15

FULL MOON NIGHT

Thornmallow read for hours, first to himself and then, when he found he was skipping paragraphs, aloud. “The Common or Great Nettle and the Small Nettle grow profusely upon waste ground and along otherwise barren waysides.” He looked up at Tansy, who was sitting cross-legged on the plum-colored chair, deep in her seventeenth book. “Do you suppose he’s a Small or a Great Nettle? He’s certainly not Common.”

“Read it to yourself,” Gorse snapped from the window ledge. “The rest of us are trying to concentrate.”

“Sorry.” Thornmallow looked down again at the book and read the next twenty pages to himself, his lips moving, as if that might help him memorize the information. He was careful not to read aloud again. “Nettles are covered with stinging hairs.” He tried to imagine a wizard covered with stinging hairs. The very thought made him shiver.

Turning to the center of the book, he looked at several colored pictures of nettles: the creeping roots, the leaves on opposite sides of the stems, the flowers small and green. He discovered that Great Nettle was also called Blind Nettle, Deaf Nettle, False Nettle, Dead Nettle, Red Nettle, White Nettle, Bee Nettle, and Hedge. It was a prolixity of names. He wondered, briefly, if any of them were important.

“Nettles,” he read further, “may be boiled and eaten as a remedy against scurvy. The leaves and roots, cut small or granulated, in a cup of boiling water make a tincture that, when taken cold, one cup a day, is a valuable decoction against sick stomachs.” Quietly he sounded out the words he didn’t know. He understood little of it.

Finally, putting the book facedown on a large library table, Thornmallow went over to Will, who crouched on the floor, his finger tapping a passage on one of the many parchment leaves spread about him.

“Will,” Thornmallow whispered, “there’s lots and lots about nettles. But nothing seems to make sense if I try to apply it to our wizard Nettle. Except, perhaps, that they all have stinging hairs and a nasty reputation. The chief thing a nettle seems to do is to irritate or annoy or vex a person.”

“You are irritating and annoying and vexing me,” said Will, not even looking up from the parchment. “And you are not a nettle. Leave me alone, Thorny. I’m reading up on correspondences, and this is my thirtieth parchment. I’ve almost got it, I think. But it’s real difficult. Fourth-year stuff.”

But whatever it was that Will had almost got now evidently got away again, for not a moment later he stood and stretched, shaking his head. Tansy stood too, kicking her legs about as if waking them up from a very long nap.

“Look!” Gorse cried out suddenly from the window ledge. She pointed outside.

A full moon—red and round as a copper coin—was just beginning to rise.

“But it can’t be that late,” Tansy complained.

Thornmallow swung around and stared at the library clock. Its hands circled its face frantically, as if all time had suddenly been compressed.

“That’s not right,” he said. “And not fair. I thought magic—even dark magic—had to be fair.”

“A fair chance,” Will explained. “Not fair.”

“And look!” Gorse cried again, pressing her nose against the glass. “Everything outside is now a barren waste.”

“Where nettles grow …,” Thornmallow mumbled, moving to the window for a closer look. “But,” he added, remembering how bare the grounds had looked when he first arrived, “wasn’t it always this way?”

“Oh no!” they all said.

Tansy added, “Wizard’s Hall is known far and wide for its flowers and gardens and trees.”

“Magic makes things grow wonderfully,” Will said.

“Better than compost,” put in Gorse.

Shaking his head, Thornmallow looked thoughtful. “That’s very odd,” he said. “There were no gardens or flowers or trees when I arrived.” It was as if the Hall were already being prepared for nettles. If that is dark magic, he told himself, then I don’t like it at all.

Then Thornmallow remembered something Tansy had said when they had talked about the lizard soup. Something about balance. Big with little, up with down, soft with loud. Fast with slow. She hadn’t mentioned that one particularly, but it made sense. “Fast with slow,” he said aloud. “Balance. Think how slowly time went for us while we were reading. And now it’s speeding up.”

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.