The Outcast

Over the next few weeks, Lily didn’t learn of any threats within the school. Even with Dia and her pawing through the spell books in their spare time, both to perfect the spells for the lessons and to learn a few others that seemed interesting or that might come up later… she learned nothing.

But, Lily did find herself having fun.

Oscar and Kiki took turns to take information back to one of the Elders’ companions. They passed on the fact that none of them had found a single suspicious thing; the books Lily had read didn’t seem to give out any information unless it was related to the subjects that were taught, and while she had been practising and reading into spells they hadn’t learned yet, they didn’t sound like anything that had been used against fairies in the past. Definitely, nothing that could harm or kill.

What they didn’t pass on was, the laughter that had been pulled from Lily’s lips when they practised spells, the fact that not just Dia, but Finn and Rainer were more than happy to talk to Lily unlike everyone had been back home, the interest and joy that sometimes moved over Lily’s face when they were in the flying or mythical creatures’ lessons.

Oscar and Kiki could easily see how much joy and confidence this school was bringing Lily, even if it was wrong and dangerous.

For the first time in Lily’s life, she had friends. True, there were still people here who didn’t get on with her. Kelsie Fulton was one such person, though there were others who sneered at Lily and Dia. It still amazed Lily that Dia always said something back, usually more defensive and more angrily whenever it was Lily who was the target.

One night, about six weeks after meeting the girl, Lily found herself asking about it.

“Why do you always snap back at them?”

That day a hex had been aimed at them from a group of girls, the group who had gravitated towards Kelsie and her sophisticated aura. They hadn’t been taught hexes, so it had missed and had very little effect. But it didn’t stop Dia from yelling at them from across the courtyard causing a rather large scene.

Dia was still fuming while sitting on her bed.

“They tried to hex us!” She growled.

“They missed.”

“That’s not the point! They tried, so why did we get the detention because I wanted to break their damned noses?!”

Lily sighed softly; she still didn’t get it. It just settled in the thought that when you spoke back things got worse.

“At least detention won’t be such a bad punishment,” Dia sighed, raising a hand to rub her shoulder absently.

“No? If it wasn’t bad it wouldn’t be a punishment.” Lily commented.

“Maybe, but they can’t resort to anything illegal so I’m sure we’ll be fine” Dia sighed as though accepting the punishment and letting her hand fall back from her shoulder. “It’ll probably just be boring as hell! Though if we have to serve together we might be able to have a laugh.”

Lily didn’t comment, but she had a feeling Dia would be the kind of person to make her laugh no matter the situation. Lily had never laughed so much in her life before now.

The detention, it surmised, was cleaning out stock rooms for potion ingredients. Which was just as Dia had predicted; boring as hell. The stock rooms were densely packed, and most of the lesser-used ingredients were in boxes, jars and barrels which were layered in dust.

“Oh yeah, because we didn’t need to breathe at all,” Dia coughed as she pulled out the items on one shelf to clean them.

Lily hummed softly in agreement. They had yet to be taught the spells that would help with cleaning and tidying, however, Lily figured that they wouldn’t have been allowed to use them anyway.

“Ewww, look at these.” Dia giggled, holding out an open box to Lily who found herself looking at string-thin tentacles that still wriggled where they lay in the box.

Lily pulled a disgusted face “What are they?”

“Tekalima tentacles” Dia stated, continuing at the raised eyebrow that showed on Lily’s face through the dim lighting “Little creatures in the water that lose their tentacles about five times throughout their year. These probably were collected from the ones in the pond behind the Blue Dorm.”

Lily’s expression turned to confusion, and to give her credit, Dia was beginning to know just what went unspoken from Lily’s lips.

“I had a wander around the back of all of them one of those times you were determined to stay in the library all Saturday.” Dia chortled. Lily’s lips formed an o-shape while understanding dawned over her. “There are a few other cool things, like the dancing shrubs behind the Green Dorm which are good fun to watch, and the singing vine fish that hang out in the Red Trumpet vines.”

Lily paused in her cleaning, looking around at Dia who was chattering away. They were such little mundane things, but they sounded glorious to her compared to the dead ends she had discovered in the library each weekend. “I should go see them…” She mumbled.

“I’ll show you tomorrow!” Came the immediate reply “Unless you’re going to the library again?”

Lily frowned at the jar she had just cleaned; she should have been going to the library again. There were so many more books that she needed to go through, with the chance that maybe one, just one, had something in there that would give her any hint that she was even in the right place to be finding the information that was required from her. But six weeks of searching had led her to nothing…

“No,” She mumbled before clearing her throat and speaking more clearly. “No, I don’t need to go to the library.”

“Really?” Dia sounded gleeful. “We should maybe go into town as well. We can go shopping or something?”

“I... I don’t have any money.” Lily couldn’t keep the scoff from her voice.

“Me neither, but we don’t need any to go look.”

“What about food?”

“We’ll figure something out.”

“But…”

“Oh, come on. It’ll be fun to get out for a day!” With an amused sigh, Lily gave in and nodded which was met with a small but genuine cheer from her curly-haired friend. “You won’t regret it, Lil!”

Shaking her head unable to fight a smile, Lily turned back to the glass boxes on the next shelf. The smile instantly vanished, replaced with her eyebrows furrowing in confusion. Reaching out to take the top box, she dusted the entire thing and focused on the label ’Fae Wings’.

“Those aren’t fairy wings” Her words left her lips without thought as she pulled open the box and glanced at the thin glowing glass-like wings inside.

“Well of course not,” Dia had walked over to look around Lily’s shoulder at the box she held “Why would there be actual fairy wings in here?”

Damn. Lily gulped back a shudder before making herself force a chuckle, motioning to the label.

“Oh, yeah karai got the nickname of Lake Fae’s some time back. You know, because they glitter over the water’s surface like the way fairies skin glitters in the light?” Dia continued sounding a little odd, as though this was another piece of information that Lily should have known “Did your parents never take you to the lakes? I thought all of us at some point had been taken to the winter solstice lights over the lakes.”

Slowly, knowing she had to tread carefully now so as not to give herself away too much, Lily shook her head. “My parents never thought to take me,” Obviously, they would never have risked the witch’s world even for something that sounded beautiful, “They never could leave the farm for long.”

“Hmm…” Dia still sounded suspicious. “Your childhood sounds like it sucked almost as much as mine!”

“Well, inside the house it was great, I just never really got out much.” Lily countered, a little too quickly as she couldn’t bear to give her parents a bad image. Dia simply smiled.

“Well, if you stay here over the holidays, you can come with me! I always go. My mom used to take me when I was a kid, but I’ve snuck out to go every year since she died too. It’s really cool! I think you’ll love it.”

With that, she went back to the shelf she had been working on, humming a soft song in her wake that sounded like the ancient winter solstice songs from when humans once existed without magic.

Lily looked back at the wings in her hand; replaying the genuine confusion that Dia had shown at the thought that they would have real fairy wings here. Did they not use fairy wings as a potion ingredient? Wasn’t that the whole point of this endless war, that they were determined to harvest the wings from fairies for the uses in potions? Lily had found any of the potions listing them yet, but she had only been through a couple of the simpler potions books and still had many to go through. Would she not find any potions that involved anything more than these karai wings?

Frowning, she placed the box back on the shelf. Were they wrong about this whole thing? But if they were, why were the witches so determined to come for them every time the barrier weakened?

Later that night, she sent Kiki with a message to the Elders with this information. But she would have to wait for their response. She lay in bed, staring up at the ceiling listening to Dia’s light snores, knowing what they would come back with. There was bound to be another reason then, the taking of fairies’ wings when they invaded was a cover for some other motive.

It left her head reeling, and she barely slept.

Part of her wanted to head back to the library the following day, but she knew she couldn’t without raising questions from Dia. Lily had to keep her promise to Dia that she wouldn’t need to go to the library.

So, she followed Dia to the singing vine fish, the tekalima pond, and the dancing shrubs. They also found that at a specific time of day, when the sun was at a certain angle in the late hours of the morning, the grass behind the yellow dorm bloomed with light as though the sun was glowing beneath the ground. It was beautiful to behold. Lily could not resist removing her shoes to walk through the glow barefoot. It had the warmth and softness of an area of black fur which had been laid in the sun for a long time; it made her want to lie down on the grass and bask in it for the brief time that it would glow that way.

Dia had simply laughed at her, but not with any malice. The sound was fond, and it only made Lily more relaxed, the confused and concerned thoughts from the day before flipping to the back of her mind.

“So, town?” Dia asked nonchalantly as they walked back through the walkway between the dorms towards the main building. “If we pick up lunch we won’t have to worry about trying to figure out how to get food when we are there.”

Lily smiled. Her smiles were becoming easier and more genuine as the days went by. “Good idea.” The lunches were often sandwiches and finger foods, so it was easy for them to load up their arms with however much they thought they would eat on the way, and they headed out of the front doors, passed the sentinels at the gate who, once again, made no movement to suggest they knew what Lily was, and walked out into the world.

The town was pretty boring all in all, there were quite a few shops, but all the owners shooed them away before they could even cross the thresholds. They all seemed to have a nasty glare on their faces when they looked at Dia.

“Are people not allowed to go inside to look?” Lily questioned after the fifth shop door was slammed in their faces.

“Well, they are…” Dia started awkwardly. “But my pop lives a couple of villages out and he’s not got the best of reputations, so it’s probably because of me. Sorry.” She added lamely.

Lily blinked and tilted her head in confusion.

“I didn’t think they’d be so cruddy about it even if they did know who I am.” Dia kicked at the ground beneath her. “I mean, it’s not like I’ve ever done anything. My old man, he’s just not that great with other people, you know. And he drinks a lot which gets him into fights when he is out of the house. And he’s…”

“Dia.” Lily interrupted, unable to stop herself at seeing her first friend tense up more with each word. It wasn’t anger. Maybe fear? Lily associated that kind of tension with the kind she felt in her own body when nerves took over as her mind ran over too many details to keep track of. Dia blinked her wide eyes up at Lily who felt a reassuring smile move over her face. “It’s ok.”

What else could she say? Lily had never needed to soothe another’s turmoil like her parents had often soothed hers as a child. In the end, she opted for a light-hearted approach; she wasn’t sure she knew Dia well enough to poke at what appeared to be family-related wounds.

“How about we go for a walk outside the village, the fields and stuff? Maybe even the very edge of the woods?” Lily didn’t want to get too close to the fairy homes, but she always felt better watching the wildlife, perhaps Dia would too.

Dia smirked a little, likely relieved for the opportunity to change the subject. “The woods? I never pegged you for a daredevil, bookwyrm.” She teased.

“We wouldn’t go far, but the non-magic animals are usually pretty docile if they are at the edges, right?” Lily shrugged, feeling rather uncomfortable at the idea of being a daredevil. To be a daredevil, you needed to be brave enough to do dangerous things willingly. Not wake up every morning and feel sick because the thought won’t go away that this is going to be that day that it all goes wrong. Each day she felt that tension which was fading from Dia, anxiety that she was going to mess up and be discovered for what she was. That she was going to fail. That she was going to either get a death sentence here in the witches’ world or a social death sentence back home.

She’d managed six weeks, but nothing showed up as wrong on the surface. Even this town seemed completely normal with nothing that would hint at an upcoming continuation of the war. Lily needed to dig deeper to find the information she was here for, and that meant more risk.

Feeling a little sick, Lily followed Dia back towards the town gates, hoping that the woods would soothe her as well.

The woods did do wonders for her nerves, it turned out. The whisper of the plants and the aroma of tree sap gave her a sensation of her home she could never describe to her friend. She watched Dia walk along, kicking her feet through the fallen autumn leaves on the floor. After a few minutes, Lily found herself subtly copying that behaviour. It was odd how relieving and fun that juvenile act was, it brought a light sense of joy to her and made her walk more like a skip.

“So, you’re a bookwyrm, but you also like nature?” Dia asked after a while of comfortable silence. “Did you do anything exciting growing up?”

“Erm, I’m not sure what you class as exciting. I spent a lot of time climbing trees and hanging out with the cats, but I can’t say I did much else.” Lily sighed, realising as she spoke it out loud that she didn’t have any exciting qualities about her.

Dia let out a low whistle, “Damn. At least the climbing trees must have been good fun?”

“It was, you get to see some amazing sights from the top of trees,” Especially when you’re in a magical barrier that makes you a few inches tall. The world was so much bigger when you looked out at it from that size.

“I bet! I used to go the other way, out into the wide-open country so I could just see for miles and wonder what it’d be like to go over the horizon and over to the mountains.”

“I’ve definitely never been to the mountains.” Lily couldn’t lie about that; she’d only ever seen them at a distance from the tops of the trees.

“Probably shouldn’t either, I don’t think it’s safe. But still nice to fantasise about it!”

No more could be said as they heard a shriek of fear and angry yelling coming from outside the town.

“What the…?” Dia started, confused. “Come on.”

“What?” Why would Dia want to go towards a sound like that?! Every instinct in Lily was saying to stay away from it so they didn’t get caught up in something bad. But her feet seemed to follow Dia automatically after six weeks of following her whenever Lily wasn’t in the library.

A crowd had gathered at the entrance of the town and had begun to follow a small bundle of people in the direction of the school, veering off to walk around the back of the high wall perimeter surrounding it.

“Whoa” breathed Dia as she pulled Lily to the front of the crowd so they could see the bundle better. Four large burly witches walked with heavy feet, one at the front leading and one at the back. The two in the middle both had hold of an arm, twisting it painfully into a position that couldn’t be fought against. The arms in question belonged to a creature Lily had never seen before. Ultimately, the female looked human enough, the same number of limbs, the same facial features. Her dark eyes glinted with purple as she glanced at the gathering crowd before letting her head fall forward and her deep violet silk-like hair cover her face. That hair, however, did nothing to hide the scaled horns which curved up from the top of her head. Her hair was also not long enough to hide the patches of purple scales covering areas of the dark skin of her upper and lower arms.

Mostly, though, it was the large, scaled wings that sat folded without struggle protruding from her shoulder blades that could never have been hidden. Those wings seemed to be getting the most mumbling about in anger and insult.

Lily couldn’t understand such a response. All she could feel, looking at those wings was awe. They were so powerful compared to the wings of fairies. The silver scales seemed to ripple with each very minute flex of muscle beneath the surface of the wings. They looked like they would be able to throw the witches off without any effort, and yet, the female walked along with tense, angry obedience about her.

“I’ve never seen one” Dia mumbled beside her.

Lily couldn’t find words for a moment or two. Then, as the female was led further past the stone boundary of the school, one question came to mind. “Where are they taking her?” Lily didn’t even stop to think if that would be an odd first question.

“The Lock Up obviously” Dia deadpanned.

“Why?”

Dia looked at her like she’d gone a little crazy. “Because draconians are warriors, vicious and merciless.” She spoke like she couldn’t fathom why Lily would even consider not locking one up. “If she’s here, it’s bad news.”

“She’s not even struggling though?”

“They’ve got rid of her weapon, so she probably realises she’s lost.”

“But they don’t have a weapon?”

“Probably destroyed it.”

Lily frowned at Dia, who met her gaze with a concerned expression Lily hadn’t seen there before. It looked as though Dia was seriously considering whether Lily was in her right mind. But as a few whispers had now turned on them, ’Dragon sympathiser’ being the one to catch Dia’s ear, she grumbled slightly and began to pull Lily away from the scene and back to school.

“Look,” She hissed, “I get you’re from a sheltered life, but you go around questioning something like that and you’ll soon be more unwelcome in this world than I was in town today.” Lily bit her lip, she couldn’t help but wonder if the witches had been fighting a war against draconians too, ripping their wings from their backs in a similar fashion. She said nothing, much to Dia’s relief, but glanced over her shoulder in the direction the draconian female had been taken.

She needed to find out if draconians were victims too. If they were, maybe the fairies would have some allies in the coming war.

Once Dia was in the bathroom that night, Lily whispered to Oscar that she wanted him to check out the so-called ‘Lock Up’ during his next few day ventures away from the dorm. It was the first of anything she had found that could give her any information at all. She had to follow it.