Flock (29 page)

“Katla Gudrun Leblanc, you are under investigation for the abuse of Stork privileges.”

At the ensuing gasps, I hung my head.

“The Tribunal’s decision,” Hulda continued, “is an immediate suspension of Stork affiliation and privileges pending trial. While you will continue to possess your magical abilities during this interim, you will be powerless to access them. Is this understood?”

“Yes, Fru Hulda.”

I should have been happy. I had, after all, achieved my goal: one of the three essentials to the pact was altered. The spell was broken. The bonus of which was that Jaelle would soon have news to share. But I wasn’t. I was deeply ashamed. And disappointed to have failed on another score. Even with my eyes on the toes of my shoes, I could sense their shocked faces and disapproving glares.

“Katla, we must ask you to leave now,” Hulda said.

With this, the mass in my throat expanded, constricting air and bringing tears to my eyes. I ran from the room without uttering a word in my defense or even glancing back. If all went according to plan, they’d know my motives soon enough. And it wouldn’t matter.

On Friday, it was cruddy out and unseasonably cold, which matched my overall mood. I kept reminding myself that the suspension was temporary, and of my own doing, but it didn’t help. My body attended school that day; my mind however was in another dimension, one I’m sure will eventually prove the existence of zombies.

In Design, Marik and I made our presentation. Much to my surprise, he stuck to the script and nailed it. The way he articulated both our name and slogan —“The Toy Box, because today’s games are the building blocks of tomorrow’s discoveries,”— had even Ms. Bryant nodding appreciatively. I, on the other hand, sucked. I couldn’t concentrate and probably now have the record for most “umms” uttered in a five-minute span.
Go me.
It hadn’t helped that we followed Penny and Jinky, who were superb. I saw the way Marik looked at Penny as she breezed her way through a flawless delivery.

Afterward, in the hallway, I saw him double over in pain. The effort of our speech had cost him. It was another indication that we were game-on.

Once school let out, I found myself slumped over my steering wheel with inertia buckling my backbone. A light rain pinged upon the roof, and the sky was the color of ash. I was expected at Pinewood; we were allotted a half hour to move our display items onto the tables, after which the show was open and the appointed judges would be circulating with their first-, second-, and third-place ribbons. Though I tried not to, I thought of Jack. I missed him so much. Funny thing about the word
miss
is that it would seem to indicate a sensation that something was lacking, the way your head feels lighter after a haircut. Missing Jack was instead this heavy thing that lodged in my throat, making breathing difficult, and slowed my reactions, making operating a vehicle a dangerous prospect.

On the drive over to Pinewood, the horizon seemed squatter than usual, as if the clouds hung lower and the band of space between the earth and the sky were compacted. I attributed it to my shriveled mood and the gloomy wet weather.

Having put the finishing touches on our project setup, a somewhat recovered Marik and I waited silently by our table.

“Do you think we got the blue ribbon?” Marik asked.

“I do.” And I did. With its primary colors and sample toys, our project was visually stimulating. And to highlight our slogan, we had an array of block-themed toys. My favorite — something I’d taken to calling Andi, given its androgynous nature — was a stack of four blocks in a vertical case that assembled a human figure in four parts: head, upper body, lower torso, and legs. By flipping the six-sided cube, one was able to alter the image radically. I tended to favor the head of the girl with pigtails, a bikini top, tutu, and Dutch clogs with knee socks. Marik, to my annoyance and with some fairly deft hand movements, went for the guy with a ’fro, jacket and tie, swim trunks, and army boots.

“I do, too.” Marik rubbed his hands together in anticipation.

“Though it wouldn’t hurt for you to use some of that magic charm of yours on the judges.” I couldn’t believe I was suggesting he influence the outcome. It was testament to how badly I needed just one thing to go right.

“My magic what?” Marik asked.

“You know, charm, hocus-pocus. What you’ve used since you got here to turn the girls to mush and even had someone like Mean Dean playing nice.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Come on,” I said.

He stared at me.

“You mean to tell me,” I continued, “all that was genuine?”

He continued to eye me blankly.

“And people just . . . like you?”

“Why wouldn’t they?” Marik said. “I like them. I like everything. No magic necessary.”

I sat contemplating this news. It was rather startling. And while amazingly simple in theory, still incredible all the same.

A judge walked toward us. Marik sucked in his breath but let it go with a big sputter when we were passed by. Instead, the official affixed the blue ribbon to Jinky and Penny’s project.

“I guess that proves it,” Marik said with a wink. “No hocus-pocus involved.”

I watched Penny and Jinky hug in celebration of their win. Their project was good, darn them. The floor plan called for an aromatherapy corner, an herbal-remedy section, a book nook, and a metaphysical wares area. Even with all its voodoo gimmicks, it was tastefully done and deliberately treated in soothing pastels, soft lines, and nature-inspired images, the handiwork of Jinky and her artistic eye.

“Reporting for chaperone duty,” my out-of-breath dad said.

I thought he may as well just term it a date with Ms. Bryant but held my tongue.

He tapped one of our sample items, one that Marik had found somewhere. It was a can labeled
MIXED SALTED NUTS
. When you opened it up, a toy snake sprang up and even made a rattling sound. It wasn’t my favorite item, mostly because Marik still liked to brag about how he “got me” that first time. “Oldest trick in the book,” my dad said, “but a classic. You kids are looking good.”

“Thanks,” I said, “but we didn’t place.”

“What?” my dad said. “You guys got robbed.” He began fiddling with Andi. He put cowboy boots where the head should go, a poodle skirt where the shoulders belonged, the head of a freckled boy below that, and a football jersey as the base. “This project is top drawer. And, come on, a toy store. What could be better than that?”

“Penny and Jinky’s wiccan wares. It took first.”

“Wiccan?” my dad asked. “Really?”

“No, not really, but New Age with a focus on healing and the metaphysical.”

“That sounds very unique,” my dad said. He had moved on to our magnetized Lincoln-Logs, but the way he had left Andi bothered me. I found the misplaced body parts grotesque and a little unsettling. My dad watched me replace the pieces into their anatomically correct locations and flip a few to the girly selections. When I was done, he gave me a must-you lift of his brow.

“What?” I asked, ready to defend the natural order of things. “It bugged me.”

“For someone who I’ve personally witnessed pair an army jacket with ballet shoes, it doesn’t make sense.”

“Not the accessory mash-up. That doesn’t bother me. But the mutations. Ick.”

“Sometimes you gotta think outside the box,” my dad said. “Take a fresh look at things. Besides, it’s a game; you gotta play the whole board.”

Box. A fresh look. Play the whole board.
Holy Hasbro. My dad was a freakin’ genius.

“I think I see the lovely Ms. Bryant,” my dad said. “I think I’ll offer her some nuts.” He took off with the gag gift and a goofy grin on his face.

OK, so maybe not a genius in the strictest sense, but a master gamer and fun-loving, which had its applications.

How had I never thought to confer with my dad on the anagram in my dream, even surreptitiously? He was the scramble king, after all. The blocks and his mention of “box” made me think of “parcel.” I had taken “parcel” as is, but on my vision quest, the girl — Idunn — had thrown all the letters up in the air to scatter them, “parcel” included. The phrase was never intended to remain as “parcel dinky pal.”
All
the letters were meant to be reworked. “Dinky pal” to “pink lady.” And “parcel” to . . . I grabbed a pen and paper from my backpack and scribbled furiously. Carpel. Holy crap, “parcel” scrambled to “carpel.” And “pink lady” wasn’t a house, wasn’t the cameo, and wasn’t the Bleika Norn; it was a type of apple. Pretty much anyone had heard of that variety, but only a girl with an apple-farmer boyfriend would know that carpels were the seed compartments inside apples. Naturally, I was
that
girl.
Break
or no
break.

All of a sudden, something didn’t feel right. Like at the Asking Fire, I sensed a low, humming vibration. One look at the water bottle on our table confirmed this. It was rippling ever so slightly.

“Marik, we need to go.”

“Go now?” He clutched at his side as if fatigued by the mere idea.

“Do you think you can make it?”

“If you think it’s important.”

“I suspect Leira’s life depends on it. And if I can change Leira’s fate —”

“Let’s go,” he said through gritted teeth. He looked pale as bleached bones, and there was a fine sheen of perspiration across his forehead. As sidekicks went, he was the short-of-breath straw, but better, I supposed, than going it alone.

Overwhelmed with urgency and not wanting to attract the attention of my dad, Ms. Bryant, or Penny, I directed us to the closest exit, double doors leading from Pinewood’s gym to the back of the school. It appeared to be a staff parking lot and bus pickup and drop-off area. Beyond it was an open field horseshoed by woods.

The moment the door closed behind us, I sensed a changed world. The horizon that had earlier seemed oddly lower was now visibly compressed into a thick purple wedge of churning clouds and darkening sky.

At once, the blare of sirens filled the air, and I brought my hands to my ears. Below my feet, the swell of vibration grew until my calves thrummed with pain.

Marik was also suffering from the sensory assaults and looked around wild-eyed. “What is that noise?”

“A tornado warning.”

A shriek of wind joined the cacophony of sirens, and its accompanying gust lifted my hair and shirttails.

“What does it mean?” Marik asked.

“Take cover. Underground.”

Marik looked at his feet as if expecting some sort of hatch to open up. By the strain on his face, he’d have taken any shortcut out of there.

“If we were smart, we’d head back to the building,” I said, shouting above the wails of the alarm and the howl of the wind.

“Are we smart?” Marik asked with sincerity, his voice hoarse with the effort.

“No. I’m not, anyway.”

As if to prove that point, it began to rain, an entirely inadequate word for the onslaught that pelted us. It fell as a curtain of water that instantly plastered my hair to my face and my clothes to my body. With an audible crack, the temperature plunged, and I hugged my arms to my soaking-wet sides.

“Something’s not right,” Marik said. “I feel sick.” He staggered, and as I put an arm out to help him, he buckled to his knees.

I fell beside him, my own knees splashing in the already pooling water. From this low-to-the-ground position, the reverberation of the earth was even more pronounced. My whole body rocked with quick vibrations until the bucking ground transitioned to rolling waves of slower but greater magnitude. But I knew earthquakes, and this was no run-of-Midgard temblor.

“We have to get out of here,” I said. “Can you make it to my car on the other side of the building?”

A crack of lightning split the sky, forking into white-hot branches.

“I don’t know,” Marik said, gasping for air. “Maybe you should go without me.”

“What? No!” I shouted. As I struggled to assist him to a stand, something hit me in the shoulder. It was hard and round, and it hurt. Another, about the size of a quarter, glanced off my forehead and another off my back until the sound of them pinging the parking lot all around us joined with the roar of the wind.