Flora Segunda: Being the Magickal Mishaps of a Girl of Spirit, Her Glass-Gazing Sidekick, Two Ominous Butlers (One Blue), a House with Eleven Thousand Rooms, and a Red Dog (Magic Carpet Books) (38 page)

And this I learned the hard way—in Real Life.

My Real Life education started in the middle of last term, when I accidentally found Valefor, our family’s long banished Butler, locked in the Bibliotheca Mayor. Val was pretty sad about being locked in the library, powerless to keep up our House; I was pretty sad about the decrepit state of Crackpot Hall. We struck a deal: In return for help with my chores (I know—it does sound stupid now, doesn’t it?—but I had
a lot
of chores), I would share my Anima with him—my Will, my spirit—and try to restore him. (This turned out to be Lesson One.)

To restore Val, Udo (my best friend, who also does not allow school to interfere with his education—or his fashion sense) and I had to find Valefor’s fetish, which we almost did, thanks to a handy-dandy Discernment Sigil we found in the handy-dandy magickal handbook
The Eschatanomicon.
(Here’s Lesson Two.) But before we could restore Val to full power, I discovered that Mamma, who is the Commanding General of the Army of Califa, had captured the infamous Dainty Pirate and was going to hang him. The infamous Dainty Pirate turned out to be Boy Hansgen, the last true ranger, in disguise. Udo and I couldn’t let the last true ranger die, so we tried to rescue him. This involved a forged order of release and a deep-cover infiltration of Zoo Battery, where he was being held. (Lessons Three and Four.) We almost succeeded, but at the last minute, Boy Hansgen was snatched away from us, and killed.

This failure was crushing, horrific, excruciating, awful. But the worst was to come: I then discovered that Valefor had infected me with Anima Enervation—a dreadful magickal wasting disease of the Will. If we did not restore Valefor immediately, he would dwindle and disappear into the Abyss of Nowhere—and take me with him.

But the Restoration Sigil required a Semiote Verb—a Gramatica Word so concentrated that it could be in only one place at a time—and that Semiote Verb was kept at Bilskinir House. Ayah, Bilskinir House, the House of the Ha3raa3a Family, closed ever since the last Ha3raa3a died years ago. Closed and guarded by a fearsome Butler called Paimon, a denizen whose sharp appetite and sharper teeth were legendary for their ferocity.

We had no choice. If I was to be saved—if Valefor was to be saved—Udo and I had to get into Bilskinir House, and hope to sneak by Paimon, steal the Word, and scarper without running into any sharpness—teeth, tusks, or otherwise. Lucky for us, Bilskinir was not nearly as boo-spooky as we’d heard, and Paimon, although fearsome, was welcoming. And an excellent cook, too, which I suppose makes sense, as by their very nature domicilic denizens are domestic. (Lesson Five.) But instead of giving us the Semiote Verb, Paimon gave us really awful news. Only Mamma, the Head of the Fyrdraaca House, could restore Valefor. And Mamma was out of town. By the time she came home, it would be too late; Val and I would have vanished into the Abyss of Nowhere.

After a slight misunderstanding and an accidental side trip into Bilskinir’s past, where we met Poppy, much younger and far less crazy than he is now, Udo and I came up with a new plan. I had only one hope: Go to Lord Axacaya, the City’s greatest magickal adept—and Mamma’s greatest enemy—and beg him for help. I quivered at the thought. But,
Desperation makes you desperate,
said Nini Mo. I had no choice. (Lesson Six.)

Well, Lord Axacaya wasn’t so very helpful. In fact, he was downright mean. He pointed out the flaws in my recent behavior: that I had gone behind Mamma’s back to help Valefor in the first place, that I had no business meddling in the City’s politics by trying to rescue Boy Hansgen, and that I had lied, cheated, stolen, and forged. True, in retrospect, I
had
been quite a snapperhead, but that was no reason for Lord Axacaya to threaten my family, which he did, saying that it was Mamma and Poppy’s fault that I was so badly brought up, that it was Poppy’s fault I was gallivanting around causing trouble. The meaner Lord Axacaya was, the angrier I got. If I’d been a snapperhead, that was
my
problem—Mamma and Poppy weren’t to blame.

I exploded in rage—and my fury saved me. My anger strengthened my Will and broke the link between me and Valefor. I refused to be pushed around anymore by anyone, and that turned out to be the thing that saved me. (Lesson Seven.) And Lord Axacaya had only been baiting me, to get me to stand up for myself; once I was myself again, he was really quite gracious. I’m not sure why Mamma hates him so.

(Oh, and Lesson Eight: Don’t always believe your eyes. Udo and I had thought we had seen Lord Axacaya’s guards kill Boy Hansgen, but they had only made it look like they did. Actually, they had allowed Boy Hansgen to escape.)

So that’s a short summation of what I learned, and how—and why.
A ranger learns from her mistakes,
Nini Mo said. I made plenty of mistakes, and I think I’ve done a pretty good job of learning from them.

Now, I’m supposed to finish up this essay (which, of course, I’ll never turn in
—not everyone needs to know everything
, said Nini Mo) by discussing what I want to learn next term, my last term at Sanctuary School.

Well, I would like to learn how to start a fire with a piece of ice. How to load one hundred pounds on a mule. How to hold my breath for ten minutes. And most important: I want to learn Gramatica, the language of magick.

True Invocations and Sigils require Gramatica, and Gramatica is fiendishly complicated. The words are sounds, but they are also gestures, and colors, and lights. Gramatica is also horribly dangerous. If you mispronounce a Word, awful things can happen. You could try to open a lock and instead turn your head backward. You could try to light a match and instead set your hair on fire. All because you had inflected up when you should have inflected down, or
klick
ed where you should have
klack
ed, or stood on one foot instead of three. One mispronounced Gramatica Word and you could evaporate all the water in the Bay or summon up an ice-storm elemental, or turn time back.

I know a few words of Gramatica, but they are tiny small words that do tiny small things: ignite coldfire sparks, charge small sigils—nothing big, nothing interesting. If I’m going to be a ranger, I’m going to have to learn a whole lot more.

And Sanctuary definitely does not teach Gramatica.

F
INALLY THE TERM
was over and two weeks of freedom loomed. Two weeks of freedom from Sanctuary School, that is. There was no escape from Poppy.

“I think,” I said, sorrowfully, “that I liked Poppy better when he was drunk.” My back hurt from leaning over the sink, and the dishwater was now cold and greasy. Happily, I was on the last pan. It was crusty and black, but it was the last. The last pan, the last chore, and then, I would be free for the first night of term break.

“There is no pleasing some people,” Valefor replied from his vaporous perch high on top of the kitchen dresser. Valefor was the one who should have been doing the dishes, and everything else as well. Thanks to his banishment, he was a mere wisp, and his helpfulness was limited to criticism, which I did not find helpful in the slightest. And he had to lay low, too. If Mamma discovered him flitting about, he would be in a World of Hurt.

Valefor continued. “You complained when Hotspur was drunk and wallowing all the time; now he’s straight as straight, and you complain about that, too, Flora Segunda.”

I put the last pan in the dish drainer, then straightened up, feeling a hundred years old, and as though I’d been washing up for ninety of those years. It was only Mamma, Poppy, and me at home, yet somehow we were generating enough dirty dishes for an entire regiment. Poppy’s fault, really; he was cooking meals big enough for an entire regiment, even though Mamma ate only breakfast at home, I ate dinner at Sanctuary School, and it was usually just Poppy and me for supper.

“I never thought he’d turn out to be such a tyrant,” I said. “He’s a hundred times worse than Mamma. At least Mamma isn’t around enough to crawl down your throat. Poppy never leaves the house. He’s always here. There’s no escaping. Flynnie, get out of there.”

At my gentle kick, Flynn slunk away from the garbage can, looking dejected, as though he’d never been fed before in his life. Which was, of course, false, as he’d not only already had dinner, but had licked the plates before I washed them—saves on the scrubbing, you know.

“Hotspur is overcompensating,” Valefor explained. “He always goes too far. When he was brave, he was the bravest ever. When he was in love, you’d have thought no one had ever loved so much. When he was crazy, no lunatic ever howled so loud. And now that he’s sober, he’s so straight you could rule your paper with him.”

“Can’t he just be somewhere in the comfy middle?” I pulled the plug and let the nasty water glug out of the sink. There, that was it. Punto finale for Flora and the dishes. Punto finale for my last chore of the day. And not a moment too soon. The kitchen clock was about to chime eight. If I didn’t get a move on it, I was going to be late meeting Udo, and I hate being late.
The only thing that it’s good to be late for,
said Nini Mo,
is your own funeral.

“No Fyrdraaca ever sat in the comfy middle,” Val pronounced. “We are all about the razor-thin edge of extreme. It’s our family hallmark.”

“Ha,” I said, sourly, for he was certainly right there.

“Anyway, you wanted things to change, and they did. So stop complaining.”

“Ha.” Even more sourly, for he was right there, as well.

My Catorcena—my fourteenth birthday whereon I became officially an adult—was three months past, and things
had
changed, and yet nothing at all changed, really. Of course, I hadn’t expected miracles—I wasn’t
that
childish, even at my most optimistic—but immediately after my birthday celebration, things had looked mighty promising.

Take Poppy, for example. During the Huitzil War, Poppy had been a prisoner, and almost executed for war crimes. At the end of the War, Mamma ransomed him, but Poppy came home sick, crazy, and a drunk. And so he had remained until finally he had promised to try to forget the woes of the past and stay sober.

He had kept his promise. But Poppy sober was almost as bad as Poppy drunk, only in an entirely different way. Drunk Poppy was a lunatic. Sober Poppy was a tyrant. A martinet. What in the Army they call a whip. What I call a giant huge pain in my hinder.

Sober Poppy had turned Crackpot Hall into an Army camp. There was Reveille (Get Up), Mess Call (Get to Breakfast), Assembly (Inspection before Leaving the House), Drill Call (Do Your Homework), Guard Mount (Take the Dogs Out), Inspection (Is Your Room Clean?), Reinspection (What Did I Tell You about Dusting?), Tattoo (Time for Bed), and Retreat (Lights Out). I was surprised that Poppy didn’t actually get a bugle and stand on the stairs sounding the calls. Maybe he just hadn’t thought of that yet.

Poppy had become a despot who skulked around the house, his face like a block of carved ice. I don’t think Poppy actually slept; he just stayed up all night polishing and dusting, scrubbing or sweeping. Crackpot was still decrepit, but now at least it was clean.

And cooking. When Poppy was a souse, I would not have pegged him to have much interest in cooking, but now, next to cleaning, cooking was all he did. He made bread and cakes, pies and cookies. Stews and soups, gelées and galantines, roasts and chops, tortillas and tortas. The pantry was full of food, the icebox was full of food, Mamma was full of food, I was full of food, Udo was full of food, even the dogs were full of food. Only Poppy was not full of food; I never saw him eat a single thing.

All I had wanted was order. Instead, I got tyranny.

Mamma, of course, was exempt from Poppy’s discipline, as she outranked him, but I had no choice but to hop to. My only relief was school; never before had I been so happy to escape to Sanctuary each morning, and I loitered there in the afternoon as long as possible. BUt eventually I had to go home.

The only bright side to Poppy’s behavior was that it was doing a great job of reminding me that I did not want to follow the Fyrdraaca family tradition. Fyrdraacas attend Benica Barracks Military Academy and then go into the Army. As far back as anyone can remember, this is so: Mamma went, Poppy went, my sister Idden went—even the Fyrdraaca dogs have gone. Fyrdraacas are soldiers. It’s our family rule.

What has soldierly duty gotten this family? Mamma is Commanding General of the Army of Califa and everyone thinks she’s a great hero for saving Califa from the Birdies, as we call the HUitzils. Thanks to Mamma’s peace accord, we are a client state instead of a conquered one. BUt she’s a slave to duty; she’s hardly ever home, spends all her time pushing paperwork, handling the Warlord, bowing to the Birdie Ambassador, trying to keep the Republic together.

Poppy was aide-de-camp to the Butcher Brakespeare, the commanding general before Mamma, and narrowly escaped being executed with her. Instead he spent three years in a Birdie prison, where he was abused and tortured. He came home a broken drunken wreck. That’s how soldierly duty worked out for him.

My older sister, Idden, is what they call a paper-collar soldier—in other words, perfect. She graduated first in her class at Benica Barracks, she’s made captain after only six years out of the Barracks, and may well be commanding general herself one of these days. But now she’s posted to Fort Jones in Trinity Territory, where you could die of boredom and it would take the news two weeks to reach civilization. Now that Califa is a client state, the Army just sits and does nothing.

And my other sister, the First Flora. Flora Primera wasn’t a soldier, just a six-year-old girl when she was captured with the Butcher and Poppy When the Butcher was executed and Poppy imprisoned, the Birdies took Flora Primera—and Mamma could never find out what had happened to her. Perhaps the Birdies sacrificed her to one of their bloodthirsty gods. Maybe they ate her, like they ate the Butcher Brakespeare. Maybe they fostered her to a Birdie family and now she’s forgotten all about Califa. Flora Primera wasn’t even a soldier, but she was sacrificed for Fyrdraaca soldierly duty.