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rainbowfic2023-11-11 09:17 pm
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White Opal #14 [Starfall]
Name: Learned By Heart
Story: Starfall
Colors: White Opal #14 (Fool’s Paradise)
Supplies and Styles: Canvas + Triptych + Silhouette + Graffiti – 11 Years of Rainbow fic (October Bingo square “Silhouette”.) + Novelty Beads (March Challenge [2022 I think?] “I know sometimes you feel like you don't fit in/And this world doesn't know what you have within/When I look at you, I see something rare - What Makes You Different, Backstreet Boys.”)
Word Count: 3727
Rating: PG
Warnings:
Notes: 1310-1312 Pollean Academy, near Old Ralston (NE); Marran Delver/Telo Torwell. (This is what happened between Marran Delver and Laonna’s mother, or the first part of it.)
Summary: Telo would love to be the perfect pupil at her Academy, but there’s one particular brand of trouble she can never let go of.
“You’ll help, won’t you?”
Telo hugged her music notes against her chest as she walked along the path. “Surely you don’t still need my help. They only want a very basic piece.”
“It’s my one weakness,” Marran said. “Composition.”
Telo shook her head, and he laughed.
Music made more sense to her than anything else. She heard it everywhere – the hurried footfalls of the Academy’s pupils scurrying about the courtyard, contrasting with the slow, measured tread of the master on duty, all to the accompaniment of the wind shaking the leaves on the chestnut trees by the wall. How Marran, who could easily lose himself in listening to music, could fail to grasp the mechanics and miss its omnipresence was past her understanding. Every new combination of sound and silence around her made its pattern and rhythm; she walked in a world full of music. Funny, really – Marran had no such problem with words.
Marran’s grin vanished as he turned his head back to the path head, and halted abruptly. Telo followed his gaze, and laid her hand on his arm.
“Don’t,” she murmured. “Ignore him. He’s not worth it.”
Then Olund, pale-faced, stocky and scowling, stepped across the path to bar their way. “Crying on your friend’s shoulder, Delver?” He threw a look at Telo. “You should hear him at night – calling out for his mother.”
“I do not!”
“Oh, sorry, is it his sister? Always waking us with his whimpering.”
Telo’s fingertips rested against Marran’s arm. He stiffened, his face tightening. She leant in. “Hit him and I won’t help you compose anything!”
Marran stood there for a long moment. She wasn’t sure he’d listen. Olund edged back, obviously sharing her doubt. It wouldn’t be the first time he and Marran had come to blows.
“Liar,” said Marran, moving forwards, getting into Olund’s space. “Why don’t you run away and tell Imai Jennoril? That’s what you usually do, isn’t it? I don’t know how your tongue hasn’t burnt right off by now. Snivelling to Jennoril about me hitting you when all I did was –”
Telo gripped Marran’s sleeve tightly enough to make him turn, and then marched on without looking back as she tugged him on. “We haven’t got time for this – I need to get to the library.”
“Cursed bog-soul,” muttered Marran. “What a nerve. He was the one picking on the new initiates. I said I’d drop him in the pond out the back if he didn’t give it a rest and next thing he’s off telling sob-stories to Jennoril again.”
Telo sighed. “I wish you wouldn’t. You know why he hates you, don’t you?”
“Because I don’t let him get away with his tricks?”
She reached the entrance first and paused to turn the handle and pull back the door. “No. Because he’s stupid.”
“Lucky for me. If he had brains, he might have got me thrown out by now.”
Telo fell into step with Marran as they headed along the worn flagstones of the corridor. Their feet tapped out a familiar beat along the well-worn path; a shared rhythm she knew by heart and written into songs several times over.
“He can’t,” she told him. “That’s what I mean. His parents struggled to get him accepted here at all. I overheard Imai Karna talking about it. They’re going to ask him to leave before the end of term. Whereas you – they don’t want to lose you.”
“That’s not what Imai Jennoril says!”
“You’re much cleverer than Olund – at most things. Not composition! But you’d have to do something awful to make them ask you to leave.”
Telo halted in front of a large painting of the Academy hung up on the wall, her shadow falling over it. It had been completed not long after it opened, around two hundred years ago. The main building had been extended since in newer styles and its soft yellow stone, at odds with the grey of most North Eastern structures, no longer glowed golden with aspiration the way the one on the wall did.
“Yes,” Marran agreed and took her hand, curling warm fingers around hers. “Help me compose one extremely dull, simple thing that even I can manage to croak out to Karna. It’ll be the last one, I promise – I drop it at the end of term.”
Telo let her hand rest in his. She bit back an unsteady smile. “I said yes already, didn’t I?”
Telo was brushing her hair, half undressed, when someone started tapping at the door. A song began in her head, the rapid series of repeated beats running behind the tune.
“Telo! Hurry!”
It was Marran. She brushed her hair harder and hummed louder. What exactly Marran Delver wanted, nobody knew yet, not even him, but Telo had always wanted to be a Pollean Priest. She was going to write music and travel around to distant mountain villages, singing songs to mark the turning points of life, and collecting those sung by others. She couldn’t remember not wanting it. Marran, though, changed his mind every other day. He climbed over the walls and broke the rules, but Telo didn’t dare jeopardise her future that way.
“You can’t back out now!”
Telo pulled the door open a crack. “Be quiet, or you’ll get us both in trouble. I can’t. I told you.”
“Last night of the fair,” he whispered, as if he hadn’t already said that a dozen times today. “Come on. It’s not really breaking the rules – they always used to let the upper classes go. Half the others will be there anyway.”
“Go away!”
He leant flat against the wall by the door; she could see him through the narrow gap. “If you mean that, I will. I’ll go without you.”
Telo closed her eyes. She could almost smell the fair – the hay on soggy ground, the cattle, the hot sweets and drinks they sold in the booths. There would be starstone trinkets for sale, and mechanical rides, and performers of all kinds, too. Walking across the courtyard to her room earlier she had heard faint, tantalising notes of unfamiliar music drifting over the wall, calling her to follow.
“Fine.” Marran peeled himself off the wall. The floorboard creaked as he shifted position, and he vanished from her view.
He was a very distracting person to know and she could never quite shut him out, no matter how much her parents wished she would. Telo pulled the door open wider. “No! Marran – wait!”
Telo’s best dress wasn’t suited to clambering over high walls, but Marran helped her up. He’d done this too many times already; his movements practised as he easily made his way over, then waited at the other side to catch her as she managed a wary half-slide, half jump down into his arms.
Now safely out of the grounds and standing on the springy, moss-covered grass, he grasped her hand and led her on down the hill to the fair at a run, taking no heed of the darkness.
The crowds rendered them reassuringly anonymous. Besides, if any other Academy students saw them, they couldn’t give them away without betraying themselves. Telo began to breathe again as the two of them wound their way through the mass of people.
“This way,” said Marran, keeping close. He tugged her on past the sheep pens, over the increasingly sodden and dirty hay, towards a row of brightly painted tents. Music was emanating out of the nearest and largest – fiddle and drums, and voices singing.
Telo lost her worries at the sound and hurried after Marran towards the woman standing outside the ten, taking entry money.
“I’ll pay,” he said.
She cast him a look. “How?”
“I didn’t steal it.” He stiffened, and turned towards her. “You know I wouldn’t.”
“I do. I just wondered whether it was supposed to be for something else – or what, exactly, you did to earn it.”
“Oh.” He dipped his head, stifling a guilty laugh. “Well. Yes. That. It’s only a few solers. My treat.”
They had been in there for five minutes before the unfamiliar tune started making all the keys turn in Telo’s head. Her fingers itched for a paper and pencil to capture some of the phrases, to play with later.
Marran leant in nearer. “You want to take notes, don’t you?”
She laughed, her head brushing against his shoulder. “How did you guess?”
“Wait, wait,” he said, amusement sounding in his voice. He shifted awkwardly about beside her and pulled out a notebook. “Here. I knew you would.”
She was tempted to hit him with it for his sheer smugness, but first – there was the music. She snatched the pencil and paper, and proceeded to use him as support to write against.
“Why did I do this?” he grumbled. “Telo!”
“Shh!”
They made their way back to the Academy, halting at the back wall as the courtyard clock chimed out the half hour within.
“We’re late!” Telo thrust the paper bag holding a few remaining warm sugar nuts into her pocket, and hitched up her skirt, ready to try to climb back over.
Marran caught her arm. “Let me go first,” he whispered in her ear. “Check it’s safe.”
“If we’re in trouble, we’re in it together,” Telo said. “I’m not waiting around out here by myself!”
He took hold of her, to give her a lift up, but when she put her arms around him, she stopped. “Marran.”
“What?”
“Thank you,” she said and kissed him, clumsily the first time, catching him mid-movement on the nose. After that, though, somehow, everything changed and any attempt to climb back inside the grounds was forgotten in kissing up each other against the rough-edged bricks of its outer wall; a little surer of themselves each time.
Telo pulled away first, the weight of their real situation suddenly landing on her. This might be more tempting than any fairings they’d bought, but they’d been here too long. “Marran, the time. We have to go.”
“Curse it,” he said cheerfully, and gave her one last kiss on the cheek, before helping her up the wall.
She turned her head, perched at the top, looking down at him. “Marran? What are you waiting for?”
“Just thinking – I’d go mad in this place without you,” he said, and then made a run up to join her.
It wasn’t like Marran not to turn up when he’d promised to meet her. He was supposed to be there to cheer her up after her music theory examination, but when she reached the steps out of the main hall, there was no sign of him.
She found him round the back of the library building, sitting pressed against the wall with his eyes closed, heedless of the drizzle in the air or the damp gravel beneath him.
“Marran.”
He turned slowly. “Telo? Is that you?”
“Who else would it be? Where were you? What is it? Is something wrong?”
He put his hand to his head, then gave himself a shake and stood. “It’s nothing. Leave me alone.”
“All right, then.” She walked away, stopping as soon as she had rounded the building. She poked her head back to see if he’d followed, sure that he would. The smile beginning to show on her face vanished. He was still standing where she’d left him.
Telo raced back across the uneven grass, dark hair flying out behind her. “Marran. What is it? What have you done this time?”
“I didn’t – well. I – I tried to fight the Chamber.”
She took his arm and guided him gently back across to his dormitory block. “I would ask why, but of course, if anyone was going to do a pointless thing like that, it would be you.”
She hovered in the doorway of his room, risking trouble. “Please. Tell me what happened.”
“It’s nothing. A headache. I’ll take something for it. I won’t do it again.”
Telo shut the door by leaning her body against it. “There must have been a reason why you did it in the first place.”
He shook his head. “It doesn’t matter.”
“You saw something you didn’t like, then.” Telo frowned. He was a little less grey at the edges, but he was still much too pale. “What?”
“Nothing.”
Telo dropped her bag and papers onto the floor and sat beside him on the bed, stealing an arm around him. “If you tell me to go away again, I will, but don’t lie to me.”
“I don’t see what I’m supposed to, that’s all.”
“There is no supposed to!”
Marran lifted his head. “There’s not supposed to.” He shrugged. “I see snow – ice – blood. Every time! I wanted it to stop – I tried to make it stay out of my head.”
“I see that worked.”
He gave a reluctant huff of a laugh. “Yes, well. Now I know. I hate it – I’m freezing for ages afterwards. I dream about it, sometimes. There are all these – these impossible monsters made out of snow, and they attack me – other people.”
“It is different for everybody,” said Telo, but she had to agree despite her words: there was a not-supposed-to with the Chamber. Trust Marran to find that out. “Weren’t there any other images or symbols?”
His mouth compressed into a line and he looked away from her.
“Marran. What were they?”
“It doesn’t know anything! How can it?”
Telo’s heart sank. “Why didn’t you tell one of the tutors? They could help. It’s no good lying to them every time. No wonder the images won’t go away.”
“Fire – swords – they’re not Pollean things,” Marran said. He pulled away from her. “They’d want me to leave. All I need to is to work out what I’m doing wrong and change it, and then I’ll see something else – it’ll be all right.”
“It’s not that they’d ask you to leave,” said Telo. “The snow and ice – I don’t know. Some sort of warning or guidance. But the symbols – it’s about you choosing something else – that you want to be elsewhere.”
“Karr went here, and he just ended up working in the Old Fort,” said Marran. “He didn’t see all the wrong things in the Chamber because he wasn’t going to go through with the priest part. Most people don’t. So why is this happening to me?”
“You have to tell them. You can’t go on lying, not about this.” Telo swallowed, the implications of it catching up. “But why, Marran? You can’t – you wouldn’t leave me?”
He raised his gaze to meet hers, and this time, she looked down, understanding. “Oh, no. Oh, Marran. You can’t stay just for me.”
He shook his head and grasped her hands. “There’s not so long left of this now – I can see it through – my family will never forgive me if I ruin everything at this late stage. It’s so stupid.”
“You have to tell.” She squeezed his fingers and pressed her head against his. “It’s too long to keep on lying. I couldn’t ask you to. Imai Jennoril will work out what’s best for you to do. Your time here will never be wasted.”
He glanced sidelong at her. “What do you see?”
“Very little,” she said. “I hear things. Music, mostly. Sometimes an awful silence.”
Marran slid his hand out of hers, then patted her fingers before moving away and standing. He crossed to the small window, staring out at the field below. “It was only the snow, to begin with,” he said softly. “Then, lately – this. Maybe it’s us. I don’t care about the Academy – any of it. Only you. I wish we could go away together. We’re old enough – they couldn’t stop us.”
“What would we do?” Telo laughed.
He swung around. “That’s one of the things I’ve been thinking about. Never mind the visions, I’m going to go somewhere I can grow sunplants!”
“What?” Telo stared. “Marran! Why?”
He crossed back and sat beside her. “Oh, it’s something we were doing in Ag and Hort. Lona’s talked about it before, too. Apparently, they’ve been trying it in Eisterland – growing them amongst the alionrel, and it helps prevent people getting sick.”
“Does it?” said Telo, who was of the opinion that the sickness came from the damp spots in which the alionrel grew. “I don’t see why you’d want to, though.”
“Oh, they keep saying the problem isn’t real in Portcallan, or all the alionrel people do, so we need farms here to try it and prove it works – and find uses for it, so it’ll be easier to persuade people. I’d like to help. Lona says someone needs to do it, so why not me?”
“Stop babbling wildly and I’ll go and get something for your headache – if you’ve still got one.”
Marran shrugged. “Don’t worry about me. I’ll work something out.”
“That,” said Telo, “is the part that worries me.”
She wasn’t all that surprised to be woken by light but persistent tapping on her door that night. She dragged herself out of bed, and pulled the door back. “Marran!”
“I’m going,” he said. He was fully dressed with a bag casually dropped at his feet. “Of course – I had to say goodbye.”
Telo froze for an instant, before recovering enough to snatch at the front of his coat. She tugged him into the room and then pushed the door shut behind him with her foot. “Don’t you dare!” she hissed. “Of all things –! Where are you going to go?”
“I don’t know – south of here. Find work on a farm. And when I’ve got my own plot –”
“Sunplants?” She only narrowly refrained from shaking him. “Don’t be such an idiot.”
“I’m not. All those hours of Ag and Hort have to be good for something. I can work out what I want to do after there. I’ve left a letter.”
“I’m sure that will reassure your mother!”
Marran bit back a short smile. “You know, of all people, Mother will probably be the least worried. I told you, Telo. We are old enough – nobody can stop me. When I find somewhere, I’ll write again. I just won’t do it too soon. I don’t want Karr coming and dragging me back by the scruff of my neck. He’s got a nasty high-handed streak sometimes. He’s not my father, whatever he likes to think.”
“And what about me?” Her throat nearly closed up and tears stung her eyes. “What will I do?”
Marran’s amusement vanished and he slipped his arm around her, pulling her in close. “Don’t say that. You’re going off to who knows where in the mountains anyway once we’ve finished. I’m supposed to wait here for you then – what’s the difference if we do it this way round?”
She pressed herself in against him, knuckles white as she gripped the edge of his coat. “No – no. Marran, please. Go back to your room.”
“I’ve said – I can’t, Telo. I can’t go in there, tell Jennoril what’s been going on – see his smug looks – get sent home, tail between my legs and then be lectured by Karr. I’ll go somewhere else – do something. Make it right first – then I’ll go home.”
He wasn’t wrong, but their inevitable parting had always seemed too far enough in the future to worry over. “Don’t go – don’t leave me behind – I can’t stand it, either. I don’t know what to do. Maybe there is somewhere we can go, both of us.”
“You don’t mean that.” He kissed her. “Thank you for saying it, but you know you don’t. Your parents would worry.”
She closed her eyes. “No, no. Listen, stay tonight. We can talk about it properly tomorrow. One more day won’t hurt, will it?”
“I hope not,” said Marran, touching his forehead lightly. He hesitated, trying to gauge her expression properly in the gloom, and then nodded. “All right. Tomorrow.”
A shiver went through Telo. This wasn’t the kind of thing she did. The ground was shaking under her feet; her foundations crumbling away. She’d write music, whatever she did, Pollean priest or not, but losing Marran – she might die inside. She’d thought it would be all right whenever the time came, but this was too soon. She couldn’t let him go yet. “We’ll leave together.”
“I love you,” he said, and then backed away, colouring up. “I – I – that is – well. Yes. But you won’t do it, Telo.”
Telo raised her chin. “I might even know somewhere we can go. Grow sunplants and write music and be left in peace, at least for a while.”
“Your parents, though, Telo! They won’t even let you come on a visit to Old Ralston out of school.”
She swallowed. “I know. I have to think. But one of our cousins has a farm over near Eisestell and it’s empty – they want to sell it, I heard. We could go there, right out of the way of everything.”
“Telo.”
“Or stay here. Both of us.” She drew further back. “I have to decide. And, yes, what to do about Mother and Father.”
“They’d probably think I’d abducted you.”
Telo shook her head. “Shh. Go back to your room. I’ll speak to you in the morning – then we’ll see.”
He pulled her into a quick, fierce hug, knocking the breath half out of her. “I hope so – but, well, it means a lot that you even thought of it, you know.”
“Idiot,” she said, and kissed his cheek, pushing him away. “Tomorrow.”
Those first small thoughts – that they could, that she knew of somewhere to go, that otherwise she’d lose Marran altogether – turned into something like a stone she’d dropped down a mountain slope, gaining speed and volume, carrying her sliding along with it all, hardly knowing what she was doing until they arrived at the little farmhouse. It was in need of work, and she didn’t know whether a hill farm like this was the place to grow sunplants. But the pale spring gave way to an unusually golden summer, and it grew easier to put everything else out of her mind, but this and Marran.
She wrote songs and he planted his sunplants – but in the end, all the songs she wrote were sad and all the sunplants he laid out withered and died.
Story: Starfall
Colors: White Opal #14 (Fool’s Paradise)
Supplies and Styles: Canvas + Triptych + Silhouette + Graffiti – 11 Years of Rainbow fic (October Bingo square “Silhouette”.) + Novelty Beads (March Challenge [2022 I think?] “I know sometimes you feel like you don't fit in/And this world doesn't know what you have within/When I look at you, I see something rare - What Makes You Different, Backstreet Boys.”)
Word Count: 3727
Rating: PG
Warnings:
Notes: 1310-1312 Pollean Academy, near Old Ralston (NE); Marran Delver/Telo Torwell. (This is what happened between Marran Delver and Laonna’s mother, or the first part of it.)
Summary: Telo would love to be the perfect pupil at her Academy, but there’s one particular brand of trouble she can never let go of.
“You’ll help, won’t you?”
Telo hugged her music notes against her chest as she walked along the path. “Surely you don’t still need my help. They only want a very basic piece.”
“It’s my one weakness,” Marran said. “Composition.”
Telo shook her head, and he laughed.
Music made more sense to her than anything else. She heard it everywhere – the hurried footfalls of the Academy’s pupils scurrying about the courtyard, contrasting with the slow, measured tread of the master on duty, all to the accompaniment of the wind shaking the leaves on the chestnut trees by the wall. How Marran, who could easily lose himself in listening to music, could fail to grasp the mechanics and miss its omnipresence was past her understanding. Every new combination of sound and silence around her made its pattern and rhythm; she walked in a world full of music. Funny, really – Marran had no such problem with words.
Marran’s grin vanished as he turned his head back to the path head, and halted abruptly. Telo followed his gaze, and laid her hand on his arm.
“Don’t,” she murmured. “Ignore him. He’s not worth it.”
Then Olund, pale-faced, stocky and scowling, stepped across the path to bar their way. “Crying on your friend’s shoulder, Delver?” He threw a look at Telo. “You should hear him at night – calling out for his mother.”
“I do not!”
“Oh, sorry, is it his sister? Always waking us with his whimpering.”
Telo’s fingertips rested against Marran’s arm. He stiffened, his face tightening. She leant in. “Hit him and I won’t help you compose anything!”
Marran stood there for a long moment. She wasn’t sure he’d listen. Olund edged back, obviously sharing her doubt. It wouldn’t be the first time he and Marran had come to blows.
“Liar,” said Marran, moving forwards, getting into Olund’s space. “Why don’t you run away and tell Imai Jennoril? That’s what you usually do, isn’t it? I don’t know how your tongue hasn’t burnt right off by now. Snivelling to Jennoril about me hitting you when all I did was –”
Telo gripped Marran’s sleeve tightly enough to make him turn, and then marched on without looking back as she tugged him on. “We haven’t got time for this – I need to get to the library.”
“Cursed bog-soul,” muttered Marran. “What a nerve. He was the one picking on the new initiates. I said I’d drop him in the pond out the back if he didn’t give it a rest and next thing he’s off telling sob-stories to Jennoril again.”
Telo sighed. “I wish you wouldn’t. You know why he hates you, don’t you?”
“Because I don’t let him get away with his tricks?”
She reached the entrance first and paused to turn the handle and pull back the door. “No. Because he’s stupid.”
“Lucky for me. If he had brains, he might have got me thrown out by now.”
Telo fell into step with Marran as they headed along the worn flagstones of the corridor. Their feet tapped out a familiar beat along the well-worn path; a shared rhythm she knew by heart and written into songs several times over.
“He can’t,” she told him. “That’s what I mean. His parents struggled to get him accepted here at all. I overheard Imai Karna talking about it. They’re going to ask him to leave before the end of term. Whereas you – they don’t want to lose you.”
“That’s not what Imai Jennoril says!”
“You’re much cleverer than Olund – at most things. Not composition! But you’d have to do something awful to make them ask you to leave.”
Telo halted in front of a large painting of the Academy hung up on the wall, her shadow falling over it. It had been completed not long after it opened, around two hundred years ago. The main building had been extended since in newer styles and its soft yellow stone, at odds with the grey of most North Eastern structures, no longer glowed golden with aspiration the way the one on the wall did.
“Yes,” Marran agreed and took her hand, curling warm fingers around hers. “Help me compose one extremely dull, simple thing that even I can manage to croak out to Karna. It’ll be the last one, I promise – I drop it at the end of term.”
Telo let her hand rest in his. She bit back an unsteady smile. “I said yes already, didn’t I?”
Telo was brushing her hair, half undressed, when someone started tapping at the door. A song began in her head, the rapid series of repeated beats running behind the tune.
“Telo! Hurry!”
It was Marran. She brushed her hair harder and hummed louder. What exactly Marran Delver wanted, nobody knew yet, not even him, but Telo had always wanted to be a Pollean Priest. She was going to write music and travel around to distant mountain villages, singing songs to mark the turning points of life, and collecting those sung by others. She couldn’t remember not wanting it. Marran, though, changed his mind every other day. He climbed over the walls and broke the rules, but Telo didn’t dare jeopardise her future that way.
“You can’t back out now!”
Telo pulled the door open a crack. “Be quiet, or you’ll get us both in trouble. I can’t. I told you.”
“Last night of the fair,” he whispered, as if he hadn’t already said that a dozen times today. “Come on. It’s not really breaking the rules – they always used to let the upper classes go. Half the others will be there anyway.”
“Go away!”
He leant flat against the wall by the door; she could see him through the narrow gap. “If you mean that, I will. I’ll go without you.”
Telo closed her eyes. She could almost smell the fair – the hay on soggy ground, the cattle, the hot sweets and drinks they sold in the booths. There would be starstone trinkets for sale, and mechanical rides, and performers of all kinds, too. Walking across the courtyard to her room earlier she had heard faint, tantalising notes of unfamiliar music drifting over the wall, calling her to follow.
“Fine.” Marran peeled himself off the wall. The floorboard creaked as he shifted position, and he vanished from her view.
He was a very distracting person to know and she could never quite shut him out, no matter how much her parents wished she would. Telo pulled the door open wider. “No! Marran – wait!”
Telo’s best dress wasn’t suited to clambering over high walls, but Marran helped her up. He’d done this too many times already; his movements practised as he easily made his way over, then waited at the other side to catch her as she managed a wary half-slide, half jump down into his arms.
Now safely out of the grounds and standing on the springy, moss-covered grass, he grasped her hand and led her on down the hill to the fair at a run, taking no heed of the darkness.
The crowds rendered them reassuringly anonymous. Besides, if any other Academy students saw them, they couldn’t give them away without betraying themselves. Telo began to breathe again as the two of them wound their way through the mass of people.
“This way,” said Marran, keeping close. He tugged her on past the sheep pens, over the increasingly sodden and dirty hay, towards a row of brightly painted tents. Music was emanating out of the nearest and largest – fiddle and drums, and voices singing.
Telo lost her worries at the sound and hurried after Marran towards the woman standing outside the ten, taking entry money.
“I’ll pay,” he said.
She cast him a look. “How?”
“I didn’t steal it.” He stiffened, and turned towards her. “You know I wouldn’t.”
“I do. I just wondered whether it was supposed to be for something else – or what, exactly, you did to earn it.”
“Oh.” He dipped his head, stifling a guilty laugh. “Well. Yes. That. It’s only a few solers. My treat.”
They had been in there for five minutes before the unfamiliar tune started making all the keys turn in Telo’s head. Her fingers itched for a paper and pencil to capture some of the phrases, to play with later.
Marran leant in nearer. “You want to take notes, don’t you?”
She laughed, her head brushing against his shoulder. “How did you guess?”
“Wait, wait,” he said, amusement sounding in his voice. He shifted awkwardly about beside her and pulled out a notebook. “Here. I knew you would.”
She was tempted to hit him with it for his sheer smugness, but first – there was the music. She snatched the pencil and paper, and proceeded to use him as support to write against.
“Why did I do this?” he grumbled. “Telo!”
“Shh!”
They made their way back to the Academy, halting at the back wall as the courtyard clock chimed out the half hour within.
“We’re late!” Telo thrust the paper bag holding a few remaining warm sugar nuts into her pocket, and hitched up her skirt, ready to try to climb back over.
Marran caught her arm. “Let me go first,” he whispered in her ear. “Check it’s safe.”
“If we’re in trouble, we’re in it together,” Telo said. “I’m not waiting around out here by myself!”
He took hold of her, to give her a lift up, but when she put her arms around him, she stopped. “Marran.”
“What?”
“Thank you,” she said and kissed him, clumsily the first time, catching him mid-movement on the nose. After that, though, somehow, everything changed and any attempt to climb back inside the grounds was forgotten in kissing up each other against the rough-edged bricks of its outer wall; a little surer of themselves each time.
Telo pulled away first, the weight of their real situation suddenly landing on her. This might be more tempting than any fairings they’d bought, but they’d been here too long. “Marran, the time. We have to go.”
“Curse it,” he said cheerfully, and gave her one last kiss on the cheek, before helping her up the wall.
She turned her head, perched at the top, looking down at him. “Marran? What are you waiting for?”
“Just thinking – I’d go mad in this place without you,” he said, and then made a run up to join her.
It wasn’t like Marran not to turn up when he’d promised to meet her. He was supposed to be there to cheer her up after her music theory examination, but when she reached the steps out of the main hall, there was no sign of him.
She found him round the back of the library building, sitting pressed against the wall with his eyes closed, heedless of the drizzle in the air or the damp gravel beneath him.
“Marran.”
He turned slowly. “Telo? Is that you?”
“Who else would it be? Where were you? What is it? Is something wrong?”
He put his hand to his head, then gave himself a shake and stood. “It’s nothing. Leave me alone.”
“All right, then.” She walked away, stopping as soon as she had rounded the building. She poked her head back to see if he’d followed, sure that he would. The smile beginning to show on her face vanished. He was still standing where she’d left him.
Telo raced back across the uneven grass, dark hair flying out behind her. “Marran. What is it? What have you done this time?”
“I didn’t – well. I – I tried to fight the Chamber.”
She took his arm and guided him gently back across to his dormitory block. “I would ask why, but of course, if anyone was going to do a pointless thing like that, it would be you.”
She hovered in the doorway of his room, risking trouble. “Please. Tell me what happened.”
“It’s nothing. A headache. I’ll take something for it. I won’t do it again.”
Telo shut the door by leaning her body against it. “There must have been a reason why you did it in the first place.”
He shook his head. “It doesn’t matter.”
“You saw something you didn’t like, then.” Telo frowned. He was a little less grey at the edges, but he was still much too pale. “What?”
“Nothing.”
Telo dropped her bag and papers onto the floor and sat beside him on the bed, stealing an arm around him. “If you tell me to go away again, I will, but don’t lie to me.”
“I don’t see what I’m supposed to, that’s all.”
“There is no supposed to!”
Marran lifted his head. “There’s not supposed to.” He shrugged. “I see snow – ice – blood. Every time! I wanted it to stop – I tried to make it stay out of my head.”
“I see that worked.”
He gave a reluctant huff of a laugh. “Yes, well. Now I know. I hate it – I’m freezing for ages afterwards. I dream about it, sometimes. There are all these – these impossible monsters made out of snow, and they attack me – other people.”
“It is different for everybody,” said Telo, but she had to agree despite her words: there was a not-supposed-to with the Chamber. Trust Marran to find that out. “Weren’t there any other images or symbols?”
His mouth compressed into a line and he looked away from her.
“Marran. What were they?”
“It doesn’t know anything! How can it?”
Telo’s heart sank. “Why didn’t you tell one of the tutors? They could help. It’s no good lying to them every time. No wonder the images won’t go away.”
“Fire – swords – they’re not Pollean things,” Marran said. He pulled away from her. “They’d want me to leave. All I need to is to work out what I’m doing wrong and change it, and then I’ll see something else – it’ll be all right.”
“It’s not that they’d ask you to leave,” said Telo. “The snow and ice – I don’t know. Some sort of warning or guidance. But the symbols – it’s about you choosing something else – that you want to be elsewhere.”
“Karr went here, and he just ended up working in the Old Fort,” said Marran. “He didn’t see all the wrong things in the Chamber because he wasn’t going to go through with the priest part. Most people don’t. So why is this happening to me?”
“You have to tell them. You can’t go on lying, not about this.” Telo swallowed, the implications of it catching up. “But why, Marran? You can’t – you wouldn’t leave me?”
He raised his gaze to meet hers, and this time, she looked down, understanding. “Oh, no. Oh, Marran. You can’t stay just for me.”
He shook his head and grasped her hands. “There’s not so long left of this now – I can see it through – my family will never forgive me if I ruin everything at this late stage. It’s so stupid.”
“You have to tell.” She squeezed his fingers and pressed her head against his. “It’s too long to keep on lying. I couldn’t ask you to. Imai Jennoril will work out what’s best for you to do. Your time here will never be wasted.”
He glanced sidelong at her. “What do you see?”
“Very little,” she said. “I hear things. Music, mostly. Sometimes an awful silence.”
Marran slid his hand out of hers, then patted her fingers before moving away and standing. He crossed to the small window, staring out at the field below. “It was only the snow, to begin with,” he said softly. “Then, lately – this. Maybe it’s us. I don’t care about the Academy – any of it. Only you. I wish we could go away together. We’re old enough – they couldn’t stop us.”
“What would we do?” Telo laughed.
He swung around. “That’s one of the things I’ve been thinking about. Never mind the visions, I’m going to go somewhere I can grow sunplants!”
“What?” Telo stared. “Marran! Why?”
He crossed back and sat beside her. “Oh, it’s something we were doing in Ag and Hort. Lona’s talked about it before, too. Apparently, they’ve been trying it in Eisterland – growing them amongst the alionrel, and it helps prevent people getting sick.”
“Does it?” said Telo, who was of the opinion that the sickness came from the damp spots in which the alionrel grew. “I don’t see why you’d want to, though.”
“Oh, they keep saying the problem isn’t real in Portcallan, or all the alionrel people do, so we need farms here to try it and prove it works – and find uses for it, so it’ll be easier to persuade people. I’d like to help. Lona says someone needs to do it, so why not me?”
“Stop babbling wildly and I’ll go and get something for your headache – if you’ve still got one.”
Marran shrugged. “Don’t worry about me. I’ll work something out.”
“That,” said Telo, “is the part that worries me.”
She wasn’t all that surprised to be woken by light but persistent tapping on her door that night. She dragged herself out of bed, and pulled the door back. “Marran!”
“I’m going,” he said. He was fully dressed with a bag casually dropped at his feet. “Of course – I had to say goodbye.”
Telo froze for an instant, before recovering enough to snatch at the front of his coat. She tugged him into the room and then pushed the door shut behind him with her foot. “Don’t you dare!” she hissed. “Of all things –! Where are you going to go?”
“I don’t know – south of here. Find work on a farm. And when I’ve got my own plot –”
“Sunplants?” She only narrowly refrained from shaking him. “Don’t be such an idiot.”
“I’m not. All those hours of Ag and Hort have to be good for something. I can work out what I want to do after there. I’ve left a letter.”
“I’m sure that will reassure your mother!”
Marran bit back a short smile. “You know, of all people, Mother will probably be the least worried. I told you, Telo. We are old enough – nobody can stop me. When I find somewhere, I’ll write again. I just won’t do it too soon. I don’t want Karr coming and dragging me back by the scruff of my neck. He’s got a nasty high-handed streak sometimes. He’s not my father, whatever he likes to think.”
“And what about me?” Her throat nearly closed up and tears stung her eyes. “What will I do?”
Marran’s amusement vanished and he slipped his arm around her, pulling her in close. “Don’t say that. You’re going off to who knows where in the mountains anyway once we’ve finished. I’m supposed to wait here for you then – what’s the difference if we do it this way round?”
She pressed herself in against him, knuckles white as she gripped the edge of his coat. “No – no. Marran, please. Go back to your room.”
“I’ve said – I can’t, Telo. I can’t go in there, tell Jennoril what’s been going on – see his smug looks – get sent home, tail between my legs and then be lectured by Karr. I’ll go somewhere else – do something. Make it right first – then I’ll go home.”
He wasn’t wrong, but their inevitable parting had always seemed too far enough in the future to worry over. “Don’t go – don’t leave me behind – I can’t stand it, either. I don’t know what to do. Maybe there is somewhere we can go, both of us.”
“You don’t mean that.” He kissed her. “Thank you for saying it, but you know you don’t. Your parents would worry.”
She closed her eyes. “No, no. Listen, stay tonight. We can talk about it properly tomorrow. One more day won’t hurt, will it?”
“I hope not,” said Marran, touching his forehead lightly. He hesitated, trying to gauge her expression properly in the gloom, and then nodded. “All right. Tomorrow.”
A shiver went through Telo. This wasn’t the kind of thing she did. The ground was shaking under her feet; her foundations crumbling away. She’d write music, whatever she did, Pollean priest or not, but losing Marran – she might die inside. She’d thought it would be all right whenever the time came, but this was too soon. She couldn’t let him go yet. “We’ll leave together.”
“I love you,” he said, and then backed away, colouring up. “I – I – that is – well. Yes. But you won’t do it, Telo.”
Telo raised her chin. “I might even know somewhere we can go. Grow sunplants and write music and be left in peace, at least for a while.”
“Your parents, though, Telo! They won’t even let you come on a visit to Old Ralston out of school.”
She swallowed. “I know. I have to think. But one of our cousins has a farm over near Eisestell and it’s empty – they want to sell it, I heard. We could go there, right out of the way of everything.”
“Telo.”
“Or stay here. Both of us.” She drew further back. “I have to decide. And, yes, what to do about Mother and Father.”
“They’d probably think I’d abducted you.”
Telo shook her head. “Shh. Go back to your room. I’ll speak to you in the morning – then we’ll see.”
He pulled her into a quick, fierce hug, knocking the breath half out of her. “I hope so – but, well, it means a lot that you even thought of it, you know.”
“Idiot,” she said, and kissed his cheek, pushing him away. “Tomorrow.”
Those first small thoughts – that they could, that she knew of somewhere to go, that otherwise she’d lose Marran altogether – turned into something like a stone she’d dropped down a mountain slope, gaining speed and volume, carrying her sliding along with it all, hardly knowing what she was doing until they arrived at the little farmhouse. It was in need of work, and she didn’t know whether a hill farm like this was the place to grow sunplants. But the pale spring gave way to an unusually golden summer, and it grew easier to put everything else out of her mind, but this and Marran.
She wrote songs and he planted his sunplants – but in the end, all the songs she wrote were sad and all the sunplants he laid out withered and died.
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