Miss Ellicott's School for the Magically Minded Read online

  The man beckoned again.

  Chantel hesitated. He must have something to tell her. But would she be able to pass through Seven Buttons?

  She stepped over the bowl of mist, and onto the path which she now saw ended at her spell. She felt a faint rippling as she passed through Dimswitch. The air smelled of early spring. She walked until she reached the tree.

  By this time the man in the tree was eating an apple. He had short brown hair and a narrow, brown, rather graceful face. He wore useful-looking leather boots, which he swung nonchalantly as he watched Chantel approach.

  Around the base of the tree was curled a large golden lizard, about the size of a donkey. It was asleep, and snoring, wings folded across its back.

  “Is that a dragon?” Chantel blurted, when she reached the tree.

  The man raised an eyebrow. “Yes. He’s called Lightning.”

  Chantel moved closer, surprised to find she wasn’t frightened at all. The dragon fascinated her. She’d never seen a dragon, not a real one. She wished it would wake up so she could see its eyes.

  “Not many people aren’t afraid of Lightning,” said the man.

  His voice was rather high-pitched. He looked like he didn’t need to shave, although he was certainly old enough. Was he some sort of elf, or something?

  He also had a strange accent.

  “I’m . . . this is the Ago, isn’t it?” Chantel asked.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “I did a spell,” Chantel explained. “To see into the past. So, um, I guess you’re in the past.”

  “That explains it. You look a bit wavery. So you’re from the future, then?”

  “From the Will-Be,” said Chantel. “Er, how far back are we?”

  “For you it is the Will-Be. For me it’s only a May-Be. How would I know how far back you are?”

  Chantel felt the conversation wasn’t going well. “I don’t know. Um, I beg your pardon, but I probably only have until the steam stops rising to ask some questions. Um, and I probably have to be back inside the wall by then.”

  “What wall?”

  Chantel turned back and looked. There was the city, climbing on top of itself to the castle at the peak. Above the castle flew the familiar dragon flag of Lightning Pass. But there was no wall.

  “I—came through it,” said Chantel. “It’s definitely there in our time.”

  “If you say so,” said the man. “Sooner or later, the wall is in your mind. Then the stone one is just a formality.”

  “Er, what’s your name, please?” said Chantel, then bit her tongue at this shocking lapse in deportment. “I beg your pardon. Mine is Chantel.”

  “Haywith,” said the man.

  Chantel stared open-mouthed, all deportment forgotten, but then managed to drop into a low curtsey beside the dragon (who was still asleep). She looked up at what she now saw quite clearly was not a man, nor an elf, but a woman.

  “Queen Haywith?” she asked from the ground.

  “Yes, but there’s no need for such formalities here,” said the queen, flapping a hand at Chantel in a get-up gesture.

  Chantel got to her feet, confused. Haywith wasn’t just a queen, but the quintessential traitor. Why had the spell taken her to speak to Haywith?

  The queen dug in the pocket of her tunic, fished out another apple, and proffered it.

  “No thank you, your majesty,” said Chantel. “I’m probably not supposed to eat anything in the Ago, or I might end up stuck here.”

  “Suit yourself.” Queen Haywith tossed the core of her finished apple aside. Instantly a seedling sprouted from it, and began to grow into a sapling.

  “Is that real?” Chantel asked.

  “Probably not,” said the queen, looking at the rapidly growing apple tree. “I expect I’m asleep in the palace and having a dream. How can I help you?”

  It was a question often asked rudely, but Queen Haywith clearly really meant it. The traitor queen was kind, Chantel thought, even if she was a little abrupt and dressed very oddly. Suddenly Chantel was pouring out all her difficulties—the missing sorceresses, and the Marauders without the gates. And to her shame, Chantel also started crying.

  “Well, crying always helps,” said the queen. “So they built the wall, did they? Over my dead body, I presume. I told them that Marauders without the gates would be the least of their problems.”

  Chantel sniffed angrily. The queen was not kind. “Well, sorry, but you’d probably cry too!”

  “Probably,” said the queen. “I wasn’t being sarcastic. Crying does help. Are you finished?”

  “Yes,” said Chantel with as much dignity as she could muster while surreptitiously wiping her nose.

  “It’s a little hard for me to advise you given that I’ve been dead for—?”

  “About five hundred years,” said Chantel.

  “Really, that long? How did I—no, never mind. Don’t answer that. So you’re doing a type of past-scrying spell, then. Do you have questions for me?”

  Chantel did, and she’d forgotten all about them in the confusion of discovering who she was talking to. “Yes. Um, the missing sorceresses—”

  “Unfortunately, I won’t be able to help you find them,” said the queen. “Remember, I’m in the past.”

  Owl’s bowels. And she couldn’t ask how to do the Buttoning. Queen Haywith seemed not to know there even was a wall.

  What to ask, then? Chantel thought of the couplet that Miss Ellicott had given her to memorize.

  “What were the words that you spoke and what was the vow that you broke?” she blurted.

  “I beg your pardon?” said the queen frostily.

  Chantel hadn’t realized the question would sound so rude. “I’m sorry. It was in a rhyme we were given. ‘Speak the words that Haywith spoke, and keep the vow that Haywith broke.’”

  “The vow I took at my coronation was to protect the kingdom, of course,” said Haywith. “And I shall always keep it.”

  “Right, of course,” said Chantel hastily.

  “I would not dream of breaking it,” the queen said.

  “Yes, sorry,” said Chantel.

  “To suggest that I would is terribly offensive.”

  Chantel curtseyed again and apologized again. She was wasting time. She felt sure the spell to see into the Ago wouldn’t last much longer. “Er, what about the words you spoke?”

  “I am thirty-eight years old,” said the queen. “How many words do you suppose I have spoken?”

  “Er, a lot,” said Chantel. “But was there anything in particular that . . . Er, can you do magic?”

  The queen looked at the sleeping dragon, and arched an eyebrow in a gesture that reminded Chantel of Franklin. She smiled. “Perhaps. But I know nothing of this spell you speak of.

  “Those patriarchs . . . we don’t have them in my time. I expect they turn up later. Hm.” She was still gazing at the sleeping dragon. “Is Lightning still in the city?”

  “I don’t think so,” said Chantel. “I’ve never seen a dragon.” She remembered something Miss Ellicott had said. “I’ve got a snake, though. He’s my familiar.”

  “What?” The queen jumped down from the branch and walked around Chantel, as if wanting to inspect her from all angles. “You managed to summon a snake? How old are you, child?”

  “Thirteen,” said Chantel, turning as the queen walked, and getting a little dizzy. “I was six when I summoned him, though.”

  “And where is he now?”

  Chantel wouldn’t have admitted this to most people, but within the spell, it seemed wisest to tell the truth. “He went into my head.”

  The queen looked startled. “That’s where he is now?”

  The question took Chantel by surprise. “No. He’s—” He wasn’t in her leg anymore. Chantel took a careful inventory. “He doesn’t seem to be there at all anymore, actually.” She felt a sharp pang of loss.

  “How can that be?”

  “I don’t know,” said Chantel. “Maybe it’
s something to do with this spell.”

  “Hm.” The queen stopped with her hands in her pockets and stared at Lightning, still snoozing under the tree. Then she turned and looked at Chantel eye to eye. “There is something I can tell you. You are more powerful than any of those who seek to act against you. But they can still overcome you if you make the wrong choices. Do not, under any circumstances, make the wrong choices.”

  “How—”

  The queen held up a hand to stop her. “Whom do you wish to help?”

  Chantel thought. “The girls at school. And Bowser. And I suppose Franklin, although he’s a Mar— a Sunbiter, and kind of annoying.”

  The queen shook her head. “Too small.”

  “And the sorceresses, of course, if they need it,” said Chantel.

  “Still too small.”

  Chantel wracked her brain. “The city?”

  “Are you asking me?” said the queen.

  “The city. The people.”

  The queen looked at the dragon, and then back at Chantel. “A good answer. And a natural one, given your affinity for . . . for snakes. But I’m afraid it’s still too small.”

  “Then what—”

  “You wish to find these sorceresses. It may be that they were kidnapped for their power. So you must ask yourself, who wants power?”

  “I don’t—”

  The queen cocked her head. “I hear something. It’s probably Rose coming in with my morning ale. I think you’d better go before I wake up.”

  “But can’t you tell me—”

  “No time! Quickly!” The queen made a shooing-chickens gesture. “If there’s a wall in your time, you might be trapped.”

  The queen was right. Trapped, and in the midst of hostile Sunbiters. Chantel turned and fled up the path.

  She ran as fast as she could, and even so she felt some resistance as she crossed Seven Buttons. A moment later, she was blinking away the last of the steam.

  And the Order of Watchful Sentinels was dragging Franklin away.

  13

  A JOURNEY TO THE TOP

  Anna was struggling to hang on to one of Franklin’s arms; Bowser had the other. The guards were raining down blows on both of them, but Bowser and Anna held fast.

  “Stop!” Chantel said, firmly. After all, she had just been talking to a queen. Guards didn’t frighten her. Much.

  The guards did stop, slightly.

  “The boy is under arrest,” said a Watchful Sentinel to Chantel. “Anyone who interferes will also be arrested.”

  “Why?” Chantel demanded

  The man looked like he wanted to tell Chantel to mind her own business, but somehow he didn’t. “He is suspected of being a Marauder spy.”

  “Well, he’s not a spy,” said Chantel. “I can tell you he’s not. We brought him—”

  “Chantel!” said Franklin loudly.

  “What?” said Chantel. “They can’t—”

  “Chantel, leave it. Please.” Franklin looked straight at her and lied. “I—they’re—They’re not going to harm me.”

  “Not as long as your friends don’t interfere, and you come along quietly,” said the guard. “Otherwise we might have to run you through and feed your guts to the ravens.”

  “Please, Chantel,” said Franklin.

  Chantel clenched her fists in frantic fury. Anna and Bowser clearly didn’t know what to do either. And while they were standing there being indecisive, the guards marched Franklin away.

  Chantel and her friends looked after him in dejection. Chantel felt a wriggle in her stomach—Japheth the snake was back. Well, he was no help.

  “I can’t believe they took Franklin!” Anna fumed. “If I ran this city—”

  She trailed off.

  They began gathering up the detritus from the spell.

  “Did you find out anything useful?” said Bowser.

  “I don’t think so.” Chantel looked down the street where the guards had just disappeared with Franklin. Why hadn’t she done something?

  “What did you see?” asked Anna.

  “I talked to Queen Haywith.”

  “Really? The traitor?” Bowser looked disgusted and alarmed.

  “I hope you didn’t believe anything she said,” said Anna. “I guess we’ll have to do the spell again.”

  “No!” Chantel was surprised by her own vehemence. “I mean, maybe later. Not right now.”

  The others stared at her.

  “I need to think about things,” she explained.

  “They just took Franklin,” said Anna, stomping at the stone street as they climbed. “Why did he say he would be all right?”

  “He doesn’t know the patriarchs like we do,” said Bowser. “Do you think they’ll torture him?”

  “Probably,” said Anna glumly. “If I—”

  “Will you shut up!” said Chantel.

  The other two looked at her in astonishment.

  “I know you have a snake in your head—” said Anna.

  The snake was actually wriggling along Chantel’s shinbone at the moment. She shook her foot angrily, trying to settle him, and stomped extra hard as they climbed the next set of stone steps.

  Anna looked hurt. Chantel felt bad. She didn’t want to feel bad, but she did. She should apologize. If Anna had been a grown-up, it would have been easy. Chantel would have just had to curtsey and beg her pardon. But you couldn’t deport with your friends.

  “Sorry,” Chantel muttered.

  Anna looked somewhat less hurt. “Do you think we can rescue him?”

  “If we tried, we’d be rebelling against the patriarchs,” said Bowser. “We’d all be put to death. They’d sacrifice us on the wall.”

  Chantel knew this was true. People did get sacrificed on the wall sometimes.

  She trailed behind Anna and Bowser as they climbed the winding streets back to Miss Ellicott’s School. She thought about her odd encounter with Queen Haywith, the traitor. And the dragon. The sleeping dragon. The queen had called it Lightning. Chantel felt oddly homesick for the dragon. She wished it had opened its eyes.

  They found Miss Flivvers and the others making soup from vegetables and the neck of a chicken. Mr. Less the clerk had brought money, and had escorted Miss Flivvers to a market on the north slope—the Miss Flivverses of the world do not venture forth alone. There were still no potatoes, alas.

  Miss Flivvers sent Chantel, Anna, and Bowser out into the parlor, and came in shortly with a pot of tea for them.

  This was not the sort of treatment to which any of them were accustomed. The parlor was usually reserved for the sort of visitors who expect rose-covered carpets and red satin wing chairs as a matter of course.

  Miss Flivvers shut the parlor door, and poured out tea and handed it around.

  Chantel took a sip. The tea was warm and comforting. The snake seemed to grow calm and somnolent in its presence. He fell asleep somewhere behind her lungs.

  “Well? Did you find out how to do the Buttoning?” asked Miss Flivvers, sipping her tea very correctly with her pinky sticking out.

  “No,” said Chantel.

  “And did you learn anything of poor Euphonia’s fate?”

  “No.”

  “Well,” said Miss Flivvers. “You must just keep searching while the rest of us try to find—”

  “Miss Flivvers, the guards arrested Franklin!” said Anna.

  “The Marauder boy?” Miss Flivvers sniffed. “I always suspected he was guilty of something.”

  “Just because he’s been arrested doesn’t mean he’s guilty!” said Bowser hotly.

  Miss Flivvers gave him a look that said she’d given up expecting deportment from him. He was, after all, a boy. “For what did they arrest him, pray tell?”

  “They said he was a spy!”

  “I suspected as much.”

  “I don’t think he’s a spy,” said Anna. “He’s nice. What will they do to him, Miss Flivvers?”

  “It is not our place to ask that,” said Miss Flivvers
.

  “But—”

  “If you wish to have any influence in deciding the Marauder boy’s fate,” said Miss Flivvers, turning to Chantel, “you must continue to do as the patriarchs say.”

  Chantel had been only half-listening to this. She was frantically worried about Franklin. She was also thinking about Queen Haywith, and the things she had said. “Miss Flivvers, what’s Miss Ellicott’s familiar?”

  “If she had wanted you to know that, she would have told you.”

  “Please, Miss Flivvers. It might be important.”

  Miss Flivvers sniffed austerely. “If you must know, a snake.”

  “Oh! Like mine!” Chantel thought about this. “How come I’ve never seen it?”

  “She outgrew it,” said Miss Flivvers.

  Chantel had never heard of people outgrowing their familiars. She felt Japheth awaken suddenly and start slithering around her spine, and though it was extremely uncomfortable and disconcerting, the thought of him leaving her forever was even worse. “Did it, er, ever go into her head or anything like that?”

  “I think it’s very disrespectful, Chantel, to suggest that your headmistress might have carried a reptile about in her head. Miss Ellicott was—is a lady of very correct deportment.”

  “I just wondered—”

  “She simply outgrew it. She became mature and understood her place in society, and put aside snakes and other such unwomanly interests. This is certainly not a conversation we ought to be having about Miss Ellicott at all.”

  Chantel saw she was going to have to abandon this line of inquiry. “Miss Flivvers, how did Queen Haywith die?”

  “Legend has it that she was locked away in the castle’s highest tower, where she wept for her sins until she drowned.”

  “That doesn’t sound very likely,” said Chantel, thinking of the matter-of-fact woman eating an apple in a tree. She had said crying helped.

  “It is presumably a metaphorical way of stating that she pined away as she reflected upon her sins . . . stopped eating, perhaps.”

  “Like everyone in Lightning Pass is about to.” Chantel thought of Franklin’s description of what the different kinds of Marauders would do to the sorceresses. “Miss Flivvers, do you think the Marauders without the gates even have the sorceresses?”