Page 31 of Darkened Wings
“There’s a—oh, come with me. I don’t want to waste any time. She’s over here.” And my roomie was darting off across the clearing and crashing through the underbrush. I stumbled along behind, completely at a loss.
“Wait. What are we—” I cut off as I didn’t need the answer to that anymore. Because, curled up in a pile of leaf litter, was a kitten. She was dirty and thin and her eyes were closed. “Oh no. Is she…”
Astra dropped onto her knees and reached for the little bundle. “She’s alive, but she’s definitely not doing well. I wonder what happened to her mama? She’s so skinny.” She lifted her gaze to mine. “We have to help her.”
“Of course.” I dropped down beside her, petting the tiny head with two gentle fingers. “Are we allowed pets?”
“No.” She cuddled the baby closer to her. “But I don’t care. This baby needs care, and she’s coming home with us.”
“What if we get caught?” Because I was not going to say no. We were taking her home. “I just want to be prepared for the repercussions.”
“We’d have to get rid of her or be kicked out. That’s what they did with a couple of boys who smuggled in a guinea pig.”
“And what did they do?”
“They sent the animals home to their parent and see them on school vacations.”
Not an option for us. “All right then. We’ll have to figure things out, but once we do, it’s the three of us or none of us. We won’t send her anywhere.”
“Agreed.” She kissed the baby’s head, probably not a good idea until we got her a bath. “Gloomy is ours.”
I started to ask where she got the name, but just then, the kitten looked up at me with the most mournful golden eyes and I knew. “Welcome to the fam, Gloomy. You’re going to have to be a quiet kitty so we can stay at school. But we’re yours no matter what.”
And so Gloomy the cat came into our lives. Luckily she was mostly just hungry and thirsty and responded quickly to our care. She also learned to hide when anyone else came, not that it happened often.
Chapter Eighteen
A great thing about the R classes? There was a back-to-back study period right in the middle of the day on Wednesdays. The rest of the students were as giddy as I was to have some time out of the classroom but, as I listened to their whispers and murmurs in the hallway, I knew their plans for the study time had nothing at all to do with hitting the books. Their gossip was about sneaking out of the school and eating fast food, along with couples talking about where they would go to make out or more.
No one was shy about their plansnotto study.
My plans, on the other hand, were to finally explore the library I’d seen from a distance but never the inside.
Not that I expected a welcome or gods forbid a tour of the school. That would mean they actually wanted me here.
And everyone knew that wasn’t the truth.
I wondered what Callum would be doing with his time. He was clearly not the studious type, but when called on, he begrudgingly gave the correct answer. He was smart but for some reason was in remedial classes. Part of his ongoing mystery.
Staying under the radar as he called it. Still, I couldn’t help but wonder why.
Maybe he had a girlfriend and was making out with her in some corner of the forest, or he went back to his room and wrote deep, heart-shattering poetry about me.
I bet Callum had a lot of secrets. I wanted to know them all.
I ran back to my room, dropped most of my books, gave Gloomy a few pats and scratches right under her chin, and then left with a hop in my step. Many times, when I was surviving on my own, the library would be my haven. There was one town where the library had coffee and donuts every morning for free if you participated in their morning book club. The titles were boring, and the facilitator did most of the talking, but it gave me a free breakfast and afterward, I would brush my teeth and wash my face in their bathroom.
Crossing campus, I kept my head down for the most part, eyes on the fallen leaves and the way the oranges, tangerines, and golds pockmarked the otherwise perfectly green grass. I joined the cobblestone walkway, careful not to step on a crack even though my mother was long gone. Of course, I was stared at and whispered about, but my mind was fixed on getting to that library. It would offer me solace and silence, two of the best parts about life.
I hoped there was a table in some dark corner where I could flick on a lamp and read until the study time was over.
A set of heavy wooden doors greeted me, and I pushed the lock on top of the handle, much like the one where I’d entered this academy for the first time. The cool whoosh of air carried a thousand scents, but the most prominent were paper, dust, musty books, and wood. I closed the door behind me and drew in an easy breath. When I turned, the place didn’t disappoint, not one bit. The center of the room was vaulted with hickory-wood ceilings that had to be at least thirty feet tall. At the center was a cast-iron chandelier fitted with those lightbulbs where you can see the inside wiring. Edison lights? The windows were all stained glass. The smaller ones held illustrations of trees or forests, while the large window in the very center held a raven with beautiful feathers and a crown at its feet. I stood there for several minutes, unable to draw my eyes away from the intricate and spellbinding vision.
How in the world could anyone concentrate on studying or reading when there was this compelling piece of art beckoning us to worship it?
Like anything else, the students and faculty here had likely simply gotten used to it. Its luminescence as the sun pushed its rays through the colors was lost on them.
I perused the shelves for a while, familiarizing myself with the layout. There was no handy-dandy map for this library, not even placards differentiating the fiction from nonfiction. But then again, it wasn’t here for the public, only for those who worked or studied at the academy.
