“I’m impressed, Emma,” her mum said one night. Emma was holding the phone to her ear with one hand and typing up her latest dataset with the other. “I showed what you sent me to the others at the station, and they agree. Professional work.”
Her laptop screen had gone blurry. Emma blinked back the tears. “Thanks. Coming from you, that means a lot. With time to recruit volunteers, the full trial could even start in spring.”
“You sound so happy,” Emma’s mother said. “Confident. This project has been good for you.”
“It has. I just know there’s something behind this flood. And with this project, it feels like I’m a breath away from finding out what it is.”
“That’s the beauty of science, ladybug.”
Soon after, a shy email on Emma’s part had led her to Dr. Asima Banerjee. A round, unabashedly loud woman, she was just as fascinated by the anomalies in animal behavior after the flood as Emma.They spent many a morning in her office in the Department of Natural Sciences, debating theories over coffee.
“Climate change, you think? Faugh! It’s definitely happening. But does it explain everything here? Flooding and frogs mating in the fall, and more besides? The caddis flies have been doing things you wouldn’t believe. Otters practically tap-dancing along the banks. Strange times.”
She nodded at the jar of frogspawn sitting on her office desk. “Thanks for bringing your samples. We’ll keep them in the lab. See if anything exciting happens.”
“No problem,” said Emma. “I wondered, would you take a look at my first species survey? I want your opinion before I send it to the foundation.”
When Dr. Banerjee finished studying the document, she let out one of the laughs that seemed to roll up from her belly. “Stellar. Good as anything my third-year zoology students turn in, the lazy sods. It’s a shame you’re not on my course.”
“Do you—do you ever get people switching?” Emma murmured.
“We do,” she said. “They have to start from the beginning, from first year. But the people who join us often find they love it.”
She handed back Emma’s data with a smile.
Emma wandered from the faculty with an unfamiliar lightness in her bones. She was so distracted, she had to rush to make it to the Great Hall on time.
Formal dinner at Gabriel was a special occasion. Candlelight flickered from oil paintings and crystal glasses. Courses came on silver platters, and guests in dinner jackets and academic robes. Emma usually avoided it: The grandeur and Latin made her nervous. But tonight she was there for Nat. As one of the college’shighest-achieving scholars, he had been chosen to read the ancient opening ceremony for the dinner. It was an honor granted to only ten students a year, and Emma had been determined to be there to cheer him on. She hadn’t seen enough of Nat, of late. Rehearsals had him at the theatre at all hours.
He fidgeted behind the lectern, academic gown ironed to a crisp, looking like a large and very nervous bat. Emma waved, then ducked into the last empty space at the long tables. The only people nearby were a trio of academics. Emma recognized tweed-jacketed Dr. Peasewhisker, the Gabriel College bursar. With him were Professor Aguilar, chic and chignonned, and a cheerful, curly-haired older woman Emma vaguely placed among Gabriel’s history dons. Emma hadn’t meant to listen, but the dining benches pressed them all so close, she couldn’t avoid it.
“Decent wine tonight.” Dr. Peasewhisker smacked his lips.
“Better without the extra legs, I imagine.” The curly-haired woman’s eyes twinkled.
“Alison.” Dr. Peasewhisker groaned. “Sorry, Beatriz, you’ll not be up on the latest gossip.”
“Do tell.” Dr. Aguilar curled manicured nails around her wineglass.
“High Table at Granville College last night. Cellar master uncorks what should’ve been the finest claret. A ’45 Bordeaux, no less. But what pours out—directly over the Sumatran president’s shoulder, mind? Spiders. A flood of spiders. Imagine the chaos. They think the flood must’ve got to the wine cellar.”
Emma’s interest sharpened.
“Hearing a lot of that these days.”
The bursar sighed. “Our own head gardener practically bangeddown my office door once the flood went down, raving about hawthorns popping up everywhere. ‘Just chop them down, man,’ says I. And what does that do, but send him wibbling on about demon trees that regrow as fast as he cuts them?” Dr. Peasewhisker took a long, consoling swallow of his spider-free claret. “I ask you.”
“Hawthorns? Perhaps the fae folk’re taking back their land.” The bright-eyed history don winked directly at Emma, as if to include her in the joke.
“You and your folklore studies, Alison.” Dr. Peasewhisker blew a breath from his jowls, ignoring Emma. “No, I don’t know what things’re coming to.”
“And the porters were complaining of trespassers in the Old Music Room.” Professor Aguilar took a dainty sip of her wine. “Animal masks, drums in the night. Petals scattered all over in the morning.”
The history don chuckled. “Probably just early Samhain celebrants. We’re harmless enough, we pagans. And it hardly takes a criminal mastermind to creep into University buildings after dark.”
At the lectern, Nat lifted the ceremonial book. The dining hall quieted. Emma’s heart swelled with pride as Nat read the Latin, his voice soaring and sure.
It was a quirk of the University that formal dinners started with this weird remnant of centuries past: not a grace, but a bizarre sort of bargain between diners and their food. Nat was reading the nonsense text with charm and humor, promising their dinner the best of their attention and delight in return for the privilege of eating it. Nobody remembered the origin of the bargaining tradition, but everyone enjoyed it.
