The Three Lights - chapter 3

Continuing the whimsy to a third chapter of this serialised (and outrageously derivative) YA fantasy, I am quite enjoying this even if nobody else is, so might go to at least a fourth chapter if I can settle on a name for the villain of the piece.

CHAPTER 1 is here

CHAPTER 2 is here (if you haven't already read them)

CHAPTER 3

 

Catriona sat at the long wooden table in the Refectory staring at the empty plate and wishing that her head would stop spinning. She didn’t think that she’d ever has to get used to so many shocks in a single day. She had screamed hysterically at the sight of Kai transforming into a dog, only stopping when he sauntered across and licked her face. After that the screaming had turned into equally hysterical giggling.

Eventually Dylan explained that everyone is Kai’s family was capable of transforming into dogs. Whilst not common, he outlined how a fair number of people who lived within the Veil were able to shapeshift. The stories of selkies, werewolves, and other such creatures were all based on reality.

After a few minutes dog-Kai woofed, picked up the underpants which had fallen off and left the room dragging both them and his robe in his teeth. Once he was out of earshot, Dylan murmured that nobody was entirely sure if Kai’s family were humans who could turn into dogs or dogs that could turn into humans. Rumour had it that, at home in Suffolk, they spent most of their time on all fours. Catriona tried to imagine the elegant Morwenna barking and wagging a tail, nearly falling off the bed laughing at the prospect.

They had all headed across to the Refectory early to get a good seat. Four exceedingly long tables were laid out in the Tower room with a shorter fourth table set on a raised dais at the far end. Catriona rightly took this to be the high table where the staff would sit. Mrs Hunter was busy checking the tableware as they filed in and directed them to the Sapling Table, the tablecloth embroidered with various leaves. All three were fulsome in their praise of how beautiful the hall looked, mollifying Mrs Hunter who had not been overjoyed to have such early arrivals before she had even finished setting everything out.

Some forty minutes later other students began to file in. Everyone at the Sapling Table wore the white robes, making a colourful contrast to the blue-robed members of Ty’r Môr, the yellow of Ty’r Awyr, and the red of Ty’r Tir. The hubbub of chatter made it difficult to hear a word. As the final student sat down some wide doors to one side open and a tiny rotund woman in a green and gold sari emerged, beaming at them all. Her hair was hennaed almost pillar box red, though she was clearly turning grey at the temples. She was followed by a cohort of tall young men in waiters’ uniforms, so alike in appearance that they could have been cloned. They stood to attention like an army rank behind her. The waiters were, in their turn, followed by three men in chefs’ uniforms pushing enormous trolleys laden down with tureens and platters. The central one strike Catriona for his sheer size. His enormous height and girth distracted her for a moment before she realised that he seemed to have tusks protruding from an alarmingly bestial face. The hall filled with the aroma of turmeric, garam masala, and dozens of other spices. Stomachs grumbled with anticipation.

“That’s Mrs Annapurna, she owns the Paneer Pavilion on Sickle Crescent,” Kai whispered as the room started to fall silent. “My sister told me she always caters for the feasts at the start and finish of the year. Apparently Professor Hildern used to live in Indian and is mad keen on the food.”

As if he had somehow heard his name mentioned, a door behind the top table opened and the Principal led the rest of the teaching staff out to take their seats at the head of the hall.

“My dears,” his voice filled the room, “Let us not stand on ceremony, there will be time enough for speeches later. The wonderful Mrs Annapurna has created a feast fir for the Gods, please enjoy yourselves and make new friends as well as renewing old bonds. Do try to leave some room for pudding though!”

The tiny cook clapped her hands and called out to her staff. At once the throng of waiters flowed around the hall dispensing bread, rice, poppadoms, curries of more varieties than Catriona had heard of. Jugs of mango juice, coconut milk, and all sorts of toothsome liquids appeared. They all fell to, conversation going in fits and starts between servings. Mrs Annapurna whirled around the room, the bells on her ankles jangling a strange tune as he went. Her arms flew giving directions and instructions to the staff with such speed that Catriona started to think the little woman had more than two arms. Perhaps the richness of the spices were somehow making her hallucinate.

By the time dishes started to be cleared away, none of the students had heeded the Principal’s advice and sprawled in their chairs bloated and groaning. The tables cleared, the waiters reappeared with trays of shot glasses and decanters. The glass placed before Catriona was shaped like an acorn. The top lifted off to reveal a small chocolate-covered mint sat in the cupule. She devoured it and followed the lead of the other students by turning the top part of the glass upside down and resting it in the cupule. A waiter appeared, plucked up the decanter and started filling the glasses with amber liquid.

Professor Hildern stood and all the other teachers followed suit, holding their acorn glasses. Catriona made to stand, but Dylan put a restraining hand on her shoulder. All the students craned their necks to see the top table.

“For those unfamiliar with Miss Hunter’s home brew, it is quite potent so sip rather than swig! Once again we owe Mrs Annapurna and her staff an enormous vote of thanks. To you, my dear, a culinary legend.” The professor raised his glass and bowed to the restauranteur who seemed to swell with joy.

Catriona coughed as the rich honeyed flavour of the mead coursed down her throat. It was closer to whisky in proof than to a sweet wine. She was relieved to see she wasn’t the only one, making awkward eye contact with the other spluttering Saplings. A plump girl with long black hair a bit further up the table started clapping and gradually everyone else joined in.

The desserts were distributed and somehow most people managed to find unexpected room in the stomach for something sweet, Catriona sparked up conversation with several other people who, like her, were the first in their families to attend Gorsedd University. They were reeling with the strangeness of it all and the discovery that there was so much else to the world than they had ever realised. Rhiannon, who had arrived expecting to study ancient languages (which, technically, she would be) had been deeply alarmed to hear about Fomorians and was insistent that someone tell her what other creatures were hidden away in the world. She cast plaintive green eyes around her colleagues till they alighted on someone who looked like they might know.

Another young woman, Kerensa, from one of the old blood families, held court to answer Rhiannon’s question which quite a few others were keen to eavesdrop on as well. Sweeping her chestnut curls back, she pointed to the high table and indicated a very short man with silver hair and tortoiseshell spectacles perched on a bulbous nose. Dr Starr, the history lecturer, was a gnome, a diminutive race famed for their scholarship and considerable longevity. Some beings, she explained, were able to pass as sufficiently human to go unnoticed.

“Besides,” she added after emptying another acorn glass of mead, “Most people are wilfully ignorant. They just don’t want to know what is going on around them, if they can possibly look the other way they will. There are shapeshifters who look human some of the time, like the gwragedd annwn. Of course, some creatures couldn’t possibly be mistaken for human even in a dark alleyway. The gwyllion mostly live in the mountains of Wales, if one of them dies or there’s an incident involving hikers then the Washers have to step to clear it all away.”

“The Washers?” Rhiannon asked before Catriona could do so.

“They’re a kind of… department run by the Arcanum of Prydain. You don’t know what that is either, do you? The Principal puts on orientation sessions for you newcomers at the start of each year, so he’ll go over all this in more depth. In ancient times the druids had their own council that oversaw things, then the priests of other gods started arriving – Romans, Norsemen and so forth. There was a bit of a kerfuffle at first but eventually they all settled in. One of Dr Starr’s books says it was a reaction against the arrival of Christianity trying to stamp them all out. Common enemy and all that. That was the Arcanum, a kind of governing council. As other waves settled in Britain, they joined too. Anyway, these days they have various sections that deal with different things. My mum works for them. One of those sections is the Washers, their job is to hide the bodies of dead creatures and deal with the human victims of some of those creatures – wash away the evidence!”

“The Washers at the Ford,” Catriona murmured, recalling the myth about fairy women who washed the clothes of those about to die at river fords.

“Exactly!” Kerensa nodded so energetically that she almost dislodged her glasses. “The Washers are one of the reasons why so few people in the wider world know what is going on. Aside from Dr Starr, there’s another lecturer who is a merrow (they’re kind of like mermaids) and one that is a ghillie-dhu. I’ve heard a rumour that the Sidhe sometimes visit, but I don’t know how true that is.”

Catriona felt her eyes growing heavy, the sheer volume of things that she had to start getting used to seemed overwhelming. Others were also looking as if they could do with a long lie down. The mead had made her rather unsteady and she was grateful to have Dylan to lean on for the journey back to their dorms. She dimly wondered where Kai had disappeared to but, as they made their way across the moonlit green he raced past barking and chasing two other dogs whom Catriona guessed must be his sisters or other relatives. One was a red setter and the other a terrier.

 

Catriona was dragged from a deep sleep by a rap on the door. Peering out she blearily recognised the excessively perky face of Rhiannon who informed her that breakfast was being served in the Refectory. Grunting incomprehensibly she lurched towards the shower which eventually enabled her to wonder how many of the garbled memories floating round her head were real and how many the product of too much alcohol.

Most of the toast seemed to have been devoured by the time she collapsed on to the bench besides Kai, who was gulping down black coffee.

“Shouldn’t you be drinking from a bowl in the yard?”

“Racist!” She blushed to her roots and tried to mumble a retraction before seeing Kai grinning broadly before bursting into a laugh laud enough to shatter her tenuous sanity.

“Are you joining the rest of us today, Cat?” Rhiannon asked timidly from the other side of the table.

“Joining… what are you doing?”

Rhiannon explained that one of the second-year students had volunteered to escort the newcomers round the shops on Sickle Crescent. Catriona looked blanked, so Rhiannon produced a much-folded piece of paper from a satchel and started talking about textbooks, potion ingredients, and a dozen other things which rapidly turned into little more than white noise.

Four large cups of coffee and a second shower enabled Catriona to join Morwenna and twenty other Saplings a mere ten minutes late as they waited outside the unassuming wooden door that separated Gorsedd from rest of the world. Morwenna arched an elegant eyebrow before leading them all down the Crescent. Their first port of call was to be a rather dusty-looking second-hand bookshop, Shelfback and Buckram’s, to pick up their textbooks. Then they would head to a sporting goods shop for those who wanted to join the collegiate hurley team, followed by a herb shop, and all manner of other things.

As the door of Shelfback and Buckram’s was jangled open, Catriona wondered how on earth they would all fit inside. However, the shop proved implausibly spacious on the inside. From her position in the crowd, she could see room after room disappearing into darkness – each filled from floor to ceiling with what must have been thousands of books. A man in an ivy-green suit emerged from an alcove behind the desk. His ebony face held a rather waspish expression as his green eyes surveyed them imperiously. Catriona could not remember ever having me a black person with green eyes before.

“Good morning. I take it, Miss Prenrudh, that these are the initial batch of Saplings that you promised me?” His voice was deep and cultured, every syllable suggesting an immensely expensive education. “Very well children, assuming you are each in search of the usual Sapling texts you will see before you twenty piles. For those on a limited budget, second hand copies are on the sinister end of the counter. The dexter end holds pristine copies for those of you whose parents have credit cards and trust funds. Should there be any editions which you do not require you will, on pain of death and I am not joking Mr Caltrop, place them gently – and I emphasise gently for those of you who are hard of thinking – in the blue box next to the cash register. If any of you are aspiring to imbibe any of the more challenging texts, we stock practically everything so you only need request and Mr Shelfback will be happy to retrieve them for you.”

The bookseller’s hands were as articulate as his voice. Catriona started to think the air around his hands was somehow rippling and tiny sparks danced around his manicured fingers. She wondered if this was an aftereffect of the remarkably potent mead from last night. A rather large and scruffily dressed lad with lank hair shuffled to the till with his pile of books and asked the shopkeeper if he had any books about the fourth house in a voice so low that Catriona would not have heard had she not been right behind him.

“Young man,” the response came in hissed tones so icy that several nearby students took an involuntary step back, “There is no such thing as the Fourth House and if you ever ask me again you will be banned from this shop for life. Do I make myself clear?”

The boy spluttered something incomprehensible in reply, handed over a wodge of notes and dashed out without waiting for the change. A look of disgust passed over Morwenna’s face.

“I’m so sorry Mr Buckram, I had no idea he was that stupid!”