“WHAT AM I going to do?” Sparx and I covered half the distance back to school before the shock wore off enough for me to start thinking again.
The big hare didn’t answer at once and I couldn’t see his expression, but I felt his tension in the grip of his paws. He was wrapped around the back of my neck like a collar of living fire, with his hind feet on my left shoulder and his front on my right.
“I don’t know.”
There was a swirl in the air and words spoke themselves out of nowhere in Morgan’s voice. “To do? Why, what my uncle asks, obviously.”
“Morgan!” I looked around angrily, but the older girl was nowhere in sight. “Come out where I can see you!”
“Where’s the fun in that?” Again, the voice spoke from thin air.
Sparx leaned forward so I could see his face out of the corner of my eye. “You can stop looking for her, Kalvan. She’s a windweaver and words are mostly air. For all we know, she could be half a mile away.” But even as he spoke he pointed silently downward.
I followed his direction with my eyes and saw we were standing on a steel grating in the sidewalk with a deep well below. “Oh.” We were passing the hospital, and slats in the side of the well suggested it was part of their heating and ventilation system—a natural amplifier for air powers. I quickly tilted my head up and pretended to look for her. “Wherever you are, Morgan, I don’t want to talk to you. Not today. Not tomorrow. Not ever again.”
“The feeling is so very mutual, but you’re my problem until dawn comes on the twenty-first and gets you out of my life one way or the other.”
“I’m not giving you the Crown, and no one can make me.”
“Oh, Kalvan, you’re smarter than that. Of course someone can make you, and that someone is you. Because, if you don’t, you die. And then your mother slips over the edge of madness never to be sane again. We all know you’re not going to let that happen, so here are my uncle’s first instructions.”
A paper airplane came drifting down out of the sky to land in my outstretched hand. It was heavier than expected, and when I unfolded it I saw that it was actually a half dozen sheets of tracing paper covered with notes and diagrams in a spider-thin hand.
“Sparx—”
But the hare shushed me with a paw and pointed at the grate again.
I nodded and tucked the sheets into my jacket pocket. “Right. Morgan, I know you’re still listening. I got the package, but don’t think this is over.” How could I have ever thought she was cute?
“Not till the twenty-first, Kalvan. Not till the twenty-first.”
When we got back to school, Sparx pointed to an enormous square vent across from the back doors. I’d never really thought about the vents before, but the shadows beyond the grillwork took on a darker cast now that I imagined the entire duct system as an enormous spiderweb with Morgan at its center. I desperately wanted to talk to Sparx about everything, but it couldn’t be here. A second later, it occurred to me that I couldn’t tell Dave anything, either. Not at school, and we weren’t supposed to see each other anywhere else. I paused and quickly scrawled a note before heading to my next class with him.
Dave, need to talk soon, but can’t do it at school—magical ears listening. Will figure out someplace we can go—maybe tomorrow. In the meantime, don’t ask about magic or anything.
I passed Lisa as I hurried to class and she waved, but I barely nodded. She had warned me about Morgan, but I had no way of knowing whether that meant I could trust Lisa or if it was all part of some ploy. Hooray, another thing for my list of stuff I had to figure out in the next couple of days if I didn’t want to die horribly.
* * *
“I think we can talk here free of Morgan’s ears.” Sparx looked around the cavern immediately below the house. “I’m sure Oscar sealed this space against any power of air when he created it.”
“But what about Oscar himself?” The cavern made me deeply uncomfortable, an effect heightened by the papers I clutched in my right hand—instructions Oscar had written. Oscar!
“The wards we put around the house should keep him and his delvers far away.”
“But? I definitely heard a ‘but’ at the end of your sentence.”
Sparx flicked his ears back and forth in a bunny shrug. “But I’m no kind of earth master. When we talk, our words bounce off the stone around us. I have no idea how far that sound will carry through stone, especially if someone like Oscar is doing things to make it travel farther, though I’m sure there’s an answer to that problem.”
I gave my companion a hard look. “And? This time I heard a silent ‘and’ at the end of that sentence.”
“Follow me.” Sparx hopped through the arch leading from this cave to the next and onward, and I reluctantly trailed behind. “There.” He pointed at the stone altar where Oscar had once laid me out like a sacrifice.
“There what, bunny boy? I still have nightmares about that altar and Oscar’s stone dagger. I don’t want to go anywhere near it.” And I hadn’t, though I’d been in the other caverns several times over the previous weeks—the whole room gave me the screaming creepies.
“I was thinking of the throne next to it, actually. I’m guessing it answers to the Crown of the North.”
I ran a finger along the edge of the Crown—a necessary adjunct to entering the cavern. “I hate this idea sooooo much.”
“But you’re going to do it anyway. I can tell by the pitch of your voice. That’s your Idonwanna-but-Imagonna whine.”
“I should never have given you that dratted muffin.”
“Yeah, because I totally started hanging out with you on account of half a stale muffin and not that whole summoning-and-binding-me thing.”
“Hey now, that was an accident.”
“More like a train wreck. Now, are you going to do this thing or what?”
“Fine.” I climbed up into the great stone chair and settled myself in place.
BAM!
I felt like lightning had struck the point of the Crown. Huge, heavy stone lightning that crushed me to a pulp even as it electrified my soul and filled me with the blinding light of knowledge. Through the throne and the Crown I could feel the whole weight of the earth beneath me. Above me. All around. I was the cavern but still Kalvan.
No. That’s not quite right. I was the stone of the walls and floor and ceiling for many yards in every direction. The throne and its altar were a part of me, each riddled with a slow and heavy sort of magic that ran through the rock like the hidden filigree running through the Crown. I couldn’t imagine the time and effort it had taken to do that. The spell carved into the floor of the other room was a crude thing by comparison, like a brand burned into my flesh, hot and aching and still full of fire. The greater cavern was a void within me, a hollow place in my heart I could only sense as a stress on my arches and domes. I wanted to crush and bury it, to fill it and be whole, and in that instant I knew exactly how it could be accomplished.
Without thinking, I started to reach out to the pressure points that would bring the roof down. There, and there, and … wait, what was that? I touched a vein of harder stone running down and away toward the river, a vein with a ghost of magic running through it. Oscar! Now that I touched his presence there, I felt him everywhere in the cavern. His magic had shaped every curve and angle. But in most places he was a background presence. In the vein I could feel his active will, though he had not yet perceived me.
My first impulse was to twist the walls and utterly crush that thread of magic, but then he would know I was aware of him. No. Perhaps I could … there were no words for it in English, but the Crown guided my will with the help of the throne.
“Yes!”
“What?” asked Sparx.
My primary awareness returned to my body and I touched a finger to my lips. “Ah, no, I was wrong. Bother. Let’s head back upstairs. This place gives me the creeps.”
I moved most of my awareness back into the surrounding stone and pushed ever so gently with my mind. The sound of footsteps started at the throne and moved quickly off toward the exit. Sparx gave me a silent round of applause but I held up a hand. The next bit was super tricky and it took all my concentration to simulate the effect of a boy and his companion sliding up through stone to the basement above.
Then, one more twist, and … “We’re good. He can’t hear us now unless I let him. Not here and not in the basement above. If we stuff a blanket or something in the duct running up to the house from the furnace whenever we want to talk there, we should be able to block Morgan, too.”
“Very slick. Now I can give you the silent ‘and’ I didn’t speak earlier. And you are an earth master.”
I shook my head as I climbed down from the throne. “Child of earth, maybe, and that reluctantly. But a master? Not even close. I could never have done any of that out in the real world. For that matter, I’m pretty sure I couldn’t have done it here without the Crown. It…” I paused to think about what had just happened. “It interacted with the throne somehow to do the thinking for me.”
“All right, that’s the opposite of reassuring, but I guess it worked out this time. So, now that we can talk without being heard, what do we say?”
“I don’t know. We can’t let Oscar regain control of the Crown, but if we don’t give it to Morgan, I die and my mom loses what’s left of her sanity.”
Sparx nodded. “Now, I mention this only to outline all the possibilities and not as a suggestion. Oscar also said you could transfer it to your mother.”
“Who it would also destroy!”
“Which is why I didn’t make it a suggestion, O Accursed Master.”
I barely heard him. “We need a … wait. I might have an idea.” I thought back to what Oscar had said about the Crown being bound to our bloodlines. “What about my father? My real father. If I can pass it to my mom, why not my dad?”
“Aside from the fact that we have no idea where he is and—according to your aunt Noelle—that he is buried deep in stone and beyond any reaching?”
“Yes, aside from that.”
“I have no idea. I’ve been over Oscar’s instructions half a dozen times, and they don’t give any explanations, just orders. I can make some educated guesses about the whys, but they’re only guesses. This a big, complex, time-intensive spell. We need an expert and the only one available is Oscar.”
I took a deep breath. “I bet Mississippi would know.”
“That would be extraordinarily dangerous. She told you not to seek her out again unsummoned on pain of death.”
“I know. And Josh hates my guts. And Tanya will have me expelled if she finds out. I still think we should do it, and none of that is even the best part.”
“There’s more?” Sparx pasted a huge false grin on his face. “Oh, goody.”
“Yes. If we see Mississippi we have to make sure neither Morgan or Oscar finds out what we have to say. Which probably means a boat.”
Sparx’s ears seemed to wilt. “On the Mississippi. In spring flood. With an angry river goddess beneath.”
“Yep.”
“Stupid, dangerous, and with a very low chance of survival or success. I love this plan so hard.”
“Me too, bunny buddy, me too.”
* * *
I was slow getting out the door the next morning and a few minutes late to school, which wouldn’t have been a problem if it had been a normal Thursday, because I have an open period first thing on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Unfortunately, it was an OLC Joint Advisory morning, and I had forgotten it completely. JAs are one of those uniquely Free School institutions I should probably explain for those who go to a normal, sane sort of school.
Our teachers and administrators feel it’s important for every student to understand what’s happening in their education and have a voice. Whenever there’s big news—like the shift from trimesters to semesters back when I was ten—everyone gets together so the principal can tell us what’s going on and get input from all the students and teachers. There’s a couple of microphones that get passed around to whoever wants to speak.
Sometimes it’s something we don’t have any real control over, like the school board deciding we were shifting to match our schedule to all the other schools. But sometimes it’s more like when we were offered a chance to start up a football team. A couple of students who had done a big project on head injuries helped convince the rest of us to vote against that one and the principal ended up telling the school board “thanks but no.”
When I arrived at school, I was immediately struck by the complete lack of older students in the halls. The school has big, wide hallways and they’re a favorite place for kids with a free period to hang out. You have to be quiet but not as quiet as in the library, so a lot of board games and study groups happen there. So does the occasional round of bouncepong, which is sort of a hybrid of Ping-Pong and dodgeball, with a side of light parkour—another uniquely Free School institution. But that’s only allowed in a few halls and at certain times of day because it is NOT quiet.
I quickly waved down the nearest sixth grader—the top end of the Early Learning Center kids. “Jada, where is everybody?”
She rolled her eyes at me. “OLC’s in the gym for Joint Advisory. Started right after breakfast, duh.”
“Oh, he—uh, bother. Thanks!”
Evelyn had mentioned there was going to be one at yesterday’s afternoon advisory, and I should have remembered. I raced for the gym, sparing a guilty mental “my bad” as I passed the charred patch on the wall where someone—read: me—had accidentally melted one of those security key light switches. That was a couple months ago and the lights in the pass-through from the main school building to the gym had been on ever since—school system maintenance does not move quickly.
When I got to the gym, I found the main doors closed. They wouldn’t be locked, but they opened noisily and I didn’t want to draw attention, so I raced to the end of the hall where a pile of old office furniture let me climb up into the ceiling and drop down to the locker room beyond. From there it was a short distance to the door that led out under the left side of the bleachers—a much subtler entrance. Even better, I saw Josh and a couple of other rougher boys hanging out in the shadows there playing some game that involved dice.
I headed that way instead of out to where most of the students were listening to what sounded like my student mentor Aleta speaking about some decision from the school board meeting Wednesday night. She sounded pissed about whatever it was, and I’m sure I should have cared, but it would have to wait till I found out if I was going to survive the next eight days. On the upside, a pissed- off Aleta is loud enough to cover a lot of quiet whispers.
“Josh.” I leaned in close and spoke very quietly. “Come with me for a second.”
Josh, on the other hand … “Go away, Monroe. Before I push your face in.”
“It’s about Herself, and you might get to see me die. But it’s got to be quiet and it’s got to be now.”
That got his attention. “What’s up?”
“Not here. The air has ears.”
“You finally figured that out, did you? Come on.” He headed toward the locker room and I followed. Once inside, he pointed. “Showers.”
“What? Why?”
“Showers or we’re done.”
I didn’t want to go because Josh could beat the crap out of me back there without anyone hearing. It was probably a stupid worry considering I was about to ask him to arrange something that might get me killed, but that didn’t stop my brain from spinning away as I complied.
Josh quickly turned on two of the showers and led me to the booth between. “All right, Monroe, now we can talk.”
“I don’t get it.”
“I wouldn’t brag about that if I were you.”
Sparx poked his head out of my bag. “He’s a bitter water sorcerer, Kalvan. Notice how very much louder the showers are than they ought to be.”
“Oh.”
Josh shook his head. “For a teacher’s pet, you sure can be dumb as a bag of bricks. So, now that you’ve figured out Morgan is nine types of bad news, what do you want?”
“I need to talk to Mississippi.”
“You really are a moron. She told you not to come back unbidden.”
“I know. I’m hoping you can arrange for me to get bidden. I need to talk to Her about the Crown and I need to do it where neither air nor earth can hear. I’m thinking a boat.”
“That’s a tall order and incredibly risky while She’s in flood even if She agrees to see you in advance. How soon would you want me to work this miracle, assuming you convince me I should?”
“As soon as possible. Today even.”
“You are way too eager to die, Monroe. Today’s not going to happen. Neither is any other day if you aren’t all kinds of convincing. It’s dangerous to approach her at all this time of year, and doubly so on something that’s already made her angry, even for me. Talk.”
So, I did, quickly telling him everything I knew about Oscar and the Crown and Morgan and what they wanted to do.
At the end he nodded. “You’re right, She probably will want to see you. I’ll talk to Her, but remember, if you live through this, you’ll owe me.”
“My life, yeah, that hasn’t escaped my attention.” I didn’t like that any more than I liked the rest of the game, but nobody had given me the option to quit while remaining in one piece.
“Good. I wanted that crystal clear and … uh-oh.”
“What?” I asked.
“A breeze just stirred the showers.”
“Morgan?”
“No, Tanya. I think. We need to get out of here since we’re both already on thinnest ice there. Hang on.” He spread his arms and every sink and shower except the one where we stood suddenly turned on full and hot, filling the room with steam.
“Come on.” Josh grabbed my wrist and pulled me over to the corner where he braced himself against the wall and made a stirrup of his hands. “I’ll give you a boost, then you can pull me up after. Hurry.”
A moment later, we were both in the ceiling, me with the arm I’d used to help Josh up feeling like it was half out of the socket. There was also an unnatural amount of steam up there considering how quickly we’d closed that tile.
Josh spoke again, his voice barely louder than a breath, “Hold perfectly still and don’t make a sound. Don’t even breathe.” The steam that followed us slid in tight around us like a blanket, taking on a weird sort of sparkle as it did so.
Seconds later, a ceiling tile blew into the air and fell to the side. More steam poured through, then flowed away as a wind whistled through the open space and stirred the dust around us into a thick cloud. The edges of our own steam blanket were tugged and tattered, but it held together. After a time that seemed very long indeed, but couldn’t have been much more than a minute, the winds caught the tile and dropped it back into place before fading to nothing.
Josh let out a long-held breath with a sigh and a whisper. “Definitely Tanya.”
“How can you tell?” I whispered back.
“Morgan would have broken my illusion. If she gets curious about what Tanya wanted, she might yet, which means it’s time to be gone. I’ll let you know what Ms. Sippi says. Until then it’d be better if we weren’t seen together outside of class.”
“But tomorrow’s a school holiday and then it’s the weekend.”
“That’s okay. I know where you live.”
Least reassuring reassurance EVER!
* * *
I wrote another sentence and then let out a long sigh. Tanya’s paper seemed incredibly pointless when I stood a good chance of dying within the next week or so, but I still had to do it to keep from getting thrown out of Free in case I lived. So, after my morning’s adventures with Josh and two exciting hours of class, I slithered off to a study carrel in the library instead of heading to the cafeteria for lunch. My stomach hated me, but I had to get this done.
I’d just bent back to my paper when I heard a faint popping sound. “Psst, Kalvan.”
“Wha—oh.” A circle not much bigger than a baseball had appeared in the air above the carrel’s shelf and Dave’s left eye peered at me through the gap. I quickly glanced around to make sure I was alone. “How are you controlling that?”
“Poorly, and I can’t hold it long. Only reason I’m managing it at all is because I’m pretty much directly above you.”
Reflexively, I looked up.
“Not like that, you goof. I’m in the theater. Back row, left side. I saw you go into the library and figured you’d be in our favorite carrel.”
“I—that’s pretty slick, Dave, but what’s up?” I’d started to say more but then remembered who might be listening. “We shouldn’t talk like this for long.”
“Yeah, I know. But I had two minutes alone and I needed to let you know we’re still cool even though I have to stay far away for a bit. My mom completely blew a gasket about the thing down by the river and now she’s got all three of my sisters taking it in turns to spy on me. I’ll check in again when the heat’s—oh, gotta-go-bye.”
POP
* * *
The knock on my window came around ten a.m. on Saturday, waking me. I blinked and tried to move, only to be greeted by the gentle tinkling of coins.
Great. Again. Super. Yay.
“Sparx, who’s—”
“Bitter water, finally. I’ll let him know you’ll be along in a minute.”
I quickly extricated myself from the heap of dollar coins and pulled on the clothes I’d taken to storing there. Weird thing number seventeen about that: Whenever I woke up there, every single coin in the crawlspace was part of the heap despite the fact they tumbled every which way as I crawled out. Weird thing number sixteen was Sparx never saw any of it happen.
I opened my window to find Josh standing in the rain outside. Before I could speak, he waved for me to lean out farther and made a gesture that evoked the falling rain.
I did as asked, poking my head into the wet. “Hi, Josh, what’s the word?”
“She wants to see you. Now, while it’s raining.”
“Did She?” I pointed into the sky.
Josh laughed. “No. That’s beyond even Her. We got lucky.”
“Okay, we’ll be right out.”
He shook his head. “It’s not a we. It’s a you and me. Bunny stays here.”
“Hey!” Sparx hopped onto the window ledge beside me and spatters of rain flared into steam as they hit his fur. He hissed and glared at the sky. “Okay, that’s a problem, but I can ride in the pack.”
Josh shook his head. “There’s a much bigger problem, and you staying here is part of the solution.”
“I don’t understand,” I said.
“Again, not something you should brag about, Monroe.” He pointed at me. “You have a LOT of scrying eyes looking your way right now. I can cover us both with illusion in this rain easily enough, but it’s a thin protection and not hard to break. Especially if there’s a lull.”
“Not sure how that affects bringing Sparx along.”
Josh rolled his eyes. “Well, for starters, it’s much easier to cover two than three. But, more important, thin protection is all you need if everybody is looking elsewhere.” He pulled a glass jar full of muddy water out of his courier bag. “This is a charm Herself made. Sitting with it’ll make someone who shares the right magical sympathies look like you. Fire magic, in the case of your rabbit buddy.”
“Hare,” said Sparx.
“Like I give a rip. But this is all taking time we don’t have. If you want to make this work, toddle on up somewhere near that spot on the roof you like so much and park the jar. Then, swap places with Peter Rottentail and hustle back double time so we can get on the road. I’ll wait ten minutes. After that, deal’s off. Before you start to argue, remember She made the charm and She will be very angry if you made Her waste time and power.”
“Hang on.” I closed the window. “Sparx?”
“If we’re not going to call the whole thing off, there’s little choice. It’s up to you. You could still go forward with Oscar’s deal.”
“It really is that stark, isn’t it? Okay, come on. We need to do this quick.”