Miss Mabel's School for Girls (34 page)

“Not too different from her granddaughter, only she had black hair. She was very selfish and, if I remember correctly, obsessed with power and greed. I think Mabel was friends with Evelyn only to seek the position of High Priestess herself. Miss Mabel was a teacher at the school when I attended here, and her grandmother still ran it as High Witch.”

“Did you see Mabel very much?” I asked.

“No. There was something very unnerving about her. When I did see her, I was always glad to leave.”

Miss Mabel had never spoke of the original Mabel, and neither had Miss Scarlett. It seemed odd not to commemorate the founder of the school, and wondered if it had something to do with the original Mabel’s execution. Grandmother stifled a yawn, and I could see that her energy was almost gone. The particles began to flutter in warning. Our time was almost up.

“I miss you,” I said, not wanting to end the conversation on a subject so bleak but realizing too late that I’d introduced one far more depressing.

She smiled and made an attempt to touch my face, but we were too far apart. Brown and gray bits of earth fell to the ground and faded into the wind.

“We miss you too. But we are very proud of you, no matter what you do. You know that, right?”

“Yes.”

“I’m sorry you have to do this,” she said with a sad grimace. “No girl should have to fight for her own right to live.”

“It’s not your fault, Nana.” I whispered. Her tired eyes lit up briefly at my childhood nickname for her.

“You have more commitment than anyone I’ve ever met, Bianca. You’re a very special girl, destined for great things. Just remember to not get in your own way. Promise me?”

A tear fell down my cheek and landed on the leaves at my feet.

“I promise.”

The spell began to fall apart. She reached towards me again, her hand shaking as she did. The leaves dropped to the ground.

Nana danced away, settling into the wind and flittering from sight.

Tricks and Hexes

B
y midnight, I could cast and remove every hex with little effort.

I glanced at the clock, let out a deep breath, and started at the beginning of the list one last time. Burying myself in studying blocked out everything else, giving me time to adjust to Grandmother’s revelations about Miss Mabel.

The deception-spell cat I practiced on had long since resigned himself to the hexes and curled in a ball on the floor. While I was never really comfortable putting hexes on the creature, knowing it was nothing more than a puff of air helped.

After I ran through every hex and removal, I broke the deception-spell cat. A noise came from the hall. I spun around to see the silhouette of Miss Mabel in the shadows. She stepped into the doorway where a beam of firelight illuminated her face. Her skin looked like alabaster.

My heart jumped into my throat.

“You’re up late tonight, Bianca. It’s well past midnight.”

A shiver of apprehension ran through me when I realized she had seen me pop the deception-spell cat. She concealed any gleam of surprise in her eyes with a cool shadow of indifference. My heart seemed to stall in my chest.

“Yes, Miss Mabel. I was just practicing.”

“I see that.”

There was no trying to get out of it. Miss Mabel advanced into the room a few more steps with an unreadable poise that terrified me.

“You did remarkably well. I just watched your last run-through. Let’s count this as your test, shall we?”

“Yes, Miss Mabel.”

She glanced at where the cat had once been and back to me. Her eyes looked silvery and thoughtful.

“It isn’t often a student is able to get a trick by me. Congratulations.”

I knew, without asking, that she referred not only to the cat but to the mimicking spell of Miss Celia’s voice. There was nothing about this moment to celebrate, but everything to fear. I held my breath, waiting for her to pass judgment, to decide my punishment or fate.

“Go to bed, Bianca.”

Miss Mabel watched me gather my scrolls and slip past her to my bedroom. She didn’t move but stayed like a pillar, staring at the fire in the doorway when I shut my bedroom door. I leaned against the wall and let out a breath. The real cat gave a pathetic call when he saw me, then turned around and settled back to sleep.

I sat on the side of the bed to calm my racing heart. I didn’t understand what just happened, but knew I hadn’t done myself any favors.

•••

The air was almost warm at three the next afternoon when we congregated outside for the Letum Wood Geography class with Miss Bernadette. Our breath left small puffs of trailing air behind. The chill pinched at the cheeks of the girls until they were a ruddy color, but didn’t feel vicious.

A small queue of first-years stood in a loose huddle near the old oak tree. When Miss Bernadette arrived, her cheeks were a lovely pink color that contrasted her brown, fur-lined cloak.

“Letum Wood extends throughout most of the eastern side of the Central Network,” Miss Bernadette began. “It fills up the North, reaches to the Borderlands, and spills over into the Eastern Network. Follow me, and we’ll look at a few things that grow here.”

Camille, Leda, and I fell into step with each other.

“I gave the cat poke root this morning,” I said, breaking into the conversation first. Camille bit her nails with an intensity that could only mean she had a test coming up, and Leda stood several paces away from us, brooding, her lips and face puckered into an annoyed scowl. Their minimal response disheartened my already frustrated mood. I wanted to tell them about my encounter with Grandmother but decided against it. For some reason, I didn’t want to share her.

“Oh?” Camille said, distant. “That’s nice.”

“I also had to amputate his leg. The surgery caused only a few bloodstains on my sheets. Miss Mabel even helped. She removed my curse.”

I monitored their responses, but neither of them said another word. They just continued to trudge forward in their own worlds. I let out a sigh and looked at the moving body of cloaked sheep in front of us, following Miss Bernadette with loyal devotion. When nothing changed for the next fifteen minutes, except for Miss Bernadette’s quiet drawl on the types of oak trees spread throughout the wood, I poked Camille in the ribs with my elbow.

“What’s going on? You’ve chewed half your fingers off.”

“Oh, Bianca!” she wailed, as if she’d just been waiting for me to ask. “I have a test today in Algebra and Geometry, and I just know I’m going to fail!”

I held up a hand to quiet her and looked to the front of the group to make sure no one else had heard the outburst. Of all the teachers, Miss Bernadette was the one I didn’t want to upset. If she caught us not paying attention, I’d feel horrible.

“I’m sure you’ll be fine, Camille,” I whispered, turning back to her.

“I hate math, Bianca. Really! I just can’t do it.”

“Have you asked Leda for help?”

“Yes, but she won’t look into the future for me on this one. She’ll normally look ahead and tell me if my chances are good or not so I don’t get so much anxiety. It’s the not knowing that stresses me out!” Camille folded her arms and shot Leda a scathing glance. “She’s been concentrating on something all morning and won’t tell me what, but it’s put her in a foul mood.”

I looked to Leda, but she was no help, caught up in her thoughts and staring at a tree trunk with a blank expression on her face. Once she seemed to come halfway out of it, I nudged her too.

“What’s got you?”

She turned to me with an impatient growl, but quickly stopped. Her different-colored eyes were bloodshot.

“Nothing,” she said, obviously still vexed. She hesitated, opened her mouth to say something, then turned away in a huff and fell into another daze.

“See?” Camille said with a self-righteous sniff that would have made the snooty third-years proud. “She gets like this sometimes, trying so hard to make sense of something. Then she gets frustrated if she can’t, which makes the curse even harder to control.”

I studied Leda’s hunched shoulders and clenched fists.

“Sounds like an awful cycle,” I muttered with little sympathy, their bad moods making mine worse.

“Right,” Camille snorted. “But not as bad as failing Algebra and having to take it again.”

She fell to studying a small piece of parchment hidden in her palm, her lips moving in silent recitation as she read. Miss Bernadette called us forward, and the whole group moved as one, deeper into the forest.

I watched Leda with a suddenly wary eye as she stumbled along. What was she seeing, and why was it so important? When Leda didn’t look my way again, I turned my back on her, ignoring her vexed expressions. The three of us spread out for the rest of the lesson, and the class faded by without me any wiser for it.

Vertigo

M
iss Mabel waited for me in the classroom when I returned from breakfast later that week, a warm bowl of oatmeal sitting in my stomach. She gazed out the windows on the backyard, her arms folded across her chest. She spoke without looking at me as I entered the room.

“Are you ready for class today, Bianca?”

“Yes, Miss Mabel.”

“Good.”

A feeling like a punch to my midsection slammed into me. I tumbled to my knees and gasped. My vision swam for a few seconds; my scalp began to tingle moments before I blacked out. When I came to, Miss Mabel stood over me, her long blonde hair dangling around her face.

“Goodness! You certainly fell harder than I thought you would. Does your head hurt?”

Disoriented, I blinked several times. My right shoulder throbbed and the world still spun. My head pulsed with dull thuds.

“What h-happened?”

Using my left elbow to prop myself up, I pushed off the floor. Dizziness overwhelmed me. My vision failed, my fingers prickled, and I passed out again.

The sound of Miss Mabel chuckling brought me back around.

“Oh, I wouldn’t do that,” she stopped me from trying to sit up by putting a foot on my shoulder. It took a moment for my vision to clear enough to bring the shiny black boot into focus. “It’ll make it worse.”

My head fell back to the floor, where it hit with a bang and echoed through my skull. I groaned and closed my eyes as Miss Mabel lifted her foot.

“What you have just been hit with is a vertigo curse. Eventually, with time, the fits of vertigo will decrease to once an hour. Then, after a few days, they will only come once every two hours, and so forth. You get the idea. Eventually, you’d live with blacking out every four to five hours. Not intolerable, I think.”

Her footsteps reverberated through my ears as she walked around me.

“As you know, I don’t think education is very valuable unless it’s hands-on. Especially for the Advanced Curses and Hexes mark. Wouldn’t you agree? No one should be able to cast a curse if she doesn’t know how it feels. This is an education you can’t get anywhere else in the Network, Bianca. Trust me. Lucky for you, isn’t it? I’m also doing it like this because your papers and homework make me cringe.”

Then, as quickly as it came, the pain and dizziness faded. I opened my eyes, and Miss Mabel smiled.

“You may sit up now.”

She walked towards her desk as I pulled myself together and stood up. My head didn’t dive up and down in a dizzy spell. It felt normal and clear. Once removed, there were no residual effects.

Before I had gotten very far, the punch came again, only stronger this time. I held onto my desk to keep from falling and gasped for air. Nothing happened. I swallowed back a tickle in my throat as I waited. But the sensation didn’t go away. It grew into a scratch. Uncomfortable, I cleared my throat. My mouth felt like sand. The need to drink seized me.

Suddenly I was so thirsty, I would die.

Barely aware of my actions, I grabbed a glass of water Miss Mabel had set out and began to drink. It tasted so sweet. The heat abated when the moisture slid past my throat. But as soon as I emptied the glass, my baked mouth returned. No, it had never left. The water didn’t quench my thirst. I still craved more. Miss Mabel sat down in her chair and lounged back with a teasing smile.

“Thirsty, Bianca?”

Trying to hide my desperation was useless. I couldn’t fight a curse, as I already knew.
What is it about cursing me that she likes?
Instead, I clung to the desk and forced myself not to move. If I got near water, I would drink until I vomited, and then begin again.

“That feeling you’re experiencing precedes every curse. Sometimes it’s the only way you know you’ve been hit. I’ve seen some curses so strong that the initial wave knocks the person over. Isn’t that wild?”

I was barely able to concentrate. All I could think of was cool blue water. The refreshing taste sliding down my mouth, past my scorched tongue, into my stomach. Moments before I gave in and broke away from my desk to search for something to drink, the feeling stopped. Relieved, I put my head in my hands and collected my breath.

“There are some curses you can cast that are silent, without precursor, meaning that there is no way of knowing when they hit you. They are a bit more advanced and complicated. Of course, we won’t bother with those. Not today, anyway.”