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“ROBINS said he found me unconscious and carried me to Unicorn Dorm in the rain. I asked him about the monster with wings, but he never saw it. No one knows what it was. I decided to look into it myself.” Charles retrieved a notebook from his bookshelf. Inside were all his findings relating to the monster. “I learned something surprising from my research. Other students had been rescued by the same creature, too.”
“So the monster saves students?”
Suddenly, I didn’t know what to believe. Monsters were supposed to attack humans.
“I was surprised, too. Some students slipped on the staircase only to be yanked up by the collar, while others saw the monster fling falling rocks from the castle away from them. Everyone described it as a beast that was half lion on the bottom, half eagle on the top. I took my memory and the testimony I got from everyone, compared it to books, and arrived at the demon known as ‘Gryphon.’”
He flipped to a new page, revealing a drawing of the exact monster I’d seen. The only difference was that one of its wings wasn’t injured.
“Is this monster the demon?” I asked.
“That’s what they say. Gryphon was the one the island’s original owner formed a contract with to build the castle in a single night. It must have been living here on the island even after the lord of the castle died.”
The legend of the monster and the demon lurking on the island had merged into one. I wondered how Gryphon felt all this time, lurking in the castle after the lord it was in a contract with passed away. If it was lonely, perhaps the castle’s transformation into a boarding school, bringing so many boys to the once empty land, made it happy.
That would be why it secretly rescued the students in peril.
Then why did it attack us?
We were students of Ark School, too. But Gryphon still attacked us that night. If we provoked it by harming the teachers, then the demon must have had some sort of deep relation to the immortals.
Was it friend or foe?
I didn’t know enough to reach that answer just yet.
“Do you think Gryphon is a good demon, Charles?”
“I think so if such a thing exists. I’ve been studying demons to find Gryphon before I graduate and thank it. That’s just my own project, though, and I haven’t found any leads yet.”
“Maybe you could lure it out if you knew what it liked to eat,” I suggested.
I wondered if luring it out with meat still on the bone would work. We could even place it on the magic circle we learned about in demon studies.
“They say it likes to have fun. Lots of people see it every year on Halloween.”
Halloween was a holiday based on the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain. It was a ceremony to celebrate the autumn harvest and banish evil spirits, but it had mostly become obsolete thanks to a different holiday being established at the start of November in Great Britain.
“It’s still celebrated on this island. The students make their own costumes to protect themselves from spirits. There’s even a snap apple contest between dorms.” Charles invited me to participate, calling it a rare opportunity. “I was thinking of asking the Tweedles to compete for Lion Dorm. Would you join them, Miss Alice?”
“But I’m not as fast on my feet as men…”
“It’s fine if you don’t win. You just need to get everyone fired up. Gryphon might appear if it hears a lot of cheering.”
It would be worth it if we lured out Gryphon. It was the complete opposite strategy of a sneak attack in the middle of the night. However, this sort of plan gave us a shot at victory, too.
I don’t know if Gryphon is the trap-laying demon yet, but I can’t let this opportunity go to waste.
“I’d be glad to participate in that case. I’ll talk to Dum and Dee, too.”
“Please do. Have whatever costume you want ready for next week’s party.”
After that, I visited the twins’ room and asked them if they wanted to join the snap apple contest. I explained that the monster who chased us was a demon called Gryphon, that it rescued students of Ark School, and was said to appear for fun events.
“Charles said the dorms compete against each other on Halloween night and wants the three of us to represent Lion Dorm. If the competition gets the crowd going, we might be able to catch Gryphon, get it to tell us if it’s the demon who laid the traps, and make it undo the spell.”
The twins, lying on their bed, stopped eating candy to ask me questions.
“How many apples?”
“Probably one for each person.”
“What shape are they?”
“Probably exactly like how they grow on trees.”
They looked at each other, engaged in a quick emergency conference, and then told me they’d participate if they could make an apple pie afterward. The apples would taste better to them when baked with sugar.
“So it’s decided. I wonder who will compete for Unicorn Dorm.”
The twins perked their heads up.
“What about Jack and Dark?”
“What about Jack and Dark?”
“I doubt it. Robins will decide who competes for their dorm, and lots of his students seem better at sports than those two.”
Dum and Dee got down from the bed and opened a nearby trunk. They rummaged through it, removing a massive heap of colorfully wrapped chocolates.
“Where did all those sweets come from?” I asked.
“From students being bullied by upperclassmen.”
“We fought off the bullies and got these as rewards.”
Candy wrappers were always on the floor whenever I came into their room. I’d assumed the sweets had been stashed away in one of the trunks from home, but it seemed they were from rescuing their fellow students.
They handed me as much candy as their hands could carry.
“Give these to Robins.”
“Tell him to let Jack and Dark play.”
“You want to bribe him?” I asked.
They nodded, actually looking serious about it…!
“You really want to compete against them, don’t you? Very well. I don’t mind resorting to wickedness for the two of you!”
I stuffed the candy in my pouch and headed to Unicorn Dorm.
Robins was walking across the plaza with a folded cloth and pieces of lumber. He had a metal toolbox hanging from his arm. It looked like too much for him to carry on his own.
“Let me help you, Robins,” I offered.
“Thanks! Headmaster asked me to help with some repairs.”
He handed me the toolbox and told me to come with him to the fourth floor once we were inside the castle. I tensed myself when I realized we were headed to the same floor where we encountered Gryphon.
“What’s that scary look for?” he asked.
“I was just wondering what we were going to repair…”
“It’s the door to the dance room. Headmaster said he’s too sick to get out of bed right now. I wonder if there’s going to be another death.” Robins’ words echoed off the walls of the staircase.
“Do a lot of people here pass away?” I asked.
“The people who work here are all elderly, after all. The young people all want to leave an island like this, and it’s not like anyone comes back after they’ve graduated. The population can’t really do anything other than decline.”
“I suppose there’s no work here that isn’t part of the school.”
It was only natural that the students would never return to a place closed off from the rest of the world, with nothing amusing around.
Perhaps that’s why the teachers have been made immortal.
I still wasn’t sure if our trap-laying demon was Gryphon or something else altogether. It was possible that the headmaster himself was the demon controlling Gryphon, but it didn’t make sense that they would ignore me now that they’d seen my face.
The toolbox was surprisingly heavy. I felt my arms being weighed down with each floor we reached. It seemed like Robins should be struggling with all that lumber, but he hadn’t broken a sweat.
Of course, Dum and Dee had shown me that boys seemed to have unlimited stamina, but still…
He must have superhuman strength.
Once we reached the fourth floor, I followed Robins down the hall and into the dance room. The door, still wide open, had holes clawed right through it.
“These are…”
The claw marks had come from Gryphon. That door could have been me that night if I never found a place to hide.
As I shivered, Robins set the lumber down on the ground.
“We won’t be able to get it back to normal. We’ll have to cover the broken parts with cloth and nail wood around them. There’s a stepladder over there.” He brought it over, hopped up, and began to cover the claw marks with fabric. “Lion claws sure do leave big marks. I’ll have to warn Charles about this, so he stops trying to find Gryphon.”
Robins seemed to know that Gryphon had saved Charles, and Charles was trying to find and thank him.
“…Speaking of lions, the Tweedles and I are going to be Lion Dorm’s representatives in the snap apple contest,” I said. “If you haven’t picked competitors from your dorm yet, would you mind picking Jack and Dark as candidates?”
“Sure, I’ll ask them.”
He smiled.
It seemed I wouldn’t need to utilize my pouch full of chocolates.
I stayed with Robins until the repairs were finished and reported all this to Dum and Dee when I returned to the dorm.
The boys were extremely pleased. They instantly wanted to start strategizing. The competition was a week away. We also needed to work on our costumes before the Halloween party.
I sighed, the difficulties of student life weighing heavily on me.