Spells

  “Please don’t be this way,” Tamani said quietly.

  “I can’t help it,” Laurel said. “The way she talked, she—”

  “I know it’s not what you’re used to, Laurel, but that’s how it is here. I’m sure none of your classmates give it a second thought.”

  “They don’t know any better. You do.”

  “Why? Because I know how humans do it? You’re assuming that your way is better.”

  “It is better!” Laurel said, whirling around to face him.

  “Maybe for humans,” Tamani countered in a strong, quiet voice. “But humans are not faeries. Faeries have different needs.”

  “So you are saying you like this? Taking faeries away from their parents?”

  “I’m not saying either is better. I haven’t lived around humans nearly enough to judge. But consider this,” he said, placing one hand on her shoulder, his touch softening the edge of his words. “What if we lived here in Avalon like you do in the human world? Every time some Springs get a Fall seedling, it gets to live with them. They get to raise her. Except that she leaves them to go and study at the Academy for twelve hours a day. They never see her. They don’t understand anything she’s doing. On top of that, they don’t have a garden at their house—a garden she needs to do her classwork—so now she’s gone for fourteen, sixteen hours a day. They miss her; she misses them. They never see one another. Eventually they are like strangers, except that, unlike now, the parents know what they are missing out on. And it hurts, Laurel. It hurts them, and it hurts her. Tell me how that’s better.”

  Laurel stood in shock as the logic sank in. Could he be right? She hated even considering it. And yet, it had a certain brutal efficiency she couldn’t deny.

  “I’m not saying it’s better,” Tamani said, his voice gentle. “I’m not even saying you have to understand, but don’t think us devoid of emotion because we separate uppers from lowers. We have our reasons.”

  Laurel nodded slowly. “What about fathers?” she asked, her tone quiet now, the anger gone. “Do you have a father?”

  Tamani fixed his gaze firmly on the ground. “I did,” he said, his voice low and slightly choked.

  Guilt rushed over her. “I’m so sorry. I don’t mean to…I’m sorry.” She touched his shoulder, wishing there was something more she could do.

  Tamani’s jaw was clenched, but he forced a smile anyway. “It’s all right. I just miss him. It’s only been about a month.”

  A month. Right when he would have been expecting her to come visit him at the land. But I didn’t come. Her chest felt empty. “I…I didn’t know.” She paused.

  He smiled. “It’s fine, really. We all knew it was coming.”

  “Really? What did he die of?”

  “He didn’t die, really. It’s kind of the opposite of dying.”

  “What does that mean?”

  Tamani took a deep breath and let it out slowly. When he looked up at Laurel again, he was his old self—his mourning hidden away. “I’ll show you sometime. It’s something you have to see to understand.”

  “But can’t we—?”

  “We don’t have time today,” Tamani said, cutting her off with a tone that had just a hint of tightness beneath it. “Come on. I’d better get you back so they’ll let me take you again next time.”

  “Next week?” Laurel said hopefully.

  Tamani shook his head. “Even if I had that much Avalon leave, they won’t let you away from your studies. In a few weeks.”

  Laurel found the concept of “Avalon leave” strangely disconcerting—but not as disconcerting as being cooped up in the Academy indefinitely. A few weeks? He may as well have said forever. She could only hope that her next phase of education would pass the time more quickly than sitting in her room with a stack of textbooks.

  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 wa
ved 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.”