Wundersmith, The Calling of Morrigan Crow

by Jessica Townsend

  “I should remind you that this isn’t one of the Society’s silly little tests, Miss Crow,” said Squall. He stood apart from them, skirting the edge of the shadows. “This is real life. If you fail, there will be real consequences. Ticktock.”

  Taking great heaving breaths, Morrigan looked from Mildmay sprawled on the ground, to Hawthorne, his eyes wide, to the Museum of Stolen Moments. The sound of murmuring chatter from inside the building had quietened a little. Were they already too late? “Hawthorne. Let’s go.”

  “Mildmay will get away,” he said. “We have to get the Stealth and—”

  “We have to get Cadence and Lambeth and the others.” She glanced down at Mildmay, who seemed suddenly panicked. A deep, reverberating growl filled the air. The Hunt of Smoke and Shadow was emerging from the dark.

  The two friends ran. Only when they’d reached the museum steps did Morrigan look back, turning at the sound of a sudden unearthly howl. Through the darkness, she saw a hundred red eyes, burning like fire.

  “I’ll take care of our dear friend Henry,” Squall’s cold voice rang out from the shadows. “Never fear.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  THE AUCTION

  They ran up the steps and into the museum’s entrance hall. It was empty and bare, except for a table of masks, like at the last market. Morrigan grabbed the first one she saw—a screaming ghoul—and hastily pulled it over her head.

  “Here,” she whispered, handing a glittery court jester mask to Hawthorne. “Put this on, quick.”

  “What do you think will happen to him?” The grinning rubber face couldn’t disguise the tension in Hawthorne’s voice.

  “Who, Mildmay?” said Morrigan, trying her best to sound unconcerned about the fate of her once-favorite teacher. Her eyes flicked back to the open door. “Nothing good.”

  They followed the sound of voices into an antechamber that led to the main hall. Morrigan was desperate to run straight through this room and into the next, where she thought the auction must be taking place, but she knew better than to draw attention. There were masked guests dotted all around, drinking and laughing and occasionally pausing to admire a globe as if it were art.

  It was surprisingly easy to blend in, even though Morrigan was at least a head shorter than everyone there. Hawthorne had fortunately shot up like a weed this past summer, and his shoulders were broader than she remembered, probably from his many hours of dragonriding training. It put him almost on a height with some of the adults, much to Morrigan’s relief.

  “This is bonkers,” Hawthorne whispered from behind his mask as they made their way across the room as slowly and calmly as they could bear. “I mean, these globes—once you know what they are—are just…”

  Morrigan felt too queasy to respond. How had she not seen the truth about this place immediately, she wondered? Some of the scenes inside the glass were quiet and subtle, easy to misinterpret. But there were also scenes of unmistakable death and destruction. A stampede of elephants, kicking up dust as they barreled toward a water hole crowded with wildlife. A cresting tidal wave, about to decimate an entire village. A muddy, blood-spattered battlefield with cannonballs in flight. Morrigan shook her head.

  “Marvelous,” mused one portly man in a tuxedo, examining a nearby globe. He wore a white, featureless mask that made him look like death itself. “All real, you know. Real people in there.”

  He tapped on the glass, peering inside as if it were a zoo enclosure. “Caught in the moments just before their deaths. The auctioneer told me. Extraordinary thing.”

  “Oh. Intriguing.” The woman with him sounded only mildly interested. “Can they hear us, do you think?”

  “Good question.” He tapped on the glass again. A group had gathered around him now, watching. “I say, you in there, dead chap—can you hear me? Blink once for yes, twice for no.” The group guffawed as if he had said something tremendously funny.

  “Dying chap, you mean.” The woman gave a foul little giggle. “Not quite dead yet, surely. That’s the point!”

  Morrigan felt sick to her stomach. At Hawthorne’s insistent tug of her elbow, she kept walking, staring resolutely ahead, determined not to look at the scene inside the globe. But as they reached the door to the main hall, she couldn’t help herself, and glanced back.

  It was a teenage boy, maybe sixteen or seventeen, in a brocade jacket and tall black boots. He was riding on horseback down a cobbled street, and perhaps his horse had got a fright or something, because it was rearing back, the whites of its eyes showing. The boy looked equally terrified. He’d been thrown from his saddle and was about to land on the cobblestones on such an angle, and with such force, that anyone could see…

  Morrigan swallowed, blinking back tears.

  She couldn’t bear it. The disgust, the unfairness of it all—of the Museum of Stolen Moments, of Mildmay’s betrayal, of the Ghastly Market itself. Morrigan felt like there was a wild creature living inside her, clawing to get out. Squall’s words rang in her ears.

  You are not a mouse, Morrigan Crow. You are a dragon.

  She wanted to do something to help these people, trapped in death. And she wanted Mildmay brought to justice. She wanted to unleash, wanted to sweep away the horror of this place, wanted to make those masked idiots stop laughing—but she had to bite it down, to clamp a lid tight on her anger.

  “Cadence and Lambeth,” she whispered to herself. “You’re here for your friends. Don’t get distracted.”

  Morrigan closed her eyes and imagined reaching into her chest and caging the fire that lived there, gently dousing its heat. Just a little.

  The lost souls of the museum would have to wait.

  Hawthorne gasped loudly as they entered a second, much larger hall. He tried to cover it up with a cough, while subtly pointing to the ceiling. Morrigan looked up, filled with dread.

  The hall was arranged to highlight the lots up for sale, raised high on platforms so they could be seen by the entire crowd—and so they couldn’t escape. The only way Morrigan could see to bring the platforms down was by a system of heavy chains and pulleys, each of them attended by a pair of brutish security guards in skull masks.

  Just like Alfie in his giant fish tank, they had each been made the centerpiece of a grotesque display, a mockery of their unique knacks. Professor Onstald, at the farthest end, was chained to the minute hand of a giant clock, currently positioned at five minutes to the hour so that he was, at least, nearly upright. Morrigan wondered how many hours he’d been there, and how many revolutions of the clock face he’d already made, the blood rushing unpleasantly to his head and back all the time. How long could he bear it?

  Cadence, on a platform against the wall to their right, had been dressed in flowing silks of radiant purple and lots of heavy gold jewelry. Beside her stood an enormous golden lamp, and Morrigan blinked at the thing, trying to make sense of what she was seeing.

  “Ugh. They’ve dressed her as a genie,” said Hawthorne, disgusted. “Is that what they think a mesmerist is? Someone who goes around granting wishes, obeying orders? They’ve obviously never met Cadence before.”

  Morrigan suddenly realized that at some point Hawthorne had begun to remember Cadence. She wondered what had changed. Was it the Recognizing Mesmerism lessons kicking in at last? Or was it because he and Cadence had finally—sort of—become friends?

  Hawthorne craned his neck to look around the room. “Oh! Look—up there. Is that him? The one Jupiter’s been looking for?”

  He was looking almost directly above them, where an angel (celestial being, Morrigan silently corrected herself) seemed to be hovering in midair. A closer look, however, revealed that he’d been bound with heavy rope at the joint where his wings met. He was dangling from the ceiling, his wingspan forcibly displayed at its most impressive, hands tied behind his back. Spinning idly from fishing wire all around him were fake clouds made of cutout plywood covered in cotton balls, like the scenery from a bad play.

  Morrigan blinked.
It wasn’t Cassiel. Morrigan had no idea what Cassiel looked like, but she knew this wasn’t him.

  Because it was Israfel.

  She shook her head. There was no time to ponder this now.

  “They’ve tied Cadence’s hands,” Hawthorne observed, scowling. “And taped her mouth shut. Are they trying to stop her from mesmerizing them?”

  Morrigan saw that he was right—and that Israfel’s mouth was also taped, to stop him from singing his way out.

  At the other end of the hall, the crowd was migrating from beneath Onstald’s platform to Lambeth’s. She was perched on a throne in the center of her platform, wearing an elaborate golden crown that was far too big for her head. Her eyes were wide as she looked down at the bidders, and she gripped the arms of her throne as if it were the only thing keeping her afloat in an ocean full of sharks. She was whispering something, over and over.

  Morrigan narrowed her eyes, trying to make out what she was saying. Was it a prayer? A plea for help? Something in her heart squeezed. Poor, tiny, terrified Lambeth.

  “Gather round, ladies and gentlemen, gather round,” yelled the auctioneer. He had a jolly, grandfatherly voice that carried across the room—but, fittingly, he wore the mask of a wolf.

  Lambeth’s voice became louder and more panicky as she repeated her line of gibberish. Morrigan could just make out the words now.

  “Calling. Dying. Freezing. Burning. Flying,” she was saying, over and over, shaking on her throne. “Calling. Dying. Freezing. Burning. Flying.”

  Hawthorne frowned. “What does that mean?”

  “Before I open the bidding on our final item I must, once again, thank you for coming to our humble little auction. You are the very worst and the very richest people we could think to invite, and for those two reasons it’s been wonderful to have you here.” There were peals of laughter and a long round of applause for this terrible joke. Morrigan felt Hawthorne grip her arm, and she wondered if he was telling her not to react, or trying not to react himself.

  “Final item,” she whispered to him, feeling something tighten in her chest. “So they’ve already sold the others.” And sure enough, the guards by Cadence’s platform began to lower it, heaving on the enormous metal chain.

  Panic gripped Morrigan like a great, icy hand. What should they do? What could they do? If they ran to help Cadence, they would give themselves away and leave Lambeth to her fate. If they went to help Lambeth—well, even if they could somehow reach her, then Cadence would be gone before they could get to her. And what about Onstald? And Israfel?

  She had never felt more helpless. Squall had set this whole thing up, had put her in this terrible position, because he hoped she would put her knowledge of the Wretched Arts to use. But what good were her measly talents here? She could call Wunder. She could light some candles, for goodness’ sake. But it had been Squall who’d fought off the Charlton Five’s attack; Squall who’d transformed the Magnificub. What could Morrigan do?

  You can call Wunder, she told herself. You can do that. Start with that.

  “Morningtide’s child is merry and mild,” she sang quietly. Her voice wobbled. Hawthorne turned to look at her in alarm. “Eventide’s child is wicked and wild—”

  “Morrigan—?”

  “Shhh.” Morrigan closed her eyes. It wasn’t answering. She couldn’t feel it. Why wasn’t it working? “Morningtide’s child arrives with the dawn.”

  The auctioneer in the wolf mask was working the crowd. “You have waited patiently for this one, I know, and your considerable, sickening wealth is no doubt burning a hole in your collective pockets—”

  “Eventide’s child brings gale and storm…”

  “—and so, let us begin. May I present our most anticipated lot in the history of the Ghastly Market: Her Royal Highness, Princess Lamya Bethari Amati Ra.”

  Morrigan stopped singing. Hawthorne grew completely still.

  Princess who?

  “A member of the Royal House of Ra in Far East Sang, Princess Lamya is fourth in line to inherit the throne from her grandmother, the queen. When the Royal House of Ra learned that their spare was a short-range oracle, they sent her off to be educated by our fancy friends at the Wundrous Society.” There were jeers from the crowd. “In doing so, they committed high treason against the ruling Wintersea Party—who, according to my Republic sources, seem to be under the impression that little Princess Lamya is bedridden due to frail health. The enterprising Queen Ama has paid off some poor village waif to laze about in the palace for a few years, pretending to be her granddaughter!”

  Morrigan couldn’t believe what she was hearing. Lambeth wasn’t from the Free State. She was from one of the four states of the Wintersea Republic, just like her. She wasn’t meant to be here! And she was a princess!

  “I did think she seemed a bit posh,” whispered Hawthorne.

  “Shhh.”

  Morrigan’s father worked for the Wintersea Party, so she had some idea of what they were like. If it was true—if Lambeth really was a member of the royal family in Far East Sang, and if they really had smuggled her out of the Republic, against Wintersea Party law—she was in even greater danger than they’d realized. People in the Republic weren’t even allowed to know the Free State existed.

  “Where are you going, o son of the morning?” Morrigan sang. She could barely get the words out, she was shaking so badly.

  The auctioneer confirmed her suspicions. “It’s bad news for the entire House of Ra if the Wintersea Party finds out.” He mimed getting his head chopped off, and the audience burst into appreciative laughter. “Treason is of course punishable by execution in the Wintersea Republic. That makes this prize all the more valuable—the possibilities are endless, folks.”

  “We have to do something,” Hawthorne hissed. “We’ve got to cause a distraction, or… or something! Morrigan, help.”

  But Morrigan wasn’t listening. “Up with the sun where the winds are warming.” Eyes squeezed shut, she tried to block out the auctioneer, and Hawthorne, and the obnoxious crowd, and pay attention to how the air felt around her. “Where are you going, o daughter of—”

  She stopped. It was working. It was here.

  Subtle at first—just a ripple in the atmosphere. A tingle in her fingertips.

  And then she opened her eyes, and the world had turned so golden-bright it was like standing on the sun.

  “Once you’ve acquired Princess Lamya’s extremely rare and useful knack,” continued the auctioneer, grinning maliciously, “you may wish to ransom her back to her family, or hold on to her for blackmail purposes, or sell her to the Wintersea Party and watch the House of Ra topple! Do what you will, ladies and gents, but we’re setting the price high. We’ll start with fifteen thousand kred. Do I hear fifteen thousand?”

  It was a different feeling from before. When Morrigan had first called Wunder in this room, the sensation of holding raw power in her hands had swiftly given way to a total lack of control. She hadn’t known what to do with the Wunder once she’d called it, and it knew that. Somehow it knew, and it had mutinied.

  This was not that. This was seamless.

  The Wunder that gathered to her now was perfectly aligned with her intention. Her righteous anger at everything that had happened tonight—everything that had happened this year—had at last given it the purpose it craved. Morrigan thought of Mildmay’s greed and betrayal. She thought of the cruelty of Mathilde Lachance, imprisoning people within their own deaths. She thought of Ezra Squall, who’d been pulling her strings like a puppet all this time, who’d arranged this nightmare just so Morrigan could be the one to end it. And she thought of the casual malice—the evil—of anyone who thought they had the right to buy and sell a knack, to buy and sell a life.

  The nearest globe shattered and its contents burst spectacularly into the room.

  It was the young men in the motorcar, spinning out of control as they screamed in terror, and smashing into another globe.

  The auctioneer and
the bidders barely had a moment to register what had happened before the second globe spilled its tragedy out across the floor—a boat on a storm-tossed, lightning-struck sea, its crew overwhelmed. The vessel came to a grinding crash and took another globe out with it—a woman engulfed by a swarm of bees. And then another—an avalanche of rocks tumbling down onto the roof of a cabin. Then another, and another.

  Morrigan had set off a domino effect. She quickly realized that these scenes of destruction were bigger than the globes that contained them. They grew as they gained their freedom, merging together to create a chaos that was now rapidly filling the hall. The stampeding elephants split the crowd in two. A great white shark lurched from its shattered glass prison amid a cacophony of screams.

  The auction guests scrambled to find safety, but the tumult was relentless. Globes smashed one after the other—an angry mob, a duel to the death, a frenzied battlefield.

  Morrigan stared as this horror unfolded in a matter of moments.

  What had she done?

  She’d only wanted to cause a distraction. She’d thought she could save her friends and free the people inside the globes, to finally let them rest in peace. But this wasn’t just a distraction—it was madness. How could she help Lambeth and Cadence now? She couldn’t get anywhere near them. She wouldn’t even be able to save herself from this.

  “MORRIGAN!”

  Hawthorne lurched toward her, grabbing hold just as a nearby globe broke open and unleashed an ocean wave bigger and more terrifying than anything Morrigan had seen in her life. The two friends clung to each other, unable to do anything but stare at the wall of water that crested above them, waiting for it to crash. They couldn’t possibly survive this.

  And then everything just… stopped.

  The deafening noise of screams, and bellowing unnimals, and rushing water, all went suddenly, deathly quiet. The tsunami above their heads slowed to an imperceptible speed, almost quivering with tension. All Morrigan could hear was the sound of her own heartbeat and Hawthorne’s rapid breathing.