Any Way the Wind Blows

by Rainbow Rowell

  They aren’t halfway down the walk before the Pitch boy is taking the Chosen One’s hand. Ah, I’d heard as much. Now that I’ve met them, I’m glad to know it’s true. They could both use a fierce ally, I think.

  Did the Mage hurt anyone worse than that boy?

  Even my Lucy got away.

  But Simon Snow was snatched off the streets and turned into a puppet of war. There’s no official account of what happened, but we all know that Simon defeated the Humdrum and then the Mage—and that the Coven, packed as it was with Davy’s friends, was still unanimous in acquitting the boy.

  What could Davy have done to turn his most loyal disciple against him?

  And what did it cost Simon Snow to make that turn? To bite the only hand that ever fed him?

  I’m glad he’s not alone in this.

  That he has someone to take his hand when they think old women like me aren’t looking.

  Can two boys do what the rest of the World of Mages won’t?

  Perhaps. They’ve done it before, haven’t they?

  29

  SIMON

  Baz made us take the Underground to get to Lady Salisbury’s.

  I hadn’t been on the Tube for more than a year. Not since I got my wings. But Baz insisted they’re hardly noticeable now that I’ve got them folded up so tight.

  “I look strange,” I said to him on the ride to Mayfair. “People are staring.”

  “Yeah, but they don’t think you have wings.”

  “They think I have a hump.”

  “They’ll get over it. Bodies come in different shapes.”

  I suppose he was right—no one jumped me or threw holy water on me. So now we’re taking the train back to my flat, standing side by side, holding on to a bar.

  It was relatively easy to talk Baz into coming back to mine—I don’t think he wants to deal with his aunt yet—but he’s still whinging about it.

  “You don’t have a sofa,” he says.

  “We can sit on the floor.”

  “You don’t have food. I’ll bet you don’t have cutlery. Or bath towels. You don’t even have a bed.”

  “I have a bed. A mattress is a bed.”

  He looks away from me. I think he might be blushing. With Baz, that’s more of an expression than a change in colour. I knock my shoulder into his, and he smiles at the floor.

  “So, what do you think?” I ask him.

  “About what?”

  “Lady Salisbury, Smith-Richards—the whole thing.”

  Baz glances around us. Nobody’s paying any real attention. There are a few girls checking him out, but there’s never any getting away from that.

  “I think Daphne might be caught up in it,” he says. “What do you think?”

  “I liked her,” I say. “Lady Salisbury.”

  “You like anyone who feeds you.”

  “I don’t think she’s barmy…”

  “No.” Baz shakes his head. “Me neither. What do you want to do about it?”

  “Well, we’re going to have to meet the new Chosen One, aren’t we?”

  He looks at me for a moment, then nods. “I suppose we are.”

  30

  PENELOPE

  The sign over the door says THE WHISTLING OGRE.

  “Right in plain sight,” I say.

  Shepard just grins at me. I swear, he’s excited. I thought it would take days of detective work to find a place like this, but Shepard assured me it wouldn’t take long. “I’ll sniff one out. Just wait until it gets dark. The sort of Maybes we’re looking for don’t truck with daylight.”

  “Maybes.” As in magickal beings.

  I wasn’t sure what to wear. None of my clothes scream “dark creature pub night.” I don’t even like ordinary pubs. I don’t drink, and I don’t smoke. And I don’t play darts. So going to the pub means watching other people drink and smoke and play darts. Secondhand darts—what an abject waste of time.

  “I don’t think I can do this,” I say. “I’m going to stand out like a sore thumb.”

  “Trust me,” Shepard says, “everyone in there will be minding their own business.”

  “Not you. You never mind your own business.”

  “That’s one of my unique charms, Penelope.”

  I roll my eyes and let his “unique charms” go without comment. “They’re going to see that we’re not creatures,” I say instead.

  Shepard has done nothing to alter his appearance. He’s really walking into a dark creature hangout with a NEVER SASS A SASQUATCH badge on his jacket and smelling like patchouli. “I told you,” he says, standing close to me and talking under his breath, “they’ll assume we’re something else in disguise.”

  “All right,” I say, “what am I, then, what’s my backstory?”

  He laughs. “Do you need to get into character?”

  “Shepard.”

  “Okay, okay, um…” He raises his narrow shoulders and bites his lip for a second, like he’s thinking. “You’re a muskrat maiden.”

  “What the hell is a muskrat maiden? Did you just make them up?”

  “No! Muskrat maidens trick human beings into trapping them, and then they trade skins.”

  “Do people trap muskrats?”

  “Well, not so much anymore. These are lean times for muskrat maidens.”

  “We don’t even have muskrats in England.”

  “See,” he smiles, “that’s good, that means no one will see the holes in your story.”

  “Shepard.”

  “Penelope, it’ll be fine. Just stay behind me and stay quiet.”

  “Oh, is that a woman’s place?”

  He points at me. “Nice. Muskrat maidens are notoriously thin-skinned.”

  “Very funny.”

  “It’s because they only steal the human epidermis,” he explains. “It’s really very intere—”

  The door to the pub opens, and a squat woman leans out. “If you’re not coming in, you need to move along. I don’t like a commotion.”

  I duck behind Shepard.

  “We’re coming in,” he says, “thank you. I’m Shepard.”

  “I don’t need to know your name,” she grumbles, waving us into a small, dark room. She’s wearing black leather trousers and a leather coat (unseasonable), and standing in front of a second door. “This is a private club. Are you a member?”

  “I am a friend of the establishment,” he says.

  “Are you now?”

  “I’ve walked the hills.”

  She folds her arms. “Have you.”

  “And crossed the rivers.” There’s a gleam in his brown eyes.

  She grunts.

  “I’ve sat in the dark and never asked for a light,” Shepard continues. “I carry no weapon, though I may not come in peace. And there’s enough in my purse to cover the night.”

  Her mouth is flat. “I suppose that’ll do,” she says, opening the door behind her.

  “Thank you”—Shepard pulls me inside by the elbow—“have a great night!”

  “Americans,” I hear her mutter behind us.

  Inside, the place looks like every other dirty old pub. A bit darker than usual. They’ve got Imagine Dragons playing too loud. Shepard still has my elbow. “I forgot to mention,” he says softly, “don’t stare.”

  “I’m not going to—” Nicks and Slick! The barman is an actual tree person. In full leaf! Is that an Ent? Are Ents real? Why would an Ent work in a pub? Don’t they require sunlight?

  Shepard takes a seat at the bar and hauls me up beside him. The tree turns our way and sort of rustles. It’s a rowan tree, I think. Immune to magic. That’s probably useful.

  “I’ll have a Coke,” Shepard says.

  “Pepsi all right?” the tree asks. It has a man’s voice. A very resonant man’s voice. Like someone is knocking on wood right in the middle of it.

  “No,” Shepard says, “do you have ginger ale?”

  The tree nods its leaves and starts to fill a glass with one branch. It’s wipi
ng the bar in front of us with another.

  “I’ll have the same,” I tell it.

  “My name is Shepard,” Shepard says. Like someone pulled the ring on his back. “And this is my friend—” I frown at him. “—Debbie.”

  The barman gives us our ginger ales.

  “We’re not from around here.” Shepard smiles.

  “You don’t say…” the barman says. I can’t see its mouth. Does it have a mouth? Is it just emitting words from its leaves? Like pollen?

  “We’re looking for someone with a special skill.”

  “My special skill is serving alcohol,” the barman says. “Are you going to order any?”

  “Definitely,” Shepard says. “Please, pour yourself a drink.”

  I get the feeling the tree is giving Shepard a flat look, but I can’t be sure. After a second, it pulls itself a pint of dark ale, then tips the pint up to a crack in its bark. “What sort of skill?” it asks—while it’s drinking. Which is either a trick or proof that it doesn’t have a mouth. Unless it has more than one …

  “Translation,” Shepard says. “We’ve found some old papers—some really old papers. Found a giant who recognized the letters, but not the language.”

  “No giants in here,” the tree says. “We’re not zoned for it.”

  “I don’t think it’s a giant language,” Shepard says. “Just an old one.”

  “This look like a library to you?”

  Shepard smiles again. “No.”

  “Some sort of centre for ancient languages?”

  “It does not, no.”

  “Did you just walk into the first underground pub you found after you got off the plane, figuring it’d be full of ye old-ey tim-ey linguists?”

  “I can see why it would seem that way.”

  The tree leans a large branch on the bar in front of Shepard. “Look, you seem like a good guy…” (Does he? Based on what?) “And if the special skill you were looking for involved making a bet or engulfing a corpse in bark, I could steer you in the right direction. But this isn’t The Da Vinci Code starring Tom Hanks. Or National Treasure starring Nicolas Cage. I can’t just point you to the back of the pub, where we keep our wizened old keeper of the sacred texts.”

  “Well, there is Old Kipper…”

  The three of us turn towards the voice. There’s some sort of gnome standing on the barstool next to me. I didn’t even see him when I came in. He’s dressed like a builder. What do gnomes build? And is he wearing doll’s clothes? Is there mass-produced gnome clothing?

  “They didn’t say they needed a passport,” the tree snaps. (We could use a passport, actually; the magic on Shepard’s is temporary.) “They want some ancient treasure map translated.”

  “It isn’t a map,” Shepard unnecessarily offers. “It’s a curse.”

  The tree backs up. “You didn’t mention any curse.”

  “We think it’s more of a treatise about curses,” I improvise.

  “Is that so, Debbie,” the tree says, somehow conveying a sneer.

  “Kipper’s a dab forger,” the gnome says. “But she knows a bit about languages, as well. Don’t want to go copying something you can’t read. Could end up summoning something ugly—or, worse, too pretty.”

  “We’d love to talk to Kipper,” Shepard says. “Is she here?”

  “Kipper doesn’t come down here,” the tree says. “She works at the coffeehouse up the street.”

  “A magickal coffeehouse?” Shepard is thrilled.

  “Yeah,” the tree says. “Costa.”

  * * *

  There is indeed a Costa up the street. I think Shepard is disappointed by how banal it all is. I’m relieved; I could use a muffin.

  When we ask for “Old Kipper,” we’re directed to the 30-something manager, a tired-looking woman with bobbed purple hair. “I’m Kipper,” she says pleasantly. “Do you need some help?”

  “Hi, Kipper,” Shepard says. “Someone at the Whistling Ogre suggested we talk to you—”

  “Oh,” she says, brightening up a bit, “are you here for a commission?”

  “Yes!” he says. “A commission.”

  “I can take my break in a few minutes. Just have a seat.”

  I get my lemon muffin, and we park ourselves in the corner of the shop. “I wonder if there are magickal coffeehouses…” Shepard says. “Do magicians have their own coffeehouses?”

  “We don’t need magickal coffeehouses,” I say. “We’re magickal wherever we go.”

  “Yeah, but you’re so put off by Normals, I’d think you’d want a place to escape from them.”

  “Magicians don’t mind Normals, in general.” I break my muffin in half and offer him some. “It’s just me who finds you off-putting.”

  He takes the muffin. “So magicians make friends with Normals.”

  “All the time.”

  “And tell them about being magicians.”

  “Never.”

  “There must be exceptions.”

  “There really mustn’t.” I think of Micah and his new probably-Normal girlfriend. Does she know what he really is? I always thought Micah liked me (in part, at least) because I was a good magician. We practised our spellwork together. We talked about the magickal life we were going to share.

  Kipper sits down at our table, taking off her apron. “Hi again, thanks for waiting. Unfortunately I only have a few minutes before I have to go back to the register.”

  “We’ll get right to it, then,” I say.

  “I’m Shepard,” he says. “And this is Debbie.”

  Kipper smiles at me. “That’s my mother’s name.”

  I have no reply to that, so I cut to the chase: “We’re looking for someone who knows about languages, a translator.”

  “Oh.” Kipper looks disappointed.

  “We’re sorry,” Shepard says. “Is that not your area?”

  “No,” she says, “it is. I just thought you wanted an actual commission. I’ve been doing more watercolours. Portraits, mostly. Sometimes I do pets.”

  “Really?” he asks, sincerely interested. “They didn’t tell us that. I’d love to see some of your paintings.”

  Kipper already has her phone out, opening her photo folder. “I have a shop online, but sometimes people see my prints down at the Ogre and ask about me.”

  Shepard is looking delighted by something on her phone. I lean over to see. It’s a watercolour of a cat wearing a bow tie.

  “Oh my God,” he says. “Adorable. And really reasonable pricing.”

  “People like to get their pets done after they die,” she says. “After the pets die, I mean. To remember them.”

  “That’s a cool idea,” he says.

  She smiles. “I kind of happened into it.”

  “So you don’t know languages?” I ask.

  Kipper looks like she forgot I was sitting here. “No, I do. A little. It’s sort of a family specialty. My mother can speak in thirty-nine tongues.”

  “That’s impressive,” Shepard says.

  “Yeah, especially for someone who only has four.”

  (Four what? Four tongues?)

  “Wow,” he says.

  I elbow him. “Get out the thing,” I say. “The … writing.”

  “Right, right.” He pulls the folded-up ritual from his inside pocket and hands it to Kipper.

  When she spreads it out onto the table, two extra fingers unfurl from each of her hands. “Oh shit,” she says, sitting back, away from it.

  “What,” I say, “what’s shit?”

  “That’s, like, really obscure.”

  “Yeah?” Shepard asks.

  “That’s not even, like, from this dimension, you know? Like, this is not from Earth-616. You shouldn’t translate this. I can’t translate it, but you shouldn’t anyway—you could end up slicing a trapdoor into another dimension.”

  Shepard gives her a sad smile. “Kipper, I think I already did.”

  31

  AGATHA

  I am flattene
d by the time we get back to Niamh’s Fiesta. My legs feel like jelly, and I’m hungry besides. Niamh pops the back of her hatchback open and gets out two bottles of water. Her face is flushed and sweaty, and her dark hair is coming out of her bun and sticking to her cheeks.

  She tosses me a water—it’s warm—and tips her own bottle up, emptying it one swallow.

  I gulp some water down, then wipe my mouth on my wrist. “Hell’s spells, I won’t be able to walk tomorrow.”

  “What happened to that championship lacrosse athlete?”

  “Oh, ha ha.”

  She’s undoing her bun. Her hair falls down past her shoulders in shiny, dark brown waves. It’s incongruous. Niamh’s face is too hard to be framed by something so soft. She’s already pulling it back up with her fingers and twisting it back into place.

  “All that work,” I say, “for nothing.”

  “It wasn’t for nothing,” she says, getting into the car.

  I get in, too. “We spent hours herding those goats—and then we just left them in the hills.”

  “What were we supposed to do with them?”

  “I don’t know, you tell me. Shouldn’t we have taken them down to the barn?”

  “I already told you, you can’t pen up the goats of Watford. The best you can do is invite them in.”

  “Invite them? Are they vampire goats?”

  Niamh was about to start the car, but now she’s turned in her seat to frown at me. “You’re just like everyone else, aren’t you.”

  “Oh, lay off.” I roll down the window. “I tried to help.”

  “I suppose that’s true,” she mutters, starting the car. “You were extremely helpful for someone who doesn’t care at all about anything outside of herself.”

  My head whips back to her. “Hey. You don’t even know me.”

  Niamh scoffs, backing the car out onto the road. “Everyone knows you, Agatha. You’re Simon Snow’s girlfriend. You’re the Chosen One’s chosen one. You so much as break a nail, and he burns down the Wavering Wood.”

  “I feel like you’re once again referring to a time when I was kidnapped…”

  She looks over at me, actually angry now. “Maybe it doesn’t matter to you whether Watford falls—but it’s the heart of who we are, as magicians. It’s our only institution, the only thing we’ve ever managed to get done and make work.”