Pennyroyal Academy

by M. A. Larson

  She opened her mouth to respond, but didn’t know what to say. All she wanted was for him to leave her alone. He looked agitated, just as her father used to when she was too frightened to jump from the rocky outcropping into the lake near their home.

  “Right. Well, this has certainly been an enthralling chat. Thank you for breaking my curse.” He gave her the slightest of bows. “And good luck with your own.”

  He strode away. Despite the grumbles of her stomach, Evie didn’t follow. Instead, she sat on a large stone next to the stables and tried to clear her head. How could she reconcile the recovered memory and Forbes’s claims about the portrait, about which he was so certain, with the story of her life as she had lived it?

  The wispy tendrils of white leeching down from the cloud bank began to release a fine mist. She sat there, breathing in the clean, cold air, and something quite unexpected happened inside her. From her first experience with Remington in the witch’s cottage to this very moment, she had felt entirely out of place. But her show of defiance in Princess Beatrice’s office that morning had taught her something. Instead of sinking back into despair and self-pity, she forced herself to her feet and marched into the Dining Hall. She found her friends in their usual place at the Ironbone table. They were thrilled to see her, of course, and Maggie even shed a tear when she learned that her new friend hadn’t been discharged after all.

  As they finished dinner, Evie filled them in on her morning, from her close call with the Headmistress to the recovered memory and the incident with Forbes. This she would not have done only one day earlier, but the elation she felt leaving Beatrice’s office had convinced her she needed a new way forward. She had only known these girls—and, of course, Basil—for a short while, but she needed to trust someone to make it to the next day. And the day after that.

  Each day got a bit easier to bear, then, and Evie slowly found herself less of an outcast and more of a real third-class princess cadet. And three days after Princess Beatrice granted her a reprieve, Evie did something she would never have imagined doing before.

  It happened in a wooded section of campus known as the Pit during a joint obstacle course exercise with the knights of Thrushbeard Company. She had no trouble ignoring Forbes, who seemed determined to do the same to her, but she didn’t have quite the same success with Remington. Each time their eyes met and he gave her that half-formed smile, the story Maggie had told about his killing a dragon before the age of twelve faded further into memory. And when he approached her as the cadets waited their turn to attempt the course, all conversation around them stopped.

  “It’s bloody hard work to talk to someone at this place,” he said, eyes fixed on Captain Ramsbottom, a bear of a man in plated mail and a knotted brown beard, and Thrushbeard Company’s commanding officer.

  Evie’s heart began to thump. She was acutely aware that everyone nearby was listening. “Indeed.”

  “And have you settled in all right? I must say, you’ve certainly enhanced your wardrobe.”

  “Yes, thanks,” she replied, knotting her fingers together. All she wanted was for him to leave, yet all she wanted was for him to stay. “And you?”

  “They’re a loutish bunch of brutes over there,” he said, casting his eyes on his company-mates, “which happens to be my favorite kind of brute.”

  She smiled politely . . . until she saw Malora looking at her with cold eyes.

  “Well, I’d better get back before Captain Ramsbottom catches me over here and flays me nose to toes. Good luck on the course.” He smiled with mischief, then trotted back to his company. Evie glanced at Malora again and found that she was still staring. It unsettled her.

  “Next up, OFF!” bellowed Captain Ramsbottom. A knight cadet and a princess cadet sprinted onto the course, and the queue inched forward. Evie was next. With Remington somewhere behind her and Anisette making loud, jesting comments to the others about Evie and him, she felt an extra thump in her pulse.

  Suddenly, someone knocked into her from behind. It was Malora, shoving past her to the front of the queue.

  “Kingsblood girls first,” she said with quiet menace, one eyebrow slightly raised.

  Evie clenched her jaw and balled her fists. Kelbra and Sage flanked Malora to form an intimidating wall. The girls waiting behind Evie took a few cautious steps back. Malora stared down at her, icy eyes sharpening to an intensity Evie hadn’t seen before.

  “Unless you’d like to show your mongrel blood to everyone here, I suggest you unclench those fists.”

  Evie’s heart fluttered beneath her dragon scale. Her nostrils flared. She heard Anisette’s braying laughter behind her, and Basil telling an animated joke. Her friends weren’t watching, and she was alone. She glared at Malora, with no idea what she was about to do.

  “Right, next up!”

  The knight cadet in the next queue ran. Malora’s mouth curled into a smile of victory, then quickly fell in shock as Evie tore away onto the course.

  “Hey!” she snapped, but it was too late.

  As Evie scaled a rough-hewn wall, she couldn’t keep from smiling. She imagined the smoldering anger on Malora’s face, the helpless protestations of Kelbra and Sage. And the same fire of pride she had felt in Beatrice’s office flared to life once more.

  “MY DEAR, you have all the grace of a giant on ice,” said Rumpledshirtsleeves, taking the smooth wooden handle of the flax break out of Evie’s hand. She wiped sweat from her brow and watched as he laid the brittle golden stalks across the break’s bed. “Observe.” With three deft cracks of the blade, the stalks yielded. He gently worked the silky blond fibers free. “Now you.”

  She picked up another bunch and laid it in the machine. Though clouds still clotted the sky, and the wind that blew brought cold hints of autumn, her linen dress was already soaked through. Invisible grains of dust clung to her skin. Her raw palms had started to callus. All across the orange-brown flax field that marked the northernmost border of the Academy, the cracks of the breaks sounded. She raised her handle, then swung the blade down. The stalks split open, and she slid the fibers free.

  “Better, but try not to be such an elephant in heels, will you?” The old troll tottered away to compliment Basil, whose pile of flax fibers was bigger and more pure than any other cadet’s.

  “My mother had me spinning flax before I could walk,” he told Rumpledshirtsleeves. It was the first time Evie had heard pride in his voice when talking of his mother raising him as a princess.

  After an hour of cracking fibers free from shives, Rumpledshirtsleeves gathered the cadets around a massive stack of what looked like blond hair. Two of his tiny assistants stood nearby, flanking a ratty canvas tarpaulin draped over a dress form. Evie knelt next to Maggie and took a long drink from her leather waterskin. Other cadets sat sprawled around their instructor, savoring the opportunity to rest.

  “Because you are in your teenaged years, you no doubt wonder why we are out in the fields breaking flax. What does this,” he said, pointing a stubby finger at the pile, “have to do with this?” The miniature trolls whipped the canvas aside in a billow of flax dust. The waterskin fell from Evie’s lips. She and the others were too entranced to make a sound.

  “Remember what I’ve told you,” Rumpledshirtsleeves continued, limping toward the dress form. “Despite Cadet Anisette’s protestations, fashion is eminently important to a princess. I created this gown for Princess Blackstone’s wedding to the Prince of Rustbark Vale.”

  He stopped and regarded the piece on the dress form. The gown was simple in its design, and yet unlike anything the girls had seen before. The material itself seemed to have been spun from moonbeams. The silver threads shimmered from within so brightly they were nearly white, yet somehow muted like a cool summer night. He picked at a growth on his chin, rattling his wiry beard.

  “The silk is from worms, of course. I bathed it in a proprietary blend of herb
s and minerals to help the strands soak up the light.” He lifted the skirt, studying the glistening material with a nostalgic smile. “I set it out each month during the full moon until it achieved that rich glimmer. My assistants here had to wait with it through the night to keep the slugs away. It took twelve months of full moons to achieve just the right glow.” He let the watery fabric slide through his fingers, then turned to face his cadets.

  “So you see, even the most exquisite of garments begins with a tiny, wriggling worm. Linen comes from flax, which sprouts through fertilized dirt. Tulle derives from cotton, which can be beset by fungus and insects. And so on and so forth. Life, splendid and ugly, transformed into transcendence.”

  Evie blinked, unable to do much else. This simple garment contained all the longing she used to feel as a child staring up into the night sky with her sister. All the conversations, frivolous and meaningful alike, that they used to share as the moon inched across the sky. The heartache of the sudden end of those days was there, too, buried deep inside those delicately woven fibers.

  “The proper design is not concerned with itself. It is concerned with the girl beneath. And I don’t mean the tailoring or the technique or any of that faff. I mean who she is. Her character. That’s what a properly designed gown will show. As I said yesterday, when a girl feels like a princess on the outside, it becomes much easier to then feel like a princess on the inside. The pod and the pea working in harmony.”

  He hobbled back to the pile of flax fibers while his assistants snapped the tarpaulin back over the dress, snuffing its luminescence like a candle.

  “Why, after all this time talking of fiber and material, have I shown you a gown? Because that is your assignment. Each of you will design and produce your own ball gown, and some of you will have the chance to use them. Has Princess Hazelbranch discussed with you the Grand Ball?”

  Several girls said “no,” but Maggie clutched Evie’s arm with wide eyes and an even wider smile.

  “She knows how much I adore being the one to tell you, bless her. The Grand Ball is a competition in the terpsichorean arts. Aside from fighting witches, a princess must engage in a whole host of courtly pursuits. Royal weddings, formal balls, and the like. Ten girls from each company will be selected by Princess Hazelbranch and myself to compete in the Grand Ball. And the winner”—he raised his eyebrows for emphasis—“is exempt from the Helpless Maiden.”

  Excited murmurs buzzed through the company.

  “That’s right. The winner of the Grand Ball receives an automatic placement as a second-class princess cadet. There are very few guarantees here at Pennyroyal Academy, but this is one of them. So I suggest you work very thoughtfully—”

  “Hang on, you expect us to make gowns from that?” said Malora, scowling at the pile of flax. “I’ve never heard of a linen ball gown before.”

  “Damask, lace . . . Use your imagination, my dear. Come, all of you, gather a bundle and I’ll teach you the flax comb . . .”

  A guaranteed return, thought Evie. None of the staff had hinted at what the Helpless Maiden actually was, but the little bits of gossip she had overheard from some of the second-year cadets made her think this Grand Ball might be her best chance to make it back next year.

  That night, while the others compared cuts and bruises and lamented their sore muscles, Evie finished reading the first volume in Volf’s epic treatise on Princess History. The stories of children taken from their beds, of mothers and fathers searching the forest by torchlight, chilled her to her bones even beneath her quilt and coverlet.

  “I’ve never had a blister before,” said Demetra, sitting at the end of Evie’s bunk. “I need that Grand Ball, because my hands won’t last to the Helpless Maiden.”

  “Glamorous life of a princess, hey?” said Anisette. She had borrowed one of Demetra’s shoes and was working the heel into the tender muscles of her neck.

  Evie climbed out of bed and cracked her back. A dull red ache spread down her spine when she moved, but otherwise she seemed to be in better shape than the others.

  “My brother Barend would never forgive me being this close to dragon’s blood without trying it,” said Basil, eyeing Evie’s necklace. He sat reclined on Anisette’s footlocker, picking his teeth with a splinter.

  “Enough, Basil. Leave it,” said Evie. She set her book on the window ledge next to several other volumes with pages that had been bloated by the elements.

  “Don’t get cross with me,” said Basil. “I was only asking. As far as I’m concerned, you can keep your manky scale.”

  Maggie looked up from a letter she was writing to her father back home. Anisette, meanwhile, plopped onto her canvas mattress stuffed thick with feathers and began kneading her foot.

  “I’m sorry,” said Evie. “I just . . . My nerves are a bit worn, that’s all.” Her eyes flicked across the room to Malora, who was laughing with Kelbra. She had been much more aggressive toward Evie and her friends since the incident on the obstacle course, and had shown an uncanny ability to know when the Fairy Drillsergeant wasn’t watching. Maggie had even started taking a longer route around the Bramblestick Company table in the Dining Hall just to avoid walking past her.

  “Ah,” said Basil, following Evie’s eyes across the room. “Princess Manky herself.”

  “I can’t understand why she’s here. All I read about in these books is a princess’s natural kindness. There’s not a drop in her.”

  “Reckon she’s here for the same reason we all are,” said Anisette. “She don’t want to live in a world of witches.”

  Evie frowned. I think she’s only here to make herself look good, and to meet a knight of proper breeding. Like Remington.

  “Look, back in the Blackmarsh we’ve been hearing about witches coming down the Slope for months now, yeah?” said Anisette. “And naught for us to do about it but sit round and wait for her sister to save us.” She flicked her head at Demetra, who just stared impassively at the floor. “When I heard us without the kingsblood could enlist, I was the first queued up. I only wanted to do something, like Princess Camilla. Your sister’s a real hero to all the girls of the Blackmarsh.”

  “Indeed,” said Demetra without looking up. The word hung there, begging for more to follow, but none did.

  “Well, I’m not here because of witches. Unless you count my crazy mother,” said Basil.

  Anisette and Evie chuckled, but Demetra and Maggie did not. A heavy silence followed, the only sound the tapping of Basil’s boot on the floor. Then, from the next bunk, Maggie spoke.

  “I suppose I’m here for my mother as well.” Her expression was hard to read in the dim torchlight, but her voice sounded a bit more strained than usual. “She . . . passed on a few months ago.”

  Basil’s foot stopped. Demetra turned to look at Maggie with great sympathy in her eyes.

  “Blimey,” said Anisette.

  “I’m sorry, Maggie,” said Evie. “Really.”

  “It’s all right. I still have Dad around to be my tailor’s dummy.” She smiled, wiping a tear from her eye. “Oh, who am I kidding, I made him do that when Mum was alive, too. So did Mum.” She laughed away her tears, and a warm atmosphere settled over the group like an invisible campfire.

  “I’m really sorry about your mum, Maggie,” said Demetra.

  “Enough,” said Maggie with a sniffle. “She’s gone and there’s nothing to be done. What about you, Evie? What brought you here?”

  Evie froze. Her stomach coiled like a pile of snakes. Don’t do it, Evie, do not do it . . . She formulated lies, searching her brain for a story tame enough that they might hear it and move on. But when she looked at Maggie, she saw such vulnerability beneath the torchlight reflected in her teary eyes. She saw a person who had lived a life unique from all others, and had come to the Academy for reasons that were hers alone. All of them—Anisette, Demetra, Basil . . . even Malora and her fr
iends—every girl at the Academy, and every boy, as well, had specific, personal reasons for being there. Why should her own story be so special?

  “I suppose I’m here because I’ve got nowhere else to go.” A torch went dark at the end of the barracks. Girls had started to settle in for the night. Maggie came around to join Anisette on her bunk, and Evie sat down next to Demetra. She took a deep breath and continued in a soft voice only their group could hear. “I love my father, mother, and sister more than anything in this world. But . . . they’re not my family anymore.”

  Demetra’s hand hooked through Evie’s elbow.

  “I suppose I always knew I was different. I’ve known it my whole life. But it only got worse as I got older. And I finally found out why . . .” She looked up and met Basil’s eyes. Then Maggie’s, and Anisette’s. “I found out why when my sister learned to fly . . .”

  • • •

  Wind screamed through fissures in the rock below. It lashed the girl’s face as it bellowed across the mountaintop. She opened her eyes, eyes as green and mysterious as the forest shivering behind her.

  There is nothing to fear, she told herself, even as she peered down the sheer rock face. Hundreds and hundreds of feet of cold, bald stone fell away beneath her toes. She filled her lungs with bracing mountain air and looked up to the ocean of sky. The clouds and their happy blue background seemed closer and altogether more peaceful than the hard earthen floor so far below. Still, she had climbed this mountain for a reason. The only way I’ll fly is if I have to, she told herself, and she leaned forward and fell off the world.

  Before her feet even left the ledge, she knew she had made a terrible mistake. In a moment of panic she tried to will herself back onto solid ground, but it was too late. She plummeted with dizzying speed, angry winds blasting her face. All she could do was hold out her arms and wish for it to end quickly. The slope of trees that had seemed so far away only moments ago now rushed toward her, only seconds away from impact. Father will be so angry was the last thought she had before—