Fantastic Schools: Volume 2

by Nuttall, Christopher G.

  Rachel Griffin and the Missing Laundry

  L. Jagi Lamplighter

  Rachel Griffin is a young sorceress with a perfect memory who attends Roanoke Academy for the Sorcerous Arts. Like the little girl with the curl in the middle of her forehead, Rachel is very good at some things and very bad at others. This story, which takes place toward the end of her freshman year at the Roanoke Upper School and includes laundry, bwbachs, her blood brother Sigfried Smith the Dragon Slayer, and much more, follows her adventures as she tries trying to sort out which of her talents falls in which of the two categories.

  You can read more about the adventures of Rachel and her friends in The Unexpected Enlightenment of Rachel Griffin.

  Rachel Griffin and the Missing Laundry

  The thing Rachel Griffin feared had come upon her.

  If she wanted to successfully complete her freshman year at Roanoke Academy of the Sorcerous Arts, she had to pass a practical test in Music.

  She stood by the open window of her dorm room in Dare Hall, flute poised before her lips. Her shoulder-length, straight black hair fluttered in the breeze. Outside the window, ferns bloomed beneath the paper birches. In the mirror atop her roommates' vanity, she could see her reflection: a tiny girl in a black academic robe with a heart-shaped face, eyes that displayed her part-Korean ancestry, and a mortarboard cap atop her head. In the cage above the second set of bunkbeds, on the far side of the room, the familiar of one of her roommates, a red-winged blackbird, pecked rhythmically at its seeds. Closer at hand, atop her own bottom bunk, her black and white cat that was just a cat purred softly where it lay curled upon her bunk.

  She lifted the silver instrument to her lips and paused.

  Rachel hated practicing her flute. She had no idea why. Normally, she was a very diligent student. She worked hard and dutifully completed assignments. The flute itself was a lovely silver instrument that had once belonged to her grandmother. It should have been a joy to play. Yet practicing struck her as such a dreadful chore that she could not get herself to do it.

  In the fall, it had not mattered. The assignments had been simple, and Rachel had impressed the tutor, Miss Cyrene, with her quick memorization and competence at reading music. However, she had known all along that she could not rely on her perfect memory alone to pass the class. To perform enchantments, she needed to be able to play an instrument. Sooner or later a time would come when she would be asked to play something too difficult for her current mediocre skills.

  That time was now.

  Did Roanoke have a shame flute, such as they had used in the Middle Ages to punish bad musicians? Would her neck be forced into the ring that held the heavy iron instrument and her fingers into the holes in the top bars, so that she would have to stand in front of the class, stuck in the position of playing a flute, enduring the mockery and derision of her fellow students? Or maybe they would further imitate this earlier form of punishment by parading her all over campus so people could throw rotten fruit at her. Rachel pictured various people she knew throwing tomatoes and rotten peppers at her and sighed.

  Maybe it would be better if Roanoke did employ the shame flute. Rachel hated being the center of the attention of a crowd. Avoiding such a fate was one of the few things she could think of that might induce her to actually practice.

  “Hey, Rachel,” the voice of orphan-boy Sigfried Smith issued from the calling card in her pocket. Like Rachel, he spoke with a British accent, though his was lower class. “Lucky and I struck something.”

  “Wouldn’t it be more accurate,” came the gravelly voice of Lucky the Dragon, “to say we didn’t strike something?”

  “Lucky and I struck nothing,” corrected Siggy’s voice. “Did you know that there was nothing under our dorm?”

  Rachel, who still stood by the arched window of her room, her dreaded flute in hand, reached into her pocket for the calling card from which their voices were issuing. She peered into the small rectangle of glass. She could see Sigfried’s nose and part of Lucky’s jade eye. This contributed precisely nothing to trying to figure out what they meant.

  “I say, that makes no sense at all?” Rachel began, thinking that this was not unusual when speaking with Siggy. “Could you…”

  She started to ask him to move the calling card so as to show this supposed nothing, but an idea struck her. If she went in person, she could postpone practicing her flute.

  “Never mind!” she cried, “I’ll be right down!”

  Rachel ran down five flights of stairs to the basement. In one hand, she carried Vroomie, her steeplechaser-model bristleless broom. Waiting for her in the cellar of Dare Hall was her blood-brother, Sigfried the Dragonslayer, and his familiar, Lucky the Dragon. Sigfried was a well-built, impossibly handsome fifteen-year-old with wild blond curls. Lucky was a golden Asian lung, or water dragon, with ruby-colored stomach scales and long, long whiskers, horns, back ridge, and a tail tuft of flame red. They both awaited her arrival with eager faces.

  The carpet that normally covered an area of floor in the back corner of the large music room in the cellar of Dare Hall had been rolled to one side. In the bare spot was a roundish hole. Rachel peered into this hole. It went down three or four feet. Below that was air and a dim light.

  “See!” Sigfried crowed, pointing at the floor. “We struck nothing.”

  “Struck...” Rachel’s eyes went very wide. She straightened and crossed her arms. “Sigfried Smith! Don’t tell me you were trying to burrow through the floor with flaming dragon acid again!”

  Sigfried and Lucky glanced at each other and then back at her. Siggy said, “I thought you’d be pleased. Don’t you hate being stuck inside? Now, we can get out anytime.”

  He had her there.

  She knelt and peered into the hole, adjusting her black robes and tossing the tassel of her cap out of her eyes. Below was a tunnel, most likely a maintenance hallway. She had seen such hallways beneath the school once in a dream, but she had never stopped to consider whether they might be real.

  Glancing up, she said, “Shall we pop in and take a look?”

  Sigfried grinned a grin so bright that there was a danger of blindness. “That’s why I like you, Griffin. No, ‘maybe it’s too dangerous’ Or, ‘You’re not supposed to go there.’ Just “Let’s pop in and take a look.’” He turned to Lucky. “You want to do the honors, Lucks, and go first?”

  “Sure thing, boss!” said the dragon.

  In a flicker of red and gold, he plunged headfirst into the hole.

  Ten minutes later, they were exploring the tunnels, only Sigfried’s girlfriend, Valerie Hunt and her familiar, Payback the Norwegian elkhound, had joined them. The five of them stood atop a wooden boardwalk that ran the length of the entirely-round corridor. Or rather three of them, Valerie, Siggy, and Payback, stood. Rachel and Lucky both hovered; Rachel sat side-saddle upon the seat of her steeplechaser, and Lucky, who was naturally buoyant, snaked lazily through the air.

  “Do you know,” Valerie asked as she ran her hand along the smooth black substance, “that they have discovered new rocks on Mars? Rocks not of this earth?”

  She wore her camera with its red strap over her long black academic robe and held a magnifying glass, with which she peered at the substance of the wall, her golden hair in bright contrast to the dark, glassy coating. Her familiar paced back and forth across the boardwalk, sniffing at the many interesting scents to be found.

  “I want to go to Mars!” Siggy crowed. “Lucky, we could be the first humans to own new rocks. That might be almost as good as gold. Some might contain gold! Griffin!” He turned to Rachel, who hovered beside him. “Can we Sorcerers make a broom that can carry us to Mars? If so, I’m in!”

  “I’m not sure,” Rachel replied. “We can put it on our list of things to look into.”

  She looked both ways down the long tunnel, lit by the soft glow of domestic will-o-wisps. She half expected to see Sarpy, as the students called Umberto Sarpento, the sleepy custodian who kept R
oanoke Academy going and herded the various fey that ran things behind the scenes, but there was no sign of him.

  She turned to Valerie, gesturing toward the smooth, shiny walls. “Do you have any idea what this substance is? I’ve never seen it before. I do recognize this stuff over here.”

  She floated her steeplechaser forward about fifteen feet to where the black walls changed to white and knocked against one of the plates of smooth, porcelain-like substance that lined the round walls.

  “This is the stuff of basic conjurations,” she continued, “which is interesting, because it could not have been conjured directly onto the wall, or it would have vanished again twenty-four hours later. It must have been fitted here, carried outside—where it could be put out under the full moon three months in a row—and then carried back here. Still, makes a rather nice wall covering. I’m surprised it is not used more often.”

  Rachel floated back to where the other two stood, surrounded by the black rock. “But do you know what this is? It almost looks like obsidian.”

  “It is obsidian,” Valerie replied. She raised a finger. “Cool factoid from your favorite rock hound, me.” She pointed the finger at herself and grinned. “If you heat granite hot enough that it melts, what you get is obsidian.”

  “Really?” Rachel leaned forward. “Are you sure?”

  “Positive,” replied Valerie. “Before I found out about the World of the Wise, back when I had no idea that magic was real, I was in Rock Hounders, the geology club at my junior high. One day, they took us to see this guy who had a Freshnel lens—this enormous magnifying glass—in his back yard. The thing was about two-foot square. It could concentrate ordinary sunlight up to three thousand eight hundred degrees. The guy picked up a perfectly normal piece of granite gravel and put it under the lens. Then, he used the lens to heat it until it was so hot that the rock melted. It turned into obsidian.”

  Valerie knocked on the smooth black glassy substance coating the inside of this section of the hallway. “Looked just like this.”

  “Do you think that is what this is?” Rachel asked, awed. “Melted granite?”

  “Do you think this was done with magic?” asked Sigfried. “Could a cantrip or a talisman be hot enough to melt through stone? Man, that would be wicked! We could melt an entire side of Roanoke Hall and never have to go to class again!”

  “A cantrip? Maybe,” she murmured, flying her steeplechaser up higher so she could run her hand over the smooth, cool black glasslike substance of the corridor’s ceiling. “Usually, when they move earth and stone with cantrips, it...doesn’t look like this. More like someone stretched the rock. I haven’t seen anything like it before.”

  Rachel peered down the corridor, burning with curiosity. What else might be down here? Would there be clues to how these corridors were made or why they were entirely round? But then she sighed. She was not supposed to be exploring the corridors beneath Roanoke Academy. She was supposed to be studying for her dreaded enchantment final.

  “Listen, I think we should...”

  From father down the corridor came the sound of weeping.

  The three students and their two familiars crept forward, seeking the source of the sound.

  “Can you see it?” Rachel whispered to Sigfried.

  Siggy touched his robe in the middle of his chest, where Rachel knew his All-Seeing amulet was hidden. Then he scrunched up his face. “I see something. Take out your calling cards. I’ll share what I see.”

  The two girls pulled out rectangles of green glass the size of old-fashioned calling cards. An image appeared in the glass of both cards. Rachel stared at hers.

  Boiling hot water flowed out of a pipe in the wall of an underground chamber. The water flowed into a gigantic tub filled with soapy water, in which garments, mainly black robes, were being washed. Around it stood a group of old women. The women were fishing garments out of the hot water with long hooks and rubbing them against old-fashioned, ribbed washboards before depositing them into a second gigantic tub, this one filled from a second pipe, which seemed to be cold water. The women themselves were tiny, maybe two feet tall, if that. They wore neat dresses of brown burlap and green bonnets. Some wore white aprons or red shawls. All of them, to a woman, had wild, wispy, white hair that seemed to escape any bun they might have tried to fasten it into.

  A second group of the little old ladies fished the robes from the cold water and waved a stick over them. Water fell from the robes back into the gigantic tub, and the robes were instantly dry.

  Valerie’s voice rose shrilly. “Washer’s-at-the-Ford! We’ve seen them! We’re all going to die.”

  “What? Where?” Siggy spun in a circle, his hand on the hilt of his knife. Why he always went for his knife rather than his fulgurator’s wand with its charges of useful spells, Rachel did not quite understand. Though, it occurred to her, maybe it was because he had only known about magic for less than a year, while he had been an orphan trying to defend himself on the dangerous streets of the bad areas of London for fourteen years before that. Sometimes habits die hard. “Lucky, prepare to burninate it!”

  “I’ll burn its face so much it won’t have a face!” the dragon cried loyally.

  “The old washing ladies!” Valerie cried. “It doesn’t help to burn them. It’s already too late. If you see them, you die!”

  “You are thinking of bean-nighe,” Rachel laughed kindly. “These are bean-tighe. They are very kind, friendly domestic fey who do laundry.”

  “Oh.” Valerie pressed a hand against her chest as she caught her breath. “Not going to die today because I accidentally saw an old lady after all.”

  “Aw!” Siggy let go of the knife hilt. “Thought I was going to get to fight something.”

  Valerie ignored him, gazing carefully at the tiny old ladies pictured in her calling card. “So, they are called ban-tee, like tea is banned here? They don’t look particularly scary. Actually, they look rather jolly.”

  “They are,” Rachel agreed. “At Gryphon Park, our bean-tighe are very friendly. I used to like going to sit with them when I was very little. They would give me hazelnuts and fresh berries, or whatever was in season.”

  “Is that how our laundry gets done?” Sigfried gaped. “Tiny old ladies scrub it by hand? Why don’t they install a washing machine? Doesn’t Ouroboros Industries make washing machines using magic?”

  “They do,” Rachel nodded. “But they only invented those recently. I suspect laundry has been done this way at Roanoke for a number of centuries.”

  “Where does all that water come from?” asked Valerie.

  “College creek, I guess,” Rachel replied.

  “How do they get it so hot?” asked Valerie.

  “I...” Rachel frowned at the huge gushing pipe “…don’t know.”

  “Ace! Bet we could take out a lot of enemies with that much boiling water. Annoying kids from math class, too.” Sigfried opined. “Oh, there’s the crying bloke. Hold on.”

  The scene in the calling card shifted. It now showed a little figure who was hidden behind one of the gigantic tubs. The tiny man was as brown as a nut. He wore no clothing except for a red turban and a matching red loincloth.

  “What, in all that is sacred, is that?” gawked Valerie.

  Again, Rachel, who had grown up with domestic fey her whole life, could not help laughing. “It’s a bwbach. They clean our rooms.”

  “Oh! You mean when I put a bowl of milk with honey in it outside my door, this is what’s drinking it?” the other girl’s face took on an odd expression. “Naked. In a loincloth. Not sure I want one of those cleaning my room. Touching my stuff.”

  Rachel giggled.

  “And you’re okay with this? You grew up with these Loincloth Larrys?” Valerie demanded.

  Rachel shook her head. “No, we have bwca at home. They are furry and dress...more normally. Bwcas are a kind of cousin to the bwbachs.”

  From off the side of the card came a voice. Sigfried shifted the image b
ack to the bean-tighe. A new creature stood there. She was a foot taller than the tiny cleaning ladies. Her humble appearance, peasant skirt and embroidered blouse and a green kerchief over her hair, was offset by the fact that she walked on chicken feet and her face had a beast-like snout.

  “What’s that?” asked Sigfried. “A Muppet?”

  Valerie snickered.

  Rachel narrowed her eyes, searching her perfect memory for drawings or descriptions that might come close. “Not sure. A kikimora, maybe?”

  The sharp and shrill voice of the newcomer asked, “Where is the laundry from Dare Hall, Rooms 2A to 2D?”

  The little old ladies looked up with their beneficent smiles. They answered one after another.

  “Fenguth has not brought it.”

  “He says it was taken.”

  “Missing.”

  “Fenguth is the butt of a prank by a mischievous fey.”

  “That is no excuse,” screeched the chicken-legged being. She scowled. “Wasn’t it only just last week that he broke the water jug?”

  “He claimed it was not him,” replied one of the bean-tighe as she scrubbed. “He claimed a miscreant.”

  “He claims a lot of things,” scoffed the kikimora. “Well, no longer. If Fenguth does not bring the laundry...every robe that is missing...his time here is done. He will be cast out. Marched to the edge of the wards and expelled from the campus!”

  “But...” a bean-tighe with an apron that could have been made from a lace doily, spoke up. Her face drawn with concern. “If a bwbach loses its place, isn’t it...”

  “Bwbach, bogle, what is it to me,” scoffed the kikimora. “He has until nightfall to bring the garments or his days at Roanoke are through!”

  Back in the hallway, Rachel covered her calling card, which returned to its green-tinted state.

  “Oh, no,” she whispered softly, pressing a hand against her chest.