The Chosen Ones

Back went Maximilian to the small drawing room with the piano. The man about to play had extremely hairy hands, and bits of wool sticking out of his ears. On the top of the piano was a glass jar full of a curiously fluorescent yellow liquid, alongside a pile of papers scrawled on with the most terrible handwriting anyone could imagine.

  When the playing began it was slow, low, but quite dramatic. Maximilian, his mind now almost completely fused with Franz’s, saw, or rather felt, in these notes a purple, almost black sky, some rumbles of thunder, a tiny plop of rain – or perhaps an angel’s tear – followed by a flash of lightning briefly highlighting some beautiful mystery. Then a little run of secrets, some curious nymphs, and then a sequence of pale rocky steps descending into an underground cave. A pause. One of the pieces of wool fell out of the pianist’s ear.

  Then – bang! It began. A fast, relentless melody like nothing Maximilian had ever heard. Notes running up and down, here and there, faster, faster, the music becoming wilder and deeper like a great storm in the middle of a tragic love affair (it must have been Franz’s memory thinking that bit). Some calm followed. The secrets and the nymphs again. But not for long. Soon the secrets were carried away on rolling waves and there was a sort of big ship and . . .

  The sonata continued. The hairy pianist’s hands grew wilder, quicker. The remaining piece of wool fell out of his other ear. And then Maximilian suddenly realised that he was alone in Franz’s mind. Franz himself had gone. And it wasn’t like when he had disappeared before. His whole being had completely departed. He had somehow managed to leave himself. It had happened several seconds ago, and he’d left Maximilian behind in his now empty self.

  Where had he gone? Maximilian rewound the memory. There Franz was. And there . . . he wasn’t. Just before Franz’s mind departed, Maximilian could feel it sort of becoming one with the music. Until, suddenly. There. A higher note. One of the angel’s tears. It was as if Franz was running very fast, and had just timed his jump correctly and managed to land his mind on this tiny moment and . . .

  Maximilian could feel Franz returning. He had clearly learned something, but he wasn’t sure what it was. Well, he sort of knew. It was that running jump. But where had it taken Franz? Why hadn’t Maximilian gone there too? ‘Very good,’ said Franz, inside Maximilian’s mind. ‘You learn well. Now we will disconnect and meet in your uncle’s cell. I will collect the keys on the way.’ And suddenly Maximilian’s connection with Franz disappeared, and the pianist, and his whole world, was gone.

  11

  It was already getting dark as Effie and Raven walked from the school gates down the hill to the bus stop. A few young, bold meteors leapt impatiently in the sky, burning through the atmosphere almost as fast as the terrible, soon-to-be-forgotten ideas being generated in Orwell Bookend’s committee meeting in a dingy basement room in the Old Town University. As usual, Orwell had no real idea where his daughter was.

  Normally Effie wouldn’t see any Blessed Bartolo children on her way home, because Blessed Bartolo’s was in the north of the city and most of its pupils lived in the north-west or the west, which were the areas with most trees, coffee shops and quaint weekend markets. Effie lived in the south, where most children went to the Mrs Joyful School and didn’t have enough money even for their bus fare. But there were plenty of Blessed Bartolo children on the bus out to the village where Raven lived.

  Effie and Raven sat at the top of the bus near the front. All the Blessed Bartolo children were at the back, looking rich and pleased with themselves in their black uniforms that smelled faintly of scented candles, polished wood and dry-cleaning chemicals. Their pagers beeped regularly. One of the boys was cleaning his fingernails with what looked like a small knife. Another seemed to be holding a ball of fire in his hands. They were odd, unsettling children.

  Even adults found Blessed Bartolo pupils a bit creepy. Most adults still claimed in public not to believe in magic, even after the worldquake. In private, many of them feared that if anyone were doing real magic it was probably children like this. Adults avoided all after-school buses, of course, because every after-school bus contained children, and no one in their right mind wanted to be confined in a small space with children. But adults particularly avoided these Blessed Bartolo buses, which, despite being the newest, plushest buses coming out of the Old Town, nevertheless quite often broke down or caught fire. Three bus drivers so far had gone missing from this route. Two of them had been found some time later living wild in Quirin Forest. The third was still unaccounted for.

  ‘Why do they keep saying your name in that weird way?’ whispered Raven.

  It was true. Every so often one of the black-clad children from the back of the bus said the word Effie or Euphemia in a strange kind of drawn-out hiss. Effie was trying not to let it bother her.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Effie. ‘I think it might have something to do with this league tennis match tomorrow.’

  ‘Shall I cast the Shadows?’ asked Raven.

  This was the first spell that Raven had learned after she had epiphanised. It didn’t quite make you invisible, but it did cast a conceptual shadow over you and whoever happened to be with you at the time. It meant you almost disappeared and people around you then generally ignored you.

  ‘You can try, but it doesn’t really matter what they say.’ Effie twisted the ring on her finger. ‘They’re just trying to scare us – they can’t actually do anything. Maybe you should save your lifeforce.’

  The bus wound its way out of the city and down country lanes where maple trees glowed orange and pink in the early evening dusk. Effie wished, not for the first time, that she could do magic. Of course, travelling to another dimension might reasonably be thought of as doing magic, but Effie didn’t count that. And there was her amazing strength and power when wearing her ring . . . But she couldn’t do proper magic like casting spells or reading people’s minds. Perhaps if she found out her art . . . But she’d messed that up once already.

  At the next stop more Blessed Bartolo children got on. Three older boys dressed in black velvet capes stomped up the stairs. Two of them sat in the double seat next to Effie and Raven’s; the other one sat in front of the first two, his long legs splayed lazily. He had long, shiny dark auburn hair. The other two had black hair. Effie heard Raven sort of gulp. She was in the aisle seat and therefore closest to all of them. One of them carried a massive school bag. Another held a wooden staff. The one with red hair was carrying a transistor radio from which came the dull thudding beats of Borders hip-hop.

  ‘Well, well,’ he said. ‘Tusitala trash. On our bus.’

  Effie knew that Raven usually got the earlier bus, which had far fewer Blessed Bartolo children on it than this one. But Coach Bruce was not known for his brevity (why say something in ten words when you could spin it out into a hundred, or a thousand?) and had kept lecturing the tennis team on strategy until way after the bell had rung for the end of school.

  The black-haired boy by the window sneered.

  ‘Including, I do believe, the Truelove girl who is going to beat us at tennis tomorrow, according to rumour.’ He laughed. ‘Although looking at her now, I wouldn’t have thought she could beat anyone at anything. No one said how small and weak and pathetic she looks.’

  Effie glanced at Raven. The time to cast the Shadows was now, but Effie couldn’t seem to catch her friend’s eye. Raven seemed frozen. Were the boys . . .? Effie had a horrible feeling they were doing some sort of magic, and Raven was unable to block it. Not for the first time, Effie felt strangely powerless. Of course, with her strength she could easily get up and hit one or all of the boys and make them stop what they were doing. But what use was great strength when you didn’t really like using violence as a way of solving things?

  ‘Raven?’ said Effie. Her friend did not respond. Effie turned on the boys. ‘What have you done to her?’

  The boy by the window looked as if he was about to say something. But just then the bus jolted and shuddered and swerved c
razily to the right, ending up with its front half in a large hawthorn bush. The boy’s school bag ended up under Effie’s legs, and his neighbour’s odd-looking staff ended up in Raven’s lap. Whatever magic had been working on Raven stopped. And just as Effie picked up the staff to give it back to the boy, Raven managed to cast the Shadows.

  ‘Where have they gone?’ said the red-haired boy.

  ‘And where’s my caduceus?’ said the one nearest the girls. He pronounced this cad-juicy-us.

  He must have meant the staff. As Effie held it in her hands she developed a warm sensation similar to the way you might feel sinking into a hot bath at the end of a long day, or lying in a quiet meadow in the sun on a perfect summer’s afternoon.

  The caduceus was clearly very old. It was made of a dark polished wood and had two snakes winding around it, with a pair of carved wooden wings at the top. Luckily the Shadows meant Effie didn’t have to give it back immediately, although that had been her intention. Effie didn’t just feel warm and comfortable holding it. She suddenly became aware that she could see, hear and understand much more around her than usual. It wasn’t an effect of the Shadows: Effie was sure it was because of the caduceus.

  But what did it mean? Effie suddenly had a yearning to learn spells – strange, exotic, unknown spells – and cast them, something she had never desired to do before. Her hearing was different as well. She could now pick up on conversations all over the bus. She understood exactly how it had come to swerve into the bush: two first-year Blessed Bartolo pupils downstairs had been trying out mind control and one of them had got into the bus driver’s head and it had all gone horribly wrong.

  All at once, Effie understood Blessed Bartolo’s. It was a school for mages. Yes, it was full of rich, stylish, cruel, haughty children. All the rumours about it were true. But everything made more sense when you realised that all its pupils were young mages, with their dark power and ambiguous morals. Effie could now feel their complex energy all around her, and she could read it as easily as she would read a book.

  ‘You shouldn’t have done that,’ one of the first-years was saying to the other, downstairs, where they should have been out of Effie’s hearing, but, while she held the caduceus, were not.

  ‘But you dared me . . .’

  ‘When the Guild finds out, you’ll be banned. What’ll your dad say? You’ll probably be expelled too.’

  ‘But you dared me!’

  ‘No, I didn’t. You did it all by yourself. Loser.’

  ‘But . . .’

  ‘I can’t believe you actually used mind control on someone. They might even put you in prison.’

  All at once, the bus managed to reverse out of the bush and Raven’s Shadows spell was broken. She must have lost concentration because of the sudden movement.

  ‘Give that back,’ said the black-haired Blessed Bartolo boy, glaring at Effie, who realised that everyone could now see her holding onto the caduceus rather tightly.

  ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘I meant to . . .’

  ‘Thief,’ hissed the other dark-haired boy.

  ‘Don’t, Gregory,’ said the first boy, as Effie handed him his staff back.

  There was then an odd moment. As Effie and the boy both held the staff, something like an electric shock went through Effie and the world seemed very bright all of a sudden. Things seemed to come into an unimaginable kind of focus and then . . . Whatever was happening abruptly stopped once Effie let go of the caduceus.

  ‘Come on, Leander,’ said Gregory. ‘Let’s punish the Tusitala trash.’

  ‘No, let’s just go.’

  Leander caught Effie’s eye. She understood suddenly that she had touched his boon, and it had worked on her. So whatever he was, she was too. But she had no way of asking him what that was, because just then the three boys got up and started walking down the stairs, their black capes swishing behind them. Effie wanted to go after Leander and ask him what his strange wooden staff meant, but it was too late.

  ‘What happened then?’ asked Raven.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ said Effie.

  ‘Why was he looking at you like that? And what was that stick you were holding?’

  ‘I don’t know exactly,’ said Effie. ‘But I’ll tell you about it when we get off.’

  ‘It was definitely a boon,’ said Raven, after she had considered everything Effie had told her.

  ‘That’s what I thought, too,’ said Effie. ‘But what does it mean?’

  The two girls were sitting on Raven’s large bed drinking hot chocolate and eating homemade cake. Apparently, Laurel Wilde baked whenever she was stressed. Something particularly upsetting must have happened recently because when the girls had gone into the kitchen they had found a Victoria sponge, an iced fruit cake, a black forest gateau, a large treacle tart, a wholemeal carrot cake and a lot of cupcakes, shortbread and flapjacks.

  There had been no one in when the girls arrived. No Laurel. No Skylurian. Just piles and piles of The Chosen Ones everywhere, and all the cake. Effie had already taken one of the copies of The Chosen Ones and put it in her school bag. Raven had assured her that no one would miss it. Then they’d gone up to Raven’s bedroom. It was a cosy space at the top of one of the folly’s four square turrets with its own special staircase. It also had a door out onto the folly’s battlements, from which you could see the village in one direction and the garden, stables and moors in the other. In Raven’s room there was a four-poster bed, an oak desk and lots of cluttered bookshelves.

  ‘It must be your secondary ability,’ said Raven now, excitedly. ‘Your art. The boon must go with that!’

  She reached for another piece of wholemeal carrot cake, which was her favourite, and passed Effie the Victoria sponge, which was hers. Laurel Wilde refused to eat most things that went in cake, because she thought they were unhealthy, and you had to watch out because sometimes she decided to make cakes with potatoes instead of flour, or aubergines instead of butter. The best-looking cakes often tasted the worst and so the girls hadn’t had high hopes for the Victoria sponge. Surprisingly, it was actually very nice.

  ‘But I don’t want to be a mage,’ said Effie, through her slice of cake. ‘I’m sure everyone at Blessed Bartolo’s is a mage. I sensed it when I was holding the caduceus. But I don’t feel anything like a mage. It just seems wrong somehow. I don’t know why. It suits Maximilian, but I’m not sure it suits me.’

  ‘Well, the caduceus doesn’t sound like a mage’s boon to me,’ said Raven. ‘What exactly did it make you feel, again?’

  ‘Just more connected to everything. I could hear all the conversations around me. I really wanted to cast a spell, and . . .’

  ‘Mages don’t cast spells.’

  ‘Don’t they?’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘How do you know all this?’

  Raven shook her black hair. ‘I went to the library. It was because I couldn’t go to Dr Green’s classes. He gave me a reading list. And then there was this really helpful librarian. He recommended . . . um . . . The thingy of thingy, thingy and thingy?’

  ‘The Repertory of Kharakter, Art & Shade?’

  ‘That’s it! I’ll get it from my shelf. I thought I’d look at it because I still don’t know my art either. But it was sort of long, and a bit complicated, and I haven’t quite got round to finishing it yet. But mage was the first kharakter in there, so I did read that. Hang on . . .’

  Effie hadn’t looked properly at Raven’s bookshelves before, except to note just how many books she had. There seemed to be more than ever now. Effie could see many old-looking cloth-bound books with titles like Casting a Circle and Nature Rites. There were all sorts of almanacs, guides to the moon and the tides, books of herbs, flowers and mushrooms, and, in a little pile, several paper pamphlets tied together with string, all by a woman called Glennie Kindred.

  ‘Wow,’ said Effie. ‘Where did you get all these new books?’

  ‘My mum’s got an account with Rosewater Books in the Old Town,’ said Rav
en. ‘I’m allowed to get as many books as I want from there. They can order stuff for you if it’s not in stock. And then for the rarer stuff there’s the library.’

  Raven reached up and pulled down a thick hardback bound in green fabric. She handed it to Effie. It was so heavy and solid – except for the delicate gold ribbon that snaked through the pages.

  Effie flicked through it. It still fascinated her. She again got something of the feeling she’d had holding the caduceus. It was most odd. She felt warm and sort of comfortable again. Inside were all sorts of words and phrases that intrigued her. In the section on ‘The Mage’, Effie read, ‘The true mage will treat darkness as if it were black velvet, the flank of a complex horse, the depths of the ocean, the ink of the night.’ In the section on ‘The Healer’, there was a beautiful line drawing of an intricate medicine bundle. Effie longed to carry on reading.

  ‘Can I . . .?’ she began. ‘I mean, would you mind if . . .?’

  ‘Do you want to borrow it?’ Raven said. ‘Sure. I’ve got it out for three weeks since last Tuesday. I can always get it out again. Or try to order one from Rosewater Books. Although apparently it’s a very rare book that you have to get second-hand now.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ said Effie. ‘I promise I won’t lose it.’

  ‘I know you won’t,’ said Raven, smiling. ‘And anyway, the man in the library said he’d put a homing spell on all the rare books so that if they do get lost they simply return themselves.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  Effie put the book in her bag, on top of the copy of The Chosen Ones from downstairs.

  ‘And are you definitely sure your mum won’t mind?’ Effie asked. ‘I mean about me taking one of those copies of The Chosen Ones.’

  ‘I doubt she’ll even notice. Skylurian might, though. She’s funny about those books. But if your dad’s taking it to the Town Hall on Friday it’ll end up in the same place anyway.’

  ‘Why are there so many copies everywhere?’

  ‘Because of the appeal,’ said Raven.