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Asparagus yipped at his fingers and he laughed, miming throwing the ball, and watching him dash in the approximate direction of where it would have fallen, if it had left his hand at all, before wheedling around in a circle, barking up back to him, demanding his ball.
“Here!” he called, really throwing it this time, only for Asparagus to catch it in his mouth, and begin to throw it up and down again, and attempt to throw it around his head, although the puppy hadn't quite gotten the handle on that trick just yet.
He'd only had him for two months but he felt that they really were getting along quite well, and not only because he sometimes snuck the fat trimmings and scrap meat, when he wasn't going to make a good soup stock, into his bowl, or straight into his mouth at the table, but only if Aunt Hester couldn't see, always making sure to pat his head as he did. He wanted Asparagus to know that it came from him more than the maid who fed him in the morning, and that he loved him. He wanted him to love him back. He thought he might now. He needed that, with the Wundrous Welcome coming up tomorrow, and the trials starting properly.
Aunt Hester had been coaching him for this for a few years now, ever since he had shown a particular talent for cooking in the weeks after his father's funeral, and all he could do was put his emotions into the food, when he had been helping out and trying to keep busy, but he was still scared.
Apparently there were over five hundred candidates this year. Five hundred into nine. Each of them with this knack or that, and he wasn't sure gastronomy was going to match up to all of those in the Show Trial. That was, if he even made it that far. There were three trials to get through first, but with amount of aunts, uncles, grandparents, and the occasional cousin here and there, they were pretty sure that each of them had done every trial between them, and a couple who had failed out too, all relegated to the bottom of the dinner table at Christmas.
He didn't want to do that. He didn't want to let down his parents’ memory. He wasn't just a Fitzwilliam, or just an Akinfenwa, like everyone else. He was both. And that meant he had to be better. He had to win.
His suit was freshly pressed, all fitted specially, still hanging in its bag from the outside of his wardrobe in his room. His shoes were polished. He had a bag of rumours about who was bringing a candidate, or the particularly rare knacks that were going to show up in the trials. Baz Charlton had fifty million again, and Aunt Hester had emphasised to him that Jupiter North was finally bringing in a first candidate. He vaguely remembered him, a tall ginger man who had patted his shoulder at his father's funeral. He couldn't remember if he had been at his mother's, but that had been much longer ago. He could barely remember it at all.
He vaguely heard the sound of barking, and blinked back into place, seeing Asparagus dropping the ball at his feet, tail wagging incessantly.
“You want me to throw the ball again?” he tried to perk up his voice. Tried not to think about tomorrow. “Do you, boy? Yes, yes you do. Yes.”
Asparagus yipped, his front paws coming off the ground as he twirled around, and Francis launched the ball as far as it would go, trying to feel as certain about tomorrow as he did about that throw as his dog dashed towards it, his sole goal, his only aim in that moment.
Tomorrow he would have other goals. He could wait it out till then.
The Book Trial had been… fine, he supposed. He had known the object going in, which put him in better stead than a lot of the other candidates. He had spotted a lot of them scribbling onto quickly blackening paper, trying to outrun the flames, and just like that a quarter of his competition was gone.
Hester had sat him down with the list of what were the most likely questions to be asked. “Why do you want to join the Wundrous Society?” “What do you think of the Free State?” “What’s your greatest fear?” “What do you want out of life?” All that fun stuff. He passed before almost anyone, he thought, even though it had meant pouring out his heart in a truly embarrassing manner to a paper booklet.
Then they’d all been sectioned away into neat little rooms. His had been with a pair of twins, and maybe one other girl, maybe two. His memory faded a little, but that could have been because he had been trying so hard not to panic, or vomit, or hyperventilate that he had been on the verge of doing all three at the same time.
But the Elders had only asked one question. He had remembered to “throw away the book”, as his cousin Louise had said, and “be as ridiculous as possible”, as his cousin Adebayo had advised.
He had looked at Elder Quinn, Elder Saga, and Elder Wong. Tried to look them in the eye as sweat trickled off the end of his spine, and his ears heated up in sheer embarrassment. He needed them to know who he was. He needed them to remember for when he got to the Show Trial. If.
Even if a quarter of the candidates or so were already gone, that still left hundreds. There might even be a hundred left by the time they got to the Show Trial. A hundred into nine was better than five hundred, but that didn’t mean that it was good. He needed to be noticed. He needed to make himself extraordinary.
None of them had even particularly looked at him. They had just been bored when they asked him what the function of the Stink was, and he had said “to oppress the poorest and weakest among us, and to preserve the status quo, according to the richest and most powerful people in Nevermoor.”
Then he had gone home and made soufflés, after receiving a crisp hand shake from his aunt, and a few shoulder punches from his cousins in congratulations. It was almost a let-down, really. First trial down, he thought, listening to the egg break and crack into a bowl. All that studying for that. He had been done in… what? Twenty minutes total? Half an hour? Even if he had spent most of the day at Proudfoot House, most of it had been waiting around, to be called, for it to be over.
But the studying had been what had made it so easy. His fear had made it possible. And now he was staring down the barrel of three more trials, thinking what next?
The klaxons went off at the starting line and his pony surged forward onto the cobbled streets of Old Town, his heels nudging it at its sides, keeping it going.
She had been a childhood pony, small, stubborn, and reliable. But hot blooded horses could be so flighty, and he was more willing to be small than to be on something fast and skittish. The purple targets exploded behind them as they charged on, ignoring the green, and heading for the yellow.
His heart was in his throat but he could barely feel it. He couldn’t feel anything at all, except the way the soft leather of the reins was beginning to stick to his skin, and the way Broccoli felt under him, muscles shifting with every stride.
He kept his head down, kept dashing along. And he didn’t look back. He didn’t need the fear he was already feeling from hearing the sounds of shouting, of yelling, a few screams, and swearing increased. Broccoli was a good pony, nice and calm, but he didn’t want to risk her bolting.
He took a few left turns here and there, getting himself off the beaten track, as the hoard rushed past. He thought he might have spotted a rhinoceros and a magnificat among them, dashing for the front of the line, but that could easily have been his imagination.
Aunt Hester had pointed out to him on a map that there was a target hidden down this way, and he didn’t dare hope that it was a secret golden one, when he found it, sitting on the outside ledge of a shop window, only five hundred metres away. Four fifty. Four hundred.
“Hey!” someone yelled. “That one’s mine!”
He didn’t stop to look around. He might have waited too long already, and Broccoli, feeling him tense up, increased, so that he was flying through the block, but he could hear his opponent catching up, the sound of hooves on cobbles behind him accelerating.
He had his hand out, when he felt Broccoli’s weight shift, and a loud slew of cursing, but the target was exploding, drenching him in purple, and he had done it.
And it meant the other person would be eliminated now. Because of him.
He jumped off Broccoli, patting her on the flank, letting her nuzzle in, and sneaking her a mint for a good job done, before he saw the boy, red faced and snivelling on the ground, his mount nowhere to be seen. His leg was at an angle legs shouldn’t ever be at.
“He bolted,” he groaned. “Fuck you. That was my target.”
Francis shrugged, victory and guilt mixing in his stomach. He wasn’t sure that was an emotion he wanted to make into soup. It made him feel ill, “Do you need help?”
“Why would I-” he caught sight of his leg and his face turned white, then grey.
Francis just about managed to catch him before his brains were dashed onto the cobbles.
The Fright Trial was the worst thing ever, but at least he had known it was coming. No one had been happy when it had been announced on the little invite he had been handed after the Chase Trial, and personally he thought it might have been because they thought he didn’t have it in him.
He was convinced he had it in him, but from all the reading he could find on it, he thought he could make it through. The thing that mattered, really, was that it wasn’t real. And he didn’t think Wunsoc could get away with it if too many candidates died in the Trial, so he probably wouldn’t die. Hopefully.
It didn’t mean the zombies weren’t real, or that he didn’t think they weren’t disgusting as they slathered their way over to him, and he had to start looking for ways to escape.
He just had to keep holding on. He just had to hold on to the fact that it wasn’t real, that it was just a test, and if he could withstand it, he would pass.
It didn’t mean that he didn’t fear-vomit into one of the empty graves. Or that he then realised that it was, in fact, his way out of there, and had to follow the vomit into the Wundrous Society gardens, but he was already going to have to clean zombie flesh from his clothes, or burn them outright, so he didn’t really care.
After shimmying up a tree, wet and mossy, drawn to the glow of a lamp, he decided that he was definitely burning these pyjamas. There was naught to save them now.
Bile rose in his throat but he pushed it back down, fighting to keep his hands still. This was it.
Watching the Elders enjoy his meal had given him hope, showing to the full extent of his abilities how he could pull emotions this way and that with his cooking. And it had all led up to this moment.
He locked eyes with Elder Wong, and took a breath. He was going to make it. He had to make it or this whole year hadn’t been worth it. He might not have been worth it.
A noise. A roar. Cheering.
His legs almost went out from under him, but he held onto Aunt Hester’s arm. His name was on the leaderboard. Top nine.
It wasn’t very high up, and he could still be knocked off it by the end of the day, but he had made it up there. Hopefully that would keep.