Spiral Path (Night Calls Series Book 3) (36 page)

“
Should
we feed the others?” Daniel looked worried.

“
We’ll
need to feed all of them,” I told the boys. “But it would be very messy in
here. You already need to scrub off the table. Let’s drop them back in the pot.
Mr. Smith, you go get some hot water and rags. Mr. Williams, sweep up every
crumb and flake of ash! I will get us reinforcements to help feed and cage the
biscuits until tomorrow.”

It was easier said than done, since lifting the lid meant
that two other biscuits hopped out. The boys caught them while I dropped the
sated ones back into the Dutch oven. Then James went for hot water, Daniel
swept, and I slipped out to talk with Margaret (after reminding Daniel not to
open up the Dutch oven with the loaf in it.)

I pushed open the door into the next classroom and found it
well lit by candelabra. I was greeted by a blast of sound—the pounding of
walking sticks against the floor, as our representatives did to approve of
speeches in the Congress.

Margaret sat next to the bowl, enthroned in firelight. Smile
lines crinkled the corners of her eyes, and her grin flashed a dimple in her
right cheek. Catherin sat next to Margaret, clapping with enthusiasm, her
beautiful laughter floating above the noise.

Mr. St. John gestured for me to enter as he shut the door
behind me. Two other men were also present, one of them very well dressed, his
dark, handsome features reminding me of a picture I had seen of the apostles.
The second student, blond and tan, was well scrubbed but untidy, as if fancy
dressing was beyond him. He sported an impressive, dark blond mustache, one to
rival Death’s.

It took me a moment to place them. They had passed me on the
stairs, as I followed Professor Brown up to the ritual dome.

“
Miss
Sorensson, you are indeed intrepid!” Catherin said. “I hope you are there to
help with all my emergencies!”

“
That
wasn’t an emergency,” I replied. “Just boys making mischief.”

“
You will make a formidable professor or parent of young
magicians, Miss Sorensson,” Mr. St. John said warmly. “Your calm under trial is
commendable.” He offered me a chair.

“
Goodness,
Daniel is
not
looking in the loaf
pot! I am astonished,” Catherin went on, bent over the bowl. “I was sure he’d
peek the moment you left the room.”

“
Not
if he wants to join any more of these investigations,” I muttered, glancing at
the water.

“
And
he knows it,” the well-dressed young man said, his smile broad. “He won’t risk
being excluded from the fun! There’s a time for such risks, and this is not one
of those times.” The man bowed slightly from the waist toward me. “I am Joseph,
Miss Sorensson. It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance.“

So you saw it all?
I wanted to ask, but of course they must have been there from the start. So
instead I asked: “Can you help confine and feed the biscuits? I think the
children should have their chance at racing them. I can’t think of any reason
why not.”

Everyone else looked at Mr. St. John. “Professor Tonneman
does not like us to manipulate animals without supervision,” he stated. “But I
think that encouraging yeast might be a good lesson in what can go right or
wrong in transformation of creatures. By all means, let them have their
race—and then have them write up a paper on their experience. I don’t see a
particle of harm in their enjoying the spectacle, but they need to be reminded
that it’s also work.”

Good. Because Tonneman took the biscuits last time, I wasn’t
sure if the children would be allowed to play with them. “Where shall we bring
the pots, then? The dome?”

“Faulkner, will you take charge of this?“ Mr. St. John
asked.

“
Yes,”
the untidy blond fellow said. “I can restrain them in the corner. We’ll need to
leave them with a good supply of honey, though. Can’t have them eating each
other.”

“
That
might be a more lasting lesson,” I said without thinking. The biscuits were so
voracious. Would they . . . ?

Perhaps. I shivered.
It’s
only bread dough
.

And yet.

“Oh!“ Catherin said in dismay, her fingers touching her
lips. “What a terrible idea!“

“True, though,“ was Mr. St. John’s comment.

o0o

A shriek echoed throughout the back courtyard, bouncing
from the brick walls and ice-coated branches. A dozen darkly-toasted biscuits
hopped past me, squeaking and roaring like a pack of gasping children.

My actual students bounded in pursuit, their knit scarves
flying like flags, some holding their hats onto their heads. One boy carried
his cap clutched in his hand as he brought up the rear.

“
Don’t
fall on them!” I yelled after the group. “If you hit them, they’ll crumble!”

“
Indeed,”
Professor Tonneman said, looking into the cage he was carrying. Within were the
remains of the loaf with teeth. The loaf had dropped from a great height to the
paving stones in the courtyard, breaking the bread into a good half-dozen
chunks. These pieces apparently did not have the energy to grow teeth, so the
yeast could not feed magically. The small mouth section snapped uselessly at
the air, while the eyes kept looking for food.

The teeth hadn’t started chewing on the loaf’s own fragments
yet, but give it time.

The professor had called all the children together to see
what happened to the loaf. After their initial chorus of disgust, they had been
slightly unsettled by the sight.

Good. I wanted them a bit uneasy about the affair.

And yet? Let them have their race! It never hurt to remember
that sometimes magic was
fun
.

St. John gathered the students together, their roaring
biscuits bouncing at their feet, to organize another race. I shook my head and
searched the sunlit yard for a good viewing position. Crisp air gave us a
glorious day, but it was not a morning to stand around in shadow.

“
Have
they started falling apart yet?” Cousin Esme walked slowly up the shoveled
flagstone path, wrapped in a cape of fine dark blue wool trimmed in white fur,
a lovely fur hat tilted over one eye.

She had an escort.

It was Shaw!

He wore his walnut-stained deerskin jacket, and deerskin trousers.
The scarf around his neck was of natural flicked wool, beiges and browns and
blacks: Shaw was dressed to be least in sight in the woods. Dark hair was handy
that way.

My cousin smiled as Shaw led her up to me. “Mr. Kristinsson
is here to teach you a spell, Miss Sorensson. I think it would be useful for
you to know it, and your mastery of the basics should allow you to absorb the
lesson swiftly.”

Suddenly I wasn’t cold anymore.

Earlier someone had brushed off the stone benches in the
back courtyard. Cousin Esme settled herself comfortably on one in the morning
sunlight.

“
There’s
an open area over between the manor and the carriage house,” Shaw said to my
cousin. “May we do this spell over there, Professor Livingston?”

Cousin Esme
nodded graciously. “
I will make sure you do not have an audience. The
young ones do not need to know this spell yet.” She glanced toward the kitchen.

One of cook’s assistants hurried up the snow-covered
cobblestone path. The girl, bundled in several long gray shawls, stopped next
to my cousin and offered her something small, like pebbles.

“
Thank
you, Emily.” Cousin Esme took the items from her palm. Turning her head toward
Shaw, my cousin said: “This might make a good object lesson.”

Puzzled, Shaw examined what she held. “Dough balls?”

I stepped closer. Shaw carefully picked up a misshapen pinch
of dried dough, such as might be left over after kneading bread, and offered it
to me. I held out my cupped palm, and he set the dough in the center of my left
hand.

“Might be able to bind the spell,” Shaw said. I could see
that he was uncertain, a slight frown touching his mouth. According to my
Denizens of the Night
, binding something
after a spell casting was more advanced work.

“What do you want to teach me?” I asked. I didn’t want merely
to see what he had in mind—I wanted to
learn
the spell.

Shaw lifted the flap on his breast pocket, and withdrew
something to offer to me.

A ray of sunlight caught the tiny object in his gloved
fingers. It shimmered like mottled silk in firelight. I offered my knit glove
with its deerskin grip, and Shaw set the item on my palm.

It was a shell, half as long as my first finger, its surface
smooth, yet covered with fine ridges. It was like a narrow cone, or a tightly
rolled piece of paper just coming loose on one edge, tapering to a point. This
shell could hide in the litter of a forest floor, striped in browns, beiges and
creams. I lifted it to my ear and sure enough I could hear the whisper of the
sea within it.

Though the shell was quite empty, it once held a living
thing that built this beautiful, coiling object. I wanted to touch it with my
fingers, feel the glass-like glide of the inside, and the tiny lines running
the length from mouth to tip, but it was too cold to think about removing my
glove.

“Mater says it comes all the way from the Shogunate,” Shaw
said. “I think it belonged to a snail. Seashells are more worn than forest
shells—from sand and salt grinding away at them. What do you think of when you
look at it?”

I blinked.

That was a very big question.

I tried to think about both tiny things and huge things. “The
endless sea, the variety of life, the perfection of some forms . . . .
” What did he want? There was so much hidden in a shell!

“Think about the form. There’s a way to hide a spell in a
tight package. Practitioners often carry magic on pieces of jewelry, or items
of food, or even a pinch of pipe tobacco or snuff. You never know when having a
spell ready-made might be useful.”

Tobacco? That
could be a nasty way to hurt someone.
It could happen with food, too,
couldn’t it?

I studied the shell again, wondering if another creature had
adopted it when the first outgrew it . . . .

“It’s a labyrinth,” I said, lifting my gaze to meet his. “It’s
a tiny labyrinth.”

“Yes,” he agreed, glancing away, as if suddenly shy. “It’s a
labyrinth. And like a labyrinth, it has many uses.”

“Can you store energy in a shell?”

Shaw’s gray eyes reminded me of chips of ice. “I guess you
could at that. What’s important is that you can store energy in a spiral. The
stronger the material, the more energy it can hold.”

“So metal and stone will hold the most?”

“And oak, maybe.”

Shrieking rose from the makeshift racecourse along the
cobblestone walkway. We were missing a fine biscuit race.

I put it out of my mind. This was important enough that
Cousin Esme had allowed Shaw to come teach it to me, long before I would learn
it in class.

So I would learn it.

I did wonder why she wanted me to learn it so quickly.

But for now? Something new!

o0o

“Are you still grounded and centered?” Shaw asked.

“Yes.” I was pretty sure I was . . . at least
I’d done everything that Cousin Cory and Aunt Marta had shown me.

Pressure bumped me, like a big horse thumping you in the
chest with its forehead. It gave me a sensation of momentarily floating, as if
I was on a wave, but my feet did not move, nor my spine flex.

“Good,” was all he said, but I knew he had checked.

Just making sure . . . .

I had my wand clutched in my left hand, and several balls of
dough in my right. My gloves were still on, but the shell was back in Shaw’s
pocket. The shell was just for show—
this is what magic can do,
it seemed
to whisper in my mind. It can coil like a string, in perfect symmetry, or
tighten like the tiny metal spring in Papa’s pocket watch.

How small could a coil of magic become? Could I watch it
scrunch down, if I used the other sight Death had taught me that day in the
woods outside Hudson-on-the-Bend? Sometime I was going to try.

“Come back to me, Allie,” came Shaw’s voice into my musings.

“I’m here,” I said, steadying my gaze on the gently rolling
snowfield between the big house and the barns.

His wand flicked into my line of vision, tiny dark lines
showing the grain of the wood, and I lifted mine in response. The grain was too
regular for oak. I wondered what his wand was made of, sparking a question.

“I’ve never done anything with this wand except charge it,
and try to fill a goblet with water,” I told him. “Is there anything we need to
do before I try to use it in a spell?”

Shaw took a step toward me, his gaze caught mine, and his
cheeks and neck suddenly flushed. “You do everything you do with . . .
your hands?” he said.

That didn’t sound quite right, but I wasn’t using my feet,
so . . . .
 
“I
think so.” His reaction made my cheeks feel warm, and I wondered if I was
blushing, too.

For a long moment neither of us spoke. I could hear the
children cheering, and a flock of crows scolding them. Deep within the farm a
stallion was trumpeting his superiority. Then Shaw said: “Why don’t you put
away your wand, and I will show you how to do this with your spelling hand.”

I looked away from his frosty eyes and slid the wand into my
skirt.

He stepped closer. “How do you do wild magic? With your
hand, or something else?” It showed how much I trusted him, that I would answer
that question.

I held up my left hand. “When I need it.”

Shaw’s right eyebrow rose. Then he looked away from me. He gestured
with his right hand, his left hand and wand relaxed, pointing away from us
both. “See the snow devils?”