The Unexpected Enlightenment of Rachel Griffin (Books of Unexpected Enlightenment Book 1) (9 page)

“Your enemies are rabbits?” Valerie Hunt lowered her glasses and staring at the princess over the rims. Valerie was with them in this class, though she had not been in Language. Her friend Salome was not with her.

“We are overrun with them in Magical Australia. Somebody once enchanted a top hat so that a magician could pull a rabbit out of it, and they just kept coming.” The princess waved an admonishing finger. “Never pull a rabbit out of a hat! It goes badly!”

“As a knight, I vow to defeat your enemy!” Siggy announced fiercely, eager to perform deeds of derring-do. “Lucky and I will rid you of these rabbits, won’t we, Lucky!”

The dragon remembered not to speak in public, but his eyes glittered with eagerness as his head bobbed up and down.

“Sigfried Smith,” the princess replied with regal graciousness, “I would be honored if you and Lucky came to Magical Australia to defeat our rabbits.”

Siggy grinned and gave Lucky a thumbs-up.

Heelis
.
Puddleduck
. From the deep well of random information in Rachel’s memory, pieces clicked into place.

“Beatrix Potter!” She jumped up and ran over to the tutor, who was feeding the animated duck imaginary corn. “You’re Beatrix Potter. You married a Mr. Heelis and disappeared from public view. All these pictures on the wall. You painted them.”

“Yes I did,” Mrs. Heelis admitted with a kind smile.

“You must be very old,” she blurted out and then blushed. It was not the kindest thing to say. The other students snickered.

Mrs. Heelis did not seem offended. “Those of us with the blood of the immortals running through our veins are not as tightly bound by time as ordinary folk. I am well into my second century. Now, pencils ready. Let us begin by drawing the basic shapes: circle, triangle, square.”

“Vladimir Von Dread! He’s eeevil!” Salome exclaimed, as she, Valerie, Siggy, the princess, and Rachel sat down to lunch together. Rachel had finally told the other girls the fate of the scarab brooch.

Lunch was served in the dining room, in the center of Roanoke Hall. The chamber was shaped like a plus sign, with a fountain in the center of the four wings. To one side were the kitchens, where students went to choose their food. While the main cooking was done by human employees, the pastries and other baking were done by brownies, little fey creatures closely related to the
bwbachs
that cleaned the dorm rooms—if one filled the bowl beside one’s door with milk.

Familiars who ate human food were welcome in the dining hall. Here and there a dog or a monkey ate beside its master or mistress. All others were fed in their rooms or at the menagerie, a large barn-like building toward the far end of the campus, west of the lily pond. Rachel suspected this was for the best. Watching a snake swallow a live mouse at lunch might not encourage hearty appetites.

The dining room itself consisted of long tables that sat twelve. The central table, near the fountain, was occupied by Vladimir Von Dread and his companions. The rest of the tables were either color-coded, to indicate that they were assigned to students specializing in a specific Art, or open to anyone. Rachel and her friends currently sat at one of these free tables. She had had the option of sitting with her brother or her sister, both of whom had waved her over—Peter smiling calmly and Laurel bouncing with enthusiasm—but Rachel had spent the entire summer with them. She wanted to get to know her new friends.

Their table was off to one side. It should have been out of the way, but a great many people kept staring at them. Rachel hated being the center of attention. She struggled to breathe. Her head felt light. Gripping the table hard, she was beginning to fear she would faint.

The air whooshed back into her lungs. No one was staring at her. The boys stared at Nastasia or Salome, and girls—and those boys who were more interested in heroes and dragons than ookie girls—stared at Siggy. Gaggles of girls drifted by and asked to pet Lucky the Dragon. Grinning his huge grin, Siggy graciously obliged.

Rachel breathed a deep sigh of relief and turned her attention to her food.

“Von Dread was incredible!” Sigfried exclaimed, as the latest gaggle departed. He had a huge tray of food with servings of everything the kitchen had to offer. He had cut each item in half and was sharing it with Lucky, who hid under the table. “You should have seen him. He destroyed the evil bug-thing with a blast of fire and lightning. Boom! Boom!” He pantomimed Von Dread drawing his fulgurator’s wand and blasting the scarab brooch.

“Evil but gorgeous.” Salome heaved a huge sigh and laid her cheek against her hands, batting her huge eyelashes.

“Do you mean the Prince of Bavaria?” Valerie Hunt had been cleaning her camera lens. She gestured emphatically with the soft blue lens cloth. “Is his name really pronounced Dread, like dreadful? All this time, I assumed it was Von Dreed.”

“Nope. Dread.” Salome fluttered her extremely long eyelashes. “As in: we dread him.”

“I don’t dread him!” Siggy tossed a sticky bun for Lucky to catch. The dragon shot out from under the table, elongating like a Slinky, snapped it out of mid-air, and disappeared again.

“But he’s evil!” Rachel echoed Salome’s objection as she slathered more butter on a honey roll. “Father says the king of Bavaria is horrid. He says he’s the worst tyrant alive today.”

Valerie pushed her camera aside and took a bite of her sandwich. “Only ruler to actually nuke another country back into the Stone Ages.”

“Wicked!” exclaimed Siggy. “I want to do that. Do we learn to do that here? Nuke stuff? Is there a spell for nuclear combustion? How about one for other kinds of combustion? Does the school get blown up a lot?”

“I’ve done research on his son, the prince, since I knew I would be going to school with him.” Valerie leaned forward, eager to share her findings. “Did you know, Vladimir took off a year from school, a couple of years back, to participate in the Winter Olympics? He has won gold medals in fencing, skiing, and skating, and silvers in swimming and shooting.”

Rachel recalled some old News Glass images she had once seen in Sandra’s room. “He also took gold in septathlon—a sorcery contest not covered by the mundane news.”

The princess took a sip of her cranberry juice and dabbed her lips with her napkin. “Aren’t some of those summer sports?”

“He has competed more than once.” Valerie tucked the lens cloth back into the leather case she wore on her belt. “The Summer Olympics did not conflict with his school schedule.”

“That’s a lot of different sports.” Siggy’s eyes goggled. “I
told
you he was impressive.”

Salome rolled her eyes. “It’s easy to get on a team when your father runs the country.”

“Father or not, he must be an excellent athlete if he won medals at the Olympics,” Rachel said thoughtfully. “He competed against the best athletes in the world.”

“Good point.” Salome pouted prettily.

The princess spoke up. “My father puts all sorts of animals on our Olympic team: boxing kangaroos, wallabies, emus. They never win medals. Usually, they are not even allowed to compete.” When the others stared at her, Nastasia gave a regal shrug, “My father is…a bit eccentric—in a friendly way.”

“An emu?” Rachel asked, hardly sure whether the princess was teasing.

“On the track team.” Nastasia nodded sadly, as if this were one of the great burdens of her life. “Once he even tried to put a croc on the swim team—at some Pan Asian Games. Scared all the other contestants out of the pool. But they still would not give the croc the medal, even when it was the only swimmer who finished the race.”

“Enough about stupid animals nobody believes in, like crocs and emus,” Siggy grinned at Valerie. “Tell me more about Von Dread, Fearless Reporter Girl!”

“You should ask Salome.” Valerie picked up her fork, spun it around her finger, and stabbed in into her potato. “She knows much more than I do.”

“You could kill someone with a move like that,” Sigfried exclaimed in admiration.

Salome leaned forward, allowing an unobstructed view down her blouse. Sigfried started to look and then yanked his gaze away, scowling. She said, “He’s the unofficial head of Drake Hall. Everyone kowtows to him. It’s so ridiculous to watch that it’s funny. I’m not afraid of him. I refuse to scurry around and be his little minion.”

“Are you in Drake Hall?” Rachel paused mid-bite, honey dripping from her warm roll. According to her sister Laurel, no one good ended up in the thaumaturge’s dorm.

“All us rich kids are in Drake. No one else can afford to be.” Salome giggled. “Those high-grade gemstones on the tips of the fulgurator’s wands are pricey.”

“What are fulgurators?” Siggy asked.

“Soldiers who wield lightning on the battlefield—the way cavalry refers to soldiers who fight from horseback.” Rachel turned to the girls. “Which dormitories are you all in?”

“I’m in Dee,” volunteered Valerie, her mouth full of baked potato.

“That’s fabulous.” Rachel ducked her head to hide her envy.

“What are we talking about now?” Sigfried asked nonchalantly.

Suspicious of his tone, Rachel checked her memory. She recalled the last two minutes, paying attention to what had been caught by the corner of her eye. A banana, an apple, and two sandwiches had disappeared into the voluminous pockets of Sigfried’s robes.

She wondered what he intended to do with so much food.

“The dormitories,” Valerie flipped her fork around her fingers and pointed it at him. “Keep up here, Smith! I’m in Dee Hall. Salome’s in Drake.”

“According to my sister Laurel,” Rachel leaned forward, “Dee Hall has bookworms and know-it-alls; Dare Hall is filled with musical show-offs; and those in Drake Hall are stuck-up or sneaky or just plain scary.” Rachel stuck her tongue out at Salome, who grinned, delightedly.

“What does your sister say about the other dorms?” Valerie reached for her notebook.

Rachel tipped back her head. “Um…Marlowe Hall is all jocks and emos. The kids from Spenser Hall talk too much. Raleigh Hall has geeks and nerds, and those in De Vere are subtle and secretive.”

“Oh. That is wonderful!” Salome clapped her hands. “I’ll have to tell Ethan.” When the others looked blank, she added, “Ethan Warhol. My boyfriend?”

Valerie waved her pencil in the air. “He’s the son of Felix Warhol, the controversial Senator from Maine? No? None of you have heard of him? Senator Warhol’s famous!”

“Siggy and I are English,” Rachel said with a shrug. “Do you know the names of anyone in the House of Commons?”

“Good point.” Valerie flashed a mischievous grin. “Though being a Fearless Reporter Girl, I do know a few.”

“So what are those of us in Dare again? Musical show-offs?” Siggy grinned as he shoved two muffins into the pockets of his robes. Rachel was not certain, but she thought she saw him put a slice of bacon in there as well. “We can live up to that, can’t we, Lucky? At least we can, as soon as we get an instrument.”

Placing her glass of milk on the table, the princess murmured softly, “I wonder if I might be in the wrong dormitory.”

“Me, too,” Rachel murmured back.

A sense of camaraderie passed between them.

Rachel leaned back and smiled. There was something wonderful about having a friend with whom one shared common values. It filled her with a warm glow. She had not expected, upon coming to America, to find someone who admired the understated things she had learned to appreciate under the tutelage of her Victorian grandparents. And yet, here was a real princess, someone raised to rule a nation. No doubt she had received the same kind of training as Rachel. Between Nastasia and the amusing Sigfried, Rachel was on her way to the inseparable friendships she enjoyed reading about in novels.

Life could not possibly be better.

“Excuse me, Nastasia Romanov?” An older student had approached the table. The hood of her robe covered her face, except her mouth. She spoke in a wry, sardonic tone.

“I am she.” The princess rose graciously.

“Hi. I’m Xandra Black…Maybe you’ve heard rumors about me? That some people call me Flops-Over-Dead-Chick? Or that my familiar is the fattest cat ever to lay around taking up space? No? No matter. Um. Sorry about this…”

The young woman’s head jerked backward. Her hood fell off. She was pretty with long dark hair. Then, her eyes rolled up in her head, and a voice came out of her mouth, a deep eerie voice that sent shivers up and down Rachel’s back.

“Nastasia Romanov! Touch not Joshua March!”

“I don’t much care for some unknown power ordering me around,” the princess confided to Rachel as they walked to their next class. Despite her gentleness, a spark of defiance danced in her eyes. “It was kind of Miss Black to bring me a message from the supernatural world. But how do I know if that voice was friendly?

“Or, even if it was friendly, does that mean it was necessarily wise? And, more importantly, where do unknown voices from the supernatural world fall in the hierarchy of command? Do they have sufficient authority to be giving orders to a princess of Magical Australia?”

Rachel giggled. When the princess arched an eyebrow in regal surprise, Rachel realized that her friend was entirely serious.

“Do they mean Joshua March, the Grand Inquisitor’s son?” asked Rachel. “I’ve met him before. He’s…intense.”

Nastasia nodded. “Joshua March is a junior here at the upper school. He is the son of my father’s friend, the Grand Inquisitor of the Wisecraft. I have looked forward to meeting him. Why should I fear to shake his hand?”

“What does any of it mean?” Rachel whispered to her. “Your visions. This person who is after Valerie? Are they related? Is there really an evil operative on campus, such as the proctors spoke of?”

“I do not know.”

“Have you touched Valerie?”

“Yes. I saw her as a young woman in her early thirties who was working for a major news corporation. She sat in an office by herself, gesturing as she talked on one of those mundane phones you put on your ear.”

“Huh. That tells me…nothing.” Rachel drummed her fingers on her books as she walked. Her thoughts whirled, pulling volumes from the library of her mind and flipping through them at high speed. But there was not enough information to click any of the puzzle pieces they had found thus far into place. If she was patient and alert, the information she needed to figure out Nastasia’s conundrum would come to her. She was sure of it.