Miss Ellicott's School for the Magically Minded Page 24
Chantel agreed. In memory of a woman who had been brave, but not brave enough to be who she was meant to be.
So the sign on the door was changed, with some scratchings out and writings in, and now it said
MISS ELLICOTT’S SCHOOL FOR the MAGICALly
MAIDENS Minded
SPELLS, POTIONS, WARDS, SUMMONINGS
AND DEPORTMENT
the making of new magic
TAUGHT TO DESERVING SURPLUS FEMALES
The girls, however, decided they wanted to stay in the caves, and Bowser liked it down there too, and Anna and the queen agreed there was room there for many more students. Provided they weren’t afraid of dragons.
Anna interviewed the sorceresses to decide which ones to hire as teachers, and one of the questions she asked was whether they were willing to try new magic, and another was how they felt about caves.
As for Miss Flivvers, she was not at all interested in caves. She found them simply shocking. So she was sent back to the house on Fate’s Turning. It was arranged that students would visit her to learn reading, writing, and as much deportment as they needed to get by. And Anna and Chantel agreed between them that they’d just keep an eye on her and make sure she didn’t get out of hand and start teaching anybody to be shamefast and biddable.
All of these decisions and discussions were constantly interrupted by Sir Wolfgang, who kept demanding audiences with the queen and was very hard to get rid of.
One day Mr. Less, the clerk, came to see the queen. He had come through the war pretty well—he had his arm in a sling, and a bandage around his head, but his mustache was as curly as ever. He wanted a job.
“I’m the only one who understands the filing system, Your Majesty,” he explained.
“Yes, that’s good, Mr. Less,” said Chantel. “But you might also be the only one who cares about it.”
“Have you thought about how you’re going to pay for all these changes you’re making, Your Majesty?”
Chantel had, actually. “Well, there are port fees—”
“You just lowered them.”
“And taxes—”
“How do you intend to collect those?”
Chantel looked at him doubtfully. He was right, of course. The things she wanted to do for Lightning Pass would cost money, and she had learned nothing about money at Miss Ellicott’s School. In fact, she realized, she needed someone to teach her, and quickly.
She wasn’t sure she quite approved of Mr. Less. He had to do with the patriarchs. But they were gone now, and—
Sir Wolfgang burst into the room. “What’s this I hear about schools in caves?”
“I don’t know,” said Chantel, truthfully.
“Look, gir—er, Your Majesty, I don’t think you’re capable of appreciating the kind of minds that designed this city’s educational system!”
“That’s true,” said Chantel, in the neutral tone she’d learned to adopt with Sir Wolfgang.
“And I heard some nonsense about lower port fees, and I’ll have you know—”
The queen held up a hand, so regally that Sir Wolfgang was momentarily stilled. “Sir Wolfgang, this is my clerk, Mr. Less. If you’ll go along with him to his office, he will listen to all of your concerns, and take notes, and ah”—she shot the clerk a look—“file them.”
The clerk bowed. “Certainly, Your Majesty.”
And Sir Wolfgang, sure that he’d just been passed on to someone with more authority, went off with the clerk, complaining happily.
The queen turned to receive some people from the harbor district who wanted something. Everybody wanted something.
And then one day a messenger came from the Sunbiter tribe and said that their chieftain would like an audience with the new queen.
The queen was seeing everybody—it felt as if she’d done nothing for months but see everybody, though it had really only been a week. So the chieftain in the red-horned helmet was ushered into her presence.
The chieftain did not bring attendants, and he did not toss his helmet over his shoulder. He set it on the floor, and he bowed, and bent over the queen’s hand, which Chantel privately thought was a bit much.
But she was so glad to see Franklin alive that she didn’t care.
“What happened?” she asked him.
“Karl the Bloody was killed in the flood when the walls burst,” said Franklin.
That much, Chantel had known. “And you were the heir. And you were there.”
“Someone had to be.”
“This isn’t what you wanted,” she said.
Franklin looked around the room, which, despite Chantel’s best efforts, had begun to acquire a certain air of royalty. “Not what you wanted either, is it?”
Chantel thought about this. “It’s all right. For me. But for you—”
Franklin shrugged. “It was the best way to save lives.”
To save lives. Yes.
“It was a good shot,” said Chantel.
A shadow passed over Franklin’s face. “They’re never good shots.”
“I . . . I was going to do it,” said Chantel. “When he told the people to start fighting again. I . . . I was working up to it. I was telling Lightning.”
But she hadn’t had to.
“Yes. And Karl the Bloody died when the wall came down,” said Franklin.
So he hadn’t had to.
Neither of them was going to thank the other. You couldn’t, really. And neither of them was where they wanted to be, exactly. But they were where their people needed them.
Chantel swallowed. “Some day . . . we’ll go to High Roundpot. And the Stormy Isles.”
And if this were a story, and someone else were writing clever things for Franklin to say, he would have replied, “To the ends of the earth, Your Majesty.”
But instead he looked startled and said, “Sure.”
For now, though, they both had work to do.
High Roundpot would just have to wait.
Chantel and the dragon flew through the sky. They soared over the city, and over the camps where the Sunbiters were packing up, heading back to their mountain homes.
They flew over a harbor thronged with ships—ships from High Roundpot and the Stormy Isles, and from everywhere else in the world. Every berth was full. White sails dotted the sea all the way to the far horizon. The city gates were thrown wide. The sailors were eager to see the no-longer-closed city, and the city people poured freely into the harbor neighborhood. Teams of workers were clearing the rubble from the ruins of the other six buttons, and people were walking out into the Roughlands, and marveling at the vast open spaces. With any luck, Chantel thought, they would all meet people different from themselves.
As for Chantel, she asked Lightning to put her down on a rock in the ocean. And he did, and went off to gambol between the waves and the sky. Chantel watched him.
He would come when she called him. But right now, after so many royal audiences, she just needed some time alone. She wasn’t afraid of the rock anymore. The waves only crashed on one side of it, and not all the time. And if the tide rose, well, she knew how to swim.
The rock had been here a long time, unafraid to let the tides of change wash over it. And the city, Chantel thought, would learn.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
When I first started writing Miss Ellicott’s School for the Magically Minded, I had the ocean all wrong. Thanks to the hospitality of the Blasdell family, I was able to spend many hours during the fall and spring of 2014–2015 sitting on a rock like Chantel, with the waves crashing all around. I am tremendously grateful to the Blasdells for this chance to fix the ocean.
Many thanks to the people who read things and told me how to make them better: Joel Ross, Lee Nichols, Caitlin Blasdell, Nancy Horgan, Jon Schwabach, Aaron Schwabach, and Deborah Schwabach.
Thanks to the folks at Katherine Tegen Books for all their hard work on this book: Katie Bignell, Melissa Miller, Kelsey Horton, Katherine Tegen, and everyone.
AB
OUT THE AUTHOR
SAGE BLACKWOOD was born in Chicago and grew up in New York State. She graduated from Antioch College and the University at Albany and taught ESL for many years. Her first fantasy novel, Jinx, was selected as a Best Book of the Year by Kirkus Reviews, ALA Booklist, School Library Journal, and Amazon.com and was purchased by President Obama.
www.sageblackwood.com
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BOOKS BY SAGE BLACKWOOD
Jinx
Jinx’s Magic
Jinx’s Fire
CREDITS
COVER ART © 2017 BY GLENN THOMAS
COVER DESIGN BY HEATHER DAUGHERTY
COPYRIGHT
Katherine Tegen Books is an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.
MISS ELLICOTT’S SCHOOL FOR THE MAGICALLY MINDED. Copyright © 2017 by Karen Schwabach. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
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Library of Congress Control Number: 2016935939
ISBN 978-0-06-240263-9
EPub Edition © March 2017 ISBN 9780062402653
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FIRST EDITION
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