Carry On

by Rainbow Rowell

  “All right, Prem?”

  “Looks like I should be asking you that question.…”

  I look down at my bloody T-shirt. “Goblin,” I say.

  Premal nods and points his wand at me, murmuring a cleaning spell. He’s just as powerful as Penny. He can practically cast spells under his breath.

  I hate it when people cast cleaning spells on me; it makes me feel like a child. “Thanks,” I say anyway, and start to walk past him.

  Premal stops me with his arm. “Just a minute there,” he says, raising his wand up to my forehead. “Special measures today. The Mage says the Humdrum’s walking around with your face.”

  I flinch, but try not to pull away from his wand. “I thought that was supposed to be a secret.”

  “Right,” he said. “A secret that people like me need to know if we’re going to protect you.”

  “If I were the Humdrum,” I say, “I could’ve already eaten you by now.”

  “Maybe that’s what the Mage has in mind,” Premal says. “At least then we’d know for sure it was him.” He drops his wand. “You’re clear. Go ahead.”

  “Is Penelope here?”

  He shrugs. “I’m not my sister’s keeper.”

  For a second, I think he’s saying it with emphasis, with magic, casting a spell—but he turns away from me and leans against the gate.

  * * *

  There’s no one out on the Great Lawn. I must be one of the first students back. I start to run, just because I can, upsetting a huddle of swallows hidden in the grass. They blow up around me, twittering, and I keep running. Over the Lawn, over the drawbridge, past another wall, through the second and third set of gates.

  Watford has been here since the 1500s. It’s set up like a walled city—fields and woods outside the walls, buildings and courtyards inside. At night, the drawbridge comes up, and nothing gets past the moat and the inner gates.

  I don’t stop running till I’m up at the top of Mummers House, falling against my door. I pull out the Sword of Mages and use it to nick the pad of my thumb, pressing it into the stone. There’s a spell for this, to reintroduce myself to the room after so many months away—but blood is quicker and surer, and Baz isn’t around to smell it. I stick my thumb in my mouth and push the door open, grinning.

  My room. It’ll be our room again in a few days, but for now it’s mine. I walk over to the windows and crank one open. The fresh air smells even sweeter now that I’m inside. I open the other window, still sucking on my thumb, and watch the dust motes swirl in the breeze and the sunlight, then fall back on my bed.

  The mattress is old—stuffed with feathers and preserved with spells—and I sink in. Merlin. Merlin and Morgan and Methuselah, it’s good to be back. It’s always so good to be back.

  The first time I came back to Watford, my second year, I climbed right into my bed and cried like a baby. I was still crying when Baz came in. “Why are you already weeping?” he snarled. “You’re ruining my plans to push you to tears.”

  I close my eyes now and take in as much air as I can:

  Feathers. Dust. Lavender.

  Water, from the moat.

  Plus that slightly acrid smell that Baz says is the merwolves. (Don’t get Baz started on the merwolves; sometimes he leans out our window and spits into the moat, just to spite them.)

  If he were here already, I’d hardly smell anything over his posh soap.… I take a deep breath now, trying to catch a hint of cedar.

  There’s a rattle at the door, and I jump to my feet, holding my hand over my hip and calling again for the Sword of Mages. That’s three times already today; maybe I should just leave it out. The incantation is the only spell I always get right, perhaps because it’s not like other spells. It’s more of a pledge: “In justice. In courage. In defence of the weak. In the face of the mighty. Through magic and wisdom and good.”

  It doesn’t have to appear.

  The Sword of Mages is mine, but it belongs to no one. It doesn’t come unless it trusts you.

  The hilt materializes in my grip, and I swing the sword up to my shoulder just as Penelope pushes the door open.

  I let the sword drop. “You shouldn’t be able to do that,” I say.

  She shrugs and falls onto Baz’s bed.

  I can feel myself smiling. “You shouldn’t even be able to get past the front door.”

  Penelope shrugs again and pushes Baz’s pillow up under her head.

  “If Baz finds out you touched his bed,” I say. “He’s going to kill you.”

  “Let him try.”

  I twist my wrist just so, and the sword disappears.

  “You look a fright,” she says.

  “Ran into a goblin on the way in.”

  “Can’t they just vote on their next king?” Her voice is light, but I can tell she’s sizing me up. The last time she saw me, I was a bundle of spells and rags. The last time I saw Penny, everything was falling apart.…

  We’d just escaped the Humdrum, fled back to Watford, and burst into the White Chapel in the middle of the end-of-year ceremony—poor Elspeth was accepting an award for eight years of perfect attendance. I was still bleeding (from my pores, no one knew why). Penny was crying. Her family was there—because everybody’s families were there—and her mum started screaming at the Mage. “Look at them—this is your fault!” And then Premal got between them and started screaming back. People thought the Humdrum must be right behind Penny and me, and were running from the Chapel with their wands out. It was my typical end-of-year chaos times a hundred, and it felt worse than just chaotic. It felt like the end.

  Then Penelope’s mum spelled their whole family away, even Premal. (Probably just to their car, but it was still really dramatic.)

  I haven’t talked to Penny since.

  Part of me wants to grab her right now and pat her down head to toe, just to make sure she’s whole—but Penny hates scenes as much as her mum loves them. “Don’t say hello, Simon,” she’s told me. “Because then we’ll have to say good-bye, and I can’t stand good-byes.”

  My uniform is laid out at the end of my bed, and I start putting it away, piece by piece. New grey trousers. New green-and-purple striped tie …

  Penelope sighs loudly behind me. I walk back to my bed and flop down, facing her, trying not to smile from ear to ear.

  Her face is twisted into a pout.

  “What can possibly have got under your skin already?” I ask.

  “Trixie,” she huffs. Trixie’s her roommate. Penny says she’d trade Trixie for a dozen evil, plotting vampires. In a heartbeat.

  “What’s she done?”

  “Come back.”

  “You were expecting otherwise?”

  Penny adjusts Baz’s pillow. “Every year, she comes back more manic than she was the year before. First she turned her hair into a dandelion puff, then she cried when the wind blew it away.”

  I giggle. “In Trixie’s defence,” I say, “she is half pixie. And most pixies are a little manic.”

  “Oh, and doesn’t she know it. I swear she uses it as an excuse. I can’t survive another year with her. I can’t be trusted not to spell her head into a dandelion and blow.”

  I swallow another laugh and try hard not to beam at her. Great snakes, it’s good to see her. “It’s your last year,” I say. “You’ll make it.”

  Penny’s eyes get serious. “It’s our last year,” she says. “Guess what you’ll be doing next summer.…”

  “What?”

  “Hanging out with me.”

  I let my grin free. “Hunting the Humdrum?”

  “Fuck the Humdrum,” she says.

  We both laugh, and I kind of grimace, because the Humdrum looks just like me—an 11-year-old version of me. (If Penny hadn’t seen him, too, I’d think I’d hallucinated the whole thing.)

  I shudder.

  Penny sees it. “You’re too thin,” she says.

  “It’s the tracksuit.”

  “Change, then.” She already has. She’
s wearing her grey pleated uniform skirt and a red jumper. “Go on,” she says, “it’s almost teatime.”

  I smile again and jump up off the bed, grabbing a pair of jeans and a purple sweatshirt that says WATFORD LACROSSE. (Agatha plays.)

  Penny grabs my arm when I walk past Baz’s bed on the way to the bathroom. “It’s good to see you,” she whispers.

  I smile. Again. Penny makes my cheeks hurt. “Don’t make a scene,” I whisper back.

  4

  PENELOPE

  Too thin. He looks too thin.

  And something worse … scraped.

  Simon always looks better after a few months of Watford’s roast beef. (And Yorkshire pudding and tea with too much milk. And fatty sausages. And butter-scone sandwiches.) He’s broad-shouldered and broad-nosed, and when he gets too thin, his skin just hangs off his cheekbones.

  I’m used to seeing him thin like this, every autumn. But this time, today, it’s worse.

  His face looks chapped. His eyes are lined with red, and the skin around them looks rough and patchy. His hands are red, too, and when he clenches his fists, the knuckles go white.

  Even his smile is awful. Too big and red for his face.

  I can’t look him in the eye. I grab his sleeve when he comes close, and I’m relieved when he keeps walking. If he didn’t, I might not let go. I might grab him and hold him and spell us both as far away from Watford as possible. We could come back after it’s all over. Let the Mage and the Pitches and the Humdrum and everyone else fight the wars they seem to have their hearts set on.

  Simon and I could get a flat in Anchorage. Or Casablanca. Or Prague.

  I’d read and write. He’d sleep and eat. And we’d both live to see the far end of 19. Maybe even 20.

  I’d do it. I’d take him away—if I didn’t believe he was the only one who could make a difference here.

  If I stole Simon and kept him safe …

  I’m not sure there’d be a World of Mages to come back to.

  5

  SIMON

  We practically have the dining hall to ourselves.

  Penelope sits on the table with her feet on a chair. (Because she likes to pretend she doesn’t care.)

  There are a few younger kids, first and second years, at the other side of the hall, having tea with their parents. I notice them, children and adults, all trying to get a look at me. The kids’ll get used to me after a few weeks, but this’ll be their parents’ only chance to get an eyeful.

  Most magicians know who I am. Most of them knew I was coming before I knew myself; there’s a prophecy about me—a few prophecies, actually—about a superpowerful magician who’ll come along and fix everything.

  And one will come to end us.

  And one will bring his fall.

  Let the greatest power of powers reign,

  May it save us all.

  The Greatest Mage. The Chosen One. The Power of Powers.

  It still feels strange believing that that bloke’s supposed to be me. But I can’t deny it, either. I mean, nobody else has power like mine. I can’t always control it or direct it, but it’s there.

  I think when I showed up at Watford, people had sort of given up on the old prophecies. Or wondered if the Greatest Mage had come and gone without anybody ever noticing.

  I don’t think anybody expected the Chosen One to come from the Normal world—from mundanity.

  A mage has never been born to Normals.

  But I must have been, because magicians don’t give up their kids. There’s no such thing as magickal orphans, Penny says. Magic is too precious.

  The Mage didn’t tell me all that, when he first came to get me. I didn’t know that I was the first Normal to get magic, or the most powerful magician anyone had heard of. Or that plenty of magicians—especially the Mage’s enemies—thought he was making me up, some sort of political sleight of hand. A Trojan 11-year-old with baggy jeans and a shaved head.

  When I first got to Watford, some of the Old Families wanted me to make the rounds, to meet everyone who mattered, so they could check me out in person. Kick my tyres. But the Mage wasn’t having any of it. He says most magicians are so caught up in their own petty plots and power struggles that they lose sight of the big picture. “I won’t see you become anyone’s pawn, Simon.”

  I’m glad now that he was so protective. It’d be nice to know more magicians and to feel more a part of a community, but I’ve made my own friends—and I made them when we were young, when none of them were overly fussed about my Great Destiny.

  If anything, my celebrity status has been a liability for making friends at Watford. Everybody knows that things tend to explode around me. (Though no people have exploded yet—that’s something.)

  I ignore the staring from the other tables and help Penelope get our tea.

  Even though we go to an exclusive boarding school—with its own cathedral and moat—nobody’s spoiled at Watford. We do our own cleaning and, after our fourth year, our own laundry. We’re allowed to use magic for chores, but I usually don’t. Cook Pritchard does the cooking, with a few helpers, and we all take turns serving at mealtimes. On weekends, it’s help yourself.

  Penelope gets us a plate of cheese sandwiches and a mountain of warm scones, and I tear through half a block of butter. (I eat my scones with big slabs of it, so the butter melts on the outside but keeps a cold bite in the middle.) Penny’s watching me like I’m mildly disgusting, but also like she’s missed me.

  “Tell me about your summer,” I say between swallows.

  “It was good,” she says. “Really good.”

  “Yeah?” Crumbs fly out of my mouth.

  “My dad and I went to Chicago. He did some research at a lab there, and Micah and I helped.” She loosens up as soon as she mentions her boyfriend’s name. “Micah’s Spanish is amazing. He taught me so many new spells—I think if I study the language more, I’ll be able to cast them like a native.”

  “How is he?”

  Penelope blushes and takes a bite of sandwich so she doesn’t have to answer right away. It’s only been a few months since I saw her last, but she looks different. More grown up.

  Girls don’t have to wear skirts at Watford, but both Penelope and Agatha like to. Penny wears short pleated ones, usually with knee-high argyle socks in the school colours. Her shoes are the black sort with buckles, like Alice wears in Wonderland.

  Penny’s always looked younger than she is—everything about her is round and girlish, she has chubby cheeks and thick legs and dimples in her knees—and the uniform makes her seem even younger.

  But still … she’s changed this summer. She’s starting to look like a woman in little girl’s clothes.

  “Micah’s good,” she says finally, pushing her dark hair behind her ears. “It’s the most time we’ve spent together since he was here.”

  “So the thrill isn’t gone?”

  She laughs. “No. If anything, it felt … real. For the first time.”

  I don’t know what to say, so I try to smile at her.

  “Ugh,” she says, “close your mouth.”

  I do.

  “But what about you?” Penny asks. I can tell she’s been waiting to interrogate me and can’t wait any longer. She glances around us and leans forward. “Can you tell me what happened?”

  “What happened when?”

  “This summer.”

  I shrug. “Nothing happened.”

  She sits back, sighing. “Simon, it’s not my fault that I went to America. I tried to stay.”

  “No,” I say. “I mean there’s nothing to tell. You left. Everyone left. I went back in care. Liverpool, this time.”

  “You mean, the Mage just … sent you away? After everything?” Penelope looks confused. I don’t blame her.

  I’d just escaped a kidnapping, and the first thing the Mage did was send me packing.

  I thought, when Penny and I told the Mage what had happened, that he’d want to go after the Humdrum immediately. We knew wh
ere the monster was; we finally knew what he looked like!

  The Humdrum has been attacking Watford as long as I’ve been here. He sends dark creatures. He hides from us. He leaves a trail of dead spots in the magickal atmosphere. And finally, we had a lead.

  I wanted to find him. I wanted to punish him. I wanted to end this, once and for all, fighting at the Mage’s side.

  Penelope clears her throat. I must look as lost as I feel. “Have you talked to Agatha?” she asks.

  “Agatha?” I butter another scone. They’ve cooled off, and the butter doesn’t melt. Penny holds up her right hand, and the large purple stone on her finger glints in the sunlight—“Some like it hot!”

  It’s a waste of magic. She’s constantly wasting magic on me. The butter melts into the now-steaming scone, and I bounce it from hand to hand. “You know Agatha’s not allowed to talk to me over the summer.”

  “I thought maybe she’d find a way this time,” Penelope says. “Special measures, to try to explain herself.”

  I give up on the too-hot scone and drop it on my plate. “She wouldn’t disobey the Mage. Or her parents.”

  Penny just watches me. Agatha is her friend, too, but Penelope’s much more judgemental of her than I am. It’s not my job to judge Agatha; it’s my job to be her boyfriend.

  Penny sighs and looks away, kicking at the chair. “So that’s it? Nothing? No progress? Just another summer? What are we supposed to do now?”

  Normally I’m the one kicking things, but I’ve been kicking walls—and anyone who looked at me wrong—all summer. I shrug. “Go back to school, I guess.”

  * * *

  Penelope’s avoiding her room.

  She says Trixie’s girlfriend came back early, too, and they don’t have any personal boundaries. “Did I tell you Trixie got her ears pierced this summer? She wears big noisy bells right in the pointy parts.”

  Sometimes I think Penny’s Trixie diatribes are borderline speciesist. I tell her so.

  “Easy for you to say,” she says, all stretched out on Baz’s bed again. “You don’t live with a pixie.”