Spells

“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.

Chapter Six (#ulink_1a962977-b61f-5215-a9a6-fa558a5cb89c)

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 on to 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 coloured 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 huge 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 full of 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 colourful liquids.

But not a desk to be seen. Laurel was a little surprised to realise 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 recognise 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; neutralises 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 a straight, dark brown fringe, 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 any more – you’re kind of a walking taboo. No offence.” She flicked her head towards 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 towards 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.