“My friends?”
She frowns. Pebbles and sticks whorl in the air beneath her. “Tell me now … What do you seek?”
“I told you—a goat. A pregnant doe. She’s in the Wood.”
“How do you know who walks in my Wood?”
“I have a feeling—”
The dryad bends at the waist to shout down at me, one hand clenched in her torn skirts. “The Goats of Watford are lost! They have no keeper! No hook, no crook, no one to lead them home!”
“We want to bring them home!”
“You?” She points her parasol at me. “You have failed them.”
I put my hands on my hips. “To be fair, I didn’t even know about them until last week.”
“Mages,” she hisses. “Treacherous. Traitorous. Takers! When have you ever protected anything good?”
I’m standing before her, below her. “I’m not here to defend magicians,” I say. “I can’t. We’re terrible. Even the best of us are the worst. I’m just here to help this doe. She’s scared and alone, and she’s never done this before. We can help her. Take us to her—please.”
The dryad is glaring at me. She draws her busted umbrella closed … Then she whirls around and sails off deeper into the Wood.
I snatch Niamh’s hand and run after the nymph. Into the Wood, into the Wood. Into the murk. I push branches out of my way, and Niamh holds them back. It should be green and lush here. You should still be able to see the sun. This is dark magic, wild magic.
I keep an eye on the dryad flying ahead of us. She’s hoping to lose us, I think. Hoping to leave us lost. We run after her. Niamh lifts me over a fallen tree that blocks our way—chest to chest, both our hearts clattering.
The dryad gets away from us. Disappears. We stumble around, looking for her.
“There!” Niamh whispers.
A clearing. Through the trees. Where sunlight falls in solid gold bars.
We move closer. This could be a trap—there are stories, about girls who enter the Wood and never leave. I’m holding Niamh’s hand. “Can you hear that?”
Ahead of us—something is crying, bleating.
We walk into the light, into a circle of grass. There’s a stone marker, and a doe lying on the ground before it, panting.
The dryad appears, hovering above the stone, watching us.
“There’s a good girl,” I say, kneeling in the grass next to the goat.
“How long has she been labouring?” Niamh asks.
The dryad ignores her. She settles onto the stone, sitting with her back to us.
It’s a grave, I realize. A wide slab of marble, nearly as tall as Niamh, etched in a typeface I think of as Watford Gothic. EBENEZA PETTY, it says. SHE LIVED FOR WATFORD AND DIED DEFENDING IT. MAY SHE REST IN MAGIC AND SLEEP IN PEACE.
The doe moans. I shake my head and make myself focus: Her eyes are closed. Her body is limp. Her legs are covered in yellow gunk. “She’s been in labour a long time,” I say.
Niamh touches her belly, and the doe’s eyes snap open. Wings unfold from her back, like magic. She tries to bite Niamh and fly away, all at once.
I dodge between them, wrapping my arms around the goat’s neck and holding her against my chest. “Shhhhhh, it’s all right, it’s all right…”
The doe settles again, panting.
Niamh scoots back and opens her shoulder bag. “Let me see your right hand, Agatha.”
I frown at her, but I hold out one hand, hugging the doe with the other. Niamh scrubs my hand with some sort of wipe. Then she squeezes clear jelly in my palm and rubs it through my fingers. She doesn’t have to tell me what to do next; I’ve watched enough YouTube videos.
I shift myself around the doe—she doesn’t fight me—and slide my fingers into her birth canal. She cries out. She’s so tired, she’s been here all day. We never should have left her.
The kid is right inside. I can feel it.
“It’s backwards,” I say. “Stuck.”
“You’ll have to get the legs,” Niamh says.
“I know.”
“All right, I’m right here.”
I lean over the doe, holding her. Her wings beat against my face. I’m in her up to my elbow. Niamh is right beside me.
I can feel the kid. I can feel the legs.
“I’ve got them,” I say.
“One at a time,” Niamh says. “You’re doing well.”
Niamh’s hand is between my shoulders. She’s casting spells over the doe. The doe is crying. I have the legs—I have them. I’m pulling them out one at time. “Push for me, darling,” I say. “I know you’re tired.”
Niamh whispers her spells. The doe pushes. The kid slides out into my hands, still in its sack. Niamh passes me a towel, and I rub the little goat clean.
“It isn’t moving,” I say.
Niamh presses her wand into the kid’s chest. “The beat goes on!”
It doesn’t move.
Its mother cries.
The dryad is sitting on Ebb’s grave, ignoring us.
“I’m sorry,” Niamh says to me. “We were too late.”
74
SIMON
We wait for Baz and Penny and Shepard to disappear inside the Weeping Tower.
Then Pippa looks at me. “You lied to them.”
“Yes.”
“Are you going to st-stop Smith?”
“Yes.”
“The White Chapel,” she whispers. “Hurry!”
AGATHA
“It’s all right,” Niamh says.
It isn’t all right. Nothing is all right. The kid is dead. The mother is crying. And the fucking dryad is acting like none of us are here.
“Why didn’t you do something?” I shout at her. I stand up and walk around Ebb’s headstone. The dryad is twirling her rotten parasol over her knees. “Why didn’t you help it?”
“I’m not the goat’s keeper,” the dryad says, watching her umbrella spin.
“It came here for help!”
Her eyes snap up at me, flashing. “No. It came here to die. That’s what this place is.”
“The goats protect Watford—don’t you know that? If they leave, the school will fall!”
“You care about Watford? Watford doesn’t care about you, fair one! It doesn’t miss you. It won’t protect you.” She runs one hand along the top of the stone. Caressing it. “She loved it, too, and all it gave her in return was a grave.”
“Did you know Ebb?”
The dryad laughs. It sounds like wind passing through a tree. “Yes.”
“Were you friends?”
She caresses the stone again. “No.”
“I hardly knew her,” I say, “but I know this—she loved these goats. If you let a goat suffer, on her grave, she will never forgive you. She’ll haunt you forever.”
The dryad laughs again. “Too late for that. Too late, golden one. You were too late.”
SIMON
I’m going to stop Smith.
I don’t know if he’s the Chosen One. I don’t know if his spell works.
But he can’t cast that spell today—not on Penny’s dad and Baz’s stepmum. Not with Jamie hidden in his basement and a wand to Pippa’s head. There are too many red flags here.
And I know that’s rich coming from me. I’m wearing a suit made of red flags, metaphorically speaking, twenty-four-fucking-seven. But this …
(I really hate basements.) (You shouldn’t hide people in basements. Even bad people. But certainly not your friends.)
I’m going to stop Smith.
I’m going to call a time-out. To keep him from making any more mistakes.
I get to the White Chapel first. (Pippa and Jamie are behind me somewhere—they’re running, I’m flying.) I never wanted to come back here, but here I am. I land in front of the gilded doors and push them open.
The Chapel is full of mages, more than I’ve seen at Smith’s meetings so far. Word must be getting out.
Smith is onstage, near the altar. So is Daphne. H
e’s holding her hand. He’s holding his wand. He’s wearing a white suit—there’s a microphone clipped to his collar.
I just have to stop him.
I don’t have to figure it all out, I don’t have to have any answers. I just have to stop this, today. For today.
Smith sees me. He says my name, but not loud enough for the microphone to pick it up.
I nod at him and raise my hand. Maybe it’s all a misunderstanding. I keep walking down the centre aisle. I’ll just ask him to step away for a moment, so we can talk.
“Simon Snow,” he says again, and everyone hears.
They all turn to look at me. To gape.
“Is it really him?”
“Does he really have dragon wings?”
“How did he get through the gates?”
“Smith,” I say. I’m more than halfway up the aisle. “I need to talk to you.”
My wings flutter, and I fly forward a few feet. (That happens sometimes when I’m not focused on staying grounded.) The crowd gasps. It makes me anxious—instead of landing, I fly higher.
“Smith,” I say, “don’t cast the spell. We need to talk.”
“Simon Snow,” Smith says again, even louder, in his stage voice. “I know you’re angry about being replaced. But you won’t stop the good work we’re doing here.”
“What?” I’m hovering before him. “Smith, that’s not—”
“Your years of deception have come to an end!” he shouts. “You’ve done enough to hurt the World of Mages!”
HEADMISTRESS BUNCE
Don’t I have enough on my plate?
I know I’m not supposed to think that—I could never say it out loud—but for heaven’s snakes, could I just have one day where nothing falls apart?
I have enough to manage, trying to keep the walls of Watford standing with scant resources and even less support. The Mage nearly ran this place into the ground … The library was empty. The curriculum was a shambles. I’ve got eighth years who can’t cast a complete sentence and fourth years who only cast Internet memes. To think that my teachers thought pop songs were unstable—my own son brought down a classroom wall with a “Yeet.”
It was Pacey. He’s 17. And, frankly, the least of my problems.
I can say this with authority because I lie in bed most nights, ranking my list of problems—and ranking my list of problematic children. There are five of them; it’s a dynamic list.
Premal, my oldest, usually owns the top spot. Holed up in his room back in Hounslow, still grieving the Mage, almost two years after the man’s death—after Premal and I found him dead. I worry that Prem will never move on. I worry about what he’ll move on to. I worry that no one is bringing him dinner when I’m here at Watford …
Alternately, I worry that his 12-year-old sister, Priya, is bringing him dinner, hovering over him and mothering him in my place. I know that she mothers Pip, the youngest. I worry about Pip, too, because I can’t yet see how I’m failing him.
And of course I worry about Penelope—always Penelope. Attached at the hip to the most dangerous person in England. And now bringing home stray Normals. Morgana, I can’t deal with it! I don’t know where to start!
I need a break … I need some help …
I don’t need this from Martin now.
He believes in the Chosen One?
When did this happen? Martin is a scholar, an academic. He’s pragmatic. He believes in facts. It’s why I fell in love with him. Partly, anyway.
We’ve always laughed at magicians who lived their lives by prophecy. People like Davy, who trusted every superstition more than his own eyes and ears.
Is this because I left Martin alone?
I left for Watford, and I left him with the kids, and we agreed it would be fine, that he could handle it, because he didn’t have the Humdrum to track anymore. Pacey and Priya are at Watford with me for most of the year anyway—and Martin and I would still see each other on the weekend …
Martin and I have been married a long time.
We have a strong foundation.
Is this his midlife crisis? Joining a cult? Other people our age are coming out as bisexual or getting into Normal-style bread-making. (I would prefer either—or both.)
“Of course I’d like to be more powerful,” he said to me on the phone this morning.
I’d been complaining to him about this Smith Smith-Richards meeting—I have to stay at Watford anytime there’s an event here—and Martin said he knew all about it, that he was planning to attend.
“Why on earth?” I asked. “Are you writing a paper?”
“No.” His voice was quiet, careful. Martin’s voice is always quiet and careful. “I’ve been following Smith-Richards for a while.”
“Following like ‘keeping track’ or following like following?”
“He’s a good man, Mitali. He has extraordinary powers.”
“We all have extraordinary powers, Martin. It’s what makes us magicians.”
“Not all of us, dear.”
Then he told me that he’s been going to these meetings for months. That he’s befriended the people there—and befriended the man himself, the man who claims to be the Greatest Mage. (Martin and I don’t have friends. We have colleagues. We have children. We have each other.)
“Did you bring the children?” I asked.
“No, they wouldn’t be interested. They take after you—they don’t need Smith’s help.”
“And you do, Martin?”
“Mitali…” He sounded hurt, that I would make him say this out loud. “Of course I’d like to be more powerful. Do you think I don’t wonder, what it’s like for you?”
We argued.
I hung up.
And now here he is, in my office, wearing the suit he only gets out for weddings and funerals. I hope he doesn’t want my blessing in all this.
“Your meeting has already started,” I say.
“I know. I thought—”
“I hope you don’t want me to accompany you.”
“No.”
Martin is a small man. His hair was beige-blond when we were young. Now it’s beige-grey. He has a squishy, nondescript face. A soft voice.
It’s his eyes that I fell in love with. Not their beauty. But the way they see everything. And feel everything. Martin takes the whole world in. That’s a tremendous thing—to be able to hold the world inside of yourself, and still feel compassion for it.
“Is it over, then?” I try to sound gentle. I don’t have it in me. “Did he spell you?”
“Mitali, I—”
He doesn’t finish. The door to my office flies open, and Penelope and Baz—and that Normal—rush in.
AGATHA
“Agatha!” Niamh calls to me from the other side of the stone. “The doe! She’s still going!”
I turn away from the dryad and rush back to Niamh’s side. The goat is moving again. She’s flapping her wings and arching her back. Her cries have grown more urgent.
“Here,” Niamh says, making space for me on the ground next to her.
I crouch behind the doe.
“Let her work,” Niamh says. “She may not need us.”
I stroke the doe’s flank. “You’re all right, darling. We’re here.”
SIMON
I should have known it would end like this.
Two hundred wands pointed at me. Children crying. Parents running for the door.
These people don’t know me …
The Mage never took me to their parties, never paraded me around or made a spectacle of me. All they know about me is that I was a lie.
I was a trick the Mage played on them. A trained dog that turned on him in the end. They all know what happened the last time I was in this Chapel …
Smith is pointing his wand at me like he’s Gandalf and I’m the Balrog. “I won’t let you stand between these magicians and their destiny!” he calls out to me.
“Smith!” I fly to the altar. “Please listen to me!”
Someone in the crowd shouts a spell, and it connects with the window above me—a skylight that used to have a beautiful stained-glass design. I bow my head and spread my wings, but the glass still falls on Daphne and the others. A chunk of it gets stuck in my wing.
“This is a sacred space for mages,” Smith shouts, “and I won’t let you defile it any further! Leave now!”
“Smith, I can’t let you—”
“Abandon hope, all ye who enter!”
His spell probably hits me. I can’t feel it.
“Stone the crows!”
I don’t even flinch.
“My spells aren’t touching him…” Smith says. “What are you, Simon Snow? Are you the Insidious Humdrum after all?!”
“What? No!”
Other people start casting spells at me. From the audience. I can’t feel them. I fly higher.
“You won’t stop us!” Smith yells. He turns away from me and points his wand at the mages onstage with him. “Let it all—”
“What a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive!”
AGATHA
The doe is straining. I cast a spell to give her strength.
There’s a loud noise in the distance. An explosion? Niamh and I both look up. We can’t see over the treetops. There’s another loud bang. Is that Watford?
Niamh says nothing. She looks back down at the doe.
So do I.
SIMON
Smith erupts into goopy webbing. It’s like it’s coming out of his pores. His whole body looks a like a haunted house.
Everyone in the room turns to see who cast the spell.
Philippa Stainton is standing in the aisle, pointing Baz’s wand. Jamie Salisbury is standing next to her, looking mortified.
“Pippa…” Smith says, his wand still hanging in the air. “Jamie?”
None of Smith’s followers know how to react. On the one hand, Pippa just cast a nasty spell on Smith. On the other, she just cast a spell.
Any Way the Wind Blows Page 37
