Rachel hugged him, looking up at him, searching for comfort and encouragement. He hugged her back, but his expression remained distracted, as if his mind could not quite comprehend all that she had revealed. Sighing, Rachel closed her eyes. She felt even more as if she were facing these terrible things alone than she had before she had told her boyfriend.
Chapter Twenty-Nine:
Moving Day
Gaius remained distracted for several days.
Rachel tried to make herself available to him, in case he wanted to talk, but she did not pry. Unfortunately, he did not seem to wish to talk. After she had been so eager to discuss with him all that occurred, it made her sad that he did not share his distress with her. She would have felt bad about having distressed him, except that she had so needed help bearing the burdens weighing upon her that she did not regret telling him. His facing these hard things with her was a bit like him taking a blow for her. She resolved to feel grateful rather than guilty.
As the week went on, Gaius recovered his normal good spirits, but Rachel found herself slipping deeper and deeper into gloom. The more she thought about her father losing his memory, the more upset she became. The very thought of not remembering something was enough to make her feel ill. To be the cause of such a calamity, and to have the victim be someone she loved so much—her father, the dashing and capable Agent Griffin, The Duke of Devon upon whom so many depended—left her completely devastated.
She tried to regain her composure and cheer. Each time she noticed herself faltering, she bucked up and attempted to push her fears aside. However, for the first time in her life, it just did not work. Every time she raised her chin and straightened her back, she would suddenly find herself slumping and close to tears again.
As time passed, she felt more and more dazed by the burden of her own fake memories. She was afraid to talk to her friends, afraid to say the wrong thing, afraid of the Master of the World. It was not for herself that she was afraid. What was the worst that could be done to her? She might somehow be made to forget for real, too? A horrible fate, but no worse than her father’s. No, her fear was all for the Raven. What would the Master of the World do if he discovered that Jariel had tricked him?
For the next two weeks, she went about her daily routine in a daze. She did not smile. She did not chat with her friends. She was even late for class. Once, she did not show up at all. Everywhere she went, except classes, she carried the plushy lion Sandra had bought her with its bright red bow, clutching it tightly.
At breakfast and dinner, which she spent with her dorm mates, she filled her plate, but she ate no more than a few bites. Instead, she sat pushing her food around with her fork and pretending that she had eaten it. At first, she feared her friends would notice and question her, but they showed no sign of noticing.
No one noticed.
Siggy was as loud and as boisterous as ever, but he had never been very observant when it came to the behavior of girls—except, of course, that if food was not being eaten, he and Lucky were always there to finish it off. Rachel suspected that the concept of someone not eating, when food was available, was not one that ever occurred to Sigfried Smith.
The princess had been withdrawn since the trip during which she had lost Zoë, becoming even quieter than before. Rachel felt she should be doing something to help her friend, such as gently pushing to find out what troubled Nastasia. But that would require her to gather the energy to open her mouth and speak, which she found herself unable to do.
Valerie only came around to hang out with Sigfried. Thinking back, Rachel realized with a sinking heart that this was always the case. She had tried a number of times in the early part of the school year to reach out to the other girl, hoping they would become friends, but somehow it had never quite worked. Valerie treated Rachel kindly, but if Sigfried was not around, she hung out with Salome or other girls from Dee Hall. She certainly did not respond to the fact that Rachel was unusually silent. In fact, even the time when Rachel had been absorbed in vectors and physics, Valerie had come to investigate only because she had been prompted by Sigfried.
As for her other friends, Joy had eyes only for Siggy and Nastasia. Zoë was more cheerful than she had been before Agent Bridges’s visit, but she, too, now doted on the princess. Also, she had become meaner and more caustic than she had been before her disappearance. Maybe she needed help, too, but Rachel could not gather the energy needed to inquire.
Rachel excused the princess and Zoë’s behavior, telling herself that they, too, had suffered terrible things; however, this did not make her feel any less lonely. Worse, she realized that, even if she found the strength of will to do so, she could not choose to put her own woes aside and comfort them—because that would have required that she talk about events she was supposed to have forgotten.
Gaius might have noticed her distress, once he recovered his aplomb. He was wiser in the ways of girls than Sigfried and more solicitous of her well-being; however, he never had the chance—because one time that she routinely felt cheerful was in his company. She now spent all her lunches at Vlad’s table. She would feel just as bad when she arrived for lunch as she did at breakfast and dinner. But when she sat down with Gaius and his friends, she found herself talking and laughing normally. By the time the midday meal was over each day, she had emptied her plate. A couple of times, she even went back for seconds.
So Gaius had no opportunity to detect that anything was wrong.
The rest of the time, however, it was as if she traveled beneath her own personal black cloud. The darkness encroaching upon the edges of her thoughts grew worse, as did the buzzing—like the beating wings of a thousand locusts. As this strange distant noise grew louder, Rachel began to feel quite frightened. She had never heard tell of anything like this before. What was happening to her?
The strangest thing was: she could not bring herself to eat, or talk—except during lunch—but neither could she bring herself to slack off. No matter how dark her days became, Rachel diligently did all that was required of her. Every day, like clockwork, she rose, went to class, did her homework, and practiced—practiced her sorcery, practiced her flying, practiced balancing on a balance beam. Even the one time she could not rouse herself from bed and missed a class, she spent the period reading the textbook. An inner voice kept whispering to her that eventually things would get so bad that she would stop doing what was required of her. To date, that little voice had been wrong.
There was something pathetic, almost frightening, about the fact that, even in such misery, she could not seem to break her routine and stop studying.
• • •
Wednesday morning, Rachel stood in the kitchen, trying to find something that looked appealing. She did not feel up to eating pancakes, but the cinnamon-swirled bread dotted with raisins actually smelled good. She watched her piece warm above the toasting grill, carefully choosing cream cheese and honey to go with it. When it was done, browned and crispy, it smelled so good that she spread on the toppings and ate a few bites on the spot.
As she turned to go back to her table, she heard a throaty laugh. Eunice Chase leaned against a wall and waved a hand in her direction. “Get her, girls!”
Rachel spun around. Belladonna Marley stood with her posse of friends, Charybdis Nutt, Zenobia Jones, sophomore Lola Spong, who bore an uncanny resemblance to a dark toad, and another sophomore from Drake, slender and leggy with short hair, whom Rachel did not know.
The girls all held cups and bowls. They converged on Rachel and dumped the contents of everything they held over her head. Tomato juice, jelly, maple syrup, and less easily identifiable but equally gooey substances poured down over Rachel’s head and robes. Lola even paused to rub syrup into Rachel’s hair. The Drake girls then all ran away, laughing and high-fiving each other; while Rachel stood, dripping, her slice of toast now ruined with tomato juice and lard.
• • •
The cantrip she had learned from Gaius only removed liquids, not sti
ckiness. Rachel ran back to her dorm and took a shower, leaving her ruined robe in the laundry bin and adding extra honey from the bottle they kept in the room for this purpose into the bowl of milk outside the door. She arrived late for her first class and sat down in the first available chair. This happened to be next to Astrid, who rewarded her with a grateful smile. Rachel, however, was forced to endure Nastasia shooting her resentful pouting glances from across the room. Rachel spent the rest of Language with wet hair, sneezing and glowering when she recalled Eunice Chase’s smug, superior expression, as the older girl had stood, arms crossed, watching her minions humiliate their defenseless prey.
She spent the free period between Language and Math brushing out her hair and getting warm. Then came Math, where she would have to face the same girls who had just humiliated her in the kitchen. They snickered behind their hands when she arrived. Rachel lowered the rim of her mortarboard cap and sat down with Nastasia and Joy, who was telling everyone how the princess could solve air pollution by breathing. Zenobia mocked Joy, claiming the princess must be able to end world hunger with other bodily functions, and Belladonna laughed outright, looking down on Nastasia through her heavy mascara.
Rachel realized Joy did not say these things at the princess’s behest. If anything, Nastasia was more disturbed by Miss O’Keefe’s worshipful behavior than Rachel. And yet it made it harder for Rachel to like the princess when the whole world was singing her praises.
Toward the end of the class, Mrs. MacDannan closed her book, removed her mortarboard, pushed her round glasses up onto her head, and made an announcement. A black and white rat sat on her shoulder, hidden beneath her bushy ginger hair. “With the end of January comes the end of our first semester. And with that comes Moving Day. On Moving Day, anyone who would like to change dormitories may do so.”
Seth Peregrine raised his hand, waving it back and forth so vigorously that it set the tassel on his cap to waggling. When Mrs. MacDannan called on him, he asked, “Do a lot of people change dorms?”
“Every year is different,” replied the tutor crisply.
“Mrs. MacDannan,” asked Charybdis Nutt, who, like Belladonna, had taken to wearing heavy eye shadow and mascara, “why does each Art have its own dorm? Why don’t people just live wherever they want to?”
“Yes, what keeps things the way they are?” challenged Zenobia Jones. “Tradition? Stereotypes? Group loyalty? The good old boys system?”
“Group loyalty?” scoffed Zoë Forrest, where she slumped in her chair, only half paying attention. Her hair was neon orange today. “Since when is an Art a group?”
“Yeah, isn’t this some kind of artificial attempt,” asked Seth, “by the school to pretend that people who practice the same kind of magic have more in common than they otherwise naturally would? Like when your mom tries to get you to play with the kids of her college chums, even though they are total losers?”
Scarlett MacDannan looked around for her glasses and then, with a sigh, remembered they were on top of her head. She slipped them back onto her nose. “Mr. Peregrine, Miss Jones, Miss Nutt, I happen to be the perfect person to answer that question. In the history of Roanoke Academy, I am the only person who has lived in all seven dorms.”
She held up her fingers with their seven rings of mastery. The students were well aware of her accomplishments, and yet, it still impressed them all to see her rings, their different-colored gems glinting brightly in the sunlight streaming in the window.
“You want to know why thaumaturges live in Drake, and Enchanters live in Dare?” she continued. “Well, I will tell you. Or better yet, you will tell me. Miss Jones, what’s downstairs in Drake Hall?”
“Musty hallways filled with dust?” replied Zenobia. When Mrs. MacDannan gave her a probing look, the tall young woman added meekly, “You mean the Summoning Chambers?”
“And what do you do in a Summoning Chamber?” asked the tutor.
“Oh, I know!” Belladonna raised her hand but charged ahead without waiting to be called upon. “You summon up monsters, elemental fey, demi-gods, celestial and chthonic entities—so you can get charges of their power.”
“Right,” nodded Scarlett MacDannan, “and what’s in Dare Hall, other than dormitories?”
Nastasia raised her hand. When called upon, she spoke politely. “A theater, a music room with a small stage, and rooms for practicing instruments.”
Their tutor nodded. “And can anyone tell me what is in Marlowe?”
Joy raised her hand, “Oh! Oh! I can! Some of my sisters live there. They have art rooms, clay, potters’ wheels. A gallery. Things like that.”
“Very good, Miss O’Keefe. And Spenser Hall?”
“I have sisters there, too,” continued Joy, “Every object is labeled in the Original Tongue. Every door and stair and window has the correct word taped to them. And the walls are covered with paintings and posters of ordinary things: cats, hats, baseball bats. Each one is labeled. So if you live there, Language class automatically becomes much easier. Also, they have rooms with listening crystals, so you can hear what cantrips are supposed to sound like.”
Rachel started to raise her hand to ask what the purpose of permanent labels was. Oh. Of course. She yanked her arm down again, embarrassed.
Mrs. MacDannan nodded. “De Vere Hall?”
Wolfgang Starkadder spoke up from where he sat brooding in the darkest part of the room, out of the sunlight. “My brother Beowulf lives there. The place is full of heavy doors that are always closed. Each door has three pictures carved into it—of three different fey or monsters. A rope hangs from the door. They put stuff on the rope—a stone with a hole in it, a daisy chain, a red thread. You have to know what that particular object stops—and touch it to the correct picture—to open the door. So, if you go in there, and you don’t know your wardings, that’s it for you.” He ran his finger across his throat. “You’re stuck. Beo says three students have starved to death, just in the last decade, stuck between two fire doors, unable to remember the correct combination to get out. Course, if they died rather than trying all of a whole three options, they were too dumb to live, and the dorm did the rest of us a favor.”
“Thank you, Mr. Starkadder for your illuminating remarks. I am certain our days have been brightened,” said Mrs. MacDannan wryly. “And Dee?”
Rachel raised her hand. When she was acknowledged, she blurted out, “Dee is a library. It’s filled with books!”
Something about the way she said it must have caught Scarlett MacDannan’s attention. The tutor’s and Rachel’s eyes met, and, for an instant, their mutual love of books ignited a bond between them.
“Very good.” Their stern tutor actually smiled. “Dee was my second choice, when I was a student. I lived there for a whole year. I loved it.”
“Is that where you started?” asked Astrid timidly.
Scarlett MacDannan shook her head. “I started in Raleigh. You’re allowed to practice alchemy on the inanimate objects in Raleigh Hall. Or the objects that used to be inanimate. The doors all talk. Some of them are rather surly. Windows open on their own. There were four different magical methods of going up stairs. For instance, if you sit on the banister, you automatically slide up to the top of the staircase. That part was fun. Ultimately, however, I decided the place was too dangerous and distracting. Which is why I first moved, Moving Day of my freshman year.”
Rachel listened with interest, curious now about the other dorms. She had loved Dee Hall since she was little. She thought of the photo of the impressive edifice that she had kept under her bed. She had been so resentful that she had been placed in Dare, with her siblings, without ever being given the chance to choose. Then she sat back in her chair, her eyes unusually wide.
Should she move?
She could be free. Free of Joy’s sycophantic behavior, free of Zoë’s caustic comments, free of Nastasia’s petulant pouting. She could live surrounded by books, books, and more books, with books everywhere.
Gaius
had wanted to live in Dee. He understood its appeal. She wished she could call him on her card or the bracelet, but she knew that he was in class and unable to converse. Reaching surreptitiously into her sleeve, she pulled out the photo Valerie had given her of a disoriented Gaius wrapped in a pink towel. She gazed at it: What would he do?
“Mrs. MacDannan, what was your first choice?” asked the tiny Magdalene Chase, who was sitting beside the silent Cydney Graves.
“I beg your pardon?” asked the tutor, “Ouch! Thorin, stop that!”
Reaching under the back of her bushy red hair, she drew out her familiar, holding him by his tail. She gave the white and black spotted rat a sharp look, as if, perhaps, he had pulled her hair, and lowered him to the table, where he sat on her Euclid, alert and bright-eyed.
“You said your second choice was Dee,” Magdalene explained. “What was your first?”
“Dare Hall,” said Scarlett MacDannan.
“Why Dare?” asked Sigfried.
“I liked the people.”
Several students snickered.
“People such as Finn MacDannan,” giggled Charybdis.
Belladonna, Zenobia, and two of the boys from Drake put their heads together and hummed a few bars of a popular tune from the band Bogus. Seth and Zoë joined them.
“My affection for Finvarra MacDannan is well-known,” Mrs. MacDannan crossed her arms, looking dryly amused. “Obviously, I admire him. Otherwise, I would not have married him.” More seriously, she added, “But it was more than Finn. The people in Dare were truly imaginative, and they could solve problems. In Raleigh, the alchemist students experimented a lot. They liked to try new things. But they were not particularly…effective. Their experiments were as likely to go awry as to work. So, yes. I liked Finn. But it was Finn’s sister and James Darling who really impressed me. They were a very effective pair.”
“You mean Ellyllon MacDannan, who went on to become Mrs. Darling?” giggled Joy.
The Awful Truth About Forgetting (Books of Unexpected Enlightenment Book 4) Page 34