Oracle (Book I)

Good Goodbye

The ship set a course out into the lake, through the Greenbriar Swamp and back around the island of the cascading basins. Alongside the green and yellow waters of the swamp, the sapphire waters of Fineas stretched on beneath brilliant blue skies full of lazy clouds. Mederi Redbeard took the ship around the endless lake in a wide arcing berth. Caprice was mesmerized by the expanse of waving waters and sky. Of course, she'd never been on a boat where she wasn't preoccupied with carrying the Whitehares' bags or fetching something for them. For the first time, she took in the view to her heart's content. There was nothing but that for miles, sky and water, as far as the eye could see.

When he wasn't at the helm, Redbeard walked the deck, toeing and booting students off the carved circles of symbols and out of the way of the infirmary's entrance.

"Scram. This is still a hospital, you know. Sit over there. Don't block the way inside in case any patients arrive."

In the meantime, Professor Volkorn regaled them with engrossing tales of his youth and first adventures at sea.

"There Rowan and I stood. Before the fabled Eternal Fountain—"

"Which you didn't drink from obviously," Bossa said. A few students laughed (quietly and amongst themselves, likely in fear for their marks). But Volkorn laughed lightly, mood unspoilt.

"Well, you never can tell, Miss Redapple. I never said my age or how long ago this was... In any event, at the Fountain we stood! Surrounded by clawed stone dwellers and the mutineers we had called our friends—"

"The black blood-drinker is right. An old man can't possibly have drank from the fountain."

Behind the students gathered around the professor was a group that looked right at home lounging together in an scarcely lit corner of the deck. It was Grent Sykes and four other unpleasantly mischievous-looking sorts. She recognized Sykes from one of her classes. He was a dark-haired boy with an arrogant, smirking face, a metal cuff on the shell of his ear, and a brand on his neck underneath the open collar of his shirt. Caprice also recognized one of the boys: He was the one who fought Bossa at the placement examination and struck the trepadora, causing it to go wild and lash out at anything too close to it, injuring Bossa so badly Caprice had thought she was going to die.

"Yes, Fahim, Rowan—or should I say Captain Redbeard? Tell us how the story ends," said the tallest and brawniest boy Sykes' bunch.

"We're dying to know," drawled a white girl with long, ugly matted blond hair.

"Way I hear it, the so-called heroes did the traitoring and mutineering," said the boy who had attacked Bossa.

At this, Volkorn and the Mederi shared a glance. A look so quick with just their eyes that Caprice was sure most of the students hadn't caught it.

After what seemed a very long moment, Professor Volkorn said with a calm look at Sykes and the others, "Secrets like this are likely best left to one's deathbed and a trusted and eager confidant." Some of the students protested and moaned their disappointment at him, wanting to hear the end of Eternal Fountain's tale, but Volkorn clapped his hands together. "Who wants to hear about my fateful turnaround in the den of the marble dragons?"

"You do not look as rough around the edges as your friends there. Best watch your company, Master Sykes," Redbeard said. His gaze was all for Syke's "company" though he was talking to the boy.

"Oh, and what's it to you, Redbeard?" The others encouraged him, egging him on with a nudges and jeers.

"Friends today are enemies tomorrow. Get betwixt them and something they've a burning greed to possess and you'll learn. True and hard way," Redbeard said.