4

FIRST SPELL

“Thornmallow, is it?” asked the gentleman with the mustaches. His voice was harsh and storklike. “Here at last to answer our need. Are you prickly on the outside?”

“Not really, sir,” Thornmallow answered.

The man looked at him very sternly for a moment more, then checked something off on a paper that had suddenly materialized in his hand. “Yes, definitely prickly, I’d say, though I shall have to take that inside squishy on faith.” He crumpled the paper, and it flared with a blue light and disappeared. “I am Magister Beechvale. Fifth row, fourth seat, if you please.”

Thornmallow looked at the fifth row, fourth seat. It was occupied.

“Sir—” he began.

“Between Tansy and Willoweed. They will keep an eye on you these first days. First days are always difficult.” He lifted his hand in a languid manner, as if pointing to the row, but his fingers wiggled mysteriously.

Thornmallow looked again. An empty school desk now stood ahead of the final desk. It was the fourth seat in the fifth row.

“Well—go ahead, boy,” Magister Beechvale said in his stork voice.

Thornmallow walked to the desk and stared at it for a minute.

“Sit!” came the teacher’s command.

He sat.

“Told you it was last bell,” whispered the girl in the desk just ahead of his. She turned as she spoke and smiled at him. Her three black plaits seemed to wave a greeting.

Tansy, Thornmallow thought. How odd. Tansy is a bright yellow flower, and she is a dark brown girl. If names are supposed to mean something, why isn’t she called Bark or Earth.

Someone tapped him on the shoulder. When he looked, he saw it was the redheaded boy with the freckle map on his face.

“Well come to Wizard’s Hall, Thornmallow,” he said, “and welcome as well. I’m Willoweed. Your expert guide. Guardians, we call them.”

Thornmallow nodded. “Hello, Willoweed.”

“We just call him Will,” Tansy said. “And I am your other guardian. Everyone gets two guardians the first days. That’s because first days are—”

“Always difficult,” Will cut in.

Thornmallow was about to explain that his real name was not Thornmallow at all, and they could call him Henry, when the sharp clearing of a throat made him look up. Standing on his long bird legs, Magister Beechvale was pointing to the blackboard with a thin wand. Three words glowed at the tip:

PUNCTUALITY!

PRACTICALITY!

PERSONALITY!

The wand tapped three times, and all the students recited as one. “Punctuality! Practicality! Personality!” Their voices were bell-like.

Thornmallow thought he’d better join in, and by the second round he’d added his voice to theirs, but somehow he was a whole tone off.

Someone in a nearby seat giggled. Thornmallow closed his mouth.

“Clear, round, perfect tones if you please,” called out Magister Beechvale, “on these three important beginning words of wizardry wisdom.” He hummed a note, and the class hummed after him. They began again on the first word.

Thornmallow tried once more. This time he was off by a tone and a half.

A blond girl in the front row raised her hand.

Magister Beechvale lifted the wand from the board. “Yes, Gorse?”

“Please, sir, but the new boy is tone-deaf.”

“Nonsense!” Magister Beechvale replied. “No one admitted to Wizard’s Hall is tone-deaf. Dr. Mo would sense it right away and send him packing. A wizard cannot be tone-deaf. And why is that, class?”

Together they sang, “A spell must be chanted on the dominant, or it will fail.”

Thornmallow rose reluctantly to his feet. He had no idea what a dominant was, but he did know something else. “Please, sir, if you mean by tone-deaf that I cannot sing on key, well I am afraid that Mistress—er—Gorse is right. My dear ma always said, Can’t carry a tune in a brass bucket! And on holidays old Master Robyn, the choirmaster, always cautioned me to just mouth the words when we sang the hymns. Tone-deaf—that’s me!”

“Nonsense!” Magister Beechvale said again, only this time he sounded more like a screech owl than a stork. His mustaches waggled furiously. “You are just not trying hard enough. Sit down, young Thorn-apple.”

“Thornmallow, sir,” Thornmallow whispered.

“Prickly indeed,” muttered the magister, raising his stick to the board once more. “And we don’t encourage prickly in my class. See to it you do not answer back again.”

Thornmallow sat down and mouthed the rest of the recitation without a sound while the others sang joyfully around him. Hearing no rough edges on the notes, Magister Beechvale actually smiled.

Eventually they moved on from the wizard’s wisdoms to a spell about roses in the snow, then one about dresses made of paper, and finally one about letting milk down from a dry cow. Thornmallow thought that the last might be something his dear ma could use. But this time, when he tried to join the chanting, he was at least two full tones wrong, and everyone in row four turned round to stare at him.

“To the front!” Magister Beechvale called three times.

At first Thornmallow didn’t think the call was meant for him. Next he tried to pretend it wasn’t for him. But the third time Magister Beechvale summoned, he added a couple of finger waggles, and without meaning to, Thornmallow leaped from his seat and trotted up to the front of the room. When, at Magister Beechvale’s request, he turned and faced the other boys and girls, twenty pairs of eyes were staring at him, coldly waiting.

“You will sing each note with me,” Magister Beechvale said, putting his hands over Thornmallow’s ears. “And this time, you must really try.” He hummed a note.

Thornmallow closed his eyes and thought for a moment about his dear ma. He would, he really would try. When he opened them again, though he couldn’t actually hear the note Magister Beechvale was humming, the teacher’s hands being clean over his ears, something else was happening. It was as if a quiet heat were radiating from those hands, spreading around and then into his ears, like some sort of little animal finding its wintering in a cave. The heat sought out the twisting tunnels of his ears and burrowed right down into his brain. And when it hit his brain, a tone sprang into it. He opened his mouth, and the heat—and the tone—came out.

The first note was not nearly close enough, but the second warm note was closer. By the third, he was right smack on pitch, and all the students applauded.

“I can feel it!” he cried out. “I can feel the note.” It seemed to be going directly from Magister Beechvale’s hands into his ears and out his mouth.

He was so excited, he called out the first spell they’d tried, surprised that he remembered it:

Red against white,

Day into night,

Let the winds blow,

Roses in snow.

It was so wonderful to sing in tune and to remember without trying that Thornmallow waved his hand in time to the chant. Only when Magister Beechvale’s hands suddenly slipped off his ears, and he heard the sharp intake of breath from the class, did Thornmallow realize that something had gone wrong.

“Oooooh, the new boy’s gonna get it!” cried blond Gorse, staring at the window.

Everyone followed her gaze, and then Thornmallow heard the thud-thud-thud as twenty bodies hit the floor and hid under their desks.

That sound was quickly swallowed up by another, louder noise as the windows all snapped open. The sky turned black. And an avalanche of snow bore down on the classroom, caving in the wall and covering Magister Beechvale and his stool.

On top of the snowdrift, which was almost as high as the ceiling, and right above the spot where the stool had been buried, sat a rosebush in full bloom, its petals drifting down like bloodspots against the white snow.

“Perhaps,” Magister Beechvale said as he emerged from the drift, “perhaps …” His voice was suddenly soft and not at all storklike. He hesitated, dusting off great gobs of snow from his black robe. “Perhaps you needn’t try quite so hard, Thornmarrow.”

“Mallow, sir,” Thornmallow whispered, swallowing hard. There were tears in his eyes, and he wanted to explain that he hadn’t actually meant an avalanche, hadn’t meant to ruin the classroom wall, hadn’t meant to scare anyone, certainly hadn’t meant to get Magister Beechvale wet. But no words came out, only a weak and embarrassing moan.

With a wave of his hand, Magister Beechvale muttered something under his breath. Immediately the snow disappeared inch by inch, until all that was left was a large damp stain on the floor. The wall rebuilt itself. And the rosebush became potted in a green stone urn with bright pink flamingos painted on the side.

Magister Beechvale gave Thornmallow a careful, quick pat on the head. This time there was no heat emanating from his hand. “Squishy indeed, Thornmallow,” he said. “Squishy indeed.”