A Fiery Friendship

by Lisa Fiedler

  “What are you doing out here?” Leef inquired cheerfully. “Shouldn’t you be inside enjoying the Declaration Day festivities?”

  “The headmistress sent me out to find some twine,” Glinda explained, her fingertips going to her still-unbraided hair.

  “Looks more like she instructed you to prune the cherry trees,” he teased, grinning as he removed a twig from her tangled hair and examined its froth of tiny pink blooms. “Some girls wear ribbons. This is far more original.”

  Glinda smiled. She hadn’t realized how much she’d missed Leef’s humor and easy company. But the sight of him dressed in Aphidina’s war uniform was troubling, to say the least. “Where are you off to in your military trappings?” she asked warily.

  “Aphidina’s castle. I am to be presented to the Witch in the Hallowed Hall of Hollyhocks.”

  “We learned in Horticultural Expressionism for Girls that Hollyhocks are a symbol of great ambition,” Glinda said, frowning at the idea of Leef bowing before one who consorted—even in a nightmare—with the Wickeds.

  “Well, ambition is a good thing, isn’t it? Although I would be lying if I said I wasn’t nervous.”

  “Then don’t go!” Glinda blurted this out before she could stop herself.

  “Don’t go?” Leef laughed. “Why would I ever elect to do that?”

  “I just have a bit of a strange feeling about it, is all. Really, Leef, you don’t have to be a soldier, do you? Surely the most intellectually promising boy in a school filled with intellectually promising boys could be anything he wished to be!”

  “That’s what Headmaster Mendacium said.” A flicker of sadness darkened Leef’s eyes. “Right after Aphidina invited me to leave school early and enlist in her army.” He shook his head. “Just before he turned up powdered.”

  Only now did it occur to Glinda what a coincidence it was that the Headmaster’s talc-y demise would occur on the heels of Leef’s premature departure from the institute. Everyone knew that Mendacium had fervently protested the Witch’s invitation, arguing that the boy was of promising intellect, after all, and deserving of a complete education.

  Glinda’s frown deepened, and without thinking, she reached out to place her hand on the arm of Leef’s rich velvet coat. The gesture made him smile.

  “Come to Declaration Day!” she urged. “Some of the girls are bound to misdeclare, which will surely make for a bit of excitement.” She cringed. “The way things are going this morning, I just might be one of them.”

  “You? Never!”

  His confidence in her only made her more eager to prevent his visit to the Witch. “Please, Leef,” she said, gripping his arm, “skip the Hall of Hollyhocks and come see me accept my scroll!”

  “I’m sorry, Glin,” he said with a lift of his shoulders. “I cannot ignore Aphidina’s request.”

  Glinda sighed. “No,” she conceded. “I suppose you can’t.”

  Faint strains of harpsichord music had begun to waft through the open windows of the Grand Drawing Room, and Glinda knew she should hurry back. “I really must go, Leef, but I do wish you the very best of luck.”

  “And to you the same,” he replied, twirling the cherry blossom between his fingers. “I trust you will be a grand success at whatever future you choose.”

  “Choose, or have thrust upon me,” Glinda muttered.

  “Even so, a future is a future, is it not? And we are lucky Aphidina is so willing to allow us to have one.” Then Leef clicked his heels and gave her a gallant little bow. “Happy Declaration Day, Glinda Gavaria. And may your hair always bloom cherry blossoms. Though, in truth, you are more than unique enough without them.”

  Glinda blushed at her friend’s kind words. “Thank you,” she said.

  “You’re very welcome. Good-bye.”

  “Good-bye.”

  But Leef Dashingwood made no move to take his leave. Instead he just stood there, holding the flowery twig and smiling at Glinda.

  Neither of them noticed the sudden flutter of a dark cape in the distance.

  From across the lawn, the harpsichord music reached a dramatic crescendo, and Glinda was reminded that she had somewhere exceptionally important to be. Dipping a quick curtsy, she turned and hurried toward the school.

  Leef watched her go, smiling after her as she ran up the garden path and into the building. Then he tucked the delicate cherry blossom twig carefully into the pocket of his coat and marched off to meet the Witch.

  By a stroke of good fortune, Madam Mentir was facing away from the Grand Drawing Room’s entrance when a flushed and breathless Glinda slipped through the towering double doors. She was sweaty and dusty from her tussle with Locasta and inexcusably late. Most of her classmates had already made their Declarations and had crossed to the far side of the expansive room; they stood now, shoulder to shoulder, each proudly holding her scroll, more than a few of them sniffling and misty-eyed. Only half a dozen girls had yet to declare, and these few were marching single file toward the copper urn in the middle of the drawing room.

  Standing at the ready beside the urn was Mistress Misty Clarence, Dean of Disastrous Decisions, who had been present at every Declaration Day ceremony since the founding of Mentir’s Academy. She was responsible for addressing misdeclarations, which made for a fair amount of suspense in an otherwise tedious ceremony. Judging by the bored look on Mistress Clarence’s face, Glinda surmised that so far, everyone in this Conclusive class had declared as per Aphidina’s expectations.

  Smoothing her wrinkled pinafore, Glinda swung herself into the slow-moving line, lifting her chin and puffing out her chest in the hopes of looking as though she’d been there all along.

  Ursie stepped forward, beaming. In the urn, the tightly rolled Declaration scrolls shuffled themselves, until one rose weightlessly out of the urn and floated across the space to hover over her head. “Ursie Blauf,” she declared boldly. “Governess!”

  Glinda watched as the scroll unwound itself in the air above Ursie; written on it in beautiful calligraphy was the word GOVERNESS.

  There was a sprinkle of applause from Ursie’s family as the scroll rolled up and placed itself in her hand. Ursie curtsied and took her place among the Declarants.

  Next came D’Lorp, in the midst of a hiccuping fit.

  “D’Lorp-hic-Twipple-hic. Seamstress-hic-hic-hic.”

  The same ceremonious floating and subsequent unrolling occurred, rightly identifying D’Lorp as the Seamstress she planned to become. She hiccuped once more for good measure, then fell into formation with the others.

  Next came a girl named Baloonda Quish, who until Miss Gage’s arrival at Mentir’s had been plagued with a heavy lisp. But thanks to the teacher’s elocution lessons and the student’s own diligence (in Baloonda’s words), “the speech situation had been successfully solved.”

  “Baloonda Quish,” she said, her crisp diction ringing through the room. “I serenely and self-assuredly select Seamstress.”

  But when the scroll floating above Baloonda’s head opened, it revealed the following: CHAMBERMAID.

  The spectators emitted a collective groan of pity.

  “It happens,” crooned Dean of Disastrous Decisions Clarence, calmly gesturing for the crowd to settle down. “You all know it happens. If it didn’t, I’d be out of a job.” Then she pointed a finger at Baloonda’s forehead and recited the following words:

  “Much to learn and much to do

  So back to Fledgling year with you

  To better know for what you’re meant

  Repeat the years you poorly spent

  You came, you saw, and yes, you tried

  But now you must be Youngified!

  The entire gathering watched as the consequence for misdeclaration, a process known as Youngifaction, was brought to bear upon Baloonda Quish: she began to shrink, not just in size but in experience, becoming younger . . . smaller . . . emptier as she reverted to the small child she had been on her first day at Madam Mentir’s six years before.

>   Glinda was thankful that the sound of Baloonda’s thirteen-year-old bones and organs squeezing themselves back to the proper size for a six-year-old could not be heard above the applause of the crowd. Essentially, Baloonda was being given an academic pardon, a second chance to please the Witch. She would return to Mentir’s next fall as a Fledgling to have another crack at it—all of it. How lucky!

  But as Glinda watched her classmate’s backward transformation, she realized that what was even worse than facing another six years of Reading Only When Absolutely Necessary for Girls was that all of Baloonda’s memories were being reclaimed as well. Joyful days spent playing on the school lawn leaked away, as forgotten as if they’d never happened! Every secret, every promise, every last daydream of the childhood she’d already lived would be erased. Stolen. Gone.

  And Glinda, like everyone else, just stood there watching it happen.

  Glinda’s heart thudded when Baloonda’s long braids began to reel themselves back into her scalp, slithering like pretty snakes. A moment later there was a painful popping sound and a pair of wispy pigtails sprouted out of either side of Baloonda’s head.

  “What have you to say, Quish?” Mentir prompted as the CHAMBERMAID scroll tore itself to tiny bits and sprinkled itself around Baloonda like the world’s saddest confetti.

  The Fledgling-size Baloonda looked nervous but managed to respond. “Baloonda Quish humbly thankth Queen Aphidina in abthentia, for allowing me thicth more yearth of exthellenth in education at Madam Mentirth Academy for Girlth.”

  The crowd applauded wildly. Someone cried out, “How patient and generous is Aphidina, the Witch of the South,” and several others chimed in, “Hear, hear! Hear, hear!”

  “Next!” Mentir bellowed.

  Trebly all but skipped up to the urn and sang out, “Trebly Nox. Chambermaid.”

  In response to Trebly’s declaration, her brother, Obblish, stuck out his tongue and sputtered a loud, wet raspberry. This earned him a frown from Madam Mentir and a good hard pinch from his mother, who scolded, “Obb Nox . . . shush!”

  Next came Blingle, who sashayed toward the urn, batting her eyelashes at the spectators. “Miss Blingle Plunkett shall become a Nurse,” she announced, as if she’d done it a hundred times before.

  Blingle’s scroll shot up from the urn and tumbled end over end like a baton toward the Declarant. It opened above her head and agreed with what Blingle had said: NURSE. The scroll landed in her reaching fingers with a flourish, and Blingle curtsied exuberantly to the crowd before going to join the others.

  At last it was Glinda’s turn to step forward. She could feel the eyes of her fellow Declarants and their families upon her soiled dress and snarly hair. A gust of harsh whispers blew through the room.

  “Glinda Gavaria,” she said, her voice a whispery scrape in her throat. “Gov—”

  Panicking, she gulped back the word and shook her head. “Um . . . I mean, Sea—” Again she cut herself off. “That is . . . Nur—”

  But the word would not form. Not on her lips, and not in her heart. Nurse, Chambermaid, Governess, Seamstress . . . not one of them felt like a future that could ever belong to her.

  Madam Mentir shot up from her chair, crooking a finger at the urn as she stomped across the room. A scroll leaped up and sailed toward Glinda to dangle above her head.

  Like a guillotine.

  The headmistress did not quit stomping until she was nose-to-nose with the errant Conclusive who still had not claimed a future. “Declare!” she commanded.

  Glinda scanned the room, searching for her mother, and found her standing beside the harpsichord. Suddenly the only words in Glinda’s head were those she’d heard once in a dream: Lead us to wisdom, set us to right . . . Lead us to wisdom, set us to right . . .

  Enraged by Glinda’s silence, Mentir again shouted in her face, “DECLARE!”

  Still Glinda did not speak, and yet, to her shock, the scroll began to unfurl above her head. Resolved to settle for whatever future it gave to her, Glinda looked up at the opened Declaration scroll.

  And found it blank.

  9

  STEADY FUTURE ONE AND ALL

  Blank!

  This was an unprecedented calamity, for in the entire history of Madam Mentir’s Academy, no Declarant had ever received a blank scroll.

  Glinda half suspected the floor would open up to swallow her whole. Or at the very least, she would be Youngified, like Baloonda. The mere thought of that made her so dizzy she thought she might drop. But Miss Gage was suddenly at her side, meeting Madam Mentir’s chilling gaze as she reached up to harvest the empty parchment from the air where it still hung, bare and empty above Glinda’s head.

  “Possibility,” the teacher announced, as confidently as if the letters were printed there in boldface type. “That is the future for which Glinda Gavaria is destined. No single word could ever be large enough in scope or meaning to define what our Glinda might become. For doesn’t the absence of one word allow for the presence of all words?”

  A murmur of agreement rippled through the gathering as Gage presented the scroll to Glinda.

  “I have every faith that in time Glinda will arrange this multitude of as-yet-unwritten words into a life story of immense purpose.”

  It was a beautiful sentiment, but Glinda doubted Mentir would consider it an accurate interpretation of a scroll full of nothing.

  “Possibility is never an option here at the academy,” she snarled. Seizing the blank scroll from Glinda’s grasp, she began to snap her fingers at it, harshly and in quick, measured time, one snap for each letter: S (snap); E (snap); A (snap); M . . . The letters appeared on the parchment one by one, as if each little click from the headmistress’s fingertips was instead the touch and sweep of a well-inked nib. When Mentir had finished snapping out the tempo, Glinda’s future had been scrawled across the scroll in dripping black ink: SEAMSTRESS.

  “You wouldn’t dare to insult your own mother by declining to follow in her footsteps, would you?” Madam Mentir challenged through her teeth.

  Glinda shook her head and went to join her snickering classmates as Madam Mentir turned to face the class and address them in a stern voice.

  “Your years here have been well spent. See that you squander nothing of what you have been so generously taught.” Her flinty eyes bored into each graduate in turn as she curled her colorless lips into something that was not quite a smile. “In the name of Aphidina, Witch of the South, I wish you girls a steady future. Steady future, one and all.”

  The graduates rejoiced; they clapped and cried and curtsied, singing out to Madam Mentir in a sugary chorus of thank-yous, waving their scrolls in the air.

  “Steady future,” the Declaration guests chimed happily.

  But to Glinda, the cheerful echo of the headmistress’s words sounded less like a blessing . . . and more like a curse.

  10

  IN THE HALL OF HOLLYHOCKS

  The Haunting Harvester had had a long morning. Krumbic fire, stagnated law enforcers, and now a visit, at her own command, from the most capable and ambitious young soldier in the entire Quadling army.

  Leef Dashingwood.

  Entering the freshly budding Hall of Hollyhocks, Aphidina felt the weight of the Silver Chainmail vest she wore. Unbidden came the memory of the moment it had become hers. That had been a day marked by colossally bad judgment, and the Krumbic one had never quite forgiven her for her greed, not to mention her failure. It was bitter consolation that her three rival Witches—Marada in the North, Daspina in the West, and that fiend Ava Munch, who hid behind a Silver Mask in the East—shared in this guilt.

  It was all the fault of the silver! Those glittering gauntlets, the shoes of sterling, the helmet with its shining mask, and oh, that sparkling chainmail, all there for the taking from the shadow of the fallen king . . .

  “Dashingwood has arrived, Your Highness.”

  Startled by Daisy’s voice, Aphidina realized she’d been gripping the chainmail so tight
ly the silver was cutting into the soft flesh of her fingers. “Present him,” she rasped.

  Daisy skittered aside, and there was Leef.

  He could not have been more impressive if Aphidina had grown him herself.

  She studied him as he swept into the Hall of Hollyhocks, stinking of Goodness and cherry blossoms and pride. When she had him pulled from Mendacium’s—based on reports that he excelled at, well, everything—she’d worried that there was simply too much decency in the lad for him to ever be the kind of soldier she required. But once he was drafted into her elite ranks, his willingness to please and his need to be the best had made him as malleable as a birch sapling. He believed (as he’d been brought up to believe) in the supremacy of Quadling Country and the absolute right of Aphidina to rule as she saw fit. In short order his fierce loyalty to her unseen Wickedness had thoroughly trampled his ability to recognize anything else.

  Even so, today she carried in her palm an enchanted potpourri of dried bark, nipped buds, and root hairs—a changeling charm that would turn him into a walking twig—just in case.

  As he marched toward her, his presence seemed to demand the respect of the whole flowery hall. The slender columns of hollyhock that made up the chamber walls stood taller to greet him, and he in turn threw back his shoulders and let them. There was a tinge of disappointment in his eyes. Perhaps he had expected more pomp, more circumstance? A brass band, medals dangling on stiff ribbons, sergeants at arms?

  Too bad.

  She could smell his ambition from across the hall, as pungent as a gardenia bed freshly fertilized with piles of aged manure.

  “Welcome, Dashingwood,” said Aphidina, closing her fist around her handful of Magic. “Stand there.” She pointed to a spot in the center of the room, then said quietly, “Grow,” and the floor around him broke open, spitting up hollyhock.