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They knew one fortune-teller.
Annie tucked her feet more tightly underneath her as she thought through the many forms of magic and science she and Kat have experienced, but yes. She knew only one person who claimed to be able to see the future - and then it was still more that she knew of him.
She'd never been introduced to Parley's father, and it would be rude to approach a friend's father with such mercenary intent, and - really - did she want to get word about her future from someone who had to end up calling his daughter 'George'?
"Say yes, Annie." Kat's voice was gentle and indulgent. She stretched over her legs as she sat on the grass, wriggling her toes. "Or I'm just going to go into 'la-la-la can't hear you' mode, drag you away, and pack you in a really big suitcase so you come with us. I could ask Bob from our residential how to rig it with a liveable environment."
Annie laughed, a little too loud, the way Kat usually made her laugh. Some of the other kids sitting around on the lawns after the exam glanced up, and Annie traded smiles with Margo and Paz. "What a kind kidnapper you are," she told Kat.
"All for a good cause." Kat buffed her nails modestly against her school shirt. "But you do have to say yes, you know."
"It's your family holiday. Will your parents really want me tagging along?"
"Of course they'd like you to come." She made it sound impatient, but it wasn't really, and she flopped comfortably back onto the grass. "They're my family, and you're my Annie. It works out."
"It's going to be expensive. I have money in my bank account that isn't for school fees, but it still might not be enough."
"Do you have any idea how much Gunnerkrigg Court pays teachers? It's insane if you compare it to other schools, even universities. My parents are actually being paid to go on this vacation - they'll be doing research and stuff on the way. They won't mind helping you out with money."
Annie looked long and thoughtfully at the hem of her skirt, which did not require the scrutiny at all.
"You know, you even make looking sad look pretty," Kat said, pretend-pouting, and elbowed her on the hip. "Quit it."
The sad or the pretty? Annie felt her face warm to think of it. It felt deeply unlikely that she'd ever have the poise to ask a question like that; teasing, smiling, implying.
"Well, are you going to tell me what's going on?" Kat said, and then, "Whoa! Whoa!" She put a hand up in front of her. "You don't have to tell me if it makes you look like that! Unless ... Annie, is it something serious?"
Annie sat up and schooled her expression so she would look less as if someone had smacked her with a frying pan as she rounded a corner. "My father..." She really wished for a fortune-teller as she took a steadying breath and asked, "What if my father comes this time?"
A shadow passed over her.
Fear flashed into her in a ridiculous jolt that made Annie twitch: wasn't that kind of thing read as an omen? Wasn't it a bad one? She glanced up and at an entirely innocent sparrow, fluttering to perch on the gutter of the tower nearby, and started again when her name was called.
Luckily, Kat hadn't noticed either reaction while glaring straight up at the sky in an apparent attempt to keep her temper.
"Annie," Kat said. She did not say, 'What if he doesn't.' The tight pull of her mouth and thunderous frown made it clear. "You've got to come with us, so say yes. I said I'm not leaving you here again. It's not fair."
It didn't sound as if she'd asked her parents yet. However, Annie couldn't conceive of Donald and Anja objecting, and in fact they'd almost certainly invite her again if she went to visit at Kat's house. It made her roll her eyes at herself to think that she was the biggest obstacle to this plan.
"Yes. Yes, yes, yes, yes," she said, enjoying it each time. She leaned over to grin into Kat's face.
"FINALLY," Kat said, flopping her arms on the ground in an exhausted motion and grinning back. And a few seconds later, quietly and warmly, "Thanks, Annie."
Travelling was much as Annie had expected: one found the unexpected each day. The Donlans had visited a good-sized part of Western Europe last year, and this year's holiday plans went in a more easterly direction, skipping from Pakistan to India to Russia in a way that Kat's parents made seem almost whimsical.
"It's because of the research part of the trip," said Anja, who could put on an awfully whimsical smile when she wanted to. Donald smiled the same way as always, and that was equally hard to read into.
It was a surprise to discover every small thing that stayed the same and every small thing that was absent. It made her homesick for the Court, its vast and empty corridors, simply for the contrast it made to crowds that gave no corner, and thrilled her in the completeness of difference possible between one place and another.
"Beings of the etherium are not overly suited to travel," Reynardine said, as he sat and was buffeted about in Annie's handbag, and nonetheless spent every moment staring around from beneath the flap with round eyes. He was circumspectly quiet when they were outside, and Anja and Donald had grown adept at not hearing when he did speak near them.
"It better be because of etherium-hokum if you're tired. You didn't have to do any walking," Kat said when they returned to their hotel room for the day, sighing as she pulled off her shoes.
"We're usually tied to our particular parts of the world. It takes a source of energy away when we leave it, and it requires more energy to travail unknown earth," Reynardine informed her.
Kat took up the challenge in the tone and they sniped at each other in a mostly friendly way. Dozing as she sat on her bed, Annie did not really begin to listen until they fell into silence. She blinked to clear her sleepiness and looked up; usually they went on for a lot longer.
"It's weird, huh?" Kat said.
"What is?"
"The way nothing's weird - well, aside from our resident cute talking plushie." (Reynardine was asleep by now, or there would have been roars of outrage; his ears didn't even twitch at Kat's description.) "I feel so normal when I'm away from school."
Annie looked at her flopped over the bed with an arm over her eyes, as comfortably limp as Reynardine, and thought of 'normal', and again of the future.
"Mmm," she said, and was aware that it sounded wrong, just a little. Enough for Kat to pick up on if she continued like that, so she put more energy into her voice. "It's something of a change, isn't it?"
Kat grinned. "Yeah, no tree-animals or ghosts or secret passages ... everybody in class will actually believe everything when we tell them about our holidays." She got a thoughtful look. "Speaking of, I still don't know if I believe Janet about that vampire story..."
Annie looked at her own tan, following the variations in tone along her arm. Though more prone to peeling than Kat - something she found rather ghastly - she was still browner than she'd ever been before. 'Normal' meant the exhilaration of being free of duty and burdensome worries for a while, and sometimes her face felt quite tired from smiling. This was no time to indulge in thoughts that she didn't really want to have.
Only three things happened that she believed she could not speak of.
At the Taj Mahal, she thought of love; it was inevitable, faced with the splendour of the monument-mausoleum. This in spite of the other tourists whooping up into the dome to hear the echo. Kat looked around at them and then upwards speculatively, almost certainly having thoughts about making the same kind of experiment about the arts of acoustics or architecture, and then she glanced at her family and burst out giggling. "Mom! Annie! You're giving me the exact same look!"
Still. Annie thought of love.
All of a sudden her lips trembled uncontrollably, seconds after she'd turned away from smiling at Anya, and she blinked fast to avoid making a spectacle. It was really, truly stupid, and the fierce embarrassment at her own reaction merely made her eyes sting more.
"Annie?" said Reynardine from her bag, his voice sharp with concern. She ignored him.
She thought of her mother, her father, Mr Eglamore. And Reynardine, and Jones. Any number of others; and she thought of Kat.
At school, before they had talked on the lawn it had been awful to think of Kat leaving for the holiday; much more, even, than the idea that Father once again would not come to see her or even call her. It had made for a knot of anxieties that plagued her towards the end of term, and Annie suspected that she'd be marked far poorer on her exams than she was used to. She also suspected that she was not much good at normal.
"It's beautiful," she said when she'd spotted the Donlans looking around for her and trotted up to them, and they kindly made no comment on the hoarseness of her voice and let her be quiet for the remainder of the day.
The second thing was quite, quite different.
"Are you sure you'll be all right alone?"
"They'll be safe enough," Donald told Anja, hand on her shoulder. "You girls have your phone and your blinker stone? There you go, Anja. Now you two try not to set anyone who bothers you on too much fire!"
"Dad!" Kat hissed frantically. "Too loud!" Donald was too busy giving menacing looks at the people drawing into the Mariinsky Ballet and Opera theatre to listen, and Annie was rather glad once again that she and Kat would be able to spend some time without adults nearby.
Anja smiled at them. "You two look beautiful. Don't lose each other in the crowd, okay? You should hold hands. If either of you loses the other, call and we'll come pick you up. It's only the first night of full moon, so we could go to that library tomorrow, too."
"Mom! We're not five!"
"Just don't lose each other!"
"Go!" Kat pushed them, but before they'd got halfway to the door, Anja raised her and Donald's clasped hands pointedly, and she beamed when Kat gave a groan and grabbed Annie's hand to raise briefly.
"They do know we've done many, many more dangerous things at school than go watch Giselle, don't they?" Kat said.
"Perhaps they're more used to those kinds of dangers." Annie smiled. "Let's go in; I'm looking forward to this."
The ballet was lovely in a way that made Annie sit up straight; it was fascinating to see such an intertwining of great grace and great strength. When she glanced away to see what Kat thought of it, Kat was already smiling in her direction. It was a very pleasant evening, and at the end, the sense of music stayed with her and she felt a little dreamy as they walked out.
"Bet you'd be a good dancer," Kat said once they'd made their way out of the initial press of people at the exits. "You're pretty smooth when you do your fighting moves."
"Perhaps. Have you ever heard of dance classes at school?" Annie said. "It might be fun."
"Hrm. As long as we weren't the beginners in front of a bunch of older kids... Hey, if we do discover dancing classes, do you think anyone else in our class would join?"
They wandered over to a corner where a light needed to be fixed, as the patch of half-dark seemed to be avoided by the other theatre-goers and it would be easier to talk there. The foyer was still quite crowded. Kat had made the call and her parents would be on their way in ten minutes. It took Annie and Kat about half that time to realise that they were still holding hands.
"Oh," said Kat, and her free hand froze midway to being put at her side after wiping strands of hair out of Annie's face, and then they looked down simultaneously. Yes, their hands had been clasped since before the ballet, for the duration of the performance, and until now. It was suddenly a distinct sense memory to Annie that Kat had tugged her arm at some point to get it closer, resting against hers, a kind of affectionate little game.
It was very natural, and almost normal between them. But neither of them were quite breathing.
"Annie," Kat said abruptly, and stopped there. Her voice had wavered peculiarly. She tried again. "I don't think..."
Annie was entirely still, waiting.
"Can I mess with your hair?" Kat asked, as if she hadn't done it freely a moment ago. "Some of it's got loose from the bun."
"Sure. Thanks. I'm not used to doing anything much with it." Annie glanced around and saw no one with any reason to look at them - of course, why was she at all nervous? - and ducked down a bit so that Kat's fingers could easily run through her hair. She blushed, because it was no good trying to pretend to herself that she was nervous; it was simply that this was private, even if it would raise no eyebrows and cause no comment to see two girls preening, but it was somehow too much to postpone or keep in.
Kat finished and was biting her lip as Annie straightened and looked around, but it looked like a relief to her when her fingers brushed Annie's again. Annie took a moment to be infinitely glad Reynardine had not wanted to come, and they laced their fingers together again, more tightly than before.
"Uh," said Kat, and then, "I - uh - I... don't know what to say, Annie." Her voice was an anxious whisper, and the blush had spread up to her ears.
Annie shook her head; she didn't know either. She couldn't speak at all. Her throat was thick with freedom. She had an answer to one of her queries to the future; she had never really thought Kat would abandon her, but she could never have thought it would be this easy. Even with them.
She told herself she should have known better.
The third thing that Annie didn't mention was Reynardine's attempt to beat the shape shifter-bear. The poor dear had suffered enough (especially when she called him 'poor dear', and at the same time could not stop giggling as the bear's cub nestled adoringly against him as he recovered).
"I had..." Kat flopped back on her bed. "The most. Amazing. Summer. Of my LIFE!"
She was going to play a videogame soon. It was easy to tell from the air-punches. Hopefully no variation along the theme of Grand Theft Auto; perhaps more along the lines of Shadow of the Colossus, foregoing colourful crash-victories for beauty, concentration, and melancholy. Summer was over, after all.
Annie curled up beside Kat on the dorm bed while she had the chance. They had returned earlier than most pupils so that Donald and Anya could prepare for classes, but in a few days the rest of their dormitory mates would be back. Even better, Reynardine was still nursing a wounded ego, and she had told him he could go to the library and she promised not look at whatever he brought back.
"Oh, definitely," she sighed. Kat's arm crept around her shoulders. They still didn't know what to say, but it felt as if it wasn't too difficult to figure out.
"Are you still tired?"
"A little. I'll be fine by the time term starts."
"Are you still worried?"
Annie looked up, startled. Kat shrugged, looking a little worried herself. "You've been down ever since we caught the flight back."
"Well..." Hesitating wouldn't make it go away. Annie sat up to lean against the cool wall. "My father."
"I figured. I wish I could give that guy a punch. At least," Kat said instantly. Her protective instincts had got stronger than her urge to be careful.
"He was the one who taught me how to fight. You might have some difficulty," Annie said, pulling on a weak smile.
"It's so wrong. How could he do something like this to you?"
Annie folded her hands in her lap and sat straight and composed. "If there's one thing I can be sure of, it's that Father has a reason. He will always have a reason."
"Huh. Not much of a comfort."
That would almost certainly always be true as well.
"But I - if he's not being a good father, I'm not a very good daughter, either."
"Annie!" Kat's eyes blazed as she sprang up. "Don't think it's your fault!"
She shook her head quickly. "No. It's not that. It's that... I haven't heard from him in two years. Since the end of last term I was thinking again that he might try to contact me, and I was also thinking about you leaving for the holiday. It would have been pretty miserable here without you, but it wouldn't have been for that long. But I had no idea if Father would come or not, and I didn't - I still don't know what would happen if he did.
"Kat. I'm more scared that my father might come than that he might not. I'm scared he might tell me to leave, and if he did... I'd go with him. He's my father."
Kat did not, perhaps could not reply. Annie certainly couldn't get out another word. The only sound came slowly, slowly, as Kat's fingers gripped the edge of the mattress and the springs began to squeak, crunched tight in the grip.
Annie touched her hand and Kat tore in a breath, sniffed hard, and wedged herself against Annie. "Just like that, huh?"
"Kat..."
"He's your dad. Of course." Kat nodded with her head against Annie's neck, and Annie knew that at least she wasn't blamed. "But we'll - that doesn't mean we'll never see each other again! We can tell him that. Right?"
"I don't intend to disappear the way he has." Annie's voice came out clipped enough to surprise her. "But ... you're sure it would be all right? To tell him?"
It had been some time since other kids at the school had been standoffish or wary around her, and she'd never taken it much to heart when they had been; but she had always been aware of it. Kat should not have to have that kind of problem.
"You idiot." Kat sat up to look her in the eyes, and gave a slow, soft smile. Then she tackled her.
"Annie, you idiot! Why would he tell you to leave? That's not even logical. You totally picked the worst possible fear for no reason!"
"Well, I'm sorry, Mr Spock," Annie sniffed against her arm.
Kat shook with laughter. "Doctor Disaster is always going to be my favourite teacher for introducing you to that."
"It was so peculiar," Annie said, "Science-fiction still doesn't make sense to me. The metaphors seem far too extended--"
"Annie!"
They giggled breathlessly for a moment before she could get the rest out.
"We'll be fine."
"We will," Annie said.
She felt definite about it. The reading of the future could, for now, be left as an interesting possibility. It was more important that now she knew that she had the right to fight, because the desire to protect was equal and shared. Annie pressed her lips to Kat's quickly, and they laughed a little more as they settled out of tackling positions. For this, with this, she could make a future and believe it certain.