by S. W. Clarke
“Can’t I?”
I took an aggressive bite out of my apple. Apparently he could. “Fine. Keep your secrets.”
He lowered to his belly, back legs flopping out. “Ugh, I can’t stand it when you look at me like that.”
I glanced up from my book. “I wasn’t even looking at you.”
“It was the look you gave me before you went back to reading.”
“And what look was that?”
“Oh, you know. The one where you look like you’ve just watched a spider turn itself inside out.”
I made a face. “That’s disgustingly specific.”
He flexed his paws. “There’s the look.”
I reconfigured my face to something resembling pleasant. “Better?”
“Anyway,” he said. “It’s a pond. I caught a fish there the other day.”
I wondered if it was the pond Torsten and Eva had gone to. Then, “You did not catch a fish.”
He lowered his face. “I absolutely did. It was delicious. Gods, this is a good spot for a nap, isn’t it?”
And with that, I was alone once again. Except now I had a black cat curled up under the tree next to me.
An hour later, I’d finished my book and my apple. I had no excuses. I left Loki to his nap and began a late-afternoon walk to the dorm.
It was time.
When I arrived, Eva was there. She lay with one leg crossed over the other in bed, a textbook on her lap. Her eyes found mine overtop it the moment I came in. The textbook clapped shut, was forgotten beside her on the bed.
She sat upright, her spine straight as an exclamation point. “I’ve been waiting.”
I dropped my satchel, flopped to a seat on the bed. “I know.”
“What’s going on?”
There was no point in prefacing it. I just reached into my skirt pocket and pulled out the key. I extended it toward her on the flat of my palm.
Her hand flew to her mouth, eyes darting. “Did you steal it from the headmistress?”
I’d expected that to be her first question. “No.”
“Didn’t she take it from you last May?”
“Yes.”
“Then, how?”
I sighed, tilting my head. “It’s bound to me, Eva. It appeared in my pocket the same day she took it from me.”
“And you didn’t tell me.”
My gut cinched; this was the moment I’d been waiting for. I could hear the disappointment I’d imagined coming crystal-clear in her voice. “I’m sorry. I didn’t tell anyone—I thought you would tell Umbra.”
Her eyebrows lowered. “Actually, I would have been loyal to you, not that it matters now. So that means you didn’t tell the headmistress?”
“No.”
“Why not? Surely she’s noticed it’s gone.”
I shrugged. “If she’s noticed, she hasn’t mentioned it to me.” Then, “I don’t think she’s been truthful with me. She’s keeping things from me. I think she’s keeping me here at the academy for her own reasons.”
Eva gave me a look. “Those sound like secondary reasons.”
“Secondary?”
“To the real reason you haven’t told her about it being bound to you.”
I folded my arms, key in hand. “And what would that be?”
“You like having the key. You told us last spring it gives you power.”
“It doesn’t give me power. It helps me tap into my power.”
She sat forward. “And you’re not afraid of what it could do? It’s already taken you straight to the Shade once.” She paused, her eyes widening. “I bet that’s why you were able to burn Jericho in the common room, wasn’t it?”
“I don’t know about Jericho. That may have had nothing to do with the key.” I sighed, rubbing the key under my fingers; that felt like a paltry excuse.
“So you’re just going to keep it forever? No questions asked?”
I shook my head. “Oh ye of little faith. I’ve got lots of questions for a trusted and respected source, especially now that I know what this key is.”
Her eyebrows lowered. “What is it?”
“It’s one piece of the Backbiter.”
She looked blank. “What’s that?”
“The Shade’s weapon. It was sundered into five pieces after the Battle of the Ages.”
Eva sat up, gasped with her hands over her mouth. When she lowered them, her eyes were fixed on the key in my palm. “That’s why Umbra took it from you. It’s incredibly dangerous, Clem.”
I shook my head. “I can’t explain why, but I know it’s under my control now. Before, the wisps had control of it. Not anymore.”
Eva looked horrified and skeptical—a combination she managed to pull off with her typical elegance. “And who is this ‘trusted and respected source’ you’re going to talk to about it?”
“Aidan’s grandma.”
Now that I’d told Eva the truth, I had fulfilled my half of the deal with Aidan. Only one problem remained: Umbra.
When I knocked on her office door later that week, I didn’t have a scheduled meeting. But I knew she was in because I’d seen her pass inside just a few minutes earlier.
A pause. Then, “Who is it?” from the other side of the door.
“Clementine,” I said, my face close to the wood. “Clementine Co—”
The door opened to reveal Umbra seated at her desk. “You don’t have to state your whole name, child. You do know there’s only one Clementine at this academy?”
“How would I know that?” I stepped in, staring up and down the length of the door. I pointed at it. “Did you use…magic to open it?”
She sighed, clasping her hands atop the desk. She wore a pair of reading glasses perched on the bridge of her nose. Around her, a notebook lay open, a pen laid down mid-sentence. Papers blossomed from where she sat like petals blown off a flower. “When you get to be my age, you’ll use magic for more than just opening doors. How can I help you?”
I came up to the edge of the desk. “I need to leave the grounds.”
Her eyebrows rose, and she lifted her glasses away, folded them into her robes. “Do explain.”
“Aidan North’s grandmother knows about witches. She’s a witch historian, apparently. A weird one, and she won’t leave her home or talk on the phone. Which means…”
“Farina North,” Umbra said. “Of course I know who she is.”
“You do?”
“Child, Farina North is perhaps the most renowned scholar on the Battle of the Ages in all of Europe. She is not strictly a ‘witch historian.’”
I sat down in the chair across from her. “Well, whatever she is, Aidan says she can help me learn more about my heritage.” Unlike you, I thought but didn’t say.
“And so you want to go to her,” Umbra said.
“For a few hours. In the middle of the day.”
“If you were anyone else, I would say absolutely not.”
Annoyance rose in me. “But—”
“But,” Umbra said, lowering her chin, “you are you, Clementine Cole. And even if I were to forbid you to leave the grounds, you would sneak out anyway. Wouldn’t you?”
My mouth hung open, all the angry words I’d been preparing dissolving on my tongue. She wasn’t wrong. “So, that isn’t a no?”
“It isn’t a no.” She sat back with a sigh. “You’re enrolled in Tangible Manipulations this year. Have you wondered as to why?”
“It had crossed my mind.”
“And?”
I glanced around, searching for an answer. “Because you want me to be able to carry a nailbat in my bag without it weighing me down?”
She couldn’t help the tiniest smile. Then she pushed it down. “So you don’t know yet. Well, you will.”
She wouldn’t have brought this up if it wasn’t relevant to me wanting to leave the grounds. But I couldn’t piece it together. “What you’re saying is, you won’t come after me if I leave the grounds with Aidan for a few hours?”
“Me, come after
you?” She shook her head. “I’m not in the habit of dragging students by their ears, Clementine. Though I would ask you to allow me to do one thing before you cross the veil with Mr. North.”
I waited.
She gestured to my moonstone. “The enchantment on your pendant wanes. Will you lend it to me for a moment?”
I set my hand over the necklace under my shirt. “Enchantment?”
She gave a single nod.
“But I thought the moonstone was a protection in itself.”
“From certain things, though not the depths of darkness it has been enchanted to hide you from.”
I lifted the pendant out, stared at it in my palm. “How can you tell?”
“It emanates with air magic,” Umbra said. “I assume it was enchanted by your mother.”
A hand clutched my heart, and I slowly drew my eyes up to her. “You think she was an air witch?”
“I know so, yes.”
It was the first detail I’d learned about my mother in many years. And now, of course, she was a completely different person than the regular human I’d known her as.
She was a witch. An air witch who had given me a pendant to hide me.
Umbra only wanted the moonstone for a moment, but a reluctance gripped me. I was never supposed to take it off. Never. The one time I had, I’d been kidnapped from my home.
Umbra must have sensed my hesitation, because she gestured me around the desk. “Come, then. You need not take it off. If you’re not resistant to kneeling before me, I’ll do it that way.”
I was resistant, but I’d rather kneel than lift the chain from around my neck. I stood, crossing around the desk and coming to stand beside her. When I knelt, I gazed up at her, the pendant dangling from the chain I held up. “How long does it take?”
She brought the pendant into her palm, gazing down at it with a long, slow breath. She didn’t seem to hear my question; her eyes fluttered as the moonstone lay in her hand. “What a signature,” she murmured.
“Signature?”
Her other hand closed over the first, capturing the moonstone flat between her palms. “The witch who enchanted this stone left a powerful signature.”
I sucked in air. “She was strong?”
“Yes,” she whispered, even as the air around us began to stir, her eyes remaining shut. “Very much so. Everyone expects a Cole to be a weak, cold-hearted witch. Not so, given what I hold in my hand. It’s a warm power.” A current swept around her hands, the softest glow emanating there.
My eyes went glassy. “Power can be warm?”
And yet I knew she was right. My mother had been a warm, loving woman. She wasn’t weak. She wasn’t cold-hearted, so why would her enchantments be?
Umbra didn’t answer me anyway. Not for a minute; the magic enveloped her completely.
When the air died down, my hair drifting back to my shoulders, she opened her eyes. “There’s a time and place for all things, child. And this was the time for you to learn that your mother was good, and she loved you. This object proves it.”
When she lifted her hand off the pendant, it shone with almost blinding brilliance. “The enchantment she left on this moonstone,” Umbra whispered, “was powerful enough to hide you from darkness for nearly a decade. Very few witches could have done such a thing, and fewer still without such love. Now go do what you must do, and feel safe in the knowledge that you are enshrouded from the darkness to the extent that my magic allows.”
Chapter Fifteen
The pendant’s glow faded as I stared at it. That was my mother’s enchantment—her magic. Umbra had renewed it, but it had begun with her.
I stood, the pendant rising with me. It settled against my chest as I looked down at the old woman. “Did you know her? My mom?”
Her hands fell into her lap. A pause, and then, “No, Clementine. I’m sorry to say I did not.”
That pause was laden. It contained unspoken truths. “Are you lying to me?” I blurted.
“No,” Umbra said, eyes soft on me. She didn’t seem surprised at all. “There are just certain things you aren’t ready to hear.”
My breathing quickened. “That isn’t my decision to make?”
“I would ask you to trust me—”
“No,” I cut in. “When it comes to my mother, no.”
She sighed, clasping her hands in her lap. “Then do not trust me, but I’m afraid what you consider a lie is a kindness, given the right perspective.”
I shook my head. “What does that even mean?”
“It means”—one thumb rolled over the other—“that all things must come in their order, following experience and wisdom. And believe me, you are growing in both.”
My eyes narrowed. “Nothing’s changed since the day you brought me here.”
“Really?” She gazed at me from under lidded, skeptical eyes. “Perhaps you’d do well to reflect on that, Clementine. For I see changes, even if you do not.”
I felt my distrust of Umbra vibrating, uncertain whether to deepen or ease off. She seemed sincere, and yet she was blunt about keeping truths from me, relabeling them as “kindnesses.”
“Who was my father?” I asked.
Umbra’s head shook. “I do not know. I swear it.”
I sighed. “Do you know why my mom hid me and my sister? Why I didn’t grow up a witch?” If I peppered her with enough questions, she might break...
An overlong pause ensued. Her lips parted, but a knock came at the door. A flicker of relief passed over her features before she lifted her chin. “Is that you, Callum?”
“It is,” came the deep voice from the other side.
“One moment,” she called back. “I’m just seeing a student out.”
I straightened as Umbra’s eyes returned to me. “Seeing me out, huh? I guess he would come first.”
“I’m afraid we’ve run over time, child. If you’d like to return—”
I raised a hand. I knew she wouldn’t give me a good answer. “Just tell me if I can leave the grounds to visit Farina North.”
Umbra’s mouth settled. “Yes, Clementine. During daytime, with Mr. North.”
“Good.” I turned to go.
At some point I’d unconsciously resolved never to show weakness or uncertainty in front of Maeve Umbra. That had been tested during this visit to her office, when she’d mentioned my mother.
But I’d been reminded again why I had made that resolution. She wasn’t honest with me. She wouldn’t answer questions about my own family—at least, not in a spirit of absolute truthfulness.
When I opened the door, I stood face-to-face with Callum Rathmore. Actually, face-to-chest. I lifted my chin to meet his eyes. They were as dark and intense as ever. “Cole,” he said.
I didn’t care why he was here. I didn’t care about all the reasons he’d conjured as to why I was inferior.
He could go suck a rotten duck’s egg.
“Excuse me,” I said.
Rathmore said nothing—only stepped aside for me to pass by. I could feel his gaze on me as I moved down the staircase, as I left by the double doors.
When the door had shut behind me, I finally allowed my chest to unbind. Emotion welled in me, unstoppered and driving my hand up to my pendant. My fingers encircled it as I stared out over the blurry grounds through tears.
My mother had once enchanted this pendant with her magic. She’d been a strong witch, a powerful one. Her magic had protected me for close to a decade.
We Coles weren’t weak. Not her or me.
That weekend, I’d planned to find Aidan as soon as the sun rose on Saturday morning. We’d just finished our first week of classes, and now that I’d told Eva about the key and gotten Umbra’s okay, he had a promise to keep.
When I came out of my dorm at nine that morning, there he was. Well, not at my door, but standing on the ground below, surrounded by a gaggle of first-years.
“This,” he was saying with a wide gesture to the amphitheater, “is where you’ll be i
nducted into your house after your sorting.”
I grinned. Of course he would be giving school tours.
When I came down and stood in the back of the crowd, unnoticed by the other students, his eyes found me. Recognition flashed there, but he continued on explaining the history of the amphitheater.
“Ever since the academy’s founding five hundred years ago,” he said, “this is where the student body and professors have gathered to commemorate inductions and all formal events.”
“What does the sun mean?” one student asked.
“Ah, good eye.” Aidan pointed up to the amphitheater’s roof. “The longer you’re here, the more you’ll notice the same emblem carved and painted in various places. It’s the symbol of our Shadow’s End—the rising sun.”
“Doesn’t the sun create shadows?” I said from the back.
Aidan flashed me a look. “It’s not the sun, but the objects it encounters which create shadows. On a flat, unbroken plane, your only shadow would be your own.”
Another student asked a question, and Aidan concluded the tour not long after. As they dispersed, he came over to me. “You have that look in your eye.”
I blinked twice with innocence. “That look?”
“Yeah. You know what I’m talking about.”
I did know; it was a little mischievous, a little triumphant. I couldn’t help breaking into a small smile. “Today’s the day.”
Aidan sighed. “I know.”
“You should be more excited. This is your long-lost grandmother.”
“She’s not been lost. More like self-exiled.”
“Who’s self-exiled?” a voice came from behind us.
We turned to find Eva with a very sleepy Loki in her arms. She had the same designer backpack on as when we’d gone to Vienna for winter recess; I understood now she only brought it out when she was traveling.
I glanced at Aidan. “You invited her?”
He shrugged. “She invited herself after prying about where we were going this weekend.”
“Listen, Eva…” I began.
“You aren’t leaving us,” Eva said. “Not me or Loki. For one thing, grandmothers love me. And for another thing, Loki was begging to come.”