7

NOT A WIZARD

They were all dismissed right after, and Thornmallow—his knees entirely water—could scarcely keep standing. But with Will and Tansy and Gorse all helping, he finally made his way down the winding stairs.

“Nice going, Thornmallow!” came a call as they reached the main floor. The speaker was an upper-classman with the beginnings of a yellow mustache above his lip.

“Awfully brave, Thorny,” cried an older girl, patting him on the head.

“Hurrah, number one-thirteen!” shouted another, waving her hand.

The buzz of student voices was overpowering, and Thornmallow even heard someone say, “Frightfully prickly,” which he decided to take as a compliment, though he wasn’t entirely sure. But he could feel the heat on his face, and his collar was suddenly too tight, and his knees were still liquid. In truth he was a shy boy and not at all used to crowds.

“I need … I need …,” he began.

“What you need is air,” said Gorse.

He nodded because she was right.

“Make way, make way for the wandy Thornmallow,” Will shouted. And surprisingly, an open path appeared between the students. With Will pushing and Tansy pulling and Gorse shouting for everyone to let him be, Thornmallow soon found himself in front of a small wooden door.

“Go on,” said Tansy. “Out there. Plenty of air. You need to be alone for a minute. We’ll guard the door, and you can get some good breaths.”

“Is this—is this what a guardian does?” Thornmallow gasped.

Gorse opened the door. “Of course,” she said. “What are you expecting—friends?” But she winked at him before pushing him through and gave him a sunny smile.

Friends, he thought as he walked outside. He’d never actually had any before, just his dear ma and his favorite cow, Bos. Friends. If he left now, just disappeared over the Far-Rise Hills, he wouldn’t have friends anymore. Except Bos. And his dear ma. All of a sudden, Bos and his dear ma weren’t enough.

He breathed deeply seven or eight times, thinking about Will and Tansy and Gorse, before he had the presence of mind to look around. He was back in the very same courtyard he’d entered only the day before. What a barren place it was. No trees. No flowers. No birds singing. And that was odd, for surely wizards could conjure such things. Hadn’t he brought in a rosebush on his own? He looked up into the evening sky where the stars had just started to wink on. They stared down at him silently, not at all like the friendly map over his bed, looking as cold and as distant as Magister Hickory.

Magister Hickory! Thornmallow shivered. Magister Hickory had praised him. Well, not exactly praised, but said that what he’d said was quite right. Everyone else seemed to think that was praise. But—and Thornmallow smiled ruefully to himself—he hadn’t meant to speak out in the meeting any more than he’d meant to bring snow into Magister Beechvale’s class.

“Perhaps,” he whispered to the barren courtyard, “perhaps I am a brilliant wizard, an enchanter, in spite of myself.” He liked the sound of that. It made a certain sense. So he said it a little louder. “In spite of myself.” After all, he hadn’t made up anything, just repeated the verse he’d been taught in class. And repeated the bit of wisdom that first his mother, then Magister Briar Rose, and Magister Beechvale had said. “Perhaps I am wandy. Whatever that is.”

Just as a test, he closed his eyes, remembering the little verse about milk and the dry cow. Only, when he opened his mouth and sang it softly to himself, the sound that came out was ghastly:

There into here,

Then into now,

Let down the milk

From the dry cow.

When he sang it, it wasn’t a song. It was too hoarse for that. And it didn’t land on any proper note. Or at least any proper single note. It wobbled all over the place. As his dear ma often said of him, Three sounds to the wind and not a one of ’em worth hearing.

He tried again, a little louder.

If anything, it was worse.

And nothing happened.

“Of course,” he whispered to himself, “there’s no cow here anyway.” But there hadn’t been any roses or any snow before he’d sung the other verse in class, and that hadn’t stopped the avalanche. At the very least, he’d expected a glass of milk. Or a calf. Or a sight of Bos snug in her barn.

He shook his head. “Not a wizard, then. Except when I don’t mean it to happen, never mind what rule number five says. There can’t be anything quite right about that, whatever Magister Hickory thinks. And if I’m here to fill somebody’s desperate need then that somebody is going to be awfully disappointed.”

He would have started crying then, but the door behind him creaked open.

“What’s that awful noise?” Gorse called through the crack. “Not blubbing are you? My brothers never blub. My da would whack ’em if they did.”

“Are you all right?” That was Tansy.

“Of course he’s all right,” came Will’s voice. “He’s better than all right. He’s quite right!”

The door opened all the way, and there were the three of them, laughing and shaking hands.

Thornmallow walked back inside. “I’m tired,” he said. “I’m going to bed.” He started down the hallway to the right.

“Not that way!” yelled Gorse. “Unless you want to sleep in the girls’ wing.”

Thornmallow stopped, his face reddening. Turning, he tried to shrug it off as a joke, but no one was fooled.

“Follow me,” Will said, pointing to the left.

He followed Will, but his left and right seemed all mixed up, and he’d lost all sense of direction. He wondered if he’d ever find it again.

“See you in the morning,” Tansy called after them. “Third bell. Don’t forget.”

He tried to make a map of the hallways as they walked, but before he’d gotten anything straight, Will had stopped in front of a small door.

“Your room,” Will said.

Thornmallow saw that his name was carved into the door, as well as a picture of a plant he assumed was a thornmallow because it had lines suggesting prickles along the stem. Also the number 113. He sighed.

“Don’t take on so,” Will said. “We all feel a little bit lost and a little bit lonely first days. That’s what the guardians are for. I …” He turned and glanced up and down the hallway as if making sure no one was listening. “I even missed my sisters.” Then he grinned, a bit sheepishly, and pulled a large blue handkerchief from his pocket. “Here, scrub your nose. You’ve got a large smudge on it.”

“Thanks,” Thornmallow said, took the handkerchief, and went into his room, scrubbing his nose.

Everything looked as it had before, except that the picture of his dear ma was different. She was no longer sitting at the butter churn. Instead she was in front of a roaring fire, sewing.

“Oh, Ma, Ma,” he whispered, and as if she’d heard him, she looked up for a moment, gazing out past the picture frame. Then she smiled in a satisfied way and looked back down at her work.

For a long time he stared at the picture, hoping it would move again. When it didn’t, he went over to the wardrobe to hang up his jacket. There was a nightshirt on a hook with the initials TM on the pocket, and a scholar’s robe. Even if he wasn’t sure he belonged, his room was sure.

“The Bear!” called out the star map overhead.

Thornmallow glanced up at the winking stars. “Hi, Bear,” he called back. Then he took off his clothes and hung them carefully on wardrobe pegs, slipped into the nightshirt, and climbed into bed.

“The Crab!” said the map.

“Night, Crab,” he mumbled.

Before the ceiling could name a third constellation, Thornmallow was fast asleep.