“I see. As to your question, monotheism means belief in only one single god,” Mr. Gideon replied. Laughter tittered though the classroom.
“That’s absurd!” cried red-haired Ian MacDannan, grinning madly. “Nobody living on this planet—either of the Wise or mundane—believes in something like that.”
“No one in the Unwary world, either,” said Rhiannon Cosgrove, a student from De Vere Hall with a head of long brown curls. “I’m from Hoboken, New Jersey. I only heard about magic for the first time two months ago. Turns out my grandmother had been of the Wise and never told my mom. But no one I know in what you guys call ‘the mundane world’ worships only one god. We go to the temples—Zeus, Apollo, Amaterasu, or whoever—on high feast days and the chapel of Asclepius when someone’s sick. Everybody does.”
“Me, too,” said Sigfried. “I mean, I grew up in the world of the Unscary, not knowing about magic, and I never heard of anyone worshipping only one god—unless you mean like the nuns of Hestia, who were scary, being loyal only to Hestia. Of course, since they ran a horrid orphanage, we never went to temple or chapel or anything.”
“But…” Rachel squinted at the tutor, wondering if he were mocking them, “wouldn’t worshipping only one god offend the other gods?”
The tutor gave her a lazy smile. “You’re the youngest Griffin, aren’t you? Your sister Sandra was one of my best students. A sharper mind I have never met. Well, youngest Griffin, some people have believed so. Akhenaton tried to make the Ancient Egyptians worship the sun god alone. Other records from antiquity suggest there may once have been a tribe in the Middle East, called the Israelites, who held such beliefs. Have any of you heard of the Israelites?”
Most of the students, Wise and Unwary, shook their heads. Rachel reviewed the encyclopedias in her mental library. She raised her hand.
“Yes, Young Miss Griffin?”
“Don’t some scholars think the Tribe of the Israelites may have been the ancestors of our modern Gypsies?”
Mr. Gideon nodded. “Some do hold that opinion, yes.”
Wulfgang Starkadder raised his hand, his eyes dark and brooding. “They worshipped just one god? Or they believed in just one god?”
“The word covers both,” said the tutor.
“How could it mean the second?” Joy O’Keefe spoke up, puzzled. “When there are obviously so many gods? Even the Unwary know there are many gods, right?” She looked at Astrid, who ducked her head, nodding awkwardly.
Mr. Gideon spread his arms. “A mystery. But it is mysteries that make pursuit of knowledge so fascinating.”
Rachel nodded, her eyes sparkling. She was going to like this tutor.
• • •
“What you said in class about a Wiser than the Wise, do you believe that?” Rachel asked Siggy, as they spilled out of the school building into the sunny afternoon. They walked onto the bridge that led across the reflecting lake to the green lawns of the commons. The air was alive with laughing and chatting. Three boys were having a boat race, each yelling to his self-propelled boat to go faster.
“You mean the idea that there are creatures who mess with us the way we mess with the Unburied?” Siggy asked. He jumped up onto the stone railing and spread his arms behind him as he ran, pretending to be dive bombing something. “Vvvvrrrrmmm! Pow! Yes. I do.”
The princess strolled beside them, slipping her school book into her house-containing purse. She only ever carried one old gray book. Whenever she opened it, it contained exactly the text that was needed. Rachel longed to examine it but felt too shy to ask.
“That is a rather disturbing thought.” Nastasia closed her purse. “Even more disturbing than some of my father’s ideas about good uses for Vegemite. Do you have any proof?”
“Maybe.” At the edge of the bridge, Siggy jumped to the ground and looked around suspiciously. Then he ducked his head and looked thoughtful for a moment.
“Tell us! Tell us!” Rachel grabbed his arm.
Siggy lowered his voice. “Where does Lucky come from? And the scarab, and the piece of paper that ensorcelled the generously-endowed and abundantly overly-mammalian young lady from Drake Hall?” When Rachel and Nastasia both gave him a sharp look, he shrugged, unconcerned. “The proctors said there were new types of magic. Where is it coming from, if not from something outside your World of the Wise?”
Rachel thought about this very hard. A piece of the puzzle suddenly clicked into place in her head. “Maybe from the places the princess visits in her visions?”
“What places?” Siggy looked at Nastasia. “What visions?”
Nastasia solemnly repeated what she had told Rachel, including the part about Salome.
“Dead? Wow! That’s ace! Can I do that? You say you go to these places? Does it happen when you touch me? Can you go to the same place over and over? What about Lucky?”
Rachel found herself grinning. It was so easy to think of amazing things when speaking with Sigfried. Already, the idea that there were other worlds—and that the people whom the princess was seeing visions about had come from these worlds, bringing their unfamiliar magic with them—was taking root in her thoughts.
The princess was not swept away by Siggy’s enthusiasm, but her eyes crinkled kindly at his eagerness. “In no particular order, it only seems to happen the first time I touch somebody. It did not happen with you or Rachel. Also, it never happened at home. A lot of strange things happened at home—a great many of them involving my father, wombats, and bubble gum—but nothing like this.” She paused and then added thoughtfully, “Next time, I am going to see if I can pick up an object and bring it back with me. I would like some kind of proof that I have not gone crazy.”
“What a good idea!” Siggy chortled. “Pick up a gun or a repeating crossbow or an atomic bomb.”
“I have not seen any of those things,” the princess said primly.
Siggy shrugged, undeterred. “Something must be causing the devastation you keep seeing.”
“Try touching Lucky,” Rachel urged eagerly. “He’s a new thing. Maybe he’s from…Outside.”
“Very well.” The princess turned toward the dragon and curtsied. “If you don’t mind, sir dragon?”
“Sure. S’okay with me, if it’s okay with the Boss,” Lucky said. “Will it hurt?”
“I don’t think so. No one else seemed to notice.” Nastasia looked at Lucky thoughtfully. “Do you know what kind of gift Lucky brings? As a familiar, I mean?”
Sigfried shrugged. “No idea. I asked the other guy who has a dragon familiar, that senior for Marlowe. But first, his dragon is a little red and blue thing, not much bigger than a winged iguana, and second, he didn’t know what his was, either.”
“Nothing new you can do that you could not before?” pressed Nastasia.
Siggy shrugged again. “Not that I’ve noticed.”
Reaching out, the princess stroked Lucky’s soft fur. Rachel ached to pet him, but she felt too shy to ask about that, too.
The princess’s expression went blank. Then, she gave a soft gasp. Water dripped from her hand. Small pink petals stuck to her fingers. She brushed the petals into her purse.
“Wh-what’s that?” Rachel pointed at her hand.
Tiny, red lines—very regular lines, about an inch apart—covered her palms and left cheek. The lines began to drip. The princess was bleeding.
“Oh, my gods! She’s been wounded! To the infirmary!” Siggy lunged at the dainty princess to pick her up.
“Wait! Wait! I am not hurt!” Nastasia waved her hand in Sigfried’s face. She brushed the blood off. Her hand was whole.
Siggy peered closely. The princess took a tissue from her purse and wiped the blood off her cheek, which was whole and fresh underneath.
“Are you sure you are okay?” Siggy asked. “Good. It would have been horrible if you had been killed by touching Lucky.” He wagged his finger at the dragon. “Lucky, why did you do that?”
“Wasn’t my fault, Boss!” Lucky’s shrug in
volved his whole body undulating like a wave. “I didn’t do anything. Didn’t see anything either.”
“Where did the water come from?” Rachel asked.
“The river.” Nastasia daintily wiped her fingers off on her robes.
“What river?” Siggy asked.
“I found myself on the bank of a river surrounded by willows and flowering cherry trees. Humanoid shapes drifted by wearing odd black and white masks. I leaned down and put my hand into the water to pick up some of the cherry blossoms. When I lifted my hands, it felt as if I had run into a net of spider webs or fishing line. As if I were pulling against a fabric of some kind. And where I pulled against it, the lines of blood appeared. Then I was back.”
“That’s…very strange.” Rachel felt as if her whole body had turned into a goose bump. “So you are going to another place?”
“Where do you think you went? Chicago? Paris?” asked Siggy.
Nastasia considered for a bit, blinking her corn silk lashes. Then, she said slowly, “This looked like Japan…but sometimes, it has been clear that I was not anywhere on the Earth. Once I saw two moons in the sky. One was big and blue.”
“You are going to other worlds!” Rachel declared, awed.
“Aw! That is so unfair! I want to go to other worlds!” cried Sigfried. “I want to be the first man on Mars! Has anyone in the World of the Wise gotten to Mars?” Rachel shook her head. “I want to be the one to go!”
“It’s got to be!” Rachel’s mind leapt rapidly, analyzing what they knew so far. “That’s where the new magic is coming from. Other worlds. Along with the people: Salome, Valerie, and Lucky!”
Thousands of topics interested Rachel Griffin, but none was as enthralling as the notion of other worlds. The idea called to her, whispering that she should awake. It was like a beam of light piercing an otherwise dark and gloomy chamber, illuminating wonders not previously beheld. Mentally, she added a wing to the library of her mind, with yards and yards of empty shelves, ready for the knowledge she hoped to collect. She wanted to know everything there was to know about these distant places. Even more, she wanted to visit them!
Siggy had picked up some rocks. He skipped one seven times across the water of the reflecting lake. Impressed, Rachel tried it, too. Her stone sank like, well, a stone.
Siggy snickered, “You throw like a girl.”
“I am a girl,” Rachel objected.
“Oh. Good point.” He looked faintly surprised, as if that taunt had never before failed to hit its mark.
• • •
As they skipped stones, a soft noise came from behind them. Tiny Magdalene Chase approached shyly but then lost her nerve and backed away. Nastasia held out her hands, gently beckoning her forward. Despite her regal bearing, the princess regarded her with such gracious welcome that Magdalene overcame her fear. She approached slowly, clutching her China doll to her chest.
“Fear not,” the princess assured her. “We do not bite…except maybe for Mr. Smith, who has been known to spit on a few palms.”
The tiny girl blushed deeply. “Um…I wonder if I could…” She bit her lip.
“Pet the dragon?” asked the discerning princess. She arched a perfectly-formed eyebrow at Sigfried.
“Sure!” Siggy gave the girl his skyship-blinding grin. “Lucky, let’s give this young lady the royal treatment.”
Lucky the Dragon zoomed forward and wrapped himself around the tiny girl. Magdalene made no noise, but she glowed as if an inner flame shone through her porcelain skin. She closed her eyes and rubbed her cheek against the dragon’s soft fur. When the dragon finally unwound from around her, she gave a tiny curtsy and ran away.
Grinning, Siggy and the dragon bumped knuckles. In the distance, thunder rumbled from the direction of Stony Tor. Rachel noticed other freshmen searching the blue skies, but the older students did not so much as twitch. Rachel wondered if this casual disregard of thunder led to them being taken by surprise when the noise heralded a real rainstorm.
“My question is,” Sigfried turned back to the princess, “who is behind this? Who knows about these other worlds? There must be someone. People from beyond the edge of our world, beyond the moon. The Metaplutonians!”
“Who?” Rachel asked.
“The Metaplutonians!” Sigfried repeated. “The people from beyond Pluto.”
“That’s a really stupid word,” Rachel snorted.
Sigfried shrugged. “I got it from a film Lucky saw while peeking in someone’s window. Only I don’t think I remembered it right. That’s how I watched all my TV, by the way. We did not have a telly at the orphanage.”
“We do not have one either,” Rachel replied. “Electronics do not work well near magic. And magic doesn’t work in places filled with electronics. Gryphon Park is far too magical a place for mundane devices to work properly. I’ve never seen a moving picture.” She paused. “But we can’t use the word Metaplutonians. It’s ridiculous.”
“Metaplutonians is a bit awkward.” The princess considered the matter carefully. “But I cannot currently think of a better one. My father would no doubt suggest something significantly worse, like bumblesauruses, or wigglebockers. I recommend we stick with Metaplutonians.”
The princess was so stately and so proper. Yet her stories about the King of Magical Australia were so inane, that, Rachel would think the princess was inventing them—were it not for the solemn, almost pained, expression on Nastasia’s face.
How could the king of a country be so frivolous? How could such a frivolous monarch produce such a serious daughter? How could such a serious daughter be so accepting of such a frivolous father? For clearly, Nastasia was fond of her father. Rachel found herself mildly curious about the other Romanov children. There were two in Dare Hall and another in Dee. Were they like Nastasia? Like their father? Or something else entirely?
“No, no. You are right,” Sigfried said solemnly. “Metaplutonian is much too ridiculous. We’ll call them Metacroutons.”
“What? That’s much worse!” Rachel cried, grabbing at her head.
The princess sighed. “I warned you. Always best to accept the craziness and move on.”
“Okay. Then Metaplutonians it is. It honors Pluto. You know the adults are trying to take away his planet.” Siggy leaned over and whispered to Lucky, “Should we tell them…about last night?”
“Up to you, Boss,” Lucky whispered back. “If they are part of your harem now, you might want to tell them.”
“Harem?” Rachel stamped her foot in outrage.
“I should think not.” The princess’s voice had a steely edge.
“Lucky,” Siggy grabbed his head, “I told you before. Humans don’t have harems.”
“Sure you do,” the dragon insisted. “You just bite the female on the back of her neck, and she’s yours.”
“No one is biting the back of any part of me!” Rachel exclaimed loudly. Fond as she was becoming of Siggy, her affection for him was definitely sisterly in nature. “What happened last night?”
Siggy and Lucky exchanged glances.
The dragon spoke first. “Something bad came.”
“Bad, how?” she asked cautiously.
“Bad as in it made Lucky not able to think any more.” Siggy’s voice shook slightly. “He turned into a dumb animal.”
“It was…really horrid!” The dragon shivered from head to toe. His soft gold fur struck straight up like a frightened cat. He looked twice as wide as normal.
“That’s terrib…” Rachel began and then froze. “Wait! When did this happen? Last night? In the middle of the night?”
They both nodded, the boy’s head and the dragon’s bobbing up and down together.
“The Raven!” Rachel stated. “I bet it was the Raven!”
“What raven?” Siggy asked.
“An enormous raven, bigger than an eagle. He came and talked to the lion that is the familiar of one of my other roommates. Tried to tell the lion that it had to go away.”
�
�In our room?” The princess halted.
Rachel nodded.
“That is…very disturbing,” Nastasia murmured softly.
“What did the lion do?” Siggy asked, intrigued.
“It refused to go.”
“Did it talk?”
“Yes.”
Rachel repeated the conversation exactly. She did not reproduce the voices like a ventriloquist, but she echoed the intonation of each speaker. Her lion’s voice was calm and regal, and her raven’s voice was hoarse and annoyed.
“Are you certain you did not dream this?” the princess asked.
“Yes. I heard it and saw it. When I asked Kitten if her lion could talk, she did not say no.” Rachel paused, uncertain how to put into words the eeriness of the Raven or the sense of august majesty that miniature lion displayed, almost as if its tiny size were a trick of the eye, and it was a very massive creature indeed.
“That is hardly the same as saying ‘yes,’” the princess pointed out graciously.
“You did not see her face,” Rachel replied solemnly.
She considered telling them about the boy she had met in the upstairs hallway but held back for two reasons. The first was that if her father had not told her the name of the organization he worked for, he probably did not want other people knowing it. And if she did not tell them that part, then having met another student hardly seemed an event worth discussing.
The second was harder to put into words. Meeting someone in her private spot seemed oddly like a secret. She realized he was probably not a nice boy, being from Drake Hall. He may have had an ulterior motive for talking to her. Still, she felt reluctant to share him.
But something else occurred to her that she could tell her friends.
“You know, dragons other than Lucky here don’t speak,” she said slowly. “They are animals, like deer and zebras.”
“And wallabies,” the princess added automatically. “Wallabies never talk. No matter how much of the pink Monopoly dollars that Father calls money he offers for a talking one.”
“So…what are you saying?” Siggy asked Rachel.
The Unexpected Enlightenment of Rachel Griffin (Books of Unexpected Enlightenment Book 1) Page 9
