The Magic Mirror of the Mermaid Queen (4 page)

The boy Fortran was having a similar experience. “Arabic?” he burst out. “Urdu? What do I need foreign languages for? I already know DOS and HTML and Java. I’m learning to be a Magic Tech, not a Diplomat.”

“There are a lot of new supernaturals coming into the City,” Tester said. “Some of them may be Tech Folk. You need to know how to talk to them. Any other questions?”

Espresso held up her hand. “I’m not grokking the sweaters, man.”

Tester smiled. “I’m glad you brought that up, Espresso. The sweaters are a beautiful tradition established by our last Schooljuffrouw, who remembered some things from her life Outside. There’s a school song, too: ‘It’s a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood.’ We sing it at assembly every morning.”

A horn blew, loud enough to make us all jump.

“That signals the end of this lesson,” Tester said. “Soon you’ll hear another. It means the beginning of the next lesson. Each of you has a guide waiting outside to lead you until you learn your way around.” We got up uncertainly. “Get moving. And don’t forget your Rule Books.”

 

 

O
ut in the hall, a small crowd of changelings was leaning against a wall, talking. When they saw us trooping out of Tester’s room in our new Inside Sweaters, they smiled.

I’d seen smiles like that before, on members of the Wild Hunt: a little too wide and much too full of teeth.

The toothiest of them looked like a dryad, tall and smoothly beautiful, with arms and legs as long and skinny as branches. Her Inside Sweater had a pattern of gold stars swirling from her right shoulder down across her chest to the hem. Under it were blue jeans, extra-skinny. Her blue eyes examined me from top to toe, widening when they got to my bare feet.

“Don’t tell me,” she said. “You’re the Wild Child.”

I’m used to teasing. The Folk love to make mortals cry. Even the moss women, who are all about helping unhappy mortals, let them wander around and moan for a while first. The moss women say it’s to find out whether the mortals are really and truly unhappy and not just pretending. But I’ve heard them giggling in the Ramble while some poor tourist stumbles around the paths looking for the way out.

I gave the beautiful mortal the same once-over she’d given me, ending at her high-heeled glass slippers. “Pretty. What’ll you do if you meet an ogre? Break your shoe over his head?”

“Ooh!” The blonde turned to her friends. “Listen to the spunky heroine! Maybe she’ll challenge me to a duel.” The friends giggled like squirrels. They had gold stars on their sweaters, too, laid out in different patterns.

“If I did, I’d win,” I said.

“
I
have a gold star in combat.”

“Good for you.”

Another dryad wannabe peeled herself away from the wall. She wasn’t quite as blonde or blue-eyed or willowy as the first one, but her stars were laid out in exactly the same swirling pattern.

“Obviously,” she said, “you don’t know who you’re talking to. This is Tiffany, Debutante of the Court of the Dowager of Park Avenue. She’s going to be the Dowager’s Voice some day? Which, since you obviously don’t know anything at all, is gigantically important. The Dowager is constantly making alliances with all the most powerful Geniuses. Tiffany’s going to be presented to the Dragon of Wall Street at the Solstice Ball this winter.”

“As what?” I asked curiously. “Dinner?”

Tiffany flipped back her shining hair. “Is that the best you can do, Wild Child? Because, I have to say, I’m so not impressed.”

One of the boys said, “Um, Tiffany. Rule 386?”

“I
am
being polite,” Tiffany said. “I’m just showing the Wild Child what life is like out here in the real City.”

Before, I’d been playing. Now I was mad. “Oh, is this the real City? I thought it was just a place to store mortal changelings who are too stupid to survive outside their own Neighborhood without their fairy godmothers holding their hands.”

Tiffany turned a deep rose color that unfairly made her eyes look even bluer.

“Stupid?” she hissed. “For your information, I have a hundred and twenty gold stars. All I need is Urban Legends, Diplomacy, and Advanced Talismans, and I’ll be ready to leave school. How many gold stars do
you
have, Wild Child?”

“Tiffany,” a new voice said sternly. “Would you please recite Rule One for me?”

Like magic, Tiffany went from scarlet Queen of the May to little white lamb. All in one smooth movement, she backed away from me and sank into a deep curtsy. I wasn’t surprised. Except for her mortal solidity, the newcomer looked like one of the Daanan sidhe—long, pale face, high-bridged nose, finely cut lips, eyes as dark and hard as asphalt. Beside her, Tiffany looked gawky and unfinished.

“Rule One,” Tiffany said primly. “Students must never fight among themselves.” She came up again without a wobble, which was pretty impressive, considering how tight her jeans were. “We weren’t fighting, Diplomat. We were simply sharing observations on the customs of our respective Neighborhoods.”

“I see,” said the Diplomat. “You do realize that if the new student had any magic at her disposal, you would most probably now be a frog, a snake, or a sheep-headed freak?”

At the thought of Tiffany with a sheep’s head, a tiny giggle bubbled out my nose. This was a mistake. The Diplomat pinned me with her granite eyes.

Heart beating like a drum, I curtsied—not as gracefully as Tiffany. “I’m Neef of Central Park.”

“Charmed. Bergdorf?” The Diplomat turned to the second blonde girl. “Shouldn’t you be taking Neef to her next lesson?”

The horn blew again, and Bergdorf grabbed my arm. I shook her off. “You are such a fairy,” she said. “And I totally mean that in a bad way. Come
on
.”

She barreled through the double doors and pulled me up the steps three at a time.

“Where are we going?” I panted.

“You’re going to Talismans,” Bergdorf said. “I’m going to Organizing Fairies. And if you don’t move it, I’m going to be gigantically late, and that would be just so
human
.”

Two floors up was another hall lined with doors. Bergdorf pointed me at one, then sped back the way we’d come.

When I entered the room, a Chinese man with a long gray braid down his back turned from writing MAGIC TECH on the big slate. “Welcome,” he said. “Come in and sit down. I’ve got an exciting lesson planned.”

The Magic Tech loved talismans like ravens love shiny things; he wanted us to love them, too. He opened the nine times nine magic locks on the talisman cabinet and brought out three pairs of boots, taught us how to tell which ones were seven-leaguers, and how to put them on without transporting ourselves out of state.

All the changelings in Talismans had gold stars on their sweaters, too, but not as many as Tiffany and Bergdorf. I was glad to see that almost all of them wore jeans, though there was one girl in a long skirt with a scarf over her hair and another in a saffron-colored sari. They seemed pretty friendly, too. While we were waiting our turn with the boots, a boy about my size asked me where I was from.

“Central Park,” I said.

Suddenly there was a little circle of emptiness around me, and the boy was talking to someone who wasn’t me.

Folk try and kill you when they don’t like you. Being ignored was way better than that. Still, I was relieved when the horn blew again and everybody boiled out into the hall, where Bergdorf was waiting impatiently.

“Where to now?” I asked.

“Lunch.”

 

Later, I found out there were two hundred pupils (give or take) at Miss Van Loon’s, which was about one-fifth of the total New York Between population of maybe one thousand mortal changelings. Two hundred isn’t really very many mortals when they’re separated. But when they’re all smooshed together in a long, narrow room with no windows and a hard floor, laughing and eating and gabbing, it’s like a Full Moon Gathering without the music.

Bergdorf abandoned me at the door. I was about to slink off to find somewhere quiet to eat when a dark head popped out of the crowd, grinning excitedly: Fortran, the best liar in Columbia. I pointed at myself. He nodded and waved some more.

Feeling more cheerful, I shoved through the crowd toward the long table he was sharing with the leprechaun girl—Espresso, from the Village. I sat down next to her. Even though the dining hall was packed, we had a whole table to ourselves.

Espresso pulled a steaming cup out of a brightly striped woolen pouch. A dark, rich smell tickled my nose.

“Is that
coffee
?”

Espresso made a face. “It’s mostly moo juice, man. But there’s a lick of java in there somewhere.”

It sounded like English, but I didn’t have a clue what she’d said. “Huh?”

“Moo juice,” Espresso said. “Milk. Java is coffee. Haven’t you ever heard anybody talk Village before?”

I shook my head.

“It’s easy,” Fortran said kindly. “You’ll pick it up in no time.”

“Right,” I said. “Um. Isn’t coffee just for Folk?”

Espresso laughed. “You’re jiving me. Every mortal in the whole City drinks java.”

“Not me.”

Silence. We set our magic bags on the table. Fortran’s was blue and lumpy and rich in straps. Espresso’s was a brightly striped woolen sack.

Fortran sighed. “I thought for sure some of the Columbia guys would come sit with me, but no. They’re all over there, talking about amulets.” He pulled a floppy slice of very thin bread with red sauce on it out of his bag and stuffed the pointy end into his mouth.

“So why aren’t you sitting with them?”

Fortran’s dark eyes slid toward Espresso, whose sack had produced a bowl of something that looked like green-flecked sand. “Oh, you know,” he said. “I see those guys all the time. The whole point of school is meeting new people, right? So I’m meeting you.”

I opened Satchel and wished, as usual, for a hamburger and French fries. I got a cold chicken leg, a chunk of brown bread, an apple, and cider.

“Wizard!” Fortran said as I tore into the chicken with my teeth. “That’s the real deal. Super-trad, right from the Old Country, I bet.”

“Isn’t that where all magic bags come from?”

“No way.” Fortran patted his lumpy blue bag, its zipper open on enchanted emptiness. “I got Backpack here at Talisman Town.”

I put down my chicken. “Are you telling me you can just go out and buy a bag like Satchel?”

Fortran shook his head. “Not just like Satchel—it’s too old-fashioned. But you could get a bag that
looked
just like it. Plus, it would give you whatever food you wanted—even burritos and hot dogs and pizza.” He waved the remains of his tomato-smeared slice.

I thought it might be nice to have a Satchel I could boss around. But then it wouldn’t be Satchel. I clutched the old, worn, stubborn leather strap. “I’ll stick to this one, thanks.”

We talked for a while longer. Fortran told us his fairy godfather was a geek in Columbia’s Magic Lab. Espresso’s godmother was a hippie chick called Earth Mother.

“What about your fairy godmother?” Fortran asked. “She’s a wood nymph, right?”

I thought about lying, then decided that if Fortran and Espresso were going to hate me because of my Park-related weirdness, I might as well get it over with as soon as possible. “Astris is a giant white rat,” I said. “She bakes really good cookies.”

Two pairs of eyes stared at me, round as marbles. I closed Satchel and got ready to move to the empty end of the table.

“Wizard!” Fortran said.

“Groovy!” Espresso said.

I looked up. They were smiling. “You don’t mind?”

“A giant white rat is cool from Coolsville, man.”

That sounded pretty positive. “Thanks,” I said shyly. “I think being a Poet is pretty cool, too.”

Espresso blushed an uncomfortable red that clashed with her coppery hair. “That’s jive, man. I’d rather groove on giant-slaying.”

I looked at her with surprise. “You’ve slain a giant?”

Espresso shrugged. “I know a poem about one. You want to hear?”

Fortran nodded eagerly. Espresso folded her hands and began to recite.

I thought this through. “I don’t quite get it,” I said. “What did she cut his head off with?”

Espresso gave me a look. “It’s a joke, man.”