sure, I just…I thought you said you had broken a lot of bones climbing trees growing up. I thought that might have been it.”
“I have never climbed a tree in my life,” the mask in front of Farah Kitt says. Or maybe Farah herself, being genuine. Or maybe…maybe I don’t know.
“Sure,” I say after a moment. “No childhood. Ever.”
“Great.”
Farah takes in a deep breath, and I can see her pretend to slowly recover herself.
She flicks her eyes down and takes in another slow breath.
The only thing that looks mildly genuine in this moment is the small tug at her smile as she holds up the sapphire amulet Hap-Sin used against us.
“I have a plan.”
“Oh yeah?”
She nods.
“I’m pretty proud of it.” She smirks, and I smirk back.
Showing her that we’re done with the awkwardness. That I’ll abide by her request. That we can keep moving forward in tandem and in sync.
I try to quell the questions.
The feeling that I don’t know Farah Kitt at all.
For her part, Farah seems to be doing better, after clearing the air with me. There’s even a bit of spring in her step.
Half her steps, at least.
She leads me out of the classroom and down the hall.
“I’ll show you this plan, then we can celebrate over stale cupcakes.”
I laugh. “Wish we could! I think we left those back in the Lounge.”
“I know,” Farah laughs back. “We marked them as nonessential for our trip over here, which is crazy.”
She strides right up to the double bronze doors leading from Yoostie to the Northwest Petal campus quad, whose grassy hills lead up and to the right toward the Lounge. She slides the bolt lock to the door open.
My mouth drops open.
“Farah! Wait! What are you—”
With one hand on the sapphire amulet, and the other on the door handle, she pulls the door open, exposing us to the horde waiting in broad daylight on the other side.
Chapter
Eighteen
The Infected that turn to face us are just as surprised to see us as I am to see them.
For a fraction of a moment our eyes meet, though I can’t see the reflection of my own in their eerie golden sheen.
It’s so unnatural. The way their eyes reflect the light.
The angles are all wrong. The light hits them all wrong.
Their shadows, too. They’re…how have I never noticed before?
They’re stretching the wrong way in the bright summer sunlight.
The shadows aren’t pulled in the opposite direction—just in a random direction altogether. The lines made by the folds of their clothes, the sunshine on their arms and heads. It’s all so wrong.
Then the surreal moment is over, and reality hits.
Oh, right. Farah’s just thrown open the door to Yoostie in broad daylight.
No big deal.
Like duelists sparking into motion, one hand whips down for the knife at my belt while the other hand flies up to my shoulder to pull the fire poker from its small strap there.
The Infected spark into motion at the same time, fast-twitching muscles jerking them into aggressive, animalistic action.
Yes.
We’re all very surprised.
Except for one person, of course.
Farah.
My hair—bowl haircut and all—gets whipped wildly in every which way as a blast of cold passes by.
A gale wind, freezing and sharp as any born from a world of pure ice, explodes from Farah’s amulet.
The freezing wind screams past me, frosting the tips of my ear and my cheek with an almost burning cold, and cascades out.
The burning cone of cold air rushes away from Yoostie, toward the steps descending down to the quad and the grass below.
But Farah isn’t done.
A torrent of snow and rain, of ice and water, explodes from the sapphire at the center of the amulet, bursting into a wide path that slams into the Infected before us with pure, freezing cold.
Farah has to brace herself, holding the tiny amulet with both hands as if facing the recoil from a heavy crossbow.
The Infected freeze, mouths open and snarling, as the cone of cold stretches down the steps up to Yoostie and onto grass of the quad. Trapped—dead—in the forming ice, their crystals beginning to Concentrate before my eyes.
“Let’s go!” Farah shouts over the gale winds rushing around us. “Help me down!”
I get myself underneath Farah’s raised arm and brace her weight against my own as I lead her down the steps. They’re slippery, and I nearly lose my footing a couple of times—but I keep Farah steady and we climb down.
Ahead of us is an ever-growing cylinder of ice, made by Farah and the magical amulet.
A few more Infected dive toward us, and I keep one wary hand on my knife—but Farah shifts the winds ever so slightly to catch them in the ring of ice.
“Muahahahaha! Fuckers!!” Farah cackles, as a pair of ferals are caught midair by the icy winds.
I know what she’s doing, by now.
I know her plan.
And it’s a damn good one.
If she and her amulet can pull it off.
Farah is creating a hollow tunnel of ice. It bends around us, walls of ice the pure blue-and-white color of glacier. The sun dims, unable to pass completely through the thick tunnel.
We forge our way forward.
Ahead of us, the tunnel continues, surrounding us on all sides and over our heads as we make our way, one icy step at a time, from Yoostie back to the Lounge, in our little ice tunnel all the while.
Safe passage.
That’s what this is.
A tube—a tunnel—a protected route—leading from Yoostie to the Lounge, connecting the two buildings in a cavern of ice.
Brilliant.
Or, at least, that’s what it will be once we make it back to the Lounge.
We’ve still got a bit to go. Almost fifty yards.
“Wow,” Farah says. She sounds out of breath. “Further…than…I…thought!”
She’s definitely happy…gleeful? Excited? Proud?
But there’s an exhaustion in her voice.
“If…if…” she pants. She shakes her head, narrowing her eyes in focus, shifting slightly to catch another feral as it tries to enter through the still-forming tunnel. Like the others, it is caught mid-leap in the shards of ice as they combine to make a wall.
“If I don’t…if we…all the way…the…Lounge…”
Ah, shit.
“Come on, Farah,” I encourage, picking up our pace a little bit, essentially carrying the girl as her toes graze the grass. “Just a little further. Just a little further, Farah.”
“Yeah,” she says, nodding.
My gaze is locked dead ahead, honing in on the door to the Lounge. So close. So close.
Thirty yards. A little more, maybe.
We can make it.
We can make it.
There are more ferals, now—drawn to the excitement just like they always seem to be.
Then the gale winds slow and quiet. Farah goes limp, and the amulet falls to the ground.
“Farah!”
I shake her awake, and place the amulet back in her hands.
I turn in time to kick an Infected in the chest and send it flying backward.
I shake Farah again and heave her back to her feet.
She mumbles something, swaying side to side.
“Just a little further!”
She mutters something in some kind of agreement and the winds pick back up again. I’m almost fully carrying her now, and my arm is burning from the effort.
Would have been better to start by full-on carrying her in the first place. Now, it’s a struggle to hold her up.
The magic is draining her. Taking everything.
“Just a little further,” I encourage.
A feral careens around the corner of the forming tunnel, and Farah doesn’t shift in time to catch it in the walls.
Shit.
I drop Farah, just for a moment, and she falls to the ground, the gale winds blaring up into the sky and falling back down on us as I tighten the grip on my knife. I attempt to tackle the feral Infected to the ground, and it moves to do the same.
Our heads crash together in midair, and I feel the hot running blood of a scalp cut down my face.
The skin of my forehead is not quite as tough as a crown of crystal spikes.
One shut eye overrun with blood, the other forced open, I drive the knife into the feral. It swings its arm around to claw my neck, but I bring my forearm up just in time, catching the crystal claws against the bracers of my traveling leathers and welcome committee jacket.
The feral swings its other arm around to get me. It seems to either not feel my knife plunged in its ribs, or not care regardless.
I move to bring my forearm up to catch this one, but I’m not so lucky this time.
My leathers catch the scratching claws themselves, not the creature’s arms, and pain stings my skin as three of the creature’s long, pink and orange quartz-like nails make it through my clothes.
I move my arms out of the way, opening my entire torso to attack.
My hands fly frantically to the feral’s neck just below the jaw.
I twist as hard as I can.
There’s a crack, and it goes down.
Farah has passed out again. I haul her to her feet, and place the amulet back in her hands. We’re so close.
Twenty-five meters.
Maybe a tiny bit less.
“Come on,” I press. “Come on!”
The gale winds resume.
The winds are weak and thin, now. But they’re still strong and cold enough to form the ice tunnel.
At long last, the door to the Lounge is dead ahead. Finally, the ice from the tunnel connects around the Lounge door.
“Just a bit more,” I plead with her, as she pumps ice and snow and raw, elemental cold to seal the tunnel completely.
She’s a wreck. Her eyes are shut, her cheeks are hollow, her breathing is shallow.
She can’t possibly summon any more energy to power the amulet.
If she keeps going—if I keep pressing her—will it kill her?
“Good enough,” I gasp.
Farah goes limp the moment she hears the words.
I heave us over to the doors and haul them open, dragging an unconscious Farah into the Lounge.
We’ve made it inside.
As I shut the door behind us, I take one long look at the single, unbroken tunnel of glacier-deep ice leading back to Yoostie.
It grows weaker toward the end, where Farah started passing in and out of consciousness. I don’t know if it’ll hold.
Night will come soon, and that brings its own problems.
But we’ve got our barricade, and we’ve got our tunnel.
We just have to survive.
Part Four
Chapter
Nineteen
It’s been three days and three nights since we set up the ice tunnel.
Almost four nights—morning is just a few minutes away.
The deep-blue ice near the mouth of the tunnel on the Lounge side is already beginning to glow slightly with the pre-dawn light.
It’s interesting to see.
It’s almost the same glow the sky does just before sunrise—when the sky is still dark, but the “blue” of it is suffused with that little bit of refractive sunlight that makes it glow ever so slightly. The ice does the same thing.
It glows, just before the dawn.
I’ve been able to sleep through the night the last few nights. It’s not exactly my beauty sleep, but thanks to trading watches with Farah, it’s enough sleep that I’m not losing my mind. Five, maybe six hours. I would be able to get more, if only I could fall asleep when the sun first sets and night first falls. Neither Farah nor I can sleep at that time, though. The howling is too loud.
Sampson is still kicking, too. Still rambling. Still giving the occasional speech.
I figured it out last night—he likes to watch the sunset.
I think he likes to watch the sunset because the colors remind him of his crystals. Reminds him of victory.
He’s made a few rambling complaints about the gates, as well.
Whoever closed them is dead.
At least, that’s the impression Sampson is under.
That doesn’t stop Sampson from promising the dead Archscholar that it’s only a matter of time until he’s able to open the gates and let his “achievements” free to the grander world.
It’s unnerving that both Sampson and I wish the gates would open. The more I think about it, the more troubling it is.
If Sampson wants the gates open…shouldn’t I not want that?
Strangely enough, it doesn’t charge our ultimate destination of Albright Tower, to confront Sampson and do what we can.
