The Unexpected Enlightenment of Rachel Griffin (Books of Unexpected Enlightenment Book 1) (12 page)

“Wait! Wait! I am not hurt!” Nastasia waved her hand in Sigfried’s face. She brushed the blood off. Her hand was whole.

Siggy peered closely. The princess took a tissue from her purse and wiped the blood off her cheek, which was whole and fresh underneath.

“Are you sure you are okay?” Siggy asked. “Good. It would have been horrible if you had been killed by touching Lucky.” He wagged his finger at the dragon. “Lucky, why did you do that?”

“Wasn’t my fault, Boss!” Lucky’s shrug involved his whole body undulating like a wave. “I didn’t do anything. Didn’t see anything either.”

“Where did the water come from?” Rachel asked.

“The river.” Nastasia daintily wiped her fingers off on her robes.

“What river?” Siggy asked.

“I found myself on the bank of a river surrounded by willows and flowering cherry trees. Humanoid shapes drifted by wearing odd black and white masks. I leaned down and put my hand into the water to pick up some of the cherry blossoms. When I lifted my hands, it felt as if I had run into a net of spider webs or fishing line. As if I were pulling against a fabric of some kind. And where I pulled against it, the lines of blood appeared. Then I was back.”

“That’s…very strange.” Rachel felt as if her whole body had turned into a goose bump. “So you are going to another place?”

“Where do you think you went? Chicago? Paris?” asked Siggy.

Nastasia considered for a bit, blinking her corn silk lashes. Then, she said slowly, “This looked like Japan…but sometimes, it has been clear that I was not anywhere on the Earth. Once I saw two moons in the sky. One was big and blue.”

“You
are
going to other worlds!” Rachel declared, awed.

“Aw! That is so unfair! I want to go to other worlds!” cried Sigfried. “I want to be the first man on Mars! Has anyone in the World of the Wise gotten to Mars?” Rachel shook her head. “I want to be the one to go!”

“It’s got to be!” Rachel’s mind leapt rapidly, analyzing what they knew so far. “That’s where the new magic is coming from. Other worlds. Along with the people: Salome, Valerie, and Lucky!”

Thousands of topics interested Rachel Griffin, but none was as enthralling as the notion of other worlds. The idea called to her, whispering that she should awake. It was like a beam of light piercing an otherwise dark and gloomy chamber, illuminating wonders not previously beheld. Mentally, she added a wing to the library of her mind, with yards and yards of empty shelves, ready for the knowledge she hoped to collect. She wanted to know everything there was to know about these distant places. Even more, she wanted to
visit
them!

Siggy had picked up some rocks. He skipped one seven times across the water of the reflecting lake. Impressed, Rachel tried it, too. Her stone sank like, well, a stone.

Siggy snickered, “You throw like a girl.”

“I am a girl,” Rachel objected.

“Oh. Good point.” He looked faintly surprised, as if that taunt had never before failed to hit its mark.

As they skipped stones, a soft noise came from behind them. Tiny Magdalene Chase approached shyly but then lost her nerve and backed away. Nastasia held out her hands, gently beckoning her forward. Despite her regal bearing, the princess regarded her with such gracious welcome that Magdalene overcame her fear. She approached slowly, clutching her China doll to her chest.

“Fear not,” the princess assured her. “We do not bite…except maybe for Mr. Smith, who has been known to spit on a few palms.”

The tiny girl blushed deeply. “Um…I wonder if I could…” She bit her lip.

“Pet the dragon?” asked the discerning princess. She arched a perfectly-formed eyebrow at Sigfried.

“Sure!” Siggy gave the girl his skyship-blinding grin. “Lucky, let’s give this young lady the royal treatment.”

Lucky the Dragon zoomed forward and wrapped himself around the tiny girl. Magdalene made no noise, but she glowed as if an inner flame shone through her porcelain skin. She closed her eyes and rubbed her cheek against the dragon’s soft fur. When the dragon finally unwound from around her, she gave a tiny curtsy and ran away.

Grinning, Siggy and the dragon bumped knuckles. In the distance, thunder rumbled from the direction of Stony Tor. Rachel noticed other freshmen searching the blue skies, but the older students did not so much as twitch. Rachel wondered if this casual disregard of thunder led to them being taken by surprise when the noise heralded a real rainstorm.

“My question is,” Sigfried turned back to the princess, “who is behind this? Who knows about these other worlds? There must be someone. People from beyond the edge of our world, beyond the moon. The Metaplutonians!”

“Who?” Rachel asked.

“The Metaplutonians!” Sigfried repeated. “The people from beyond Pluto.”

“That’s a really stupid word,” Rachel snorted.

Sigfried shrugged. “I got it from a film Lucky saw while peeking in someone’s window. Only I don’t think I remembered it right. That’s how I watched all my TV, by the way. We did not have a telly at the orphanage.”

“We do not have one either,” Rachel replied. “Electronics do not work well near magic. And magic doesn’t work in places filled with electronics. Gryphon Park is far too magical a place for mundane devices to work properly. I’ve never seen a moving picture.” She paused. “But we can’t use the word Metaplutonians. It’s ridiculous.”

“Metaplutonians is a bit awkward.” The princess considered the matter carefully. “But I cannot currently think of a better one. My father would no doubt suggest something significantly worse, like bumblesauruses, or wigglebockers. I recommend we stick with Metaplutonians.”

The princess was so stately and so proper. Yet her stories about the King of Magical Australia were so inane, that, Rachel would think the princess was inventing them—were it not for the solemn, almost pained, expression on Nastasia’s face.

How could the king of a country be so frivolous? How could such a frivolous monarch produce such a serious daughter? How could such a serious daughter be so accepting of such a frivolous father? For clearly, Nastasia was fond of her father. Rachel found herself mildly curious about the other Romanov children. There were two in Dare Hall and another in Dee. Were they like Nastasia? Like their father? Or something else entirely?

“No, no. You are right,” Sigfried said solemnly. “Metaplutonian is much too ridiculous. We’ll call them Metacroutons.”

“What? That’s much worse!” Rachel cried, grabbing at her head.

The princess sighed. “I warned you. Always best to accept the craziness and move on.”

“Okay. Then Metaplutonians it is. It honors Pluto. You know the adults are trying to take away his planet.” Siggy leaned over and whispered to Lucky, “Should we tell them…about last night?”

“Up to you, Boss,” Lucky whispered back. “If they are part of your harem now, you might want to tell them.”

“Harem?” Rachel stamped her foot in outrage.

“I should think not.” The princess’s voice had a steely edge.

“Lucky,” Siggy grabbed his head, “I told you before. Humans don’t have harems.”

“Sure you do,” the dragon insisted. “You just bite the female on the back of her neck, and she’s yours.”

“No one is biting the back of any part of me!” Rachel exclaimed loudly. Fond as she was becoming of Siggy, her affection for him was definitely sisterly in nature. “What happened last night?”

Siggy and Lucky exchanged glances.

The dragon spoke first. “Something bad came.”

“Bad, how?” she asked cautiously.

“Bad as in it made Lucky not able to think any more.” Siggy’s voice shook slightly. “He turned into a dumb animal.”

“It was…really horrid!” The dragon shivered from head to toe. His soft gold fur struck straight up like a frightened cat. He looked twice as wide as normal.

“That’s terrib…” Rachel began and then froze. “Wait! When did this happen? Last night? In the middle of the night?”

They both nodded, the boy’s head and the dragon’s bobbing up and down together.

“The Raven!” Rachel stated. “I bet it was the Raven!”

“What raven?” Siggy asked.

“An enormous raven, bigger than an eagle. He came and talked to the lion that is the familiar of one of my other roommates. Tried to tell the lion that it had to go away.”

“In our room?” The princess halted.

Rachel nodded.

“That is…very disturbing,” Nastasia murmured softly.

“What did the lion do?” Siggy asked, intrigued.

“It refused to go.”

“Did it talk?”

“Yes.”

Rachel repeated the conversation exactly. She did not reproduce the voices like a ventriloquist, but she echoed the intonation of each speaker. Her lion’s voice was calm and regal, and her raven’s voice was hoarse and annoyed.

“Are you certain you did not dream this?” the princess asked.

“Yes. I heard it and saw it. When I asked Kitten if her lion could talk, she did not say no.” Rachel paused, uncertain how to put into words the eeriness of the Raven or the sense of august majesty that miniature lion displayed, almost as if its tiny size were a trick of the eye, and it was a very massive creature indeed.

“That is hardly the same as saying ‘yes,’” the princess pointed out graciously.

“You did not see her face,” Rachel replied solemnly.

She considered telling them about the boy she had met in the upstairs hallway but held back for two reasons. The first was that if her father had not told her the name of the organization he worked for, he probably did not want other people knowing it. And if she did not tell them that part, then having met another student hardly seemed an event worth discussing.

The second was harder to put into words. Meeting someone in her private spot seemed oddly like a secret. She realized he was probably not a nice boy, being from Drake Hall. He may have had an ulterior motive for talking to her. Still, she felt reluctant to share him.

But something else occurred to her that she could tell her friends.

“You know, dragons other than Lucky here don’t speak,” she said slowly. “They are animals, like deer and zebras.”

“And wallabies,” the princess added automatically. “Wallabies never talk. No matter how much of the pink Monopoly dollars that Father calls money he offers for a talking one.”

“So…what are you saying?” Siggy asked Rachel.

“The Raven. It was trying to stop the lion from being here. I wonder if it is trying to stop Lucky, too.”

Siggy’s eyes darkened dangerously. “It had better not…”

From the left, voices cried: “Look! It’s Sigfried Smith! And his dragon!”

Girls swarmed everywhere, fawning over Siggy and squealing over Lucky. Rachel, who did not like being near the center of a crowd, felt her chest grow tight, as if she were wearing a garment that was too tight. She had to struggle to draw her next breath. As Siggy grinned and spoke boastfully to his adoring fans, she quickly slipped away.

Retrieving Vroomie from her room, she flew among the towers and spires atop Roanoke Hall, slowly at first and then more quickly until she was whipping through them at lightning speed. The crowds, the campus, the disturbing visions, and the murder attempts all fell away. She was alone with the glory of flight.

She ate dinner with her new friends and retired much earlier than her roommates, as she was still adjusting to the time zone. When she arrived, the others were still in the dining hall, or the many common rooms, or enjoying the pleasant weather on the commons. Alone in her room, she lay with her head on her pillow and recalled the events of the day. More had happened in this one day than happened in a week or even a month of her previous life. In fact, in her entire existence, she was not sure she had fit in so many extraordinary moments. In one day, she had started her new life; made friends; spied out an imposter; witnessed a murder attempt; bonded with her familiar; considered the possibility of a world beyond her world; met a helpful boy who might possibly be evil; learned the name of the clandestine organization for which her father worked; discovered that one of her new friends could visit other worlds in visions and bring back flower petals; and talked to a dragon.

Oh, and she had heard a raven talking to a lion.

Thinking back, she realized with a start that John Darling, her crush from afar, had been in the dining hall during dinner. She had not even noticed him. She replayed from her memory the few seconds of him laughing with her brother Peter that her memory had caught out of the corner of her eye. Freezing the image in her mind’s eye, she concentrated on his smiling face and sighed.

As she thought back, she remembered something else that had happen that day. In the forest, she had found a statue of a beautiful woman with wings—a statue that made her want to cry when she thought about it, though she did not know why. A statue that…

Rachel sat upright in bed, her eyes flying wide open, though she could not see much of the darkened room. When she had gone flying that morning, she had seen Bannerman Island. When she remembered back, the obscuration failed to trick her perfect memory, and she had recalled the real Island of Roanoke.

In the same way, her memory of the glade with the statue did not match what she had seen at the time. Everything was the same, except that her eyes had shown her a tree bough above her head that had bobbed despite the lack of wind. In her memory, an enormous black raven sat upon that branch, staring down at her with blood red eyes.

Rachel woke early the next morning. Again, the dawn was peeking over the horizon, and her roommates were asleep. Pulling out paper and ink, she filled her new fountain pen and wrote a long letter, detailing every aspect of the incident with Valerie and the fake Agent. Her father would see that the right people in the Wisecraft learned about these events.

Rachel tipped her chair back and thought about her father. He was a wise and kind man, beloved of his family and much admired by his peers and tenants. Over the last few years, with Grandfather gone and Sandra, Father’s favorite, away at school, he and Rachel had become closer. Writing everything down and sending it to him made her feel as if her father were near, as if she was one of his operatives gathering secrets for the Wisecraft. She imagined him reading her words and being so pleased that his littlest daughter was following in his footsteps.