Archive of Our Own ^beta

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Because Nancy had redecorated 75% of the bus with her vomit, my group had to get off at a service station and wait for a new bus—obviously paid for by dear daddy dearest, who was informed of the incident and not only scolded her like she’d committed murder and live-tweeted it, but also punished her by confiscating her credit cards.

Did I feel bad about it??? HA. I enjoyed it. Every. Second.

Since Yancy is a private school for troubled kids—am I a troubled girl? Obviously. As they say: the ones with angel faces are the worst little demons—the teachers didn’t want to risk sending us separately in taxis, much less make us walk to the museum. Especially since our Latin teacher, Mr. Brunner, is paraplegic, and Grover, well, is disabled.
Although you should see him run when it's enchilada Tuesday in the cafeteria—he leaves Usain Bolt in the dust, and that’s with Bolt wearing turbo skates.

Luckily, one of the service station employees took pity on poor Mr. Brunner, who got stuck supervising twenty-seven preteens with mild criminal tendencies—yes, I'm including myself; I have an interesting record of... strategically timed accidents.
I mean, how serious do you think it is to leave the teacher who bullied you in primary school paraplegic with forest snake venom?—while Mrs. Dodds dealt with Niagara Nancy. Yes, that’s her name now. I’m proud of it.

We were told to wait in the manager’s office, supervised by a teenager so addicted to his phone he wouldn’t have noticed if we’d set the front counter on fire.
Honestly, I’ve never understood mortals and their obsession with gadgets. Like, how hard is it to turn off your phone for an hour and, I don’t know, read a book? Plant a tree. Burn a bus.
Okay, maybe I talk like this because I grew up in a forest with zero connection to the mortal world, and the only “network games” I had were the cobwebs on the ceiling. Maybe if I’d grown up like the others, I’d also cry if my phone didn’t have signal for five seconds.

Meanwhile, Mr. Brunner went to help Mrs. Dodds with the Nancy Disaster, leaving my classmates free to return to their natural state: unsupervised delinquents. Not that being supervised ever really stopped them.

And me?
Well, I laid back across two plastic chairs, crossed my arms behind my head, and closed my eyes.
Waiting—no, wishing—to dream again about the boy with lake-blue eyes.

But of course, dreaming about the boy from the woods? That would’ve been too nice, huh?
Instead, the nightmare decided to get... creative.

I found myself walking—or more like being dragged—through the halls of a Greco-Roman gallery. The lights were dim, the statues looked like they were staring at me, and the hand gripping my arm belonged to Mrs. Dodds, with her signature scent of dust, disinfectant, and... was that virgin blood? I don’t know, but it was weird.

“This can’t be happening again,” I muttered, and I wasn’t sure if I said it out loud or just thought it so hard that it echoed in my ears.

She was dragging me like I was a war prisoner and she was the official executioner of Olympus. I was sure she was about to punish me for the whole Niagara Nancy situation. Because yeah, soaking your classmates and teacher in aged school-bus barf is apparently “problematic.”
Not that I even got to explain that it was all scientifically justified!

But then it happened.

Mrs. Dodds stopped. She turned slowly... and her eyes sank into her skull. Her mouth stretched sideways, revealing long, yellowish fangs. Her nails grew like daggers, and her back twisted grotesquely until, right in front of me, stood a Fury.

I froze.

Not because I didn’t know how to defend myself. Not because I lacked tools (I literally keep a set of poisoned daggers in my school socks). No.

I froze because it had happened before.
Once, in the forest, a creature just like her—with those same claws that looked like they were made to shred your soul—had tried to kill me.
And if it hadn’t been for my mom showing up right when that thing was about to give me a DIY lobotomy under the open sky, I wouldn’t be here telling this story.

Then, in the middle of my emotional paralysis, I heard it.

“Nimue!”

I turned, and there was Mr. Brunner at the end of the hall, holding something shiny. He tossed it to me.
A pen.
A pen?

My rational self would’ve said, “Brunner, not the time to write haikus.”
But my trained self caught it mid-air without thinking twice.
And the second my fingers closed around it, the pen expanded, shifted in weight and—boom.
Sword.

The metal was dark, etched with glowing inscriptions that seemed to slither on their own.
It was beautiful. And familiar.

But before I could use it—before I could even lift it...
I woke up.

“Nimue!”

I opened my eyes wide. My mouth was dry, my heart stuck in my throat, and I could still feel something watching me from the dream.

“The bus is here,” Grover said, looking at me with that classic expression of concern-meets-resignation he always wore when talking to me.

I nodded, still feeling the phantom weight of the sword in my hand and the scent of sulfur clinging to my nose.

The day was just starting. And I had a feeling it wasn’t going to get any better.

We got on the bus like survivors of a student apocalypse. There were only ten of us left.
Why so few? Easy. Half the group had been pulled out by their parents after Nancy Niagara’s little biohazard stunt.
Not because they cared about their kids—please—but because the vomit situation might hit the media and ruin their public image.
And if there’s one thing we’ve learned from rich parents: if it’s a choice between saving their kid or saving their reputation, the reputation wins by a landslide.

The rest... well, let’s just say not everyone’s born with the natural gift of not scamming tourists at a gas station.
Yep. A few geniuses tried to sell “ancient Greek magical artifacts” made out of soda cans and duct tape.
They got arrested, obviously, and Mrs. Dodds had to go bail them out like that one aunt who always has to save the family idiots at parties.

Nancy came back too. Because monsters don’t go down that easy.

She wore fresh clothes, smelled like she’d bathed in a pool of knockoff perfume, and had a plastic vomit jar around her neck like a hiccuping horse. Every step she took made it clink against her chest, and I swear, I wanted to develop telekinesis on the spot just to chuck that thing out the window.

When we got to the museum, Mr. Brunner led us down the halls like a weary shepherd guiding his flock of violent sheep.
We stopped in front of a massive stone column, almost four meters tall, with a giant sphinx perched on top.
I recognized it instantly. Not because I’d seen it in some textbook, but because I’d dreamed about it.

“This is a funerary monument,” Mr. Brunner began, voice calm, as if he wasn’t standing in front of a bunch of teens with the attention span of a caffeinated mosquito.

As he talked about rituals and sacrifices—nothing I hadn’t already lived through at home—eight of the ten students whispered, giggled, made fart sounds, and basically challenged the wrath of the gods.
The final straw was Nancy trying to braid her vomit jar’s string.

That’s when I snapped.

It wasn’t some dramatic scream.
It was a whisper... in Celtic.

“Dún do bhéal!” I growled, and my voice echoed off the walls like the statues themselves were backing me up.

My eyes lit up. Literally.
And for one second, everyone saw me for what I really am: a demon in a schoolgirl disguise, a forest creature with ancient magic in her bones and blood that sings in lost tongues.

Everyone went silent. Even Nancy, who looked like she might throw up again from the shock.

Mr. Brunner, on the other hand, didn’t even flinch. He turned to me like nothing had happened, wearing that half-smile teachers get when they’ve seen everything and still pretend they haven’t.

“Any comments on the lesson, Nimue?”

I blushed. Like an idiot. Ugh, damn it.

I felt so ridiculous I mentally compared myself to my sister Aisling and her blood-red hair.
My face probably looked like a grenade had gone off in it.

“N-no,” I mumbled, lips tight, wishing one of the statues would absorb me right there.

“Nimue,” said Mr. Brunner, pointing to a carved image on the stone. “Could you tell us what this scene represents?”

I stepped closer and immediately thought: oh right, the baby-eating dad.
The relief showed a messy-haired, muscular dude with a crooked crown holding a baby like it was a badly wrapped burger.

“Oh yeah, that’s Cronus,” I said, crossing my arms like the improv expert I am. “You know, the psycho dad who swallowed his kids ‘cause someone told him one would overthrow him. And well, we all know how oracles are—if they say it, it’s gonna happen. So Cronus ate Hestia, Hades, Hera… basically hosted a family buffet. Bon appétit.
But then his wife, Rhea—who honestly deserves her own Netflix series—tricked him by wrapping up a rock like a baby. Cronus, who apparently didn’t chew, just swallowed that too. Zeus grows up, makes him barf his siblings back up, and boom. Epic family war.”

“And what good is that gonna do you?” Nancy chirped in her high-pitched “my brain’s buffering” voice. “Like, you’re not gonna put that on a job app: Hi, I know Cronus’s diet plan.”

I rolled my eyes with a grin I knew looked wicked—especially because right then, a fat, cranky black crow flew down from a skylight.
And without warning, without mercy, it dive-bombed Nancy.

Swear on my mother: it was glorious.

The crow flapped around her head like it was collecting a thousand-year debt, pecking at her hair and trying to build a nest in it.
Nancy screamed, spinning in circles, swinging her vomit jar like it was a sacred weapon.
I just smiled and raised an invisible cup in my mind.

Thanks, Mom, I thought with mystical gratitude. Point for Team Druid.

“Anyway,” I continued, not missing a beat, “Cronus ate them and later puked them up. The end.”

Mr. Brunner didn’t even glance at Nancy, who was now hiding behind a display case, clutching her jar with all the dignity of a soggy sock.
He kept his eyes on me, completely calm.

“And how do you think that story might help you in real life, Nimue?”

I shrugged—this time, without the sarcasm.

“Well… if I wanna study architecture, it helps me understand how the ancients thought and why they built stuff the way they did. If I wanna study history, it’s useful because it ties into politics, society, religion.
And if I wanna write novels—duh. You can’t write fantasy if you don’t know who ate who first.”

Brunner smiled.
And not in that condescending grown-up way. No.
He smiled like I’d just confirmed some ancient theory.
Like my answer was another puzzle piece sliding into place.

“Excellent,” he said simply, and continued talking about the technical details of the stele—the materials, the time period, the symbolism of the sphinx—while Nancy hid behind glass like a traumatized museum exhibit.

Meanwhile, Grover was still acting weird—glancing around like he expected a lamp to attack or something—so I frowned and kept watching him.
It wasn’t the first time I’d seen him like this.
Actually...
He’d been acting strange for months now.

To begin with, his diet was so weird. He spent all day eating lettuce, raw potatoes, entire cans of Coca-Cola (yes, with the can), and the weirdest thing of all: recycled paper. He said it had “extra fiber,” but come on—even hamsters eat better than that.

And then there was the way he followed me around Yancy Academy like I wouldn’t notice. But duh, of course I noticed. He was terrible at it! Every time he tried to spy on me, I’d ditch him by slipping through the maintenance tunnels or behind the gym storage. Nobody else knew those paths—just me... and the janitors. But they liked me, so they didn’t count.

And to top it off, I recently overheard him talking to Mr. Brunner. They thought no one was around, but I was literally right behind the library shelf.

“The solstice is approaching,” Grover whispered, like the solstice was some kind of huge spoiler.

“I know,” Brunner said, super serious. “And she’s not ready.”

They didn’t say my name, but come on. If you say “she” right after I sneak past like a ninja with new boots, who else could you possibly mean? Mrs. Dodds? Yeah right. Unless the winter solstice was some kind of black-tie event for demon fans in power suits.

So I couldn’t help myself. I leaned in close to him, got right next to his ear—which, now that I think about it, is kind of pointy—and whispered, ice-cold:

“Donkey.”

The sound he made was somewhere between a stabbed goat and a car alarm with emotional issues.

The kids around us lost it. Nancy even paused her dramatic imaginary feather-shaking routine for a second to laugh like a dehydrated hyena.

Grover crouched down behind a bench, face red like an anxious watermelon, hiding under his hoodie.

I felt a tiny bit bad for him… but just a tiny bit.

While everyone was still laughing, I crossed my arms and side-eyed him.

Uh-huh. Satyr. I’d bet my granola bars on it.

Mr. Brunner cleared his throat loudly, the way teachers do when they want to stop chaos without having to bust out a megaphone or launch themselves out of their wheelchair.

“Mrs. Dodds, would you be so kind as to escort the group outside?”

I turned my head, surprised. Since when was she there? Standing behind the group like a crow in a business suit, arms crossed and that classic “don’t even breathe too hard” glare. She wasn’t with the kids she’d gone to “rescue” from detention, which could only mean one thing: she left them there. Yay for poetic justice.

Mrs. Dodds nodded with a grimace that maybe could’ve been a smile—if you ignored that she looked like she was about to gut someone with a ruler. Then, just by standing there, she got the whole group moving out of the museum. The kids bolted like they’d just survived an in-flight bomb threat and couldn’t wait to kiss the ground.

I stayed behind, standing at the museum entrance, looking up.

The sky was so black even Edgar Allan Poe would’ve called it “a bit much.” The clouds didn’t move—they seethed, like they were arguing with each other over how epic the storm should be.

Then, a bolt of lightning tore across the sky like a glowing scar, and it felt like someone had just stabbed me from the inside.

I gasped.

Fell to my knees on the museum’s polished floor, my legs suddenly useless like soggy paper. I covered my ears with both hands, like that could stop the brutal echo pounding through me.

Give it back.
GIVE IT BACK.
GIVE IT BACK, THIEEEEF!

The voice wasn’t human. It sounded like the roar of the ocean, thunder mashed up with the rage of a thousand storms crammed into my skull. Every syllable hurt like it was yanking out pieces of me.

I don’t know how long I stayed like that, trembling, curled into myself like I could hide inside my own shadow. But when I finally opened my eyes, I felt a cold breeze brush my face.

And I realized—I was surrounded.

Several museum staff were around me. I couldn’t hear anything. It was like all sound had taken a spontaneous vacation. But I could read their lips.

“Are you okay?” one asked.

“Do you need help?” said another.

“Can you stand up?”

I blinked, dazed, trying to get my brain to crawl back from the dark place it had just been dragged to. I slowly pulled myself up without answering, feeling like if I said anything, I’d end up vomiting lightning or worse.

Give it back… the voice kept whispering, like an echo that refused to die.

---

Mr. Brunner, after making sure I wasn’t on the verge of collapsing into a lightning-induced emotional coma, placed his doctor-hand on my shoulder and gently guided me to a bench next to the atrium’s main fountain. He sat me down carefully, like I was some fragile museum piece, probably so he could keep an eye on me while he—apparently—remembered something “very important” in a nearby room.

And just like that, he vanished behind a column. I couldn’t hear a thing, so I just read his lips: “Back in a second…”

Grover nodded nervously, but when he tried to say something to me, the words froze right on his lips. Everything was silent—like the whole world had slammed the “pause” button.

Time passed. Or, well, it felt like forever in my head. Then, suddenly, a high-pitched whine sliced through my ears, like an old kettle throwing a tantrum. Before I could even flinch, the silence shattered—a deafening blast of sound exploded inside my skull like a sonic grenade.

I groaned, hunching over, my fingers digging into the cold stone of the bench, just trying to hold on.

And then… music.

Soft. Simple. Almost sweet. It came from some reed pipes near me. I lifted my gaze and turned my head to the right.

There was Grover, standing by the fountain’s edge, blowing into a reed pipes like some impromptu forest bard.

But my vision wouldn’t hold still. One blink, and he was hunched over his phone, thumb swiping across the screen. Another blink, and he was back on the pipes, the breeze moving the mouthpiece as if it had a mind of its own. The whole thing looked like someone had put a glitchy blur filter on reality.

The sound was finally back—but it brought everything with it: the soft splash of water from the fountain, the distant murmur of voices, the creak of footsteps on marble… and Grover’s melody, surprisingly graceful now, drifting through the air like a whisper from a forest no one remembered.

I leaned back against the bench, still dizzy, and let the music—whether reed-made or ringtone-fueled—wrap around my mood like a warm hoodie.

Because, after all… a satyr plays to heal with their song.

---

I was back in that forest of whispers and armor, walking slowly with my spear at the ready, feeling the invisible gaze trailing behind me. The air smelled like wet earth and salt, like the ocean was just around the corner—and that’s when I heard it:
—Nimue…
I turned around, tightening my grip on the spear, but instead of fear, my heart was pounding with that weird mix of surprise and longing. There he was: the boy with sandy blond hair, blue eyes like endless lakes, and that cocky smile that could slice fear clean in half. He raised his hand, about to say something…
And suddenly—
Clink, clink!
The sound of Nancy’s bottle clanging around her neck yanked me out of the dream. I blinked and came back to the Museum: cool gallery air mixing with the splash of the fountain. Nancy was walking toward me in that exaggerated way of hers, giving me that “are you still alive?” stare.
“Sleep well, princess?” she mocked, leaning down to get a better look at me.
I raised my hand in the most elegant, disgusted wave I could manage.
“Get lost.”
Didn’t even bother sounding nice. She opened her mouth to bite back… and then a wave of water rose out of the fountain with a deep slosh and swallowed her whole. Nancy flailed and fell back into the pond, soaked from head to toe, screaming like a banshee who just got ghosted.

The kids around us stared, jaws dropped. Some of them whispered:
“The water just—dragged her in!”
“Dude, it looked like magic!”

I was just as confused as they were. Magic water? In a museum? I didn’t even know I could command waves.

Mrs. Dodds showed up immediately, scooping Nancy up with the care of a momma duck and promising her, “It’ll be okay, sweetheart. I’ll get you a fresh t-shirt from the gift shop.”
She started wiping the red hair and loose feathers off Nancy like she was rescuing an injured peacock.

Then she looked at me—well, more like she looked through me—and her eyes sparkled with this wicked triumph, like the water ambush had been her evil genius plan all along.

And there I was, caught in the silence of complete what-the-heck-just-happened, while the marble floors reflected my own “am I seriously still standing here?” face.
“And now, sweetheart…”
“I know,” I muttered, already prepping myself for full-blown disaster. “A month erasing math workbooks, right?”

But nope. Not even close.
“Come with me,” Mrs. Dodds ordered, using that voice that makes you feel like a bug she’s about to crush with her evil little stiletto.
“Wait!” Grover jumped in—either because he had a loose screw or the biggest heart ever—and said, “It was me! I pushed her!”

I stared at him, jaw hanging. I mean… what? Grover? Covering for me? The same Grover who flinches when she raises an eyebrow?
And she did. She looked at him like he smelled like gym socks. Grover’s chin trembled like expired Jell-O.

“I highly doubt that, Mr. Underwood,” she said, with poison dipped in sarcasm.
“But—”
“You. Stay. Here.”

Grover gave me a I'm-gonna-faint-but-I-tried kind of look. I smiled back, grateful.
“Don’t worry,” I whispered. “Thanks for trying.”
“All right, sweetheart,” Mrs. Dodds snapped, sounding like she just won a gold medal in evil. “Let’s go.”

Nancy chuckled behind me like a hyena with vocal fry. I shot her my best next-time-I-see-you-it’s-on-sight glare and turned to follow the witch… but she was gone.

Like, poof.

Now she was standing way up the museum steps, waving at me like I was her dog.
How did she get up there so fast? Did she teleport? Roll up like Sonic? Because I swear I blinked and—new location, who dis?

I have these moments, you know? Like when you’re in class and everyone’s on page 45 and you’re still wondering when the book got handed out. The school counselor called it an “ADHD symptom”—my brain interprets the world however it wants.
But I wasn’t so sure.

I followed her. Obviously. Because nothing screams “smart decision” like chasing the teacher who just got your enemy KO’d by a fountain.

Halfway up the stairs, I glanced back at Grover. He looked paler than an uncooked tortilla.
When I turned to the top again… she was gone. Again.

Then—boom!—she was inside the museum, right at the end of the entrance hall, like she had won at hide-and-seek with space-time.
“She’s gonna make me buy Nancy a new shirt,” I thought. But nope. That wasn’t it.

We walked into the museum. The lights flickered like in every bad horror movie ever. When I finally caught up to her, we were in the Greek and Roman section again.
Just her. And me.
No Grover.
No tourists.
No background giggles.
Just marble, silence, and my demon algebra teacher.

She was standing in front of this massive marble frieze—you know, one of those with the naked Greek gods wrestling over who gets the last olive. Arms crossed. Not moving. But she made this weird sound in her throat, like a growl that had smoked too many cigarettes.

And even without the growling, I was already nervous. Being alone with a teacher? Awkward. Being alone with her? Felt like being locked in a cage with a jaguar measuring your neck for a pawprint.

And there was something in the way she stared at that frieze… like she wanted to burn it down with her eyes. Or worse, like she saw something I didn’t.
And that’s when I started thinking this wasn’t just a “you’re in trouble” talk.
This was something way darker.

“You’ve been causing problems, sweetheart,” Mrs. Dodds hissed like a snake with a mic.
I picked the safest answer possible. The one you give a cobra in heels.
“Yes, ma’am.”

She rolled her leather jacket cuffs like she was about to throw hands with Hades himself.
“Did you really think you could get away with it?” she asked.
Her eyes weren’t just angry. They were… something else. Something I’d only seen in the nightmares that visited me every night. Like she looked through me and knew stuff. Stuff I didn’t even know.
“She’s a teacher,” I told myself, panicking. “She can’t hurt me… right?”
“I-I’ll try harder, ma’am,” I stammered, like when your mom’s already holding the chancla but hasn’t aimed yet.

A thunderclap shook the museum. Not a normal one. One of those—the kind that echoes in your bones like the gods are bowling upstairs.
“We’re not stupid, Nimue,” Dodds hissed. “It was only a matter of time before we found you. Confess. It’ll hurt less.”

Confess what, exactly? That I stole Grover’s popsicle last week? That I plagiarized my Odyssey essay from a weird site that ended in .ru? That I’ve never read Tom Sawyer, but still signed it with curly letters and doodles?
Or worse… were they gonna make me read it?

“Well?” she demanded.
“Ma’am, I don’t—”
“Your time is up,” she growled, teeth clenched like she was holding back the urge to scoop out my soul with a spoon.

And then… it happened.

Mrs. Dodds snapped. Her body ripped open like a shadow on fire. Her eyes lit up with a red that did not belong in the human spectrum, and her mouth—her mouth became something that no math teacher ever should have.
Her black wings unfolded with a loud CLACK, like a demonic bat fresh from Hell’s bakery. Her skin looked like burnt paper and nightmare fuel.

She turned toward me with a death smile.

My knees were like “bye,” my hands shook like gelatin in an earthquake, and if I hadn’t been holding a sword (wait, when did I grab a sword?!), I would’ve dropped it.

“DIE, SWEETHEART!” she screeched, flying at me like a witch on a turbo broom.

I didn’t think. Didn’t plan. My body just moved.
I raised the sword and swung with everything I had.

The blade touched her. On the shoulder. But it felt like slicing through hot air.
Her body disintegrated like smoke—fwoosh!—bursting into yellow dust that smelled like expired sulfur. Her scream echoed as if something died… and was still watching me.

And then… nothing.
Silence.
Darkness.
Terror.

And in my hand… was just a pen.

What the—

I blinked. The room was empty. No screams. No wings. No witch.
Just me. And the pen. And my hands still shaking like I’d licked a power outlet.

Did I imagine it? Was it the lunch? Did someone spike my sandwich with magic mushrooms?

I walked out in a daze.
Outside, it was drizzling. The kind of rain that doesn’t soak you right away, but sneaks into your socks and your thoughts.

Grover was still by the fountain, using a museum map as an umbrella. Nancy Bobofit was still there, dripping drama, gossiping with her new BFFs like she was the star of her own soap opera.
When she saw me, she said:
“Hope Mrs. Kerr gave you a good spanking.”
“The who?” I blinked.
“The teacher, duh,” she said, turning like I wasn’t even worth a proper insult.

I stared at her. Kerr? Who the heck was Mrs. Kerr?

I turned to Grover.
“Hey… what’s up with Mrs. Dodds?”

Grover blinked.
“Mrs… who?”

And in that tiny pause… he hesitated.
Didn’t look me in the eye.
And that set off every single alarm in my brain.

“This isn’t funny, Grover,” I said through gritted teeth. “This is serious.”

Thunder rolled overhead, like even the sky was backing me up.

---

I stood there, looking like an idiot under the drizzle, not knowing whether I should run, scream, or just let the water soak me to the bone. My fingers were still a bit numb from the way I had held the pen—no, the sword—but when I looked at it again, it was nothing more than that: a lousy school pen.

I sat alone on a nearby bench, far from Grover, from Nancy, from the chaos, from everything, and hugged my legs. I closed my eyes for a second... and when I opened them, I saw her.

A raven. Perched on the branch of an old oak, soaked just like me, staring at me with that intelligent, deep, judgmental look. And I don’t know why, but I couldn’t look away. There was something in her eyes that felt familiar. Like she knew. Like she had always known.

“You saw what happened too, right?” I murmured softly, feeling like an idiot. But she didn’t leave. She just tilted her head as if to say, Of course I did, kid. And you haven’t seen anything yet.

I swallowed. My throat burned. Not from cold or fear, but from that kind of sad anger you swallow so you won’t cry in front of everyone.

Did Mom know anything about this?

Because if she did... if she really left me alone with all this madness, with monsters disguised as teachers, with magic swords that disappear and erased memories like pages ripped out of a journal... then who the hell am I?

I closed my eyes again. The raven cawed once, loudly, like she was answering me with a think about it, and flew off. I felt the wind push my hair back hard, and then I knew, no matter what happened next, there was no turning back.

I wiped my face with the sleeve of my hoodie. I could still feel the echo of Mrs. Dodds’—or whatever she was—screaming, buzzing in my bones. Part of me wanted to scream too. Another part just wanted a fifteen-year nap.

I looked at my hand. The pen was still there, firm between my fingers. I twirled it between them. Blue, cheap plastic, with the cap slightly bitten (guilty as charged). It was the same. But it made no sense. It had turned into a sword! How did it return to its original form? And why did no one else seem to remember anything?

I sighed and got up. The breeze hit me head-on, and with it, the rain began to soak through my clothes as if it too wanted answers. I walked toward Mr. Brunner, who was still under his ridiculous red umbrella, completely dry, all dignified, like he hadn’t just missed the miniature apocalypse.

“Mr. Brunner,” I said, walking over with an unsure step. “I have your pen. I think…”

He looked up, raised an eyebrow, and extended his hand. I handed it over. And the moment his fingers touched the pen, something changed.

I froze.

The plastic wasn’t wet.

How...?

He examined it like he had just found it lying around in the teacher’s lounge, then looked at me with that calm, annoying look adults get when they know more than they let on.

“Thanks, Nimue. In the future, please bring your own supplies. This one is... special.”

I wanted to ask him a thousand questions, but my tongue got stuck in my throat, like it knew he wouldn’t tell me anything useful. Mr. Brunner just closed his book (how the hell was it still dry?) and went back to reading, leaving me with my brain spinning like clothes in a dryer.

Wait, wait, wait... How did he know I had his pen?

How did he even know it was his?

I looked at my empty hand again.

And for the first time since all of this started, I seriously wondered: