Today, he was showing Sigfried how to create the Achilles elixir, which temporarily protected the drinker from a single type of damage. Sigfried was tremendously excited about this—until he learned that he could not just uncork the elixir and shout out the name of the danger from which he wished to be protected. The threat to be resisted had to be chosen at the time the elixir was created. Also, this particular elixir was extremely specific. It could only protect against a single type of creature or spell or weapon.
Attached to the practice lab was an enormous specimen closet that was the size of a classroom and smelled of formaldehyde. Rows of shelves held large glass jars containing specimens of every kind. Siggy pored through it, looking for something dangerous that he could make himself immune to. Finally, after some nudging from Varo, he grudgingly settled upon concocting an elixir that would protect him from the bite of a wolf spider.
“Wolf spider!” Sigfried exclaimed. “How often am I going to have to face off against wolf spiders? Are there even wolf spiders here? Giant wolf spiders? Werewolf spiders? Now those would be worth being immune to!”
“Nyet,” stated Varo. “No giant volf spiders.”
“What good is this, then?” exclaimed Sigfried. “Why can’t I make an elixir to protect me against something important? Like a dragon or the ogre?”
“You bring me hair from ogre,” said Varo, “I teach you make ogre-proof Achilles elixir.”
“Okay, Lucky, let’s…” Siggy began heading for the door.
“Oh no, you don’t, big boy!” Valerie jumped from where she had been sitting at a lab station, reading a Shakespeare assignment for Language class, and hooked her arm through Sigfried’s. Turning to the lab assistant, she raised her other hand. “Hey, I have a question.”
“Yes, Miss Hunt?”
“Why don’t the Agents carry Achilles elixirs to protect them from everything?”
“First, this elixir not as effective against sorcery as bey-athe cantrip. Good bey-athe stop all enchantment and cantrips. Achilles elixir stop only one spell. Second, unless they know ahead of time vhat enemy they face, not help—unless they carry huge bandolier of million elixirs.”
“Bandolier of elixirs!” exclaimed Sigfried.
He nodded knowingly. Valerie kept her arm locked through Sigfried’s and shook her head at Lucky when he tried to sneak out the door. Lucky drooped and slunk back.
“Can’t, boss,” whispered Lucky. “Goldilocks nixed the plan, and her hair is the same color as treasure!”
“She is the brains of this operation,” Siggy whispered back.
“Then,” Valerie said, still addressing Varo, “if this elixir is so specific, who uses it?”
With great solemnity, the Russian lab assistant pronounced, “Gardeners.”
“Gardeners?” asked Sigfried, bug-eyed.
“Da. Who else know ahead of time what bad things they face? Gardeners know. Today, work near poisonous snake. Tomorrow, near bee hive. Next day, poison ivy. Day after that, dig near home of volf spider. Wery useful for gardening.”
“Achilles elixir, you have betrayed me!” Sigfried held up an empty crystal vial at arm’s length. “And I thought you were going to be this great achievement. I thought you would make me invulnerable, invincible, impenetrable, and every other word starting with im!”
“Immiscible?” inquired Valerie innocently.
“Yeah,” nodded Siggy. “That, too.”
“You know vat you are, Mr. Smith? Too impatient,” said Varo, as they carried several large jars back to the lab. Placing the jars on the lab station, he stroked his forked, black beard. He had a youthful face, despite his beard, and at over seven feet, he towered over the freshmen, even Sigfried. “This elixir is first step. Baby step. You master it. Next step, you make stronger elixir. Keep going, someday, you will be as good as Baba Yaga at protecting from harm.”
“The witch?” Siggy asked. “Was she good at making elixirs like this?”
“Baba Yaga!” He pronounced it Baba YaGAH!. “She could put charmed life on frog, so that even being run over by Mack truck would cause not one smidgen of harm.”
“How was this terrible witch ultimately defeated?” asked Nastasia.
“Oh! Oh! Me, I know! I asked about that,” cried Siggy, raising his hand. “They used Nothung, the Free Sword—whatever that means. It was said to have been forged in dragon fire! But it’s gone now. Ian said it didn’t exist any more.”
“Nothung is the Great Talisman that Mr. Fisher created that they forgot to put out in the light of the full moon one month,” Rachel said sadly. “It lost its enchantment.”
“That’s cause I didn’t make it,” Sigfried pointed his thumb at his chest. “Everyone knows Nothung has to be re-forged by Sigfried!”
Valerie blinked at him, confused.
The princess said kindly, “He is referring to the Ring Cycle, Miss Hunt, in which a hero named Sigfried re-forges his father’s sword.”
“Oh! You mean Wagner! Sigfried. The sword Nothung. Right,” Valerie smacked herself on the temple. “I should have gotten that. I did some research into the name Sigfried when I was back home in October. Of course, I hadn’t pronounced it aloud. Guess I was reading Nothung as something else.”
Rachel turned to Varo, “But I thought that Ellyllon MacDannan defeated Baba Yaga. She’s a conjurer. Did she hit the witch with a sword?”
“Vell,” Varo took a deep breath. “Mrs. Darling is a friend to mermaids. I am told that she and her siren companions danced and put all Baba Yaga’s servants to sleep. Even the valking hut vith its chicken legs. Vhen the old vitch had no one left to help her, Miss Ellyllon stabbed her vith the sword. Baba Yaga did not believe she could be hurt by it, so she just laughed and did not raise her vand to defend herself. But the sword cut through all her magic charms. Though I think it vas Miss Ellyllon’s brother Finn who ultimately cut off the vitch’s head.”
“Why didn’t Ellyllon cut off Baba Yaga’s head herself?” challenged Valerie.
Varo raised a bushy black eyebrow. “Have you ever tried to cut the head off a vitch? It is hard vork.”
“Charmed lives aren’t all that impressive,” boasted Siggy. “The dragon in the sewers had a charmed life. Where’s he now? Dead!”
“You mean the dragon in London? The one you killed to get your fortune?” asked Valerie, surprised. “You never mentioned that.”
Siggy shrugged nonchalantly. “He said he did, but Lucky and I attacked him anyway, together. I grabbed a sword from his hoard and went at him. The first blow bounced off, but the second one cut! Some charmed life.”
Siggy stomped over to the lab station, grabbed a tricorne mirror, and went to work.
“Excuse me, Mr. Varovitch,” Rachel asked politely, suddenly curious, “but did Baba Yaga put a charm on the ogre that lives here on the island?”
“Our ogre? One who eats high school students and pleasure-boaters? That I do not know. But I heard, as boy in Russia, that she vunce put charm on famous ogre named Mambres, in return for him vhispering in her ear certain spell he knew. Mambres said to be brother of Ogre of Smeeth.”
“The Ogre of Smeeth!” cried Rachel, delighted. “I know about that one! It was slain by Tom Hickathrift, who was said to be a giant…” Her voice trailed off because Varo Varovitch was gazing at her oddly.
“Hmph.” He rubbed the back of his neck and his shoulders slumped, as if this might make him shorter. “How could human be also giant?” He spread his hands. “Absurd.”
Rachel craned her neck to gaze up at the towering young man. “You don’t think he was a giant?”
“Probably part titan,” muttered the Russian, under his breath. He returned to Sigfried’s side to comment on his progress.
Later, after Sigfried had finished, as they left Roanoke Hall, Rachel whispered to the princess, “You haven’t happened to touch him, have you? Mr. Fisher’s lab assistant, I mean.”
Nastasia whispered back, “Actually, I did once, by accident, while he was he
lping me to cut ingredients for an elixir.”
“Did you have a vision? What did you see?”
“I saw him in the woods, hunting. He had a young woman with him. I think she was his wife. She looked a bit like Wendy Darling, but…it wasn’t her. The girl looked daft, moonstruck, but very sweet and cheerful. Varo looked almost exactly the same but even bigger. He was stalking a deer, and when it came running out of the thicket, he threw a spear at it and hit it straight in the mouth, which is quite extraordinary, when you think about it.”
“Moonstruck?” Rachel’s brows drew together. “Do you think she could have been Wendy MacDannan? She’s daft, and they say she looked like her niece when she was young.”
The princess shook her head, “I doubt it. First, I have touched all the Darlings and MacDannans on campus, and they are all native, as is their mother, Mrs. Scarlet MacDannan. So it is likely that Wendy MacDannan is a native, too. And secondly, were she not, this vision would have to have taken place before she came to Roanoke—in other words before she was cursed by the Terrible Five—so she would not have been crazy yet.”
“Oh. You’re right.”
• • •
Outside, the air was brisk. As Rachel and her friends walked back toward their dorm, they noticed a group of students gathering on the commons. Drawing closer, they found a crowd was circling around a new freshman girl, who had only just arrived on campus. She had walked all the way from her home forest in the Pacific Northwest.
“No one told her about travel glasses,” Salome whispered to them, gleefully, as they walked up beside where she and Joy and Zoë were standing in the snow.
“Such a shame,” Nastasia replied softly. “She’s missed so much of the school year.”
“You would worry about that,” smirked Salome. “I’m more worried about her feet.”
Ahead of them, the pink-haired Kris Serenity Wright called for attention. With quick, purposeful motions, she leapt atop a large mound of snow, left from shoveling the walkways, and sat cross-legged, her face alight with amusement. As she leaned forward to address the crowd, Rachel thought she resembled a kettle of mirth in constant danger of boiling over into giggles.
“Hey, everybody, this is my new roommate!” she declared, gesturing with both arms toward the new girl.
“Mine, too!” cried her roommate, Rhiannon Cosgrove, a young woman with a head of long brown curls. She jumped up and down with excitement. Her familiar, a house cat-sized pony, cantered back and forth across the commons, trampling the snow and neighing.
Rhiannon climbed onto the snow mound beside Kris. Leaning down, she offered a hand to the new girl, who climbed up on Kris’s other side, eyeing the snow as if doubting whether it would support her weight. A little mouse sat on her shoulder, its nose a-wiggling.
“Right, Rhiannon’s and mine,” continued Kris, putting a sisterly arm around the shoulder of the new girl. “Her name is Hekpa Tenatyee.”
Hekpa waved at everyone with a wry, alert smile. She was tall and gangly with prominent cheekbones. Her hair, which stood up from her scalp like bushy slender twigs, was russet and brown, with hints of green here and there.
“Hekpa and I have something in common,” continued Kris, addressing the crowd. “We are both fey-born!”
“What’s that mean?” asked Rhiannon, who had grown up among the Unwary. “We didn’t have fey-born in Hoboken, New Jersey. Or at least I didn’t know about them. Of course, I didn’t know anything about magic until the day I kicked over a toadstool and got stuck in a fairy circle. You should have seen how angry my mother was when I didn’t make it home in time for my piano lesson that she had already paid for. Somehow, ‘stuck in a fairy circle’ didn’t cut it.”
“Fey-born’s an old term for anyone with a parent who was a supernatural creature,” replied Kris. “As opposed to most of the Wise, who are distantly descended from some fairy or god. My mom is a kitsune. Hekpa’s mother is a dryad.”
“Does that make you better than us?” Rhiannon gave a mock-pout.
Kris reached over and ruffled her friend’s long curly hair, laughing. “Nope! We can sometimes do things no one else can; we tend to have splendid talents. But fey-born often find that their magic is unpredictable and sometimes goes haywire. Oh, but during the summer, we do get to go to Camp Half-Blood, with Percy Jackson. He’s a hunk. I’m totally going to gouge out Annabeth’s eyes and take him for myself.”
Rhiannon laughed heartily, but Rachel blinked, not sure who they were talking about. Siggy cocked his head, also staring blankly. Valerie moved forward and began taking pictures of the new girl and her roommates atop the pile of snow.
“Um…who? Where? And can I watch?” he asked. “Girls fight dirty. At least, that’s what I learned from the older girls at Sister Rahab’s Home For Unwanted Tramps, the sister-institution to the orphanage where I grew up. When those girls fought over boys, heads were slammed and ears were burned by cigarettes!”
“My money’s on Annabeth,” quipped Rhiannon. “She’s tough!”
“Kris is talking about characters from a book.” Hekpa, the dryad’s daughter, gave Sigfried an apologetic smile. “It’s just a joke.”
“Oh.” Siggy instantly lost interest.
Despite the brisk cold, the throng of curious onlookers grew larger. Hekpa, though embarrassed by all the attention, addressed the gathered crowd, answering questions about her long trek and her happy life growing up in the forest with her mother, the dryad of a Douglas fir, and her father, a canticler who farmed and trapped for their living. According to her stories, she had spent much of her time alone, but she spoke glowingly of her visits to the ice cream parlor in her local town. Far from the shy, retiring person Rachel might have expected from her circumstances, the skinny young woman proved quick-witted, and, from her stories, quite resourceful. When Hekpa Tenatyee finally bowed and sat back down with her roommates, the crowd clapped. The dryad’s daughter blushed, but she nodded her head in acknowledgment.
As the crowd began to disperse, Siggy, who had wandered off, suddenly reappeared.
“Hey,” he called to Kris. “Aren’t you the one whose grandfather knows about fairies and other girly stuff? Has he done anything about that ogre yet? What is an ogre anyway? Are they giants whose growth was stunted by too much coffee and cigarettes at a young age? Or oversized dwarves? Really oversized?”
“No one really knows where most fey things come from,” Kris replied. “Or rather no one knows for sure. Everyone has theories.” She turned to her new friend. “Hekpa, you’re the daughter of a dryad. Did she ever share any enlightening thoughts about their origins?”
Hekpa pulled her knees up and leaned back into the snow. “No. Not really. She used to talk about the council of old trees and the tree-telegraph network. But if she said anything about the origins of things, I don’t remember it. If you want, I can ask her when I go home.”
“Grandfather tells many stories about where creatures like ogres come from,” Kris turned back to Siggy, “but they all contradict each other. Like the Storm Goblin who lives over yonder. In some stories, he’s the ghost of a dead Dutchman. In others, he’s a spirit of nature; yet in still others, he’s a reduced god.”
“A reduced god?” asked Rachel, intrigued. “What does that mean?”
Kris turned to her, “It’s a god who isn’t worshipped much anymore, so there’s not much meat on him, so to speak. He turns into…something like a hungry ghost. Hangs around looking for a new gig. I think Grandda thinks Dwerg is an old god who acquired a new gig from the dead Dutchman. Not sure what he thinks about the ogre. He said the ogre came from far away and didn’t fit in well with the local spirits. They hate each other—Grandda and the ogre.” She turned to Sigfried. “Like mortal enemies!”
Sigfried scowled. “He’s going to have to move over. I’m the ogre’s mortal enemy now.”
Zoë rolled her eyes. “Let’s hope it doesn’t end Sigfried-zero, ogre-one.”
“It won’t,” Sigfried assur
ed them, patting his knife. “Did your grandfather mention whether ogres were good to eat?”
Chapter Twenty-Three:
Busted
Monday evening, Rachel received a reply from her father. She contacted Joy and Gaius during lunch and asked them to meet her at the clubhouse again.
“My father has offered to send Templeton Bridges, his second-in-command,” she told the other two. Holding up the letter, she waved it back and forth. “He says that Templeton has access to Shadow Agency talismans not available to Halls of Healing or even the regular Wisecraft.”
“I don’t know.” Joy worried the ends of her hair with her teeth. “Do you know this person?”
“Oh yes,” Rachel nodded decisively. “He’s a close friend of my father’s. I’ve known him my whole life. The Bridges have two children, Benjamin and Yasmin, who’s seven. Benjamin was probably my best friend, before I came to school.” Inwardly, she cringed, recalling how she had slipped off to invade her parents’ room and investigate the rattle, rather than spend time with Ben at the Yule Party. She vowed to make it up to him.
“Um—” Joy looked torn.
“We don’t have to say a word about scars,” Rachel assured her. “We can just tell Zoë that Mr. Bridges is a family friend who is visiting Roanoke because Benjamin will be a student here next year. That way he can get an informal look at Zoë—before we do anything more drastic.
“If he thinks he needs to examine her more carefully,” she continued, “we can tell Zoë that he’s my father’s physician-sorcerer friend, and that the Wisecraft thought she should have a check-up—just to make sure that getting pulled off the path had not harmed her.” Rachel recalled Colleen MacDannan’s comments in the kitchen about the tight-lipped Agent Bridges. “My father’s friend is known for his discretion. He won’t tell the nurse or the dean or anyone.”
The Awful Truth About Forgetting (Books of Unexpected Enlightenment Book 4) Page 26
