Rachel and the Many-Splendored Dreamland (The Books of Unexpected Enlightenment Book 3)

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Rachel and the Many-Splendored Dreamland (The Books of Unexpected Enlightenment Book 3) Page 10

by L. Jagi Lamplighter


  It was perfect.

  It was exactly accurate.

  A stick lay next to the stairs that lead to the ruined castle, a short branch with a Y in it. Rachel remembered that branch. It had been next to the stairs, in this exact position, when she arrived on the first day of school. When she and Siggy flew down those stairs the next day, it had still been there. By the time they returned and found Mortimer Egg on the docks, however, it had moved. Perhaps the wake of her broom had shifted it.

  Yet, in Cassandra March’s dream, the branch lay exactly where it had been on the first day of school—which would have been when Mrs. March last visited Roanoke to drop off her children.

  Only a person with perfect recall could reproduce such specific details.

  Just before she stepped into the mist, Rachel turned and glanced back at the woman who had eyes like her sister and knew her mother’s secret dissembling techniques. Cassandra March stood with her hands on her black-clad hips, watching them go.

  Mrs. March winked.

  Chapter Eight:

  Awkward Homecomings

  Stumbling out of the dreamland into the foyer of Dare Hall, they came out in front of the great oak doors that led to the theater. It was eerily disturbing to go from the silence of dreams to the loud clacking of soles striking the black and white marble floor.

  “That was great!” crowed Sigfried. “When can we do it again?”

  The others stared at him, weary and sore.

  “What do I do with my father?” pleaded Valerie, who was looking very pale.

  The goose had stopped struggling and was visibly trembling.

  “Come on,” Xandra sighed and put her hand on Valerie’s shoulder. “The proctors will know what to do. I’ll explain that the voices that torment me told us where to look for him.”

  “We better keep her company,” Siggy told Lucky, “in case she needs a professional liar.”

  “Lying will serve no purpose,” the princess announced pointedly, as the four of them opened the doors out into the cold night. “I plan to tell my friend Dean Moth everything.”

  “That’ll go well,” muttered Zoë.

  Zoë and Rachel exchanged glances. Rachel sighed.

  “Here, take this and give it to the proctors. Maybe it will help them locate the Veltdammerung cultists.” Rachel handed the fish-headed rod to Sigfried and the alchemist’s fan, who nodded and stuck them under his arm. He, Valerie, and Xandra departed.

  Nastasia, Zoë, Joy and Rachel headed up the sweeping staircase toward the girl’s rooms. When they reached the fourth floor, Rachel and Nastasia headed for the room on the right, which they shared their other two, presumably-sleeping roommates. Zoë limped toward the door on the left, supported by the coughing Joy. Neither of them looked well. Rachel and the princess waved goodbye and slipped into their room.

  The chamber was dark, except for where the moonlight shone in through a crack in the curtains. Rachel could hear their sleeping roommates breathing and the clatter of Beauregard’s nails against the floor as the Tasmanian Tiger rose to greet his mistress. The princess dropped to one knee and stroked her familiar. Mistletoe was nowhere to be seen, but with the special senses that bound sorceress and familiar, Rachel could feel her cat curled up under her bed.

  Her cat, she finally admitted, would never be a proper familiar. She had been wrong when she disregarded the advice of her family and insisted on bringing him to school. Because of her bad judgment, she was doing horribly in art class. She had even passed out earlier today. She had attempted to conjure with no familiar to help her and failed. All this because she had not heeded her grandfather, years ago, when he told her that the bold, little black and white kitten that had so charmed her was not of familiar-grade.

  Sighing, she pulled off her robe and found her sleepwear and towel. Heading to the bathroom, she showered, washing off the bloody swamp water from the duck pond. Fresh and clean, she slipped into her nightgown and returned to her room, striving not to wake Astrid or Kitten, who were asleep on the other set of bunks. Nastasia had climbed up into the upper bunk. Her cough did not seem as bad as earlier. Still, Rachel wondered if her friends should go to the Infirmary. She made a note to insist on it in the morning, if Joy and Nastasia had not improved.

  Mistletoe emerged from his hiding place and rubbed against Rachel’s leg, purring. She knelt and rubbed her cheek against his. He might not be able to help her in art class, but he was still a comforting presence.

  Picking up the cat, she climbed into bed. She snuggled close to Mistletoe, basking in his warmth and the vibration of his purr. She was so exhausted she felt ill with fatigue, but it felt good to be curled up in her own bed. So much had happened, she could hardly comprehend it all. In the last twelve hours alone, she had been to Beaumont Castle twice! And if she thought back one more day, there was the even more momentous occurrence, involving Sakura and the Raven, which she had been told she could only share with only one person. She knew who she wanted that person to be. First thing in the morning, she would hunt him down and tell him.

  “Rachel,” the princess whispered urgently from the bunk above Rachel’s. “It is very important that you do not tell Mr. Valiant about anything that happened tonight!”

  “Wha…” Rachel shot up to a sitting position, disturbing her cat. “Why?”

  “We must have no truck with evil. No matter how pretty a face it might show.”

  Rachel tried to swallow, but it did not quite work. She lay back down. She wanted to please her friend, but she felt she must defend her boyfriend. “Y-you hardly know Gaius! Why do you say such horrid things about him?”

  The princess answered seriously. “It is because you insisted on sharing our information with him and Mr. Von Dread that Mrs. Egg is dead.”

  Agony pieced Rachel. “W-we don’t know that! You told the Dean! She told the Agents. Valerie warned us that the Wisecraft might be compromised!”

  “The Wisecraft de-geased us, using the Spell of True Recitation.” Nastasia’s voice was stern. “Do you think that they did not also carry out similar protective measures on their own people? If there were a spy among them, they would have found it.”

  “But…”

  “A woman is dead,” Nastasia said severely. “Do you think the decision of who should live and who should die should rest in the hands of children our age? Let us leave these matters in the hands of the legitimate authorities: the Dean and the Wisecraft.”

  Rachel’s heart fell. The princess was correct. She had no way of knowing who had betrayed Mrs. Egg, and the King of Bavaria did have a very unsavory reputation. The darkness seemed ominous, and the night filled with uncertainty. Mistletoe, who had been such a comforting presence, leapt off the bed and trotted away.

  Despite this, Rachel had to admit that she no longer believed Gaius to be the wicked boy the princess made him to be. She was tired of hearing him bad-mouthed.

  Screwing up her courage, she blurted out, “I…don’t think you’re right, Nastasia! I am certain Gaius can be trusted!”

  The princess’s voice was gentle with regret, as if she hated to hurt Rachel’s feelings. “You were also certain that a house cat would make a good familiar.”

  The princess’s breathing soon became regular with sleep, broken by an occasional cough. Rachel, however, lay awake, her body uncomfortably cold where the warmth of the cat had been.

  • • •

  The next morning, Rachel was awoken from a heavy sleep by someone coughing. Opening one eye, she saw the other bunk was empty. Kitten and Astrid had already departed for breakfast. The hour on the clock was absurdly late. Alarm gripped Rachel. Then, with a rush of relief, she realized it was Saturday morning. She had not slept through class.

  The coughing came again. Joy leaned against the door, her eyes red, her nose swollen. She mumbled, “Zoë and I are going to the Infirmary. Do either of you want to come?”

  “I will accompany you,” said Nastasia, from somewhere above Rachel. “I seem to have ac
quired a persistent cough.”

  The princess climbed down from her bunk to greet her. Even when ill, Nastasia looked lovely, wan but ethereal, like a character out of a Victorian novel who was wasting away due to some mysterious ailment. Joy just looked thoroughly miserable.

  “Probably from the kelpie.” Rachel tried to convince her eyelids to stay open. “They spread disease.”

  “Why didn’t you mention that last night?” Joy’s voice squeaked from fear.

  Rachel blinked in surprise and sat up. “I…thought everybody knew.”

  Sitting up turned out to be a mistake. Her body was sore in numerous places. Each stab of pain brought a vivid memory of its origins. The tenderness of her tailbone was from the original fall out of dreamland; the pain in her shoulders was from the wrenching they suffered when she tried to keep hold of Nastasia and Xandra when Joy and Sigfried first pulled them off the silvery Way; that twinge in her hip and the more persistent pain in her back and shoulder were from hitting the ground after the demon threw them. Xandra’s oboe-playing, however, had entirely healed the results of her fall out of dreamland onto the gravel walk. When she rubbed her face, she felt no pain in her cheek and lip.

  “In the future, don’t assume! If we died because of—” Joy’s voice cut off. She was gazing at Rachel. She covered her mouth, trying not to laugh, but giggles escaped from her the side of her mouth.

  “What?” Rachel looked around, stifling a groan from the pain caused by the motion.

  “Er…maybe you should look in the mirror.”

  Rachel rose gingerly and crossed to look in her mirror. A large black and blue spot had formed in the middle of her forehead, where her broom had struck her.

  “You look like a bruise-icorn!” Joy guffawed, bending over and slapping her thigh.

  Rachel sighed.

  • • •

  As the other three left for the Infirmary, Rachel leaned against the tall, arched window and stared out at the ferns and the paper birches with their curling, parchment-like bark, that grew behind Dare Hall. She had been wrong, in the castle, when she had thought that capturing Azrael would bring everything to a close. Azrael was no longer a threat, true, but this new demon had come to take his place, and he was trying to call up something worse—something much worse. It must be stopped at all costs! She did not know why she was so certain. She just knew that Moloch was worse than this Morax, worse, even, she suspected, than Azrael—who had killed whole families.

  Currently, this new fiend was far away, in Europe, but she felt a strange certainty that she and her friends would encounter it again.

  It was not over.

  Nothing was over.

  It was as if she were watching the ship of her previous life—the life where she had been an obedient, bookish girl—as it burned, smoke billowing from the slowly sinking craft. She wanted to rush to it, to rescue it, to extinguished the flames and prop the tiny foundering vessel upright, but she could not. Too much had happened. She had learned too many secrets and had seen too many terrible sights. She had made too many decisions that others—parents, tutors, Agents—should, by right, have made. Staring out the window—the bruised spot on her forehead pressed against the soothing coolness of the glass—Rachel came face to face with the truth.

  She was never again going to be an ordinary girl.

  That ship had sunk.

  Finally, she turned away, took a new mortar board cap from her trunk (she had lost her old one when trying to stop the plane) and pulled it low over her forehead. Then, she headed over to the boys side to see how Sigfried had fared. She wondered as she walked whether he might need to visit the nurse himself and how matters had gone with Valerie’s goose-parent.

  The door to his room was open. As she came down the hall, however, Sigfried came from the other direction wiping his wet hair with his towel.

  “Hallo, Freaky Dwarf Genius!” He gestured toward the open door. “I need to get Lucky and my books. Then, I’m off to the infirmary to see Goldilocks. Wanna come?”

  “I jolly well do.” Rachel stuck her head in the door.

  Inside the room, the window was open, but the crisp autumn breeze only partially-obscured the odor of dirty socks and half-spoiled food. Rachel made a mental note to pour a pitcher of milk into the bowl that stood in the hallway next to the door, so the cleaning bwbach would visit this room. She suspected Sigfried and his roommate Ian had neglected to do this for some time.

  To the right, Lucky had wrapped his elastic body around the entire hoard of treasure that cascaded off of Sigfried’s bed like a skirt of gold. The precious metal clinked as the dragon busily counted each coin, reciting its name. He looked up fondly at his master as Sigfried tossed the damp towel onto a rung of the ladder leading to the top bunk.

  “Hey, it’s my roommate, Mr. Not-Dead-After-All.” Sigfried leaned toward his familiar and whispered, “what’s the nerdy kid’s name? The one they said was dead, but now isn’t?”

  “Is it Edwin? Eldridge? Eckblat the Destroyer?” Lucky looked up from where he was shining a silver chalice with his soft golden nose. “Wait, no, it’s Enoch. I’m like almost, nearly, absolutely, sort of certain it’s Enoch. It might be Earscratcher. I am seventy-three and three-eighths percent sure it starts with an E…”

  Rachel stuck her head farther into the room. To the left, Enoch Smithwyck unpacked a small suitcase on his bed. He was a pale British boy who had been raised in Japan and spoke with a Japanese accent. He had sandy-colored hair and wore glasses.

  “Enoch! You’ve returned!” Rachel exclaimed with secret delight.

  Enoch smiled and bowed to each of them. “Hello, Griffin-san, Sigfried-kun, Lucky-sama. It’s good to see you again.”

  Striding over to him, Siggy smacked Enoch on the back, almost knocking off his glasses. He grabbed the other boy’s hand, shaking it enthusiastically. “Hey, Roomie! Good to see you!”

  The sound of bells came jingling down the hall. Sakura Suzuki burst through the door; tiny bells were plaited into her two long black pigtails. Enoch looked very pleased to see her. His smile faded when he saw her angry glare.

  “Shut up, Enoch!” she shouted. Rachel jumped backward, alarmed. The tall Japanese girl was normally so calm and somber.

  Enoch blanched. “Sakura-chan! I didn’t say anyth…”

  Siggy stepped away from Enoch, mumbling, “Sorry, man, I don’t fight girls. Good luck!”

  He yanked Rachel out of his room, shutting the door as soon as Lucky snaked through it. Outside, he looked carefully up and down the hallway. Then, he pulled a green mirror the size of an old fashion calling card from his pocket. A gold chain had been clamped to it. Lifting it up, he murmured, “Rachel Griffin.” Then, he put the chain around his neck and slipped the calling card under his robes, taking a moment to adjust it.

  “Look what Valerie and I worked out,” he whispered. “Check your card.”

  Rachel pulled her own calling card from her pocket and gaped. In the mirrored surface, she could see the scene on the far side of the door.

  “I said shut up!” Sakura shouted. She stalked toward Enoch. Enoch backed away until his legs hit the bed behind him.

  “Did you think about what you were doing when you threw yourself in front of that girl with the whip?” she exploded. “Did you stop to consider how dangerous what you did was?”

  Enoch blanched again, shocked and bewildered. “No. I-I didn’t.”

  “Shut up! And then you go and get yourself killed! Dead! They said you were dead! And then you were too stupid to even do that right!”

  Enoch’s expression changed from shocked to miserable. He pushed his glasses up from where they had slipped to after Siggy manhandled him. They were too big for his face, so they constantly needed adjusting. Sakura watched him make the motion as if she had seen him make it a thousand times before.

  Her rage melted.

  She lunged forward, wrapping her arms around him, and started to sob uncontrollably. Enoch looked relieved. He patted
her back with concern, speaking softly to her in Japanese.

  “Okay…I hate mushy stuff,” said Siggy. The calling card returned to blank, green-tinted glass. “Girls! They are crazy…”

  Lucky nodded in sympathy.

  “Enoch died…Er, I mean, was injured and thought to be dead…saving Sakura’s life,” Rachel explained softly. “He jumped in front of her to protect her from the crazy, possessed girl with the whip. He saved Mr. Fisher, too. That’s why Sakura’s so upset.”

  “That was brave.” Sigfried nodded his approval.

  Rachel continued, “She knew him in their other world—before the two of them were brought to Earth and turned into teenagers. So, she was particularly upset at his death.”

  “Huh. I guess that makes sense.” Sigfried shrugged. “Except, he wasn’t actually dead.”

  Rachel bit her lip. Only she knew that Enoch had been dead. Something the demon Azrael had done had created enough uncertainty to make it possible for the Raven to undo his death. What this meant, exactly, Rachel did not understand, but she grasped enough to know that this was an extraordinarily rare occurrence—not likely to happen again in her lifetime.

  Eager to change the subject, she asked, “How did you do that? Make what was happening on the other side of the door appear in my card?”

  Siggy grinned. “The girlfriend worked that out. She used the cantrip that attunes a person to a glass to attune my wailing card—or whatever it’s called—to my All-Seeing Amulet. So, whatever I see with it, I can make appear in the cards. Nice trick, eh?”

  The ramifications of this were so astonishingly glorious Rachel trembled from sheer delight. All the secrets he might be able to show her, all the information she could learn.

  She grinned. “Best. Trick. Ever!”

  • • •

  Outside, rain poured from a gray sky. Rows of ten-foot wide umbrellas bobbed along the pathways in long lines. Their J-shaped handles all pointed the same direction, forming two-way paths as students passed to one side or the other. Balls of will-o-wisps glowed beneath each dome, lighting the otherwise dreary morning. As Rachel and Siggy headed along the Commons toward the Infirmary, she saw Gaius and a few of his classmates leaving Roanoke Hall, where breakfast was held. He did not see her.

 

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