The Uncanny Raven Winston

by Tammie Painter

  I’d never been on a plane before, but I had been on the half-hearted little roller coaster at Oaks Amusement Park in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland. I figured that was close enough to a slide, so that’s what I pictured in my head when Corrine asked if I was ready. In response to her question, I nodded, my throat too dry to speak.

  The moment the slot clanged behind me, I promptly forgot what it had been like to be on that roller coaster. Come to think of it, I never did make it out of the gate. The ride had broken down soon after the conductor had buckled me in.

  Instead of chugging up an incline and whizzing down a descent, I ended up being jerked around, tossed aside, chucked into what felt like midair with gut-dropping speed, tumbled, shoved, squeezed. And all of this in bitterly cold darkness.

  I realized I was a package. I was being treated like an uninsured box of Christmas cookies sent by the cheapest ground shipping available. A taped up, re-used box of treats that would be three months stale and broken to bits by the time Grandma got them.

  Besides the pain, Alastair was right, traveling this way was disorienting and my stomach was doing more flips than a playing piece in a Tiddlywinks tournament. Then, with a sudden burst of warmth, I tumbled out onto a concrete floor. Eye level with Alastair’s mismatched argyle socks, I had enough sense to turn away from his tasseled, leather loafers just before what felt like an entire week’s worth of food rushed back out of my mouth in a great big plop.

  "So, you didn’t fly first class?" he asked, squatting down beside me and magicking away the mess I’d just made.

  "I think I came by Pony Express. Drunken Pony Express."

  "It’ll be easier next time."

  Alastair helped me to my feet and handed me a packet of cookies from Runa’s shop. The sugar mostly stopped my head spinning. And I’m so glad it did because I wouldn’t have wanted to miss what came next for anything.

  13 - ARRIVALS HALL

  TOBEY, AS I may have mentioned, has no magic. I had seen him use portals in MagicLand, but my keen observation skills had noticed that, while he could return to Real World Portland on his own, he always needed a Magic with him to get into MagicLand. But I hadn’t given this much thought when we’d all been lining up to be mailed to London.

  Clearly, it takes a fair amount of magic to cross an entire continent and an ocean in less than five minutes without the aid of virtual reality or psychedelic drugs. Without any of his own power, Tobey needed help. And if my journey had been any indication, the ride could be bumpy if you weren’t careful. Which meant holding his grandpa’s hand, as he did when using Portland portals, wasn’t going to work.

  Instead, Tobey and Mr. T had been taped together with Tobey in front and Mr. T behind him as if they were getting ready for a bargain-basement, tandem parachute jump.

  Despite my still-woozy head, I couldn’t stop laughing at the sight. I tried to help undo the half roll of packaging tape Corrine had used, but the fits of laughter were eating up too much of my motor control to do much good.

  "I’m glad you enjoyed that," Tobey said in a disgruntled grumble that only sent me into another giggling fit.

  "Believe me," I said, wiping tears from my eyes, "no matter what happens, that sight is going to make this trip completely worthwhile."

  A few giggles kept bubbling up, and while I tried to get control of myself, I took in my surroundings. We were in a basement of some sort, and from somewhere nearby there came the clattering, whooshing noise of a conveyor belt.

  "Are we in the post office?" I asked.

  "No," Mr. T said, almost reverentially. "This is the British Library."

  I raised an unimpressed eyebrow. This place looked industrial, not somewhere that should inspire awe, stimulate minds, and draw tourists with its papery treasures.

  Busby caught my judgmental look. "It’s only the underground levels where items are sorted. Must you always be so cynical?"

  The British Library has a collection storage facility that extends deep underground. Not "the Underground" run by Transport for London, but just underground, with a lower case U. And not only are there miles of shelves down there, but also a system of equipment to sort, store, retrieve, and deliver books to eager readers on the upper levels.

  It also, as I later learned, happens to contain the courier portals to most other magic communities around the world as well as one of the few portals into London’s Magic HQ. And with all the conveyor belts looping around, the best way to get to that portal, according to Mr. T, is to climb aboard one of the belts.

  We trundled past dozens of mail slots. A few of which were popping out small packages or letters, and in one case, a golden cage draped in purple silk with a yellow bow on top. The silk was slightly parted in front, providing a peek inside the cage where I caught a glimpse of a raven, gleaming black except for a small white patch above one eye that gave him a quizzical expression. As the cage rolled past, its occupant tapped its beak on the bars as if in greeting.

  I tugged Alastair’s sleeve and asked, "Did you see that bird?"

  "What bird?" he responded distractedly as he watched our progress. I glanced back at Mr. T with my own quizzical expression. He looked in the direction I indicated, but by now the cage had gone past and only the covered back of it could be seen.

  "Some communities like to send gifts to HQ, especially when they’re nearing evaluation."

  "Eval—" I started to ask, then cut the question off. Even in MagicLand, it seemed you couldn’t escape bribes and bureaucracy. "Never mind, I’m sure I get the idea."

  I half-expected to ride straight through another mail slot to get into HQ, but just like a baggage claim belt at the airport, this conveyor system only ran in an elongated oval. I wasn’t sure exactly where we were headed, but when Alastair said, "Hop off," we all did.

  Trouble was, when I jumped, I forgot to grab my bag and had to chase the belt a few lengths to snatch it. Unfortunately, I used my bad hand for this and cursed at the pain as I darted forward and barely managed to grasp the bag’s handle before the belt disappeared into an opening in the wall.

  When I rejoined my travel buddies, Tobey was doing a very bad job at holding back his laughter.

  "Oh yes, Cassie’s in pain, how amusing."

  "Serves you right for laughing at me earlier."

  My hand throbbed too much to argue, so I ignored him as we crossed the room. Alastair and Mr. T had stopped in front of a huge door that looked like it should be attached to a castle. It had that rounded top thing going on, wood slats that looked like they’d been made from entire oak trunks, and big iron bolts and hinges holding it all together. If it had been set inside a thick, stone wall, it would have seemed perfectly in order. But this door was set in what appeared to be your basic office building drywall that had been painted an industrial shade of taupe.

  "Do we knock?" I asked.

  "No, we wait," replied Mr. Tenpenny.

  "For…?"

  Heavy footsteps sounded from behind the door. Metal thunked heavily against metal and the door creaked open. I wondered if the creaking noise was just a bit of magical theatrics since it would seem that if you could transport humans over five thousand miles in only a few minutes, you could cast a spell that would quiet noisy hinges. But that’s just me. I’m cynical, remember.

  "Him," Mr. T said brightly. "Chester, so good to see you."

  Chester was— Well, I wasn’t sure exactly what Chester was. Big. Rather ugly with a squashy, bulbous nose that didn’t sit quite straight on his face, a tiny fringe of red hair hanging over a heavy brow, ears that wanted to stick straight out from the sides of his head but were just managing not to, and, gripping the door’s edge, a hand with only three fingers and a thumb. Except for the red hair and the tie and jacket instead of a dingy tank top, he reminded me of Morelli.

  "What’s that?" I asked Alastair in a whisper as Chester greeted Busby with a crushing hug like they were lo
ng lost pals. I did wonder if Mr. T’s suit was going to need to be pressed again after the encounter.

  "Troll. Well, probably half troll from the look of him," Alastair said quietly. "Best gate keepers you can find. They also work well at guarding bridges."

  "Chester the Troll?"

  "They’re named for the town they come from. Works well since they get lost fairly often."

  "Right." I drew out the word as Chester’s arms swallowed up Tobey in an enthusiastic greeting. "And why does he remind me of my landlord."

  "Morelli is part troll."

  That would explain so many things.

  "Where’s the town of Morelli," I asked.

  "That’s just a surname he chose. His first name is Eugene."

  I grinned and couldn’t wait to call him that the next time he blocked my stairway.

  Once Chester had finished his boisterous welcomes — which ended up leaving a trail of troll snot on Tobey’s shoulder — he took my bag for me then ushered us into London HQ.

  The moment I stepped through the doorway, I hesitated. The industrial basement was gone and I was now staring down a dark passage with dank, stone walls. As we trailed after Chester, a sensation of humming buzzed through my bones. But just as I wondered if this sensation was caused by magic in the air, something very furry and far too big for my comfort scuttled past my foot. This was immediately followed by a heavy stomp, a squishy splat, and the sound of crunching bones.

  "Got him," Chester said proudly.

  "Got him?" I whispered to Alastair.

  "Rat. Trolls have a sort of pest-control instinct. Even half trolls can’t resist the pull."

  Which I suppose might explain why my apartment, no matter how terrible I was at keeping on top of the cleaning, had no mouse or cockroach problems.

  "Is this a dungeon?" I asked Alastair. I may be wrong, but he seemed stronger already and had even dared to take my hand to guide me through the darkness.

  "Well, yes, actually. We’re in the Tower of London."

  "The Tower. As in where many queens’ heads have rolled?"

  "It was only two queens," Mr. T said defensively.

  "Three if you count Lady Jane Grey," added Chester.

  "We do not count Lady Jane Grey," Busby said emphatically.

  I’d always wanted to go to London. I’ve watched dozens of documentaries about the city, and have done a fair amount of armchair traveling thanks to my library card. We had just gone from the British Library to the Tower of London, a distance of about three miles, in only a few steps. If tourists only knew how easy it was to get from one side of London to the other, Transport for London’s visitor pass scheme would crumble.

  With Chester stomping a few more unlucky vermin and me cringing with every crushed bone, we continued along the gloomy underpass/dungeon thing until we came to a spiraling set of stone stairs that were worn almost to a U in the center. I don’t know how far down we were, but my head was spinning and my thighs were burning by the time we emerged onto a courtyard bathed in deliciously warm sunlight.

  "I thought it rained all the time here."

  "Cassie," Mr. Tenpenny said critically, "when this is done, you really must see more of the world."

  "I’ll add it to my to-do list, right after working forty hours a week and barely scraping by."

  "Things can be arranged," he said in an annoyingly vague way.

  Just as I was about to ask him to elaborate, we slipped through a cluster of tourists and I caught sight of something I never expected to see on the grounds of any historic site.

  "Garden gnomes? Isn’t that kind of tacky?"

  "Don’t be so rude, Cassie," admonished Mr. T. He seemed about to say more, but Chester was directing us through another doorway and into a tall, glimmering stone structure. The White Tower, I recalled from a Rick Steves’s video. Once inside, and after a jaunt down a poorly lit hallway at the end of which was a small, thickly paned window, we reached a vast room with high ceilings and walls decorated with gorgeous tapestries depicting scenes from British legends.

  At a sleek, modern desk on which perched an enviably recent model of the Macbook Pro, sat a woman with silvery-grey hair in rows of braids whose ends were decorated with beads. I later discovered (because I’m rude and prone to staring) these weren’t beads; they were very tiny snow globes, but instead of snow, they rained down infinitesimally tiny silver flecks every time she moved.

  "Olivia," said Mr. T with a warm familiarity that spoke of a long friendship.

  Olivia slid out from behind the desk in a move as graceful and slinky as a cat. She wrapped her long arms around Mr. T for a brief hug, then held him at arm’s length as if examining him.

  "Busby, I’m so glad you’re well," she said in a voice that held a hint of a Scottish brogue underneath an accent just as posh as Mr. T’s.

  "I’m dead."

  "So I heard, but looking remarkably fit for all that. And Tobey." She reached out for Tobey and shook his hand in that two-handed grasp that always seems affected, but which Olivia had the poise to pull off. "Alastair," she said, stepping over to him. He hesitated just a moment before letting her kiss him on the cheek. She whispered something that made Alastair blush and laugh at once, and I felt a stab of intimidation, jealousy, and irritation with this languidly elegant woman.

  She then turned to me and I caught a whiff of her magic which carried the woodsy, tangy scent of spruce. "And you must be Cassie Black," she said, a neutral smile on her face.

  "I must be. Nice to meet you," I said, and curtly gave a little wave as I backed up half a step to show I wasn’t into the European style of personal-space-invading greetings.

  "Shall we," she said, then snapped her fingers. Where there had only been two chairs before her desk, there were now four. In the shuffle, I ended up sitting between Tobey and Alastair. Chester left my bag near the door, said his goodbyes, and headed back to, I assume, his rodent hunting.

  "Now," Olivia began, "because of the special circumstances, starting tomorrow Cassie will take formal training with private tutors." I just love being talked about as if I’m not sitting right there. "She will be tested after her second week so we can assess her. Once that is sorted, and once we ensure she’s not going to hurt anyone, she can be brought up to speed with the current cohort of students. No matter how well she does in her assessment, we will want to see vast improvement within a month."

  On the final words, Olivia’s gaze darted to Busby, and from the corner of my eye I could see him give the tiniest shake of his head. Olivia’s lips twitched and something like disapproval crossed her face, but she was too professional to reveal anything further and continued with her instructions.

  "Busby, there are papers we need to go through together. Alastair, you will continue the defensive work you’ve started with Ms. Black, and you will also be glad to know we have some newly uncovered archives for you to study to bring your current knowledge of historical magic innovation up to date. You might also be able to add something to them."

  "I would be honored to look them over," Alastair said in that formal manner Americans adopt when talking to Brits. Especially posh Brits like Olivia.

  "And Cassie." What, who me? Oh that’s right, the person you’ve been talking about for the past five minutes. "One of our people will work with you throughout your studies and she will be the one evaluating you."

  "Is that—?" Alastair began, sitting forward in his seat as if ready to challenge her, but Olivia cut him off with a sharp tsk. Alastair scooted back, but I could feel the tension radiating from his shoulders.

  "You’ll meet her tomorrow after you’ve settled in."

  "Settled in where?" I asked. It was a fair question. The Tower of London was a castle, but it was also a prison. Plus, it was a huge tourist attraction. How in the world was I meant to sleep, eat, and partake in magic classes right under the selfie sticks of half the world?

&n
bsp; "You’ll find the White Tower is much larger than it appears. Now, if the gentlemen wouldn’t mind leaving, I’d like to speak with Ms. Black privately."

  14 - A CHAT WITH OLIVIA

  THE "GENTLEMEN" MADE sounds of assent, and Alastair gave me a reassuring smile as they filed out. I noticed Alastair took my bag with him and wondered if we’d be sharing a room. I didn’t think I was quite ready for that level of, well, whatever was going on between us, but since I didn’t know how far away our rooms might be, I wasn’t going to argue about free porter services.