A Most Magical Girl

by Karen Foxlee

  I am Annabel Grey, she thought. Valiant Defender of Good Magic.

  She willed herself to believe the words. She wished herself to believe the words. Oh, how she did not believe those words!

  But she did not want those terrible things and Mr. Angel to take London.

  “Make haste!” cried Miss Henrietta, flinging open a trapdoor beside Miss Estella’s bed.

  Miss Estella had her hands outstretched to Annabel. She clutched at Annabel’s shoulders, kissed her cheek with her papery, dry lips.

  “In here are the answers,” she said, touching Annabel’s head and then her heart. “This is where you will find your magic.”

  Miss Estella turned to her sister. “Give her the Ondona, Hen. They will need it. I feel it.”

  “She will not know how to use it,” said Miss Henrietta.

  “She will know,” said Miss Estella. “I am sure of it.”

  Miss Henrietta pointed the Ondona at the trapdoor. “Benignus,” she shouted, the way she had in the shop. “Benignus!”

  Her face was fierce, and light erupted from the end of the wand and coated the perimeter of the trapdoor so it snapped and sparkled and sizzled white.

  She thrust the wand into Annabel’s hand and herded her toward the space. Annabel peered down through the glow at a ladder that disappeared into darkness. Would the magic light burn her?

  “Go!” screamed Miss Henrietta, and Annabel knelt down quickly. She tucked the broomstick under her arm and turned to feel for the ladder. She clambered onto it and watched Miss Henrietta’s solemn face.

  “But you will need the wand,” said Annabel. She’d just realized it. “Against those things!”

  “Go quickly,” cried Miss Henrietta. She grabbed Kitty, who was frozen, staring at the black shadow seeping under the door. She thrust her toward the ladder.

  Kitty started down after Annabel, her eyes still on the spreading shadow stain upon the floor. She did not want to go, but there was no other way out of the room, away from those things.

  Annabel…, whispered the shadowlings, and the sound filled the room in the draft sliding its way slowly though the crack. Miss Henrietta snapped the trapdoor shut after the girls.

  It was dark.

  Terribly dark.

  Just a thin square of spell light up above.

  Be brave. Be good.

  Annabel heard Miss Henrietta cry out in a high-pitched voice. Loud words. Wild words. Magic words. She heard Miss Estella shrieking with her. Spell words. Heart words. Saving words. Annabel clambered down the ladder with Kitty. They climbed down, down, down into the darkness.

  “When traveling, a young lady should always take care to wear dark clothing and to ensure a quiet and courteous demeanor.”

  —Miss Finch’s Little Blue Book (1855)

  Down they went into Under London. The broomstick trembled beneath Annabel’s arm as though afraid of the darkness, and Annabel trembled against the ladder because she was just as frightened. And holding a broomstick and a wand and descending a ladder and shaking all over at the same time made things very difficult. It reconfirmed in Annabel’s mind her theory that the Great & Benevolent Magical Society was very wrong indeed to have chosen her as the most magical girl.

  It was a very long ladder, and Annabel’s and Kitty’s eyes adjusted to the darkness as they went. At first the bricked-in space was narrow, but halfway down, it opened out into a much larger tunnel. There, they could see the ladder plunged toward water. Far below, Annabel could see a tiny rowboat: Miss Estella’s rowboat. Oh, just the thought of her great-aunts made her want to cry.

  I am the Valiant Defender of Good Magic, she told herself sternly, but her bottom lip quivered. Far above, they could hear the trapdoor begin to wobble and bang.

  “Can those things get through?” Annabel asked, and the brickwork took her voice and magnified it.

  Oh, she did not want those terrible things to hear.

  Those dark things. Those things she did not understand.

  Those things that whispered her name.

  “If you keep stopping, they will,” said Kitty, climbing down fast and stepping on Annabel’s fingers occasionally, adding to her vexation. “We need the river.”

  The fast river would take them away. Kitty could hear it beneath them. Its urgent rushing voice said, Quickly, quickly, quickly. She was a girl who knew water: the sound of the tide turning and the streams covered over and chattering all night through culverts and ditches. She knew the voices of forgotten wells and fountains. Ponds that held the sky on the marshes. This river said, Hurry, hurry, hurry.

  When they stood together on the bottom rung of the ladder, the river touched their boots. It was loud, this river. It slurped and slapped and shouted, Quickly, quickly, quickly. It stank. If this is Under London, thought Annabel, it smells rotten. It made her eyes water. It smelled of human waste and dead things. Even worse, the boat was not close to the ladder at all but two body lengths away, its rope tether pulled taut by the racing river.

  “What now?” whispered Annabel, and high above them the trapdoor rattled.

  “Try pulling,” said Kitty, and they grabbed at the rope together, but the force of the river was too strong. Up above, the trapdoor jolted several more times.

  Annabel felt scared, terribly scared, and her legs felt wobbly.

  “We’ll have to jump,” said Kitty. “It’s not too far.”

  Annabel looked at the boat and the dark wash of water that rushed between them and it. The river that smelled like a thousand chamber pots. She nodded her head, even though she had never once even jumped across rocks in a pleasant stream. She took a deep breath and tried very hard not to let out a sob.

  “It’s the only way, Annabel Grey,” said Kitty, and in the dim light Annabel saw her green eyes gleaming. Kitty looked like a girl who could jump across wide spaces and climb very tall trees. “Here—give me the broomstick and the wand.”

  Kitty took them from under Annabel’s arm before she had time to protest. Up above, the trapdoor banged loudly.

  “You know you can,” said Kitty. She could hear the river in a way that Annabel couldn’t. It said, Away, away, away, with its restless voice. “Watch me.”

  Kitty sprang out from the ladder like a cat from a wall. She yelled a little yell as she went. It was a rough sound, and it seemed to propel her across the space. Annabel saw her land in the boat, smack! and the thing pitch wildly side to side.

  “Jump,” called Kitty.

  “Yes,” said Annabel, but she didn’t move.

  “Now!” shouted Kitty.

  High above, there was a pounding against the trapdoor.

  “Yes,” said Annabel again.

  Be brave. Be good.

  She closed her eyes. She tried to yell the way Kitty had yelled. She yelled a smallish yell and leapt. She leapt out into the space between the ladder and the boat. She leapt out and felt herself falling. She yelled and waited for the feeling of a wooden boat.

  She longed for the feeling of a wooden boat.

  She thought in those tiny seconds that stretched out like minutes that perhaps she had never longed for anything more.

  She waited for the comfortable slap of herself hitting the wooden boat, but instead she felt water, the sudden shock of cold, stinking water.

  The river took Annabel under. It took her head and held it down. It filled up her mouth. It roared in her ears. It snatched her and snagged her and somersaulted her. It wanted her for its own. Annabel had never swum. She flailed against the force of it. She tried to raise her arms, but the river grabbed her from below. It pulled at her skirts and the cloak, yanked her and tugged at her and twisted her down.

  “Help!” she cried once, and Kitty heard her before she went under again.

  Kitty was tearing at the rope tether, cursing the pretty girl all mapped over, the magical girl, who would drown before she even got a chance to look in her stupid red glass. She had the rope undone then and the boat was rushing away on the back of the r
iver.

  “Annabel!” she called as she went, and she peered into the blackness.

  The river released Annabel momentarily, and she gulped mouthfuls of air. It slammed her into the brick wall and raised her quite suddenly onto a brick ledge, where she grasped a metal grate and remained.

  “Help,” she said, coughing, and she saw Kitty go sailing past in the boat.

  “Stay there!” shouted Kitty, and she cursed the girl again. “I’ll try and stop.”

  The river gushed through the brick tunnel; it sped Kitty away in the little boat. It banged her against the walls and spun the boat like a leaf on a stream. Kitty grabbed an oar and tried to row against the current, but the boat would not be slowed. She heard Annabel’s calls, farther and farther away in the darkness.

  “Stay there,” shouted Kitty once more, and she paddled as hard as she could. She paddled and paddled, until she managed to turn the boat lengthwise. The tunnel obliged by growing narrower at that very point, and the bow and stern wedged against the walls so violently that she nearly fell out.

  “Annabel,” she called when she had recovered herself. “Let go of the wall and let the river bring you down. I’m stopped here—you’ll find the boat.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous!” cried Annabel. She was out of the water, shivering against the grate. There was no way she was going back in.

  “You must!” she heard Kitty shout from somewhere far away. “You can’t just stay there.”

  Annabel looked at the dark water surging beneath her toes.

  She didn’t like the river, the secret river, hidden away so long ago beneath the city. Rivers were meant to be clean and pretty, with grassy green banks, like the ones she had gone boating on with Isabelle Rutherford. Rivers were places where you giggled behind a parasol and admired the view.

  She had never had anything so terrible happen to her.

  She closed her eyes and wished it all away.

  “Hurry up!” came Kitty’s voice. “The boat’s nearly gone, and that’ll be the end of you.”

  “Fiddlesticks!” shouted Annabel, and she jumped into the stinking black water again. She didn’t think she’d ever been crosser.

  Kitty heard the splash. “You’ll hit the boat!” she shouted to encourage Annabel but heard nothing, just the river’s loud voice against the brick walls. “Annabel?”

  Nothing but the river racing by.

  “Annabel?”

  Then a thump. A definite thump, with the little boat tilting to one side and Annabel’s face appearing in the darkness.

  “Here,” said Kitty, and she dragged Annabel forward until she had her beneath the arms. She hauled Annabel’s stinking, sodden mess into the boat and laughed.

  “Stop it!” shouted Annabel, and then she coughed so violently that she spewed over the side.

  Kitty had never seen a young lady so thoroughly ruined. She looked at Annabel’s fair hair, all undone and tangled; her rosebud dress, all muddied.

  Annabel stared back at her with disbelief. She’d never met anyone so rude. She’d nearly drowned, and the terrible girl had laughed.

  “Beg your pardon,” said Kitty, and she replaced her laughter with her solemn green-eyed stare. “You just look a mess, is all.”

  “Well, I nearly drowned,” said Annabel. All she could smell was the terrible river. It was stuck up her nose and down her throat. She could taste it, and just the thought made her begin to wretch again.

  “Nearly, but you didn’t,” said Kitty. “I saved you.”

  Annabel should say thank you, she knew it, but she didn’t want to. Not to someone who had saved her and then laughed at her. The green-eyed girl never stopped looking at her.

  “I’d be very pleased if you stopped staring at me,” Annabel said instead, very politely.

  Kitty laughed her little laugh again. She took an oar and pressed it hard into the brick wall until the bow of the boat loosened and spun and the boat was moving again.

  “We have to find a way up out of here,” said Kitty. “We’ll need your map.”

  Annabel held her hand to her face. She remembered her reflection in Miss Estella’s mirror. They were in the boat for a purpose, to find the Morever Wand, and deliver it to the Great & Benevolent Magical Society and save all of London, including her home. The remembering quite took her breath away. Home! She wanted her house and her mother and Mercy calling her for supper. The boat raced along on the dark river. It was taking her farther and farther away from all those things. She had never seemed so far away from everything that she knew.

  “B-b-but we’ve got to go to Under London,” stammered Annabel. “To find the wand and stop Mr. Angel.”

  “You can do all the looking and saving you want,” replied Kitty. “I want up above. I only said I’d take you to the wizards and back, and now I’m down here where I don’t want to be.”

  She was a girl who needed air and sky.

  “But remember?” said Annabel. “Remember what the wizards said? The whole of good magic depends upon us.”

  “Upon you,” said Kitty.

  “But you saw those things!” cried Annabel, and the boat banged them against a wall for good measure, spun them in a circle, and flushed them out suddenly into a wider open place. “Mr. Angel wishes to raise an army of them and march on the city. You must help.”

  “Do you never stop talking?” said Kitty, as though Annabel had said nothing of importance.

  Annabel shivered with the cold. She had never felt so bad. She was on a stinking underground river, with the worst girl ever—who said she would not help her—and she had to find a wand and save everything by herself.

  She peered into the darkness at the place where the water had slowed. She would have to find a way. She knew she would have to. She just had to think. She tried to empty out the cup of her mind, the way Miss Henrietta had taught her, but there was one huge thought in the way of everything: she really didn’t like Kitty.

  Kitty began to hum softly, and that made Annabel dislike her even more. She blinked back tears in the dark. Yes, she disliked the girl very much. Miss Henrietta and Miss Estella were positively endearing compared with this girl. She disliked having to dislike someone. She wasn’t used to it. She was accustomed only to pleasant things. It seemed such a violent emotion and poked at her insides.

  Kitty hummed.

  “Stop that,” said Annabel.

  But Kitty didn’t.

  Kitty hummed for another minute, gradually getting louder, until she opened her mouth and out popped a blue orb of light, shimmering and starry, the size of her fist. Annabel fell back, astonished. By the orb’s light she saw Kitty’s solemn little face, the Ondona, the broomstick lying at the bottom of the boat, and her hand and arm all mapped over.

  “How did you do that?” whispered Annabel. Now she could see the dark water and the arched brick ceiling above. They were in a large underground chamber. The water dripped and trickled loudly.

  “I just raised it up with a magic song of my own making.”

  “Where does it come from?”

  Kitty shrugged. “My heart, I believe.”

  Annabel remembered Miss Henrietta. I have heard it said she can sing up her spirit light. There are not many girls like Kitty anymore.

  “You can do magic?” whispered Annabel.

  Kitty didn’t answer. Instead, she made a loud hawking noise and spat over the side of the boat. Annabel shuddered. Kitty bobbed the light up and down. Her face disappeared in and out of the dark.

  “Well, I’m going to find the wand,” said Annabel. “I have to. I have the map. I’ll find my own way.”

  But her voice sounded weak and small.

  They rocked on the river, and Kitty laughed again, but softly this time. She took a deep breath and expanded her heart light so that they could see better the place they had come to. The river had widened and slowed. The chamber was circular, the ceiling vaulted. Opposite them three arches stood like dark mouths.

  Kitty thought. She t
hought of how the night would be up above. How the moon would be climbing the sky and the dirty fog might have lifted and, everywhere, the secret places of London would have woken. The great trees would be sending their shivering messages. A badness was coming, it was clear now. That was what they had been saying. The wild grasses at Hackney Marshes would be singing a warning song. The meadows hidden and tucked behind gasworks and factories, the places where the farms pressed their edges against town would be calling, shrill with summer bluebells and dog rose.

  A darkness is coming. A blackness is coming.

  The shadowlings scared her. The thought of them gliding over her places, wiping them away. She had seen dark things and known treacherous places, places brimming with bad feeling, but nothing had scared her as much as those shadowlings.

  Annabel would not get far at all without her help. Kitty knew it just as well as she knew the river was singing to them of danger. It annoyed her, for she was hungry and tired and had not counted on her day turning wrong in such a way. But it made sense now, the strange feelings of endings and beginnings. She sighed.

  “They’ve gone and ruined your pretty face with all that writing,” she said at last.

  “You shouldn’t say such things,” said Annabel.

  “They have,” Kitty said. “I never saw a girl all written over with words and lines.”

  “Stop it!” cried Annabel.

  “Let’s see what the map shows,” said Kitty, and she made her heart light small and hovered it just over Annabel’s hand.

  “Will you help me, then?” asked Annabel.

  “I will help you find your way,” said Kitty, and her stomach growled, and she thought of her lost evening. “You would never find it on your own.”

  In Islington there was a tavern where the music had stopped. On the chairs there were piles of dust, and on the floor there were more. Mr. Angel kicked at them with his shoe. He raised the Black Wand and admired it. He was more powerful than any man had ever been. He was sure of it. He was full of darkness and ruin, and he laughed and wiped terrible tears from his eyes.