Pearl Before Swine ch 5: The Dean

~THE PEARL~

Within Terra’s forest, everything curves and bends. Where light and shadow press against one another, they blend or sway.

Within Southern Shores University, flat metal stands unyielding, and even light must wear a leash. The walls of the dean’s office measure three times my own height, but the platinum gears within them loom even larger, their edges hidden beyond an iron ceiling clouded by steam. Tiny, luminous gourds outline the floor, and their glow draws inverted, overlapping mountains.

The strawberry-haired girl does not follow me through the doorway. As she retreats, the tile where she stood rises with a series of echoic clicks, and the door swings shut.

The dean sits in a massive chair at an enormous desk, and everything about his person claims those same descriptors. He is not a giant like Terra or Mare, but even with him sitting, Pike would still be shorter than him, and I am shorter than Pike.

With a gesture for me to approach, he leans forward, and a deep, gravelly voice pours from his mouth. “You managed to greatly impress my students. Forgive me if I find their accounts—and the report of the train conductors that found them—difficult to believe. Care to tell me how you came to be in the E’er Wild Forest?” Elbows wrinkling the desk’s velvet runner, he folds his hands.

I bite my lip, gaze drawn to the stack of papers and codices stacked to his left. Reports, some of them about me, but not all of them. They are stories, newer than the ones Terra told or I read in his archives, fresh, ones I do not yet know the end of. I want them.

Alongside them rests a plaque carved with a name in many scripts. I recognize three. They spell Roald Smythe. Should my name be written somewhere like that as well?

The dean sighs. “I certainly hope you can speak.”

Yes, but for some reason, I do not want to. Each time I open my mouth to answer his questions, my throat tightens. My eyes fall back to the pile pushed to the side of the desk as if some deeper part of myself warns me to choose my words with greater caution.

I know a story where the hero speaks untruth. When I read it, I asked Terra why the man would conceal what happened.

“Not all are deserving of all information. Some would use the truth as a weapon to hurt others the same as a villain uses lies.”

Dean Smythe possesses an easy smile, and his eyes are pools of timid brown. His ears remind me of an elephant’s, and his poufs of graying hair do little to disguise their size. What about him has turned me into a clam? I do not like this feeling. My legs itch to run, but Pike said I must impress this man if I want to stay, and I do very much want to stay.

“I do not know how I entered the forest.” I am not quite the lying hero, for this is true. When the first human I met carried me into the grove surrounding Terra’s cave, my awareness was still so small. I do not know from which direction he came.

The dean purses his lips and nods slowly. “You were wearing a shipman’s garb that was worse for wear. How did it get that way?”

I try not to smile. “I do not know.”

“I feel you are being cheeky with me.” His eyes narrow, and his hands steeple before his nose in a similar fashion to Mare’s. “You must at least have a name.”

“Pearl.”

This earns me another nod as his smaller fingers leave their embrace to flick in my direction. “And a family name?”

“Just Pearl.”

With a slow, deep breath, he picks up a portion of the papers. I crane my neck, trying to read upside-down, but it is gibberish.

“Well, Pearl, maybe you’ll feel more like sharing if I share first. This school is my dream. I built it from the ground up. We accept anyone here that wants to change the future and is willing to work for it.”

He rifles through the papers until he uncovers the one he wants and holds it out to me.

I bring the glossy page almost to my nose. “This is us.”

A perfect, miniature rendering of Pike gives a thumbs up alongside my blue-eyed young man. In his arms, like a bride sailing over a threshold, lounges a lean girl with skin the brown of Terra’s eyes. Me.

The artist is as skilled as the golems. They must have captured my likeness as accurately as the boys’. As Pike said, my eyes are nearly as obsidian as the lashes that frame them. Judging from their half-lidded state, this scene occurred after I passed out.

Dean Smythe’s brows rise. “There was a lot of blood on you, and not a scratch. Same for the student carrying you.”

I lower the portrait but make no move to return it. “He truly is alright then?”

“Thank the Essences, though I wonder how appropriate that phrase is in this instance.”

“Why?” I purse my lips and tilt my head. Terra could have healed my young man, but I doubt he would have. Mare might count it as interference, and the bet would be lost. Plus, had Terra been involved, he would not have let the bear die either.

A squeal shatters my thoughts as the dean pushes back his chair and stands. “Do you not know what that boy is?”

I shake my head.

He utters one word, low and quiet, as if he fears the wind will overhear. “Koa.”

It means nothing to me, and my head tilts in the opposite direction.

“The islanders hated by the Essences.”

The corners of my lips point at my feet. Terra never mentioned hating any humans, even the villains in the stories. He always debated their side with me. He wanted me to see from all points of view, even those steeped in corruption.

Dean Smythe’s gaze upon me rivals the mid-day sun. “It is an old and widespread tale. Its fame is by no means a good thing, but I apologize for assuming I would never meet someone who did not know it.”

My sightline drops to the picture, again studying my blue-eyed human. Does he really come from a story where the Essences hate him?

I cannot believe that. The way he holds me is strong yet gentle, like the hand of the man who first pulled me from the sea. Yet, I am wiser now, and I see something else in his stance, in how the artist renders his stare. Protectiveness. Nothing will succeed in taking that unconscious girl from his arms, not a legion of soldiers, not even the end of the world.

Pike said he had to go, said they both did, but Pike stayed because he is infinitely more compassionate. Confusion churns in my core. This does not appear to be someone who would have so easily left me behind.

The dean draws a noisy breath. “The island Koa have been estranged for millennia from the mainland’s constantly changing nations. An ambassador nephew of mine wants to unite the world into a coalition with a common goal, and he wants to include the Koa. Wise men laughed at him, but he got the Koa to send that kid to my school.”

He chuckles and strides to the row of captive lights. “I’m an inventor. I thrive on the stories of progress.” He kicks one of the gourds, and it shatters with the smallest scream.

I flinch as a burnt stench wafts about the room, mingling with the steam, and my hands slide behind my back to shield the precious portrait of me and my humans from his destructive inclinations.

“Sometimes progress steps backward because those carrying it are not strong enough.” A few paces return him to his desk, and he retakes his seat, gaze lost in the ceiling’s changing clouds. “The first Koa man on the mainland in centuries, and before he even arrives under my roof, he’s attacked by a bear. Yet, he and Pike say you saved him.” His eyes fall to me, glazed and tender. “You have ensnared my curiosity, my dear.”

Keeping the artwork pressed against my spine, I force one corner of a smile and lob a pretend item to him. “I release it.”

His laugh is a cascade of ancient trees falling to the forest floor. “I would like nothing more than for you to stay at Southern Shores University, Pearl. Will you?”

This is what I want. Safe within these walls, Pike studies his science. Simple words—me saying I liked his song—filled him with such glee. I want to see that smile and hear him laugh again. He could love me, win my freedom.

His friend is also here, my blue-eyed islander human whose name I wish I knew. Dean Smythe surely knows it, but my tongue ties a knot at the thought of asking him.

I want to stay, so why do my knees shake when he requests that I do?

Despite a mighty swallow, I cannot coerce words past the lump in my throat. Even so, my nod places a grin upon his face, whimsical as feathers dancing on a fickle breeze.

“Good! Good. Have a look around my school. Sit in on classes. Perhaps you’ll find something of interest to you.” He shrugs and fiddles again with the papers. “You could even end up changing the world.”

Beneath the mess he has made of the stack, he finds a raised circle, and when his fingers press it level with the desk, the echoic clicks resound. The door pops open, and I whirl to face the strawberry-haired girl.

“Ah, Tulip. You have a vacancy in your room, don’t you? Meet your new roommate.” He circumvents the desk, and I scoot closer to the girl. As her gaze snaps to me with a narrow slant, he sweeps a hand in her direction. “Pearl, this is Tulip Everton. She works as my secretary part-time to repay her loans, and she is a lifesaver. Ask her for anything.”

Tulip’s face is unreadable, every angle of her expression formed of perpendicular lines, but she leads me back through a series of doors and into the hall where I last saw Pike.

For a moment, I think I spot the curly-haired, female science student again, but when I blink, only an odd shadow comes into focus. Still, a tingle simmers within my spine from the press of a suspicious gaze.

Students crowd the corridor, each one in a hurry. In the more congested intersection beneath the stairs, they stop just short of pushing. Eyes flit everywhere. I should not be so sensitive. Surely no one watches me any more than anyone else.

Tulip props a hand on one hip. “Guess I’m supposed to show you around. Sorry if I sound less than enthusiastic. It’s been a long day.” She smiles, but her weariness curls the edges.

The same ruggedness frays the posture of so many of the students. As I follow Tulip, a thousand conversations surround me, ten thousand agendas, each one heedless of where it intersects another. They crash and boom like a tempest, and I am lost in its swirls, bobbing in a sea of so many colors.

The last I see of my guide is her strawberry hair disappearing between waves of blue, gold, green, and black.

Continued in chapter 6: The Healer

Thank you for reading!