“For what reason do you interrupt my class, Ariel Haven?” Mage Klinmann questioned. His voice was calm when he said it, but he wasn’t looking at her. He was looking out at his fellow Gardnerians, catching their sympathetic glances as they, also, pointedly tried to avoid looking at Ariel.
“They said I’m too smart for the class I was in,” Ariel spit out, self-consciously, her eyes darting around as she fidgeted from one foot to the other. I could see her fighting off the urge to cower, her posture that of someone braced for an attack. She thrust out a piece of parchment at Mage Klinmann. He must have seen it out of the corner of his eye—his lip twitched and he turned farther away from her.
“And how do I know you did not fool your professor in some way, Icaral?” he asked, almost sounding bored. “I’m told that your kind are very crafty.” He smiled at this, still not looking at her.
I’d seen people avert their eyes from Ariel and Wynter before, but only as they passed, never during conversation. It was strange and demeaning and filled me with an intense discomfort.
“You should look at me!” Ariel cried, her pockmarked face reddening, her hands balling into tight fists.
“Excuse me?”
“I’m talking to you! You should look at me!”
Professor Klinmann sniggered lightly. “And why, exactly, is it so important that I look at you?” He eyed the other scholars, as if they all shared an inside joke she was excluded from.
“Because I’m talking to you!” she cried, her eyes blazing with humiliation.
This prompted outright, incredulous laughter from some of the Gardnerian scholars.
Professor Klinmann seemed to be valiantly trying to ward off a smile. “Now, now, Icaral. To look at you would be against my religious beliefs. You’re well aware of that. It’s not a personal slight, and it would be foolish of you to take it as such. So you shouldn’t let your feathers get all...ruffled.” His eyes shot up to the Gardnerians before him, twinkling, and the scholars obliged him by breaking out into polite laughter, everyone studiously continuing to avert their eyes from Ariel.
Ariel flinched back as if struck, then turned and stormed out of the room.
I half rose, almost ready to go after her, then remembered that she hates me, and slowly sank back down.
I’d never seen anything like this.
I listened to the laughter of the scholars surrounding me in horror, suddenly nauseated. I turned to Yvan, who was seated across the aisle from me. He was the only other person in the classroom not smirking or outright laughing. He looked just as horrified as I felt.
Perhaps sensing my stare, Yvan turned to me, his eyebrows knit tightly together in anger. The moment his intense green eyes met mine, he gave a start, possibly surprised that I wasn’t laughing like the others, the two of us instantly united in this sickening outrage. We held each other’s gaze for a long moment as the anger in his face gave way to something akin to astonishment.
As if he was seeing me for the first time.
*
“It seems like it would be terrible to always have people looking away,” Aislinn considers as I finish telling her my story. Her brow tenses. “I never really thought about it before.”
“And now,” I tell her, “Yvan doesn’t flat-out hate me anymore. He still won’t speak to me, but the other day during my kitchen labor, when no one else was looking, I was having trouble picking up a large bucket of water, and he helped me. He grabbed the bucket out of my hand and walked off with it, cursing under his breath and acting like he was angry at himself for even doing it, but he helped me nonetheless.”
“Strange.”
“I know.”
The other scholars in Professor Volya’s class are trickling in, including our rune-marked professor herself, so we cease our conversation and turn our attention toward the front of the room.
Aislinn and I are not only fast friends by now, but research partners, as well. Not able to partner with a Lupine, on the second day of class Aislinn simply took a seat next to me, sitting as far away from Jarod Ulrich as possible. Diana smugly and wordlessly took the seat next to her brother, shooting a triumphant look at Professor Volya. Professor Volya pursed her lips unhappily, but decided to ignore the slight. Jarod’s face, however, remained tense and troubled for the rest of the class.
Aislinn, for her part, doesn’t spend much class time taking notes, as I’m generous in sharing mine. Instead, Aislinn hides classic novels and poetry books in her Chemistrie text and reads discreetly through every lecture. The class we’re currently sitting in is no different from any other, and after Professor Volya begins her lecture, Aislinn plasters a studious expression on her face and dives into her secret book.
I, in turn, dive into furiously scribbling notes on the distillation of essential oils. We’re about half an hour into the lecture when a neatly folded piece of parchment is tossed onto my papers from the direction of the Lupines. I look at it curiously.
It reads Aislinn, in neat, attractive script.
Confused, I glance over at the Lupines. Diana seems clearly annoyed about something, and Jarod appears to be concentrating on the lecture.
I hand Aislinn the note, needing to elbow her to break her reading haze. Her brow furrows in puzzlement as I give it to her.
Aislinn quickly opens the neatly folded note. It reads:
What are you reading?
Jarod Ulrich
We both give a start, Aislinn’s eyes flying open wide. We glance over at the Lupines in unison. Jarod is focusing straight ahead at Professor Volya with an expression of unbroken concentration. I turn back to Aislinn. She’s now staring sideways at Jarod uneasily.
I can’t imagine that she’ll respond. After all, she’s afraid of him. He tried to help her twice, once when she dropped her books, another time when she spilled a vial of Ornithellon powder. Both times, he appeared wordlessly by her side, and both times, his attentions made Aislinn obviously fearful and uncomfortable.
But this time she surprises me.
Aislinn quickly writes the name of the poetry book on the paper, as if she has to act fast before she loses her nerve, then places the note firmly before me. I gape at her, dumbfounded, wondering if she’s taken complete leave of her senses. She gestures sharply toward the Lupines with her chin to spur me on, her brow knit hard with tension. For a few seconds we silently argue, but she remains resolute. I sigh deeply in reluctant surrender, shooting her a look of utter disbelief. The next time Professor Volya turns her broad back to us, I pick up the note and toss it onto Diana’s papers.
Diana glares at me, rolling her eyes disapprovingly, then hands the note to her brother.
Jarod takes it nonchalantly, his eyes never leaving the front of the room. He opens the note without looking at it, then lets his eyes flicker down briefly, his expression neutral. He pulls out a fresh piece of paper and begins to write as if he’s taking notes from the lecture. Aislinn and I watch him out of the corners of our eyes as he folds the note and places it in front of his sister, ignoring Diana’s irritated huffing as she defiantly folds her arms in front of herself, letting the note just sit there, unmoved. She shoots her twin repeated, hostile looks, but he calmly keeps his eyes straight ahead. Finally, when I think I’ll die from curiosity, Diana gives in, picks up the note and throws it at me.
I immediately pass the note to Aislinn and she eagerly unfolds the paper. “What is it?” I whisper.
A look of amazement spreads across her face. “Poetry!” she gasps.
I glance over at Jarod. He’s still pretending to be engrossed in the lecture.
Aislinn impatiently flips through her poetry book, biting on her lip in consternation, until she finds what she’s looking for. Then she places the note on the open book and moves them both toward me for my perusal.
The poem Jarod has written, an ode to the beauty of autumn, is identical to the one on the printed page. I look over at Jarod again, and there’s a small smirk playing at the corner of his mouth. Aislinn carefully refolds Jarod’s note, places it as a pagemarker in her book and pretends to focus in on the lecture, her eyes glazed over with surprise.