“Oh, really,” Siggy chuckled, rolling up his sleeves. “Let us at ‘em.”
Siggy strode forward and grabbed the handle of the bin. It popped open easily, gaped, and, with a snap, caught him, drawing him in head first, and snapped shut again. His legs kicked from the top of the partially-closed feed bin.
The bin made a low, dark chuckling noise. It moved the lip of its opening out and in, as if trying to chew on the young man.
Sigfried was entirely undismayed. In a loud voice, he declared, “What shall it be, Lucky? Shall I pull them out of the wall? Explode them? Shred them to bits? Or would you rather burn them?”
“I could melt them?” suggested Lucky. He snaked down from above and hung over the bin. “Or just bite them. Dragon bites can be deadly.”
“I’m learning to box, you know,” replied Siggy’s muffled voice. “I could use ‘em for boxing practice.”
There came a few sharp knocks, and the bin made an oof sound.
“And then I could burn ‘em,” Lucky replied happily. “And then eat them.”
Siggy’s legs kicked. There came another two or three sharp blows from inside the bin, which let out a groan of pain. Lucky tipped his head back, opened his mouth, and sucked in air, preparing to breath fire.
“No need for all that! No need for all that!” cried the bin, flapping its mouth open and spitting out Sigfried.
“See, we’re open! We’re open!” called another.
After that, they had no trouble with the bins.
As they left, Rachel considered life as an alchemist. She rather liked alchemy, actually. She was not a natural like Sigfried, who seemed to have a real knack for it, but she had a sense of how to combine influences to make effective talismans.
Problem was, in the long run, alchemy came down to a cantrip, the one used to transfer the alchemical influences to the item being created. And she was not at all good at that cantrip. It seemed a silly thing to be an alchemist who had to constantly rely on other people to do the final step for her.
Besides, occasionally alchemy was fun, but she was not a person who wanted to carry an arsenal of talismans, or even wear a charm bracelet, as many alchemists did.
Alchemy just was not for her.
The final stop was Dee Hall, Valerie’s dorm. It was also the secret home of Rachel’s heart, the place she had wanted to live when she first came to Roanoke, the home of scholars and books. Living in Dee was like living in a library.
The trapdoor for Dee had shelves to either side of it. The halls were lined with books, as were the window alcoves, the risers between each step, and the doors. Even the room where the familiars ate was lined with books. Some of them, Rachel noted, were on how to care for various animals, and what they ate.
Rachel paused a moment and breathed in the wonderful book scent.
Ahhhh. It smelled so good. Was this the place for her? Should she make Dee Hall her home? Then she could be a scholar and spend her days studying and researching. She loved to learn; it was the thing she loved the most, knowing things, finding them out. Surely, this was the place for her.
Only if she moved to Dee, everything would change.
Suddenly, the thought terrified her, so much so that a tightness in her chest made it hard to breathe.
“Girl looks sad?” The little fey tugged on her robe, looking up. “Scared?”
He looked so solicitous that Rachel knelt down and spoke to him.
“I am thinking of making a change. Of moving, from Dare to Dee. Only,” she swallowed, “moving means changing who I spend my time with. My roommates. My core group—that’s the people I take classes with. I love Dee. I love learning. But…”
She looked around with longing, but the lump in her throat was growing larger. Would she be happy with Valerie and her roommates as her new friends? Or would she feel…
“Girl afraid that if she leave Dare, she change?” asked the bwbach with surprising discernment of his own “New place. New life. Maybe become new self. Maybe not girl anymore?”
Was that what she was afraid of, becoming a sort of human bogle? If she gave up on being an enchantress, changed dorms, changed classes, ultimately, probably, changed friends, at least the ones she spent the most time with, would she like who she would become?
“Fenguth not want to be bogle,” the little fey said, his eyes wide with fear. “Fenguth not want to go away.”
Rachel looked him in the eyes. She figured they knew each other well enough know that he would not shy away. She smiled. “Don’t worry, Fenguth. We won’t let that happen.”
As she straightened, she thought that all it took to save Fenguth was to regain a few robes. Would it be that easy for her?
They returned the pallet to the fenoderee in the menagerie, who reluctantly removed his new wardrobe and gave it back to Fenguth. The little fey carefully counted all the laundry they had retrieved and announced that of the seven missing robes, they had gathered five.
“Look at that, little guy,” Sigfried crowed. “Only two more robes, and you’re home free!”
“Maybe Fenguth not be bogle after all,” the little fey said happily, hugging his laundry.
Valerie called Payback and had her sniff the place where the fenoderee had found the robes. And then, they were off again, following the silver and black elkhound.
They brought the five robes they had recovered to the laundry and gave them to the bean-tighe, then they continued following Payback. This time, as they walked, following tunnels that led them under Roanoke Hall, the passageway grew warmer and the air bore traces of cinnamon!
“Salamanders!” Rachel cried, smiling as they rounded a corner. “I bet there’s a whole enclosure of the ones they put in the hearths in the dorm during the winter. Do you think they…”
Her jaw gaped.
Ahead was a gigantic chamber filled with enormous pipes through which, from the sound of it, water rushed. Beneath the pipes, warming them, was the most enormous salamander she had ever seen or even heard of. Most salamanders she had encountered were hearth-sized, not much bigger than iguanas. The boiler back at her home had one about the side of a Komodo monitor dragon.
This salamander was ten feet high and at least fifty feet long. She had no idea they could grow so large. Even a hundred feet down the hallway, she could feel the heat radiating from it.
“Look at the rocks behind it!” Valerie pointed at the black and ember-colored lizard. “Some have been slagged to obsidian. This thing made all these tunnels!”
Rachel gawked at the titanic heating-fey. Valerie was right. The salamander must have burrowed through the earth, forming the tunnels they had been exploring all afternoon. The tunnels were obsidian where it burrowed through rock, and where it had passed through earth, the white, conjured wall slabs had been put up to reinforce the earth.
“What is this place?” Siggy asked. Lucky flew up into the heights of the chamber, flying around the giant pipes.
“The school’s boiler room,” Rachel guessed. “All that hot water must come from here…and the heat in the winter.”
Their group approached the boiler room. Up close, they could see that the salamander was in an enclosure walled off with brass and gold, just like a hearth salamander. The great pipes were supported by lesser pipes, giant wheels, and massive levers leading to vents designed to carry heat away from the boiling room toward the main hall. These levers and wheels were tended by a squat, furry fey maybe three feet tall with a long beard, longer mustache, and a hat that looked like a brass teapot. Or maybe it was wearing an actual teapot on its head. It frowned when it saw the students, but when it saw Fenguth, it shrugged and returned to its tasks.
“Domovoi,” Rachel murmured to the others.
“Whatever that is,” Valerie whispered back. “Et’s-lay et-gay out-ay of ere-hay!”
Valerie tried to continue down the hall, leaving the boiler room behind, but Payback followed the scent path right into the boiler room. The domovoi frowned forbiddingly at the el
khound, who paid it no heed. The students followed, sweat beginning to form on their brows from the oppressive heat.
The dog paused and barked.
“Hey, Furry Beard Guy,” Sigfried called to the domovoi, “have you seen any—”
Then he fell silent because two black robes floated into sight. They hung in the air, to the puzzlement of both the students and the domovoi.
“Hey, boss!” called Lucky. “Up here!”
“Look!” Sigfried cried, pointing up into the pipes. “There it is! The thing that took the robes!”
Overhead, a little fey squatted on a pipe. It was skinny and gray with a tuff of wild hair tied with a ribbon sticking up between very large ears. It grinned maniacally, pointing and cackling.
Oh, of course.
“What is that?” Valerie asked. She raised her camera and snapped a photo. “A phooka? A trow?”
Rachel shook her head. “Bogle.”
“You mean like this guy will become if we don’t get those robes back,” Siggy stuck his thumb at Fenguth. “That makes sense. You said these bog-whatevers are troublesome.
The bogle gestured. With a whoosh, the two flying robes tumbled into the salamander’s enclosure. Instantly, both robes began to smolder.
“No!” Fenguth let out a bloodcurdling screech.
He ran forward, arms outstretched. When he reached the enclosure, he tried to climb the brass fence. It must have been very hot, because he screamed and pulled back his hands.
The salamander turned its huge head with its snub, salamandery nose and began moving toward the fallen robes. Rachel gasped. If the salamander touched them, they would burst into flames.
She did not hesitate. She did not even think. She just whistled. Blue sparks burst from her lips and struck the titanic salamander. Sparkles played across the gigantic black and red creature.
It froze.
Valerie gawked up at the motionless salamander. “Wow, Rachel,” she breathed, “Did you just freeze the entire, dinosaur-sized salamander. It’s huge! First that breeze in the corridor and now this. You’re amazing enchantress.”
Rachel did not answer, but she blushed with pleasure. Maybe she was not so bad at enchantments after all.
The robes were still in danger. Smoke issued from them now.
“Tiathlu!” she cried, performing her favorite cantrip.
The two robes were much lighter than a pallet of familiar feed. With a gesture she whisked the last two robes out of the salamander enclosure and into the arms of the waiting Fenguth, who shrieked with joy, hugging the garments and rubbing his cheek against them.
Up on the pipes, the bogle cackled again and dashed away. No longer able to see it, Rachel remembered back, recalling what she had seen earlier and examined it in her memory: the gray, knobby limbs, the scrap of ribbon tied in its hair.
No, not ribbon, red cloth. Like a bwbach’s turban.
Suddenly, everything Fenguth had told her, the sadness she had seen in his eyes, came back to her. A dozen little things snapped into place in her mind.
Oh. Her lips parted softly. An idea had struck her, an idea so crazy she was almost afraid to speak it aloud, and yet…
“Wait!” She jumped on her steeplechaser and flew up toward the hot pipes. It was uncomfortably warm here, but the idea buzzing through her thoughts was so powerful that she hardly noticed. “Bogle, wait!”
Seeing no sign of it, Rachel called downward. “Sigfried, where is it?”
Sigfried did not even look her direction. He tapped his chest lightly, where his All-Seeing amulet lay and then pointed upward at a different section of pipes. Rachel flew that direction.
A creepy cackle sounded from the direction Sigfried had indicated. Rachel caught sight of the bogle again. It waved its hand. A force sent Rachel and her broom flying. She spun sideways. Knocking into the hot pipe, she screamed.
Keeping a hold on her bristleless, she darted away, her cheek and arm aching where they touched the metal of the pipe. Turning around, she faced the bogle again. Was she crazy? Should she even try? Was it too dangerous?
But it had worked with the ogre. He had remembered…
She looked the bogle in the eyes and called it by its name: “Moilpubh!”
The bogle stopped. Its maniacal grin took on a strange, strained quality.
“You’re Moilpubh, aren’t you?” she asked softly, not breaking eye contact. “It’s not true that no one liked you. Fenguth misses you.”
The bogle took an uncertain step back. Rachel wiped sweat from her face. It was beginning to run into her eyes.
“Isn’t that what happened? You were stuck in DeVere for over a week, and no one noticed? After that, you thought no one cared, and it became hard to do your work? So they let you go?” She gazed deeply into the bogle’s eyes and blurted out, “I think if you forgive Fenguth and the others, you might be able to turn back.”
“Fenguth,” she called downward, wiping her face again on her sleeve. “Ask Moilpubh to forgive you?”
“Forgive?” the little fey gazed up, puzzled. Its eyes grew very, very wide. “Moilpubh?” A huge smile creased its face. “Moilpubh!”
And, just like that, everything became clear. It was not just Moilpubh who needed to forgive. If Rachel wanted to move forward as an enchantress, she would have to forgive her grandmother. It was not practicing that Rachel hated. It was the flute.
Lady Amelia had long graceful fingers, but Rachel’s were short and slender, like her half-Korean mother. When she played the instrument, a part of her mind recalled previous attempts to learn to play, back when her disapproving, Victorian grandmother was still alive. Rachel remembered the tall, august woman criticizing Rachel’s fingering, criticizing Rachel’s playing, criticizing Rachel’s mother—of whom the duchess disapproved.
As a child, the duchess’s judgmental manner had wounded her, but since coming to school, Rachel had learned a great deal about Amelia Griffin, Lady Devon that she had not known as a child.
Her grandmother had loved Blaise Griffin all her life, but when they were young, he had fallen in love with and married someone else. Amelia had become a Vestal Virgin.
Vestal Virgin vows were for life, but when a demon murdered Blaise Griffin’s wife and children, Amelia had broken those vows to leave the order and marry him. Breaking her vows weakened the Eternal Flame she had devoted so many years of her life to guarding. While she had loved her husband, Amelia had never forgiven herself for breaking those vows.
Blaise Griffin, much as Rachel adored him, was not an easy man to live with, and yet Lady Devon had enjoyed a good life with him and bore him two sons. Then, twenty-five years ago, her younger son had been slain in the Battle of Roanoke.
It had broken her grandmother’s heart. She had never truly been the same again.
By the time she tried to teach her tiny granddaughter to play the flute, she had become a cold, critical woman, but considering what she had been through, Rachel suddenly found that she could not fault her. It was time to forgive.
All this came in a flash, but it was as if Rachel’s world had turned upside down, or maybe, it turned right-side up for the first time.
“Miss Griffin! Get away from there!” From below came the voice of Mr. Fuentes, Rachel’s favorite proctor. “That’s a bogle! It’s dangerous!”
He stood in the tunnel just outside the boiler room. With him were two other proctors. They all looked up in great concern.
No! Not now! Panic threatened to overwhelm Rachel.
“It’s okay! I can do this!” She called back.
“Miss Griffin, those are dangerous fey. You need to come down right now.”
“Please, I…” Rachel bit her lip.
The craziness was creeping back into Moilpubh’s eyes. If she lost him now, there was little chance that she could ever get him back again.
A new voice spoke below them, an older masculine voice, one Rachel had seldom heard before.
“Let her be, Fuentes.”
Ra
chel glanced down. Beside the domovoi was an older man with a somewhat bulbous nose, a hairline that had receded halfway across his head, and short gray hair behind that. It was Mr. Sarpento, the school janitor.
“Sarpy, the boiler room is dangerous,” Mr. Fuentes objected. “Miss Griffin’s going to get hurt. Not to mention the bogle. Those things are...”
“Let her be,” the janitor said gruffly. “I want to see what happens. Never seen one of ‘em do that before. You keep doing whatever you’re doing, child.”
Hope leapt in Rachel’s heart. Was it possible, restoring a bogle to his former bwbach state? What else could she do to remind him of who he used to be?
Suddenly, she felt embarrassed and ashamed. How in the world could she have thought that she could do this? She knew nothing about this Moilpubh. There was nothing she could say or do that would remind him…
Only, there was.
Slowly, Rachel flew her steeplechaser back to the ground. She stepped off it and knelt on the hot stone floor of the boiler room. For a moment, she just knelt there, sweat streaming down her face and neck, her eyes closed.
Then she opened her mouth, and she sang:
White coral bells
Upon a slender stalk,
Lilies of the valley deck my garden walk.
* * *
Oh don’t you wish
That you could hear them ring?
That will happen only when the fairies sing.
* * *
She finished singing, but no one spoke, not even Siggy or Lucky. Rachel opened one eye. Fenguth stood before her, his little jaw slack with amazement. Next to him stood a second little bwbach, its face, too, was suffused with joy.
“Moilpubh?” Rachel asked softly.
“Yes. Moilpubh is back! Moilpubh—” the second little fey suddenly realized that it was naked and let out an ungainly squeak, covering his loins with his hands. Valerie stepped forward and proffered Sigfried’s red silk handkerchief. Quick as a flash, the little fey grabbed it and tied it into a new loincloth.
Fantastic Schools: Volume 2 Page 44
