Academy of Magic Collection

by Angelique S Anderson et al.

  “How’s your ankle feeling now that you’re off your crutches?” I ask softly, humbled, trying yet again to break down her wall—this time by forgetting about the omens, and Sebastian, and the mountain of butterscotch wrappers that sat on the library table between us as we searched for clues just an hour ago.

  Kash lifts her foot into the air and flexes it. “Better.”

  Here we go again. Two syllables once more.

  But then she surprises me.

  “The nurse said I can try dancing on it again tomorrow if I take it easy,” she adds.

  A full sentence. Progress. As I switch over to my lipstick, I can’t help but feel hopeful. “That’s great!” I tell her. My tone is probably more enthusiastic than it should be. I sound like I’m wishing her a happy birthday or welcoming her home after a year abroad. “You’ll be able to dance in the recital after all.”

  “Yeah.” Kash’s enthusiasm doesn’t quite meet mine. She lowers her ankle again, pops in her earbuds, and lies down on her bed. She stares at the ceiling. Now it’s her turn to block me out, I guess.

  So much for progress.

  Shutting off the light to my makeup mirror, I stand up. It’s time for me to get to class anyway. I smooth out the fabric of my gown, feeling the cool, crisp layers glide beneath my fingertips. I’m about to slip into my coordinating high heels of horror and slide out the door when I hear Kash say something else. Quietly. Like an afterthought.

  “I’ve been thinking that you should try checking your grandmother’s translation of the Lost Scroll of Clio, by the way,” she mumbles.

  “What?” I ask.

  She doesn’t repeat herself. She just turns on her side, away from me.

  Chapter Nine

  It’s hard to sit through Poise and Charm class after that. I fidget, my gown crinkling and wrinkling around me. Ms. Dashwood catches me staring out the window more than once. And I mix up my silverware place setting so much that the Dillard twins giggle about it when they think I’m not listening. Like not knowing proper placement of an oyster fork is a scandal worthy of the most sensational tabloids.

  But I’m there—in person physically, if not mentally—and that counts for something. It’s still progress compared to my days of showing up late for class or skipping it altogether.

  Sebastian gives me questioning looks the entire time. He must have noticed my worse-than-usual performance, too. Amid all the posture-checking and table-setting, though, I don’t get a chance to give him a hint about Kash’s suggestion.

  “What’s going on?” he asks me afterward. He hurries to my side, but there’s really no need: as the room clears, I’m standing by my chaise waiting for him anyway.

  “There’s something I have to show you,” I tell him, speaking so fast my breath can barely keep pace with my lungs.

  I pull him along by the sleeve of his tuxedo jacket without giving him the chance to either agree or decline to come with me. There’s no time to waste. I don’t even change out of my gown or switch from my heels into flats.

  “Where are we going?” Sebastian asks, staggering along through the halls, trying to keep up with me.

  “The auditorium,” I tell him as we dodge the swarm of puffy dresses and plaid uniforms that stands between us and the truth.

  The place I didn’t want him to see … and the place we can’t avoid any longer. As much as I haven’t wanted him to know about my connections to the leaders of our realm, I don’t see a way to avoid that now. This is too important. Art and beauty—not to mention our existence—are at risk.

  “I’ve gotta say, you picked an odd time to call in that special tap dance,” he jokes.

  I swallow down a gulp of air and shake my head. “This isn’t about your tap dancing.”

  As we slip around the corner, I glance over my shoulder to be sure no one’s following or watching us. Technically, students aren’t supposed to enter the auditorium unless there’s a special event—a dress rehearsal for a play or a recital or other ceremony. Barging in here like this is another one of those things Kash would probably lecture me about. But I do it anyway. Finding the coast clear, I tug against the handle of the closest double doors and lead us both inside.

  “So this is Harper Auditorium …” Sebastian murmurs, turning in circles as he takes it all in around us.

  The rows of seats. Wooden and squeaky. Traitors to anyone arriving late or sneaking out of an assembly early—as I know firsthand.

  The stage with its garnet, velvet curtains. Heavy enough to be worn as a winter coat. In Antarctica.

  The white statues that flank the room. The original Muses, frozen in time like sculptures made of ice. Each toting a symbol of their specialty—a lyre or stylus or some other ancient tool of their art.

  And then, in a sectioned-off part of the auditorium not far from the floor-to-ceiling windows that overlook the garden, I spot it: the glass case containing the achievement that made my grandmother famous in the realm of Muses. The one that changed the course of her career, that took her from an assistant to the Board of Nine to a full-fledged member and headmistress of Brightling Academy.

  “A lot of people don’t realize this, but Clio was more than a historian,” I tell Sebastian as we approach, navigating the maze of aisles and seats. “Yes, she recorded events that happened and helped judge good actions from bad. But her work didn’t just focus on the past. She also predicted future events, too—or she did one time, at least.”

  Sebastian seems to stand a little taller, his attention captured. His tongue darts over his lips as he tries to focus. “Like a Seer? Clio could See?” he asks in an excited whisper.

  “Sort of,” I explain. “The thing is, she only ever wrote one prediction—and it hasn’t come true yet, so no one can be sure if her vision was accurate or not. For a long time, no one even thought Clio made the prediction at all. It was written in code and completely dismissed by the Board of Nine altogether. Then about thirty years ago, someone—” I resist the urge to mention that someone happened to be my grandmother “—translated the document and proved it was Clio’s work.”

  We stand in front of the ropes now. My fingertips graze along the top of one as I lean a little closer to see inside the case. Beside me, Sebastian does the same.

  “And that’s the document, I suppose?” he asks, nodding toward the display.

  “Exactly. The Lost Scroll of Clio.”

  For a moment, the two of us stare at the fragile, faded pages preserved beneath the glass. The parchment looks so dry and brittle that a light sneeze would probably cause it to crumble. Tiny handwriting, in a language and an alphabet I’m not quite sure how to read, stretch across the paper. And beneath the pins that secure the document in place, its edges are still slightly curled, a lingering reminder that it was once rolled tight.

  “If this is so rare and important, why is it here at Brightling instead of with the Board?” Sebastian asks after a moment. His question is hushed, carried on a puff of his breath. Like he knows as well as I do that the answers we’re seeking are written out right in front of us. They’ve been so close this entire time.

  “Because the translator was a member of the Board for a while—and a former headmistress here,” I tell him. “This auditorium is named after her, with the original Scroll on display in her honor.”

  Squinting, I look up at him, half-wanting and half-afraid to see his reaction.

  “Harper Auditorium,” he repeats, mulling over the name.

  I can see the change in him—the exact moment he connects the dots. A muscle in his jaw twitches, and his eyes dart back to mine like raging waters lashing at the shore.

  “Harper. Of the Bianca Harper family line?” he asks.

  I nod. “That would be the one. Daphne Harper, the Muse who cracked Clio’s code, is my grandma.”

  “Holy shit,” Sebastian whispers. He gapes at me like I’m something even more unusual than what I am. As though I’m not just a Muse—I’m one of the strange creatures in Aurelia Ketterl
ing’s encyclopedia of mythic beings. A dryad, maybe—or a mermaid. And those choices would be kind.

  Sighing, I wrap my arms around myself. Partly to make sure I’m still me: a human body, with twenty-four ribs to my cage and a heart trapped inside. And partly because I’m trying to hold myself together—to keep myself from splintering into a thousand pieces under the pressure everyone puts on me. I don’t think I can bear it if Sebastian starts expecting too much of me, as well.

  But then, just as quickly as his expression changed, it returns to normal. He shrugs his shoulders nonchalantly and looks back at the display.

  “So what do you think this says?”

  I let my arms slip to my sides. Slowly. But I do. The pressure I’ve had pent up inside for the last hour subsides, a tea kettle letting off steam in my chest. I’ve misjudged Sebastian. Again.

  “Let’s find out,” I tell him.

  We may not be able to read the original document—neither of us has the training, resources, and experience my grandmother had when she worked on the translation, after all. But that doesn’t matter. A plaque is suspended on the wall above the display case. I’ve never really bothered to read the inscription before. It didn’t seem all that important. Just another reminder of the Harper family legacy hovering in the background. But now, as I point it out to Sebastian, I linger over every word written on it.

  The Lost Scroll of Clio.

  Translated by Daphne Harper.

  Once thought to be a forgery, this document predicts a series of nine events that mark the decline of the arts in the Mundane realm. According to Clio, once these events have transpired, the Well of Imagination will be dry and Muses will be powerless to inspire the Mundane. The world we share will then sink into a new, darker era—one devoid of creativity and pureness of deed. Although many dismiss the warning as a fable intended to illustrate the importance of Muse-kind, the Board of Nine has deemed Clio’s final work to be authentic.

  “So it’s not that Muses are being attacked,” Sebastian murmurs. “It’s that art is dying.”

  My shoulders sag, and I feel breathless again, my lungs unable to keep up with the panicked thoughts rapidly firing through my brain.

  “The Well of Imagination is going dry,” I agree, nodding. “This is so much worse than we thought.”

  Shaking, I lower myself to sit down. The floor is hard and cold, and the layers of my gown fold and crunch unevenly beneath me. A pose unworthy of a Muse, I’m sure. Ms. Dashwood would scold, but I don’t care. Even the closest row of chairs still seems too far for me to reach. I stare, dazed, at my hands in my lap. Still trying to process the truth.

  “We should try to figure out how many of the nine events have happened,” Sebastian suggests. He drops to the floor beside me, taking his cell phone out of an interior pocket in his tuxedo jacket. “Maybe there’s still time—maybe there’s something we can do to stop all this.”

  My heart beats hopefully, even as a small voice in the back of my head whispers caution against optimism. I watch quietly as Sebastian’s fingertips move over the tiny screen in his hands, searching for answers just like we did together last night. After a moment, he glances up.

  “I think I found something,” he says. “Someone posted a full translation of the Scroll.”

  I scoot closer to him on the floor. So close that our shoulders touch. So close that I can feel the warmth of his body radiating out around him. Then he tilts the screen toward me so I can read it, too.

  “It looks like the closure of the opera house is the sixth warning,” he tells me.

  I read the words over and over again, piecing together everything we know so far. “The first omen,” I murmur. “It says, ‘Our wombs will grow weary of carrying fruit.’ That has to be the declining birthrate among Muses, don’t you think?”

  Sebastian nods and points to another line. “And there—‘The fountain of poetry will become arid as a desert’—that could be the repetitive songs and movies the headmistress mentioned.”

  We continue making our way through the predictions. The third sign references a “silence of strings.” That’s the musician Kash and I saw on the street the day Sebastian came to Brightling—the day the man with the green handkerchief stole the violin. An uneasy feeling gnaws inside me as I tell Sebastian about the incident. I should ask him about the man. I know I should, but I can’t bring myself to. So I gloss over the details and let us move on. The fourth mentions the disappearance of canvases brushed with beauty: the missing Laffitte. And the fifth talks about flames consuming havens for the creative: Brambleton.

  “Everything fits together,” Sebastian says.

  “It’s moving so quickly. A new sign every couple of days now. It’s like someone else has figured it out and is rushing the prediction along.” I fidget uncomfortably—not just because of my dress but also because of our discovery. “What’s the next one?”

  Sebastian scrolls lower on his screen. “It says, ‘They will smash the creations of our hands with their own.’ … Then there’s something about Muses being harnessed with ‘a weight so heavy that even the lightest feather will be crushed beneath its burden.’ And the last talks about ‘bright halls turning dark.’”

  The clues seem so cryptic. Strange riddles that only make sense in retrospect. Sebastian and I could spend a decade trying to puzzle everything out and still be wrong. Maybe that’s what happened to the Board of Nine. Maybe they’re just as confused and unsure as we are. We sit together for hours, tossing out ideas … only to talk ourselves out of the suggestion again a moment later.

  “Creations of hand … That must refer to a type of art, don’t you think?”

  “Sure, but isn’t almost anything made with your hands?”

  “Paintings, sculptures, pottery … Yeah, I guess you’re right.”

  Sighing, I lie back and stare at the ceiling. It seems too big for us to manage. Maybe Kash is right, and we should let the headmistress and the Board solve whatever’s happening around us. But then I remember Sebastian’s confidence last night in my dorm room before Kash barged in. The way he assured me there’s a solution—and how we may even be the ones to find it—and I remember to keep trying.

  We have to keep trying.

  Chapter Ten

  It’s late by the time Sebastian and I decide to leave the auditorium. The sky outside the windows is dark. There’s no chattering in the hallways beyond the double door. And despite the small pile of butterscotch wrappers mounded on the floor between us, our stomachs are growling with hunger. We’ve missed dinner entirely.

  We may not have figured out the rest of the omens—or how to stop Clio’s prediction from coming true—but at least the box of granola bars my mom sent me in a care package last week won’t go to waste.

  “Better to miss dinner than to miss Poise and Charm class,” I mumble under my breath as Sebastian takes my hands and helps me to my feet. I wobble a moment on my high heels, teetering like I’m standing on a house of cards about to fold.

  “I keep meaning to ask you about that,” he says, gripping my arms to help steady me. “What’s with your and Kash’s obsession with that class?”

  I’ve already told Sebastian so much about myself today. Maybe it wouldn’t hurt to share a little more. He took the news about my grandmother well. Maybe this won’t matter either. Plus, it’ll be nice not to have to suppress my urge to strangle Kash any time she brings up the thin ice I’m on.

  “I’m sort of flunking it … and Ms. Dashwood and Headmistress Fothergill won’t let me graduate if I do.” I let out a miserable sigh. “Now you know the truth: the great Daphne Harper’s granddaughter is this close to being a Brightling Academy drop-out.”

  Sebastian’s face changes again, the haughty lines melting into something I haven’t seen in him before. Sympathy, I think. His eyes soften, too. They’re no longer a vision of stormy seas. They’re more like clover fields. As I look up at him, I get lost in their feathery greens.

  “You didn’t want me t
o know, did you?” he asks. “Not just about Poise and Charm, but about your grandmother, too.”

  I shake my head. “I was embarrassed, and I thought it would change things. It always does.”

  Sebastian shakes his head. “Look, I know what it’s like to have an important family expect great things of you,” he says softly. “The way you always worry you’ll disappoint them—but you sort of want to anyway, just to prove that you’re different … to show them that you’re your own person, despite what they say.”

  “Exactly,” I whisper, mystified, as I gape at him.

  He clears his throat, and his demeanor changes—it becomes more intense and formal. Snobbish, even. And his tone deepens, heavy as a rock. “‘You must try harder, Sebastian,’” he says, straightening the knot of the tie at his throat as he talks. Imitating a relative, I’m sure. Maybe even his father. “‘There are legacies to consider.’”

  I laugh bitterly. His words sound all too familiar. They could be the echo of the tutors my parents hired so I wouldn’t enter Brightling Academy completely untrained. So I could go to the top of the class immediately and stay there all four years. So I could make my grandmother—and all our ancestors—proud.

  “Try being the last of the Harper family—the only heir for them to mold,” I scoff, agreeing. “My grandma can trace our family tree all the way back to Clio.” Pausing, I shake my head. “I wonder if Clio would’ve passed Poise and Charm.”

  Sebastian grins. “Probably not if Ms. Dashwood was teaching it,” he teases.

  Not funny. Not knowing how close I am to failing myself, anyway. I shake my head and roll my eyes, and his smile fades. But he doesn’t give up on making me feel better. Instead, he raises his hand to my face, brushing his knuckles against my cheek with a gentleness that surprises me.

  For a moment, my breath hitches in my chest. I’m unsure what surprises me more—the fact that he’s trying to comfort me again, or how much I like that he is. We’re more alike than I ever thought possible that first day I saw him in Poise and Charm. Sebastian seems to know this already; maybe I should accept it, too.