3

THORNMALLOW GETS TO CLASS

When Thornmallow awoke, he felt refreshed. Opening his eyes, he blinked twice, not quite believing what he saw. On the ceiling of his room was a star map with little lights that winked off and on, reciting their own names.

“The Ram,” one group of stars said. “The Hunter,” whispered another.

He sat up.

Someone had taken off his boots and tucked them side by side under his bed. He reached over, picked them up, and drew them back on. They were freshly polished. He could almost see his face in them. Sitting on his bed, he began to wonder if all the magicks he had seen were tricks—or real.

Real! he decided at last and stood.

“The Bear,” answered the stars.

When he opened the door of his room, he saw a long hall. Out of many similar doors poured boys his own age. Some were tall, some short, some weighty, and some as slim as he. None of them seemed to have combed their hair, though one—a boy with a bright yellow cock’s comb—was intent on slicking his hair back with hasty fingers. All the boys were wearing long black scholastic gowns and carrying books.

“New boy?” called one as he raced by, going right to left. He was tall, with flaming red hair and a network of freckles like a map over his nose and cheeks.

Before Thornmallow could answer, the boy and his companions were gone. Not disappeared this time, but gone around a corner of the building. Thornmallow hurried after them and found himself in another long hall, this one filled with rushing girls in black scholar’s robes running toward the right.

“Last bell!” one girl cried. She had a face the color of old wood, and her black hair was caught up in three plaits of equal weight: one on each side of her head and one standing straight up from it. She was short, with the eager look of certain small dogs.

“What bell?” Thornmallow ventured, but his words were immediately drowned out by three enormous and quite unmelodious bongs.

Even as the third bong sounded, the girls disappeared, funneling into separate rooms.

Standing in the middle of the now-empty hall, Thornmallow stared about him. His gooseberry eyes were wide, and his heart skiproped in his chest.

“What next?” he whispered. Being a wizard had so far been full of rushings about, of comings and goings, appearances and disappearances, not at all what he’d expected. But—as his dear ma was fond of saying—Expectations always disappoint.

Something touched his elbow. He jumped and turned to see Magister Briar Rose. There was something rather like strawberry jam on her right sleeve.

“About your classes,” she said. “Close your eyes.”

He obeyed. When she told him to open his eyes again, they were in another room, this one filled floor-to-ceiling with books. Or at least he and Magister Briar Rose were in the room. His stomach, he was sure, had been left behind.

“Don’t worry,” the old woman said. “You’ll soon get used to it. Sit!”

He did as she commanded, collapsing onto the floor.

“Wherever did you learn your manners?” Magister Briar Rose asked. “Sit in the chair.” She pointed. “Over there.” She sat herself behind a book-littered table and poured herself a cup of black tea. Then she snatched a cracker from a nearby basket.

Red-faced, Thornmallow stood and walked over to the perfectly respectable high-backed wooden chair she had pointed at and lowered himself carefully onto its plump purple cushion.

There was a long silence while she seemed to be examining Thornmallow and the cracker alternately and with equal attention.

“Please, ma’am,” he said at last, “may I ask a question?”

“Of course,” she said. “But just the one. We have a great deal of business to get on with, now that you are finally here.” As she spoke, she dipped the cracker into the tea.

“Then, ma’am, what is a magister?”

“Why—a teacher,” she said and took a small bite of the now soggy cracker.

“Then …” He paused a minute, screwing up his courage, as he wasn’t sure if this was a second question he was asking or part of the first.

“Then what, child? We haven’t got all day.” She brushed cracker crumbs off her chest.

“Then … why not just say teacher?”

“Ah.” She leaned back and smiled at him, and he knew it was all right. “There’s nothing magical about the word teacher, is there? Everyone knows it, and therefore it’s common and not fraught with magic. And we are about the business of magic here. There is this to remember: magic is tough and sometimes dangerous, and the words you use are always important.”

Thornmallow was not sure he understood it all, but as she did not seem to want to elaborate, he had to be content. He was sure she would not tolerate another question.

“Now next time,” Briar Rose said, “you must wear a scholar’s robe.”

He nodded, not even daring to ask where such a robe might be found.

“Why, in the wardrobe of course,” she answered as if he had spoken aloud. “And now to your studies.” She put the half-eaten cracker down. It jumped back into the basket.

Thornmallow gulped.

“Can you spell?”

Catching his breath, Thornmallow said in a voice that sounded rather as if it had suddenly ripped on a nail, “C-A-T spells cat?”

Magister Briar Rose chuckled, but it was not meant meanly at all. In fact it sounded as if she were laughing at herself instead of at Thornmallow. “No, child, not that kind of spelling. This kind. C-A-T …” She waved her hand in a decidedly odd manner and pointed at the floor.

A calico cat, hardly more than a kitten, materialized. It looked up with but a moment’s surprise in its green eyes, then settled at once into cleaning its back leg, ignoring them both.

“No,” Thornmallow whispered. “Not at all like that.”

The cat stopped cleaning itself, stood, and stalked out of the room.

“Elementary Spelling, then,” Magister Briar Rose said, nodding her head and making a note of it on a piece of parchment. “What about Names?”

“Thornmallow,” Thornmallow whispered. “Or Henry.”

“Andrew-John-Bruce-David-Bob,” intoned Magister Briar Rose, staring at him.

Thornmallow felt himself growing smaller and smaller and smaller still—until he sat at the edge of a vast purple meadow that seemed to stretch behind him forever.

“No names,” he said, his voice as tiny as he.

“Bob-Divad-Ecurb-Nhoj-Werdna,” came a booming from above him. Magister Briar Rose was reciting the names backward.

Slowly Thornmallow expanded, as if he were steadily being pumped full of air. When the names stopped, he was his right size again.

“First Year Names, then,” Magister Briar Rose added to her list, “though I thought that your arrival heralded something more exacting than that. How you can possibly help as a First Year is beyond me.” She shrugged and cocked her head to one side. “Any Transformations?”

“None—none at all,” Thornmallow squeaked quickly.

“Ah. Ah,” she agreed. “I didn’t expect so. Though I did hope …” A third line was added to the growing list. “Curses?”

He shook his head, afraid to make a sound.

She scratched the last of it onto the parchment and signed her name on the bottom with a flourish that, especially upside-down, looked nothing like Briar Rose. Then she dropped a bit of red wax onto the parchment from a burning taper and took a great seal shaped rather like the handle of a butter churn. With it she set her mark into the wax.

Just then, the room went dark, the light blinking off and leaving Thornmallow with an awful feeling, as if pins and needles were sticking all over his body. A moment later the lights went on again.

“Was that a Curse, ma’am?” he asked. “Or a Transformation?”

Magister Briar Rose had an odd look on her face, and there were white spots on her cheek. “That,” she said finally, “is a failure of power. You do not need to know more.” She took a deep breath. “And this is for you.” She handed him the list. “Now you are ready. And I hope—I truly hope—that you will do.”

“Do what?” he began to ask, but the moment his hand touched the parchment, he found himself in a classroom. An elderly gentleman with thick drooping mustaches tied over his chest in a gray bow was sitting at the front on a high stool. He looked like some kind of long-legged bird on a nest. Before him, at small, compact desks, twenty boys and girls were chanting a rhyme.

Thornmallow no longer marveled at how he had gotten there. He only wondered if his stomach would ever catch up.