Around them, in the city, bells rang and trumpets sounded to announce the new day.
“‘At the dawning of the day/Face the sun and turn away. Speak the words that Haywith spoke/And keep the vow that Haywith broke,’” said Anna. “Wait . . . you think she hid the spell inside our heads?”
“Not just ours,” said Chantel. “I bet she told other girls that they were the Chosen One, too.”
They hurried downstairs to the dormitory. The girls were still asleep, but Chantel and Anna rousted them out of bed and assembled them into two frowsy, yawning, eye-rubbing rows seated along the edges of two beds.
“How many of you,” Chantel asked, “have been told by Miss Ellicott that you are the Chosen One?”
The girls looked startled. Several hands went up. One of them was Daisy’s, and one was Holly’s.
“If Miss Ellicott gave you something to memorize, we need it,” said Chantel.
Most of the girls didn’t have couplets, as Anna and Chantel did. They just had single lines.
The lines came out of order. Daisy’s was: “And touch the wall, and make it whole.” Which sounded like it ought to come near the end.
Holly’s was: “Write the third sign with your feet.” That was easy enough. The third sign was a bit like a circle and a bit like an eagle that had swallowed an anchor.
Anna wrote each line on a separate scrap of paper, and she and Chantel set them down on the floor and shuffled them around. Each line was part of a rhymed couplet. The trick was to get the couplets in the right order.
“There’s something missing,” Chantel said.
“Before the writing-with-your-feet bit,” Anna agreed.
“Right,” said Chantel. “Do you write in the dust? Or—”
“Maybe you cut your feet and write in blood,” said Leila.
She looked smug.
“Do you have a line, Leila?” Chantel asked.
Leila just smirked.
“If you do,” said Anna, “I think you’d better tell us, please.”
“I don’t see why I should,” said Leila. “I really am the Chosen One. Miss Ellicott said so.”
“She said it to a lot of us,” said Anna patiently. “It was probably just her way of making sure we didn’t forget.”
Leila continued to look smug.
“I don’t think she has one,” said Chantel. “I don’t think Miss Ellicott ever told her she was the Chosen One.”
“Think what you want,” said Leila.
That tactic obviously wasn’t going to work. “If you don’t tell us,” said Chantel, “I’ll have Japheth bite you.”
The snake obligingly reared its head and bared its tiny fangs.
“That snake doesn’t scare me,” said Leila.
And then an odd thing happened. Japheth reared his head higher. And higher yet. His weight on Chantel’s shoulders was very much increased. Chantel cricked her neck and saw a mighty cobra rising above her head, its hood spread, its curved fangs gleaming, its forked tongue flicking in and out.
One or two girls let out a squawk of terror. The rest gazed, awestruck.
“Fine,” said Leila, in an I-don’t-care tone which nevertheless quavered a bit. “It’s just some stupid thing about tombs.”
She gave them a single line. Japheth, to Chantel’s simultaneous relief and disappointment, turned back into a little green-gold snake.
Once they had Leila’s line, they had this:
At the dawning of the day
Face the sun and turn away.
When the bells and trumpets sound
Cast dust from seven tombs around.
Standing barefoot in the street
Write the third sign with your feet.
Speak the words that Haywith spoke
And keep the vow that Haywith broke.
Bring the peace that Haywith stole
And touch the wall, and make it whole.
This remains from long lost lore.
The rest is gone. We know no more.
The girls read it over several times. They tried mixing the bits of paper around some more, but they decided this must be how it was supposed to go.
“And nobody’s got anything else?” said Chantel.
No one did.
“It’s not exactly a spell, is it?” said Anna.
Leila looked amused and superior. “It’s instructions for how to do the spell.”
“I guess,” Chantel agreed reluctantly. “Part of it. But it says there’s something’s missing. And it doesn’t tell us what words Haywith—”
There was a knock on the door.
“Sorry,” said Bowser, sticking his head in. “Mrs. Warthall said if you don’t come down to breakfast right now she’s going to tell Frenetica to pour it into the gutter.”
“Small loss,” said Leila.
“What do you think of this, Bowser?” said Anna.
Bowser came over and looked. “Is it a spell?”
“Almost,” said Chantel. “I think it’s instructions for the Buttoning. The spell to strengthen Seven Buttons.”
“What are the seven buttons, anyway?” asked Holly.
But none of the girls knew this, because none of their teachers had ever told them. And it certainly wasn’t in books.
Anna frowned at the assembled rhyme. “Even with what’s here, it doesn’t say where to stand to do it—”
“Somewhere on the west side of the city,” said Bowser. “Because you have to face the rising sun, which is in the east, and then turn around, and then you’re going to touch the wall, so the wall must be to the west. Could you all kind of get dressed and come down right away? Mrs. Warthall’s really not in a very good mood. I mean compared to what she usually is,” he added meaningly.
Mrs. Warthall was furious, and distributed smacks, threats, and extra chores.
“You girls may think you have it made,” she said grimly. “Lying late in bed and swanning in for breakfast when you’re good and ready. But you just wait. You won’t be living this easy life for long.”
Chantel and Anna were assigned to help Bowser scrub down the walls in the kitchen. It was nasty work, involving a vile-smelling paste that burned Chantel’s hands.
“I’m almost sure it matters where you stand,” said Chantel. “When you do the spell, I mean.”
“Somewhere west,” said Bowser.
“But where?” said Chantel, reaching into a tub of the nasty-smelling glop and quickly slapping the stuff onto the wall. “Seven Buttons is fourteen miles long.”
“So there’s a button every two miles?” said Bowser.
Chantel had never thought about it like this before. “You think it has actual buttons?”
“Maybe a button is a place where the wall can be breached,” said Anna. “Like treacherous Queen Haywith did?”
“I bet there’s nothing you can actually see,” said Chantel. “I mean, it’s all just stone the whole way around, isn’t it?”
“There are the guard towers. But it mostly just looks like wall,” said Bowser. “I walked all around it that time I ran away from home. They don’t let you out, you know? If you go to the gate, the guards stop you.”
Chantel grabbed a brush and scrubbed vigorously. “Someone must know where the buttons are. If there are buttons.”
“I suppose the patriarchs know,” said Bowser.
“What about ‘Keep the vow that Haywith broke’?” said Anna. “What’s that mean? And what are the words that Haywith spoke?”
“I don’t know,” said Chantel. “In history books, she doesn’t speak at all. The books just say things about her.”