Sophie’s shoulders slumped. Shimmying the strap off, she gave her pack to Jasper. “Stand up to them,” she whispered to Claire before she followed the commander out the door.
And as Sophie turned left, while the rest of the apprentices went right, Claire couldn’t help but feel that it was all her fault. In just the first hour, Claire had managed to break the rules, humiliate herself, and crush Sophie’s dream of uncovering her magic.
Her stomach flipped. At the rate she was going, they’d all be lucky if Stonehaven was still standing by dinnertime.
Trailing after the others, she followed them to a door haloed by light. Behind it, she could hear loud voices and a rumbling grind that would have sounded more at home in a construction site than a classroom. A moment later, the door swung open.
“You’re all late!” A man of about Claire’s height, who was as wide as he was tall, opened the door. His nose was cherry red, and his voice squeaky, as if he had a cold.
“S.A.S. class, er, took off in a different direction than usual,” the girl with springy hair said cheerily. “We’re very sorry.”
“Extremely sorry,” her brother added.
“Infinity sor—”
“All right, that’s enough from you, Zuli, Lapis,” Scholar Pumus said, and held the door open wide. “All of you come in and join the others. All except for …” His eyes scanned the group and landed on Claire. “You. Claire, is it?”
Claire nodded as the others trickled in around her to join the other Gemmer students.
“I thought Terra was supposed to bring you here herself at second chime, but no matter,” Scholar Pumus said, sweeping her ahead of him into a room that didn’t look like any schoolroom Claire had ever seen. There were no desks, and the kids bustled around different workstations. In one corner, a large waterwheel churned, sending water pounding down onto a pile of rocks. In another corner, some apprentices turned a large tumbler, while others walked around the room, dispersing rags, sandpaper, and polish to the children who sat at long, glimmering tables.
Claire blinked. The tables glimmered because they were heaped with jewels. And not just any jewels—most were as large as her fist. They were bigger than any Claire had ever seen, even in the natural history museum with Dad and Sophie. Just one, she was sure, would have covered the cost for all the paints at her favorite art supply store.
As Claire watched, a boy her age, or maybe even a little younger, reached for a sparkling green stone and began to polish it. A second later, the gem seemed to more than sparkle; it glowed. Holding the stone up, he examined it with a magnifying glass identical to the one Claire knew was in her own Gemmer pack.
Appearing satisfied, he tossed it into a massive clay pot beside him that brimmed with light, and picked up the next gem, this one a brilliant yellow.
“Now,” Scholar Pumus said, rubbing his bald head, the only surface shinier than the gems. “How old are you?”
“Eleven and a half,” Claire said, trying to speak over the sound of more jewels clattering onto the tables.
The scholar squinted. “With those scrawny arms? But never mind, follow me.”
He led her over to a spot next to Lapis, and thankfully, far away from Geode, who was smirking as he watched her pass.
“Listen carefully,” Scholar Pumus said as Claire settled onto a stool. “If you don’t want the stone to turn to magma, you’ll need to follow the three rules of crafting—”
“Scholar Pumus!” Zuli yelped from across the room. Claire saw that her feet seemed to have disappeared into the solid marble floor. She windmilled her arms as she tried to take a step, each of her springy black curls waving wildly.
“Zuli! I told you not to play with Impressionism!” Pumus looked around the table and pointed at the boy whose curls stuck out like exclamation points from his head. “Lapis, please help Claire get settled.”
“You’ll need these,” Lapis said, handing her a rag as Claire took a seat. “And the little bit of diamond dust polish that should be in your pack. You just need to dab a little of the polish over the stone, then rub. Then it’ll begin to glow.”
That was it? Claire could do that. It didn’t sound any harder than drying the good silver after one of Mom and Dad’s fancy dinner parties. Still, she hesitated, not wanting to take the rag from Lapis.
Lapis stared at her expectantly, then his eyes widened in understanding. “It’s safe, I promise! We’re not all awful. Geode has pebbles for brains,” he confided conspiratorially. “His joke wasn’t funny at all. Here, I’ll show you.” Using the rag he’d offered to Claire, he skimmed the cloth over a pink gem and immediately, his face reflected the rosy glow.
“See? A Gemglow.” He tossed it into a waiting pot, then selected a small, white rock and handed it to Claire. “Try a diamond. They’re the easiest.”
“But how do I—?” Claire broke off her question as Lapis had already ducked his head back down and started attacking his pile.
Cautiously, Claire skimmed her rag over the gem and began to polish. But no matter how many times she ran her cloth across the diamond, it didn’t get any more sparkly. Did she not have magic anymore? Is that why she couldn’t let go of the arrow? Had she used it all up when she’d released Unicorn Rock?
Magic is in the material. Her friend Nettle Green’s voice bubbled up from her memory. I can only release the potential the seed already has.
Claire bit her lip. The last time she’d seen Nett, he’d been sick, and their friend Sena Steele was dragging him out of the swamp and to the closest village for help. Claire still didn’t know what had happened to them, but Aquila had promised to find out for her while she was questing for the unicorn.
Struggling to remember the times she’d done magic before, Claire rubbed her hands together, trying to get them to feel tingly. When that didn’t work, she imagined herself in a long chimney, climbing up through a magical hum that rattled her bones. She even tried to picture, as she had that day on the Sorrowful Plains, that she had already called light to the diamond as she had imagined the unicorn already out of the rock. But nothing happened.
“Where are your Gemglows, apprentice?”
Claire looked up to see the scholar’s round face staring down at her.
“I’m sorry,” Claire said, “I just don’t know—I mean, I couldn’t …”
Scholar Pumus sighed. “After lunch, please join the preambles. They could use some help folding the polishing rags.”
Someone snickered. And from behind, she heard Geode whisper, “Some princess.”
A thread of shame looped over Claire and pulled tight. She kept her head down for the remainder of class.
CHAPTER
6
The rest of the day tumbled by in a rocky sea of classes and worries: What was the first test with Terra going to look like, especially now that they knew Sophie wasn’t a Gemmer? What would happen if Claire couldn’t wake the moontears after all? Would everyone think she and Sophie were royal imposters, like Jasper and Geode clearly believed?
Claire was beginning to regret ever coming to Stonehaven. They should have gone straight home, climbed back down the chimney, and stayed where they belonged, where it was safe.
But even as Claire thought it, she also knew she couldn’t just run away and go home. Because what would happen to Arden then? They’d discovered a magical world. They couldn’t just let that world fall apart—and she especially could not. After all, she was the Gemmer princess.
At last, the chimes tinkled, announcing dinnertime, and Claire heaved a huge sigh of relief. Though she’d been nervous attending class, she had secretly thought magic school would have been more like art class: fun and something she was good at. But now, she’d much rather have long division quizzes and spelling tests than relive today. She’d never been more overwhelmed.
Each apprentice helped carry the large pots of Gemglows to the dining hall, and they began to string garlands of glowing gems, bringing both light and cheer to the dark corners of the
cavernous space. At least, Claire assumed they were supposed to bring cheer—they only succeeded in illuminating how alone she was. Maybe now that it was dinnertime, she’d see Sophie again.
She hoped Grandmaster Carnelian hadn’t been too harsh with her.
Slowly, the dining hall filled up. Choosing a spot as far away from the imperious Commander Jasper and his Wraith Watch as possible, Claire sat at an empty table, nibbling the potatoes in front of her and scanning the Gemmers trickling in through the doors. But as the line thinned out, Sophie still did not appear. The potatoes turned cold in her stomach. She hoped Sophie hadn’t gotten into any trouble. Or, more accurately, that trouble hadn’t found Sophie. Maybe she should go find her.
But before Claire could even formulate a plan, someone was tapping on her shoulder. Terra.
“I’m glad to see you where you’re supposed to be,” the scholar said. “Commander Jasper filled me in on the day’s events.”
“I’m sorry!” Claire said quickly. “Geode said—”
“Yes, yes, so I heard from Sophie.”
“Where is Sophie?”
“She’s where she’s supposed to be,” Terra said. “Now come, it’s time.”
Before she’d even finished her dinner? “But—”
Claire looked up at Terra and closed her mouth. Terra did not seem like someone who was used to being disobeyed. A wave of exhaustion hit Claire but she stood and trailed after the woman. She knew what this was about.
The first test.
Claire followed Terra into her study, trying to breathe calmly. As they wove their way through the unicorn sculptures, paintings, and figurines, Claire marveled again at how many places Terra had been able to put a unicorn. Perfectly stitched unicorns marched across the deep blue curtains that had been pulled over the windows, and stones carved into unicorn profiles had replaced the dresser knobs.
Claire rubbed her clammy hands on her tunic. She knew she was being silly, but it suddenly seemed like all the hundreds of unicorns in that room were staring at her, waiting for her to prove herself to them. She followed Terra to the desk, now covered with open books—which, of course, were filled with unicorn sketches.
Terra sat down behind the desk. “Now. Did you have a good day?”
“It was …” Claire trailed off. Miserable, awful, disastrous—all seemed to fit. But she knew that wasn’t what Terra wanted to hear. So instead, she settled on, “… fine.”
“Good, good.”
As Claire watched, Terra bent and unlocked the top drawer of her desk. A second later, the moontear necklace appeared in her hands, sparkling in the chandelier’s light. Claire leaned forward, drinking in the familiar peace of their rounded edges and gentle gleam. They were luminous and … wait, were they bigger?
Narrowing her eyes, Claire leaned closer. She could have sworn they had grown since last night. Maybe they had just needed the fresh air of Starscrape Mountain. Or maybe Claire was just so used to seeing them around Sophie’s neck that she wasn’t remembering right.
Terra stopped ferreting in her desk and dropped a few polishing rags on top of an open manuscript, which currently was laid out to a page that showed the correct way to braid a unicorn’s mane.
“Don’t just stand there,” she said, glancing up. “Sit. We have a lot—stars and diamonds above, what’s wrong?” she exclaimed as she finally looked at Claire for the first time.
Claire took a step back. The current lenses were so thick that they made Terra’s eyes look as big as an owl’s. Terra rapidly flicked through her lenses, then stopped before she let out a low whistle. “I’ve never seen someone so completely embody misery before. What on earth and underneath it happened today?”
It was almost as if she could see not just Claire’s face but inside her head, to her thoughts. But her tone was so warm and so motherly that Claire’s eyes immediately swam with tears. She was so focused on keeping them in that the rest of the day spilled out: How Geode had tried to play a prank on her; how she hadn’t seen Sophie; how her gems never, not even once, glowed. And how she thought that maybe …
“Maybe what?” Terra prompted.
“That maybe I’m out of magic,” Claire admitted all in a rush. She held her breath, wondering if she had made a mistake. Terra could call the Wraith Watch, and Claire and Sophie might find themselves at any moment dumped outside the Citadel’s wall.
“My dear,” Terra said, resting her hand on hers. “Magic never runs out. It’s always there, in the material. Magic is really about seeing, about finding the possibilities.”
Claire frowned. “Possibilities?”
Terra nodded, her large ruby earrings swinging. “Everything has the possibility of changing into something else. Everything contains secret wishes and capabilities. Objects have stories they are longing to tell. Magic is learning how to understand what those are, and then choosing which ones to bring out. Your sister mentioned that you like to sketch, yes?”
Confused at the abrupt turn in conversation, Claire nodded and felt a familiar itch in her fingertips. It had been so long since she’d held a pencil in her hand. Graphite, or letter stone as it was called here, was rare in Arden. So rare that even Anvil and Aquila, the most renowned treasure hunters of all the guilds, had said they’d only seen a handful of them in their lifetime. The graphite mines had shut down years ago.
Still, drawing was one of her favorite things. Slowly, Claire lowered herself into the pink velvet armchair, ready to hear more.
“When you draw,” Terra said, tapping the illustration of the braided unicorn on her desk, “what’s the very first mark you make on a piece of paper?”
Not sure where this was going, Claire shrugged. “A line, I guess.”
“And then what do you draw?” Terra prompted.
Claire thought a moment. It was such a simple question, she wondered if it was a trick. “I draw more lines.”
“Exactly.” Terra nodded. “The line is just a line until you, the crafter, see what that line has the potential to be: the underside of a chin, the swoop of an apple, the curve of a smile.”
She reached up to her earlobe and tugged off a ruby earring. It clinked against the table as she placed it on the desk in front of Claire.
“Right now, the ruby has simply been asked to reflect the light around it. But rubies once created their own light as they melted in the heart of the earth. By polishing it, you can help the ruby remember how it once shone by itself, and how it can do so again. Now, go on. Try.”
Slowly, Claire picked up the ruby, and taking the kerchief Terra handed her, she began to rub it over the stone.
Nothing happened.
“Remember what it feels like to draw,” Terra murmured. “You follow the line of letter stone, releasing an image from it. Here, you follow the spark of light, encouraging it to escape.”
Claire wanted to point out that polishing was not the same as drawing, but Terra would just call that an excuse. So instead, she focused on the tiny sparkle of the ruby. Closing her eyes, she tried to imagine the absolute darkness that this ruby had been born in, the entire heat of the world hugging it close. Squeezing, squeezing, and squeezing, until it would have shaken the molecular structures, making it buckle, vibrate, hum, and melt … Something flashed against the dark of her eyelids, and Claire snapped them open.
The ruby glowed in the center of her palm.
It was faint, hardly brighter than a strand of fairy lights in daytime, but it was there. She had made the ruby glow. She had done magic.
On purpose.
A flush of joy washed over her, followed immediately by confusion. “Why was it so easy for me before I got here?”
“Ah yes.” Terra nodded. “Sophie did mention something about a cave, and a wyvern. At moments of great emotion, sometimes our abilities surprise even ourselves. But learning to control the magic and draw upon it whenever you want takes practice. You don’t become a great artist overnight.”
Claire nodded, but she was only half list
ening. She was again staring at the moontear necklace. “How is polishing going to help with the moontears?”
“You just released light from stone,” Terra pointed out. “And according to Timor the Verbose,” she tapped the book in front of her again, “a unicorn’s closest relative is starlight. As a Gemmer princess, maybe you can call forth the unicorns the same way you called out the ruby’s spark of light.”
Claire looked at her, dumbfounded. “Really?”
Terra adjusted her spectacles. “It’s just an idea, but,” she waved her hands at her desk and shelves, all covered with straight-spine covers, “all these books began as just an idea, too. And so did all these paintings, portraits, sculptures, tapestries …”
Gazing at the moontears, Claire thought they were the prettiest idea of all. The ruby’s glow seemed to reignite somewhere in her chest. Small, but strong.
“Hand me a cloth, Scholar Terra,” she said. “I’m ready to try.”
CHAPTER
7
An hour later, Claire padded through the marble halls, only the patter of her footsteps keeping her company. She tried to tread softly. Stonehaven seemed like a place to whisper, feeling both as grand as a cathedral and as intimate as a library. Into that echoing quiet, her stomach growled hungrily as she tried to shake off a feeling of doom.
It hadn’t worked.
The moontears had pulsed slightly in her hands as she polished them in Terra’s office … but no light came forth, no magic happened, no unicorns appeared. All the elation Claire had felt moments before seemed to evaporate immediately.
“We’ll try again tomorrow, dear,” Scholar Terra had said as she picked up the moontears and locked them back into her desk. “These things take time to learn.”
But Claire could tell Scholar Terra was disappointed, and as soon as Claire had left the warmth of the study, she felt suddenly cold, and very alone. Now, following Terra’s instructions, as she made her way up a set of winding stairs to her and Sophie’s shared room, she passed a jade statue of a woman in robes that fell in stone folds, with a bow and arrow across her back. And on top of her long curly hair was a three-pointed crown.
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