Wundersmith, The Calling of Morrigan Crow

by Jessica Townsend

  “How did you find it?”

  “Well, it took me a while,” he said. “But luckily I know lots of people who know lots of things. And I’m nosy by nature, aren’t I?”

  They crossed the vast floor to where Jack stood in front of another podium, with another purple diamond plaque.

  Here Stands a Singularity

  Crafted by the Wundersmith Decima Kokoro

  Sponsored by Senator Helmut R. Jameson

  A gift to the people of Nevermoor

  Spring of Seven, Age of the East Winds

  “A Singularity,” Morrigan repeated. That word brought the memory of her encounter with Ezra Squall rushing back into focus. “That’s what Squall called the Museum of Stolen Moments. He said the Committee for the Classification of Wundrous Acts declared it a Spectacle. But Squall thought they were wrong, because they didn’t understand what it really was.”

  Jack looked from Morrigan to Jupiter and back again, his one visible eye narrowed. “The museum of what? When did you see Squall?”

  “I don’t get it, though,” Morrigan continued, ignoring him. “According to Onstald’s book, the Wundrous Acts Spectrum only has five classifications—Missteps, Blunders, Fiascoes, Monstrosities, and Devastations. It doesn’t say anything about Spectacles or Singularities. But they obviously exist, because… well, because we’re standing in one.” She threw her arms up. “So why doesn’t Onstald know about them? He wrote a whole book about Wundrous Acts, for goodness’ sake! Why does he think this place was classified a Fiasco?”

  “What’s this about Squall?” Jack repeated, in a slightly higher-pitched voice. He lifted his eye patch as if to get a better read on the situation.

  “Good question, Mog. I’m afraid I don’t know.” Jupiter scratched at his beard. “But I suggest you start by asking Professor Onstald himself.”

  “Oh, I will ask him,” Morrigan said. She was suddenly filled with a fresh, fierce determination. How could Onstald have written an entire book about Wundersmiths and Wundrous Acts when he was obviously so misinformed? Had he ever bothered looking for Cascade Towers or Jemmity Park, or any of the other Wundrous Acts in his book? “I’ll ask him first thing tomorrow.”

  “Go in easy, though, won’t you?” said Jupiter. “Nobody likes to be told they got something wrong. Especially something they wrote a whole book about.”

  “No promises,” she said grimly.

  A few moments went by in silence while Morrigan brooded and Jupiter gazed up in silent appreciation of Cascade Towers, until Jack finally burst out:

  “Is anybody going to tell me about Squall?”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  THE TREACHEROUS TIMEKEEPER

  Have you sorted your costume yet?”

  “Costume?”

  “For Hallowmas,” said Hawthorne. “It’s tomorrow.”

  “Erm.” Morrigan blinked, struggling to engage with the conversation. She’d barely slept the night before and her mind was well and truly elsewhere as they marched up the path through the Whingeing Woods to Proudfoot House. “No. I hadn’t really thought about it.”

  “You know what I think you should come as?” Hawthorne looked carefully around, then whispered, “A Wundersmith!”

  Morrigan made a face. “That’s the most ridiculous idea you’ve ever had.”

  “Nah, listen—nobody knows you’re really a Wundersmith except—”

  “Except,” interrupted Morrigan, counting on her fingers, “you, Jupiter, Jack, Fenestra, Miss Cheery, Professor Onstald, the Elders, the Scholar Mistresses, everyone in our unit, and all of their patrons.”

  “Yeah, but nobody else.”

  “Oh! Let’s not forget our mystery blackmailers, whoever they are. And Ezra Squall, and—”

  “Anyway,” Hawthorne pushed on determinedly, “that’s what makes it such a good idea! It’s, um—what’s the word? Homer used it the other day. It’s… ironic.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means… I dunno, who cares. Just imagine everyone’s faces when you show up at the party dressed as a Wundersmith! Black mouth, talons, big old cape… scariest costume in the room. BOOM. Instant street cred.”

  “BOOM. Instant expulsion.” Morrigan rolled her eyes. That wasn’t even what Squall really looked like. “What party, anyway?”

  “Whichever one we want!” Hawthorne jumped up to touch an overhanging branch, getting excited. “Unit 918 are having a party at Freddie Roach’s house. Freddie’s in my reptilian care class, he’s nice. Or Homer’s friends are having a party. I bet he’d take us with him if we promise to keep at least three yards away from him at all times and wear masks that fully cover our faces.”

  “But we’re marching in the Black Parade, remember?” Morrigan said, shivering. “We don’t have to wear costumes for that, just formal black uniforms.”

  She pulled her coat tighter around her and buttoned it all the way up to her chin. Autumn had really kicked in. Outside the walls of Wunsoc that meant crisp air and piles of satisfyingly crunchy leaves to stomp through. Inside Wunsoc, the wind was bitingly cool, there was an ever-present smell of woodsmoke and sweet rotting apples, and the Whingeing Woods had become a vibrant canopy of woven reds, golds, and oranges (something none of the muttering trees seemed particularly happy about, but when were they ever?).

  “That’s not until midnight! Hey, I bet Jack knows someone who’s having a party, maybe he could—”

  “Jack will be at the Deucalion,” said Morrigan. “And really, I suppose I ought to be there too, for whatever Hallowmas nonsense Frank has cooked up.”

  “Ooh, can I come?”

  “Of course.”

  “Cool. I’m going to be a pirate, I think. Or a ghoul. Or a dinosaur. I’m not really sure yet. Or a vampire, maybe…”

  Hawthorne kept up a constant stream of costume ideas for the entire walk to Proudfoot House. He didn’t seem to require any real input from Morrigan, which suited her perfectly as it meant she didn’t have to listen.

  She’d been awake half the night, brooding over how she should tackle her conversation with Onstald. Jupiter was correct, of course. Nobody liked to be told they were wrong. But did that mean nobody ought to be told they were wrong?

  After all, Onstald had spent the whole year teaching Morrigan things that were heinously false. He’d declared himself an expert on a topic he obviously knew nothing about and he’d made Morrigan believe she was doomed to repeat the failures of every evil, idiotic or just plain useless Wundersmith that came before her.

  The more she thought about it, the angrier it made her. She’d worked herself up into a fury all morning, thinking about Cascade Towers and Jemmity Park and the countless other Wundrous Acts that could still be out there in Nevermoor, ready to be discovered if only someone would bother to look for them.

  When Morrigan stormed into Professor Onstald’s classroom, shoulders back and head high, she was ready to have a very serious conversation with her tortoisewun teacher.

  “What… is all… this… racket?” asked Professor Onstald, as Morrigan threw open the door and marched into the room, throwing her book bag down onto a desk.

  “You’re wrong,” said Morrigan, surprising herself a little. Fury or no, she hadn’t intended to put it quite so baldly.

  “I beg… your…”

  “Pardon, yeah,” Morrigan interjected, too impatient to let him finish. Onstald’s beady eyes grew a little wider, his mouth opening slightly in surprise at her rudeness. She didn’t care. She wouldn’t be put off. “You’re wrong about the Wundrous Acts Spectrum. Your book says there are only bad Wundrous Acts, only Missteps and Blunders and… and Monstrosities, and all that.”

  Professor Onstald stared at her. “There are only…”

  “But that’s not true,” Morrigan barreled on. “What about Singularities? And Spectacles?”

  She paused, waiting for Onstald’s response. His wrinkled, leathery face was blank.

  “Cascade Towers isn’t a Fiasco at all,” she c
ontinued. “I know, because I’ve seen it.”

  His mouth dropped open. “You’ve… seen…”

  “Yes, and it’s wonderful. There’s a plaque there, a purple diamond plaque, and it says, ‘Here stands a Singularity.’ Not a Fiasco—a Singularity. A gift to the people of Nevermoor. And Jemmity Park isn’t locked to everyone—it lets in poor children who deserve to have it all to themselves. The Committee for the Classification of Wundrous Acts declared it a Spectacle, and a gift to the children of Gresham. There’s a purple plaque that says so.”

  Morrigan saw that Professor Onstald was becoming more and more agitated, but she couldn’t stop. She could barely pause for breath, so desperate was she to make him understand. “Don’t you see what that means? You got it wrong, Professor. Your book says every single Wundersmith throughout history has been stupid or wicked or cruel or wasteful. But Decima Kokoro wasn’t useless—she was a genius. Odbuoy Jemmity wasn’t cruel—he was generous and kind.”

  “Keep… your… voice down.” Professor Onstald looked nervously toward the open door. A few people walking past in the hall peeked curiously inside, wondering what the noise was all about. “Somebody… will…”

  “I don’t care if somebody hears me,” snapped Morrigan. She felt the pricking of angry tears and cursed her treacherous eyeballs into infinity. Why must getting angry make her feel like crying? It wasn’t at all the message she wanted to send. She curled her hands into tight fists. “I won’t be quiet until you listen to me. Don’t you see—if you were wrong about Kokoro and Jemmity, maybe you were wrong about other Wundersmiths too. Isn’t it worth trying to find out the truth? If there are more Wundrous Acts out there that are good, don’t you want to…”

  Morrigan trailed off, suddenly aware that Professor Onstald had not expressed even the smallest amount of surprise. He hadn’t called her a liar, or asked how she knew these things, or even looked confused at the mention of Spectacles and Singularities. He was only worried about whether someone else might hear the things she was saying. He kept glancing fitfully toward the door.

  A long and weighty silence fell between them.

  Morrigan looked down at the huge book on the professor’s desk, placing a hand on its faded cover. Missteps, Blunders, Fiascoes, Monstrosities, and Devastations: An Abridged History of the Wundrous Acts Spectrum. When she spoke this time, her voice was barely audible above the ticking of the clock on the wall.

  “An Abridged History. Edited. Abbreviated. Shortened.” She looked up at Onstald, recalling his words from their first lesson. “You already knew all this, didn’t you? You left things out deliberately. You lied.”

  With a long, wheezing breath, Onstald opened his mouth to respond, a trail of spittle stretching between his wrinkled lips. “I… revised.”

  “You LIED!” Morrigan was shouting now. She couldn’t help it. “You’ve been lying this whole time. You tried to make me believe that all Wundersmiths are evil. But you knew that wasn’t true, didn’t you?”

  “All Wundersmiths… are… ev—”

  Unable to hear these words again, unable to bear it, Morrigan opened the book and flipped aggressively through the pages until she came to the chapter about Odbuoy Jemmity.

  And then she ripped it out. The whole chapter. She gritted her teeth and tore the pages into tiny pieces and let them fall to the floor like confetti.

  “STOP. LYING.”

  Professor Onstald had just opened his mouth to respond to this shocking act of vandalism when Henry Mildmay burst into the room, looking worried and a bit flustered. He carried an awkward armful of books and maps, and his bangs flopped down into his eyes.

  “Oh! I’m sorry, Professor Onstald, I was passing by and I thought I heard shouting.” He looked from Morrigan to the aged tortoisewun to the pile of torn-up paper on the floor, a deep line of confusion creasing his brow. “Is everything all right?” He looked at Morrigan when he asked this, but it was Professor Onstald who answered.

  “Everything… is fine… young man.” Morrigan noticed the way he addressed Mildmay as if he were a schoolboy, rather than his colleague. For some reason, it only irritated her more. How dare he be so rude to Mildmay, especially when the younger teacher was so good and kind, and Professor Onstald was such an awful old liar? It wasn’t right. “Go… about… your business.”

  But Mildmay was still staring at Morrigan with a look of curious concern. “Miss Crow, are you—”

  “She… is fine,” asserted Professor Onstald. “Your… continued… presence here… is most inappropriate, boy.”

  A touch of color rose in Mildmay’s cheeks. “Of course, Professor Onstald,” he said. “My apologies.” With one last inquiring glance at Morrigan, he ducked his head and turned to leave, but instead hit his knee on the edge of Onstald’s desk. He cried out in pain and dropped his books and maps all over the desk, scrambling to pick them up, even more red-faced, and in his embarrassment, he tripped, casting an armful of belongings into the air yet again.

  In the moment of noise and confusion, something very strange happened.

  Morrigan felt suddenly as if the world and everything in it were grinding to a halt. The air around her felt as thick as molasses. It was like time had slowed down to an unbearable speed—or as if time had become solid and was somehow holding her in place. Her mind worked as fast as ever, but even her eyeballs were moving at a snail’s pace, refusing to look where she desperately wanted them to look. In her peripheral vision she saw that across the room, Mildmay too appeared almost immobile, his belongings floating in the air—floating in time—around him.

  It felt like an eternity passed. Just as Morrigan was wondering if she had somehow made this happen, if her ill-formed talents as a Wundersmith were betraying her yet again, she realized who was really responsible.

  Moving across her line of sight at his usual tortoise pace (which was now, of course, many, many times faster than her own near-frozen speed), Professor Onstald crossed the room in small, shuffling steps, heaved An Abridged History up into his arms, and left the classroom.

  It was Onstald. He’d made it happen. He’d slowed time.

  Moments later, the world stuttered back to life. Mildmay’s books and maps clattered to the floor and he hit his knee on the corner of the desk again, crying out in pain.

  Morrigan gasped for breath and ran to the door. Too late. The professor was gone. “How did he do that?”

  Mildmay was breathing as if he’d just run a marathon, pressing one hand to his chest. “Good grief. I had no idea….I always assumed Professor Onstald was Mundane. I didn’t know he was a Timekeeper. I didn’t know there were any Timekeepers left in the Unnamed Realm.”

  “What’s a Timekeeper?”

  “A very rare knack,” said Mildmay. He was still gazing at the door Onstald had disappeared through, shaking his head, eyes wide. “There are different strands of Timekeeping, different ways to use and manipulate time—preservation, shrinking, looping, stretching. Seems like old Onstald is a stretcher of time. I can hardly believe it.”

  Morrigan gave an angry, derisive snort. “Sounds about right. He’s a stretcher of truths too. And he took the book!”

  She slammed her fist on the desk. She’d wanted to take the book from Onstald, the proof of his fraudulence. To take it home and pore over its pages with Jupiter, to see what other Blunders and Monstrosities might turn out to have been gifts to the people of Nevermoor.

  “Oh dear. What, er—what book was it?” asked Mildmay distractedly, gathering his things from the floor. Morrigan bent down to help.

  “An Abridged History of the—” She stopped herself just in time, pressing her lips together as she handed him a rolled-up map. It would be impossible to tell Mildmay the title of the book without potentially giving herself away as a Wundersmith. “I forget. Some stupid history textbook.”

  “Oh well… I’m sure he’ll bring it back.” Mildmay headed to the door, still looking flustered and slightly in shock, as if he hadn’t quite recovered yet
from the effects of Onstald’s bizarre knack. Morrigan could understand. Her head still felt a little fuzzy. “I should go. Lessons to plan. I’ll see you, Miss Crow.”

  “A Timekeeper? Crikey. Are you sure?”

  “Well, that’s what Mildmay said. And he did stretch time… or least, that’s what it felt like.”

  Morrigan breathed deeply, inhaling clouds of chamomile smoke as they rolled out from the walls. She had come home in a terrible state, shouting for Jupiter as she ran down the hall to his study, ready to lay out the whole terrible episode. Her patron had, wisely, suggested they have the conversation in the empty Smoking Parlor, and asked Kedgeree to put on a calming scent. Morrigan had recounted the whole thing in furious detail, and was most gratified when she got to the bit where she realized Onstald had known the truth all along, and Jupiter had literally jumped up out of his seat. It had taken quite a bit of chamomile before he’d finally stopped pacing and sat down again.

  “But why has he been lying?” said Morrigan. It was the umpteenth time she’d asked the question that afternoon, and Jupiter couldn’t answer it any more than she could.

  “I’ll have to go to the Elders,” he said finally. “They need to know the truth more than anyone.”

  “Tomorrow?” Morrigan asked hopefully.

  “Tomorrow,” he agreed. “I’ll talk to them when I see them before the Black Parade. After Frank’s party. I promise.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  HALLOWMAS

  The Deucalion glowed a wicked golden-orange on Hallowmas night. Every light in the hotel had been extinguished so that the building was as dark as a witch’s cauldron except for several well-chosen rooms in which hundreds of candles were brightly burning. From the street, the candlelit windows made the precise formation of a gaping, toothy mouth and a pair of devilish eyes, so that the Deucalion’s façade resembled a gigantic jack-o’-lantern. The effect was chilling.