by A. L. Knorr
“Thank you for your attention. You are dismissed.” Basil strode off stage at the clip of someone who had places to be and things to do.
Students and teachers got out of their chairs and milled about as they headed for the door. Several smiles were directed my way. Ryan was lost in the crowd and I was glad, his face was the last thing I wanted to see.
As I stepped down from the dais, wishing Basil had waited a moment so I could talk to him, Gage was there. He held his arms open and I stepped into them. Fire crackled where our skin touched, and from his lips where they pressed against the sensitive skin of my neck.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t tell you,” I said into his shoulder as I luxuriated in his hug.
“I get it,” he murmured, pulling back. He inspected my features as though seeing them for the first time. “Burned,” he breathed, shaking his head. “I should have known. The signs were there.”
A mist filled my eyes as relief swept over me. Gage wrapped an arm around me as we joined the crowd heading for the door. People sent looks my way, but none of them were hostile.
“It must have been such a burden,” Gage said as we made our way to the cafeteria for breakfast.
His words made me want to burst into tears. They solidified the truth which had been coming together like a broken vase being repaired. I no longer had to check myself when practicing in public. I no longer had to hide my true status and nature. I no longer had to pretend that I was doing second-degree stuff in my classes when I was doing fourth. Best of all, Ryan no longer had any power over me. Basil knew all of my secrets. Gage knew almost everything, and when I told him about what I’d done for April during the exam last year, he’d be just as understanding and generous as Basil had been.
Ryan was a monster with his teeth pulled, a revolver with no bullet chambered, a blade as dull as a butter knife. I never had to fear him again.
Seven
A Paramount Pursuit
Later that afternoon, during a spare, I went out of my way to stop by Basil’s office. An enormous weight had been lifted from my shoulders. I was grateful, but before school had even started Basil had spent a lot of time and effort outlining expectations, making provisions for difficulties that might come up. Now that my situation had been flipped on its head, I wanted to talk to him about new expectations.
I knocked and waited.
“Headmaster Chaplin isn’t in there.” Dr. Price appeared at the top of the stairs.
I shifted my laptop bag from one shoulder to another. “Do you know where he might be?”
She grasped one wrist with her other hand in a gesture that made her appear wise and contemplative. “I could make an educated guess. I don’t think he wishes to be disturbed, though.” She studied me with eyes that missed nothing. “Is there something I can help you with?”
I shook my head, frowning. “Thank you, no. I just... he kind of sprang that assembly on me. I feel like I’m in a bit of a tailspin. He’s always been so good about setting expectations, planning, details. You know.”
She smiled. “I do know. It’s one of his strengths. He sprang that assembly on all of us. Though the staff knew of your status, none of us knew he was going to make an announcement to the whole school and toss out one of the cardinal rules he’d set up for you last semester.”
“I need to talk to him.” I made my eyes as big and pathetic and pleading as I could manage. “If you know where he is—”
The doctor took a step closer and spoke in a near whisper. “When he needs time to contemplate something big, he goes to his greenhouse.” Pulling back, she put a finger against the side of her nose and winked.
“What greenhouse?” I whispered, mimicking her wink.
She continued in a quiet, conspiratorial tone. “It’s on the edge of the property, hidden in a glade and surrounded by brambles and thorns to repel people. But there is a narrow, hidden path through the weeds for those who know it’s there.”
I listened as she gave me instructions on how to find the path. Thanking her, I went directly to my room to grab a sweater. I’d need my raincoat and boots so I’d go out through the mudroom. The grounds of the academy were extensive and beautiful, but in the winter they became soft and slippery as the moisture turned the ground to a layer of slick mud.
Cutting through the connecting corridor to the backside of the villa, I made my way past the library, heading for a set of rear stairs. Passing Secretary Goshawk’s office, I noticed a lineup of students in the hall. Some leaned against the walls while others sat on the floor with their backs propped against the paneling.
Secretary Goshawk’s door stood ajar and her voice registered as I bee-lined for the stairwell. The students waiting in line either smiled as I passed, or looked everywhere but at me, cheeks pinking up with a flush.
“You don’t have any problem whatsoever with snapping, Ms. Talbot,” Secretary Goshawk was saying. “When the headmaster said that Ms. Cagney’s time is reserved for those with real need, he didn’t mean you. Your grades are outstanding.”
I caught a glimpse of the back of Ms. Talbot as I went by the door and recognized her as a competent second-year student I’d seen perform in the fire-gym. I didn’t know her first name, but I knew she didn’t need any help from me.
I bit my lip against a smile as I pushed into the stairwell and made my way down the steps. Surely that lineup of students hadn’t all been to register for my time. Surely most of them were there to address scheduling issues or book dojo time. But in all my months at the academy, never had I seen a line of students trailing from the secretary’s door, so maybe they were there for me. The thought was a strange one. I felt like I’d stepped through a mirror and into upside down land.
Pulling on my rain boots, I zipped up my raincoat and tramped out into a cold mist. It wasn’t quite rain, but after fifteen minutes of slipping and sliding along the narrow trails that crisscrossed the property like scars, water dribbled from the hem of my jacket and my hair was wet. The sound of the waves in the distance and the cry of seabirds made me close my eyes and take a deep breath. Nobody spent much time out here between November and March, but if one didn’t mind a bit of mud, moisture and cold, it was sweet smelling and fresh.
Dr. Price had told me to watch for a single red brick set into the earth and overgrown with moss. If I hadn’t been told it was there, I never would have spotted it. Not far from the brick, a grown-over pathway barely suitable to pass through revealed itself, along with faint depressions from recent footsteps of a person wearing Wellies.
Following the path’s serpentine way, I emerged into the clearing Dr. Price had described. The greenhouse sat in the center of a patch of lawn. The nearby trees had been cut away to allow for sunshine—when it was available—to come through. There wasn’t any sun today but even so, the diffuse light painted the greenhouse with a soft aura. Condensation coated the windows from the inside and green fingers of leaves brushed up against the glass, leaving streaks of running water.
It was an antique, this greenhouse, with curved metal ribs and a layered construction. It reminded me of a two-tiered cake. The front steps were broad and led to a terrace crowded with pots and gardening tools. The door had been left open.
Passing through the doorway was like stepping into a wall of soup. Warmth and moisture enfolded me. Shucking my jacket, I passed through a small alcove and took another open door. Two corridors split from the entrance, going left and right. A thick jungle of tropical plants, from bird-of-paradise to tall palms to tea-roses, filled the two story building. A spiral staircase to my left made me pause. It was constructed of wrought iron and was wide enough for only one person to use at a time. It had a familiar curlicue design supporting the hand-rail. In fact, it was identical to the one leading down into Basil’s secret art studio. This spiral staircase led up to a metal walkway which circled the perimeter of the greenhouse. The clank of metal banging against metal made me jump.
“Basil?” I hooked my jacket on the coat-rack stand
ing just inside the second doorway.
“Blimey.” Basil’s voice came, but not loudly enough to be an answer, more like I’d scared him. Then: “Saxony?”
The sound of heavy footsteps on metal drew my eyes up to the left side of the elevated walkway. Basil came around the bend and into view. He paused there, looking down in mild surprise. He wore a white chef’s apron with a sunflower design splashed across it, and mismatched gardening gloves. One hand loosely held a pair of wicked looking gardening shears.
My stomach gave a nervous dip, I hoped he wasn’t angry.
“Who gave me away, then?” Basil took off one of the gloves and retrieved a handkerchief from some rear pocket. He mopped his face.
“Dr. Price. Please, don’t be mad. I was desperate to talk to you.”
“Angry,” he replied, tucking the handkerchief back into its pocket.
“What?”
“Please, don’t be angry. Not, please, don’t be mad.”
“Oh. Right.”
He adjusted his glasses then gestured in my direction. “Behind you you’ll find a little green spray bottle. Bring it up, would you?” With that he turned and disappeared around the bend. Footsteps on metal receded.
I located the bottle on a low shelf filled with powders and liquids and bags of soil and other plant goodies and medicines. Just above the shelf, on the thick iron beam that served as one of the main supporting legs of the building, hung a drawing in a frame. The subject was a strange object, rendered in charcoal. I cocked my head, wondering if it was upside down. I concluded that the shape had no up or down. It looked a little like a tennis ball with a runaway line. The rings that circled it were depressed into its sides, as though a rope had been wound tightly enough around the shape to cause deep welts. The drawing made me think of the secret studio.
A second drawing—hanging a little askew on the next metal rib two feet away—was a similar rendering. This time, the shape, which was also basically round, had multiple knobs protruding in a symmetrical pattern from its sides. It looked like a kind of three-dimensional gear.
“Are you coming?” Basil’s voice resounded through the greenhouse. Ascending the narrow spiral staircase, I stepped onto the walkway. From up high, the greenhouse layout became clear. Two aisles ran the length of the building, jogging outward where mirror-image glass alcoves jutted from either side of the ‘cake’, before meandering in again to loop around and meet at the opposite end. An identical entrance to the one I’d entered graced the other end of the building, but it appeared to be blocked off and used as storage.
Reaching the bend in the walkway, I rounded the corner to see Basil using the shears. He had just begun to trim back the thick branches of a luxurious looking tree dotted with fantastic cone-shaped clusters of orange flowers. They dripped from its branches like grapes.
“What’s that?” I held out the spray bottle.
“Colvillea racemosa.” Basil took the bottle, tucking it into the pocket of his apron after spraying the cut. “Also known as a whip tree. Pretty, isn’t it?”
“Very. Don’t tell me you’re the one who maintains all these plants?” The sound of wings drew my attention to the other side of the greenhouse where a small bird fluttered among the palms.
“No. The academy gardener does most of the looking after. I suspect I make more work for him in my desire to be helpful, but he tolerates me well.” Branches fell away as Basil used the shears to prune the tree where it threatened to break through the glass.
A butterfly fluttered by as Basil worked, making me think of Georjie. I wondered if any fairy cocoons had ever formed in this greenhouse.
“Now that you’ve found me, what can I help you with?” Basil grunted as he worked at a thick branch.
“I wanted to talk to you about the assembly. The one where you outed me.”
Basil released the branch to face me, wiping the sheen of sweat from his brow. “What about it?”
I tried not to gape. “What do you mean ‘what about it’? Why didn’t you warn me that that’s what you were going to do? I didn’t know what to think, and when you called me on stage…”
Basil looked at me, thoughtfully processing this. I realized that he still looked older and more tired than usual. He had come across as ageless until now, although based on the Palumbo report he had to be in his fifties. The smudges of sleeplessness beneath his eyes and the lines bracketing his mouth jarred me. Perhaps he wasn’t as infallible as I’d held him up to be.
“I did tell you.” Basil pulled his gardening gloves off and leaned against the metal railing.
I recoiled. “No, you didn’t. I have had very few conversations as important as the one we had last night. I will never forget what was said, and definitely wouldn’t have missed it if you told me you were going to call an assembly and reveal me to the whole academy.”
Basil bit his bottom lip, now looking doubtful. “Didn’t I?”
I shook my head in pure amazement that he could even think he had. Concern lanced my heart. It wasn’t like him to forget what was discussed, especially something as important as my secret. “Are you okay, Basil?”
He rubbed at his temple absently. “Yes, yes. I’m fine. I was just sure I’d told you. My apologies.”
While I had sat there awkwardly on stage, his apology would have been gratefully accepted. But the moment had passed and everything had turned out fine. Basil’s aged appearance and absentmindedness was more concerning and made me feel sorry that he’d just apologized.
“No apology necessary,” I replied. “I wanted to say sorry to you for bringing trouble down on your head. Someone said they’d overheard you having an argument on the phone before the assembly. I assume you were calling to tell Mr. Wendig that you could no longer protect Ryan from the truth?”
“Ah, that. Yes.” Basil sniffed. “Chad will get over it. And now that we’ve eliminated the danger of Ryan’s blackmail, you can enjoy Arcturus the way you were meant to. Ryan is my responsibility while he is here and his parents know I’ll do everything in my power to keep him on the straight and narrow, but that boy spent many more years under their roof than he’ll ever spend under mine. I’ll not shoulder more responsibility for his behavior than I must.”
At this speech, tears misted in my eyes and I brushed them away.
Basil didn’t miss my emotion and patted himself down before locating the kerchief in his back pocket.
“I’m okay.” I waved his kerchief away, blinking at him through blurred vision. “I’m just grateful.”
Basil tucked the kerchief back into its pocket, looking uncomfortable. “Don’t be too grateful, please. I never should have put you in such a position.”
I nodded, wiping at the moisture in my eyes. “You’ve taken Ryan’s power away. There’s nothing he can do to me anymore, now that the whole school knows. But I would like a little help in knowing how to act and what to do now. Things between me and the other students are different than they were.”
“You mean they look at you like you’re a goddess?” Basil turned and went after the strays with his shears again.
“Something like that. There was a lineup outside Secretary Goshawk’s office this morning and I think they were hoping for time with me.
Basil glanced over his shoulder with a crease between his eyes. “You would prefer not to offer tutoring to anyone?”
I leaned back as a branch whipped by my face before tumbling to the level below. “It’s not that. I thought you might prefer for me not to tutor anymore. You don’t want students to want to be Burned. Spending time with me might make them desire it.”
“I could no more stop mages from wanting to be Burned than I could stop them from getting hungry,” Basil replied. “What I want to avoid is students making such foolish attempts while under my roof. After they graduate, they can risk their silly necks if they wish, and many of them will. I’m sad to say, that is simply statistics.” He looked at his wristwatch. “I do have somewhere to be in an hour, shall we?�
�
I nodded and turned to follow the walkway back to the ground floor. As we reached the bottom of the stairs, my eye fell on the drawings again.
“What are those?” I asked as Basil set his shears and the spray bottle on the shelves.
Untying his apron, he pulled it off and hung it on a hook. “They’re just relics. Rather, an artist’s rendering of relics.”
“Your rendering?” I asked, feeling like I might be walking close to an edge but advancing anyway.
He shot me a sideways glance. “How did you know that?”
I shrugged. “Just a guess.”
“Yes, they’re mine. I drew them when I was in my twenties and wrapped up in some dotty mythology about the origins of the mages. There are legends that claim there are ancient relics with some secret power that can only be wielded by certain, worthy mages.” He waved a hand. “It’s nonsense, but it provided many hours of daydreams for a nerdy young man.”
“Do Arcturus students learn about these relics in the History of the Mages course?” I pulled on my rain jacket.
Basil’s navy jacket hung next to mine and I unhooked it and handed it to him. History of the Mages was a course high on my priority list for next year. I was already looking forward to it.
“Goodness, no.” Basil laughed as he pulled the hood on his jacket over his head and gestured for me to go through the doorway. He closed the doors and we took the steps down from the terrace and crossed the glade toward the narrow trail.
“The history we teach here is more of a chronology of events and exploits that great and not-as-great mages were either involved with or masterminded over the last eighteen hundred years. While it’s fascinating in and of itself, the course reminds me every year how badly I’ve failed to awaken an understanding of true history inside every young mage who passes through our doors.”
I stopped abruptly, feet sliding in the mud. “Failed? You’ve not failed. What are you talking about?”
