Things started to settle at the compound after Uncle Winston’s visit. Nellie had been forced to promise not to do anything rash regarding the possibility that the Regere knew where Rhys was. She was unsure what that encompassed and made a note to ask the Regere about her father when the opportunity arose.
It was creeping to mid-June with no word or visit from the Regere. Not even Morgan received calls or letters from his father, although his mother wrote often. He lazily read through that week’s letter, his chin propped on his fist.
“She sends her love,” Morgan said blandly, folding the short letter away.
The group of them sat around the den with notes from home. Each letter was at least a page front and back for everyone else, some of the contents not being well wishes or lamentations judging by some of the expressions Nellie saw around her.
“I told her to keep the dog out of my room,” Brody grumbled from his beanbag.
“Was it your models,” Arch asked, his eyes locked on his own letter.
“He ate Notre Dame and St. Peter’s!”
Nellie smiled sympathetically as her mind flashed back to when Ash was ripping her pillows and bedding daily. She scanned her letter for the parts about Ash as a pang of loneliness struck her.
“Oh,” Lilac said. “Looks like my parents want to visit.” She hummed, sucking on her pinky nail. “Two weeks might be too short notice to put in a room request….”
“Our families are allowed to visit,” Ava asked.
“Yeah, of course they are,” Fin said, frowning. “This ain’t a prison or anything.”
“Mrs. Adams likes a month of notice to get everything perfect,” Brody said. “Mr. Javernick doesn’t care as much, and it is his house. Ask him, Lilac, and let him get Mrs. Adams’s wrath.”
“Oh, Brody, you can be so wicked,” Lilac giggled. Brody’s dark complexion deepened on his cheeks. She skipped off with her letter to her chest.
The mentions of Ash were few and far. Nellie noted to press for more regarding her smoke wolf. She hoped Nathalie was not ignoring him too badly.
The smell of smoke caught Nellie’s attention. Itzel’s letter was starting to smoulder at the corners. Her dark eyes shined with tears.
“Itzel,” Arch warned, grabbing her wrist. He easily looked over her shoulder, scowling. “Blast, I can’t make sense of it.”
Morgan went over, spoke something to Itzel in a quiet voice, and nodded as she answered.
“Release her, Willoughby,” Morgan commanded. “She’s just homesick. Her Conservatory has a new litter of iemisch that she’d been looking forward to.”
Arch let go. “English is difficult, but you’ll need it if you plan to join the Auctorita,” he said. “A common tongue is important. Isn’t that so, Calix?”
“I can help,” Calix offered. “I know how to learn it.”
“Why is it English,” Nellie asked. “The Regere lives in Portugal.”
“Portugese isn’t an international language,” Morgan said before Calix or Arch could answer. “We live in Lisbon, but that isn’t the center of the Auctorita. That’s just where my mother’s family is.”
“Makes it easy for us,” Arden said from the seat he was sideways on. He stuffed his letter in his pocket and swung himself upright. “Training dummies?”
“Sounds good,” Brody said.
Calix left a minute after Arden and Brody, presumably to go shoot targets. Fin settled to write his responses to his letters. Arch excused himself to the library to finish up a history assignment.
Ava suggested they go to the greenhouse before their required lesson. Nellie eagerly agreed and they set off, without Morgan much to Nellie’s chagrin.
There were three greenhouses on the property, the largest looking as if it was converted from a boat house. This greenhouse held a small pond with a waterwheel and several stone and wooden benches scattered about.
Lilac was kneeling in the wet muck by the pond. She was carefully searching the water with her fair hands, smiling dreamily when she pulled up a wad of sopping, dark leaves.
“Are your parents coming,” Nellie asked, sitting on the nearby stone bench.
“They are,” she said. She plucked apart the mess in her hand. “I hope the fern flowers bloom while they’re here.”
“Are you… checking them,” Nellie asked unsurely.
Lilac’s smile widened uncomfortably. “This is muthkwey.”
“For healing,” Ava whispered to her.
“If only I was a witch,” Lilac lamented. “Some of these are beyond me.” She tossed her clump of leaves back in the pond. “Off to the belladonna.”
“Poisonous,” Ava whispered as Lilac sauntered by.
She knew that much—belladonna was a popular poison across fiction—but let Ava have it. She hunched over the arm of the bench to smell a cluster of white flowers, glad to find them pleasantly fragrant and not pungent.
Ava had gingerly taken Lilac’s spot by the water, eyeing the plants below wistfully.
“I’m surprised Lilac’s parents are coming,” Nellie said offhandedly.
“It’s great, right? They must be forgiving each other.” She tapped the surface of the pond to create a ripple. “Or it’s just that absence makes you want to see them thing. I miss my parents.”
“You guys like each other though,” Nellie pointed out.
Nellie had made more of an effort to get to know the others since Uncle Winston allowed her to stay. She had been reluctant to ask about their lives outside of the compound, particularly their families, fearing it would open her to questions about her own. The image she created of everyone else having a loving set of parents was not true for all of them.
Silas had found Lilac in a shelter. She had run away from home a week prior after years of misunderstanding between she and her parents. They had screened her for autism, sent her to counselors and doctors, all because she could sense something they could not, and that she had no name for. They kept trying to find out what was wrong with her, when–as Silas surely explained to them–nothing was.
“I think I'm going to go ask Mr. Javernick if I can invite my parents,” Ava said. “If they can come the same week as Lilac's, that'd be awesome.” She frowned. “Well, it’ll be tricky for Dad on such short notice, but Mom should be okay.”
There was not much reason for Nellie to stay in the stuffy greenhouse after Ava left–except that it reminded her a little of the Everglades–so she departed for the stables. She hurriedly entered the stone building, the smile falling from her freckled cheeks.
Hodge was gone.
His stall door was open with half the shaving mucked into a wheelbarrow. She timidly peeked in as the scratch-scratch of the mucker reached her ears; her shoulders relaxed when she saw it was Fin. Disappointment seeped into her chest.
Fin jumped a mile. “Ay Dios mio! Don’t sneak up on me like that, Nell!” He clutched his chest. “You knocked the Spanish outta me.”
“Sorry… Hodge isn’t here?”
“Guess Penny grabbed him at dawn and took off,” Fin said, returning to his mucking. He wrinkled his nose as he deposited a lump of greenish poop in the wheelbarrow. “This is the closest I could get to him.”
“Suppose she was in a hurry,” Nellie said dully.
She crossed to the equipment room to grab the spare mucker. It was not like she and Penny were friends. They met the one time and there was about a decade between them. She just jumped to the assumption they had a bond seeing how they fought a dragon together.
“Penny never says bye,” Fin said, watching her. “I’ve been here a year, and I think I've only spoken to her twice. Same with Cal, and he’s been here for four years.”
She hummed recognition to what Fin said, but kept quiet otherwise.
Silas told her back when he spoke to her and Nathalie about her coming to the compound that he urged Penny to join the Auctorita, and she refused. He told her she was the daughter of his friend, and that friend–Keena Fox–was friends with Rhys. Nellie confirmed as much with ‘Fox’ popping up in passing several times in Rhys’s letters to Nathalie. This was all information that sat too close to things she was supposed to keep quiet.
“Your dad’s a Knight with the Order of Ferblanc, isn’t he,” Nellie asked.
“In the Southwest USA chapter,” Fin said, puffing out his chest. He deflated and eyed her dubiously. “Why?”
“There’s no way he knew mine then?”
Fin smiled softly, shaking his head. “Sorry, Nell. I know he went to Rome as a cadet, but that would’ve been way after your dad’s time.” His hands tightened on the mucker as he stared at the cobbled floor. “He was young when he… transgressed.”
Nellie nudged him. “And mine was old.”
“Yours left the Order first,” Fin said pointedly, clearly looking happier. “But, I’ll take you as a member of the My-Father-Broke-Vows club any day.”
They had just finished sweeping the last remains of the shaving when Arden skidded into view, sweating and dirty from his swordplay.
“Oh good… you’re still here,” he said, panting. “Mrs. Adams said to prep the extra large box in the back.”
“You mean she told you to do it,” Fin said.
“But seeing that you’re already….” Aden turned and bolted. “IOU!”
Nellie left Fin with Arden’s chores. She had just reached the patio when Mrs. Adams appeared with her large cowbell. Nellie only just covered her ears when Mrs. Adams waved it over her head to signal to the kids roaming the grounds it was time for lessons.
The Montauk monster was not interesting by itself—hairless, chubby, with a pointed almost beak-like jaw with its teeth exposed that ate decay, garbage, and rotting roots—but the reaction to one washing up on a public beach in the 2000s made learning about it more tangible than old stories of manticore or cockatrice from hundreds of years ago. Prior to the one that washed ashore, people had referred to them simply as gremlins.
“It took six years of small interviews, national interviews, and the occasional article to get the fallout under control,” Mrs. Adams said, stumping back and forth with her cane. “It is now generally accepted that the gremlin was a diseased racoon that somehow got out in the ocean, died, halfway decayed, and had all the fur stripped off in the process. Then, there is the school of thought that it was a hoax all along, which was a most acceptable narrative.” She whacked her cane against the giant projected image of the dead Montauk monster. “These incidents were one reason why there was little resistance when the Auctorita was formed. Keepers and the Order of Ferblanc had too much else to worry about. Yes, Miss Herle?”
Nellie lowered her hand. “Why is there all this effort to keep the Realm secret?”
“Partly so people like me don’t burn at the stake,” Arch said.
“Your input is unneeded, Mr. Willoughby; I am in charge of lessons,” Mrs. Adams said stuffily. “But, he does make a point. People in great numbers don’t act rationally, and dislike anything different. Mages are different. The separation keeps them safe. As for the creatures, some are quite dangerous and that could cause panic, but others have a… mysticism to them, which could cause greed, or other negatives. Take unicorns, as the example. Who can tell me about unicorns? Mr. Jones, yes?”
“Unicorns are hostile and can be dangerous to anyone except a virgin maiden,” Brody said. “People would get hurt trying to get near them. And, alicorn is a powerful healing material, so people would hunt them for it.”
“The creatures could very well be at a higher risk if the Realm was common knowledge,” Mrs. Adams said, nodding her approval at Brody’s explanation. “A mage could defend themselves, with or without magic. They’re human, and thus have reason. Trying to change the hearts and minds of people who discover a creature is dangerous, or has something valuable to them, that is impossible. Our single lives are just not long enough to do it. The rhinoceros is still hunted, yet we know their horns do nothing, and billions of dollars have been spent over the decades to stop it.” She turned off the projector and used a small remote to brighten the lights. “That’s enough of that for the day. Fifteen minutes, and then to algebra. Mr. Faust, see to that box stall. You can’t unload chores onto Mr. Cabrera. Miss Maebry, Miss Wagner, a moment.”
Nellie left with Morgan. She had wanted to get him alone for days, but thought asking Ava to go away was rude and suspicious, and she did not see asking Itzel to clear off going well. The young mage often hovered around Morgan with him being the only fluent Portuguese speaker at the compound.
“So… nothing at all from your dad,” Nellie asked.
“You know it’s only my mother writing me,” Morgan said, eyeballing her. “I suspect he went to headquarters.”
“Where is headquarters,” Nellie asked curiously.
Morgan furrowed his brows. He looked equally annoyed that Nellie was asking and irritated that he could not answer the question quickly or simply. He shrugged.
“It’s complicated,” he said flippantly.
“You’re just in the dark for everything, aren’t you,” she muttered. She sighed, turning away from his smouldering fury. “He told me that he knows where my father is. I was just wondering if you heard anything.”
He lost a bit of his edge, and dragged his feet as they moseyed towards the outdoors.
Morgan would be no help on information about Rhys. The Regere had a high, thick wall between his son and his position. Silas would have been a good source, but Nellie was not confident that he would divulge anything. He was more fervent about keeping her safe after Uncle Winston’s impromptu visit.
“Perhaps you should write my mother,” Morgan said offhandedly. “I highly doubt she’d know anything useful, but who knows.”
“That wouldn’t be too weird?”
“Have you met yourself,” Morgan scoffed. “Writing a letter is the least of your weirdness.” He rolled his eyes blatantly as she frowned at him. “You are using this camp to gain some skill so that you can hunt dragons, are you not? Or are you just playing pretend? Ready to go back to Tennessee and pass a test for some school? It’s abnormal no matter the choice.”
“Yeah, thanks for that,” Nellie said wryly.
“I’m submitting my letter to Mrs. Adams before curfew tonight,” Morgan said. “It makes no difference to me if you write her or not. I know where my father is.”
“Do you?”
“A better idea than you do,” Morgan seethed.
They glared at each other, hackles raised, and then stormed off in opposite directions.
---
The box of Rhys’s letters had been a tight fit. Packing an extra pair of shoes would have been more practical given how she often needed to dry her sneakers out, but sitting on the end of her bed scanned the letter where Rhys first complained about Brue felt better than dry shoes.
Nellie stole the photo of Rhys at his graduation from the photo album before Uncle Winston brought it back to Nana and Granddad. She traced the blond wave on top of Rhys’s head and absentmindedly felt the ends of her wavy, auburn hair.
She tore a large corner from her spiral notebook–full of notes from classes, mostly creature related–and wrote: Do you know where Rhys is? –Nellie
She scurried into the dark hall in her bare feet. The floor creaked as she tiptoed. The weak light from the wall sconce elongated and twisted her shadows. It felt foreboding making her way to Mrs. Adams’s office even though it was still before curfew.
Morgan was about to knock on the office door. He stopped with his fist raised and looked hauntingly at her.
“Here,” Nellie said, handing him the rip of paper.
He folded it, tucked it into his letter, and knocked.
“Master Morgan. Miss Herle.” Mrs. Adams looked to Nellie’s feet. “Shoes or slippers, Miss Herle. Bare feet outside your room is inappropriate.”
“Sorry,” Nellie mumbled, scrunching her toes.
Mrs. Adams took the letter from Morgan and stared at Nellie expectantly. The poor lighting in the hall deepened the lines and wrinkles on her face giving her a face that looked painted black and white.
“Oh, I don’t have my letter written yet,” Nellie said. “I was just… walking. With Morgan. He’s afraid of the halls at night.”
“I am not,” Morgan protested.
Mrs. Adams seemed to feel his protest was too strong to be genuine, her sharp eyes softening slightly as they passed over him.
“See him back to his room then,” Mrs. Adams said. She went rigid once more. “And don’t forget the rule about bare feet again.”
“Don’t get your hopes up,” Morgan said once they got back to the second floor.
They stopped outside Morgan’s room. It was at the start of the hall, next to Arden’s room and across from a full bathroom with a claw-foot soaking tub. Nellie had stolen away to that tub twice despite preferring showers to use the fizzy bath bombs.
“I’ve been looking into dragon lore,” Morgan said. He shuffled his feet. “Just in case you got curious.”
Nellie crossed her arms and leaned against his doorway. “I don’t even know where to start all that… I wish Penny stuck around a minute so we could talk.”
“She’s after her own mother; I doubt she’d be much help.”
“But she’s been hunting dragons for who knows how long, so could at least tell us which stories she and Ira have looked into,” Nellie said. She smiled weakly. “Want to have a cousin only day in the library tomorrow?”
Morgan tried to conceal his happiness, but his smile was too wide to pass off as forced or polite.
----------------------------
This was mostly a 'get to know' chapter. The kids can write everyday if they want, but letters are handed out once a week and sent out once a week. Mostly because half of them are international, so it's just easier. They all do a phone/video call a week too. They don't have calls and letters on the same day.
I mentioned way, way long ago that Rhys's vows he took when he joined the Order of Ferblanc were similar to the vows monks take. That includes celebacy. Fin's father broke his vow, was reprimaned (he was too new to be demoted), but his broken vow resulted in Fin, so he has to fulfill his duties as a Knight, but also the duties as a father the best he can. Fin knows his father, has a good, respectful relationship with him, but is ultimately being raised by a single mom since his parents aren't allowed to be married.
