The School between Winter and Fairyland

by Heather Fawcett

  “Sorry,” she said before he could answer. “I keep forgetting that the prophecy—that there isn’t much—” The words got all tangled up. Cai was still gazing at nothing with that gray expression, as if he was half there and half elsewhere. “I know you probably never forget.”

  “That’s all right.” He blinked and gave her a brief smile. “I wish I could, sometimes.”

  He went back to his enchantments. As the light drifted, he said, “It must be nice. Living with your family, I mean. Seeing them every day.”

  Autumn was happy to talk about something else. “Do you miss your family?”

  “Usually I’m too busy to think about it. But whenever I’m not—” He stopped. “The first year was the worst. I was only eight. I wrote my parents every day, begging to come home.”

  Autumn asked Cai about his family’s home in Langorelle. He seemed to like talking about it, and she had always wondered what a magician’s house looked like. However, although Cai’s house was grand, he and his sister, Bluebell, had spent most of their time playing in the little wood that backed onto the garden, which reminded him of the Gentlewood. Langorelle was miles from the Gentlewood, but sometimes birds carried seeds there. One of the trees in Cai’s wood was a Gentlewood tree, a great mossy thing that grew faster than anything else and muttered to itself in the wind. Cai had fallen asleep in its shade one fall day and awoken to find himself tucked under a layer of bright leaves like a blanket. Another time, the tree had covered him with spring blossoms. The flowers gave anyone else who touched them a nasty rash, but they didn’t bother Cai.

  He also told Autumn about his cats. Of the two, it was clear that Catastrophe was his favorite.

  “She’s black and white, with a big black patch around one eye, like a pirate,” he said, moving his hands through the light, which dripped down the window like rain. “My parents got her before I was born. She used to sleep with me every night and lick my head. She still does when I visit.”

  Autumn laughed in surprise. “I didn’t know cats did that. I only ever had Choo. Well, we used to have a dog called Jester, but I don’t remember her much. She died a long time ago.”

  “Tassy’s pretty old,” Cai said. “She sleeps a lot these days. Sometimes I worry that I won’t be there when …”

  “Sure you will,” Autumn said softly.

  He absently murmured something to the light. “When I was little, Tassy got sick. We thought she was going to die, but an animal healer came and fixed her up. I used to think that’s what I’d like to be.”

  “A healer?” Autumn was astonished. Healers weren’t much higher than servants, particularly animal healers. Most of them traveled around Eryree with all their belongings on their backs and made barely enough money to keep shoes on their feet.

  “Sure. I’d have a cottage in the Gentlewood, and people would bring their animals to me to fix up. I could listen to the leaves rustling every night and live there like a witch in a story.” He blinked, and added quickly, “I know better now, of course. I’m a magician. Magicians protect Eryree.”

  “S’pose so,” Autumn said. When Cai put it like that, being a magician didn’t sound so great. What good was magic if it stopped you from having what you wanted?

  Clouds rolled in, covering the stars. Cai seemed more tired after that, as if the starlight had given him strength as well as magic. He kept leaning against the wall.

  “I don’t think anything’s happening,” she said as Cai rubbed his eyes. The window was as empty as ever.

  “No,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

  Disappointment settled inside her like cold ashes. “It’s not your fault.”

  “There’s still the boot,” Cai said quietly. “The third clue.”

  Autumn nodded. Her disappointment was a weight heavy enough to root her to the spot. She’d hoped that Cai would take one look at the window and know just what to do. But it would be unfair to say it, with him worn down to the bone.

  “We can keep looking tomorrow,” she managed.

  She picked up Cai’s staff, which had a ghostly sort of warmth, the warmth of stars. With an effort so great it hurt, she turned her back on the window. Then she helped Cai down the hall.

   12

  IN WHICH THE BOGGART SCORCHES THE SKY

  Autumn came down to breakfast the next morning to find Sir Emerick seated at the table, devouring a plate of fried eggs and mushrooms. Autumn had known he was there, of course. She’d heard him and Gran roaring at each other by the fire all night.

  Sir Emerick greeted Autumn with the sort of hello you give somebody you see every day, though she hadn’t seen him in months, and handed her a small sack filled with caramels. Autumn tried to be appreciative, despite the disappointment clinging to her like a shadow. She thought Sir Emerick looked a little worse for wear, but as he was so very worn to start with, it was a hard thing to judge. His clothes were so patched that the patches had patches, and he usually didn’t smell very good. But his eyes were quick and bright, and while you could never be certain whether he was joking, the answer was usually yes. Most knights were part of the king’s army, but those found ill-suited for the job were turned out eventually. Some of them didn’t know what else to do with themselves, so they wandered around the kingdom, fighting monsters too insignificant for the king to bother with in exchange for whatever reward the villagers could scrape together.

  “Help out an old man, will you, Autumn?” he said. “I’m trying to convince Bea—that is, your gran—to go for a couple days’ ramble in the forest with me, like we did when we were young.”

  “And what would I come back to?” Gran said, giving Sir Emerick a sour look as she dropped a raw egg yolk into some tomato juice. “A menagerie on fire and at least one headless grandchild, bet your boots.”

  “They make knights out of boys younger than your eldest,” Sir Emerick said. “They’ll be fine.”

  Autumn thought he was probably right. Gran, though, only let out a snort.

  Sir Emerick started rambling about his travels up and down the coast of Eryree. He’d sailed all the way to the tiny islands of Inis Wen and Inis Dawl in a summer storm and been washed overboard. Fortunately, he’d been close enough to swim to shore, following the little light of his ship. Emys, who’d always loved Sir Emerick’s stories, listened with his mouth half-open until Gran thumped her hand against the table.

  “Don’t you go getting any ideas about running off to the Outer Isles,” she said. “Lonesome, hardscrabble places they are. And the sea dragons they have to deal with!”

  “Didn’t say I was,” Emys muttered, scowling at his toast. “Be nice to see somewhere else, though, besides these nasty old woods.”

  “Just like your dad,” Gran said, shaking her head, but Sir Emerick gave a snort of laughter before the tension could brew into an argument.

  “Least the boy wants something in life,” he said, folding his hands over his round belly. “No harm in that, Bea, my girl. Keeps the blood pumping.” He leaned forward. “Don’t let anyone beat the wanting out of you, boy. At least want to want something, even if you don’t know what it is. You don’t want to end up like this one, do you?” He stabbed a thumb in Gran’s direction.

  Gran threw a roll at his head.

  Autumn found her thoughts drifting back to Sir Emerick’s words as she mucked around the afanc pond with a shovel, digging out the bank to give the beast more room to wash his horns. She didn’t quite understand what Sir Emerick meant by wanting to want something, but it made her think of Cai, who wanted all kinds of things. The forest. Catastrophe. Home, whatever that meant to him. She’d never wanted anything in that way—or at least, she’d never let herself. What would be the point? Her life was the menagerie and her chores, just as her parents’ had been, and Gran’s was, not to mention all those other Malogs who had faded into the past with only the boggart to remember them.

  The afanc grumbled from the middle of the pond. Afancs looked like beavers, if beavers were the size of ho
rses and had an appetite for human flesh. Autumn grumbled back at him, and he subsided.

  Her boot sank ankle-deep in the mud with a wet smuck, and she paused to wrestle it out. Her gaze drifted over the mountainside, copper green in the sunlight. Sparrows flitted among the tall grasses. She knew every nook and burrow, and had counted all the spindly little nests they’d abandoned in the summer. She watched the shadow of Mythroor brushing the edge of Lumen Far—she could tell time by it like a sundial.

  In her whole life, she’d never been beyond the places that shadow touched. Did she want that? She didn’t know. The idea was a little frightening.

  She shook her head, tossing another shovelful of muck over her shoulder. The boggart would kill himself laughing. Afraid of villages the ravens fly over with one flap, but not a ravenous monster? he’d say. That’s just like you.

  All thoughts of Sir Emerick disappeared as Autumn snuck out of the cottage again after Gran fell asleep. The knight had wandered off, saying something about an old, lone Hound that periodically strayed into a farmer’s barn and ate all her cheeses before collapsing from indigestion, after which Sir Emerick would have to lure it, moaning, back into the forest.

  This time, Ceredwen had not only flooded the bathroom, but half the second floor. This struck Autumn as overdoing it somewhat, but Ceredwen seemed delighted. Autumn wondered if all housekeepers secretly fantasized about making enormous messes. Ceredwen was too intimidated by Cai to say hello, and left Autumn when they reached the corridor below the Silver Tower. Autumn kept going, the boggart invisibly in tow.

  At that hour, the corridor was deserted and a little spooky. Of course, the Silver Tower was usually deserted. Sometimes visitors stayed there—for example, during festivals, when students’ families were invited to join the celebrations. But for most of the year, the rooms sat empty, visited only occasionally by housekeepers sent to freshen them.

  The third clue, Autumn thought. She imagined Winter’s boot lying there among the shadows, a small thing, easy to miss. What would they find here? Autumn had searched the tower before, and so had the boggart. It was a clue leading to a dead end.

  She found Cai seated at the bottom of the stairs, his staff leaning against the wall and his head buried in papers. He blended into the shadows better than the other students ever did, so well that, for the first time, he struck Autumn as a little monstrous. The effect was shattered when he jumped at the sound of her approach.

  “I was looking through the maps again last night,” he said. “I found something interesting.”

  He passed one to Autumn. It showed the seven towers of Inglenook—the Silver Tower, the South Tower, the Windfarer Tower, the West Tower, the North Tower, the Northmost Tower, and the Dawn Tower, which Autumn now knew held the skybrary. The towers were strangely named because of the castle’s piecemeal construction by a dozen different magicians, each with their own opinion on where to put things and what to call them. Magicians hated teamwork.

  “Look,” Cai said. He was so intent on the map, his magician’s brain so clearly humming along at lightning speed, that Autumn felt a shiver of hope. “This map is so old it uses the ancient name for the Gentlewood—Fairyland. Sounds nice, doesn’t it? Back then, the forest wasn’t as much of a menace.”

  Autumn nodded slowly. Gran called the forest that on occasion, when she was in one of her storytelling moods—Fairyland was what her own grandparents had called it.

  She traced the dark line of the forest. It had been much farther from Inglenook back then—only the edge was visible, a green wrinkle at the corner of the map. Long-lost villages dotted the hills between the school and the trees.

  “Have you heard of the cloud towers?” Cai said.

  “Oh no,” Autumn groaned.

  Cai smiled. “You’ve already been in one—the Dawn Tower—and nothing terrible happened. Nobody calls it a cloud tower anymore, of course. People say there used to be three; they say the others went even higher than the skybrary, so high you could see all of Eryree from the top of the turrets. I thought it was just a story, but look here. The mapmaker drew the Silver Tower up to the sky.”

  Autumn squinted. “So some magician lopped the top off, then?”

  “No. They took the easier path and hid the upper levels with a spell. But the magic’s so old now that if I can find the seams, I might be able to find a way in.”

  “Where’s the other one? You said there were three.”

  Cai tapped the map. Specks of light wafted off the paper like sparks. “I think it was enchanted off the map. Someone didn’t even want the third tower to exist in a drawing.”

  Autumn shook her head. “Why would magicians have gone to all that trouble to hide two perfectly good towers?”

  “I don’t know. I could only find one reference to them.”

  Cai pulled out another map, which had tiny black lettering around the edges. He read: “‘And in the third year of Queen Alys’s reign, Inglenook’s tallest towers were given back to the sky. To build them was folly, and their existence is best forgotten. Headmaster Lewelyn herself cast the final enchantment. We pray that they will never find their way in again.’”

  “‘They’?” Autumn repeated. A finger of cold trailed down her back. “Who’s they?”

  Cai shook his head.

  “Poor castle,” Autumn said, looking at the map. “You’re not even a proper castle. You’re a bunch of castle bits stuck together and rearranged a dozen times. How would Winter have found his way into one of these cloud towers if they’re hidden with all kinds of magic?”

  “Sometimes old spells start coming apart on their own,” Cai said. “I’ve seen it happen. Especially when you have lots of spells stitched together. When magic starts to decay, it sort of … flickers. A door might open in a spell at midnight on the last day of summer, or at twilight on the twentieth anniversary of its casting, and then vanish for another ten years. Winter might’ve stumbled through a door and been trapped.”

  Autumn’s heart thudded. She thought about what Cai had said about ancient magicians locking people up in mirrors. “Or fell through an old mirror?”

  “Maybe. Maybe that’s what we’ll find up there—the place where he fell through. If so, maybe I can pull him out again. Or maybe we’ll find him—maybe he’s trapped in that hidden tower, half there and half not, and somehow he’s using mirrors to communicate with us.” Cai shook his head. “Sometimes magic is like pulling a thread in a tapestry. You never know how it will unravel.”

  “Boggart?” Autumn said.

  Yes? The edge of the carpet, which had been arranging itself into a tripping hazard for an unwary foot, slid back into place.

  “Did you hear that?” Autumn said. “We’re looking for a way to the hidden cloud tower.”

  Cloud tower? the boggart repeated. You don’t want to go there.

  “Why not?”

  The boggart seemed to consider. His invisible fingers played with the lanterns, making the flames dance. The cloud towers are bad places.

  “Why?”

  I don’t remember. It was a long time ago.

  “You’ll be there. You can protect us.”

  Of course. A sly note entered the boggart’s voice. I’ll protect you, Autumn.

  “No,” Autumn said. “You’ll protect us.”

  Isn’t that what I said? Cai let out a sharp breath and clapped his hand to his ear, as if someone had pulled on it.

  Okay, the boggart continued, all innocence, I’ll look for a door. But I’ve searched the Silver Tower lots of times. I didn’t smell Winter anywhere.

  Autumn didn’t find the boggart’s answer reassuring, but she had told him not to harm Cai. She was reasonably certain he would listen.

  Reasonably. But because you could never entirely predict a boggart, even her boggart, she told Cai what the boggart had said as they climbed the tower staircase. The boggart darted ahead with a flash of claws and was lost in the shadows.

  “How old is he, anyway?” Cai said quietly.


  “I don’t know. He says he lost count after a thousand years.”

  Cai’s eyes widened.

  “He spent a lot of them asleep,” Autumn added.

  “And has he always been with your family?”

  “As far back as Gran knows,” Autumn said. “He tells stories about my great-grandparents sometimes, or their great-grandparents. He always has a favorite in every generation of Malogs.”

  “And you’re his favorite now, I guess?”

  Autumn nodded, her cheeks prickling with pride. After all, boggarts chose their friends carefully. “Though he likes Winter, too. He always says that when I’m grown and we get married, Winter can live with us if he wants to.”

  Cai stared. “When you what?”

  “Oh, it’s just something he says. He talks about building me a castle in the forest out of silver and lilies, a castle with a hundred windows, and stealing the Mynach Falls and putting them next to my bedroom, and other nonsense. It’s all boasting. I don’t think he even knows what it means to be married.” She didn’t tell Cai that she didn’t know what it meant either. “What’s the big deal?”

  “The big deal? You’re twelve. And he’s, what, twelve thousand?”

  “Well, it’s not as if I’m going to marry him now.”

  “You could marry him when you’re a hundred and it would still be weird.”

  “Oh, and you know all about weird, do you?” Autumn’s temper rose. Cai didn’t know what he was talking about. He hadn’t known the boggart since he was a baby—someone who protected you when you were scared, who brought you bright flowers from the depths of the forest and let you cry into his shoulder when you missed the parents you couldn’t even remember. “The hero who’s also a monster.”

  Cai was quiet. Autumn felt a stab of guilt, but Cai didn’t look mad, only wary.

  “You should be careful, Autumn.”

  “You sound like Gran.”

  “Your gran’s been around monsters a long time,” Cai said. “Gosh, if I had a boggart following me around, threatening to marry me, I wouldn’t get a wink of sleep.”