Work Text:
Chapter One
On the side of a red brick wall, halfway up the building beside a window, was a girl who definitely wasn’t supposed to be there. If someone were to open the window and hit her, and send a shout into the room inside (probably because they had just watched a girl fall two stories from the wall), she wouldn’t be able to show her face ever again. Not that her face was showing now–she’d taken every precaution. The tight black scarf hid both her face and her foggy breath. Not that it would help if she were actually caught. She wondered how much she’d have to beg them for the wifi so she could change the forwarding address for the new sneakers she’d ordered to “County Lock Up.” And she wasn’t even sure that was exaggeration. But she’d got herself here for a reason. Strange things were afoot. Things she knew were wrong. And no one could do anything about them unless they knew. So that was why in the middle of the night she was on the side of a red brick wall, halfway up a building beside a window, despite the risk of jail.
Her foot slipped. Risk of death from falling was more immediate, she supposed. But the wall was old, and the bricks jutted enough to provide mostly decent foot-and-hand-holds, at least for someone who frequented the rock wall three or four times a week.
It was too bad really that she only frequented it twice. A month.
Inside the window, a group of old men sat around smoking in lazy armchairs, having an interesting conversation about money. Because of all the smoking, the window was cracked (it was a fair autumn night, so they could do that), and that was how she was able to listen in. She clung in her dark clothes, scarf around her face to muffle her foggy breath, just outside the sleepy light of the window–nothing but a spider in the eaves.
“Tory has been very amicable to the way of things so far,” one old fogey was observing.
Another hmphed. “Ms. Tory is getting her fair share. And Saunders. When you reap the benefits too why cancel the delights?”
“Tisn’t wise,” a grey cap muttered. This was a college, and they were old academics, so they could use words like that.
“Who knows what’s wise?” said the Dean of the Philosophy department sharply. “But it is smart.”
“A decent little scheme, and we keep ourselves fed,” agreed the first.
They settled into a long smokey silence, and during one of the series of noises they made as they, fat and satisfied, one by one departed, the girl on the wall outside scuffled down the wall.
She stopped at the bottom, mostly because someone was shining a flashlight in her face, which tends to make you blind, and it’s not very wise to move headlong when you are blinded. The Dean upstairs would’ve broken out ‘t’isnt’. Her scarf was still up, her face mostly covered. She wasn’t discovered yet. If she could be mysterious enough, they might let her go.
“How’d you do that?” the Someone behind the flashlight asked her, a little too excited for a whisper.
“Aaah!” she said, which wasn’t very conducive to being cool and mysterious. She folded herself into the shadows behind a nearby tree to avoid the light. That was more helpful. She moved so fluidly the Someone almost forgot about the ‘aah’.
Seeing she was shying away from the light, the Someone flipped off the flashlight and settled for the slippery tendrils of the moonlight instead. For a moment, neither moved, both trying to make out the outline of the other against the dark.
“It’s not wise,” the girl said, “to startle things in the wood.”
She thought the other–a boy from the voice–was rubbing his head sheepishly, and that was how she knew he was doing something he didn’t want to be caught at either. “You wouldn’t happen to be illicitly tracking night birds too would you?”
She said nothing. He said, “I’m working on a project but the Dean wouldn’t give me permission to be on campus this late. Which got me wondering—" now his head cocked, and he seemed sharper in the moonlight than he had before. Like a hunting knife. “Why not?”
“There’s lot of reasons why they might not want people out here.” She caught herself before she said ‘us out here’. When she left, she’d leave like she was going into town. There’d be no solid reason to suspect she was a student here too.
“Yeah but I’m not sure they’re good ones.” She still couldn’t make out his figure beyond its outline but his voice was lit up by a beautiful enthusiasm as he went on. “See I’m tracking the numbers of some of the waterfowl around here. I’m pretty sure they’re being poached. I brought my data to the dean, but they dismissed it, even though last week one of our skiffs hit a trap in the river and now it’s totaled!” He wasn’t very good at covering his tracks though. Rowing team. Maybe not a hunting knife then–an oar, slicing through the water.
“You think they’re profiting off the poaching here?”
The boy froze. Maybe he was taken aback by how ready she was to believe him, like she already knew things he was only getting inklings of. He looked from her half figure in the trees to the wall he’d seen her lurking on. If she could have seen his face, she would have seen its transformations as she became international spy, fox spirit, Artemis, Diana to him. Finally, he asked rather quietly, “Who are you?”
“Look I think I’ve already got a bead on whatever’s going on. And you’re probably right. But don’t get into trouble over it. Don’t worry, I’ll be looking into it. I promise.” And she turned to slip away.
“Hold up!” There was some scrabbling in the leaf litter behind her, and the apparition of the boy in front of her. “You’re not police or anything.” He observed, with a laugh like he couldn’t believe her.
She couldn’t hide the annoyed snort she let slip out.
His voice, which had been keen for the observation, grew earnest. “I have data that can help you! We can work together!”
“What sort of data?”
He knew he’d got her on the hook. There was a boy’s smile in his voice as he said, “I’ve found the locations of two other traps. I can watch them! And see who comes to get the fowl. I’m on the rowing team, no one will suspect anything weird.”
She evaluated silently for a long while, but she couldn’t really think of anything to say, so in the end she just said “Ok. Two days. Saturday night. Meet me here again, same time, with what information you have.”
Even in the dark the boy looked like he’d just inherited a kingdom. “I’m Peter,” he said. She was already slipping off into the woods again. “Should I call you anything?”
A breeze was whispering through the trees above her. “Call me Aspen,” she said. It was stupid, but she couldn’t give him her real name. That would be dangerous. She turned right, like she was heading into town. As far as she could tell, the boy—Peter—had moved no farther.