If he did turn back into a boy, the loss of his wand was going to break his heart.
A wave of nausea spread through her. Smelling the smoky odor of the damaged wood struck her much harder than even seeing the sheep had. Tossing the charred wand onto her bunk, she ran to the bathroom and threw up into the toilet.
• • •
She sat on the stall floor, her arms wrapped around her head and her forehead resting on her knees. Her skin was clammy. The square tiles were cold and hard beneath her backside, but she felt too weak to rise.
Her father had set this in motion. He had spoken to Von Dread, and it had led to this.
Her father.
Two days ago, he had been the center of her world. Then, he had deserted her. In the midst of a crisis of loyalty, she had chosen Gaius as her guiding star. And now, her father may have killed—or at least erased—the charming, outgoing, brilliant boy who had been Gaius Valiant.
There had been no recognition in the eyes of the sheep, no intelligence as human beings used the word. Had her father’s actions destroyed the only person entirely on her side, the boy she loved?
She loved him.
The realization jolted her, as thoroughly as if she had put her hand into the path of the lightning bolt that had destroyed Gaius’s wand. If she had not loved him before, she surely loved him now.
She sat there, on the cold bathroom floor. Her hand throbbed painfully where the sheep’s hard hoof had trampled it. Sorrow and wrath warred within her, trampling her heart in their battle. She had never felt emotions like this before. It was like getting caught in a thunderstorm, after having only ever encountered mild drizzles. She did not know how to weather such a tempest.
Of one thing, however, she was deadly certain. If Gaius died—if he was not restored to his brilliant, life-loving self—she would never speak to her father again. Never. Ever. Not if she lived to be a thousand.
She loved Gaius. Loved him so much that she wanted to spend the rest of her life with him. She wanted to marry him. As she wept on the bathroom floor, their future unfolded before her—almost like a vision. He worked as a sorcerer-scientist for William Locke’s Ouroboros Industries. She was a librarian-adventurer, visiting unknown places and coming home to write books about them. Their six children—destined to be five great sorcerers and a librarian—were all students here at Roanoke Academy.
What a happy life they might have lived.
Instead, the future was dark and bleak. She had nothing to look forward to but decades of living alone and childless, perhaps with a pet sheep.
• • •
Hours went by. She remained on the cold tile floor. Sometimes, she sat curled in near delirium. Sometimes, she wept.
She wished she were at home, curled up in her room within the safety of the pink curtains of her canopy bed—rather than sitting on the cold floor of a public bathroom. She wished she could hug her stuffed animals: Mr. Muffin, Splashdown the Dolphin, and Torture the Penguin. When she was little, Laurel used to grab this last toy and run about the house shouting, “Torture the penguin! Torture the penguin.” Tiny Rachel had thought that was its name. The moniker had stuck.
She wished Sandra were nearby. Neither Peter nor Laurel would sympathize with her agony. Peter would be stuffy about her liking a boy—he still thought she was eight, and Laurel was unsympathetic in general, though she could be very good company when one was cheerful.
Sandra, however, would understand. Rachel was sure of it. She imagined her older sister kneeling beside her, her dark eyes alight with love. Sandra would gaze at her with concern, the same way she had the time she had found Rachel stretched out on the floor by the servant’s staircase, cradling her broken arm, her steeplechaser impaled in the grandfather clock. This was the second time that Rachel failed to make this turn and had flown into the clock. Sandra was the only member of the family who did not chide her for having tried the maneuver again.
When Rachel finally mastered the staircase and could take that turn at full speed, Sandra was the only person she had invited to witness her success. She remembered how her sister had clapped and laughed, the air of the hallway fragrant with her sweet honeysuckle perfume.
But her sister was far away in London. Thinking of Sandra’s compassion only made her feel lonelier. She began crying again.
The horror of the whole day hit her, and she wept for her friends: for Valerie who suffered so horribly; for Nastasia who was tortured with phantom fire by Remus Starkadder; for Joy who had stood paralyzed while Johan Strega’s cruel knife sped toward her back; for Misty and Sakura, and all that they had lost; for tiny Magdalene Chase, whose life was far worse than Rachel could have imagined. She wept until her whole body shook, curled up on the cold black-and-white tile, till she was sick with weakness from crying.
A knock sounded on the stall door.
“Rachel?” Zoë Forrest’s voice asked. “Are you okay?”
“No,” Rachel whispered very softly.
Zoë opened the stall door and knelt down beside Rachel, patting her on the back. She wore a pair of purple and blue pajamas sporting a bashful Eeyore. Rachel shrank away from the other girl, embarrassed. She feared the smell of vomit still lingered.
“So, is this from the excitement of the day?” Zoë’s hair was bright orange now. The neon-orange braid swung down beside Rachel, the feather tied into it tickling her cheek. “Or are you coming down with something?”
“Zoë,” Rachel’s voice hiccupped when she tried to speak. “I-If someone gets t-transformed into an animal—a dumb animal…A-are they dead?”
Zoë shook her head firmly. “My uncle got turned into a sea tortoise. They lost him in the bay for months. Eventually, they found him and changed him back. Afterward, he was fine. Except for the weird things he did at the beach…”
“Lost him!” Rachel laughed in spite of her inner agony, hiccupping. She pressed her hand against her mouth and then winced at the pain in her bruised hand. “I’m glad you got him back!”
It was as if a great weight had been removed from the burden oppressing her. So, a person could be transformed into a dumb animal and recover his intelligence.
Zoë rubbed her back some more.
“See? It won’t be so bad.” Zoë’s drawl, which was normally dry, had a cheerful, encouraging tone. “You’re worried about that boy who got turned into a sheep, aren’t you? Don’t worry. They’ll fix him. Things like that happen in duels.”
Rachel took a shaky breath and nodded wordlessly. She felt like a plucked viola string. Much as she appreciated sympathy, right now she wanted to be alone. Otherwise, everything she was thinking would come spilling out. On the other hand, maybe that would not be such a bad thing.
“Um…Zoë?” Rachel’s voice squeaked. “I really need to talk to someone. But I-I might break down in the middle. That’s a lot to ask of someone I only recently met. If you want to go away and pretend you didn’t see me, that’s okay.”
Zoë looked at her thoughtfully. She shrugged. “You can talk to me. I don’t mind if you break down. I’m feeling rather useless. It would be nice if I could help someone.” She looked around. “But maybe you would be more comfortable talking somewhere else.”
Zoë helped Rachel stand up and got her a glass of water. Rachel drank it slowly. She leaned against the black marble counter. In the mirror, her tear-stained reflection looked woeful.
“Something is wrong—seriously wrong—with our world.” Rachel closed her eyes, searching for words to express the thoughts tormenting her. As her personal fear for Gaius ebbed, the greater fears, brought on by events of the day, were catching up with her. “Magic that’s not supposed to work does. People are here who aren’t supposed to be. And I keep seeing this Raven, whose presence supposedly signifies the Doom of Worlds. No one knows what’s causing all this, and no one seems to be taking it seriously.
“Even my friends, who have vowed to help, aren’t serious. Siggy’s very brave, but he’s like a small boat suddenl
y adrift on a large sea. Everything is so different from the restrictive atmosphere of the orphanage that he doesn’t know how to control himself. How to choose what to say or do. Sometimes, he’s helpful. Other times, he’s totally crackers.
“And the Princess—she’s so sweet. But she doesn’t understand we’re trying to protect the world. When we talked about it earlier this afternoon, before everything went crazy, she thought we were forming a social club! She’s too concerned with rules and politeness, to tackle the real problems.”
Zoë leaned against the tiled wall, twirling the tip of her neon orange braid. She did not say anything, but she listened intently. Drawing an uneven breath, Rachel forged ahead.
“And the adults!” she continued. “You’d think they’d be properly serious, but they’re not! Like the princess, they’re too concerned about rules and regulations to put the resources they have—knowledge—where the problem is: with us.
“You’d think James Darling, at least, would understand,” cried Rachel. “Can you imagine how much easier his life would have been had the Parliament of the Wise supported him, instead of trying to placate the Terrible Five?”
Zoë’s eyebrows arched upward. Rachel noticed that they were a dark auburn. She wondered if that was the original color of Zoë’s hair.
“Yeah.” Zoë blinked twice. “That woulda been really different.”
“I trusted the adults, but they don’t trust me—because I’m thirteen.” Rachel’s voice took on a hard, bitter tone. “But being thirteen doesn’t protect me. It hasn’t kept me from being the one who had to decide what to say to Mortimer Egg. Or the one who heard that horrid Raven talk to Kitten’s Lion. It won’t keep me alive, if I do the wrong thing when the Raven comes. Because sooner or later, it might do more than just watch me.
“You know what I see, in my mind’s eye, when I think about the Agents refusing to share information?” Rachel’s voice went low and flat, her eyes glazed over. “I see Valerie dead on the grass, killed by the evil brooch. Or the princess unconscious and covered in blood. Or Siggy—forever pale and still—killed by black fire shot out of the hands of the geased Mr. Fuentes. Or you dead—because, when the danger came, the adults had failed to share the information needed for us to know to be wary of it.
“We students are the ones under attack! We are the front line!” Rachel finished fiercely. “We are the ones who need to know what’s going on!”
Zoë jumped up to sit on the counter. “Doesn’t anyone care? You would think…” She waved a hand as if to indicate someone out there, somewhere.
Rachel snorted ironically. “The only other person who’s serious is Vladimir Von Dread.”
“Dread? He’s the guy who sheeped that boy, isn’t he?”
“Yeah.”
“The sheep kid—was that the same boy you were talking to in the dining hall? The one who stood on the chair and made that other guy tell everyone how he tried to stop your broom?”
“Yeah, Gaius Valiant.” Rachel nodded. “My boyfriend.”
Zoë’s eyebrows shot up. “I didn’t know fourteen-year-olds had boyfriends.”
“I’m thirteen.”
“Oh. Right. That makes it all right, I guess,” Zoë drawled, rolling her eyes.
“At first, I thought being his girlfriend was a very bad idea,” Rachel admitted, “even though I fancy him something fierce. He’s sixteen. He’s dangerous. I’m tiny. My older sister says—” Rachel’s cheeks grew warm. Her words rushed out. “She says even nice boys sometimes get…um…over-exuberant when you let them date you. What could a little girl like me do to stop such behavior? So, I said ‘no.’”
“I can understand that.” Zoë ran her fingers down the feather tied into her braid. As she did so, it changed color, turning purple spotted with blue. It now matched her Eeyore pajamas.
Rachel gawked. “Did you…just change the color of the feather?”
Zoë gave her a cocky grin. She ran her hands over her hair. As they passed, her short locks changed from neon orange to a frosty lavender. As an afterthought, she passed her hand across her head once again, this time adding blue highlights.
“That’s absolutely brilliant!” Rachel gaped. “I’ve never heard of anyone doing that! Is that a Metaplutonian power?” Her eyes widened. “That’s what you did to that beastly Cydney Graves and her friends! When you made their hair spew-colored. Can they change it back?”
“No idea.” Zoë grin grew even wider. “You were saying?”
“Oh, um…Right. So, at first, I wasn’t going to date him, but Gaius kept impressing me. After a bit, things that had seemed like big obstacles just fell away.”
Zoë nodded. “I thought that kid and Dread were friends. What went wrong?”
“Me.” Rachel traced the swirls of the marbled lines on the countertop. “My father found out Gaius was my boyfriend. He told Vladimir Von Dread to order him not to date me.”
Rachel shivered. Up until tonight, her family had meant everything to her. Now, she felt as if she had been ripped out of her family portrait.
“Your father?” Zoë frowned. “That’s really crappy. Not that I don’t think a thirteen-year-old dating a sixteen-year-old is a little weird. But still. Your father coulda at least met the guy before he decided if he’s a jerk or not. Yeesh, you English!
Zoë slipped off the counter and poured herself a glass of water. “So, what happened? Instead of talking to him, Dread turned Valiant into a sheep? That was choice!”
“Dread talked to him all right, and Gaius jolly well said ‘no!’” Rachel’s eyes grew large. Even thinking about it made her giddy with astonishment. “He stood up to Vladimir Von Dread—the person he most admires— rather than not be my boyfriend.” Rachel blushed furiously. “I think he likes me.”
“You think?” Zoë asked sardonically. “So, he dueled Dread—over you?”
Rachel’s head bobbed up and down, a tiny smile curling up the corner of her lip. “He even held his own for a bit! And Gaius’s only an upper school senior, while Dread’s a college junior. But,” she gave an exaggerated sigh, “it ended in sheepness.”
“Mmm. A shame.”
“Now Gaius is at the Halls of Healing, and I-I’m really scared.” Rachel’s voice shook. “If you’re right about your uncle, though, maybe Gaius’ll swim out to sheep sea and eventually be restored—to a guy who’s just like the old Gaius, except that he likes to chew cud.”
“Most likely.” Zoë nodded. “Same old Gaius—only more likely to baa when he laughs.”
Rachel’s voice broke. “People are alive, who might be dead, were it not for the spell Gaius taught me. I didn’t realize how much he had helped me this week—until he…stopped being around.”
The sorrow and loss was too much for her. She covered her face and wept. Zoë did not comfort her, but she did yank a paper towel from the dispenser and hand it to her. Rachel pressed it against her eyes, sniffing. Then, she splashed cold water on her face.
“We’ll get Valiant back,” Zoë announced decisively. “I’ll help you. I can walk through dreams, and I have a super-cool war club. That’s two of us. With Valiant, that’s three. We’ll find other people who are trustworthy, and then we’ll save the world.”
Rachel felt a rush of joy, as if a weight had lifted from the burdens oppressing her. “I knew there had to be more people who were serious!”
“What the rest of us need is to learn how to cast like you,” Zoë said. “Even though you’re thirteen, you beat people you shouldn’t have. And Valiant held his own against Dread. I bet he woulda won, if I had whacked Dread over the head with my war club in the middle of the fight.”
The image of Zoë whacking Dread with her greenstone club made Rachel giggle unexpectedly. “You give me hope. I feel much better!”
“Hey!” Zoë flipped her braid over her shoulder. “I think you can save Valiant right now!”
“H-how?”
“You guys saved Dread’s life, right? I heard him say he owed you. Pri
nces take that kind of thing seriously, don’t they? Tell him you want him to turn Valiant back.”
Rachel’s heart began to race. “You think Dread can turn him back? The nurses couldn’t.”
“I’ll bet you good money Dread knows what spell he cast. Three-quarters of recovering from magical accidents is figuring out what went wrong. Don’t skimp on it, either. Tell him to go to New York, fix Valiant, and get him a new damn wand. What a jerk face!
“Or, if you prefer,” Zoë added, “I can step out of a dream into Dread’s room and bash him with my club. You decide.”
“Tempting, but no.” Rachel chuckled. She chewed on her lip, thinking. The Prince of Bavaria intrigued her. She was angry with him for hurting Gaius, but she would not let that stand in the way of what needed to be done—like learning more, and saving people, places, and things—including the world, which was either a place or a thing. Maybe both. “I don’t mind talking to Dread. I have a number of things I’d like to say to him. Thank you for the idea and for listening to me. I’ll go talk to Dread now. Oh, wait. It’s after curfew.”
“Not if we go my way.” Zoë tapped her silver sandal against the tiled floor.
“Do you think if we appear in his room, Dread will blast us?”
“Yeah, nah.” Zoë tilted her head in thought. “He’s evil, I’m sure. But I doubt he would blast a couple of girls. Or do you want to wait until morning?”
Rachel smiled wickedly. “Let’s go!”
Chapter Fifteen:
The Cold Lair of Dread
Zoë knelt and motioned for Rachel to hop on her back. Rachel did so, holding tightly to the other girl’s shoulders.
“Good thing I’m tiny.”
“You truly are.” Zoë crossed her arms behind her and lifted Rachel up. “You look more like an eleven-year-old than a thirteen-year-old. People keep mistaking you and that Chase girl—What’s her name? Madeline? Magdalene?—for visitors from the Lower School. No offense, but it makes your having a boyfriend even weirder.”
The Raven, The Elf, and Rachel (A Book of Unexpected Enlightenment 2) Page 17