“The MacDannans don’t hide from the world the fact that they are brothers,” said Sigfried, “nor does the Princess go around saying she is not a Romanov. There is no point in being my blood-sister, if the bad guys aren’t aware that to mess with you means a swift, one-way ticket to the screamy, ouchy, Land of Wow-I-Weren’t-Expecting-My-Face-to-be-Burned-Off-by-the-Kid-With-a-Dragon.”
“Very good, then!” Rachel inclined her head smartly. Silently, she prayed that the princess would be too well-bred to kick up a fuss.
Lucky came and sniffed her, his whispers tickling. “So, uh, we’re all family now? Okay, let me know if you need someone burned. Or if you need someone’s familiar eaten.”
Rachel bowed to Lucky. “If I need any familiars eaten, you’ll be the first person I call!” She peered around carefully, as if looking for wayward familiars in need of extermination.
Lucky snaked up to Sigfried. “Psst. Boss, she called me a person. I think she might be dragon-blind.”
“You and Griffin are both persons because you both fly,” Sigfried explained seriously, “whereas I’m a crippled, naked monkey-boy.”
“Ah. That makes sense.” Lucky’s head bobbed up and down rapidly. “Welcome to the family, bizarrely-short-brainy-girl.”
“Thank you, Lucky.” Rachel curtsied.
• • •
That night, Rachel sat down to write letters. The first one was to Sandra. Before she wrote it, she spent a few minutes contemplating what she had learned that afternoon.
So she had been entirely wrong about Dread. He was not a fortress, aloof and separated from all things. He was the pursuer, besieging her sister’s fortress. Rachel could not blame him. Sandra was beautiful and charming and good at everything to which she turned her hand. What more could a young prince desire in a queen?
Sandra would be perfect for Dread!
The big question now was: what could Rachel do to forward Vladimir’s suit?
The first thing that came to mind was to suggest to him that he find some excuse to appear in front of Sandra in his sweat pants, preferably while he was sitting on his bed, looking forbidding. Rachel was fairly certain that seeing him this manner would destroy any remaining objections her sister might be entertaining.
But, that did not seem practical.
Second, Sandra might be more interested in marrying Dread if she understood the degree to which he needed her. Sandra was an astute student of human nature. She probably knew everything about Vladimir that Rachel had deduced. But just in case, she felt it might be wise to share her musings with her sister.
With this in mind, she wrote:
Dear Sandra,
It was great to see you! I was so happy you came by.
I must say I’m puzzled by Peter. He originally said my dating Gaius was such a bad thing, but then he hasn’t done anything to try to stop me. What kind of protective older brother is he? Not that I want him to stop me, mind you. It’s just that I can’t help thinking that, deep down, he doesn’t care.
On a different subject, I’ve been thinking about it, and I think you should marry Vladimir Von Dread. It would be great fun to have two kings as brothers-in-law. But, more importantly, I think Vlad is poised on the edge of a very dangerous precipice, and someone has to keep him from going the wrong way. Some of my friends say they can detect evil in him…I can’t. Apparently, I don’t have the detect-evil power…but he did do something very bad to the princess—the equivalent of pushing her through a door that he had been told might have alligators, spikes, and a volcano on the other side, merely because he wanted to find out where the door led.
He’s going to be a king someday, and I don’t think there’s any question that he will be a just king. He is obviously very concerned with upholding the law. But whether he turns out to be Just and Great, or Just and Cruel, has yet to be determined. I think he needs someone to besiege the fortress of his heart and lead him towards Great and away from the precipice of Cruelty.
I would do it myself, except I have other things to do, so you will have to take up the cause. You should be good at that. You are so gracious and joyful and kind. Just tell him that you want to help save the world, and he’s bound to like you. You are very pretty.
Anyway, thank you very much for coming! Sorry you didn’t get to meet the princess.
Love,
Rachel
PS: Oh, and we have a new brother. That Sigfried Smith boy I introduced you to,—the famous Dragonslayer.
The second letter read:
Dear Mum and Father,
I hope all is well at home and that Widdershins doesn’t miss me too much. Please make sure he is getting plenty of oat treats and that Oliver or one of the other stable boys is exercising him regularly. Maybe one of the tenant farmers, such as the Banks or the Meyers, would like to send one of their children up to the manor to ride him.
I thought I should inform you that we have a new family member. I now have a blood brother: Sigfried Smith, the bravest boy in the universe. He comes with a dragon. So, we now have a family dragon. Lucky is very useful and loyal, but he likes to eat familiars and animals in the sacrificial pens. That’s a bit of a problem, but not that often.
Love you!
Rachel
Chapter Twenty-Two:
Slaying Elves and Chestnuts
All Hallow’s Eve dawned, cold and overcast. The trees on campus were nearly bare, a few last leaves clung to the dark, skeleton-like branches, fluttering in the chilly wind. The sky was filled with dark birds, wheeling and cawing—crows maybe, or starlings. Occasionally, flocks of them landed on roofs or lamp posts, their cries echoing like raucous jeers.
By late afternoon, the campus had been decorated for the holiday. Jack-O’-Lanterns, their leering grins and triangular eyes lit by cheery candlelight, lined the walkways and sat beside doors. Chinese lanterns had been strung across the Commons. Their orangey paper sides glowed brightly against the dreary day. The bonfire was already being built in the fire ring in the Memorial Gardens, near the lily pond.
A second bonfire would be set by the proctors atop Stony Tor.
All across campus, students were already turning their garments inside out and tying sprigs of twig to their familiars’ collars to keep wandering spirits at bay. Not that such entities could cross the school wards, of course, but traditions were still traditions. There would be a party that evening, with candy and games led by the Gnosis students from Dee Hall: blind man’s bluff, apple and candle, bobbing for apples, three luggies, moon mirror, leap-the-tin-cups, and other games of divination. Curfew had been lifted for the night, and students were free to stay up late. Samhain was a religious holiday, so there would be no classes the next day.
In the library during a free period, Rachel leafed through books about the Dead Men’s Ball that the librarian, Mr. Poole, had put out for a display. The gathering of the restless dead would be held that night at Bannerman’s mansion, not a mile north of the edge of the school’s wards. Rachel also paged through A History of New-York from the Beginning of the World to the End of the Dutch Dynasty, by Diedrich Knickerbocker, and Legends and Lore of Sleepy Hollow and the Hudson Valley by Jonathan Kruk. Both books were so interesting, filled with curious facts about the Hudson Valley in general and Pollepel Island, as the Unwary called the island where Roanoke was moored, in particular. Rachel read about the storm goblin, the Heer of Dunderberg, who had terrorized the Hudson before his capture and imprisonment in Stony Tor; the ghost of Major Andre, a British soldier who was captured in the uniform of the enemy, but who claimed up until the moment he was hanged that he was not a spy; and the Headless Horseman, a vindictive specter who was said to be the ghost of a Hessian mercenary beheaded at the Battle of White Plains on October 28th, 1776, during the American War of Independence.
It seemed so unfair. All these fascinating entities would be gathering tonight, so close to her current location, and she could not go. How amazing it would be to attend the Dead Men’s Ball, to see all th
e shades and spooks in action, to inquire what kept them tied to the world of the living. As she went to put the books back on the display, a longing swept over her as powerful and as irresistible as a riptide pulling a hapless swimmer out to sea. Changing her mind, she checked out both volumes and surreptitiously continued to read them during her next class—glancing at a page or two, then reading it from her memory, then glancing at the next few pages.
After classes ended, Rachel and her friends trudged over to Roanoke Hall to help the festival committee make corn dolls, and the Cooking Club prepare treats for the domestic fey: the bwbachs that cleaned the rooms, the brownies who cooked, the bean tighe who did the laundry. Rachel and her friends all sat together at a table, corn silk and string everywhere, and chatted as they worked, except for Siggy and Lucky, who ate so much of the caramel for the apples that Joy’s oldest sister, Temperance, the president of the Cooking Club, had to ask them to stop helping. Siggy and Lucky came over and plopped down next to Valerie, who sat at the end of the table dipping apples in a self-heating, cast-iron pot of hot caramel. She moved the pot away from them. They pouted.
“So, I’m excited about going into dreamland and not having to hold hands,” said Joy, who was painting a face onto a corn woman. “I will be even more excited, if I am not the ‘victim’.”
“It will be more pleasant for all of us,” agreed Nastasia, who was trying to decide whether to add corn silk or rust-colored yarn for the hair on her third doll. Beauregard lay beside her chair, gnawing on a rawhide bone.
Rachel looked from the princess’s neat roll of husk figures to her own lopsided doll, with one arm longer than the other, and sighed. She kept braiding the husks, though, and tied off the little hand.
“You can say that again!” Zoë ran a hand over her head until her own hair was the same pale yellow as the corn silk. She sat nearby, her feet up on a chair, eating one of the caramel apples that were supposed to go to the fey.
Thunder reverberated through the dining hall. A few students glanced warily at the clear sky, but the disturbance was coming from the north. The tor had been rumbling all day. Perhaps the trapped storm goblin was more impatient with being imprisoned on Halloween.
“Wait.” Valerie looked up from her work, hot, sticky candy dripping from the apple in her hand. She surreptitiously dropped a little for her dog to lick up, as soon as it cooled. “We found a way to not fall out of dreamland?” She touched the spot on her forehead where she had struck the table after she tried to shake hands with Dream Gaius. “When did that happen?”
Sigfried and Lucky sat beside her, watching, with identical forlorn expressions, the now-forbidden, hot, tawny bubbling goodness. Siggy pulled at the bandage on his forehead from where he had flown Vroomie into a tree, a few days earlier—when Rachel first began trying to teach him to fly it. She had given him several lessons since then. He had previously mastered a Flycycle during flying class, so it was only a matter of teaching him the complexities of maneuvering the steeplechaser. So far, he was doing well. There were many finer points to the device he had yet to learn, but he had successfully mastered both flying at high speed and turning.
Landing was still a work in progress.
“Well, we took Zoë to see—” Siggy began.
“Stop!” Rachel barked. She ducked her head, embarrassed, as people from other tables turned and stared at her. Lowering her voice, she spoke in a whispered hiss. “We can’t talk about this. Remember?”
“But…Wheels knows now,” objected Sigfried. “And nothing happened. It isn’t fair for all of us to know and Wheels, and not my G.F.! Goldilocks deserves to know!”
“She is a proper member of the Inner Circle,” the princess acknowledged thoughtfully.
“It isn’t a matter of proper or fairness,” Rachel implored, trying to keep her voice low. “It’s a matter of life and death.” She turned to Valerie. “We were told if more than three people knew…someone would die.”
“But, don’t…” Valerie’s voice trailed off. She frowned and counted aloud, “one, two, three, four, five people now know? I didn’t mind not being in the know when it was an urgent matter, and no one else could find out. But now Zoë knows, too. Why was Zoë told and not me?”
“The Unmentionable One sent me a dream,” Sigfried explained. “She asked to see Zoë.”
“Yep.” Zoë dipped her half-eaten apple back into the black pot of hot caramel.
Valerie let out a strangled yelp and waved her hands at the other girl to chase her away.
“So, this mystery is a ‘she?’” asked Valerie. “Is it ‘she’ who will die, if word gets out?”
Several of them nodded. Nastasia finished gluing on the long silky strands of hair and held her doll up for inspection. Thunder shook the chamber again.
“Oh, princess,” Joy gushed, “that is the best corn doll I’ve ever seen. That may be the best one made on the planet earth. People from other planets are going to be drawn here, as if by a magnet, to view its perfection!”
“Um…thank you,” the princess said stiffly, staring carefully at her handiwork. Joy’s ebullient praise embarrassed her, but she was too well-mannered to object.
Valerie dipped another apple on its twig stem into the bubbling pot. “Let’s not change the subject. I admit to feeling very inquisitive about this mysterious ‘she’…from whom Siggy received herbs and Alchemy tips, and now Zoë got to talk to her, too, and, I presume, received the gift of keeping us from falling out of dreams. I was restraining my curiosity, because I thought it was important to keep the matter secret. But if everyone knows but me…that’s not acceptable. Having both a detective father and a crusading newshound mother, I was born with a nose for the unusual, the curious. And I hate not knowing things. If everyone else knows, I think it is only fair that I know, too.”
Rachel looked down at her corn doll. She completely sympathized with that argument. Were it her, she would feel exactly the same way. And yet…
“So, we tell Valerie.” Siggy turned his chair around and straddled it. “Here’s what…”
“No!” Rachel cried. “You can’t kill the…her!”
“Rachel, be reasonable.” Nastasia laid her doll on the table and gathered green husks to start a fourth. “The only evidence we have that anyone is in danger is the opinion of that unpleasant raven-person, and he does not strike me as at all trustworthy. I think it is unfair to exclude Valerie based on such flimsy evidence.”
“Exactly!” Siggy leaned forward eagerly.
“Besides,” continued the princess, “it occurs to me that we could take our…friend home. To her home. We did go to a dream version of her home, she and I, when she was teaching me how to use my gift, but we could not get from the dream to the waking world. With Zoë’s help, however, we could do such a thing.” She glanced at Zoë, who nodded.
Rachel jumped up. “Let’s do it now!”
“We are busy now,” replied the princess primly. “Besides, we are not allowed to leave campus. I was thinking that if we waited until the Thanksgiving holiday, we would be able to leave campus without violating any rules. Also, if it took time, or we wanted to stay there a few days, our absence would not frighten anyone.”
“Oh, what a good idea!” breathed Rachel, her mind filled with images of the great forest the Elf came from, where trees grew out of the tops of the canopies of other trees.
“I am not waiting until Thanksgiving!” Valerie violently dipped an apple in the caramel. “You’ve told me this much. Tell me the rest.”
“No,” Siggy agreed. “That is too much to ask of a curious, fearless reporter girl! It is as inhuman as torture.”
“But—” Rachel began.
Joy cut her off. “Princess, you’re the leader. What do you say?”
“Yeah!” Siggy looked at Nastasia. “What is your decision, Fearless Leader?”
“Let’s put it to a vote,” Nastasia said pleasantly.
“No!” Rachel cried, grabbing her head. “You can’t put s
omeone’s life up to a vote!”
But they voted. Only Rachel objected.
“Great!” Siggy grinned like one of the nearby Jack-O’-Lantern. “I have been waiting and waiting for this! Have I mentioned how much I hate secrets?”
Rachel looked around.
Where could she go for help? Gaius? Von Dread? Her friends would not listen to them. Mr. Fuentes lounged against one wall, but if she went to him, what good would it do? She could not tell him why she wanted him to keep her friends from telling a secret, without revealing too much herself. The Elf’s friend, Mr. Gideon? She could run to his office. He might not be in on Halloween, however, and the princess had already made it clear several times how disappointed she was in their True Hiss tutor for not having been straight about the purpose of the detention duties upon which he had sent them. Nor could Rachel ask the Raven for his help. Even if he would have come, which was unlikely, she did not know his name to call him.
Rachel pushed back her chair to stand and leave. She wanted no part of this. If they were going to commit homicide—elficide?—they were going to have to do it without her.
She rose and took a step from the table. Then, her steps slowed, for she had just remembered something.
It had been a cold late-November day. The early morning frost had lain across the moors. Rachel, bundled in a thick red wool coat held shut by three toggles, had needed to run to keep up with her grandfather’s long strides. She had been five, and he had been the center of her world.
Ten minutes previously, a servant had come from the stable and informed Grandfather that Warlock was failing. The great charger had served Rachel’s grandfather as his steed for over a century, accompanying him into many battles. Now, however, the beast had grown so feeble that even magical healing could no longer ease its pain. Grandfather had listened to this news with a stony face, nodded, folded his paper, and told Rachel to fetch her coat.
Rachel and the Many-Splendored Dreamland (The Books of Unexpected Enlightenment Book 3) Page 29