Wundersmith, The Calling of Morrigan Crow

by Jessica Townsend

  The only answer was a vague sort of mumbling.

  Mildmay grinned, apparently choosing to ignore the lackluster response. “Terrific! Now, each group is going to hop inside a brass railpod, which will take you to your starting point, a Wunderground station somewhere in this wild and wonderful city of ours. You’ll notice they don’t have windows, so you’ll really have no idea where you’re going. When you arrive, you’ll find your first clue, which will lead you to the next, which will lead you to the next, and so on… three clues per team, and you’ll need to bring all of them back with you within the time limit if you want to pass. Remember, we’re testing your ability to navigate Nevermoor AND your ability to work together. No scholar left behind. Understood? Right—in you hop.”

  Cadence, Arch, and Lambeth filed into the first spherical brass railpod; Thaddea, Anah, and Hawthorne took the second. Mildmay waved at them all and called out, “Good luck!” as the doors closed.

  Morrigan had hoped Mildmay would put her in a team with the only two people in the unit who liked her, but no such luck. She, Francis, and Mahir stepped into the third pod and traveled in a stony, awkward silence for close to three-quarters of an hour.

  At some point she felt, as the other two must have, the nerve-racking realization that they really were traveling quite far—perhaps to the outer edges of Nevermoor—and that the three-hour time limit they had to make their way back was now dwindling closer to two hours.

  When the train finally stopped, it was at an aboveground Wunderground station, little more than a concrete platform next to a set of tracks. The three scholars emerged from the train into the cool night air. It was dark. The station was, officially, closed—only private Wunsoc trains and railpods ran at this time of night (another perk of Society membership). The sky above was cloudless, and the stars shone brightly in a way that you didn’t often see in central Nevermoor, because there was so much light pollution. Morrigan breathed in deeply; the air felt cleaner and sweeter. She read the station sign: POLARIS HILL. That confirmed her suspicions; they’d come all the way down to Betelgeuse, one of the outer boroughs. She frowned. How were they going to get from Betelgeuse back to Old Town before dawn?

  “There’s the first clue!” said Mahir, pointing to a clock on the station wall. A small envelope with the number 919 was stuck to it. Francis got there first and tore it open to read the contents aloud.

  “A garden of night,” he began. “A killer’s delight. A weapon for cowards. Death by flowers.”

  “What’s that mean?” asked Mahir.

  The gears in Morrigan’s brain were slowly grinding. A garden of night… Death by flowers. “What sort of flower can kill someone?”

  “A… poisonous one?” said Francis uncertainly.

  “No,” said Mahir, his eyes wide with excitement. “One of those giant killer flytraps with teeth! The ones in the southern rain forests that eat people whole.”

  “But where—” began Morrigan. “Oh! No, Francis is right. A weapon for cowards. It is talking about poison! We’re meant to go somewhere poisonous flowers grow. A garden of night. Which garden, though?” Morrigan ran through a list of Nevermoor’s green spaces, counting on her fingers. “There’s the Garden Belt in Old Town. St. Gertrude’s Green. Um… Oxborrow Fields, that’s not really much of a garden, though…”

  “Eldritch Murdergarden!” Francis said, clicking his fingers. “It’s got almost any poisonous plant you could think of. I’ve bought death caps from there before. They have a little shop.”

  Morrigan wrinkled her nose. “What are death caps?”

  “Poisonous mushrooms. They’re actually rather tasty… in very, very small doses.”

  “You bought poisonous mushrooms,” Mahir said, blinking at him, “from somewhere called a murdergarden?”

  Francis shrugged and said again, “They have a little shop.”

  Morrigan made two mental notes: firstly, to never again eat anything Francis offered her; and secondly: to ask Jupiter why in the world he’d never told her there was a poisonous garden in Nevermoor. For goodness’ sake, he knew that sort of thing was right up her alley.

  “Garden of night—killer’s delight. That must be the place. We’re in Betelgeuse, which means Eldritch is east of here, so…” Morrigan paused, picturing the Living Map inside her mind. “Francis, what’s the closest Wunderground station to the Murdergarden?”

  “Old Marlow Road.”

  “If I can get us there, can you get us to the garden?”

  He frowned for a moment, then nodded. “Yes, I think so.”

  “Mahir, how long before dawn?”

  Mahir checked his watch. “Hour and a half. We’ll never make it.”

  “Don’t say that.” Francis twisted the front of his coat nervously. “Aunt Hester will kill me if I fail an exam.”

  Morrigan didn’t want to admit it, but really, Mahir was right. She couldn’t see how they’d make it all the way back to Wunsoc by dawn, when the use of public transport was forbidden and they still had to pick up two more clues from two mystery destinations.

  Still. There was no way Morrigan was going to admit defeat in one of her only two exams. Dearborn would think she’d been proven right—that the wretched Morrigan Crow was a failed experiment, unworthy of a proper education.

  “We ARE going to make it,” she said, rolling up the sleeves of her cloak. “But I hope you’re both wearing comfortable shoes.”

  They ran all the way to the gates of the Eldritch Murdergarden. It took twenty of their precious remaining minutes, and the only living things they passed on the way were a pair of noisy urban foxes, several rough sleepers huddled in shop doorways, and a dustman who got the fright of his life as the three of them clattered past at breakneck speed.

  The black gates to the garden were locked at this hour, but clenched in the teeth of a silver skull and crossbones mounted on the gates was another little envelope labeled 919. Mahir snatched it and read the note inside aloud.

  “Not bronze or gold, but Houses old. Abundant wealth; dubious moral health.”

  “Another riddle,” said Morrigan. “Not bronze or gold. Well, that’s got to be silver, doesn’t it?”

  “Houses old. That’s not very specific,” said Francis. “There are lots of old houses in—”

  “Oh!” Mahir shouted. “The Grand Old Houses!”

  “Grand Old Houses?” asked Morrigan.

  “The old families in the Silver District,” said Mahir. “That’s what they call them—the Grand Old House of St. James, the Grand Old House of Fairchild… all rich, nasty aristocrats. Abundant wealth, dubious moral health. Makes sense, doesn’t it? But I wouldn’t have a clue how to get there.”

  “Me neither,” said Francis. “Not without the Wunderground.”

  Morrigan closed her eyes, trying to picture the Living Map again. She’d seen the Silver District somewhere before. In her mind, she was picturing water… canals. Little boats sailing through foggy, swirling mists…

  “The Silver District is in Ogden-on-Juro!” she declared triumphantly. “It’s that borough that’s sinking into the River Juro—I saw it on the Living Map.”

  “That’s ages away.” Francis slumped against the Murdergarden gates and they made a clanging noise. “It’ll take us an hour to run there, at least. I can’t run for an hour!”

  “Told you.” Mahir too leaned against the gates and slid all the way down to the ground, landing with a soft oof. “There’s no way we’re making it back to Wunsoc by dawn. We might as well give up now.”

  “Snap out of it,” Morrigan barked at them. She’d remembered something else she’d seen on the Living Map. “How did you two ever pass your trials last year with this sort of attitude? Get up and follow me. I have an excellent idea!”

  “This is a horrible idea,” shouted Francis over the wind.

  “Yes,” agreed Morrigan.

  “But you said—”

  “I lied.”

  Mahir groaned. “We’ve been waiting for ten
minutes. It’s not going to show! I’m freezing up here, let’s just—”

  “It will,” said Morrigan. “It’ll show. They run every hour. Just one more minute. Trust me.”

  She was trying her very best to channel the indomitable life force of a certain ginger-bearded madman she knew. But it was hard to quell the nausea swelling up inside her as she stared down from where she, Francis, and Mahir stood—precariously balanced—on the rails of the Centenary Bridge, into the fathomless black waters of the River Juro below. She began wracking her brain for an alternate plan, but then, from underneath the bridge, the bow of a rubbish barge came into view, cutting swiftly through the water for a vessel of its size. Morrigan felt relief wash over her.

  “On three,” she shouted over the noise of the flowing river. “Ready?”

  “No,” yelled Mahir.

  “No,” echoed Francis.

  “That’s the spirit. One—two—JUMP!”

  Francis and Mahir jumped, but only—Morrigan was certain—because she had such a ferociously tight grip on each of their arms that they had very little choice in the matter.

  The three scholars screamed all the way down until they landed on a soft pile of putrid-smelling rubbish.

  “Urrggghh. Morrigan, I will NEVER”—Francis tried to stand but fell over instead, sliding all the way down to the end of the rubbish pile and causing a small landslide that brought Morrigan and Mahir sliding right along behind him—“EVER FORGIVE YOU FOR THIS,” Francis finished, glaring at her.

  “You’ll forgive me when you pass your exam,” Morrigan muttered as she struggled to her feet. Truthfully, she was feeling a bit annoyed with herself. Why didn’t her excellent ideas ever involve something easy or pleasant?

  But the barge got them to Ogden-on-Juro faster than even a trip on the Wunderground would have done. And although they had to jump in the water at one point and swim to the shore, at least the chilly waters of the River Juro washed most of the disgusting rubbish smell from their clothes… even if it meant they were now wet and freezing.

  “A t-t-tunnel of g-green,” read Francis, lips blue and body shaking as he read the note they’d found stuck to the ostentatious silver gates enclosing the sinking Silver District. “F-fit for a… q-queen. A m-m-monarch…”

  “Oh, h-here, let m-me read—” said Morrigan through chattering teeth. She tried to snatch the note from him with her frozen, clumsy fingers. “A tunnel of green, fit for a queen. A monarch alone. A g-graveyard of bones.”

  “Av-avenue of t-trees,” said Mahir immediately. “Queen’s Heath. There’s a path through the h-heath that’s planted with trees that have all g-grown over.”

  “Queen’s Heath,” echoed Morrigan. She stamped her feet up and down and rubbed her hands together, trying to force some warmth back into them. “That was Queen Septemberine’s h-hunting ground, wasn’t it? Six or seven m-monarchs ago. I read about her in A History of Nevermoorian B-barbarism.”

  “A graveyard of bones!” said Mahir. “You’re right. And they say nobody else was ever allowed inside the heath during Septemberine’s lifetime: a monarch alone. It fits!”

  “But Queen’s Heath is in Highwall,” said Francis, his face falling. “Two boroughs north. We don’t have anywhere near enough time.”

  “I think I know a way,” said Morrigan urgently. “Spitznogle Street. We just passed it on the way here—it’s only two blocks back. It’s marked on the Living Map as a Swindleroad, I’m sure it is.”

  Mahir looked surprised. “How do you know that?”

  “I memorized the geographical oddities.”

  Mahir’s eyes widened at that, and Morrigan shrugged. “Well, not all of them. Not yet. But most of the Tricksy Lanes and some of the Swindleroads… and remember what Mildmay told us about Swindleroads? They swallow you up and spit you out somewhere else, sometimes miles away. It can’t be a coincidence that there’s one this close to our third clue. I bet you anything you like that we’re meant to go down Spitznogle. I bet it takes us to Queen’s Heath… or closer to it, anyway.”

  “But Mildmay said we’re not supposed to go down Tricksy Lanes,” Francis protested. “And we haven’t even studied Swindleroads properly yet. They wouldn’t put something in the exam that could be dangerous.”

  Morrigan groaned. “Oh, for goodness’ sake, Francis, haven’t you figured out the Society by now? They don’t care if it’s dangerous. They don’t care if we’ve studied it or not. They’re not coloring inside the lines, and they don’t expect us to either.”

  “Coloring inside—what are you talking about?” asked Mahir.

  “Sometimes you just have to know which rules to obey, and which ones to break,” said Morrigan, remembering something Jupiter had once told her. “When to follow the plan, and when to improvise.”

  “But we don’t have a plan,” said Francis weakly.

  “Exactly,” said Morrigan. “It’s time to improvise.”

  Spitznogle Street was long, narrow, and dark. It was impossible to see what was at the end of it. Morrigan stood at the entrance, flanked by Francis and Mahir. Her hands shook, and she was beginning to regret her brain wave, just a little.

  “Right,” she said. “So we should just…”

  “You’re going first,” said Francis, in a terrified squeak.

  “Right,” Morrigan repeated. “Of course.”

  She took a tentative step into the darkness, then another. Then, with a shake of her head, she decided it was all or nothing. Taking a long, deep breath, she broke into a run, clattering down the black alleyway until she saw a light—small but growing—up ahead. Yes, she thought, picking up speed, until finally she emerged…

  Not on the other side of Spitznogle Street in the Silver District.

  Not on the Queen’s Heath in Highwall.

  Not anywhere, really.

  She stopped herself just in time, before her nose met the brick wall at the end of the alley, rising in front of her, blocking the way out. It grew right before her eyes—twelve feet high, then fourteen, then twenty…

  She sighed, staring at the bricks, deeply reluctant to turn around and tell Mahir and Francis that she’d been wrong, when from behind her came a long, deep creaking sound. She heard a familiar click-clack, click-clack, and the unsettling scccrrrrape of something being dragged along the cobbles.

  Morrigan’s throat burned. Her nostrils filled with the hideous smell of dirty river water and decaying flesh. A creeping, oppressive cold spread through her chest. She turned slowly, and was faced with something she’d hoped never to see again.

  The Skeletal Legion. The Bonesmen.

  There were more of them this time. A horde had gathered—two dozen at least, maybe more—and were crowding into the alley mouth behind her. They pressed in shoulder to shoulder, wall to wall, four men deep. Click-clack, click-clack, scccrrrape. Click-clack, click-clack, scccrrrrape.

  Just as she remembered—and as Mildmay had described—they had clearly been assembled rather haphazardly from the leftover bones of the people and unnimals that had died and been cast down to the bed of the River Juro over centuries, along with—it seemed—whatever else happened to be nearby. One of them had a rusted old umbrella frame instead of an arm, and another rolled along on a long, corroded, seaweed-strewn shopping trolley instead of legs. One of them was a human skeleton topped with the tiny skull of what looked like a cat. It could almost have been comical, but Morrigan had never felt less inclined to laugh.

  The salty chill burned her chest, her breath coming in great rattling heaves. She squeezed her eyes shut, feeling an impotent fury at her own feebleness. She was supposed to be a Wundersmith, wasn’t she? Why couldn’t she do what a Wundersmith was meant to do? Why couldn’t she do the things she’d seen Ezra Squall do? Why couldn’t anyone teach her how?

  It was a dangerous thought, one she would never have voiced aloud. But in that moment, for the first time ever, Morrigan wanted very much to be a real Wundersmith.

  As if bidden by the thought, t
here came a loud whinnying bray from somewhere behind the Bonesmen. A great clattering gallop thundered down the alley toward Morrigan, a rider of black smoke cleaving straight through the horde of Bonesmen as if they weren’t there at all.

  Morrigan’s breath caught in her throat. She realized what it was immediately—the Hunt of Smoke and Shadow had returned. She shivered, remembering Ezra Squall’s last words to her—Lesson two will take place as soon as you request it.

  The huntsman stopped directly in front of Morrigan and seemed to grow even larger, billowing up as if… as if to protect her, as if to form a shield between her and the grotesque skeleton monsters.

  The black shadow-horse reared back on its hind legs, fiery steam shooting from its nostrils, its fierce red eyes blazing. As its hooves thundered back down onto the cobblestones, the enormous black smoke hunter on its back leaned down and held out a hand to Morrigan.

  Morrigan’s lungs burned and, realizing she had stopped breathing, she gulped in a mouthful of cold air. Her pulse thumped in her neck.

  The huntsman waited, perfectly still, hand outstretched.

  Not a threat. Not a command.

  An invitation.

  Morrigan stepped backward into the stone wall, shaking her head. “I—I’m not going anywhere with you.”

  The huntsman said nothing. His eyes, like the eyes of his horse, swirled red and pitch like glowing liquid embers. Like lava. The horse stamped impatiently.

  “I’m not going with you!” Morrigan shouted again.

  The huntsman again said nothing (she wasn’t sure he even had a mouth with which to speak), but turned very slightly back toward the click-clacking horde of Bonesmen, and again to Morrigan with what looked like a mocking tilt of his smoky black head.

  You’ve got a point, Morrigan thought miserably.

  She didn’t have a choice. Heart pounding, she reached out to grasp the smoky hand, feeling the strangest sensation as they connected, as if she was touching air made solid. With hardly any effort at all, the huntsman pulled her up into the saddle, and the horse instantly took off, scattering the horde of Bonesmen as it galloped through.