Rachel tried vainly to stanch the tsunami of blood rushing to her cheeks. “Um…yeah.”
That Vlad had acknowledged her so publicly made the whole experience headier, but she found herself wishing he had spoken to her privately. The memory was still too fresh and too precious for her to enjoy hearing it bandied about.
“Should we be expecting wedding bells?” asked Salome, mischievously.
“No!” Rachel squeaked. Not mine, anyway.
“Did you see Eunice’s face?” Salome continued excitedly. “She looked as if she was about to wet her pants. She clearly thought she was going to be Dread Chow.” Salome leaned forward confidentially, “Tell me, has she been bullying you?”
“Bullying? No.” Rachel regained her aplomb. “Just less than friendly.”
“Well, if Eunice does cross the line, you come to me. Von Dread will just make a mess of things. I, on the other hand, know how to get things done subtly! Look how well I did with Cydney Graves.”
“Yeah,” Rachel kept her voice neutral, as she still felt uncomfortable about that incident, and Salome’s part in it. “Cydney has left me alone so far. Though I notice the Drake Hall girls have finally bounced back from having been ensorcelled by Dr. Mordeau. I’m expecting Miss Graves to begin oppressing me again any day now.”
“Not a chance,” replied Salome.
“Wha-what do you mean?”
“Cydney won’t bother you, ever again,” Salome confided, her luminous eyes filled with mirth. “She’s totally fallen apart. She’s a pariah. Doesn’t talk to anyone. Even the other Drake girls won’t have anything to do with her. She won’t be bullying a blind kitten, much less you.” Salome made a dismissing gesture with her hand. “She’s done. Stick a fork in her.”
Startled, Rachel searched her memory, recalling incidents from the last couple months in the dining hall, math class, and the commons, when Cydney Graves had been present. For the first time, Rachel paid attention to what Cydney was doing. Salome was right. Cydney was always sulking by herself, petulant and sullen. Even in the dining hall, she sat entirely by herself, which was unusual at Roanoke.
Rachel slid her mask of calm over her features. Underneath, she felt appalled. True, she had wanted revenge after Cydney had led a group of Drake Hall girls to cast cantrips on Rachel, leaving her on the basement stairs, paralyzed and deformed. However, her hatred had vanished during that first Knights meeting, when she had seen Cydney’s face, flushed and red, after Salome had whispered in the other girl’s ear. Cydney had looked so upset, so lost; Rachel’s heart had gone out to her. Much as Rachel did not like being the target of nasty magic, she had not wanted some other young woman to suffer so, either.
To her surprise, she also found herself fighting off a sharp stab of disappointment. She had been looking forward to facing her persecutor. It would have given her a chance to learn about herself, whether she was the kind of person who could stand up to a bully. Having Salome solve the problem for her made her feel oddly bereft.
“What did you say to her?” Rachel asked curiously. “At the Knight’s meeting, I mean, to make Cydney challenge me to a duel?”
Salome looked as smug as a cat that had caught a songbird. “Remember the time she and her friend paralyzed you? I told her that her older brother Randall was the person who set you free so quickly. She suffers from a big brother complex. She felt totally betrayed.” Salome grinned. “I told you I was good at annoying people! I always know what to say. It’s like a magic power!”
Rachel glanced at Salome and then out over the reflecting late, where Valerie’s latest rock skidded across a patch of thin ice, Payback barking at it excitedly. In her memory, Rachel examined Salome’s face carefully. The other girl’s eyes had danced with glee, but Rachel saw no evidence of malice or wicked intent.
Rachel was reminded of a time when she had been visiting a tenant farm at Gryphon Park. A gangly young boarhound had come running up and dropped a dead animal at the farmer’s feet. It was the family’s beloved pet duck. The great pup had stood enthusiastically wagging its tail, awaiting its master’s praise for its hunting prowess.
What had Salome actually done? Was Salome’s glee innocent or sadistic? It made no sense that losing one duel would transform Cydney Graves from a popular girl into an outcast. Nor did it make sense that a simple lie about her brother could have upset her so much. Was Salome’s “magic power” of annoyance actually something more sinister? Or was she like the boarhound, blissfully unaware of the damage she was causing?
With a sigh, Rachel returned her attention to the other girl.
“Thank you,” she murmured, out of a sense of obligation.
“Anything for a friend of Valerie’s!” Salome crowed cheerfully.
• • •
For her final Saturday of detention—the punishment for the time she and her friends had accidentally left campus by falling out of dreamland into Transylvania—Rachel was assigned to clean the brooms in the broom closet. She washed each bristleless, oiling the levers, polishing the shafts and the fans, testing the flight spells. Those that listed to one side or could not fly straight she put in a pile. The rest went back on the rack.
As she worked, her thoughts yo-yoed back and forth between physics equations and Gaius. How utterly sweet he was! He had gone to such trouble to help her understand both sorcery and physical laws. A girl could not ask for a better boyfriend.
She polished each fan blade in the pile beside her until she could see her reflection in the shiny wood, daydreaming, as she worked, about kisses and motion vectors. On those few occasions when her thoughts drifted too near the dangerous topic of the Prince of Bavaria, she very firmly pulled them back into line.
As she was nearing the last of the bristlelesses, Sigfried trotted into the broom closet carrying a mop and bucket. He had been instructed to clean the permanent floors in the gym. There were not many such floors, as most of the gym space was conjured anew upon request. To her surprise, the usually boisterous Siggy did his work with uncharacteristic diligence. Even Lucky helped, dusting out of reach places with the soft red puff at the end of his golden tail.
“Didn’t realize boys knew how to clean,” Rachel said, impressed.
“We had to scrub a lot of toilets and stuff at the orphanage.” Siggy looked up from where he was scouring the flagstones with a scrub brush. “I imagine you could do it better.”
“You’d be wrong,” she admitted sheepishly. “I know nothing about cleaning.”
“Don’t girls come knowing how to clean?”
“Not those who are the daughters of dukes,” replied Rachel. “When would I ever have cleaned? Polished brooms and mucked stalls, yes…but scrub floors? Wash laundry? At Gryphon Park, we have bwca and bean tighe for that kind of work, not to mention human servants.”
“Bwca? Like the brownies that clean stuff in the dorm? Those crazy little guys with loincloths and turbans?
Rachel chuckled as she began waxing the tail fan of the next broom. “Those are bwbach, relatives of the bwca. Only bwca are not such bizarre dressers. Brownies do baking. Bwca and bwbachs clean. Bean tighe do laundry. We have bean tighe here at the school, too. They’re taller and female. They look like hunched old ladies usually.”
Siggy shook his head. “I’ll never get ’em straight.”
“We’ll be studying domestic fey in music class in the spring. Learning to summon them.”
“Ace!” Sigfried grinned. “You mean I’ll be able to play my trumpet and have magic clean my room?”
Rachel laughed. “You can have bwbachs clean your room now—if you put milk in the bowl in front of your dorm room.”
“Ooooh. Is that what that’s for?”
“Oops,” murmured Lucky, his golden ears and enormously long red whiskers drooping with guilt.
Rachel giggled behind her fingers.
They cleaned for a bit. Rachel found the next-to-last broom listed severely to one side. She took apart the tail fan, cleaned it carefully, and
reassembled it. To her delight, it now flew straight. With a great sense of satisfaction, she hung it back on the rack.
“When does Wheels get back?” Sigfried asked presently. “Classes are boring without her there to sass the tutors.”
“No idea. Ivan didn’t even know if she had gone with Nastasia.”
“Oh. Is Nastasia gone, too?”
Rachel sighed. “Yes, and Joy has only spoken to you about this three hundred and sixty-seven times.”
Sigfried shrugged, uninterested.
Rachel paused in her work, frowning. “Not a very nice attitude to take about a friend.”
“If she wants to be treated like a friend, she should act more like a friend,” Sigfried scowled. “All she ever does is shoot down my ideas.”
“In her defense, Siggy, your ideas are totally over the top. Everyone shoots them down.”
He paused in his work and fixed her with his startlingly blue eyes. “Not you.”
Rachel sighed and returned to polishing. “True.”
She bit her lip, hoping he would not ask why. She did not want to explain her reasons—that she had taken a secret vow to support him, so he would not feel so alone in the world. This same vow had led to them becoming blood brother and sister. She hated the thought that he had no one who cared about him, no one whom he thought of as family (except Lucky, of course). The result was that, rather than disagree with him at the outset, she agreed with all his madcap ideas. Only once they were committed did she try to subtly introduce a note of caution.
Also, she did not wish to admit this aloud, but running full-tilt at danger helped her keep herself together. Falling in with Sigfried’s crazy ideas required tremendous focus. As long as she had something important to concentrate on—such as physics, or the trip to Hoddmimir’s Wood, or some other upcoming adventure—she could stave off the dark thoughts that threatened to overwhelm her whenever things were peaceful.
Sigfried, being Sigfried, did not ask. A moment later, however, she almost wished that he had. The look of black hatred that crept over his face scared her.
“Where does the princess get off telling me that I’m no longer her knight?” The words exploded from Sigfried, as if he had been laboring to keep them in. “Knights are not employees! Did Galahad get a paycheck? Lords cannot fire vassals! Punish them, yes. Have them flogged, killed, even. Send them to their death by ordering them to fight an ogre or a dragon, certainly! But fired? You cannot fire a knight!”
He looked so angry and so lost that sympathetic fury at Nastasia ignited inside Rachel. She tamped it down. It would do no good to take sides between her two dearest friends.
“I’m sorry,” she said sincerely.
“I want to be a knight!” Sigfried cried, his eyes wild. “I’m no good on my own. I don’t know how this crazy world works. I might not know how to make decisions but I do know how to be loyal. Kings and princesses are supposed to stay awake at night making hard decisions. Knights are supposed to serve and protect—and we sleep well.”
“You could be my knight,” Rachel said softly, half joking, half deadly serious.
“You’re not a princess!” he scowled so darkly that Rachel quailed.
She stared down at her lap, wishing very much that she had not spoken.
“Nastasia is so annoying!” Sigfried continued. “First she tells us she has to study day and night. Then she blows off school to gallivant around Magical Australia for days. And she’s never nice to you, Rachel. She treats you badly, and yet, every time you’re good at something, she acts envious. Why are you even friends with her?”
There were many things Rachel could have said, but she settled for the one she thought would be most persuasive to Sigfried.
“She’s going to take us to Hoddmimir’s Wood,” she reminded him, her voice low.
“Oh! Right!” Siggy’s eyes grew huge. “Okay. When we get back from our first visit to another world, I’ll forgive her.”
“I wish I could invite Gaius,” Rachel sighed wistfully. “He’d love to see another world.”
“Who?”
“Good grief!”
“Oh! Your boyfriend. Sorry. I couldn’t hear what you said, you were sighing so loudly.”
Rachel snorted in amusement. She added, “Besides, you have to remain friends with the princess. You’re both Keybearers! You are destined to do some great deed together.”
“Key-wearer?” Siggy looked up from where he was scrubbing. “Like wears on a chain?”
“Bearer! Not wearer. I…don’t know.” Rachel waved a hand. “The Raven said the Keybearers were part of a greater working: ‘Ones who have a high and weighty destiny before them—to undo a great harm.’”
“I don’t want to undo a great harm! I want to do great harm!” Sigfried said fiercely, adding, “To a bad guy, of course. Are you one? A Key-bear, I mean?”
“No. But I get to be support crew.”
“If you’re not one, and she is, I’m not sure I want to play, either,” stated Siggy.
Rachel frowned sadly. She could not imagine being offered the opportunity to do some great good and not jumping at the chance, no matter the cost. It baffled her that Sigfried was not overjoyed a the prospect. She returned to polishing, and they worked a little longer. Sigfried finished and tossed his rags and mop into the bucket. He leaned against the mop handle.
“Another world!” His eyes were bright and far away. “Even the sound of it’s grand.”
Rachel hung up the last broom and turned toward him, her eyes shining. “I cannot begin to put into words why I want so much to go. Part of it, I guess, is the newness of it. Part of it is seeing the place that was once the home of our friend, the Elf. Part is the adventure—my chance to be like my hero, Daring Northwest.”
Siggy interrupted, “He’s that’s the Librarian Adventurer guy who disappeared through that silvery glass in Transylvania, right?”
“Yes. I should tell my father about that glass—though it’s broken now.” she sighed.
“Didn’t he tell you to stop reporting to him?”
“Yes, and I don’t know if he is even aware that I went to Transylvania,” she said glumly. “Anyway, with my plan for the Library of Worlds, actually going to another world, touching truly alien soil, would be the first step of my real life.”
“One small step for Griffin,” quipped Lucky. “One huge step for freaky, genius, dwarf girls everywhere.”
Rachel and Siggy both laughed. Sigfried scratched his dragon between his ruby-colored horns. Lucky’s back leg kicked repeatedly, like a dog’s.
“Ooohhh yeah!” murmured Lucky. “That’s the spot! That’s why every dragon needs to keep a boy! It’s your opposable thumbs.”
Rachel chuckled. “Back to the earlier topic, though, it isn’t just for fun things, like starting the Library of All Worlds, that I want to travel. There’s also the search for knowledge. Dread and Gaius come from different worlds, and yet the fetch inside Magdalene Chase’s doll knew of both of them. This implies that there may be worlds out there that do not have the knowledge blackout we have…where they might actually know what’s going on.”
“Why don’t you ask the doll-thing more questions?” asked Sigfried.
“Gaius told me that Dread has tried, but it won’t speak.”
“Maybe we should beat the information out of it,” Siggy suggested cheerfully.
“Or roast it!” offered Lucky, still kicking his hind leg.
Rachel rolled her eyes, amused at their antics but trying not to encourage them.
“Maybe there was something special about All Hallows’ Eve,” she said.
Sigfried turned to Rachel, his eyes burning with unexpected intensity.
“I’ve been trapped my whole life,” he said, “in one small, stinking orphanage, in one small, stinking city, in a place that is only an island, not even properly part of the Continent. The universe is infinite, and I want to see all of it before I die.” He paused. “And then I want to come back to life an
d see it again.”
His words resonated so deeply with her that Rachel could hardly speak. She reached out and gave his arm a tight squeeze, murmuring. “Me, too, blood brother. Me, too!”
Chapter Eight:
The Art of Falling
Sigfried put away the bucket with the mop and departed. Her steeplechaser in her hand, Rachel went to return the key to the broom closet to Mr. Chanson’s desk drawer. As she walked back through the central corridor toward the front door, she came upon Ivan Romanov stepping out of a zapball court as he headed for the boys’ locker room. His blond hair was damp with sweat, a towel around his neck. With his shirt resting over one shoulder and his chest bare, he made quite an appealing picture.
Gazing up at the Crown Prince of Magical Australia, with his handsome, boyish grin, Rachel could not help smiling back. What a splendid brother-in-law he would make! She felt so flattered that he had once insinuated he might consider marrying her. That a prince had thought highly enough of her to contemplate proposing had cheered her during a number of dark times.
A momentary wistfulness that she had directed him toward Laurel rather than accepting herself assailed her, but she dismissed it. Ivan might be a great catch for her wild sister, but he struck her as too tame and boyish for her own taste. If a young man was not entirely devoted to pursuing the truth, he was not the one for her.
Still, it was would be such fun to have Nastasia as her sister-in-law, once Laurel married Ivan. When Sandra married Vladimir, both her sisters would be wedded to crown princes.
Someday, she would be the sister of two queens!
Ivan smiled down at her. “Hello, Mini-Griffin. I heard from home this morning. My sister should be back this afternoon.”
“Will she! Excellent!” Rachel exclaimed. “Did they happen to mention Zoë?”
Ivan shook his head. “I didn’t think to ask about her.”
“I see.”
An idea struck her. She stepped closer and flashed him a conspiratorial grin. “About Laurel impressing your father, Ivan. While it is true that my sister has never joined the circus, she did take two silver ribbons in equestrian vaulting. I have seen her do some amazing things on the back of a horse—splits, flips. That, combined with her conjuring light shows, might be enough to convince anybody that she was circus material. If you thought it would intrigue your royal father, I could arrange for her to put on a rather splendid performance next time he’s on campus. It would take a lot of work, though. I don’t want to go to all that effort just to find out that you have been toying with Laurel.”
The Awful Truth About Forgetting (Books of Unexpected Enlightenment Book 4) Page 9
