The School between Winter and Fairyland

by Heather Fawcett

  “Wake up,” she chanted. “Wake up, wake up, wake up.”

  She poked him with her walking stick. Cai groaned.

  “Finally!” Autumn dragged Cai to his feet. “You missed a lot. Come on, sleepyhead.”

  Cai mumbled something. To Autumn’s relief, he began moving his legs. With Cai’s arm slung around her shoulders, Autumn stumbled on through the woods, following Choo’s bouncing yellow tail.

  She began to recognize the forest as they ran on—there was the twisted old yew; there the mushroom ring beside the old stump. Autumn summoned the last of her strength and yelled, Boggart!

  Was he still asleep? If so, she doubted she could wake him by shouting. To her immense relief, though, within a few seconds there came a ripple of pure movement among the brambleberries. A familiar voice demanded, What happened?

  “Help me with Cai,” Autumn said. Distaste lashed through her mind, but then the boggart turned himself into a black pony and let Autumn help Cai onto his back.

  “We have to hurry,” Autumn said. “I don’t know if the Hollow Dragon is following us.”

  What? Autumn was taken aback by the fury in the boggart’s voice. The magician made you fight that thing with him?

  “Not exactly,” Autumn said. “We stumbled across him, is all.”

  Oh, well, if you stumbled across him, that’s just fine. The boggart was trotting as though he had fleas, jolting Cai with every step. What were you doing going into the forest without me? Did Cai—

  “Calm down,” Autumn said. “It was my idea. That’s why it turned into a shambles, all right? I thought I could just attack Cai’s problem, and it ended up attacking us.” Autumn felt like kicking herself. “Oh, why do I always make a mess of everything? We barely got away from the Hollow Dragon.”

  Where is he? The boggart turned his pony head around. I’ll teach him not to scare you.

  “Could you?” Autumn said curiously. “He’s like you, boggart—he has no body. Do you think he’s another boggart?”

  No, the boggart said.

  “Why not? The way he moved, it was like—”

  It wasn’t like.

  “Fine!” Autumn was exhausted, and singed, and her hair was sticky with honeysuckle and rose petals, as if she’d stuck her head in a bowl of potpourri. She didn’t have the energy to pry information out of the boggart when he was in one of his moods. “But I don’t want you fighting him. You might break another law, and I already feel bad enough about the last time.”

  What she didn’t say was that she wasn’t at all confident in the boggart’s ability to defeat the Hollow Dragon. The creature she and Cai had met in the woods, which wasn’t really a dragon at all, didn’t seem like something anybody could fight.

  It was better before he came, the boggart muttered. Autumn knew he didn’t mean the Hollow Dragon.

  When they finally emerged from the forest, it was like the lifting of a heavy weight. Autumn hadn’t realized how oppressive the forest had become, as if the Hollow Dragon’s fury had enveloped them as they ran.

  Cai tumbled off the boggart’s back. Autumn and Choo were at his side in an instant, while the boggart became a cat, no doubt to project as much disdain as possible.

  “Are you all right?” Autumn demanded.

  “Yes,” Cai murmured. His eyes were open, but he looked wrung out and limp, like wet laundry.

  “No, you aren’t.” She felt his forehead. She only did that because she’d seen Gran do it—it felt like a regular forehead. “Should we go to the healers?”

  “No.” Cai sat up. “I’m all right. I’m just—I’m sorry.”

  He did sound sorry, so sorry that he looked ready to collapse beneath the weight of it, and Autumn was alarmed. “We got out all right.” She squinted. “Did you have another vision? What did you see?”

  It was clear he’d seen something. His brow was furrowed, his gaze focused on the near distance, as if he was reading a grim book.

  “I saw it happen,” he said. “I was floating outside myself. The Hollow Dragon was nearby—I couldn’t see him, but I could hear him. I think he was dying.” He swallowed. “But I think I was, too.”

  “Was I there?”

  “No.”

  “Oh.” Autumn shrugged. “Then it wasn’t a true vision, Cai. Because when you fight the Hollow Dragon, I’ll be with you.”

  Cai stared. “What?”

  “Why are you so surprised?” Autumn worked her fingers through her hair, trying to dislodge the honeysuckle, but she just ended up getting her fingers stuck. “Of course I will.”

  “Autumn, this isn’t a joke,” Cai said.

  “Really? I thought the Hollow Dragon was hilarious. I was laughing my head off back there while we were running for our lives.”

  “I’m serious.” Cai gazed at her with his strange eyes. “You don’t know what you’re offering.”

  “Cai, listen to me.” Autumn drew a deep breath and put her hands on his shoulders. “You’re useless.”

  He blinked. “I’m useless.”

  “Completely, totally useless. You are the most unscary monster I’ve ever met. On top of that, you’re literally the worst dragonslayer in Eryree. You’re probably the worst dragonslayer in all the realms, even the ones that don’t have dragons in them. What are you going to do the next time you see the Hollow Dragon? Faint more dramatically?”

  “The prophecy—”

  “I don’t care about the prophecy,” Autumn snapped. “Maybe the prophecy doesn’t say anything about me, but it also doesn’t say anything about you having to do this alone.”

  Cai was staring at her. “You’re either the bravest person in the world or a complete lunatic.”

  “I’m not either of those. I’m just not a magician, which means I’m not too busy worrying over magical nonsense to see what’s in front of my face. You can’t fight the Hollow Dragon alone, Cai. You just can’t.”

  Cai was quiet for a long moment. “Nobody has ever offered to help me.”

  Autumn thought that over. “Well, they should have.”

  Cai shook his head. “Autumn, I appreciate everything you’ve done,” he said. “I can’t even say how much. But I have to face the Hollow Dragon by myself. It’s not what you think,” he added quickly, seeing her expression. “I’m not trying to be heroic. It’s that I—I don’t want you to see it happen.”

  Autumn frowned. “What are you talking about?”

  Cai paused. “There are two lines missing at the end of the prophecy. My parents asked Taliesin to keep those secret, because they didn’t want to scare me. But I always knew the prophecy was incomplete—I don’t know how. When Taliesin came to visit when I was six, I made him tell me the rest.”

  Cai recited the prophecy slowly, from the beginning. The air seemed to vibrate as he spoke, as if each word was a note on a harp.

  The lightest winds wander far,

  The quietest hunters draw blood.

  The lowest may walk among stars,

  In some hearts a forest may bud.

  No blade or enchantment will slow

  The empty song in the wilds.

  Ere his thirteenth winter’s snow,

  The beast will fall to the stars’ child,

  Whose fate he will share with his foe,

  From night he came, into night he’ll go.

  Cai fell silent. It took a moment for Autumn to shake off the magic of the words, which made her feel sleepy and still.

  “No,” she murmured. “It can’t— There must be some other explanation.”

  “Maybe.” He gave her a smile, which was awful. Because Autumn knew he didn’t actually mean it, that he was just doing it for her.

  Cai thought he was going to die fighting the Hollow Dragon. He had for a long time.

  “There must be a way around it,” Autumn said. Her voice was too loud. “Maybe the seer meant something else. Maybe—”

  “Now you know why I came to you.” He let out his breath. “You see, I don’t have much time left
to figure this out.”

  Autumn felt numb. “And your parents know?”

  He nodded. “They’ve always done their best to prepare me. I’ve had magic tutors since I could walk, and knights who trained me in swordsmanship.”

  Autumn shook her head. She thought of Cai growing up, knowing that he would never grow older than twelve. Knowing that his parents knew, that they accepted it. She thought of them sending him to expensive tutors, buying him fancy swords, all so that he would be strong enough to fight the Hollow Dragon and save Eryree.

  And then die, like a proper hero.

  “Oh, Cai,” Autumn murmured. She could imagine him when he was little, facing his swordfighting tutors with the same expression, no matter how many times they knocked him down. She’d seen herself how stubborn he was. Choo rested his head on Cai’s knee.

  Autumn clenched her hands into fists. She wished there was something in front of her she could fight—a dragon, a pooka, anything. “How can you be so calm? Doesn’t it make you angry?”

  A shadow passed over Cai’s face, but then it cleared. “I wish I could have kept it from you. But it’s all right, Autumn. The Hollow Dragon has hurt so many people. It has to stop.”

  “And you’re the one who has to stop it,” Autumn said bitterly. “Not your parents. Not the king’s magicians, or the headmaster with all his magic. All those grown-ups aren’t even going to help you?”

  Cai smiled faintly in a way that made him look older than twelve. “Grown-ups never help. They always leave the important things to us.”

  Autumn’s fists clenched. “I don’t believe that. Gran would help. Gran—”

  “Autumn, the prophecy says—”

  “The prophecy can pipe down,” Autumn snapped, brandishing the walking stick. “I’ll fight the prophecy too, along with the Hollow Dragon. You’re not getting rid of me that easily, Cai Morrigan.” Her voice trembled, but she was not going to cry. She didn’t believe in prophecies. Cai wasn’t going to die, because she wasn’t going to let him.

  “Autumn,” he said, “you’re the bravest person I’ve ever met.” He hugged her.

  Autumn didn’t know what to do. People didn’t hug her very often. Gran wasn’t the hugging sort of grandmother—there wasn’t much motherliness about her, when it came down to it—and if she were to hug one of her brothers, they’d probably fear for her health. Jack liked to hug, of course, but he’d hug a wyvern if it turned its back long enough.

  From the shadows there came a terrible growl. It was the sort of growl that could only come from a very large mouth lined with a great many teeth.

  “What was that?” Cai grabbed his staff.

  “It was the boggart.” Autumn would recognize her boggart’s voice anywhere, no matter what shape he took. “Boggart?”

  No reply. The trees rocked in the wind, and the gorse rustled its prickles.

  “Boggart!” Autumn yelled.

  “What’s wrong with him?”

  “He’s upset with me.” Autumn didn’t see the need to tell Cai that he was the reason for the boggart’s anger. “And he’s not well. He had to break one of his laws when he rescued us from the gwyllions. It made him a little bit human.”

  Cai frowned. “That’s not good.”

  “He’s still the boggart,” Autumn said defensively. “Anyway, what’s wrong with him being a bit human?”

  “I don’t know.” Cai looked into the shadows, the frown hovering around his eyes. “Maybe nothing. But Headmaster Neath always said that monsters are only more dangerous than humans because of their powers to beguile and mislead. That a human with the powers of a boggart would tear whole kingdoms apart. He said that even a monster hungry for hearts is only hungry for hearts. A monster’s hunger is a thundercloud that frightens but can only hold so much rain, while human hunger is a bottomless well.”

  “You magicians like talking in riddles,” Autumn said. But she felt the stirrings of unease. Surely there was no reason for it. The boggart’s moods changed with the sky. He’d always forgiven Autumn when they quarreled—why would this time be any different?

  “Are you all right?” she said. “You look … funny.”

  Cai did look funny, though she couldn’t explain how. Something about him had sharpened. His eyes were too dark—no longer like pinecones or mushrooms, but morasses and tree hollows.

  He touched his head. “I—I think so.”

  “Wore yourself out with all that fainting, I bet,” Autumn said. She hid her worry and helped Cai to his feet. “You’d make an excellent maiden in a ballad, you would. Let’s get you back to the castle.”

  She looked over her shoulder, hoping to catch the telltale glint of claws. But the shadows were empty. The boggart was gone.

   17

  IN WHICH AUTUMN HAS A TERRIBLE IDEA

  The next day, Autumn took every opportunity to look for the boggart. He didn’t return to the old beastkeepers’ hut, nor did he come out when she stood at the edge of the Gentlewood and called to him in the Speech. Where else could he be?

  The sky stayed low and gray, the clouds sagging under their burden of rain. It was one of those days when dawn brought with it only a watery version of night. And yet every splash of rain across her face, cold as it was, came as a relief. The weather was still coming from the sea, laced with salt and warmer than the storms that blew down from the north.

  “That’s right,” Autumn muttered to the sky as she stomped across the mountainside. “You just wait. He’s not ready for you yet.”

  She kept herself busy with her chores and, of course, with fretting over Winter. The day after their misadventure in the Gentlewood, Cai sent Autumn a very strange gift. It was a beautiful gray-and-gold feathered mask with a long, wolfish snout. Attached to it was a note inviting her to the Hallowtide Masque in Cai’s neat, clear handwriting. Cai thought the masque would be the perfect opportunity to look for the third cloud tower.

  It took Autumn half an hour to read the short message, tracing each letter with her fingertip as she sounded them out. When she finally had it, her heart was pounding.

  Hallowtide took place in mid-November and celebrated the coming of winter. It was a festival of games and pranks, the one time when rank disappeared and servants and commoners, magicians and nobility alike dressed in costumes and mingled together. Inglenook held the masque in the banquet hall—that night, the rest of the school would be empty.

  Autumn set aside the note with shaking hands. Would they find Winter on Hallowtide? They’d failed to find the third tower before, and there was no particular reason why this time should be different.

  But it felt different. Maybe it was because Hallowtide was a time when impossible things felt possible. Or maybe it was because Winter had disappeared soon after Hallowtide, and now the great wheel of the year was returning to the place where everything had gone wrong, and maybe Winter would return with it. Whatever the reason, Autumn clung to the new stirring of hope.

  On the morning of the masque, Gran came upon Autumn in the cellar, where she had been hoping to find the boggart nestled among the flour or preserves. Gran snorted when Autumn told her the boggart was missing.

  “He’s been ill,” Autumn said defensively. “And he’s upset with me. I have to talk to him.”

  “Never heard of a boggart being ill,” Gran said. “He’s upset, you say? What makes you think that’s your problem? Monsters who’ve walked the earth since before we mortals could light fires or spin cloth don’t get to be angry with children. Leave him to his moping and moaning.”

  “But he seems different, Gran.” Autumn shook her head. “Did he ever get upset with your sister?”

  Gran’s sister had been the boggart’s previous companion until her death, a year before Autumn was born. Usually, Gran didn’t like talking about her sister—her shoulders would stiffen whenever her name came up, and she’d bustle off somewhere. Autumn wondered if she would answer.

  “Not upset, exactly,” Gran said after a long moment. “Thoug
h that one’s always been given to tantrums when he doesn’t get his way. No, the only time I saw him upset was when Jane got sick. Wouldn’t leave her side either night or day, and woe betide any healer who suggested bloodletting or any such quackery—he’d throw them through the window. I was certain the old trickster was done for when she died. He didn’t move for years—just stayed there under her headstone, curled up small. Some nights there’d come this wild wailing—even the students in their towers could hear it, they said. But, for the most part, you’d never know if he was still there, or if he’d simply faded away, like my Janie.” Gran pressed her lips together. “Until you came along.”

  Autumn knew the rest of the story, though she didn’t remember it herself. One day, she’d escaped from her nursemaid—the first of many successful escape attempts—and gone tottering and tumbling down the mountainside. She’d stumbled across the mossy gravestone and the boggart snoring gently beneath it. Delighted by the discovery of a snoring nothingness, she’d set about poking the boggart until he awoke. By that point, Autumn had torn her hands and knees falling into gorse bushes and had a painful lump at the back of her head. The boggart, seeing her pitiful state, had taken Autumn home. He hadn’t returned to his little hollow beneath the headstone but had slept at the foot of Autumn’s bed in the shape of a hare, or sometimes a cat, which infant Autumn had liked better, until she was healed. Eventually, he returned to his old sanctuary, the former beastkeepers’ hut, where he’d lived with generations of Malogs.

  “You’ll have enough to keep you busy today without worrying about that malcontent,” Gran said. “Come.”

  Puzzled, Autumn followed Gran to the menagerie. Choo trotted behind them, tail swinging, but Gran made him wait outside. He sat down smartly, delighted to be entrusted with the role of guard dog.

  “Gran, what about the gwarthegs?” Autumn said. “I thought we were moving them to the eastern pasture today.”

  “That can wait. We’ve a few new guests, you see.”

  “Oh!” Autumn felt a shiver of excitement. New monsters! Had Gran found a clutch of dragon eggs?