The School between Winter and Fairyland

by Heather Fawcett

  “Let’s see how high it goes,” Cai said. “Watch your step.”

  He held his staff before him, murmuring a word to brighten the starlight. They climbed slowly, minding the stairs that were cracked or broken.

  Each floor was the same—an empty ruin with cloud rippling through it. The upper slopes of Mythroor ran parallel to the Silver Tower, and in places the steep mountainside was only a few yards away. Autumn thought she could jump to it with a running start. A ewe and her lamb stood nearby, calmly browsing the grass on a precarious ledge.

  “Can they see us?” she said.

  “No,” Cai said. “We’re inside the enchantment. There’s no door here. In fact, they could walk right through us.”

  “Oh.” Autumn went faster after that. Being inside an invisible tower was one thing. Having a sheep walk through you was something else entirely.

  The higher they climbed, the colder it got. Frost furred the steps, and some stones were icy. Cai seemed perfectly calm as the stairway took them up, up, up into the sky. Autumn supposed he’d had so many adventures at Inglenook that enchanted towers were all in a day’s work. She wished she could be just as nonchalant. She had no experience with adventures, and her heart was beating like a rabbit’s. Where was the boggart?

  “What’s that?” Autumn said as Cai’s starlight gleaned off something pale. She knelt beside it, waving her hand to clear away the cloud.

  It was a bone.

  She couldn’t tell what kind, for she backed away quickly. Cai drew in his breath—he’d found another bone beneath one of the windows. It was long and curved, like a rib. Autumn realized something else—the floor was covered with animal droppings.

  “Birds, I guess,” she said, as much to herself as to Cai. She didn’t think birds usually roosted this far off the ground. But what else could it be?

  The next floors were much the same, only with more bones. Some of the windowsills were scored with deep scratches. They were above the summit of Mythroor now. Below was a carpet of mist and mountaintops; above, a tapestry of stars and slow, lacy clouds.

  “Where does it end?” Autumn asked. The wind was like ice and dried the sweat on her brow instantly. She was holding up better than Cai, who, as a pampered magician, was a little soft. The higher they went, the more he huffed and puffed and stopped to lean against the stairwell.

  “I’m not sure.” Cai looked up. “What was that?”

  From the floor above there came a sharp, whispery sound. Scritch-scratch, scritch-scratch.

  Autumn and Cai froze, staring at each other, neither daring to move another inch. The boggart appeared before them with as little warning as the last time. Cai yelped, but Autumn had never been so relieved to see anyone in her life. She threw her arms around the boggart’s neck. He looked annoyed and pleased at the same time.

  “I wish you’d listened to me,” he groused, pulling free. His glossy black curls were unmoved by the wind. “You’d better keep your voices down, or they’ll hear you.”

  Autumn’s relief curdled inside her. “They? Who’s they?”

  “Oh, you mortals and your names,” the boggart said. “They call themselves the Lords and Ladies of Above. They live in the cloud tops, mostly, and on high mountains. They like to lure mountain children from their homes and onto slippery crags.” The boggart rolled his eyes, as if he disapproved of this solely from an entertainment perspective.

  Autumn swallowed. “Are you talking about gwyllions?”

  Cai let out his breath. “There are gwyllions here?”

  The boggart looked pleased by their reaction. “I remember what happened now. The magicians who made the castle built its towers too high, and the Lords and Ladies found them. They killed a great many students.” He wrinkled his nose. “It was messy.”

  Autumn leaned against the wall. Gwyllions. There were gwyllions up here. Not even Gran had ever encountered a gwyllion. They kept to the highest places and weren’t social monsters like boggarts or wisps. But they were the reason mountain dwellers in Eryree kept their children close. Few knew exactly what they looked like, though mountain folk likened them to man-size ravens who lurked in shadow and mist, ready to snatch children up with their talons.

  “If you keep quiet and don’t touch anything, you should be all right,” the boggart said. “But if you get into trouble, I won’t be able to help you.”

  “Touch what?” Autumn said. The tower was an empty ruin. “And why can’t you help us?”

  “There are rules. You know that. This is their territory, not mine.”

  Autumn swallowed. Creatures like the boggart—higher-order monsters who could think and reason and plot—couldn’t interfere with each other in the lands they claimed as theirs.

  “Go back, Autumn.” There was a pleading note in the boggart’s voice that Autumn had never heard before.

  Autumn wavered. She looked up the dark stairs. What was she doing? She should be home in bed, ready to be up early to attend to her duties, not mixed up in dangerous adventures.

  “Autumn,” Cai said. “You can go. I’ll carry on and look for Winter.”

  He said it firmly, as if he couldn’t imagine her arguing with him. She supposed most people didn’t—they just let him march off and do stupid, brave things all by himself. Something rose inside her, closer to annoyance than courage, but it was fortifying nevertheless.

  “No you don’t, Cai Morrigan.” She lifted her chin. “We’ll do this together, or not at all.”

  She set off without another word. Fortunately, Cai was right behind her, lighting the stairs. The boggart flitted ahead, muttering furiously.

  The next floor was empty, but the one after that? The breath left Autumn’s body.

  The round floor was clustered with tables piled with all manner of treasures. There were spyglasses and telescopes; tiny glass horses and even tinier glass soldiers; porcelain dolls with gleaming black hair and layers of silk skirts. There were marbles and brightly painted playing cards, silver jumping jacks and music boxes that murmured when the wind brushed them, a rocking horse so lifelike that Autumn could feel the muscles bunching in its leather hide.

  It was like stepping into an enchanted toy shop.

  “Where?” Cai murmured. “How?”

  “I think I know how the gwyllions lure mountain children from their homes,” Autumn said.

  Her hands trembled. She’d seen such toys before, in the Inglenook dormitories, carelessly scattered on the floor or jumbled up in chests. She only had one toy to her name, a doll that had been her mother’s, its dress a faded gray. She was too old for dolls now, and yet her heart ached for the chestnut-haired one peeping out at her from a wicker basket, its eyes like jewels and its feet shod in petal-pink slippers.

  “Winter would have loved that book,” Autumn murmured. The book was pocket-size, as children’s books often were, with a fine leather cover engraved with a picture of a boy and a dog framed against a snowy cabin.

  Cai was staring at a music box with a forest and a dancing wolf inside it. “The boggart said not to touch anything,” she reminded him.

  Cai swallowed and stepped back. Autumn tried to see only the jagged remnants of the tower, the clouds billowing about them. She turned her back on the gleaming treasures and pulled Cai after her.

  Unfortunately, the next floor was just like the last, as was the one after that. If anything, the toys became more elaborate. There were ships in bottles that rocked against real waves and cups-and-balls that crackled like lightning. The dollhouses could more accurately be called dollcastles, each a confection of turrets and staircases and shining windows.

  Cai gripped her shoulder. “Autumn.”

  His voice was strange. Autumn turned and found that one of the windows had darkened.

  Something crouched there. Something shaped like a bird as large as a wolf. Its talons went tap-tap, tappity-tap against the windowsill.

  Cai murmured a word, and a mote of starlight floated off his staff. Before it went out, Autumn saw
two vast black wings, an eyeless head that held only an enormous curved beak, and far, far too many filthy talons. Though it had no eyes, she knew the creature was staring at her.

  Autumn croaked and staggered back into Cai.

  Two thieves, sirs and madams, the gwyllion murmured with obvious delight. Two thieves. Trespassing where they don’t belong, taking what isn’t theirs. No respect!

  Autumn turned slowly to Cai. “You didn’t take anything, did you?”

  “No!” But Cai’s hand crept to his pocket. “No …”

  He reached inside and withdrew a book. He and Autumn stared at it in horror.

  “I—I barely remember picking it up,” Cai whispered. “All I remember is you saying that Winter would have liked it and wishing that you could have it.”

  “Oh, Cai,” Autumn said. She took the book with shaking fingers. We’re sorry. Here, we’ll give it back.

  She’ll give it back! The gwyllion hopped back and forth. The Lords and Ladies of Above don’t care, do they? The Lords and Ladies are too busy for time-wasting children.

  To Autumn’s horror, the book began to transform in her hand. It became a stack of crumbly leaves glued together with spidersilk. A worm poked its head out of a hole. The toys on the tables changed too, crumbling to leaves and grass blades and twigs and bits of string and other things often carried on the wind.

  The Lords and Ladies don’t care, another voice agreed. A second gwyllion appeared in the window behind them. For the Lords and Ladies own the sky and everything in it. Trespassers!

  Nobody owns the sky, Autumn said.

  She regretted it immediately. The gwyllions froze, staring down their beaks at Autumn and Cai. Feathers rustled, and suddenly there were gwyllions clustering along all the windowsills and wheeling through the sky beyond.

  This Lord proposes that the thieves be eaten alive, one of the gwyllions said.

  No! another exclaimed. Such a mess! This Lady objects to messes. Uncivilized.

  This Lord apologizes to Her Ladyship, the gwyllion said, bowing his beak. The thieves will be killed and then eaten. The eating will be done in an orderly manner, and all shall mind their table manners.

  The second gwyllion nodded. His Lordship is wise.

  The other gwyllions also nodded. Nodded, and sharpened their beaks against the stones.

  “Cai?” Autumn whispered. Her knees wobbled. “There’s—uh—a lot of them.”

  “Yes,” Cai said. His voice was very calm. “Run!”

  Autumn ran. But a flock of gwyllions exploded from the stairwell before they could reach it, beaks clacking with a sound like enormous gardening shears. Their way down was cut off. Cai grabbed Autumn’s hand and dragged her up the stairs.

  “What are you doing?” Autumn yelped. “We can’t go up! Up is bad!”

  “It’s the only direction that doesn’t have gwyllions!” Cai yelled back.

  They raced on, feet thundering like panicked heartbeats. The next floor was empty of anything but a swirl of leaves and debris, and a glassy-eyed doll slowly crumbling into sand. A gwyllion lunged through the window.

  Back! Autumn shouted in the Speech. The gwyllion jerked back with a furious scream.

  Cai shouted an enchantment, and a net of starlight wrapped around the gwyllion, pulling it to the ground. They ran up and up. Cai blasted the stairway behind them with a bolt of starlight. It speared two gwyllions, but it also punched a hole in the tower.

  The tower shuddered and began to list.

  Autumn shrieked and fell against Cai. He steadied her, and they ran on.

  “Here!” he said as they burst onto another floor. This one had fewer windows, and several still had glass, though Autumn doubted that would hinder the gwyllions for long. Cai hurled another bolt down the stairs, then gathered a net of starlight and threw it out the window. A gwyllion that Autumn hadn’t even seen screamed and fell.

  Back! she yelled again and again. Back! Back!

  Cai’s staff pulsed, and the entire stairwell collapsed in a heap of rubble, starlight leaking out of it. At least a dozen gwyllions were crushed. Black feathers filled the air.

  “Cai, no!” Autumn shouted. “You trapped us up here!”

  “You know, Autumn,” Cai said through gritted teeth, his brow furrowed in concentration, “you really need to worry about one thing at a time.”

  A gwyllion soared toward them, scythe-beak gaping, but a coil of starlight wrapped around it and hurled it back. Cai was chanting spells so fast that the incantations ran together into a stream. He shone in the darkness like moonlight on water. It would have been dazzling if they hadn’t been about to die.

  “Watch out!” Cai yelled as the tower let out a terrible groan. His spells had destabilized it—stones and dust rained down on them. Autumn tried not to think of that long, long drop through clouds and more clouds to the ground below.

  That was when she felt it.

  Not it. Him.

  Winter.

  Autumn whipped around. It was as if a map had unfurled before her eyes, the map that had shown Winter’s whereabouts before he went somewhere she couldn’t follow. Winter was close.

  “Cai, Winter’s up here!” Autumn cried.

  Cai turned to stare at her. “What?”

  A gwyllion lunged out of the darkness, its beak aimed at Cai’s throat.

  Back! Autumn screamed with everything in her. The gwyllion crumpled to the ground. Unfortunately, Autumn hadn’t aimed the command but thrown it wide, and Cai fell over too.

  “No, no, no!” Autumn cried. “Cai! I didn’t mean it!” Cai! she yelled in the Speech.

  Then—

  THUD.

  Autumn was knocked off her feet by an impact that rolled through the tower. Light poured across the sky, and the gwyllions screamed in chorus. Feathers wafted into the tower, singed and smelling of an unpleasant sort of roast chicken.

  Autumn ran to the window.

  “Boggart!” she screamed.

  The creature that hung in the sky, painting the night clouds with jets of flame, looked nothing like the boggart. It was a dragon the size of a castle, possibly even the size of Inglenook, so large that one of its fangs could have skewered Autumn vertically if you wanted to think of it that way, which she didn’t, but couldn’t stop herself from doing. And yet there was something in the flash of its black eyes that Autumn knew very well.

  The gwyllions were screaming. They wheeled around the boggart, screaming, Rude! Insolent! Lack of respect! They slashed at him with their talons, but it was like watching moths try to take down a tiger—admirable, but entirely pointless. The boggart released plume after plume of flame, so vast and hot that the clouds dissolved and fell to the earth as steaming rain. The heat beat against Autumn’s face, forcing her back from the window.

  She realized she was shaking. She’d never seen the boggart do anything like this—she hadn’t known he could. She didn’t know any creature that could set the sky on fire like this. Was this really her dear boggart?

  Come on! the boggart snapped, and her fear vanished at the sound of his familiar voice, which held an equally familiar petulance not at all suited to such a situation. He was hovering outside the window, which couldn’t contain even one of his vast eyes. That tower’s going to fall on you, and if your head gets crushed, I can’t put it back together again!

  More stone rained down. Autumn wrapped her arm around Cai and helped him to his feet, and together they raced back to the window.

  “Oh no,” she said when she realized what they had to do. “Oh no, I can’t, oh no—”

  Fortunately, Cai had plenty of practice with stupid heroics. He didn’t even hesitate. He grabbed her around the waist and leaped out the tower window.

  Autumn screamed. They fell for barely three seconds through cloud and nothingness before they landed on the boggart’s vast, scaled back, but those three seconds felt like three hours. She didn’t realize she was still screaming until Cai, who had landed smoothly behind her, clamped his hand over h
er mouth.

  “Sorry,” he said. “My ears.”

  I TOLD you, the boggart raged. I told you not to keep going. I knew that useless magician wouldn’t be able to protect you, but would you listen to me? Nooo—

  Autumn wanted to tell the boggart to shut up, because she could barely breathe with all the steam and feathers hanging in the air, let alone argue, but she also wanted to throw her arms around her boggart and sob with relief. But he was too big to hug just then, and soon she couldn’t focus on anything other than the feeling of her stomach leaping clear out of her body as they careened through the night toward the mountain. Then she was tumbling off the boggart’s back and rolling over grass and stone and hawkweed, and coming to a stop in a heap on the cold bank of a stream.

   13

  IN WHICH AUTUMN IS ENTANGLED

  Everything was hazy after that. Autumn remembered Cai leaning over her, chanting something, and suddenly her head stopped spinning. Then they staggered over the mountain for a while, eyes streaming from the lash of the night wind.

  Autumn woke slowly, covered in blankets and very muddled. Her stomach was inside out, and she ached all over. Had she been sick?

  A familiar voice said, “Autumn?”

  “What time is it, Winter?” she murmured. But Winter didn’t reply.

  Then Autumn opened her eyes and found herself in a tower in Inglenook.

  That shocked her awake, and the memories of last night rushed back. She knew right away she was in Inglenook, not her cozy attic bedroom. Sunlight poured through a circular column of windows that overlooked the Mythroor col and the green darkness of the Gentlewood. And it smelled like Inglenook—of well-banked fires; of old, damp limestone; of the mint and lavender sprigs the housekeepers rubbed into the tapestries to freshen them.