Still, she was extremely nervous when she was called into Miss Ellicott’s study the following day.
The room smelled of magic and furniture polish. Miss Ellicott herself smelled of soap and magic potions. Chantel sat where Miss Ellicott told her to sit, tucked her robe neatly around her, and folded her hands in her lap. Japheth the snake was looped around her neck.
Miss Ellicott straightened her steel-rimmed spectacles on her nose and directed a grim gaze at Chantel. “To say that I am displeased with your deportment, Chantle, would be greatly understating the case.”
Chantel did not say It’s pronounced shahn-TELL. Miss Ellicott was a force of nature, like a thunderstorm. You didn’t correct thunderstorms.
“Do you understand why it is particularly important for you to comport yourself in such a way as to frighten no one?”
Chantel looked up in surprise. The idea of her frightening anyone was ridiculous. She was, at the time, only ten. And she was only Chantel.
Miss Ellicott was waiting for an answer.
“Er, because I’m a girl?” Chantel ventured.
“Because you are a magical maiden. And this frightens people, Chantle. The city needs sorceresses, but it fears them.”
Miss Ellicott looked at Chantel to see if she was taking this in.
“Er, doesn’t the city kind of fear everything?” said Chantel.
“Chantle!” Miss Ellicott’s eyebrows drew down like twin lightning bolts. “What a thing to say. With Seven Buttons and all our soldiers to protect us, we have no need to fear!”
But we do, Chantel wisely didn’t say. That’s why we have Seven Buttons, isn’t it? That’s why we have soldiers. And all the spells we learn, they’re all about things we’re afraid of, aren’t they? We don’t learn to fly. We learn to hide.
“A magical maiden must be shamefast and biddable,” Miss Ellicott went on, “so that she can learn magic without anyone being unduly upset. A magical maiden must show promise of growing into a proper and correct sorceress. If a sorceress were not proper and correct, she—”
Japheth gave a mighty wriggle on Chantel’s neck, and Chantel reached up and grabbed him.
“—would not survive,” said Miss Ellicott.
Chantel froze in surprise, her fingers around the snake. “Miss Ellicott, has somebody . . . not survived before?”
“I have warned you,” said Miss Ellicott. “There is nothing further you need to know.”
She stared at Chantel through those steel-rimmed spectacles until Chantel looked down and said, “Yes, Miss Ellicott. Thank you, Miss Ellicott.”
“Very well.” Miss Ellicott sat back perhaps a fraction of an inch in her chair. “Now, there is something else I must discuss with you, Chantle.”
Chantel waited.
“When you came to us from the orphanage, they told us how you arrived there. I waited until you were old enough, but now I feel you are ready to hear.”
Chantel knew how she had arrived at the orphanage: the same way nearly everyone did, in a basket balanced on the narrow, uneven orphanage steps. These baskets happened often, because babies were in excess supply in Lightning Pass. At the age of five, children outgrew the orphanage and were moved on to something else . . . being a servant, or working in a factory, or sweeping the streets. Chantel knew she was extremely fortunate to have ended up at Miss Ellicott’s School instead.
The important thing was, it didn’t sound like she was being expelled. So she kept her hands neatly folded in her lap even though her nose was beginning to itch.
“You were left in a basket, Chantle, on the night of—” Miss Ellicott stopped and peered in the registry-book open on her desk—“July 3rd, in the seventh year of the reign of King Wiley the Warmonger, of blessed memory.”
Chantel knew this. She’d been told it at the orphanage. The basket had a hole in it, and she herself had been wrapped in a very worn but reasonably clean dishrag. Both items had then been used around the orphanage until they fell apart.
“Perched on the edge of the basket was a small golden dragon,” said Miss Ellicott, in the same tone in which she’d stated the date. “And when the orphanage matron came to the door, the dragon breathed letters of fire that spelled out ‘Behold the Chosen One.’”
Chantel had not heard this part before, and she was surprised into speaking. “I didn’t know the orphanage matron could read.”
Miss Ellicott turned a hard glare on her student. “That remark was impertinent, Chantle.”
“I beg your pardon.” Chantel spoke politely. But Japheth, who had never been taught deportment, reared his small green head and flicked his tiny forked tongue. Chantel was pretty sure the matron couldn’t read, and this seemed to her a real hole in Miss Ellicott’s story. And there was another. Chantel stroked Japheth’s smooth, scaly skin. “My familiar is a snake, not a dragon.”
“A snake is merely an immature form of dragon. That is neither here nor there,” said Miss Ellicott haughtily. “Do you not want to know what the message meant?”
“Yes please,” said Chantel.
“Chosen to save the realm,” said Miss Ellicott. “Chosen for a great destiny. Without you, the Kingdom of Lightning Pass cannot survive. Without you, Seven Buttons will crumble, and evil will rush in.”
This was the first time anyone had spoken to Chantel of her future.
“You mean,” she said eagerly, “I’ll go into battle and—”
“Certainly not! Magical maidens do not go into battle.”
“So will I cast a great spell that—”
“I sincerely hope you will have no reason to do anything of the kind.”
“Then what—”
“You will do as the king and the patriarchs tell you,” said Miss Ellicott. “You will grow from a shamefast and biddable maiden into a proper and correct sorceress, and you will do your duty. That is how you will save the realm.”
“Oh,” said Chantel. As destinies went, it sounded rather dull.
“I am sure you must feel overwhelmed by this news,” said Miss Ellicott. “Keep it to yourself, and consider it. Do not tell the other students, as they would naturally be jealous.”
“Yes, Miss Ellicott.” Chantel refolded her hands neatly on her lap.
“You have years to go in your education,” said Miss Ellicott. “Now that you know the great future that awaits you, I trust you will apply yourself to your lessons, and take very seriously everything your instructresses try to convey to you.”
Chantel thought this was unfair. She always had. Miss Ellicott, of course, hadn’t noticed. Miss Ellicott was an important sorceress, and did little of the actual teaching herself. Most of it was done by the underteacher, Miss Flivvers, who was not magical at all, and by jobbing sorceresses who lived elsewhere. The jobbing sorceresses taught the students to do small protective and household spells, and to bring light into the darkness, and to summon lost things.