Chapter 21
CHAPTER 21
Grandfather arrived early the next day. He, Professor Akhtar, and Professor Dunlop went straight to the Headmistress’s office, and they were still in there at lunchtime.
“I really wish we could listen to their conversation,” I moaned at lunch, pushing my mac and cheese around my plate with my fork.
“I mean… We could…” Bruce said slowly.
“What do you mean?” Aiden asked, leaning forward.
“My family built this castle. I grew up here as a child. There are hidden passageways you can’t even imagine,” Bruce explained. “And, if I recall correctly, there’s one that passes behind the Headmistress’s office with peep holes for eavesdropping.”
“Why haven’t you mentioned this before?” Paige demanded.
Now that her story—her shame, she called it—was told, she was a lot more relaxed. She even managed to sleep last night; I know, because I insisted that she stay in our room. It hadn’t managed to completely get rid of the dark circles under her eyes, or her skeletal gauntness, but she was looking a little healthier.
Bruce shrugged. “It wasn’t necessary.”
“It would have been nice to have advance warning about the manducare hunt,” Rhiannon muttered.
“How?” Bruce crossed his arms on the table. “We didn’t know it was likely to happen. I can’t exactly set up a recording device in my descendant’s office. We’d spend all our time combing through it for very little useful information.”
I waved my hands, drawing everyone’s attention. “The past doesn’t matter. Why aren’t we listening to them now ?”
“Right.” Bruce got to his feet, dusting his hands on his pants. He tilted his head. “Let’s go.”
In pairs, we left the mess hall, trying not to draw too much attention to ourselves. There were still some teachers who watched us suspiciously, Professor Wright among them.
I bit my lip nervously. “I’m worried that he thinks we still have Moonbeam,” I whispered to Aiden after we left the room.
“Nothing we can do about that,” Aiden said tensely. He nodded at Bruce, who was near the main doors of the academy.
Bruce knocked on a stone half-hidden behind one the statues and then ducked down, Clarissa following him.
We made eye contact with our other friends and silently agreed to continue down this path we had chosen.
We decided to become invisible before we all made our way through the secret passageway. If Bruce hadn’t shown us how to open the door, there was no way we could have seen it, but the rest of us didn’t need to be visible. Someone else might see us.
The passageway behind the stone wall was already dimly lit by Bruce’s magic.
“It should be tall enough that nobody bangs their heads, but I’ve never brought anyone as tall as you two through here,” Bruce said in a whisper, indicating Aiden and Brom. “Best to keep a hand in front of your face. The lights need to stay at our feet so we don’t announce our presence to anyone. Keep your voices down.”
I rolled my eyes. Of course we shouldn’t be talking.
Bruce nodded, dropped the lights to the ground and let them roll out in front of him. They barely cast enough light for us to see beyond the second one.
The press of people at the entrance to the passageway thinned out as our friends started to follow him deep into the hidden passage.
The dust was thick on the floor, tickling my nose. I held back a sneeze, my eyes watering. There were cobwebs, spiders, and other various creepy crawlies back here. They must come in through cracks somewhere.
I almost ran into Hazel’s back when she stopped abruptly. I peered around her to see that Bruce was pointing at a spot on the wall before continuing on a little further.
When I got to the spot he indicated, I saw a tiny hole. I fitted my eye to it, and could just make out the inside of the Headmistress’s office.
Professor Akhtar was busy explaining the ley lines with charts. He showed her my trick of turning the three-dimensional image flat, the spiral clear even to me in the hidden passageway.
I pulled back from the eyehole to blink in the dim corridor. My friends were at their own spy holes, eagerly watching what was unfolding in the office. I pressed my face against the wall again, trying to hear what was being said. It was faint, probably due to the thickness of the walls.
“As you can see, the block in the ley lines corresponds to the trajectory of the manducares,” Grandfather was saying. “We need to go and help them.”
“Manducares are dangerous creatures,” Headmistress Blackthorn insisted. “They should be wiped from existence.”
Grandfather frowned. “I expected a little more understanding from one of the greatest witches of our age.”
“They were designed for this exact purpose,” Professor Dunlop said.
“How do we know they weren’t part of the problem as well?” the headmistress said.
“Because the timelines don’t align!” Grandfather shouted. “We have the diary entries from over two thousand years ago, along with the scientific notes on the genetic manipulation that created the creatures—”
“Genetics weren’t known back then,” Headmistress Blackthorn interrupted triumphantly.
“Merlin’s hairy ballsack!” Grandfather swore loudly, throwing his hands in the air.
I bit my lip to keep from laughing.
“Akhtar, talk some sense into this woman. I can’t deal with illogical thinking.” My grandfather threw himself into a chair.
“As Declan has explained, Siobhan found diary entries in her grimoire, dating back to the last time the ley lines vanished. In their notes, they try several solutions to fix them, including creating these creatures. I know genetics weren’t a thing back then, they didn’t use that word. They bred the creatures the hard way, for specific traits, just like the monks did with the peas in Austria much later.” Professor Akhtar’s voice was calm, but I detected a bite of impatience. “Might I remind you that the Quran opens with descriptions of genetics, and it was written even earlier than the monk’s experiments with peas.”
“We are getting bogged down with semantics,” Professor Dunlop took over. “It doesn’t matter how, or when, these things took place. We have a problem, we have a solution, and we don’t actually need your permission to go to Australia to implement it. It would make it easier if we had your cooperation, but…” he trailed off.
“But I know about the manducare hoard,” Headmistress Blackthorn said, one hand at her throat.
“You do,” Grandfather said, bushy eyebrows furrowed. “What do you plan to do with that information?”
“I could tell the ministry,” she said.
“It’s out of their jurisdiction,” Professor Dunlop growled. “Their reach must have grown since I last dealt with them if they think they can wipe out an entire species on the other side of the world.”
“They can communicate with the Australian ministry, explain the situation,” the headmistress said frantically.
“Australia isn’t having an issue with the ley lines. Yet ,” Grandfather said forebodingly. “If we don’t act quickly, they’re going to have more trouble than they know what to deal with, and the manducare won’t be around to help if they’re all killed off.”
“They eat magic!” the headmistress whined. I’d never seen her so out of control like this. Professor Wright had really done a number on her. “We can’t let them live! We’d all be human in a few years!”
Grandfather scowled darkly. “You say ‘human’ like it’s a bad thing. At least we’d be alive. That’s not something the Australians will be able to say when the Gràineileachd wakes up.”
The headmistress scoffed. “Children’s stories.”
Professor Akhtar shook his head. “The kids put together quite the persuasive argument and have recorded histories from several different families. In this case, myth seems to be reality, not legend.”
“Not to mention that Paige actually saw the giant,” Professor Dunlop pointed out. “How can you be so obtuse?”
“She’s not,” Grandfather said wearily. “She’s terrified.” He got to his feet and crossed the office to stand in front of her, placing his hands on her shoulders. He spoke so quietly I had to strain to hear him, “Do you think we’re any less scared of what might happen if he wakes up? Help us prevent the catastrophe, please.”
I held my breath, hoping Headmistress Blackthorn would do the right thing.
“Declan,” she whispered, her head hung low, “I can’t put my reputation on the line based on the accusations of a bunch of students.”
“If you won’t call the ministry to help, at least come with us,” Professor Dunlop urged. “We could use a witch with your power.”
“I need to stay here and protect the academy,” she said.
Bruce scoffed, and Grandfather’s head snapped up, looking at the wall suspiciously.
I bit my lip, suddenly worried that he could see right through the wall to us in the corridor beyond. It was a simple spell, one that Rhiannon had modified to show me the bones of creatures. I signaled to the others silently, and we started creeping back along the corridor.
After leaving the hidden passageway, we gathered together in a huddle.
“What are we going to do?” Paige whispered.
“It looks like we’re going anyway, even without the blessing of the academy,” Bruce said grimly. “Well, if Ophelia won’t give her blessing, I will.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“It’s a Quest with a capital ‘Q’, right? Well, there are steps that can be performed to give those going on it a bit of a boost, as it were.” Bruce shrugged. “Only a Blackthorn can perform the blessing, since we are bonded to the academy. I can still feel the tether in my bones, so even though I’m not the headmaster, I can bless us.”
“Fascinating,” Professor Dunlop drawled from behind us. “Declan, it seems you were correct. They were eavesdropping.”
We turned to the older men. My cheeks flushed with embarrassment.
“Sorry, Grandfather,” I murmured. “We were anxious.”
“We understand your intent,” Grandfather said. “But I don’t appreciate your lack of trust. How much did you overhear?”
“She’s not going to give her blessing. She’s going to tell the ministry about the pod of manducare heading toward Australia.” I felt frustrated tears on my cheeks. “She doesn’t believe us.”
“She won’t tell the ministry anything,” Professor Dunlop said gruffly.
“What do you mean, Sir?” Aiden asked.
Professor Akhtar shook his head. “We can’t afford the distraction that holding off the Australian ministry would cause. We had to take drastic measures.”
My eyes widened, alarmed.
“Not fatal ones,” Grandfather reassured us. “We put her to sleep.”
“Now, what’s this blessing Bruce was talking about?” Professor Akhtar said. “I had thought it was something that was just said, not an actual spell.”
“No, it’s a real thing,” Bruce confirmed. “It was put in place when the castle was first built, and tied to my bloodline. Are we ready to go now? It’ll last for the duration of our quest, but only if we leave within half an hour of the blessing. It’s draining, for both the caster and the academy.”
Everyone exchanged glances.
“The portal to the Australian Academy should be available to use,” Professor Dunlop said.
Grandfather consulted a tablet that he pulled out of his pocket. “We need to arrive soon. The manducare pod has reached Australian airspace.”
I peeked around his shoulder to stare at the tablet screen. It looked exactly like radar tracking, the outline of the country visible in green on a black background, with green circles expanding out from a point in the middle of it. A blob of reddish-yellow was moving slowly in the top right corner. “Is that where we’re going?” I asked, pointing at the center of the circles.
“Close. That’s Ayers Rock. I wasn’t certain where the cave Paige described was located, but it’s close to the rock, so I used that as a guide.”
“Then those would be the manducare,” Aiden said, pointing at the moving blob. “There’s a lot of them.”
“We should—” I cut myself off guiltily, glancing from one professor to the other.
“You need to collect your pet,” Professor Akhtar said gently. “It will be the best time to return her to her family.”
“Not to mention we can’t leave her here unprotected,” Professor Dunlop agreed grimly. “I’ll go with you, Aiden, in case you run into trouble. The rest of you should head to the second floor.”
“We’re going to class?” I asked incredulously.
“There’s a room that will lead us to the heart of the academy,” Bruce explained. “For the blessing.”
“Right.”
Aiden and Professor Dunlop joined us quickly, and I breathed a sigh of relief that they hadn’t been stopped. We all entered the room at the same time. It was squished between two offices, so I expected it to be tiny, but there must have been some kind of dimensional magic on it, because the room was massive.
In the center was a circular table with an open space in the middle.
“This is the funniest part of the whole blessing. I wish we could have watched Ophelia vault herself into the space,” Bruce said with a chuckle. He hopped onto the edge of the table, swung his legs around, and slid into the opening. “Gather ‘round, everyone. One hand on the table please.”
Bruce waited until we were in place before putting his hands on the table, which immediately began to glow blue.
“These adventurers are about to embark on a Quest, to find and defeat a giant. On behalf of the Blackthorn Academy, I grant them its blessing, that they return safely, having accomplished their goal,” Bruce said solemnly. “Do you accept this blessing?”
“I do,” I said in chorus with everyone else.
“It is done.” At his words, the blue light traveled up our arms to settle in our chests.
I blinked in surprise. The light didn’t feel like anything, and it vanished once it reached its destination.
“Does this mean you don’t have the blessing?” I asked, once I realized the light had whooshed away from him.
“That’s right. Ophelia giving the blessing would have been better,” Bruce said.
“It’s not safe for you to come with us,” Professor Dunlop said with a frown.
“Psh. You need all the help you can get.”
“He’s right,” Professor Akhtar said. “But forcing you to stay behind isn’t an option. We’re wasting time. Let’s go.”
Moonbeam leapt out of Aiden’s arm onto the table. She stalked around it, her tail twitching, eyes fixed on Bruce in the center.
“Uh…” he said. “Nice kitty?”
Moonbeam sat down in front of him stretching out her neck until her face was directly in front of his.
“Aiden,” Bruce said out of the corner of his mouth. “Get your cat and let’s go.”
Just as Aiden stretched out his hand to grab her, Moonbeam coughed as if she was hacking up a hairball and a bright blue ball of light exploded out of her mouth.
It hovered in the space between the manducare and witch, before diving into Bruce’s chest like it belonged there.
Satisfied, Moonbeam batted at Bruce’s cheek and then sauntered back to Aiden.
“Well, that settles that,” Grandfather said. “Australia, here we come.”