On my last Sunday at the Monastery, my hair was washed with sea water and basilic oil, then left to dry in the sun. Expert fingers then pulled it into three long braids and pinned these up firmly with a golden clip. During my stays here, I would answer to an elderly monk named Romilio, who knew me from infancy, from the day I’d first been found. I did the same with his hair, which was a pitch black, still full despite his age. He oftentimes found me intolerable. To his credit, I oftentimes was, but in his annoyance was a somewhat mild understanding. “This is a difficult age for you,” he’d said to me. “I disagree with the assessment that you’re of bad health. Rather, you’re of bad temperament. With guidance and meditation and self-discipline, that should change.”

I stood cliff-side, watching eagles swoop low and high above the white waves. My mutters were inaudible. Romilio’s were the same, himself sat cross-legged in front of a roaring fire while speaking quiet meditations to its flames. Whenever he said something that was particularly agreeable, the fire would roar up to a flame so hot it burned blue and green, before calming down again. At the end of his meditation, without physical intervention, the fire quickly burned itself out, leaving only a cool line of smoke as its goodbye. We ate salmon with avocados I had plucked from the gardens. As we were washing down our meal with juice from grapes that I had also earlier harvested, Manon’s carriage ambled up to the Monastery.

It wasn’t a warm welcome. Romilio had been in reluctant correspondence with her ever since I had been moved to the Alchemist Academy, and his frustration towards her might even exceed that towards me. It was worsened by her company, because unlike what she’d forewritten, she wasn’t accompanied by Ivra Vonglo. The grandeur of the carriage and the number of the horses immediately betrayed this, because walking out after her was the Baron de la Tourrefeille, three military men, as well as the Général de Gérome himself. Manon’s gaze found me immediately, and she smiled and waved. Her smile didn’t meet her eyes. There was no space left for it to – her eyes were already so occupied with guilt.

The Baron de la Tourrefeille looked up at the tall stone stature of the Monastery, hands on his hips as he stared at its height, warmly impressed. Then he noticed me standing by the edge, and he raised a hand in greeting, winking at me.

I didn’t care about the negotiations, or the compromises, or anything that needed to be conceded or retracted in order to have allowed my autumn and winter at the Monastery. I didn’t care to understand the obvious complexities in the Monastery’s position within the King’s jurisdiction. When Delphia had died, the Monastery had been refused my custody, and so I had been given to a Court bureaucrat and moved to an academy that was ‘suitable’ for me. And I hadn’t cared about the concessions, because I was frequently allowed to return, because I didn’t despise Manon’s guardianship, only I could now see what these concessions were.

Manon must have read the alarm and anger in my eyes when she was close enough, because she shushed me before I’d even said a word. “It’s wonderful to see you, Avari.” She said softly to me, giving me a long hug. “Will you show me around?”

I couldn’t, and not just because of my own reluctance and sense of betrayal, but because Romilio refused to allow them a tour, instead installing them in a makeshift guest lounge and offering them no other space. “I…” I was mindful that Romilio was observing from the side, where he was pouring them all tall cups of sea-water tea. I was mindful that there were emotions within me that I didn’t have the capacity to understand, or express; that Romilio had warned me of the consequences of my bad temperament; that to even speak in front of the Baron and military men felt disgusting, like I was degrading myself. “Artisan.” I said instead, my voice low but forceful. “I agreed to join the Artisans.”

“You’re hardly suited for artisanal work.” The Baron mused, having heard me despite my mutter. “Unless you’re secretly a seamster? A textile weaver? Ceramics, possibly? You can’t join an academy for the sake of it, Avari, you have to go to where you’re best suited.”

“I don’t know the military.” I immediately countered, and like many others, just the fact that I’d directly spoken to him greatly amused him. “What use am I to-?”

“Of course, our wing for Healers. You will be permanently stationed there.”

“Then why not send me to an Alchemist academy?”

“That’s hardly worked for you thus far.” He reminded me, crossing his legs and relaxing further in his seat. “It’s been decided. You’re no Artisan. You’re no Artist either, or Homme de Lettres or Baker or whatever else. You apparently show good promise for healing and so you’re a Healer, but those Academies are all run-down and badly supervised and no place for a young man like you. A young man capable of such…spectacles, wouldn’t you say?”

I looked to Manon, then knew I would never receive help from her, and so immediately looked to Romilio, who was gently placing all their cups onto a glass tray. He set it down on the centre table. “Sea-water tea,” he explained gruffly, “extremely hot. Let it cool.”

“Did you know?” I asked Romilio.

“Of course. Miss Cotillard wrote to inform me. It was discussed thoroughly.”

Whatever expression that must have flickered through my eyes made no impact on him. He looked at me as if he was looking through me, and so I instead turned to the men that had come for me, then I again looked to Manon, and then I closed my eyes.

“Perhaps,” the Baron said, “you might end up a distinguished Homme de Lettres, comparable to the newly notorious…what’s his name-?”

“Jubespirthe.” Général de Gérome supplied.

“Yes. Perhaps you’ll write literature or political philosophy or practice law. Or you could find yourself to be a good baker. You’re in no physical condition for us to consider hunting or agriculture, but those fields have scientists, planners, and thinkers who work in their background. One thing all these elves have in common, is that they completed a foundational education before specialising in their affinity. You understand, military is different because we have incorporated our own school and it’s a discipline that benefits from young teaching, as is hunting, or the many arts. If we find out that you’re a secret master of the piano, we will send you to a Music School, otherwise – you will benefit from a foundational education, which the military will freely give you, and when you’re of age you can choose whatever specialisation you please.

“And you might then question, ‘why not send me to a typical foundational school?’. You understand, no other Academy has resources like my own. I believe, out of a sense of altruism or responsibility, perhaps, that we are best equipped to supervise you and…encourage your full potential. I thought you might see it as an honour, that the overseer of military education and I have come to personally escort you to your new home.” He laughed lightly. “I thought you would understand that after your last visit, after the one before that, you’ve proven yourself to be quite…notable. Our only experience of you is what you’ve newly given us thus far. You would understand, then, what your relationship to my Academy should be.”

There wasn’t much to pack. There wasn’t much to do. There wasn’t even much to say. They struggled to drink their sea water tea and I stood there, feeling an anger that surpassed itself, feeling wronged, feeling as if the little words I said had no meaning, no purpose, that I might as well be saying nothing at all. Delphia had been so strict in her instructions – she had told me, under no circumstances, was I allowed to miss her. “A disservice to the peace I will find and the peace that will replace me,” she had said, as if those flowery words had any meaning. Romilio had echoed them, saying it was unbecoming of a monk to experience the emotions that I had during her passing. He had called it ‘childish’, ‘unlearned’. She had told me not to miss her, and I had been told not to overstate the relationship between her and I, that I shouldn’t interpret it in any other way than a senior monk guiding a new one, but I felt she wouldn’t have let this happen to me. That if she were still here, she would fight for me. If not to stay, then to at least go somewhere I could be happy.

Manon touched my hand, trying for a smile. “Your room will be much bigger, Avari. And you can choose the classes you want to study. I know you’re-”

I pulled my hand away from her, not even turning to face her. “Vous êtes comme les autres.”

You’re like the others.

“If the fear of your attacker is holding back your enthusiasm,” the Baron continued, “Rest assured, Ulyses d’Aigle-Blondeau has been expelled.”

I didn’t care. I didn’t care if they expelled everybody in that school. I didn’t care if the ground opened up underneath that bastardised Academy and swallowed them all up in a hole of clay, brick, and stained-glass windows to a French religious virgin. I didn’t care if they all choked on their sea water tea and Romilio threw their bodies into the field to turn into compost for the plants. I didn’t care if Romilio’s words were true, that if my ‘bad temperament’ got the better of me again and I disturbed the balance of nature around me and provoked another storm, that storm would inevitably sap what little energy I had left and likely kill me outright. I didn’t care. I didn’t care. I didn’t care.

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Why wasn’t I being left alone? All I could do, all the monks here could do better. Why did being a child, did being an orphan, ruin me?

It would be a journey straight to the Military Academy. I couldn’t return to the Alchemist Academy and say goodbye to Ivra, to collect Fox or Cat 1 and Cat 2. Manon tried to argue for this on my behalf, but the Baron was unwilling and Général de Gérome thought it was unnecessary. The veto was his decision, apparently, because sometime during my autumn and winter at the Monastery, Manon had successfully signed over personal custody to the Général himself. “It reverts to the state if you’re truly unsatisfied.” He told me, as if that mattered, as if there would be any checks on my ‘satisfaction’. I had nothing to say. Like a stone, I had nothing to say.

Romilio had one last thing to say to me:

“At 18,” he said gruffly, “do your best to return. There’s nothing we can do until then. So do you’re best to come back.”

Then, I was gone.

*

We passed a lavender field just as the sun started to rise. Rows and rows of light purple, spanning an endless distance, maybe even extending all the way to the bottom of the mountains that I could see along the horizon. I mentally searched for the nearest body of water as I whispered my morning meditation, and the Baron, out of politeness or curiosity, waited for me to finish before speaking.

“Did you drink a lot of lavender tea at the Monastery?”

And I thought this question was stupid, mindless, and that he was stupid and mindless for asking me. “Homegrown lavender?” He asked, that stupid, mindless smile on his face. “Grown by the seaside?”

Did he expect me to answer him? I didn’t. I didn’t even look at him. I kept my focus on the lavender field instead, on the faraway mountains I would never have the strength to climb, on a rising sun that was giving off loose, noncommittal waves of heat. The Baron stopped the carriage to buy some ‘lavender stems’. Some confusion was caused by this request. “You don’t mean, the lavender itself?” “The root, I said. Give me the root.” And so he was given the root of the lavender, and then he was nudging my knee and handing me these roots, these stems, like presenting a bouquet of flowers.

“Why don’t you make a garden for yourself at the Academy?” He suggested. “And grow us some lavender?”

I eyed the lavender, then I scrutinised him. The gold of his wedding band gleamed in the sun as he extended his hand to me, waiting for me to take the lavender. I didn’t take it, and so he set it down by me instead. Whatever Manon wanted to say, she didn’t say it. Instead, she bit her lower lip and wasted her expression with guilt. What was the point in her guilt, in her regret, in her remorse, if she never bettered herself the next time round? Why claim that sending me to the Military Academy would help my ‘socialisation’, if the fundamental reason was because the Academy had instructed her to do so?

The gold of his wedding band continued to gleam when the Baron put his hand on Manon’s knee and squeezed. It made her flush a guilty pink, guilty as ever, guilty as always.

*

The journey exhausted me. I needed two full days’ rest to recover.

*

And when I next woke, it was to the sound of boyish laughter, chatter, the sound of someone jumping and someone else running around. The noise was disorienting, because the dialogue was all in rapid-pace colloquial French, because the sounds were close, as if from my very chambre, because the voices were familiar. I opened my eyes to see a red-and-white-haired boy jumped up on a chair, boldly giving a nonsense speech as he pretended to be a politician at the King’s Court. I saw a brown-eyed battle elf running around, shouting out weird slogans that I couldn’t understand, both on the politician’s side and against it. I saw another boy, quieter but still grinning with his friends, pitch black hair but bright blue eyes, siding with whoever made the funnier comment. They roared with laughter. They played make believe. They…noticed I was awake.

Their reactions were different. Gaspard de Villieu straightened up, looking awkward and wary, looking at me like I was an alien species, capable of sudden but intense harm. Wolfgang Roqueforte-Cilliac de Montaigne stepped down from the chair, sighing, burdened by my consciousness as if I’d woken up with the sole mission of spoiling the fun. Laclan Stymphalia smiled. He approached me, looking down at me in my bed, grinning like he’d been waiting a long time to see me. “Avari!” He punched my shoulder. “You’re finally awake!”

Slowly, I sat up in my bed. My bed, in my chamber, in my new home of the North District Boys’ Military Academy. The room was large but barely furnished – a bed, a dresser, a desk, a mat that Manon must have requested for indoor meditation. The huge window was covered up by some red cloth, and so it was a little dark, making all of their eyes luminescent with night vision. Laclan looked like an overenthusiastic dog, anticipating my movements, excited by my general presence. “Tell him why we’re here,” Wolfgang said. I didn’t look over at him. In my peripheral vision, I could see that he was very pointedly not looking at me.

“We,” Laclan said boldly, “are here to be your mentors!”

I wanted the ground to open up. I wondered what negotiation I could have with Nature to make that happen.

“Gaspard is at the top of all his classes – the book classes – so he’s been charged with helping you catch up in time for summer exams. I am at the top of all the real classes – the military classes – and so I’m you’re…hmm…‘body teacher’…? And Wolfe is…he…he saved your life. He’s your…the Baron used the phrase ‘principal soutien’, like ‘main support’, so I guess he’s that.”

My eyes were on the A on both of his shoulders. Then my eyes were on the ceiling. My room in the Alchemist Academy had been occupied by a cosmologist many years before me, and she’d traced patterns of the universe into the ceiling’s brick. At night, it was like sleeping under the stars, something I often did at the Monastery, something I often liked to do.

There was nothing on this ceiling. It was ugly and plain and desolate. I hated it like I hated the boys in this room. I hated it like I hated the students in this school. I hated it like I hated everyone and everything else, like I might have hated myself.

“Fun, huh? We’ll be together all the time. The four of us.”

Neither Wolfgang nor Gaspard wanted that, clearly, but they didn’t give any counter.

“Do you want to come with us to the Mezzanine? Sunday lunches are always a big roast of..euh…it’s a French meal so the Elven name is lost on me, but it’s the one day in the week when we don’t have to follow the strict military diet. What did you eat at your Academy? I bet it’s nowhere near as good as the food here on Sunday. It’s like dining at the King’s Court! And these two would know, because, well, boys from the South are always vacationing to Aalia to play dolls with the Prince, or whatever-”

“I don’t go to Aalia, you bouche-tête. Aalia comes to me.”

Mischief was quick to burn in Laclan’s eyes, and he combed his floppy hair backwards with his fingers, narrowing his eyebrows and popping up his collar. “Oui, oui, I’m a Roqueforte-Cilliac and I have playdates with the Crown Prince himself. Yes, yes, fire powers and politics…How dare you suggest I do something so vile as to travel?! How dare you insinuate that I lower myself to visit the Royal Family, when it is they that fight over themselves to glimpse upon me!”

It made Gaspard laugh. It made Wolfgang smile a little too, even if he pounced on Laclan who easily fought him off, still cackling himself. Laclan straightened up, beaming at me. “So, let’s go for dinner!”

I had forfeited any food for the past two days, and by this point I could feel my stomach churning itself over in expectation. It would take some effort to push myself to a seated position, I might stumble a little as I steadied myself on the ground, and I would have to depend on my cane to make it to the Mezzanine. Either they would all bound ahead, or they would force themselves to slow to my pace out of obligation or pity, or whatever emotion they were capable of. I would sit in their cafeteria and eat their food and know that I couldn’t go ‘home’, that this was all I had waiting for me. I didn’t know if Manon was still here, but if she was I would have to deal with her guilt-pity too.

Delphia had warned me not to miss her.

Wolfgang and I finally looked at each other. His eyes were impassive, impatient. Slowly, he was growing into his features. His jaw was sharpening and his cheekbones were beginning to hollow out. Slightly less childish, slightly more severe. I turned over in my bed, facing away from them and glaring at the wall instead, saying nothing.

They waited. Then they realised I wouldn’t be going with them.

“We-”

“Leave him.” Wolfgang said. “He’s dull and annoying. We’ll babysit him only when we have to.”

“Don’t say that.” Laclan’s voice was sharp. But then he sighed. “Okay. Okay.”

I don’t know how long I stared at that wall. Long enough for them to leave and night to fully settle. Long enough for me to doze off again and wake up in pitch-black darkness. Long enough for a soft knock on the door, for Manon to gently walk in and stand in the corner, watching me for some moments, trying to guess if I was awake or not. I glanced at her even though I knew it was her, maybe to just see her one last time, maybe to make sure she saw me one last time, that she saw how I felt, that she knew I blamed her.

“Whenever you want me to visit,” her voice was a pathetic whisper, “write to me, and I will come immediately.”

I faced the wall again.

“I know you don’t believe me, but you might when you’re older. Truly, no one here wants to hurt you. No one wants to make you miserable. Everything that’s being done is being done for your sake.” Liar. “That being said – don’t tell them what they don’t need to know. Your self-healing. You healing at all. What you can do to the nature around us. I don’t think they need to know. Okay? I’ll be gone by the time you next wake, but I’ll be back whenever you want. I swear, whenever you want.”

“Pourquoi voudrais-je de vous?”

Why would I want you?

“Because I am not a ‘vous’ to you, Avari.”

When I had been entrusted in newly-graduated Manon Cotillard’s care, Romilio had warned me then to be wary of her, to not trust her, to know that ‘she is one of them’. When Manon had moved with me to the Alchemist Academy, Ivra would often pull me aside and say the same thing, that, like I had been told with Delphia, I shouldn’t misunderstand the relationship between Manon and me. These were warnings that I should have been better in heeding to. It would have saved me from whatever useless pang of emotion I was feeling in that moment. I tried to dismiss it as hunger instead.

“Go away.” I said to her. “I’m tired.”

She sighed. She sighed and sighed and sighed. Any sort of defects in my personality (and at that age, there were many) had never truly faced critical self-examination before, not until that night. After Manon Cotillard left me alone, I pulled the covers over my head and thought. I thought of Wolfgang’s accusation that I was ‘dull and annoying’; of Manon Cotillard’s constant frustrated sighs, of what growing up without parents might have done to me. I had never thought there was any other way I could be, not until that night.