Any Way the Wind Blows (Simon Snow, #3)(131)
And of course I worry about Penelope—always Penelope. Attached at the hip to the most dangerous person in England. And now bringing home stray Normals. Morgana, I can’t deal with it! I don’t know where to start!
I need a break … I need some help …
I don’t need this from Martin now.
He believes in the Chosen One?
When did this happen? Martin is a scholar, an academic. He’s pragmatic.
He believes in facts. It’s why I fell in love with him. Partly, anyway.
We’ve always laughed at magicians who lived their lives by prophecy.
People like Davy, who trusted every superstition more than his own eyes and ears.
Is this because I left Martin alone?
I left for Watford, and I left him with the kids, and we agreed it would be fine, that he could handle it, because he didn’t have the Humdrum to track anymore. Pacey and Priya are at Watford with me for most of the year anyway—and Martin and I would still see each other on the weekend …
Martin and I have been married a long time.
We have a strong foundation.
Is this his midlife crisis? Joining a cult? Other people our age are coming out as bisexual or getting into Normal-style bread-making. (I would prefer either—or both.)
“Of course I’d like to be more powerful,” he said to me on the phone this morning.
I’d been complaining to him about this Smith Smith-Richards meeting—I have to stay at Watford anytime there’s an event here—and Martin said he knew all about it, that he was planning to attend.
“Why on earth?” I asked. “Are you writing a paper?”
“No.” His voice was quiet, careful. Martin’s voice is always quiet and careful. “I’ve been following Smith-Richards for a while.”
“Following like ‘keeping track’ or following like following?”
“He’s a good man, Mitali. He has extraordinary powers.”
“We all have extraordinary powers, Martin. It’s what makes us magicians.”
“Not all of us, dear.”
Then he told me that he’s been going to these meetings for months. That he’s befriended the people there—and befriended the man himself, the man who claims to be the Greatest Mage. (Martin and I don’t have friends. We have colleagues. We have children. We have each other. ) “Did you bring the children?” I asked.
“No, they wouldn’t be interested. They take after you—they don’t need Smith’s help.”
“And you do, Martin?”
“Mitali…” He sounded hurt, that I would make him say this out loud. “Of course I’d like to be more powerful. Do you think I don’t wonder, what it’s like for you?”
We argued.
I hung up.
And now here he is, in my office, wearing the suit he only gets out for weddings and funerals. I hope he doesn’t want my blessing in all this.
“Your meeting has already started,” I say.
“I know. I thought—”
“I hope you don’t want me to accompany you.”
“No.”
Martin is a small man. His hair was beige-blond when we were young.
Now it’s beige-grey. He has a squishy, nondescript face. A soft voice.
It’s his eyes that I fell in love with. Not their beauty. But the way they see everything. And feel everything. Martin takes the whole world in. That’s a tremendous thing—to be able to hold the world inside of yourself, and still feel compassion for it.
“Is it over, then?” I try to sound gentle. I don’t have it in me. “Did he spell you?”
“Mitali, I—”
He doesn’t finish. The door to my office flies open, and Penelope and Baz — and that Normal—rush in.
AGATHA
“Agatha!” Niamh calls to me from the other side of the stone. “The doe!
She’s still going!”
I turn away from the dryad and rush back to Niamh’s side. The goat is moving again. She’s flapping her wings and arching her back. Her cries have grown more urgent.
“Here,” Niamh says, making space for me on the ground next to her.
I crouch behind the doe.
“Let her work,” Niamh says. “She may not need us.”
I stroke the doe’s flank. “You’re all right, darling. We’re here.”
SIMON
I should have known it would end like this.
Two hundred wands pointed at me. Children crying. Parents running for the door.
These people don’t know me …
The Mage never took me to their parties, never paraded me around or made a spectacle of me. All they know about me is that I was a lie.
I was a trick the Mage played on them. A trained dog that turned on him in the end. They all know what happened the last time I was in this Chapel …
Smith is pointing his wand at me like he’s Gandalf and I’m the Balrog. “I won’t let you stand between these magicians and their destiny!” he calls out to me.
“Smith!” I fly to the altar. “Please listen to me!”
Someone in the crowd shouts a spell, and it connects with the window above me—a skylight that used to have a beautiful stained-glass design. I bow my head and spread my wings, but the glass still falls on Daphne and the others. A chunk of it gets stuck in my wing.