Wundersmith, The Calling of Morrigan Crow

by Jessica Townsend

  They were silent for another block, listening to the patter of rain and the clip-clop of hooves, and then—

  “But how did I breathe fire?”

  “I’m afraid I don’t know, Mog.”

  “Am I”—she paused to swallow, and choked out a half-laugh—“am I turning into a dragon or something?”

  Jupiter snorted. “Well, let’s see. Do you feel scaly?”

  “No.”

  “Got talons?”

  She checked her fingernails. “No.”

  “Sudden urge to hoard treasure?”

  Morrigan considered for a moment. “I don’t think so.”

  “Then no, I doubt it.”

  “Will they ever let me go back?” she asked, turning to look at him.

  “The Elders will come around,” he said. “We’ll find a way to make them come around. I promise. And look—the summer holidays are about to start, anyway. Six whole weeks to cool off and chill out. By the time school starts back again, they’ll have had a change of heart.”

  “You think so?”

  Jupiter thought for a moment. “I know Elder Quinn pretty well,” he said finally. “She’s… not unfair. Sometimes she just needs time to see what is the fair thing to do.”

  They settled into silence. Morrigan watched the busy streets go by through a filter of fat raindrops spattering the glass. When they were just a few blocks from the Deucalion, Jupiter cleared his throat.

  “I know you might not be inclined to share confidences right now,” he said in a quiet, careful tone, “but is there anything you want to tell me, Mog?”

  She hesitated.

  “Have… have you ever heard of the Ghastly Market?”

  Jupiter took a moment to answer.

  “Yes,” he said finally. “Why?”

  And he listened intently while she told him all that had happened that afternoon in her Decoding Nevermoor class. He didn’t get cross that she’d broken Mildmay’s Tricksy Lane rule, and he didn’t make her promise never to do it again, and he didn’t express the tiniest sliver of doubt about what she’d seen and heard.

  “Devilish Court, you said?” He wrote the name in a tiny notebook he’d pulled from his pocket. “I’ll look into it.”

  I’ll look into it. More than anything else, it was these four words that eased Morrigan’s jangled nerves that afternoon, that undid some of the residual tension from what had been her worst day since arriving in Nevermoor. Because even if the rest of the world was suspicious of her, Jupiter never would be. He believed her. He trusted her.

  “Anything else?” he asked.

  Of course, there were other things she wanted to tell him. There were things she was dying to tell him, things she’d been dying to tell him for weeks. Like how frightened she’d felt when the Charlton Five had pinned her to a tree and thrown sharp things at her head, and about the blackmail note and the ridiculous demands, and how her unit had only just managed to vote not to expose her secret to the whole Society… and the million other things she’d been storing up in her mind, bursting to tell him when she saw him next.

  But now that Jupiter was here, and she had his full attention, those things didn’t seem so important. She was happy just to finally have him back, and there was a whole list of other things she wanted to tell him instead.

  “My conductor’s the best person in the whole Society,” she began.

  “Really?” His eyebrows shot up. “The BEST?”

  “Yes. Much better than you.”

  Jupiter burst out laughing—the big, joyous laugh she’d been missing—and Morrigan grinned at him. She told him all about wonderful, sunshiny Miss Cheery and her seemingly limitless positivity and her polar bear biscuit jar, and how she had the best smile and wore the coolest clothes. “Oh—and she decorated our Hometrain herself, and it’s really comfy. We’ve got beanbags!”

  And she told him how she was the only one in her unit—maybe in the whole Society—who was immune to Cadence Blackburn’s mesmerism (he, of course, needed several reminders of who Cadence Blackburn was). And how she was the best in her Decoding Nevermoor class.

  Jupiter listened closely to every word, and reacted exactly the right way in exactly the right places. And it was all so familiar and so comfortable, so reassuringly normal, that the question Morrigan really wanted to ask—the question that had been burning at the back of her throat, threatening to burst out of her mouth like dragon fire, since she’d watched him stare down Baz Charlton in the Elders’ Hall—burned itself down to ashes before she could find a way to ask it. She swept it into a quiet corner of her mind and let it sit there, ignored and unanswered.

  And if she ignored it for long enough, maybe it wouldn’t be important anymore. Maybe it would never be important again. Maybe the question What’s a safeguard for? could sit under that pile of ashes in her mind, safe and quiet and unimportant, forever.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  YOU’VE NEVER SEEN ANYTHING MORE BIZARRE

  We want to be at the East Gate entrance.”

  “Catriona, darling, that’s the busiest gate. We went through this last year.”

  “Dave. Trust me. East Gate is the business.”

  “Yes, I know it’s the business. That’s why it will be packed with a million other Nevermoorians by now. We should have left an hour earlier if you wanted to start at East Gate. I told you.”

  “It’ll be fine, love. We’ll just barge through.”

  “Barge through? It’s not a mosh pit, Cat. We’re civilized adults.”

  “Sweetheart, it’ll be fine. You’re talking to a champion barger. Why do you think they call me Queen Barge?”

  “Nobody calls you that, darling.”

  Hawthorne’s mother, Cat, struck Morrigan as a grown-up female version of Hawthorne. Her hair was a bit longer, falling past her shoulders in thick chocolate-colored curls just like his, but otherwise they were basically the same. Same blue eyes, same splotchy freckles, same gangly limbs that brought to mind a mother and baby giraffe.

  The Swifts had invited her to go with them to the Nevermoor Bazaar, on the first Friday night of the summer holidays. Although Jupiter had promised to take Morrigan himself, he’d been needed elsewhere at the last minute—and knowing how gloomy she’d been since term ended a week ago, he had encouraged her to take the opportunity and go with her friend instead. Morrigan was relieved; last summer he’d promised every single week that he would take her, and every single week something else had come up. She was determined not to miss out this year.

  “Lots of people call me that, my love. Ask Homer, he’ll tell you. Tell him, Homer.”

  Hawthorne’s elder brother made a face at their parents. Homer looked more like their dad. Same fair hair, same thick eyeglasses, same sturdy, towering build like a Viking wrestler—all he was missing was Dave’s scruffy beard.

  At fifteen, Homer was currently in his fourth year of study at the Conservatory of Thought. Hawthorne had explained to Morrigan that students of the Conservatory took a vow of silence for their years of study and were only allowed to speak one day a year, so when Homer was with his family he carried a blackboard and chalk around his neck to communicate. Hawthorne said he mostly used it for sarcasm.

  “Speak up, darling son. He’s gone all shy.”

  “That’s not very nice, dear,” said Dave, trying not to laugh.

  Homer didn’t bother with the blackboard; he just rolled his eyes.

  Their elder sister, Helena, couldn’t come to the bazaar. She was a fifth-year student at the Gorgonhowl College of Radical Meteorology, far away off the coast of the Sixth Pocket on a tiny island that sat in the eye of a perpetual cyclone. Helena only ever came home at Christmas and the summer holidays, because it was difficult and expensive to travel in and out of a cyclone. This summer, however, the storm had turned so bad that all travel was suspended until further notice—which, according to Hawthorne, suited Helena perfectly. She loved it when storms turned bad, he said. She wanted to stay in school and see the
damage for herself.

  The youngest member of the family Swift was two-year-old Davina, who also looked just like her dad. Baby Dave, as the family called her, was enormously fat, blond, and cheerful. The Swifts all agreed she was brilliant, maybe better than the rest of them put together. Morrigan was undecided—she’d only ever seen Baby Dave spit up milk, throw food on the floor, and squeal at passing dogs.

  Morrigan and the five Swifts took the Wunderground downtown for the bazaar, and Dave made them all hold hands so nobody would get lost in the swarming crowds. Cat did them the favor of singing loudly and out of tune for the whole train ride, however, which she said would make the public handholding less embarrassing by comparison. (I’m not with these people, read Homer’s blackboard.)

  When at last they arrived at Temple Station and battled the crowds to reach the East Gate, the sun was just about to set. There were thousands of people waiting at the gate to be granted entry to Old Town, and the anticipation was palpable. Dave hoisted Baby Dave onto his shoulders for a better view. Hawthorne grabbed Morrigan’s arm and squeezed it, bouncing up and down on his tiptoes and looking like he might burst with excitement. Even Homer was gazing up at the East Gate, lost in silent awe.

  “See?” said Cat, smiling at her husband. “Told you. The business.”

  The space inside the East Gate was obscured by a sort of shimmering silvery haze that looked a bit like a gigantic pane of rippled glass, except for the fact that it moved in the breeze. Across the top of the great stone arch, enormous, brightly burning letters of fire read:

  WELCOME TO THE NEVERMOOR BAZAAR

  And underneath, an ambitious promise wrote and rewrote itself in the air with smoke siphoned from the fiery letters:

  You’ve Never Seen Anything More Bizarre

  “Magic!” cried Cat, grinning as she nudged Homer in the ribs.

  Homer rolled his eyes, picked up his chalk and wrote: Cheap parlor trick.

  Cat laughed. Morrigan found she agreed with her: It was magic. It had to be. It was wonderful.

  Dave leaned down, beckoning Hawthorne and Morrigan in. “It’s an illusion,” he said. “Built by magicians, see?” He pointed up to where a small team of tuxedoed men and women perched on a corner of the arch. They were deep in concentration, using a combination of convoluted hand gestures and machinery to direct the smoke message, over and over. It looked like tedious, complex work. “You can always identify a magician’s illusion, even if you can’t see the magician herself, by spotting the seam. Wait for it… THERE! Did you see it?”

  “Oh!” Morrigan did see it now. There was a moment when the illusion sort of… flinched. If she watched carefully, she could feel a slight jarring sensation each time the message got to the end of the word bizarre and restarted—an almost imperceptible stuttering seam of imperfection in the loop.

  “That’s not a cheap parlor trick, Homer,” said Dave, straightening up and ruffling his elder son’s hair. “That’s craftsmanship.”

  Morrigan agreed with that too—but impressive as the illusion was, she couldn’t help giving the words themselves a bit of side-eye. She had, in fact, seen quite a few bizarre things. Most of them at the Deucalion.

  “Right, you three,” said Dave, addressing Hawthorne, Morrigan, and Homer. “Got your money? Good. Keep it close—lots of pickpockets at the bazaar. I want you to meet Mum and Baby Dave and me back here at midnight on the dot. Not a second later, you understand? If you’re not back at the East Gate by midnight, I’m gonna let Mum come after you and do a street performance of her one-woman play about the lady who loses her children and goes mad and ends up thinking she’s a squirrel. All right?”

  Morrigan laughed, but Homer and Hawthorne were wide-eyed. “Please don’t do the song, Mum,” said Hawthorne.

  “No promises, boyo,” said Cat, pointing a finger at him. “You’d just better be back at midnight, you hear?”

  The two boys nodded.

  “All right then,” she said. “Have fun—”

  “But be safe,” added Dave.

  “Eat lots of treats—”

  “But please not too much sugar—”

  “And let’s see who can find the most ridiculous souvenir this year!” Cat finished with two thumbs-up and a mad grin.

  “But nothing sharp, nothing alive, nothing explosive, nothing bigger than the front door, and no weapons,” said Dave, with a meaningful look at Hawthorne.

  Just then there came a noise like a thousand tinkling bells, and the shimmering, glassy veil over the East Gate melted away, disappearing into the Gossamer and revealing an Old Town utterly transformed.

  There was a moment of pleasurable, stunned silence as the crowd took in the sights and sounds of the bazaar, before they all began pushing their way to the front, eager to be the first inside. Morrigan and Hawthorne grinned at each other, happily buffeted along amid the river of people flooding through the gates.

  As soon as they’d lost sight of Cat and Dave, Homer wrote something on his blackboard and held it up for Hawthorne to see.

  11:45. Temple doors.

  Hawthorne gave him the thumbs-up, and Homer wiped his message and wrote something else.

  I know it’s hard for you, but try not to do anything stupid.

  Hawthorne made a face at him and the two boys parted, Homer flicking his little brother’s earlobe before disappearing into the crowd.

  “I thought we were meant to stick together?” asked Morrigan. “Your dad said—”

  “Oh, never mind Dad, he’s a worrywart,” Hawthorne said airily. He took two maps from a woman passing by on stilts, folded one into his pocket without looking at it, and handed the other to Morrigan. A title across the top read, Precincts of the Nevermoor Bazaar. “Trust me, we don’t want to stay with boring old Homer. He’s gone to find his boring old friends so they can be boring and old together. I think we should go clockwise, all right? South quarter first, then west, north, and back here to the East Gate to meet Homer.”

  As they wandered past the Temple of the Divine Thing and made their way down Grand Boulevard, Morrigan examined her map. The bazaar sprawled across all four quarters of Old Town and was divided into dozens and dozens of little precincts, each with its own purpose. A tannery, an antiques market, a witches’ market, a perfumery…

  “There’s a cheese market in the West Quarter that goes for a whole block!” said Morrigan, squinting at the map’s tiny writing. “No, hang on—it says it’s a fire-twirling show. Or… wait. No, sorry, it’s a dog show. It keeps changing!”

  “It’ll be all three.” Hawthorne was walking very fast, holding on to Morrigan’s sleeve and steering her left and right to dodge other people as she concentrated on the map.

  “Oh. On different nights?”

  “Same night.”

  Morrigan stopped in her tracks, checking the map again.

  “Hurry up,” pleaded Hawthorne. “We’ve only got a few hours, so we need to get to South Quarter quickly. Come on, I know a shortcut.”

  He led her down Callahan Street, off the side of Grand Boulevard.

  “Dreadfully disorganized, isn’t it?” Morrigan said, still frowning at her map. Some of the precincts seemed to be labeled with three, four, even five different purposes or events, most of which seemed completely at odds with each other. She held up the map for Hawthorne to see. “Look—we’re about to come to Ambrosia Square, right? This map says Ambrosia Square is hosting a tango lesson and a tea party. But that’s ridiculous, Ambrosia Square is so small, how can it be—”

  Morrigan looked up just as they reached what she knew should have been the entry to the little square, and found herself face-to-face with a curtain of flowing, many-colored silks.

  “This is how,” said Hawthorne, and he led her through the silk curtain into the middle of a tango lesson. Ambrosia Square—normally a quiet courtyard lined with tiny terrace houses—was alive with dramatic music and swirling dresses, tempestuous men and women crossing back and forth in each other’s arms. Morr
igan jumped as a bottle smashed, spraying red wine across the makeshift dance floor. A fight broke out just as Hawthorne grabbed Morrigan’s arm and pulled her back through the silk curtain the way they’d come.

  Through the curtain again, and Ambrosia Square had transformed into a bustling—but very civilized—tea party. A pianist played tranquilly on an upright piano in the corner while a brigade of hostesses went around refilling people’s cups and piling little cakes onto three-tiered trays.

  “What—how?” asked Morrigan.

  Hawthorne shrugged. “Who cares? Come on—we’re not stopping here.”

  At the other end of Ambrosia Square, they stepped through a curtain of feathers into the Avian Market, where hundreds of hanging cages held birds of every description—some exotic and brightly colored, some tiny and jewel-like, some huge, terrifying birds of prey that reminded Morrigan of her grandmother. There were birds that spoke in multiple languages, birds that were trained to hunt, and some that flew in formation.

  Morrigan wanted to stop and look at them, but Hawthorne hurried her along, through another curtain made of creeping vines into a flower market overflowing with color, and then a lantern market with a thousand colored lights casting psychedelic patterns all around them, then a loud and smelly fish auction, a prayer meeting, a vigorous debate on Wunimal rights, a farmers’ market full of fresh fruit and vegetables, then a carnival with a carousel, a ghost train, a jumping castle and sideshow alley….

  “Hawthorne, stop—don’t you want to go on the ghost train? Slow down, I’m getting a stitch!”

  But he wouldn’t slow down. He knew exactly where he was going, and though he refused to tell Morrigan (“It’s a surprise!”), she had an idea what it might be about. She knew her friend too well.

  Morrigan had expected the bazaar to be crowded, and she’d known there would be lots of stalls selling peculiar things. All last summer she’d witnessed the Saturday-morning postbazaar ritual over the breakfast table as Hotel Deucalion guests and staff alike compared endlessly fascinating stories and souvenir hauls.