The School between Winter and Fairyland

by Heather Fawcett

  Autumn sat up. She was in a beautiful oak bed canopied in sky-blue velveteen. The bed was big enough to fit three girls and looked more like a cake than anything, with its layers of creamy silks and soft furs. She glanced across the room, and there was Cai, reposing with a book atop an equally ornate bed.

  “You’re awake.” His expression was strange—had she been talking in her sleep? She couldn’t remember. “How do you feel?”

  Autumn blinked. “What am I doing here?”

  “I didn’t know where else to go,” Cai said. “I didn’t think it would be a good idea to take you home all cut up and dirty. Especially when your grandmother didn’t know you were out. I managed to sneak us into the castle through one of my shortcuts without anyone seeing.”

  Autumn lifted her hands. Her palms were bandaged. Dimly, she remembered taking a tumble down a steep slope in the mountainside, a tumble halted by a prickly gorse bush.

  “I sent a message to your grandmother.” Cai looked guilty. “I said you were helping me with another essay. She thinks you left before sunrise.”

  “Good thinking.” Autumn rubbed her head and felt an acorn-size lump. “What time is it? Won’t you be late for your morning classes?”

  “I have a few minutes.” Cai sounded so unconcerned about the prospect of lateness that Autumn’s mind boggled. “Are you hungry? I had the servants bring breakfast. I met them at the door so they wouldn’t see you.”

  He gestured to the table by her bed, where a tray of toast and marmalade and soft-boiled eggs sat next to a pot of tea. The teapot was wrapped in a thick flannel cozy and the tea was still hot. Autumn was hungry, but she could only pick at the food. Alongside the cup was a square of fresh honeycomb, an extravagance beyond her imagining. She popped it into her tea and watched it dissolve, then slurped up the remnants before she could stop herself. The honeycomb crunched wetly when she bit down, oozing summer sweetness.

  Autumn felt dizzy. She was in the students’ tower in Inglenook, eating honeycomb brought for her by servants. She felt like a bedraggled duck who had accidentally wandered into a peacock aviary. She focused on the only thing that mattered.

  “Cai, I felt Winter in that tower,” she said. “We have to go back.”

  She expected him to argue, to say it was too dangerous, but then she remembered that he was Cai Morrigan, hero of a dozen stories. He drummed his fingers on his knee thoughtfully. He looked well, if a little pale, his hair combed and his clothes clean. Not at all like a boy who’d climbed up into the clouds and fended off a horde of gwyllions. Autumn had only to look at the pillow her head had just vacated—scattered with soil and tufts of gorse—to know she was nowhere near as presentable.

  “Well?” she said as he just sat there, thinking. Her voice rose. “You believe me, don’t you? I know he’s up there. I don’t know where exactly, or how, but we have to go back, Cai—”

  “I believe you,” he said simply, and Autumn heaved a sigh. “We go back as soon as I can replenish my magic—a day or two should do it.”

  They went over their plans, and Autumn felt herself relax a bit, despite the strangeness of her surroundings. Talking to Cai was so easy. Apart from Winter, he was the only person she’d met who didn’t find her loud or annoying or simply too much. She supposed that was what having a friend felt like. She’d never had one of those before, apart from Ceredwen. And really, Ceredwen had always been more of a fan than a friend.

  Someone tapped on the door, and Autumn started like a thief with her hand in a jewelry box. A tall girl with dark skin and black hair drawn back in an elegantly messy bun poked her head in.

  “Can I grab my books, Cai?”

  “Of course,” Cai said, looking embarrassed. “Bryony, you didn’t need to—”

  “That’s all right.” The girl grabbed a stack of books off the floor, giving Autumn a quick, blank stare. After she left, Autumn rounded on Cai.

  “Is this her bed?” she demanded.

  “I was going to sleep on the floor,” Cai said. “But Bryony insisted. You were in rough shape.”

  “And your roommate didn’t think it was strange, you stumbling into the tower in the middle of the night with one of the servants, all covered in mud and magic?” Autumn fell back against the pillow and found she could answer her own question. “No. Of course she didn’t.”

  “It’s not the first time I’ve snuck out at night,” Cai said, almost apologetically. “Bryony’s used to it by now. She’ll tell everyone the same story I told your gran, that you’re helping me with an essay.”

  “Will people believe that?”

  Cai made a shrugging face. “People believe what they want to.”

  Autumn supposed that was true, especially where Cai was concerned. She was trying not to be impressed by it all—how the entire world seemed to orient itself around Cai, even roommates, who jumped at the chance to give up their beds to strange, dirty servants just because they were in Cai’s company. By now, she was used to seeing Cai as Just Cai—not Cai Morrigan, Hero of Eryree—and she didn’t want that to change.

  She finished her tea and carefully washed off the worst of the dirt and blood in the bathroom. The taps were gold and the sink had been carved into intricate ridges like a scallop shell, and she didn’t want to touch anything. Her hair was a bird’s nest that would require some serious elbow grease to sort out, so she just stuffed it back under her housekeeper’s kerchief.

  She gazed into the mirror and imagined Winter looking back at her. Determination burned inside her like embers.

  “I know where you are now,” she whispered. “And I’m going to bring you back.”

  When she got out, Cai had his cloak on, and they left the dormitory together. Near the bottom of the tower was a study overlooking the vegetable garden. The study was large but cozy, the fire crackling in the hearth and armchairs arranged haphazardly around tables.

  Autumn saw all that, but what really drew her eye were the small things. The salted chocolates lying under a chair, perhaps fallen unnoticed from a satchel because the owner had never bothered to ration them. The hats and gloves and scarves, all in leather or the finest angora and gleaming with magic, strewn about the floor with no thought given to the risk of stains or tears. The flashes of gold competing with the faint background shimmer of enchantment—cuff links and pocket watches; bracelets and rings. Little luxuries that made Autumn so aware of the holes in her old boots that she almost felt them boring into her toes.

  Every head in the study—and there were quite a few heads in attendance—swiveled toward them. Cai didn’t seem to notice. His friends greeted him as he passed, and he answered calmly. Autumn, on the other hand, was oddly conscious of her every step, and probably looked like a marionette. Even more alarming than the stares were the whispers that followed in her wake.

  “Is that her?”

  “One of the beastkeepers, I think—”

  “No, she’s a housekeeper. I saw her changing the linens once.”

  “—heard she’s not human, she’s part monster or something—”

  “Cai’s helping her break in a new dragon, Gawain said.”

  “What’s he doing helping a servant?”

  “I always said there was something off about him—”

  Few of the stares were friendly. One of the older boys muttered something to his friends as she passed, and they sniggered. Then she and Cai were through the study and descending the last staircase. Autumn nearly sprinted toward the first servants’ hallway she saw, but Cai grabbed her hand.

  “Are you all right?” He was frowning. “I’m sorry about all that. Students always gossip. They think I had something to do with the dragon last night, so they’re guessing you did, too.”

  “What? They saw the boggart?”

  Cai raised his eyebrows. “With all that flame? Plus, he was as big as a mountain. He was a little hard to miss.”

  Autumn wished she could tell Cai how strange she felt, as if she were wearing someone else’s skin, but
Cai would never understand. How could he? He’d been attracting stares and gossip since he could crawl.

  She thought of Anurin. Mud’s not meant to gleam. What had she gotten herself tangled up in?

  “Cai!” Winifred was beckoning to him from down the hall, standing with two other friends of Cai’s whose names Autumn didn’t know, all three of them alight with magic with their glowing staffs and glittering cloaks. As Cai was, and as Autumn decidedly was not. Her feeling of strangeness deepened.

  “I’m going to be late,” she said, and she fled toward the familiarity of the beastkeepers’ cottage, and her familiar invisibility.

   14

  IN WHICH THE DARK COMES FOR WINTER

  – LAST MONTH –

  Maddie taught Winter how to move between the mirrors in Inglenook and how to catch the attention of the outsiders. Usually, he could only show himself for a second or two, but sometimes he managed to mouth a few words at them. The outsiders would look confused, and some would touch the mirror briefly. But then they always turned away.

  Autumn. He needed Autumn to see him. Somehow, he had to find her.

  It was hard to practice as often as he wanted to because he kept losing himself. There would be hours, possibly days or weeks—for time had no meaning in the mirror world—where he would simply drift. It was as if a tide, cold and gray, was pulling him out to sea. It grew stronger and stronger, that gray tide, though Winter fought it as hard as he could.

  Each time, when he came back to himself, it was a little harder to remember his name. And each time, he looked a little grayer, a little blurrier.

  These weren’t easy times. But Winter never lost hope, for he knew Autumn would find him. He knew because she was Autumn, and Autumn would never let him go.

  He came to know several of the other mirror-folk—who, to Winter’s dismay, all referred to themselves as ghosts, and would only sigh and shake their gray heads when he argued.

  “Poor thing,” they said. “You were too young when you went.”

  “But I didn’t,” he always replied. How could he make them listen? They weren’t dead. They weren’t dead for the simple reason that Autumn was going to rescue them. It made perfect sense to him.

  Among them was Tom, who had owned a cat and worried whether anybody was feeding her; Daw, whose only memory was of a red wheelbarrow; and Gwendolyn, who had been a senior apprentice at Inglenook and spent all her time trying to remember her incantations. They called her the Old One sometimes, for she had been there longest of all of them, and only Winter seemed to remember that there had been someone else who had been called that before.

  Winter helped them remember their names the same way he had with Maddie. Some, though, were beyond remembering, including the smudged figure who drifted at the edge of their little group. She eventually disappeared, and Winter was sad at first, but then, like the others, he forgot her.

  “What’s my name?” Tom asked Winter one day. Tom asked whenever they saw each other, whenever they both stopped drifting.

  Winter wrinkled his brow. “Tom,” he said finally, and the man’s gray face brightened.

  Though Winter sometimes forgot his own name, he didn’t ask the others. They never remembered. He carried all their names around with him as best he could, jostling inside him like keys in a pocket, though he knew it made it harder for him to remember his own. As time passed, Winter began to feel thin. He clung to the few memories he had, but they kept slipping away. How much longer could he hold on to them?

  Then one day, when he was drifting through the mirrors on the fourth floor, he saw her.

  She was pacing up and down a deserted corridor, muttering to herself. Her hair was white and tangled, twigs sticking out here and there, and her boots were muddy up to the calves. Clomp, clomp, clomp, they went. She held a lantern in one hand and was lifting up the tapestries one by one. It was clear she was looking for something.

  Or someone.

  Every once in a while, the girl muttered orders at things, or kicked them. “Move it,” she hissed at a tapestry that wouldn’t come free of the wall. “Why, you old rotter.”

  She wrenched at it as if it had given her a grievous insult, and the bolts gave way. The girl wore an expression Winter knew well—brows lowered over narrowed eyes, mouth flattened, as if she were marching into battle.

  Winter felt a rush of desperate joy. He was in a window just then—for windows worked like mirrors at certain times of day. He pressed himself against it and shouted with all his might:

  Autumn!

  And she turned, and she saw him. She rushed at the window, her face red, her mouth forming words he couldn’t hear. Winter! she shouted into his mind.

  Autumn, I’m stuck, Winter shouted back. I’m still here. There are others with me—we can’t get out of the mirrors!

  He didn’t know how much she heard. He could no longer hear her voice in his thoughts. She seemed to be pounding on the glass, but he couldn’t hear that either. Could she still see him? He pressed his hands against the glass the way Maddie had taught him and focused.

  Something moved at the edge of his sight.

  Winter turned, and his stomach plummeted. To his left, everything was shadow. The shadow had no shape or form—it was simply an absence. In that direction, there was no mirror, no Inglenook. And yet Winter knew that the shadow was watching him. It crept closer, swallowing the reflection of the corridor.

  It was the Dark.

  Winter ran. He darted from mirror to window to mirror. The other mirror-folk had warned him about the Dark. It followed them, too, and the more you forgot, the more often you saw it. The folk who vanished, the ones who were now forgotten except as the folk who vanished, had complained, shortly before they disappeared, that the Dark never left them alone.

  Winter was always able to escape the Dark, and this time was no exception. By the time he reached the kitchen mirror deep beneath the school, he had shaken it.

  He went back to the window. The corridor beyond was full of shadows now. How long had he been running from the Dark?

  Too long. Autumn was gone. She had left him.

  Winter rested his head against the glass. He tried to tell himself that Autumn couldn’t have known where he’d gone, or if he would come back, but he was sweaty and sick, and so cold. A strange cold that nestled deep inside him. He’d escaped the Dark, but for how long? For the first time, despair crept into his heart.

  He slumped to the ground. When the gray tide pulled at him again, he let it carry him away.

   15

  IN WHICH AUTUMN’S PLAN HAS HOLES

  Cai kept his promise. The next night, they went back to the Silver Tower.

  This time, the boggart wasn’t with them. When Autumn had gone to the old beastkeepers’ hut, he hadn’t been there. It was strange. The boggart was always easy to find—all boggarts were easy to find, given their homebody natures. He was clearly still angry at her.

  When they stepped through the fireplace, they found a gaping hole in the side of the tower. The first staircase had completely collapsed, and the tower had a distinct lean. Clouds clung to the soggy mountainside, swollen with rain. The wind that billowed through the enchanted tower was wet and cold, and Autumn was soon shivering. Cai shifted stones and rubble with tiny shovels made of starlight while Autumn wore a groove in the floor stomping back and forth, frustrated by her uselessness.

  “It’s no use,” he said at last. “It’s not just wood and stone blocking the way, you see—it’s magic. The spells are torn and tangled together. If I pull at one, the rest may come loose, and the tower will collapse. Or maybe I’ll blast a hole in the sky or turn myself inside out. You can’t predict these things.”

  Autumn didn’t reply.

  “I’m sorry,” Cai said quietly.

  He sat down beside her. Autumn brushed away tears, and he pretended not to notice.

  “At least we know we’re on the right track,” Cai said. “You felt Winter up there above the school. That’s
something. I’ll keep looking for the third cloud tower.”

  Autumn nodded. Cai was right—she couldn’t forget that they had a trail now, and even a trail leading into the sky was better than no trail at all. It was equally clear that Cai was no longer humoring her. He believed her completely and had fully donned his hero guise now that he had somebody to rescue. But, if anything, the ache inside her only worsened. What had happened to Winter? Would he still be himself when they pulled him out of the enchantment he was tangled in?

  And if they were closer to finding him, why did it feel like he was moving farther away?

  “Where are you?” she whispered to the swirl of clouds and rain.

  She took to visiting the bay window as often as she could. Sometimes she fell asleep there, head resting upon the cold glass. But he never appeared again, and though her determination never wavered, each time she left with her heart a little heavier.

  She was glad for the distraction of Cai’s lessons, but their progress there was just as discouraging. She tried introducing Cai to Amfidzel while the snowy dragon puttered around her garden, reasoning that there were quite a few things in the world more intimidating than a dragon with a spade in her mouth neatly digging up dandelions. Indeed, Amfidzel had never seemed less interested in disemboweling someone and had even taken a step back when she saw Cai, bleating worried queries about whether he’d come to practice dragon-killing spells on her. Cai had promptly eased her fears by keeling over backward, landing in a boneless sprawl in Amfidzel’s strawberry patch. The dragon had been quite happy to see the back of them—or, at least, to see the back of Autumn as she dragged Cai from the garden.

  Next Autumn introduced Cai to one of the wyverns, who were among the least dangerous dragons of all. Wyverns were two-legged, and only those who lived in the snowy reaches of the Boreal Wastes could breathe fire. Their most dangerous quality was their temper—a wyvern would claw you to death just for looking at them sideways. The menagerie’s wyverns were both elderly, and while they remained every bit as peevish as their brethren, they had lost the motivation to do much about it beyond a few growls and clawing gestures. They spent most of their days asleep, tangled together in a pile of limbs and scales in their sunny corner of the menagerie or lazing about the overgrown garden at the forest’s edge they had tended when they were young. Autumn had chained the eldest wyvern securely to a tree, which the dragon suffered only in exchange for a crab-apple sapling and the promise of two hours’ weeding. After adjusting the chain beneath her wings, she had curled her serpentine body into a comma and gone to sleep.