The Unexpected Enlightenment of Rachel Griffin (Books of Unexpected Enlightenment Book 1) (11 page)

When he finished, Brunhilda Winters, a cheerleader from California with blond sun-streaks in her honey-colored hair and long limbs tanned from hours of playing volleyball at the beach, asked, “Can you give an example?”

Mr. Gideon rocked his chair backward, thinking. “Certainly. Mundane history reports that the English founded a colony on the island of Roanoke in North Carolina. When they returned later, the colonists had vanished. True History reveals this colony consisted of sorcerers evading persecution. They used their magic to uproot their new home. When the next ship arrived from England, the floating island of Roanoke had vanished.

“Virginia Dare, the first English child born in America, grew up to be a powerful Enchantress. She founded a school on Roanoke. For more than three centuries, the island floated around the oceans of the world, visiting many nations, picking up additional teachers—which is why Roanoke is the only school where all seven of the Sorcerous Arts are taught. Roanoke continued to float until the early twentieth century, when it ran aground against Pollepel Island in the Hudson River. It remains here today.

“Or, for another example, the Unwary know that during World War II, Hitler committed genocide against the Gypsy race—all thirteen tribes, including the tribe of Judah, the tribe of Reuben, the Romani tribe, etc.—declaring the Gypsies to be the cause of Germany’s ills and forcing them into concentration camps—in the travesty against humanity we call the Holocaust. The Wise know that his fear of the powerful Gypsy sorcerers, such as Oppenheimer and Albert Einstein, contributed to his paranoia.”

“Einstein was a sorcerer?” Brunhilda asked incredulously.

“Of course,” Mr. Gideon replied smoothly. “You don’t think the mundane scientists would have been able to invent the nuclear bomb without the help of Gypsy sorcery, do you?”

Siggy put up his hand. “Sir? How do we know?”

Professor Gideon looked at him coolly. Evidently he had heard of the famous boy, but he had not taken a liking to him. “How do we know what, Mr. Smith? It has been found, by many repeated experiments, that articulating a complete idea is an aid to communication. Assuming that is your purpose?”

Siggy was undaunted. “How do we know this is true history?”

Professor Gideon’s cool look hardened into coldness. “Some of what you will learn is based on the records of the Wise. For more recent history, some of your elders are old enough to recollect the events. We do keep track of what we have changed, young man.”

“But the Unhairy have records and eyewitnesses too, right?” asked Sigfried. “We meddle with them, so they don’t know the truth, and can’t know it. Well…? How do we know someone is not doing that to us? People who stand to the Wise as the Wise stand to the Unscary? The Wiser-Than-Us? The Unfairy don’t know about us. What do we not know?”

Rachel’s eyebrows quirked. He could not be getting Unwary wrong so many different ways by mistake. He must be doing it on purpose.

The professor snorted. “In your case, Mr. Smith, a very great deal.” He waited for the snickering to die down, a small smile on his lips. “But it might be better to learn what the real history is, before we engage in denigrating it. The first semester will cover the antiquities, from the earliest roots of civilization in Egypt and China and Atlantis, keeping in mind that our records of those days are more complete and stretch back considerably farther than what mundane archeologists have unearthed. Now, who can tell me at what point in prehistory the Wise diverge from the Unwary?”

“With the discovery that it actually rained if a shaman descended from immortals performed the rain dances?” asked Zoë Forrest, the world-weary-looking girl with a New Zealand accent, black lipstick, and dark green hair. She wore it short, except for one long lock in front, into which she had braided a feather.

Zoë sat sideways, slumped against one chair with her legs resting on a second one. A funny-looking marsupial sat on her shoulder, eyeing everyone suspiciously. It had a nose like a squirrel only longer, a thick tail, and white spots all over its orangey fur. Rachel searched the encyclopedias in her memory and discovered it was a tiger quoll from Tasmania.

“Very good, Miss Forrest. That is, in fact, one of the divergence points.”
Astrid raised her hand shyly. “Please, sir, before we go on. That word you used in your overview…monotheism? What does it mean? I’ve never heard that word.”

Very seldom did Rachel come upon a new word. She, too, had never heard this one. She checked her memory. It was not in any of the three dictionaries she had memorized—two dictionaries of the Wise, and a mundane one.

Was
monotheism
another mystery word, like
friar
and
steeple
?

Mr. Gideon examined a roster of names. “Ah, Miss…Hollywell, right?”

Astrid ducked her head, embarrassed, and nodded.

“You grew up in the mundane world, did you not?” he continued, “The world of computers and cars. Had you heard of magic? Of the Wise?”

“N-no, sir. I had no idea that sorcerers or dragons or anything of that kind was real. I guess you would call me…Unwary.” Astrid frowned and asked shyly, “What exactly is the definition of Unwary?”

“Someone who does not know about the World of the Wise. About magic and sorcery,” replied Mr. Gideon. “Usually, the Unwary are mundane. In other words, they cannot use magic. A few, such as yourself, were merely unaware of the existence of magic.”

“A normal person, then.” Astrid nodded. “I was Unwary.”

Mr. Gideon’s eyes danced with amusement. “That implies that we of the Wise are not normal, but I will let that slide. But, back to the topic at hand, you had heard of the gods?”

“Well, of course, I’ve heard of them,” Astrid said slowly. “And my family gave offerings at temples occasionally, the way everyone does. On big national holidays, such as Walpurgisnacht, Mid-Summer’s Eve, and Yule, of course. But I thought the gods were symbolic—that Apollo was a personification of creativity and reason. That Isis represented fertility. That sort of thing. I didn’t know they were real.”

Rachel listened to this with great interest. She had often wondered how the Unwary saw the gods. She knew that they had temples and religious orders. Their hospitals were run by nuns and monks of Asclepius, just like those of the Wise, for instance. But they did not perform animal sacrifices or expect the gods to actually show up. Of course, the gods had been very quiet for the last several centuries. It had been a couple hundred years since the last verified visitation by one of the gods.

“How did you come to learn about us?” Mr. Gideon asked. “About magic?”

“I am interested in s-science,” Astrid stuttered. Rachel felt so sorry for the shy girl who was being put on the spot. “I applied for a summer internship at Ouroboros Industries. They gave me an aptitude test. Apparently, I tested well for learning sorcery.”

“I see. As to your question,
monotheism
means belief in only one single god,” Mr. Gideon replied. Laughter tittered though the classroom.

“That’s absurd!” cried red-haired Ian MacDannan, grinning madly. “Nobody living on this planet—either of the Wise or mundane—believes in something like that.”

“No one in the Unwary world, either,” said Rhiannon Cosgrove, a student from De Vere Hall with a head of long brown curls. “I’m from Hoboken, New Jersey. I only heard about magic for the first time two months ago. Turns out my grandmother had been of the Wise and never told my mom. But no one I know in what you guys call ‘the mundane world’ worships only one god. We go to the temples—Zeus, Apollo, Amaterasu, or whoever—on high feast days and the chapel of Asclepius when someone’s sick. Everybody does.”

“Me, too,” said Sigfried. “I mean, I grew up in the world of the Unscary, not knowing about magic, and I never heard of anyone worshipping only one god—unless you mean like the nuns of Hestia, who
were
scary, being loyal only to Hestia. Of course, since they ran a horrid orphanage, we never went to temple or chapel or anything.”

“But…” Rachel squinted at the tutor, wondering if he were mocking them, “wouldn’t worshipping only one god offend the other gods?”

The tutor gave her a lazy smile. “You’re the youngest Griffin, aren’t you? Your sister Sandra was one of my best students. A sharper mind I have never met. Well, youngest Griffin, some people have believed so. Akhenaton tried to make the Ancient Egyptians worship the sun god alone. Other records from antiquity suggest there may once have been a tribe in the Middle East, called the Israelites, who held such beliefs. Have any of you heard of the Israelites?”

Most of the students, Wise and Unwary, shook their heads. Rachel reviewed the encyclopedias in her mental library. She raised her hand.

“Yes, Young Miss Griffin?”
“Don’t some scholars think the Tribe of the Israelites may have been the ancestors of our modern Gypsies?”

Mr. Gideon nodded. “Some do hold that opinion, yes.”

Wulfgang Starkadder raised his hand, his eyes dark and brooding. “They worshipped just one god? Or they believed in just one god?”

“The word covers both,” said the tutor.

“How could it mean the second?” Joy O’Keefe spoke up, puzzled. “When there are obviously so many gods? Even the Unwary know there are many gods, right?” She looked at Astrid, who ducked her head, nodding awkwardly.

Mr. Gideon spread his arms. “A mystery. But it is mysteries that make pursuit of knowledge so fascinating.”

Rachel nodded, her eyes sparkling. She was going to like this tutor.

“What you said in class about a Wiser than the Wise, do you believe that?” Rachel asked Siggy, as they spilled out of the school building into the sunny afternoon. They walked onto the bridge that led across the reflecting lake to the green lawns of the commons. The air was alive with laughing and chatting. Three boys were having a boat race, each yelling to his self-propelled boat to go faster.

“You mean the idea that there are creatures who mess with us the way we mess with the Unburied?” Siggy asked. He jumped up onto the stone railing and spread his arms behind him as he ran, pretending to be dive bombing something. “Vvvvrrrrmmm! Pow! Yes. I do.”

The princess strolled beside them, slipping her school book into her house-containing purse. She only ever carried one old gray book. Whenever she opened it, it contained exactly the text that was needed. Rachel longed to examine it but felt too shy to ask.

“That is a rather disturbing thought.” Nastasia closed her purse. “Even more disturbing than some of my father’s ideas about good uses for Vegemite. Do you have any proof?”

“Maybe.” At the edge of the bridge, Siggy jumped to the ground and looked around suspiciously. Then he ducked his head and looked thoughtful for a moment.

“Tell us! Tell us!” Rachel grabbed his arm.

Siggy lowered his voice. “Where does Lucky come from? And the scarab, and the piece of paper that ensorcelled the generously-endowed and abundantly overly-mammalian young lady from Drake Hall?” When Rachel and Nastasia both gave him a sharp look, he shrugged, unconcerned. “The proctors said there were new types of magic. Where is it coming from, if not from something outside your World of the Wise?”

Rachel thought about this very hard. A piece of the puzzle suddenly clicked into place in her head. “Maybe from the places the princess visits in her visions?”

“What places?” Siggy looked at Nastasia. “What visions?”

Nastasia solemnly repeated what she had told Rachel, including the part about Salome.

“Dead? Wow! That’s ace! Can I do that? You say you go to these places? Does it happen when you touch me? Can you go to the same place over and over? What about Lucky?”

Rachel found herself grinning. It was so easy to think of amazing things when speaking with Sigfried. Already, the idea that there were other worlds—and that the people whom the princess was seeing visions about had come from these worlds, bringing their unfamiliar magic with them—was taking root in her thoughts.

The princess was not swept away by Siggy’s enthusiasm, but her eyes crinkled kindly at his eagerness. “In no particular order, it only seems to happen the first time I touch somebody. It did not happen with you or Rachel. Also, it never happened at home. A lot of strange things happened at home—a great many of them involving my father, wombats, and bubble gum—but nothing like this.” She paused and then added thoughtfully, “Next time, I am going to see if I can pick up an object and bring it back with me. I would like some kind of proof that I have not gone crazy.”

“What a good idea!” Siggy chortled. “Pick up a gun or a repeating crossbow or an atomic bomb.”

“I have not seen any of those things,” the princess said primly.

Siggy shrugged, undeterred. “Something must be causing the devastation you keep seeing.”

“Try touching Lucky,” Rachel urged eagerly. “He’s a new thing. Maybe he’s from…Outside.”

“Very well.” The princess turned toward the dragon and curtsied. “If you don’t mind, sir dragon?”

“Sure. S’okay with me, if it’s okay with the Boss,” Lucky said. “Will it hurt?”

“I don’t think so. No one else seemed to notice.” Nastasia looked at Lucky thoughtfully. “Do you know what kind of gift Lucky brings? As a familiar, I mean?”

Sigfried shrugged. “No idea. I asked the other guy who has a dragon familiar, that senior for Marlowe. But first, his dragon is a little red and blue thing, not much bigger than a winged iguana, and second, he didn’t know what his was, either.”

“Nothing new you can do that you could not before?” pressed Nastasia.

Siggy shrugged again. “Not that I’ve noticed.”

Reaching out, the princess stroked Lucky’s soft fur. Rachel ached to pet him, but she felt too shy to ask about that, too.

The princess’s expression went blank. Then, she gave a soft gasp. Water dripped from her hand. Small pink petals stuck to her fingers. She brushed the petals into her purse.

“Wh-what’s that?” Rachel pointed at her hand.

Tiny, red lines—very regular lines, about an inch apart—covered her palms and left cheek. The lines began to drip. The princess was bleeding.

“Oh, my gods! She’s been wounded! To the infirmary!” Siggy lunged at the dainty princess to pick her up.