Wonders of the Invisible World (29 page)

Averil’s violet eyes skewed in horror toward her squalling baby brother, whose tonsils were visible. He had just turned four, a skinny, noisy, mindless bundle of mischief and energy who Averil seriously doubted was quite right in the head.

“Sorry, Mom.” She grabbed her book bag hastily. After all, her mother had nothing else to do. “I have group study after school.”

“Averil—”

“Mom, it’s important! I’m good at my studies—one of the best in a decade, Miss Braeburn says. She thinks I can get a full scholarship to the University of Ancient Arts if I keep up my grades. That’s why we moved here, isn’t it? Anyway, my friends are waiting for me.” Something in her mother’s expression, not unlike the mingling of admiration and despair that Averil’s presence caused in less gifted students, made her round the table quickly, trying not to clout Felix with her book bag, and breathe a kiss on her mother’s cheek. “Ask me again after Naming Day. I might have time then.”

She discussed the situation with her friends, Deirdre and Tamara and Nicholaus, as they walked to school.

“My mother should understand. After all, she almost graduated from Oglesby herself. She knows how hard we have to work.”

“She did?” Nicholaus queried her with an inquisitive flash of rimless spectacles. “Why didn’t she graduate? Did she fail her classes?”

Averil shrugged. “She told me she left to get married.”

“Quaint.”

“Well, she couldn’t stay in school with me coming and all the students’ practice spells flying around. I might have come out as a ruffled grouse, or something.”

Deirdre chuckled, and made a minute adjustment to the butterfly pin in her wild red hair. “Baby brothers are the worst, aren’t they? Mine are such a torment. They put slugs in my shoes; they color in my books; they’re always whining, and they smell like boiled broccoli.”

Tamara, who was taller than all of them and moved like a dancer, shook her sleek black hair out of her face, smiling. “I like my baby brother, but then he’s still a baby. They’re so sweet before they grow their teeth and start having opinions.”

Averil murmured absently, her eyes on the boy with the white-gold hair waiting for her at the school gates. She drew a deep, full breath; the air seemed to kindle and glow through her. “There’s Griffith,” she said, and stepped forward into her enchanted world, full of friends, and challenges within the craggy, dark walls of the school, and Griffith with his high cheekbones and broad shoulders, watching her come.

Someone else watched her, too: a motionless, silent figure on the grass within the wrought-iron fence. An intensity seemed to pour out of him like a spell, drawing at her until, surprised, she took her eyes off Griffith to see who the stranger was.

But it wasn’t a stranger, only Fitch, who blinked at the touch of her eyes, and drew back into himself like a turtle. She waved anyway, laughing a little, her attention already elsewhere.

In her classes, Averil got a perfect score conjugating Latin verbs, correctly pronounced a rune which made Dugan Lawler believe he was a parrot, and, with Griffith, was voted best in class for their history project, which traced the legendary land on which Oglesby stood back through time to the powerful forest of oak trees under which early students were taught their primitive magic. She and Griffith pretended to be teacher and student; they actually reproduced some of the ancient spells, one of which set fire to Mr. Addison’s oak cane and turned on the overhead sprinklers. Averil suspected the ensuing chaos was responsible for the popularity of their project. But Mr. Addison, after mending his cane and drying the puddles with some well-chosen words, complimented them on their imaginative interpretation of ancient history.

After school, she and Griffith, Nicholaus, Tamara, and Deirdre went to Griffith’s house to study. The place was huge, quiet, and tidy, full of leather-bound books and potted plants everywhere. Griffith had no siblings; his parents were both scholars and understood the importance of study. His mother left them alone with a tray of iced herbal tea and brownies in the dining room; they piled their books on the broad mahogany table and got to work.

Later, when they had finished homework and quizzed each other for tests, talk drifted to the all-important Naming Day.

“I can’t decide,” Averil sighed, sliding limply forward in her chair and enjoying the reflection of her long ivory hair on the dark, polished wood. “Has anyone chosen a name, yet?”

Tamara had, and Nicholaus. Deirdre had narrowed it down to two, and Griffith said he had had a secret name since he was seven. So they could all give their attention to Averil.

“I thought: something to do with air?” she began tentatively. “Wind?”

“Windflower,” Griffith said promptly, making her blush.

“Windhover,” Tamara offered. Averil looked blank; she added, “It’s a falcon.”

“I don’t think I’m a falcon. More like a—well, something white.”

“Snow goose?” Deirdre suggested practically. “Nobody would ever guess that.”

“Swan, of course,” Nicholaus said. “But that’d be too obvious. How about egret? Or I think there’s a snowy owl—”

Averil straightened. “Those aren’t really names, are they? Not something really personal that defines me.”

“What about a jewel?” Tamara said. “A diamond?”

“Pearl,” Griffith said softly, smiling a little, making Averil smile back.

“Something,” she agreed, “more like that.”

It was all so interesting, trying to find the perfect name for Averil, that nobody remembered the time. Griffith’s mother reminded them; they broke up hastily, packing away books and pens, winding long silk scarves around their throats, prognosticating cold suppers and peeved parents.

“Stay,” Griffith said to Averil, making a spell with his caramel eyes so that Averil’s feet stuck to the threshold.

“Well—”

“Stay for supper. My parents are going out. I’ll cook something.”

“I should call—”

“Call your mother. Tell her we’re working on a project.”

“But we’re not,” Averil objected; true wizards did not need to lie.

“We are,” he said, with his bewitching smile. “Your name.”

Averil got home later than even she considered marginal for excusable behavior. Fortunately, her father was already being taken to task for his own lateness, and Averil only got added to the general list of complaints. Still enchanted, she barely listened.

“You don’t realize—” her mother said, and, “No consideration—”

“Sorry, dear,” her father said soothingly. “I should have called, but I kept thinking we’d get the work finished earlier.”

“Stone cold dinner—”

“Sorry, Mom,” Averil echoed dutifully.

“If I don’t get a moment to myself, I’m going to—”

“After Naming Day, I promise.”

“Now, dear, he’s barely four. He’ll settle down soon enough. Take him to the park or something.”

Her mother made a noise like cloth ripping, the beginning of tears. Her father opened his arms. Averil let her book bag fall to the floor and drifted away, thinking of Griffith’s farewell kiss.

She escaped out the door without breakfast the next morning after allowing her mother, who was on the phone pleading with a baby-sitting service, a brief glimpse of her face. At the table, Felix was upending a cereal box over his bowl.

“Bye, Mom.”

“Averil—”

“See you, but don’t know when. There might be a celebration later. It’s Naming Day.”

“Av—Felix!”

Averil closed the door to the sound of a gentle rain of Fruitie Flakes all over the floor.

She was halfway down the block, already searching the flowing current of students for Griffith’s white-gold hair, when she remembered her book bag. It was still on the living room floor where she had dropped it; escaping the morning drama in the kitchen had taken up all her attention. She turned back quickly, trying to make herself invisible so that her mother wouldn’t start in again at the sight of her. I am wind, she told herself, pulling open the apartment building door. I am...spindrift.

Spindrift! There was a name, she realized triumphantly, running up the two flights of stairs rather than wait for the elevator. White as swans’ feathers, a braid of wind and wave and foam, always graceful, never predictable.... She flung the door open, leaving it wide for a hasty escape, and as she rushed in, something shot past her so fast it left only a vague impression of gnarly limbs and light in her eyes before it vanished out the door.

“My wand!”

The screech hit Averil like a spell; she skidded to a stop. This wasn’t her apartment, she saw, appalled. She had barged through the wrong door. And there was this—this huge, ancient and incredibly ugly thaumaturge-thing, a witch or crazed wizard, seething at her from behind a cauldron bubbling over a firebed on her living room floor.

“You let my greyling out!”

“I’m sorry,” Averil gasped. Plants crawling up the walls, across the ceiling, whispered with their enormous leaves and seemed to quiver with horror.

“Well, don’t just stand there like a gape-jawed booby, get it back!

Averil closed her mouth, tried to retrieve some dignity. “I’m sorry,” she repeated. Her voice wobbled in spite of herself. “I have to get to school. I just came back for my book bag, and I must have gone up an extra floor.” She took a step, edging back toward the door. “I’ll just—Your greyling is probably downstairs; I’ll just go see. I won’t let it get out of the front door, I promise.”

Up the stairwell behind her came the distinct rattle of a heavy door fitting its locks and hinges and frame back into place as it closed. The old witch seemed to fill like a balloon behind her cauldron. Her tattered white hair stiffened; her eyes, like thumbprints of tar in her wrinkled skin, slewed and glinted.

“You get my greyling. You get my wand.”

“I haven’t time!”

“You let them out. You bring them back.”

“I have classes! It’s my Naming Day!” Even a senile old bag like that must have anticipated her own Naming Day once. If things had names that long ago. “You must remember how important that is.”

“You. Get. My. Wand.”

“All right, okay,” Averil gabbled; anything to get out the door.

The witch’s murky eyes narrowed into slits. “Until you bring me back my wand and my greyling, you will be invisible. No one will see you. No one will hear your voice. Until you bring me my greyling and my wand, even your own name will be useless to you.”

“I don’t have time.” Averil’s voice had gone somewhere; she could barely whisper. “I have to get to school.”

“Then you’d better start looking.”

“You can’t do that!” Her voice was back suddenly, high and shrill, like a whistling teakettle. “I’m at the top of my class! My teachers will come looking for me! Griffith will rescue me!”

“Go!”

She couldn’t tell if she moved, or if the word itself blew her out the door; it slammed behind her, echoing the witch’s voice. She stood in the hall a moment, trembling and thoughtless. Then she took a sharp breath—“The greyling!”—and precipitated herself down the stairs two at a time, on the off-chance that the witch’s familiar still lurked in the hallway below.

Of course it was nowhere in sight.

Averil plunged out the door, trying wildly to look every direction at once. What exactly was a greyling? She racked her brains; nothing leaped to mind from her Legendary Creatures class. Did it like water? High tree limbs? Caves? Could it speak? She hadn’t a clue. A jumble of pallid, root-like limbs and a sort of greeny-yellow light were all she remembered. The one must be the greyling, the other the pilfered wand. She hoped desperately that the greyling wouldn’t have the power to use it.

A familiar figure crossed the street toward the school. “Tamara!” Averil shouted with relief. Tamara’s long stride didn’t falter. She called out to someone herself; her voice seemed small, distorted, like words heard from under water. Ahead of her, a dark head turned; spectacles flashed. “Nicholaus!” Averil cried, hurrying toward them. “Tamara!”

Neither of them heard. They greeted one another, and then Deirdre caught up with them, red hair flying. They chattered excitedly, finally turning to survey the street where surely they would see, they must see Averil running toward them, yelling and waving her arms.

Their faces grew puzzled. A bell tolled once, reverberations overlapping with exaggerated slowness. It was the warning bell; those outside the gates at First Bell would be locked out. The three moved again, quickly. In the distance, Averil could see Griffith, just within the gates, waiting for them, for her.

However fast she followed, they were always faster. As though, she thought, breathlessly sprinting, they were always in the next moment, a slightly different beat in time; she could never quite catch up. She stopped finally with a despairing cry as her friends passed through the gates; they seemed farther away than ever. They spoke to Griffith; he shrugged a little, then pointed toward a high window, where their first class would begin. Maybe Averil’s there, his gesture said. First Bell tolled three times. The gates began to close. As the last students jostled inside, Averil noticed one face still peering through the bars, searching the streets. Fitch, she recognized glumly. And then even he turned away, went up the broad stone steps into the school.