by S. W. Clarke
She had just started toward her inner office, her staff clapping across the ground. She stopped hard when I said that. “Spoke to you?”
I nodded. “Something about returning to the ancient place.”
The headmistress flinched like she’d been slapped. In the next moment, her entire form appeared to shrink. Not a great deal, but enough that she looked older. Even her back seemed to hunch. Her eyes became ghostly and enormous in her face.
“The ancient place,” she whispered, as much to herself as me. “They said that?”
“They did.”
Her eyes darted down to the floor, where the story of the horsewoman and the fae was engraved around the edges of the enormous antechamber.
The headmistress turned toward me. As she neared, she seemed to regain her size. No—more than that. She was growing large, twice as tall as me, even though I knew she wasn’t. She was my height. But right now, she loomed over me, nine or ten feet tall.
“Listen and listen well, Clementine Cole.”
This kind of physical intimidation usually didn’t work on me. But then, I had never dealt with a magic user of Umbra’s power stepping up to me. And the urge to back myself up to the wall was practically overwhelming.
So I did. I took one step away, my back finding the smooth wood behind me.
Umbra followed, placing her face less than a foot from mine. “Do not bring your anger into this academy. The wisps feel it. This is no place for darkness.”
I stared up at her, every nerve in my body electric. I wanted to tell her I hadn’t started that fight. I wanted to tell her Liara had intended to hurt me. That wasn’t my darkness.
But another more important question pushed its way to the fore.
“What’s wrong with anger?” I whispered. “Why aren’t I allowed to feel what I feel? Everyone gets angry—even you.”
And in that moment it became obvious, as though a blanket had been lifted. There we stood, she looming over me with my back pressed to the wall.
She was just as angry as I was.
Even then, the rational part of my brain processed something else.
Headmistress Umbra is afraid, too. She’s masking her fear with anger.
Did she fear the wisps? Me? I didn’t know.
But even in the midst of this electric moment, and as soon as she stepped away and left me in the antechamber, I did know one thing:
I was going to get to the bottom of her fear.
Chapter Twenty-Six
I emerged into the night with my breath still coming hard, my heart still hammering.
Stepping into the fresh air felt like lifting an enormous, heavy shroud off my head. My mind cleared, and I was finally able to think straight. I wasn’t afraid anymore.
That had been the headmistress’s doing. She had used her power to fill me with terror, with complaisance. But even then, a small part of me had still clung to rationality.
I had understood what she was doing, even if I hadn’t fully known why.
And I had caught the scent of her fear. Her anger.
Aiden and Eva were waiting outside, and they ran over as soon as I came out.
“What happened in there?” Eva said, grasping my shoulder as I started away from the headmistress’s office. “We heard loud voices.”
I managed an eyebrow raise, even though I didn’t feel amused. “You were eavesdropping?”
Aiden fell into place at my other side. “Not exactly. We were keeping a respectable distance, but when you raise your voice…you’re audible.”
“Really audible,” Eva added.
I kept walking, veering us away from the amphitheater. That was the second-to-last place I wanted to return to right now. “How’s Liara?”
“Not great.” Eva ran a self-conscious hand over her own head. “She was taken to the med ward with about half her hair missing. Parts of her scalp, too.”
My breath left me. “Her scalp?” She would never grow hair in those spots again. Even if we had fought, I still felt for her. It had just been schoolyard bullying—and now she would pay for it for the rest of her life.
“That’s a fixable thing in our world,” Aiden said. “The nurses in the infirmary can regrow limbs. Liara will be fine.”
I stopped hard, my gaze darting between the two of them. “Limbs? Like, you get your finger cut off and they can grow you a new one?”
Eva was clearly amused by my ignorance. “Oh sure. You can go farther up than that, too. Take it off at the shoulder, even.”
“And it’ll grow back? The entire arm?”
“The entire arm,” she said with perfect confidence.
“Eva would know—she has healing magic,” Aiden said. When I turned around, he was observing my hands. “Clem, what happened in there? You’re shaking.”
I closed my fingers to fists to stop the tremor. I hadn’t even noticed it. When I opened my mouth to answer, my eyes darted back to the headmistress’s enormous tree. “We aren’t far enough away,” I said. “Come on.”
Without realizing it, I walked us straight to the library. Clearly my subconscious had plans in mind that I hadn’t consciously processed.
Outside the library, I glanced over my shoulder. No one else was around. I pulled the other two into a huddle. “What do you know about those wisps?”
“The will-o-the-wisps?” Eva said. “They’ve been here at the academy forever, though until today I’d never seen them leave the headmistress’s tree or the library.”
“Will-o-the-wisps,” I repeated. “What are those?”
“It’s not clear,” Aiden said. “Different cultures have different interpretations. Some see them as ghosts. Others see them as the false promise of dreams and hopes. In Europe, they’re supposed to guide you to treasure.”
“In fae lore,” Eva said, “we considered them benign and helpful.”
I flicked a hand around to indicate the academy grounds. “And what is this culture’s interpretation?”
The other two didn’t have an answer. Aiden just shrugged. “Nobody really talks about them here. Like Eva said: before today, they were just light fixtures in the headmistress’s office.”
I could tell it pained him not to have a precise answer to my question. Aiden almost always had a book or two with him, and probably prided himself on knowing things.
As I gazed between the fae and human standing before me, something hit me.
These two were unequivocally my friends. We were a trio.
When had that happened? I guess in the way all relationships happen: slowly, by invisible degrees. Or sometimes in visible degrees—like when you get into a fight and textbooks get chucked.
And friends were people you shared secrets with.
“They spoke to me,” I whispered.
“Who?” Aiden asked.
“The wisps. The will-o-the-wisps.”
“Talked to you?” they said in unison.
“What did they say?” Aiden asked.
“‘Shadowend. You return to the ancient place.’”
Eva’s perfect brow developed a crease. “You’ve never been to the academy before. Have you?”
“Definitely not. And it happened my first time in the headmistress’s office.”
“Did you tell Umbra?” Aiden asked. “That the wisps spoke to you?”
“Yeah, and she flipped her lid.”
The other two looked baffled, so I got detailed. “She backed me up against a wall and told me the wisps respond to anger, that I should keep my ‘darkness’ out of the academy. She seemed…afraid.”
Now that I was retelling it, it sounded like Umbra was the one bringing anger and darkness. Actually, it definitely did. Which was completely out of character with everything I had seen from her to this point.
“The headmistress?” Eva said. “Are you sure?”
I raised a defiant eyebrow. “Completely sure.”
Silence fell between us, and the other two stared at the ground like they could divine an answer from
it. They almost looked crestfallen over what I had told them about the headmistress.
Aiden raised his eyes first. For some reason, I expected him to disbelieve. To think I was lying—and maybe to tell me so.
It wouldn’t be the first time.
But all he said was, “I’m sorry that happened to you.”
He believed me.
Tears hit my eyes with such suddenness I had to turn away before either of them noticed. It wasn’t just about this moment—it was everything that had happened tonight. “It’s fine. But I need to figure out what’s going on. I’m going inside.”
Before either of them could say anything else, I started up the steps to the library. Now wasn’t the time for getting all touchy-feely because someone believed I told truths instead of lies.
Aiden and Eva didn’t follow me into the library. They were quickly getting wind of my idiosyncrasies, one of which was to leave me be when I clearly wanted to be left to be.
Or maybe they just had healthy boundaries.
I came into the library—the fount of knowledge and the first stop to answering my questions—with a certain anxious headiness. How was it I’d never voluntarily gone into a library before now?
Oh, that’s right—I spent all my free time as a regular human completely distracted by electronics.
As I passed Professor Milquetoast in the circulation room, she called out, “Replace all books you deshelve.”
“Sure thing,” I said—though I didn’t stop walking or even look in her direction. I wasn’t going to waste a minute. The library was way too huge, and I had a question burning a hole in my chest.
As I came into the central room and stared up at the other set of wisps circling near the ceiling, I had a sense I could get answers here. The wisps felt like a mystery with a loose thread just waiting to be tugged. One good yank, and the whole thing might unspool for me.
Eight minutes and two flights of stairs later, I hopped off the bottom rung of a ladder with a host of magical creatures books in my hands. I lugged them all over to a table and dropped them into a pile, which made everyone else present shoot daggers with their eyes.
Well, no use being the bad witch unless I was going to live up to that by thoroughly disrupting everyone else’s peace and quiet. So I dragged my chair across the wooden floor and dropped into my seat.
I grabbed the first book—A Lexicon of Magical Creatures by the wizard Alonsius Brittlebranch—and popped it open, running my finger down the table of contents.
Holy crow, there were a lot of mythical creatures in the world. Wisps weren’t even in the table of contents; if they were in the book at all, they would be under a heading, like “Creatures of Earth,” “Creatures of Air,” “Creatures of Shadow,” etc.
Wisps flew. That was a pretty unequivocal designation. So I flipped to Creatures of Air and began paging through.
Near the end of the section, I found it.
The will-o-the-wisp. A creature so common it appeared in folklore on just about every continent. But where regular old human books would speak of the will-o-the-wisp as a mythological creature, Brittlebranch knew wisps were real. Even though I should have expected as much, it was still a bizarre shift in perspective for me.
For nineteen years, magic had been impossible. Now it was as real as anything.
Of course, every book in here was written from the perspective of mages and their world. But my brain was still partly configured for my old, human life. It felt almost like I was reading fiction. This would take some getting used to.
Brittlebranch had catalogued wisps on three continents, and always found them benign. He also didn’t mention them ever speaking, or ripping out anyone’s hair. They were just chill, as flighty and innocuous as moths.
The more I read, the more I realized Brittlebranch was like the Herodotus of the magic world. He just recorded all his experiences traveling, documenting them according to the creatures he had seen.
So it was all anecdotal.
I moved on to the next book, which was much more scientific. It included a drawing of a wisp that had been—ugh—dissected, as well as describing its anatomy. Prior to death, the wisp could not be grasped with the hand—they had to be caught in a container.
By now I had concluded that the scientist who wrote this book lacked some empathy, because he went on to write that in his dissection, dead wisps became brittle. Their light left them, and they easily crumbled to dust.
I moved on to another book, slowly assembling a broad understanding of will-o-the-wisps. This one spoke of magical creatures in terms of their powers, and how they could be used in tandem with mages’ spells and incantations.
According to this writer, wisps had no magical affiliation, no real purpose. Which made them perfect as vessels. They could be imbued with anything from memories to souls to messages.
Messages.
You return to this ancient place.
Had that wisp contained a message it had delivered to me? And if so, who had placed it inside the creature? And why was I the recipient?
But it must have been more than a message inside those wisps, because they had attacked Liara.
The back of my neck prickled. That usually meant I was being watched, or I was late.
I glanced up, but the library was empty. Completely empty. My eyes found the clock on the wall; it was two minutes to closing time.
I’d managed to spend the entire evening in the library without any awareness of time. And despite that, I felt like I had more questions about wisps than answers.
I pulled myself up just as Milquetoast poked her head out of the circulation room and pointed an imperious finger at me. “We’re closing.”
I waved a hand up at her. “Got it.”
She surveyed the books arrayed around the table. “You’ll need to reshelve those.”
I picked up the unread ones. “Can I check these out?”
She shook her head. “It’s too late now. You should have allotted yourself time to do so. Return tomorrow for them.”
I wanted to tell her all about how I was on the trail of a revelation, but I sensed she wasn’t in the mood. Not now—or maybe ever. Which was fair, because I didn’t know if I’d ever willingly hear Milquetoast out if I weren’t in her class.
But I really, really needed some book learning in my life. And, given who I was and my impulse control, I needed it now.
So I did the next best thing to checking the books out tomorrow. I waited until she’d turned away and shoved two of the unread books into my bag.
It’s for the greater good, I thought at her back as I pulled the heavy bag to my chest and made the stealthiest exit I was capable of.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Two weeks passed after the wisps attacked Liara, Headmistress Umbra gave her warning, and I stole the library books. I read them cover to cover within a day—and reshelved them without Milquetoast noticing—and I still didn’t know what had happened with the wisps.
It was a mystery.
And as much as it pained me, I couldn’t solve it. Not with the books at the library or by talking to Eva and Aiden or by turning all the pieces over in my head, which I did—a lot.
The only upside was that the whole thing had bonded me with Eva and Aiden. We were officially Friends with a capital F, which meant we ate meals together and hung out in the meadow most evenings.
On the other hand, Liara and I avoided each other completely, except for the occasional angry glare she’d shoot me in passing. I should say: Liara avoided me way more than I avoided her. It was like I had an invisible wisp floating over my head for how carefully she kept away from me.
At least they’d been able to grow her scalp and hair back in the infirmary. Healing magic was something else.
In combat class, Torsten had been informed by the headmistress what had occurred, and he kept her and I at opposite ends of the room and prohibited us from fighting. I didn’t care; I’d never wanted to fight Liara in the first place—
not really and truly. I’d just wanted to get better at fighting, and she was the strongest opponent in class.
Plus, I had other things to think about. For the first time in my life, I’d developed a routine.
Mornings I’d go to the stables and muck out the stalls, feed the horses their alfalfa and oats, and brush them down. Sometimes the quartermistress would give me a lesson on one of the horses, and I had already begun cantering. And (secretly) I’d try to win Noir’s affections. Actually, I’d made friends with all the horses—except Noir, who had twice now tried to bite my fingers off, and once tried to kick me.
I definitely wasn’t a morning person, so I’d always needed something to get me up. And this did the trick. Despite the hard labor and general dirtiness of the work, I found my job meditative. It gave me the solitude to process everything I was learning at the academy.
And I was learning a lot. More than I’d ever crammed into my head in my nineteen years. After history lessons with Aiden at the library, I’d spend the next hour reading. I’d already read every book they had that mentioned witches—not very many—and found out they had been around for all of recorded history, though they’d been called various names and regarded differently by various cultures.
Generally, though, witches were bad.
They were also exclusively female. As the headmistress had told me, witches were matrilineal. The power was passed from mother to daughter. Which made me wonder if both my sister and I had been witches, or whether it was just me.
Tamzin, I’d thought with a pang when I read that part. She’d only been two years younger than me when she disappeared, and she had been my best friend. Losing your best friend, your sister, and your mother in one go is the hardest trial a child will ever have to bear.
But I digress.
Unfortunately, the books were all in agreement: many witches went bad. And the ones that went bad were the ones who’d really set the standard for how witches were regarded in the magical world.