Winter gazed back at her sadly. “I had to, Autumn. I knew you’d never be able to. It’s the right thing to do—Cai knows.”
The star that had been circling Mythroor slowed. Autumn thought she caught the shimmer of something in the air—a thread like the one that had connected her to Cai, this one joining Cai’s staff to the star. The star, no longer having enough magic to propel it, recoiled against the thread. The thread pulled taut, and then the star was falling, falling in a blaze of gold and silver. The star hit Cai squarely in the chest and burst apart in shower after shower of light. Autumn screamed.
But Cai was a star magician, and starlight couldn’t hurt him. Or at least, it couldn’t hurt the boy who should have been Cai Morrigan, the boy whose face Cai had been wearing since they were babies. That boy sagged to the ground, and another boy, bodiless now, drifted out of the explosion of starlight and tasted the air.
“Cai!” Autumn screamed. She could barely separate him from the shifting shadows and light.
The star had sliced across the Hollow Dragon’s side as it careened past, and now dragon scales floated through the air like jewels. The monster gave a shuddering roar, and then it folded to the ground.
Something rose out of the limp dragonskin. A ripple of shadowy motion that joined Cai as he hovered glittering in the air. The two ripples whirled around each other, one laced with ash and embers, the other glazed with starlight, and then they darted into the gloom of the Gentlewood.
Autumn didn’t even look at the boy lying limply on the grass, starlight pooling around him. That boy wasn’t Cai, and never had been.
Autumn ran.
She ran so hard her feet churned up mud and grass. She tripped over a hillock and was up and running again before she even felt the pain.
“Cai!” she yelled. “Cai!”
She jumped over the ancient stone fence that had been worn down to a scattering of stones, and the tangle of gorse and mushroomed stumps that lined Glammary Crag. She knew the shape of Mythroor better than her own palm.
But she forgot about the mud.
Just below the crag was a tremendous puddle that only went dry at the height of summer. Autumn’s left boot sank into it up to the ankle, but this didn’t stop her, for her downward momentum was too great. She came free of the boot and kept going, rolling over and over.
When Autumn finally came to a stop, she was covered in mud and leaves and wet. Her cloak was torn, and her palms were bloody. She let out a low groan, the only sound she could manage.
Some time later she became aware of a familiar presence at her elbow, and a familiar hand on her back. She didn’t raise her head. Then, some time after that, a cold nose nuzzled her and a warm tongue smelling strongly of trout licked her cheek. Strong hands wrapped around her shoulders and lifted her out of the mud. She became aware that her teeth were clacking from the cold. She didn’t understand what she was seeing for a moment—the view was oddly hazy, and her eyelashes were tangled with something wet and cold. Then she realized that it was snowing.
“Cai’s gone,” she said, or tried to say. Through her tears and running nose and the mess of mud stuck to her face, it didn’t really sound like words. Winter took her hand.
“I know he is, child,” Gran said. “I know.”
Choo gave a whine. He was staring into the dark forest, his tail whipping back and forth.
“What about Inglenook?” Emys’s voice said from somewhere behind Autumn. “The fires—”
Gran snorted. “Let’s leave the magicians to clean up their own mess. I think we’ve done enough for one night, don’t you?”
And she lifted Autumn as easily as a lamb and carried her home through the gentle snowfall, Choo and her brothers trailing behind.
24
IN WHICH THEY GO BACK TO WHERE THEY BEGAN
Autumn sat in the grass amid the wan February sunlight, muttering to herself. Cloud shadows drifted by every few minutes, darkening the book in her lap—which was giving her enough trouble as it was—and draining the warmth from the air. She pulled up the hood of her Inglenook cloak.
She sat on the lawn below the school, keeping an eye on Amfidzel puttering about below. It was nearly three months after Hallowtide. The school looked much the same up there on the mountainside, puffing smoke as usual, but it didn’t feel the same. Ever since Headmaster Neath had recovered, he’d been making a flurry of changes at Inglenook. Among them, reading lessons for all the servants.
Autumn glared down at her book, as if that might convince it to speak. She didn’t think she would ever be much of a reader. Still, she couldn’t deny that it was a satisfying thing to pick up a book and see words rather than a labyrinth of black scratches. It made her a little less annoyed with Winter for suggesting to Headmaster Neath that all the Inglenook servants be given a proper education. The headmaster was suddenly falling all over himself with eagerness to grant the Malogs’ every request—which was nice but extremely disconcerting. Gran had twice chased away a small army of carpenters who had descended upon the cottage with measuring tapes, all sent by the headmaster to build them a nice addition. Autumn suspected Gran would relent eventually, if only out of exhaustion.
The Gentlewood rocked in the breeze. Autumn often found herself gazing at it these days. The sunlight made the dark, wet boughs glimmer as if enchanted.
She forced her gaze back to the book, though she was no longer reading it. It was strange. She had thought that when she found Winter, she would be happy—all the way happy, not just mostly happy. Gran had said that was just the way happiness worked much of the time, that it was like a slippery fish that kept darting just out of reach. Autumn had been so annoyed that she’d stomped out to the garden and worn a trench in Gran’s potato patch. She’d felt a little better after that.
She didn’t have to look up to know that Winter was behind her. He crouched on the grass, regarding her book with a wry smile. With him was Choo, who snuffled at the strange object in Autumn’s hands, puzzled.
“Didn’t you finish chapter three yesterday?” Winter said.
“Shush,” Autumn replied. “I had to go back. The story wasn’t making sense. Can’t you just tell me what happens?”
“No,” Winter said happily. “Are you ready to go?”
Autumn nodded with relief and shoved the book into her pack. Together, she and Winter dashed down the mountain path with Choo barking at their heels. The days were growing longer, and though it was nearly suppertime, sunlight lingered in the sky. They passed Inglenook’s ghost tree, or what remained of it. Amfidzel paced around the tree with a rake in her mouth while Jack looked on. The fire in the Hollow Dragon’s throat had burned hotter and faster than ordinary fire. The tree was a charcoal shell now, but Amfidzel had sniffed out a seed, dormant but alive, near the dripline. She intended to plant it beside the mother hawthorn and nurse it to life. The dragon wasn’t acting out of kindness; as a gardener, she had been horrified by the loss of such a venerable old tree. Autumn hoped she would have more success with hawthorns than she did with roses.
“Wait!” a small yet surprisingly commanding voice yelled. “Wait!”
Autumn heaved a sigh. Blue raced down the mountainside toward them, her dark hair streaming in the wind. The girl had started her lessons at Inglenook a month ago. Her staff held only an ember of moonlight at the tip, for she hadn’t yet learned how to gather it properly. She didn’t seem to have noticed, though, for she held the staff like a queen’s scepter.
“You’re going into the forest,” she said. “I’m coming with you.”
“Blue, it’s not—” Autumn began, but the little girl marched ahead of them without a backward glance. Autumn looked at Winter, who raised his eyebrows.
Blue came to a halt at the forest’s edge and glared at the trees as if expecting them to leap out of her way. “Over here,” Autumn called, indicating the path that was little more than a stain in the ground, invisible unless you knew where to look. Blue hustled over to it as if she’d known
where it was all along.
The forest was quiet. The bluebells swayed against the patchy snow, which had turned wet and muddy in the chill February rains. It was that awkward time when spring seemed to come and go, one day dotting the bare boughs with tiny buds that sparkled with melted frost, the next dashing for cover as winter roared back to life.
The Gentlewood was slowly returning to its old cantankerous self. Monsters that had been stirred from long slumbers by the Hollow Dragon’s rage had gone back to their blankets of moss. Dragons were less prickly and more preoccupied with their gardens. Trees tucked their roots back into the ground. The forest itself seemed asleep, the way it used to in the winter. That didn’t mean the monsters had left, or that the paths were any less inclined to trickery. But the fury and hatred that had soaked into the bones of the forest like poisonous rain was gone. Gran said she didn’t think the king’s knights would have any trouble pruning the trees back from Eryree’s borders this year.
Autumn and Winter left the path and wove through the trees to the bit of clearing that had once housed a garden—now rather sad and trodden on, apart from the honeysuckle, which could survive anything, including dragon combat. The folded dragon was alive, but Gran said he was hurt, and would likely sleep until he was well again.
After a few moments and a lot of crashing, Blue emerged from the forest behind them, her cheeks red and her hair snagged with twigs. She didn’t pause to pat Choo as he ran hopping circles around her, and he hopped all the more, delighted by his own anticipation.
“This is where you meet him?” Blue surveyed the clearing with disdain, as if she had expected a reception room.
“I don’t meet him anywhere,” Autumn said, trying to keep the annoyance from her voice. She knew she should feel sorry for Blue, who after all had known Cai better than Autumn had, but the little girl had a way of repelling sympathy, like rain off a duck.
Blue’s eyes narrowed. “Your brother said you visit him.”
“Which brother?”
She frowned. “The one who looks like he was hit on the head.”
Autumn sighed. “That’s wishful thinking. I haven’t seen Cai since Hallowtide.”
“Then why do you come here?”
Autumn didn’t have an answer to that. She knew that Cai had gone back to his forest as he’d always longed to do. That he had family who loved him, even if that family was a soul-eating monster.
And yet.
And yet someone had smashed the mirror in the headmaster’s second office and rescued the people slumbering by the fire a few days after Hallowtide. They had come wandering down the stairs, a little unsteady on their feet but decidedly alive and whole.
And someone had given back the headmaster’s soul late that night as he lay sprawled in the grass, collecting frost, while the masters and students raced to and fro, enchanting the lingering monsters and putting out fires.
And someone had left a neat pile of children’s books on the front step of the beastkeepers’ cottage on Midwinter’s Eve. Jack thought they had been left there by the Spirit of Winter, because he still believed in the Spirit of Winter, the skinny, bearded old man who traveled across Eryree on the longest night of the year, borne by the icy winds, bringing gifts for well-behaved children.
Autumn had no proof that Cai had done any of those things. But she’d had no proof that Winter was still alive, not really. Sometimes hope was just as important as proof.
And so she waited.
After a while, Blue began to shiver. The forest air was wet, and the cold had a way of seeping inside you.
“You can go back to the castle,” Autumn said. “He’s probably not going to come.”
Blue glowered at Autumn. “He’s my brother. Not yours.”
Autumn bit her tongue. Blue was one of the most ferociously spoiled children she’d ever met—which was saying something, given that she worked at Inglenook. She often had the sense that the little girl had never heard the word no in her life. She suspected it was largely Cai’s doing.
“You have all sorts of brothers,” Blue said, an odd heat in her voice. “Now I don’t even have one. Why do you get so many, when I don’t have one?”
Autumn was astonished into silence. She’d had no idea that her overabundance of brothers was something anybody else would want, let alone be jealous about. “You have a brother,” she said finally. “You have Cai.”
“Him!” Blue crossed her arms. “I haven’t decided if he’s my brother or not.”
“That’s not something you get to decide,” Autumn said. “Trust me.”
“Is too,” Blue said mulishly. “He might be my brother, or he might not. But I know Cai’s my brother. The real Cai, the one who left.”
Autumn pressed her lips together. She knew what Blue meant. Cai—whom she’d taken to thinking of as the Other Cai—had come to visit her a few days after Hallowtide. He had been like a newborn baby, if newborn babies could speak and weave complicated enchantments. He had thanked her for rescuing him. He had no memory of anything before that night, apart from a few fragments here and there. Autumn had felt sorry for him, but all the same, she wished he hadn’t come. He was a perfectly nice boy, and when he left, he had smiled at her. His smile was warm and lopsided. It was a good smile. It wasn’t Cai’s smile.
Her Cai was gone.
Blue glared into the forest. “I’m going to find him, you know. I’ll find him and bring him back.”
Autumn suppressed a sigh. “How are you going to do that?” The girl glowered. She didn’t have an answer, and she knew it. “You’ll see,” she finally spat. Then she picked up her skirts and fled through the forest, back toward Inglenook, making a fearsome noise through the undergrowth. Autumn and Winter exchanged one of their shared looks, the kind with words in them that they didn’t need to speak, and he followed Blue on quiet feet.
Autumn tucked her legs beneath her, shivering as the stony cold soaked into her skin. She wished the boggart was there. But even though she’d forgiven the boggart for what he’d done—because how could you not forgive a monster for being monstrous?—he was avoiding her. He slept and slept, folding himself up under the floor of the cottage, where he could absorb the warmth of the fireplace, or sometimes in the chimney, from which he would emerge stinking of woodsmoke. Gran said that he felt guilty and didn’t know what to do about it. If true, he was the first boggart to feel guilty in the history of boggarts, and Autumn didn’t blame him for his confusion. She supposed that just as Cai was going to have to learn how to be a monster, the boggart would have to learn how to be human.
Autumn’s thoughts were just turning to the warmth of the beastkeepers’ cottage, and dinner, when Choo sneezed.
Autumn stiffened. Choo sat gazing into the forest, panting but alert. Despite his stillness, excitement ran through the lines of his body. He sat like that in front of the door a few minutes before Gran got home. Only now there was no door; there was a forest of trees with spaces between them, spaces filled with shadow that deepened like the sea. The birds were silent, as if holding their breath.
Autumn?
Autumn was on her feet in an instant. “Cai!”
She wanted to lunge forward and hug him—a ridiculous urge. Instead, her heart in her throat, she darted back and forth before the trees. She couldn’t see a thing.
“Where are you?” Frustrated, she stamped her foot. “You’re not hiding, are you? Cai!”
No, he said a little sheepishly. Sorry. I didn’t want to startle you.
Something rustled among the branches in a deliberate sort of way, drawing Autumn’s gaze. She squinted. There wasn’t much to see, though, apart from a blur of motion. Cai had a little bit more substance than the boggart, but only a little. It was a shadowy, shifting kind of substance, like tree branches waving in the night, the dark opposite of his old starlight glimmer. Choo ran happy circles around the blurry space.
I’m sorry, Cai said. I can’t stay very long. It’s too dangerous. I’m dangerous. And m
y brother’s still angry at the magicians.
Autumn could practically hear him blushing. Could a shadow blush?
She burst into tears.
Autumn, Cai said, it’s all right.
“No, it isn’t,” she blubbered. “I said I would help you fight the Hollow Dragon. But I didn’t do anything.”
Of course you did! Cai sounded bewildered. He f lickered a little in the fading light. I needed you, Autumn. Without you, I never would have gone back to where I belong. To where I began. I never would have been free.
“Free,” Autumn repeated. Her tears were drying, leaving behind a cold, dull emptiness. Cai had what he wanted now.
To leave.
Cai flitted back and forth. His thoughts were all muddled, and Autumn knew he was searching for a way to comfort her, to make things right, like he always did. She felt a stab of surprise from his direction. You’re wearing an Inglenook cloak! he said. Is it—
“It’s mine.” Autumn looked down at her sleeves. “After everything that happened on Hallowtide, the king decided that hedgewitches have to be taught at Inglenook again. He sent knights across Eryree, looking for teachers. Apparently there’s a few folks who still remember the old ways, though they don’t call themselves hedgewitches anymore. As soon as they track them down, us Malogs are going to start our studies, along with any other hedgewitch kids they find.”
Oh, Autumn, Cai said. I’m so glad.
Autumn said nothing.
Isn’t that what you wanted? Cai said. I saw how you always looked at Inglenook.
“It’s what I wanted.” Indeed, the thought of attending classes at Inglenook filled her with such astonishment at times that she felt like Choo, ready to run delighted circles round and round the castle. She thought of Sir Emerick’s words about wanting to want something. In truth, she’d always known what she wanted, she just hadn’t let herself feel it. She still struggled with it, sometimes, for it all seemed like much more than she deserved, little more real than a dream. The feeling was fading, but she wondered if it would ever go away for good.
The School between Winter and Fairyland Page 25