Penny was not at breakfast.

Or in lessons.

Or at dinner.

Instead of returning to her sleeping quarters with the rest of the students, Credence slipped away and wandered the halls, trying to remember the way back to the Headmaster's office.

Terrified of being caught by one of the domestics, who prowled the school like hunting owls, she was relieved when she found herself in front of the tall door with a carving of the towns on its face. Just as she raised her fist to knock, a gentle swishing sound caught her attention, and she turned to find a lone domestic several feet away, sweeping dust around the floor with a worn broom.

When they locked eyes, the old woman's face scrunched in disdain and she pulled the broom under her arm. She took a step forward, but Credence answered her threat by knocking loudly on the door. 

The domestic halted in her pursuit.

"Lose anymore shirts?" Credence questioned in a mocking tone.

"Enter," the Headmaster called behind the door. 

Credence flashed a triumphant smile before disappearing into the room. She wondered if the domestic knew her purpose, and if she scurried away to tell her foul sisters.

Not that it matters, Credence thought smugly.

"Credence," the Headmaster greeted in surprise.

He was sitting behind his opulent desk just like their last visit, but the setting atop it was vastly different. In place of papers and quills laid a generous feast.

The Headmaster's dinner. She had interrupted it.

The intrusion embarrassed Credence, but the Headmaster gave a warm smile and beckoned her  to approach.

"Please, come sit."

Encouraged by his pleasant greeting, Credence took her seat in the chair before the desk.

She could not keep her eyes from wandering over the food. The offerings of the school were not meager, but they paled in comparison to the mountains of decadence here. Loaves of bread, bowls of pudding, saucers of butter, and brass pitchers filled to the lip formed a winding pathway between generous servings of meat and colorful vegetables.

"Looks delicious, doesn't it," the Headmaster mused, noting the covetous stare of the girl before him.

"Smells it, too," Credence said without thinking.

The Headmaster nodded sympathetically and, to Credence's delighted surprise, plucked an empty plate from the end of the desk and offered it to her.

"If you're hungry, eat."

When his generosity was returned with an astonished look he chuckled and added, "There's more than enough for me here, Credence. Go on."

Not needing to be asked again, she began filling her plate with a little bit of everything from the spread.

"Perks of being headmaster," he said, watching his guest with amused interest.

Credence bit into a buttered roll and her eyes closed in pleasure.

"You deserve it," she said honestly.

"It's more than enough for me, yet far too little to feed the entire school. It's the only reason we don't feed everyone as generously as this. There's just not enough to go around, you see, and to treat one child above another would only create hostility and jealousy." He poured himself a mug of water before adding, "Let's keep it our little secret, shall we?"

Credence nodded and shoved a forkful of greens into her mouth, sighing in delight at their wonderful flavor.

"But you didn't come here to share my meal," the Headmaster continued, "so may I ask why I have the pleasure of your company tonight?"

Distracted by the food, she'd almost forgotten her reason for appearing at his door.

"Something is troubling me, Headmaster."

"Something we spoke about previously?" 

"I think something is wrong and—"

"If you look for evil—"

"Evil is all I will find, yes. I understand that. And I promise I've been trying really hard not to look for it."

"But...?"

"Penny...the fit she had...I can't help but notice a similarity to Adam."

"And you still think it's the medicine? Do you believe I forced her to drink a bucket of it?"

"Oh no, Headmaster! I don't think ill of you at all."

Quite the opposite, Credence thought as her gaze fell to the opened collar that exposed his throat.

His tongue darted out and ran across his lips, a gesture made in deep thought. 

Credence swallowed before continuing, "But Penny acted in that...strange way after she found something in her food."

"You think what she found in her breakfast caused her cough?"

"I think there's something notable about two people behaving like wild animals."

"Wild animals? Penny had what we call an 'attack of breathing'. Some children suffer from maladies of the lungs, and cannot help it if their body revolts against them."

"But before that—she was eating her hair!"

The look the Headmaster gave her almost made Credence regret saying it. 

"I saw her doing it during class. She took it straight from her head and put it in her mouth."

"Why were you focused on Penny and not your lessons?"

"I was trying to focus, but Penny distracted me." She paused before adding, "It scared me, Headmaster."

"You're certain she was chewing her hair?"

"Yes."

"And you realize that many children do this?"

Credence blinked. "No."

"It's a comfort to them, though normally seen in much younger ages. Some suck their thumb. It makes them feel safe, and it's quite common. My guess is Penny misses her family, another common theme at school, and chews her hair to soothe herself."

"She wasn't chewing, she was eating."

"All the same, it's a safeguard from fear. We allow such acts to go unnoticed because they ease a troubled mind and stop with age. It makes perfect sense, doesn't it? If Penny has weak lungs and a compulsion to swallow hair, it's easily predictable that at some point the combination would trigger an attack of breathing."

"It can't be good for her."

"It won't kill her."

"I've never seen Penny do it before."

"How often have you thought to study her?"

Credence grimaced. "There's something I want to ask you, but I'm afraid you'll get upset."

"Whatever it is, Credence, I sense you won't rest until you speak it. Go on, let me put your mind at ease."

She raised her hand to grab another buttered roll but stopped herself and put her hand back in her lap.

"The domestics," she began carefully, "do they...like the students?"

"Now you think the domestics are up to no good?"

The Headmaster shook his head, and Credence was shamed by his obvious disappointment.

"What must I do," he said, exasperated, "to make you understand that the school means you no harm?"

"I only wanted—"

"You've taken suspicion away from me and placed it on those poor women who work hard to keep you in comfort."

"I thought—"

"What? That they are poisoning your food? That they want to hurt children?" He paused. "Oh, Credence...you're not the first to think so low of them, though I do wish you children wouldn't hate them so. You all think that because they are quiet, or because they do not smile, they wish you ill. What you don't see is how they sew up torn clothing so that you're never dressed in rags. How they sweat to serve enough food to feed you all. How they wash your bedsheets and keep time to the exact second to make sure your day is spent wisely. They love you, Credence, and their love is an extension of my own. No, they do not possess beautiful faces, but they have hearts as big as the kindest mother, and see you all as their own."

He sat back and ran a hand through his hair.

"And when children are sick, those same domestics nurse them back to health in the infirmary. Even now they tend to Penny, making sure she is comfortable and calm. They sit by her side constantly, taking turns to make sure someone is always watching her. How can you think so horribly of them? It hurts my heart to hear it."

Credence lowered her gaze to the rug beneath her feet. "I'm sorry. I don't want to hurt you."

"Why must you insist on hating all of us? Hating the school? Would you rather be out in the woods, fighting for your next meal? Sleeping on the ground?"

Sometimes, Credence thought but kept it to herself.

"No, Headmaster."

"Then why do you resist our help?"

Credence thought about it.

"My pa," she whispered. "He taught me to hate the towns."

"Your pa?"

"He always said there was nothing but evil here. That's why we had to live in the woods."

"Your pa is not here," he answered gently.

Credence couldn't reply. Sorrow hit her with great force, bringing tears that did not quite reach her eyes, but caught painfully in her nose.

"Pa is dead," she whimpered. "And Ma. And Josiah."

She bit her cheek and scrunched her face to fight the oncoming sob. 

"I don't even have Ma's book anymore. I don't have anything to remember them..."

She sniffed, and when she spoke again, tears flowed with her words.

"It doesn't matter, they lied to me. Both of them."

She touched her arm, squeezing the spot where her skin symbol sat beneath her sleeve.

"They lied about this, too."

"About what, Credence?"

She pulled up her sleeve to reveal her skin symbol.

"I suppose I do have something to remember them," she said bitterly.

The Headmaster's expression fell into something akin to pity. He rose from his seat and moved to Credence, taking a knee before her.

"I saw that on you when Mistress Cinder introduced us. May I look at it closely?"

Credence nodded, raising her arm for his inspection.

"Ma put this horrible symbol in my skin and she—she promised it would protect me!"

He took her arm gently in his hands.

"Darkwood Marc," the Headmaster said without any fear or hate or judgment.

"I think he was my pa, but how will I ever know?"

Tears washed Credence's lips. She closed her eyes, not wanting to see the cursed symbol branded into her forever.

At last, the Headmaster gave a long sigh and released her arm.

"You poor thing, you don't understand that if Darkwood Marc was your father, how lucky you are that he is dead."

Her eyes fluttered open, and she found the Headmaster staring at her with great  remorse.

"What do you mean, please, tell me why."

"He was a wicked man."

"No, he wasn't—"

"Perhaps not to you. Perhaps not yet." The Headmaster took her hands in his, and his stare made her both uncomfortable and elated.

"Darkwood Marc, or Marc o' the Darkwood as some called him, was a nasty keeper. Do you know what a keeper is?"

"Mistress Cinder is one."

"Yes. A keeper is like...a parent of sorts. A parent to angels. You remember we began to discuss what an angel is, don't you?"

"You said it was an honor to be one. They dress very fancy."

"They do. And people, sometimes called 'patrons' or 'strangers', seek out the company of angels."

"Why?"

"Because the company of an angel is unlike anything else. Because angels make people happy."

"How do they make people happy?"

He reached up to tuck a stray hair behind her ear.

"They talk to them. Sometimes they touch them as I'm touching you now."

His thumb traced her bottom lip, gliding over her skin like a smooth stone across a frozen pond. When he spoke again his voice was low and intimate.

"Does my touch comfort you, Credence?"

It did and it didn't.

"Y-yes."

"That is what an angel does. Relaxes a troubled mind and body. And a keeper makes sure angels are safe."

"Safe from what?"

"From people."

"You said angels were loved by people."

"They are, but an angel's sway can be dangerous. It can drive people to mania. Sometimes people become covetous. Sometimes people become violent. A keeper ensures that never happens, by housing angels and caring for them. But that, as you can imagine, costs a great deal of coin. So, an exchange is demanded, and anyone who wishes for the company of an angel must pay the keeper first. To ensure patrons know whom to pay, the keeper places markings on their angels.

There was a woeful time, ages before you were born, when angels didn't have the protection of keepers. They didn't have fancy dresses or comfortable homes. Instead, they stood on the streets, wandering up and down to find patrons. They were called 'walkers' then, though the name is modernly used only by the lower classes, or as an insult. It was a hard time for walkers, and no one was held accountable if one was harmed. Sometimes they went days without eating, and some survived entirely on the scraps of pitying townsfolk. Many didn't. But the period of enlightenment came and walkers became angels. A few concerned caregivers became keepers, and the towns became a better place."

"And...Darkwood Marc was one of them?"

The Headmaster's face darkened.

"He was the worst of them. He preyed upon poorer families, purposefully seeking out those who could not be properly fed and comforted. Easy targets for his awful deeds. He made them angels under the guise of wanting to care for them—but he never trained them or welcomed patrons to pay for their company. Instead, his angels began to disappear. He stole them away, even children. He took them from the streets. At the peak of his mischief, he even stole students from this very school.

What happened to those poor angels, no one can say. He took them into the woods, and no one who had been brought under the care of Darkwood Marc was ever seen again. We had to assume the worst. For years the towns tried to catch him, and a few times we were almost successful, but Darkwood Marc always managed to slip away. He was a shadow, slithering in secret to snatch his victims and drag them to their doom."

It was a lie. It had to be.

Pa was not a monster, not until the very end when a demon took over his body.

"That's not my pa," Credence said. "We lived alone. I never saw anyone else. Pa was a good man."

He wasn't capable of stealing people.

But what did she really know of him? Of his life outside of the woods, and his secret trips to the towns? Sometimes he came back with bruises. The last time he'd returned with his arm in a sling.

"That marking on your arm is Darkwood Marc's," the Headmaster said bluntly. "For a time it was believed to be a curse to have it. Those who bore it were ignored, for no one wished to engage with such a vile keeper. No one wanted to bring bad luck upon themselves."

"Ma said it would keep people from the towns away," Credence whispered to herself. "A protection spell."

"Not a spell, Credence. A threat. A threat against anyone foolish enough to lay hands on Darkwood's property."

Credence pulled her sleeve over the skin symbol.

The Headmaster clucked his tongue. "I didn't know Darkwood Marc took a wife. I don't suspect anyone ever believed someone could willingly love such a brute. Maybe he forced it—"

"No," Credence seethed. "My parents loved each other very much."

"And to have a child! I regret you had to learn about him like this."

"Everyone says he's dead. How did he die?"

Credence knew the truth, for she had seen it happen, but she wanted to hear what the towns believed. The Headmaster raised an eyebrow, as if he suspected she already knew the answer.

"No one knows," he said. "No one knows that he's even dead, but he's not been seen in, oh, when was it? When he fell from the gate during an escape. He'd come to steal more victims, and even got as far as the courtyard of this school—but we were ready for him. We didn't catch him, but he suffered an injury on his way out and hasn't been spotted since. That was...one, no, two, years ago? We cling to the hope that the woods finally got him."

He looked at her with a curious expression.

"Now that I look at you, Credence...you do resemble him in some ways. Not your eyes, but your chin and nose..."

The Headmaster stood and moved to his desk. He opened a drawer and searched through various items before producing a weathered parchment.

"Here," the Headmaster said, offering it to Credence. "This was his call for arrest. They used to clutter every inch of the towns, but after a time they were taken down. I saved one as a curiosity. Darkwood's portrait is drawn on it."

Credence didn't want to look at it, but couldn't stop her hands from reaching and taking the page.

Traced in charcoal was a man from his shoulders up, scowling at her. She touched his face, tracing her fingers over his lips and nose. It felt like ages had passed since she last saw Pa's face, and she wasn't certain the likeness was exact—but it could not be mistaken for anyone else.

The man who raised her, the gentle mountain whose smile could turn away the clouds...

Was a monster.

A deep, complex shame filled her.

"Pa said the towns..." She grasped for a sliver of argument. "He said it was bad place."

"Because of him."

Credence wept. She could no more stop the tears from falling than she could change her bloodline, or the terrible crimes committed by a parent who promised to love and protect her. The Headmaster gathered her into his arms, embracing her in an uncharacteristic show of affection. He said nothing, but allowed her to sob into his chest, and ran his fingers through her hair in a soothing gesture.

"It's all right now," he whispered. "You no longer need to worry. Whatever ill befell you in the woods, whatever evil came from those who bore you, it's behind you now. You're safe with me."

His words did little to comfort the confusion and terror and anger within her. She wanted more than anything to prove the Headmaster wrong. To prove that Pa was a kind man, a loving, patient father.

Had Ma known about this side of him?

How else would she have known to brand her children with the mark of a villain?

Her skin symbol was a curse, Credence decided. She would never be able to part with the reminder of her parents, the sinister truth of who they were and the lies they'd filled her childhood with.

But the revelation broke the dam to a thousand horrid questions.

What use did Pa have for angels—or other children?

Where did they go once he took them into the woods?

Did Pa...No, he couldn't...

Did Pa kill them?

When she could no longer bear to listen to her thoughts, Credence pushed her face into the Headmaster's robe, until her nose and cheeks began to hurt, and she wailed into his chest. He held her tightly, allowing sorrow and rage to pass through her without interruption.

Someone screamed.

A muffled voice carried from somewhere near the Headmaster's room. Credence was almost convinced it had been an echo of her own voice until a second scream followed.

She pushed away from the Headmaster.

"What was that?"

"What was what?"

The answer came from a third scream. It sounded like someone in pain.

"Ah, that," the Headmaster said, furrowing his brow.

Another scream followed. This time it had definitely come from beneath the floor.

Credence looked at the Headmaster cautiously, but the man gave no indication that the noise was something to be worried about.

"Nightmares," he explained. "Some students are plagued by them. I'm afraid I've grown used to hearing a nightly cry or two, to the point where I almost don't recognize them anymore. Forgive me for not understanding how upsetting they might be to unaccustomed ears."

"It sounded like a man's voice."

"Some of the older students are almost men, aren't they?"

"I suppose—"

A long scream cut her off. She waited for it to die before asking, "He's a little grown to be having nightmares, isn't he?"

"Are nightmares only had by a certain age? Do grown ups have no worries?

"They do, Headmaster. I just thought—"

"Such things vanished when you grew up?"

She nodded as another shriek hit their ears. "Why does it sound like he's under the floor?"

"Sleeping quarters on the lower level of the school. You've never seen that area, I suspect. But of course, you've never needed to."

The Headmaster paused for another scream, and when silence replied, he nodded.

"Peaceful dreams are restored," he said. "And now, I think it's time you find them, too. That is, if you think you're ready?"

"Yes, Headmaster. Thank you."

He turned back to his desk, where the remains of his dinner still sat, now cold and only half-eaten. From another drawer he produced a vial of dark sap.

"Something to help you sleep," he said, offering it to Credence.

She wiped her face with a napkin from the desk, then stood and reached to take the vial of medicine. Just as her fingers touched the glass, the Headmaster pulled it away.

"No more suspicions about the school," he commanded.

"Not one, Headmaster."

"I don't anticipate a third meeting, Credence," he said sternly.

He offered the vial once more and Credence took it. The sweet taste helped to ease her nerves. When she handed the empty glass back to him, the Headmaster took her hand.

"I am sorry for what you learned tonight. I hope you can take the trust you placed in your parents and place it in me instead."

He pulled her gently forward and bent to press a kiss on the top of her head. Credence blushed under such attention, though it felt like a parent's affection.

"Off to bed," he instructed, "and forget the troubles of your past. It's time to look towards the brightness of your future."