The Unexpected Enlightenment of Rachel Griffin (Books of Unexpected Enlightenment Book 1) (3 page)

She bent low and gripped her handlebars more tightly.

She suddenly felt very lonely.

With the forest and the western dorms behind them, the main campus stretched out in either direction. To their left lay the reflecting lake with its small pleasure boats. The boats had eyes painted on them and could move of their own accord. On the far side of the lake rose the main building, great Roanoke Hall. The dining hall was in the center. The right side housed the upper school; the left side housed the college.

Roanoke Hall resembled the Chateau de Chambord, which Rachel’s family had visited in France. Like Chambord, the hall had been designed by the great sorcerer Leonardo da Vinci. It was a massive castle with enormous round towers. Dozens of lesser spires and gables graced the roof. Six bell towers rose above the rest.

It seemed to Rachel as if the towers and spires called to her, as if they were whispering, asking her to fly between them—preferably at high speed. She gripped her handlebars tightly, smiling, eager to accept the challenge.

What a wonderful place to own a broom!

The forest flanked the main chateau and the reflecting lake. Through the trees—birches and hemlocks—she could see the towers of the other dormitories, including Dee Hall, where she secretly had hoped to be assigned, even though generations of her family had all lived in Dare Hall. Each dorm was devoted to students studying one of the seven Sorcerous Arts and had its own character and nature.

To the right, the commons stretched several hundred yards to a lily-covered pond. On the far side of the lawns were walled gardens, ivy-covered out-buildings such as tool sheds, the gymnasium upon which grew purple wisteria, and an Oriental garden. She could also hear the creek that ran through the woods beyond. On the closer side of the lily pond, in the distance, stood fountains, statues, and a tall, domed memorial. In the distance, beyond the pond, she could make out a double row of trees leading to the docks.

Near the reflecting lake, an astonishingly handsome boy with golden curls was chasing a long red and gold ribbon that whipped through the air. He charged forward, laughing loudly as he went. The other girls flying with Rachel stared at him, mesmerized.

No. He was not chasing a ribbon. He was chasing
a dragon.

“Sigfried Smith!” shouted the three girls in unison. Rachel feared they were going to swoon and fall from their brooms. She glanced at the boy with interest and saw they were correct. It was Sigfried the Dragonslayer, the most famous boy in the World of the Wise.

The girls began all babbling at once.

“They say he’s an orphan. And raised in the mundane world, too!”

“In a truly Dickensian orphanage, in the worst part of London.”

“And he’s rich as Croesus!”

“Do you think he really killed a dragon in the London sewers?”

“A giant one. All scales and fire!”

“I saw a picture in
Mirror of the Wise
.”

“Where else would an orphan boy get a fortune?”

In unison, they all crooned, “And he’s got a pet dragon!”

Rachel turned away with a pang of regret. The boy looked so charming and energetic, but there was no point in joining the gaggle. With so many pretty girls to choose from, a boy like that—handsome, famous, and rich—would never pick for a friend someone undersized and awkward with people—like Rachel.

Instead, she zoomed forward and looked more closely at the dragon, as it zig-zagged along the edge of the reflecting lake. Its long serpentine body, which sometimes seemed to be ten feet long and sometimes twenty, was covered with soft golden fur with ruby scales on the underside. Its frippery—immensely long whiskers, tail puff, and the mane that ran down the length of its body—were flame red. Short horns curled above its wolf-like head. It was a lung, a river spirit from the Far East. Only, according to the News Glass, no one had ever seen one like Sigfried’s.

It was so beautiful. She wished she could reach out and pet it.

The dragon turned and looked at her with its large jade eyes. Their gazes met. He looked so intelligent, so mentally active, Rachel could not help smiling.

“Flying brooms! Wicked cool!” Sigfried exclaimed behind her. He had an English accent, too, though it was working class. Still, the familiarity of it made her feel more at home. Turning, Rachel saw him peering closely at Belladonna’s red bristleless.

“Where do you attach the bombs, then?” Sigfried peered at the device. “These things look like they don’t even have missile bays! How do you expect to blow up a lecture hall during a dull class without missiles?”

Rachel burst out laughing. Behind her the three blondes giggled, but they seemed uncertain, as if they were unsure of what to make of him.

“What a cute accent!” exclaimed Charybdis, batting her blond eyelashes at him.

Watching the girls gush over the famous boy amused Rachel. She did not like them, but she had to admit they made a pretty picture, all giggling and blushing in their smart black and white uniforms. She bet the boy liked it.

Boys were like that.

Rachel herself was not much interested in boys, except for her enduring crush from afar on John Darling, the son of world famous James Darling, Agent. With a start, she realized that John, who was one of the school’s stars at Track and Broom, must be somewhere on campus. The thought made her slightly breathless.

“How fast can it go?” Sigfried ignored the girls, his entire attention on their brooms. He leaned over them, poking at the levers and the fans. “If I fly fast enough, can I ram through a wall? Can it shoot out an oil slick and make people skid in mid-air? Do people freeze if they fly too high, so that their corpses circle the earth forever? Have any sorcerers flown a broom to the Moon? Mars? If not, I want to be the first person on Mars!” He stared up hungrily at the sky. Grinning again, he asked, “Can I have a go?”

Rachel laughed again. The boy was outrageous. If she had a friend like this, she would always be laughing. The other girls did not seem to be catching on.

“I…guess you can try it.” Belladonna bit on a lock of her shoulder length hair. “Though if you’ve never flown before, it’s tricky. You might want to wait for gym class.”

“One of you could give him a ride,” suggested Rachel.

The other students turned. The gazes of the three young women were not friendly. Rachel blushed. She had not meant to draw attention to herself. She started to pull back, but the boy gave her a grin so bright that the gleam from his teeth could have blinded sailors on passing flying ships. Perhaps, he, too, enjoyed hearing a familiar accent.

“I guess you could sit on the shaft.” Belladonna gestured at the long pole behind her seat. “People used to do that all the time, before adding seats became popular.”

“Great! I want to go see Stony Tor.” Sigfried spoke with tremendous enthusiasm. His startlingly blue eyes glittered with manic delight. “I hear there’s an evil goblin trapped there! The Heer of Dunderhead or something. Can we see him? Will he be cross if we poke him with a stick? What if we shoot him with fireballs? Do we learn to throw fireballs here? All magicians in stories throw fireballs—or so I’ve been told. Haven’t read a lot of stories, outside King Arthur. Do we get to be knights?”

“We are not allowed to cross the wards that protect school grounds.” Cydney spoke with haughty primness. Rachel guessed the harshness of her tone was directed at Belladonna, in retaliation for being the first to offer to take the cute boy for a ride. “Crossing the wards without the proper precautions could let something unpleasant through the protections.”

“How disappointing.” Sigfried scowled in annoyance.

Rachel examined the boy very carefully. Not just now, as he stood scowling, but also as he had appeared in her memory over the last few minutes. His huge impish grin suggested that the crazy things he said were all in fun—a show of boyish enthusiasm, as when her friend Ben Bridges described, complete with leaps and imitation cantrip gestures, the spells he would have cast had he fought the Terrible Five during the Battle of Roanoke, twenty-five years ago.

However, there was something else in the eyes of this boy, a glint of desperation—like a sailor at sea in the midst of a storm with no sail, no anchor, and no port in sight.

Sigfried Smith had grown up as an Unwary, Rachel recalled from a myriad of news glass articles. He had lived in the mundane world of vacuums, automobiles, and television, without
bwca
to clean his house, without flying umbrella carriages, without magic. His calm universe of orderly physics had been turned upside-down earlier this summer, when he had come upon a dragon in the sewers of London. He had slain the beast, gained possession of its hoard, and catapulted himself into instant fame in the World of the Wise.

Now, everything he had previously known had suddenly been yanked from him. The very laws of nature had turned out to be wrong. He was adrift, exposed, and unprepared.

Rachel could not imagine how it would feel if she discovered that everything she knew to be true about the laws of the universe was incorrect. At the very least, she would be terrified. She doubted she would take it as well as this young man had. Her heart went out to him.

Aloud, she asked, “Why don’t you take him without crossing the wards?”

“Duh! Stony Tor is outside the school grounds.” Cydney looked at Rachel as if she were a particularly unpleasant bug.

Undaunted, Rachel rolled her eyes. “Leave by the door. Go out through the ruined castle and down the green steps to where the ferry docks. Then fly around the island to the north. That’s what my big sister Laurel says she does when she wants to sneak out.”

“I don’t think we’re supposed to do that,” Belladonna broke in hastily.

“Well, no one ever said that to me, so the rule doesn’t apply.” Sigfried spoke with extreme confidence.

“Besides,” Charybdis said, a slight tremble to her voice, “If we fly away from the island, we might get confused by the obscuration and get lost.”

Rachel smiled a secret smile. She murmured, “
I
won’t get confused.”

She turned to where Sigfried stood on the damp morning grass, his bare feet sticking out from under his brand new robes. He looked so eager and so filled with enthusiasm. Similar to laughter and yawning, Rachel realized, enthusiasm was contagious.

Like two dappled roads cutting through a dark forest, the dilemma branched before her. Should she take the safe path and say nothing? Or take the unknown path and risk leaving school grounds—which was surely against some rule—to forge a bond with a boy she had just met? As when flying, she made her decision in an instant, taking less time to deliberate than it took a flame to flicker.

Rachel leaned forward and patted the back of the long leather seat on her steeplechaser, her eyes sparkling with glee. “Come on, Sigfried Smith. I’ll take you for a ride.”

Rachel and Sigfried flew across the lawns, over the lily pond, and down the tree-lined pathway leading to the docks. Green boughs formed an arch above the mossy walkway. The sun shining through the leaves bathed them in a verdant light.

The archway of a ruined castle loomed before them. Rachel shot through it, bursting into the brilliant sunlight. Grass-clogged steps led from the ruins of the ornate castle to the dock on the brown waters of the Hudson. In a burst of gold and scarlet, the dragon flew up beside them. He moved effortlessly through the air, almost as if he were swimming.

“Whoa!” Sigfried cried, holding onto her waist tightly. “This is incredible! Can we turn upside down? Can we spin? Can we twirl in a circle fast enough to churn milk into cheese?”

“I think you mean butter.” Rachel grinned gleefully, eager to meet any broom challenge. “Here we go! Hold on tight!”

Angling Vroomie upward, she flew a full Immelmann loop, then spun sideways—upside-down to right-side up again. That covered “turn upside down” and “spin.” Next came: the butter churn. Spinning while diving was not a move Rachel had practiced, certainly not while carrying a rider. She paused and pictured it in her head, calculating the forces involved.