Spells

SIX

LAUREL STUDIED HER APPEARANCE IN THE MIRROR the next morning, wondering just what, exactly, an acolyte-level student was supposed to look like. After the fiasco of her first dinner in Avalon, she had taken pains to dress appropriately, but asking anyone what to wear never got her more than a smiling encouragement to wear “whatever you find most comfortable.” She considered her hair — pulled up in a ponytail — then untied the ribbon, letting it fall back down around her shoulders. As she was sweeping it up again, a knock sounded at her door. She opened it and peered out at Katya’s smiling face.

“I thought I’d come show you where to go, for your first official day of classes,” Katya said brightly.

“That would be great,” Laurel said, smiling in relief. She glanced at Katya’s outfit — a long, flowing skirt and a sleeveless, scoop-necked top. Laurel was wearing a calf-length sundress made out of a light material that swung in the breeze and rustled about her legs when she walked. She decided her outfit was similar enough to Katya’s that she wouldn’t look completely out of place.

“Are you ready, then?” Katya asked.

“Yeah,” Laurel said. “Just let me grab my bag.” She shouldered her backpack, which got a sidelong glance from Katya. With its thick, black zippers and nylon weave — not to mention the Transformers patch David had ironed onto it a few months back as a joke — it contrasted sharply with Katya’s canvas shoulder bag. But Laurel had nothing else to carry her note cards in; besides, it was comforting to carry her old, familiar backpack.

They headed out the door and, after a few turns, started down a long hallway lined with sugar-glass windows that flashed in the sunrise and projected the girls’ reflections on the opposite windows. Laurel studied their reflections as they walked, and for a moment lost track of which was her own. Katya was about Laurel’s height and also had blond hair, though hers was short and curled at cute angles all around her head. Most of the other faeries at the Academy colored their hair and eyes by manipulating their diets, so red-and green-and blue-haired faeries far outnumbered plain blondes and brunettes. It was an interesting approach to fashion that, under other circumstances, Laurel thought she might enjoy. As it was, she had her hands full with the nuances of the unofficial dress code.

They reached a set of double doors from which emanated the scent of rich, damp earth. “We’ll be here for today,” Katya said. “We meet in different places, depending on our projects. But class is in here about half the time.” She pulled open the door, and a wave of chatter drifted out.

Behind the door was a room unlike any classroom Laurel had ever seen. She would ordinarily have called it a greenhouse. Planter boxes full of various greenery lined the perimeter of the room, under tall windows that stretched from ceiling to floor; skylights were mounted into the sharply pitched roof, and the whole room was tropically warm and humid. Laurel was immediately grateful for the light material of her sundress, and understood why her wardrobe contained so many like it.

There were no desks, though there was a long table running down the middle of the room covered with lab equipment. Laurel could imagine David geeking out over it: beakers and vials, droppers and slides, even several instruments resembling microscopes, and rows and rows of bottles filled with colorful liquids.

But not a desk to be seen. Laurel was a little surprised to realize that this was a relief. Reminded her of her homeschooling days.

The faeries themselves sent a thrill of nervousness down Laurel’s back. The buzz of conversation, slightly muffled by the abundant greenery, filled the room; perhaps a hundred faeries were milling about, clustered together in front of planter boxes or standing in circles and chatting. According to Aurora, the acolytes Laurel was here to study with could be anywhere from fifteen years old to forty, depending on their talent and dedication, so how much she had in common with her classmates was anyone’s guess. She didn’t recognize hardly anyone in the room, just a face here and there from the dinners. This put her at a significant disadvantage because she was sure most of them would remember her from before — would remember her as someone she herself did not.

As Laurel stood with her feet frozen to the damp stone floor, Katya waved at a group of female faeries standing around what looked like a large pomegranate bush. “It will be a few minutes before the professors arrive,” she said, “and I want to check on my pear tree before they get here. Do you mind?”

Laurel shook her head. Mind? I wouldn’t know what else to do.

Katya walked over to a planter box with a small, leafy tree in it and pulled a composition book out of her shoulder bag.

Pear, Laurel thought automatically. For healing; neutralizes most poisons. The juice from the blossoms protects against dehydration. “What are you doing with this?” she asked.

“Trying to make it grow faster,” Katya said, squinting at several marks on the trunk of the small sapling. “It’s a fairly rudimentary potion, but I just can’t quite get the knack of it.” She picked up a vial of dark green liquid and held it up to the sun. “If you need a potion to cure ailments, I’m your Mixer.” Laurel blinked at Katya’s casual use of the word; after all, Tamani had suggested it was a Spring faerie word, and even implied it wasn’t entirely polite. Katya apparently thought otherwise. “But simply enhancing already functional aspects grows knots in my mind,” Katya finished, not noticing Laurel’s reaction.

Laurel let her gaze wander around the room. Some of the faeries looked up to meet her eyes, some glanced away, others smiled, and a few just stared outright until it was Laurel who finally had to look away. But when she met the gaze of a tall, purple-eyed faerie with straight, dark brown bangs, Laurel was surprised to find herself at the sharp end of a pointed glare. The tall faerie tossed her long hair over her shoulder and, rather than simply looking away, turned all the way around and presented Laurel with her back.

“Hey, Katya,” Laurel whispered. “Who’s that?”

“Who?” Katya asked, a little distracted.

“Across the room. Long dark hair. Purple roots and eyes.”

Katya glanced over quickly. “Oh, that’s Mara. Did she give you a look? Just ignore her. She has issues with you.”

“With me?” Laurel almost squeaked. “She doesn’t even know me!”

Katya bit at her bottom lip, hesitant. “Listen,” she said quietly, “no one really likes to talk about how much you don’t remember. We all make the memory potions,” she added quickly, before Laurel could interrupt. “We learn how, as initiates. I made my first successful batch when I was ten. But they’re supposed to be for humans, trolls — you know, animals. They don’t work the same in faeries.”

“Like being immune to enticement?” Laurel asked.

“Not exactly. If faeries were immune to Fall magic, we wouldn’t be able to use beneficial potions. But potions made for animals don’t function the same in plants, and who in their right mind would specifically brew a potion to rob memories from another fae? I mean, Fall faeries did study faerie poisons in the past — long before I sprouted — but there was a faerie who…she took it too far,” Katya said, her voice almost a whisper. “So it’s strongly discouraged now. You have to have special permission to even read the books about it. You’re a special case, because they didn’t want you to be able to reveal anything to the humans, even by accident. But still, having an amnesiac faerie around — to be frank, a victim of magic we’re not even allowed to study anymore — you’re kind of a walking taboo. No offense.” She flicked her head toward Mara. “Mara hates it the worst. A few years ago she applied to study faerie poisons and was refused, even though she’s the best in the class and already an expert with animal poisons.”

“And she hates me because of that?” Laurel asked, confused.

“She hates that you are evidence of a potion she doesn’t know how to make. But on top of that, she knows you, or did. Almost all of us in here did, to one extent or another.”

“Oh,” Laurel said softly.

“Before you ask, I didn’t really know you before you were selected as the scion, and even then it was only from a distance. But Mara,” she said, flicking her head toward the tall, statuesque faerie, “was pretty good friends with you.”

“Really?” Laurel said, feeling both stupid that she had to find out from someone else who her friends were and mystified that having been friends with someone in the past could justify such a glare.

“Yes, but Mara was in the running to be the scion too, and she was really upset when you got the spot instead of her. She saw it as a failure instead of what it really was — that you fit the parameters better than she did. Being blond apparently was the clincher,” Katya said with a wave of her hand. “‘Humans like blond babies,’ they said.”

Laurel choked a little at that, coughing to clear her throat and drawing quite a bit of attention from the other faeries. Even Mara turned her head to glare at Laurel once more.

“I suspect she’s been out to prove herself ever since,” Katya said. “She’s really talented; rose to acolyte way earlier than most of us. She’s just about ready to become a journeyman, and as far as I’m concerned, the sooner the better.” Katya turned back to her tree. “She can go study with them,” she muttered.

Laurel angled her body that way too but kept peering at Mara out of the corner of her eye. The slender, languid faerie lounged against the counter with the grace and beauty of a ballerina, but her eyes took in the whole room, weighed it in the balance, and seemed to find it wanting. Could they have ever really been friends?

An entourage of middle-aged-looking faeries strode into the room, the one in the lead clapping her hands for the students’ attention. “Gather, please,” she said in a surprisingly quiet voice. But the sound carried throughout the room, which had gone completely silent. Every faerie had stopped talking and turned to the instructors as they entered.

Well, Laurel thought, that’s way different than at home.

The faeries walked in from all sides of the room to gather in a large circle around the twenty or so teachers. The faerie who had called everyone together took the lead. “Anyone starting a new project today?”

A few hands went up. As soon as they did, the other faeries shuffled and made room for them to come to the front. One at a time each faerie — or sometimes a small group — described the project they were starting, its purpose, how they planned to go about doing it, how long they thought it would take, and other details. They fielded a few questions from the staff and even some from the other students.

The projects all sounded very complex, and the faeries kept using phrases Laurel didn’t understand; phrases like monastuolo receptors and eukaryotic resistance matrices and capryilic hleocræft vectors. After a few minutes of this her attention began to wander. She glanced around the circle as the faeries made their presentations. The other faeries were standing quietly, listening. No one fidgeted; hardly anyone whispered, and even when they did, it seemed to be about the project being described. It was almost half an hour before all the new projects were accounted for, and everyone remained quiet and attentive.

It was a little creepy.

“Did anyone complete a project yesterday?” the instructor asked, once everyone had reported. A few more hands went up, and again the crowd shuffled to bring those students to the front.

As the faeries reported on their finished projects, Laurel glanced around the classroom with fresh eyes. The plants that grew here were as varied as those growing outside, but they seemed more haphazard in their diversity. Many were surrounded by sheaves of paper, scientific equipment, or fabrics strategically draped to filter the sunlight. This wasn’t a greenhouse, really; it was a laboratory.

“When I observed your project last week, it didn’t seem to be going well.” One of the professors, a male faerie with a deep, rich voice, was questioning a small brunette faerie who looked quite young.

“It wasn’t,” the faerie said simply, without any kind of shame or self-consciousness. “In the end, the project was a complete failure.”

Laurel cringed, waiting for the derisive whispers and giggles.

But they didn’t come.

She glanced around. The other faeries were paying very close attention. In fact, several were nodding as the faerie described various aspects of her failure. No one seemed discouraged in the least. Another big — and rather refreshing — difference from home.

“So what do you have planned now?” the same teacher questioned.

The young faerie didn’t miss a beat. “I have more studying to do to determine why the serum didn’t work, but once that is complete, I would like to start again. I’m determined to find a way to restore the use of the viridefaeco potion to Avalon.”

The instructor thought about this for a moment. “I’ll approve that,” he finally said. “One more round. Then you will need to return to your regular studies.”

The young faerie nodded and said thank you before returning to the circle.

“Anyone else?” the head instructor asked. The faeries looked around for raised hands, but there were none. “Before you disperse,” the instructor said, “I think you are all aware that Laurel has returned to us, even if only for a short while.”

Eyes turned to Laurel. She got a few smiles but mostly curious stares.

“She will be with us for the next several weeks. Please allow her to observe you freely. Answer her questions. There is no need for her to decant anything, particularly if it is a delicate undertaking, but please take the time to explain to her what you are doing, how, and why. Dismissed.” She clapped her hands once more, and the faeries dispersed.

“What now?” Laurel whispered to Katya. The buzz of conversation had returned to the room, but whispering still felt appropriate to Laurel after the silence of the last hour.

“We go work,” Katya said simply. “I have two long-term projects I’m working on right now, and then repetition work.”

“Repetition work?”

“Making simple potions and serums for the other faeries in Avalon. We learn how to make them when we’re quite young, but they only trust the higher level students to prepare the products that are actually distributed among the populace. We have monthly quotas and I’ve been so focused on my pear tree that I’m a little behind.”

“You all just…work? On whatever you want?”

“Well, advanced projects need to be approved by the faculty. They’ll wander through here and check up on us periodically. But yes, we decide on our own projects.”

The whole process reminded Laurel of the years she’d spent being homeschooled by her mother, building a curriculum around her personal interests and learning everything at her own pace. She smiled at the memory, even though she had long since stopped begging her mom to return to homeschooling — thanks in no small part to David and her friend Chelsea.

But here Laurel didn’t have a project of her own, and wandering the room didn’t seem like it would help her actually learn anything. Even after two weeks of memorizing plant uses, she simply didn’t know enough to ask meaningful questions of the students. So she was relieved when she saw a familiar face enter the room — an emotion she had doubted she would ever feel upon seeing the stern face of Yeardley, the fundamentals instructor.

“Is she ready?” Yeardley asked, addressing Katya instead of her.

Katya smiled and prodded Laurel forward. “She’s all yours.”

Laurel followed Yeardley to a station at the table lined with equipment. Without so much as a greeting, he began to quiz her on the second batch of books she had been reading the past week. She didn’t feel complete confidence in any of her answers, but Yeardley seemed pleased enough with her progress. He reached into his own shoulder bag and pulled out…more books.

Disappointment washed over her. “I thought I was done reading,” Laurel said before she could stop herself.

“You are never done,” Yeardley said, as if it were a bad word. “Each caste has its essential nature. The essence of Spring magic is social; it trades on empathy. Summer faeries must hone their sense of aesthetics; without art, their magic is thin indeed. The essence of our magic is intellect; knowledge gleaned through careful study is the reservoir from which our intuition draws its power.”

That didn’t sound like magic to Laurel. Mostly it sounded like a lot of hard work.

“That said, these are my books, not yours.”

Laurel managed to stifle a sigh of relief.

“Laurel.”

She looked up at the tone of his voice. It wasn’t stern, the way it had been a moment earlier. It was tense — worried, even — but there was a softness to it that hadn’t been there before.

“Normally at this point I would begin teaching you rudimentary potions. Lotions, cleansing serums, nutritional tonics — that sort of thing. The things we teach novices. But you’re going to have to come back at a less important time and learn those or catch up on your own. I’m going to teach you defensive herbology. Jamison insisted, and I’m in full agreement with his decision.”

Laurel nodded, feeling a rush run through her. Not just from excitement at starting actual lessons, but because of the reason for the acceleration: the threat of the trolls. This was what she’d been waiting for.

“Most of what I teach you will be beyond your abilities to replicate, likely for quite some time, but it will be a start. I expect you to work hard, for your own sake more than mine.”

“Of course,” Laurel replied earnestly.

“I’ve had you reading about a variety of plants and their uses. What you may not yet realize is that making potions, serum, elixirs, and the like is not simply about mixing essences together in the right amounts. There is always a general guideline — a recipe, if you will — but the process as well as the result will differ from one Fall faerie to the next. What we teach in the Academy is not about recipes, but following your intuition — trusting the ability that is your birthright, and using your knowledge of nature to enhance the lives of everyone in Avalon. Because the most essential ingredient in any mixture is you—the Fall faerie. No one else can do what you do, not even if they follow your rituals with unerring precision.” He reached into his bag and pulled out a small pot with a little green plant growing in it, its buds tightly closed.

“You must learn to feel the very core of the nature you work with,” he continued, touching the plant gently, “and to form a connection with it, so close, so intimate, that you know not only how to bend its components to your will”—he searched through a row of bottles and picked one up, opening it and dabbing a drop of its contents on his finger—“but to unlock its potential and allow it to thrive as no one else can.” He carefully touched each of the closed blossoms with his wet finger and as he pulled his hand away, the tiny buds opened to reveal bright purple flowers.

He looked up into Laurel’s wide eyes. “Shall we begin?”