Ellsbeth
The College of the Arcane Arts at Newlyn was almost its own university within the university, with a cluster of buildings on the west side of campus curled around a grassy courtyard like a dragon around its hoard.
Hale Hall took up nearly one entire side of the quad, a stately granite-and-brownstone structure with a striped roof that peaked in a gothic point and tall, narrow windows.
The Practicum, for graduate students, was across the way, behind a small thicket of heritage elm trees. It had no windows at all.
Though Newlyn University had a respectable reputation as an undergraduate school, it was home to one of the most elite graduate programs for arcane arts in the world—certainly the best program in the United States, next to Yale.
“How do you know? Last I heard, you’re studying French. And dance.”
“He’s famous,” Bertie said, thumbing through the book. “Or he was. They brag about it in the school brochures and stuff. Come on. It’s cool that he’s at Newlyn.”
“I mean, sure,” Ellsbeth said. “But I’m pretty sure he went to Cambridge.” Bertie flipped to the back of the book for an About the Author section that she read silently, then scowled and threw the book down onto the bed beside her.
Had Bertie been so insistent on getting Ellsbeth to join her at Newlyn because she was lonely?
Because she needed her sister? There were so many moments that Ellsbeth replayed in her mind, trying to make sense of what happened.
It was like trying to complete a puzzle, but the pieces were soggy and torn and dissolving in her hands.
In the end, Ellsbeth had not gone to Cambridge.
Ellsbeth had sat for her one and only Arcanus that winter, and she had failed, destroying any possible future she would ever have as an arcanist, the only thing she had ever wanted to be.
And when she flew home to New Jersey the next time, Bertie wasn’t there.
Her clothes were sealed in vacuum-packed plastic and her bedroom door remained shut.
“Do you think we’re actually going to, like, do arcane mechanicals?” A girl in expensive leggings and a ponytail so tight it pulled at her temples was practically vibrating with excitement as the mass of students slowly pressed forward into the lecture hall itself.
Ellsbeth snorted. She couldn’t help herself. The girl shot her a look. “This is a freshman lecture,” Ellsbeth said. “You’ll be lucky if they pass around a piece of compounding clay at the end of the semester just so you can feel it in your hands. This is going to be all theory and basic math.”
The Ponytail Girl continued glaring at Ellsbeth, and now her friend beside her was glaring, too. “How do you know?”
“I mean, it’s kind of obvious. What? You’re really expecting T. M. Rawlins to let a bunch of eighteen-year-olds start doing bone-bindings?”
“Okayyyyy,” the girl’s friend said. “You don’t have to be such a bitch about it.” The two of them, muttering and shooting further dark glances back at Ellsbeth, found seats near the front of the room.
The lecture hall echoed with chatter and the shuffling of books and feet as Ellsbeth slipped into an open seat on the right side of the room, six rows back.
It was an older classroom, with its front wall lined with green chalkboards from the floor to the ceiling (and another layer of chalkboards hidden behind the first, accessible via a system of ropes and pulleys).
The students sat in ascending rows, forced to squeeze into uncomfortably small wooden chairs with attached desks.
Ellsbeth absently wished she had worn a less conspicuous sweater.
Surely Rawlins wouldn’t be able to count visually and see that there was an additional student in the lecture hall, but it seemed unwise to have chosen a red wool jumper.
There was no need to draw any additional attention to herself; she was already irrationally certain that there was something indelible about her that made it obvious she didn’t belong here.
Her age, yes, but also her sadness. She had lived what felt like a thousand lives in the months since Bertie died.
The students around her felt like children.
And then, as if cued by a conductor, the chatter in the hall stopped in an instant. From a small door behind the podium, Rawlins had appeared, and the room was silent.
The handsome boy from the photo in his book was still visible, but he was graying at the temples of his hairline, which was receding into a deep widow’s peak that suited him perfectly.
Fine lines spiderwebbed from the corners of his eyes, which were bleary from too much caffeine or too little sleep or both.
“Welcome,” Rawlins said. His voice was lower than Ellsbeth had expected.
“This is Introduction to the Principles of Arcane Mechanicals. If you’re looking for British Literature 101, that’s on the North Quad.
” There were a few polite chuckles. Rawlins had delivered his half joke flatly, unsmiling; Ellsbeth was certain he opened the lecture the same way every single year.
Before he said another word, he pulled an iron ingot from his pocket, snapped it in two, and let the dust settle on his desk.
Using his finger, he traced a circle in the iron filaments.
The lecture hall gasped and then burst into applause.
Rawlins allowed himself a small smile without looking up.
The chalkboard behind him had instantly become covered with messy scrawling handwriting—important dates in the history of the arcane arts, along with basic equations.
“Have to do something to impress you all on our first day,” he said.
“After all, I know how competitive registration can be. Those of you who managed to enroll in this class are part of a lucky group.”
And at that moment, he looked up, directly at Ellsbeth.
She felt her underarms prickle with sweat and her heart tighten in her chest. He was holding her gaze, his eyes locked on hers. They flicked down to her sweater, and then away, toward the papers he was keeping in a stack on the lectern.
Ellsbeth held her breath, exhaling only once he began talking about Norman contributions to thaumaturgy and she was fairly confident he wouldn’t interrupt the lecture to publicly shame her as an interloper.
The content of the introductory class was basic, information that Ellsbeth had studied back when she was in high school, reading books that made the librarians at the local branch raise their eyebrows.
But from the way Rawlins spoke, she understood immediately why his class always had a waiting list. He was clear without being dull, reverential without veering into the poetic.
He talked about the science of augury like he was telling a story.
He was brilliant. But more important, Ellsbeth realized, he was bored. He was reciting the same lecture he had been giving on the first day of class for years, probably verbatim.
When Rawlins glanced back in her direction toward the end of the lecture, she was smiling at him. The truth was, Ellsbeth hadn’t snuck onto campus simply to attend a single undergraduate lecture. She had come to Newlyn for her sister, and she had come here for Professor Rawlins.