The Magic Mirror of the Mermaid Queen Read online

  A horn blew, loud enough to make us all jump.

  “That signals the end of this lesson,” Tester said. “Soon you’ll hear another. It means the beginning of the next lesson. Each of you has a guide waiting outside to lead you until you learn your way around.” We got up uncertainly. “Get moving. And don’t forget your Rule Books.”

  Chapter 3

  RULE 1: STUDENTS MUST NEVER FIGHT AMONG THEMSELVES.

  Miss Van Loon’s Big Book of Rules

  Out in the hall, a small crowd of changelings was leaning against a wall, talking. When they saw us trooping out of Tester’s room in our new Inside Sweaters, they smiled.

  I’d seen smiles like that before, on members of the Wild Hunt: a little too wide and much too full of teeth.

  The toothiest of them looked like a dryad, tall and smoothly beautiful, with arms and legs as long and skinny as branches. Her Inside Sweater had a pattern of gold stars swirling from her right shoulder down across her chest to the hem. Under it were blue jeans, extra-skinny. Her blue eyes examined me from top to toe, widening when they got to my bare feet.

  “Don’t tell me,” she said. “You’re the Wild Child.”

  I’m used to teasing. The Folk love to make mortals cry. Even the moss women, who are all about helping unhappy mortals, let them wander around and moan for a while first. The moss women say it’s to find out whether the mortals are really and truly unhappy and not just pretending. But I’ve heard them giggling in the Ramble while some poor tourist stumbles around the paths looking for the way out.

  I gave the beautiful mortal the same once-over she’d given me, ending at her high-heeled glass slippers. “Pretty. What’ll you do if you meet an ogre? Break your shoe over his head?”

  “Ooh!” The blonde turned to her friends. “Listen to the spunky heroine! Maybe she’ll challenge me to a duel.” The friends giggled like squirrels. They had gold stars on their sweaters, too, laid out in different patterns.

  “If I did, I’d win,” I said.

  “I have a gold star in combat.”

  “Good for you.”

  Another dryad wannabe peeled herself away from the wall. She wasn’t quite as blonde or blue-eyed or willowy as the first one, but her stars were laid out in exactly the same swirling pattern.

  “Obviously,” she said, “you don’t know who you’re talking to. This is Tiffany, Debutante of the Court of the Dowager of Park Avenue. She’s going to be the Dowager’s Voice some day? Which, since you obviously don’t know anything at all, is gigantically important. The Dowager is constantly making alliances with all the most powerful Geniuses. Tiffany’s going to be presented to the Dragon of Wall Street at the Solstice Ball this winter.”

  “As what?” I asked curiously. “Dinner?”

  Tiffany flipped back her shining hair. “Is that the best you can do, Wild Child? Because, I have to say, I’m so not impressed.”

  One of the boys said, “Um, Tiffany. Rule 386?”

  “I am being polite,” Tiffany said. “I’m just showing the Wild Child what life is like out here in the real City.”

  Before, I’d been playing. Now I was mad. “Oh, is this the real City? I thought it was just a place to store mortal changelings who are too stupid to survive outside their own Neighborhood without their fairy godmothers holding their hands.”

  Tiffany turned a deep rose color that unfairly made her eyes look even bluer.

  “Stupid?” she hissed. “For your information, I have a hundred and twenty gold stars. All I need is Urban Legends, Diplomacy, and Advanced Talismans, and I’ll be ready to leave school. How many gold stars do you have, Wild Child?”

  “Tiffany,” a new voice said sternly. “Would you please recite Rule One for me?”

  Like magic, Tiffany went from scarlet Queen of the May to little white lamb. All in one smooth movement, she backed away from me and sank into a deep curtsy. I wasn’t surprised. Except for her mortal solidity, the newcomer looked like one of the Daanan sidhe—long, pale face, high-bridged nose, finely cut lips, eyes as dark and hard as asphalt. Beside her, Tiffany looked gawky and unfinished.

  “Rule One,” Tiffany said primly. “Students must never fight among themselves.” She came up again without a wobble, which was pretty impressive, considering how tight her jeans were. “We weren’t fighting, Diplomat. We were simply sharing observations on the customs of our respective Neighborhoods.”

  “I see,” said the Diplomat. “You do realize that if the new student had any magic at her disposal, you would most probably now be a frog, a snake, or a sheep-headed freak?”

  At the thought of Tiffany with a sheep’s head, a tiny giggle bubbled out my nose. This was a mistake. The Diplomat pinned me with her granite eyes.

  Heart beating like a drum, I curtsied—not as gracefully as Tiffany. “I’m Neef of Central Park.”

  “Charmed. Bergdorf?” The Diplomat turned to the second blonde girl. “Shouldn’t you be taking Neef to her next lesson?”

  The horn blew again, and Bergdorf grabbed my arm. I shook her off. “You are such a fairy,” she said. “And I totally mean that in a bad way. Come on.”

  She barreled through the double doors and pulled me up the steps three at a time.

  “Where are we going?” I panted.

  “You’re going to Talismans,” Bergdorf said. “I’m going to Organizing Fairies. And if you don’t move it, I’m going to be gigantically late, and that would be just so human.”

  Two floors up was another hall lined with doors. Bergdorf pointed me at one, then sped back the way we’d come.

  When I entered the room, a Chinese man with a long gray braid down his back turned from writing MAGIC TECH on the big slate. “Welcome,” he said. “Come in and sit down. I’ve got an exciting lesson planned.”

  The Magic Tech loved talismans like ravens love shiny things; he wanted us to love them, too. He opened the nine times nine magic locks on the talisman cabinet and brought out three pairs of boots, taught us how to tell which ones were seven-leaguers, and how to put them on without transporting ourselves out of state.

  All the changelings in Talismans had gold stars on their sweaters, too, but not as many as Tiffany and Bergdorf. I was glad to see that almost all of them wore jeans, though there was one girl in a long skirt with a scarf over her hair and another in a saffron-colored sari. They seemed pretty friendly, too. While we were waiting our turn with the boots, a boy about my size asked me where I was from.

  “Central Park,” I said.

  Suddenly there was a little circle of emptiness around me, and the boy was talking to someone who wasn’t me.

  Folk try and kill you when they don’t like you. Being ignored was way better than that. Still, I was relieved when the horn blew again and everybody boiled out into the hall, where Bergdorf was waiting impatiently.

  “Where to now?” I asked.

  “Lunch.”

  Later, I found out there were two hundred pupils (give or take) at Miss Van Loon’s, which was about one-fifth of the total New York Between population of maybe one thousand mortal changelings. Two hundred isn’t really very many mortals when they’re separated. But when they’re all smooshed together in a long, narrow room with no windows and a hard floor, laughing and eating and gabbing, it’s like a Full Moon Gathering without the music.

  Bergdorf abandoned me at the door. I was about to slink off to find somewhere quiet to eat when a dark head popped out of the crowd, grinning excitedly: Fortran, the best liar in Columbia. I pointed at myself. He nodded and waved some more.

  Feeling more cheerful, I shoved through the crowd toward the long table he was sharing with the leprechaun girl—Espresso, from the Village. I sat down next to her. Even though the dining hall was packed, we had a whole table to ourselves.

  Espresso pulled a steaming cup out of a brightly striped woolen pouch. A dark, rich smell tickled my nose.

  “Is that coffee?”

  Espresso made a face. “It’s mostly moo juice, man. But there’s
a lick of java in there somewhere.”

  It sounded like English, but I didn’t have a clue what she’d said. “Huh?”

  “Moo juice,” Espresso said. “Milk. Java is coffee. Haven’t you ever heard anybody talk Village before?”

  I shook my head.

  “It’s easy,” Fortran said kindly. “You’ll pick it up in no time.”

  “Right,” I said. “Um. Isn’t coffee just for Folk?”

  Espresso laughed. “You’re jiving me. Every mortal in the whole City drinks java.”

  “Not me.”

  Silence. We set our magic bags on the table. Fortran’s was blue and lumpy and rich in straps. Espresso’s was a brightly striped woolen sack.

  Fortran sighed. “I thought for sure some of the Columbia guys would come sit with me, but no. They’re all over there, talking about amulets.” He pulled a floppy slice of very thin bread with red sauce on it out of his bag and stuffed the pointy end into his mouth.

  “So why aren’t you sitting with them?”

  Fortran’s dark eyes slid toward Espresso, whose sack had produced a bowl of something that looked like green-flecked sand. “Oh, you know,” he said. “I see those guys all the time. The whole point of school is meeting new people, right? So I’m meeting you.”

  I opened Satchel and wished, as usual, for a hamburger and French fries. I got a cold chicken leg, a chunk of brown bread, an apple, and cider.

  “Wizard!” Fortran said as I tore into the chicken with my teeth. “That’s the real deal. Super-trad, right from the Old Country, I bet.”

  “Isn’t that where all magic bags come from?”

  “No way.” Fortran patted his lumpy blue bag, its zipper open on enchanted emptiness. “I got Backpack here at Talisman Town.”

  I put down my chicken. “Are you telling me you can just go out and buy a bag like Satchel?”

  Fortran shook his head. “Not just like Satchel—it’s too old-fashioned. But you could get a bag that looked just like it. Plus, it would give you whatever food you wanted—even burritos and hot dogs and pizza.” He waved the remains of his tomato-smeared slice.

  I thought it might be nice to have a Satchel I could boss around. But then it wouldn’t be Satchel. I clutched the old, worn, stubborn leather strap. “I’ll stick to this one, thanks.”

  We talked for a while longer. Fortran told us his fairy godfather was a geek in Columbia’s Magic Lab. Espresso’s godmother was a hippie chick called Earth Mother.

  “What about your fairy godmother?” Fortran asked. “She’s a wood nymph, right?”

  I thought about lying, then decided that if Fortran and Espresso were going to hate me because of my Park-related weirdness, I might as well get it over with as soon as possible. “Astris is a giant white rat,” I said. “She bakes really good cookies.”

  Two pairs of eyes stared at me, round as marbles. I closed Satchel and got ready to move to the empty end of the table.

  “Wizard!” Fortran said.

  “Groovy!” Espresso said.

  I looked up. They were smiling. “You don’t mind?”

  “A giant white rat is cool from Coolsville, man.”

  That sounded pretty positive. “Thanks,” I said shyly. “I think being a Poet is pretty cool, too.”

  Espresso blushed an uncomfortable red that clashed with her coppery hair. “That’s jive, man. I’d rather groove on giant-slaying.”

  I looked at her with surprise. “You’ve slain a giant?”

  Espresso shrugged. “I know a poem about one. You want to hear?”

  Fortran nodded eagerly. Espresso folded her hands and began to recite.

  “Isabel met a hideous giant,

  Isabel continued self reliant.

  The giant was hairy, the giant was horrid,

  He had one eye in the middle of his forehead.

  Good morning, Isabel, the giant said,

  I’ll grind your bones to make my bread.

  Isabel, Isabel, didn’t worry,

  Isabel didn’t scream or scurry.

  She nibbled the zwieback that she always fed off,

  And when it was gone, she cut the giant’s head off.”

  I thought this through. “I don’t quite get it,” I said. “What did she cut his head off with?”

  Espresso gave me a look. “It’s a joke, man.”

  “I knew that,” I said hastily, and laughed. “Funny.”

  “Did you make that up?” Fortran asked.

  Espresso shook her head. “That would be a mortal named Ogden Nash. I told you, I’m not a Poet.”

  Bergdorf didn’t show up after lunch, so Fortran’s guide, Abercrombie, took both of us to Basic Manners. He was one of Tiffany’s gang—tall, blond, heavily starred, and as snooty as an elf lord. He led us upstairs to a door that looked like every other door. “Welcome to the nursery,” he said, and went away.

  Fortran opened the door. “Oh, nuts,” he said. “He’s brought us to the wrong room.”

  Looking at the fifteen round, rosy-cheeked little faces turned to stare at us, I had to agree. Except for the gray sweaters and no wings, they looked like a nest of Victorian fairies.

  “Eyes front!” We all snapped to attention. It was the tutor I’d met in the hall earlier, the Diplomat. “Clearly,” she went on, “we all need more practice on focus and cultivating a pleasant expression. Neef, Fortran, welcome to Basic Manners. Fortran, you may be seated.” Fortran slipped hastily into an empty desk. “Neef, if you could step to the front of the class?”

  I stepped, doing my best to look cool, and bobbed the Diplomat a curtsy.

  “Please face the class, Neef. I wish to present you to the other students.”

  I turned and watched everyone work on their pleasant expressions. They weren’t very good at it.

  The Diplomat folded her hands at her waist. “Neef is a new student,” she announced. “She comes from Central Park.”

  Everyone’s eyes bulged with the effort of not reacting. I curved my lips in what I hoped was a friendly smile.

  “You’ve all heard about Central Park Folk,” the Diplomat went on. “They’re primitive, backwards, stubborn, uneducated, and violent. Their music is old-fashioned, and they all hate City Folk.”

  My smile became a frown. “That’s not fair,” I exclaimed. “How would you like it if I said that City Folk are stuck-up, snotty, stupid, and prejudiced?”

  The Diplomat didn’t even blink. “I’d say that snotty and stuck-up are essentially the same thing, and that you’ve left out impractical, self-centered, and unreliable, but you’ve hit most of the high points. I’d also say you need to work on keeping your temper. Thank you, Neef. You may sit down now.”

  Seething, I started for the back of the room. “Stop.” I stopped. The Diplomat turned to the class. “Peony, would you like to tell Neef the proper response to a formal dismissal?”

  Peony looked like a doll, with golden ringlets tumbling over the shoulders of her Inside Sweater. “You say, ‘Diplomat.’ Or ‘my lady,’ or ‘my lord Genius,’ or whatever. And you nod a little.” She inclined her head a few respectful degrees.

  “Gracefully done, Peony,” the Diplomat said graciously. “That is worth a gold star point.”

  “Diplomat.” Peony nodded briskly and sat down, grinning.

  If I’d screamed or stomped out, I’d just have convinced everybody that everything they’d heard about the Park was true. So I nodded curtly, and retreated to the back of the room.

  “What’s a gold star point?” Fortran muttered as I sat down beside him.

  “Something we’ll never get,” I muttered back. “Now shut up, okay?”

  Basic Manners lasted forever. We practiced making formal introductions and polite conversation. Fortran made a blatting noise on Tosca’s hand instead of kissing it. The Diplomat sent him to the corner to sort a jar of mixed dry rice and beans into separate bowls as punishment. While he was still sorting, the horn blew, and the Diplomat excused us.

  My first day of scho
ol was over.

  Out in the courtyard, I stopped to take off my Inside Sweater, which I stuffed into Satchel with the Big Book of Rules. All around me, changelings were chasing each other, huddling in groups, and playing mortal games with twirling ropes and bouncing balls. Over near East River Park, a magic swing hung from the sky by ropes of ivy. I thought I saw the horrible Tiffany in a crowd of blonde heads and skinny, jean-clad bodies, but the East Siders all looked so much alike it was hard to tell.

  The Pooka came bounding up to me, black tail whipping the air, yellow eyes aflame with welcome, barking out questions about how I was liking education and what had I been after learning and were there any mortal boys as handsome as my fairy godfather at all.

  I wanted to throw my arms around his furry neck and tell him just how horrible it all had been and how much I hated Tiffany and Bergdorf and how Fortran and Espresso were okay, for City mortals. Then I remembered Rule 3.

  I shook my head.

  The Pooka stopped bouncing and sat at my feet. “Are you telling me there are none? Or there are, and you’re sparing my vanity?”

  I shrugged. His ears drooped. “Well, if you won’t tell me, you will not. It’s beneath my dignity to ask twice, as I’d think it was beneath yours to deny your fairy godfather an answer to a civil question.”

  “I can’t, Pooka. There’s a rule against talking about school stuff to Folk.”

  “They can’t be meaning your fairy godfather, surely?”

  “It mentioned godparents particularly. Don’t be mad, Pooka. I’ve had kind of a complicated day.”

  His ears returned to normal. “No harm in asking.”

  “I want to go home,” I said, trying not to sound as pathetic as I felt.

  “Right,” he said. “Step into the Park with me, then, and I’ll be shifting into something more practical for traveling.”

  Chapter 4

  RULE 160: STUDENTS MUST NOT BULLY, INTIMIDATE, TEASE, OR OTHERWISE PROVOKE OTHER STUDENTS.