2.2
“Show me how the fingers go again?” I asked.
Now, at the kitchen table late at night, I tried myself.
I joined my right index finger and my ring finger together and made the small, tight circle Mr.
Wells had shown me; I whispered the Old English word over the knot.
It didn’t take, of course.
I hadn’t expected it to. There were a thousand variables—the size of the circle, the pitch of the whisper, the tension in the muscles. The only sure way to learn it was to do it right once, find the feel of it, and keep trying to replicate it until it was perfect.
I tried again.
And again.
By the end of the first hour my fingers ached and my throat was sore.
I kept trying.
I wasn’t afraid anymore.
It truly was magic that held my brother.
As terrifying as it was, that meant one important thing: Magic was real.
It was real, and that meant that things could be fixed after all.
Matthew was cursed—curses, every fairy tale told me, could be broken.
I could break it, whatever it cost.
It meant another thing too.
It meant that I could learn magic.
And that, though I hardly dared to think it, was a doorway to more than just teaching.
That opened a whole new world.
By the end of the summer, I was ready.
Anything I can do, you need only to ask.
Mr.
Wells had said that, and even though he’d never come back, I knew that he had meant it.
I found his address in the drawer where Mum kept old correspondence from her relatives.
I wrote to him that very night, short and businesslike, assuring him that nothing was wrong but I had a personal favour to ask of him the next time he chose to visit the house. A week or so later a letter came back from him, expressing his regret that he would be unable to visit in the foreseeable future. He would, however, be doing some business nearby in two weeks, if I wouldn’t mind travelling to meet him for lunch. Enclosed in the envelope was a round-trip train ticket to Manchester.
Mum wasn’t at all sure.
I don’t know what bothered her more—the magical world, or the idea of me travelling to the city by myself to meet a man we barely knew.
It was my turn to appeal to Matthew to convince her, trying to suppress the guilty memory of where my efforts on his behalf had put him.
He managed it, too, though he came out shaking his head with the same half-mischievous, half-chagrined air I remembered from the time I was ten and he had taken me with him into the pub on Friday night.
“Don’t push her too far, all right?”
he said.
“You have to remember how this place can be about witchcraft.”
Our farm wasn’t far from Pendle Hill, where twelve people were accused of witchcraft during the Lancaster Assizes in 1612.
Superstition clung to the hill like shreds of cobweb—it was the site of visions and visitations, encounters with fae and with devils.
I knew even then that most of it had little to do with real magic, only fear.
Still, I took Matthew’s warning to heart.
With my mother, fear was almost as dangerous as a curse, and just as inconvenient.
I had been to Manchester only a handful of times in my life, and never since the war.
It startled me: its size, its redbrick solidity, its rattlings and its shouts and its smoke.
It seemed in a constant state of construction, exciting and chaotic all at once.
The restaurant to which Mr.
Wells escorted me was startling in a different way. It was sleek and white and modern, its marble-and-glass interior defying the city outside to smudge it. We sat on plush chairs at a window overlooking the retail district, and I knew that whatever would be put in front of me would cost enough to feed my family for a week.
Mr.
Wells looked the same as he had those few months ago—a little rounder and better rested, perhaps, with his suit sitting more comfortably on his shoulders.
He apologised for making me come out to the city.
It was, he said, difficult for him to get time away from his work, and I knew at once that he was lying without knowing why.
I decided to come out with it quickly.
“You told me you learned how to counter faerie curses at a university,”
I said, after the waiter had given us our soups and left.
“A magic university.”
“Camford,”
he confirmed.
“Or the Cambridge-Oxford University of Magical Scholarship, to give its proper title.”
The name bewildered me momentarily.
“Is it at Oxford or Cambridge?”
“Neither.
Both.
Very few people know where Camford itself is situated.
Wales, possibly, or Scotland.
It’s a closely kept secret—most of the magical universities are the same. There are two doors, one at Oxford and one at Cambridge. You pass through one or the other to get there.”
I nodded, as if this was the kind of information I received every day.
“And it’s where people like you go to learn magic?”
“It’s where most of the sons of magical Families go when they turn eighteen or so, yes.
Most learn very little there, it must be confessed, but it’s the custom, and some do stay on to be scholars.
I didn’t graduate myself.
I left after my first year to sign up, and I couldn’t face going back. Why?”
“I want to go there,”
I said.
“Camford.
I want to learn magic.
I want to be a scholar.”
“Ah.”
He had just raised his spoon; he set it down and touched the napkin to his mouth on reflex.
“May I ask why?”
“Many reasons.”
He kept waiting, cautious and courteous.
“First and foremost, because Matthew needs help.
He can’t keep living like this.
It isn’t fair.”
Mr.
Wells’s face tightened, as at some sudden pain.
“Has he said that?”
“No, of course not.
I do.
I see what he’s going through every day.
And he isn’t the only one, is he? There were others struck by faerie curses in that battle.”
“There were,”
he agreed, still cautious.
“Very few are still alive, however, and it won’t happen again.
The Families across Europe made an accord after the war—no more faerie magic.
The doors between our world and faerie country have been locked for good.
Too little, too late, but still…”
“But still,”
I countered.
I hadn’t known that, of course, but I was determined not to remind Mr.
Wells just how little I knew.
I was afraid, in an abstract way, that it would put him off helping me to learn more.
“It doesn’t help Matthew. And that’s what I want to do. If he were injured in the usual fashion, I might train to be a doctor or a chemist. That won’t be of any use in this case. He needs magic.”
“He does, I agree.
But—forgive me, I don’t mean any offence.
I just want to be clear.
I’m not sure he needs magic from you .
I’m not sure such a thing would even be possible.”
It was no less than I had expected, yet it still stung.
I drew a deep breath, making sure none of the hurt found its way to my voice.
“Mr. Wells—”
“Sam,”
he interrupted.
“Please.
I grew used to ‘Private Wells’ in the army.
Mr.
Wells sounds peculiar.”
“Sam,”
I amended.
“You did tell me, when you first came, that anyone could learn magic.
I know people from outside the magical Families would never normally attend Camford—”
“I wouldn’t say never,”
he interrupted, yet again.
Normally I would grit my teeth at that; from Sam, though, it didn’t feel dismissive.
I could see he was ill at ease, and he was one of those people whose tongue runs away with them in such times.
“There have been cases of people discovering our secret, just as you have, and attempting the entrance exam.
Some have succeeded. Never a woman, though. There are few women scholars at Camford even from the Families. It’s a stuffy old place at times, very set in its ways. It’s expensive, too, like any prestigious university.”
I appreciated the delicacy.
He must have known we were poor as church mice.
“Don’t they have scholarships? Other universities do.”
“Well, yes.
Most of them are for postgraduate study, though—prizes.
The top five graduating students in each year, for instance, receive the Merlin Scholarship, and that pays their way through a doctorate.
The only scholarships to enter Camford at first year are hardship benefits, and they’re rarely claimed.
Most magical Families are wealthy, or at least would rather not attend at all than admit they weren’t.”
“I’m not wealthy,”
I said.
“And I don’t mind admitting it.”
That wasn’t quite true—I had a healthy degree of pride, as well as trepidation at the thought of how such people might look upon someone like me.
I wouldn’t let it stop me, though.
“It isn’t so simple.
They don’t give such scholarships out of the goodness of their hearts.
It would require you to not only pass the entrance exam but pass among the very top.”
“I’d be one of the few who were truly trying, if magical Families are so wealthy.”
“They won’t need to try to outperform you.
You don’t understand.
Anyone can learn magic, Miss Hill, there’s no denying that.
The truth is, though, those from outside the Families find it very difficult.
I don’t know why—nobody does—but for some reason, if it isn’t in the blood—”
“I learned the spell you showed me.”
I thought it was only fair I took my turn to interrupt.
“The binding spell.”
That made him pause, curious, on the edge of sceptical.
“Show me?”
I glanced around the restaurant, at the people eating their food and laughing.
“Oh, it’s quite safe,”
Sam assured me, following my gaze.
“This is a Family restaurant.
You probably didn’t notice the spell I performed at the door before we came in? If I hadn’t done it, this would have opened to a very old-fashioned shoe store.
We can do any magic we like without breaking the code of secrecy.”
“Nobody else seems to be.”
He laughed pleasantly.
“Why would they? I daresay there’s some magic being employed in the kitchens.
Everyone here is busy eating. Here.”
He took up the cloth napkin in front of him, tied it in the middle, and slid it across the table to me.
“Bind that, if you don’t mind.
I’d like to see it.”
I tried to make it look simple, effortless, as though magic came as naturally to me as breathing and not at all as though I had practiced for hours every night for months until my voice was hoarse and my hands cramped and my head throbbed.
I was so nervous that my fingers were stiff and clumsy, and I feared my voice had trembled at the wrong moment.
It felt as though my future were hanging on that one incantation, the only one I knew.
Sam picked up the napkin, tugged it experimentally.
His eyebrows rose above his spectacles.
“That’s very good,”
he said.
“Impeccable.
You must understand, though, the students from Families have been doing magic since they were children.”
“I’ll keep up, I promise.”
Hope flared in my chest.
He had sounded impressed.
“I’ll work as hard as I need to.”
“I believe you, truly.
I’m simply trying to make you understand how hard that will need to be, and that even your hardest might not be enough.
Do you really want to go down this path, considering?”
“I want to help my brother,” I said.
“I do understand that.”
I saw that flash of pain across his face again.
“But scholars have been working on faerie curses for a long time.
Believe me, if anything new is discovered, I’ll make it available to you straight away.
It’s unlikely, though, to come from—”
“Me,”
I finished, when he looked awkward.
“A woman from a nonmagical family.
Nobody special.”
“Clover, believe me, I have heard all about you from your brother,”
Sam said.
“I know you’re special.
I know all of you are.
Still, the lack of experience and the, well, the advantage one gets from magical blood…”
“Perhaps I am unlikely to help Matthew,”
I said, because I could get nowhere by arguing.
“Even so, I want to learn magic.”
“Why?”
he repeated.
“Let’s set Matthew aside for a moment.
Suppose it transpires that your brother can’t be helped, that however hard you study, you will make no material difference to his condition.
Would you still want it?”
“Yes.”
The answer came so swiftly I surprised even myself.
“More than anything.”
“Because…?”
“Because I’ve lived my entire life wanting to get away from my home and learn about the world.”
The words came easily in the end, the ones I had never planned to say.
The ones I had been ashamed to admit to, lying in bed late at night in a house filled with dearly loved people who needed me.
“I wanted to study to be a teacher because that was the only use I could see for education that didn’t feel selfish, that I could use to earn a living and help my family.
We could never have afforded to send me to a real university, even if one would take me.
But if I can pass the entrance exams to Camford near the top, then everything would be paid for. That’s right, isn’t it?”
“That’s right,”
Sam said slowly.
“If you passed near the top.”
“I can.
I know I can.
If I can learn Latin and Greek and geometry, I can learn magic.
I proved that, didn’t I? I taught myself that spell on my own. And—”
“And?”
Sam prompted gently when I hesitated.
“And I loved it.”
I hadn’t meant to say that either.
I wanted to appeal to his reason, to argue my case on its own merits.
It just came from me, because it was true.
“When it worked—when I did that—I’ve never felt anything like it before.
Like the universe was pure light, and I could run it through my fingers and stir it about like water.”
That was only a frustrating shadow of what I meant.
When I looked at Sam, though, something in his face had shifted.
“Do you understand?”
“I do,”
he said simply.
“Any of us would.”
I felt the bubble of hope grow stronger.
“I know you’ve already saved Matthew’s life.
You owe us nothing—”
“I owe your family everything.”
This interruption I didn’t mind at all.
“More than you know.
Of course I’ll help if I can.
You never know, after all.
With the proper tutelage, you might learn a great deal in the next year or so. And I work for the Board of Magical Regulation now—I’ll ask around and see if I can dig up any scholarships that most won’t know about. We’ll give it our very best shot.”
He hesitated.
“How is your brother?”
“All right,”
I said.
“Tired.
The last midnight was hard on him.”
I wish I could say I didn’t know then what I was doing, and on some level I truly didn’t, but I wasn’t surprised when I saw Sam wince.
I was more skilled at manipulation than I admitted, even then.
“I’ll help,”
Sam repeated.
“I promise.”
We finished our meal in silence broken only by pleasantries, and he walked me back to the train station afterwards.
He offered to take me to the Manchester Museum, which I had never seen, but I explained I had to be home to help with the sheep at night.
“Why don’t you come and visit us?”
I asked him on impulse.
He seemed so wistful as the train pulled up, and he had been so kind.
“Matthew hasn’t seen you since he was hurt.”
“Perhaps I will,”
he said, and I knew that, for whatever reason, he wouldn’t.
“Either way, you’ll certainly hear from me.”
Within a week, a letter arrived for me in the post.
It gave me the name and address of a house about an hour on horseback from our farm, and told me a witch was expecting me.
She owes my family a debt , he said.
Besides, I believe you’ve rather intrigued her.
Her name is Lady Anjali Winter—her husband was killed in the war.
If you go to study with her once a week, she’ll give you the benefit of her knowledge.
She also has an extensive library, though you may find the books outdated. If by next summer she thinks you ready, you may sit the Camford entrance exam. Do let me know if there’s anything more I can do, and give my best regards to your brother.
I did go to study with Lady Winter.
I’ll have more to say about her later—at the time, I’m not sure I saw her properly, as scared and in awe and utterly focused on magic as I was.
For an hour each week, she taught me basic spellcraft, theory, history, and folklore.
In between lessons I practiced harder than I had ever practiced anything before.
I immersed myself in books from her library, wrote essay after essay, tried spells over and over until I hit them perfect every time. I kept my eyes on my work, and I never looked up.
In the summer of 1920 I journeyed to Manchester again, this time to meet a red-faced, disgruntled mage and be ushered into a small room.
One hour of writing and two of practical tasks later, red-faced myself now and wrung dry with exhaustion, I was informed that I could start at Camford in September, on full scholarship.