(25) A Symphony Of Squiggly Lines

A/N: Hello, friends! I know I'm behind on comment replies again, but I see you reading weekly, and I want you to know that it makes my day  😊

This is a smol heads up that I've just completed another editing pass on this book, and cleaned up some minor details that I wrote in while pantsing but later found just complicated things. Nothing substantive, but if you notice any inconsistencies with what you've read before (especially around the sixty-year historical mark), just go with the newer version. It's already been fixed throughout the book!

That's all for me. Cheers, and happy reading  ✨

Detail on the map is scant; this wasn't an engineer's construction. But there's something else on it that catches my eye. In the middle of the grounds around the backside of the building is a faint dotted line. It outlines a shape—"circle" is generous, so I'd call it a blob—in the middle of grass that Exie and I have trampled before. From it to the building runs a line. More than one—the rest branch off it like bureaucratic tangents—but their motherline runs from the blob straight up the ass end of Melliford Academy, where the chapel lies. There it ends.

"It's the water," I say.

"What is?"

"This." I trace the blob with one finger. "Look, that's the same distance from the wall as the last willows. You ran to this one"—I tap an empty space on the blob's bottom right corner—"and these ones were still standing. This one was gone."

"What are the lines?"

"No idea."

There's no logic to them. Only their main trunk seems to run to the school, and the wall eats it for breakfast. There's no doorway back there; I've checked. Besides the front doors and the school's many first-floor windows, there's no alternative exit at all. The other branching lines interlock with one another and end in random parts of the yard, though one has adopted a nomadic life and taken off into the neverworld somewhere off the map's left spread. I pull up my mental image of the region again, but there's no town in that direction. There is a wall, also doorless. The line runs past it like a teenager ignoring their parents' call for dinnertime. It can't be a road.

"Anything on the others?" I whisper.

Exie shakes her head, handing the papers back. "It's just student records."

Records of people this school has brainwashed into demon servants. I also take a look over the pages, but they're straightforward, with no suspicious marks or annotations. I'd love to take them all with us, but we can't risk that theft being discovered. I cast a final eye over the building map, paying particular attention to the blob and the intersecting nest of lines making roots for it. There's nothing but grass along them, to my memory, but a second, more targeted search of the school grounds might reveal something. I slip all the papers back into the hidden drawer and slide it shut until it clicks. I test the finger-hold on its underside. Back to how we left it.

Exie beats me to the office door, and has it open by the time I join her. When the office is locked up and left behind us, we slip back down the stairs and regroup behind the statue of the indecent angel there. His wings make a nice little shadowed spot against the wall, and the moonlight pouring through the school's windows will light-sensitize the eyes of anyone walking by, rendering us as good as invisible. The brighter the light, the darker the shadows.

"Any sign of Clarice?" whispers Exie. I've got a better vantage point.

"I'm right here," someone whispers behind us. We both jump so hard, I crack my head against the angel's elbow. Clarice giggles. Nothing in the school moves.

"Don't do that," I say, rubbing my second skull-bruise in less than a week. I'll concuss myself properly at this rate.

"Back to my room," whispers Exie. "We can't talk here."

"There's a student in the bathroom," says Clarice. She sounds much too cheerful for the situation. I want to chide her for recklessness, but that's the pot calling the kettle black, and she did just sneak up on us. I don't want to know how good she is at it.

Exie grumbles something profane under her breath. We're on the dark side of the school here, and it's too much of a risk to light our candle. I peek from hiding. We're not far from the crossroads here, and the full moon pours day-bright through the great rose window in the chapel. Its glow is visible all the way from here. We'll be able to read any paper in that kind of illumination, and maybe get a chance to scout the end of the line on the map if we have time. I meet Exie's eye and tip my head in that direction. She opens her mouth to protest, but Clarice has already started walking. I shrug, Exie looks disgruntled, and we both follow.

The teachers' private balcony carries on unhindered the length of the hall. Clarice leads the way beneath its shadow, until its shadow ends. We're just shy of the chapel. Its pews seat only moonlight, but their emptiness turns them into worshippers themselves, kneeling before the preaching pulpit. I turn my back on the silent congregation with a shudder. Clarice is grinning like a gull with some poor beachgoer's stolen lunch. She hops from foot to foot, but waits for both me and Exie's attention before pulling out a paper dove.

"Colson's roommate locked his door," she says matter-of-factly, handing the treasure off to Exie, who fairly leaps to take it. "I picked the lock, but he barricaded the other side, too. He was really spooked this morning. This one's from Barnabas."

Exie's hands go still for a moment. She swallows hard, then nods and resumes unfolding the paper dove, her hands as light as if it's made of glass. We all flinch as the paper's crackle echoes through the hall. Nobody leaps from the shadows to accost us. The paper springs open, and Exie does another scan for eavesdroppers before holding it out into the moonlight.

It's a book page, alright.

"It's in English," whispers Exie, her face bent close to scrutinize the florid script. "But old. This dialect died out during the Sectant Expulsion." There's a long silence in which she continues reading, Clarice eyes up the angel portraits, and I take my turn shifting restlessly. When I glance back from yet another compulsive shoulder-check, Exie's biting her lip. Her face is pinched in a way that never means good things.

"Is it the bible?" I ask.

She shakes her head. She flips the paper over—I will never understand how she can read so quickly—and carries on down its other side. When she looks up, she meets my eye with an expression too close to fear to be pretending.

"It's a story," she whispers. "About the fall of MSTM."

My heart was already going hard enough. This is real. I knew so already—it's been hard to ignore the likes of Colson II—but if these doves have anything to do with the brainwashed minions' new spiritual formation, we're not just dealing with a cult here. We could be dealing with an actual fallen angel. A demon of the highest degree.

"I can't tell where it fits in the overall narrative," says Exie, looking back at the page. Her hands are shaking slightly. "It's too vague. It's probably a huge book. This is just a sliver of it."

"Anything important to us?"

"I don't know."

I don't hear her say that often. She repeats my check, then sits on the floor and hesitates midway to setting the paper down. She passes it to me instead, then digs in her satchel for a notebook and pencil. I hand the paper back. Exie skims it even faster this time, jotting down notes with a look like she's not convinced any of them will help us here. When she finishes, she's got less than half a page. She picks up the paper again and just looks at it—in the shadows, so she can't be reading—for a long, long time.

I pull out a matchbox and hand it to her.

Exie swallows like it hurts her throat, and nods. It's a stiff, jerky motion. We gather up the paper and move behind a column that will block any view of us for someone coming up the hall. Exie sets the paper on the floor again. Then she closes her eyes. She presses one hand over the cross beneath her shirt, and her lips move through what can only be a prayer. When she finishes, she lights a match and touches it to the corner of the crinkled page. It's just paper. It crumples in on itself, folding along the same creases its dove form gave it as the smoldering eats it to ash with barely a lick of flame. I watch the orange line wipe it out, hypnotized by the coal's flickering, until the final corner shrinks and blackens.

The same instant that last corner falls to ash, a blood-curdling scream echoes off the walls from the direction of the student dorms.

I grab Exie's arm, and she grabs mine. Clarice crouches. The scream continues, louder and louder, longer than any human should be able to maintain. The sound is muffled, like it's reaching us through a heavy wooden door, but even that door can't stifle it completely. In an instant, I hear doors and feet thundering all over the school. The shadowy forms of teachers race along the second floor. I never see them up there in the daytime. Students' voices rise, panicked and shrill.

My own anxiety calms. I've always had a mode like this in crisis situations. It feels like years since I last accessed it, but it's been years since I faced a crisis without being confronted with a body, either. We just did something. I don't know what. I don't know if it was the right thing, but fire purifies; we've always known that. If we just killed Barnabas, at least we set him free.

Exie is not calm. I catch her flailing hand as it grabs and shakes my sleeve. Her eyes are bright with panic in the darkness. I lace our fingers together and squeeze hers tight as I scatter the ashes of the former paper dove. They drift just slightly. My hand stills. There shouldn't be a draft coming so consistently from that direction. There's no exit on this end of the school, and no windows lower than the great rose window, either. All the internal doors are closed.

I lift my gaze, and lock eyes with the Mastema portrait.

Branching lines from an oblong pool. There were willows outside, but no sign of the water that nourished them, though they were big enough to have grown with it for most of their lives. Even the soil of the school grounds wasn't soggy. I tighten my grip on Exie's hand and pull us to our feet. This is reckless, and may yet be my stupidest decision of the last six days. But already, there are teachers' voices down by the dorms, and it's only a matter of time before they start searching. If they're behind the doves and have seen anything like this before, they'll know what happened. If they sweep the school, they'll find us soon enough.

Exie struggles against my pull. She's saying something, but I can't hear it; my own heartbeat is aspiring the accompany an orchestra on full-sized drums. Clarice is already gone. She'll make it away. Exie and I can't match the stealth proficiency of a lifelong kleptomaniac. Exie finally gives up struggling as we reach the chapel's pulpit side, face to face with the portrait of Mastema. The scenes of destruction in its background are a town. I'd bet anything its welcome sign reads Miranda.

I grab the edge of the portrait and pull. There's a small, magnetic click, and the whole thing swings off the wall to reveal a hidden passageway. A set of tight, spiral stairs descends into the darkness. I pull Exie onto them and shut the portrait behind us.