by Jane Yolen
They all spoke together.
Will said, “You mean …”
Gorse said, “Then where’s …”
Tansy said, “Is that why …”
But it was Thornmallow’s question that rang out above the rest. “So has she gone entirely?”
“Gone—and not gone,” Magister Hickory said. He rose suddenly and walked over to the wall, where he plucked down the picture of the beautiful woman and stared at it “Gone—and not gone.”
“But she couldn’t have had a worse black side than the rest of you,” cried Thornmallow, who was already half in love with the picture.
“She had more ambition, more insight, more desire than all of us,” said Magister Hickory, shaking his head. “And more love.” He placed the picture facedown on the little table by the chair. “And tonight when the Master—who was once the wizard Magister Nettle—comes with the Quilted Beast by his side, he will loose his powerful spells. And he will slowly leach out the rest of our strong emotions, feeding them to his Quilted Beast, making it grow huge with our stolen feelings. If we cannot stop him, we who are the best and the brightest in the land, he will make us all disappear, and he will then own Wizard’s Hall. From there, why, he could go on to own all of the Dales.”
Thornmallow leaped to his feet, filled with unaccountable bravery. He was thinking of his new friends here in the room. He was thinking of the magisters and Register Oakbend and the little white creature in the cage. He was thinking about his dear ma, no longer safe in her cozy home. What he was not thinking about was what he was going to say. It just popped out on its own.
“Tell us what to do!” he cried. “We will not fail you.”
Magister Hickory’s head, like a clockwork figure’s, began to shake back and forth, back and forth. “Oh, my dear children,” he said in time to each shake. “It may be we who will fail you—for, though we know we need one hundred and thirteen students to break the Master’s hold, we do not know what to do.”
13
IDEAS
For a long moment no one spoke. Thornmallow could feel a kind of heat rising to his cheeks, and behind his eyes unshed tears prickled.
At last Magister Hickory stood, his voice soft as a cradle song. “Without a good breakfast,” he said, “we will none of us have the strength for tonight’s work.”
“Whatever that shall be,” murmured Thornmallow, but he was all of a sudden hungry, as if the magister’s suggestion had been spoken directly to his stomach.
The four children rose and filed out of the room, boys turning left, girls right, but Magister Hickory did not follow. Instead he closed the door softly behind them.
Thornmallow was not surprised to find himself suddenly in front of the dining hall, side by side with the other three. They glanced briefly at one another before going in. None of them remarked on Magister Hickory’s absence.
“I hope,” Thornmallow said, trying to change the mood, “I hope it isn’t lizard soup.”
In fact it was porridge, a lighter shade of brown than the soup, and when Tansy mentioned raisins, they immediately popped up like freckles in the bowls. Thornmallow wished she had mentioned strawberries instead. But when he tasted his porridge he realized it was just the appearance and not the actual fruit, so it didn’t matter after all.
The four of them stumbled through Elementary Spelling and Curses and first-year Names, their attention wandering. They kept giving one another little frightened, rabbity looks. However, their distraction was hardly noticed. The magisters, too, seemed unable to concentrate on the lessons, and the classes became strange combinations of badly articulated questions and barely understood answers.
None of the magicks worked.
It was rather like a half-holiday, only they were still in their seats.
At lunch the strange mood at Wizard’s Hall was all anyone talked about. One of the fourth-year students remarked, “I’ve never seen anything like it.”
When they went back to Transformation class, there was a note on the door:
CANCELED ON ACCOUNT
“On account of what?” asked Wormwood, fiddling with his ear.
No one had an answer.
“That’s done it!” Will whispered to Thornmallow. “Now everyone will want to know why.”
Thornmallow turned to Will. “They should be told,” he whispered back. “To be fair.”
“To be fair,” Gorse said, her voice too loud by half, “we should all be sent home.”
“Sent home?” Wormwood insinuated himself into their circle. “But why?”
“Because …,” Gorse began, but she was elbowed fiercely by Will.
“Because,” Tansy finished for her, “if we’re to have an undeclared holiday, it would be more fun at home.”
Satisfied, Wormwood left to spread the rumor that they were all going to get the afternoon off. It took the magisters the rest of the day to make sure none of the one hundred and thirteen students actually left. Magister Briar Rose had to run after two second-year students who’d made it as far as the gates with a picnic basket chock-full of egg-and-watercress sandwiches.
“Of course,” Tansy said, “I really have no home to go to. Except for Wizard’s Hall.”
“Her ma and da are dead,” Gorse explained to Thornmallow. “And mine are away on a business trip. Wizards’ business.”
“Mine still have farmwork to do,” Will said. “They could use a helping hand.”
Thornmallow thought about his own dear ma and about running off home to her. He knew she’d welcome him. But running off home wouldn’t be right. After all, he had promised. And he had to try.
Suddenly Thornmallow looked up. “What are we talking about? There is no holiday. It was just something Tansy said to get rid of Wormwood.”
As if coming up out of a dream, the three stared at him.
“You’re right,” Will said. “What have we been talking about?”
“It’s a magic drain,” Gorse whispered fiercely. “My da told me about them. Pulls all sense out of you and leaves only non-sense. It must be the result of the Master’s stopping by.”
“Well, what can we do?” Thornmallow asked. “To help the magisters, I mean. To defeat the Master and the Beast?”
“We’re only first-years,” reminded Tansy, putting her hand on Thornmallow’s shoulder.
“But we must try,” he exclaimed.
Tansy’s eyes widened suddenly. “Try? Of course we’ll try!”
“How?” asked Will.
Thornmallow grabbed up his hand. “Think, Will, think!”
Will’s mouth opened and shut twice, like a fish in a shallow pool. “The library,” he gasped out at last.
“To learn things,” agreed Tansy, tightening her grip on Thornmallow’s shoulder.
“You’re all crazy,” Gorse said, turning to leave. But Will caught her by the arm and pulled her around. She stared at him. “What things?”
“Things like … nettles,” Tansy said.
“And correspondences,” added Will.
Understanding seemed suddenly to dawn on Gorse. “I’ll take nettles or quilts.”
It’s as if they are all speaking another language, Thornmallow thought miserably. And only I’m left out. He made a wry face, remembering something his dear ma always said, Secrets is like wounds, can’t be cleansed until opened.
“Let’s go!” cried Will, and dragging Thornmallow to the left, he turned the corner, and they were there.
14
LIBRARY TIME
“I’ll take nettles,” Gorse said.
“I’ll take quilts,” said Tansy.
“I’ll look up correspondences,” said Will, shutting the library door carefully behind them.
Thornmallow looked around. The library had walls of books. There were books on the windowsills and books stacked two- and three- and four-deep on shelves. Where there were no books, single pieces of parchment littered the floor, covered with crabbed writings and odd diagrams with arrows pointing up
and down and around great circles.
Nettles. And quilts. And correspondences. What did they mean? And where did they mean to start? Thornmallow couldn’t move. He stood, amazed.
As if she knew exactly where to go and what to do, Gorse headed for a particular wall of books and began pulling down volumes, two at a time. Tansy gathered up books from a great plum-covered chair near an oriel window. Will shuffled through leaves of parchment as if they were cards in a deck.
“What are you all doing?” Thornmallow asked at last, no longer caring if they knew how stupid he felt.
“Finding out, of course,” Gorse said in an exasperated tone.
“Finding out what?”
For a moment they all looked so puzzled at his puzzlement that Thornmallow drew in a deep breath. At last he let it out and said, “Look—I know I’m new here. Why, I didn’t even know there was a library. So how can I help it if I don’t know why we are looking up nettles and quilts and … and … correspondences?”
Gorse shook her head as if appalled at his ignorance, but Tansy dropped the books back onto the plum-colored chair. Dust flew up and then settled gently back down on the cushion.
Crossing the room, Tansy explained in a singsong voice, chanting a verse as if she were in class:
Correspondence is the key
To making dreams reality.
First you must repeat the name;
Then make the magic be the same.
“Get it?” she asked in a normal voice.
Dismally, Thornmallow shook his head.
“Thorn … mallow,” Tansy said in a quiet but determined way. “Now do you get it?”
“No.”
“Why do you suppose that’s your name, stupid?” Gorse called.
He turned and glared at her. “Because I’m supposed to be prickly on the outside,” he answered sharply. “Or so everyone keeps telling me.” His chin began to quiver and his eyes shone with tears.
Tansy smiled. “And squishy within. Just like a thornmallow. You are like your name, and it is like you. They correspond.”
“Like Tansy is named Tansy because she has such a sunny disposition,” said Gorse. “And Willoweed because he manages to plant himself anywhere. Just like willoweed.”
“And Gorse is …,” Tansy began.
“Small and prickery,” Gorse finished, as if proud of it.
“So,” Will said, “if we understand what a nettle is, all its properties and uses, then we will understand all about the wizard Nettle—what he is.” His busy fingers kept at the parchments. “And we’ll be able to take away his nettlesome nature.”
“Make him squishy within?” asked Thornmallow.
All three spoke at once: “Exactly.”
“And if we learn all about making quilts,” Gorse added, never looking away from the bookcase, “we’ll also learn how to un-quilt the Beast.”
“It all sounds too easy,” Thornmallow said. “And The Voice we heard is not going to be overcome with easy magic. Besides, if we thought of it, why didn’t the magisters?”
“Probably because it is too simple and too easy,” Gorse said. “Have you ever noticed how grown-ups try to complicate everything? Make it harder than it is? Like grown-up food, with too many sauces.”
“And grown-up clothes, with too many buttons,” added Tansy.
“And grown-up manners,” Will said. “With too many shoulds and shouldn’ts.”
Thornmallow nodded. It all made sense in a way. But something still was troubling him. “WAIT!”
They all looked at him.
“Thornmallow isn’t my True Name. Nor is Henry. No auras, remember? Distinctly flat. I mean—Nettle can’t be the wizard’s True Name. He’d never let anyone know it. So if we don’t know his True Name, what good are all these correspondences anyway?”
Will dropped the parchments to the floor and sank down next to them. Gorse turned from the bookcase, looking grim. Tansy’s hands flapped like broken wings.
“He’s right, you know,” Tansy said at last. “Why didn’t we think of that?”
They shook their heads slowly.
Tansy added, “Without knowing Nettle’s True Name, we might as well not even try.”
The library seemed to reflect their depression. The light appeared to dim, and the walls became as somber as the leather bindings of the books. The words not even try hung in the air, heavy as the smell of the Beast.
“NOT EVEN TRY?” For the first time since coming to Wizard’s Hall, Thornmallow raised his voice. “NOT EVEN TRY?” He remembered his mother’s face at the window.
“Magister Hickory didn’t mention Nettle knowing the True Names of the magisters. So if Nettle managed all he did without knowing them, why can’t we?”
No one answered.
“Gorse, you take nettles as planned. And Tansy, quilts,” Thornmallow said. There was a new power in his voice.
The library lights shot back up to full strength, and the walls brightened again to an off-white.
“Right—and I’ll continue with correspondences,” Will agreed. “I’ve already located a bit about it on one of these parchments.” He scrabbled through the crackling amber-colored sheets. “Here!” He pulled one out of the pile, smiling triumphantly.
“And what about you, Thornmallow?” asked Gorse, clutching a brown book to her chest. “What will you do?”
“I don’t really know yet,” Thornmallow admitted.
“Well, at least you can try to help me,” Gorse said. She winked and held out the book. “Chapter two seems to have lots about nettles in it. See what you can make of it.”
15
FULL MOON NIGHT
Thornmallow read for hours, first to himself and then, when he found he was skipping paragraphs, aloud. “The Common or Great Nettle and the Small Nettle grow profusely upon waste ground and along otherwise barren waysides.” He looked up at Tansy, who was sitting cross-legged on the plum-colored chair, deep in her seventeenth book. “Do you suppose he’s a Small or a Great Nettle? He’s certainly not Common.”
“Read it to yourself,” Gorse snapped from the window ledge. “The rest of us are trying to concentrate.”
“Sorry.” Thornmallow looked down again at the book and read the next twenty pages to himself, his lips moving, as if that might help him memorize the information. He was careful not to read aloud again. “Nettles are covered with stinging hairs.” He tried to imagine a wizard covered with stinging hairs. The very thought made him shiver.
Turning to the center of the book, he looked at several colored pictures of nettles: the creeping roots, the leaves on opposite sides of the stems, the flowers small and green. He discovered that Great Nettle was also called Blind Nettle, Deaf Nettle, False Nettle, Dead Nettle, Red Nettle, White Nettle, Bee Nettle, and Hedge. It was a prolixity of names. He wondered, briefly, if any of them were important.
“Nettles,” he read further, “may be boiled and eaten as a remedy against scurvy. The leaves and roots, cut small or granulated, in a cup of boiling water make a tincture that, when taken cold, one cup a day, is a valuable decoction against sick stomachs.” Quietly he sounded out the words he didn’t know. He understood little of it.
Finally, putting the book facedown on a large library table, Thornmallow went over to Will, who crouched on the floor, his finger tapping a passage on one of the many parchment leaves spread about him.
“Will,” Thornmallow whispered, “there’s lots and lots about nettles. But nothing seems to make sense if I try to apply it to our wizard Nettle. Except, perhaps, that they all have stinging hairs and a nasty reputation. The chief thing a nettle seems to do is to irritate or annoy or vex a person.”
“You are irritating and annoying and vexing me,” said Will, not even looking up from the parchment. “And you are not a nettle. Leave me alone, Thorny. I’m reading up on correspondences, and this is my thirtieth parchment. I’ve almost got it, I think. But it’s real difficult. Fourth-year stuff.”
But whatever it wa
s that Will had almost got now evidently got away again, for not a moment later he stood and stretched, shaking his head. Tansy stood too, kicking her legs about as if waking them up from a very long nap.
“Look!” Gorse cried out suddenly from the window ledge. She pointed outside.
A full moon—red and round as a copper coin—was just beginning to rise.
“But it can’t be that late,” Tansy complained.
Thornmallow swung around and stared at the library clock. Its hands circled its face frantically, as if all time had suddenly been compressed.
“That’s not right,” he said. “And not fair. I thought magic—even dark magic—had to be fair.”
“A fair chance,” Will explained. “Not fair.”
“And look!” Gorse cried again, pressing her nose against the glass. “Everything outside is now a barren waste.”
“Where nettles grow …,” Thornmallow mumbled, moving to the window for a closer look. “But,” he added, remembering how bare the grounds had looked when he first arrived, “wasn’t it always this way?”
“Oh no!” they all said.
Tansy added, “Wizard’s Hall is known far and wide for its flowers and gardens and trees.”
“Magic makes things grow wonderfully,” Will said.
“Better than compost,” put in Gorse.
Shaking his head, Thornmallow looked thoughtful. “That’s very odd,” he said. “There were no gardens or flowers or trees when I arrived.” It was as if the Hall were already being prepared for nettles. If that is dark magic, he told himself, then I don’t like it at all.
Then Thornmallow remembered something Tansy had said when they had talked about the lizard soup. Something about balance. Big with little, up with down, soft with loud. Fast with slow. She hadn’t mentioned that one particularly, but it made sense. “Fast with slow,” he said aloud. “Balance. Think how slowly time went for us while we were reading. And now it’s speeding up.”