Wundersmith, The Calling of Morrigan Crow

by Jessica Townsend

  One weekend, Morrigan had the brilliant idea to invite all of Unit 919 over. Excited and nervous for the opportunity to prove to them she wasn’t dangerous, that the Elders had it all wrong, she went so far as to write out individual invitations on fancy parchment.

  She thought carefully about what she wanted to say—that she was sorry about what had happened at the station, that it was an accident and she would never hurt anyone on purpose, and please would they come over for swimming and snow cones this Saturday. She closed the invites up carefully with a wax-sealing kit that Jupiter lent her, and had Hawthorne hand-deliver them on her behalf. But when the day arrived, only he and Cadence showed up.

  Morrigan tried not to be dispirited, and made the most of the day by giving Cadence a tour of the hotel, which turned out to be an interesting test of their fragile new friendship. Unlike Hawthorne (who, to Morrigan’s satisfaction, had boundless enthusiasm for everything the Deucalion had to offer, no matter how weird), Cadence’s reaction was mixed.

  She was politely perplexed by the Rain Room (“What, so it just… rains? Inside? All the time? Why?”), and she hated the theater, with its dressing room full of costumes that each came with their own accent and mannerisms (Morrigan did warn her not to try on the Puss-in-Boots costume; Cadence was still meowing and scratching behind her ears an hour after she’d taken it off). But she loved lounging on the sandy island in the middle of the lagoon pool, complete with swaying palm trees and gentle, tinkling ukulele music that drifted on a warm breeze.

  Hawthorne still had to train over the holidays with the Junior Dragonriding League, but he made his way to the Deucalion most afternoons, exhausted and sooty. He, Morrigan, and Cadence would usually play cards in the Smoking Parlor, inhaling the latest summery scent rolling out from the walls. The parlor was trying out a new seasonal range, with mixed results. Coconut smoke, ocean breeze smoke, and strawberries-and-cream smoke were big hits. Insect repellant smoke, Wunderground commuter sweat smoke, and potato-salad-at-a-picnic smoke were dramatically less successful.

  Since she wasn’t allowed to get involved with Jupiter’s investigation, Morrigan tried to concentrate more on figuring out who was blackmailing Unit 919. Though as she wasn’t allowed to leave the Deucalion and most of her unit wasn’t speaking to her, she had to admit there wasn’t an awful lot to be getting on with.

  The one good thing, Morrigan thought, was that their blackmailers must be on summer holidays also. So at least Unit 919 would have a respite from any more demands until classes began again.

  But no such luck.

  “Look at this,” said Cadence one morning, passing a note to Morrigan as they settled into a pair of sun loungers. She popped on her sunglasses and lay back while Morrigan read.

  Cadence Lenore Blackburn.

  Your patron has an important public appearance tomorrow morning.

  You will find a creative way to make him humiliate himself.

  If you fail, we will reveal the secret of Unit 919.

  Remember:

  Tell no one.

  Or we will tell everyone.

  Morrigan blanched. She didn’t like Baz Charlton, but if somebody had told her to choose between protecting her unit and publicly humiliating her own patron, she honestly didn’t know what she would have done.

  This did at least eliminate a suspect—surely Baz wouldn’t demand his own humiliation! But even so, it didn’t bring Morrigan any closer to knowing who was behind it.

  She glanced sideways at Cadence, who had propped her hands behind her head and was basking in the bright warmth.

  “I wasn’t sure whether you’d get one of these,” Morrigan admitted.

  “Me neither,” said Cadence, frowning. “I didn’t think they’d even notice me.”

  “So, um,” Morrigan went on, trying to sound casual, “what’s this public appearance tomorrow morning?”

  “It was this morning—the note came yesterday. He was attending Parliament to petition for stricter border laws. Big, important speech.”

  “Oh.” Morrigan waited, but Cadence said nothing more. “So… what happened?”

  “Well, I had to really think about it, you know.”

  “Right.”

  “I was up all night, trying to decide what to do. I couldn’t sleep.”

  “Of… of course.” Morrigan held her breath.

  “But in the end, I just couldn’t choose between making him drool through the whole thing, speak in a baby voice, or drop his trousers at the end and shout ‘BAZZY WANT POTTY.’” Cadence grinned. “So I went with all three.”

  Fireworks and water slides and rock concerts were fine, Morrigan thought. But this, truly, was her favorite moment of the summer so far.

  Toward the end of the holidays, Jupiter announced his return from one of his longer expeditions by waking a reluctant Morrigan and Jack at dawn and bringing them to the rooftop, where he’d tethered a gigantic hot-air balloon. It was a dreamy, magical thing to float high above Nevermoor’s rooftops watching the sun illuminate the city in pink and gold, with no sound but the occasional blast of heat from the burner. Morrigan never wanted her feet to touch the ground again. And she never wanted this summer to end either.

  But she wasn’t stupid. She knew this was all part of a grand combined effort to keep her distracted and happy and safe at the Deucalion, to steer her away from the Ghastly Market investigation and to soften the blow of her Wunsoc ban.

  And Morrigan appreciated their efforts, she really did. However, the fact remained that when the new term began, Hawthorne and the rest of 919 would be heading back to their classes at Wunsoc, and she would be left behind. The Elders still hadn’t decided whether it was safe for her to return to campus and were insisting that for now, the ban must remain in place. Jupiter had pleaded and cajoled and threatened and stormed and pleaded again, all to no avail.

  “Gregoria Quinn is the most implacable person I’ve ever known,” he fumed one day after returning from another fruitless mission to the Elders’ Hall. (Later, Morrigan looked up the word implacable and decided that she agreed with him entirely.) “I mean for goodness’ sake, if it weren’t for you, the Stealth might never have saved—might never have… brought Alfie home.”

  There was a moment of unease that came with those words. Because, after all, the Stealth had not really saved Alfie, had they? At least, not in the eyes of the Elders, or of Baz Charlton… or of most people at Wunsoc, in fact. According to Jupiter, they were all acting as if Alfie had died, when really he’d just become a bit more… normal.

  “At least he’s alive,” Morrigan kept saying anytime Alfie’s missing knack was brought up in conversation. Jupiter always agreed with her, but she knew that deep down, he was thinking about how it would feel to no longer be a Witness.

  Morrigan wondered how she would feel if somebody told her she wasn’t a Wundersmith anymore. Given that the whole situation had caused her nothing but grief, she suspected she might throw a party. But even so, she could imagine how it would feel for Jupiter to have his talent taken away without his consent. The thing that made him unique and important. It would be like a little death.

  “Do you think… could he maybe get it back?” she asked. “If they ever find the person who took it, I mean.”

  “We can’t be certain someone did take it,” said Jupiter. “I’m not totally convinced that’s even possible. Alfie can’t tell us much; he’s still in shock and barely remembers a thing. Maybe—hopefully—it’s just the trauma of it all, and he’ll regain his talent in time.”

  “And if he doesn’t,” said Morrigan, “will he be allowed to stay in the Society?”

  Jupiter was quiet for a moment, and she wondered if he was about to tell her a comforting lie. But he simply gave a blunt, bewildered shrug.

  “I’m honestly not sure, Mog,” he said. “That’s up to the Elders.”

  Inevitably summer ended, and Professor Onstald arrived at the Deucalion to continue his boring lectures on the evils of being a Wunders
mith.

  The staff knew how Morrigan felt about Professor Onstald’s lessons. (They ought to; she’d done quite a lot of complaining about them.) Even so, they strove to make her teacher feel welcome at the hotel.

  Or at least, that was what Morrigan thought.

  In the beginning.

  “I’m afraid this is the only space where we can accommodate you today,” said Kedgeree on the first morning, as he showed Onstald and Morrigan into the Deucalion’s second-biggest ballroom, on the fifth floor. “Everywhere else is occupied. Very busy time of year for the hotel industry, you understand.”

  Moving at Onstald’s glacial pace, it had taken them almost half an hour just to get down the hall from the elevator, but Kedgeree didn’t seem to mind. He kept up a stream of cheerful chatter the whole way, apparently oblivious to Onstald’s impatient little snorts and huffs of reply. Now, heaving his usual rattling breaths as he gazed upon the ballroom, the tortoisewun looked deeply appalled.

  “Are you… telling me… I must teach… in this… this…”

  “—very elegant space that’s currently being prepared for our Annual Autumnal Ball, yes,” interrupted Kedgeree, with an apologetic shrug. “But don’t worry, Frank’s promised he won’t disrupt your lesson at all. Right, Frank?” he called out to the vampire dwarf, who was across the room setting up a sound check for his favorite swing band, Iguanarama.

  “You won’t even know I’m here,” Frank boomed into the microphone. There was a squeal of feedback. Onstald flinched. “Oops, sorry.”

  The hardest thing for Morrigan was trying to concentrate on Onstald’s litany of Wundrous misdeeds while Frank paraded an increasingly ridiculous variety of distractions through the ballroom, accompanied by his constant refrain of “Ignore me, ignore me—I’m not here!” She kept a straight face through three consecutive rehearsals of Iguanarama’s chart-topping dance hit, “Swing, Swing Your Scaly Tail.” She even managed to read an entire chapter on the tyrannical Wundersmith Tyr Magnusson while tranquilly ignoring the giant floating champagne bubbles that were slowly filling the room.

  But the final straw—for Morrigan’s poker face and Onstald’s patience—was when Frank brought in a flock of squawking geese dressed in black jackets and bow ties.

  “What… is the… MEANING… of THIS?” demanded the tortoisewun, while Morrigan dissolved into giggles.

  Frank turned to them, his face a picture of innocence, and said, “Well, I’m sorry, Professor, but someone has to train the extra catering staff!”

  The next day, Kedgeree moved them to an art studio in the east wing. It reeked of oil paint and turpentine, but Kedge opened the windows wide and took care to point out that it was, at least, free of tuxedoed waterfowl.

  However, it was also close to the Music Salon, and Dame Chanda took to wandering the hall outside, practicing her arias. Each time her angelic voice floated past the studio, crowds of squirrels, bluebirds, badgers, foxes, and field mice swarmed through the open windows, drawn irresistibly to the sound. Onstald made Morrigan close the windows, but the paint fumes became unbearable and the creatures kept coming, only now they were scratching at the glass and whimpering to be let in.

  Martha prepared lunch for them every day, and after several mumbled complaints from Professor Onstald, Morrigan realized that the maid was deliberately sabotaging his meals. Giving him soup that was just a touch cold, bread a touch stale, tea a touch weak. Meanwhile, she always slipped Morrigan a foil-wrapped chocolate or a tiny iced honey cake with her lunch, and never gave Onstald a single sweet treat. It was a small act of pettiness, but by gentle, tenderhearted Martha’s standards, it was a declaration of all-out war, and Morrigan adored her for it.

  Each day that week brought a move to a new room with its own fresh variety of nuisance, and it didn’t take long for Morrigan to figure out exactly what the staff were doing. It lifted her spirits in a way that even pool parties and hot-air-balloon rides could never have done. Every morning she jumped out of bed, excited to see what they would come up with that day to make Onstald’s head explode.

  But the pièce de résistance of Hotel Deucalion resistance, came—of course—from Fenestra. On Friday morning, when Morrigan and Onstald had settled into their latest improvised classroom (a disused badminton court on the seventh floor) and begun their lesson, Fen sauntered in. She didn’t say a word but sat behind Morrigan, glowering over her head at Professor Onstald and purring so aggressively that it made the floor vibrate.

  Morrigan knew that if anyone else had interrupted their lesson, Onstald would have demanded they leave at once. But Fenestra wasn’t the sort of cat who inspired demands.

  That evening, a messenger arrived with an ivory envelope addressed to Morrigan.

  Miss Crow,

  I write to inform you that my fellow Elders and I have reconsidered your exile from the Wundrous Society campus. After careful review—and a strong recommendation from Professor Onstald, who assures us that the behavior he has seen from you this week has been satisfactorily nonthreatening—we are pleased to invite you to return to Wunsoc, and to your Decoding Nevermoor class with Mr. Mildmay, on Monday.

  Needless to say, we will continue to closely monitor your conduct.

  Please do not disappoint us.

  Kind regards,

  Elder Gregoria Quinn

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  RIDDLES AND BONES

  Autumn of Two

  The tiny encircled W on Morrigan’s station door lit up. She stood there for a full minute, matching her breaths to its gentle, pulsating glow, before finally steeling herself to press her imprint against the light.

  The door swung open to reveal a huddle of faces that looked pretty much as she’d expected. Cadence and Hawthorne, at least, seemed pleased to see her. The others were at best warily awkward, and at worst openly hostile.

  Given the week they’d just had, Morrigan could hardly blame them.

  Cadence and Hawthorne had filled her in over the weekend. In the five days she’d missed, there had been four new demands, one after the other.

  First, Mahir had been ordered to paint rude words in thirty-seven different languages all over the Hall of Tongues. Then Hawthorne had to set a section of the dragon stables on fire—though from the way he told the story, he seemed to have quite enjoyed it.

  “And nobody suspects a thing!” he said. “Because Burns With the Fire of a Thousand Wood-Burning Stoves sleeps in that section, so I just blamed it on him. He’s got terrible gas, Burns With.”

  Anah was deeply shaken by her own criminal exploits—she’d had to steal medical supplies from the teaching hospital (just a few pairs of rubber gloves and a bedpan, according to Cadence, but Anah had spent the rest of the week wailing about what the nuns who raised her would say).

  The worst demand had come for Arch, who’d had to steal a lock of hair from Ms. Dearborn. Morrigan imagined that was about as safe as stealing a scale from a dragon.

  “I thought he might die of fright, but he got it,” Cadence had told her, grim-faced. “Only he felt so bad afterward that he left it with an anonymous apology note for her to find on the steps of Proudfoot House. The idiot.”

  “And she’s been on the warpath ever since,” muttered Hawthorne.

  Morrigan now approached her stony-faced unit.

  “Hi,” she said, giving a nervous wave. “Er, how’s it going?”

  “Oh, terrific,” said Thaddea, glowering at her. “We’ve all just been here taking massive risks to keep protecting your secret. How ’bout you? Nice week at home in your fancy hotel, was it?”

  “Shut up, Thaddea,” said Hawthorne, but he was drowned out by the chug-chug-chug of Hometrain arriving. Morrigan sighed as she watched Thaddea and the others march into the carriage without sparing her a second glance.

  It was, perhaps, the hair-stealing event that had led Dearborn to announce a surprise exam period, starting that very day.

  Morrigan had it easy, compared to the others. That was one benefit, at lea
st, of having only two classes on her timetable. Onstald’s examination paper was tediously predictable; a monstrous many-paged booklet full of long-winded questions like, “Name the three worst Wundersmiths in history, ranking their top five most dreadful acts of evil and/or stupidity,” and “Why was the Great War of the Age of Poisoners entirely the fault of Wundersmiths? List twenty-seven reasons.” It took Morrigan three days to complete it.

  The test for Decoding Nevermoor later in the week was much trickier, but also much more interesting.

  “All right, Nine-One-Niners, listen up!” Mildmay’s voice cut through the echoing chatter that bounced around Proudfoot Station. He held a finger up to his lips, and the scholars fell silent. “I know we’re all up WAY past our bedtimes for a Thursday and probably starting to feel a bit tired and silly at this time of the morning, but let’s try to stay cool, all right? One last time, let’s go through the rules—”

  Cadence groaned. “We’ve been through them already.”

  “Humor me, friends,” said Mildmay. “Altogether now, rule number one is…?”

  “No Brolly Rail, no Wunderground, no hansom cabs, no buses,” droned the unit as one.

  He held up two fingers. “Rule number two?”

  “No asking for directions or talking to strangers.”

  “Three?”

  “No maps, no guidebooks.”

  “Four?”

  “Back before dawn, safe and sound and whole.”

  He held up his hand, fingers splayed. “And the fifth and final rule?”

  “A failure for one is a failure for all.”

  “That’s right,” he said, nodding. “To pass this exam, you and your team must all be back by sunrise—that’s three hours from now.” He looked around at each of them in turn. “You and your ENTIRE team. If you want to succeed, you’ll need to work together on this one. And remember: If one team out of the three fails, the whole unit fails. Understood?”