I left the classroom and stepped into a surreal chaos in the hall. It wasn’t the level of noise, but the crowd of students, that stunned me. Slowing to a stop, I yet again questioned my sanity and tried to make sense of what I was seeing.
Like any school between classes, the majority of students hurried to some unknown location while a few lingered in small groups, talking and creating congestion. However, unlike any normal school, less than half the student body appeared human.
Dwarves, whom I could easily mistake for normal short people if not for their excessive display of jeweled rings and necklaces, mingled with giants. Where their diminutive counterparts moved briskly with each step, the giants languidly made their way through the crowd. Some stood so tall, the tops of their heads almost brushed the ten-foot ceilings. They weren’t the most impressive sight, however. Elves walked gracefully beside minotaurs, centaurs, and cyclopes.
I took a moment to watch a centaur prance past, the clop of his hooves rising above the sound of so many voices. He caught my gaze and nodded at me, the movement slightly terse. Probably because I was staring at him with my mouth open. Closing it, my sweeping gaze made another pass over the creatures in the hall.
My disbelieving heart stuttered in my chest. There were even more creatures, but I didn’t have a clue what they were. While most of them seemed human, a few looked anything but. This had to be real. I didn’t have the kind of imagination, awake or sleeping, to make this sort of stuff up.
“Hey, newbie,” a girl said, stopping in front of me. “Come to the pool with me, and I’ll sing for you.” She tilted her head slightly, exposing thin lines just behind her ears.
Gills? Were those gills?
“Ah, no thanks.”
“Some other time, then.” She shrugged playfully and walked away.
I should have been freaking out and running for the door. Instead, I found I couldn’t tear my gaze from the bizarreness of the individuals around me. Across the hall, a group of girls wore skimpy tops made to showcase their green-hued skin. They preened at whoever would look at them, and one went so far as to grab a guy’s butt as he walked past.
What was this place really? Sticking to the side of the hall, I began to make my way toward the stairs.
“Oh, new meat!” a high-pitched voice squealed.
Turning toward the main body, I briefly met eyes with the source of the squeal, a cute little redhead with fangs. She smiled at me hungrily. Before I could decide how to react, someone stepped in front of me. I looked up at the back of a shaggy head of dark hair.
“No you don’t, Belemina,” Fenris said. “You promised I’d be the only boy you’d put under your spell.”
“She’s not a boy,” the girl said with a laugh. “But I’m sure I could be persuaded to look the other way if you walk me to my next class.”
“If I walk you to class, Mina, you’ll never look anywhere but at me ever again,” he said, smoothly offering his arm. A slim pale hand looped through it, and they started away.
He glanced back at me and mouthed, “You owe me.”
I wasn’t sure what, exactly, he’d just saved me from, but I nodded, relieved. A boyish smile played around his lips before he turned his attention back to his companion.
Released from the fixation that had gripped me the moment I stepped from the door, I glanced down at my schedule. It was easier to think about getting to the next class than the strange world I found myself in.
Unsure how long I had, I turned toward the stairs once more only to be blocked by Fenris’ her-herd.
A surge of irritation rose up inside me as I locked eyes with the blonde driver. It wasn’t because she was tall, curvy, or insanely gorgeous. Half the females in the hall met that criteria. And my reaction to her had nothing to do with the sneer on her face, although it probably should have. Most people set my temper off for no good reason whatsoever.
“Aubrey, let’s just go,” the blonde to her right said, tugging Aubrey’s sleeve.
“Aubrey,” I said, recalling the wolf and the way Fenris had commanded it. I looked at the rest of them. They didn’t all glare at me like Aubrey did and weren’t nearly as irritating.
“Man, Fenris really has a thing for blondes, doesn’t he?” I said, meeting Aubrey’s gaze.
“He does. So stay away from him.”
I rolled my eyes.
“He doesn’t seem like a guy who can be stolen. He seems more like the guy who does the stealing.”
In a rare show of restraint, I tried to step around her, but she shadowed my move.
“Seriously, furball? Go pee on someone else’s tree.”
One of the girls groaned as Aubrey snarled at me.
I grinned and made a fist. If she wanted a fight, I’d give it to her.
“Bring it, bitch,” I said, embracing my anger.
As soon as she launched herself at me, I swung hard toward her face. My fist connected with a satisfying thwaump that encouraged my temper.
Aubrey screeched as she flew backward. Unfortunately, the crush of bodies still coming up the stairs stopped her from toppling down. I launched myself at her, more than ready to pummel her face so she wouldn’t be able to snarl for a week.
Mid-swing, I found myself lifted up and away from Aubrey. Unable to stop the punch in progress, my fist bounced off the cheek of the largest man I’d ever seen. At least eleven feet tall to my five foot six, he dwarfed me. His peeved gaze pinned me as I dangled from his fingers by the back of my shirt. I tried to quell the anger boiling under my skin.
“I call Mulligan on that last one,” I said, softly.
The giant lifted his free hand and made as if to flick me in the face. Since his fingernail was the size of my nose, I knew it was going to hurt and braced myself.
A voice cut through the commotion around us.
“That’s enough.”
I turned my head a bit to see Dream Guy standing behind me, his head nearly level with my stomach.
“Put her down, Finnegan. I saw the whole thing, and we both know hitting you was an accident.”
“Hitting me was. But what about hitting Aubrey? New girls shouldn’t hit people they don’t know,” the giant said, in a deep voice.
“You’re right. And, people they don’t know shouldn’t try to pick fights with them on their first day either.”
The giant nodded and set me on my feet just as a bell rang. The hall around us immediately cleared, and the giant ambled away, ducking slightly to enter the room I’d just left.
Aubrey continued to glare at me. The increasingly red mark on her cheek and the slight swelling of her upper lip let me know I landed a solid hit with the first punch. I wondered if a second one would knock the glare from her face.
“Aubrey, we both know that Fenris flirted with her, not the other way around. It wasn’t necessary to try to establish your claim with her. You need to establish it with Fenris. Do you want someone to look at your face?”
“I’ll look at it for her,” I said before I could stop myself.
“Why are you so angry?” Dream Guy asked, studying me.
“Mommy issues because she left you here?” Aubrey’s attempt at a snide smile ended with a wince. It didn’t make me want to hit her any less.
I clenched my fist and stepped forward. Dream Guy blocked me.
“Class or home?” he asked.
He’d better not be toying with me.
“If I seriously have a choice, home.”
“I’ll take you. Jenna, let Adira know.”
The blonde beside Aubrey nodded, and the quad walked off. Dream Guy motioned me down the stairs.
“You going to fly me home?” I asked.
He glanced at me but kept walking.
“Was she right?” he asked.
“About my mom? Yeah, she left. So what?”
“Is that why you’re angry?”
“Pft. I was angry long before that,” I said.
We reached the first floor and started down a long hall that looked just like the one we’d left.
“Why?”
“How am I supposed to know? What about you? Why are you always so bossy?”
“Daddy issues,” he said.
His comment didn’t make me angry. In fact, it defused the lingering tension under my skin.
We reached the main atrium, but he didn’t head toward the main door. He passed through the space toward the right wing.
The smell of salt water tickled my nose before the lilting sound of singing reached my ears. Instead of keeping straight on the main hall, I turned left, following the sound. I didn’t walk far before I reached a section of windows set into the hallway to view two giant swimming pools.
Girls and boys swam in the water or sat on the edges. Some sang. Some played with the next person’s hair. All of them had tails. None of them wore clothes. Thankfully, the girls had very long hair.
“How does that make you feel?” Dream Guy asked quietly.
“Watching them play with each other? Slightly pervy.”
“I meant their music.”
I shrugged and focused on listening.
“A little calmer maybe. Why?”
“A siren’s song can be very alluring.”
“Alluring? Who are you? Are you really my age?”
“I am. Come on.”
We trekked back to the main hall and out through a side door to a parking lot.
“Please tell me you have a car here.”
“I do.”
He led me to a red sporty thing in a line of sporty cars.
“Way to be unique.”
He shrugged and opened my door for me. I slid in, more than a little jealous of his car. Not because it was red or sporty but because it was a car.
When he got in, he caught me petting the leather seat.
“I thought you weren’t a fan,” he said.
“I’m a fan of anything that will get me to where I want to go without walking.”
He started the engine and eased out of the parking spot. I looked out the window and stared up at the towering height of the school.
“I’m still not sure I believe any of this is real,” I said. “Giants. Sirens.” I looked at him. “Griffins.”
His expression remained neutral, as it had been every time I saw him. Except for when I hit him.
“It’s real,” he said.
“How is it real? And why doesn’t anyone know?”
“You were in Lucas’s class. We blend. Look at you. You lived in the human world for how many years?”
“Seventeen, and I wasn’t blending. I’m human.” A thought occurred to me. “What’s going to happen to me when they figure that out?”
He glanced at me and tapped the wheel for a moment as he slowed by the gate. It swung open without him needing to use the button.
“If you’re here and enrolled in Girderon, you’re not human, Megan. They don’t make those kinds of mistakes.”
“They?”
“The Council. The governing body that oversees the Academy, the town, and our community.”
I shook my head slightly, realizing I was actually believing everything. It was hard not to believe after almost being flicked by a giant.
“Okay. I’ll bite. What is this community really?”
“A home for the children and creations of the gods.”
“Gods?” I couldn’t keep the disbelief from my voice.
He glanced at me once more, his expression still neutral, then focused on the road. We drove the rest of the way to my house in silence. If I’d offended him by not buying into his beliefs, he was good at hiding it.
When he pulled over in front of my house, I caught a subtle, judgmental change in his expression after a glance at my front yard.
“The lawnmower’s broke,” I said, feeling the need to defend myself since the responsibility of the place fell on me now. That thought triggered the memory of what Aubrey had said in the hall. She’d known my mom had abandoned me. Did they all know?
“Thanks for the ride.” I quickly got out and started toward the rear of the house. I didn’t look back at the sound of his car slowly pulling away.
The idea that he’d stepped in to help me at school and gave me a ride home because I was the town’s charity case sat like lead in my stomach and increased my hatred for this place. Yet, I knew it wasn’t Uttira’s fault. It was my mom’s. She’d brought me here with the sole purpose of ditching me. If what everyone kept telling me was true, she had to have known what this place was and had withheld so much information from me. Why hide the truth from me? Why bring me here? Was it because I actually was something more than human? If so, what was I?
I let myself in through the back door and placed the Girderon papers on the table. After fixing myself a snack, I sat down and logged into the Academy’s website. A list of interactive sessions and tests waited on my student home page.
More curious about the school itself than my course list, I clicked around and read what little there was. A page simply titled “Origins” caught my eye. The article, written by Lucas Flavian, contained a fair number of links to Greek and Norse mythology sites. While I munched on some veggie chips, I read how Mr. Flavian proposed “we” were descendants from the gods, some of us direct offspring between human and immortal, and some creations of those godly immortals. He went on to outline the ebb and flow of each god’s reign.
To me, the article didn’t have a point. It wasn’t announcing, reviewing, or summarizing. It lacked persuasion of any kind. It was more a bunch of speculative opinions or the start of a lecture that might eventually lead to a point if it were ever finished.
I continued my random clicking through the website but didn’t unearth anything useful to help explain what the school truly was. Deciding to look at the assessments that Lucas had mentioned, I went back to the main page and opened the first interactive session. It followed the standard “watch a short video then answer some questions” format.
The sound of a lawnmower starting up in my yard pulled me from my aptitude review of high school English. Frowning, I went to the front door and looked through the window. There was indeed someone trying to push a lawnmower through the waist-high grass.
Dream Guy.
I yanked open the door.
“Hey!” I called from the porch.
He didn’t look up.
I jogged down the steps and waited for him to turn and see me. When he did, he cut the engine.
“What’s your name?” I asked.
“Oanen.”
“What are you doing, Oanen?”
“Cutting your lawn. Your mom made arrangements for it to be cut on Wednesdays. When I saw it, I figured waiting wouldn’t help.”
“You’re the lawn service?” I asked in disbelief.
He shrugged and continued to look at me.
“Is there something else you want to ask?” he said after a moment.
“No. Nothing.”
Confused and frustrated, I turned and went back inside. Outside, the lawnmower started up again.
I wished more than ever I understood Mom’s motivation for leaving me here.
With each passing day, it was getting harder and harder to tell myself that she’d be back.
