Young Writers Society

The day before had been stressful, to say the least, but today might just be worse. Zita sat on one of the now-spare beds in a random room just down the hall from hers. The dirty, frayed bandages wrapped around her wings got looser and looser as Emily carefully snipped away at the gauze with a pair of scissors, hopefully not snipping any of her feathers as she did so. Not that it would matter much if she did, Zita reminded herself, it wasn’t like she could fly anyway.

“Almost…” The bandages fell away. The air slammed against her wings like an icy wall. Zita shivered. “Got it,” Emily sighed and put down her scissors.

Zita glanced over at Kivvien. He was examining her wings like a puzzle he couldn’t quite put together. His eyes flicked between each and every imperfection. The unnatural bends in the bone. The odd angles of the feathers. The partially-bald spots where feathers had yet to grow back.

“You won’t be able to fly with these,” He said finally.

Zita was saved from responding by Emily, “Well, we’re not done. We have to re-break all the old bones that didn’t heal properly and set them right, when they heal you’ll be able to fly again. Duh.”

“And you didn’t mention this before because…” Kivvien raised his eyebrows in question.

Emily shrugged, “It slipped my mind.”

“It...slipped your mind…”

“Yep,” Emily said simply, “I do that a lot actually. I actually forgot who was president during the American Civil War for the longest time. Well, president in the north, not the south. I keep forgetting there were two presidents for a while.”

“What are you talking about,” Zita asked, entirely confuzzled.

Emily waved the question off, “Just some Chorismagian history I lived through. It’s really a shame I missed the revolution, though. I was in Egypt that the time, so it was quite a bit less interesting. But I did hear about it after the fact, so that’s something.”

“We’re still confused, Em,” Kivvien interrupted before she could continue spouting her nonsense.

“Oh, sorry,” She apologised, “Zita, do you want me to re-break those bones now or do you want to wait until you get some strength back in them first?”

“I’ll wait,” Said Zita as she got up from the bed.

“Okay then, I’m going to go get lunch if you guys want to join me?”

“I’m good, Zita?” Kivvien turned to her. She shook her head.

Emily shrugged, “Suit yourselves. But they do have non-sugary options for those of you who had the unfortunate luck of not being able to handle the sweet stuff.”

Zita rolled her eyes, “I’m not hungry, Emily, I just ate. Honestly, for someone who’s supposed to live off blood you sure eat a lot of anything else.”

Emily grinned, “I’m just special like that,” She said with a wink and skipped off into the hall using the wall as the floor.

Kivvien shook his head as soon as she was gone, “She’s something else, that’s for sure.”

Zita was too distracted by the wonderful feeling of stretching out her wings. She was working out cramps she hadn’t even realized were there.

Kivvien picked up a stray feather that had fallen out of the discarded bandages and twirled it between his fingers. With every spin, it caught the light and flashed like the sequins of a dancers’ dress.

“You know,” Kivvien said awkwardly, keeping his eyes trained on the sapphire-colored feather in his hands, “I picked you for a reason during the game.”

Zita’s wings curled around her shoulders instinctively, “Yeah?” She asked, cursing herself for her now re-realized handicap.

“Yeah,” Kivvien repeated, seemingly grappling for the right words to string together, “I, um, well…” He trailed off, his face morphing with his growing frustration.

Zita smirked, “Cat got your tongue?”

Kivvien laughed, “It’s just, seriously, I don’t like Ash-”

“Neither do I, so?”

“So, I don’t like Emily either when they’re together,” Kivvien sighed, “It was just easier to work with you than with them, you know?”

Zita shrugged, “Why was that so hard to say?” She asked, probably a bit rudely, but she was feeling blunt.

Kivvien’s eyes pinned on the feather again, “No reason. I just figured you’d want to know since it was a kinda weird decision…” The feather twisted again.

Zita’s wings spread and her head tilted in curiosity. There was more, that was for sure. Still, she kept her mouth closed.

Kivvien cleared his throat to break the awkward silence, yet somehow managed to make it more awkward instead of less. “So, um, I don’t suppose you’ll be wanting this back?” He held up the feather.

Zita shrugged, “So long as you don’t plan on making a voodoo doll it’s all yours.”

Kivvien nodded with a smirk, “Naw, I just need a symbol of the air element for some spellwork I’d like to try.”

Zita’s wings perked up (she really did have to get that under control), “Spellwork? Mind if I tag along?”

Kivvien suddenly got a deer-in-the-headlights look, “Um, I’m not sure if it’s the sort of thing you’d be interested in…”

Zita forced her wings to fold behind her as well as they could, “I know a grand total of zero actual spells; it’d be nice to see what one looks like at least.”

“It’s pretty advanced…”

“Kivvien.”

“Fine,” He relented, “but the spell can’t be enacted until midnight on the double full moon in three days, so meet me in the field outside the city half and hour before that so you can help me set up.”

“Works for me,” Zita chirped smugly. Kivvien tried to glare at her, but his eyes were smiling too broadly for it to have an effect.

☽O☾

Dinner that night was very quiet. Zita was used to the loud babbling of nearly a hundred kids filling up the enormous, multi-floor dining hall. Instead, tonight was almost silent. The hall was eerily empty, from the spiraling balconies stretching all the way up to the ceiling, covered in clean, unoccupied tables, to the ground floor, where the only remaining guests sat across three tables. No one spoke. Like an impenetrable wall of ice, silence enveloped them. None dared so much as scratch it, much less talk and shatter the silence with their voice.

Carlin might have been eating at the table he sat at alone, but it was difficult to see through the piles of books and stacks of paper he had built up around himself. The directors sat at the second table, locked in their little games, with the plates of untouched food sitting before them. Imani sat next to Anders across from the only remaining kids at the hotel, separate from their colleagues.

The third was the only table where everyone was eating. Zita imagined that Anders and Imani moved over here for just that reason like there was some taboo about eating where no one else was. For all Zita knew there might be. Politeness wasn’t exactly one of the lessons taught in her household.

“So, Imani,” Anders shattered the ice, “what’s the plan for these kids?” He gestured to the other side of the table with his fork, then took a bite of his food.

“Well,” She responded, addressing the kids directly, “I think you should move on to the more advanced training. Once you’re done with that we’ll assign you to specific stops instead of wandering around between them. Honestly, that was how it should have worked in the first place, but communication has always been pivotal to the Stops working properly and messengers are too unreliable, and comm spells have always been far too taxing on the caster to be practical. But we can figure all that out later. We’ve got training to get you four started on.”

While Imani was saying all that, Zita listened only partly. Her full focus was on Imani’s plate, where Anders had just sprinkled a clear bottle of something on her food while no one was supposed to be looking. And indeed no one was, save for Zita. As each drop sprinkled onto the meal, a feeling, like a chill in the back of Zita’s chest, grew.

She glanced at the others at the table. Everyone was either engrossed in their food or whatever conversations they had started after Imani’s explanation. Even Kivvien was too busy chatting with Anders about the previously mentioned training to pay any attention to Imani’s plate. And why would he? Zita thought to herself, not everyone grew up watching their siblings’ hands and plates for little live bugs and bits of sugar, or other nasty things they would slip to her or each other when they weren’t looking. Not everyone would inevitably get blamed for it.

Zita thought, at first, that she was mistaken. Then, as Imani’s fork lowered for another bite, and that feeling pressed against the back of her mind, she decided she couldn’t afford to be. A glance at Anders gave her nothing but what she would expect of someone who had been sitting innocently the whole meal. She decided she could afford a misunderstanding at worst.

“Imani,” Zita said. The fork froze.

“Yes?”

She didn’t know why she didn’t just say what she saw, but that didn’t seem the right thing to do at the time. Instead, Zita said, “Were you the one who started the Kid Stops?”

Imani put down her fork, “I was, yes. I started them about...what was it? Seventeen years ago now? Anyway, I was much older than you are when…” She launched into what was probably an interesting tale about how and why she had begun one of the biggest underground operations Zita had never heard of. Unfortunately, Zita wasn’t listening.

Imani got a faraway look in her eyes as she recalled her tale. Zita choose that as her moment. A fraction of a second was all it took. Zita waited for everyone at the table to be one hundred percent distracted, and, when not an eye was on the table, Zita switched Imani’s plate for hers. Imani glanced down as soon as it was done with this confused look on her face like she lost her train of thought, but then she brushed it off and continued with her story. Zita released a breath, and with it, the chill.

The meal ended before Imani could finish telling Zita about her escape from the Krinian guard, which was a shame, it was quite interesting, but Zita had other things on her mind. Imani promised to finish the story another time as everyone got up to do whatever it was they had to do today, and Zita gave her a smile.

Zita caught Emily’s arm as she walked past, “Hey, can you check something out for me?” If anyone knows what this stuff is, it’s Emily.

“Uh, sure,” Emily slid into the bench next to her, “hey, you’ve hardly touched your food! What did I say about eating during mealtimes!”

Zita rolled her eyes, “Would you quit playing mother for a second? I need your help.” Zita’s eyes followed Anders as he got up and left.

“Okay…” Emily frowned, “what with?”

Zita considered how to word it, then decided to just be blunt. Because tact was for people with time, “I saw Anders put something in this, would you check it for me?”

“Anders? Are you sure?”

“No, that’s why I want you to check it. Maybe I’m paranoid, maybe I saw something, just check it.”

Emily blew a strand of hair out of her face, “Okay, fine, what did it look like? And why would Anders put anything in your food anyway?”

“It was clear, and he didn’t put it in my food.”

“Okay, so a clear liquid, I assume? And what do you mean ‘not your food?”

“I mean he put it in Imani’s, now do you know what it was or not?”

Emily sniffed the food, “For all I know right now it was just water, or nothing. So you stole Imani’s plate?”

“Switched,” Zita amended, “I switched her plate for mine so no one would notice. I wanted to make sure she didn’t eat any before I knew what it was.”

“That sounds really weird you know.”

“I don’t care how it sounds, I just got a weird feeling, is there another test you can run on it?”

Emily considered it for a second, then raised a hand over the plate, palm down, “Reveal,” She commanded.

A flash of yellow on select spots of the dish, doubtless the places where the liquid landed, then Emily’s eyes went the same shade. The yellow faded as quickly as it had come and Emily looked over at Zita in surprise.

“This is a serious cocktail,” She said as if Zita knew exactly what that meant.

Apparently, the look on her face told Emily exactly what Zita was thinking, because she clarified, “There are multiple kinds of poison in here, a mix of werewolf and vampire venom mostly, which is deadly on its own, but there are a few traces of things like wolfsbane and silver, both of which would ensure that whoever consumed this stuff would be dead as a doornail in a few hours. Are you sure Anders put this in here?!” She stared down at the plate in horror and disbelief.

Zita nodded, “I’m sure.”

Emily drew a shaky breath, more dramatics than necessity, and let it out, “Okay...we have training tomorrow, just...just pretend nothing happened. We have to figure this out before we go pointing fingers. We wouldn’t want to pose any faulty accusations before we have all that facts, okay?”

Zita suppressed the flare of anger that, instead, translated to her wings, “Look for what facts?! Why did Anders try to poison Imani?! Because I’m sure he knows, and I’m sure he isn’t going to give up when this fails. And that’s not even beginning to touch on how suspicious he’ll be when this, according to you, ‘perfect’ poison fails.”

“Hey!” Emily stood up, baring her fangs, “We. Will. Figure. It. Out. First. Understood?!”

Zita mimicked her stance and looked her in the eye. Emily’s usually brown eyes were overtaken at the edges with swirling dark red, but Zita refused to be intimidated, “Be careful, Emily.” She growled, not a threat, a reminder.

Emily blinked in surprise, but Zita was already gone.

☽O☾

When Zita got to training the next day, she had already put on her chosen mask. She was calm, almost giddy. Bouncing with energy as she stood at the end of the row against the wall, she watched Anders as he held one hand up, keeping in place the patchwork of threadbare sheets concealing the second half of the room.

“Good morning class!” He called out with a glint in his eye that didn’t bode well for the four of them. After some grumbled ‘good morning’-s from maybe two of them, Anders continued as joyously as ever, “Today we start your advanced training, as you know. Meaning I get to go as hard on you guys as I please! So today, we’re starting-” He dropped his hand. The curtain came cascading to the floor in a rippling wave of white, and behind it, stood the most dangerous-looking obstacle course Zita had ever laid eyes on. Granted, the only other obstacle courses she had ever seen were the little ones set up in the city for the kids to play in while the parents shopped, but she was pretty sure fire was a fairly big safety hazard on any course.

She seemed the only one amazed, the others could be summed up as more various levels of amused. Except for Emily, who looked like she was about to throw up. But the other two just looked excited.

“You are going to learn to complete this course three different ways, and master every single one of those ways before the month is up. Now, Ash, you first, then down the line to Zita, go!”

Ash took off at a sprint and used her momentum to run up one of the support beams and leap to catch hold of one of the ropes suspended over what might have been really black water, but was probably something else. She then leaped and swung her way through over the probably-not-water pit, back-hand-springed out of the way of the blunt spears (at least Zita hoped they were blunt), and generally acrobat-ed her way through the whole thing. Except for the climbing section, then she climbed -- really, really, fast.

Next up was Emily, then Kivvien took his turn, one after the other they served as a countdown to Zita’s humiliation. She paid close attention to each of their styles, and the little tricks each of them discovered for getting through. She even managed to forget about the poison for a minute as she ran forward after Kivvien finished.

She used the same trick to get over the definitely-not-water as Emily had, meaning no trick at all. She swung from rope to rope much more clumsily than any of her classmates. She mentally cursed the clear advantage they all had over her. Kivvien was a protector already, and, from what Zita could tell, so were Emily and Ash, so all three of them had probably had this training before, which was beyond unfair by itself, but add the fact that Emily and Ash were vampires, and thus, could have had as much previous training as eternity allowed, and things went from a simple ‘unfair’ to absolutely ridiculous.

After kinda-sorta making it across the ropes with only a few slip ups, Zita faced the hopefully-blunt spears of pain (and hopefully not death). She happened to glance up just before risking the sprint across and there, disguised within the mechanical meat of the death trap, was an opening. Instead of sprinting, Zita crouched low to the ground, then leaped into the air.

Her aim was just perfect. By stretching her wings behind her, Zita fit between the pipes and wires just right. She dusted off her sleeves and crouched inside the space so she could crawl under a rather cumbersome piece of metal that Zita hadn’t the slightest chance of guessing the purpose of. Just a few feet before her lay another opening, revealed by the shining of the lights below. The cyr wriggled through the smaller opening and was surprised to land, not nearly seven feet below on the ground in front of her next challenge, but rather on a rope, which, upon receiving her weight, dropped into the view of her audience.

The rope was pulled tant between two pulleys suspended by hinged poles. A hidden obstacle. Zita wobbled forward with her arms out, tilted, almost fell, regained her balance and over the trenches of fire she walked. She tilted again and this time her wings spread on instinct to balance her. With them out, it was nearly impossible to fall.

Zita practically skipped over to the top of the wall, easy as breathing, and stared down at the sudden drop. The blood from her face drained to her feet, taking her stomach with it. It looked a lot smaller from the ground. Her heart pounded in her ears, drowning out the thoughts that struggled to be heard. A deep breath. The pounding slowed to a steady beat. Thump. Thump. Thump. A prayer to Lok, and she jumped. Her attempt to mimic her classmate’s roll ended with a big bump on the back of her head and a very sore back.

“Well done Zita!” Anders congratulated her as he offered her a hand to help her to her feet. The moment she took it, the memory of the dinner came flooding back.

As soon as she was on her feet she pulled away from him and stepped back, maybe a little too quickly. Anders frowned, but before he could say anything, Ash materialized by his side.

“Why don’t you use those wings of yours?” She said with mock-helpfulness, “Aren't they designed to keep you from hitting the ground too hard?”

“Yeah,” Emily chimed in with her usual cheer, somehow unable to detect the mocking laughter in Ash’s eyes, “Try spreading them out next time, like a parachute,”

Zita was caught between heeding the advice of a friend and defying the taunts of… whatever Ash was. Her eyes happened upon Kivvien hanging back from the crowd. He looked thoughtful, like he was picking apart her every motion, calculating how it should have been done.

“You should listen to the girls, Zita,” Anders said kindly. That’s it.

Zita gave him a kind smile of her own. Careful not to show mal intent, Zita asked a favor, “Hey, Anders, could Emily and I talk to you in the hall real quick?” Zita wasn’t sure if Emily understood by the look on her face, but she nodded along, so she assumed she did.

“Alright,” Anders looked a little confused, maybe a bit worried, but not particularly so. Zita had to shove away the little bit of doubt eating away at the back of her mind. It was small, she convinced herself, poison was poison. But was it toxic to Imani’s kind? The doubt may have been larger than she wanted it to be.

A minute later they were in the hall. Zita briefly wondered what the loud pounding was in her ears, then realized it was her own heartbeat. This isn’t hide-and-seek, she chanted in her mind, I won’t get hurt.

“What did you want, girls?” Anders asked.

Zita didn’t even have time to consider a response before Emily had pulled out a neon-red flashcard from a hidden pocket and was reading off a scientific formula. Anders face went just a little paler, he backed up just a half-step, his eye flitted only slightly. The corner of Zita’s mouth twitched upward. Just a little.

“Do you want help figuring out what that substance is or-”

“I know what it is,” Emily interrupted, “The two of us just want to know why you put it in Imani’s food, is all. After all, it is highly toxic, especially to fairies, of all kinds,” Emily’s usually happy tone remained the same, but that only served to make her seem even more threatening. Zita was suddenly hit with an image of Emily, with her happy little smile and her happy little tone, pouncing on her unsuspecting prey claws flashing. Zita realized that the grin wasn’t always a smile. Sometimes it was a preditors grin. The baring of fangs before a kill. That thought, terrifyingly, made Zita want to laugh. Not an anxious giggle of fear, but a hearty laugh of joy. And that’s when she also began to question her sanity.

“-don’t know what you’re talking about,” Anders was saying, “Why would I try to poison Imani? She’s my mentor for Lok’s sake! What could possibly possess me to-”

“Money,” Emily interrupted again, “power, a hostage maybe. Everyone’s got their tritors price, heck, I’ve got one! What’s yours, is the question of the day.”

Anders was sweating now, fidgeting, shifting. A trapped animal beginning to realize that it’s the prey. “Look, you must be mistaken. I would never-”

“I’ve heard that before,” Emily chirped, “Every. Single. Time.” She shook her head, “There’s always an ‘unless’, Anders, please, for your sake, stop denying it. I can practically feel your pulse speeding up with it beating so loudly.”

Anders stuttered something incomprehensible. Zita met his eyes. Something stirred in the pit of her stomach, something hot, something strong. Like a burning anger, but not quite. It was stronger than that, and laced with magic.

The blood drained from his face.

“I-I’ll tell you everything,” He managed.