He started writing on the board as he spoke. “We are told rules as if they are set in stone, but they all began somewhere, and you may find that some of them aren’t as true as you thought. I would like you each to write a paper on Etherium and Sinistral. What do these worlds have in common, and what makes them different from each other? If you were going to define them to someone who has never heard of them before and who has no loyalty to their rules, how would you describe them? And—I want you to question one essential rule.”
“Great,” I sighed as we left class. “Before I came here, I had never heard of them either and I still don’t know what they are except that Firian keeps having to go to Etherium, and it’s a weird place, and Sinistrals are bad, and…”
“You know more than that,” Alec said. “Didn’t you read ‘The Tainted Brow’ in magical history last year?”
“Um. Yes. Yes, I totally read it. Cover to cover. And I wasn’t at all confused.”
He ruffled my hair. “I guess we need to take Charlotte back to kindergarten.”
“Do we get to put her in pigtails first?” Montague asked.
I elbowed him. “Perv.”
Harris looked us all with a faint sniff and changed the subject. “I wonder why Stuart is making is go back to basics?”
“I don’t know, but I don’t think the guys who left are very smart,” Alec said. “Stuart is a scary dude.”
“I don’t know how you could think that,” Harris said. “I have never met anyone less scary in my life. I’m not sure he’s even qualified to teach in a place like this. Much less such a fundamental class.”
“Harris, there is something weird about him,” I said. “I’ve seen it too. When he caught us breaking into Blair’s house…”
“Scary? He was downright permissive,” Harris said.
“Yeah, but the look in his eyes,” Alec said.
“Do you…see something I don’t?” Harris looked like he found this impossible and unacceptable. “Well, I’ll write the paper later tonight. I don’t need to go to the library because I can write something like that in my sleep.”
“La di-frickin’-da,” I grumbled.
Oh well. I had sexy company at the library. I called Firian in to fact check. Montague and Alec offered to find books for me. They came back with a bunch of dusty old kids books for witches and warlocks. The ABCs of Etherium. Meet My Familiar: An I-Can-Cast-It Book. Ethereals are Eager, Sinistrals are Selfish: A Wizard’s First Book of Magic.
“I think I could have handled something more advanced than this,” I said, cracking open the last one to a picture of a smiling witch with braids and a rabbit familiar, and a sullen little blonde boy with his arms crossed and a snake familiar.
I guffawed. “It’s Harris!”
My name is Elsie. I’m an Ethereal witch. My magic comes from the land of Etherium. Etherium is a special place where everyone is always helpful to each other.
My name is Sylvester. I’m a Sinistral warlock. My magic comes from the land of Sinistral. Sinistral is a dark place where everyone is selfish.
“Okay,” I said. “I am sensing a certain level of…bias. Was Stuart trying to tell us that Sinistrals aren’t actually bad?”
“I’m not sure,” Alec said. “Sinistrals often are bad. I mean…they kill people. They’re the sorts of beings that drink blood or have sex with people to become more powerful. That’s why Montague and I have to worry about the council kicking us out.”
The book was really short. Elsie’s story was on the left and Elsie was annoying if you asked me.
This is my familiar. My familiar is a spirit from Etherium who helps wizard kids learn to cast spells. When I grow up, I won’t need her as much as I do now, but she makes sure my magic never causes an accident. I always listen to her.
I listen to my parents and teachers too. I love to listen! When I’m good, my magic becomes stronger! Maybe someday I’ll be as good at magic as my mommy!
“I can’t help it. Sylvester is so much more fun,” I said. “Did this actually convince any kid to be good?”
My magic comes from Sinistral, because there is nothing I love more than causing mayhem. Once I left my snake familiar in my sister’s bed. My magic gets stronger when I misbehave.
When I’m bad, I attract demons to hang around near me. When I get older, they might try to tempt me into doing their work for them.
“Damn, this turned dark,” Firian said.
The book ended with the kids declaring,
I need to be good so Etherium will be stronger.
And I need to bad so Sinistral will be stronger.
“Okay, I get that Sinistrals are selfish,” I said. “And sometimes evil. Ethereals are supposedly good, but I already know they aren’t necessarily good, because some of the people here are not very nice at all. How can the Lockes possibly be ‘ethereal’?”
“They haven’t murdered anyone yet,” Alec said. “And they probably think bullying you is for the good of order.”
“They’re chaotic neutral,” Firian said.
“Oh, I think that is being generous to them, but whatever,” I said. “So you’re born into one or the other, but you can get kicked out of Etherium if you murder someone or have sex with your familiar or something like that.”
“Hush,” Firian said.
“But Sinistral takes everybody. All the rejects. The vampires and demons.”
“Yes,” Montague said. “All witches are born Ethereal unless both their parents are Sinistrals. Ethereal is the default. The council decides who gets banished, and then they go to Sinistral.”
“Is this one of those things where the bad guys turn out to be like, free spirits, and actually just misunderstood?”
“Ethereals really are…mostly good,” Firian said. “And a lot of Sinistrals really are murderers and con artists. But Etherium operates on old world principles. They haven’t really adapted to 21st century morality. And magic works on belief. So it doesn’t always move quickly. When you think of magic in a fantasy novel, you probably think of an older kind of law. Where everything is black and white, and bad guys deserve to die.”
“So it’s like…what we think in stories becomes real?”
“Essentially. What humans believe magic is, is what magic is. All of us in the magic world rely on humans. We are what you want us to be.”
I understood the basic idea. It was like what Monty said in St. Augustine. The town maintained a magical realm because humans who came to St. Augustine believed in spirits, which fell within the world of magic. Although it seemed like a very bizarre way for a world to exist, it also made some weird sense. Like in Peter Pan when you have to clap to make Tinkerbell live.
In the human world, we lived by one set of rules, and in a lot of ways they were just as confusing. Like, you needed money to get power, and if you didn’t have money or power already, you had to find some way to fake it or charm people into getting it. And in the magical world, they had tricks and deals.
In the real world, when I was a kid, I thought everyone wanted to be good. Of course, as a kid I could be a jerk, like any other kid, but I was always trying to be good. As I got older, I realized that some people didn’t try to be good. Sometimes they just had a weird idea of what good was, but other times they actually got off on having power and being sexist trolls on Fortune’s Favor. Just one example.
Ethereal and Sinistral were just ways of dividing all those people into two worlds, literally. But it did seem pretty brutal. Like you could never redeem yourself.
“So does the witch and warlock council decide who is good enough to be an Ethereal?”
“Yes. Or the Ethereal and Demon symposiums, which are basically the councils, but for magical beings who aren’t human. They impose order on the chaos.”
“My family fought against those rules,” I said. “They must have thought they weren’t worth preserving.” I stood up and headed for the stacks. “Okay. I need some time alone. I know what I want to write about for my
paper.”
Alec and Montague looked a little surprised.
I guess I didn’t have the most studious reputation.
“I mean it,” I said.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Charlotte
Next Monday, when I walked into Stuart’s class, maybe I imagined it, but I thought he smiled at me and a glow went down my entire body.
Then I remembered it was Stuart. Dorky Stuart with some sort of terrifying magic underneath the surface. I wasn’t going to let him dupe me. Gah. One minute he was the most boring man alive, then he was scary, then I actually felt like I wanted to impress him.
“I have reviewed your papers over the weekend,” he said. “I am returning them to you. I marked them ‘Pass’ or ‘Fail’. If you failed the paper, I want you to follow your pals on over to conjuring.”
He distributed the papers to us, and there was immediate loud protest. “What the hell?” “I failed?” “Professor, I spent all week on this paper and I have never failed a written assignment. I demand to know why immediately.”
“I told you to write about Etherium and Sinistral from the perspective of someone who doesn’t understand them. And I told you to question one essential rule. Most of you didn’t take this assignment seriously.”
“I questioned your rule to write this paper,” Jeremy said, and then low-fived his best friend Charles in the next seat. They were, like…those kids.
“When are we going to get to battle dragons or something?”
“You’ll enjoy conjuring,” Stuart said. “Do you really want to keep attending my boring class? I assign a lot of papers. Look, I just don’t want to keep anyone here if they don’t want to be here. If you like, think of it as an upgrade.” He shrugged.
The guys who failed grabbed their papers and left amidst muttering.
When all was said and done, the only students left were me and Team HAM, studious Irving, who did tend to question everything, and guitar-loving Jack.
Just six of us?
“One more thing,” Stuart said. “I am going to cast a silence spell on this room. Whatever I tell you, from here on out, you will not share with anyone. If you do, you will be cursed and your tongue will turn purple so everyone knows you’re a liar.”
“This just got pretty hardcore,” Alec whispered.
“Does anyone want to leave?” Stuart pointed at the doors. “Don’t feel bad about it.”
Irving raised his hand. “Are you going to tell us anything that will put us in danger?”
“Maybe.”
Irving glanced at the rest of us. Jack was still just doodling.
Harris said, his voice lofty, “We won’t shame you for leaving, Irving.”
“I’ll stay,” Irving said, even though he already looked like he was trying not to crap his pants.
Stuart waved his wand at the doors and locked them. He spoke spell words in some language I had never heard before, and the lights flickered as green smoke wafted from his wand and swirled around us, marking our lips.
In a sudden panic, I raised my hand. “Pro— Professor?”
“Charlotte?”
“Can Firian attend the class? I—I can’t—keep a secret from him. If he can’t come, I want to leave. If I still can.”
“Oh, go ahead and call him,” Stuart said. He didn’t seem mad.
I summoned Firian, although I was feeling very nervous about whatever was happening. He looked around at the mostly empty classroom, shrugged, and slid into a seat.
“Merlin College was founded with the intention of teaching the very best young warlocks about how to face the magical world with all of its great dangers,” Stuart said. “It was supposed to be a cutting edge school. They used to say if you wanted to be a truly great wizard, you came over here. Boys came not just from America but from Europe and Asia, African villages and tiny magical tribes in the Amazon. Although…mostly just America and England. Still—it was very much ahead of its time. But nowadays, if you want to learn how to defeat a demon, you sure don’t come here, do you? You go learn on the road from any old masters you can find.”
“That’s what my paper was about,” Harris said. “My dad was lamenting that kids used to die here, and now they never do.”
“Wait, what?” I said.
“Charlotte, I found your paper particularly interesting,” Stuart said. “Charlotte put herself in the heads of her grandmother Sally, who left the magical world entirely, and her mother Emily, who became a Sinistral. These women abandoned their family, but instead of judging them, you tried to understand them.”
I didn’t say anything. I had written the paper in a rush of emotion. I wouldn’t go so far as to say I didn’t judge my mom and grandmother for not being around. If anything else, for my dad’s sake. I’d watched Mom’s absence tear into him my whole life. I’d watched him try to hide it and be strong for me. I’d watched him fail, now and then. He was just a normal guy who loved a witch, which ended up being sort of like a punishment he didn’t deserve. Mom had given us up to save her cousin, which—I had to admit—really pissed me off when I thought about it. Cousins were probably cool and all, but they weren’t your husband or daughter.
So, I thought it was probably about a lot more than saving Ina. I thought it must be about her anger at being kept from the magical world. Which led me back to my grandmother and why she left the magical world in the first place.
That was what my paper was about. Trying to understand why.
The why led me back to the rules. The sexism. The way familiars were treated. Everything that drove me nuts.
“Etherium and Sinistral. The Fixed Plane and the Spirit World.” Stuart said. “All witches know these four places. But how many of you have heard of the fifth realm?”
“The fifth realm?” Harris looked like he really, really wanted to say that he did, but that he in fact did not.
“Wyrd,” Stuart said.
I spazzed a little. “The realm is called Wyrd?”
“Yes,” he said. “Wyrd is a realm like Etherium and Sinistral. It’s a world of neutral magic. Wyrd is founded on a belief not in good or evil but in the space between. Is nature good or is it evil? Wyrd comes from the belief that both are needed, or that neither exist, and that we are governed not by good or evil but by fate, which keeps balance. If you look at religions and spiritual beliefs around the world, you will find some of them based around a battle between good and evil, while others see harmony. Wyrd is that world. It’s a world where Ethereals and Sinistrals could, in theory, meet.”
“If there is a whole other world, how could we possibly not know?” Harris asked. “I have a hard time believing this isn’t just a conspiracy theory or a myth.”
“It isn’t,” Stuart said. “I know this because Charlotte is carrying a Wyrd wand.”
“Oh my god. What does that mean?” I asked, picking my wand up from where it was sitting next to my chair.
“Sweet,” Jack said, giving me an approving nod.
“This school is in a spot where the veil is thin,” Stuart said. “When Samuel found his wand, it came from a strange tree and resonated with a strange kind of magic. That magic is Wyrd.”
“How come none of our familiars come from Wyrd? There are no Wyrd witches that I’ve ever heard of,” Irving said.
“Good question, Irving. The fae have controlled Wyrd for milennia.”
“The fae?” Montague looked at me sideways.
“They won’t let humans in except as servants. Charlotte’s wand is special because she was able to reach Wyrd, as was Samuel. They aren’t the only ones, of course. There are a handful of witches and warlock around the world who have Wyrd wands. But that’s been as far as it’s gone for thousands of years.”
“We knew Char was special,” Montague said.
“So the faery at the tree let me have the wand,” I said. “But why me?”
“You must have that balance inside you,” Stuart said. “The faeries are trying to send you a message. Just like Sam
uel…you’re not meant to follow the rules of the council, Miss Byrne.”
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Charlotte
Let it be known: Professor Jablonsky told me to break the rules.
So maybe he wasn’t actually mad when he found us breaking into Master Blair’s house last year after all. It seemed like they were cool with me being the heroine of the story.
You know, in the sense that heroines are usually fun little scamps who ignore rules and do dangerous things all the time without managing to be dead yet. So far, that was me.
I really should stop.
But, not yet.
It was a very cold night with a light dusting of snow, and we had a moonlight class with Professor McGuinness. We were standing out under a brilliant sky full of stars, no light pollution in sight, breathing in cold puffs wearing heavy wool coats and school crest scarves. The clothing shop didn’t offer any nice, lightweight down, only this thick stiff wool. Even the smallest coat in the shop looked big on me. We looked like we were ready to die for the glory of the Tsar.
“You have all given me the names of the people you intend to summon,” Professor McGuinness said. “Please do not summon anyone else. If the person doesn’t come, do not try again. You’ll get another chance later with one of the spirits who was successfully summoned tonight. You must do this alone, but all of the professors and staff are posted around the campus for safety. Please, find an unlit fire and begin.”
Alec looked at me. “Good luck, Charlotte.”
“You too.” I blew him a kiss.
Bonfires had been set up in advance around the grounds, in the more tucked away places. The air already smelled of woodsmoke. I started hurrying down the path to the farthest end of campus.
I told Professor McGuinness I was summoning some old witch, but I had every intention of summoning Lily Maxwell. A Sinistral, but also…Alec’s mom. I just wanted to try to get Alec some closure.
Once we were away from the group, Firian appeared next to me. He was dressed the same as everyone else, so he blended in. He also looked very BBC hot in his coat and scarf.
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