He stood up finally, holding it in his hand. It almost did prance—if I blinked fast enough: it turned its head toward me, shaking its mane and dancing on too many feet. Okay, maybe I was blinking too fast. Or maybe I shouldn’t have had that third mug of coffee for breakfast. There was a faint breath of sweet-smelling air against my cheek, like a little feathery or hairy foot had just brushed it.
Takahiro held the little paper thing out to me. “She’s for you,” he said. “I’ve been working on the pattern for her all summer and couldn’t get it right. I was going to show you and ask you to help me—maybe you could see something I was missing. But it was like seeing you this morning, I suddenly knew what to do. So I knew she was for you. But it’s been like she was trying to get through to me all summer. Nice perfume,” he added. He moved his hands to hold either end of his figure, pulled gently, and it—she—flattened out. “You can keep her in your knapsack,” he said.
It still took me about half a minute to raise my hand and touch her. I was pretty sure there was an almost-invisible something pattering down my arm—or some of an almost-invisible something de-accordioning down my arm—to meet her too. If Takahiro noticed anything funny about the shadows on my sleeve he didn’t say anything.
“Domo arigato,” I said faintly.
He nodded once as if whatever was happening was perfectly normal, hung his own knapsack over his shoulder, and left while I was still staring at my new mascot. I’d have to get Taks to show me how to make her. Maybe with him helping me I could do it while I was awake. Slowly I tucked her into another one of those sixty-seven weirdly shaped pockets you (usually) don’t need that every knapsack has, that I’d stuffed a lot of kami into earlier. Maybe I’d just discovered something. They’re all for holding origami. I should have thought of that before.
When I looked up from zipping my knapsack closed, trying to make myself think about algebra (ugh—and if I didn’t hurry now I was going to be late) . . . maybe it was that third mug of coffee again, or my natural resistance to thinking about algebra. But for a second—half a second—the quadratic exponential thingy of a second—everything went dark. At the same time that I knew it all happened in a fraction of a fraction of a second, I was also hovering, hanging, in the darkness for as long as it took half the stars in the universe to pull themselves together, shine like crazy, and blow up into nothingness again. There were other flashes in the darkness—like meteors or comets or something maybe—I don’t know. And. And something. Something shadowy in the darkness. While I hung, and there was nothing under my feet, and nothing holding me up.
I came back to myself with a little invisible hairy thing fanning my face like I’d had a touch of heatstroke. Not likely: it was cold enough this morning to see your breath outdoors. My first thought was that the lights must have flickered off and on again—which made me feel a little sick and scared because while there are lots of reasons for electrical outages, one of them is that a cobey is maybe opening somewhere near you. That was still preferable to anything else I could think of about what had just happened—including that Hix appeared to have noticed whatever it was.
It was ten o’clock in the morning and the sun was streaming in the big windows. Even if the lights had gone out you’d have barely noticed.
Mrs. Tarrant was standing beside me, frowning a little. “Are you all right?”
“Er—the lights didn’t just flash off and on, did they?” I said.
The frown deepened. “No. Maggie, don’t worry. NIDL are in Copperhill, the cobey has been contained, and they’re working to shut it down. By tomorrow everything will be back to normal.”
I could see her making her face stop frowning. She tried semi-successfully to smile. No, she hadn’t liked the news reports this morning either.
“It must have been that third cup of coffee at breakfast then,” I said. “Tomorrow I’ll have orange juice.”
“You do that,” she said. “Er—do you want a pass for the nurse?”
I thought about it. Yes. No. Algebra would still be there tomorrow. I sighed. “No. Thanks. It’s algebra next. I’d better get used to it.” She smiled. It was a better smile this time.
I picked up my knapsack—sliding the strap carefully onto my shoulder so I didn’t pinch anyone’s toes—and my monster algebra book, and left. There were a bunch of strange grown-ups wandering through the halls. They could have been new teachers I didn’t know but I didn’t think so. They didn’t walk or look around the right way for teachers—and they were too interested in the students. Most teachers get enough of students in class. They looked like plainclothes army goons to me. One of them stared right at me, like he was hoping I was carrying stolen goods so he could arrest me. Nope, just my algebra book.
And a shadow thing brought into the country by my mom’s new husband who had had all his magic taken away from him, except that he hadn’t.
There was another silverbug quivering a couple of feet from the ground under the tree outside the office. I could see it through the corridor windows. I aimed my phone at it and sent the coordinates in although half the school probably already had. Maybe the goons were watching to see how many of us were good citizens, and clicked it through. Did I get a point for responsibility, or minus a point for paranoia? Did the niddles have a scan for shadows?
• • •
I worried about my blackout the rest of the day. (Shadowy-darkness-out?) I pretty much missed algebra class without involving the nurse. I could see Ms. Dane’s mouth going and hear words like “polynomial” and “vector” but nothing got as far as my brain. (Not that my brain would know what to do with them even if they did.) I didn’t think the blackout had been the third mug of coffee. But then what was it? Shadowy had developed a whole new meaning in the last seven months—and a whole whole new meaning since last night. I put my hand up to my collarbone again, where something was tickling me. Had the big blackout thing been like one of Val’s shadows? Only a lot bigger? I didn’t think this one was friendly. He’d given them a name—gruuaa—but he’d avoided explaining what they really were, hadn’t he? He just said that Hix was friendly. I put my hand to my collarbone again. I caught Ms. Dane looking at me, and moved my hand to fiddle with my necklace.
And, speaking of what things were, what was Val? Was he still a magician? (How could you not know you were a magician? Or still a magician? It wasn’t like getting back on a bicycle and finding out you still could, was it?) I pulled my necklace a little too hard; if I wasn’t careful I’d break the cord. The tickle on the back of my hand got longer and slower, more emphatic and more rhythmic. Hix was (maybe) saying, There, there, it’s okay. Mom said the only suspicion she’d had about me was the way I got along with animals. Possibly including invisible shadowy animals with too many feet.
By the end of the day I was the kind of exhausted that I just wanted to go home—except that’s exactly what I didn’t want to do, because Val was there, and I didn’t know what I thought about him any more, except that everything was so complicated with him around. Him and his shadows, one of which had cleared off from the shadow mob and was now coiled around my neck. It had been easier hating him, and being sure the shadows were some kind of bad guy. As I pulled my jacket out of my locker Hix was humming again.
That Val had killed someone—that he’d killed his best friend—should have made him easier to hate. But it didn’t. I remembered his face, when he told us. I didn’t understand—I didn’t understand anything—but I understood how he’d been willing to have his magic taken away after that. How he’d wanted it taken away.
And how he was having a bad time too. And how some of it was my fault.
Jill wanted to hang out and I didn’t so I said I’d take the bus home. But I got to the bus stop and without realizing I’d made some other decision, kept walking. The park was not so far away that I would die carrying one million books and an old ’top (the new ones weighed less) in my knapsack
plus my dreeping algebra book in my arms.
By the time I got to the park gate my feet and shoulders were both starting to hurt, but I knew I wanted grass and trees and the river, and that it was worth a few blisters (probably). I walked in as far as I had to to find an empty bench beside a tree and collapsed, letting my knapsack drop onto the bench beside me. My algebra book slid off my lap onto the ground. I looked at it. I wondered what the chances were that it had landed in dog pee. Benches are big favorites with dogs. I picked it up gingerly. It now had a slightly bent-in spine corner. Well, the flastic thing weighed too much.
There was a bunch of little kids playing on the grass in the meadow. There were a few moms on a bench near them. I could hear the kids shouting, but they sounded farther away than they really were. I was probably light-headed from my beast-of-burden thing. I hoped that’s all it was. The river was over the little hill from where I was sitting; I’d get up in a minute. I’d come this far; I wanted running water. Running water was the classic protection against bad magic, right? Hix had wrapped herself way high up around my neck—since she didn’t weigh anything, presumably gravity didn’t bother her—maybe to get away from the knapsack straps. But she made me feel like I was wearing one of those Elizabethan ruff things, like in last year’s history of northwestern Oldworld textbook.
I thought about leaving my algebra book in a tree for the squirrels. It had to be the biggest, dumbest textbook ever made, this huge square thing. It looked like it should have legs holding it up and a lamp sitting on top of it. It had pretty fractal pictures on the cover, but it also said Enhanced Algebra in huge letters which wouldn’t go with most people’s décor. I was sure I was sinking into the ground with every step. I would weigh about a third less if I weren’t carrying it.
I worked my way back into my knapsack straps and then picked up Enhanced creepo Algebra and tried to figure out a way to make it ride comfortably against my chest. While I was wrestling with it I started to feel some kind of big solid silence pressing in on me from behind, almost as if attracted by my stupid textbook. Of course I was imagining it. No I was not imagining it . . . and silence was the wrong word anyway: I could hear the trees rustling in the breeze: shhh. Shhh. But the not-quite-silence was crowding up against me, spilling to either side of me, as real as a mugger or a silverbug mob. In a minute it would have reached out its arms far enough to wrap them—
I jumped forward and spun around—well, lurched around—holding my algebra book out like some kind of shield. There was a shadow as big as a forest bending over me—
I gasped and jerked back—and promptly overbalanced with the weight of my knapsack, almost as if it was trying to drag me out of harm’s way. Maybe the shadow bounced off my algebra-book shield too: by the time I stopped staggering and looked up again it wasn’t there any more. Maybe I imagined it? Like I couldn’t be sure I hadn’t imagined the blackout at school. My body thought there had been something: I was shivering with adrenaline. Hix seemed to have gathered herself together onto the top of my head as if on lookout.
And then my phone rang. I stood there with my phone going roop roop from my left hip: it’s the theme song from Sworddaughter. My hands were shaking as I fished for it. I didn’t recognize the number. I almost didn’t answer. As it went roop for the last time I pressed the button. “Hello?”
“Hello?” Casimir’s voice.
“Oh!” I said. I should have been thrilled to hear from him, but I wasn’t sure if I was or not. Had he mixed my phone number up with some other, cuter girl’s? Was he going to figure out his mistake in a minute and I’d have to try and pretend I didn’t notice and let him hang up? “Oh, um, hi!”
“It is a beautiful day,” said Casimir. “And the restaurant phoned me a few minutes ago and said I should come to work late. I thought I would walk along the river. I did not know if you are busy. Would you like to come for a walk? I could perhaps pick you up? I am sorry to give you no warning. I expect you have other things to do.”
He sounded tentative, even a little sad, like he was waiting for me to say no. No, for the other, cuter girl to say no. “I’d love to!” I blurted out before I had any more chance to think about it. To think about how totally intimidated I was going to feel all alone with the most gorgeous boy I’d ever seen (who would by then be being gruesomely polite to the wrong girl) and how I wasn’t going to be able to talk in complete sentences and he’d think I was a moron. And I had all this STUFF with me, which was so uncool as to be totally fatal. “I’m at the park now,” I said hastily, drowning out these thoughts and the pictures that were starting to appear with them, about me falling in the river or breaking his foot when I dropped my knapsack (or my algebra book) on it, or . . . “but my knapsack is full of books and weighs forty tons.”
“I will carry your knapsack,” said Casimir, and his voice was now all bright and shiny (as if I was the right girl). “Where are you?”
“I’m near the Willow Street entrance,” I said. “If you go straight up over the hill and down the other side, there’s the river. I’ll be there, by the red bridge.”
“I will see you in ten minutes,” said Casimir, and hung up.
CHAPTER 6
I FOUND I WAS SMILING, AND MY KNAPSACK DIDN’T weigh quite as much as it had a minute ago (maybe). I glared around as if daring any bad shadows to give me a hard time and then tottered up over the hill and down the other side and dumped my knapsack and algebra book on the riverbank. It was probably just the effort of climbing the hill with all this extra weight that was making the edges of my vision sparkle like everything was silverbugs. There weren’t any silverbugs. I stopped a couple of times to look around carefully.
I sat down on the bridge and put my feet over the edge and swung my legs back and forth and got my breath back. And tried to think up a few things to say to Casimir when he got here and then memorize them for when my mind went blank. Although probably the stuff I memorized would blank out too. I was staring dreamily into the water when there was a shadow moving at the edge of my vision. . . . I jerked my head up and it was Casimir walking toward me.
He had an amazing walk, or maybe it was just that I was already hopelessly crushing on him. You know that sort of half roll, half stalk that long-distance runners and tigers have? He had it too. As he walked toward me it was like the trees were framing him not because he was on the ordinary normal park path that had been cut through the trees, but because the trees were leaning back to give him space, like a crowd parts for a king.
At the same time . . . weren’t the trees framing him a little too well? They were just ordinary trees lining an ordinary path, right? Then why was it like he was walking down a tunnel of light through darkness—snaky, writhing, shadowy, bottom-of-the-abyss darkness. . . . No.
I yanked my eyes away from him and leaned down to haul up my knapsack. As I straightened again, Casimir was beside me, reaching out for the shoulder straps. I looked into his face and for a moment his eyes glinted like running water, like the surface of the river I’d just been looking at—like silverbugs—and his long curly hair seemed full of shadows.
He smiled, and his eyes were brown again, and his hair was just curly. Little springy bits of it had escaped the ponytail. “Hi,” he said.
“Hi,” I said, briefly riveted by his gorgeousness. He took the knapsack—swinging it up over his shoulder like it weighed nothing—and reached for my algebra book. I couldn’t let him carry everything while I minced along beside him like a . . . girl. “Thanks,” I said. “I’ll stick to this one.” He looked surprised.
“I have a new theory about algebra,” I said. “I’m going to learn it by osmosis.”
His face lit up in a fantastic grin and then we were more comfortable with each other. We turned and walked beside the river without saying any more. I knew my knapsack was a torture device but Casimir didn’t seem to be aware of it. I kept surreptitiously trying to rearrange the algebra book so
he wouldn’t notice I was struggling with it, but it didn’t want to rearrange, or anyway however I held it there was some corner that was digging into my ribs or my arm or my stomach. In another minute I was going to leave it for the squirrels.
What do you say to a gorgeous boy you’re trying not to look like a moron in front of? One of the things I’d thought of while I was sitting on the bridge was that I could ask him if he’d heard about the cobey in Copperhill. An interest in current events is a sign of a mature mind, right? And he hardly could not have heard about it, by now it was everywhere, first header on your pocket phone local news and the live billboard ribbons too, but it was better than saying, Gods, I could die for your dimples. So I asked.
He nodded. “But it is only one so far, right?”
Only? So far? I thought, clutched my shield-like algebra book, and didn’t think about deep lines like the one that ran between Copperhill and Station. I swallowed. “Only—one?”
“In Ukovia, we have them more often than you do here. You know this, yes? Oldworld has many more than you do.” He looked at me, but my mind had gone blank just like I’d been afraid it would.