Page 15 of Malcroix Bones Academy

I walked to the opening, and lifted my hand to part the curtains carefully when I got near enough. I took another deep breath, and slid through.

Another cavernous, architecturally-improbable space greeted me, this one eerily dark across the majority of its floor. Despite its vast size, the cloying darkness, and the lack of lines or shapes that would indicate a court of any kind, it reminded me most of my school’s gymnasium in Winchester.

Truthfully, that passing similarity didn’t have much basis in reality, though.

Here, apart from the area by the wall where I stood, the only illumination in much of the cavernous space came from round spotlights that dotted the polished hardwood. Rather than from above, those lights seemed to glow up from below.

A single, school-aged child stood in the center of each spotlight.

Across from every child stood a plain table, manned by one adult.

I counted over thirty kids total standing on one of those lights, some of them so far away, it was difficult to see the desks and the adults sitting across from them. More kids stood in single-file lines by the wall, not far from the curtain and me.

When I looked up, I couldn’t see the ceiling.

Every child, both in line and on the floor in one of those circles, looked approximately nine or ten years old. I glanced around, looking for anyone older. I looked for someone my age, or at leastcloseto my age taking the test, but found no one.

I didn’t even see anyone as old as my brother.

The adults sitting behind those tables ranged from middle-aged to downright old, with grey to no hair, and often heavy wrinkles.

Those animals made of light were everywhere I looked.

A woman walked briskly up to me and held out a hand.

A bone-white, translucent crow sat on her shoulder, preening its feathers. Her irises looked nearly white, too. If the woman knew the crow was there, she didn’t pay it any notice. I was still watching it curiously, when the woman cleared her throat.

I jumped. Then, realizing what she must want, I handed over the slip of paper.

The woman read what had been scrawled there, nodded once, then motioned for me to follow. I wordlessly shadowedher high-heels to what must be the correct line, the very furthest from the curtained door.

She handed the piece of paper back to me, and walked away.

Unlike the man outside the curtain, the crow woman didn’t seem squeamish about touching me, at least. Then again, she barely seemed to register me at all.

With her gone, there was nothing to do but wait.

I stood silently in my line, towering over the young children.

I considered asking them questions, but none of them were talking either, and as most looked anxious to the point of nearly vomiting, I didn’t.

I did field a number of stares.

Most of those stares came from the children standing in line, but I saw the occasional flash out of the corner of my eye, and when I glanced left, the woman with the orange eyes and quill and the man with that odd camera stood maybe ten yards away.

They must have come in through a different door.

Another flash made my vision go white. I looked away when I saw the woman with the orange quill staring at me and writing furiously.

I tried to see what was happening at the tables on the gymnasium floor, but they were all too far away. I couldn’t hear anything anyone said at those tables, either. It was as if every spotlit circle in the room had been soundproofed.

I did notice all the young people in my line walked to the exactsametable when it was their turn. The spotlight would switch off, there would be a few seconds’ pause, then the adult at the head of our line motioned the next child forward.

I never saw where the previous children went.

I felt more and more eyes on me, the longer I stood there. Children from the other lines gradually began to notice me, along with more of the adults. I ignored it as best I could, but something about those stares both annoyed and unnerved me.

More than half the kids in line had their own animals loitering around them.