Janie’s voice came out of the desk, quite faint, and sounding as if she were speaking underwater. “Claudia! Claudia, is that you?”
Claudia cast a hunted look around. “Yes,” she whispered, hunching close to the apparition. She wondered if anyone else could see it.
“Did you send me a letter?”
From the front of the room, Mrs. Anderson glanced up. Claudia’s stomach lurched. “Yes,” she whispered, even more softly, almost touching the desk with her lips.
“Well, what did it say?”
Claudia felt a little wave of sadness—though not surprise—that Janie hadn’t been able to read her letter. “It said, ‘earthquake,’ ” she whispered in agony, mouth near Janie’s image, eyes on Mrs. Anderson. “The birds say— ‘earthquake.’ And all the cans will fall on Remmy Garcia …” Mrs. Anderson stood abruptly, and Claudia panicked. She wasn’t at all sure which would be worse, having the cans fall on Remmy Garcia or having Mrs. Anderson see Janie in her desk. It was a fine point, and too much for Claudia to contend with in her present state of mind. She seized her spelling paper and dragged it back over Janie’s face.
Janie’s voice came even more faintly, but demandingly. “Claudia! I’m losing you! Claudia, I need to know when. When is there going to be an earthquake?”
Mrs. Anderson was walking down the aisle. Claudia glanced at Remmy Garcia’s brown head, gulped, and made the ultimate sacrifice. She lifted the bottom of the spelling paper and hissed underneath it:
“I don’t know! They don’t know, either! They just say soon! Oh, Janie, help us, help us!”
Then she slapped the paper back down, banged her clasped hands hard on top of it, and raised a terrified face to her teacher.
Janie felt the circle tremble and begin to break away from her. She exhaled sharply and let it go. When her vision cleared she saw the students around her gathering books and backpacks, heading for the door. Several of them lingered to give her odd glances: had she been summoning demons or just having an epileptic fit? She ignored them. After a few minutes of quiet breathing, she slipped the wand into her backpack and left.
If asked, Janie Hodges-Bradley probably would have agreed with Bliss Bascomb’s evaluation of her appearance. It was generally acknowledged that Janie’s brother Charles, with his fair hair and blue-gray eyes, had inherited all the good looks in the family. Alys, the eldest, shared the same coloring, and though not exactly pretty, she seemed to radiate good health and energy.
Janie looked like none of the others, and least of all like Charles, her twin. There was no conventional beauty about her, but there was something arresting in her tangled black hair and her pale skin. And her eyes were neither blue nor gray but simply purple. Most people stopped to look at her twice.
Just now there was a stinging in those purple eyes. Marvelous. She’d probably burst a blood vessel, straining that way. And for what? All very well for Claudia to say “help us,” but what on earth could Janie do? Janie was no sorceress, no wielder of even a lowly Green or Brown Staff. She was not even a proper apprentice, being human and not one of the Finderlais, the Wildfolk.
But … she had managed to cast a visioning circle, after only a year and a half of training—and with a rowan wand, no less. And she might be a human, but she was a smart human. Alys would never forgive her if she didn’t at least try to help.
Bliss Bascomb was at the end of the hallway, with two other girls. They stopped talking as Janie went by only to resume in whispers when she was past. Janie willed herself to keep on walking, but her hand clenched almost involuntarily on the rowan stick inside her backpack.
Just once, oh, just once. If that stupid, simpering Bliss only knew what might happen. But Janie remembered quite well the time she had mentioned it to Morgana. She had asked the sorceress if there were such a thing as a spell to discomfort your enemy, and Morgana had given her a quick, level look out of those strange gray eyes of hers and said, “Of course.” And with one sharp movement she’d opened a book and tossed to Janie a faded piece of parchment. Janie, reading it, had stiffened.
“But, Morgana,” she’d said, after a minute. “This—is a killing spell.”
“Of course,” Morgana had said, in exactly the same tone as before, and still watching her. “A sorceress does not discomfort her enemies. If they are important enough to deal with by sorcery, they are important enough to kill. You cannot turn the Wild Arts to trifles. Do you wish to learn the spell?”
Janie had held her gaze a moment, then looked away, yielding. “No.” Before Morgana could say anything else she’d added grimly, “I get the point.”
So, now, walking away from Bliss, feeling the stiffness in her shoulders and the flush in her face, Janie made herself think about other things. About Claudia, who was in trouble.
The sight of the public phone in the amphitheater gave her an idea. Morgana did, in fact, have a telephone, though she very seldom used it.
But the line rang and rang with no answer. Which was hardly surprising. The sorceress could be anywhere, down in her secret workroom or out in the wilderness of gardens behind the old house, and she would never hear it.
Well, that was that. Janie had done all that a reasonable person could do. But she somehow felt, as she tapped the earpiece of the phone absently against her lips, that this would not satisfy Alys. Alys, if she were here, would demand that Janie do something unreasonable, but also something that worked. And then there was Claudia, in third grade, with cans of some sort about to fall on her head.
Right, then. Well, what would Alys do?
The tapping slowed. Janie’s eyes, fixed on the telephone buttons, narrowed, then creased at the corners. She tried, and failed, to repress a smile.
Well, now, why not? It was certainly unreasonable enough.
As the bell for her next class rang she began to punch in the telephone number of Serrano Elementary School. She was grinning and her eyes were glowing violet.
*
Claudia shuffled her feet uneasily. Cautiously, she chanced leaning out of line to look past other silent, fidgeting children at Mrs. Anderson, who was huddled with two other teachers on the blacktop.
They had been standing there for half an hour. The whole school. Claudia had no idea how Janie had managed it, but not five minutes after she had slammed the spelling paper over her sister’s face, while Mrs. Anderson was still in the middle of a lecture about Claudia and Claudia’s grades and Claudia’s attitude, the bells had begun to sound. Not the duck-and-cover, but the fire drill. All the children had filed out to the field, where they had been standing ever since. Claudia’s fear, now, was that they would be released and sent back to class before the quake came.
Even as she thought it, even as someone behind her said, “Hey, what are the police— ” she swayed a little on her feet.
No, it was the ground swaying—everyone had felt it. The birds were in a frenzy. All other sound had stopped. Claudia saw the line of children break up as some stumbled to the right and some to the left. Everything began to shake hard. Children were crying, holding on to each other. Belatedly, far away in the empty school, the bells began to sound the duck-and-cover.
*
In American History IB, Charles Hodges-Bradley raised his chin from his fist and scowled at the boy next to him.
“Quit it, Talbott,” he muttered.
Talbott bristled. “I wasn’t. You quit it.”
“I didn’t do it, you did. Leave my desk alone.”
“Back off, jerk.”
“Make me, creep.”
Talbott opened his mouth to frame a suitable reply, then stopped dead. Both boys stared at each other, and expressions of unholy glee broke over their faces simultaneously.
“Earthquake!” shouted Talbott to the class at large. “Hey! Earthquake! Earthquake!”
“Ladies and gentlemen,” said Charles through a megaphone made of his homework paper, “we interrupt this program to announce—”
“Under the desks,” broke i
n the teacher, as bells began to shrill. “Under that desk, Hodges-Bradley! I mean it. All the way! Anything sticking out, I kick!”
“This is great,” whispered Talbott, grinning amicably from under his own desk. “Isn’t this great?”
Charles nodded. The back-and-forth sensation was certainly interesting to start with. It was just that it kept going.
It was okay with him if it stopped now. Yes, it really was okay if it stopped… .
*
Alys Hodges-Bradley was in the outfield, running, reaching for a high fly ball, when something picked the ground up and shook it once, hard. The ball smacked down, unheeded, at a little distance, as Alys turned and stared. All action in the Softball game was suspended. Something shook the ground again, and kept shaking it. Sirens and school bells broke the unearthly silence.
Alys took two steps on the suddenly unstable ground, then stopped. There was nothing she could do. Claudia and Charles and Janie were far away. By the time she reached them it would all be over.
Someone was pointing at the high-school pool, where the water sloshed back and forth, spilling out first at one side, then the other. Alys could keep her balance on the rolling ground if she tried, but her legs didn’t want to. They folded quietly under her and she sat under the hot bright sun, clenching grass tightly between her fingers, willing the world to be still.
*
Janie Hodges-Bradley wedged herself more firmly in the doorway of the girls’ rest room and glared at a lowly seventh grader who had also found refuge there. She didn’t like thrill rides and she was beginning to feel seasick. Enough was enough.
THREE
In Fell Andred
When the world settled into place again Claudia let go of Susan Parlin and cautiously raised her head. Teachers were standing up, moving around, comforting students. Kids were sobbing. Claudia stayed with her class as parents, first by ones and twos and then in a flood, came to pick up their children. A man with a megaphone tried to keep order, telling all the remaining students to stay until someone came for them. But in the shadows near the school building Claudia had glimpsed a lithe red shape. She slipped quietly away and in a moment the vixen was in her arms, wet nose on her neck and jaw.
“Yes, yes, indeed, to be certain,” said the vixen, wriggling as Claudia hugged her tightly, breathing in the dusty half-wild smell. “That is to say, yes, but not here in public. Have you broken any bones? No? Then stop sniveling and come along. Morgana wants you.”
They detoured to pick up a grimy Charles and a scowling Janie along the way. Alys was not to be found.
*
Alys was the last to reach Morgana’s house that afternoon, for the simple reason that she had gone first to the junior high and then to the elementary school, and finally home, before realizing where the others must be. As she walked her bike up the long gravel driveway under the tall, shading eucalyptus trees, she felt again the sense of isolation the old house always gave her. Fell Andred was very much a place apart, a place that existed beside, but did not quite belong to, the rest of the world.
She went around to the back of the square gray mansion, passing the front doors that had not been opened in a hundred years. She did not knock, but let herself in, and then stood listening to the silence.
“Hello?” she said. “Morgana? Janie?”
The great room, which had once been a dining hall, but which Morgana used as a living room, was empty. So was the spacious, oak-beamed kitchen. Uncomfortable, Alys hesitated, not liking to shout. Fell Andred was so large and echoing, and had such an air of quietly waiting and watching that it always dampened her spirits. It would be like shouting in a church.
She sighed in worry and frustration. She would have to search for them. But they could be in any of the dozens of strangely shaped, oddly furnished rooms or outside somewhere on the vast grounds. It could take hours.
She turned first to the little stairway off the kitchen, which led straight down into the cellar. It was cool and dark as always. At the far end of the cellar was an apparently solid wall. Squinting, Alys approached it, located the faint outlines of a door in the boards, and slipped her fingers into a knothole. She paused a moment, feeling the spring mechanism under her fingertips. No one ever disturbed Morgana Shee at her work. But Alys was annoyed and anxious and didn’t really believe Morgana was inside.
She pressed the spring hard, heard the click, and felt the door swing away.
“Oh—oh, excuse me—I’m so sorry—”
She had a glimpse of Morgana’s startled face, and of another face, unnaturally colored and apparently floating in air above a device of twisted copper wires on the worktable. In the briefest of instants Alys felt there was something familiar about that face, and then a green hum flashed past her cheek, circled her head once, and whizzed off into the cellar.
“Darion Beldar!” cried the sorceress, slamming a fist on the table. Whether it was a curse or a plea for assistance Alys didn’t know. Thrusting Alys aside the sorceress pursued the green hum.
“I’m sorry—I’m so sorry—”
Sorceress and quarry had both shot up the stairs. Alys turned back in dismay to look at the workroom. The face above the twisted wires had vanished; the wires themselves were smoking. Evidence of the recent earthquake was everywhere: bottles smashed on the floor, retorts overturned, shelves in disarray. The Gold Staff lay on the worktable, looking, as it always did when not in Morgana’s hands, exactly like an old brass fire iron. Alys gave it a wide berth. Beneath one shelf was a drawer that she had never noticed before; it seemed to have popped out of the wall. As she waited uneasily for Morgana’s return her eyes fell on what lay inside.
A sword, a beautiful sword. There were other instruments that she did not recognize, but from the first it was the sword that held her attention. Long and straight and clean, with pure singing lines, very plain, and very, very beautiful.
She had reached out to touch it before she knew what she was doing. Her hand clasped the hilt, and it felt wonderful there, just right, and then she gasped and let go.
It had burned her. Or—no—it had been more like an electric shock searing through her hand and up her arm to the shoulder. An agonizing, aversive sensation, like the feeling when you barely save yourself from falling and the adrenalin rushes through you …
Wounded, rubbing her arm and shaking her hand alternately, Alys realized that somehow, incredibly, she was almost tempted to pick it up again.
While she stood indecisively she heard a step.
The returning sorceress was not pleased. Her clear gray eyes pinned Alys briefly to the wall, and then moved around the room to rest on the smoking wires.
“Did you touch anything?”
“I—no,” said Alys, utterly shocked at herself.
“Never touch anything in here.” There was something green between Morgana’s cupped palms; she opened them above the wires and the green flowed out into the device. It stopped smoking and flared brightly; now a featureless copper-colored sphere. Morgana placed it in the drawer and the drawer slid back into the wall, perfectly concealed.
“I’ll go away,” said Alys humbly.
“And high time.” Once more the odd gray eyes fixed on her and Alys realized she was still rubbing her elbow. She stopped, feeling guilty. “Your brother and sisters are above,” said Morgana slowly, still watching her.
Alys started. She had forgotten all about them. Remorse fully, wondering what she had interrupted and why Morgana was doing it practically in the middle of an earthquake, she turned and went back up the stairs.
Seeing the others revived her. “Is everybody all right?”
“Sure,” said Charles. “Want a cookie?”
Claudia was sitting at the kitchen table with the vixen in her arms, stroking the familiar’s red-gold fur. The vixen was bearing this passively. Alys hugged her smaller sister, examined her for bruises, and absently licked a finger to wipe a smudge from her face, all the while saying:
“Well, y
ou could have left a note or something, couldn’t you? I’ve been looking for you everywhere.”
Janie, glancing up through spiky lashes at the doorway behind Alys, murmured, “But you aren’t supposed to go everywhere—are you?”
“We were out at the henhouse,” Charles put in hastily, as Alys gathered herself for a reply to this. The hens were Claudia’s, but she kept them at Morgana’s house because their mother said that one rabbit and any number of stray cats in their own backyard was enough.
“No bickering, please,” added the vixen, her sleepy eyes as gold as the collar around her neck. So Alys turned back to Claudia, who had been trying to get her attention.
“I’m all right because of Janie,” she was saying, looking up seriously at Alys. “She saved us. Me and Remmy Garcia and everybody. I looked in the room afterward and the cans were all over and there were dents in the desks. Most of the cans were dented, too. I guess we won’t win the food drive now,” Claudia finished sadly, as if this thought had just occurred to her.
“Dents in the desks? Food drive?” Alys looked at Janie in alarm.
Janie shrugged. “Apparently they had an earthquake hazard in the kiddies’ classroom. Claudia knew what was going to happen and sent a note to me. So I arranged to get them all out of the building before the quake hit. That’s all. It was nothing much.”
Alys ignored this patent fishing for compliments. “How?” she demanded.
Janie grinned. “I called in a bomb threat. They evacuated the whole school out onto the blacktop. According to Claudia the police are still swarming all over.”
“You did what?” said Alys, scandalized.
Janie’s grin disappeared and her jaw thrust out. “Listen, if you think you could have done a better job—”
Morgana’s voice broke in.
“I should like to know how Claudia knew what was going to happen, when I did not, myself.”
Heart of Valor - V1 Dec 2004 Page 2