Antebellum Awakening (16 page)

“No, but if you’re fast you can break it. I’ll give you a few swings to start practice. A block, a lunge, and swing, for example. You’ll practice on this dummy.”

Off to my right stood a figure cloaked in a white sheet. The fabric fell away, revealing a four-limbed wooden figure with a grotesquely painted face and a distorted frame. Many swords had bitten into its wood.

“What is that?” I asked.

“This is Mikhail, or so the Guardians dubbed him. He’s the practice dummy for sword work.”

“Mikhail? Named after the Southern Network High Priest, Mikhail?”

“The very one,” Merrick said, walking toward it. I followed just behind. “He just stands there and doesn’t do anything while all the Guardians work around him, a shocking resemblance to the South’s High Priest.”

I would have laughed if Merrick hadn’t looked so serious. Focused on the objective as usual, he immediately began to demonstrate several new sword movements while I mimicked him.

“Practice again tonight,” he said, casting his eyes over the dummy. “We should be able to use Mikhail for a couple of days. Oh, and carry those back with you.”

He pointed to two buckets filled with rocks.

“Why?” I asked, already dreading it.

“Because I said so.”

I glared at him. No doubt he enjoyed having someone to boss around. As an apprentice, he probably had very little power of his own. I couldn’t begrudge him a little flexing of his control. I’d probably do the same thing, but I didn’t have to like it.

“Can I ask you a question?”

He looked back at me, his green eyes bright, almost dazzling, in the full sunshine.

“Yes.”

I hesitated. Ever since my visit with Isadora I’d been contemplating what she said.
There are strengths you possess that she does not. Every witch has a weakness.
I hoped that putting the question to Merrick wouldn’t bring me, or my intentions, too much attention.

“Do you think physical strength could match magical strength in a fight?”

His brow wrinkled.

“In what regard?”

I wanted to ask him outright:
I cannot beat Miss Mabel with magic; she is too powerful. Could I kill her with physical force before she kills me with magic?
But I couldn’t for so many reasons. How I loathed the dark secrets of my heart.

“Oh, just an idle question.” I kicked at a clump of grass nearby, certain that my lackadaisical response made him more suspicious than ever. “So many witches rely on magic that I wondered if, or when, we fight the war, we could triumph through non-magical means.”

Merrick thought about the question, and I was glad to have a moment to recover my wits.
Oh, just an idle question?
That must have been the single most suspicious thing I could have said. I would have smacked my forehead if my arms weren’t so tired.

“Yes, I think it can,” he said. “The Eastern Network has fought battles entirely without magic in the past, and triumphed. While I think it presents its own challenges when the opponent does use magic, it’s by no means a death wish.”

“I agree,” I said, hoping to close the conversation. But my heart sped up just a little. Is that what Isadora had meant when she told me I had strengths that Miss Mabel didn’t? Perhaps I really could destroy the contract and win my life back. Maybe by learning sword work with Merrick, I could physically fight Miss Mabel for my life.

Could I meld the two? Magic and sword work? There must be a way. I thought back to the day at Sanna’s, when the magic slipped and buried the ax in the stump.

“Can magic and sword work be used together?”

“Together?"

“Yes," I said. “I mean, could a witch use magic to make her sword work better?”

He pressed the tip of his wooden sword in the ground and leaned on it, looking me directly in the eye.

“What you’re really asking is if Miss Mabel came after you again, would you be able to win if you were using a sword and she was using magic?”

At first his straightforward response scared me, but having it out in the open felt better.

“Yes,” I said, averting my eyes. “That’s what I meant.”

“It depends on if she knows how to fight with a sword.”

I looked up at him again, an unnatural desperation in my voice that I couldn’t control. “But could I use the magic to make my sword fighting better? She’s too powerful for me to defeat any other way. A physical fight would be my only chance.”

I’d said far too much, with too much emotion. I could see the surprise in the way his face wrinkled and his eyes focused on me. But I couldn’t take the words back so I waited, holding my breath.

“Magic can give strength and power to skills that you learn if you can figure out how.”

“How do I do it?” I asked, breathless.

He shook his head. “I don’t think you can.”

“What? Why not?”

“Because there’s more to sword fighting than swinging your arm and having good footwork.” He tapped his head. “Sword fighting is all about what’s up here. Until you’re ready to let go of whatever is holding you back, you won’t be able to really learn.”

His words set fire to my rage, making the hair on the back of my neck stand up. What did he know anyway?

“You think you know me so well?” I hissed. “Nothing is holding me back! I’m learning just fine. I executed each task today just as you ordered me.”

“I didn’t say your footwork was a problem,” he said in a calm, unapologetic tone. “Your footwork is fine.”

“Then what is my problem?”

“I can’t tell you that. Only you can.”

I growled, grabbed the two buckets, and left without another word.

•••

With Leda and Camille occupied by their studies, I took the opportunity to visit Miss Celia—one of the teachers at Miss Mabel’s School for Girls and Master of the kitchen—later that day.

Without girls to fill the school, the usual bustle and hum of life had drained away. No stray giggles. No candles in the windows. It made me feel decidedly lonely as I approached the old manor. Even with the bright sun illuminating the green strands of ivy, it looked bleak and forgotten.

I pushed the creaky iron gate open with trepidation. My eyes flickered to the attic and then away again. Magic stirred within, annoyed by the sudden flood of memories. I turned the power away and opened the heavy front door.

A tall, expansive foyer with a silver chandelier greeted me. I ran my eyes over the twirling stairs, the ivy carved into the railing, and the crimson rug that ran along each step. The comforting sound of Miss Celia humming drifted through the empty corridor, pulling me from the dark reveries the magic threatened to pull me into. Smiling, I closed the door behind me and called out. If I startled Miss Celia she’d clobber me with a rolling pin.

“Miss Celia?”

The humming ceased.

“Who’s there?” she called back. I followed her voice down the hall and turned into the kitchen on the left.

“Oh, blessed be!” she cried, her rosy cheeks lighting up. “Bianca, what are you doing here?”

Miss Celia looked the way she always did, with a little pouf of gray and white hair on top of her head and her favorite old apron with flour splotches covering her torso. Her wrinkled, kind face lit up in a smile. I recognized a familiar rectangle of dough on the counter in front of her. She must be making a batch of her famous cinnamon buns! Good timing indeed.

“Merry meet, Miss Celia,” I said, laughing. “Are you busy?”

“Not too busy to talk! Come in, come in and have a seat! I’d love a little chat. Heaven knows it’s too quiet here with only me and Scarlett around. How are you?”

I obeyed, taking a seat on a stool near the cupboard where she worked the dough, not realizing how much I had missed her. When she didn’t have forty hungry girls to cook for and a gaggle of students coming in and out of the kitchen all the time, she seemed more like a friend than a teacher. We dispatched with the trivialities about my time at Chatham Castle quickly.

“And Camille?” she asked. “How is she enjoying the castle?”

“She’s the center of attention with the Guardians,” I said. Miss Celia’s eyes sparkled.

“Yes, yes I can see that. Sounds like a lovely time. And Leda is holed up in the library doing classes, I hear.”

“Yes, and Michelle is the pride of the kitchens.”

Miss Celia waved a hand through the air, spreading a slight puff of flour as she went. “Of course,” she cried. “Michelle is one of the brightest girls I’d ever met, that’s why I recommended her so highly to Fina.”

“Miss Celia,” I asked, making sure to keep my tone light and sweet. “I came for a specific reason. May I ask you a few questions?”

“Of course! Ask me anything.”

Ha! We’ll see about that.

“It’s in regards to Mabel.”

Her countenance dropped a little, suddenly not as bright as it had been.

“Miss Mabel?” she repeated, forcing nonchalance. “She’s been quite busy these past few months and I haven’t—”

“No,” I said, pulling
Mildred’s Resistance
from my bag and setting it in front of me with a loud thud. It sounded like the final gong before a death blow. “Her grandmother.”

Miss Celia paled beneath her flushed cheeks, her rolling pin poised just above the dough. She stared at the book for a second, and her eyes darted back to mine.

“Why?” she asked in a faint voice.

“I need information.”

Miss Celia dropped the rolling pin and turned away, dodging some of the cast iron frying pans and copper pots suspended from the ceiling. She opened a long cupboard and fumbled through several glass jars of spices with a trembling hand.

“I’d prefer not to talk about her, if you don’t mind,” she said in a clipped tone, dissolving her previous joviality.

“But I do mind,” I said, sliding off the stool. “I need to know about her, and you worked with her all the time. You are probably the one person alive that knows her best, except Miss Mabel. Please, Miss Celia?”

She cast me a suspicious look from the corner of her eyes.

“I can’t imagine why anyone needs to know about her. She was not a nice witch.”

“Because I need to find out more about Miss Mabel,” I said. “Learning about the original Mabel may give me some more clues.”

“Why do you need to know more about Miss Mabel?”

“I-I just do, Miss Celia. Please help me?”

“I don’t know,” she said, fidgeting with a small bag labeled
basil leaves
. Her eyes flitted around, avoiding me. She stuffed the bag back inside and shut the cupboard. “I just don’t know.”

“We both know what Mabel really was,” I said in a low tone, although no one could overhear us. “I need your help if we are ever going to make right what she’s done.”

Miss Celia looked at me. I let her search through my eyes, silently pleading. She finally capitulated.

“Oh, fine!” she muttered with a familiar snap in her voice. “But only for a few minutes while I finish my rolls. Then I have things to do. Heaven knows I hate talking about her. What do you want to know?”

Relieved, my shoulders dropped back.

“Thank you,” I said. “Tell me what she was like. Anything you can remember.”

Miss Celia let out a huff, making it clear once again that she wasn’t happy about it, grabbed a can labeled
cinnamon
and pattered back to her pastry dough. I walked back around the oak table to face her and leaned against the smooth wood, giving her my full attention.

“She went by May. She had hair like a raven, black and shiny, just like yours. Her eyes were sharp.” Miss Celia gave a little shudder. “I remember her wearing a lot of black, though she was as vain as a peacock.”

Miss Mabel’s sultry beauty drifted through my mind. Miss Celia, sprinkling a generous helping of cinnamon and sugar on the dough, continued on.

“She wasn’t a warm witch. She was very business-like and demanding. Luckily she didn’t care much for simple matters like groceries and kitchen work, so she let me manage it and left me alone to handle the meals. I didn’t have to interact with her much, really.”

“How did she treat Miss Mabel?”

“The same way she treated everyone else,” Miss Celia said, shrugging. “She had high expectations and little compassion. Miss Mabel and May were far too much alike. By the time Miss Mabel could talk, the two of them were in a continual power struggle. Miss Mabel didn’t want to listen, and May wouldn’t tolerate anything but total obedience.”

“That explains a lot,” I muttered.

“They constantly fought. Miss Mabel grew to be a very bitter young woman because of how difficult May was to live with. May was always spouting off big ideas and plans, but she rarely followed through with them. I could never decide which of the two of them had more vanity, and which one wanted power more. ”

I perked up. Vanity was a given. But their mutual desire for power had me intrigued.