Harvest 10, 855
Buu sniffed his new clothes before he put them on. They stunk of soap, chemical, and flowers. He didn’t know if he missed the familiarity of his usual outfit, flecked with sawdust and splinters and smelling of woodsmoke, or if he simply didn’t like this new smell. They had taken his old clothes, so he supposed it didn’t matter.
While he found the clothes strange and alien, the bed he had been given for the night felt like it had been made just for him. He doubted there was anything softer and more comfortable for miles. The moment his head hit the pillow, he fell into a dreamless sleep, and stayed there until the morning sun became too much to ignore.
The previous night, Idah had taken him to the school’s baths, instructing him on the multistep process of cleaning himself. He had snapped at her that he knew how to wash, but immediately regretted it when he realized that not only were there multiple steps for a simple task in this bizarre school, but there were also multiple rooms. He studied his foot before sliding it in his boots, wondering if it had ever been this clean.
An impatient knock rapped on the door to his small room — a whole room just for him! — and he dropped off the bed to answer it. Idah waited for him, greeting him with an appraising stare. He stood a little straighter. After a moment, she nodded solemnly, approval begrudgingly granted.
“’Morning. The headmaster wants to talk to you. Come on,” she said, gesturing into the hallway.
Buu followed. “What’s the headmaster like?” he asked.
“He’s like all the teachers. Just be polite and you’ll be fine.” Idah offered him a smile over her shoulder. “They can seem a little grumpy sometimes but they’re alright really.”
“Why are you so much younger than all the other students?” Buu asked as they walked down a long hallway. One side of the hall remained open to the yard below, a frigid morning breeze chasing away the memory of Buu’s new bed.
The night before, Idah had taken him on a whirlwind tour of the school, marching him from building to building without letting him get a word in edgewise. This morning, he wanted to get his questions in first. She shot him an annoyed look.
“I don’t really see how that’s your business,” Idah chided, “but if you must know, I got caught practicing and my father wanted to keep an eye on me. You’re not supposed to practice magic without training.”
“You’re already taking lessons?” Buu raised his brows. “That’s impressive. Is it difficult?”
Idah smirked without taking her eyes off the path ahead, puffing up. “Yes and no. I basically have to study two curriculums,” she bragged, eyes sparkling with satisfaction. “I practice magic on my own, and then when I go to class I study what the teachers tell me, which isn’t magic. Not really. Mostly it’s a lot of reading and sitting around dusty lecture halls.”
Buu’s face pinched into a sour expression. Letters didn’t cooperate with him, even when he had spent a whole summer trying to coax them into some semblance of order. Lectures might not be so bad, but if they weren’t about magic, what was the point of them?
He was about to open his mouth to ask as much when Idah pulled open a large oak door and beckoned him inside.
Despite its tall ceiling, the room felt claustrophobic. A small fire burned in a small hearth beside two small chairs, a single door waiting directly across from the one they had entered through. A long desk took up one entire wall, making the other furniture seem even smaller by comparison. A student stared at a sheaf of papers behind the huge desk.
“Good morning, Liem,” Idah greeted. After giving him an assessing scan, she added in a chipper tone, “You look awful.”
The young man dragged his eyes from his work to wink at Idah. “Thanks. I feel awful.” He leaned back to show them a heavy-looking pouch at his hip. He shook it and metallic clinking rang out. “I think those soldiers like to lose though, which does make me feel a little better.”
Idah shook her head, grinning. “You should be more careful. One day they might learn to count.”
Liem laughed, letting his robe fall over the pouch again. “As long as I keep bringing ale with me, I don’t expect they’ll be all that angry.” He turned his attention to Buu. “Is this the prof’s escort?”
Buu bobbed his head at the same time Idah said, “Yeah, he’s here to see the headmaster.”
“Is it true you tell the grimm who to kill?” Liem asked, sitting forward in his seat with a good-natured grin.
Buu tried to match the smile as his stomach dropped but couldn’t quite force his mouth into the right shape. What had people heard about him? He had only been here one night and already the rumours had outpaced him. Was this the kind of thing they joked about here? Had they not seen what the beast could do? Buu hid his hands in his sleeves, taking comfort from the small bit of extra warmth and softness. He had to clear his throat to answer without his voice breaking.
“No — I don’t know how anyone ever managed to tell that monster anything. It’s a bloodthirsty animal and I want nothing to do with it.”
Idah and Liem exchanged a curious glance as the single door opposite them opened. A man stood in the doorway, a disapproving look in his hard brown eyes. He lifted one arm to gesture to Buu and Idah, ink stains marring the sleeve of an otherwise spotless and elegant robe.
“Liem, your job is to tell me when my appointments arrive. Not to take those appointments yourself.” The man beckoned to Buu. “You must be Buu. Please, come in.”
Buu glanced to Idah, who stuck her tongue out at the headmaster before shrugging to Buu. Liem ran a hand through his hair, sheepish. Doing his best to remember every polite thing he had ever heard, Buu said a quick, “It was nice meeting you, Liem. Thanks for showing me the way, Idah,” before following the headmaster into his office.
Buu took the chair opposite the grand desk in the room’s center, leg’s dangling several inches from the floor. A roaring fire snapped in an oppressive stone hearth, alarmingly close to the ornate rug that lined the room from wall to wall. Large windows looked out over the campus wall and into the alvar beyond. Early snow dotted the green landscape.
The headmaster slid into his seat with a sigh, watching Buu over steepled hands the colour of deer hide. Buu squirmed under the scrutiny, missing the solid, steady feeling of his uncle by his side. His mouth had gone dry by the time the headmaster finally spoke.
“Thank you for escorting Professor Dyan back to us. With a grimm on the loose, she probably wouldn’t have stood much of a chance alone.” His expression didn’t change as he spoke, steady stare never wavering. “I’m Headmaster Sanir Tono, and I understand that Aru has promised you refuge here for the winter.”
“That’s correct. I get sick a lot, so my uncle wouldn’t let me come unless he knew I’d have somewhere to stay. The trip back to Scarred Lake would be difficult for me now that the snows are starting.” Buu sat up straighter, folding his hands in his lap to stop them from fidgeting, only to have his leg begin to bounce of its own accord.
“Did the professor tell you about… the other thing?” Buu asked, not quite willing to say the words aloud.
Headmaster Sanir raised one eyebrow, a small smile breaking the hard lines of his face as some decision clicked into place behind his eyes. He sat back, running one hand through thick black hair as he read from a notebook on his desk.
“Powers exhibited during raid. Necromantic abilities on small insects and large mammals including kinemortum and occisum. Unusual thaumic aura with similarities to that of the grimm. Grimm simultaneously guards and threatens the subject, though subject claims no control.” Headmaster Sanir snapped the book closed with one hand. “Those are the bulk of Dr. Dyan’s notes.”
Buu stared at the headmaster blankly. He understood the pieces about the grimm, but everything else sounded like babble to him. It was as if the headmaster had read aloud the semi-gibberish that Buu saw when he read from paper. Did he know, somehow, and was mocking him?
His horror and confusion must have shown clearly on his face. The headmaster sighed, fanning himself with the notebook, though the hearth hadn’t yet dented the morning chill. Smiling wryly, he winked at Buu.
“Don’t feel bad for not understanding. Your abilities are something we haven’t seen before, and the professor has made up several new words to categorize them. ‘Necromantic’ just means magic to do with dead things. ‘kinemortum’ and ‘occisum’ means that you can make the dead move and make things dead.” The headmaster sighed, tossed the notebook back on his desk with a thud. “She’s an academic — she sees something new and can’t help but try to make up dusty, dry terms for everything.”
Buu had the strong suspicion that dusty, dry words were exactly the sort Headmaster Sanir would prefer to use too, if his conversation partner could keep up with them. Buu offered a watery smile, uncertain. Tentatively, he decided to risk sounding like an idiot and ask his questions using his own words, small and threadbare in comparison to those spoken in the world of Aru and the headmaster.
“Can you get rid of the necromantic? And the grimm? I don’t want any of it.”
The headmaster gave Buu a sympathetic frown, and Buu’s heart sank. He knew the answer before Headmaster Sanir spoke it.
“Unfortunately, no. We have no way to separate you and your abilities. Powers aren’t a thing you hold on to, but a way of thinking, of tapping into things bigger than yourself and using what you find there to exert your will on the world.”
“And the grimm?” Buu asked tentatively.
“Do you know what the grimm is?”
“No.”
The headmaster rose from his seat to stand in front of the windows. Staring out across the alvar, he clasped his hands behind his back, and Buu found it easy to imagine this man giving a lecture to a hall full of students. He had presence in the same quiet way as Uncle Kavir.
“The grimm is a Thiab construct. To put it in its basest terms, our brothers and sisters to the west believed in their religion so hard that the magic in their blood made it real. The grimm was an imaginary figure that supposedly shepherded the dead from the world of the living to the stars, or the ‘campfires,’ as the Thiab think of them.
“Until about a century ago, he existed in the mythos as an independent force. Then, suddenly, he began being written into their histories as a creature belonging to their many-faced moon goddess. No one has been able to work out why the Thiab stories changed, but when they did, portrayals of the grimm became darker. Bloodier.”
Buu stood too, not able to contain his curiosity as he joined the headmaster at the window. If adults were allowed to fidget, he should be too.
“But the grimm isn’t a story. I’ve seen him,” Buu insisted.
“I know. I have too. About a year ago, their General Ido showed up with it in tow.” The headmaster gestured to the Thaven troops patrolling past the wall. “A creature stepped directly out of myth. It shouldn’t even have a physical form, yet here it is.”
Buu chewed on the information for a while, staring out the window as he considered everything he had heard. If the magic experts didn’t even know why the grimm had appeared, they probably didn’t know how to get rid of it. After he’d thought for as long as he could muster, Buu blew out a noisy breath and threw his hands up in exasperation. “Then what in Anaya’s light do we do?”
Headmaster Sanir patted Buu’s shoulder gently, a sympathetic smile cracking his face under sad eyes.
“We do what academics always do, Buu: we study and try to find the answers. You’ll be enrolled as a student to get a better understanding of your abilities, and as for the grimm, we’ll just need to wait and see what happens.
“He went on a rampage last night, tearing through a group of militia, then a patrol of Thavens, so he wasn’t satisfied with the massacre at Red Birch. He will likely continue to do whatever he wants until someone works out a way to stop him.”
The headmaster squeezed Buu’s shoulder before turning back to his desk, a faraway look in his eyes. “If you can, try to distance yourself from the grimm. Rumours have run ahead of you, but we don’t want people assuming you had anything to do with the bloodshed. The longer it takes for our more militant guests to draw their own conclusions on the matter, the better.”
Buu nodded his agreement, numb. More killing? He swallowed, the carnage at Red Birch flashing before his eyes. Bile rose in his throat as he remembered the wet sound of teeth tearing flesh. When he spoke, his voice tremored: “What do we do if they decide I have something to do with the grimm’s behaviour?”
Headmaster Sanir slid into his chair, not meeting Buu’s eyes as he steepled his fingers. “That will depend if we agree with their findings or not.”