She waited to see if Miss Ellicott was going to say anything else. Once she would have asked “Can I go now?” but that sort of question was smacked out of Miss Ellicott’s students in the first year. Chantel let Japheth do the impatient squirming for her, sliding ticklishly along her collarbone.
“There were more words that the dragon flamed,” said Miss Ellicott. “A mysterious couplet. Do you wish to hear it?”
“Yes please,” said Chantel.
Miss Ellicott cleared her throat and intoned, “‘Speak the words that Haywith spoke, and keep the vow that Haywith broke.’”
“What does that mean?” asked Chantel.
“Do not tell me you are unaware of the treachery of wicked Queen Haywith. Has Miss Flivvers taught you nothing?”
Chantel’s face burned at the accusation. Even if Miss Flivvers had taught her nothing, Chantel would still know that, five hundred years ago, Queen Haywith had opened a breach in Seven Buttons and let evil Marauders into the city. Everyone knew that. It was the reason for the saying “She’s about as trustworthy as Queen Haywith.” Which meant not trustworthy at all. Or, likewise, “I wouldn’t trust her any further than I could throw Queen Haywith.”
“I beg your pardon,” said Chantel. “I was wondering what the second part meant.”
“It does not matter what it means. Recite!” said Miss Ellicott.
Chantel obediently repeated the couplet. She was good at memorizing things. All Miss Ellicott’s students were.
“Very well. Do not forget. The meaning will become clear in time.”
Chantel wanted to shrug, but her deportment wouldn’t let her. And Japheth couldn’t do it for her. Snakes are ill-equipped for shrugging.
“Remember what I have told you,” said Miss Ellicott. “A great destiny awaits you, and the entire kingdom will depend on you. You may go, and tell no one.”
Chantel did tell no one, of course, except her friend Anna, and Bowser the pot-boy. And when a year later Miss Ellicott called Anna into her study and said that Anna was the Chosen One, Anna of course told Chantel.
The three of them puzzled over it in the skullery at the back of the high, twisty brick house, which was their refuge from things Ellicott. (In most houses it would be called a scullery, but in Miss Ellicott’s School it was a skullery, for reasons that may be explained later.) This was where Bowser worked. Much of his life was spent scrubbing out burned pots with sand, and that was what he was doing at the moment.
“Well, we can’t both be the Chosen One,” said Chantel, feeling a little miffed.
“Maybe she thought I was you,” said Anna. “Bowser, we could do a scouring spell—”
“Frenetica doesn’t want any magic in the pots,” said Bowser. “Because of those frogs that one time.”
Frenetica was the cook.
Chantel did not think Miss Ellicott had mistaken her for Anna. Anna had yellow hair, and skin the color of raw chicken. “What did she tell you about being the Chosen One?”
“She said I was left in a basket made from oily grasses that don’t grow in Lightning Pass,” said Anna. “And woven into the basket were the words THE CHOSEN ONE, in red-dyed reeds.”
“Hmph,” said Chantel. Anna’s story had a nicer basket in it.
“I don’t think I’m the Chosen One,” said Anna. “The only thing I’m much good at is brewing potions.”
“Maybe she was trying to encourage you both,” said Bowser, his voice ringing from deep inside an iron kettle. “You know, give you something to shoot for.”
Chantel and Anna looked at each other. They shook their heads.
“I don’t think so,” said Chantel. “She doesn’t encourage people exactly.”
“No,” said Anna. “I wonder if she means we’re going to be two of the Six?”
Six sorceresses—the very best in the city—were tasked with the Buttoning, the spell that kept the wall called Seven Buttons strong. Miss Ellicott was one of the Six.
Most of the girls from Miss Ellicott’s School would grow up to be jobbing sorceresses. They would keep the Green Terraces growing, and they would mind shops that sold potions, small protections, and conjurings. But Chantel had hoped—and sometimes rather confidently expected—to become one of the Six.
She had to admit she hadn’t really thought about Anna.
“If she was talking about you being part of the Six, she wouldn’t have said the Chosen One,” said Bowser, inside the kettle.
Chantel and Anna and Bowser more or less forgot about Chosen Ones after that, up until the day a mysterious stranger appeared at the door, uttered the word “Dimswitch,” and changed everything.
2
THE WILL-BE
Chantel grew tall and thoughtful. She excelled in summonings, spells, wards, and, as time went by, deportment, at least until the day the snake crawled into her ear. But that comes later.
Her life began to change one ordinary day when she was thirteen, and enduring an unnecessary magic lesson from the utterly unmagical Miss Flivvers.
There were many kinds of magic it would have been quite useful to learn, Chantel thought. Like flying. Or turning into something—a cat, for example. Or turning invisible. Chantel could do a self-abnegation, of course; most of the older girls could. But that didn’t make you invisible, just hard to notice.
Instead, the magical maidens were learning to summon small and useful household objects. And Chantel had been able to do that since she was five.
Nonetheless, there they all were, a dozen magical maidens, lined up in front of Miss Flivvers—the little girls like Holly and Daisy, who hadn’t even learned to make light-globes yet, and big girls like Chantel and Anna. Only Leila, the oldest student in the school, was missing.
“First,” said Miss Flivvers, “recite for me the two principle rules of summoning objects.”
“One,” chorused the girls. “Do not summon anything that does not belong either to you, or to the person for whom you are performing the summoning. Two—”
At this point Holly faltered, forgot her lines, and burst into tears. Anna took her hand and led her from the room.
“Two?” Miss Flivvers demanded.
“Two,” the girls said. “Do not summon anything likely to frighten, upset, or offend any of those present.”
“Correct,” said Miss Flivvers. “Now, for this spell we use what signs?”
“Sixth, fourth, and nineteenth,” chanted the girls.
“Very well. First, you will show me your sixth sign. Left arms up, and—if Chantel will deign to join us?”
Chantel curtseyed quickly by way of apology and raised her left hand with the others. The fact was she had already summoned the scrub-brushes and sponges that were waiting at the other end of the room several times while Miss Flivvers’s back was turned. Then she’d sent them back again. She would be asked to summon them again, of course, after the little girls failed to do the spell the first time. Which was very—
Leila stuck her head in the door. “I beg your pardon,” she said in a deportment-y tone. “Miss Ellicott wishes to see Chantel and Anna. And me.”
Leila swept out.
“You may go, Chantel,” said Miss Flivvers. She looked worried. Maybe because she would have to finish teaching the lesson without Chantel’s help, or maybe because worried was just an expression that sat naturally on Miss Flivvers’s face.
Chantel knocked on the tall, stern door of Miss Ellicott’s office.