Miss Ellicott's School for the Magically Minded Read online

  She wanted to lose her temper, but she had a feeling her deportment had never been more important. “Miss Ellicott,” she said. “What happened to your familiar?”

  “It is not your place to ask me questions,” said Miss Ellicott.

  The other sorceresses shook their heads and tsk’ed.

  “Really,” said the king. “We expected your student to be more shamefast and biddable, Miss Ellicott.”

  “My apologies, Your Majesty,” said the sorceress, with a brief and rather angry curtsey.

  “I know your familiar was a snake, the same as mine,” said Chantel, fighting for calm. The sorceresses still encircled her. She felt more angry than frightened—but really, she felt plenty of both. Japheth seemed to be burning mad; the inside of her skull felt as if it were on fire.

  She just managed not to clutch her head in pain. “What happened to your snake, Miss Ellicott?”

  “I outgrew him,” said Miss Ellicott coldly. “I became an adult, and I put away childish things. And you? What about you, Chantle? Have you put your familiar away?”

  “No,” gasped Chantel, squeezing her eyes shut.

  “Good,” said Miss Ellicott. “For the moment, there is power in that. And we need power.”

  “Why?” said Chantel.

  Miss Ellicott turned to the king. “I beg your pardon, Your Majesty. It seems she is going to keep asking why.”

  “In order to help her king,” said the king. “What could be more fitting?”

  “Chantle,” said Miss Ellicott. “Far too many people have worked far too hard to bring events to this point, to have you spoil it now.”

  “You should want to help,” said one of the other sorceresses.

  “What could be more proper for a girl than to serve her king and country?” said another.

  “I don’t understand what you want from me!” Chantel said, much more angrily than she’d intended. Japheth thrashed and burned in her head. She struggled for deportment. The sorceresses were using lots of it. Chantel drew on it as hard as she could—she summoned deportment—and managed to still the snake’s antics.

  “I beg your pardon, Miss Ellicott,” she said. “But could you please explain why you wanted me here, and what it is you want me to do?”

  “We ourself shall explain,” said the king.

  Chantel turned to face him. “Thank you, Your Majesty.”

  “Do sit down,” he said.

  She sat, and folded her hands in her lap, and kept her eyes on his face, as she had always been taught. Which turned out later to be a serious mistake.

  “It has long seemed to us,” said the king, “that the patriarchs do not govern the city in the best possible manner. They control everything: the soldiers, the sorceresses, the markets, the money, and, most of all, Seven Buttons.

  “Therefore we have long sought a means of displacing the patriarchs, and returning the city to the king’s own rule, as it was in the time of our grandfather’s grandfather, before our dissolute cousins lost the reins of kingship. We have summoned the sorceresses here to help us with this, and now we have summoned you.”

  He looked much larger than he had before, and kinder, and his voice seemed very wise. A Gleam spell, Chantel thought. One of the sorceresses is doing it. She ignored the Gleam. “What is it that you want the sorceresses to do, Your Majesty?”

  “Why, use magic, of course, to overthrow the patriarchs, and to turn the soldiers to our side. And you, of course, will use your familiar. You can use him, can’t you?”

  “I’m not sure,” Chantel admitted. “But, Your Majesty. If you use magic to fight the patriarchs, people could get hurt.”

  The king smiled. “A wise man once said, Chantel, that one cannot make an omelet without breaking eggs.”

  “I see. And once all the, er, eggs are broken, Your Majesty, what will happen?”

  “Why, we shall be a true king, of course!” said the king. “And we shall command the soldiers to make quick work of the Marauders without the gates, and we shall order the sorceresses to seal Seven Buttons, and we shall cause the dr—the sorceresses to patrol the city and make certain that nothing threatens our reign, from within or without the walls.”

  “And . . . and that will make things better for the people?” said Chantel.

  “Of course!” said the king. “We shall control the markets, and gold shall fill the royal coffers again, and the castle will be full of servants, and thus the people will all be better off.”

  He’s not stupid, Chantel thought. I can see that in his eyes, no matter what stupid things he says with his mouth.

  “But the people . . . Will food still be expensive?”

  “If it is,” said the king, “at least the money will go to a worthy cause.”

  Meaning himself. “Thank you for explaining everything, Your Majesty,” she said. “You’ve certainly given me a lot to think about, once I get home. I—”

  “You’re not going home, Chantel,” said the king, with an annoying little smile.

  He stood up. Chantel hastily scrambled to her feet too; it would not do to sit while royalty stood.

  And then she saw what the sorceresses had done.

  She and the king were surrounded by a cage of glowing red bars of light.

  The king smiled at Chantel, nodded, and stepped through the bars.

  When Chantel tried to follow him, the bars were searingly hot. They crackled and spat sparks.

  “You’ll stay right where you are, Chantle,” said Miss Ellicott. “Until you see reason and agree to work with us.”

  The sorceresses walked in a circle all around the cage, making so many signs with their hands and feet that Chantel couldn’t keep track, and then they stood outside the cage, with the king beside them, and smirked.

  Chantel was angry. She was furious. The fire inside her head burned white-hot.

  She grabbed again at the bars, but it was like trying to grab fire. Fire that writhed and spat, fire that grabbed back.

  She put her burned hands to her mouth. She had to get out. Everyone at the school was depending on her, and there were the Sunbiters outside the gates, and Franklin in prison.

  She needed mighty magic. And she tried to summon it. It had worked with Dimswitch, but it wasn’t working now. Maybe because she was so furious.

  She was in a flaming rage. She wanted to do something horrible to the vile king and the traitorous Miss Ellicott. But she couldn’t find any magic strong enough. She could only tell them what she thought of them.

  “You’re terrible!” she said. “You don’t care about the city at all, you only care about yourselves!”

  Inside her head, the snake had grown bigger, and hotter, and she felt as if her skull would explode. She hardly noticed the pain in her hands now.

  “There are Marauders without the walls!” she yelled. “You ought to be thinking about how you can drive them away. How you can help! Instead, you’re thinking about what you can get out of the situation!”

  “Really,” said the king, “not at all shamefast and biddable.”

  “Not at all,” echoed a sorceress.

  “It will be worth it, Your Majesty,” said Miss Ellicott. “You’ll see.”

  “You’re—” The pain in Chantel’s head was stifling. “Absolutely—” She struggled with her brain, trying to make it summon magic. “You’re—” Pain filled her throat, and her mouth. Something horrible was happening. She couldn’t breathe. She fell to her knees. The world flashed red and green.

  Something slithered out of her mouth.

  Scaly and golden, fiery and strong.

  The sorceresses and the king stumbled back in surprise. The thing kept coming out. Everything began to go black around the edges of her vision.

  Then, with a furious, writhing wriggle, the thing leapt out into the air and flew at the king and the sorceresses.

  It was a dragon. It breathed fire. It swiped at the sorceresses with gleaming scimitar claws. They fell back, barely escaping the jet of red-oran
ge fire it sent at their heads.

  “I told you, Your Majesty!” cried Miss Ellicott, as she and the king and the others fled.

  The dragon crashed around the room. He smashed into the walls, splintering beams and sending chips of red and golden paint flying. Then he landed. He paced over to Chantel’s cage, claws clacking on the tile floor. He sat on his haunches, rather like a cat, his ridged tail curled around his feet.

  He was golden and alive and beautiful, and his eyes flickered like deep orange flames.

  Chantel was afraid, but not in a bad way. Not the kind of fear you feel when you face something terrible, but the kind you feel when it’s time to leave your old life behind, take an enormous leap, and hope you land on something.

  “J-Japheth?” she whispered.

  There were certain things that were the same. A way of tilting the head and flicking the tongue. The shape of the head around the eyes. Those told her that this enormous, fire-breathing dragon had been her little green snake Japheth.

  He extended a claw and beckoned.

  “I’m stuck in here,” said Chantel.

  The dragon opened his mouth several times, his forked tongue struggling. It seemed he was trying to talk. But his throat and his mouth weren’t built for it.

  “Come out,” he managed at last, rasping. If metal—gold, perhaps—could talk, its voice might sound like that.

  Chantel examined the spell that had made the cage. It was complicated. It used the power and magic of each of the sorceresses. There was no way a lone magician could undo it.

  “I can’t come out,” said Chantel, casting an anxious look at the closed doors through which the king and the sorceresses had vanished. “These bars burn.”

  The dragon snaked his tail around and held it over one of the bars. Like a jet of water when you stick your hand in it, the bar of light stopped shooting upward, and sputtered every which way.

  “Just a minute,” said Chantel.

  There was no point in leaving the cakes and tarts behind. She bundled them in her handkerchief.

  The dragon laid his tail across several bars. Droplets of fire splattered. Chantel winced as one hit her in the hand. She seized her robes and her bundle tightly and half-leapt, half-stumbled through the gap. She tripped over the dragon’s tail and fell sprawling. Her left leg had a stinging burn. Her hair smelled singed.

  Footsteps rang behind the double doors. “I heard something,” said a voice.

  Chantel scrambled to her feet and ran toward the hallway where she’d come in. She felt a jerk at her robes. The dragon had caught her with his teeth.

  “’is way!” he said, around a mouthful of cloth.

  “The way out is this way!” said Chantel, struggling.

  The dragon made a growling sound in his throat and tugged. Chantel tried to pull free. The dragon held fast.

  The door opened, and several men entirely dressed in iron clanked into the room, their faces obscured by iron helms.

  “She got out!” cried one of them, in Prince George’s voice.

  The iron men rushed at her. Chantel frantically started doing signs for an adhesion spell to stick their feet to the floor.

  The dragon seized Chantel in his claws and took flight.

  They flew around and around the room, dizzyingly. Chantel’s feet dangled just a few feet from the floor. She was still trying to do the adhesion spell. The dragon’s claws on her shoulders hurt. The prince grabbed at Chantel’s leg, and she kicked, struggling. Then someone grabbed the hem of her robe.

  The dragon faltered in his flight, tottered, and brushed against the wall. Furiously Chantel tore at her robe and kicked, trying to get rid of the man holding her.

  The dragon surged upward. There was a jarring crash that made Chantel’s teeth rattle. The stupid dragon had flown right into the ceiling!

  And through it. There was a fury of plaster dust and tumbling bricks. The man who’d been clinging to Chantel’s robes was suddenly shaken loose, and Chantel heard him scream as he fell.

  Then Chantel and the dragon were out in the bright blue world, sailing free. They soared high over the city, and out over the Roughlands, where the Sunbiter army was an anthill beneath them.

  Then Chantel and the dragon sailed over the wide gray sea.

  Have we misunderstood?

  Is she not the girl we think she is?

  That dragon was real.

  That was no illusion. It breathed fire. It carried her, and it flew.

  Of course it was real.

  But the girl has fled.

  She is not ours. She has broken free.

  She

  is

  a

  storm.

  Nonsense. No human ever really breaks free. Certainly no girl. What are we without the rules and walls that contain us?

  No one would want to live like that.

  Yes, yes, that is all very well. But she, the girl Chantel Goldenrod, has broken free.

  With the dragon, mind you. I think she will probably die.

  And if she dies, that is no help to us at all.

  16

  IN WHICH CHANTEL SEES FROM VARIOUS POINTS OF VIEW

  The dragon flapped down just low enough to set Chantel on a rock in the sea. For a moment she stood and gasped, catching her breath.

  Then she looked at where she was. A brown ripple of stone, rising just a few feet out of the sea.

  Waves crashed against the rock, sending up spouts of white water that splatted down almost at her feet, then slid away.

  The dragon was high above her, flying around in joyful spirals and loop-de-loops. Then he dropped into a wide, wide circle, swept once around the sky, and glided toward the horizon.

  Chantel watched in dismay as he became a smaller and smaller dot in the distance. She looked down at the bundle of cakes still clutched in her hand. She looked toward Lightning Pass, a barely visible toy city on a thin arc of land. Even the mountains climbing behind it looked small.

  She jumped up and down and waved her arms. “Help! I’m stuck on this rock out here!”

  No one heard her, of course. She hardly heard herself above the smashing waves.

  There were small pools of water in hollows on the rock. Chantel dipped her finger in one and tasted the water. Yech. Salt. There was no fresh water here. There was no anything.

  Maybe the dragon had thought she could swim.

  Or hadn’t really thought about her at all.

  A fog rolled in.

  It hung low on the ocean, obscuring the land and then even the sea. Soon Chantel was completely enveloped in pearl-gray mist. She could hear the waves around her, and feel droplets of seawater splashing her skin, but she couldn’t see anything.

  What if she jumped into the water? Maybe she would discover that she really could swim. But then a particularly strong wave smashed against the rock and splatted into her face, and she decided not to try just yet.

  Maybe later. When she started to get thirsty.

  Immediately, she started to get thirsty.

  The important thing was not to panic, she told herself. You couldn’t make a rational plan when you were panicking.

  Especially not when you were standing on a rock, invisible, surrounded by ocean, and nobody even knew where you were.

  And who would help, if they knew? Who could you count on?

  Nobody, that’s who. Not Miss Ellicott, nor any of the other sorceresses. They had betrayed Chantel, betrayed the school. And not Miss Flivvers—if she knew Chantel was stuck on a rock in the ocean, she’d probably flap her hands helplessly and tell Chantel to recite the 423 situations in which a magical maiden must never find herself.

  Not the patriarchs—they only cared about themselves. And the king was no better. And the other girls, even Anna, well, they really relied on Chantel to know what was best. Bowser wouldn’t know what to do.

  An image of Franklin came into Chantel’s head. The one person who might actually know wh
at to do, but he’d been captured by the—

  A wave washed over Chantel’s feet.

  She took a step backward and almost fell. She scrambled to regain her footing. The entire rock was underwater now except the little bit she was standing on, and the waves were lapping over that.

  The tide was coming in. She’d read about that in books. The dragon had left her on a rock that disappeared at high tide!

  She was going to have to swim for it. Or drown for it, more likely . . . she couldn’t even remember which way the land was. She—

  There was an almighty crash, and a wall of water knocked Chantel off her feet. She was in the ocean, fighting the waves and her entangling robes.

  Then a dragon head loomed out of the mist. “Sorry,” it said. “Forgot.”

  “You—!” Chantel swallowed salt water and sank.

  The sea roiled around her, and then she was rising, the dragon beneath her. The dragon gave a grunt and a small shrug, and Chantel slid into a space between his back and his neck.

  The rock was completely submerged now, but he rose up, standing on it.

  Chantel was just feeling around desperately, realizing there was nothing at all to hold on to on a dragon, when the dragon’s muscles bunched. He sprang forward and glided out over the open sea.

  Chantel threw herself flat and wrapped her arms around as much of his neck as she could reach. The dragon sailed upward, rising through the fog. They broke out into sunlight. Chantel saw the fog like a sea below her, and then it slowly broke apart and she saw the ocean, deep blue and spreading to the horizon. Here and there it was dotted with ships like toys. She saw a cluster of fish at the surface—no, not fish, she thought. Whales! I’m seeing whales!

  She felt a rush of joy. Whatever happened now, even if she fell off the dragon and died—she had flown. And she had seen whales.

  The dragon flew higher still, over the harbor and over the city and over the marshes where the Sunbiters were camped, and up to the mountains.

  And there he landed, on a shelf of rock, his claws grating and sending up sparks.