As Cyan’s first semester at Twelvelms draws to a close, he & Felix are some of the few who stay behind over the solstice break…

An Episode of The Twelvelms Conspiracy

Content Warnings

• Implications of violence and murder
• Implications of parental abandonment
• References to past child neglect and abuse
• Mentions of scars which are implicitly self-harm
• Descriptions of excessive alcohol use
• Mild body horror

Transcript

[EXCITED BABY SOUNDS]

There, you see? The stones are listening to us, now. 

You can tell they’re listening because you can see marks appearing across the surface. Can you see it? Almost like tiny insects, crawling out of the stone. You want to touch? 

[EXCITED BABY SOUNDS]

There you go. It’s not very heavy, see? Amanuensis stones are hollow. You have to dig for this right kind of stone, in the dirt, hidden inside other rocks. Unmages call them geodes. Inside, they’re full of jagged crystals. Quite beautiful. When you open these stones with magic, you can see the words carved over every inch of them, hear the voices trapped inside whispering back. When the story ends, they seal again. 

I learned to speak through stones like these. I didn’t realise it at the time but I was probably opening them with magic. The stones have no seams, you see, but if I held them in my hands and twisted, they’d come free. If the stories in the stones were meant for you, it really can be that easy, but any mage can open any stone with the right technique. 

Felix taught me a way that uses none of your own magic at all, where you brew a potion, seasoned with blood, and set the stones inside it. When the liquid has all boiled away, the stones are hot enough to burn your skin, but if you’re brave and tap them with the very tip of your finger, they’ll open right up. He’s very clever with things like that. He’s had to be, because of what happened. 

But I… I’ve not got to that part yet. 

Feels important to tell you this story from the beginning. Even saying that is disingenuous; where you choose to begin a telling defines what you will tell. I could have started with your mother going back, leaving you with us. I think I am too angry, still, to have started there. 

I imagine that’s frustrating to you, whenever you’re listening to me speak. 

Yes, look at you, those big hazel eyes watching me…

[THE BABY SOUNDS HAPPY, UNAFFECTED.] 

Do you miss your mother and the others? Are you too young to know they’re gone? 

Quinn told me that a baby thinks they are a part of their mother until they are six months old. How old are you, now? Five months? You must be close. Did it feel like losing part of yourself, when your mother left you? Or was it different, because she could not stand to hold you in her arms until you were already weeks old, and even then, her embrace was brief. 

Ah. I’m still too angry to talk about it. 

Funny that I can say her name when I talk about our past. It’s so easy on my tongue, to say it then. I can forgive her in the past. When there was nothing to forgive, I suppose.

Reilly Rowse was my first real friend, after all.

[INTRO MUSIC] 

After what happened at Samhain I was folded into the little entourage that Quinn ap Howell had gathered around herself; I sat with them to eat; I studied with them; they even spoke to me. But Reilly was the first one who was really my friend. 

It started with the books she gave me, I think, or maybe with the hug we shared on our way to the library that night after Twelvelms’ atrium was destroyed. She loved to read. Any book, any size, any length, she would read it, and she loved nothing more than to talk about her thoughts. 

‘I mean of course there is speculation about the real Respice Finem, but they’ve really just become a story,’ she told me. ‘I think it’s a part of what mages do. Or maybe it’s a people thing. My mother loves stories. I never met my grandparents, her parents, but I feel like I know them through the stories she’d tell about them. It’s funny, isn’t it?’ 

‘I suppose,’ I told her. The only stories I’d hear were from the amanuensis stones hidden under the floorboards of my attic bedroom, told by a young boy  who did not know he would lock my mother in a basement. The little boy who told me about running along the beach, about playing in the sand. Who I did not know would one day grow into my father. He was someone else to me, a boy whose name I did not know, alive in the stories he told me. 

I didn’t tell Reilly about that then. Did not tell her for years. She didn’t know who or what I was, and admitting there were amaneusis stones in the house where I grew up would have stripped away a key part of Abagnale’s story about who I was; I was supposed to be a Happener, raised my unmages.

I think this was a part of Reilly’s fascination with me; It was something we shared. She’d grown uo outside of the purlieus after all. In a way, I think I became her project. She delighted in what I did not know because she could tell me about it, pull books off the library shelves, stack them in my arms, and send me away to learn more. She could be relied upon to follow up, too; to ask if there were things I didn’t understand; to ascertain that I had taken in the message she was attempting to impart. 

I had never had someone play such close attention to me, to engage me in so much conversation. I found I struggled to articulate myself often, but as weeks melted away, I stumbled less and less. 

‘It’s good for you to integrate,’ Abagnale told me, ‘but you must watch your back.’ 

Reilly’s inquisitions were helpful to me in other ways besides their obvious utility. Because it was almost always the four of us together, Reilly, Quinn, Felix and I, that meant Quinn and Felix rarely spoke to me aside from about the subjects of Reilly’s books. She was so focused on bringing me up to speed with the state and organisation of magedom that there was rarely a chance for us to simply chat.

It was clear Quinn did not much mind this. She was grateful for Reilly’s education of me; it eased some of the burden she must have felt. But I could tell her suspicion about me had not entirely faded. She made it clear that she was glad for whatever help I’d given Felix, but she was also very careful to make it clear, in fleeting moments where we were alone, that she did not wholly believe Felix’ telling of what happened on Samhain. 

One night, as she escorted me across the Twelvelms grounds to what she still believed were private lessons with Abagnale, she asked me why I’d not made a bigger fuss about what I’d supposedly done. 

‘You saved Felix Scarlett’s life. You could be a hero. But as far as I can tell, the only people who know what happened that night are the four of us,’ she said. 

I looked at the ground. ‘I don’t want to draw more attention to myself,’ I said. 

Quinn hummed. ‘Maybe that’s wise. You aren’t supposed to be here, after all.’ 

I almost stopped walking. I was angry, but she was right. I wasn’t supposed to be there. 

‘It’s strange that they attacked the atrium, whoever it was,’ said Quinn. 

‘Why?’ 

‘Well there’s nothing there. We’re less than a mile from the Raeg, where all the closest secrets of Magedom are held in the vaults. If he was after something, some kind of weapon magic that the Raeg holds close to their chests, why would he attack the university? It doesn’t make sense.’ 

‘Maybe he was just mad,’ I said. This was the prevailing theory amongst most of the scholars at that point. Abagnale had made a speech to everyone the morning after Samhain where he said the event was sad and unfortunate. 

‘Maybe it he was angry,’ Quinn countered. ‘If it really was Thomas Vane, perhaps it was some kind of revenge against Abagnale for rejecting him the way he did.’ 

‘I thought you said it couldn’t have been Vane,’ I said. Abagnale’s speech about the attack had made no mention of his assistant, Thomas Vane. When Reilly asked the librarian Lady Ottillie about it again, she acted as though she’d never have suggested such a thing. 

‘What I said was that it didn’t make sense for it to be him,’ Quinn corrected. ‘Vane’s a wanted criminal. After Abagnale outed him for what he’d done, he was supposed to go be on trial before the High Table, but he escaped the vaults. Nobody is sure how he managed it. Nobody had ever done it before. So if it was Vane, and he’s dead the way you and Felix said, why would they keep it quiet? And of course, you apparently bested this man in a fight,’ said Quinn. 

‘Well, it was hardly that,’ I said. ‘He was distracted, or I couldn’t have done anything at all.’ 

‘Given you can hardly change the colour of a plank of wood in practical casting, it’d be a miracle if you could have fought off a squirrel,’ said Quinn. 

Anger flared brighter still in my chest. 

‘Sorry,’ said Quinn, softly. ‘It’s just hard to make sense of things.’ 

‘I know. I’m sorry, too.’ 

Quinn sighed. ‘You needn’t be.’ 

‘Well I am. I know I’m a burden to you, and you’ve already got so much to think about.’ 

Quinn froze in place. Her expression was unreadable. ‘You think my wardens are a burden to me?’ 

‘I only meant—’ 

‘Don’t pretend to understand what you can barely grasp at, Goodman. It’s an honour to be trusted with the care of others. An honour. Do you understand?’ 

‘I— I don’t. Like you said. I don’t. How could I?’ 

Quinn sighed. ‘How could you indeed.’ 

We started walking again. 

‘I need to ask a favour of you,’ Quinn said, quietly. 

I hesitated before I spoke. ‘What favour?’ 

‘Felix. He’s not coming back to Castle Derwen with me for the Winter Solstice.’ 

‘So he’ll be staying at Twelvelms?’ 

‘Yes. Given you’re apparently invested in his safety, I want to ask you to look out for him whilst I’m away.’ 

‘Look out for him?’ 

‘Well. It’s a difficult time, for Felix. I’ve done all I can to convince him to stay with me, but he won’t listen. And I think it’s because of you.’ 

‘Because of me?!’ 

‘Don’t pretend you’ve not noticed him snooping around after you. The only reason I feel I can ask you this right now is because I’m certain he’s not followed us out here tonight because he’s drinking in his room with Reilly. I made sure of it.’ 

I had noticed the snooping. And that Felix had been following us out across the grounds most evenings since Samhain.

‘I’m doing my best to keep him from you,’ said Quinn. 

‘Why?’ 

‘Felix has a tendency to see monsters where there are none.’ 

I thought of my coat. My sharp teeth. The blood pouring from my father’s empty eyes.

‘I thought you were suspicious of me, too,’ I said. ‘Because of Edward March.’ 

‘Don’t talk about Edward; you didn’t know him. It is suspicious that you’re here, and I’d be a fool to dismiss my grandmother’s concerns about Abagnale, whatever my own thoughts about him. But if I’ve learned one thing about you in the last two and a half months, Mr Goodman, it’s that you’re clueless. Either that, or you’re a very gifted spy.’ 

I gritted my teeth. 

I looked forward to my time alone with Felix over the solstice break as one might look forward to a tooth extraction with no numbing potion. Quinn was right, he’d been following me around, but I could have dealt with that if he hadn’t been so… Well. Himself. 

Since I’d been brought into Quinn’s little circle, Felix had gone to great lengths to make it apparent that whatever happened on Samhain, it didn’t make him feel indebted to me. In fact, he made it very clear to everyone that he never felt indebted about anything. 

He was brash, loud, and had a knack for pushing people’s buttons. He’d point out Reilly tapping her pen against her teeth when she studies; the way Quinn would cut across the end of people’s sentences; how Reilly couldn’t help correcting people, how Quinn would stare off out of windows instead of paying attention whenever the topic got difficult or confusing. 

He had nicknames for us all too, called us those more often than he used our names. He called Quinn ‘your majesty’ or ‘Princess Howell’, and she bristled almost every time. He called Reilly ‘Madame Brainy’, or more often just ‘Brainy’. I could tell this irritated her, too. Me, he’d always called ‘creep’ before I’d allegedly been allowed to be his friend, but now I was in the fold, he called me ‘stranger’. 

Quinn and Reilly both seemed to have a huge amount of genuine affection for Felix but I could not for the life of me fathom why. When he wasn’t deliberately winding them up, he was drinking too much wine and complaining about school work or the state of things in Magedom more broadly. There was nothing too big or small for him to find complaint with, from the quality of the food, to the new, constant presence of Watchers from the Raeg who had been patrolling the university grounds ever since the Samhain attack. 

‘If there’s really such a risk to our safety, why not just send us home?’ he said. 

‘Twelvelms has never cut a term short, not even during the Liminus Wars,’ said Reilly.

‘It was just one bad actor with some petty motives,’ said Quinn. ’The whole thing is absurd.’ 

‘It is absurd,’ said Felix. ‘So then, why are there dogs breathing down our necks all hours?’ 

Felix always called the Watchers ‘dogs’. I wondered if it was because of their familiars; huge dogs which paced silently ahead of them across the grounds. 

I had also noticed other things about Felix. Scars on his arms in straight lines, like a tally. How he liked to sprawl whenever the chance presented itself, often lying across Quinn and Reilly’s laps when they’d let him, but if anyone touched him without warning, he’d flinch away. 

There was plenty to distract me from Felix’ strange behaviour, though. We had mountains of work to get through as the term inched to its close, and the Winter Solstice celebration was a significant affair which Reilly had me reading about in preparation. 

The celebration would last three days, each with its own special kind of celebrating. The first day, Winter’s Eve, began at nightfall on the 20th, and involved huge, lavish feasts and the copious consumption of spiced mead. The Solstice itself was marked by the solemn building of a pyre, and we’d all be expected to place an offering on it which represented our role in our community. I had no idea what I could use to represent me. I was not sure I had a role, or that I was a part of the community at all. After the pyre was lit, e’d be awake until dawn on the 22nd, telling stories around the pyre, and then finally, when the sun had fully risen, we’d be allowed to disperse. 

From the morning of the Solstice proper, I’d be expected to be present for more than forty-eight hours. That was a long time to go without a bath. I dreaded the state my skin would be in afterwards, especially considering I’d be so close to a fire for so much of it.

Reilly could tell I was anxious, but misattributed the source of my discomfort. Part of the celebration on the Solstice involved remembering the dead, but as far as Reilly knew, neither of my parents were mages which meant they wouldn’t be remembered. 

The night before she and Quinn were due to leave, she knocked on my bedroom door. 

‘I made you something,’ she said. She held out a small wooden plaque. On it, she’d carved the names Abagnale had invented for my parents; Brian and Cecilia Goodman. ‘I know you were worried about what your offering should be. I thought that maybe, even if Abagnale can’t read their names because they’re not mages, you could still honour them by putting them on the pyre, maybe?’ 

I stared at the little plaque. Invented names with no connection to who my parents had really been. The plaque was a ruse. If there was anything representative of my role in the community, it was this. 

‘Sorry, if you think it’s silly—‘ 

‘It’s not,’  I said. 

Reilly beamed. She pulled me into a brief, tight hug. Before she could say anything more, though, there was a massive crash in the hallway behind her. 

‘What on earth?’ Said Reilly. 

We both stepped out into the hall. Many of the mages who shared our corridor were craning their necks out of their own doorways. Felix’ door was hanging half-open. Quinn’s voice rang out: ‘would you please get a hold of yourself!’ 

‘Why?’ Felix hissed in reply. 

Quinn was standing just inside the Felix’s doorway in her pyjamas, her hands on the purple silk scarf she always wore over her head for bed. Felix was slumped on the floor next to the open window, breathing fast. He was shirtless, a sheen of sweat on his chest, which was covered in swirling marks. Tattoos, runes of some kind. Some of them were cut through with scars. 

‘Come for the show?’ he said, grinning at us as we stepped into the room. 

‘What happened?’ asked Reilly 

‘Apparently endless carafes of wine wasn’t enough for Felix. He’s been stealing mead from the stores under the house’ 

I thought about the nest down in the cellars that I’d seen the night of Samhain. 

Felix threw an empty bottle past my head. it was so close I felt the air stir as it whooshed past me. It shattered against the wall. 

‘What is wrong with you?!’ asked Quinn. ‘I know this time of year is hard for you, I know you hate your stupid Solstice birthday. You’re like this every year, and I’m sick of it.’ 

‘And to think, it isn’t even your problem,’ Felix sneered. 

‘Only it is, Felix, because you insist on making it my problem by drinking yourself sick!’ 

‘You could have just left me alone. But you can’t resist sticking your nose in, can you? You do so love to be the hero.’ 

‘I could hear yo sobbing through the wall!’

‘Oh come off it. We’re only friends because it’s part of your fucking mandate,’ said Felix. 

 Quinn was breathing hard. She looked on the verge of crying. She shrank back from Felix. Reilly reached out, put a hand on her arm, and she leaned closer. 

‘Felix. You’ve gone too far,’ said Reilly. 

‘Oh fuck off, Brainy. You’re so smart, and yet somehow you still know fuck all about how any of this works. You’re more naive than him.’ Felix gestured at me with another one of the bottles. ‘I’m sick of pretending.’ 

‘What are you pretending about?’ I asked. 

Felix stared at me. ‘All of it. This place, these people. All of it is a load of shit. You know, you can’t be a coven leader unless you come to Twelvelms? You ever thought about that, Cyan fucking Goodman?’

‘Yes, Fe, we all know you think how the Alliance gets things done is a load of rubbish, but you can’t just—‘ 

‘Why did you make me come here?’ Felix croaked, cutting Quinn off.

‘Oh, don’t be ridiculous. Of course you wanted to come to Twelvelms! You want to show off, prove how good you are at everything!’ 

‘I told you I didn’t want that. I told you hundreds, fuck. Thousands of times. You didn’t listen. You are still not listening.’ 

‘This is where you belong, Felix! It’s where all of us belong. Like it or not, your place is here, with me. With all of us. I know you walked away from Sambucus. But you can’t walk away from who you are. You’re Felix Scarlett. Your family has been coming to Twelvelms since it was founded. Whatever you think about the Alliance, you’re a part of it, Felix. You always will be.’ 

Felix’s expression crumbled. He dropped the bottle to the ground and curled around himself, pressing his face against his knees.

‘Oh Fe,’ said Quinn.

‘Get out,’ said Felix. 

‘We want to help,’ said Reilly. 

‘I told you, GET OUT.’ 

Felix’s signet stone, hanging from a leather strap around his neck, began to glow. 

As if in answer, my own stone glowed too. I hadn’t realised I’d grabbed it and pulled it free of my pocket. But there it was, bright blue. Mixed with the purply red of Felix’s stone, it was almost the right colour for Derwen. 

Felix looked up from his knees, glaring at me. ‘What. You going to fight me, stranger? You going to bleed me like a stuck pig?’ 

Felix was staring at me, grinning in this awful, vicious way. More like a wild animal than a person. 

I felt cold. 

I stormed out of his bedroom, into my own. I was breathing hard and heavy. My ears were ringing. My signet stone was as bright as the lamps, its rich blue glow filling the room. I threw it onto my bed. I climbed into my shower, not pausing even to take off my shoes. I sat sobbing under the hammering stream of water, and I couldn’t fathom why. I wished I had my coat. 

Felix didn’t come out of his room to see Quinn and Reilly off the next day. I could tell they were upset, but they assured me this was par for the course with Felix. 

‘He just finds it all quite difficult,’ Reilly told me. 

‘Clearly,’ I said. 

Quinn pursed her lips. ‘He’ll behave at the feast, I’m sure. He always does. Just. Make sure he’s there at the pyre tomorrow, won’t you?’ 

‘Of course,’ I said, though I didn’t fancy my chances at getting Felix Scarlett to go anywhere he didn’t want to be. 

Just as Quinn had said he would, Felix came to the Winter’s Eve feast that evening. He drank ungodly amounts of mead and laughed too hard at everyone’s jokes, and now and then he’d look down the table at me, peering around the animal skulls dripping in ribbons and bells elevated above our meals. His eyes were full of daggers. 

‘I hear the Solstice is an altogether different affair on Isla Sambuce,’  Said Lady Ottilie. She was fluttering her eyelashes over her drink, but I think it was a consequence of an excess of mead rather than an attempt at flirting. 

‘I wouldn’t know,’ said Felix. 

‘Of course, it’s your birthday tomorrow, isn’t it, Master Scarlett?’ she went on. 

The gathering of scholars and professors fell silent. Even the music Abagnale had charmed to sing from the walls seemed quieter. 

‘I’m so sorry,’ said Lady Ottilie. 

Felix clenched his jaw. ‘Yes.’ He grabbed on of the bottles of mead and drank straight from the neck. 

‘Perhaps you ought to get some rest, Felix,’ said Abagnale. ‘We have a long day ahead of us tomorrow.’

Lady Ottilie laughed. ‘No, Abby, it’s a very short day. It’s the night that’s long.’ 

Abagnale smiled. He kept staring at Felix. With a scoff, Felix stood up. He grabbed another bottle of mead and stormed out of the room. 

The conversation around me resumed. I turned to Lady Ottilie.

‘How are Solstices different on Isla Sambuce?’ I asked. 

Lady Ottilie beamed. ‘What an excellent question! They’re such a secretive bunch that hardly anyone knows the answer I’m afraid! There’s a rumour they’re all charmed into silence when they leave the island. Nobody can get a word out of them about it.’ 

‘Why would they do that? I thought the whole point of Twelvelms was to foster knowledge sharing between covens.’ 

Lady Ottilie reached across the table to put a hand on my shoulder. ‘What an idealist you are, young Master Goodman. Coven Sambucus freely shares their knowledge of healing magic with the rest of us; such advances they’ve made in the repairing of injury and the treatment of sickness. Without them, we’d still be using the grotesquerie of unmage medicine. Imagine, stitching wounds closed with a needle and thread!’ 

‘Yes, grotesque.’ 

‘Goodness, you’re a Happener. I didn’t mean it as an insult! But we have better ways of treating injuries now, and that’s because of knowledge Coven Sambucus shares. Of course they don’t share everything, no coven does. But Sambucus are the most secretive. The old ways hold sway over them, still, more than they do elsewhere.’ 

‘Old ways?’ 

‘Back in the Dark Days, before the Alliance, magic was cast with bones and blood. Remnants of those old traditions remain in many things we do. Think of the blood we spill upon the altar every Summer Solstice. Look at these skulls, emblems of death we hold elevated on this night where we send off the old year and prepare to welcome the new. There are some in every coven who hold these old ways dearer, of course. Healers, for one. Blood and bones are their purview; it makes sense that they’d rely on magic born of those things to do their work.’ 

‘And Coven Sambucus is known for making great advances in healing.’ 

‘Cyan,’ Abagnale said, loudly. 

‘Yes, Lord Abagnale?’ I said.

‘You look tired. Perhaps you ought to go to bed.’ His eyes were steely, expression inarguable. 

I left the table as quickly as I could, almost tripping over my own feet. 

The large room where we’d been eating had been warm and filled with light, but the rest of the main building was much cooler, lit only by the moonlight streaming through the large, unobscured windows, and the shimmering waterfalls of magical light which had been hung along the walls. 

Across atrium, almost all signs of what happened the night of Samhain had been repaired, but even then, weeks later, I could still taste that strange, o-zone smell of spent magic on the air. 

I had grown fond of this building at night. The ornate metal leaves winding around the central staircase shimmered in the dark. The painted frescos of flowers on the walls looked prettier with their colours dulled in the moonlight. I passed the closed doors of the professors’ private rooms and slipped through the doorway that led up to Abagnale’s office, kept climbing the stairs past its entrance, right up to my bathroom. 

The air was cold, but the salty water was warm, conjuring a fine mist that hung almost a foot above its surface. I stripped out of my clothes and put on my coat; I could change forms fully dressed if I wanted, but I didn’t like walking back to House Derwen soaking wet. I’d been infected by Abagnale’s curiosity about that; when I slipped into my seal form, I would become undressed, so how was it my clothes became soaked when I was in the water? 

It seemed clear my seal form was more than an illusion. I really did fully change shape. And when I did, the coat was gone, and so would be everything I was wearing, as well as everything I might have had in my pockets. And yet, when I turned back, my clothes would be completely sopping wet. 

I thought of that as I rolled into the water. I moaned with relief and watched the stream of bubbles rise up above me. 

The bath was lined with mosaic tiles; I’d gotten in the habit of rolling over them, feeling the delightful scratch of the edges of the tiles against my fur. I imagined I was swimming through a reef, brushing up against coral and sea rocks covered in little creatures. I imagined fish twisting through the water, shimmering in the moonlight, and the sounds of other selkies drifting distorted through the current. 

But then, there was a real sound, huge and booming. 

My immediate thought was that it was another attack. I closed my nose and lay as still as possible on the tiles at the bottom of the tub. 

More sounds; thump, thump, thump. Slow, hesitant footsteps. Abagnale? I pushed myself upwards, breaching the surface of the water with just the top of my head, trying to peer through the hanging mist without drawing too much attention to myself. 

Felix Scarlett was standing next to the chest where I kept my coat. He was holding my shirt in his hand, frowning at it. A knot of dread, coiled in my stomach, turning hard as a rock. Maybe there would be some way to sink back into the water without him noticing. Before I could even try, Felix turned around. 

He has described what he saw that night to me so many times that his memory of what happened is as clear to me as my own. Two dark, orb-like eyes half-visible in the moonlit mist. 

I was taller than Felix as a human, but as I seal I towered over him as I pulled myself upright, this huge, dappled beast writhing, standing impossibly vertical less than two feet from his face. 

He staggered back, slammed against the wall, shocked into total silence. 

He saw the surface of the monster before him begin to ripple and squirm, and then the beast’s skin split at the seams. Its face was replaced with mine, dripping wet. 

Felix began to scream. I covered his mouth with my sopping hand. He tried to fight me, but I had my coat on and there was no chance of him overpowering me. His eyes were wide.

‘Shut up!’ I hissed. 

Felix shook in my grip. His tears ran like trails of seawater over my fingers, clamped hard over his mouth. He squeaked against my palm, tried to breathe in. My other arm was braced against his chest; I felt him choke. 

When I let him go he was gasping, spluttering, still flattened against the wall. His clothes were covered in patches of damp where my body had pressed close to his. He stared at me, gaze sweeping downwards. I pulled my coat tighter.

‘Go,’ I said. 

Felix, panting, ran from the room, slamming the door behind himself. I heard his shoes pounding and squeaking on the parquet floor of the hallway.

My head was spinning. I felt dizzy and sick. 

It’s strange to remember a time where I didn’t trust him. I could not think of a worse person to see me like that. Now, there is nobody I’d trust more. 

[CYAN DRAWS A DEEP BREATH] 

I think perhaps… it would be easier to think of this I fI could sleep. 

Maybe if I switched form, it would be easier. I’d be able to think less. I used to do that all the time, slip into my coat when I needed to rest. And my skin is so sore. There’s been no time for a proper bath since we got here, I’m starting to blister, a little. 

Perhaps when Abagnale comes next, I’ll ask him if we can go to the sea. It’s close by; I can smell it. But we can’t leave without his permission. 

Ah. Yes. The coat, I should put the coat on that will help. 

[CHAIR MOVES]

Will you let me take it back for a little while? You can sleep against my side if— 

[THE BABY STIRS] 

Here. Up we go, pretty baby, I’ll set you down, right there and—

[BABY STIRS MORE] 

And then I’ll just… ah, ahh. It’s good to put it on. 

[THE BABY CRIES OUT, UPSET.]

Oh no, don’t, don’t. What if I, perhaps if I—

[THE SOUND OF MAGIC RISES, SHIMMERING, AND CYAN SIGHS.]

[AN ODD, WATERY GARGLE. THEN, A THUD.]

[THE BABY CRIES OUT]

[CYAN, NOW A SEAL, MAKES SOFT CHUFFING SOUNDS. HE SHIFTS ACROSS THE FLOOR, HIS BODY THUDDING AS HE GETS CLOSER TO THE BABY. AT FIRST, SHE DOES NOT SOUND OKAY, BUT THEN HE SNUFFLES AGAINST HER AND SHE SQUEALS IN DELIGHT, AND BEGINS TO BABBLE AS HE CONTINUES TO CHUFF SOFTLY NEXT TO HER]

[THE SOUNDS OF THEM PLAYING TOGETHER FADE INTO THE OUTRO MUSIC]

[END]