Spellwood Academy

by Kate Avery Ellison

  All that fake dying was exhausting, but I was determined not to let him break me. I didn’t know why he hated me so much, but I was a good student, and slowly, I learned how to dodge and weave and occasionally go for a weak spot in whatever monster he’d concocted for me to fight.

  My proudest moment came one day when Joras was being especially hard on me. He’d dredged up a monster made of mud and grass and ordered me to survive against it. We were gathered at the edge of the West Woods, in a grove surrounded by oak trees and saplings. The grass was up to my knees, and the water from a nearby spring squished beneath my shoes.

  I knew Joras wanted me to hide in the tall grass and crawl through the mud, but I wasn’t in the mood for that kind of humiliation today. I dropped into a crouch and felt around for a stick. I knew these golems had a weakness in their center, where the magic was concentrated. I’d been paying attention to what made them collapse, and a disruption in the place where the heart would be seemed to be the best bet.

  My fingers closed over a thick, straight branch half buried in the mud. I lifted it like a spear and sprang up from the grass at the exact same second that the mud creature rose over me, its hollow mouth opened wide. I planted my feet and thrust the stick straight into the monster’s chest.

  The mud beast exploded. Muck and bits of grass slammed into my face and rained down on the other students. I turned to face them, my stick lifted in triumph, feeling like a warrior.

  I’d done it. I’d killed the thing.

  The rest of the class stared at me, their mouths hanging open in astonishment.

  Joras looked furious.

  “Class dismissed,” he hissed. “Miss Solschild, remain behind.”

  I wiped the mud from my eyes and waited as the others filtered back toward the school. Hannah lingered at the edge of the trees, waiting for me, but Joras barked at her to go, and she did.

  After they’d all gone, Joras strode toward me, bristling with anger.

  I braced myself.

  “How many times do I have to tell you the point of this class?” he thundered. “Yet you keep insisting on flaunting your powers, making yourself more of a target instead of less—”

  “I survived, didn’t I?” I shot back. I was tired of meekly taking his anger. It never made a difference. “I’d say I fulfilled the point of the exercise. And I’m not flaunting anything. In case you haven’t noticed, I’m a middling, mostly mortal, and I don’t have any powers!”

  He halted an inch from me, seething like a bull. “Enough,” he bellowed. “Detention. Library. In the evenings.”

  “I’m already on detention in the evenings!” I protested.

  Seriously, what had gotten into me? I couldn’t seem to keep my mouth shut.

  Joras scowled harder. “Six days of stocking shelves starting after Summertide. You’ll be finished with your other punishment then.”

  Awesome.

  ~

  My friends commiserated with me that afternoon, but they didn’t let me mope about it for long.

  “Speaking of Summertide,” Lyrica said, “what are you planning to wear, Kyra?”

  “More importantly,” Hannah added, “what are you both wearing for Society Night?”

  “And why is that more important?” Lyrica wanted to know.

  Hannah planted her hands on her hips. “Summertide is one celebration. The societies we join will shape our future here at Spellwood and beyond.” She paused. “I want to look as fierce as possible, so Flameforge will be impressed with me.”

  “I was planning to wear my regular after-school clothes,” I said.

  They both pinned me with twin expressions of horror.

  “No, no,” Lyrica said. “Hannah is right. You have to make a statement. An impression. Especially if—” She stopped and turned pink.

  “Especially if you look too mortal,” Tearly, who was lounging on my bed, finished for her.

  “It’s true,” Hannah said with a sigh. “We have to do something clever, Kyra, if we want to stand out among those of us with wings and tails.”

  “You both look beautiful,” Lyrica hastened to add.

  “What can we do?” I asked. “Paint our faces? Dress in costume?”

  “Enchantments are allowed during holidays and on Society Day,” Tearly said. “For aesthetic purposes only, of course. You can always find a few kind-hearted artisans to help with your clothes in exchange for contraband.”

  “Contraband?”

  “You know. Mortal stuff. Candy bars, CD players, etc.” Tearly shrugged. “Did you bring anything with you?”

  I shook my head. “Can I have something shipped to me?”

  “Sure,” Tearly said. “There’s a whole black market for bubble gum, for example. Or playing cards. Fae love playing cards for some reason. They’re fascinated by them. They think they have power. And fae folk love to gamble.”

  There was so much I still had to learn, I thought.

  That evening, I wrote my mom and Grandmother Azalea a letter asking them to send a few things and telling them about my first few weeks. I left out the part where I had been falsely accused of using magic on a fellow student. They had enough to worry about right now with my life being threatened and the mystery of the mark on my arm. Although the mark had faded, my memory of what the dark swirls had looked like under my skin still stuck in my mind like the aftertaste of a nightmare.

  At dusk, the others had told me, a stag came to collect letters that needed to be sent, with birds perched on his antlers. The birds fluttered up to the windows to fetch the letters and brought them down to the stag, who pulled a small cart behind him.

  I had never witnessed this exchange, since I’d spent most of my evenings so far in the Cistern with Lucien. I left the letter with them for the birds and the stag to collect and set off alone for my punishment, my muscles already aching at the thought of what lay before me.

  The moss had completely regrown. It was as if I’d done no work at all.

  Maybe I should just sit on the ground and do nothing. It was all the same, wasn’t it?

  But no. I was trying to prove that I wasn’t some weak mortal. I wanted to show all of them—Lucien, Headmaster Windswallow, Selene, who’d gotten me into this mess in the first place—that I didn’t give up. That they’d have to make room for me, because I wasn’t turning around and going home.

  I attacked the moss with savage cuts from the tip of the shovel. A frustrated growl slipped from my lips as I strained to wrench it free from the stone.

  I didn’t even see him until he reached for my hand.

  Lucien.

  I pulled back, startled, the shovel clutched in my hands. Up close, his eyes were like a forest in summer, all green and gold. His dark hair fell over his antlers, nearly concealing them, but the tips peeked through the waves. He looked like a young forest god.

  “What?” I said, pretending indifference as I swallowed my frustration.

  He matched my attitude with a tone of total disinterest. “You’re doing it wrong.”

  Furious words rose to my lips. I struggled to contain them. Some sarcasm slipped through. “I thought you were a prince. I’m surprised you would know anything about menial labor.”

  His eyes sparked at my jab, as if I had struck a nerve.

  “Look,” he said. “Your constant failure to clear the moss is bothering me.”

  “Bothering you?” I demanded. “Forgive me, your highness. I didn’t mean to bother you with my backbreaking punishment that isn’t even my fault to begin with. If your friend hadn’t framed me—”

  “What friend?” he snapped. “Stop telling lies.”

  “Selene,” I hissed. “She choked the student, not me. I don’t have any powers like that. I’m a middling, remember?”

  “Selene wouldn’t do that,” he said.

  I chortled in astonishment. “You doubt the cruelty of your little elite crew? Please. You all have a nasty reputation. Sorry if I don’t believe your protestations of her innocence.�
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  “I’m not making protestations of innocence. I’m telling you the facts. Selene wouldn’t do that.”

  “And why do you expect me to believe that?”

  “Because Selene can’t cast spells,” he snarled. “Her father stole her magic from her as a child. He used her and abused her because of her mortal blood, just as all fae fathers do.”

  Oh.

  I was startled into silence, into sudden remembrance of what my mom and grandmother had told me about my father’s family. How my uncle had come with a sword to take me. How they’d kept me secret for fear of my relatives taking me away.

  All fathers, he’d said.

  He was most certainly talking about his.

  My anger ebbed, replaced by sadness.

  “I’m sorry—”

  “Don’t,” Lucien said. “I don’t want your pity, and neither does she. I’d rather you hated me.”

  “Fine,” I said. “Go away, then, and leave me alone.”

  If he didn’t want pity, I wouldn’t pity him. He was an ass whether or not he had a cruel father.

  Was it my imagination, or did Lucien’s lip twitch in a smile?

  “First, let me show you what to do so you can contribute to the night’s work for once,” he said, and dropped to a knee beside the moss. He plucked the mushrooms growing closest to us. “You have to uproot the mushrooms first, or the moss holds on to the stone. Once the mushrooms are gone, it comes up easily. See?”

  The mushrooms made musical sounds when plucked from the moss, and once unmoored from the ground, emitted soft, single notes that stretched on and on.

  So, that was the music I’d been hearing.

  Lucian was scraping up the moss with his bare hand now, but I forgot everything else in my wonder. I dropped to the ground beside him and picked one, holding it to my ear. The sweet, pure note was like a windchime in a waterfall.

  “They play music,” I breathed.

  “Yes,” he said, looking at me with an inscrutable expression. “The nyms write songs with them.”

  I picked another mushroom, a smaller one with a pointed cap, and the note it emitted was high and clear. I picked another, a squat fat one, and its note was lower, deeper, like the song of an oak with deep roots.

  Something inside me tugged at this, like the memory of a memory. I arranged the mushrooms in a line, and the notes changed slightly, playing off each other, alternating.

  They were singing a song now, in a wild fae kind of way.

  I moved the mushrooms around so they played the song that had been stuck in my head.

  Lucien was still, listening to it. One of his hands twitched, and he closed his fingers in a fist.

  “Are the mushrooms… sentient?” I asked.

  “No,” Lucien said, and his voice was strained. “No more than any tree in the forest, anyway.”

  That made me throw a startled glance at the forest. I didn’t really know what he meant by that.

  I picked more mushrooms and arranged them in swirls and circles as I discovered that the patterns affected the songs too. Music bloomed around me, mournful and melodic.

  Lucien stood and went back to his side of the Cistern, but I felt his attention for the rest of the hour. He was watching me like I was a puzzle he was trying to solve.

  I ignored him.

  If he wanted to hate me, fine. I’d hate him too. We could hate each other quite happily for the rest of my stay at Spellwood, as far as I was concerned. He’d probably gotten into that fight by insulting a poor middling student minding his own business.

  When the dusk came, darkening the Cistern and making it hard to see, I was almost sorry. I gathered a few of the mushrooms to take with me.

  Once again, Lucien disappeared before I even noticed it was time to leave.

  ~

  The next night, I practically ran to the Cistern. The mushrooms I’d brought back with me hadn’t survived the night, but had withered into little worm-shaped pieces as hard as driftwood and as silent as stones. I’d swept them into a drawer in disappointment that morning.

  I wanted to play with the music again.

  I’d already plucked and arranged two dozen mushrooms in order of their musical notes when Lucien arrived. I felt his gaze on me, though he pretended he was hard at work when I glanced his way.

  Whatever.

  I was working on a song. A more complicated version of the simple one that had been stuck in my head for days now. I arranged and rearranged the mushrooms, discovering that I could make mild alterations to the notes they produced if I split them in half or crumbled the tops.

  The moss lay forgotten around me, but I noticed that where I’d picked mushrooms the day before, it had withered away on its own. No shovels needed.

  I’d been doing all that backbreaking work for nothing.

  The first half of the song was perfect. I brushed my fingers over the toadstools, my heart tugging at the tune. But the second half was giving me trouble. I couldn’t quite grasp what I wanted it to be, but I knew what I’d tried so far was wrong.

  I was still mentally chewing over what to do when a few notes drifted on the wind. The notes that had eluded me like a whisper just out of earshot. I lifted my head.

  Lucien had arranged a few of the mushrooms on his side of the Cistern. The notes were perfect.

  I forgot for a moment that we had agreed to hate each other.

  “How did you do that?” I said, breathless. “It’s perfect. I know it’s right. I don’t know how I know, I just…”

  “You remember it?” he asked.

  “Yes.” I stared at him.

  “I do too,” he said. “I don’t know why. I’ve heard that song in my nightmares for years.”

  Nightmares.

  He turned his head away. The first stars had come out. It was time for us to leave.

  Did he think I was purposefully trying to torment him?

  We locked gazes.

  Something in his made my stomach flip, but not in a bad way.

  He looked… wistful. Intrigued, and frustrated by it. Guarded.

  I wanted to say something, but before I could think of why, let alone what, he rose to his feet and disappeared up the path.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  WHEN I RETURNED to my room that night, I discovered that my mom and grandmother had replied to my letter with one of their own. I read it eagerly, hungry for any word from them, aching to hug them both and tell them everything I’d seen and done so far. I missed them fiercely. I wished I could feel the warm squeeze of my mom’s hands and smell Grandmother Azalea’s perfume as I snuggled between them on the couch with some of her herbal tea in a mug balanced on my lap.

  The letter didn’t tell me much about the thing that we were all worried about—the attempt on my life and their efforts to learn more about why it’d happened—but they did tell me all the neighborhood gossip, and they included some sticks of gum, a strip of bubble wrap, and a handful of peppermints.

  I read their letter over and over and wished I still had my locket. I missed them fiercely.

  Before breakfast, I wrote them back, and tried to keep tears from falling on the paper. I had a thousand things I wanted to say and a thousand more that I wasn’t sure if I should tell them. Should I mention the things I’d heard at the well? I could only imagine the horror my escapade might inspire in my mom, especially if she knew anything about the incident of the drowned girl.

  I hesitated, then scribbled a confession about the lost necklace. That way, they wouldn’t wonder why I never used it.

  I left the letter unfinished, and how much to tell my mom and Grandmother Azalea plagued me all through the morning.

  To make matters in my head even more tangled, after lunch, Griffin appeared and asked to walk me to the library.

  I could feel Lucien’s glower on us over the pages of his book. He probably hated that his half-brother found me interesting. For some petty reason, this pleased me—probably more than it should have.


  I said yes.

  The Spellwood library was in a round, dome-roofed building set back at the edge of the west woods, with a rectangular fountain in front that was clogged with water lilies so thickly that I couldn’t see the bottom. Inside, the shelves seemed to lean toward each other like gossiping old ladies, the shelves laden with leather-bound books of history and lore, all the reading that nobody but Hannah seemed to be doing.

  I wondered why Griffin wanted to take me here. He didn’t seem the type to enjoy browsing through dusty piles of ancient literature.

  He led me up a spiral metal staircase to the second level of the library, where a skylight in the top of the dome let in a column of sunlight. Here, the shelves were shadowed, and I saw only the occasional other student lounging at a table or in an overstuffed chair.

  “This is Basilisk territory,” Griffin said proudly. “We won rights to it in last year’s war. The others aren’t supposed to come up here, except Briar. They’re allowed.” He smiled like a benevolent king granting clemency to an ally as he said it, and I looked past him and saw a female student with flame-colored hair and red eyes watching us before she turned and vanished among the rows of books.

  “What if another student needs a book from this level?” I asked, glancing around.

  “Nobody does the reading,” he said with a roll of his eyes. “And anyway, these books are never used. They’re all about the eighth court, which doesn’t exist anymore. And there are librarians. They can get it.”

  “An eighth court? What was it called?”

  But Griffin wasn’t listening. He took my hand and pulled me toward a back row of shelves. The row was dark as a cave and had a pleasant, dusty smell to it that made me think of curio shops and dried rose petals. Griffin put a hand on my hip and tugged me close, and I knew what was coming. I kissed him because I was curious about kissing a fae elite, and because it felt powerful and a little bit nice. His mouth was warm like the rest of him, and he was a good kisser. I put my arms around his neck and he pressed me against one of the bookshelves. The spines bumped pleasantly against my shoulders. I closed my eyes.