Instead, no matter what subject was broached by the Die Horribly Debate Club, Sigfried proposed a response that required ever increasingly dangerous and illegal activities. Since Nastasia had no notion that his responses were directed at her, she took him seriously. So if the subject was how to acquire heads to mount on the walls, Sigfried would suggest leaving campus to raid a zoo of the Wise and bring back the head of a chimera or cockatrice. Then the princess would immediately bristle and remind him in no uncertain terms that they were absolutely not allowed to leave campus, much less to kill a beast belonging to someone else. Or if the discussion turned to what their next activity should be, Siggy would recommend sneaking into the dean’s office to steal back Zoë’s shoes. To which the princess would reply coolly, despite her growing indignation, that the dean was her friend and stealing was wrong, under all circumstances.
The more outrageous Sigfried’s suggestions, the more severe and disapproving the princess’s reaction. And the more disturbed Nastasia became, the more over-the-top was Siggy next suggestion. It might have been funny had Rachel not been stuck in the middle.
Watching Sigfried effortlessly infuriate Nastasia, Rachel could not help wondering if this was how his younger self had handled the nuns of the Order of Hestia. She could imagine him, a skinny little orphan boy, bright-eyed and tousle-haired, too small to fight his cruel caretakers directly, cheerfully exasperating them at every turn.
Finally, after hours of debate—during which Zoë fell asleep; Salome claimed to have died from the horrible boredom; Siggy continued to infuriate an increasingly disgruntled Nastasia; both of whom called upon Rachel to mediate; and Xandra Black dropped in to wish them well, claiming that the voices that spoke through her had clued her in to the presence of excellent cookies—it was decided that each of them could have a section of wall and decorate it however they pleased. Salome had simplified things by declaring herself an auxiliary member and, thus, did not need a wall space of her own.
So, now, Maori punk rockers and Canadian hockey players were splattered on one wall, along with a giant image of Red Ryder, the lead singer of the band Bogus (and father of Oonagh and Ian.) He sang into a microphone with his back arched, his red hair spiked, and his signature golden safety pins stuck through his ears. On the opposite wall hung posters of the jungles, orchards, and scrublands of Magical Australia.
Sigfried had ceded his space to his girlfriend but had reserved the right to mount an enemy head, should he acquire one. He had already picked out a spot for the ogre’s head and that of the Jabberwocky, which, for some reason, he insisted would be one of the first monsters he defeated.
Valerie had eventually decided to decorate her double section with blow-ups of her photographs. Some were of precious stones, some of her hometown of Kennebunkport, Maine, and others had been taken during their ill-fated trek through the dreamland. These included shots of Beaumont Castle in Transylvania and of the dream hippocrene and amphitheater where they had met the dream muses and Mrs. March.
Valerie had offered to blow up the photo of Gaius wrapped in a pink blanket, which she had taken just after he returned from being a sheep (ram!), but Rachel thought that would not be seemly. She had, however, accepted a copy for herself, which she stashed in the pocket in one of her voluminous sleeves, so she could pull it out and stare at it dreamily any time she pleased.
The last section of wall was split between Rachel and Joy. Rachel had plastered hers with drawings of magical beasts she had cut from a coffee table book of Daring Northwest’s larger bestiaries that she had picked up in London over Yule Break. She had deliberately chosen illustrations of the creatures Mr. Tuck had mentioned during his History of Roanoke lecture. She figured that it might prove useful someday, if the other members of the club were also able to recognize a water leaper or tell a spruce troll from a trow.
After much giggling, Joy had plastered her span of wall with posters and news clippings of the most famous boy of the Wise: Sigfried Smith the Dragonslayer. It was these that Rachel had stayed behind to help Joy with, after the others had left for dinner. Joy was running behind because she had spent the afternoon hanging Zoë’s posters. After dumping her choices on the table, Zoë had lost interest in the project and had spent the rest of the afternoon goofing off, making sardonic quips, and chatting with Siggy and Salome about music.
Now, as she held the bottom of the ladder upon which Rachel stood, Joy’s eyes filled with alarm. “I knew she got yanked off the road and stuff, but I didn’t realize she got cut up. She’s been wearing long sleeves ever since. Even to bed. I thought it was a style thing…until I accidentally glimpsed her changing. She thought I was asleep. Then, I started paying attention. She’s even wearing makeup to cover scars on her face.”
Shock jolted Rachel, followed by guilt. “And here I was just looking at Valerie’s photos and thinking that we shouldn’t be afraid to travel to other worlds, just because one of us had been yanked off the road.”
Joy bit her lip. “I was hoping you might know someone who could help cure her.”
“Did you ask Xandra Black?” inquired Rachel.
Joy nodded. “Indirectly. She doesn’t know how to cure scars.”
“My mother can cure cuts, bruises, and broken bones,” Rachel said slowly, thinking. She taped the next corner of the poster. “But if Xandra can’t do it, Mum probably can’t either. Her knowledge is pretty basic. Should we tell a tutor? Insist that Zoë go to the infirmary?”
“I’m pretty sure Zoë doesn’t want anyone to know.” Joy replied. “I think she’s embarrassed—which is why I haven’t talked to her. I was asking you because, well, you have better information and contacts. Can you ask one of your many peons? But don’t tell them what it’s for! And don’t tell Zoë! Or anyone!”
“Peons?” Rachel blinked, wondering to whom Joy might possibly be referring.
“You know. Your boyfriend and his scary friends.”
It took all Rachel’s expert control to keep from bursting into loud peal of laughter. Gaius, William, and Vladimir Von Dread were her peons?
“Yes. Yes, I can.”
She went back to taping the huge poster. A blown-up photo from a news glass that showed Sigfried standing with his hands on his hips and grinning, like a modern-day Peter Pan. She finished the last two corners and came down the ladder.
Joy looked relieved. She taped another magazine clipping to the wall. This one read: Orphan Boy Slays Dragon, Makes Good. “I would have asked our princess, but she doesn’t like Dread or his evil minions. You, on the other hand, are dating one.”
That made Rachel giggle. Though, to herself, she added: She’s a princess, not our princess! Or not mine, anyway.
Pleased as she was to have Nastasia as a friend, the idea of having to kowtow to her, to serve her as royalty, was extraordinarily distasteful. Rachel felt suddenly very grateful that she was English, and that Magical Australia was such an insignificant place. Nastasia and her family would never be Rachel’s superiors.
Aloud, she said, “Should I ask my evil minion boyfriend? Or should I go directly to the dark lord of villainy himself?” She paused and then grinned. “I’ll ask Gaius. He can call upon his resources.” Not wanting to reveal the black bracelet, she pulled out her calling card. “Gaius?”
The green glass in her hand cleared to show his face.
“Hi there, Gaius!” she waved. “Do you have a minute? Could you…?” She mouthed to Joy. “Do you want to be there?” When Joy nodded, Rachel addressed the card again, “Joy and I have a question for you. Can you meet us at our clubhouse? It’s a delicate matter.”
“Sure,” Gaius replied. “I’ll be there in five minutes.”
• • •
Gaius arrived about ten minutes later. Rachel ran to meet him. Just seeing him made the matter less disturbing. She stopped when she was standing very close to him, her eyes shining with happiness, but she felt too shy to kiss him in front of Joy. Gaius smiled down at her, grinning his lazy, amused-at-
the-world grin.
He stepped into Room 321 and took one of the two remaining cookies from the plate, trying a bite. He made a noise of pleased surprise and quickly ate the rest of it. Then, he looked around, his eyes resting on the incongruent wall hangings.
“This is…” Gaius pursed his lips.
“Totally schizophrenic?” asked Joy.
“I was going to go more with modern-baroque-stream-of-consciousness?” Gaius offered, gesturing expansively at the varied content. He stopped before the bestiary pages and nodded at Rachel. “Nice choice.”
Rachel ducked her head, beaming at her boyfriend’s praise.
Joy frowned, “How did you know which stuff was Rachel’s?”
Rachel smirked and quoted Laurel’s Charlie. “We read the same books.”
She and Gaius exchanged secret smiles. A happy blush spread across her cheeks. Suddenly shy, she lowered her eyes demurely. Gaius chuckled in delight.
Recalling the seriousness of the matter, Rachel assumed a more somber demeanor. “Gaius, would you know anything about healing scars?”
“What kind of scars?” asked Gaius, still staring up at the drawings of the horse-like Each-Uisge and the hairy woodwose with its crown and loin-covering of leaves. “Normal? Caused by curses? Magical diseases? If they were incurred in the mist between the waking world and the dreamland, no magic could cure them…but mundane technology might help.” Turning, he looked from Rachel to Joy, as if searching for scars. “What’s this about?”
Rachel ran to the door. Sticking her head out, she looked both ways and confirmed that no one was listening in the hall. Then, shutting the door, she returned to where Gaius was now leaning against the dark polished wood of the central table.
“First, um…promise not to tell,” Rachel began. “She’s hiding the scars, so she must not want anyone to know.”
“Whoa Nellie!” Gaius raised his hands. “Back up. Who doesn’t know…what?”
“Zoë,” Rachel clarified. “Joy says Zoë has scars all over her body.”
Gaius looked grim. “Do we know what caused them? Considering she was pulled off the path into some dark place between worlds, it may have been something rather…awful. I am guessing, though. It could be something simple like she fell through trees and was cut by their branches. Joy, has she tell you anything about the cause?”
Joy shook her head. “She didn’t tell me at all. I woke up while she was changing.”
“It was probably something pretty bad,” said Rachel. “Dream demons. Something like that…Does Vlad’s group have a medic or someone with healing talents?”
“Jenny—but she’s only a college student.” Gaius looked concerned. “She’s not nearly as talented as the school nurse. She’s fine with broken bones and even punctured organs, but healing magical injuries is another matter. That can get tricky.”
“So…what do we do?” Rachel looked to the older boy for guidance.
It was such a relief to be able to turn to someone more experienced. This was one of the perks of having an older boyfriend. She gazed at him enraptured. Joy crossed to stand beside Rachel. She, too, gazed hopefully at the older boy.
Gaius’s ears turned a bit red. He muttered under his breath. “Okay, on-the-spot much?” Aloud, he said seriously. “I want to be able to say, ‘She can take this pill, and she’ll be fine.’ But, honestly, she needs to tell us how the scars were acquired. It’s been, what, two months since it happened? How healed are they, if at all?”
“I’ve only seen them clearly the once. She’s being really careful,” Joy sat on the table, hugging her arms and looking miserable. “She wasn’t like that before she disappeared. Also, she’s even lazier than before. Now, she doesn’t seem to care about anything.”
“And she hasn’t said anything about what happened after she fell?” asked Gaius. “Oh, that’s right. You told me she doesn’t remember.”
“We need to do something, but…what?” cried Rachel. She cast her thoughts about, trying to think of some option, some avenue they had not yet exhausted. “Our Elf’s gone, and we already tried the Comfort Lion, right? He stepped on her and pushed a shadow out of her.”
“Maybe we should ask the Comfort Lion again,” urged Joy. “He could at least make her feel better about the scars, right? He got that smoky thing out of her.”
“We could ask the Lion again,” suggested Rachel.
“That sounds like a good idea.” Joy nodded eagerly. She lifted herself on her hands, preparing to slide off the table. “Let’s go ask Kitten.”
Rachel ran toward the door and froze. In the doorway was a tiny tawny Lion.
Chapter Twenty-Two:
Defying the Wolf Spider
The Comfort Lion padded across room 321 and rubbed against Rachel’s leg.
Immediately, she saw a vision: Zoë lying on the snow behind Roanoke Hall and the giant lion with its paw on her chest. This was followed immediately by a second vision: She was standing on a silver line and, in the distance, was a sphere of colored lights. It reminded her of the object that the Guardian pulled from Sakura Suzuki’s chest. It had many different colors running through it, but it was large. Very large—as large as a world. The sphere hung above a boiling pit of darkness. Above the sphere danced something that looked look like the Northern Lights. Beholding them, Rachel was gripped by longing and hope, such as she had never felt. Down below, however, the darkness made her feel lonely and afraid.
A brilliant light flashed above. The darkness below receded from it, until it seemed a great distance away. From the brightness, a ray of pure white light shone down upon the multi-colored sphere. Again, she saw the image of Zoë on the ground, and the Lion swatting at the darkness coming from her.
Then the beam from above dimmed and faded. The darkness below rose back up to where it had been. There was a moment of panic, and everything seemed darker. A ray of darkness climbed up from below and struck the glowing world-sphere.
A third vision impressed itself on Rachel: a man with long pale silver-blue hair stood atop one of the stones at Stonehenge. His face was handsome, but his features were twisted by a scowl of impatience. He was dressed in thorns. His eyes, which were like chips of ice, momentarily turned red. He hopped off the thirteen-foot-tall stone and started walking.
Suddenly, Rachel was back in the clubroom. Gaius and Joy also looked disoriented. Gaius raised a hand to his temple, and Joy clutched the table.
Gaius rubbed his eyes. “I think I just had a vision.”
“Oh!” Rachel pressed her fingertips against her lips. “Oh.”
“Oh my. Oh no!” cried Joy. “That thorny guy. He didn’t appear because of some disaster that Egg created, right? He’s new, isn’t he?”
The tiny Lion growled menacingly, though not, Rachel felt, at Joy.
Then, turning, it departed.
“What was that thorny guy?” Joy cried excitedly. “Is he like the Guardian? Like the Elf? What does it mean?”
“Beats me,” muttered Gaius. “I didn’t understand any of it.”
“I think I understand what the Lion was trying to tell us,” Rachel struggled to put her thoughts into words. “When the Lion acts, the other side is allowed to act, too. He told me, when he saved Zoë, that we are behind enemy lines. I think this has something to do with that.”
“Enemy lines?” Gaius asked. “Who is fighting whom?”
“So, Thorny is something horrible?” Joy shuddered.
Rachel nodded. “We have to find a way to help Zoë ourselves.”
“Okay,” Gaius ran a hand over his chestnut hair. “Plan One, call the Lion, crashed and burned. What’s Plan Two? If the nurse or Halls of Healing cannot assist, then Ouroboros Industries is the place to go. They have an advanced lab with magical and technological systems, specifically to diagnose new diseases and hexes and figure out the cures. Is she getting worse?”
“I don’t know.” Joy shuddered. She turned to Rachel. “Would your dad know someone who might help?”
“He might,” Rachel replied slowly. “He’s got connections all over the place. He might know someone who would be gentle and competent. Someone Zoë could talk to without anyone else having to know about it.”
“Can you ask him?” asked Joy.
Rachel considered this. She was still disappointed that her father had not taken time over Yule Break to hear the important things she wished to tell him. But ever since she had seen the memorial at O.I. to the man who died at Tunis, her previous anger had begun to fade. Her father had a very dangerous job. He worked so very hard. There were many deadly things in the world. Maybe she should not be angry at him because his job was so important.
In the back of her mind, a tiny voice whispered urgently that involving her father would end badly. She pushed it aside. He was her father. Of course, he would want to help her.
“Very good,” said Gaius. “I’ll hold off until I hear more. But call me if you want William’s help, and I’ll arrange it.”
Rachel nodded. Sitting at the table, she wrote a letter asking her father if he could recommend an expert on magical ailments. She explained that a friend needed help but would not ask for it and that she would like someone on hand when she and her friends confronted the girl. Then, waving goodbye to Joy, she and Gaius set out for the mailroom to post it.
• • •
Sunday passed quietly. On Monday, she and her friends had a free period in the afternoon. Joy went back to her room to keep an eye on the brooding Zoë. Rachel, Nastasia, and Valerie headed for the practice lab on the second floor of Roanoke Hall, where Sigfried was trying out a recipe for a new elixir. Nastasia and Valerie pulled out their school books and sat down by an unused lab station to study. Rachel tagged along, following Sigfried as he gathered his equipment and supplies.
The practice lab was designed to allow students to perform alchemical experiments outside of class time, so long as they had a tutor or lab assistant present. Sigfried had befriended their tutor’s lab assistant, a Russian college student named Varo Varovitch, by giving the lab assistant a few samples of the plants from the Elf’s garden that Sigfried had managed to save. Varo had been impressed. He now opened the practice lab any time Sigfried wished.
The Awful Truth About Forgetting (Books of Unexpected Enlightenment Book 4) Page 25