by Ed Masessa
“Away!” Coralis’s sudden, sharp command sent the snakes slithering toward a tall bucket. They slinked inside and instantly went rigid, joining another dozen that Henry had initially assumed were canes.
“Okay, that’s pretty amazing.” Serena took a step toward the petrified snakes, but Coralis stopped her.
“You will have time to look around later—if I’m feeling generous,” he growled. “Right now, I’m not. Luis, I understand your issues, but you are a part of this group and need to control your irrational anger toward those who are not your enemy. There will be a time—very soon, I’m afraid—for you to release that anger at a more acceptable target. And you.” He pointed at Bryndis. “I will make an exception this one time because you just arrived—and who knows what kind of baggage you brought to this motley crew—but if I ever see another outburst like that, I will send you back from whence you came. Understood?”
Her facial features cycled through a range of emotions in the span of a second—anger, fear, resignation. She inhaled, then exhaled deeply. “Understood.”
“Good.” Clearly feeling in control again, he gave terse commands. “Molly, they’re all yours. Run them through some basic wand-control drills. Gretchen, you’ll know where to find me.”
“You could have at least said please,” Molly joked once Coralis was out of earshot.
“Ja,” Gretchen agreed. “The grouchy side is my least favorite.”
The tension in the room instantly dissipated and everyone relaxed with a nervous chuckle. Everyone but Bryndis. “Bryndis,” said Molly. “May I call you Bryn?”
“No.”
“And you thought I was bad.” Luis had crept behind Henry and whispered the line, but not soft enough.
Bryndis lunged toward him. Molly whipped a wand from a small side pocket in her pants and froze the new girl in her tracks. Her face turned a deep shade of crimson as she fought against whatever was holding her in place. “You need to calm down,” Molly said sternly. “He didn’t mean anything by it. Did you, Luis?”
“No!” Luis slid farther behind Henry for protection, obviously afraid of the new girl.
“Wow!” said Brianna. “What did she do to you?”
Bryndis’s eyes blazed at Brianna as she struggled to speak. Only a garbled croak came out.
Henry thought her eyes were going to pop right out of her head from the strain of trying to break free. “Bryndis, you have to know that we are your friends,” he offered. She twitched and jerked but he could see her back off slightly. “None of us asked to be here. And some of us probably don’t want to stay here any longer than we have to, but right now we need to find out more about ourselves and how to use the power we were given.”
Bryndis listened and relaxed. Her head was locked in place but her eyes shifted from one apprentice to the next, resting a shade too long on Luis, who ducked behind Henry again.
“What exactly did she do to you?” Henry asked.
“She had just arrived,” Luis started hesitantly. “We were in the main entrance—the one with the live tree columns. All I said was ‘nice boots.’ ”
Bryndis garbled meanly and strained to lunge at him.
“I wasn’t making fun!” he said defensively. “I think they are really nice boots. But she went crazy. She pulled out a wand and pointed it at a tree. The roots burst through the floor, wrapped around my ankles, and slammed me to the floor.” He rubbed his butt. Brianna giggled.
“Fortunately, Coralis reversed whatever she did. But then she got mad at him and swung her wand at him.”
“Oh, snap!” said Brianna.
Molly whistled softly. “That’s playing with fire.”
Luis nodded vigorously. “I know, right? I mean, like, I just got here too, but I’m not loco enough to attack a Wand Master.”
“So what did he do?” Brianna asked.
“He made her wand disappear. Poof! Then he marched us all down here. When she came after me again, Coralis made those sticks come alive. That one is a yarará snake. I’ve seen people die from their bite and wasn’t going to be one of them. So I stood as still as I could. Why would he do that to me?” he asked Molly. “I did nothing and he tried to kill me.”
“It’s been a long time since he’s trained several young apprentices at once,” said Molly. “He’s rusty, and I don’t think he’s ever dealt with such a diverse group. Bryndis, you are from Greenland?”
Bryndis strained to speak. “Sorry.” Molly released her from her frozen state. “Promise to behave or I will encase you in a block of ice.”
“Ha! That would be welcome,” she scoffed. “I am from Qaanaaq, northern city in Kalaallit Nunaat—what you call Greenland. Small town, not many people but much ice.”
She finally smiled, more or less. Her mouth twitched at the corners and her eyes crinkled ever so slightly. But from Henry’s perspective it transformed her from a snarling Doberman to a Labrador retriever. He almost laughed when Luis got up the nerve to step from behind him and offer a hand to her.
“Friends?” he asked hopefully.
“Not yet.” The Doberman returned. She pointed to her boots. “Kamiks—made from caribou … um, reindeer—like Rudolph.” Her left eyebrow wiggled a short dance and her eyes twinkled with amusement. “When I hunt seal, I use sealskin kamik. Does not get feet wet.”
“You hunt seal? That’s amazing!” Katelyn exclaimed.
“How else we eat?” Bryndis placed her hands on her hips and thrust out her chin.
“You eat seal?” Henry winced at the thought.
“I just said so.”
Bryndis stated it so matter-of-factly that Henry felt foolish for asking. “What is that around your neck?” he asked to change the subject.
“Tupilaq—means soul of ancestor. I carved from walrus tusk,” she said proudly.
“You made that yourself?” Serena asked.
“Everyone in Qaanaaq make tupilaq. Very powerful.” Bryndis eyed Serena curiously. “You know this—call it totem.” She pointed to either end of the fifteen-centimeter carved figure. “Polar bear here, dog here. Make strong protection.”
Suddenly Gretchen burst out laughing. “Please stop. I can’t take it anymore. Qallunaatituusuunguviit?”
Bryndis paled. “Where did you learn that?” Her broken English vanished as if she had flipped a switch. Her entire demeanor changed from defiant warrior to suspicious teenager.
“I spent several years in Kalaallit Nunaat. The schools there teach the English language from the first year.” Gretchen placed her arm on Bryndis’s shoulder. “There will be no fakery here, dear.” She turned to the others. “I asked her if she spoke English in her native tongue of Kalaallisut.”
“Sounds like a pretty complicated language,” Henry remarked. Katelyn, Luis, and Bryndis all laughed. “What’s so funny?”
“When you grow up speaking your native language, English is the most difficult second language to learn,” said Bryndis.
“Really?” Brianna asked.
“Really,” Luis answered. He glanced nervously at Bryndis, who twitched a smile.
Molly sighed in relief. “So now that we’ve crossed that bump in the road, let’s have a look around.”
Once they began to explore, any tension that remained vanished as quickly as Bryndis’s wand—which, coincidentally, was found on a shelf behind a bottle of giant leeches.
“No one can make something actually disappear,” said Molly. “Magicians use misdirection and sleight of hand to make things seem to vanish. Coralis’s technique is much more complex than that and is something only Wand Masters can do.”
“Is it teleportation?” asked Katelyn.
“Impressive word,” Luis commented as he held the leeches up for closer inspection.
“I happen to like Star Trek,” she answered as she poked the stick-snakes.
“Not teleporting, more like sucking something through a high-speed wind tunnel. He manipulates the air molecules to pull or push an object at a velocity that is t
oo fast for the untrained eye to see.” Molly leaned against a bench as she assumed the role of instructor. “A Wand Master, as the title implies, has mastered all four elements—air, fire, water, and earth.”
“The symbols on the front of the Guidebook,” Henry said as he examined a unique chair with the hooves of a large animal. He rubbed a hand gently over the rawhide surface and felt it respond with a rippling sigh. He grinned, suddenly aware of the fact that he was inside Coralis’s private work space—his inner sanctum.
When he had first gone to New York, he and Brianna stayed in the basement of Molly’s tavern. She had a fascinating collection of oddities, but nothing like this. Coralis’s room was not only quite large, but as Henry walked past certain bookcases and shelves, he felt that there was something beyond them he couldn’t see—other rooms, perhaps even more Kunstkammers. He thought of the way Coralis had taught him to store information in his mind. Drawers full of compartments and subcompartments. It would make sense that a well-developed Kunstkammer would have the same, if not a more intricate, level of depth.
“So what is this place?” Luis asked.
“Ein Kunstkammer,” Gretchen answered. “The translation from my native German is ‘art room,’ but it has also been called a cabinet of curiosities.”
Molly took over. “Every Wandmaker will begin collecting their own special objects soon after they begin their apprenticeship. This particular collection is the result of hundreds of years of scientific study by dozens of Wand Masters who date back almost four thousand years. You will never see another one like it.”
Katelyn whistled softly in amazement. She turned to Henry and Serena. “You two have been at the castle awhile, but from your reaction, I’ll guess this is your first time in here.”
They nodded and Serena asked the obvious question. “Why now? We’ve been here for over a year and Coralis never thought to reveal it before.”
“Perhaps because he can’t wait any longer.” Molly’s brow creased.
Henry eyed her warily. “What do you mean?”
Instead of answering immediately, Molly walked over to a built-in shelf unit. It was as tall as the room and about two meters wide. There were ten shelves, each lined with skulls—some human, but mostly animal. She ran her hand lightly along the edge of a center shelf, stopping midway at a small bronze plate.
Henry recalled reading a section of the Guidebook about skulls. He had studied the book in meticulous detail, which was how he was able to guess what the bronze plate had engraved on it before he read it. “From the collection of Ole Worm.” He pronounced it Olay Vorm.
“Do you know the story?” Molly asked.
“Not much of it,” Henry replied. “Only the short paragraphs from the Guidebook.”
“What guidebook?” Luis and Bryndis asked simultaneously.
“The Wandmaker’s Guidebook,” Brianna answered. “Our dad gave it to Henry as a Christmas gift. From the way he treated it, you’d think it was some valuable treasure.”
“It is,” Henry said defensively. “Coralis wrote it himself, trying to attract people who might be worthwhile apprentices. It’s how he found me,” he said proudly.
“Randall found you,” Brianna corrected.
“That name came up last night,” said Luis. “Coralis said it was the falcon’s name.”
“Ja, but so much more than a falcon.” A pained expression crossed Gretchen’s face. “A young man like yourself. One of the best and brightest. He transformed himself into a falcon and set all of this into motion.” She waved a hand at the group, then dabbed at a tear with her handkerchief.
“We’ll get back to Randall later.” Molly nodded to Gretchen with a terse smile. “Henry, what can you tell us about Ole?”
He could have recited the entire section from memory. “I don’t know what rank of Wandmaker he was, but in his lifetime, he had assembled one of the most astounding workrooms Coralis had ever seen. One of his hobbies was collecting skulls.”
“That’s a pretty morbid hobby, if you ask me,” said Serena.
Henry scanned the shelves, looking for a particular specimen. He stopped at the center of the top one. “The unicorn goat.”
“There is no such thing as a unicorn,” Serena said adamantly.
“Maybe not in this world.” Katelyn’s eyes sparkled with mischief.
Serena involuntarily shivered as she recalled Katelyn’s story from the previous night.
“What does this have to do with Coralis?” Luis shifted impatiently. “Is there a point to all of this … history?”
Henry frowned—not so much at Luis’s reaction but because of something else he remembered. “I thought that when Ole died, his collection was taken by the king of Denmark.”
Molly grinned like the Cheshire cat. “Only the items out in the open.”
Henry’s face lit up. “He had a secret room?”
In response, Molly placed one finger on either side of the nameplate and pressed. With a soft click, the shelf unit moved ever so slightly. “He wasn’t the only one. Welcome to the real Kunstkammer.” She pushed on one side and the unit swung inward. Seven pairs of eyes stared on in wonder.
“Ach, the secrets that man keeps from me.” Gretchen led the way, entering the hidden room for her first time as well. “I suppose there is a magic lamp to give us light?”
Henry felt along the wall, recalling his brief time at the New York Marble Cemetery. With some satisfaction, he flipped a light switch. His smugness evaporated when he saw the room in its entirety. He was at a loss to come up with an adjective that could adequately describe it. The room was at least quadruple the size of the previous one. Earlier, he’d thought he had felt something was hidden, but he did not expect this. “Is this the only secret room?”
Molly smiled and shook her head. “Smart lad. You must have sensed them, and that’s something that cannot be taught.”
There was a time when Henry would have been proud of himself. But standing in the presence of all the ancient artifacts left him awestruck. The group slowly made their way around the room, as if moving too quickly would somehow show disrespect. Enormous cabinets and row upon row of skulls, mummies, and fossils filled the room. Henry gingerly opened one of the cabinets that looked like an armoire to reveal hundreds of drawers—each three fingers in height and the length of his hand.
“That’s as far as you should go, Henry,” Molly warned.
“I know. I can feel it,” he said.
Serena came to his side. “I do, too.”
One by one, the others joined them. Each drawer had a nameplate. Henry scanned the names, most of which were unfamiliar, until he came to one he had learned about in his studies—Marcel Denard. One of the Guild’s most infamous failures. The Wand Master to Napoléon Bonaparte, emperor of France.
“Each of these compartments contains the wand of a deceased Wandmaker,” Molly told them. “Each wand still possesses the power that its owner amassed, for once a wand has power, it never goes away. Which is why it is essential that none of you ever let your wands out of your possession. If you were to pick up one of the wands in this cabinet, horrible things would happen to you.”
“Then why aren’t they locked up?” Bryndis asked in a whisper.
The group was still and quiet, awaiting Molly’s response.
“Because no one but Coralis knows where it is. And now that you know”—she turned to the group for dramatic effect—“I have to kill you.”
As one they jumped back in shock. Molly laughed. “Just kidding. You should see the looks on your faces.”
“Not funny.” Katelyn was the first to recover.
“Was that just some story meant to scare us? Because it did,” Luis said angrily.
“Only the killing part.” Molly shrugged. “Seriously. I know about it and I’m still here. The rest is true. Scout’s honor. Recognize any other names, Henry?”
He studied the names, pointing to ones he knew. Sus Akai from the Ming dynasty. Cormac the Skald, t
he Viking warrior.
“Laars Thornkill.” Bryndis leaned in for a closer look. “I am a descendant of this man.” Awestruck, she reached out but pulled her hand back just before touching the drawer. “He died a very mysterious death. I think perhaps you can remove the mystery for me some day.”
“There’s Tecumseh’s wand!” Serena nearly shouted, seeing the name of the great Shawnee chief.
“And Merlin,” Katelyn whispered in awe.
Bryndis scoffed. “Merlin? Another joke?”
“No joke,” Molly said sternly. “Many legends are derived from truth. Granted, some have been embellished a bit too much over the years, but Merlin is as real as you or I.”
“You said ‘is,’ ” Henry remarked.
Molly closed the cabinet, smiling cagily. “Someday. But let’s talk about why we are here.” She motioned them to be seated around a small, innocuous table in the center of the room. “Coralis brought you here because he is out of time. It takes many years to train an apprentice. Unfortunately, the six of you must be given a crash course.”
“Six?” asked Henry. “You mean … ”
“Yes, Brianna has talents as well and will be trained as an apprentice.”
“Um, I think Coralis made a mistake,” Brianna said. “I mean, Henry’s the one with all the ability. I’m just, like, his sidekick.”
“Not from what Coralis has told me.” Molly grinned. “If not for you, Henry would not have succeeded in defeating Dai She. And while your power might not be that of a typical Wandbearer, you are nonetheless an important element.”
“An Enabler.” Gretchen stood and placed a hand on Brianna’s shoulder. “One who has the ability to amplify the power of a Wandbearer. It’s been hundreds of years since the last one—who just happened to be my great-great-great-grandmother. She died well before I was born, but the details of her life have been passed down through the generations. It is a privilege to be in the presence of one and a rare honor to be given the opportunity to pass my knowledge on to you. It looks like you and I will be spending some time together.”