The School between Winter and Fairyland

by Heather Fawcett

  It was Winter’s cloak.

   3

  IN WHICH CAI MORRIGAN NEEDS A FAVOR

  Autumn wanted to go straight home to examine the cloak, which she’d hastily stuffed into her pack, but a servant caught up with her and Emys at the forest’s edge and told her she was wanted by one of the masters. The servant kept staring, and Autumn realized she was covered in mud. She couldn’t bring herself to care.

  Questions swarmed her as she followed the winding mountain path. How had the cloak ended up so deep in the forest? Why wasn’t it charred like the boot?

  The crag where the junior apprentices trained was high above Inglenook, a flat-topped bluff only reachable by a rubbly stairway. From there you could see the dark stain of the Gentlewood going all the way to the northern horizon, the wave-creased sea to the west, and the Twyllaghast Mountains to the east, rocky and trailing mist.

  About fifty junior apprentices huddled on the windy mountainside, ranging in age from eight to fourteen or so. Their staffs gave the bluff a pretty glow—at each tip was a small crystal filled with light, for all light was magic, gathered and transformed into enchantments by a mysterious alchemy not even magicians entirely understood. There was star magic, sun magic, fire magic, and moon magic. From what Autumn understood (which was very little), all magicians could cast the same spells, no matter what kind of magician they were, though some spells came off better if cast by a sun magician or a moon magician and so on. Gran had once said that magicians were like musicians, who could play any song they wished, but some songs were written for fiddles and others for harps or drums, and it was harder to play music that wasn’t meant for you.

  Master Connor waved Autumn aside. The students were practicing enchantments on the menagerie’s troop of brownies, small monsters covered in hair who looked like wizened old men. Some brownies were simple household creatures that liked cleaning and cooking, and snuck out of hidey-holes at night to wash dishes and such, but others were troublesome. They had a rudimentary magic that allowed them to leap great distances by summoning wind, and the students had to summon their own wind to oppose it. Autumn’s job was to intervene whenever a student looked likely to be hurt, and she soon had her hands full.

  “Careful, miss,” she called to a little girl waving her staff haphazardly. A brownie snuck up behind her and bit her ankle.

  Let go, you, Autumn ordered. The brownie yipped and ran off, but the girl had already burst into tears. Her enchantment shattered, and a glitter of sunlight fell to the grass like rain.

  “You’re wasting magic, child,” Master Connor said. The girl cried harder. Autumn supposed the master had to be strict, though she knew sunlight was the easiest magic to replenish; even on rainy days a little leaked through the clouds.

  Normally, Autumn was good at handling brownies—if you could grab them by the scruff of the neck, they went limp as kittens. But she was distracted, and by the end of the lesson, her hands were scratched and bleeding.

  After the students had gone, Master Connor lectured Autumn for her inattentiveness. The brownies had gotten into her books and scattered pages across the mountainside, and Master Connor made Autumn clean up the mess, though it wasn’t her job. Autumn mumbled her apologies and kept her expression dull. She’d found that to be the best approach—if the masters thought you were a half-wit, they let you off easier. They never seemed to need much convincing on that score.

  The sun sank behind the mountains as Autumn chased scraps of paper here and there. The wind had a mean streak that evening, and no sooner had she closed in on her quarry than it drifted off to a precarious ledge or gorse thicket. Soon she was sweating and cranky.

  The moon rose in the violet sky. A handful of magicians wandered out across the lawn in front of the school, gathering moonlight.

  Autumn paused. It was a little like watching someone swirl a broom through a nest of cobwebs. The moonlight brightened briefly as it drifted into the magicians’ staffs. Sometimes, they reached down and scooped it by the handful.

  Autumn wondered what it felt like to touch light. She often tried to imagine it. With its silvery hue, she thought moonlight would be cold and a little slippery, like fish. Starlight had the gentle creaminess of bone, and that’s how it would feel—smooth and ghostly. Sunlight and firelight would be warm, of course, but firelight would crackle and snap in your hands, whereas golden sunlight would have the sticky ooze of honey.

  Autumn’s fingers tingled. She made herself turn away from the magicians.

  When she had gathered up all the pages she could find, she raced back down to the castle and left them in Master Connor’s office. Then she entered the river of students heading down the grand staircase toward the banquet hall and dinner. The fastest way back to the cottage was to cut across the third landing to the passageway that led to the servants’ entrance.

  A ripple passed through the crowd. Autumn could guess what it meant, and sure enough, there was Cai Morrigan, making his way down the stairs. He was walking with a dark-haired girl Autumn didn’t know, except as one of his sidekicks. He never seemed to notice the stares and whispers that followed in his wake, or how the younger students leaped out of his way as if he were the king himself. One girl tripped in her haste, and Cai paused to help her up. Her friends stared at her in awe.

  Autumn glared at the side of Cai’s face. Head down, she wove through the crowd, jostled and elbowed at every step. A few magicians looked at her askance, but for the most part, they ignored her.

  “Autumn?” a voice said. “Autumn Malog?”

  Autumn turned, expecting a servant. Instead, she found herself face-to-face with Cai.

  The other students swirled around him, cloaks trailing like fins. Cai was halfway down the stairs, looking up at her, but when he turned and made his way back upstream, the students parted to make way for him.

  Autumn’s face heated. Normally, nobody ever noticed the servants, unless they did something wrong. Now here was a magician—and not just any magician, but Cai Morrigan, future savior of Eryree—staring right at her with a slight smile on his face. Autumn felt an urge to run away.

  “Are you all right?” Cai asked.

  Autumn blinked. “What?” She added quickly, “Sir.”

  He gestured. “Your hands.”

  “Oh! I—I had some bad luck with the brownies.”

  Cai nodded. “I remember. The juniors have to trap them, don’t they?”

  Cai was already a senior apprentice, which was unheard of for someone so young. Most magicians didn’t graduate from junior to senior until they were at least fourteen, and some never managed it at all if their magic was weak.

  “Are you all right?” Autumn said, looking him over curiously. She could see no evidence that he had recently fought the worst monster in the kingdom. On the contrary, he looked healthy and rested, his cloak spotless and his dark hair at least partly combed. His eyes were the crisp brown of pinecones. Autumn was suddenly and acutely aware of the twigs tangled in her hair.

  “Yes,” Cai said in a voice that had a question in it.

  “I heard you fought the Hollow Dragon last night,” Autumn said. “Um, sir. People are saying he nearly killed you, and that you have a scar from here to here.” She pointed.

  He smiled faintly. “People say all sorts of things.”

  That wasn’t an explanation, but Autumn didn’t see what she could do about it, so she just stood there, waiting.

  “Listen,” he said, “I’m sorry about Gawain. He shouldn’t have said that about your brother.”

  Autumn faltered. She was surprised Cai hadn’t already forgotten he’d seen her last night, what with all the heroism he’d been up to. “That’s all right.”

  “No, it isn’t,” Cai said firmly. “I know you probably don’t want to have anything to do with me, but is there a chance we could talk? I have a favor to ask.”

  Autumn stared. The idea of Cai Morrigan asking her for a favor made as much sense as the headmaster asking for one from Cho
o.

  Unless.

  She thought of Gawain. He was cruel, and maybe Cai was no different—maybe this was all part of some prank. The students pranked the servants sometimes, especially the cooks, sneaking into the kitchens late at night to eat all the pudding and replace it with river mud, for instance.

  “What sort of favor?”

  He smiled as if she’d said yes. “Meet me at the ghost tree tomorrow after class. I won’t keep you long, promise.”

  Autumn tried to arrange her scattered thoughts. But Cai just gave her another of his absentminded smiles and melted back into the river of magicians.

   4

  IN WHICH AUTUMN DOESN’T SEE HERSELF IN THE MIRROR

  The next morning, Autumn was half convinced her conversation with Cai had been a dream. What could Eryree’s most famous magician have to say to her?

  She gazed up at the ceiling. It was sloped, because her bedroom was in the attic, her bed tucked into the corner. If she rolled too far to the left, she banged her nose against the roof. Winter’s bed was opposite hers, the blankets neatly folded and clean, for she took them outside for freshening every week. Autumn hadn’t let Gran take the bed away, though Gran had suggested, in a quiet tone quite unlike her usual manner, that Autumn could replace it with a wardrobe all her own.

  Autumn didn’t look at Winter’s bed, with its cold blankets and smooth pillow. The hardest times, she found, were going to sleep and waking up. During the day, she could distract herself from missing him with chores or her schemes in the forest. But if she woke in the night, or lay there in the quiet of early morning, it was just her and the empty bed.

  She rose and pulled on her clothes, gazing at herself in the old mirror, which was scuffed and stained, like her. She wore the blue-gray tunic and trousers that were standard issue for Inglenook’s servants. These were presentable enough, with a minimum of grass stains, but her cloak was a mess. It had looked nice once—Inglenook was generous with its servants, and everyone who worked out of doors received a cloak woven with a simple spell to ward off cold, which gave the soft gray wool a telltale shimmer of enchantment. But a beastkeeper’s cloak was impossible to keep clean, and the shimmer was dulled by a layer of grime and small tears. One of the top buttons was missing, so Autumn had to fasten it unevenly to keep out the cold. Her white hair, long enough to tuck behind her ears but not long enough to tie back, was unevenly cut.

  No, of course Cai would have nothing to say to the likes of her. His friends had probably been watching on the stairs, laughing into their hands. If she went to the ghost tree tonight, Cai wouldn’t be there, and they’d laugh harder.

  It was Jack’s turn to cook breakfast, thankfully, and the cottage was filled with the smell of baked eggs and cockles and buttered toast. It was also filled with the smell of brothers, but Autumn was used to that. She elbowed her way up to the table between Kyffin and Emys. Kyffin smiled at her and ruffled her hair as he always did. Kyffin was fifteen and almost as handsome as he thought he was. They usually ignored each other, though only Autumn did so on purpose.

  Autumn kicked Jack under the table. She needed to tell someone about Winter’s cloak. But Jack’s dreamy expression didn’t change.

  She kicked him again. Jack gazed at her with a look of wounded puzzlement, and then he sighed and passed her the toast. “You could ask.”

  Autumn gritted her teeth. Winter would have known right away what she meant. She wouldn’t have had to kick him—he would have read her face and understood.

  “You,” Gran said, giving Autumn a look that pierced her right through and pinned her to the chair. “You’re with me today. The gwarthegs need deworming.”

  Autumn’s jaw dropped in outrage. What had she done to deserve the worst chore of them all, a chore Gran reserved only for grandchildren she wished to punish? Then, of course, she remembered that she’d done a great deal, such as disobeying Gran and sneaking into the Gentlewood with the boggart. She shot Emys a poisonous look, but he was too busy scooping cockles onto his toast with the single-minded focus of a starving wolf.

  Autumn sighed. There was no point even talking to her brothers when they had food in front of them, let alone threatening revenge.

  Autumn spent the rest of the morning following Gran around the gwartheg paddock with a bucket of medicine that resembled green snot. The gwarthegs grazed along the lower slopes of the mountain by the Afon Morrel, a lazy river that wound down from the Blue Mountains and through the Gentlewood. You couldn’t see the castle from there, though occasionally the wind carried the scent of woodsmoke.

  Gwarthegs looked like enormous black cows. Their eyes were black like the rest of them, with an unpleasant intelligence. They fed on flesh, human when they could get it, and moved with a slithery grace. Their hooves tinkled like gentle bells in a way that made you horribly sleepy—or conveniently sleepy, as the gwarthegs surely saw it.

  For Autumn, the morning couldn’t be over soon enough. It was her job to shove spoonfuls of the awful green stuff down the gwarthegs’ throats, inevitably splashing herself in the process, while Gran spoke soothing commands into their minds. Then the gwartheg would begin to cough and cough, until it coughed up something that resembled an emerald snake—monsters, of course, didn’t have the same illnesses as ordinary beasts. Autumn had to catch the worm before it escaped and crush its head with a shovel. Half the time, the wily worms escaped into the Afon Morrel, where the gwarthegs drank, ensuring the continuation of the whole hideous cycle. Most monster-related duties were unpleasant, but it was the futility of this particular chore that made Autumn want to tear her hair out.

  “Off with you, then,” Gran finally grunted. Autumn didn’t need to be told twice. She was so relieved to be rid of the hacking beasts that she almost forgot to care that she was covered in green slime.

  “Boo!” A figure leaped onto the path. Autumn shrieked and stumbled backward, but it was only the boggart in his boy shape. He grabbed her before she fell.

  “That was too easy,” the boggart said, looking disappointed. “What’s wrong with you?”

  “I’m dead tired, that’s what,” Autumn groused. “Emys tattled to Gran. I’m in for a week of punishment, at least.”

  The boggart shook his head. He looked like he was twelve—his boy shape had always been the same age as Autumn—and had large black eyes that reflected the light strangely, black curls, and rosy cheeks. The boggart, being vain, never chose an ugly shape. Like Autumn, he was dressed in servants’ robes. Standing still, he might have been mistaken for a servant, but he moved like smoke and his feet left no imprint on the ground. His fingernails were long dark claws no matter what shape he took.

  “I wish you didn’t have to listen to her,” he said. “When we’re married, you’ll be able to do whatever you want.”

  Autumn rolled her eyes. The boggart often promised—or threatened, depending on how you looked at it—to marry her when she was grown. She had been only four or five the first time he said it. She had been playing in the Afon Morrel with Winter and cut her foot on a rock. The boggart had made a bandage out of spiderwebs and promised that when they were married, he would make them a castle of stone smooth as glass, and he would order the rocks in the stream to move out of her way when they saw her coming. Autumn had never agreed to marry the boggart, mainly because she had little sense of what marrying someone meant, though there was a part of her that reasoned that if she had to marry someone when she was grown, why not the boggart, who was her best friend?

  She wasn’t going to tell him that, of course. She didn’t know much about marriage, but she knew you were supposed to ask someone to marry you. The boggart, like many monsters, thought too much of himself.

  “I’m glad you’re up,” Autumn said, and she told him about Winter’s cloak. She hadn’t wanted to say anything in the forest with Emys listening, and after their adventure the boggart had gone right to sleep. Boggarts slept more than cats, sometimes for weeks at a time.

  The boggart listened
with a frown on his face. “Why didn’t the magicians find it? They searched the woods.”

  “Because they didn’t search the woods,” Autumn said. “Not really. The cloak was barely singed—only a little at the hem.”

  “Like the boot.” The boggart's frown deepened. “Whatever happened to Winter, he wasn’t burned to a crisp.”

  Autumn nodded. The path curved over a knoll matted with heather, and the castle came into view. Just below it was Ravenbrood Tor, a green spur topped with a flat, weathered stone. One of Master Edelmeet’s classes was on the tor right now with Amfidzel, practicing shielding spells. Kyffin stood off to one side, ready to leap into action if Amfidzel grew tired of having light dashed in her face and decided to decorate her antlers with magicians.

  “That’s not all.” Autumn’s heart was thundering. “It wasn’t the cloak Winter was wearing that day.”

  “Are you sure?”

  Autumn bit her lip. “Mostly.” Winter hardly ever wore his newest cloak, which he’d been given on the previous Midwinter Eve, when Inglenook gifted every servant with a new uniform and a bottle of cream liqueur—or a satchel of chocolates, if you were under sixteen. He complained that the fresh glitter of the enchantment made it harder to move stealthily through the Gentlewood, which was true enough, though telling anyone that would mean admitting that he and Autumn played in the Gentlewood.

  “So,” the boggart said musingly, “someone planted one of Winter’s cloaks in the woods and burned it a bit to make it look like the Hollow Dragon took him.”

  Autumn felt a rush of relief that the boggart had come to the same conclusion she had. “Exactly. And if they planted the cloak—”

  “They planted the boot too,” he finished.

  They gazed at each other for a long moment, taking in the seriousness of it all. “What do we do now?” the boggart asked.

  “I don’t know.” Autumn’s hands tightened into fists. She felt a familiar rush of frustration. What could they do? They might have found evidence that Winter hadn’t been stolen away by the Hollow Dragon, but Autumn had to admit it was pretty spotty. It also wasn’t evidence of where he had gone.