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Slowly, Baxter rises from her chair. She looks unprepared, as though she’d never planned on speaking about this to us.
“In recent days,” she begins stiffly, “there has been news from the capital. The former queen regent is dead.” She breaks this as monotonously as before, and the few students who had been unaware gasp loudly. “Her passing is an unfortunate event, as I’m sure you’ll agree. Lochkelvin sends its regards to her remaining family.”
She sits, looking just as awkward, and all heads swing back to Luke. Luke clutches the bread roll between his fingers like a talisman as he sits frozen in his chair.
“I need to get out of here,” he mutters wildly, though his feet don’t move.
“Passed?” Duncan asks Baxter, sounding curious, a dog with a bone he won’t let go. “Passed how? In her sleep? Of natural causes?”
“‘Remainin’ family’,” Finlay repeats in a quieter voice. “The fuck does that mean? Is that a threat?”
“I need to get out of here,” Luke mutters again, barely listening.
“That will be all I will be saying on the matter,” Baxter adds pointedly, in an attempt to curb all questions.
But Duncan looks dissatisfied. “I remember you did a moving tribute to Rowena Marchmont only last year.” In a snarky tone, he points out, “Do you think this was a suitable mark of respect to someone we’ve known to be queen all our lives? Rowena Marchmont was a royalist, too, and you had no problems then. What’s changed, miss?”
Benji.
Antiro.
King James.
Luke stands suddenly. Rory’s gaze darts to him, and he swings himself off the bench as Luke stalks unseeingly out of the dining hall.
Long-suppressed chatter explodes around the room. Danny, Finlay and I share a worried glance, and then all three of us are standing, leaving the table in search of Luke and Rory.
The entrance hall doors are wide open, the wind howling through them. We race down the steps and into the Lochkelvin grounds, where, a short distance away, Luke stands stationary in the freezing night air. Rory hugs him tightly from behind as cold stars shine down on us.
“We’ll save this,” Rory murmurs soothingly to Luke. “We’ll give her the send-off she deserves.” When he notices us, he addresses Finlay, “Go upstairs and get an instrument.” He pauses. “Violin, I should think. And lanterns.”
Finlay raises an eyebrow but does as Rory instructs, returning to the castle by taking the steps two at a time. Rory slowly releases Luke, observing him as though preparing to catch him should he crumple. “You’re okay,” he whispers, stroking his back, as Luke gazes sightlessly at the jet-black hills looming before us. The forest in front of them. The loch we know snakes between the two. He takes great lungfuls of air — deep, calming breaths, as though the dining hall had shrunkAlice-style to an unaccommodating size. “You’re resilient.”
“Doesn’t mean I have to be tested till I snap.”
“I know.”
“I want to walk,” Luke states, and Rory nods.
Behind us, the castle windows glint with light, the only place around for miles to do so. Finlay soon returns, a violin case in one hand and a group of old glass-fronted lanterns in the other. “Ye know I’m mair a guitarist, right?”
“Not today,” Rory informs him, taking a lantern and offering one to me.
Together we set off toward the hills and the forest from my memories. Even as we travel, it manages to seem like more than a walk. A pilgrimage, united.Just being together, we’re connected.
Together we’re unstoppable. It’s something I’ve considered a lot recently, but it’s only then that I genuinely feel it. As we stride together, journeying through a forest that’s just a forest, none of us talk. But words are a waste, somehow unnecessary. I sense the anxieties probing at the others as readily as if they were screaming. I sense the brokenness inside Luke like it’s a halo he wears.
It’s Luke’s night, which Rory seems to have decreed. And while Luke had seemed lost beforehand, it’s only now when truly lost in the forest that his sense of purpose has returned. He seems single-minded about our direction, and deep inside I know where we’re going. I know instinctively, because Luke is returning to the scene of the crime.
The crime had been murder. Perhaps Luke wants revenge.
It’s strange how a forest can be frightening on Hallowe’en and normal any other night, how water can sparkle cerulean alongside stones that glitter neon. A dream, a fantasy, a fiction… Danny grasps my arm, looking nervous about the finger-shaped branches that claw at his mousy-brown hair. We step deeper and deeper into the forest, guided by moonlight and candlelight, until the distinct sound of running water can be heard. All of us are jolted from our thoughts.
When Rory pulls back the branches, the air thrums with that now-familiar strange, mystical quality, so much so that I half-expect the vivid neon water to be rushing past us again. But it’s black and slick and ordinary at night, a mirror sheen of the sparsely starred sky.
Luke makes his way slowly to the loch’s edge, his gleaming shoes crunching across the stones. I look around at the pebbles in awe — how many of them had we tossed into the loch, hoping for the best? Tied up at the water’s edge, the little rowboat is upright, bobbing softly on the lapping water.
I shoot Luke a confused glance. “Did you…?”
