by Sarina Dorie
The next room held Pro Ro sitting in a circle of candles on a hardwood floor. He was awake too. I swear, Vega and I had to be the earliest to go to bed around this place. A skylight of stars shone over Pro Ro’s head as he chanted. I couldn’t tell what language he spoke. In the center of the circle where he sat, symbols had been written in chalk.
Speckles of light danced across his tunic, making him look like he was made of stars. I didn’t want to stare or invade his privacy, but I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the bewitching flickers dancing over him. He muttered under his breath, the light growing brighter.
He held a piece of paper in his hand, lifted it up to the heavens, touched it to his lips, lifted it again, and set it down before him. The paper was a photo of a woman with blonde hair. It took me a minute to recognize who smiled at the camera.
It was a photo of me.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Brownie Points
Pro Ro continued chanting. The candle flames in his room changed from gold to blue. I stood on tiptoe and craned my neck, trying to see the photo better. It couldn’t be me. Why would he have a photo of me?
Yet, there I was. The photo was a couple years old, one I recognized from my mom’s house when I’d bleached my hair. A halo of light circled the photo. I felt light-headed. Was this a spell? I focused on the sphere of energy inside me. The red light of my affinity felt like it was diminishing. Was that good or bad? Thatch had seemed to think it was good, but he’d also implied it was bad if someone else controlled my magic. What was Pro Ro doing?
“What be ye doing here?” a scratchy little voice asked.
I whirled, seeing no one.
“Down here, lass.”
I looked down to find myself staring at a knobby little creature with legs and arms that reminded me of sticks. The naked man carried a wicker basket on his back, overflowing with clothes.
“Excuse me,” I said. “I don’t believe I’ve made your acquaintance. I’m—”
“Room 201, ladies size four, bra size 32 B, striped socks, no thongs. Granola and muffin gifter. I ken who ye be.” His accent was Scottish or perhaps Welsh, only there was something that reminded me of an older American dialect as well. Perhaps it was a Fae accent.
“Huh?” I asked, not understanding half of what he said.
He muttered another inventory of my clothes sizes and attire. From the wicker basket, it looked like he had some of my clothes inside it.
“Are you a brownie?” I asked.
He squinted at me. “What’s wrong with ye? Donnae ye never see a brùnaidh afore, lass?”
Another naked creature lurched out of one of the windows, carrying a sack over his shoulder. This one looked me up and down. “Bogie bollocks! It be that one again.”
“Pardon me,” I said. “I’m looking for Julian Thistledown. Have you seen him? We got separated. He thought some students had made their way into one of the secret passages, looking for answer keys to their exams.”
The brownie threw down his sack. “Have nae seen no students down here. Donnae you ken, this hall be off-limits to Witchkin’s and their prying eyes?” From the way he looked me up and down, I took it he meant it was off-limits to teachers as well.
The first one with the basket dragged it past me. “Saw a trio of those nasty bootlickers earlier, I did. Down a different passage. Thank Nimue they dinnae find their way down here and muck up our cleaning schedule. Unlike a certain lass.”
I fidgeted with the ties of my robe. “If you can show me where they went, I can get out of your way.”
The first brownie harrumphed. “Ye human folk always be demanding something, ye are.”
“Why donnae ye leave out some special granola for us next time?” the other brownie or brùnaidh said. “Ye ken what I mean, lass? Clarence Greenpine’s ‘special’ mix from Ye Green Grocery, eh?”
“Are you talking about the one that has marijuana in it?” I asked. That was what Khaba and Josie had implied. “Are you sure I can bring that on school grounds?”
“Aye.” He knocked on the wall. A door that hadn’t been there before materialized. It was about three feet tall. He opened it. “This will get you out of our way. Take the path to the right, and for Nimue’s sake, donnae go through any doors like they did. Use the tapestries to exit.”
“What do you mean, ‘like they did?’ Who is ‘they?’ The students? Or Julian?”
The brownies didn’t answer. They dragged their baskets along the hall. Already I doubted my plan for showing Jeb what a valuable staff member I was would work.
I crouched through the door and took the fork to the right like they’d instructed. The next exit was a normal sized door in the wall. It was wooden with a metal latch. I tried to peek through the keyhole, but I didn’t see anything beyond. A short distance down the hall was a tapestry of swirling designs. I peeked around it. Beyond looked like one of the school corridors with a candle lit in a sconce. It was quiet.
I walked a few paces back to the door. The brownies had said not to take the door. But someone had taken the door. Students? What if I opened the door and I released an unspeakable evil upon the school like my mother had?
I walked back to the tapestry, about to duck under when I heard a muffled giggle. It definitely came from behind the door. My students had to be there. I ran back and flung the door open. No one was in sight, but the hallway beyond looked normal enough. I tentatively walked through. The door closed behind me, sealing me in darkness.
I groped around for the handle, wanting to open the door again and shed more light on the place I was stepping into before I tripped down a stairwell or fell into some monster’s feed trough. The handle was gone. The door had disappeared. In its place was the uneven texture of a stone wall.
Fan-freakin’-tabulous. Now I was stuck.
A faint light glowed from up ahead. I groped along the wall and tripped over a suit of armor’s foot. The metal dinged in the quiet.
“Someone’s coming,” a voice whispered. “Hurry, before we get caught.”
I tiptoed toward the voice, my arms out in front of myself like a zombie. I groped my way around a corner. Three shadows ran down the hallway away from me, a dim light radiating from someone’s wand.
I ran now too, having just enough light to see by.
They whispered in that way teenagers often did in my class, thinking they were being quiet, though I could actually hear them across the room.
“I think we lost him,” one said.
“Teacher or student?”
“Can’t tell.”
He? I loved how they assumed their pursuer was male. Like a female teacher wasn’t perfectly capable of going out in the middle of the night chasing them. Of course, their other female teachers were probably far wiser than I was. Vega had gone back to sleep. No one else had gone off with Julian, unarmed and gotten herself lost. Maybe it did seem like a macho guy thing to do.
I needed a plan. If I had known how to get back to the student dormitory, I would have waited for the students to return and apprehended them there. Or pounded on the principal’s office until someone answered. I was more concerned I had no idea where I was or how to get back. My best option was to keep following them.
I was lost, but it wasn’t like I was in any danger. Those brownies had warned me not to go through the door, but obviously they had been punking me. There wasn’t any danger ahead. If there had been, the students would have gotten into it by now.
The students stopped at the end of the hallway. One of the students must have had an invisibility Snuggie because a sliver of neon pink shirt was visible as well as a pair of feet and a floating head. The other two students wore all black so I couldn’t actually see much of them. Shadows writhed in front of them. At first I thought it was the light of their wands making shadows dance, but as I neared, I heard the hissing.
“Oh shit!” I recognized Hailey Achilles’ voice.
“Son of a succubus!�
� I knew that curse from hearing it in my third period class. Balthasar Llewelyn.
The shadows in front of them rose, something immense and sinewy.
“You shall not pass,” a wet inhuman chorus of voices hissed, unified in one song.
The words were so epic fantasy I would have died of laughter, except that the thing kept getting bigger. I had a feeling those kids, my kids, had no idea what they were facing. Neither did I.
“Return the way you came,” the voices said. “This is your last warning.”
Any rational, sane person would have done whatever that thing asked. But my students weren’t the brightest bulbs in the pack, so I had no faith they would do the right thing.
“Run!” I yelled.
I ran forward to grab them and yank them back, but one of them shouted a magic word that sounded like gobbledygook. An explosion of light shot out of his wand. Energy hit me in a wave, and I fell back. The spell illuminated the creature before them. It was a six-headed snake, a hydra.
It lunged and snapped, the kids dodging and rolling with the agility of Cirque du Soleil acrobats. I dove back into the shadows. More fireballs were thrown at the creature. It batted the fire right back at the kids, flames exploding on the stone floor. Hailey slashed out with her wand like a sword. One of the heads fell.
Even I knew that was a bad move, and I wasn’t from this world. I had read Greek literature in college. Out of the cut stump, two more grew.
The echo of something metal being struck dinged in the air. The hydra fell over, plopping loudly onto the floor and writhing. The students ran past, opening another door and slamming it behind them. I didn’t want to follow them. I considered going back to Jeb’s office and interrupting his tryst. I could wake one of the teachers from the hall of mirrors. Except, I couldn’t go back. The hallway didn’t lead anywhere useful. Or if it did, I didn’t know where I might end up.
I had no way out but forward.
I edged closer, toward the door. The hydra flopped around in a puddle. Molten wads of fire clung to the ceiling and the walls. Enough light shone on the creature that I could see it better. It was smaller now, fairly limp, and about the size of half a dozen gardener snakes. Cold, wet water soaked my slippers. I stood in the middle of an immense puddle. Now that I looked more closely I could see water gushed out of a bucket that had tipped over. It wasn’t a normal amount of water, more like a lake being dredged. Couldn’t anything be normal in this world?
The hydra moaned pathetically. A couple of the serpents slapped the floor, splattering the water. I placed my hand on the door. It moaned again.
“Help. Please,” it wailed in its chorus of voices.
Crap. The pitiful sight tugged at my heartstrings. How could I just leave it?
I turned back to the hydra, hoping my kindness wasn’t going to bite me in the ass later. “All right, little guy. I’ll see what I can do.”
I crouched down and heaved the upturned bucket back into place. It was heavy with the creature half in and half out of it. Snakes were not my pet of choice, and I wasn’t keen on touching them, especially after my weird magic lesson with Thatch. I tried to coil the snake bodies in the bucket as gently as I could while keeping my hands away from the heads. I removed my house coat and sopped up the water, wringing it out in the bucket over the hydra.
“More water. Please, so thirsty.” One lifted its head and brushed against my hand.
I jerked back, falling on my butt in the wet puddle. I mopped up more water and wrung it out. I couldn’t see how deep the water went in the bucket, but it didn’t look very full.
“You have saved us. We owe you a boon,” the hydra said in its slithery chorus.
“A favor or a wish?” I asked, thinking of Khaba. All the wishes I’d witnessed from him so far hadn’t been magic.
“A wish.” They coiled around themselves, looking as though they were fighting for the water at the bottom of the bucket.
I could ask them to help me become a powerful witch. I could get information from them about the Red affinity or the Fae Fertility Paradox. They could give me the missing chapter I had wanted to read. There were so many things I could wish for.
On the other hand, genies in stories were always being used for their magic. Khaba had implied Loraline had tricked him into agreeing to becoming the djinn of the school with her ‘selfless’ wish. I didn’t want to be greedy and selfish like she’d become, but I had so many things I needed.
The serpents pushed at each other, trying to get at the water in the bottom of the bucket. They whimpered, sounding like newborn kittens. I couldn’t leave them like that.
“Can I wish for all the water to be returned to your bucket?” I asked.
“Why would you wish for that?”
“It doesn’t look like there’s enough in there. Would that help you?”
“Yesssssss.”
“Okay, then. That’s my wish.”
The level of the water in the bucket rose. A unified sigh came from the serpents. One brushed its head against my wrist. I stood, my dripping housecoat still in hand.
“Such a silly wish,” one serpent said to another. “I would have wished for those students to be locked inside metal cages with spikes.”
I started toward the door, but I hesitated when I heard the hydra’s next words.
“If I was her, I would have wished to know more about the curse someone cast on her.”
“Or asked for it to be lifted,” another serpent said.
“What curse?” I asked. In my dream, Derrick also had mentioned a curse. Did this have something to do with what I’d seen Pro Ro doing?
“Nothing, dear. Our obligation to you is fulfilled.”
I scooted toward them again. “How can I break the curse?”
“You need a protective ward for that. A protective rune.”
“Where can I find a protective rune?”
They gave a collective shrug. “You could start by looking in a book.”
Ugh! As if I wanted to do more reading. Then again … maybe I didn’t have to. Thatch had made me read a book on runes. I had skimmed a chapter on protective spells. Maybe there was something in the book that could help me.
“Thank you!” I said. Maybe I hadn’t completely lost my wish in the process of giving it away.
“A parting word, before our obligation is fulfilled,” they said. “Don’t follow those students into that room. Any harm that should befall them is their own doing. Let it not be yours as well.”
I bit my lip, staring at the door. “Those are my students. I have to try to help them.”
They tsked in unified exasperation. They didn’t try to bite me as I passed. I opened the door.
“Don’t say we didn’t warn you,” they said.
I stepped through the door, hoping for the best, expecting the worst.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
My Night with Rembrandt and Friends
The room was so bright I had to blink several times before my eyes adjusted. It was daylight. My first thought was that I had spent all night chasing those damned kids, and now I was going to miss breakfast and morning classes. As I stood there just past the threshold, I realized the sun was too high for it to be morning.
I didn’t close the door this time. I wanted a way out in case I was walking into a boobytrap.
I stood in a forest. These trees weren’t the Sitka spruces and western hemlocks of the Hoh rainforest, nor the maples or alders near the school covered with curtains of hanging moss and ferns. This forest was drier, denser. There was no trail.
Something about it wasn’t quite right. The colors were a little too bright and unreal to have actually come from nature. Silence rang in my ears, the quiet unsettling. No birds flew in the sky. Chipmunks and wildlife remained absent.
My slippers squished over slick pine needles and dead leaves. If this was a portal to another world, or another time, I was probably going to be stuck here fore
ver.
I could hear the other teachers talking about it now. “Fifth art teacher in a row. We knew it was only a matter of time. Stupidity was the downfall of this one.”
Maybe I could ask for directions from the hydra. First, I had to get out of here. I turned back to the door. I had purposefully left it open for a reason.
Wouldn’t you know it? The door slammed closed.
Damn it! Now what?
My footprints had made blurred blobs of color on the ground. I stared at the muddy earth perplexed. I touched a finger to the moss of a tree. My finger came away coated with a glob of yellow green. It smelled like oil paint. The more closely I stared at the tree, the more unreal the tree looked. For one thing, the lighting wasn’t right. The shadows on the tree should have been on the same side as the cast shadow, but it wasn’t. I didn’t have time to ponder the impossibility of the physical properties of light and shadow, though.
“Did you hear that?” Balthasar whispered.
Hailey groaned. “Someone followed us.”
I stepped toward the voices.
“Hex him!”
“You will do no such thing,” I shouted.
A white light shot out from behind the trees and blasted into a branch above my head. I dove out of the way and rolled onto the leaf-covered floor. Dead leaves and pine needles stuck to me in greasy globs. Footsteps trampled away.
“I am your teacher. You will stop right now and go back to bed!” I called after them.
No one stopped. I scrambled to my feet, running from tree to tree in cover from spells. My feet slipped over the wet earth.
Without warning, the forest changed, and I stood in a meadow of sheep. In the distance a dragon breathed fire at a village. The sheep were frozen in place. I’d seen this scene before. It was a painting on the wall in one of the rooms. A spell came crashing in from the side, hitting a lamb in front of me. It exploded in a shower of white globs, most of which landed on me. I ducked lower, hidden behind more sheep and wiped the paint out of my eyes. My nightgown looked like an impressionist painting.
