Page 52 of Good Losers (Lochkelvin Academy)

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The moon is something else tonight. It hangs like an all-seeing eye in the cloudless navy sky, the same glowing white hue as a swan’s plumage, spilling ghostly, feathered light across the neat manor grounds. Every stem of grass turns into a sharply defined blade. The whiteness of the moon is truly intense. It possesses the same brilliance as the gloss of a unicorn or the sheen of a specter — something unearthly, unworldly, strange.

We roam the grounds, rushing down the slope near the illuminated trees to grow farther and farther from the manicured high-class civility of the manor and closer to something wild and unexplainable.

Beyond the warning cricks of insects and the slow lament of amphibians lies something powerful, a force heavy enough that it can almost be tasted in an estate as isolated and remote as Lochkelvin.

As Rory guides us deeper into the grounds, there’s an inescapable feeling that the air is thrumming with serene, moonlit magic.

“Where are we going?” Finlay grumbles, stepping through the tall swaying grass and wide-open wildflowers beyond the slope, sulking as though he’d rather be anywhere but here. Bindweed and feverfew decorate our path. “It must be near midnight.”

“Exactly,” says Rory, as though this is in any way an explanation.

It’s almost midnight but the moonlight, in its own way, is as bright as the sun. I can pick out the different shades of brown on the rugged, craggy bark of the old oak trees in front of me, each leaf on the canopy a different green from its neighbor. The wind stirs faintly as we enter the shelter of the trees. Bluebells and foxgloves lie scattered along our secret path, adding vivid splashes of color as we step between bracken and branches to follow Rory.

The still summer night is peaceful except for our footsteps and animal song. Not even the temperamental Scottish wind is here to grab the treetops inside greedy fists and shake them from side to side. In the relative stillness of the evening, they give a soft rustle in the night air and little else.

Finlay catches my eye as Rory stalks straight ahead. His expression is one of tired exasperation, with the knowledge that no matter how far Rory travels, Finlay will be right there behind him.

It feels like we’ve traipsed for miles across soft dewy grass and snapping twigs, though in reality the manor still stands behind us like a stoic overlord, full of glinting watchful windows and a dotted patchwork of lamplight.

The outdoors is a different beast to the safe, regimented structure of life in the manor, and part of me is starting to think that Rory — who does his best every day to leave the manor and wander the moors — is more a creature of the earth than I ever presumed.

Eventually, our hushed, secret world opens up. We come upon a petal-covered glade leading to a small stream lined with rocks and stone. A loch. It lies so still, reflecting the bright, shining moon so clearly that it resembles a mirror tilted toward the sky. The illusion is only shattered when a dragonfly hovers at the edge, its tiny beating wings forming ripples along the serene, ice-like surface.

“Och, come on, ye’re no’,” Finlay murmurs, his eyes lifting distrustfully at the moon. “No’ this pagan stuff again.”

“Pagan?” I repeat nervously, remembering running through the forest during Samhain and losing the length of my hair and seeing my own body hanging from trees a hundred times older than me. Queasiness slides into the pit of my stomach.

Finlay gestures at the water. “It’s the same water as Lochkelvin. Same source, same properties.”

I bite my lip. It’s narrower than the rushing loch at Lochkelvin, and I don’t know what this means — that it’s weaker? More potent? I don’t understand these rituals, the symbolism the rich place such powerful beliefs in. It makes me nervous that they all seem to place such enormous faith in something so invisible, so abstract, that it can never be disproved.

“You said this would be fun,” I accuse Rory, and Rory just gives me a small laugh.

“Luke rightfully isn’t talking to me and Fin is in a sulk so I’m trying to fix things for my friends… and myself. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t have to be fun.” There’s glitter in his eyes and it’s not the antagonism I expect. Am I imagining things or is Rory softening around me? It unnerves me, this new Rory, the one who cares for fluffy eagle chicks and talks to me like I’m almost an equal.

I’m not used to being an equal, not even when I sought to be one of the chiefs.

“What do you know of full moons?” Rory asks me suddenly, his silver gaze analyzing the stillness beyond.

Lost, I manage to summon, “They happen every month?” In all honesty, I’ve never considered the moon much other than observing a skinny crescent or a bright, glowing sphere. It’s the latter that stares back at us now, its surface shining and beaming upon the loch before the three of us. “The moon also represents female energy,” I have the urge to add, and then feel like an idiot.

A smirk tugs at Rory’s lips. “Female energy,” he says with a kind of hidden delight, as though turning it over in his mouth and deciding he likes the sound of it. “They used to perform rituals here under the light of the full moon.”

“Rituals don’t work,” I mutter, glancing at Finlay and hoping he might back me up. I remember him sharing his doubts with me after Samhain, that it had been nonsense for rich people.

But Finlay says nothing, staring glumly at the moon as though sensing it peering into his soul.

“If they don’t work, why are they passed down from generation to generation? Why are the stories still being told? If there is no truth to them, why do they still exist?”

I wish Rory wouldn’t speak like this. When the air is fraught with an almost cinematic purpose, when every glance is charged with meaning, I’m unable to deny him. It turns out I can give up all sense of logic, rationalism and enlightenment for him without much encouragement. But I can’t ever deny Rory.

Besides, nothing I say could ever refute him. Not when he’s like this. Not when the world we embody is so full of secrets. And so I stay quiet, listening to warm summer air that’s laden with the unknown.

Rory begins to pluck at his sweater.

I stare at him. He’s wearing a sweater, something so soft it looks like cashmere, and right now he’s… I swallow. He’s taking it off.

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