It was a peaceful night, gentle waves lapping at the Kestrel, which rose black and tall on the water. Connor turned on his flashlight and jogged down the dock, the light bobbing wildly as the others trotted after. He stopped abruptly and Max heard him swear. As they caught up to him, Max saw why: the Kestrel did have a rope ladder hanging from its side, but the ship itself was moored fifteen feet away. They would have to swim to it. The water looked inky and cold. Connor kicked a wooden post.
“They might have told us about this!” he fumed.
“Let’s just forget it,” muttered Rolf, looking back toward the stone steps set in the cliff.
“I am not going in the ocean at night,” a girl said, and shuddered, peering over the dock at the water.
“Yeah,” said another boy. “I vote we head back.”
Max stood quietly, watching the ship, as the others debated what to do. He noticed that its rocking motion brought it closer at regular intervals.
Max backed away down the dock. For several seconds, he studied the ship’s movement in the water. When he saw its mooring chain begin to slacken, he sprinted toward the edge and leapt high into the air.
For a moment he thought he had misjudged badly.
He plummeted toward the water, grabbing wildly for the rope ladder as he fell. With a sudden snag, his fingers caught it and he crashed against the side of the ship. There were surprised gasps and cheers from the dock as his feet scrambled for a hold and he began climbing. Swinging over the ship’s side, he spilled onto the deck, rolling over something hard and uncomfortable. He looked to see what it was and smiled, standing to cup his hands around his mouth.
“Hey!” he called back to the dock. “There’s a gangplank on the deck—no one has to swim!”
The others began chattering; the atmosphere was electric once again. Grunting from the weight, Max swung the gangplank over the ship’s side and fed it slowly toward the dock, where Sarah and Rolf reached out to grab it. Securing the end of the plank into its groove, Max signaled it was ready. They proceeded in single file; Connor was first up, carrying Max’s gear with his own.
“You’ve got some serious springs, don’t ya, Max?” Connor grinned, dropping the gear on deck and looking around.
“Yeah, I call Max for my basketball team!” piped David, who began rummaging through Rolf ’s pack for snacks, to the visible annoyance of its owner.
The students fanned out and began exploring up and down the deck. Several took turns playing with the wheel. Lucia and Cynthia crawled up to a crow’s nest, raining hard candies down on the rest as they spread out blankets and sleeping bags. Connor strolled toward the cabin, returning shortly with a disappointed expression on his face.
“There are locks on all the doors and hatches; looks like we’re staying above.”
“That’s fine by me,” squeaked a girl from Denmark. “It’s probably scary down there!”
“I’ll bet it’s cool down there,” said Connor wistfully. He took a seat on a nearby blanket and turned on someone’s radio, quickly lowering the volume as an opera singer blared an impressive tremolo. He began scrolling through the stations.
Soon all of them had settled down in their impromptu campsite. Huddling in a small group as the boat rocked, Max laughed and played cards and devoured Rolf ’s snacks while he learned about his classmates’ hometowns and families. Omar was telling Max about his baby brother back in Cairo when the boat pitched wildly.
Playing cards slid across the deck. The masts creaked noisily and the children stopped talking.
For a moment all was silent again. Then the boat shuddered as a massive wave rose beneath it, crashing the children into one another as they scrambled for a hold.
Thump.
Thump, thump.
Something was thudding loudly against the side of the ship, below the waterline.
The children felt the boat strain against its moorings. Lucia shrieked as the gangplank slipped from its hold and splashed into the water. Max looked frantically over the railing to see something, anything that would indicate what was churning the sea. All he saw was swirling, fathomless black.
Keening wails suddenly filled the air, causing Max to fall back onto the deck as the others covered their ears. The Kestrel now bobbed like a toy boat as seawater frothed and spilled in foamy waves over the sides.
“Run!” screamed Connor over the noise, pulling Lucia to her feet. “All of you, run!”
The children staggered toward the bow of the ship, falling now and again as it pitched back and forth. The keening increased; the timbers of the boat began to vibrate and hum. Many of the children leapt over the side, plunging some fifteen feet into the water and flailing through the chop for the beach. Max saw David bob up in the foamy water when he suddenly felt a hand seize his arm. Sarah was shouting at him in terror.
“I can’t swim!”
The wailing became deafening; the boat lurched away from the dock as one of the mooring chains strained near snapping.
Max grabbed Sarah and hurled the two of them over the side. They plunged into the sea. Swallowing a mouthful of salty water, Max clutched Sarah’s shirt and stroked wildly with his free arm for the beach. The water was cold and swirling in wild currents; beds of kelp dragged against his legs like clammy fingers. At any moment, Max expected something horribly strong to clamp on to his foot and heave him out toward deeper waters. Brine splashed in his face, and a great black wave rolled over his head, pushing them under. Sarah was screaming and thrashing crazily in his grip, her sharp elbows hitting him on the side of the face as he labored.
As Max’s grip threatened to give, their feet met the rough sand. Sarah flung herself away from him and scrambled through the surf. The keening began to die as the children fled up the stone steps and across the lawns.
The Manse’s lights were on. A crowd of students and faculty had gathered onto the drive by the fountain. Ms. Richter was among them, her bright lantern casting her anger into sharp relief.
8
THE NEW AND WEIRD
Stifling a yawn, Max stumbled down the hallway with his classmates shortly before six o’clock Monday morning. Many were exhausted, having spent Sunday cleaning out the stables as punishment for their foray aboard the Kestrel. The task had taken most of the day, leaving them drained and filthy. Ms. Richter had been sparing with her words, muttering only that she had never seen a class so determined to exterminate themselves.
When Mr. Vincenti asked why they had elected to do such a foolish thing, Connor insisted that it was his idea, staring all the while at Alex Muñoz, who gawked from the dwindling crowd. Despite their questions, no one told them what had churned the seas and wailed so horribly. No students seemed to know, and no faculty would say.
Max was particularly tired. After the day’s labor, feeding and playing with Nick had proven to be no trivial task. Following the instructions in his booklet, Max murmured, “Food for Nick: Black Forest lymrill,” into a stained and spattered wooden bin in the Warming Lodge. The bin rumbled and shook, its lid clattering and spilling beams of light onto the stalls. While his reading had braced him for Nick’s diet, Max still retched upon opening the lid. The bin was piled high with crates of writhing rodents and worms along with small stacks of thin metal bars.
Nick’s tail fluttered wildly, and he zoomed up and down the corridor as Max loaded the crates into a wheelbarrow and staggered outside. He looked away as Nick methodically devoured each crate’s contents: first bloodying his snout in the wriggling piles of vermin before extending his tongue to deftly separate, lift, and swallow whole each of the small metal bars. After cleaning himself vigorously in the lagoon, Nick then chased Max about the clearing, racing ahead in tremendous bursts of speed to ambush him from outcroppings of rock or swatting playfully at his ankles to spill the boy into the grass as he fled. When Nick finally stopped and curled himself into a dozing ball, Max almost wept with gratitude. Scooping the lymrill into his arms, he walked down the Warming Lodge’s rows of sta
lls until he found the door for Nick’s. After laying the sleeping lymrill in the boughs of the stall’s small tree, Max dragged himself to bed.
“How are you feeling?” inquired Omar, stumbling along next to Max as they descended the stairs for their first class. Omar was in Max’s section, one of five groupings of First Years who would be taking all of their classes together.
“I can’t even see straight,” moaned Max. “Nick kept me out until eleven.” “Can Nick talk?” asked Omar, rubbing sleep from his eyes.
“No.”
“Well, you should be thankful. Try caring for Tweedy. He’s making me memorize the life works of his favorite composers….”
Max grunted in sympathy as they entered the basement classroom, a large space whose floor was covered in firm, spongy mats. A tall, wiry man with close-cropped black hair and heavy-lidded eyes stood in the middle of the room. He wore a loose-fitting shirt and pants; his feet were bare. He sipped from a bottle of water as he perused a clipboard, not bothering to look up as they entered.
“Remove your shoes,” he murmured with a slight accent. “Start jogging around the room. Clockwise. Quick, quick!”
Max jogged along with the others, shooting curious glances at the instructor as they lapped doggedly around the room. “Faster,” the man’s voice snapped like a whip. After a few minutes, Max was huffing; he noticed Jesse and Cynthia were several laps behind. The man took another distracted sip, sat on the ground, and murmured, “All right. Over here. Spread out along the floor, facing me. Stretch your hamstrings, like so.” He spread his legs and smoothly lowered his forehead to a knee, holding it there. As Max and the others seated themselves and struggled to emulate him, he abruptly stood and started walking around the room. “Do not bounce!” he hissed, passing Connor, who promptly groaned and forced himself back down.
“I am Monsieur Renard. I will be your instructor for Training and Games. You will either love or hate me. This does not concern me.”
Max’s eyes widened. He shot a look at Connor, who had unwisely taken a break just as M. Renard passed behind him.
“Many of you are fat and lazy,” the instructor hissed, digging his toe into Connor’s midsection. “Little sausages that have burst their casings. That ends today. Cynthia Gilley?”
“Over here,” wheezed Cynthia, red-faced in the corner.
“Cynthia Gilley,” he read off the clipboard. “Lactic production rate: forty-nine. Lactic dispersion rate: thirty-four. Twitch speed: fifty-one. Muscular density, current: thirty-six…. Hmmm. You might have to be a special project. And I do not like special projects.”
Cynthia looked helpless.
“Rolf Luger,” he continued, scanning down the list. “Not bad…not bad at all. We’ll see what we can do.”
Rolf suddenly looked very serious and grunted through his stretches.
“Max McDaniels?” M. Renard inquired, raising his eyebrows and scanning the room for Max, who raised his hand. M. Renard walked over, looking him up and down with a stoic expression. “Your ratings are unusual—most unusual. Are you aware that a ninety-five has never been recorded?”
“Nigel said something about it,” said Max, ignoring the glances from his classmates.
“Are you lazy?” asked the instructor, looking down his nose.
“I don’t think so.”
“We shall see,” mused M. Renard, turning on his heel. It was a punishing hour of exercises and stretches. Cynthia had been reduced to tears; M. Renard simply stepped over Omar’s inert body when he assumed the fetal position during sit-ups. When M. Renard finally announced that class was finished, the students rushed off to shower and breakfast before their first academic classes.
Clutching a slice of buttered toast, Max ran up Maggie’s steep stone steps as fast as his tired legs would allow. His school uniform felt hot and stifling. Other students disappeared quickly down hallways; doors began closing.
This classroom was smaller and cozier than the Manse’s basement gymnasium, its desks and chairs raised in a small amphitheater to look down on the instructor’s desk and blackboard. Old prints, tapestries, and rich paintings of landscapes and famous battles hung on the paneled walls. The room smelled strongly of tobacco, while warm saltwater breezes slipped through the open windows facing the sea. An old, roly-poly man sat low in a cracked leather chair near the blackboard, puffing on a meerschaum pipe, and nodding as they entered. As they took their seats, he grumbled in a low baritone.
“No familiar faces here. Good. I think I must be in the right place. Welcome to Humanities for First Year Apprentices. I’m Byron Morrow. I’ll be your instructor.”
Lucia coughed and raised her hand.
“Mr. Morrow? Will you be smoking a pipe every day?”
“Yes, I will, young lady,” he grumbled, raising an eyebrow. “Is that all right with you?”
“I am allergic to smoke.”
“Heaven help you in Mystics!” he exclaimed. He chuckled and waved his hand, causing the pipe smoke to abruptly stream down and snake a wispy path along the floor until it disappeared up and out the window. “Better?” he grunted.
Lucia nodded with wide eyes.
Throughout the period, Mr. Morrow enchanted Max and his classmates with an overview of the course delivered in his rolling baritone. At times, Mr. Morrow would waddle around his desk in sudden fits of passion; during others he would lean back in his chair to answer students’ questions between long puffs on his pipe. They would be learning a combination of history, literature, writing, and myth. It would be a challenging course, he promised, but those needing extra help could always find him at his small white cottage beyond the Sanctuary dunes.
Mathematics and Science were straightforward and more familiar, if daunting. Math was spent taking a diagnostic test to gauge their proficiency. Max turned it in after only ten minutes; many problems had symbols he had never even seen before.
Science was hardly an improvement, as they were assigned a lengthy chapter in their text and strongly encouraged to know the earth’s major ecosystems by the next class. Taking a breather before Languages, Max leaned on Maggie’s railing and watched the white-capped swells out on the ocean. In daylight, the Kestrel looked antique and charming—hardly the seesawing terror from which they had fled early Sunday morning. Someone tapped him on the shoulder. He turned to see Julie Teller, grinning and holding a flimsy photo between her fingers.
“Hey, you,” she said with a laugh, “want to see your photo? I should win a Pulitzer!”
“Oh. Hi,” said Max, standing up very straight, aspiring to her height. “Sure.”
She handed him an eight-by-ten black-and-white photograph that showed a shirtless Max leaping high off the ground away from the selkies. His expression was one of sheer terror, his limbs shooting in four different directions. In the photo, Helga had turned her head to look at him; Frigga was still oblivious as she basked in the sun.
“Oh my God,” Max moaned, handing it back to her. “It’s worse than I thought. Are you sure you need to use it?”
“It’s not so bad,” tittered Julie, giving the photo another look. “It’s cute!”
“It is not cute,” muttered Max, blushing. “I won’t live it down all year….”
“Oh, stop it,” she said, smiling. “How’re your classes?”
“They’re okay—I don’t know how I’m going to do all the homework…. I like Mr. Morrow, though.”
“He’s the best,” she gushed. “Some of us still go visit him out at his house. I think he gets lonely sometimes.”
Max nodded, racking his brain for something—anything—to prolong the conversation.
“Well, anyway,” said Julie, hoisting up her bag, “I’ve got Devices—first time, and I heard Vincenti’s a killer. Gotta run!”
With a wave, Julie jogged down a path toward the woods, her shiny auburn hair swishing back and forth. Max watched her go, until Connor stuck his head out Maggie’s double doors.
“Who was she? She’s a stun
ner,” Connor said as Max followed him inside and up the stairs.
“She’s a Third Year,” Max replied, wary of Connor’s tone. “I met her in the Sanctuary…. She took my picture for the newspaper.”
“Think she likes you?” asked Connor, sounding impressed.
“No.” Max flushed. “She liked the photo opportunity.”
The rest of their Languages class was already seated when Max and Connor entered. The room looked like a concert hall in miniature, its polished walls and roof designed for optimum acoustics. At the front of the room was a very large woman with curly black hair who wore a cheery sundress and an unusual coppery necklace. Once Max and Connor took their seats, she handed out printed sheets and delicate chrome headsets that blinked with bright green lights. Returning to the blackboard, she wrote:
Welcome to Languages.
My name is Celia Babel.
She turned and beamed at them, then motioned for Connor to introduce himself. He did so, followed by the others. Next she motioned for them to read their handouts. Puzzled that the woman had not yet spoken a word, Max read a passage that was printed in several different languages.
Please pick up the headset on your desk. It is a translator and it is already turned on. On the screen labeled AUDIBLE, use the arrows and scroll to Greek. On the screen labeled SUB, please scroll to your native language and put on the headset. Further instructions will follow.
Mrs. Babel waited patiently for the class to follow the instructions before she spoke for the first time. Her voice was high-pitched and a bit nasal, and the words were completely foreign—unfamiliar and spoken with a strange rhythm. Yet, to his utter shock, Max found he could understand them. “Hello, students,” the instructor said. “I’m pleased to have you in my Languages class. At the moment, you are hearing the Greek language—a language with which all of you are unfamiliar. You are simultaneously hearing, in your subconscious brain, these words and phrases translated into your native tongue. How many of you have difficulty understanding English?”