Cyan is not the only one at Twelvelms who has been keeping secrets…

An Episode of The Twelvelms Conspiracy

Content Warnings

• Violent threats
• Descriptions of violence
• Descriptions of blood
• Implication of murder

Transcript

I should have slept longer, probably. Take advantage of the fact you’re out for the count, little one. But I can’t. I’m hoping my talking won’t wake you. Given the opposite has been true so far, I’m not too worried. 

You know, I learned to speak from stones like these. I found some in a box, hidden under a loose floorboard in my attic bedroom. I didn’t know they did anything for a long time. I would just weigh them in my palms, feel all the tiny marks etched into the outside of the stones, not knowing they were words. 

It’s a surprisingly complicated bit of magic, though no surprise to me this is how so many mages’ stories are kept. Language was spoken before it was written; of course mages would seek to find a way to preserve their voices first. It does mean that a lot of our histories have been lost with the languages that spoke them. Clutches of ancient amaneusis stones unearthed, the voices within them freed, but unintelligible to us now. 

Unmages have language studies which might unlock their secrets, of course, but mages have always been reluctant to cooperate enough to let them. Too many layers of explanation involved, they say. 

We open the stones anyway. Listen to the voices held within them even though their words make no sense to us. Even though they make no sense, they mean a lot. They mean people were here long ago, as we are here now. That life is finite and ever changing. We listen to them so the histories within those stones are heard, even if they are not understood.

[MUSIC] 

Anyway. 

Where was I? 

[PAGES TURN] 

Ah, yes. That’s it. My disastrous initial assessment in Practical Casting. Things may have been less explosive had there not been water involved. 

I’ve come a long way since then. Abagnale’s idea has always been that I have both mage and selkie magic in me. Or, broadly speaking, he thinks mage magic and selkie magic is the same but we channel it all differently. So, shorthand. Mage magic, selkie magic. Same source, different channeling. 

Doesn’t really matter, anyway. It would not be for a long while after I came to Twelvelms that I’d meet any other selkies. 

Other selkies, I say, as though I’m truly one of them. I’m not, of course. 

This is not important for now, what is important is that I had proven to be a powerful but reckless practical caster. Though Reilly seemed impressed and Felix was somewhat intrigued, their interest was quashed by Quinn, who made it doubly clear to me that she was not interested in being friends, and I should keep my distance from Reilly and Felix, too. 

‘You’re not supposed to be here,’ she told me. ‘I look out for you because it’s my duty to my coven. Do you understand?’ 

After Practical Casting, Quinn insisted on chaperoning me everywhere, but refused to engage me in conversation as she did so. Every evening after dinner she’d lead me across the gardens from Derwen House so I could attend my ‘private lessons’ with Abagnale. We never spoke on the walk. Sometimes Reilly or Felix would come along with us. Reilly would try to include me in conversation, but Felix seemed to delight in excluding me from them. 

‘This is a good thing,’ Abagnale told me as I soaked in my salt-water bath. 

I was in seal form. I could only reply with a huff of water. 

‘It’s best you keep them at arm’s length. Better they dislike you than they know what you are.’

I closed my eyes, dove down to the deep depths of the bath, resting my belly on the cool tiles. I dreamed that the swaying water was the current of the sea. I dreamed the echoes of movement through the walls reverberating through the tiles was the sound of creatures swimming all about me. I listened to them, strange songs, and ignored the distorted sounds of whatever it was that Abagnale was saying. As a seal, I can hold my breath for close to an hour. It’s a wonderful escape, even though then I was never more than six feet away from him. 

Thankfully, Quinn did not wait for me during my lessons with Abagnale. Abagnale assured her he himself would accompany me back to Derwen House, but he never did. I appreciated the time alone. Quinn’s constant supervision and lack of warmth reminded me too much of my father. 

Abagnale would help me out of my coat and seal it away in its box, and I’d head out into the evening. The main building was encircled with old, beautiful oak trees, their galls cast onto the paths winding through them. Oak was the sacred tree of Coven Derwen, the coven I was a part of. Though each coven’s boarding house was surrounded by a healthy crop of their own sacred trees, Derwen’s was all over the grounds. 

I’d asked Abagnale about that. He told me that Derwen was pivotal in the founding of the university and the presence of oak trees was there to honour that. In the three hundred years since the university had been established, there had been almost a hundred deans of the school. More than half of them were Coven Derwen.

I remember thinking then, doesn’t that seem a little unbalanced, given the whole principle of the the place was supposed to be that each coven had even footing here? But I didn’t say that out loud. Twelvelms was on neutral territory. 

Next to the main building was a wide road lined with elm trees. Seven were living trees, each on the exact age of that coven’s leader. Five more were wrought of marble and gold. The five dead covens. The Alliance of Seven-Once-Twelve. 

This I had asked Abagnale about, too.

‘They were lost,’ he told me. ‘ Some to famine, some to in-fighting. Long ago there were many mages, but now we are very few. It’s a miracle there are seven covens left in the UK at all. These monuments are here to remind us of what we have lost.’

One evening in mid-October, I was walking back to Derwen House after my bath. The leaves of the grounds of Twelvelms were starting to brown. My skin, though healed, felt itchy. I’d cut my soaking short on Abagnale’s advice; we had an early start the next morning, picking a particular weed before the sunrise so its power could be enhanced. 

As I breathed the cool night air, part of me longed to go back, to climb the winding stairs of the grand atrium, up to the top hallways where the professor’s offices and sleeping quarters were, past the great, heavy door to Abagnale’s office, and into the small, square room where my bath was. Where my coat was tucked safely into its wooden box, locked up tight until I could come back to it. 

I felt in my pocket for the key. Abagnale had installed a new lock. Just to keep it safe, he told me. Both Abagnale and I had a copy of the key. It wasn’t the same as having my coat with me at all times , of course, but it was soothing to feel the smooth brass against my palm, warm from being pressed near my skin, next to my signet stone.

I decided that I’d take the long route back to Derwen House, hoping the itchiness would subside enough by the time I got back that I’d be able to sleep. 

There was a large circular path that linked everything on the grounds at Twelvelms together. Scholars called ‘The Round’. If you followed it, there were signs which would lead you to the boarding houses of all seven of the covens; to the libraries; the tree nurseries; and the green houses. There were also shortcuts, little paths across the lawns, through the large, cultivated gardens. They could get you to places much more quickly than the Round, but they were less easy to follow. The Round was handy especially if you weren’t sure exactly how to get where you were supposed to be. Just keep going around the Round, and eventually you’d pass a sign for it. 

Right in the middle of the grounds, at the dead centre of the Round, was a stone garden and a dome made of living trees. Inside the dome was the altar where I claimed my coven and my new name.

Derwen’s boarding house was almost at the exact opposite side of the Round to the main school building. It was far, far quicker to cut across the path that cut through the Round’s centre.  It was a pretty nice walk to; you passed some sculptures of historical mages I didn’t know, and the rose garden which always smelled gorgeous. 

Whenever we cut across the Round, we never went through the stone garden. None of the scholars did. Even though it would have been quicker, we always followed the path around the edge of it.

Back then I did not truly understand the significance of the altars, but what had happened to me on the night of the autumn equinox had done enough to make me afraid. When we passed the edge of its ring of stones, we’d all go quiet. Everyone did. Like we were passing through a graveyard. 

You could not see the altar’s dome and ring of stones from the Round. Even as they were beginning to shed their leaves, the young oaks that lined the path were planted too densely, and beyond them, the well-maintained gardens obscured everything else. All that could be seen of the altar space from the Round was a twist of branches which caught the light and glinted as though they were hung with crystals. 

Up close, you could see it wasn’t, though. Whatever made those branches shimmer, it was something else. 

I was almost at the turn off the Round to the boarding house of Coven Sambucus, which meant I was almost back at Derwen. Elder trees lined the red stone path to the boarding house and almost obscured it entirely, even having shed half of their leaves. They were beautiful things, I thought, especially now their twisting, winding branches had been exposed. Elder trees have always looked to me more like roots than branches, as though each tree had been uprooted and turned on its head. In the dark, they looked like spectres. 

As I passed the turn, I heard hushed voices in the dense foliage. I kept my head down and tried to keep walking, but as I did, Felix Scarlett was thrown out of the hedges right in front of me. Felix’s cheeks were as red as his surname, his eyes wide as he took me in, standing over him. 

‘Are you following me, creep?’ he spat, as though it were normal for people to fall out of hedges in the middle of the night.  

I was about to ask if he was alright, when a taller, broader man stepped out of the hedge Felix had just been thrown from. From his formal wear I assumed he was from Coven Sambucus. All of them dressed as though they were going to funeral, all the time. From the set of the man’s eyes, the curl in his hair, and the scowl on his face, I guessed that he was somehow related to Felix. 

‘One of your little friends?’ asked the man. 

Felix scrambled to his feet. There was a small cut on his cheek. ‘Fuck off, Ignatius.’ 

Ignatius squared his shoulders. Felix did not shrink back from him, but he didn’t need to; he was at least a foot shorter. Nonetheless, Felix raised his hands, balled into fists. One of them was slightly thicker than the other; a purple-red mist leaked out from between his fingers. He was clutching his signet stone. 

‘Felix,’ I said. 

‘Go away, creep,’ Felix barked. 

Ignatius was looking right over Felix, straight at me. ‘You’re the Happener, aren’t you?’ he said. His expression curled into a smile. He looked less like Felix when he smiled. Felix had a grin that suggested mischief and a not inconsiderable amount of madness. Ignatius’s smile oozed only of contempt. 

‘I told you to go,’ Felix hissed. 

‘I’ve said all I need to,’ said Ignatius. His smile dimmed as he looked at Felix again. ‘You know your duty. There is still a way for you to honour it.’ 

‘I hope Consul Greer dies and rots in the ground and Valentina Mahogan takes the seat before you have chance to shag someone.’ 

Ignatius’ cheeks flushed. Felix breathed heavy; the red-purple mist was swirling around the whole of him, not just his fist. I closed my fist around the smooth signet stone in my pocket.

’Ten cycles would pass before you’d have chance to get a leg over, you up-tight, self-righteous piece of—‘ 

Before Felix could say what Ignatius was a piece of, a blast of deep, crimson magic burst from Ignatius’ chest and Felix soared backwards, slamming into one of the young oak trees that lined the Round. 

And then, several things happened at once. Ignatius turned to me; I squeezed my eyes shut; and Ignatius began to scream.

’Stop!’ Felix yelled. I could hardly hear him over the ringing in my ears. ‘CYAN. PLEASE. HE’S MY BROTHER!’ 

I opened my eyes. Ignatius slumped to the ground. Felix glanced at me, horrified, and scrambled over to him. 

‘Iggy,’ Felix said, pulling Ignatius out of the crumpled heap he’d fallen in. 

I was breathing hard, muttering over and over again that I was sorry.

‘Iggs, come on,’ Felix hissed. He struck his brother’s bloody face with the back of his hand. ‘Iggs. Please.’ 

Ignatius spluttered and gasped. He sat up and shuffled back from Felix at once, glaring over his shoulder at me, in horror. He touched his face, stared at his bloody fingers. ‘What did you do to me?’ he asked. 

I shook my head. 

‘What did you do?!’ Felix demanded.. 

‘I don’t— I don’t know.’ I thought of my father. I thought of the blood arcing from his nose, his mouth, his ears, the places where his eyes had been, twisting like ribbons through the air. Ignatius had got off lightly. 

I put my head down and started to walk back towards Derwen House.

‘OI!’ Felix shouted after me. ‘Come back here and explain what the hell you just did!’ 

But I couldn’t. I couldn’t go back and I certainly couldn’t explain. 

At Derwen House I shut myself in my room and sat bundled up with my back against the door. I ignored Felix hammering against it, yelling my name. I ignored the voices of other people demanding to know what was going on, why Felix was screaming. I put my hands over my ears, slid onto my side, and stayed like that, there on the floor, until I fell asleep. 

I was woken several by the ruckus of everyone getting ready to start their long hike to the Botany Green Houses. I stayed where I was, ignoring Quinn hammering against the door. I didn’t emerge until lunchtime.

Quinn reprimanded me for missing my lessons. Reilly offered to share her notes, despite Quinn’s scowl. Felix did not look at me at all. Felix; surely he would have told them about what happened. But if they knew, they didn’t acknowledge it. 

Some days later, I came down to eat my breakfast before our lectures began, and was surprised to see that everyone was still in their pyjamas, which was extremely unusual as most people had lectures first thing. 

Samhain, which falls on the same day as Halloween or All Hallows Eve, is a significant festival in the mage calendar, it turned out. There would be no lectures at all, and almost nobody was expected to work. 

There are many observed traditions on this day; eating pumpkin pies; lighting candles in memory of loved ones who have passed to encourage them to visit you and bless you whilst the veil between this world and the next is thin; writing your name upon a stone and casting it into bonfires and trying to find it again once the flames burn low. Those whose names are still legible when their stones are found in the ashes are said to be destined to die before the next Samhain comes. 

Twelvelms had its own tradition, too. Each boarding house built its own bonfire through the day using fallen twigs and dead leaves from their own gardens, plus a few logs to bulk it out. The fire was lit in the afternoon, and we’d all throw in our names, and then, run and hide. It was supposed to be extremely good luck to stay hidden until midnight. 

There were all sorts of reasons that people would break cover; they needed to use the loo; they were bored; they were hungry. More than anything else, it was a game of endurance. If you threw in the towel, you were supposed to start looking for everyone else. Essentially, it was a massive game of Hide and Seek. 

It all seemed rather daft to me. Everyone at Derwen House was at least eighteen, and most of them were older. I’d read books where people played hide and seek, and it seemed to be a game for very young children. I couldn’t understand why anyone wanted to indulge this. But most people did, and I didn’t want to give anyone any more reason to think I was strange and unusual, so when the fire was lit, I ran to hide like everyone else. 

Most people headed out of the house. I followed them, but ended up standing lamely in the courtyard at the front. I could hear the bonfire burning in the private gardens at the back of the house, still. I could already smell the smoke. I looked up at the main school building. Maybe I could go up there. A lot of people were headed that way so I was pretty sure it wasn’t against the rules to do so. I could go up to my bath, slip into my coat, sink into the water. Nobody would find me there. 

Someone barrelled into me at speed. I yelped, but a hand clapped over my mouth before the sound could escape. 

‘Don’t try anything,’ Felix Scarlett hissed down the back of my neck. 

I went limp in his grip, let him guide me backwards into the house. I didn’t want to hurt him; that would have been a disaster. And I was good at letting people do what they wanted with me. I’d had lots of practice. 

Felix dragged me across the hall, ducked us behind a curtain as some giggling people hurried past us. He was a good few inches shorter than me, but his hand on my mouth was firm, as was his arm around the bottom of my ribs. I could feel his heart pounding against my back. 

I glanced down. Leather bands were wrapped around his wrist and forearm. In his clenched fist, his signet stone was glowing purple-red. 

When the voices passed, Felix took us out from behind the curtain and ducked us instead into a small cupboard. Inside were shelves were lined with boxes and jars; some kind of pantry. 

Felix was breathing hard as he released me and crept forward to very carefully close the door. He turned, and looked me up and down. ‘Move,’ he said. 

I glanced around; there was not an awful lot of space for me to move into. 

‘Step back,’ he hissed. 

As soon as I did, Felix got to his knees. He pulled up the ratty old rug, disturbing a cloud of dust. Right under where I’d been standing was a trap door. Felix set his right hand against it, signet stone directly in contact with the lock. 

‘Recluse, resigno, resero, recludum,’ he whispered. His magic glowed for a moment, and the lock clunked. He threw the trapdoor open and hurried through it. When only his head was poking out, he looked at me. ‘Well come on,’ he said. 

I glanced at the door back out into the house. I could hear people moving around upstairs, squeals of laughter from out in the gardens. I thought about the main building, my coat, my bath. 

Felix’s magic glowed again. He narrowed his eyes. ‘Come on,’ he said. So I followed him. 

The trapdoor led us down into a large, bricked cellar. Like the pantry above, it was well stocked with supplies, but rather than boxes and jars of jams and chutney, the cellar was mostly filled with dusty bottles of wine. 

In the corner of the room was a scrunched up blanket. There were a couple of books on it, and several empty wine bottles. Felix walked past the small nest without so much as glancing at it.

‘Eventually the shelves give way,’ he said, walking ahead of me in a way that suggested I should follow, so I did. 

‘I’d read about the tunnels under Twelvelms years and years ago, but people talked about them like they’re a myth,’ said Felix. He scoffed. ‘Well. Reilly does. Don’t get me wrong, she’s clever. She’s just not as clever as she thinks.’ 

‘You haven’t shown this to the others?’ 

Felix glanced back at me. ‘I like my privacy,’ he said. 

‘But I’m here.’ 

‘Yeah. I doubt you could get the lock open on your own. Not without exploding it, anyway. Even if you did, I’d fucking kill you and hide your body in the tunnels. By the time anyone found you, they’d have no way of telling how you died.’ 

At the back the cellar, the shelves did indeed give way. The bricked walls of the cellar did, too. The tunnels were not tunnels so much as caves. They were only a little higher than my head, and just wide enough for two people to walk side by side.

‘Ilumino, incaedo,’ Felix whispered. A glow from his signet stone, and then, all down the tunnels, small lights lit themselves in tiny, arched alcoves, rising from jagged shards of shiny black rock. They guttered like flames, but they were pale and didn’t give off any heat,

‘Glass candles,’ said Felix. ‘Hard to get. Each one is probably worth more money than most mages earn in a year,’ he said. 

I don’t know if I’m remembering this right. I was scared. Mostly I was scared Felix had somehow figured me out, but I was also worried that he’d hurt me. He’d been so ready to fight Ignatius who must have been twice his weight. I was barely taller than him, and back then I was built like a reed. He could have snapped me in two, if he’d fought me. 

I was also scared of what I’d do to him if he tried to threaten me. It had come so easily the other night, with Ignatius. I hadn’t even intended to hurt him. With my father, at least I could understand where the rage had spilled out of me from, the gaping wound in my soul where that magic poured free of me. I wasn’t in control of it, it had been in control of me, but I could understand its origin. Feel it in my chest when I remembered. 

With Ignatius I’d just been a little threatened, a little annoyed. I had no idea what would happen if I was put in that position again. And I really did not want to hurt Felix. I’d be thrown out of the school. I’d ruin Abagnale. I had no idea what would happen with me if the Alliance found out we’d lied to get me into Twelvelms. If they learned what I was. 

So I just followed Felix in silence down the slightly curving stone tunnel-cave. Our footsteps crunched on the stone, flattened under our feet, worn smooth in the centre from years of use. 

‘The tunnels link up the school,’ said Felix. ‘It’s like the Round, but underneath. I walked the whole way around it. Took more than an hour, just like walking the Round. Over where the main building is, there’s a branch of different tunnels. A couple of them are blocked off, all bricked up like on purpose, you know?’ 

‘Right,’ I said. 

Felix kept walking ahead of me. We passed dozens of glass candles, their pale ethereal glow casting strange, muted shadows ahead and beside us as we walked. Now and then we passed a larger arch in the wall of the cave. Carved into the floor at each threshold, the name of a coven. We passed Sambucus first, then Collen. When we passed Ewen, I stopped. We were headed towards the main building. 

A moment later, having noticed the absence of my following footsteps, Felix looked back at me again. In the pale light of the glass candles, he looked like a ghost of himself. 

‘Why were you following me?’ Felix asked.

‘What? You practically dragged me down here.’ 

‘No. The other night. With Ignatius. Why were you following me? Are you a spy?’ 

‘A spy?’ I repeated, shaking my head. ‘What are you talking about?’ 

Felix narrowed his eyes. ‘If you’re here to threaten me, now’s the time for it. But I warn you. It’s a waste of breath.’

‘You grabbed me and dragged me down here. If anyone’s a spy—‘ 

‘I couldn’t be a spy,’ Felix said, with a bitter laugh. ’The Traitor of Isla Sambuce. What a fucking joke.’ 

‘What are you talking about?’ 

Felix looked me up and down again. ‘You really don’t know?’ 

‘I really don’t.’ 

Felix inhaled sharply. ‘What were you doing in the middle of the night hanging about by Sambucus House?’ 

‘I was going back to Derwen. I— I was enjoying being alone.’ 

Felix narrowed his eyes again. ‘Quinn said Abagnale escorts you back. He promised her.’ 

I shrugged. ‘Yeah well. I guess he has better things to do.’ 

Felix folded his arms over his chest. He started walking again. ‘What did you do to him? To my brother?’ 

‘I don’t know,’ I answered, quietly. 

Felix paused again. ‘You’re not lying, are you?’ 

‘No.’ 

‘You’re fucking dangerous. Do you know that?’ 

I shuddered. ‘Yeah. I’m getting that impression.’ 

Felix turned, closed the distance between us, and slammed me into the wall. My head struck the rock hard and a bright spot of pain burst across the back of my scalp. I could feel hot blood trickling down the back of my neck. 

‘Don’t mess me about, creep,’ Felix growled. 

Then, there was a deep, reverberating boom. The walls of the cave trembled, plumes of dust shaking free from the tiny cracks in the stone. Felix jumped back from me as though he’d been electrocuted. 

‘How did you do that?’ he barked. 

‘That wasn’t me!’ I said. 

Another boom. This time, anticipating it, it was clear the sound came from above us. 

‘Something’s happening,’ said Felix. He bolted down the tunnel, in the direction of where the main building would be if he was right and this really were an underground double of the Round. I followed him. 

A third boom sounded above us, louder this time. Whatever was happening, it was happening in the main school building. 

We met a series of forks in the path, just as Felix had promised. He darted down one of them, and soon we were climbing a set of cut stone steps. We burst out of a wooden door into a huge, vaulted space. Large, rectangular pools were cut into the stone. Hot water steamed in them, the air thick with the scent of lavender. Felix bolted between the pools, heading across the room to another door. This one let to another set of stone steps, winding up, to another door, which led us to a corridor right off the main building’s huge, vaulted atrium. 

The source of the sound was immediately apparent. In the centre of the atrium – which was five storeys tall – was a huge statue of a tree, made of scrolls of polished brass. A staircase wound around it, splitting off into delicate paths which led to each floor of the building. 

Or, they did.

Three walk ways lay on the shattered marble floor of the atrium, and another groaned as it threatened to fall, too. 

‘GET BACK!’ Professor Sorrel bellowed. She was standing at edge of the twisted stump where one of the walkways had once been attached to the second floor. Her bat familiar twisted in the air above her, screeching at a huge, black blur which raced towards it, moving too fast to be anything more than a shadow. 

A blast of Sorrel’s emerald-coloured magic lit the atrium; the black thing shot back and away from her familiar, slamming into the tree, shedding feathers. It was a gigantic raven, far larger than the huge ones I’d seen from my window in the attic of my father’s house. It cawed, fierce, massive, and it echoed across the room. High above us, a blast of magic, its colour so pale it was almost white. 

The fourth walkway collapsed. Sorrel cushioned its fall with another burst of magic, but it still boomed like an explosion as it struck the marble floor. Clouds of dust rose around it, catching in my throat. Amidst the rubble, I heard a strangled bark. 

’Taceo!’ Felix yelled. He darted forward, into the dust clouds. 

‘What are you doing?! Get out of here!’ Sorrel screamed. 

In the dust cloud, I saw the red-purple glow of Felix’s magic. ‘Come on!’ He was shouting. ‘Come on!’ The magic flared bright, again and again. 

Above us, the fighting continued. Distantly, I was aware of people shouting. Of tendrils of light bursting all around us. But I could hardly hear it. A figure dressed all in white sailed down the side of the brass tree, a line of white magic cutting his way, stopping him from falling. He hadn’t noticed me. His attention was focused entirely on Felix, on the pulsing light of his magic as he tried desperately to help Taceo. 

I ran towards them. The dust stung my eyes. Everything smelled of chalk and ash and that o-zone smell that lingers in the air after powerful magic has been cast. Felix had his hands on Taceo’s side. Her blood was oozing through his fingers. He shouted again, and again; each pulse of his magic got dimmer, dimmer. 

The man in white stepped closer too him. I couldn’t hear anything but the crunch of his boots on the broken ground. He grabbed Felix by the collar of his jumper and threw him aside. Taceo lifted her head, whining. The man was speaking to Felix, too quiet for me to hear. Felix’ eyes were growing wider, wider. 

For a moment, everything was still. The man was not whoever he was. Felix was not Felix. The man was my father. Felix was my mother. And he was going to kill her. 

I raised my hands. There was a sound, like rocks hitting water. The man’s grip on Felix dropped. Felix slumped to the ground. The man in white turned to me, his eyes full of blood, just as it began to stream from his nose, his mouth. 

It wasn’t like before. Not like how it was with my father. The blood didn’t come out in arcing tendrils. It—  it— it poured and splattered. People were shouting; I could hear them but not their words. Like I was deep, deep at the bottom of the sea. 

Then, something sharp and bright struck the side of my face and I was on the ground, groggy, blinking like I was clearing sleep from my eyes. 

Felix was standing over me. His hands were raised, an aura of red-purple glowing about him still. The raven was caught in a ball or red-purple light. He was holding it there with magic. Blood was dripping from his nose. 

Above us, there was shouting, flashes of light, chunks of stone and decorative metal falling all around us. 

And then, a thud. Softer, smaller than the others. A crumbled heap of white fabric, stained red. 

In Felix’s grip, the raven began to scream. The sound was almost human. Felix’ grip on the bird fell away, but it didn’t matter. It didn’t try to fly. It just flailed on the ground. 

In front of us, the dust from the fallen walkway began to clear. It settled on the blood which was lood was beginning to pool around the man dressed in white. 

‘Stay back.’ Abagnale’s voice was distant, but loud, and unmistakable. He stood on the last walkway, high above us,  peering down, his face cast completely in shadow. 

[BANG, BANG, BANG] 

Blast. 

[A BABY STARTS TO CRY] 

I know pet, I know. 

[CURTAIN MOVES AS BABY CONTINUES TO WAIL] 

Abagnale. Again. 

[BANG, BANG, BANG, BANG, BANG] 

Yes, yes. I’m coming, I’m coming. 

[CYAN BLOWS OUT A CANDLE]

[END]