Cyan and the baby have a visitor whose presence seems to deepen their isolation, rather than do anything to remedy it…

An Episode of The Twelvelms Conspiracy

Content Warnings

• Descriptions of violence
• Mentions of fire
• Descriptions of distress
• Descriptions of child neglect
• References to deliberate self-harm
• Implications of suicidal ideation

Transcript

[BABY FUSSING] 

I know, I know. But there’s someone outside. Not in the trees or beyond the hedges like I’ve heard before. 

There’s someone in the garden. 

[BABY FUSSING] 

Abagnale swore nobody would be able to get inside. He said the protections on this place were iron clad, that even mages who happened to walk by would see nothing but a ruin standing here, would be filled with disinterest and just walk away.

But there is someone outside. 

[BABY FUSSING] 

I can’t see them, but I can hear them. 

[BABY FUSSING]

Who goes there?!

[BABY FUSSING] 

Felix?

[BABY FUSSING] 

Taceo?!

[DOOR SWINGS OPEN; WIND BLOWS; A WOLF TROTS IN, CLAWS CLICKING ON THE GROUND] 

Taceo. Where’s your master? Where’s Abagnale he was supposed to— 

[HUFF FROM THE WOLF] 

This package. He sent it? 

[HUFF FROM THE WOLF] 

Okay. 

[PAPER RUSTLES] 

Magically preserved food. A bag of… is this sea salt?! Oh thank, you thank you. Thank god. And a note. ‘Things have changed. Stay in the cabin.’ 

That’s it. He can’t be serious. Stay in the cabin?! Where else would I have gone?! We fled in the middle of the night because Castle Derwen was being attacked and I’ve been entirely cut off from news since! I don’t know why it happened, I don’t know if Quinn and Charlie are alright. I don’t know where Felix even is! What’s changed?! Taceo!

{TACEO HUFFS] 

I wish Felix was here. He could read you so well it’s like he spoke dog. 

Wolf. My apologies. 

{TACEO HUFFS MORE FORCEFULLY]

What? I’ve opened the package, read the note! What more do you— 

{TACEO PACES AND YIPS]

There’s something under the food?

{TACEO HUFFS; PAPER RUSTLES]

A newspaper! News, oh thank god. News. That’s a photograph of us. Of the four of us from school, Quinn, Felix, Reilly and I. CASTLE DERWEN FIRE MYSTERY CONTINUES; WHEREABOUTS OF CONSUL DERWEN UNKNOWN. 

[PAPER FOLDS AND IS TOSSES ASIDE]

Well that tells me a sum-total of nothing, doesn’t it? I knew Quinn was missing because she wasn’t there when I tried to find her. Her room was empty, the window was broken, and there was blood. Then I heard the baby crying, found her hidden in the wardrobe, and I ran. Because what else could I do?! There was fighting, there was… 

There wasn’t a fire. 

And it wasn’t a mystery. We were attacked, we were definitely attacked! The rest of the article…

[PAPER MOVES AGAIN]

It says Reilly was at Castle Derwen when the fire broke out. But that’s. She was gone, too. She was gone. She’d been gone for weeks, she left the baby with us, Taceo, you know that! Felix left to try to find he, even though Abagnale told all of us to stay, and then we were attacked, and the baby, and I ran and I don’t know where anyone is! 

[PAPER MOVES AGAIN]

Presumed dead? They say here that we are all presumed dead. Does anyone know anything?! 

[TACEO HUFFS]

No? Still no?! How!It’s been more than a week. I’m going mad. I swear I’m going mad I. 

I need to soak. That would help. 

[THE BABY IS STILL FUSSING, THOUGH MORE QUIETLY] 

[TACEO HUFFS] 

What? You have to leave? Alright. Then go, go! Tell Abagnale we’re not going anywhere because where on earth would we even go to?!

Tell him to come as soon as he can. 

Please. 

[TACEO HUFFS] 

[WIND BLOWS] 

[CYAN CLOSES THE DOOR.

[INTRO MUSIC: This is the Twelvelms Conspiracy, episode eight, Shared Secrets]

[THE BABY IS FUSSING MORE INSISTENTLY]

[CYAN SIGHS] 

Come here. Shh, shh. It’s alright. It’s all alright. I won’t let them have you. I won’t.

There’s no mention of you in the article, at least. That’s good. That’s very good, in fact. That means that they don’t know where you are either. And there’s a chance that the Scarletts aren’t sure you exist. Though I’m convinced they do. Quinn was more optimistic; if they knew Reilly was going to have you, and then you’d been born on the Solstice, surely they’d have come for you. 

[THE BABY IS QUIET, NOW]

That’s what I have to assume it was, that night. The ‘fire’ that was not a fire. Red magic. It has to have been mages from Sambucus, sent to find you. Somehow they must know these things. 

Sambucus is governed by the old ways, there must be some magic that confirms the eligibility of a mage to become their consul or else how could they know for certain a baby was born on the Winter Solstice? Otherwise the parents could just lie. 

It stands to reason, then, that if they have methods of proving that, they might have methods of telling Reilly would have you even though she tried to hide it, even though she ran away. 

God even then, even then her only thought was that she didn’t want them to get their hands on you. No regrets for marrying into Sambucus despite what Felix told us about it. Marrying Felix’s awful brother despite what all of us knew. She wanted to go back. To hide you from them and then go back. 

She wanted to go back. 

God, I could hardly speak to her. Could hardly stand to look at her. Took the first assignment Abagnale offered me and left to swim the seas. Tried to put it all far out of my mind. 

Felix. He did so much better. And I was angry at him for it. So angry that I— We’d hardly spoken for months. Months and months. Yes, he’d come to see me, to meet me in the dark but we’d touch and nothing more, not saying a word. I am a wretched thing. Shameless coward. I let him give me what I wanted even though I was furious with him, and I never even asked him to explain how he could have sympathy for Reilly even after what she’d done, even after everything that had happened to him. How she’d become a part of the very system he’d almost died to escape from. 

Part of it, I think, was that we’d never actually spoken of what happened to him directly. He’d mention his family, disparage their name, speak ill of Sambucus’ traditions, yes, but he’d never say what actually happened to him. 

No. Quinn was the one who told me how Felix was raised. Coven Sambucus’ method for selecting their consul is complex and archaic. There are five families who are part of something called ‘the Cycle’. They each take a turn at having a family member be the leader of their coven, to sit at the High Table of the Alliance. The Scarlett’s are next in the Cycle. They missed their last turn, so it’s desperately important they have a child who would qualify this time. 

The trouble is, to qualify, the child must be born on the Winter Solstice, like Felix was. Your father, Felix’ older brother, he was the one who was meant to take the seat. He was born two weeks early. Your grandmother tried everything she could to keep him inside her but she was bleeding. She would have died. And so Ignatius was born on the 7th of December, not the 21st. 

She was pregnant again by the end of April, she had not recovered from her first, traumatic birth, but there was no time. The current Consul was getting old already, even then, twenty-three years ago. She’s ancient, now. Could go at any time. The Scarlett family needed a viable future consul to be born before that happened, and Portia Scarlett was the only one who could carry it. The only Scarlett of child-bearing age, an only child, raised aloneby her mother. There was nobody else. 

Felix’ birth was induced the morning of the Solstice. The labour went on and on. He was born at sunset, small and silent. His mother was dead within the hour. 

I wonder if you know all of this. It seems impossible that you could hear me speak it and still have been taken back to Coven Sambucus but… I don’t want to waste time telling you what you already know. 

There is a tradition in Coven Sambucus that a future consul should be raised alone and unmarred by the burdens of human connection. As infants, they are all fed with bottles, never lifted from their cribs, except by magic. Their clothes are changed by magic, bodies cleaned by magic. From the moment they leave their mothers they will not receive a human touch until the day they become consul. The blood of the old consul will be smeared upon their forehead, a touch of thumb to skin. The first touch.

There are reasons why they do it like that, but none of them justify it. Looking at you, little one, right here in my arms. I— I cannot imagine seeing a little human like you so alone, so in need of comfort, and choosing to deny it. To not lift you from your crib when you scream. To not soothe you, rock you, hold you close.

To call it inhumane is an understatement. It is an animal instinct not restricted to humankind that we touch and comfort our young. To deny that touch is a kind of violence that I find near unspeakable. Even my father, awful as he was, held me in his arms when I was small. He washed my hair, cleaned my wounds. 

Reilly tried not to have you on the Solstice. She tried and tried. In the last minutes of the day, though, you were born.

I am so sure Scarletts must have known. She’d run away to hide her pregnancy but they must have ways of knowing. Abagnale suspected this but he could not be sure and the only person we had to ask about it was Felix, but he’d left Sambucus when he was fifteen, so he only had limited knowledge of their secrets. 

The Traitor Prince of Coven Sambucus. Felix Scarlett. 

He was my friend. More than. 

We should have talked. I wish I’d talked to him about this, that I hadn’t had to piece together the ways his upbringing affected him through all the scars it had left, on his skin and on his soul. Context derived only from the what Quinn chose to share, when we were finally close enough for her to take that risk. 

She did not wholly trust me. She had good reason not to; I was lying to her every day by omission, of course. But we had begun to get along. 

At first, she seemed thrilled about Felix and I having this friendship. Relieved, even. Reilly took it all in her stride, of course, she was good like that, back then. I think for Quinn, she would have always had questions, but she might’ve let them lie if I hadn’t started getting better at magic. 

It was Felix’ idea to try casting when I was wearing my coat. ‘It’s just a hunch,’ he said. I’d already soaked; my hair was dripping with water and my coat was slick with it. He showed me how he raised water with magic, instructed me to copy him. 

‘I can’t. What if I break something?’ 

Felix laughed. ‘Oh come on. Last week you couldn’t even make a pebble hover. What’s the risk?’ 

‘It’s water. Don’t you remember how I exploded that glass?’ 

‘That’s why I think it’ll work.’ 

‘How on earth does that make any sense?’ 

Felix shrugged. ‘Just try it, to see. You’re a selkie. Selkies do water magic all the time.’ 

I took a breath, reached out my hand as Felix had done. He told me to focus on what I knew of how water moved. Envision an invisible cup that I was dipping into the water and using to lift it up. ‘You can use some words to help set your intention, like Professor Sorrel tells us to do in practical casting. Some people find it easier like that, but I’ve never liked doing magic with words. They’re never quite as specific as I want them to be. I’m a very visual thinker.’ 

As he said this, his gaze ticked briefly from my hand, reaching out over the bath, and back to the rest of me. He didn’t look at my face, though. 

His attention was only very, very brief and I turned bright red anyway. Felix acted like it hadn’t happened. He looked back at my hand. ‘Focus on the look of it. The shape you want. How much water you need to—’ 

A small cylinder of water rose out of the pool. Enough to fill a drinking glass, but the glass was not there. The edges moved and rippled. Droplets fell from its base. I held it up only for a second, then I realised what I had done, gasped, and it splashed back down to join the rest of the water again. 

‘Did you see that?’ I said. 

‘Yes! Holy shit, Stranger, you actually cast some magic!’ 

‘On purpose,’ I said, mystified. ‘I did it on purpose.’ 

Felix flung his arms around me, squeezed me tight, and then froze. He dropped his arms, cleared his throat. ‘I—I think a selkie’s coat is kind of like a familiar,’ he said. 

‘What?’ 

‘Well, when a mage is bonded with a familiar, they can use that familiar’s power as well as their own. Their souls are connected. It hurts to be away from them, unless you practice it, and even then, from everything I’ve read its less like it stops hurting, and more like you both learn how to tolerate it.’ 

There was a long moment of quiet. I thought about the bird, and I knew Felix was thinking about it too. ‘We should check on it,’ I said, as I had every other night since we’d first found it. 

Felix nodded. 

We made the long walk through the tunnels, back to the cells. The raven was lying on its back, beak open, barely breathing, but alive. Just as it always was. 

Felix fed it scraps of meat.

We walked back to House Derwen, I asked why he kept feeding the bird. 

‘It’s starving.’ 

‘So why won’t it just die?’ 

‘Because its mage is alive. They’re bonded at the soul. Its mage will keep giving it strength, as long as he lives, even without meaning to. Even if he would rather let the thing just die in peace, there’s nothing he can do. Unless someone strikes it with a fatal blow, the raven will keep living, starving, suffering, for as long as its mage is out there.’ 

‘Is that true the other way around? Like if a mage was in captivity but they had a familiar, could that familiar keep their mage alive with their own life-force like that?’ 

‘There have been records of that happening, yeah. You should ask Reilly about it. She’s a real nerd about this kind of thing.’ 

We were back at the House by then. I paused outside Felix’ door as he stepped inside. 

‘I still don’t really understand why you keep feeding it. You hate the Spicers, and according to you, that’s a Spicer’s familiar.’

‘The bird shouldn’t suffer because the mage it happened to get bonded to went bad. Familiars don’t get to pick their mages.’ Felix shut his door in my face without another word. 

The next morning, things were a little frosty between us, until we got to Practical Casting. On the hunch that Felix was right about my coat, I’d brought it with me, stuffed into my bag under my school books. We were meant be making rings of fire, that morning. Or, everyone else in class was meant to be doing that. I was still trying to lift a stone. 

I pictured myself lifting it, imagined the pebble’s weight on my palm. That was easy enough; myself and that pebble had become very well acquainted over the months I’d been trying desperately to lift it off the ground. So I thought of its weight in my palm, and the way it went from cool to warm in just a few seconds of resting on my skin. And I imagined lifting it just a few inches off the floor. The pebble raised. I gasped; the pebble fell again with a clatter. 

Professor Sorrel’s familiar noticed. She chittered and flapped her wings to catch her mage’s attention. 

‘Did you raise your stone?!’ Professor Sorrel asked, delighted. 

I looked at the pebble again, lifted it from the ground. This time, it wasn’t a shock that I’d managed it. It stayed steady in the air, my signet stone glowing in my fist. 

‘Raise it higher,’ said Professor Sorrel. I did as she asked and she beamed. ‘Now, flip it over.’ I succeeded again. ’Turn it in a small circle, going clockwise.’ This was trickier, but after concentrating for a moment, I managed that too. 

‘That’s wonderful, Cyan! Such progress, I’m delighted!’ 

I let the pebble fall, glanced around the room. Nobody else seems to have noticed what was going on. Most of the other scholars had sparks hovering in front of their faces. Quinn was doing a little better, a handful of flames burning right over her palm. As always, though, Felix’s circle of flame was perfect. He turned his wrist idly, distorting it into a figure of eight, a wispy line, and back into a circle again. 

I knew a little bit about fire. I knew how it felt when it bit into your skin. I opened my hand. Thought about burning, about the fire’s flickering light. A few flames burst from nothing, right there over my palm. I tried not to be too surprised that it had worked. My heart was in my throat as I turned my fingers, drew a circle in the air, and the flames followed. 

Professor Sorrel clapped her hands together. ‘Cyan! I’ve never seen such marked progress in such time, after so long without anything changing! This is a delight!’ 

I barely heard her though. I was looking at Felix. He was beaming at me. 

In the hallway after class, he cornered me. He snatched my bag from my shoulder. ‘Hey!’ I said. 

Felix ignored me, rummaging under my books. When his fingers found the sleeve of my coat, I felt them on my arm. Thumb and forefinger rubbing together over the short, dense fur. I shuddered. 

Felix grinned. ‘I knew it!’ he said. He shoved my bag against my chest and practically skipped away, beaming, resplendent. I could not help but grin, too. 

That evening, Quinn insisted that she accompany me to Abagnale’s office for once. Felix tried to argue, but Quinn was not having it. I was disappointed, but I could stand to spend one night in the little bath, I thought, and I was actually secretly quite thrilled that Quinn seemed keen to spend time with me. 

‘That was some impressive casting,’ she said, as we walked across the lawns. 

‘Thank you. I’ve been practicing.’ 

‘It’s good to see that Abagnale’s tutoring is finally having an effect,’ she said. ‘But I couldn’t help but notice that Felix seemed very invested in your achievement.’ 

‘He has been helping me a little.’ 

‘I also noticed you didn’t use any words when you cast. Not for raising your pebble, or conjuring those flames.’ 

‘Yes… I guess words feel a bit too. I don’t know. Limited?’ 

Quinn hummed. ‘Felix always says that too. Only he’s been casting magic since before he had a signet stone, of course language feels like it lacks nuance to him. I’m curious about what he’s been telling you. This morning you were casting almost as well as he was, despite the fact that last week, you couldn’t so much as make that pebble of yours twitch.’ 

‘You know. This and that. I— I suppose something just clicked into place.’ I clutched my bag closer to my side. 

Quinn noticed. ‘Felix is a good friend, and I’m glad he’s helping you. I can understand why you’d ask Felix for help, why you’d trust the advice he’d give you. He is probably one of the most gifted practical casters of our generation. But…’ Quinn stopped in her tracks. ‘I know that to you, all the ways of magedom must seem equally strange, but things at Coven Sambucus work differently. If Felix has shared things with you about the way he was coached in magic when he was young, you need to understand… that is not the ordinary way that mages are taught magic.’ 

I frowned. ‘What do you mean?’ 

‘Have you hurt yourself, Cyan?’ 

‘What?’ 

Quinn sighed. ‘It might seem to work at first, but it’s not worth it. It took Felix years to learn how to control his magic without harming himself, and even now, sometimes I worry.’ 

‘Harming himself?’ I echoed. None of what she was saying came together in my mind. 

Quinn grabbed my arm, shoved back my sleeve. My arm was covered in splotchy purple scars from the times my father had kept my coat away from me, but whatever else Quinn was looking for, it wasn’t there. She dropped my hand and sighed. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. 

‘What for?! What was that?!’ 

‘I had to check. That’s the arm you were holding your signet stone with, it makes the most sense that’s where he’d tell you to cut.’ 

Understanding hit me like a wave crashing against the shore. All those thin white scars up Felix’s arms I’d seen the night I’d seen him shirtless. Hundreds of them. Neat little lines. I thought I was going to be sick, my head spinning. 

‘He hasn’t told you,’ said Quinn, equal parts devastated and relieved. ‘Oh, he’ll be upset with me that I’ve said it.’ 

I was so angry I could hear the sea in my ears. I could almost feel my sharp, jagged seal’s teeth in my jaw, wanted to use them to rip out the throat of whoever had encouraged such a thing. 

‘What happened to Felix?!’ 

Quinn looked back at me. In the moonlight, her brown skin looked even darker, except across her cheekbones, where her make-up caught the light and gleamed like silver. She clutched the hair at the back of her neck, looking at the ground. ‘You really care about him, don’t you?’ 

I answered without hesitation: ‘Yes.’ 

Quinn sighed. We were close to the dome of trees that surrounded the altar in the middle of Twelvelms grounds. Quinn sat on one of the low walls that broke up the flowerbeds. ‘I suppose you should know some things, then. He’ll be angry that I’ve told you, please understand that before I do.’ 

I nodded. And then Quinn began. 

She started with the story of Felix’ brother, meant to be born on the Solstice, but too early to meet the mark, how Felix came soon after, how his mother died as he left her body. And then the details of what it meant for a child to be a future consul in Coven Sambucus. The isolation. How their emphasis on the old ways of blood and bones led them to excellence. Their prowess healing meant that small wounds could be repaired with ease. Why not, then, use pain to concentrate your casting? It did not work for all mages, but it worked for some. It worked for Felix. And he was an excellent practical caster. Truly, he was. 

‘That means that all he felt, all that time.’ 

‘Yes, I know,’ said Quinn. ‘I know.’ 

I was so angry it was difficult to speak. 

I lay awake that whole night, clutching my coat. I could hardly look at Felix the next day. He kept trying to catch my gaze but I couldn’t let him. I couldn’t stand it. 

As we walked to bionomy, he grabbed the back of my jumper. ‘Hey. What’s going on?’ 

‘Nothing.’ 

‘Liar. Your knuckles are starting to peel.’ 

I looked down at my hands. The skin already looked dry having skipped just one day of soaking. I should have put on my coat and sat in the shower. It wouldn’t have been as good as if it were in salt water, but it would have at least stopped my skin from starting to flake. 

‘What happened last night?’ Felix asked. 

‘Nothing.’ 

‘Yeah, clearly. Quinn didn’t even take you to that miserable puddle Abagnale left you, did she? But you were gone for hours. So where did you go?’ 

‘Nowhere.’ 

Felix laughed. ‘Oh come on, I’m not stupid, I—‘ He finally met my gaze. The smile died on his face. ‘What has she told you.’ 

‘Oh Felix. I’m so sorry.’ 

‘What does it matter?! Everyone else already knows. The Traitor Prince! Well, now you fucking know too.’ He put his hands on his head, turned away from me. 

‘I’m so sorry that happened to you.’

‘Yeah, yeah, everyone’s fucking sorry. Except the people who did it. They think I should be sorry. Every summer they’re campaigning for me to go back. I’m still their best shot at Consul even after I jumped out of the fucking window just to get away from them.’ 

‘You— you what?’ 

Felix turned back, eyes wide. ‘She told you how I grew up but she left out that?!’ 

‘You jumped out of a window?’ 

‘I just had to get out of there. It was the only way. The doors were all locked. The window looked over the cliffs, so there was hardly any protection on it. It just took a while to build up the. You know… It’s not what you think.’

Felix walked away. He didn’t even glance at me over his shoulder. He just left. 

And I let him. 

Just like I let him go when he said he wanted to see if Reilly was okay, after she left. I knew he was angry with her, that there was something strange about the serenity he seemed to have about her decision to leave again, to return to Sambucus after you were born. It had been unsettling me, how undisturbed he’d been by her return, how little he said when she explained why she’d run. He did not demand anything more from her and did not question how she’d come to think that there was any way she could marry Ignatius and not be placed in the exact position she was in now. 

No.

I was the one who raved about that. Shouting, ranting at Reilly and Quinn whilst Felix just sat there— 

Reilly knew what happened to Felix so how could she have done this and not expected this outcome?!

Felix said nothing. 

The nothing went on and on and on. 

He brought Reilly food. He helped to hide her. He promised he would care for her child, when it was born. You. When you were born, little one. 

He moved with this calm, detached serenity. He did not ask about anything I’d said. I didn’t try to discuss it with him. And then after Reilly left, he said he wanted to make sure she was alright. And I knew there was something off about it. I knew! But I didn’t push back. I didn’t demand and explanation. I just let him go. 

And then. An attack on Castle Derwen. Screams. Quinn, nowhere to be found. You in the wardrobe. I did the only thing I could think to. I grabbed you and I ran and I ran and I ran. And then Taceo found us, and now we’re here.

Still here. 

[CYAN SIGHS] 

It’s not fair of me to burden you with this. 

Whenever you’re listening, I’m sure this a story you’ll have heard already. I hope you know more then than I do now. All these aching gaps will already be filled, for you. You’ll already know what happened that night. You’ll already be safe from the things I’m trying to protect you from.

You do not need to hear all of my senseless, useless whining at the things I do not and cannot know because I’m stuck here in this cabin, waiting for news. 

Felix wouldn’t have hurt Reilly. No matter what she did. He loved her, same as I did, and as furious as I am with her, however impossible it feels that I would ever forgive her, I know I’d never hurt her. So Felix wouldn’t, either. He wouldn’t. 

But his brother? 

His brother is another question entirely. 

And there was no mention of Ignatius in that article at all. No mention of Sambucus, even. No mention of you. Only mention of Reilly except that she was there, no further details, though honestly, why would there be? They’ve put so much effort into hiding the fact she left them so far, why would that change now? 

All this pointless speculation. I know almost nothing. Whenever you’re listening I hope all of this is over. That you’re safe. That what you need most of all is the context behind it, the parts of the past that nobody would think to tell you. All the things I’m missing about my own past. I don’t know how my father came to keep my mother in that cottage, I don’t know how she fell pregnant with me. I don’t know what he intended, by keeping me secret the way he did, and I will never know. I will never know any of it. 

More painful than that is that I’ll never know who he was before. I’ll never understand what circumstances guided him into the man who raised me, and who chose to raise me the way he did. He was a whole person. He had friends who knew and cared about him. None of them would tell me his story now, largely because they have no idea that I am his son. Though perhaps that would make them more reluctant, not less. This too I suppose I will never know. 

And there’s a chance, little one. There’s a chance you have grown up not knowing anything about the people who loved you. About Felix, Quinn and I. About who your mother really was. And I want you to know it, to have that in your heart, so that maybe it does not bleed all over the rest of your life the way mine has always done. 

I love you, little one. I am doing everything I can. Even though it does not feel like much. I hope it is enough. 

[END]