Wundersmith, The Calling of Morrigan Crow

by Jessica Townsend

  “Beautiful, isn’t it?” he said. “Have you ever seen anything like it?”

  “Never,” Morrigan admitted.

  “Henry,” said the young man, holding out a hand to shake Morrigan’s. “Mr. Mildmay, I suppose. Gosh, doesn’t that sound odd. Perhaps I’ll just go with Mildmay. That’s better, isn’t it? More relaxed. Oh—it’s my first class,” he explained, noticing Morrigan’s look of polite confusion. “I’m new. Just graduated as a Senior Scholar last year. Go easy on me, won’t you?”

  Morrigan smiled. “It’s my first class too. Well—second.”

  “Smashing, we can muddle through together.” Morrigan liked the way Mildmay’s hearty, friendly tone took the edge off his terribly posh accent. “You’re… Miss Crow, yes?”

  “Yes,” said Morrigan cautiously. She wondered if he knew what she was. If he did, he didn’t show it.

  “Smashing,” he said again. “I’ve memorized all your names and faces already. Anyone else joining us?” He consulted a piece of paper. “Says here I’m meant to have your whole unit for this class. They haven’t gone AWOL already, I hope?” He gave her a lopsided, knowing grin. “Perhaps awful old Murgatroyd’s scared them off.”

  Morrigan didn’t know what to say. She’d never met a teacher quite so… unteacherly.

  The doors swung open again, and Thaddea stalked into the Map Room, closely followed by Anah, running to keep up.

  “Just let me look at it, Thaddea,” Anah said, fussing around the taller girl’s face with a damp cloth. “It looks dreadful. You don’t want to get an infection, do you?”

  “For the millionth time,” said the redheaded girl through gritted teeth, “I’m FINE. Stop your bleating.”

  “You’re being ridiculous,” huffed Anah, shaking her head of ringlets. “And you’re BLEEDING! I bet Miss Cheery would tell you—”

  “Nobody asked you,” Thaddea snapped. She was, indeed, bleeding from what looked like a fairly serious gash in her forehead.

  “Good afternoon, scholars,” said Mildmay, frowning deeply. Morrigan could tell he was trying to look stern, and that it didn’t come naturally to him. “What’s all this about?”

  “Nothing, sir,” echoed Thaddea, looking him squarely in the face, her chin jutting defiantly upward.

  Mildmay pressed his mouth into a line as if he was trying not to smile at Thaddea’s bullish expression, and cleared his throat. “Righto, then. Where are the others?”

  Morrigan was surprised. Was he just going to ignore the gash on Thaddea’s forehead? Anah was right, it did look serious—there was now a thick rivulet of blood dripping down the side of Thaddea’s face. “Lambeth is in a sensory deprivation hydromeditation chamber,” said Anah, looking up to the ceiling as if reciting from a list emblazoned on her memory. She hadn’t so much as glanced in Morrigan’s direction and was giving her a wide berth. “Francis is in the kitchen garden, learning to identify rare herbs. Hawthorne is at a firefighting demonstration. Arch is in the teaching hospital, having the fingers on his left hand broken and reset for maximum dexterity. Mahir is—”

  The doors opened again and Hawthorne strode into the room, talking loudly. He was followed first by a grinning Mahir and then by Francis, Cadence, and finally Lambeth, who trailed in several steps behind them looking peacefully dazed, as if she’d only stumbled on the Map Room by accident.

  “Ah, excellent,” said the teacher, clapping his hands together. “We’re all here, more or less.” Morrigan frowned, counting the unit. They were most certainly not all here. Arch—and his broken fingers—were still missing. Once again it seemed that Mildmay cared not a fig.

  She was beginning to see that Ms. Dearborn had meant exactly what she’d said about grown-ups in the Wundrous Society. Nobody’s going to hold your little handies or wipe your little nosies. Yet they were quite happy to break their little handies, apparently.

  “Everyone up here on the walkway, quickly now,” said Mr. Mildmay. “I want you to look down and tell me what you see.”

  “It’s Nevermoor! I can see my house,” said Hawthorne immediately as he took the spot beside Morrigan at the glass rail. He squinted hard at the map, leaning so far over that Morrigan had to grab the back of his shirt to stop him from tumbling headfirst onto the tiny people below. “Wait—I can see my MUM! Look, Morrigan, that’s her curly head—that’s her purple pullover with the rainbow on the front. She was wearing that this morning! Is this—”

  “A live, almost one hundred percent realistic depiction of Nevermoor and its inhabitants,” said Mildmay. “Well, nearly live. There’s a few seconds’ delay in some boroughs. I mean it’s really old, this map, it’s bound to have a glitch or two. Now let’s delve a little deeper, class. Look closely. See what’s really there.”

  The scholars of Unit 919 exchanged confused looks but tried to concentrate on the miniature city sprawling before them.

  “A labyrinth, Professor?” said Francis, looking bug-eyed at the tangle of streets and alleyways.

  “Absolutely!” agreed Mildmay. “Well done, Mr. Fitzwilliam. Although, please—just call me plain old Mildmay. I’m not a professor—you’ll find that very few of us here at Wunsoc are. Nobody can sit still long enough to get the proper qualifications. There are a few patient souls among us, of course—Professor Kempsey, and Professor Dresser (though she prefers to go by Molly, for obvious reasons), and Professor Onstald. The rest of us are just enthusiastic amateur educators who are willing to share our expertise. I myself am a member of the Geographical Oddities Squadron,” he said proudly, and blew his bangs out of his eyes. “When I heard that the Elders were looking for someone to teach you how to get around this bizarre and beautiful city, I jumped at the chance to show off what I know. So, what else? Fire away. No wrong answers. Miss Amara, are you still with us?”

  Lambeth was looking in the wrong direction, at the glittering constellations above.

  “Hello?” Thaddea shouted, waving a hand in front of her face. Lambeth flinched. She recovered quickly to turn a haughty, disapproving glare on Thaddea, who quailed slightly and lowered her voice. “We’re meant to be looking down there, not at the ceiling.” She pointed at the three-dimensional map of Nevermoor.

  Lambeth frowned silently at the map for several moments.

  “Well?” prompted Mildmay. “Any thoughts?”

  “Yes.” Her eyes skittered across the streets and boroughs before landing on Begonia Hills, then pointed at a busy intersection. “Motor accident.”

  Mildmay blinked. “No, I meant thoughts about—”

  He was interrupted by a screeching of tiny wheels and a honking of angry horns, signaling that two vehicles had just plowed into each other. A pair of tiny drivers jumped out to bellow and shake their little fists, bringing the traffic to a standstill. Lambeth returned to watching the stars, which seemed a lot less stressful.

  “Oh,” said Mildmay. “Right. Well. Anyone else?”

  “A game—no, a puzzle,” said Anah. She looked at the teacher hopefully, clearly eager to please. “For us to figure out.”

  “Wonderful!” he enthused, aiming an electric smile in Anah’s direction. Anah glowed right back at him. “I certainly hope you’ll try to figure it out, Miss Kahlo, but as nobody has ever been able to do so in Nevermoor’s entire history, I hope you’ll forgive me if I don’t hold my breath. Though undoubtedly you shall tackle the task with your trademark surgical precision.” Anah giggled at this, blushing. “What can the rest of you see?”

  “Streets, buildings, squares, temples,” said Thaddea, sounding a little bored, or perhaps woozy.

  “A bustling metropolis!” shouted Mahir.

  “A bustling mess,” muttered Cadence.

  “Good. Now, let me tell you what I see when I look at Nevermoor,” said Mildmay. He looked down at the tiny, teeming city with a rapture that lit his eyes from the inside. “I see a monster. A beautiful, terrible monster that feeds us all with stories and history and life, and demands to be fed in return. A monster that, over
the Ages, has grown fat on the unwitting, the gullible, the vulnerable… has chewed them up and swallowed them down, never to be seen again.” He tore his eyes away from the map and turned to face them, holding up one finger. “But… it’s a monster that can be tamed, if you are willing to learn its behaviors, its weaknesses and perils. I have dedicated my life to taming this monstrous city, and I love her with every fiber of my being. If you wish to survive and thrive in Nevermoor, you must do the same.”

  Morrigan wondered if it really was possible to tame a city so wild and… well, ridiculous. She doubted it.

  Mildmay slapped both hands on the rail. “But we’ll start small.” He gestured to a table at the end of the walkway, on which sat two small wooden bowls filled with slips of paper. “I want you all to begin by taking one piece of paper from each bowl. The first location will be your starting point, the second your endpoint,” he continued. Crossing to the other end of the viewing platform, he tugged on a chain and a blackboard came rolling down, bearing two separate lists of Nevermoorian landmarks. “I want you to plot the simplest route from A to B, and write a detailed set of directions. But here’s the catch: See these two lists?” He pointed at the board. “The first is a list of landmarks you must include on your route. The second—landmarks you must avoid. And remember, this is an aboveground journey: no cheating by taking the Wunderground.” He grinned at them. “Sounds straightforward, but you might find it trickier than you’d expect. You have one hour. Go!”

  Morrigan’s first slip read Tumbledown Road, Bittern & Bustard and the second Grouse Street, Southey-Upon-Juro.

  It was more than tricky—it was maddening, and involved a lot of running back and forth on the glass walkway and footbridges. Every time Morrigan thought she had her path set, she’d notice that some part of it meandered straight past Dredmalis Prison or the Royal Nevermoor Playhouse or some other forbidden landmark from the second list, and she’d have to backtrack and find another way around.

  There were constant groans, frustrated sighs, and even a few muttered curse words from Unit 919. By the end of the hour, a few of them had almost given up altogether.

  “It’s impossible,” grumbled Thaddea, moving away from the map of Nevermoor to slump against the curved wall. She made a noise of disgust and pulled away, realizing too late that she’d leaned against a part of the wall showing the Albertine Ocean in the Fourth Pocket, and it had soaked through the back of her pullover. “Nevermoor is ridiculous.”

  Morrigan, however, was enjoying herself for perhaps the first time since coming to Wunsoc. While some of the other scholars were easily discouraged when their route was dead-ended, she found it strangely satisfying to puzzle out an alternative path.

  “Time’s up!” called out Mildmay when the hour was over. “Well done, everyone. We’ll discuss your work in detail during our next class. Miss Crow, please stay behind.” He didn’t look up from the papers he’d just collected. Hawthorne hovered near the door for a moment. “You may go, Mr. Swift,” the teacher added.

  Morrigan slowly approached Mildmay’s desk. “Sir?”

  “Don’t worry, you’re not in trouble,” he said. “Quite the opposite. I wanted to tell you how impressed I am. You did terrific work today.” He held up her set of directions, shaking his head in amazement. “This is perfect.”

  Morrigan smiled, feeling her face grow warm. “Thank you.”

  “Did you enjoy the lesson?”

  “Yes!” she said with sincere enthusiasm. “I’ve never done anything like it before.”

  “Oh, I’m glad somebody did.” He brushed his floppy bangs back out of his eyes, looking relieved. “You have an unusually good knowledge of Nevermoor. It’s a strange place, but your grasp of it seems very intuitive. You obviously grew up here, yes?”

  Morrigan hesitated. “I… um, not exactly…”

  Last year, when horrid Inspector Flintlock of the Nevermoor City Police Force had been (rightly) convinced that she’d been smuggled in from the Republic, and the threat of deportation had hung over her head, Jupiter had advised her to keep quiet about where she’d come from.

  But that was last year. Morrigan hadn’t been a member of the Wundrous Society last year, and she didn’t have the protection of the little W badge that now gleamed on her collar. Now that she was a full-fledged member of Nevermoor’s most prestigious group, was it all right to be honest about the fact that she grew up in Jackalfax, deep in the heart of the Wintersea Republic, among the enemies of the Free State? That she hadn’t even known about this place until she’d met Jupiter? The Seven Pockets of the Free State kept strict border laws and even stricter secrecy, and her patron had risked everything to smuggle her in. Would she be putting him at risk if she told the truth now?

  Morrigan didn’t know. She made a mental note to ask Jupiter’s advice.

  “Not exactly?” prompted Mildmay.

  “I grew up outside of Nevermoor,” Morrigan admitted, and left it at that. “I moved here to take the Wundrous Society trials, last year.”

  He looked deeply impressed. “Goodness. You’ve only been here a year? And yet you and Nevermoor seem to go hand in glove. It’s almost like this place was made just for you.”

  Morrigan beamed with her whole face, feeling a glow emanating from somewhere deep inside. That was exactly how she felt about Nevermoor! Like it belonged to her. She was thrilled—almost to an embarrassing degree—to hear this from somebody else, somebody entirely objective.

  “If you’d like to visit the Living Map outside of our lessons, you’re more than welcome,” offered Mildmay. “I do. Always have done, even when I was a scholar.” He gazed out over the miniature Nevermoor with obvious affection. “I was pretty lonely at your age. The other members of my unit thought cartography was a pretty boring knack. Lots of whitesleeves in my unit, see—we’ve got a couple of sorcerers, and Tilda Green’s a fire oracle, and Susan Keeley can speak to water—”

  Morrigan’s eyebrows shot upward. “Speak to water?”

  “—and they didn’t really think I belonged with them. Sometimes I would come here and sit for hours, watching all the tiny trains carrying the tiny people to their tiny houses. Watching the lights come on all over the city as night fell.” He grinned sheepishly. “Pathetic, I know. But I thought it was fun.”

  “I don’t think my unit likes me much either,” Morrigan admitted. She felt surprised at herself. She hadn’t planned to say anything of the sort, but it just… came out. “I mean, except Hawthorne.”

  “Why, do you have a boring knack too?” Mildmay asked ruefully; then his face immediately turned red. “I—I mean… I apologize. I wasn’t prying. I know we’re not supposed to ask you. I was only joking.”

  In that moment Morrigan wanted very much to throw caution to the wind and tell Mildmay she was a Wundersmith. She thought perhaps—just perhaps—he wouldn’t look at her with fear or hatred.

  But Elder Quinn’s warning rang in her head. If anyone—anyone at all—is found to have broken our trust… then all nine of you will face expulsion from Wunsoc. For life.

  Anyone at all. Even Morrigan herself.

  She couldn’t risk it.

  “Yes,” she said simply. “It’s very boring.”

  He smiled at her. “Well, sometimes the boring knacks turn out to be the most useful ones. My unit won’t be laughing when I join the League of Explorers.”

  Morrigan perked up. “My patron’s in the League of Explorers!”

  “Jupiter North, I know,” he said, nodding with enthusiasm. “He’s a real inspiration. I’m going to run interrealm expeditions one day too. I’m going to be a captain in the League. Just like North.”

  “You are?”

  “Don’t you realize, Miss Crow?” He chuckled, his face lighting up with possibility. “We’re in the Wundrous Society. We can be anything we want to be!”

  The sound of a gong being struck reverberated in the Map Room, so loud she and Mildmay both covered their ears. An officious voice sounded from
horn-shaped brass speakers mounted in the corners of the ceiling.

  “Ahem. Elders, Wuns, and Scholars, a moment of your time, please. A member of our teaching staff, Paximus Luck, has now been missing for almost a week. Students in Mr. Luck’s popular Stealth, Evasion, and Concealment class have, most unfortunately, continued attending lessons, believing his mysterious absence to be merely… ahem… ‘part of the syllabus.’” Morrigan thought she could almost hear the woman rolling her eyes. “This is not the case. We are currently investigating Mr. Luck’s disappearance, and anyone with relevant information should speak to the High Council of Elders immediately. In the meantime, we ask that any scholars continuing to attend Mr. Luck’s classes despite his evident absence… stop doing that. Good day.”

  The announcement ended with a mechanical squeal that made Morrigan and Mildmay both wince.

  “Strange,” she said, wondering vaguely how Jupiter’s investigation was going. “All these disappearances. Paximus and Dr. Bramble’s Magnificub and—”

  Mildmay chuckled. “That’s Paximus Luck for you, though, isn’t it?”

  “What do you mean? Has he done this before?”

  “Well, yes, I mean… that’s his knack, you know,” he said. “Disappearing. Reappearing. Trust me, this is just some elaborate stunt to prove his cleverness. He’ll be back in no time, expecting applause.”

  Morrigan frowned. She sometimes felt that her true knack had nothing to do with being a Wundersmith. That it was, in fact, her remarkable ability to assume the worst. It came, of course, from a lifetime of believing she was cursed, and it seemed to be stitched into the very fabric of her being, even now. Telling her not to worry about bad things happening around her was like telling Hawthorne not to get excited about dragons, or Jupiter not to be ginger.

  As she left the Map Room, Morrigan thought about the last time a pattern of strange, unwelcome things had started happening in Nevermoor, and the man who was behind them.