“No, he’s not!” she objected loudly, successfully brushing the tassel aside.
“The guy’s a total git! He’s a freaking Thaumaturge. He’s also too old for you. You’re too young to date anyone. Also, did I mention: he’s a freaking Thaumaturge.”
She shouted back, “Thanks to you, he spent last night in the Halls of Healing!”
“Uh, I didn’t hurt him. I didn’t even see him.” Peter frowned. “And don’t think I didn’t try! I did speak to the foremost evil boy himself, Vladimir Von Dread. I told him to keep his toady in line, or he’d have to answer to me.” Sadly for Peter, he did not look very imposing as he spoke, possibly because he shook slightly at the memory of what he had done.
“You did that?” Rachel cried, grabbing her head. “You? I blamed Father! Von Dread did talk to Gaius. He told him to stop dating me.”
“Good for him.” Peter looked so pleased.
“Gaius said, ‘No.’ So, Von Dread told him that if he didn’t stop seeing me he’d throw him out of the Knights.” Rachel’s expression faltered, as she recalled how certain she had been that Gaius would drop her. Then, her face lit up. “But Gaius just said, ‘Good luck finding someone who can beat me.’”
“He stood up to the Prince of Evil?” asked Peter, mildly surprised.
“They fought a duel! Zap! Bang! Pow!” Rachel jumped around, gesturing wildly. “Spells flying everywhere! Gaius held out against Von Dread for an amazingly long time. But in the end, he got turned into a shee…ram, and he had to spend the night at the Halls of Healing.”
“He fought Dread?” Peter’s eyes widened, impressed. Then he remembered himself. “Listen, I don’t care. He hasn’t even asked Father if it’s okay to date you. That’s extremely rude, to say the least. Not that Father would say yes. He’d also say you’re too young. You know why? Because you’re too young. Did I mention how old you are not?”
“I did explain all that to Gaius,” Rachel said.
“Okay, so, fine. You’re not dating him. Tell him he can wait a year. Or four. By then, you’ll meet a nice Dare boy, who will make you completely forget any stupid Thaumaturge.”
“Peter Griffin, what kind of girl would I be if I were to walk out on a boy who fought Vladimir Von Dread for me?”
“A thirteen-year-old kind of girl! I don’t care if he shot down the moon and can walk and chew gum! You’re too young to be dating.”
“I am not!”
“Yes, you are! And you need Father’s permission. Or at least mine, as his official representative for our family at school.” His face suddenly took on a weird expression. “Good gods, he kissed you, didn’t he?”
Rachel blushed and looked down. Lightning flashed across the sky, momentarily illuminating the wide foyer where the two Griffins faced each other.
Peter knelt down in front of her, gazing earnestly into her face. “Rachel. You shouldn’t be kissing anyone. You’re thirteen. And he, at sixteen, shouldn’t be kissing thirteen-year-olds. I assume he is the only boy you’ve kissed, right?”
Rachel nodded sincerely, biting her bottom lip. Then, she blurted out, “It’s not his fault. I kissed him first. He was paralyzed.” She giggled slightly at the memory, even though she was aware this might not be the most appropriate reaction under the circumstances.
His jaw dropped. If it had fallen off his face, rolled out the window, and grown back a few moments later—looking ugly for a bit before it righted itself—he could not have looked more surprised. He stood up and stared blankly at the wall over her head. “Yes. Of course. He was paralyzed. Silly of me to be so concerned.”
“The first time…” Rachel gazed down at her hands. Her fingers looked utterly fascinating.
“You’re going to ignore me, aren’t you?” Peter said. “I’ve known you for your entire life. I’ve watched out for you. One boy comes along, and I’m not worth listening to any longer? Just say it, Rachel. Say: ‘I am going to keep dating him, Peter. I don’t care what you say.’”
Rachel looked up at her adored brother. Even though she was angry at him, she wanted him to be proud of her. But she could not give up on Gaius.
Not after he had fought Dread.
To her tremendous embarrassment, she started to cry.
“Rach, you can’t cry your way out of this.” Peter knelt down again and held her at arm’s reach. “A lot has happened to you in your first week of school. Probably more than has happened in the whole three years I have been here.
“I understand you’re very mature for your age,” he continued, “but, mature or not, you’re too young to be kissing boys. I’m sorry, but, as your brother, I cannot let this continue. If you were thinking straight, you’d understand.”
Rachel stood there, shaking and crying. Then she wailed softly, “But…I love him!”
Outrage and revulsion fought for control of Peter’s face, leaving it rather splotchy. Pivoting, he strode off toward the boys’ side without another word.
• • •
Outside, the morning was gloomy. Rain fell briskly, splashing loudly on newly-fallen leaves. Huge floating umbrellas hovered rim-to-rim over the walkways that ran between the dormitories and the main hall. The edges glowed silvery, as did the handles, the curves of which all faced the same direction, like a line of Js. The few people braving the weather rushed along, their shoulders hunched against the biting wind. They walked under the long line of umbrellas, to the right of the curved handles, in both directions.
Rachel hated fighting with Peter. Of all her siblings, she was closest to her brother. They had been at home together for a couple of years after the older girls had left for school. She and Peter had spent these early years under the tutelage of their grandparents, who had grown up during the reign of Queen Victoria. For Rachel, this period had been idyllic. For Peter, it had been less pleasant.
In the Griffin family, everyone except the wayward Laurel had a most-favorite person. Rachel had her grandfather. Her oldest sister Sandra had Father. Peter had their mother. They understood each other much the way Rachel and her gruff grandfather did. Sandra and Father shared a mutual love of the Wisecraft. Mother and son shared a gentleness and a delight in the natural world.
Unfortunately, from her grandparents’ point of view, gentle and bookish were not qualities prized in an heir to a dukedom.
It was Laurel’s wildness that caused the falling out between Rachel’s mother and the late duke and duchess. As much as Rachel loved her grandparents, she understood their shortcomings—one of which was that they, particularly her grandmother, had trouble seeing the good qualities of Rachel’s sweet and wise mother. (Rachel suspected her grandfather secretly had a soft spot for his lovely Asian daughter-in-law. She had caught him several times being uncharacteristically kind to her in the last year of his life, after his wife died.) It was never said within Rachel’s hearing, but the implications were that The Duchess of Devon felt her son had been taken in by a pretty face and had unwisely married beneath his station.
Ellen Griffin had grown up in an upper middle class family, but she had not been raised to the duties of the aristocracy. The result was that her first two children, Laurel, and even Sandra, whom everyone else found utterly charming, had behaved too commonly to please the elderly Duke and Duchess of Devon—who had expected their grandchildren to live up to the rigorous standards that had been required of lords and ladies for centuries. Sandra did not gallop naked across the countryside in an attempt to impersonate Lady Godiva, or talk the tenant farmers’ boys into setting fire to their entire supply of hay to “make a really big bonfire worthy of the gods” the way Laurel did; however, Sandra loved all things Unwary—to the degree that nowadays she lived in a flat in London, complete with mundane curiosities such as electricity and refrigerators. This disregard for authority and lack of respect for the traditions of the World of the Wise had disturbed Rachel’s grandparents.
They had loved their granddaughters, appreciated their good qualities, and lauded their talents,
especially Sandra’s prowess on horseback. They had worried, however, about trusting the future of their over two-thousand-year-old family line, and the almost eight-hundred-year-old ducal title, to children who showed so little regard for their world and its traditions.
To remedy this, her grandparents, particularly their stern grandmother, had taken over the children’s early education—particularly Peter’s and Rachel’s, as the older daughters left for Roanoke Academy. Her grandparents had taught them to value the world to which they had been born. Rachel had flourished. The requirements upon a young girl were not overbearing. By the time she reached an age at which their tutelage would have restricted her adventurous spirit, her grandparents had passed away.
Peter had not been so lucky. The demands on a young duke-to-be were rigorous, and her grandparents had been less tolerant of weakness in a boy. He had been expected to be much fiercer and more sober than otherwise had been his nature. That, combined with the constant accusations that their gentle mother was coddling him, had made Peter’s young life difficult.
Life might have been different had Father been home to mediate. During Rachel’s early childhood, however, Ambrose Griffin had been away, hunting down the remnants of the Morthbrood and other servants of the Terrible Five. His wife had been left alone to bear the brunt of his parents’ disapproval. Rachel realized that, due to her mother’s sweet and private nature, it was unlikely Ellen had ever told her husband how she had suffered during this period.
Peter had lived up to the challenge. He had learned to carry himself as a duke ought and to perform the duties expected of him. Rachel had a wonderful memory of seeing ten-year-old Peter and their towering grandfather, their rifles resting on their shoulders, coming back from walking the boundaries of the estate together. One of the last things her grandmother had said upon her deathbed was how she could die in peace, knowing that Peter would uphold the family honor. Peter’s face had shone with pride that night.
Rachel sighed, her emotions a jumble. She understood why Peter had acted as he did. Even she would have considered him derelict of his duties had he not been concerned about the safety of his little sister. Still, it pained her so to be at odds with her family.
• • •
She arrived in the dining hall, shivering and clammy. None of her friends were there. She ate hurriedly, taking advantage of the solitude to dry her tears. By the time she finished, she felt calmer, though her eyes still smarted. Putting her tray away, she ran down the spiral staircase to the basement, where she stamped the order for Sigfried’s calling cards with her postal seal and slipped it into the slot for the outgoing post. Then she sat down at a table beside the mailroom and wrote a letter to Sandra.
She missed Sandra tremendously. Peter was the sibling she had spent the most time with, but Sandra was the one with whom she had the most in common, the one to whom she found it easiest to talk. They were both students of their mother’s dissembling techniques and placed great value on discerning secrets and hiding their thoughts. Peter and Laurel had never picked up the dissembling arts. They wore their hearts on their sleeves. This suited rebel Laurel but was a hardship for the dignified Peter.
It was by observing the interactions between their gentle mother and their stern, overbearing grandmother—in which their mother never lost her temper, never raised her voice, never let on how much the elder duchess’s disapproval hurt her—that Sandra and Rachel had first glimpsed the fine art of dissembling. They had learned both from their mother’s example and from her direct tutelage: how to hide their emotions, how to appear ever calm under pressure and graceful, how to keep the world from seeing their joy or pain. They had also learned to see through such deceptions. The Griffin Girls—as Father called them—might hide their feelings from the world, but they could not hide them from one another.
Seated at the table by the mail room, Rachel’s lips quirked as she penned a letter she hoped would amuse Sandra and spark her curiosity, thus increasing the odds that her sister would respond more quickly.
Dear Sandra,
How are you? How is your new job with the Wisecraft? I am at Roanoke Academy now, with Peter and Laurel. It’s very exciting. Someone has already tried to attack two friends of mine. (One on the first day of school, the other in a dream.) Also, my math teacher turned into a dragon and tried to kill us. Other than that, we’re settling in and learning lots of good things.
I have a theoretical question that I thought a person of your age and experience might be able to address. Imagine there was a boy who was petrified by a cantrip during magic practice, and a girl kissed him: would that count as a first kiss? What if the girl stood still, and the boy kissed her? Would that count as a first kiss? Or do both parties need to participate?
Just wondering.
Your littlest sister,
Rachel
Upon finishing it, she sealed it, slipped it into the post slot, and ran back up the stairs.
• • •
Rachel headed for her favorite corridor between two turrets on the top floor of Roanoke Hall, her own private practice area. A suit of armor stood beside a high round window. Across from it, a wooden doorstop, a battered book, and a large rock lay on a small table. An empty trashcan stood at the end of the short hallway. Originally, the corridor had been dusty from disuse, but the wind blasts she had repeatedly whistled into existence had put an end to that.
Once there, she quickly got down to the business of practicing her spellwork. Whistling up a breeze, she strove to blow the large rock off the table. Whistling enchantments was difficult. They were meant to be played on an instrument. The tingles from the energy made her want to grimace or giggle. But the secret dissembling techniques she had learned from her mother that allowed her to mask her emotions helped her keep her face calm and still. This allowed her whistling to succeed. Still, most of the time, her little breeze, with its silver sparkles and scent of evergreens, was not strong enough to budge the stone.
Occasionally, the rock did roll off and crash to the floor. Then, she used the cantrip tiathelu to float it back to the tabletop. It was hard work. The rock was too large for her current skill level, but she did not give up. Patiently, she tried again and again and again and again.
As she practiced, the sky rumbled and flashed. Rain pelted the round window above the suit of armor. The sky grew even darker, making the corridor gloomier, punctuated now and again by brilliant flashes of light. Occasionally, Rachel was quick enough to try tur lu, the cantrip Mark Williams had used on her broom. Its effects were inconclusive because the rock dropped straight down anyway. But if she used the doorstop, she could blast the triangular piece of wood across the room with her wind and then remove its inertia, so that it stopped moving forward, paused momentarily in mid-air, and then flopped harmlessly to the floor.
The first time this worked, a slow smile crept across her face. Then, frowning seriously, she repeated it again and again and again.
• • •
Much later, she sank down next to the suit of armor. The floor was cold, but she was too exhausted to notice. Her tremendous effort, practicing so diligently, combined with her late night and the heavy gloominess of the weather, had sapped her strength. Her eyelids fluttered shut.
She woke with a start to find herself asleep on the floor, her bruised hand and thigh aching painfully. She was curled up next to the suit of armor underneath a cozy blue comforter, her face resting on the flat square portion of her hat. The weight of the blanket brought a big smile to her face. Only one person knew she came up here. She sniffed the comforter and rubbed her cheek against it. It smelled faintly of fresh soap. Then, she stretched and looked around.
Gaius sat against the far wall of the corridor, reading. He looked up and smiled. Rachel’s heart pirouetted around her chest. He looked so adorable sitting there all human-shaped and not covered with wool. She wanted to leap up and run over and hug him. Shyness held her back.
She hoped he would cross the distance to
her, but he did not. He did, however, give her a huge beaming grin. Though the weather had not changed—outside the sky remained overcast, and the winds still howled— the day seemed suddenly cheery.
“You’re not a sheep.” Her joy lit her whole being.
“Not anymore.” He held up his hands, turning them this way and that, as if to demonstrate that they were not hooves.
“I had a huge row with Peter.”
“Over me, I’m guessing? Sorry about that.” He paused. “Unless irking Peter is a perk?”
She shook her head. “I love my brother. I had hoped he would approve of my boyfriend.”
“Ah. A pity.”
“Are you…all right?”
“Yeah. Last night was…weird.” He shivered. “Rather not talk about it, actually.”
“Okay.” Rachel paused, unsure what to say next. Running a hand across her face, she discovered there was an indentation in her cheek where she had been lying on the tassel string of her hat. “Um…did you get a new wand?”
“Vlad’s away getting it right now. He promised me a higher quality sapphire this time—it will hold more spells.” He winced and grabbed his head, making a masculine mock crying noise. “Ugh! So many spells lost! And I had some really good ones stored up, too.”
“Yeah. That’s really a shame. I imagine it will take a long time to replace them.”
“Some of them I can’t replace. The person who played enchantments for us graduated last year.” Gaius searched her face carefully, as if anticipating a reaction. Rachel had no idea what he was expecting. She kept her head turned so that the part of her cheek bearing the impression of the tassel line was out of sight. When she did not respond, he gave her a grateful smile. “I hear you came to my defense. I rather appreciate that. There is a ninety-eight percent chance I would still be a sheep right now, were it not for you.”
Rachel’s cheeks grew warm. “Glad to help.”
“Yeah. I just wish it hadn’t been necessary.”
The Raven, The Elf, and Rachel (A Book of Unexpected Enlightenment 2) Page 19
