“I don’t think he wanted to marry her,” Laurel scoffed. “They were just dating.”
“He did so want to marry her! He showed me the ring—at a Yule party, before he lost his memory.”
“Really? No wonder she was bummed,” said Laurel. She wagged her finger at Rachel. “But you are changing the subject. Who is Sandra dating?”
The gods would descend from Mount Olympus and roll up the sky before Rachel would betray Sandra. She crossed her arms and said nothing.
Stepping back to where she could see Charlie again, Rachel asked, “So, what do you do—beside smoke in library parking lots. Was that smokes as in a pipe? Or smokes as in you know a spell that makes a person smolder?”
Laurel stamped her foot. “Gah! My thirteen-year-old sister is holding out on me!”
She pouted.
Charlie replied, “When I am not spending time with your lovely and fascinating sister, I like to read a good book, or study the stars. Astronomy is fascinating.”
“What are you planning to do when you graduate?” asked Rachel.
“I’m thinking of going to divinatory school.”
“What kind of career did you have in mind?”
“Temple work, most likely. I’m leaning toward Athena or Apollo or maybe Orunmila.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever heard of Orunmila.”
“He is the god of divination of the Orisha.”
Rachel rifled through several encyclopedias in her mental library before she came upon Orisha. “Orisha—emissary gods. Orunmila is worshiped in Nigeria?”
Charlie added, “And in Prester John’s Kingdom.”
“Do you think you might have trouble finding a flock back in England?” asked Rachel.
“Perhaps. Or perhaps I’ll engage in a grand adventure and take your sister to Africa! Fancy living in Prester John’s Kingdom, my love? They say the streets are paved with precious gems, and legendary animals meander through the parks.”
Laurel rolled her eyes. “I hardly think that Prester John’s people are going to want a skinny Englishman for their spiritual councilor.”
“Maybe not,” replied Charlie, his cheerfulness unperturbed. “What I would really like is a pastorship. I think I would prefer being a local pastor to working a big city temple. Might even take up the abandoned living on my parents’ estate; a lovely little cottage down by the river. Locals could use a bit of divinatory insight.”
“That would make you a real embryo parson,” giggled Laurel.
“Right-o!” Charlie grinned broadly. Leaning his head toward his girlfriend’s, he whispered to Rachel, “Just like a character in one of our favorite books.”
Rachel, who had read the same book, asked innocently, batting her eyelashes. “Isn’t that story about the poor relations of the Transylvanian royal family?”
Charles blinked and then chuckled. “Oh! Yes. I see what you are doing there. Very droll. Except the name of the family that owns Cold Comfort Farm is pronounced Stark-adder. While the royal Transylvanians are Star-kadders, as they take their name from the Kadder Star. The priceless heirloom of eldritch power which that prig Romulus is always waving about.”
“Speaking of books,” Rachel asked suddenly. “Are you related to Lloyd Lord Fairweather, the great Thiriomancer who wrote numerous books on the sorcery of horse breeding and other fascinating topics? I’ve always admired his work, though my boyfriend says he’s a bit confusing to the Unwary-born.”
“I am!” Charlie replied. “My father is his nephew. Marvelous chap. I met him when I was very young, and he was in his dotage.” Smiling, he concluded, “So it is a parsonage for me. Unless I decide to join the Wisecraft, as every other able-bodied male member of my family has, stretching back to the nth generation.”
Laurel smiled, looking very proud of her multi-talented boyfriend. “He’s very brave.”
“You know me,” Charlie ducked his head at Laurel’s praise. “Never show fear, and all that. Oh. And, of course, I play rugby and flying polo for the Spartans.”
“He’s actually very good,” Laurel said. “He’s the Captain of the Spartans. And he’s on the student council, like Sandra was. He’s the boys’ delegate for Dee Hall.”
“I heard, through a source surprisingly close to me,” said Charlie, “that you are not going out for Track and Broom, even though you’re such a good flyer that they call you the Broom Goddess. I have to say it’s a smart move—even though I am sure your team is disappointed. Takes time to adjust to school and all. Lots of things to study.”
“Broom Goddess,” Laurel snorted. “Who started that anyway?
Charlie chuckled, “Rather a mouthful of a nickname for one so young.”
Rachel cocked her head. “Are you two busy? Come with me.”
She led them to the gym, where she stopped at the broom closet and picked up the red Flycycle she was borrowing until hers came back from the Chansons. She had chosen it because, from her work cleaning and polishing and testing them, she knew this one was in the best shape. Then, she walked up to a door and asked for the high-ceilinged pool.
As she climbed on the bristleless, she turned back to Laurel and Charlie, “Siggy said I must warn people not to be frightened. So, don’t be afraid.”
Rachel flew up to near the top of the hundred and twenty foot chamber. Once there, she dived off the broom, stretched out her hand, and called out, “Varenga, broom!”
She plummeted.
The broom raced to her hand. She grabbed it and swung herself over the seat, zooming up again. The maneuver had proved both easier and harder with the borrowed broom. The longer handle made it easier to grasp, but the Flycycle took a lot longer to engage after she mounted it than the steeplechaser did. (The first time she tried it on the borrowed broom, she had feared, for a long moment, that it was going to continue to fall.)
Below, she could see Laurel and her boyfriend gawking. They looked obviously impressed.
Rachel landed and raised her arms like a gymnast, “Ta-da!”
“Rachel!” Laurel ran over to her and grabbed her shoulders, shaking them. “Dongsaeng! Gah, I was so scared! You can’t tell me not to be scared. It doesn’t work like that!”
Charlie said, “That is very impressive. I see the Broom Goddess moniker is well deserved. How long have you been practicing that move?”
“It came to me last week. I had to figure out how to make sure that if I fell off, I wouldn’t get into trouble, and I’m sure to fall, since what I’m really trying is this.”
She put the broom down and stepped onto it, so that she was standing on the broom as it wobbled back and forth, trying to balance with her arms outstretched like a wire-walker’s.
“Maybe you should get a pole,” Charlie suggested, “like in a circus, to help with your balance.”
Rachel started to ask Laurel if she wanted to join the circus, but then sadly remembered that Laurel no longer needed to impress the King of Magical Australia.
“Well, be careful,” Laurel ordered. “Don’t break your neck. You need it for stuff.”
Charlie was gazing down at her Flycycle. “Have you tried supporting the broom from two ropes? So it is not completely stationary? More like being in the air. For practicing, I mean.”
“Good idea!” Rachel cried. “Thanks.”
“No wonder there’s so much talk about you going out for the team,” stated Charles.
Rachel, who had not known there was such talk, blinked. “I have a lot going on, what with having to save the world and all, so I thought I’d wait a few years. Also, I don’t want to play while Gaius is here. I don’t want to have to choose between practicing and spending time with my boyfriend.”
“Don’t make lame excuses,” said Laurel. “It’s okay you don’t want to play.”
“It’s not a lame excuse.” Rachel objected hotly. “I spend hours and hours practicing spells. Then, I have saving-the-world experiments, then there’s broom practice, and homework, and learning to draw. And now ther
e’s physics! As it is, it’s hard to find time to see Gaius, outside the Knights. Can you imagine if I had Track and Broom practice, too?”
Laurel said, “You do too much. Cut half of it. I suggest True History be the first to go.”
“Now, now, that’s not a good idea,” objected Charlie. “History is very important. Yes, it’s a little dry, but those who forget the past and all that…”
Laurel blinked up at him with feigned innocence. “Those who forget the past? Was that the end of that sentence?”
Charlie rolled his eyes. “You realize I know you’re not an airhead, right?”
Laurel retorted, “You can prove nothing!”
“You pretend to be shallow, and she pretends to be dim?” giggled Rachel.
“Listen, Little Miss Snippy—” said Laurel.
“I’m not snippy,” Rachel replied, surprised at the claim. “Just…enthusiastic.”
“You’re snippy,” Laurel insisted. “And rebellious. That’s supposed to be my job! You and Sandra are the goody-goodies, Peter’s the dork, and I am the wild child. No muscling in on my territory! You can be Dork Number Two, if you want.”
“I’m not rebellious,” Rachel protested, truly shocked. “I’m completely and utterly devoted. I never so much as waver. How can that be called rebellion?”
“You’re dating Gaius Valiant. Daddy told you not to. That’s not rebelling?”
“No he didn’t.” Rachel said slowly. “You told me that Daddy wanted to see me. I ran away. Then Peter told me that I should not date Gaius. Daddy…Daddy’s never told me anything! He never wrote to me about it. He never said a word on the topic. Neither Father nor Mummy has ever uttered a single word to me about Gaius.”
Laurel said, “That’s odd, since they both mentioned to me that you shouldn’t be dating. You’re too young. Stop being evasive. You know Daddy doesn’t want us dating. Which is why I didn’t tell him about Charlie and probably why Sandra didn’t tell him about William.”
“They haven’t told me, no matter what they said to you,” replied Rachel firmly, deliberately ignoring Laurel’s comment about William. “Which is good…because I don’t think I could survive without Gaius. He’s sane. All calm and cheerful. He makes all these crazy horrible things seem…bearable. Besides, why would they object to Sandra dating? She’s twenty.”
Laurel scowled, “Well, whatever. Sandra will do what Sandra does, and Mummy and Daddy will gush and say she’s perfect. Yay.”
Charlie stared at the pool, as if the bluish waters were suddenly extremely interesting.
Rachel thought about Sandra, Sandra’s boyfriend, and the campaign to convince Ambrose Griffin that his daughter’s beloved was not a ‘young tyrant in the making.’ She wondered if life might not be much harder for Sandra than Laurel realized.
“Why shouldn’t I be dating?” Rachel asked. “What’s wrong with it? Sandra told Gaius he could date me, so long as we didn’t do anything we wouldn’t do if she was in the room.”
Laurel shouted, “SANDRA IS NOT YOUR MOTHER!”
Charlie jumped. Laurel stamped her foot, turned, and stomped out of the gym. Rachel stared after her, shocked and hurt.
Charlie leaned down. “I’m sorry, Rachel. She’s been very agitated for the past week or so. I really think she’s been worried about, well, you. She was truly scared when she heard you had been kidnapped, even though it was after the fact. She’s not been dealing with the stress very effectively. I hope you will forgive her for her outburst. I’ll go speak to her.”
Rachel nodded numbly. Then, she shook herself and smiled. “I understand…probably better than you might believe. I’ve been through a lot lately, too. I didn’t…I didn’t know she was upset. She doesn’t talk to me a whole lot.”
“I’ll see what I can do to help you two patch things up,” said Charlie. “I think you being safe helps her a great deal.”
With an apologetic smile, he hurried off in the direction that Laurel had stomped. Rachel watched him go, but what she was thinking was: Why hadn’t her parents said a word to her about Gaius?
Chapter Twenty:
Forgotten Gifts at Yuletide
The remaining time before school let out for Yule Break was a blur of activity. Rachel and her friends worked hard to finish their assignments in time for their upcoming vacation. Occasionally, Rachel had free time, while others were struggling to memorize material for upcoming tests, but there was no one with whom she could spend it.
Even Siggy actually studied, chewing a pencil as he pored over his books.
Rachel spent the extra time filling her grandmother’s wand. She now had quite a collection of paralyzing hexes, wind blasts, tiathelu, and her new favorite, since her visit to O.I., turlu. Having a collection of spells instantly available dramatically improved her performance during the second half of the Knights of Walpurgis meetings. Gaius even told her she had the makings of a good duelist.
High praise indeed from the best duelist in the school!
The week before the Yule holiday was Don Rag week, during which, in the tradition of great schools such as Oxford and Cambridge, every student was required to appear before a panel of their tutors and sit uncomfortably while their teachers discussed them in the third person, as if the person was not present. Rachel’s first Don Rag went very well. Her tutors were delighted with her progress. The only sour note was when Miss Cyrene, her Music tutor, expressed a desire to see how her flute playing would progress over the next few months. Since Rachel never practiced her flute outside of class, she feared Miss Cyrene was ultimately going to be disappointed.
Then, before she knew it, with a flurry of snow and goodbyes, she and Peter and Laurel (who spoke to her only grudgingly) and their familiars were heading home to Gryphon Park, their family’s estate in Devon, England. Rachel was grateful to return to the enormous, sprawling manor house, every stone of which was like an old friend.
Once home, however, the week leading up to Yule was even more heavily scheduled. There were shopping trips to London, visits to friends and family, holiday cards to be sent, and skating parties on the lake. Even a day trip to their village of Gryphon-on-Dart was a whirl of shops and boutiques and calling on old friends, with highlights that included a reunion with her favorite librarian and a visit to the Gryphon’s Nest Pub—where she beat all the locals at billiards and lost horribly to them all at darts.
The busy trip to Gryphon-on-Dart, however, seemed lazy compared to those that followed, days filled with preparing for Yule, decorating with pines and holly the manor house and the stone statue of a giant carrying a child, which stood at the base of the Old Castle just beneath Rachel’s bedroom window. Next followed the festivities of Saturnalia—though this year, Rachel begged off with a fake headache. She could not bear the thought of praising the Titan of Time, whom she now knew to be the horrible demon Moloch, who had compelled so many parents to sacrifice their children.
It was rather lonely to be missing the games and merriment, especially when she could hear the sounds of celebration from the windows of her room. Yet she would rather be lonely than praise a fiend. She had tried twice to convince her family not to hold the Saturnalia festivities, but her father had insisted that the tenant farmers and villagers looked forward to it all year. He did not wish to disappoint them.
Rachel did not think he quite believed her when she explained that Saturn was the same entity to whom she had almost been sacrificed.
After that, an entire day was spent wrapping presents and addressing cards. Rachel posted the Yule cards she had drawn, along with hand-picked presents for her closest friends. For those she knew less well, such as Astrid, Kitten, Sakura, Wendy, and Hildy, she included perfume, soap, or candles from the Gryphon Park Lavender Farm, the only farm that was overseen directly by the family, rather than by tenant farmers. While at the farm’s lavender shop, she also picked up a handful of bottles of the Bogey Away spray she had described at Ouroboros Industries, sending one each to Gaius and William along w
ith her gifts for them.
For Astrid, who always wore something around her neck, Rachel searched high and low for a new scarf, but nothing seemed quite right. She finally found what she wanted at a Korean store in London. The shop was full of brightly-colored silk hanbok and dark wood furniture, lacquered tables and folding screens, inset with mother-of-pearl flowers and butterflies. The back room, however, included K-pop posters and the latest fashions from Korea—including a cute purple scarf, bristling with more tassels than a hedgehog had quills, that she chose for her roommate.
She realized that she did not know where Sigfried was spending the holiday. She had asked him several times, but in typical Siggy fashion, he had somehow never given her an answer. She sent his present to Valerie, figuring that if he was not with his girlfriend, she was the person most likely to know where he had gone.
During her one free afternoon, Rachel took Vroomie for a flight over the moors. On her way back, she flew up to Gryphon Tor, which rose high over her family’s estate, just north of the lake behind the enormous manor house. From the top, she could see the rolling hills of Dartmoor National Park stretching out around her. Gryphon-on-Dart lay beneath her. Smoke curled above the chimneys of the town.
Floating above the ruins of the Saxon castle atop the tor, she stared out to the west, where she knew Gaius’s farm to be. It seemed unfair that her boyfriend was so close, and, yet she could not visit him. Her parents insisted their schedule was too full, and Gaius reported that his days were crammed to overflowing with chores his father needed him to do around the farm. Rachel was grateful to Vladimir, however, for her black bracelet, as it allowed her and Gaius to speak to each other regularly.
She also found a few minutes to steal away to her grandfather’s library, the round, tower-top room that was her favorite place in the house—and also the mansion’s highest chamber. It was a sorcerer’s library, cared for by an elusive book bogel, so that the books occasionally rearranged themselves. Sometimes, Rachel came upon volumes she had never seen before on shelves she had examined a thousand times.
The Awful Truth About Forgetting (Books of Unexpected Enlightenment Book 4) Page 23