Cyan Goodman did not belong at Twelvelms and everyone knew it. Especially him.

An Episode of The Twelvelms Conspiracy

Content Warnings

• Descriptions of self-inflicted injury, in a ritual setting
• Implications of arson
• Discussion of child abuse and neglect
• Description of violent murder

Transcript

[FIRE CRACKLES; WIND BLOWS DOWN THE CHIMNEY, QUIETLY]

[A BABY IS FUSSING} 

Oh shh, shh. 

It’s alright, it’s alright. 

[FABRIC MOVES] 

I’ll keep talking. You always like it when I’m talking don’t you? 

[THE BABY’S FUSSING BEGINS TO SETTLE]

I… don’t know how long we have. The amanuensis stone will keep it all, so I can send it with you if they… when they… 

[BABY SQUAWKS]

I’m scared your story will start like mine, and I— I can’t let that happen. You understand? I’m doing my best to make sure that you’ll know, so you’ll be ready for it. 

This is a story about my friends. It is also a history, and like all histories, it is alive because we tell it. 

[INTO MUSIC. INTRO VOCALS: EPISODE ONE: WHAT’S IN A NAME?]

It was a strange day, the day I came into magedom. Most mages, they grow up knowing what they are, understanding that they were powerful. By the time they were grown, as I was then, they understood what all of it meant. They knew the names of all the covens and were certain of their faith in the one they’d chosen. They knew what the High Table of the Alliance was, the names of the coven leaders who sat at it. They knew their histories; they understood their world. 

For me, things were a little different. 

I’d known Twelvelms existed for three days when Abagnale brought me there. I’d been in this flat somewhere, I don’t know where. Abagnale came in and out, brought me food. ‘You are Cyan Goodman,’ he told me. ‘Your coven is Derwen, as is mine.’ 

He kept promising it was going to be alright but I couldn’t see how it could be. Everything I knew was gone. My mother, my father, the tiny cottage by the sea where I’d spent most of my life. When I was alone, I spent my time staring at the dirty ceiling in the bedroom of the little flat, counting the cracks in the plaster. If I stared long enough it looked like the ceiling of my bedroom at home. 

But that ceiling would be black with soot, if it was still there at all. The last I saw of the place where I’d grown up was the column of smoke rising from beyond the cliff.

And then, Abagnale brought me to Twelvelms on the Autumn Equinox.

There was hardly anyone at the dirt altar in the centre of Twelvelms’ school grounds. Abagnale and me, and a few junior aides from the Alliance who’d agreed to stay behind to bear witness to my kin-giving. 

It was quiet there, in the little grove. It smelled of the earth, of plants and damp soil, and that strange, heady o-zone smells that hangs in the air where powerful magic has been cast. 

Twelve elm trees surrounded the altar, their branches knit together above our heads, like a ceiling. The altar itself was a heap of dirt, compacted into the roots of the trees, peering out here and there, the wood worn smooth from touching. 

Abagnale stood on one side of the altar. He held a large book in one hand. When he read from it, the words echoed like we were standing in a great cathedral and I could smell hot metal and salt. 

‘The sun hangs low. You have come to call your kin,’ he said. ‘What is your name?’ 

‘Cyan Goodman,’ I said, like I’d been told to. 

‘Which coven is your kin?’ 

‘Coven Derwen,’ I said. 

The dirt of the altar seemed to glow, though no light was cast from it. 

‘How will you prove your allegiance?’ 

As I had been instructed to, I grabbed a fistful of dirt from the ground beside me and cast it into the altar. Bright flames erupted along the exposed roots. 

‘I give this dirt from earth that bore me.’ 

From my pocket I pulled out a handful of feathers and bones which Lord Abagnale had pressed into my hand before I’d stepped into the grove. As I threw them into the flames, too, I called out ‘I give these bones of the food that fed me.’

The last part of the ritual had frightened me when Lord Abagnale explained it, but when he handed me the knife, set with shimmering stones, I felt calm. I drew the blade across the flat of my thumb and watched the blood well to the surface. I held out my hand. I could feel the heat from the fire on my skin. 

‘I give the water from my veins which quenched my thirst,’ I said.

A fat droplet of blood fell from the cut. When it touched the flames, they hissed, and at once extinguished. The dirt altar glowed, a deep light undulating within. My thumb was throbbing. 

Lord Abagnale, stood on the other side of the altar, nodded at me before he spoke again. ‘You have not stood before the gods until this day, but you stand before them now. You call yourself Cyan Goodman; is this your name?’ 

‘That is my name,’ I said. It had been my name since the day before. 

‘And when you called your kin, you called for Coven Derwen. Is this your kin?’ 

‘They are my kin.’ 

‘Then by faith thrust your hands into the altar and bring forth your signet stone.’ 

I braced myself before I plunged my hands into the smouldering earth, but once I’d breached the crackling surface, the dirt was cold. For a moment, it was as though Lord Abagnale and the other mages who had been debating if I’d be allowed to perform this ritual were gone. The grove melted away, and so did the dirt under my hands and the dirt under my feet. When I breathed in, I felt water in my mouth. Above me, I heard the thunder of waves. 

Before me hung a light. It was blue. My lungs were crying out for air but I could hardly feel the pain because the light before me was so enchanting. I reached for it, leaning closer. My fingers closed around it. The stone was hot in my palm. 

I slammed onto my knees, panting. I was dry except for my own sweat. 

The mages around me applauded. 

I opened my hand. There on the flat of my palm was a blue stone with ragged edges. It wasn’t glowing like it had been before. But of course it wasn’t. 

‘Hold it up!’ Lord Abagnale hissed.

I held up the stone, scrambling to my feet. 

‘Cyan Goodman, you are a mage of Coven Derwen.’ 

The morning after I pledged myself to Coven Derwen I met Quinn ap Howell. She met with Abagnale before I was brought into the room. I sat on a small stool in the private part of Abagnale’s office. 

The room was set up as a small library and was in some state of disarray. A large, comfortable chair was sat next to the fireplace, its sage green upholstery mostly hidden with books and loose leaves of paper. 

Almost everything at Twelvelms was covered in the iconography of plants. Ivy was carved into the edges of every shelf. The crown moulding was pressed into the shapes of flowers and foliage. Floral patterned rugs overlapped across the flower-painted floor. 

Beside Abagnale’s armchair, a small wooden bed with a plush blue cushion, near-felted over with white hair. Abagnale’s wolf, Taceo, was on the other side of the door with Lord Abagnale and Quinn ap Howell. The wolf had not seemed to like me much so far. Its silent gaze was a piercing blue, matching Abagnale’s’ own. her head came up to his waist and she watched me, constantly, her attention piquing whenever Abagnale’s own seemed to wane. 

I wondered if she was staring at Quinn ap Howell the same way she stared at me. 

I had not had a chance to soak in the bath for almost two days. My hands were itching. 

The door was heavy enough to obscure most of the conversation on the other side but I could hear the blurry, wordless outline of raised voices. When Abagnale finally swung the door open and beckoned me out, he looked hassled. 

Taceo sat beside Abagnale’s large, oak desk. Rather than being made of several pieces, the desk seemed to have no seams, as if its intricate, branch-like legs had naturally sprung from its large, flat top. 

Quinn ap Howell was not sitting in either of the chairs that faced Abagnale’s desk. She was standing by the window, her arms crossed. ‘You’re Cyan, then,’ she said. 

I nodded. 

‘Is he mute?’ Quinn asked Abagnale. 

‘No,’ I answered. 

‘You’re not supposed to be here,’ said Quinn. ‘Before anything else I need to make that absolutely clear.’ 

I glanced at Abagnale. He nodded, just slightly. 

‘I know,’ I said. 

Quinn huffed a sigh. ‘Abagnale says you’re powerful.’ 

I cringed a little. ‘So I’ve been told.’ 

‘It’s unusual for a powerful Happener to make it all the way to eighteen before we find them,’ said Quinn. She spoke evenly and calmly, even though she was breathing a little too fast.

‘I didn’t get out much,’ I said. 

‘Abagnale explained who I am?’ asked Quinn. She seemed older than me, though I knew she wasn’t. 

‘You’re the granddaughter of the head of Coven Derwen.’ 

‘That’s right,’ said Quinn. ‘And that makes you my responsibility. So. Just. Be normal, alright?’ 

I put my hands behind my back to hide my puckering skin. ‘Of course.’ 

Quinn gave me a last look up and down, nodded, and left the room. 

‘All things considered, that went well. When she was assigned her other two wards, she shouted at the High Table members for two hours. She said it wasn’t fair of them to ask her to be responsible for other mages her age. But with her father dead, she’s the heir to Coven Derwen’s seat at the Table of the Seven-Once-Twelve. So there was nothing to be done about it,’ said Abagnale.

‘Your hands look awful. Find some time to soak before the welcome ceremony,’ said Abagnale. He handed me a key from one of the many pockets concealed with his dramatically layered coat. ‘Down the hall I have arranged for there to be a bath you can access as necessary, but you have to be discreet.’ 

After my bath I wanted nothing more than to curl up and sleep. It was a relief for my skin not to be so painful, but without its persistent itching and stinging, I was struggling to keep myself alert.

There wasn’t time, though. Other students had been arriving whilst I luxuriated in the water; I’d heard their voices drifting up from the Twelvelms’ vast grounds through the small, slightly opened window which was the bathroom’s only source of natural light. 

Now I was dressed and ready, the voices had increased, transforming from a few tangled conversations into a knot of indecipherable noise. They were heading to the large theatre at the base of the school’s main building for the welcoming ceremony. 

I’d been reassured that this was a ceremony only in name, and I wouldn’t be required to contribute the way I had during the equinox. Still, I felt oddly nervous as I made my way down to the theatre. 

Other students’ interest seemed drawn to me, like I was wearing some sign that telegraphed my unease. The community of mages is a small one, and the students of Twelvelms were the children of the community’s elite; they all knew each other, even if only in passing. I was new blood. Unfamiliar. Not one of them said a word to me. 

The theatre was vast. Its walls were painted with golden flowers, its domed ceiling pale blue, broken with intricate patterns of vines and constellations. There was a low, oval stage, and around it, seven sets of tiered seats which the students filed to fill. Each stand of seating was coloured to match the heraldry of the coven whose members would sat there, banners hanging from golden rods on the ceiling to match, bearing each coven’s crest. 

I made my way to the rich purple seats of Derwen. Quinn was sat at the very front, beside her two other wards. I didn’t know much about them besides their names; Reilly Rowse and Felix Scarlett. As I approached them and sat in the empty chair on Quinn’s left side, they stared at me. Quinn nodded in acknowledgement, and carried on her conversation as if I’d not been there at all. 

I was one of the last to arrive and it was not long before a hush fell across the vast room. 

Abagnale strode across the low stage, his wolf, Taceo, at his heel. He stood behind a pulpit; a gold sculpted elm tree. Taceo sat beside, her wide, ice blue eyes scouring the crowd, settling for a moment upon me. 

Abagnale cleared his throat, and began to speak. 

‘Ladies, gentlemen, those with the good fortune to be neither! It is my duty and great pleasure as Chancellor of the University to welcome each and every one of you to Twelvelms. This is supposed to be a talk for our newcomers but I see a few familiar faces here. Perhaps my speeches are simply that impressive and entertaining. 

‘Regardless, I’m grateful to you all for joining me here tonight, on the first night of the rest of your lives, in this tradition we call Salve Princep! 

‘Don’t worry, though. There won’t be any ritual sacrifice or pledges of allegiance tonight, scholars. Tonight is your first night as members of the oldest and finest institution of culture and learning in all of magedom. A university of some kind has stood here since the first trees were planted at Avalon, since before the Covens, before even the druids. These grounds are hallowed not by the gods but by mages, scholars, learners, like you and I.

‘To stand upon the mighty shoulders of those great thinkers before us is a privilege, yes, but I must also impress upon you that it is also a great responsibility. This institution represents the foundation on which the Alliance of our great covens is built; a common ground between our great, formidable powers where we meet together and learn and teach. In the decree of the Alliance it is written that no mage will be above. 

‘Whilst you are scholars here, you will learn not just how to become the finest mages in the country, but also ambassadors of your coven. This university and the purlieu of Twelvelms beyond it is the beating heart of our society and it thrives on cultural exchange and learning. 

‘Some of you among us of are great houses. Others are the first in your family to be granted the honour of studying here. Whatever your standing, it is your job as scholars of this institution, of this great city, to do your duty to your heritage whilst doing all you can to learn from that of those around you.

‘In the coming weeks you will have to make a great many adjustments. You will learn to cook and clean and live with others who are not your family. You will perform feats of magic so profound that your younger selves would have gone dizzy with the thought of it. You will see wonders and face challengers stranger and more exciting than any you’ve ever known. 

‘And you will, each and every one of you, take this in your stride. I know this because you were all selected with great care.

‘Above all, this must be stressed; you are each of you here for a reason. You are all worthy of your place at this university. Which is why welcoming you here feels woefully inadequate; you are not simply welcome. This is where you belong. 

‘For now, good evening. And I will speak with you all again soon. 

‘Oh, and I believe there is bread, cheese and wine on the way, which may explain why there are so many familiar faces now I’ve dispelled any notion it could be anything to do with the quality of my speeches.’ 

This speech is not recorded from memory. Unlike much of this account, which is pieced together from my own messy, piecemeal rememberings and scraps of the diaries I kept whilst at Twelvelms, this speech, as all others given at Twelvelms, was recorded in full in its fastidious Tome of Records, which, when Abagnale left the stage, we were all summoned forth to sign our names in. 

There was a reverence to this act. Students approached the book in orderly lines, coven by coven. Derwen signed second to last, and Quinn kept me and her other wards at the back of the line. I signed with my new name, Cyan Goodman. Under my name, Felix Scarlett, and Reilly Rowse. At the bottom of Derwen’s page of signatures, Quinn’s name stands larger than the rest. ‘Quinn ap Howell, Warden of Coven Derwen.’

At the time I was mostly struck by the uncertainty with which I’d written my own name, my hand betraying its unfamiliarity, but when I look at the photocopied pages of the tome laid before me what strikes me now is how our names closer than the rest. But perhaps this is just a trick of the light. 

The evening was loud and full of wine and revelry. I stayed away from both, trying my best to smile politely at every suspicious glance thrown my way. Once we’d eaten, the students split off according to their covens. 

Derwen’s boarding house at the school was a large, low building made of rust red stone, transported to Twelvelms from the hills around Deva, Derwen’s purlieu. Sprigs of oak – Derwen’s sacred tree – decorated the mantels above the fireplaces, and furniture made from its rich, golden wood filled every room. The new students struck up conversations with the old and I drifted from room to room, feeling like a ghost but for the gazes which followed me everywhere. 

At the back of the house was a small, private courtyard lined with oak trees. Though it was late September, there was warmth still hanging in the evening air, as though the night was clinging desperately to the last vestiges of summer. Benches were arranged here and there, twelve in a square around a pond. Its small fountain was in the shape of a woman, water pouring from her outstretched hand. I wondered if it was modelled after one of Quinn’s ancestors. 

‘It’s a bit much, isn’t it?’ 

I startled at the voice. It belonged to Quinn. She was sat on one of the benches at the far end of the garden. In the dark it was hard to see her expression. 

‘They are suspicious of me,’ I said. 

‘Naturally,’ said Quinn. ‘You’re not supposed to be here. It’s not how things work. And the place you’ve taken was supposed to go to Edward March,’ Quinn explained. 

I floundered. ‘I didn’t know I was replacing someone.’ 

‘That’s the thing,’ said Quinn. ‘You’re not. He went missing the day before the Equinox. He never confirmed his allegiance to Derwen, he’s not a full mage by the Alliance’s standards so he wouldn’t be able to come until next year now, even if they’d found him. 

‘Funny that, isn’t it? Edward March disappears, conveniently leaving a space for another Derwen student to come to Twelvelms this year. And instead of choosing any of the mages who were on the waiting list, who had proven themselves after years of study, who had passed the entrance exams in the spring, that place went you.’ 

‘I don’t think it’s very funny,’ I said. 

Quinn hummed. ‘Who are you, Cyan Goodman?’ 

The words made me shiver. I didn’t know how else to answer so I told her the truth: ‘I don’t know who I am.’ 

Quinn got to her feet and stepped into the light pouring into the courtyard from the windows. 

She stood a foot from me, staring at me with her wide, dark brown eyes. Around her neck, a silver chain. Her signet stone was set into it. I closed my hand around mine, which was loose in my pocket. 

‘I hope they find Edward March,’ I said. 

‘Yes,’ Quinn agreed. With that, she went back inside. 

I crossed to the back of the courtyard. As I had been promised by Abagnale, there was a gate, concealed by ivy, which I slipped through. I strode away from Derwen’s house as fast as I could. 

The other coven houses were too spread out for me to hear much from them, but I could tell they were all as alive with chatter and music as Derwen’s had been. Rather than reassuring, this made me feel more nervous than ever as I walked the fine-chipped gravel paths up to the school. 

Abagnale was waiting for me in the foyer. 

‘Next time, take the long way around, through the trees,’ he said. ‘Everyone is preoccupied tonight, but you can’t risk anyone spotting you.’ 

‘Right, of course,’ I said. 

Abagnale walked up with me to the bathroom. As I unlocked the door, he reached into my pocket and pulled out my signet stone. 

It’s odd; I felt a rush of panic as his fingers closed around it, as I always did when someone grabbed my coat. 

‘Larimar,’ said Abagnale, turning my signet between his fingers. ‘Unusual signet for a mage of Coven Derwen. We usually have purple stones – garnet, mostly – in line with the coven’s colours. Not yours though. Turquoise, shot through with white. Like sunlight catching on the surface of the sea.’ 

I snatched the stone back, my heart racing. 

Abangnale smiled apologetically. ‘Forgive me. I only glimpsed it when you pulled it from the earth at the equinox. I should have asked.’ 

‘Yeah,’ I said, breathlessly. I clutched the stone in my fist. 

‘I was so curious as to what you would pull from the beneath the altar. I confess I was worried you’d be given no stone at all.’ 

My stomach clenched. 

‘This does suggest some interesting things about our magic, don’t you think?’ 

‘I suppose,’ I said. 

Abagnale sighed. ‘Forgive me. It is so rare to meet someone like you. Rarer still to have such an opportunity to see your full potential. I imagine you will do great things. You certainly seem capable, from what you did to your father.’ 

I pressed my eyes shut against the memories reeling through my mind. Blood splattered on the walls. Swirling my coat in the water to wash the blood from the fur, sobbing, sobbing. Crying for my mother. But she was gone. Gone.

I thought of my father’s body on the floor. The pale cast of his skin, dead grey against the blood which had streamed from his nose, his eyes, his mouth. I had not meant to do it, but at the same time of course I had. I pictured it my head and a rush of power flooded through me and there it was, the water of his body, bright red, pulled through every orifice it could find. 

It was over in seconds. 

My mother stood by the doorway, her coat in her hands. She spoke to me, in her deep, soft voice, still cracked from all the weeks my father had kept her coat from her. Her words were a song, and the song was my name, my real name. Free-winding currents in the widest sea, water that warms the coasts. My father had only ever called me ‘boy’. 

‘I’d say I hate to pry, Cyan, but it would be a lie,’ said Abagnale, with a little laugh. ‘But I have been wondering why you didn’t simply follow your mother, once you’d set her free?’ 

‘I couldn’t follow her,’ I said. ‘I don’t know how to swim.’ 

Abagnale smiled sadly. He put his hand on my shoulder. ‘I am so glad that I was the one they sent to see about the source of all that power. I am so glad you will be safe here, as long as I can manage it.’ 

I nodded. 

Abagnale dropped his hand. ‘The other mages will find your signet stone peculiar, too.’ 

‘I’ll keep it hidden, then.’ 

‘You can’t,’ said Abagnale. ‘Your magic will be coloured by the stone, now the earth has gifted it to you.’ 

I opened my fist, looked at the sea-coloured stone on my palm. ‘Will they know what I am?’ 

‘Dear boy, most people think what you are is the stuff of fairytales,’ said Abagnale. ‘Let’s keep it that way, until you’ve shown who you are, which is far more important.’ 

‘Lord Abagnale,’ I said, as he began to walk away. ‘Who am I?’ 

Abagnale turned back to me and smiled. ‘Whoever you wish to be.’ 

With that, he left me alone. 

I locked the bathroom door once I’d gone inside. 

The bathwater was still and warm. I swirled my fingers in it, tasted its saltiness. My coat was in the small wooden chest my father had always kept it in, the lock axed away. I touched the splintered wood lightly as I pulled the coat out. 

I remember the first time I held it. I was barely able to speak, then. I had been so ill, hardly able to move from the blisters and thickened skin all over my body. Every breath I drew hurt. 

My father had panicked that I might die, so he took me down to the basement where he kept my mother. She held me in her arms and sang my name to me. Looking up at her, I knew that’s what it was. I’d been hearing her song all through the house my whole life and had never known that she was calling to me. And now she was holding me tenderly in her damp, salty arms. 

She told my father in her strange voice that I needed my coat or I would die. He unlocked the chest, the same one I sat before that night at Twelvelms, and pulled it free. Even under my crusted fingertips, the fur was soft and warm. I started shaking and crying as my mother laid it over me, fed my limbs into its sleeves, singing my name all the while. 

When I put on my coat it is like a falling away and a becoming. It is a sigh, a shudder through my very soul. I slip and twist in my other form, supple and elegant, built for the sea. Smells are sharper, sounds keener. Neither form feels more right to me, but perhaps this is because I have spent so long shaped like a human that I am out of practice when I slip into my seal shape. 

The night I killed my father was only the fourth time in my life I had been allowed to soak in sea water with my coat on. My father had learned quickly that so long as I was close to the coat and sat in sea water every night, I could be kept alive and fairly comfortable without letting me change my shape. 

I have, over many years, come to understand that what my father felt for my mother and I was a kind of love. A twisted, selfish kind of love, but a love nonetheless. He loved her like a child loves a toy he does not wish to share. He once told me a story of the night he and my mother met, when he saw her on the beach, slipping out of her coat for the first time. He had never seen a more beautiful woman, with her long, charcoal hair and freckled, soft-beige skin, her wide near-black eyes. He told me then, as he always did, that he knew he had to have her. Have.

I sometimes regret that I killed him before I could wrangle a real explanation from him, before I had a chance to see if he had any remorse for what he had done to my mother, and to me. But the older I get the more certain I am that there was no answer he would give that would satisfy me. I wonder now if he was capable of understanding that what he’d done was wrong at all. 

But then, I was young, and I was glad to be able to be what I was, even if it had to be secret. A door I locked myself was a step above a door locked by my father. 

Through the small window in the Twelvelms bathroom, I looked up at the moon. As softly as I could, I sang my name into the water. I held my breath and dove as deep as I could. I hoped that somewhere, out there, where the other selfies lived, that my mother was singing back, from the sea she had disappeared into once I had freed her, the night I killed my father, the night Abagnale came and told me he was going to change my life. 

He certainly did. 

[OBJECTS ON THE SHELVES BEGIN TO SHAKE] 

What on earth? 

[BABY STARTS TO CRY] 

[CHAIR LEGS SCRAPE; SLOW FOOTSTEPS ON A WOODEN FLOOR]

[END]