“Wrexham’s Introduction to Clockwork. A good place to start,” she explained as Alex took the book from her.
“Thanks.”
“No worries. There are a few other good ones. Worth a read, if that’s your cup of tea, anyway,” she said, beginning to write a list of titles on a small scrap of paper, torn from one of her notebooks. On it were recommendations for other mechanical books, neatly written in her precise, cursive script, which was elegant and distinctly feminine.
“Thank you. This is great.” Alex smiled as he read the titles.
“No problem. Good to see you taking an interest in something,” she teased, gathering her books from the floor. There was a mighty stack of them; it looked like Ellabell might topple under the sheer weight, but she held them easily, balancing them like a skilled circus performer.
“Hey, don’t let me disrupt you if you want to keep reading,” Alex said.
“I needed to get going anyway,” she told him.
“Well, can I at least give you a hand?”
“No, I’m good, thank you.” Ellabell moved away, toward the edge of the stack. “Happy hunting!” Then she jumped over the banister. Alex knew she was capable of magic, but all the same, he found himself running to the edge, looking down just in time to see her land gracefully, her books still neatly stacked. She flashed a look back up at him, as if to say, See?
Seeing that Ellabell was safely on the ground, Alex tucked the tan leather book under his arm and clambered up another floor or two, walking to a small alcove at the end of one stack. In the alcove sat a giant, dusty tome—the library Index. He heaved the gigantic pages to the letters he was looking for, flurries of dust flying up into his face as the rest of the pages came down with an unceremonious slam. First, he looked under ‘H,’ hoping to see the word ‘haven.’ An obvious choice, but Alex was optimistic. The word itself was not there. Undeterred, he tried the other three names instead: Stillwater House, Falleaf House, and Kingstone Keep. Half expecting there to be nothing, Alex was surprised to find two or three books per name, preserved among the stacks. He quickly wrote down the numbers, his heart pounding with excitement, as he raced off through the towers to find the corresponding books.
The first ones should have been up on the very top floor of the second tower. But, as he ran his finger along the numbered spines, his hand stopped short at a small but noticeable gap. Between the numbers, three books were missing—the three books that had appeared under the name Stillwater House in the Index. Frustrated, Alex checked the next set of numbers, and climbed back down to the second floor of the tower, walking along until he came to the right section. Again, where Falleaf House ought to have been, there was a small but noticeable absence of books. Trying not to lose faith, he walked over to the third tower and climbed to the very top, where the last of the books should have been. He didn’t even need to see it as he neared. The gap was obvious; there were no books left on Kingstone Keep. They had all been removed. On purpose, Alex knew, clenching his jaw in annoyance as he felt the familiar burn of rage toward the manor and the man—or thing—who ran it.
Defeated, Alex plucked the other square of paper from the pocket of his pants, deciding to scavenge for information on the Spellbreakers instead. Slowly, he clambered back up the endless ladders to the alcove with the Index tucked away, and scanned the ‘S’ section until he came to the word he was looking for. When he had first come to check for any information on Spellbreakers, after hearing the word for the first time, he had been surprised to even see it listed, but it had been there, clear as day. It still was, although there were limited books on the subject. Only four, to his knowledge, and he had already been through one of them without much success. But there was enough uncharted territory to keep him busy for a while. Three books remained, begging to be read. He scurried up to the correct floor and plucked the further three tomes from the shelf, wishing he didn’t have to climb back down one-handed with them tucked under his other arm.
Once safely on solid ground, Alex wandered back over to his spot by the window. The sky had darkened with clouds. He sat down, the armchair swallowing him in a cozy embrace, as he flipped open the first of the books, entitled The Families of the Old World. It was as dull as the Historica Magica, but Alex forced himself to read. It covered much of the same ground, but seemed to repeat six names over and over—the main bloodlines of the Spellbreaker clans. He picked up the other book, curious. In it, it repeated the same thing. Six names, over and over, the only names of any real importance. Six great houses of the Spellbreakers: Rorschach, Bessamer, Volstag, Muldoon, Wyvern, and Copperfield.
When he picked up the third book and riffled through it, his anger almost overwhelmed him. He could feel the heat of it in his cheeks, the mist of it in his eyes, as he traced the words from page to page. It was a fiction book—a great, heroic novel marking the myths and tales of the Mages of old and their archnemeses, the Spellbreakers. His people were always the bad guys, and the writer of the fictional story had relished in descriptions of their demise. Bodies ripped apart by golden explosions of good magic; warriors bursting into shards of pure light from the pierce of a Mage’s spell; Spellbreaker children and women crying to see their fathers and brothers and husbands turned to glittering dust—the fear, knowing they would be next. The writer delighted in the Spellbreakers’ misery, and it was almost more than Alex could take. He slammed the book shut, startling a nearby student.
Alex felt a pang of sadness twist at his heart. Six houses, with such a rich and wonderful history in each one. And yet where were they now? The last of them were buried in a watery grave, with nobody to remember their names. Nobody to remember they even existed, except in victorious, vile tales of magical battles, from the very folk who had put them under the lake. Whole families, whole lineages wiped out by Mages, without so much as an apology for their genocide. The bitterness welled up in Alex as he looked around at the clueless students—the very kind of people who had delighted in the deaths of his ancestors, and they didn’t even know. They had no idea a different kind of Mage had existed once. His kind. Alex wasn’t sure they’d even care.
A chill ran through him. Looking down, he quietly gasped in horror as he saw that wisps of black and silver ice coiled around his hands and across his arms—his anti-magic aura, brimming through his skin. He closed his eyes and focused, trying to rein in the tendrils of anti-magic that threatened to break free. He breathed slowly and deliberately. Though the images of his murdered ancestors broke through in vivid fragments, he managed to regain control of his senses, pushing the imaginings to the back of his mind.
When he opened his eyes again, the coils of anti-magic had disappeared. He breathed a low sigh of relief, hoping nobody had seen his outburst.
He shoved the book of fiction out of the way with the heel of his shoe, and set his copy of Historica Magica on the table to join the rest. Seeing those six names had made him curious about his own bloodline. Alex figured he must be in there somewhere. He was a Spellbreaker, after all. He had to belong to one of the bloodlines—a smaller one, or a weaker one, maybe. One that was less important. The two books beside his, one in a red cover, the other in dark blue, only really mentioned the six main houses, but he knew the Historica Magica contained every name in Spellbreaker history. Boring, unending lists of names and houses and bloodlines and people long dead. His people, his heritage, had to be in there somewhere.
He flicked to the index at the back of the Historica and searched for ‘Webber,’ but could find no mention of his surname. Dismayed, he glanced out the window, catching sight of a glittering spire and buildings beyond the horizon. Familiar buildings. The ever-shifting scenery beyond the grounds had chosen to show his hometown that day. He couldn’t remember the last time it had done that. To think that his house was just through the gate and up a dozen or so streets—so close, and yet…
Unbidden, the memory of a blurry photograph returned to Alex’s mind. He had found it in a crumpled old shoebox, years ago
, when he was helping his mother with spring cleaning. It had been stuffed at the back of the wardrobe in her room, gathering a blizzard of dust, when he had happened upon it. Lifting the lid, he had rummaged through the small number of belongings within, not expecting to find much. He had come across a faded sonogram from his first scan, his first baby blanket, a bright green pacifier, and a small, cream-colored teddy bear with multi-colored buttons down the front.
Alex remembered reaching in to remove the blanket—baby blue and still soft to the touch—when something fell from within the fleecy layers. A rectangle of card, face down, a small notation on the bottom right corner, written in blue ink that had turned green over time. It read, ‘Marianne & Alexei 1995.’ He had bent to pick it up from the carpet. At that moment, the photograph was torn away from him, his mother snatching it from his grasp. He had looked up to see her standing in front of him with her eyes wide, cradling it to her chest as if it were a precious jewel he had unearthed.
The unexpected image of his mother, crystal clear in his mind—healthy and so much younger—made his heart clench.
He recalled asking who it was in the photo, and tears had sprung into his mother’s beautiful blue eyes.
“Your father and I,” she had said.
“My father?” Alex remembered saying, and seeing his mother nod. He had asked to see the picture, and she had shown it to him with a pull of reluctance. A faded, blurry thing, the photo made it nearly impossible to make out a clear image of the man or the woman. He had only known it to be his mother because she had said it was her. The man, however, was a stranger. Alex could not have pointed him out in a lineup.
But, remembering that moment so vividly, and seeing his history laid out on the library table before him, Alex couldn’t help but dwell upon his father. That faded man in the blurry photograph, kept in a shoebox the whole of Alex’s life. He knew nothing of the strange man who had created half of him—had never seen him, met him, or heard him mentioned much. His mother hadn’t liked to talk about him, so Alex had stopped pushing.
Where else would this power have come from but him? Alex pondered, his eyes on the clouds beginning to trail across the overcast sky. He tried hard to sharpen the detail around the man in the photo, but he couldn’t envision his face. Alex looked back at the list of names in the index, a thought niggling at the back of his mind: Is my father’s name among these bloodlines?
‘Webber’ came from his mother’s family, not his father’s. His father’s name could well be there, in front of his very eyes, and he wouldn’t know it. He had never dared to ask his mother more about his father than she was willing to tell, and she had never been very willing to say much on the subject. Alex knew his father’s name was Alexei, but that was all. The mere mention of him always brought sudden tears to his mother’s eyes, leaving her silent and mournful for hours after.
Either that, or I’m a mutant, Alex thought dryly as he checked over the names again, seeing if any jumped out at him. None of them did.
Alex’s eyes were drawn once more to the glittering lights in the distance. An enchanting, tormenting spectacle. He couldn’t help but gaze at it. The pain in his heart increased, his chest tightening, as he thought about his mother, waiting out there for him to come home, sitting by the phone and hoping the next call would be from her son. Watching the door, praying the next knock would be his knuckles on the wood, heralding his return.
He bit back bitter tears as he gazed out to the glimmering horizon, wishing he could run through the glass and not stop until he reached home. He missed her, and hated to think she was in pain because he had never come home that day. He hated to think of her worrying and panicking—or worse, thinking he was dead. In her state, all of this was terrible for her health. Alex gritted his teeth against the twist of loss inside him, hoping desperately that his mother was still out there, alive and awaiting the return that he promised would come one day—however long it took.
A mix of emotions rose up in Alex, surging through his veins, overwhelming him. The frustrations of his dead-end heritage; the irritation of knowing his name might be on the page but unrecognizable; his untrained powers coiling inside with nobody to aid their growth; the blurry image of his deadbeat dad and the secrets of what lay, icy and dark, inside of him. And, most frustrating of all, the keenly felt loss of his mother, of being so seemingly far away and unable to comfort her—the helplessness he felt, locked up behind walls of someone else’s design.
The outside called to him, and he knew he had to get out of the stuffy confines of the library before he released an icy fury on the place and everyone in it. Checking the clock, Alex saw it was close to seven. Jari and Natalie would be expecting him soon anyway.
Picking up the books on the table, he hurried to put them back where he had found them until only one remained in his hand. He tucked his Historica Magica away again and set off toward the wine cellar. Sparring would be a prime opportunity to let off some pent-up steam from a lifetime of unanswered questions.
Chapter 4
Natalie and Jari were already waiting in the stagnant warmth of the wine cellar when Alex arrived, breathing heavily from his run. His friends seemed locked in a peculiar standoff, the freckled boy glowering at the onyx-haired girl.
“Did I miss something?” Alex asked as he dropped down the last few rungs of the cellar ladder.
“Jari says we are not permitted to begin until Aamir is also here,” Natalie explained, her voice tight with frustration. Jari’s glower deepened, his eyes narrowed to almost reptilian slits.
“It’s only right that we wait,” Jari said, folding his arms across his chest as he sat down on the ground and leaned against one of the crumbling wine racks, sending spiders skittering in all directions.
“We could wait a few minutes, I guess.” Alex shrugged, though he was eager to get started, his muscles wound tight from his library ordeal.
“We are waiting until Aamir gets here,” Jari said firmly, his tone brooking no wiggle room for negotiations.
“What if he does not come?” Natalie cut in.
Jari whipped his head toward her. “He will come—he promised.”
“No, I believe he said that he promised he would try to come,” Natalie retorted, sighing loudly. “We are wasting time.”
“We aren’t starting until Aamir gets here,” Jari repeated.
Natalie grunted, sinking down onto the floor, against one of the side walls.
Alex followed suit, sitting on the dirt opposite Natalie, so they made up a wonky triangle on the floor. Jari’s gaze settled on the hatch to the cellar, unmoving. Natalie rolled her eyes. Alex tilted his head back, staring up at the earthen ceiling, noting silently where the roots were coming through from the trees and plants above, the pale tendrils creeping through like slender, skeletal fingers.
Half an hour passed, and still Aamir had not come.
Alex was sure he had drifted off for a while. Natalie tapped her foot on the dirt in a vague attempt to amuse herself. Jari stared at the hatch.
“How did your meeting with Renmark go, Natalie?” Alex asked, breaking the silence.
Natalie paused. “It was okay, I suppose. It was nothing so special,” she said finally, though Alex had the uncertain feeling that Natalie was being tight-lipped about it. He couldn’t say why, but there was a shiftiness in her as she spoke, and she was unwilling to meet his gaze.
“Well, what did you do?” Alex pushed, intrigued by Natalie’s coyness.
Natalie shrugged. “Nothing so difficult. It was more of a meeting—I did not learn anything new,” she answered stiffly.
“Do you think you will?”
“It is hard to say. Perhaps,” she replied, picking up an abandoned cork from the floor and flipping it between her fingers in a distinctly antsy display. “How was your trip to the library?” she countered, leveling her gaze at Alex.
“It was fine,” Alex said, trying to push down the bitter feeling that rose up his throat.
“W
hat were you looking for?” she pressed, with a knowing smile.
“Nothing much.”
Now it was Alex’s turn to feel uncomfortable. He didn’t feel as if he could explain the true reason he had gone to the library. He still had not told his friends about the mystery shadow-man Elias and all the secret gifts he had been bestowing upon Alex since his arrival at the manor. There was something about Elias that held Alex back—as if the others might think he was under the influence of some dark magic, like Natalie’s curse. Or that Natalie might regret their attack on Finder, if she knew of Elias’s involvement in the whole thing. Elias was an odd enough phenomenon to Alex’s mind; he had no clue how he would explain him to the others. None of his friends had seen Elias for themselves, and Alex somehow sensed that Elias would not appreciate being talked about or revealed in such a way. A shiver crept up Alex’s spine every time he thought about telling the others of Elias and his gifts, like a silent threat. An invisible warning not to say a word.
And so, Alex didn’t.
“You must have been looking for something, I think?” Natalie frowned.
Alex thought of his literary dead-ends, and the earlier frustrations of the empty gaps in the shelves, wondering why he felt he should be so secretive about them. It was crazy. If anyone could help, they could. Alex looked across at his friends, and felt the urge to tell them both about the havens. He was just about to open his mouth, to begin the tale of these other schools, when there was a creak at the overhead hatch. The words stopped dead on his tongue as Aamir dropped down into the cellar.
He looked flushed and exhausted, but happy to see them, his weariness falling away as he brushed the dirt from his hands. He ran a hand through his luxurious black curls and sighed, the sound whispering around the room, his lips curving easily into a broad smile. Jari jumped up and ran to him, and the older boy pulled him in for a tight hug. Natalie and Alex couldn’t help but smile too at the sight of such pure friendship.