Kenai

Chapter Five - The Bones

We had been walking for hours before Katie stopped at the end of a dusty old farm track. She looked back at me, excitement plastered across her face, and I followed her up the deserted road. After her speech earlier on, I was hesitant to ask her any more of the questions laying siege to my mind. I was desperate to find out more about this Kenai stuff, but the sound of the Varaat scared the shit out of me. Still, we walked to the end of the dirt road, and my jaw hit the floor when I saw the building at the other end.

Warrenheath Academy was, in no uncertain terms, beautiful. It looked oddly like Hogwarts, and I pictured the students wearing long black cloaks with vibrant house colours, and I smiled. The black stone walls seemed to absorb the sunlight, and ivy climbed halfway up the front wall. The windows, large and arched, were all still intact, and the ancient wooden door seemed to be calling out to me.

"It's talking." I say out loud.

"It calls out to those with the right blood." Katie explained.

"Why?"

"To welcome them home."

Together we pushed open the wooden doors, and immediately the place took on a whole new feel. The whimsy and wonder I had felt when I saw it was gone, replaced by the strong desire to vomit as the smell of old blood and rotten flesh punched me in the nose. I staggered back, and Katie was there to catch me.

"What is that smell?" I ask, holding my nose.

"The last students who studied here were attacked," Katie said, "only two survived."

"Out of how many?"

"Hundreds."

I looked around the dark atrium, and I wanted to cry when I saw three skeletons huddled together in the corner. I stepped closer to them, Katie's grip on my arm loosening, and I knelt down in front of them, despite the pain in my side.

"I'm so sorry." I said quietly.

I stood up and turned back to Katie, and she screamed as a skeletal hand grabbed mine. I looked down at the skeleton, and realised it was the smallest of the three, clearly a child.

"Please," said an echoing voice, "lay us to rest."

"I will." I promise, not even sure where to begin in doing so.

The hand dropped away and I ran back to Katie, who was shaking more than me.

"You said they were attacked," I ask her, "by who?"

"The Varaat," Katie replied, "they showed no mercy."

"That was a child's voice."

"You ok?"

"No, no I'm not."

I stared at the skeleton, thinking of my promise to the voice.

"Is there a graveyard nearby?" I ask.

"I'll show you." She said, taking my hand.

---

After a few minutes of walking down skeleton lined corridors, we stopped outside a door marked 'Hall of the Fallen'. With shaking hands, I pushed the door open, and as I expected there were more skeletons inside. Stepping carefully around them, Katie and I stood in the middle of the Hall, where a stone slab stood undisturbed.

"Welcome to the Hall of the Fallen," Katie said grimly, "the dead are brought here to be laid to rest. The body goes on the slab and is automatically returned to the family plot."

I let Katie speak and I wandered among the stone walls. There were hundreds of them, and the deeper into the Hall I went the colder it seemed to get. I read the plaques beneath each family name, and the ages ranged from 114 years old to just 5. It was humbling to be a living soul among so many dead, especially given that I outlived some of them without the skills they undoubtedly learned here.

Katie stopped talking and I started to make my way back to her. I was almost there when I spotted a familiar name on the wall. The family name was Summers, Mum's maiden name, and beside it was another family name. My name.

Dagwood.

I traced the names on the plaques on the Dagwood wall, and froze when I reached the lowest and most recent name:

Michael Dagwood

Born 13th Dec 1966 – Died 13th Dec 2006

Aged 40

My father. I touched the plaque with shaking fingers, totally oblivious to Katie walking up behind me.

"You gone deaf?" She joked.

I said nothing, I just continued to stare at my father's name on the wall. She stopped smiling when she realised who I had found, and instead she stepped away from me, giving me the space she thought I needed.

"I was six years old when he died." I said quietly.

"Kay-"

I didn't want to talk. I walked over to the nearest skeleton and scooped it up with trembling hands. Katie tried to help me, but I refused. I placed the skeleton on the table, and after a few seconds it was enveloped in blue light and disappeared. The same blue light appeared on the wall opposite my father under the family name McGuire. I wondered how many names would be added to the walls once I was done.

---

I refused to let Katie help me as I carried the skeletons from the corridors into the Hall of the Fallen. As promised, I laid each and every one of them to rest, and once the corridors were clear I knew there would be more throughout the Academy. Katie just watched me, looking lost, as I worked until there were no more old bones to shift.

By the time the corridors were cleared, I had moved over seventy skeletons ranging in ages from 8 to 46. I would never forget the feeling of holding a child's skull in my hand as I searched for the rest of the body.

I stopped and slumped against the wall, tears pooling in my eyes, and Katie sat beside me. It was the closest I had let her be since finding Dad's grave. Part of me hated her for not telling me he was here, part of me hated Mum for keeping all this from me, and part of me hated myself for not asking more questions until now. That just proved in my mind that I truly was the biggest idiot of them all.

"Come on," Katie said, tugging on my jacket "I want to show you something."

We stood up and I followed her down yet more corridors full of bones, and she stopped outside a pair of grand wooden doors decorated with gold. She opened them, and we entered an equally majestic room, larger than any space I'd ever seen before. The walls were not black, but a dark grey, and a row of silver chandeliers hung from the ceiling stretching from the doors to the far wall. The floor was covered in stone slabs, and stone steps leading up to a variety of wooden doors framed the room, turning it into a macabre stone theatre.

"What sort of room is this?" I asked.

"This is the Grand Hall," Katie answered, "all new students came here first before their training began."

I walked towards the far wall, getting further and further away from Katie.

"What for?"

"Initiation."

The voice that answered me wasn't Katie. I turned to face her, and almost hit the ground in shock. Katie was being held by a monster. It had a hand around her throat, but it wasn't a human hand; it was covered in black fur and had long black claws that were digging further into Katie's neck with her every breath. The same fur covered its face, making its amber eyes stick out like candles in the dark.

"Let her go!" I yelled.

The monster laughed. "You can see me now?"

"Of course I can! How could I miss you?"

"You did before, but you spotted Ferne straight away."

Ferne. I remembered her face changing momentarily into a fox, but this was no fox.

"Who are you?" I demanded.

With a chuckle, the fur began to withdraw back into the body. The hand stayed clawed and furry, but the face was clear, and I knew immediately who I was looking at.

"Hello Kayla," Deacon said, "time to claim your birth right."