Changeling (Sorcery and Society Book 1)(31)
Unfortunately, the mattress didn’t seem to have much of an appetite. I sat up, grunting in discomfort at the pinch of my bodice on my ribs. I yanked the pins from my hair and let it loose. The Mother Book caught my eye from my desk. I stood, carefully taking the fragile tome in my hands.
“I don’t know what to do,” I said to the book. “Everything I touch seems to go wrong… I just need to know what to do.”
When nothing happened, I thought maybe the book was ignoring me. Or that maybe I wasn’t the Translator after all. Maybe this overlarge insect imprinted on my skin was just a mistake. I hugged the book to my chest, wrapping myself around it, hoping to feel something besides this crushing embarrassment and disappointment.
The dragonfly hummed, spreading a warm sensation from my arms to my heart, like resting in front of the fire at our old house. I let the book fall away, into my hands and the pages fell open to an entry that hadn’t been translated yet. I ran my fingertips over the cuneiform, and they seemed to melt in response, changing and wriggling into tiny gold letters.
An elaborately wrought, gilt-edged illustration melted onto the page, depicting the sigils of the great houses of the Coven Guild. The Mountforts’ scales, the Brandywines’ flowers, the McCrays’ silver lamps, and so on, and so forth. From those major lines sprung the minor houses, the blue compass for House Morton and the Winters’ plunging black raven. I would never describe the House as “minor” to Mr. or Mrs. Winter, of course, because I was not insane.
Mountfort House Sigil
At the bottom, smaller and more faded than the others, was a black owl surrounded by silver and gold filigree. I frowned. I didn’t know of any House, or even one of the related smaller families, that used an owl in their crest. None of the sigils were labeled, so I couldn’t even get a name for this mysterious house. I wanted to ignore the page, to move on to Translating some spell that would make a difference for me or the magical world at large. But I just couldn’t stop staring at that silly owl. Why did I get the feeling the owl was important? Why would the book show me something like this when I had so many other things to worry about?
I rubbed my fingertip around the edge of the filigreed frame. The gilt pulsed and glittered in response. I would read up on the old families in the library. Maybe I could find some clue as to what the book was trying to tell me.
“I ask for answers, and you give me more work.” I closed the book with a decisive snap. “You are not helpful at all.”
8
What Tangled Webs We Weave
It helped to think of the school as a giant household, and we students were there to serve the faculty’s whims. We woke in the mornings, had breakfast, then moved about the “house” in perfectly synchronized shifts, but instead of washing or cooking, we were embroidering or dancing or drawing runes. After classes, the girls either retired to the library for study or enjoyed a walk on the grounds with their familiars before dinner. Poor Tom, the stocky young Snipe lad who cared for the grounds, spent most of his twilight hours picking up the familiars’ “contributions” from his carefully manicured grass.
After dinner the younger girls, like me, were early to bed, the older girls gathered in study gaggles in their rooms. Though it was still autumn, they were preparing for a ritual called the Spring Interview. The most talented graduates of Miss Castwell’s would be invited to join ladies’ research guilds, like Mrs. Winter’s Demeter Society. But the girls had to prove themselves worthy of these coveted positions with rigorous magical tests. Girls who did not qualify for guild memberships had to console themselves with their mother’s matchmaking efforts. It was considered cold comfort to have enough free time to plan your wedding to your fabulously arranged match.
Mail call was held every Thursday immediately after afternoon classes. John and David, Snipe footmen who helped with the heavy work around the school grounds, pushed a heavy cart of extravagantly wrapped care packages into the atrium every week. The packages were filled with pocket money, bottles of hair treatment and silk gloves were doled out to the girls whose families wanted to make sure they knew how missed and cherished they were. Ivy’s parents sent her boxes of rose jellies and hair ornaments in the Cowell family colors. Callista’s mother showered her with new hair ornaments, beauty tonics and box upon box of chocolate bonbons that she distributed like a queen doling out bread to her favorite peasants.
Receiving one of her bonbons was more than status symbol, it was a weekly re-ordering of social currency accounts. If you received a bonbon, you were in good standing. If you did not receive a bonbon, you had done something to upset Callista and you should scramble to correct that situation immediately.
Girls who didn’t receive letters or packages from home were to be pitied. Fortunately, Mrs. Winter remembered this from her school days and on my first Thursday, sent me a box laden with my own bonbons, candied violets, and her specially blended herbal tonics to keep my skin glowing. This treasure trove was accompanied by a large carton containing several new dresses. The carton was slate blue with a large curlicued “D” from Madame DuPont’s over the enclosure. It took three housemaids to carry it up the stairs under the careful supervision of Headmistress Lockwood and most of the student body.
Anxiety crawled up my spine, because I knew that the box contained my gown for the upcoming school social, among several others. We were to dress more formally for the social than we did for classes, but not in our full ballgowns. If there was an opportunity for me to disgrace myself before all of Guardian society and reveal my origins, it was the school social. I was practically failing ceremonial dance. My feet seemed to belong to another person. And I would be wearing the biggest, fluffiest dress to date, just to increase the level of difficulty. I would make a fool of myself. And possibly be arrested by Coven Guild enforcement when I accidentally revealed my underprivileged roots. I would be the first student at Miss Castwell’s to be arrested for bad dancing.