Pennyroyal Academy

by M. A. Larson

  She hadn’t seen much of Remington, aside from brief exchanges in the Dining Hall, and that suited her just fine. Between memory treatments, worrying over her Grand Ball gown, and keeping up with the physical demands of her training, she had begun to think he would be nothing more than a distraction, anyway.

  But now that she stood only a few yards away from him, she realized how much she had missed that glint of mischief in his eyes. She stole a glance at him and he was already looking at her. She quickly looked away.

  “Pay close attention, all of you,” said the Fairy Drillsergeant, floating near the hulking, bearded Captain Ramsbottom. “This is not a game.”

  Ironbone Company and Thrushbeard Company had gathered beneath a thin, octagonal tower called Joringel’s Stem. There were other, bigger towers nearby—the tallest being Dapplegrim Tower, so disjointed and crumbling it looked like giants had been bashing at it—but standing at its base, Joringel’s Stem seemed high enough. Particularly when a small figure in silver stepped onto the ledge of the highest window, framed by the swirling black clouds above. Then, to gasps and screams, she fell.

  A horse tore across the courtyard ridden by a knight cadet in matching silver and chain mail, leaning forward to slice the air. Just as the princess was about to smash on the stone, the horse galloped past and she landed on its back. The Thrushbeard knights cheered as the horse curled back around and trotted to a stop before them.

  “And that’s how you escape a tower,” said the Fairy Drillsergeant. “Thank you, cadets.”

  The knight and princess bowed their heads, then rode off and disappeared around the tower.

  “It takes timing and trust to execute this type of escape. But if you don’t master it, you could be spending the bulk of your career trapped in a tower.” A ripple of nervous whispers broke out on the princess side. “Relax, you sorry wumpers, I’ve got a wand, haven’t I? Those were first-class cadets. They’re the only ones to do this without safety precautions.”

  Evie noticed Demetra standing near Maggie, eyes fixed on a lone dandelion. She looked ashen. There’s something the matter with her lately, she thought. I must remember to try to talk to her during free hours.

  “Today, you’ll be working with partners.” Evie looked to Remington. He gave her a smile and raised his eyebrows. As she grinned back, Malora took a half step forward and blocked their view. Evie couldn’t say for certain if it was intentional or not, but she suspected it probably was.

  To her consternation, she hadn’t been paired with Remington, but with Forbes. Judging by the flat acceptance in his reaction, he was none too thrilled with the pairing, either. She and the other Ironbone girls followed Demetra and Maggie up the twisting turnpike staircase that seemed to stretch on to the heavens.

  “Come on, Demetra, there’s nothing to worry about,” came Maggie’s voice from above, bouncing off the tubular stone walls. They passed a small diamond-shaped window, and Evie caught a glimpse of the knight cadets below. They already looked small and distant, and there were many more stairs left to climb.

  Finally, they crested the staircase and emerged into an empty lookout room, where most of the walls had been cut away into pointed arches to create panoramic windows. Maggie dragged Demetra across the hollow wooden floor to the window overlooking the courtyard. Evie followed. Behind her, scattered members of Ironbone Company emerged, huffing for breath.

  “Look, there’s my knight!” said Maggie, pointing to the ground below.

  “Whenever you’re ready, Cadet!” came the ghost of the Fairy Drillsergeant’s voice.

  Maggie turned to Evie with wide eyes and an excited smile, and a moment later she was gone.

  “Maggie!” screamed Demetra.

  Evie leaned over the rain-smoothed ledge and saw a flash of motion in the courtyard below. A moment later, the horse traced a wide arc into the field beyond, carrying both Maggie and her knight.

  “Brilliant, Cadet!” shouted the Fairy Drillsergeant. “Who’s next up there?”

  A small contingent of Ironbone girls huddled near the top of the staircase, with others sporadically joining them. Most were hunched over or leaning against the wall, struggling for breath. Others looked in no hurry to take their turns.

  Evie turned to Demetra. “Reckon it’s us.”

  “Shouldn’t kingsbloods go first?” said Kelbra to Malora. Evie looked over, ready for a fight. Instead, Malora gave her a sly smile.

  “Let them,” she said. “We won’t get any of their splatter on us up here.” Evie scowled, but Malora didn’t seem to mind.

  “You go ahead,” said Demetra.

  Evie gave Malora one last glare, then put a foot on the window ledge. But before she could jump, something stopped her. Something she had glimpsed in Demetra’s eyes.

  “Demetra . . . are you all right?” She stepped down into the lookout room.

  “I can’t.” Demetra slowly shook her head. Her lip trembled and her eyes welled with tears.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I can’t do it. I’d rather go home.”

  “Demetra, listen, all you have to do is close your eyes, take one step, and it’ll be over in a moment.” She put a hand on her friend’s arm. “Trust me, I’ve done it from a higher place than this.”

  “It’s not the fall, Evie, it’s . . . They’re on horseback down there.”

  “Go on, will you? It’s getting crowded up here,” said Malora as more Ironbone girls reached the top.

  “Demetra.” Evie gripped her shoulders and looked straight into her eyes. “What’s wrong?”

  “What’s going on up there?” shouted the Fairy Drillsergeant. “Do I have to come up and throw you out?”

  “I should just go home and save everyone the bother,” said Demetra with a sniffle.

  “I don’t understand. You’re one of the best in the company—”

  “But I’m not my sister, am I? I’ll never be my sister. I can’t even ride a bloody horse.” She took a deep breath and looked out the window, and the daylight lit up the pain in her eyes. “I used to go riding all the time until my horse threw me. I don’t even remember why it happened, but I’ll never forget it. I couldn’t breathe. I tried to scream to my father that I was dying, but I couldn’t speak.”

  “Are you seriously crying?” said Malora, incredulous. Kelbra laughed, and so did a few others.

  Evie glowered at her. “Quiet, Malora, can’t you see she’s scared?”

  Malora’s jaw tightened in anger, but she didn’t say anything.

  “My father picked me up and put me back in the saddle. I still couldn’t breathe, but he said I had to toughen up and keep riding. The horse threw me again, and I . . .” She swallowed back the horrible memory, but couldn’t stop tears from falling. “The look on my sister’s face . . . like it was somehow my fault . . .”

  “Forget your sister. This is for you. None of us is going to make it through this place without confronting our fears.”

  “Bloody hell, girls, all you have to do in this exercise is FALL!”

  “You just have to step through and do it, that’s all there is. Besides, you can’t go home. What if you’re the Warrior Princess?” said Evie with a smile.

  Demetra laughed and wiped her eyes. “And afraid of a horse? I think Basil might have better odds.”

  “Hey!” he said. “I’m sitting right here!”

  A blast of wind shot through the window. “All right,” she said with a shiver. “All right.” She put her hands on either side of the arch and stepped into the window.

  “Look, there’s your horse there,” said Evie, pointing to Demetra’s knight at the courtyard’s edge. “That horse is going to keep you alive, do you understand?”

  Demetra nodded. She looked out at the distant horizon, where the charcoal clouds sawed the Glass Mountains in half, and she was gone.

  Her
screams pierced the campus, and behind Evie the girls who were already nervous about the fall shifted uncomfortably. Down the side of the tower, Evie saw a glimpse of whipping golden hair and a galloping horse, and then she was on its back riding into the green expanse beyond.

  “That’s what I like to see, Cadet! Perhaps I’ve underestimated Ironbone Company, have I? Who’s next?”

  Evie didn’t wait for discussion. She stepped onto the rain-smoothed stone and crouched in the window. The winds swished in and out of the lookout room, playing havoc with her balance. From these heights, the undulating peaks and valleys of the Dortchen Wild looked like a tempestuous green sea. She could even see the slight curve of the earth as she looked from one end of the world to the other. She closed her eyes, ignoring the pig snorts and laughter behind her, and let the wind rush across her face. She pulled the dragon scale from her dress and put it to her lips.

  “For you, Father,” she whispered. And then she leaned out into empty air and fell.

  As she plummeted toward the ground, she had none of the terror of her fall from the cliff. This was different. She let the wind push her arms away from her body and felt the adrenaline course through her blood. With her eyes closed, she could almost imagine that she was flying. It was a blissful weightlessness she had never experienced before, and it felt so entirely right—

  Her body slammed to a sudden stop, and her neck snapped forward. I’ve missed my horse, she thought. I’m dead. She tried to inhale, but could only manage a tiny wheeze of air. She opened her eyes and saw . . . grass?

  “WHAT IN BLAZES DO YOU THINK YOU’RE DOING?” screamed the Fairy Drillsergeant, so incensed that her voice rasped away to nothing.

  Gradually, Evie’s lungs began to draw air again. She looked around and realized she was floating only inches off the ground, spared from a horrible death by the magic in the Fairy Drillsergeant’s wand.

  But why am I above grass and not cobblestones?

  “ARE YOU TRYING TO GET YOURSELF KILLED? ANSWER ME, CADET!”

  “I . . . I’m sorry, Fairy Drillsergeant, I don’t know what happened.” She coughed, and her breathing returned to normal.

  The Fairy Drillsergeant flicked her wand and Evie fell the last few inches to the ground. She pushed herself to her knees, and that’s when it dawned on her.

  I’ve just flown.

  Forbes sat on his mount near the tower, a look of utter bafflement on his face. Somehow, she had overshot him, overshot the entire courtyard, and had ended up in the middle of the field.

  Fates be praised, I’ve just flown.

  She caught the eyes of Maggie and Demetra, both looking back at her with astonishment.

  “GET IN THERE AND RUN THAT STAIRCASE UNTIL I TELL YOU TO STOP! I WILL NOT HAVE . . . WHATEVER THAT WAS IN MY COMPANY!”

  Evie staggered to her feet. Her muscles felt weak and shaky. She started to run back to Joringel’s Stem, and a smile bloomed across her face. With each quivering step, it grew bigger and the Fairy Drillsergeant’s screams faded farther away.

  I did it, Father. I flew.

  As she passed through the tower door and started up the turnpike stairs once again, the exercise slowly returned to normal operation. Evie ran the stairs, up and down, for more than an hour. And she felt so light and free that she could have easily done twenty more.

  I flew, Father, and I am your little girl after all.

  EVIE SAT on a low wall bordering one of the Academy’s many baileys, this one accented with spindly, leafless fruit trees. The unhewn stone of the wall was dry, though heavy black clouds above bulged with rain. Her breath puffed in the crisp air as she turned another page of her book. She had spent so much time reading about Princess Middlemiss and other contemporary princesses that she had fallen behind on her actual class work. She didn’t mind having to catch up, though. The story she was reading now had her riveted. It told of Princess Pennyroyal’s very first discovery of courage, a seminal event in Princess History. She had only been two years older than Evie was now when it happened. A wicked witch had enslaved her village and killed her beloved grandparents, who had raised her from birth. This act triggered something inside her that had snuffed her fears and allowed her to stand face-to-face with the witch. Armed with nothing but her own courage and the memory of her grandparents, Pennyroyal had become the first princess ever to drive a witch from a kingdom. It was the purest display of courage Evie had ever heard told, made all the more miraculous because of where she was reading it. She ran a hand over the flagstone wall, pocked with divots caused by years and weather. It had new meaning to her now. Every stone, every building, every concept in this Academy could be sourced to the story she now read.

  “Volume Three: A Narrative History on the Origins of Courage by . . . Volf. Sounds absolutely horrendous.”

  Evie looked up to find Remington, dressed in a black tunic beneath his black leather Thrushbeard doublet. A tarnished bronze scabbard at his hip housed a sword.

  “Hello,” she said.

  “Aren’t you a bit cold out here?” He cupped his hands and blew into them.

  She closed her book and said nothing. Perhaps it was that she had been so deeply engrossed in the book, or perhaps it was something else, but she found herself at a bit of a loss for words.

  “Oh, that’s right,” he said, eyeing a flapping banner in the distance, “you don’t particularly feel the cold, do you? I remember that from our first frigid swim together.”

  Something near a barren apple tree across the way caught her attention. Three girls in emerald tunic dresses, shivering and pretending not to, seemed to be having a chat. But Evie noticed that they kept glancing over. Remington followed her eyes and saw them, too.

  “Bloody hell . . .” He shook his head. “All right, ladies?” he called, and they scattered, mortified to have been spotted. “Honestly, what is it about your kind? They seem to think I’ll be their Grand Ball escort if they only lurk about and make me uncomfortable enough.”

  “Perhaps they’re waiting to see if you’ll need rescuing from a witch,” said Evie. Immediately after the words were out, her face fell. She had meant it to sound flirtatious, but then realized she had no idea how to do that. Still, her worry vanished when he laughed.

  “Is that so? Well, when the final songs are sung, we’ll see who saved whom.”

  Their eyes held for a moment, and neither spoke. It was only a second or two, but something remarkable passed between them. His swagger fell away and she glimpsed a completely different person underneath.

  “Besides, I’ve retired from the witch game,” he said in a clumsy attempt to cover the moment. “I’m on to dragons now.”

  She cringed, and her spine straightened just a bit.

  “Speaking of which,” she said, “I believe you owe me an apology.”

  “Do I?”

  “You lied to me when we first met. You said you weren’t a knight.”

  He glanced around the bailey in confusion, as if only now realizing where he was. “This is the training academy, is it not? Or else I’ve been horribly misled.”

  “I heard about your . . . that you’ve . . .” She choked on the words. “Killed a dragon.”

  “Where did you hear that?” he said, his face darkening. “Honestly, the gossip is endless. No, my lady, I haven’t killed any dragons. Or giants or tigers or sea serpents, either.”

  She studied his face, trying to read his truthfulness. His anger over the rumor seemed genuine. Was it possible it really wasn’t true? They stood there a moment, neither sure what to say, until finally the bong of a bell echoed deep in campus.

  “Ah, the chimes of the late cadet, forever ringing, forever ringing,” he said as his eyes lightened and his smile returned. “Try not to freeze out here. I didn’t rescue you from a witch only to see the elements get you.”

  He flicked his dark eyebrows, and then he was go
ne. A smile crept across her face as she watched him go. If Maggie really was mistaken, if he hadn’t actually killed a dragon . . . well . . .

  Her smile blossomed until her lips parted and she was beaming. As she was replaying the conversation in her head, three figures in green dresses scurried past, and she burst out in laughter.

  That night in the Dining Hall, she caught herself staring over at him all through supper. Unless she consciously forced herself to listen to her friends—and tonight’s topic of conversation was Maggie defending to all others that the white-furred snowbear really did exist in the lands of the south—her eyes always found their way back across the room to his table.

  Over the next few days, her thoughts kept returning to the bailey. He hasn’t killed a dragon after all. And with that fact dispensed, he came to mind at meals, during drills, in classrooms, and in the Infirmary. But unlike the distractions she had battled during her first few weeks at the Academy, this one was quite welcome.

  Anisette turned many nighttime conversations to the knights. She and Maggie seemed to take particular pleasure in teasing Evie about Remington, which usually drove Basil out of the barracks to his storehouse. But Evie kept her feelings to herself, and responded with nothing more than a smile.

  She was smiling still as she and her company followed the Fairy Drillsergeant up a rain-slicked road to the Armory, a brown dome that lay on the ground like a fallen shield, glinting in the wet.

  “Inside, all of you,” said the Fairy Drillsergeant, who seemed in an even fouler mood than usual.

  The cadets poured through the iron-studded doors and into a vast circular chamber with a low, curved ceiling. The walls were ringed with every type of armor and close-combat weapon imaginable. Spears and spikes and swords and maces and shields. Pennyroyal banners streamed down the walls, separating the various families of weaponry. The center of the Armory was dominated by a worn sparring pit of scarred cobblestones, crisscrossed with the chinks and slashes of weapons slapping rock.