Page 9 of Darkened Wings
Chapter Six
I sighed. The numbers on the map and schedule were regular, but the doors were hung with brass Roman numerals. As if I needed an extra layer of confusion getting around this place. I could figure them out. We had covered them in math long ago or maybe history? School, anyway. I was no dummy, but goodness, someone should’ve warned me.
Yeah, like that was going to happen.
A cracking sound came from down the hallway, and I jumped six feet in the air, nearly throwing my pitiful lantern and peeing my pants in the process. I’d found the battery-operated device on a table in the hallway and assumed it was for the use of those who had to wander in the night. If I hadn’t been so damned hungry earlier, and knew about the torment I would receive from the dining hall students, I would’ve skipped dinner altogether and done this during the daytime.
“Come on, Gwendoline, you can do this. There’s nothing in the dark that isn’t here in the day. It’s simply a lack of light. There’s no ghosts here or witches waiting to cast a spell on you. No monsters, other than the ones in your mind.”
I didn’t even convince myself.
I’d pinpointed all of the classes in this hallway, and a shot of trepidation bolted through my body at the thought of going outside to cross to the other building. Walking around in my robe and bare feet in an empty hallway was one thing, but there were things that went bump in the night, and for me, in my mind, the population of those bumpers tripled once a person stepped outside. There had been slippers in that package, but did I put them on? No. In my rush to leave and not wake my roomie, I was now padding barefoot on marble floors with my toes turning to ice.
I turned out the lantern to give whatever creepie crawlies a chance to come out thinking that I was gone. Pressing my nose against the window in the center of the door at the end of the hallway, I strained my eyes in the darkness, looking for anything that might jump out and snatch me in the night, while pulling my robe tighter around my chest and clenching my fist around the lapels.
It wasn’t like anyone in this place was going to come looking for me. Quite the opposite. They would probably be glad that I was gone. The blot on their otherwise blameless school would be erased from sight and memory.
Still, no matter how long I stayed, scanning the bushes, the trees, the dark corners of the outside walkways, I saw nothing. It didn’t quell my fear, not even a bit, but the best way to get over this fear was to face it head-on.
“If anything is out here, I’m damaged goods and probably taste like broken dreams and clotted blood. Better to stalk someone else.”
I whispered the words before taking off at a sprint, which wasn’t a very good idea in my robe in the nearly pitch darkness with the only light coming from the cloudy night outside. It wasn’t the best running attire. Still, it did the job, and before I could get frozen with the fear that coursed through my veins, I was into the next building, slamming the door behind me and thanking the gods I made it through. My chest heaved while I caught my breath, more from the terror than from running. I was skilled at running. You kind of had to be when you were going from place to place. Humans called shifters weird, but judging from what I’d seen on the streets, all beings had their weirdness.
My nose and ears were cold and my feet, despite the slippers, were getting cold as well. I needed to hurry up and get this done.
I would probably look like an insomniac zombie in the morning, but better that than a lost goose.
With the map and schedule in my hands, I turned the lamp back on and resumed my plotting for the next day. This building contained all of the raven education. Conspiracy History, Raven Culture, and Raven Myth and Lore. The last one seemed the most interesting to me, and I actually looked forward to learning more about who I was.
Maybe figure out a thing or two about why my parents did what they did, while I was at it. Yeah, I was damaged, but there was a missing piece I couldn’t put my finger on. Too bad they didn’t live long enough for me to build up the courage to ask.
I turned the lantern on and shone my light on the first door to my left. These doors were not marked with numbers at all but rather people’s names. Shoot. Did I come to the wrong building?
“What in the world?” My voice echoed down the dark hallway, making my heart rev up to a thousand beats per second, or what felt like it. “It’s just an echo, Gwendoline. Just an echo.”
I checked and rechecked the map and schedule, even dashing outside to make sure I was in the right building. Yes, Harbinger Hall. I was in the right place. I crouched down right there near the door and placed the map and schedule on the floor, flattening them out. When I was running from one building to the next, I must’ve crumpled the papers in my hand, and now some of the rooms were next to each other when they shouldn’t be.
Finally it dawned on me. Yes, there was another floor to this building.
I rolled my eyes at myself. In all my fear and haste, I’d lost my common sense completely. This building actually had three floors, and the layout for it was on the back of the regular map.
“Okay, I can do this. It’s just a building with classrooms, nothing more.”
If someone heard me talking to myself like this, in the middle of the night, in my robe, when I should’ve been sleeping, prepping for the first day of school, they would be convinced Damaged Gwendoline was mentally damaged as well as physically.
If they only knew, my damage was so much deeper.
Locating the stairwell, I made a dash for it. After about a dozen stairs, there was a landing, a U-turn, and then another flight that led to a set of double doors at the top. All I wanted to do was to get out of that stairwell. It was probably the safest place to be in this school, but there was something about the closed quarters that made me shudder.
I pushed through the double doors quietly, not wanting to spook anything that might’ve been up there waiting in the shadows for me. My light was dying more and more by the second, onto the placard near the stairwell. This building’s numbers were regular, and so I concluded that the other building must’ve been older, when people used Roman numerals. Jeez, this school was older than I knew. Maybe they would say in Raven History.
I stuffed the map in my pocket, confident that I could deal since these numbers were regular. After mustering up the courage, I hightailed it around the corner and…oomph!
Arms and legs and my schedule scattered everywhere, and that wasn’t it. I’d run into someone. And that someone didn’t make it out of our collision unscathed, either.
The moon had appeared at some point from behind the clouds and beamed from the large window at the end of the hallway. Its glow brought some of his features to life. As I scuttled away, backward crab style, I took them in, making sure he wasn’t a ghost. His platinum hair was all out of place, and the scowl on his face was below the bluest eyes I’d ever seen in my life.
I landed on my ass but tried to recover some of my pride, snatching up my schedule and shaking my lamp, trying to make it come back to life.
