Miss Ellicott's School for the Magically Minded

by Sage Blackwood

  “Of course,” said Chantel. “There has to be, because of the air flow. Otherwise people couldn’t breathe.”

  “The kind of people who are down here aren’t the breathing kind,” Bowser pointed out.

  They walked on in uneasy silence.

  After what seemed like a very long time, they reached a place where the walls were no longer fitted out with floor-to-ceiling bones. Instead, there were shelves scooped from the stone. Waiting for the people who aren’t dead yet, Chantel thought.

  The snake in her head had settled down a bit, but every now and then he gave an uncomfortable squirm that made it hard to focus her thoughts.

  Which was probably just as well.

  “Chantel, you gave Lord Rudolph a Look,” said Anna.

  “He deserved it,” said Chantel.

  “Do you think we should try to get Japheth out of your head?” said Anna.

  “Not right now,” Chantel snapped. “Let’s just get out of here.”

  “He really went into your head?” said Bowser. “It wasn’t just magic?”

  “Of course it was magic,” said Chantel. “But he’s in my head, all right?”

  Bowser shrugged and looked hurt, and Chantel was annoyed at him for being hurt, annoyed at herself for hurting him, annoyed at him for pretending not to be hurt, and just generally extremely annoyed.

  The narrow catacomb ended abruptly, and there was a passage leading off to the left and two leading to the right.

  “Which way do we turn here?” said Bowser.

  “Let’s go left,” said Anna. “If we turn left whenever we come to a split—”

  “Then we’ll go in a circle,” said Chantel.

  “Maybe we should take this one. I think it goes up a little bit,” said Bowser.

  “What’s that noise?” said Anna.

  There was a scraping sound somewhere behind them.

  They took the passage Bowser suggested, and quickly.

  The scraping came again, followed by an almost imperceptible sound like cloth brushing over stone. It was closer this time.

  They broke into a run. Their shadows were huge black shapes sliding along the walls. The thing chasing them sped up, too.

  “Left!” Bowser called, and that was how Chantel knew there was another split. She followed the others. The thing was closer still, and now she heard its breathing, in-out-in-out, impossibly regular for any living thing. It sounded like a bellows with pneumonia.

  “Right! And then left!” yelled Bowser.

  The sound was closer, and Chantel felt ice-cold breath against her neck. Inside her head Japheth squiggled. “Faster!” Chantel yelled. “It’s almost—”

  Something grabbed at her shoulder. The light-globe rolled off her hand and went out. She felt cold slime soak through her robe, and there was an algae smell, like a flooded grave. She tore away and put on a burst of speed, shoving Anna forward.

  “It’s a fiend!” Chantel yelled.

  The fiend screeched, and they all ran faster than Chantel would ever have thought possible.

  “Daylight!” Bowser gasped.

  And Chantel saw it too, a tiny yellow-white scrap of light up ahead. She felt hope for a second, then two slimy clawlike hands gripped her.

  “It’s got—” she yelled, and then the hands were on her neck.

  She turned and fought, hard. She hit and kicked. She clawed at the fiend’s horrible green face as its slimy fingers tightened around her throat. Then Bowser and Anna were climbing over her to get at the fiend, grabbing it, dragging it forward, why—?

  Chantel understood, just as Anna yelled, “Get it into daylight!”

  The three of them fell, got up, and stumbled onward, Anna and Bowser pulling Chantel and all three of them dragging the fiend. Everything was going black at the edges as the fiend strangled her.

  Then they reached the sunlight.

  Suddenly the horrible hands were gone, and Chantel lay gasping in the patch of daylight on the floor of the catacomb.

  “Get up, Chantel, quick!” said Anna.

  Chantel got to her feet with difficulty. She and the others staggered up a narrow, uneven set of steps. They squeezed through a gap between two rocks, and out into the bright, bright sunlight. Chantel collapsed on the ground.

  Her throat hurt. She still had a snake in her head. She was overwhelmed by the horror of what had happened underground. If the others hadn’t turned back for her, if they’d run to save themselves . . .

  She owed them her life. She thought of saying this, and then she thought of how uncomfortable that would make everybody. While she was thinking this, her eyes gradually got accustomed to the light.

  She saw her two friends. First they looked gray and indistinct. Then, as her eyes adjusted, she saw that they were staring around them in amazement. Finally, she saw what they were looking at.

  Land. More open space than Chantel had ever seen. Rolling, broken hills and bluffs. Ravines and woodlands. A mesa above them with a still-standing dead tree sketched against the sky. A heap of boulders at the base. Faraway mountains climbing the horizon. And when Chantel turned around—

  A wall. A high, imposing wall, marble-white, smooth as sheet steel, tall and implacable. A wall that was the only interruption of the forever-space around them.

  For the first time in her life, she was looking at Seven Buttons from the outside.

  7

  WITHOUT WALLS

  It was at the same time wonderful and terrifying . . . so much space with nothing being done to it. In Lightning Pass, there were the Green Terraces, carefully planned, painstakingly arranged. So much space for growing fruit, so much for vines, so much for vegetables. Gardens for people to sit in, or stroll in, at such and such hours of such and such days.

  Here the land was alive. Things were growing wherever they wanted to, with no plan at all. You could probably walk right up to the trees and touch them—though then again, Chantel wasn’t sure if that was safe.

  She took an unsteady step, dizzy and uncertain. It was hard to stand upright with no walls closing you in, hard to walk with no doors or gates ahead of you.

  They turned around and stared at Seven Buttons, outlined by the setting sun.

  “Well, there has to be a gate in it somewhere,” said Anna.

  “We could go back the way we came,” said Bowser, without enthusiasm.

  Chantel could still feel the cold grip of the fiend’s slimy hands on her neck. “No.”

  “If we follow the wall we’ll come to the gate,” said Anna.

  Chantel looked over her shoulder. She didn’t feel safe turning her back on the vast, open land where anything could happen.

  “The gate’s at the port,” said Bowser.

  “And which way is that?” said Chantel.

  Bowser frowned up at the sun. “Well, it’s in the south part of the city.”

  “We know that,” said Chantel impatiently. The snake in her head was making it hard to be polite.

  “Which is this way,” said Bowser, with a firmness that communicated quite clearly that he didn’t know.

  Chantel didn’t have a better suggestion. They started walking.

  It was difficult. They were used to cobblestone streets and flag-paved steps. They weren’t used to uneven ground, and weeds that came up to their waists, and then to their necks. Thistles and teasels snagged at Chantel’s robe, combining with the snake wriggling in her head to make her crankier and crankier. She tripped over something and fell headlong.

  “Owl’s bowels!” she yelled.

  She’d never sworn before in her life, and she found it worked.

  “Shouldn’t we try to get the snake out of your head?” said Anna, helping her up and pulling a burr off her robe.

  “Not now,” Chantel snapped. “We have to get out of here before we meet any Marauders. And besides, there’s the little kids at the school.”

  “Right,” said Bowser, pushing his way through a tangle of plants higher than his head. “We don’t know w
hat that woman is doing to them. She might . . .”

  He let out a squawk, said a much worse word than owl’s bowels, and disappeared.

  Chantel and Anna hurried through the broken weeds, and stopped short at the edge of a ravine.

  “Bowser?” Chantel called.

  “Down here.”

  All Chantel could see down there was more weeds.

  “Are you all right?” said Anna.

  “Yeah.” There was a rustling, and his head appeared above the scrub. “Look, we can’t get through this stuff. We’re going to have to find a street or something.”

  “Are there streets out here?” said Anna.

  “Who knows?” said Chantel.

  Bowser looked around. “It looks easier to walk down here.”

  The girls started to climb into the gully. They slid, crashing through undergrowth and grabbing at nettles. They landed jarringly at the bottom.

  Chantel swore again. Anna gave her a shocked look, but Chantel and the snake in her head didn’t care.

  It was easier walking down here. The weeds didn’t grow quite as high and there weren’t as many thistles. And the closeness of the gully walls was reassuring. They heard things scurrying away from them, and once Chantel trod suddenly into an ice-cold hidden stream. She worried because they were heading away from the wall. Away from the little girls at the school.

  “How much further is it to the street?” Anna asked.

  “Oh, not much further at all,” said Bowser.

  “He doesn’t know,” said Chantel irritably. “Why are you asking him?”

  Anna looked hurt, and so did Bowser. Chantel felt bad, but Japheth’s scales were tickling the inside of her head.

  She couldn’t bring herself to actually apologize for being in a bad mood. After all, other people were in bad moods all the time—Miss Ellicott, Miss Flivvers, and as for that manageress woman, Mrs. Warthall, she was all bad mood. Why shouldn’t Chantel be in one for once? She was sick to death of deportment.

  She grumbled to herself as she pushed through the brush. The gully smelled of mud and dirty water. There had been no sign of civilization anywhere, except for the blank glaring face of Seven Buttons, and there was no way to know whether they were getting closer or further away from this street that the Marauders might or might not have, and anyway, who knew what Marauders had? They probably all rode around on warhorses all the time, and maybe the warhorses didn’t need—

  “The gully stops here,” said Bowser, turning to look at them. His face was covered with scratches and dirt, and he had a stinging-nettle welt on his neck. His shirt was torn. Chantel expected she didn’t look any better.

  “I guess we have to climb up, then,” said Anna. She, too, was covered with scratches and nettle stings, and her clothes were even more of a mess than Bowser’s.

  “Stay right where you are,” said a voice from above. “We have you surrounded.”

  8

  MARAUDERS

  Chantel looked frantically up and all around. The rim high above them was covered with thick growth. She couldn’t even be sure which side the voice had come from. The Marauders surely had weapons aimed at them.

  “We should have gone back to the catacombs,” said Anna.

  “We couldn’t,” said Chantel. “The fiend.”

  “Lay down your weapons!” The voice was deep and booming. It had an annoying twangy drawl that made the snake in Chantel’s head twitch.

  “We haven’t got any weapons, fool,” she heard herself say. “Do we look like we have weapons?”

  Bowser took his knife out of his pocket and laid it on the ground at his feet.

  “Good,” said the voice. “Now don’t make any sudden moves, and—”

  “If we were going to make any, we would have made them while we still had the knife,” Chantel pointed out.

  “—And,” said the voice, “take all your money and tie it in a handkerchief, and toss it up here.”

  “We haven’t got any money,” said Bowser.

  “I left my handkerchief at home,” said Anna.

  “I don’t know if we could throw that high, anyway,” said Chantel. “And we don’t know which side of the gully you’re on.”

  “Both sides! I told you,” said the voice, still with that awful twang. “We have you surrounded. However, you should throw it on this—I mean, on the north side.”

  There had been a high squeak at the end of surrounded.

  “I think it’s just kids,” Chantel told Anna and Bowser.

  “No whispering!” drawled the voice.

  It was hard to be circumspect when you had a snake in your head. “I’m not afraid of you,” she called up at the weeds. “I think you’re just kids.”

  A crossbow bolt zipped past her ear and buried itself in the ground.

  “I think you shouldn’t have said that,” Anna remarked unnecessarily.

  Chantel shivered. Not because of the crossbow bolt. It was getting dark, and a chill had begun to settle in. Shadows filled the bottom of the gully.

  “It’s cold down here,” she said. “We’re going to come out.”

  “Chantel, they’ve got crossbows,” said Anna.

  “And we don’t,” said Chantel, loudly. “We’re unarmed. They have nothing to fear from us.”

  “Can we climb up?” Bowser called. “Without you shooting us?”

  “Wait!” said the voice above. “Let me—us—let us consult our comrades at arms. Each other, I mean.”

  There was a sound of murmuring from above. It all seemed to come from one side of the gully, and from the same spot.

  “All right,” said the voice. “But leave your knife down there.”

  It was nearly dark now. Chantel started climbing. Bowser picked up the crossbow bolt and stuck it in his belt. Chantel had the impression that he also picked up his knife at the same time.

  It was much harder climbing up the slope than falling down it. Chantel kept stepping on her robe. Most of the plants she grabbed to pull herself up were prickly. She uprooted one by mistake and nearly fell. Finally she arrived at the top, even dirtier and more beprickled than before, and having uttered even more dire swearwords. Despite the sheer misery of the situation, she couldn’t help but notice that nothing bad had happened when she swore. Somehow she’d always assumed that, at the very least, the sky would fall.

  It was dark up here, too. Twilight was edging toward night.

  Chantel reached down and pulled Anna up the last couple feet, and they futilely brushed dirt off each other’s robes. Bowser scrambled up after them.

  “Right,” said the voice, now much closer and definitely cracking. “So put your hands on top of your head and—”

  “You’re the ones with the crossbows,” said Chantel. “Why are you scared of us?”

  “I’m not scared!” the voice snapped, from deep in the night-shrouded thicket.

  “All right, you’re not scared,” said Chantel. “Are you going to come out and let us see you?”

  “Chantel,” said Anna warningly.

  “They’ve got crossbows,” Bowser said.

  There was a rustling sound, and a Marauder emerged from the brush.

  As best as Chantel could see in the darkness, the Marauder, just one Marauder, was about five feet tall and had red hair that stuck up, and front teeth that stuck out. His nose was slightly crooked, as if someone had broken it for him sideways. His eyes had an amused look that was doing its best to conceal a hunted look . . . he’d been running from things, Chantel thought. He held the crossbow so casually in front of him that Chantel was afraid it might go off by accident.

  “Who’re you?” said Chantel.

  “Pardon her,” said Anna. “She’s got a snake in her head.” She curtseyed. “I’m Anna Bellringer, of Miss Ellicott’s School, and this is Chantel Goldenrod, and Bowser Stepmonger.”

  Bowser appeared to consider bowing and then discard the idea as ridiculous. The Marauder was no older than they were.

  “Who�
��re you?” Chantel repeated.

  “Franklin,” said the Marauder. “Are you from the walled city?”

  “Yes, Lightning Pass,” said Anna, managing to stop herself from curtseying again. “And we’re lost. We came through the catacombs and we ended up out here, and now we need to know how to get back again.”

  “Catacombs?” Franklin looked interested. “You can get into the city that way?”

  “Absolutely not,” said Chantel, recognizing the danger. “There are hordes of bloodthirsty fiends, plus some vampires and a really grumpy zombie. And a dragon,” she added for good measure.

  “Wow. You got away from all of that?” said Franklin.

  “We’re very fast runners,” said Anna.

  “Plus they’re sorceresses,” said Bowser.

  Franklin had lowered the crossbow, but now he raised it again. “Good ones or evil ones?”

  “Good,” said Bowser at the same time that Chantel said, “Evil.”

  “Can you tell us how to get to the city gates?” said Chantel.

  “Do you really need gates, sorceress?” Franklin looked skeptical. “Don’t you have magical ways to get through the wall?”

  “No magic can get you through Seven Buttons,” said Chantel firmly.

  Franklin shrugged. “The only gate is down to the south, at the harborside. That’s where you Lightning Pass folks trade with the outside world, without letting anybody actually come into your precious city. Don’t you even know that?”

  “Of course we know it,” said Chantel. “But we don’t know how to get there. So if you could show us—”

  “Wait a minute.” The Marauder boy raised his crossbow again. “You’re forgetting that I’ve captured you. You’re not going anywhere unless I say so.”

  Chantel had never seen a crossbow pointed straight at her before. She found the experience rather exhilarating. It cut through all the usual nonsense of life, the veiled threats and the worries about the future and about people not liking you and about not being good enough. A crossbow was immediate and real.

  Besides, she had a snake in her head. Chantel took a step toward the boy.

  “Chantel!” said Bowser urgently.

  “Don’t move again or I’ll shoot,” said Franklin. The crossbow didn’t waver. “I’ve shot people before.”