Eloise finally spoke—actual English, though it came out rusty, like a drawer that hadn’t been opened in years. “You’re the consultant,” she said to Carter. “Tell them I’m leaving. This place is for kids who need to learn to quack. I was born quacking.”

Wetherby clutched Carter’s arm. “She’s not supposed to be able to do that for another four years. Do you understand? She’s a duckquackprodigy . And she knows it.”

He pointed. “What’s that one?”

“That,” Wetherby whispered, “is the Subsonic Mating Resonance of the Canvasback . It’s not even in the standard curriculum until Year 9. It doesn’t convey information. It conveys presence . A canvasback drake emits that frequency, and the entire pond ecosystem reorients around him. Fish swim in calmer lines. Reeds grow straighter. Time dilates.”

Wetherby’s eyes glistened. “That was Penelope. Class of ‘21. She’s at MIT now, designing resonant frequency dampeners for naval sonar. She says every breakthrough came from the staccato burst —the three-quack warning pattern.”

Eloise smiled—a sharp, wild thing. Then she quacked once, softly, a note of such profound and amused farewell that the reeds along the pond bowed in her direction.

Carter followed him past a crumbling Georgian building. In the back, instead of a football field, there was a sprawling, meticulously engineered wetlands. And in that wetlands, forty-seven children in navy blazers stood knee-deep in cold water, their mouths pursed, their throats bobbing.