The Mountain Dancer

Chapter 11: Shaynike & Monarec

“This is so so so so Uh-maaazing! Shay! Shay! You have to let me help you! You have to!”

Mona bounced in front of Shay, somehow hopping backwards down the boreway as they descended.

“You’re going to render your brains when you trip,” Shay said, focusing her gaze elsewhere. Her mind was on the shard. It had come a whole seven days ago, moments after she had numbly left the Headmaster’s Chambers.

‘Come to the council room in the Upper Library one week from now,’ was the emotionless instruction. It had been crafted by Ellawek Boulderin, Head Caterer of the Mountain Dance. She had only recently worked up the nerve to tell Mona about it.

“I can manage a touch of Sluicestep, you know!” Monarec did a little spin to prove her point. “And don’t you change the subject. You’re going to let me help you, right?”

“I wish you could just do it all for me,” Shay said. She meant it.

“Don’t I wish! But that’s not how it works, Songmaster!”

Songmaster... why? Why is this happening to me? Shaynike rubbed her temples through unkempt and frazzled hair. The summons to the Headmaster’s Chambers had not been even close to what she had anticipated. Tanglemire himself had not even bothered to meet with her. Instead, she got Head Tutor Minyel, the wiry old Bindcrafter who was the academy’s oldest tutor and resident healer. Tutor Minyel had given her grief over taking so long to arrive, but made no mention of her assembly desertion. When she foolishly brought it up herself, he had waved it away and said something about a warning.

Then he bluntly informed her that she had been selected to sit on the Mountain Dance’s planning council and would be excused from a few of her normal lectures in order to get caught up.

“But the council’s full!” she had protested.

“Am I accused of forgetting how to count council members, Pupil Cliffland?” the tutor had demanded, forcing her into a stumbling apology.

As it turned out, one of the members had to leave rather abruptly, a spot had opened up, and the Head Caterer had named her for the Dance’s Songmaster. It was arguably the least exalted position, but it was a position nonetheless. The terrible and confusing news had at the very least solved the mystery of Faevock’s warning… a rather unsatisfactory consolation.

Tutor Minyel had had one more thing for her. In order to make up for the missed lectures, she would be assigned a sub-tutoring role for two new pupils, fresh little kids barely a year past their birthright. “I trust the uncontested Crown Academic nominee shouldn’t find this task insurmountable?” he had warbled, arching a bushy white eyebrow at her.

In the Chambers, she’d accepted the task dutifully. In reality, she was a mess. It was taking a giant amount of effort to keep from hyperventilating every time she thought about her long list of horrors that had all sprung up out of nowhere.

Worst of all was the attention. Pupils were sending shards and trying to talk to her more than ever now. She saw with a sinking heart that it was happening now: as they passed through the floor of the General Assembly Hall, Lauresh Fixedwillow and her boyfriend ZaoMol Hikebarrow caught up to her and Mona. Normally Shay didn’t mind these two – there were certainly nastier, more evil pupils to deal with, but the overstimulation over the past few days had her on edge.

“Did you hear?!” Mona said to them by way of greeting.

“Mmm, seems Pupil Cliffland is just flying up the pecking order,” Lauresh said. Shay managed a glance and a pained twitch of her lips in acknowledgement. Lauresh was a stunning girl: flowing, tall, with dark yellow hair streaked with browns and greens. A daughter of the Moonshadow Wood, the girl practically oozed intrigue. Why she ever bothered to talk to Shay and Mona was a total mystery.