The School between Winter and Fairyland

by Heather Fawcett

  “The other boot was in the school,” the boggart pointed out.

  “In the corridor below the Silver Tower,” Autumn said. “But you heard Winter in the kitchens.”

  The boggart nodded. He thought he’d heard Winter’s voice once, calling him. Unfortunately, the boggart hadn’t been able to work out where the voice had come from. He’d been napping at the time.

  “The Silver Tower, the kitchens.” Autumn tapped her foot. “It doesn’t make sense. I’ve searched both places more than once. And you searched Inglenook from top to bottom after that second boot was found.”

  “I searched everywhere I could think of,” the boggart said. “The school’s old, and there’s magic everywhere, layers of spells all tangled and hodgepodge. It gives me a headache. I don’t think even the masters know about half of them.”

  Autumn’s head was whirling. “Look again, okay?”

  The boggart nodded. He became a hummingbird with a ruby breast and flitted up the mountain.

  Autumn followed at a slower pace. Inglenook’s ghost tree loomed above her. It was a hawthorn, like all ghost trees, twisted with age and hung with ornaments commemorating important events in Inglenook’s history. Most schools didn’t have their own ghost tree to connect them to their past or store family memories. A school wasn’t a house, after all, but the magicians who founded Inglenook had wanted it to feel like a home, and so they had planted the tree the day the school opened.

  The ghost tree made her think of Cai, so she looked away. Normally, the servants’ path afforded a view over the combe and the hem of the Gentlewood, but the day was misty, and Autumn saw only outlines.

  A sheep baaed at her from the slope above. There was a farmstead on the next mountain, which overlooked the pocket-size village of Lumen Far.

  “Baa,” the sheep said again, peering expectantly.

  Baa, Autumn said into the sheep’s mind. She’d tried using the Speech on ordinary beasts before, but most took little notice. Autumn imagined the sound sheep made to greet lost members of their flocks. She couldn’t say it, but she could think it. Baa.

  “Baa,” the sheep agreed. It minced along beside her, as if pleased with its new friend. Who really knew a sheep’s mind, though? Maybe it just wanted to chew on her sweater.

  Autumn was happy to have the sheep with her. She and Winter had done almost everything together, including their chores—Gran had long ago given up on assigning them separate duties—and sometimes it still felt strange to do things by herself. She supposed that it was lonelier to be alone when you were used to being two people than it was when you’d only ever been one.

  Baa, she told the sheep, hoping it wouldn’t wander off. Baa. Baa.

  “Baa,” it replied contentedly, keeping pace with her along the path.

  The farmer appeared in the distance and waved to her. Autumn waved back. She wondered how much longer the farmer would stay in Lumen Far. All the other shepherds had moved south or abandoned their farms after losing their flocks to the monsters of the Gentlewood.

  “Hi, Autumn,” Ceredwen said as Autumn walked into the servants’ foyer. She had a broom in her hand, and her lustrous hair was tucked beneath a bonnet, of which one of the strings appeared suspiciously chewed. “Mrs. Hawes again?”

  “Mmm,” Autumn said.

  Autumn worked for Gran—none of the other servants, not even the steward or the keeper of keys, could order her around. Beastkeepers were looked down upon by everyone, but they also stood apart from the other servants due to the importance of their work. If one of the masters wanted the services of a beastkeeper, they notified Gran directly. However, sometimes when Gran didn’t have need of Autumn, or when she just wanted her elsewhere, she told her to report to the head housekeeper. Gran and Mrs. Hawes were friends, and given that Mrs. Hawes occasionally sent her own servants—those with a stout disposition—to clean the Malogs’ cottage and weed Gran’s garden, Gran reasoned that they should return the favor.

  For her part, Autumn was fairly certain that Mrs. Hawes would prefer Gran didn’t return the favor. Autumn wasn’t any good at cleaning up. Gran called her the two-legged whirlwind—good at attacking things, not so good at the finer tasks. One time, Autumn had finished cleaning a chimney only to turn around and find that her boots had tracked mud, leaves, and mouse fur—the remains of the gwarthegs’ last meal—all over six different carpets.

  Today, though, Autumn had no intention of reporting to Mrs. Hawes.

  Autumn motioned Ceredwen closer, lowering her voice. “You didn’t see me, okay?”

  “When? Yesterday? I’m pretty sure I saw you, Autumn. Didn’t I say hello? Are you mad at me?”

  Autumn smothered a groan. “No, you didn’t see me today. You especially didn’t if Gran comes looking for me. Understand?”

  Ceredwen’s expression cleared. “Oh! Anything you say, Autumn. Hey, do you want to hear the ballad I’ve been working on? It’s based on something the bards played last month during the harvest banquet. You remember the one with the loyal old horse and the prince who lost his way in the Gray Marshes—”

  “Later, okay?” Autumn cut in. If Ceredwen wasn’t talking, she was singing. Autumn often marveled that such a small person could contain such a large volume of words.

  Autumn hadn’t meant to make friends with Ceredwen. Three years ago, Ceredwen had been outside hanging laundry when a thick mist crept up the mountainside. Spying it from the cottage window, Autumn had raced up the path and reached her just in the nick of time, for the mist had sprouted horns and fur. It was a pooka, rolling toward Ceredwen with its fanged mouth open like a dustpan ready to scoop her up, and Ceredwen standing there frozen with her eyes buggy and her braid still in her mouth. Autumn had tackled her just in time, yelling into the pooka’s mind until it burst into tears and fled down the mountainside. Pookas were great blubberers, though they had nothing on Ceredwen, who had sobbed and clung to Autumn for an hour at least. Autumn had let her because she didn’t know what else to do, though her eardrums hadn’t thanked her later.

  Then, to Autumn’s astonishment, Ceredwen had turned to her with a frighteningly earnest look on her tearstained face and stated that her life now belonged to Autumn, and that she, Ceredwen, would remain forever in her debt. It sounded like something out of a ballad, which it probably was. But Ceredwen had made good on her promise dozens of times, keeping Autumn’s secrets and lying shamelessly to Gran as needed. Ceredwen was even working on a ballad about Autumn, which at last count numbered some two hundred verses.

  Autumn climbed up the nearest servants’ staircase—the school was a warren of staircases and poorly placed corridors. She kept her expression dull, nodding to anyone she passed.

  She mounted another staircase, then hurried along a narrow hall lit by a few shivering candlesticks that was used by the housekeepers when they cleaned the magicians’ dormitories. Then she climbed another staircase, which led to an empty room with two doors at the back. Inglenook would be a nightmare to map out.

  Finally, Autumn found herself in a strange, broad corridor lined with windows overlooking the mountainside. There wasn’t much point to them, as they were so close to the slope of the mountain that they saw little light. If you opened one, it would get stuck in the heather.

  It was Ceredwen who had told her about this hidden hallway. Ceredwen knew that Autumn was looking for secret rooms and passages, anyplace Winter might have stumbled into and gotten himself trapped by some enchantment. She told Autumn about anything she found or heard from the other housekeepers, who, after all, knew more about secret passageways than anyone in the world.

  Autumn had searched a dozen such places over the last year and come up empty-handed. But the cloak had given her new hope.

  The problem, of course, was that she didn’t know what she was looking for. What sort of spell could trap a boy for almost a year? Had Winter been turned into a statue? Embroidered into one of the tapestries? Had the spell been a prank gone wrong, or had Winter stumbled into a
n ancient enchantment?

  She couldn’t begin to guess.

  Autumn spent the rest of the afternoon opening and closing windows, banging on walls, and examining tapestries. She stayed until the shadow of the mountain swallowed the land below. The rainclouds fled south, replaced by lazy white tufts that threw spears of sunlight onto the fields.

  Her disappointment grew. It grew so big she could feel it weighing her down like wet wool. She didn’t normally get this upset when her investigations brought her to a dead end. It was because of Winter’s cloak—she’d been so full of hope when she found it. But beneath the hope, there had been fear.

  Because despite what she’d said to the boggart, despite all her theories, her discovery of the cloak in the forest had another, simpler explanation: that Winter had been taken by the Hollow Dragon, like everybody said he had.

  Am I wrong?

  It was a little voice that said it, buried deep inside her. She didn’t normally listen—mostly, she pretended it didn’t exist. But now she heard it clearly.

  Dizziness washed over her. For a moment, she couldn’t sense the little glowing dot that was Winter. But that was only because she was upset—not because the little dot had never been there to begin with.

  Wasn’t it?

  A tear slid down her face and she yanked on one of the tapestries, cursing. The tapestry didn’t deserve it, but she couldn’t stop herself. When it wouldn’t come loose, she kicked it. There was a pressure building behind her eyes, and she knew more tears were about to burst out—they were the bursting kind, not the sniffly type. Something like terror rose inside her like a towering wave.

  Autumn?

  She whirled.

  At the end of the corridor was a bay window overlooking the deep valley between Mythroor and its neighbor, Mynfarn. The darkness made the glass reflective. Autumn’s own face stared back at her—her face, with one difference.

  The lips were moving.

  Autumn’s legs wobbled. “Winter!” she croaked.

  She raced to the window. She didn’t think about the logic of it, what Winter could be doing staring out of a window. The only thing that mattered was that he was there.

  She ran her hand over the window—all she felt was smooth glass. Winter wasn’t standing on the other side—the space there was empty, as was the mountainside below. Somehow, he was inside the window.

  He gazed back at her. He didn’t look upset, or even surprised. He looked lost.

  “Winter!” Autumn struck the glass with her fists. “Winter!”

  Winter’s mouth moved again, but Autumn couldn’t hear him.

  Use the Speech! she shouted. That’s how she had heard him before. Winter looked back, as if someone had tapped him on the shoulder.

  “Winter!” she sobbed. “Where are you? What’s happening?”

  Someone had put a spell on him—just like she’d thought! But what terrible magic could trap a boy in glass? Winter looked back at her, and then he seemed to take a step away—impossibly, for the window was barely an inch thick.

  Then he was gone.

  Autumn’s own reflection returned—an infinitesimal change; even Gran used to get them mixed up sometimes. Her reflection’s hands, though, were pressed to the glass.

  “Winter?” Autumn was shaking to her bones. She ran from window to window, tripping over her feet, shouting his name. But there was only shadow and windswept grass.

  She went back to the bay window, hands clenched tight. One of the stones in the seat was loose—she wrenched it off, then hurled it at the glass. A spiderweb of cracks formed. The evening wind whistled through, brushing the hair from her forehead. She didn’t realize she was speaking at first, a hoarse, murmured chant like the wind outside.

  “I’ll find you,” she said. “I’ll find you. I’ll find you.”

   5

  IN WHICH A MAGICIAN COMES TO DINNER

  Autumn dashed home through the gathering dark. Foxes and other small creatures fled before her, for she wasn’t careful about avoiding their burrows as she usually was but ran heedless through the night.

  A fire burned inside her. She had been right! Winter was trapped in the castle. She’d waited by the bay window until she could wait no longer, but he hadn’t come back.

  She would go back to the window at first light. Or should she sneak into the kitchens? That was where the boggart had heard Winter’s voice. Had he been in a different window then? Should she search all the windows in Inglenook? What sort of enchantment had done this to him? And how was she to get him out? She would ask the boggart—yes, surely the boggart would have some ideas, despite his dislike of magicians and their magic.

  Her thoughts wheeled like birds in a tempest.

  She leaped down the mountainside, past Amfidzel’s garden and the overgrown remnants of the old beastkeepers’ hut. She hopped over the familiar stream and slapped her way through the familiar gorse to emerge behind the cottage, its windows golden and steamed. There she froze in midstep, her breath billowing around her.

  Standing by the cottage was Cai Morrigan.

  He was facing the Gentlewood, one hand on his staff. In his eyes was the same longing Autumn had seen in him before. He watched the waving leaves as intently as if something was written there.

  He turned as if he’d heard her, though she’d been frozen for several heartbeats. “Hello,” he said in his musical voice, smiling. He was such an improbable sight—standing there on the overgrown path in Gran’s garden in his lightly shimmering Inglenook cloak—that Autumn couldn’t speak. He was one too many impossible things in a day.

  “What are you doing here?” she finally managed.

  Cai blinked. “We were supposed to meet at the ghost tree, remember? I came to see if you were all right.”

  Autumn’s jaw dropped. The idea of Cai Morrigan not only waiting for her, as if he was the servant, but coming to check up on her was too much. Her face hardened. Without pausing to think through the wisdom of it, she grabbed Cai by the cloak and dragged him away from the windows. Then she shoved him against a tree.

  “What are—I didn’t mean—” Cai sputtered. He was so startled that he’d dropped his staff. “Autumn—”

  Autumn cut him off, her voice low and fierce. “You listen to me, Cai Morrigan. I don’t know what sort of prank you and your friends are planning, but I don’t want any part in it, see?”

  She kept one hand on his chest, pushing him into the mossy trunk, as she scanned the mountainside for Cai’s friends. If she saw Gawain, she would throttle him. She would throttle him, then feed him to the gwarthegs. The shock and terror and delight of finding Winter all bubbled inside her, a tangled mess of feelings that felt like it was doing the thinking for her.

  “Autumn?” Cai’s voice was oddly hesitant. His eyes, some part of Autumn noticed, were a loamy brown. She could have sworn they’d been the color of pinecones before. “I came here alone. I just want to talk to you, honest.”

  Cai looked not only stunned but hurt, and she realized with a start what she was doing. She couldn’t push Cai Morrigan into a tree! He could get Gran fired for that—for less than that.

  Cheeks burning, she stepped back and dropped into a hasty bow.

  “I’m so sorry, sir,” she mumbled at the ground. “I thought … You showing up, out of the blue …”

  He made a face. “Don’t call me that.” He frowned. “You thought I came to play a trick on you?”

  “Lots of students play tricks on the servants.”

  “I don’t,” he said, in a voice that made Autumn think she’d offended him, though she couldn’t imagine how. He rubbed the back of his head ruefully. The shimmer of his cloak—a much deeper shimmer than Autumn’s, due to layers of spells built into the weave—had been creased by Autumn’s grip. “You’re strong.”

  Autumn cast around for something humble to say. “Well, compared to you.”

  She could have kicked herself. But Cai just smiled.

  “Look,” he said, his face gr
owing serious. “I wanted to talk to you because … well, you’re clearly a good beastkeeper. Better than your brothers. I saw you handling that snowy dragon the other day.”

  Autumn gazed at him blankly. “Amfidzel? She’s just a baby. Anyone could handle her.”

  Cai’s mouth twisted. “I couldn’t.”

  Autumn was about to snort, but then Cai let out a soft breath and held out his hands. “See that?” he said, disgust in his voice. “Just talking about her is enough.”

  Autumn didn’t understand until she realized that Cai’s hands were trembling.

  “You’re—you’re afraid of Amfidzel?” Surely it was a joke. Some sort of odd magician’s joke that she couldn’t understand any more than she understood their spells.

  “I’m afraid of all of them.” Cai shoved his hands into his pockets. “Every dragon in that forest. I can’t get within ten paces of them without embarrassing myself.”

  “But—” Autumn was lost for words. “But how do you do your lessons?”

  “Most lessons are theory, learning how to draw on our powers without unbalancing the realms,” Cai said. “I have permission to skip the ones with dragons. The headmaster knows the truth. So does Gawain. He started a rumor that my magic is so strong that I lose control of it sometimes, and the masters are afraid I’ll kill one of their monsters. The other students believe it.”

  They would, Autumn thought. She would have believed it herself—the real reason wouldn’t have even occurred to her. Cai Morrigan, afraid of dragons? Not just afraid, but so afraid that he couldn’t be in the same room as a silly baby like Amfidzel?

  “But you go into the Gentlewood,” she argued. “I saw you the other night.”

  “I’m not afraid of the forest,” he said.

  “That doesn’t make any sense.”

  “I know.” He sounded tired. “I know. Will you help me?”

  “Help you?” Autumn repeated. “How am I supposed to do that?”