Welcome To Grail Academy - Chapter Twenty-six: Momma’s Place
Finally, the exams were over. No more stress, no more classes, no more teachers, no more lectures. A wave of relief swept over the entirety of Grail Academy, the hallways of the school had never been so calm before. Where there was once petty squabbles and panicked studying, now was students exchanging contact information and hugs before the winter break set in. Everyone, except for Esmerelda and her teammates. They all stood huddled around Nico’s locker while he maneuvered the lock on it. He had forgotten the combination years ago, but the paper clip he wiggled in the slot between the combination wheel and the locking mechanism was working just fine. A small click, and the lock popped off. “So, what’s the plan again?”
Esmerelda crossed her arms, a look of thinly veiled disgust crossing over her face as she watched her teammate hook the lock onto a belt loop on his pants. Something felt...different. She was about to speak, but trailed off as she pondered, looking around at the lockers and the passing students. “We...haven’t we done this before…?” She muttered. Nico gave her a strange look, questioning “What?”
The same wave of realization washed over himself and Bernard, and they straightened up. The three of them watched the sea of students part around them as they turned in confusion, like fish lost in the ocean. “...Have we?” Bernard wondered and looked to Esmerelda. She didn’t have an answer for him. Nico shook his head and scratched at his hair, frustrated. He squeezed his eyes shut while he tried to think and stammered, “W-wait. This isn’t...what’s going on?”
Esmerelda rubbed her temples, “Okay, what’s the last thing you two remember?”
“Uhm...we were on the quad, I think.” Nico grasped for the answer by tracing for clues in his memory. Bernard nodded, rubbing his chin silently. “That can’t be right…”
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Hari struggled with the controls on the old projector. The buttons stuck and the toggle never fully focused. One of the feet was broken so the machine always leaned to one side, so the image looked like a stretched diagonal square. After a few slaps to the side of the projector and a couple of tries at turning it off and on again, the inner fans sputtered and whirred, and Hari stepped back to flick the lights off. He left Yorick and Sable alone in the office, shutting the door. With the white window of projector light shining on the wall acting as their only light source, the two of them were wrapped in a blanket of darkness. Strangely, it made Yorick feel safer.
“I offered you a home here. Offered you training. Offered you purpose.” Sable’s face was a thin sliver of pale white within the cloak of tangled hair as she circled the loveseat, running her slender arms along the back. She spoke softly into Yorick’s ear, standing behind him with her hands slowly making their way to his shoulders. “I expect you to repay my generosity.” She sang to him like a siren, holding him in a gentle grip like that of a mother. Yorick’s cheeks were stained with droplets of cold sweat. He couldn’t understand why he was suddenly anxious, but he didn’t dare turn his head to look at Sable as she spoke. Don’t look at her. Look at the light. Look at the light, he told himself.
“You’re strong, Yorick. But you lack restraint. You need to learn control.” Tendrils of pitch black hair snaked themselves around the boy’s body, his arms and torso tied down to the seat. Yorick didn’t notice. The grip was barely tight enough to constrict the breathing of a fly.
A click. A soft tap of a button press. And a video flashed on the wall. It was a little boy, no older than two years, blowing out the candles to a birthday cake. He was struggling, his child-sized lungs provided only enough force to make the flames flicker. The room was dark, but his face and the faces of those around him were illuminated by the soft glow of the fire. He was laughing. A man with thick glasses reached around and helped him blow out the candles, and everyone clapped. A woman with mousy hair began to cut slices from the cake while the man lifted the boy out of his chair, and the child screamed in happiness.
Yorick shuttered. “H-how did you get this?” He wanted to face Sable, but his body refused to let him turn away from the video. Sable did not answer his question, and continued. “How old are you in this? Two? Three? Did you have your semblance at this point? Did your family know?” She asked, and quickly changed the screen instead of waiting for an answer.
It changed to photos of a crime scene. A car on the side of the road, flipped over, smoldering. Sheets on a soft patch of snow next to it. Another slide. A woman, matted hair, bloodied, half her face missing, her dress torn and burnt, parts of her exposed skin flaking off the bone. Another slide. A man, shattered glasses, covered in soot, soaked in blood, red blisters, right hand burnt to a crisp and disconnected from his arm. Another slide. Yellow police tape, a series of broken car parts, an organized pile of numbered evidence. A shiver crawled up Yorick’s spine. He shut his eyes. He was shaking, his fists clenched so tightly that his nails were making indents in his palms. He felt his gut growing hotter, bubbling. He was going to be sick. He held back tears.
“Your parents.” Sable grumbled, “Look at them.” Her freezing cold hands grabbed the sides of Yorick’s head, and straightened him to face the pictures. “You did that. You did that.” The words she said cut him like a knife, but her tone was gentle and passive the entire time. “You’re not just lethal. You’re a cancer. Spreading rapidly.” The slides changed again, to photos of a burning building. A school. One of the rooms completely collapsed and engulfed in smoke. “Everything around you succumbs to the infection. You have to control it.” Yorick’s eyes were watering and red, his breathing grew labored. It took everything he had not to start crying. Small wisps of smoke trailed from the corners of his mouth. “There is no cure for your type of malignancy. No permanent remedy. It’s an irrational anxiety surrounding a rational fear. But you can learn to live with it.”
Tears were streaming down his face. Yorick’s quiet weeping did nothing to waver Sable. She persisted. A photo of his parents, smiling and alive, shone down at him from the wall. He felt another knife in his gut, making him boil hotter. “This pain, it never leaves you. But you can survive it.” Another video, this one of his parents' wedding, the guests dancing and clapping and laughing. “A senseless tragedy. One with no closure, no justice. You know the feeling of that purgatory.”
Yorick nodded slowly and repeated her words, his voice shaky, “Senseless tragedy…” Sable loosened her hold on him, and let the video play out. “What other kind is there?” He asked. Sable stood up from her stooped position and whispered, almost sadly, “Necessary.”
“Was Buck necessary?” Yorick snapped, the smoke pouring from his nostrils. The images of the body washed over him again, and he tried to stand to face Sable. His restraints kept him down in the loveseat, but he squirmed. Was he angry? Was he scared? Yorick had no idea. But whatever he was feeling, it was something he had been burying deep down for a long time.
“You’re searching for conspiracy because the truth is far more painful,” Sable retorted.
“Is it conspiracy if it’s true?”
“You wouldn’t know.”
“Well, is it, then? Is it true?”
“I am not the enemy, Yorick. We will navigate the consequences together, but you are angry at the wrong person. I didn’t kill your parents. I didn’t send you away.” She pulled one of the slides out of the projector and showed him the small photo of police officers crowding around the car wreck. “Be angry at them. They wanted to control you, to make you submissive. They’re afraid of you. I’m not. I know you. I know your power, your strength.” She repeated again, “I am not the enemy.”
Yorick shoves the loveseat to the side, removing the barrier between the two of them. He was panicking. He was angry. He was panicking because of his anger. He had no idea where to direct his hate. “You do not want to lose me. I’m the only person willing to help you. I have been kind, have I not? I can be cruel as well. I will turn my back on you forever if I like. No more friends, no more home.” She placed a hand on his shoulder to keep him from shaking more. “Not all authority will disappoint you. Not all parents leave. But let me be very clear, this is your last chance. Your next words will define your future.”
The rage, pure, unfiltered, untainted, erupted inside him. His stomach felt like a grenade, and Sable just pulled the pin. The pain clawed its way through his body, up his throat, dancing on his tongue. Sable lifted her hand and watched a blue light fill the room, both sudden and slow. Yorick’s insides were on fire, like he was drinking hot magma, but on the outside he was cold. The fire was no longer inside him. It wasn’t even outside him. He was the flame. Sable began to smile, and Yorick sighed. He was tired. “...I’m thirsty.”
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Esmerelda’s head was spinning. She tried to calculate the math in her head, once, twice, three times. It just didn’t make sense. “We were...already here.” She muttered. Looking to Bernard, who was staring blankly at the wall of lockers in front of him, she attempted to apply some form of logic to the situation. “Try harder, think back. What’s the very last thing you remember happening?”
Nico guffawed, “I told you! We were on the quad, and then those…” He suddenly grew quiet as he lost his train of thought. But Bernard finished his sentence for him, announcing, “...Those people. The Hedge Witches.” The three of them nodded in unity. The story was becoming more clear. “And then there was an explosion, and…” Nico hit his fist on the side of his head, as if he was trying to shake the memory loose. When he mentioned the explosion, a figurative light bulb flashed on over Esmerelda, and she let out a gasp.
“The clocktower.”
Bernard began to look over his shoulder and behind his friends, checking to see if anyone was listening in on their conversation. “Wait, this could be a good thing! Like a reset button! Now we have a second chance to do things right,” Nico grasped around as he tried to find a silver lining to the predicament, “Maybe we can fix this whole mess.” Esmerelda only sighed, eyeing the stairwell that led to the tall oak doors of the headmaster’s office at the end of the hallway. “We need to find Madehold.”
