Carry On

by Rainbow Rowell

  Dad spent the whole month of June in his lab, not even coming out to eat. Mum made his favourite biryani and left steaming plates of it outside his door.

  “That madman!” Mum kept ranting. “Sending children to fight the Humdrum!”

  “The Mage didn’t send us,” I tried telling her. “The Humdrum took us.” But that just made her angrier. I thought she’d want to work out how the Humdrum had done it. (It’s impossible to steal someone like that, to port them that far. The magic required … Even Simon doesn’t have enough.) But Mum refused to approach it intellectually.

  It made me really glad that she doesn’t know the details of every other scrape Simon and I have got ourselves into—and got ourselves out of, I should add. We deserve some credit for that.

  Mum probably would have cooled down sooner, if it weren’t for the nightmares.…

  I didn’t scream when it actually happened:

  One minute, Simon and I were in the Wavering Wood, gaping at Baz and Agatha—me holding Simon’s arm. And the next minute, we were in a clearing in Lancashire. Simon recognized it—he lived in a home there when he was a kid, near Pendle Hill. There’s this big sound sculpture that looks like a tornado, and I thought at first that the noise was the Humdrum.

  I could already feel that we were in one of his dead spots.

  Dad studies dead spots, so I’ve been to loads of them. They’re the holes in the magickal atmosphere that started appearing when the Humdrum did. Stepping into a dead spot is like losing a sense. Like opening your mouth and realizing you can’t make any noise. Most magicians can’t handle it. They start to lose their shit immediately. But Dad told me he’s never had as much magic as most magicians, so it isn’t as terrifying for him to think of losing it.

  So Simon and I show up in this clearing, and I can feel straight away it’s a dead spot—but it’s more than that. It’s worse. There’s this weird whistling on the wind, and everything’s dry, so dry and hot.

  Maybe it’s not a dead spot, I thought, maybe it’s a dying spot.

  “Lancashire,” Simon said to himself.

  And then—the Humdrum was there.

  And I knew it was the Humdrum because he was the source of everything. Like the way you know that the sun is what makes the day bright. All the heat and dryness were coming from him. Or sucking towards him.

  And neither of us, Simon or me, cried out or tried to run, because we were too much in shock: There was the Humdrum—and he looked just like Simon. Just like Simon when I first met him. Eleven years old, in grotty jeans and an old T-shirt. The Humdrum was even bouncing that red rubber ball that Simon never put down our first year.

  The kid bounced the ball at Simon, and Simon caught it. Then Simon started screaming at the Humdrum, “Stop it! Stop it! Show yourself, you coward—show yourself!”

  It was so hot, and so dry, and it felt like the life was getting sucked out of us, sucked right up through our skin.

  Both of us had felt it before during the Humdrum’s attacks—that sandy, dry suck. We knew what he felt like, we recognized him. But we’d never seen the Humdrum before. (Now I wonder if that was the first time the Humdrum was able to show himself.)

  Simon was sure the Humdrum was wearing his face just to taunt him. He kept howling at it to show its real face.

  But the Humdrum just laughed. Like a little kid. The way little kids laugh once they’ve got started, and they can’t stop.

  (I can’t really say why I think so or what it means, but I don’t think that the Humdrum appeared that way as a mean joke. I think that’s his true form. That he looks like Simon.)

  The suck was too much. I looked down at my arm, and there was yellow fluid and blood starting to seep through my pores.

  Simon was shouting. The Humdrum was laughing.

  I reached out and took the ball from Simon and threw it down the hill.

  The Humdrum stopped laughing then—and immediately darted after the ball. The second he turned away from us, the sucking stopped.

  I fell over.

  Simon picked me up and threw me over his shoulder (which is pretty amazing, considering I weigh as much as he does). He pushed forward like a Royal Marine, and as soon as he was out of the dead spot, he shifted me around to the front—and big bony wings burst out of his back. Sort-of wings. Misshapen and overly feathered, with too many joints …

  There’s no spell for that. There are no words. Simon just said, “I wish I could fly!” and he made the words magic.

  (I haven’t told anyone that part. Magicians aren’t genies; we don’t run on wishes. If anyone knew that Simon could do that, they’d have him burnt at the stake.)

  We were both hurt, so I tried to cast healing spells. I kept thinking that the Humdrum would haul us back as soon as he found his ball. But maybe that wasn’t the sort of trick he could manage twice in one day.

  Simon flew as far as he could with me clinging to him—stuck to him with spells and fading fast. Then I think he realized how mad we looked and landed near a town.

  We were going to take a train, but Simon couldn’t get his wings to retract. Because they weren’t wings. They were bones and feathers and magic—and will.

  This is what my nightmares are about:

  Hiding in a ditch along the side of the road. Simon’s exhausted. And I’m crying. And I’m trying to gather the wings up and push them into his back, so that we can walk into town and catch a train. The wings are falling apart in my hands. Simon’s bleeding.

  In my nightmares, I can’t remember the right spell.…

  But I remembered it that day. It’s a spell for scared children, for sweeping away practical jokes and flights of fancy. I pressed my hand into Simon’s back and choked out, “Nonsense!”

  The wings disintegrated into clumps of dust and gore on his shoulders.

  Simon picked someone’s pocket at the train station, so we could buy tickets. We slept on the train, leaning against each other. And when we got back to Watford, it was in the middle of the end-of-year ceremony, and Mum and Dad were there, and they dragged me home.

  They almost didn’t let me come back to school this autumn—they tried to talk me into staying in America. Mum and I yelled at each other, and we haven’t really talked properly since.

  I told my parents I couldn’t miss my last year. But we all knew that what I really meant was that I wouldn’t let Simon come back without me.

  I said I’d walk back to Watford, that I’d find a way to fly.

  Now they make me carry a mobile phone.

  37

  AGATHA

  Watford is a quiet place if you’re not dating Simon Snow—and if you’ve spent so many years with Simon Snow that you never bothered making other friends.

  I don’t have a roommate. The roommate the Crucible gave me, Philippa, got sick our fifth year and went home.

  Simon said Baz did something to her. Dad said she had sudden, traumatic laryngitis—“a tragedy for a magician.”

  “That would be a tragedy for anyone,” I said. “Normals talk, too.”

  I don’t really miss Philippa. She was dead jealous that Simon liked me. And she laughed at my spellwork. Plus she always painted her nails without opening a window.

  I do have friends, real friends, back home, but I’m not allowed to tell them about Watford. I’m not even able to tell them—Dad spelled me mum after he caught me complaining to my best friend, Minty, about my wand.

  “I just said it was a hassle carrying it everywhere! I didn’t tell her it was magic!”

  “Oh for snakes’ sake, Agatha,” Dad said.

  My mother was livid. “You have to do it, Welby.”

  So Dad levelled his wand at me: “Ix-nay on the atford-Way!”

  It’s a serious spell. Only members of the Coven are allowed to use it. But I suppose it was a serious situation: If you tell Normals about magic, they all have to be tracked down and scoured. And if that’s not possible, you have to move away.

  Now Minty (we met in primary sc
hool, that’s actually her first name, isn’t it lush?) thinks I go to a super-religious boarding school that doesn’t allow the Internet. Which is all true, as far as I’m concerned.

  Magic is a religion.

  But there’s no such thing as not believing—or only going through the motions on Easter and Christmas. Your whole life has to revolve around magic all the time. If you’re born with magic, you’re stuck with it, and you’re stuck with other magicians, and you’re stuck with wars that never end because people don’t even know when they started.

  I don’t talk like this to my parents.

  Or to Simon and Penny.

  Ix-nay on my ue-feelings-tray.

  * * *

  Baz is walking by himself across the courtyard. We haven’t talked since he’s been back.

  We’ve never really talked, I guess. Even that time in the Wood. Simon burst in before we could get anywhere, and then Simon burst out again.

  (Just when you think you’re having a scene without Simon, he drops in to remind you that everyone else is a supporting character in his catastrophe.)

  As soon as Simon and Penny disappeared that day, Baz dropped my hands. “What the fuck just happened to Snow?”

  Those were his last words to me.

  But he does still watch me in the dining hall. It makes Simon mental. This morning, Simon got fed up and slammed his fork down, and when I looked over at Baz, he winked.

  I hurry to catch up with him now. The sun is setting, and it’s making his grey skin look almost warm. I know it’s setting my hair on fire.

  “Basil,” I say coolly, smiling like his name’s a secret.

  He turns his head slightly to see me. “Wellbelove.” He sounds tired.

  “We haven’t talked since you’ve been back,” I say.

  “Did we talk before that?”

  I decide to be bold. “Not as much as I’d like.”

  He sighs. “Crowley, Wellbelove, there must be a better way to get your parents’ attention.”

  “What?”

  “Nothing,” he says, walking ahead.

  “Baz, I thought—I thought you might need someone to talk to.”

  “Nope, I’m good.”

  “But—”

  He stops and sighs, rubbing his eyes. “Look … Agatha. We both know that whatever you and Snow are squabbling about, you’ll soon work it out and be back to your golden destiny. Don’t complicate it.”

  “But we’re not—”

  Baz has started walking again. He’s limping a little. Maybe that’s why he isn’t playing football. I keep following him.

  “Maybe I don’t want a golden destiny,” I say.

  “When you figure out how to sidestep destiny, let me know.” He’s walking as fast as he can with his limp, and I decide not to run to keep up with him. That would look appalling.

  “Maybe I want something more interesting!” I call out.

  “I’m not more interesting!” he shouts back, without turning his head. “I’m just wrong for you. Learn the difference.”

  I bite down on my bottom lip and try not to cross my arms like a 6-year-old.

  How does he know he’s wrong for me?

  Why does everyone else think they know where I belong?

  38

  BAZ

  Snow has been staring at me all day—for weeks now—and I’m just really not up for it. Maybe Aunt Fiona was right; I should have stayed home longer and rested up. I feel like complete shit.

  Like I can’t get full, and I can’t get warm—and last night, I had some sort of attack in the Catacombs. It’s so fucking dark down there. And even though I can see in the dark, I felt like I was back in that stupid numpty coffin.

  I couldn’t stay underground any longer. I caught six rats, banged their heads on the floor, tied their tails in a knot, then brought them back upstairs and drained them in the courtyard under the stars. May as well have sent an engraved announcement to the whole school, telling them I’m a vampire. A vampire who’s afraid of the dark, for Crowley’s sake.

  I threw the rat carcasses to the merwolves. (They’re worse than rats. I’d drain every one of them if the taste didn’t stay in my mouth for weeks. Gamy and fishy.)

  Then I slept like the dead for nine hours, and it still wasn’t enough. I’ve been asleep on my feet since lunch, and I can’t exactly go up to my room to take a nap. Snow would probably sit across from me and watch.

  He’s been following me everywhere since I got back. He hasn’t been this persistent since our fifth year—he even followed me to the boys’ toilet yesterday and pretended he just needed to wash his hands.

  I don’t have the strength for it.

  I feel 15 again, like I’m going to give in if he gets too close—kiss him or bite him. The only reason I got through that year was that I couldn’t decide which of those options would finally put me out of my misery.

  Probably Snow himself would put me out of my misery if I tried either one.

  Those were my fifth-year fantasies: kisses and blood and Snow ridding the world of me.

  I watched the football practice this afternoon, just for an excuse to sit down, then slipped away from the team when everyone else headed for dinner.

  Wellbelove catches me in the courtyard and tries to suck me into her maiden-fair drama, but I haven’t got time for the pain. I heard Miss Possibelf say that the Mage is coming back to Watford tomorrow—and I still haven’t snuck up to his office. (Probably because it’s an idiotic idea.) But if I go up there and take something, it will at least get Fiona off my back for a while.

  I haul myself to the Weeping Tower, and skip the spiral staircase to take the staff elevator up to the very top.

  I walk past the door to the headmaster’s rooms. When my mother was headmistress, I lived with her here. I was just a toddler. Father would come in most weekends, and we’d all go back to the house in Hampshire every summer.

  My mother used to let me play in her office while she worked. She’d come get me from the nursery, and I’d spread my Lego bricks out on her rug.

  When I get to the headmaster’s office, the door opens easily for me—the Mage never took down the wards my mother cast to let me in. I can get in his rooms, too. (I snuck in once and found myself puking in his toilet.) Fiona would have me inspecting his chambers every night, but I’ve told her we have to save that trick until we really need it. Until we can use it. And not just to leave steaming bags of shit in his bed.

  “Furthermore, Fiona, I’m not shitting in a bag.”

  “I’ll do the shitting, you knob; it can be my shit.”

  My stomach clenches when I walk into the office. When I see my mother’s desk. It’s dark in here—the curtains are drawn—so I light a fire in my palm and hold it out in front of me.

  It terrifies my stepmother when I do this. “Basilton, don’t. You’re flammable.”

  But bringing fire is as easy for me as breathing; it hardly takes any magic, and I always feel utterly in control. I can make it twist through my fingers like a snake. “Just like Natasha,” my father always says. “He’s got more fire than a demon.”

  (Though Father did draw a hard line when he caught me smoking cigarettes in the carriage house. “For Crowley’s sake, Baz, you are flammable.”)

  The headmaster’s office looks exactly the same as it did when I played here. You’d think the Mage would have thrown all my mother’s things out and hung up Che Guevara posters—but he didn’t.

  There’s dust on his chair. On my mother’s chair. And thick dust on the computer keyboard—I don’t think he even uses it. He’s not the sitting, typing type, the Mage. He’s always stalking around or swinging a sword, or doing something to justify his Robin Hood costume.

  I open his top drawer with my wand. Nothing here … Dried-up office supplies. A phone charger.

  My mother kept tea in this drawer, and mint Aero bars and clove drops. I lean in to see if I can smell them—I can smell things other people can’t. (I can smell things no people
can.) (Because I’m not a person.)

  The drawer smells like wood and leather. The room smells like leather and steel and the forest, like the Mage himself. I open the other drawers with my hand. There aren’t any booby traps. There’s nothing personal at all. I’m not even sure what to take for Fiona. A book, maybe.

  I hold my flame up to the bookshelves and think about blowing, just setting the whole room on fire. But then I notice that the books are all out of order. Obviously out of order. Stacked, instead of set on their shelves—some of them lying in piles on the floor. I feel like putting them back, sorting them by subject the way my mother used to. (I was always allowed to touch her books. I was allowed to read any book, as long as I put it back in its place and promised to ask if something confused or frightened me.)

  Maybe I should take advantage of the fact that the books are out of order: No one will notice if one goes missing—or several. I reach for one with a dragon embossed on the spine; the dragon’s mouth is open, and fire spews out forming the title: Flames and Blazes—The Art of Burning.

  A shaft of light widens on the shelf before me, and I jerk around, sending the book sailing, pages flapping. Something flies out as the book hits the floor.

  Snow is standing in the doorway. “What are you doing here?” he demands. His blade is already out.

  I’ve seen that sword in action enough, you’d think I’d be terrified—but instead it’s reassuring. I’ve dealt with this, with Snow, before.

  I must truly be exhausted, because I tell him the truth: “Looking for one of my mother’s books.”

  “You’re not supposed to be in here,” he says, both hands on his sword.

  I hold my light higher and step away from the shelves. “I’m not hurting anything. I just want a book.”

  “Why?” He looks down at the book lying between us and rushes forward, abandoning his stance to beat me to it. I lean back against the shelves and swing one ankle over the other. Snow’s crouching over the book. He probably thinks it’s a clue, the thing that will blow my conspiracy wide open.

  He stands again, staring at a small piece of paper in his hand. He looks upset. “Here,” he says softly, holding it out to me. “I’m … sorry.”