Thrones Academy

The cemetery, with its rows on rows (and rows on rows) of identical grey-stone markers, was tucked back behind Thrones. Raphael could never decide if that was because Thrones was hiding the cemetery—their shame; look at all the students who hadn't been worthy of being born twice—or if the cemetery was behind the school because death was what the school was built on.

A brisk breeze blew, tugging at his hair and his sleeves and the armful of flowers he carried. His feet left indents in the grass. No other sign of him existed to the naked eye. The cemetery's gate, which was large and wrought-iron, gothic-romance novel inspired (it had to be), opened wide enough for a boy (closer to a man these days) to slip through and then closed.

Raphael spat out the sprig of heliotrope he'd held in his mouth. Suddenly, inside the cemetery, had anyone been looking, they would have seen a boy appear as if out of thin air.

The cemetery was peaceful.

That was a lie, of course.

"Hello, my darlings," he murmured, slipping through the rows unerringly. They never answered back. That happy power was not his but that was all right as Raphael could do enough talking for all of them. He walked down a row of graves where the date of death was the same year, some five years ago, and laid a single flower on each.

"Abby," Raphael said, for she had detested that name and gone by her middle one, "your cat has gone missing again. I'm sure he will come back; he always does and yes, I'll feed him."

He settled himself down on the grave; his shoulders pressed against the letters of her name (Abigail June Walters) and Raphael looked up at the gathering clouds. "I hate you," he told her conversationally. "I hate all of you, really, but you especially. I think even your cat hates you, for leaving him with me. Stretched out underground / a boy and a girl / saying nothing, never kissing / giving silence for silence.*"

Overhead a bell rang, tolling deep and clear into the growing darkness. The dinner bell.

"The new children are here," he told her, though of course, she already knew. "Here to die—though they don't know that. More for the eternal garden. How many will you let past their gates this year?"

He lapsed into silence. Hours later, he added:

"You're the lucky ones," he told her, told all of them. "Death is better, a milder fate than tyranny.**" Raphael pressed one finger to his lips. "But tell no one that. They would not believe it of me."

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[*is from Los Novios by Octavio Paz

**from Agamemnon by Aeschylus]