by Jane Yolen
He would have started crying then, but the door behind him creaked open.
“What’s that awful noise?” Gorse called through the crack. “Not blubbing are you? My brothers never blub. My da would whack ’em if they did.”
“Are you all right?” That was Tansy.
“Of course he’s all right,” came Will’s voice. “He’s better than all right. He’s quite right!”
The door opened all the way, and there were the three of them, laughing and shaking hands.
Thornmallow walked back inside. “I’m tired,” he said. “I’m going to bed.” He started down the hallway to the right.
“Not that way!” yelled Gorse. “Unless you want to sleep in the girls’ wing.”
Thornmallow stopped, his face reddening. Turning, he tried to shrug it off as a joke, but no one was fooled.
“Follow me,” Will said, pointing to the left.
He followed Will, but his left and right seemed all mixed up, and he’d lost all sense of direction. He wondered if he’d ever find it again.
“See you in the morning,” Tansy called after them. “Third bell. Don’t forget.”
He tried to make a map of the hallways as they walked, but before he’d gotten anything straight, Will had stopped in front of a small door.
“Your room,” Will said.
Thornmallow saw that his name was carved into the door, as well as a picture of a plant he assumed was a thornmallow because it had lines suggesting prickles along the stem. Also the number 113. He sighed.
“Don’t take on so,” Will said. “We all feel a little bit lost and a little bit lonely first days. That’s what the guardians are for. I …” He turned and glanced up and down the hallway as if making sure no one was listening. “I even missed my sisters.” Then he grinned, a bit sheepishly, and pulled a large blue handkerchief from his pocket. “Here, scrub your nose. You’ve got a large smudge on it.”
“Thanks,” Thornmallow said, took the handkerchief, and went into his room, scrubbing his nose.
Everything looked as it had before, except that the picture of his dear ma was different. She was no longer sitting at the butter churn. Instead she was in front of a roaring fire, sewing.
“Oh, Ma, Ma,” he whispered, and as if she’d heard him, she looked up for a moment, gazing out past the picture frame. Then she smiled in a satisfied way and looked back down at her work.
For a long time he stared at the picture, hoping it would move again. When it didn’t, he went over to the wardrobe to hang up his jacket. There was a nightshirt on a hook with the initials TM on the pocket, and a scholar’s robe. Even if he wasn’t sure he belonged, his room was sure.
“The Bear!” called out the star map overhead.
Thornmallow glanced up at the winking stars. “Hi, Bear,” he called back. Then he took off his clothes and hung them carefully on wardrobe pegs, slipped into the nightshirt, and climbed into bed.
“The Crab!” said the map.
“Night, Crab,” he mumbled.
Before the ceiling could name a third constellation, Thornmallow was fast asleep.
8
CLASSES
Thornmallow was awake before first bell. By the time the bell had finished its booming call, he was out of his nightshirt and into his clothes. He brushed his teeth and hair and put on the black scholar’s gown. Then he poked his head out of the door.
The hallway was empty.
Cautiously, he stepped outside his room just as the second bell rang out, echoing loudly in the corridor. He could hear the boys starting to stir in their rooms. Head high, shoulders straight, he walked down the hallway, checking the names on the doors: Feverfew 107, Saxifrage 11, Pepperwort 96, Buck’s Horne 3.
The third bell resounded, and doors popped open all down the corridor. A rush of boys swept past him. One of them was Will.
“Here, Thorny, you’re going the wrong way,” Will cried, grabbing him by the shoulder and turning him around. “Never go widdershins in anything.”
“Widdershins?”
“That’s going the opposite direction of the sun’s movement, ninny. At Wizard’s Hall, only girls can go that way. It’s a rule. Number three, actually. Come on.” Will shepherded him to the dining room, where the meal was a bowl of thick porridge, clotted cream, and wild strawberries.
“No lizards?” Thornmallow asked.
“Don’t even think it. And wipe the side of your nose,” said Tansy.
He drew the blue handkerchief out of his pocket and wiped.
The meal was over almost as quickly as it had begun, and Thornmallow was pulled toward a classroom.
“Curses!” whispered Gorse, grinning at him. “It’s much better than Elementary Spelling. You’ll like it, Thorny. No snow.”
They filed in.
Curses was much better than Spelling. At least in Curses Thornmallow didn’t break down any walls. He learned how to curse a field to blight it, curse a cow to stop its milk, and curse a wart to remove it.
“Much faster than a poultice,” Gorse said, “though I heard a third-year named Milkweed got some of the words wrong and managed to lose a toe. It was found in Magister Beechvale’s tea.”
Tansy gave Gorse such a look that Thornmallow wondered, but it was Will who explained.
“She loves to try and frighten people with her stories,” he said.
“Then Milkweed didn’t lose a toe?” Thornmallow asked.
“Oh yes,” Tansy said. “But not because of the wart.” She glared at Gorse.
Gorse grinned. “I was just joking about the tea.”
Just then Magister Bledwort called them back to attention, and Thornmallow never did get the rest of the story. And later, when they were changing classes and he tried to ask, they were all much too busy to explain.
Besides, the next class was first-year Names, and he found it much too interesting to remember to ask Gorse about curses, for in this class he learned that all things have a True Name.
“Even me?” he asked timidly, raising his hand.
Magister Hyssop, who taught Names, smiled and nodded her head. “Even you, young Thornwillow.”
“Mallow,” he corrected automatically.
“No, not Thornmallow. That’s not your True Name at all,” Magister Hyssop said. “If it were, you’d have a distinct aura when you spoke it aloud. You are distinctly flat right now. But remember you must take care. Why, class?” She looked around at the hands all waving madly. “Yes, Tansy?”
“True Names,” Tansy said, standing as she answered, “must never ever be spoken aloud. That’s rule number nine.”
“See that you remember that, young Thornapple,” cautioned Magister Hyssop. “You never know when the knowledge may be vital.”
“Mallow,” he said again.
“Not at all,” Magister Hyssop replied and turned back to the board.
The idea of finding his True Name so fascinated Thornmallow that he would not let it go. He scarcely listened in the next class, Transformations, even when Will got himself tangled up in a shape-shifting spell and came out with donkey ears, and Wormwood, the blond boy with the hair growing into his ears, turned a strange shade of dark blue. And in Magister Beechvale’s Spelling class for the second time, he sat transfixed, whispering a variety of names like a spellmaster out of some ancient tale.
“Dandelion?” he tried. “Fennel? Bachelor’s Button? Thyme?” He checked his reflection in the window for an aura, some slight haloing around his head and ears. But he was, in Magister Hyssop’s words, distinctly flat. And though the list of names he tried went on and on, he saw and felt no change.
At last called upon by Magister Beechvale a second and then a third time, and pinched into awareness by Will from behind, Thornmallow stood.
“Yes, sir,” he said, trying to sound as if he knew what was going on.
“I asked, young Thornmolly, if you thought you might try a spell again. Not the snow spell, but another um … less active one.”
Thor
nmallow gulped. “Yes, sir,” he said in a small voice, setting aside for the moment his search for his True Name. He rose from his seat and went to the front of the class.
This time Magister Beechvale left Thornmallow strictly alone, no hands over the ears, and Thornmallow struggled along. He tried singing and missed each note of the spell by at least a tone and a half. His friends all put their hands over their ears, Wormwood giggled openly, and even Magister Beechvale shook his head.
“Never,” the magister muttered. “Never in my fifty years, boy and man, have I heard such sounds. Never. What could Dr. Mo have been thinking? And you, our much-needed one hundred and thirteen. We are worse off than before. How could you, young Thornmaple, have brought that snow yesterday? Never. Never!”
It was that never Thornmallow heard as they marched into the dining hall. It rang louder than any bell. He could not get the sound of it out of his head.
Never. Never. Never.
9
EAVESDROPPING
Thornmallow scarcely noticed what he ate. It could have been real lizard soup for all the attention he paid it. He spent the whole meal wrestling with that voice in his ear.
Never!
It repeated until he was thoroughly sick of it.
Never!
He heard it in Magister Beechvale’s strict tones, in Magister Briar Rose’s softer ones, and in his own dear ma’s familiar voice. It accompanied each slurp of his soup.
Never!
Will tapped him twice on the shoulder. “Thorny—what’s wrong?”
Thornmallow looked up as if in a daze. “What?”
“You’re muttering to yourself,” said Tansy.
“And saying nothing worth repeating,” Gorse added.
The other first-years at the table giggled, and Wormwood pulled at the yellow hairs invading his right ear.
“Never!” Thornmallow said. “They’re right.”
“Who are they?” Tansy whispered to Gorse, who shrugged.
“I’ll never make a wizard. Never in four years; never in a million and four years. I’m going to Magister Hickory right now to tell him it’s best for everyone if I quit.”
“Not a wizard?” asked Tansy. “But what about that avalanche of snow?”
“And the roses on top?” added Will.
“What about quite right and trying?” asked Gorse. “And the fact that you are number one-thirteen? All the magisters seem to think that’s terribly important.”
Up and down the table, all the first-years were listening in to the conversation and nodding. Even Wormwood.
“It’s all a terrible mistake,” explained Thornmallow, standing. He could feel the soup—whatever kind it was—swimming around inside his stomach. Probably doing the backstroke, a little voice in his head said, and at that the soup lurched and threatened to come back up. “A mistake,” he said loud enough so that everyone up and down the table could hear. “And the snow and roses were Magister Beechvale’s doing, not mine.”
Before anyone could tell him no, he stepped over the bench and walked out of the dining hall.
Turning left—never widdershins as Will had warned—he walked down the corridor and soon found himself in front of a series of doors neatly labeled with the names of the magisters. He let out a long breath, and that was the first time he knew he’d been holding it.
“Magister Beechvale, Register Oakbend, Magister Lilybell, Magister Briar Rose …,” he whispered aloud as he passed each door. He hesitated at Briar Rose’s, remembering how nice she’d been and wondering for just a moment if he should ask for her advice. Then, shaking his head, he walked on.
At last he came to a door with MAGISTER HICKORY in gold. He raised his fist and was about to knock, when he heard voices coming from inside the room.
Now, Thornmallow was not an eavesdropping sort of boy. At home there had been no one but cows and chickens to eavesdrop on. So it wasn’t in his nature, and he hadn’t acquired it as a habit. There was never any thought, therefore, that he should listen. On the other hand, there wasn’t any thought that he shouldn’t, especially since the very first words he could make out included his name.
“That Thornfellow is the last,” came a voice.
“Mallow,” corrected another. (He thought it might be Magister Briar Rose.)
“Prickly on the outside, squishy within, but he does try hard.” (Probably Magister Beechvale.)
“Squark!”
“So now we have the necessary number.” (Clearly that was Magister Hickory, with a voice of authority.)
“And thirteen magisters.” (Magister Hyssop.)
“Just in time,” pronounced Magister Hickory, “as Dr. Mo promised. Though I do think that was cutting it a bit fine.”
Cutting? Fine? Thornmallow wondered what Magister Hickory meant.
As if in answer to the unspoken question, Magister Hickory continued, “The Quilted Beast and its Master will come on the night of the next full moon, which is …” He hesitated as if calculating. “Tomorrow. So it is written. So it must be. Register Oakbend checked and rechecked our calculations, using the letters in the Beast’s name. One hundred and thirteen was the number needed, and so he sent out the Call. Thornmellow answered it.”
“Mallow,” said Magister Briar Rose.
“But what do we do with that number?” Magister Hyssop’s lilting voice asked. “The spell is unclear. And what good are we anyway, already so diminished by the Master and his beast?”
“Squark!”
“Dr. Mo is right, Hyssop. We must try.” Magister Hickory’s voice sounded a positive note. “As to what we do with that number—if we knew the answer to that, my dear, we would not be in such danger. All we know is that we had to reach precisely one hundred and thirteen students, and Thornwillow is it. With the boy here, the Beast’s defeat is at least possible. And the Master’s. Without Thornbellow, Wizard’s Hall is—” Magister Hickory’s voice suddenly stopped. “What was that?”
Behind the closed door, Thornmallow had moaned out loud. He hadn’t meant to, but the sound had escaped his mouth without his willing it.
The door was flung open.
“Thornpillow!” said Magister Hickory.
“Marrow,” corrected Magister Beechvale.
“Mallow,” squeaked Thornmallow.
“You were eavesdropping!” Magister Hickory’s face was as red as an apple.
“I—I didn’t mean to, sir. It’s just … it’s just …” Thornmallow stood transfixed, his mouth refusing to say the rest of the words. He felt terrifically squishy inside.
“Squark!”
Magister Hickory took a step back, and his mouth assumed a more welcoming expression. “Better come in, boy.”
At that, all Thornmallow had been feeling and worrying about rushed up to his tongue. He couldn’t have followed Magister Hickory’s invitation to move if he’d been threatened with a hot poker, but he could speak.
“Please, sir. I was just here to tell you that I realize I will never make a wizard, no matter how hard I try. I can’t find the dominant, and I’m not very practical, and hardly ever punctual. And I thought it best, really sir, for everyone if I left. Now. Today. At once. Except …”
There was an awful hush in the room.
“Except?” Magister Hickory’s voice was suddenly like thunder over the Far-Rise Hills.
“Except,” Thornmallow added miserably, his voice breaking on the two syllables, “I did hear what you said. Without meaning to, that is.”
The magisters looked at one another in great concern. Thornmallow continued uneasily.
“If I leave, you will no longer have the one hundred and thirteen students you need. And somehow you need that number because of some beast and its master. And you need that number by tomorrow night. And we can’t count on another Call, I suppose, going out in time, and some other boy or girl showing up.” His voice got somewhat wistful here and he looked at the magisters, all of whom were shaking their heads.
“So though I am
certainly no kind of hero, being small and thin and often smudgy of nose …” He rubbed his fist over his nose. “I could stay until just after you defeat this beast fellow. And its master. You know I was able to make some snow yesterday, and maybe that might help. If you need snow, that is. Though I know I need more practice. And then …” His voice trailed off, though by a supreme act of will, he managed to keep it from whimpering.
“Squark!”
Register Oakbend turned his sightless eyes toward Thornmallow, and those eyes pierced right through him. He could feel the sharp pinpricks where they entered.
“Dr. Mo says you must stay.” Register Oakbend closed his eyes, and Thornmallow felt as if the pins had been removed.
“Till … till when?”
Before anyone could answer, the room suddenly went dark. Not the kind of dark that happens if the light has been turned off, but as dark as if all light and all color were gone from the world for good. And there was an odd smell, of something wet and old and horrible.
Just as suddenly, the smell was gone, and the light came back on.
“What was that?” whispered Thornmallow.
“The Master has been playing with us for a full week now,” said Magister Hickory softly. “Lights on and off, odd noises, awful smells. And that was a glimpse of the Beast.”
Remembering the lights going off in Magister Briar Rose’s room, Thornmallow said, “But I saw nothing.”
“Which is worse—seeing or not seeing?” asked Register Oakbend.
Shivering, Thornmallow said, “But the smell …” He gulped. “It was like a bear’s winter cave. Like a sick cow’s breath. Like …”
“Better not remark any more upon it,” cautioned Magister Briar Rose. “In Wizard’s Hall, things spoken aloud can become real.”
“And names have power,” added Magister Hyssop.
Thornmallow nodded grimly. “I’ll stay,” he said. He wondered if they could see the trembling of his knees beneath his gown, then decided that, since they were wizards, they probably could. “I’ll stay. And I’ll try.”