“You don’t understand,” he mumbles.
“My gran hates Musicraft,” I say. “She did everything she could to stop me from coming here. But here I am.” I spread my hands. “All I’m saying is, one day you’re going to have to tell him how you really feel. Release the inner rock star!” I wave my hand in the air, my index finger, pinky, and thumb spread wide.
Jai cocks an eyebrow. “What is that?”
I waggle my hand. “You know! The rocker symbol.”
“That’s sign language for I love you. You gotta put the thumb down.”
I snatch my hand out of the air, face suddenly hot. “Oh.”
He rolls his eyes. “Look, maybe your dad’s all touchy-feely, but mine’s about as huggable as a homicidal porcupine.”
I drop my gaze, my stomach shriveling into a hard knot. “I wouldn’t know. Haven’t seen mine since my mom died. I don’t even remember what he looks like.”
It’s mostly true; I can remember his voice, his laugh, and even what his footsteps sounded like when he came through the front door. But his face is a blur in my memory.
“Do you know his name?”
I hesitate, then say in a tight voice, “Eric. Eric Neal.”
Jai’s eyes widen. “Well, did he go to Mystwick?”
“For a while, but he dropped out.” That seems to be his thing, dropping out. Out of school, out of responsibility, out of my life.
“Then he must be in the records,” Jai says, “or maybe in a yearbook. We could look and—”
“No.”
He gives me a startled look, and I realize I sounded harsher than I’d intended.
“I don’t care, okay?” I say. “Look, if he wanted to be around, he would be. But I’m not going to waste time finding someone who doesn’t want to be found. I don’t care if I never meet him, and that’s the truth.”
Jai nods and doesn’t say anything else about it, for which I’m grateful. My face is burning as it is, and like always when I think about my dad, anger ignites in my chest until it feels like I can’t even breathe.
To distract myself, I look up at Darby.
She’s standing up, furiously tapping her nose, like she’s been doing it a while.
The signal! Oops.
“Go, Jai!” I hiss, and then I stand and raise my flute, beginning to play “Row, Row, Row Your Boat.” It’s the most basic of hovering spells, so it isn’t very strong. Usually it can lift something an inch or two. Jai joins in, his back against mine in the small space, branches poking us from every side. There’s barely enough room for him to move his bow, but he makes it work.
The melody is light and quick, and Jai and I play overlapping one another, a continuous stream of notes pouring out in pale-yellow wisps. I focus hard on the water, glinting just steps away.
We’re far enough from the buildings that no one should hear us.
But the humfrogs do.
And the result is so instantaneous I almost swallow my tongue.
Dozens—no, hundreds—of frogs rise out of the lake, looking startled. From the water, the banks, even the bushes around me, the little creatures lift off and float through the air, webbed feet kicking like they’re trying to swim. The sound of surprised croaking breaks out, loud enough that some of the students shout out, pointing toward the lake.
Jai and I exchange looks. He’s grinning ear to ear. I can’t smile back without breaking off playing, so I raise my eyebrows instead.
This is going perfectly. Hopefully the sight of a couple hundred floating frogs will be enough to lure Mrs. Le Roux from her office. Everything is going according to plan.
Then, of course, the plan goes haywire.
See, no one told us that humfrogs repeat melodies they hear. And that like musicats, they’re one of the few animal species with the peculiar ability to create magic with their voices.
Because that’s what they begin to do now.
All across the lake, the flying amphibians’ croaking starts to blend together in a scratchy, noisy, froggy symphony. And hearing a couple hundred frogs hum “Row, Row, Row Your Boat” in unison is easily one of the most terrifying things I have ever heard. Worse, while the spell may be weak when just a few people play it, as the Fourth Rule of Musicraft promises, the more individuals who join in, the stronger it gets.
The result here is like Jai and I tried to light a campfire—and caused a wildfire instead.
Frogs. Go. Everywhere.
I soon realize I don’t have to keep playing, because the frogs are drowning me out anyway. They don’t even sound like normal frogs—their voices are deep but agile, almost human. It sounds like they’re really singing “Row, row, row!” And the more they sing the hovering spell, the higher and higher they float—and the more they spread out, like a cloud unrolling across the school.
I jump out of the bush, horrified. There’s nothing I can do to stop it. Swarms of frogs float through the air. Now everyone up the hill can see what’s going on, and students start wandering down to take a closer look. They’re so focused on the floating frog choir that they don’t notice Jai and me tumbling out of the bushes, pulling our instruments with us.
“Jai! Jai, what do we do?”
He turns to me, eyes wide. “Um . . .”
“Do we finish the spell?” I ask.
“It’s not our spell to finish anymore.” He waves a hand at the clouds of frogs thickening the air. I can barely even hear him for the thunderous croaking.
I see what he means. “Row Your Boat” is a perpetual canon, meaning its magic can go on and on and on until the musicians playing it decide to stop. One of my favorite stories when I was little was about how the orchestra on the Titanic played it nonstop for days after the ship hit an iceberg, floating the entire thing safely to land.
But unlike me, Jai, and the Titanic’s orchestra, frogs have no way of deciding when to end a spell. They’ll probably keep croaking it until they all . . . well, croak.
“Did you know this would happen?” This part of the plan had been Darby’s idea. Actually, the entire plan had been Darby’s idea.
“Of course not.” His eyes grow wide. “Amelia, watch out!”
A frog, spinning a bit wildly through the air, smacks me in the face. I yelp and duck as more of them go soaring overhead. In their alarm at finding themselves suddenly airborne, the frogs seem to have sped up the tempo of the spell, singing at an increasingly frenzied pace. This, I realize, only serves to make them fly faster, and their frantic flopping sends them into crazy spins.
“We could try to transpose the key!” Jai says. “Reverse the spell!”
We raise our instruments and try it, sloppily; Jai gets it right before I do, but soon so many frogs are smacking into us that we’re forced to lower our instruments and cover our faces, our pitiful attempt quickly drowned out by the roar of croaks.
Turns out, it’s impossible to play any kind of music when you’re being pelted by panicked, flying frogs.
I even try singing the notes in minor key, hoping the frogs will repeat that instead, but all I get is a slimy, wet frog smacked on my mouth. Spitting and gagging in disgust, I wrap myself around my flute to protect it and give up.
“Jai! We have to get inside!”
He just shakes his head at me, and I realize he can’t hear me.
Then I feel a strange sensation, like someone is pulling at my legs. My whole body starts to feel lighter and lighter.
Because I’m lifting off the ground.
With a scream, I grab hold of the bush, anchoring myself to the earth as the frogs’ spell starts to take hold of me. Beside me, Jai is doing the same thing, and this time I can hear him yelling even over the croaking frogs.
“Don’t let go!” I shout. But I hardly need to tell him; he’s clinging to the bush like . . . well, like he’s a balloon and it’s the only thing holding him down.
My legs are now pointed to the sky. Completely upside down, I have a weird view of the lake, where I see more things popping
from the water—fish and turtles are starting to fly too. The frogs’ spell is so strong it’s even reaching the bottom of the lake. And if someone doesn’t fix this mess fast, all those poor fish will be belly-up in minutes.
Twisting my neck, I manage to look up the hill to see it’s worse than I thought. All the students who came out to watch the frogs have gotten caught in the spell as well.
Students cling to the grass, to bushes and posts, to each other. One girl is gripping a statue of Bach with one hand, while holding on to another girl with the other. That girl, in turn, is holding on to the feet of a screaming boy. All around them frogs are spinning, floating, soaring.
Even the rocks and twigs and other loose stuff on the ground are starting to drift away. Backpacks and instruments cases, loose papers and books and pens and someone’s shoe . . .
Then the branch Jai’s holding on to snaps.
He screams as he begins rising into the air with nothing to grab ahold of.
“Jai!” I yell, and I let go, trying to swim through the air to him.
We collide and go into a wild spin, frogs pinging off us.
“That was bloody stupid!” Jai shouts in my ear. “Now we’re both dead!”
Immediately I see he’s right, that jumping after him was about the dumbest thing I’ve ever done in my life. We hold hands to keep from being pulled apart, but that just means we’re rising higher and higher together, borne on a spell that’s showing no signs of weakening. And now, I don’t want it to stop.
If it does, we’re going to have one nasty fall.
Jai looks at me.
I look at him.
And together, we both start screaming.
The kids on the ground get smaller and smaller. We’re almost higher than Harmony Hall now. I scream until my throat burns and I choke on my own voice.
We’re not the only ones drifting up into the sky: I see other students—dozens of them—who lost their grips too, slowly tumbling through the air, screaming, crying—except for one, who I recognize as the drummer from Rebel Clef. That maniac is laughing.
Then Jai points frantically, so I look down and see the most amazing, wonderful, beautiful thing I’ve ever seen in my life:
Mrs. Le Roux.
She drifts out of Harmony Hall, carrying a cello, looking completely calm. Like floating through a sky full of singing humfrogs with half the student body is just another day at the office.
After she’s a few feet off the ground—really, how does she manage to make even flying look so graceful?—she props her cello on one foot, raises her bow, and then starts to play.
“It’s no use!” I shout to Jai. “We already tried—”
“No, look!” he replies.
I gasp.
Of course!
The humfrogs repeat the melodies they hear. And unlike me and Jai, Mrs. Le Roux doesn’t panic, even as frogs bounce off her.
At first, Mrs. Le Roux’s music doesn’t seem to make a difference, but then the frogs drifting right next to her start to change their tune. They sing her spell instead, and as they do, they begin to descend. The spell spreads from there, as more and more frogs switch to the new spell.
In minutes, the sky fills with the sound of Brahms’s “Lullaby,” and the frogs, fish, turtles, students, and other random objects all start drifting back to the ground. The animals return to the water as soon as they land, as if they can’t wait to disappear into the murky depths and possibly never resurface. I wouldn’t blame them. Once they vanish beneath the water, they fall silent.
The spell Mrs. Le Roux chose is gentle, and nobody goes crashing to their death. Instead, we touch down lightly, soft as feathers, amid the soothing notes—as soothing as a thousand frogs can possibly sound, anyway. I’m not sure this is what Brahms had in mind when he wrote his famous lullaby. But at least it’s working.
I’ve never been so happy to feel solid ground.
Dropping to my knees, I hug the grass.
“Oh, earth!” Jai says beside me. “I’m never taking you for granted again!”
All around us, students cry out in relief as they’re returned to the ground. Mrs. Le Roux is the last one to touch down, settling onto the grass without missing a single note. She plays a few more measures, finishing the spell. Now all the frogs are silent, and the only sound is Mrs. Le Roux’s sonorous cello. The last note draws out, deep and melodious, and then it fades away.
Everyone breaks into applause.
Mrs. Le Roux slowly lowers her bow, then raises furious eyes.
The applause cuts short. Silence falls at last.
Mrs. Le Roux looks around, her lips tight. “I don’t suppose anyone is going to take responsibility for this?”
No one speaks.
She studies every face. When her gaze finds me, I train my features to absolute stillness. But all my insides turn to water and for a moment, I’m sure she’s seen how guilty I am.
But then she moves on.
I let out a slow, relieved breath as everyone starts shuffling away. Jai and I turn to each other and exchange amazed looks—amazed that we somehow got away with this.
Then a hand pounds my back, and I whirl with dread, thinking it’s Mrs. Le Roux.
But it’s Darby, her face flushed and eyes shining.
“That went perfectly,” she says.
Jai looks like he’s about to pop an eyeball. “Perfectly? Perfectly?”
“You knew,” I whisper, feeling sick. “You knew the frogs would repeat the spell, and that it would all get out of control.”
A little smile curls at the corner of her lips. “Look, Mrs. Le Roux would never have come outside on account of a few floating frogs. A bunch of floating students, on the other hand?”
I gape at her. “Jai and I could have been killed!”
She shrugs. “But you weren’t. Anyway, I bet you got a nice view of the campus. I’m almost jealous.”
I’m furious. I could happily watch her float into outer space right now. Was this some kind of revenge scheme, her way of getting back at me for taking her Amelia’s place? “How dare you—”
“Jones,” she says. “Look.”
She takes off her backpack, glancing around to be sure no one’s watching, then unzips it slightly.
Two yellow eyes glow inside, then a clawed paw darts out, nearly scratching my nose. I shout and step back as Darby quickly zips it shut.
“Like I said.” She smirks. “Perfectly.”
She carefully slings the backpack over her shoulder, then takes off in the direction of the girls’ dorm, where she and I are supposed to meet Rosa for the trade, according to the note Darby found in our room this morning, slipped under the door in the night and signed unmistakably with a kiss of apple-red lipstick.
“She’s nuts,” I tell Jai. “She’s completely, totally insane.”
He nods. “Yeah. But . . . the view up there was pretty great.”
He yelps when I punch him in the shoulder.
Chapter Twenty
The Sound of Musicats
THE NEXT FEW DAYS, all anyone can talk about is the Great Humfrog Float, which is what they’re apparently calling it now. And soon, the story—much like the spell it started with—has gotten completely out of control.
“There’s a rumor that a kid is missing,” whispers George in the computer lab on Thursday. “They say it’s a tenth grader. Floated right up into space.”
“That’s not true,” I say.
“Oh, it’s totally true,” Jai puts in. “I was there, saw the whole thing. See, what happened was—”
He launches into a long, complicated version of the story that is about 90 percent total lies. I just sigh and poke at the keyboard, working on yet another email to Gran that she won’t reply to. I’ve tried to keep a low profile during these conversations, in case anyone starts to get suspicious about my involvement in the disaster.
No one’s been charged with the crime. Yet. But I swear I’m getting more and more sideways looks from the
Maestros. Jai says it’s just my imagination, but I’m not so sure. Still, we got the black spell from Rosa, and that was the important thing. She even let Darby and me watch while she recorded Wynk’s humming spell, and let us set the musicat free outside when she was done. What the spell was for, I have no idea—and I’m not sure I want to know.
Dear Gran, Nothing new to report, except that I learned how to set a table using magic! No need to add that every dish I’d moved with my spell ended up shattering on the floor without ever actually touching the table—thanks to a ghostly arm knocking them out of the air. To everyone else, it had looked like I’d flubbed yet another lesson, and they’d just rolled their eyes and said, “Typical Amelia.” Even Miss Noorani had just sighed and handed me a C–.
How long will you stay mad at me? Are you never going to talk to me again?
Biting my lip, I erase the last two lines and hit Send, forgetting to add my usual Love, Amelia.
* * *
By Friday, the Great Humfrog Float story has died down, as everyone starts talking about musical zombies instead, which seems to be some kind of annual school-wide game played in the woods.
“That’s when you’ll have to play the spell,” Rosa had told Darby and me. “Rebel Clef will be playing during the game, and trust me, over the sound we’ll make, nobody will notice.”
To hear some of them, you’d think it was the most important day of the year. Kids break off into groups to whisper strategies. The seniors scope out the woods where the game will be played. And on Friday night, the girls’ dorm hums with activity late into the night, despite curfew. I can hear girls running back and forth from each other’s rooms, shrieking and laughing. Since it’s the weekend—and the dorm captains are as much into the pregame excitement as the rest of us—nobody says much about it.
But Darby and I are too anxious to even think about the game.
Or at least, I’m anxious. I don’t think anything could make Darby nervous, but she does sit on her bed for hours, studying the black spell and practicing the fingerings on her oboe. The spell is written for piano, and Darby has spent the last few days painstakingly rearranging it for a flute, oboe, and violin trio instead.
The Mystwick School of Musicraft Page 17