Two busts guard the secret door in the Poets Corner—the most famous of the modern mage poets, Carroll and Seuss. I’ve got some nylon rope, and I tie one end around Theodor’s neck.
The door itself, a panel in the wall, is always locked, and there isn’t any key. But all you have to do to open it is possess a genuine desire to enter. Most people simply don’t.
The door swings open for me. And closed behind me. The air is immediately colder. I light a wall torch and choose my first path.
Down in the winding tunnels of the Catacombs, I use every revealing spell I know, and every finding spell. (“Come out, come out, wherever you are! It’s show time! Scooby-Dooby-Doo, where are you!”) I call for Baz by his full name—that makes a spell harder to resist.
Magic words are tricky. Sometimes to reveal something hidden, you have to use the language of the time it was stashed away. And sometimes an old phrase stops working when the rest of the world is sick of saying it.
I’ve never been good with words.
That’s partly why I’m such a useless magician.
“Words are very powerful,” Miss Possibelf said during our first Magic Words lesson. No one else was paying attention; she wasn’t saying anything they didn’t already know. But I was trying to commit it all to memory.
“And they become more powerful,” she went on, “the more that they’re said and read and written, in specific, consistent combinations.
“The key to casting a spell is tapping into that power. Not just saying the words, but summoning their meaning.”
Which means you have to have a good vocabulary to do magic. And you have to be able to think on your feet. And be brave enough to speak up. And have an ear for a solid turn of phrase.
And you have to actually understand what you’re saying—how the words translate into magic.
You can’t just wave your wand and repeat whatever you’ve heard somebody saying down on the street corner; that’s a good way to accidentally separate someone from their bollocks.
None of it comes naturally to me. Words. Language. Speaking.
I don’t remember when I learned to talk, but I know they tried to send me to specialists. Apparently, that can happen to kids in care, or kids with parents who never talk to them—they just don’t learn how.
I used to see a counsellor and a speech therapist. “Use your words, Simon.” I got so bloody sick of hearing that. It was so much easier to just take what I wanted instead of asking for it. Or thump whoever was hurting me, even if they thumped me right back.
I barely spoke the first month I was at Watford. It was easy not to; no one else around here shuts up.
Miss Possibelf and a few of the other teachers noticed and started giving me private lessons. Talking-out-loud lessons. Sometimes the Mage would sit in on these, rubbing his beard and staring out the window. “Use your words!”—I imagined myself shouting at him. And then I imagined him telling me that it was a mistake to bring me here.
Anyway, I’m still not good with words, and I’m shit with my wand, so I get by with memorization. And sincerity—that helps, believe it or not. When in doubt, I just do whatever Penny tells me to.
I work my way carefully through the Catacombs, doing my level best with the spells I can make work for me.
I find hidden doorways inside hidden doorways. I find a treasure chest that’s snoring deeply. I find a painting of a girl with blond hair and tears pouring down her cheeks, actually pouring, like a GIF carved into the wall. A younger me would have stayed to figure out her story. A younger me would have turned this into an adventure.
I keep looking for Baz.
Or a clue.
Every night I turn back when I get to the end of my rope.
18
LUCY
Do you know these walls are a thousand years old?
There are spirits moving through them who speak languages no one is left to understand. But it doesn’t matter, I guess. Nobody hears them.
The walls are the same as when I walked them. The Chapel. The Tower. The drawbridge.
The wolves are new. The fish-beasts. Where did Davy find them, I wonder? What spell did he cast to bring them here? And what does he think they’ll prevent?
“Paranoid,” Mit always said. “He thinks everyone’s out to get him.”
“I think a few people might actually be out to get him,” I argued.
“Only because he’s such a spiteful git,” she said.
“He cares too much.”
“About himself? Agreed.”
“About everything,” I said. “He can’t let any of it go.”
“You’ve been listening to him for too long, Lucy.”
“I feel sorry for him.… And if you’d listen to him, you’d realize that he’s making sense. Why can’t pixies and centaurs with mage heritage come to Watford? And why did my brother have to stay home? Just because he isn’t powerful?”
“Your brother’s an idiot,” she said. “All he cares about is Def Leppard.”
“You know how much it hurt my mother when he was rejected. He has a wand, and he doesn’t even know how to use it. My parents almost got a divorce over it.”
“I know.” Mitali softened. “I’m sorry. But the school’s only so big. It can’t take everyone.”
“We could make it bigger, Davy says so. Or we could build a new school. Imagine that—schools all over the country for anyone with magic.”
She frowned. “But the point of Watford is that it’s the best. The best education for the best magicians.”
“Is that the point of Watford? Then Davy’s right. It is elitist.”
Mit sighed.
“Davy says we’re getting weaker,” I said. “As a society. That the wild, dark things will wipe us from the earth and let it reclaim our magic.”
“Does he tell you that they live under your bed?”
“I’m being serious,” I said.
“I know,” she said sadly. “I wish you weren’t. What does Davy expect you to do? What does he expect from any of us?”
I leaned towards her and whispered my answer—“Revolution.”
* * *
I’ve been wandering.
Trying to find my way to you.
The walls are the same. And the Chapel. And the Tower.
The neckties are thinner. The skirts are shorter. But the colours are the same.…
I can’t help but feel proud of Davy now—you’ll think that’s funny coming from me, but I can’t help but feel proud of him.
He managed it. His revolution.
He opened these doors to every child blessed with magic.
19
SIMON
It’s almost Halloween before I finally talk to the Mage.
He calls for me himself. A robin flies into Greek and drops a note onto my desk. The Mage often has a bird or two flapping around him. Robins, mostly. And wrens and sparrows. (Like Snow White.) He’d rather cast A little bird told me than use his mobile.
When class is over, I head towards an outbuilding at the far end of the grounds, up against the outer wall. There are stables back there that have been turned into a garage and barracks.
His Men are outside—Penny says she’d like the Mage’s Men better if there were a few women among them—and they’re gathered around a big green truck I’ve never seen before, something like a military truck with canvas walls. One of them is holding a metal box. They’re taking turns reaching for it and watching their hands pass right through.
“Simon,” the Mage says, stepping out of the garage. He puts his arm around my shoulder and leads me away from the truck. “Here you are.”
“I would have come right away, sir, but I was in class. And the Minotaur said you would have sent a larger bird if it were an emergency.”
The Mage frowns. “The spell doesn’t work with larger birds.”
“I know, sir. I’m sorry. He wouldn’t listen.”
“Well.” He claps my shoulder. “It wasn’t an emergency. I just wanted to
see you. To check on you. Miss Possibelf told me about the attack, the bugs—she said it was the Humdrum.”
Flibbertigibbets. In Magic Words class. A whole swarm of them. I’d never even seen a swarm of flibbertigibbets before.
We call them bugs because they’re about the size of bumblebees, but flibbertigibbets are more like birds. One can kill a dog or a goat or a gryphon. Two or three can take down a magician. They burrow into your ears and buzz so loud, you can’t think. First you lose your mind—and then they get to your brain, and you lose everything else.
Flibbertigibbets don’t attack people, not usually. But they came in through the classroom window last week and surrounded me like a chattering orange cloud. The worst part was that dry, sucking feeling that always accompanies the Humdrum’s attacks.
Everybody else in the class ran.
“It felt like the Humdrum, sir. But why would he send flibbertigibbets? They’re hardly a threat.”
“Not for you, certainly.” The Mage rubs his beard. “Maybe he just wants to remind us that he’s out there. What’d you hit them with?”
“Dead in the air.”
“Well done, Simon.”
“I … I think I killed some other things, too. Ebb found pheasants in the field. And Rhys had a parakeet.…”
The Mage glances at the robin flitting above his shoulder, then squeezes my arm. “You did what you had to. And no one was hurt. Did you see the nurse?”
“I’m fine, sir.” I step closer. “Sir. I was hoping—I mean. Have you made any progress? With the Humdrum? I see the Men coming and going. But I don’t—I could help. Penelope and me. We could help.”
His hand slips from my shoulder, and he rests it on his hip. “There’s nothing to report on that front. No breakthroughs, no attacks. Just the constant widening of the holes. I almost wish the Humdrum would show his face again”—I shudder at the memory of that face; the Mage goes on—“to remind these backwards fools what we’re really up against.”
I look over his shoulder at the truck. The Men have been carrying boxes past us the whole time we’ve been talking.
“Sir, did you get my note?”
He narrows his eyes. “About the missing Pitch boy.”
“About my roommate. He still hasn’t come back.”
The Mage rubs his beard with the back of his leather glove. “You’re right to be concerned, I think. The Old Families are closing ranks, calling their sons home, bolting their gates. They’re readying to make a move against us.”
“Their sons?”
He starts rattling off names—boys I know, but not well. Sixth, seventh, and eighth years.
“But surely,” I say, “the Families know that the Humdrum will finish us if we don’t stand together. He’s more powerful than ever.”
“Perhaps that’s part of their plan,” the Mage says. “I’ve stopped trying to figure these people out. They care more for their own wealth and power than for our world. Sometimes I think they’d sacrifice anything to see me fall.…”
“How can I help, sir?”
“By being careful, Simon.” He puts his hand on my arm again and turns to face me. “I’m leaving again in a few hours. But I was hoping, in the light of this new attack, that I could convince you to heed my words. Leave here, Simon. Let me take you to the haven I spoke of—it’s the farthest I can put you from danger.”
I take a step back. “But it was just flibbertigibbets, sir.”
“This time.”
“No. Sir. I told you … I’m fine here. I’m perfectly safe.”
“You’re never safe!” he says, and he says it so fiercely, it almost seems like a threat. “Safety, stability—it’s an illusion. It’s a false god, Simon. It’s clinging to a sinking raft instead of learning to swim.”
“Then I may as well stay here!” I say. Too loudly. One of the Mage’s Men, Stephen, looks up at me. My voice drops: “If nowhere is safe, I may as well stay here. With my friends. Or I may as well fight—I could help you.”
We lock eyes, and I see his fill with disappointment and pity. “I know you could, Simon. But the situation is very delicate right now.…”
He doesn’t have to finish. I know what he means.
The Mage doesn’t need a bomb.
You don’t send bombs on reconnaissance missions or invite them to strategy meetings. You wait until you’ve run out of options, then you drop them.
I nod my head.
Then I turn away from him, walking back towards the heart of the grounds.
I can feel his Men watching me. They’re all just a year or two older than I am. I hate that they think they’re even older—that they feel so important. I hate the dark green breeches they wear, and the gold stars on their sleeves.
“Simon!” the Mage shouts.
I flatten my expression, then turn back.
He’s holding up a hand to shield his eyes from the sun. He gives me a rare smile. A small one. “The Humdrum may be more powerful than ever, but you’re more powerful than ever, too. Remember that.”
I nod and watch him walk back to the garage.
I’m late to meet Penelope.
20
PENELOPE
We’re studying out in the hills, even though it’s cold, because Simon doesn’t like to practise where anyone can see him.
He’s got his grey duffle coat on, and a green-on-green striped school scarf, and I should have worn trousers because the wind is blowing right through my grey tights.
It’s nearly Samhain—the Veil will close soon, and Aunt Beryl hasn’t shown a whisker.
“It is what it is!” Simon says, pointing his wand at a small rock sitting on a tree stump. The rock shivers, then collapses into a pile of dust. “I can’t tell if the spell’s working,” he says, “or if I’m just destroying things.”
Every eighth-year student is tasked with creating a new spell by the end of the year—with finding a new twist in the language that’s gained power or an old one that’s been overlooked, and then figuring out how to apply it.
The best new spells are practical and enduring. Catchphrases are usually crap; mundane people get tired of saying them, then move on. (Spells go bad that way, expire just as we get the hang of them.) Songs are dicey for the same reason.
Almost never does a Watford student actually create a spell that takes hold.
But my mother was only a seventh year when she worked out The lady’s not for turning—and it’s still an incredibly useful spell in combat, especially for women. (Which Mum’s a bit ashamed of, I think. To have a spell taught in the Mage’s Offence workshops.)
Simon’s been trying a new phrase every week since the beginning of term. His heart’s not in it, and I don’t really blame him. Even tried-and-true spells hiccup in his wand. And sometimes when he casts metaphors, they go viciously literal. Like when he cast Hair of the dog on Agatha during sixth year to help her get over a hangover, and instead covered her with dog hair. I think that’s the last time Simon pointed his wand at a person. And the last time Agatha had a drink.
He brushes the rubble off the stump and sits down, shoving his wand in his pocket. “Baz isn’t the only one missing.”
“What do you mean?” I point my wand at some chess pieces I’ve set on the ground. “The game is on!”
The bishop falls over.
I try again. “The game is afoot!”
Nothing happens.
“This phrase has got to be good for something,” I say. “It’s Shakespeare plus Sherlock Holmes.”
“The Mage told me that the Old Families have been pulling their sons out of school,” Simon says. “Two seventh-year boys didn’t come back. And Marcus, Baz’s cousin, is gone. He’s only a sixth year.”
“Which one is Marcus?”
“Fit. Blond streaks in his hair. Midfielder.”
I shrug and stoop to pick up the chess pieces. I’m being fairly literal myself at the moment, because I’ve tried everything else with this phrase. I feel like it could be a
good beginning spell—a catalyst.… “Is it just boys who haven’t come back?” I ask.
“Huh,” Simon says. “Dunno. The Mage didn’t say.”
“He’s such a sexist.” I shake my head. “Marcus—is he the one who got trapped in a dumbwaiter our fourth year?”
“Yeah.”
“That one’s joined the other side, eh? Well, I’m shaking in my boots.”
“The Mage thinks the Families are getting ready for some big strike.”
“What does he want us to do about it?”
“He doesn’t,” Simon says.
I slip the chess pieces in my pocket. “What do you mean?”
“Well, he still wants me to leave—”
I must frown, because Simon raises his eyebrows and says, “I know, Penny—I’m not going anywhere. But if I stay here, then he wants me to lie low. He wants us to lie low. He says his Men are working on it, and it’s delicate.”
“Hmm.” I sit next to Simon on the tree stump. I have to admit, I sort of love the idea of lying low—of letting the Mage get up to his mad business without us for once. But I don’t like to be told to lie low. Neither does Simon. “Do you think Baz is with these other boys?” I ask.
“Makes sense, doesn’t it?”
I don’t say anything. I really, really hate to talk to Simon about Baz. It’s like talking to the Mad Hatter about tea. I hate to encourage him.
He knocks some bark off the stump with the back of his heel.
I lean into him, because I’m cold and he’s always warm. And because I like to remind him that I’m not afraid of him.
“It makes sense,” he says.
21
THE MAGE
Books. Artefacts. Enchanted jewellery. Enchanted furniture. Monkeys’ paws, rabbits’ legs, gnomes’ gnoses …
We take it all. Even if I know it’s useless to me.
This exercise has more than one aim. It’s good to remind the Old Families that I’m still running this show.
This school.
This realm.
And there’s not one of them who could do better.
They call me a failure because the Humdrum still drums on, stealing our magic, scrubbing our land clear—but who among them could pose a threat?
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