Chapter Text
Dawn breaks out over Revachol. The sun peeks out of the horizon, groans, then shuffles drowsily up the sky. The rest of the city follows suit: parents tumble out of bed to wake their children; newspaper boys sally forth on their burdened bicycles; cafés roll up their shutters to bless the world with freshly brewed coffee; and slowly, but surely, motor carriages converge on Main Street like globs of fat in an hypertensive’s arteries.
Meanwhile, deep within the decayed bowels of Fort Agmar, a lone knight lifts his sword and plunges it into his foe’s scaly flank.
The Grand Würm screams, a ghastly, earth-shaking screech that would have reduced any other man to a snivelling infant. But not Ser Mikael. No--He has sailed across the five seas, hiked snow-capped mountains, and trudged through chocolate bogs just to reach this fort. He will not let victory be taken from him. Not now, when his prize lies within arm’s reach.
Blood gushes out of the würm’s wound in red, hot spurts. Ser Mikael wrenches his sword free, which earns him another deafening roar, and darts away just in time to avoid the massive talons that cleave the air where he was standing.
He whips around, sword and shield held ready. The würm paces in front of him, blood dripping down its obsidian scales, tongues of flame flickering from its cavernous maw. Behind it, Ser Mikael sees the Luminous Lance---its hilt encrusted with rubies and emeralds, its blade forged from the purest meteorite steel---glistening atop a mound of gold coins like a banner planted on a mountain peak.
“For Nygglefstein!!!” he yells, charging sword-first as the würm rears back and--
Their battle-to-the-death is interrupted by two raps on Ser Mikael’s bedroom door.
“Mikael!” His father’s voice calls out. “Time for school!”
“Coming!” Ser Mikael replies.
He looks apologetically at the Grand Würm.
“Sorry,” he says. “I’ll slay you tonight, I promise!”
The würm belches out a small sad ball of fire. At least Mik thinks he does. It’s hard to tell since the würm’s just green words on his radiocomputer screen.
He quickly types in the shutdown code. Fort Agmar and the Grand Würm blip out of existence, and Mikael (also known as Ser Mikael Gareth Heidelstam, Champion of the Seven Isolas, Guardian of Nygglefstein, and the Rightful Wielder of the Luminous Lance) unplugs the console before rushing to the bathroom to get ready for school.
He shows up at the kitchen just as his father is setting down the pancakes on the table.
“Morning, cub!” Trant says as Mikael hops onto a chair. “Did you sleep well last night?”
“Mmhmmm!” Mikael takes the table napkin and ties it around his neck. His dad used to do this for him, but he’s a big boy now, so he can do it himself. He can do a lot of things by himself now. Like tie his shoelaces. And reach the jar of cookies on the kitchen counter. “I woke up early to slay the Grand Würm!”
Any other parent would have scolded Mikael, or at least frowned at him severely, for sacrificing his sleep to play a radiocomputer game. But Mikael’s dad isn’t like other parents. After all, Mikael’s pretty sure that none of his friends’ parents make them read essays on in-dus-tree-al psychology. Or com-part-ative literature.
“Really now?” Trant asks brightly as he slices his pancakes into four equal quadrants, then into tiny squares. “And what did this Grand Würm look like?”
“He was big! Really big!” Mikael crows, spreading his arms to illustrate the really big-ness of the Grand Würm. “It had black scales, red eyes, and...and it could breathe fire too! Like this!”
He takes a big gulp of air and unleashes a mighty air-breath attack on his defenseless pancakes. Trant manages to look genuinely impressed.
“Wow, that sounds really scary!” Trant pops a square of pancake into his mouth. He chews and swallows before speaking again. “Was it guarding any treasure?”
“Yep! May I have the syrup please? Thank you.” After drizzling an acceptable amount of syrup onto his traumatized pancakes, Mikael slices them into four slightly-less-than-equal quadrants, then into four-cornered shapes that look more or less like squares. He pops a piece into his mouth, chews, then swallows before speaking again. “It was guarding the Luminous Lance and lots and lots and lots of gold coins!”
“Ah! I see that the developers have taken a page straight out of ‘The Master of the Crags’,’” his father says in the tone of voice that Mikael has learned to associate with an incoming Educational Experience. “The trope of the greedy würm guarding its pile of treasure from intrepid explorers hails all the way back to the 8th century, when Huron the Elder wrote his masterpiece…”
Mikael nods and works through his pancakes. Every now and then, his father mentions a word that he recognizes, like “coins”, “battle”, “phenomenology,” and of course, “würm.” Mik makes sure to nod whenever he hears those so that his dad wouldn’t feel bad.
“Anyway,” Trant says, after a lengthy exposition on the origins of literary archetypes in medieval Suresne literature, “I’m sure that Grand Würm didn’t stand a chance against Ser Mikael Gareth Heidelstam, Champion of the Seven Isolas, Guardian of Nygglefstein, and the Rightful Wielder of the Luminous Lance!”
Mikael beams. If there’s one thing that his dad is really good at, it’s remembering really long phrases.
“I didn’t get to slay it, though,” he confesses, poking his last square of pancake. “Is it okay if I play a bit after school today? I promise to do my homework first!”
Trant studies him over the rim of his coffee cup. “Promises are special, Mikael,” he says solemnly. “We shouldn’t make them lightly. Even if it’s just about homework.”
Mikael nods. “I know! I’m a knight, so my word is bronze!”
“Gold,” his father gently says.
“Gold!” Mikael repeats. He puts his right hand over his lungs. “I promise to finish my homework before slaying the Grand Würm. Or I’m not the Champion of the Seven Isolas, Guardian of Nygglefstein, and the Rightful Wielder of the Luminous Lance!”
His father laughs, a sound that always reminds Mikael of warm, golden syrup on fluffy pancakes. “Alright. I’ll hold you to your word, Ser Mikael.”
They clean up the kitchen together. Then, after double-checking the contents of Mikael’s schoolbag and triple-checking the contents of Trant’s briefcase, the two of them hop into the car and drive to school.
...only to drive back minutes later to pick up Mikael’s wurm-themed lunchbox.
Mikael’s school is not like other schools.
For one, they don’t have any classes. They don’t have any teachers either, except for Miss Sylvie, who’s a learning facilitator, not a teacher. What they do have is a nice building with lots of books, educational toys, and most of all, lots and lots and lots of free time.
He used to go to a regular school until last year, when the Incident occurred. It had been a small thing, really--His Science teacher, Mr. Peregrine, had said that mammals who lived in cold climates were protected by an insulating layer of fat called “bubbler.” Which was obviously wrong. So Mikael raised his hand and corrected him.
Mr. Peregrine had gone very still.
“Excuse me?” he asked quietly.
Mikael hesitated. Everyone was looking at him, even Jimmy Dawson, who slept through most of their classes. But like his father always said, “Truth is truth, no matter how badly you advertise it.”
So Mikael mustered up his courage and said, “Blubber, sir. It’s blubber, not bubbler.”
Everyone looked at Mr. Peregrine.
“Thank you, Mr. Heidelstam.” Mr. Peregrine had this habit of calling everyone “Mister” or “Miss”, as if they were all forty-seven years old instead of seven. “But I think I know my Science, thank you very much.”
“I’m sure you do, sir,” Mikael said, displaying the good-natured loquaciousness that is the trademark of the Heidelstam lineage. “But it really is blubber. Not bubbler. It says so in ‘Zoology for Undergraduates’, second edition.”
His classmates had looked at him in awe. They’d never heard about zoology or undergraduates before.
They looked at Mr. Peregrine again, whose face looked as red as Marianne's pencil case.
Long story short, Mr. Peregrine called for an emergency parent-teacher meeting with Mikael’s father. The meeting lasted for a long time. Mikael remembers how long it lasted, because he and his Uncle Jean waited outside the meeting room. They played a lot of rock-paper-scissors and tic-tac-toe. Jean told him plenty of interesting stories about detectives and criminals. Then, after valiantly staying awake for the first hour, Mikael succumbed to his sadness and anxiety and fell asleep on Jean’s lap.
When he woke up, Jean was carrying him back to their car. His father was walking with them, and he looked very tired.
Mikael stopped going to that school the following week.
“Good morning, Mikael!” Ms. Sylvie says as Mikael walks into the school lobby by himself. “How are you doing today?”
“Morning, Ms. Sylvie!” Mikael likes Ms. Sylvie. She’s really nice, and always comes up with interesting things for them to do, like pinball tournaments and mixing mocktails. She never got mad at them too, not even when Luke and Leo flushed down their coloring pages down the toilet and ate all their crayons. “I almost slayed a würm today!”
Ms. Sylvie gasped. “Really? You must be really tired then.”
Mikael shakes his head. “Nuh-uh! I slept for eight hours first so I could wake up early to slay it. It’s really, really hard to slay a würm when you’re sleep-depraved."
“You mean ‘sleep-deprived,’” Ms. Sylvie says, smiling. She takes his lunchbox, places it on the Snacks Table, then claps her hands. “So! What are you hoping to learn today?”
With great excitement, Mikael opens his backpack and pulls out a large, folded piece of paper. “My mom gave me this map of the world!” he says, brandishing said map as if it held the secrets to the universe. “I wanna copy it, then color it, then put animals on it, then find where my house is, then I’m gonna--”
As Mikael prattles on about his personal World Geography curriculum, Sylvie relaxes. Kids like Mikael made her job so much easier. Too bad there was only one of him.
This school used to be a cafeteria, before the Incident happened. Afterwards, the former manager, Lawrence Garte, decided that life was too short to keep serving beer to ungrateful bastards who would just riddle the place with bullets anyway, so he decided to convert the building--jukebox, pinball machines, pre-revolutionary tilework and all--into a place where the new generation could learn how to live in peace and harmony with each other, regardless of their socio-economic classes.
And so the Whirling-in-Ragamuffins was born.
Now, Garte knew that there were Procedures you needed to follow when you set up a school. He also knew that no one would bother to check if he skipped most of those Procedures. Still, he was nothing but a prudent man, so he went ahead and checked out three books on Educational Philosophy from the Jamrock Public Library.
He hit jackpot on the third book.
Two weeks later, pamphlets started popping up in the places where pamphlets usually popped up. It was a very well-designed pamphlet, and it spoke about a new educational center situated in the cozy, seaside district of Martinaise where young minds will be allowed to flourish by nurturing their natural capacities for wonder, curiosity, and innovation, which traditional schools--those oppressive, soul-sucking slave factories--systematically stifle with outdated curricula, incorrect textbooks, and close-minded teachers.
There will be an Open House on Tuesday, from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Snacks will be served.
One of these pamphlets ended up, providentially, on the desk of one Mr. Trant Wentworth Heidelstam. He picked it up, read it, then immediately went to file a leave of absence for Tuesday.
And the rest was history.
"--then I'll make my own map and, and my own animals, and put my house in my own isola, and--and---"
...Or in Mikael's case, geography and zoology.
"That sounds great, Mik!" Sylvie says with the enthusiasm and the thinly veiled desperation of a woman who agreed to host a party, only to find the entire neighborhood at her front door. She gently shepherds Mikael towards the playroom, which used to be the Débardeurs' Union Booth, but now serves as the headquarters of an even more menacing posse. "Lily and her brothers are already in the playroom. Let me know if you need anything, okay?"
“Alright!” Mikael waves at her before pushing the playroom doors open. He really loves his new school. Back in his old school, he had to do the same thing his classmates were doing, even though he already knew how to do them. He would always finish tasks before everyone else, and when he tried talking to his classmates about in-dus-tree-al psychology and com-part-ative literature, they just laughed at him or picked their noses.
Cheered by his newfound intellectual freedom, Mikael skips over to his schoolmates, Lily, Luke, and Leo, who are silently congregated around fallen object on the floor...
“Hi, guys!” he says. “What are you looking at?”
Then he sees Lamby.
...Or rather, what’s left of Lamby.
Everyone in school knows Lamby. He’s Lily’s stuffed lamb toy, and also the most well-behaved student in the entire Whirling. He and Lily are inseparable—They eat together, play together, nap together, and even go to the Little Girls’ Room together. He’s nice, soft, and smells a little bit like drool. Mikael knows this because Lily let him hug Lamby on his first day here, which made Mikael feel all warm and fuzzy inside.
Someone's ripped Lamby’s head off. It now stares up at the four of them with its one remaining button-eye, while his body, surrounded by tufts of stuffing, lies forlornly by Leo’s feet.
Mikael stares at this grisly scene, horrified. Someone sniffs. He looks up and sees Lily, her face streaked with tears, nose runny with snot, biting her lip to stifle her sobs. He looks at Luke and Leo. They look like they’re about to cry too.
Mikael’s lip starts to tremble. His vision turns blurry, but he shakes his head and snaps out of it.
“What happened?” he asks, voice trembing. “Who hurt Lamby?!”
Luke sniffs and wipes his nose on his sleeve. Mikael knows it’s Luke because of the little mole on his right nostril.
“Dunno who did it,” he mutters. “But when we get ‘im, we’re gonna punch ‘im real hard.”
“Yeah,” Leo chimes in. “No one makes Lily cry ‘cept us.”
Lily says nothing. Big fat teardrops roll down her cheeks, but she doesn’t let out a single sob. This baffles Mikael even more than seeing Lamby’s headless corpse. If he’d been Lily, he would have been bawling his eyes out and running to Ms. Sylvie...
“I’ll go get Ms. Sylvie!” Mikael says. “She’ll know what to do!”
Luke and Leo quickly block his way. “No!” they say in unison.
“We can’t let Ms. Sylvie know!” Luke whispers. “She’ll think we dunnit!”
"She'll tell our Mom," Leo says, his eyes wide with fear. "Then our Mom won't let us play outside for...for...forever!"
The three of them briefly contemplate the dreadful thought of playing indoors for eternity. They all shudder.
Meanwhile, Lily walks over to Lamby's body, crouches down, and gently cradles it to her chest.
"I--I'm (hiccup) sorry, Lamby..." she murmurs through her tears. "I didn't mean to...(hiccup) leave you..."
"Lily went out to get somethin' for their stupid tea party," Leo whispers to Mikael, pointing to the little table where a plastic tea set had been lovingly set for two. "Luke and I were playing upstairs."
"We came down 'cuz we were hungry," Luke says without missing a beat. "But Ms. Sylvie said it wasn't snacktime yet, so we went here."
"Lily was crying already, and Lamby was..." Leo trails off. He runs a thumb across his throat slowly while making a "srrrrrrrk" sound.
Mikael shivers. He really, really, really wants to tell Ms. Sylvie about this. Or call his dad. Or his mom. Or Uncle Jean...
He pauses.
Uncle Jean...
He gasps.
Uncle Jean!
"Lamby's been murdered!" Mikael exclaims. "We gotta find out who did it!"
Lily, Leo, and Luke stare at him in confusion.
"Mudrer?" Leo tilts his head. "Whassat?"
"Murder," Mikael repeats. "It's when someone kills someone else."
The siblings take a moment to process this new vocabulary word.
"Our Mom kills fish all the time. Does that mean she mur...murdred them?" Luke asks hopefully.
"No, you can't murder animals. You can only murder people," Mikael says with complete certainty.
Leo frowns. "But Lamby's an animal--"
"No, he isn't!" Lily exclaims, jumping to her feet. "Lamby's my best friend! And someone mudrered him!"
"Murdered," Mikael says with the same infinite patience as his father.
"Murdered!" Lily crows happily, Lamby's decapitated body still dangling from her arms.
"How we gonna find out who did it?" Luke asks. "Are we gonna call the po-leees?"
Mikael shakes his head. "No. We're going to do something better," he says. "We're gonna be detectives!"
"Oooooooooo," Lily and her brothers say in a choir of awed voices.
"My Uncle Jean's a detective," Mikael says, his little chest puffed with pride. "He solves murders all the time! He's told me lots of stories about them!"
Luke raises his hand.
"So...deeee-teck-tives catch murder-people?"
"Murderers," Mikael says. "Yeah, they do!"
"But we're just kids," Leo points out. His siblings nod to support the logic of his statement. "We're no dee-teck-tives. Only grown-ups can be dee-teck-tives."
"How do you know that?" Mikael asks. "You just found out what detectives are right now."
Leo opens his mouth, closes it again, then scrunches his eyebrows. Why does thinking have to be so hard?!
"Okay," he grudgingly concedes. "I'm in."
"Me too!" Luke says.
"Me three!" Lily chirps, her grief over her murdered stuffed toy temporarily overpowered by her excitement to play the Detective Game.
"Alright!" Mikael says, giddy with excitement. This is way better than drawing some stupid map of the world! "We'll have to investigate real quietly so that Ms. Sylvie doesn't find out."
Everyone nods. They can be quiet. They don't do it very often, but they can do it, when push comes to shove.
"So what do we do first, Mik?" Lily asks.
"Yeah, you're the only one who knows how to dee-teck, so you're gonna have to tell us what to do," Leo says.
Mikael thinks about it. His Uncle Jean's told him lots of stories, but the bits that Mikael remembers best were the ones that had lots of running and shooting. But he does remember a paper that his Dad made him read. A paper on fo-ren-sick psychology...
"Okay," he nods firmly. "This is what we're gonna do."