‘No use,’ she said. ‘This is a job for a highly skilled librarian.’
Alice smiled. Bea was much more than a custodian and curator of books. She was Alice’s mentor and lifeline. For six months, she’d force-fed her student a diet of books and set her a series of hard mental and physical challenges; it was a lot like having a personal trainer, only with less shouting.
‘Besides,’ Bea continued, ‘we both know the books can’t bear the sight of you – yet.’ She raised an amused eyebrow.
Bea spoke about her library as though it were filled with living things that could express preferences and desires. In a way, she was right. The books Alice searched for always seemed to evade her – pages fell out, front covers fell off, and those she plucked from the shelves at random seemed to attack her deliberately with paper cuts.
‘Are you feeling okay?’ asked Bea, frowning.
‘What? Oh.’ Alice nodded. ‘Yes. Fine. I’m just getting over a stomach bug.’ She licked her lips; they were salty with sweat. ‘Has Holly been in? She’s trying to hunt down the Dugdale book.’
‘Not yet,’ said Bea. ‘But surely she’s not going to spend the day of the first test trying to learn something new?’
Alice shook her head. ‘Lester’s going to quiz her on it, apparently.’
Bea’s expression was withering. ‘Pointless,’ she said. ‘They should be warming up for tonight with some practical exercises.’
Alice sighed. ‘Maybe he thinks Holly doesn’t need them.’
They lapsed into silence. Holly wielded her legacy without thinking. Alice had seen her drop a glass bottle in the courtyard once, and a claw of twigs from the mulberry tree had shot out to catch it before it hit the ground. Holly wasn’t boastful about her gifts, and she wasn’t modest; she simply accepted them as her unquestionable birthright and didn’t think they warranted much attention. For Holly, the testing process was merely administrative. All she really cared about was passing more successfully than her sisters.
‘Are you ready to start now?’ asked Bea. ‘I was expecting you after lunch, but the more time we have, the better. Tom said he’d try to stop by to give you a pep talk as well.’
Like Bea, Tom also belonged to House Mielikki. Most members had day jobs alongside the functions they performed for their House. Bea had taken up mentoring duties and Tom helped to administer the test results. Alice would have preferred some insider tips on how to pass rather than a pep talk, but she’d take all the help she could get.
Alice gestured at Reid’s Post-it. ‘Let me just get Reid’s book request out of the way first.’
‘All right. Show me what she’s asked for again,’ said the librarian.
Alice held it out and Bea glanced at the scrawled writing. There was a slight tremor in Alice’s arm from the effort of keeping it raised. Bea noticed, so she made an effort to steady it.
‘Look for 198 DAV,’ she said. Bea was renowned for her encyclopedic knowledge of the Dewey Decimal filing system. She turned back to her sodden book pile and Alice drifted away.
It was very easy to get lost in the library. It was two storeys high with polished wooden columns supporting the mezzanine floor above. There was a wide set of steps at the far end, but there were others – small spiral staircases set at random intervals around the library that led to alcoves and cubby holes midway between the two floors, their entrances concealed by bookshelves, and others that led to dead ends or just stopped in mid-air. The library had been designed by someone who saw logic as a minor complication, and not as a basic architectural aim.
Leaded windows and two immensely sturdy chandeliers gave light to the room, throwing long shadows from the wooden rafters across the parquet flooring. On the ground floor an array of mismatched lamps glowed warmly across equally mismatched tables and comfy chairs. It was very snug, perfect for curling up with a book.
Alice hadn’t curled up with a book for months. She tended, instead, to slump over them in exhaustion, or build towering stacks of them as she laboured through page after page of dense academic jargon. Bea was a hard taskmaster and she had a book for every purpose, but Alice could only cram so many words into her brain without feeling she might burst at the seams.
She came to a stop in the philosophy section. Someone had posted a flyer on the end of the rack:
Compete in the annual Cream of the Crops competition!
Face off against your foes in the Legacy Games.
Entry available only to full House members.
No associates allowed. Must be registered to
your House’s student society to apply.
Bea would kill the event organizers. She’d already banned them after the last batch of flyers. Alice whipped the poster down and crumpled it up, quickly resuming her search. Here, the books were crammed onto their shelves, the covers pressed so tightly together that the spines were buckled. She ran a finger along the dusty line, searching the alphabetical author names . . .
Alice paused at the sound of movement nearby and spun towards the source of the noise, but there was no one there. She hesitated before returning to her search, a vague sense of being watched leaving her unsettled, and continued to scan the titles until she reached the end of the shelving unit. Nothing.
She gave a frustrated sigh and moved back to the first shelf to start again. She must have missed something. This time she moved even more slowly, but the twisted letters began to swim across her vision. Alice shook her head to clear it, and frowned. It was nothing to do with her sickness; she was used to that. She was sure the books were making her search impossible on purpose, because she was House-less.
Thanks to the university’s archaic rules, only members of a House were allowed to remove volumes from the library for personal use. Alice had had to resort to putting all her books on Reid’s account. And without a House, the books were not inclined to treat Alice kindly – they sliced her fingers and made themselves impossible to find. She hoped that winning entry to House Mielikki might make her ability to conduct research much easier.
She sighed heavily and shoved her brown hair out of her face. Looking down, she saw not her book but her nightjar, sitting on the rug. With a flutter, it shuffled closer to the bottom shelf, cocked its head and raked its claws along one of the spines. Alice raised an eyebrow. It stared back at her with slit eyes, then tilted its head again and pecked at a book. She moved closer and yanked the volume free from the press.
The Weight of the Unknowable Spirit, by C. P. Davies. A surprised grin spread across Alice’s face. ‘All right,’ she murmured to her nightjar. ‘That’s worth a thank you, I suppose.’ If it was possible to look self-satisfied, her bird managed it.
Rising, Alice marched off to find the librarian, but Bea found her first, appearing at the end of an aisle with a potted sunflower in her arms. ‘Ready for a final practice session?’ asked her mentor.
Alice pushed aside the sudden flicker of nerves and the spike in temperature that usually preceded a headache. Not now.
She forced a smile and nodded. ‘Ready as I’ll ever be.’
‘Excellent,’ said Bea, thrusting the sunflower – grown from a seed during their last session – into Alice’s hands.
Alice glanced down at it, her smile fading fast. The sunflower’s petals were withering. They shrivelled and crisped as she watched. The stem began to droop under the weight of the flower head and then the petals broke free, scattering to the library floor.
‘Must be infested with cutworm,’ said Bea, whipping the decaying sunflower from Alice’s arms with a nervous laugh. ‘The buggers are everywhere.’
‘Must be,’ agreed Alice gratefully. Even the thought of Bea discovering her secret was enough to make Alice’s blood run cold. Would the mentor really want to help her win a place in House Mielikki if she knew her heritage? If necromancers were social outcasts, Alice would be practically leprous.
Alice stared at the petals lying like small cadavers at her feet. The two sides of her nature were out
of balance and at war – and her father’s deathly legacy was winning. She’d run out of time. It was poisoning her Mielikki skills and strangling her chances in the House membership tests.
She was going to fail.
The sky was bruised with purples and warm yellows: the dying embers of the sinking sun. Street lights glimmered across the pavement, chasing away frail shadows. It was warm and sluggish, the kind of night that trapped the city odours. There was no breeze to carry away the exhaust fumes or the scent of stale beer and unwashed dray horses.
Alice marched along the pavement, paying no attention to the city’s assault on her senses. Her thoughts were focused on the skills she had acquired over the past year. She ran through the circumstances in which, under Bea’s tutelage, she’d grown branches from knots of wood, teased life from young buds and turned summer leaves autumnal. She recalled the desire she’d felt before she’d worked the magic, the sense of calm determination and the tingling in her fingertips – all sensations she’d need to recapture to do whatever was asked of her tonight.
‘Chamomile?’ said Bea, her relaxed pace lagging a few steps behind.
‘A mild sedative,’ Alice responded automatically. ‘Useful for its calming effects and for treating insomnia.’
‘Preparation?’
‘Pour boiling water over the dried flowers and add alcohol. Leave it and then strain it to remove the herbs from the tincture.’
‘Container?’ asked Bea.
‘No metal, no plastic. Glass is best; it keeps the mixture free of other chemicals like bisphenol that might taint it.’
Bea smiled. Alice had slowed, deep in thought, and Bea overtook her, the heavy necklace she wore swinging against her dress as she trotted past. A car horn honked, and Alice glanced at a commotion on the road.
The driver of a vintage green Bentley gestured impatiently at a street sweeper to let him pass. The street sweeper – a thin man with a pencil moustache and a battered trilby – glared at the driver, brushed the litter and debris to the roadside and bent over. He laid his palm on the stone kerb and then, very carefully, lifted it, the entire pavement tilting up at a slanted angle.
Alice lost her footing and slid sideways, but Bea merely adjusted her balance and kept walking. The street sweeper brushed the litter underneath as though sweeping it under a rug and then lowered the pavement again, the kerb thumping back into position. Then he spun round and tipped his hat sarcastically to the driver, who sped off with a roar.
Alice shook her head and tried to regain her focus. Catching up with Bea, she worked furiously to remember the herbs she might be given if she was asked to concoct a tincture: chamomile, echinacea, valerian . . . She ran through the flowers she’d managed to bloom by thought alone – marigolds and pansies were the easiest; the perennials always presented her with more difficulty. If they asked for a demonstration, she hoped there was no yarrow or English lavender.
She had been concerned that the tests might involve some sort of combat. Bea had scoffed at this, telling Alice, ‘Darling, you’re not being conscripted into the army. At House Mielikki, a group of hobbyist basket weavers meet in the clubhouse bar every Wednesday. That’s the sort of place you’re attempting to join.’ Alice had grudgingly accepted there was no need to hone her defensive skills. Besides, in case of emergency, she could cloak herself to hide from an opponent’s sight, or call on her own nightjar’s help if she needed a better overhead viewpoint. However, she would be expected to use her Mielikki legacy to win a place in their House – and relying on her aviarist tricks might see her fail their test.
‘Remember,’ said Bea as they walked, ‘if you’re good enough, you’ll join. The first test is just about you. You’re not in competition with the other candidates today. Not with Holly or anyone else.’
Alice nodded. ‘I’m in competition with myself,’ she said.
‘Exactly, darling.’
Alice frowned. Bea’s words hadn’t relaxed her; far from it, they’d highlighted her biggest fear.
The dome of St Paul’s Cathedral rose above the distant rooftops, and they hastened along King Edward Street towards it. In London, the ruins of Christchurch Greyfriars sat at the bottom of the street, partially destroyed by German bombers in the Blitz. Two perpendicular walls remained standing and a beautiful wild garden had burst to life in the building’s broken shell. Where the stone pillars had once stood, there were now wooden frames crawling with fragrant roses and trails of clematis, overlooking a patchwork quilt of hardy shrubs and plants.
But this wasn’t London – and it wasn’t Christchurch Greyfriars that occupied the space at the end of King Edward Street. Here in the Rookery, the site of those ruins was home to House Mielikki. Though the Rookery had been untouched by war, the church walls had been torn down to mirror the damage suffered by the original building and then replaced with walls made of flowering vines and climbing plants. The governor of House Mielikki had considered it a fitting tribute to the London dead: a reminder to all that life could bloom in death’s shadow.
Alice had come once or twice to draw the building. Sitting on the corner of Angel Street, her back resting against the iron railings and her sketchbook on her knees, she’d marked out the clean lines of the two original stone walls that stood at a corner. But it was the other walls – those created in memoriam – that had really captured her attention. Built not from stone but from a dense thicket of entwined boughs and twigs – willow, cherry blossom and horse chestnut – the walls had been knitted together in overlapping weaves of leaf and wood.
She had sketched hurriedly, trying to keep pace with the transformation unravelling across the building, her eyes fixed on the botanical walls as the bare branches evolved, tender green shoots and buds exploding from the bark. Berries and flowers fountained from the buds, their petals rippling in the breeze; the waxy green leaves thickened and multiplied, before the colours shifted – the greens fading and autumnal browns and oranges catching hold of the leaves, spreading like fire across the walls, then twisting away from the stems and branches and spiralling through the air to scatter across the pavement. Winter, spring, summer, autumn – the walls cycled through the seasons at speed, producing the most beautiful display of nature, and of power, to all who passed by.
House Pellervoinen, a huge edifice made of pale Portland stone, neighboured House Mielikki, and it too demonstrated its unique character. Its architecture frequently morphed into different iconic styles, the walls melting into the clean lines of art deco, or a more decadent gothic style, or the many columns of the neo-classical. But Alice had only ever had eyes – and a sketchbook – for House Mielikki.
She crossed the road towards it, this time without her sketchbook, and breathed it in while Bea waited patiently. The House had a musky fragrance, heavy and earthy one moment, then light and fresh with hints of citrus and spice the next. An arched bough formed the entrance to the building. A warm glow flickered in the gloom beyond, as though the entrance was illuminated with candlelight. The first time she’d seen this building a haunting melody had seeped out into the night: the notes of violins and tambourines carried faintly on the breeze, the penny whistle partly hushed by the rustling of wind through the leaves.
Crowley had been with her then. She’d found herself trapped in the entrance and dashed out in a panic; he’d caught her by the arms and held her steady. Something in her chest tightened and she turned away, staring at the cars rumbling past, their headlamps like searchlight beams seeking out the dangers ahead. Was she ready for this? For the possibility of—
‘Alice Wyndham?’
She jumped, startled, and whirled around. A severe-looking old man with dark skin and greying hair in tight curls stood in the doorway. He was dressed, like most of the Rookery’s residents, in an outfit more suited to the previous century: rounded club collar, skinny tie and sharply creased trousers. The tweed waistcoat, complete with dangling pocket watch, told Alice he was dressed for formality. He watched her closely from behind cir
cular wire-framed glasses.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I’m—’
‘And, of course, the honourable Lady Pelham-Gladstone,’ he said, a sparkle in his eye.
Bea wagged an amused finger at his face. ‘Stop goading me, Cecil. You know I’m a socialist now, not a socialite.’
He turned to Alice, the smile fading to an expression of polite interest. ‘I’m Cecil Pryor, Head of Membership Admissions. Follow me, please.’ He turned on his heel and disappeared into House Mielikki. Alice ducked inside without hesitation.
The wicker ceiling was strung with twinkling pinprick lights, leading her down a dimly lit corridor. The walls either side were not made of seagrass, as she’d initially assumed; they were woven from willow, with vines sewn through the gaps for additional strength. There was a doorway at the far end, and the sound of music, muted voices and clinking glasses drifted out from the gap at the bottom of the door. The clubhouse bar, she assumed.
Cecil stopped midway along the corridor and brushed the willow. Alice watched, impressed, as the branches began to unravel and twist, opening up a gap in the wall, which he stepped through.
It led to a room filled with leather chairs, a glossy walnut desk and a boldly patterned rug. On the walls there were ornamental animals, carved in ebony wood or sculpted in terracotta, flashing their teeth and claws. The array of potted plants and flowers lined haphazardly on a shelf behind the desk seemed too quaint in contrast.
‘Please sit,’ Cecil said brusquely, taking a seat behind the desk and reaching for a handful of papers. He glanced up at Bea, who lowered herself into a leather chair with a grateful sigh. ‘Can I interest you in a drink?’ he asked Bea, indicating two cups – one empty and one filled with boiled water. ‘Green tea, isn’t it?’
Bea waved his question aside. ‘I’ve given it up. I’ll have a rosehip, if you have it.’
He turned to the plant pots, his hand drifting left and right while he searched with his eyes. His hand paused and then plucked several small red fruits from a rose plant. He crushed them in his palm and dropped them into the cup of hot water. Alice watched in silence as the water turned scarlet, noting that he hadn’t asked her if she would also like a cup. With a flourish, Cecil whipped out his handkerchief, laid it over the empty cup and poured his concoction over it to strain out the rosehips.
The Rookery Page 6