by Jane Yolen
But the others were no longer listening. Instead they had crowded together to stare out of the window at the blood-red moon swiftly rising over Wizard’s Hall.
Just as the moon passed beyond the window’s frame, the great bell shattered the library’s silence.
“Assembly,” Will said, turning around.
“But why should there be an assembly? And at this time of night?” asked Tansy. “I thought the magisters wanted to keep the students out of it.”
“Maybe—maybe it wasn’t the magisters who rang the bell,” Gorse said ominously.
Thornmallow found himself shivering again, this time so hard his top teeth clattered against his lower ones. But when Will grabbed his hand and pulled him out of the room, he dutifully followed, turning left and marching down the hall.
16
THE MASTER AND THE BEAST
The doors to the great hall stood wide open. Thornmallow and his friends were the very last to arrive.
“Never mind going up on the balcony,” Gorse said.
“Right.” Will slipped in through the doors, turning back to add, “If we’re to do anything, we need to be up close.”
They pushed through the students in the aisle and made their way forward. Everyone was whispering and the sound of it was like waves in the sea, see-wash, see-wash over and over. There were no seats left, and so they sat huddled together on the floor in front of the first row.
No one was on the dais yet, but the magisters all stood along the right-hand wall, talking animatedly. Only Magister Hickory was missing.
“Maybe it was Hickory who called the meeting,” Thornmallow whispered, remembering the magister’s entrance the last time. But the others shook their heads, and even he was unconvinced.
Just then the lights flickered and dimmed, and the great school gong reverberated once again. Instantly, the room grew still.
All eyes turned forward, and Thornmallow could feel tension, thick as new butter, filling the Hall. Magister Hickory stumbled onto the stage from behind a wine-dark curtain. His hair was once again hanging limp against his shoulders and his right hand cradled the left against his chest. Turning his head to stare behind him into the shadows, he looked like a frightened creature being chased through tall grass.
A high chittering broke the vast silence. It took Thornmallow a moment to locate its source. Dr. Mo, raging back and forth and pounding the bars of the cage, was screaming squarks so quickly, no one could translate.
Suddenly the lights shot up to full force. A figure cloaked in dark green strode onto the stage, standing behind Magister Hickory. His hair flared out in a black halo around his head and his black beard was braided in a hundred braids. He held the great staff.
“Nettle!” Gorse silently mouthed the name at Thornmallow.
Nettle raised the staff, and at that, even Dr. Mo was mute. Then the black-haired wizard, with casual disdain, pushed Magister Hickory aside with his left hand. Magister Hickory flinched as if he had been badly burned.
Covered with stinging hairs, Thornmallow reminded himself.
“You will call me Master!” commanded Nettle, flinging his arms wide.
“Master … Master … Master,” came the dutiful response from the students, an avalanche of sound reminding Thornmallow of the snow crashing through the classroom wall. He found he was unable to stop himself and called out the Master’s name with the others.
“And you will keep your eyes on me,” Nettle continued, waving his left hand languidly toward the rear of the room. “Only me.” He giggled, and the sound was surprisingly high-pitched.
They smelled the Beast before they heard it. It was the same smell Thornmallow had encountered in the magister’s room: something wet and old and horrible, like a blanket left too long in a damp cellar. And he remembered as well Magister Briar Rose cautioning, “Better not remark any more on it.”
Then came the sound, a strange asymmetric lumbering. First it seemed to be coming from somewhere outside; then gathering speed down the hallway; and finally—loud and distinct, yet strangely muffled—right outside the Great Hall doors.
No one turned around to look. No one dared. Compelled by the Master’s words and by fear itself, they all stared straight ahead and, as if one body, held their breath.
Something impossibly large stomped down the aisle. It was larger than a dog, larger than a cow, larger even than a wagon loaded high with hay. It was larger than anything Thornmallow could comfortably imagine, but he only glimpsed it out of the corner of his eye.
Slowly and awkwardly the massive creature climbed the stairs, making its way onto the stage. Only then could they see it for what it really was.
It was as tall as the Master at the shoulder, its bulky head towering high above him. There were great swatches of color all over its body, no two alike. Dark lines, like awful scars, ran across its back and shoulders and under its stomach and groin. Each leg was patchworked with the lines. And the lines, running like rivers over its muzzle and under its jaw, seemed to ooze, though whether with sap or blood or tears or infection, Thornmallow could not tell.
Quilted, he thought to himself. It really is quilted. But I wouldn’t want anything like that on my bed.
The Beast quite suddenly opened its mouth, and its sharp silver teeth glittered. Horribly, it had no tongue.
The Master smiled and let his hand drop, giggling that high giggle again. At once the hall was abuzz with questions. Everybody talked at once. Everybody but Thornmallow. He was silent, trying to remember all he’d read about nettles just an hour before.
Trying.
But for all that he tried, he could not remember a single line.
17
MAGISTER HICKORY’S DEFENSE
“I am the Master,” said the wizard Nettle, “and this is the Beast. Do not think to stop us. Do not even try. See what happens to those who would.” He pointed down into the room at Register Oakbend and at the cage holding the now silent Dr. Mo.
For the first time Thornmallow saw that the little white creature was not a mouse at all. Or a shrew. Or a vole. Or any other tiny animal. It was a miniature human being dressed in white, its hands waving in agitation.
“Dr. Mo,” Thornmallow whispered to himself as if adding up a string of numbers. “Dr. Mo-rning Glory. Oh!”
“And there!” said the Master, pointing this time at Magister Hickory, still crouching over his scalded hand.
Thornmallow cried out, “Try, Magister Hickory. Please—try!” His voice was too weak to be heard.
Still, Magister Hickory must have heard something, because he nodded to himself, shook himself all over, and slowly stood, his wounded hand red and inflamed before him.
“We have …,” Magister Hickory began, flinching once when the Master raised his nettlesome hand. “We have …,” he began again, his wavering voice starting to grow stronger, the red hand paling down to a pink, “the number to defeat you, Nettle. We have one hundred and thirteen students. Sing, children! On the dominant!” He sang out a note, and all around Thornmallow the students began to sing the note back When Thornmallow opened his mouth and tried, he missed the note by at least half a tone. But he did try.
The Master laughed, high and hollow. “You have nothing. You never had anything. Numbers are mere fingers on a hand, symbols on a page, nothing. Your casual mathematics mean zero to me, nil, null, nothing. What are one hundred and thirteen children singing? Openmouthed bottles over which wind plays. Nothing.”
He held up the staff before him, and the sound the students were making stopped at once. Thornmallow felt the breath sucked out of him, and his note, along with the others, was gone.
“Number …,” Magister Hickory tried again. “Number one hundred and thirteen, as it says in the spell.” He waved his hands before him, the good hand and the reddened one, which was once again a bright painful color. His fingers made complicated signs in the air. From his fingertips a bit of smoke wavered, wobbled, and at last dissipated into a strange unnatural da
rkness.
The Master struck the ground with the globe end of the staff. Little lightning cracks darted across the globe’s face. At each crack, a similar crack appeared on Magister Hickory’s face, until his skin looked like parchment with a map of the Dales written across it. He no longer spoke.
Then the Master lifted the staff, pointing it directly at Magister Hickory, who was still desperately waving his fingers. A thin line of something seemed to spin out of Magister Hickory’s open mouth. It was as if a thread were being pulled out of the cloth of his being, and he was unraveling before their eyes. The unraveling took a long minute, unwinding the magister into a golden-red thread, then winding him up again around the bulky back of the Beast. When the unraveling and the winding up were done, a new patch had appeared on the Beast’s shoulder, a patch as red-gold as the thread, as red-gold as Magister Hickory’s hair with the faint imprint of a face on its surface. The Beast belched, and Magister Hickory’s empty robe fluttered to the ground.
Thornmallow felt himself sigh, a sound so quiet he doubted anyone near him could hear it. But it felt like a small surrender.
“And now,” the Master declared, “oldest to newest, you will do my bidding. You will mount the steps and add to the beauty of my Beast.” He smiled horribly. “As your own Magister Hickorystick could do naught against me, not a one of you will be able to do anything more. Best come along quietly and get this done without any messy fight. Remember the words: Punctuality, Practicality, Personality. So come one at a time when I call. It’s the only thing you can do. After all …” He laughed again. “Of the one hundred thirteen students, of the thirteen magisters, whose personality is the dominant one?” He raised his staff high overhead, and all the magisters stood upright as if they were marionettes jerked to their feet by invisible strings. Magister Briar Rose tried to raise her hand and failed.
“Once I was not good enough for the Hall, but now I will quarter my Beast here!” the Master said.
And after Wizard’s Hall, Thornmallow thought desperately, he will take all the Dales. He wondered briefly what color he would make on the Beast’s big body. He wondered what color patch his dear ma would make. He was much too frightened to cry.
18
THE END OF WIZARD’S HALL
Slowly the line of magisters, compelled beyond any resistance, moved across the room to the stairs.
“Try, oh please try,” Thornmallow cried in his mind. But he could not get the words out. And what good, he wondered, were one hundred and thirteen students if not one of them could make a sound?
Register Oakbend stumbled forward, his empty hands outstretched before him. Magister Beechvale, like a tamed bird, walked on trembling stork legs. Magister Briar Rose, holding onto the tail of Beechvale’s robe, came after. Her cheeks were spotty, as if she had been crying. Pale as paper, Magister Hyssop followed.
In the line of unprotesting magisters came Magisters Greybane and Lilybell, Black Thorn and White Ash and the rest. They climbed step by step without protest, eyes staring at the floor.
Thornmallow named each one to himself as they shuffled across the stage, and he cried silently to each of them to try. Only Magister Briar Rose turned around when he named her. She looked terrified, and her eyes were as blind as Register Oakbend’s. Thornmallow was certain she could not see.
One at a time the magisters stood before the Master as, giggling, he raised the staff and pointed the cracked globe toward them. One by one, a deadly arithmetic, they unraveled as the students watched.
Register Oakbend was spun out into an off-white thread, Beechvale a beige, Briar Rose a soft lavender, Hyssop a brilliant yellow. Greybane and Lilybell, Black Thorn and White Ash and the rest were as easily stretched out into thin colored strands, a rainbow of death, the imprint of their faces like a ghastly portrait gallery on the Beast’s patchworked hide, while beside the Master the pile of discarded gowns grew.
With each new patch, Thornmallow felt smaller himself, diminished by the losses in a way he could not understand.
Why don’t they try? he groaned inside. But he knew the answer. They had tried. That was the chance they’d been given. That was the fairness. But what they tried was not nearly enough. The Master was too strong for them—for Magister Hickory, for Register Oakbend, for all of them.
For the first time Thornmallow felt despair.
With a wave of his hand, the Master brought up the fourth-year students. They marched like clockwork dolls in a line. Thornmallow looked away, the only protest he could manage.
If I don’t look, he thought, perhaps it won’t be real.
But he could still hear the drag of feet across the floor, up the stairs, and over the stage. He could still hear the thinning out as, one by one, the students were threaded and patched onto the Beast.
Fourth-years, then third-years, then seconds went without his watching. But when it was the turn of the firsts, he could not help himself. For these were his friends. Thornmallow knew he could not let them go without being their only witness.
He looked up at the stage just as Gorse was winking out, her yellow hair drawn out in a thin gold line.
Oh, Gorse! Thornmallow thought, staring at the Beast where a bright yellow patch with the shadow portrait of Gorse appeared on the right side of the creature’s neck.
The Beast was as big now as a barn mow and puffed out with patches. Hardly moving, it seemed somehow horribly content. But still it smelled, if anything—worse than before.
Thornmallow’s entire body felt cold, too cold to allow for shivering. His tongue cleaved to the roof of his mouth, which kept him from uttering a word. His palms were as wet as if he had just washed them. He would have dried them against his robe if they’d obeyed him. But he couldn’t move. He couldn’t even blink. Not without the Master’s command. All he could do was stare—as one after another of his friends disappeared: three boys he’d sat near in Curses, then Wormwood, as brassy a yellow as his hair, then Will.
Will! But Thornmallow could make no sound except in his head. Will’s name echoed there long after his sassy red patch had shown up on the Beast’s shoulder, his red freckles dotting the hide.
And then there were but a few students before him, and Thornmallow felt himself jerked upright. As if boneless, he found himself marching toward the stairs. Trying so hard to reach out, past the Master’s magic, to touch Tansy’s hand for comfort—for she was the fourth student ahead of him—Thornmallow stumbled over his own feet.
The jarring released him for just a moment and he thought: What about quilts? Standing up again slowly, he had time for another thought: Tansy never told us anything she’d learned about them. And then he realized that in less than a minute he would know rather intimately more about quilts than he ever wanted to know.
19
THORNMALLOW REALLY TRIES
The closer Thornmallow got to the top of the stairs, the more frightened he became. And the more frightened he became, the angrier he got. And the angrier he got, the more leaden his feet felt, until he was hardly able to drag one after the other. If he could have, he would have sunk to his knees and never taken another step again. But his body kept moving to the Master’s command.
When he reached the top step there were only five students left between him and the patchworked Beast—three boys, a girl with an orange braid, and Tansy. Thornmallow thought of a curse. Not a wizardly curse. A farmer’s curse, smudgy but heartfelt.
“Cow pucker!” he thought. And then he was shocked when the words actually fell aloud from his mouth. Glancing up, he saw that the Master had been at that very moment kicking aside a pile of empty student gowns and smiling to himself. That moment of broken concentration, with the Master so sure of himself that he’d let down his guard, had become a moment of relief. But of the six students left, only Thornmallow seemed to have noticed.
Nettles, Thornmallow thought grimly, boiled and eaten. His stomach rumbled, but he couldn’t imagine boiling or eating another person. It would have to be some
thing else. Cut small and granulated. But he had no knife, nor any mortar or pestle with which to grind the wizard fine. And he couldn’t imagine the wizard standing still for any such operation either.
But there was something more about nettles. He thought frantically. Something was missing. It had to do with names. True Names. Other names.
Looking up from the gowns, and still smiling, the Master began to focus again on the six remaining students.
Try! Thornmallow urged himself desperately. Try to remember.
And then there were only four others ahead of him, and a bright blue patch appeared on the Beast’s right rear leg that hadn’t been there before.
The Beast shifted its great bulk, and the moonlight through the colored glass window lit two of the patches on its enormous body, a red patch and a white one.
Red, thought Thornmallow suddenly. And white. That’s it! If he could have smiled at that moment, he would have. Red Nettle. White Nettle. Those were two of the names. If I can only remember the others … He concentrated even harder and could almost see the book in his mind, his finger on the words. But he concentrated so hard, he tripped over his own feet again, knocking against the boy in front of him. That boy fell against the next boy, who tumbled into the girl with the orange braid, who stumbled into Tansy.
Tansy fell straight forward, her forehead coming to rest against the instep of the Master’s shoe. Startled, the Master growled, a sound that filled the room.
Blind Nettle! Thornmallow remembered. His hand grasped the next boy’s leg for support as the words spilled out aloud.
As if those words became suddenly real, amplified by the five children linked hand to leg to arm to small of the back to forehead against the instep of a shoe, the thought traveled. It raced across the bridge of bodies and up into the Master’s flesh until he screamed. It was an awful scream, high-pitched and full of terror. He put his hands up to his eyes, and when he took them away at last, his eyes were the color of old pearl, gray-white and opaque.