Cressida raised her hand immediately. Veronica nodded for her to speak.

  “My family has been in both camps,” Cressida began, sitting up straighter. “The Locke side of my family believes in the old ways, the natural flow of magic through generations, through bloodlines. They think it’s something sacred that shouldn’t be tampered with. But the Widdington side... well, they’ve embraced machine magic. They see it as a way to innovate, to bring magic to those who might not have been born with it. You know, to do good with it, not just for us, but also the animal world.”

  “So that is one thing about the adherents of pure magic, that they use animals in their spells and they use animal ingredients in their potions.”

  “You couldn’t do pure magic without animals,” Mabel said. “Well, not much of it, anyways.”

  “You can do quite a lot of pure magic without using animals,” Veronica said. “Not all the potions use animal ingredients, but yes, some do. Some of the machine magic uses animal parts like leather and oil.”

  “Yes, but those animals live normal lives on farms. They’re not in small cages in animal houses where their eggs or young are taken away or they’re mistreated like the spiders that constantly have to make news webs because the magicians harvest their webs.”

  “Like anyone cares about spiders,” a boy said at the back. Veronica made a guess it was Percy.

  “It’s true that pure magic uses more animals, but⁠—”

  “But they shouldn’t,” Cressida said.

  Veronica turned back to the class. “What are the uses of both types of magic? How different are they?”

  Maeve said, “Very different.”

  “Can you explain how?”

  “Well, pure magic uses… nature. Machine magic makes… things.”

  “Things can be very useful,” Veronica said.

  “Like Mr. Fairweather’s clockwork bird?” Marcus said, and the whole class laughed.

  “Like machines that weave your clothes.”

  “There would be no need for those machines if people kept more spiders,” Lila said.

  “You would still need machines to sew your clothes.”

  “Isn’t the sewing what the women in the poorhouse do?” The off-hand comment illustrated that Lila also came from quite a well-off family.

  “Imagine that those women didn’t have to do that.”

  “But then, what would they do?”

  “Something else useful. Pure magic is about study and the betterment of the individual. Machine magic is about letting machines do the boring jobs for everyone.” Veronica turned around and wrote on the board “individual” under Pure Magic and “society” under machine magic.

  “Now, seen through these two words, what are the dangers of each type of magic?”

  Cressida raised her hand. “Pure magic makes heroes out of individual wizards. They can rise to the top of their circles and rule because no one dare speak against them. People can’t speak against them, because as soon as they do, the wizard will use his spells or his henchmen against this person. The henchmen don’t have to be human. They can be dragons or wyverns that belong to the wizard. It’s always a man, by the way. Machine magic takes that power away and gives it to the makers of the machines, who can sell the machines to anyone who pays. Or can sell the products that the machines make without having to master any magic themselves. The magicians don’t control who has money. They control some, but they don’t control all of it, and they don’t control who owns the magic.”

  When Veronica started at the Academy, an old tutor had said, Every once in a while, a few times in your teaching career, a student comes along whom you will realise has a far better understanding of the subject than you do.

  Was Cressida such a student? She hadn’t done well in her test, but was that because she was too smart for it, while someone like Mabel—who was probably a scholarship student like herself—could just learn by rote without questioning facts?

  Veronica was saved from having to make an embarrassing comment by Percy, who said, “No need for newfangled explanations. Machine magic can be used to make weapons that can kill a lot of people without the owner of the machine having to be in the same place as the machine.”

  So Veronica wrote these things on the board and then gave the students the assignment to discover how attitudes against the different types of magic had changed throughout the ages.

  The students were unusually engaged with the subject. They talked about the use of animals in magic and discussed whether the animals or unwitting people were really slaves of the master magicians.

  It was a good discussion and reminded Veronica why she had chosen to become a teacher: a teacher made people think and made them capable of answering their own questions.

  Chapter Thirteen

  After class 5C had left, Veronica taught two classes of younger students.

  During the second of these lessons, she became aware of unusual noises from outside.

  Some of the students, also, kept looking out the window.

  Veronica grew curious and went to have a look for herself.

  Barnaby Green stood in the courtyard performing his favourite activity: telling people with tools what to do. Whenever the school ordered maintenance performed on the buildings, he would always watch and chat to the workers.

  Today, these workers had brought a bunch of planks into the courtyard and were building a platform on the grass. It was a stage that would be big enough to hold half a class. A couple of steps led up to it from the grass, where other people were putting out seats in rows.

  “It’s for the concert and speeches this afternoon,” said little Quincy, whose mother sat on the school board and would know exactly what was going on, also because he lived next to the school.

  Veronica had been given a sheet with a schedule of days and times that things would be happening in the school, but she hadn’t given it a lot of attention, because she had been focused on finding the rabbit.

  This concert had something to do with the junior choir, she remembered. Singing was one of the purest forms of magic summoning.

  When the class was gone, Veronica went to the history department’s teacher room and ate the lunch her mother always insisted on packing for her. She was chatting with a few other teachers when an older teacher came into the room and announced, “You won’t believe what’s going on in the courtyard right now.”

  Veronica followed a group of teachers across the hallway to a room next to hers.

  The courtyard was already filling up with people who wanted to attend the choir concert. A group of students, led by none other than Cressida Locke Widdington and Mabel, came out through the arched entryway into the courtyard. They carried signs painted with slogans like Protect the Magical Creatures and Save the Rabbit. They also carried the sign Veronica had seen them create, with the red prohibited sign painted through a rabbit. They blew whistles and yelled slogans. There were about twenty of them, and they disappeared out of sight, presumably through the archway that led to the main building. Their voices faded.

  What was all that about?

  Still more people were coming into the courtyard, but these were people who were coming to listen to the speeches and the choir performance.

  Veronica went down to join them. She sat in one of the few remaining seats in the courtyard. Almost all of the school was here, and it was amazing how crowded the school had become in the last few years since she had started working there.

  The weather was nice. People sat in the dappled shade under the trees while the junior choir sang on the stage.

  The principal sat at the front with the members of the accreditation committee. Veronica wondered if the principal knew about the fact that Mrs. Marsh was not at the school, or if she was too busy schmoozing the committee members.

  The students sang a number of very proper traditional songs. These were items like The Magic Forest or The Circle of Light, songs every child would learn, regardless of whether they would ever perform magic or not. They were songs meant to be sung by fairies dancing in meadows and sprites sitting in the branches of trees.

  Except fairies worked in the building, delivering messages, and sprites retreated ever further into the forest. They didn’t like people and would certainly never sing with them.

  But then, just as a song finished, the sound of raised voices drifted into the courtyard.

  A man said, “No, you’re not coming in here like that, young lady.”

  And a female voice said, “We are students of the school. We have every right to come in.”

  That sounded like Cressida.

  The people in the audience around Veronica craned their necks to see what was going on, but Veronica already knew: Cressida and her group had returned. And boy, the group had grown. Veronica guessed there were at least a hundred now. Mostly senior students from years 5 and 6, but there were some junior ones as well.

  Holding the placards, they marched along the aisle between the rows of seats and sat at the front, right next to the committee members.

  Veronica recognised Fenella Broadmeadow in that group. Her face was red and her eyes wide.

  She pressed her lips in a thin line.

  Mrs. Everhart was gesturing frantically for the choir to continue.

  The young teacher who led the choir indicated for them to start.

  The junior choir sang. The first notes were shaky, the young students clearly rattled by the events. But they pushed on.

  But gradually more and more of the singing was drowned out by the arguments of the protest at the front. The singers on the stage looked scared, bundled together, while a few teachers got up and attempted to remove Cressida and her group from the courtyard.

  Fenella Broadmeadow got up and conducted the junior choir from where she stood. She didn’t keep the same tempo as their teacher, and the students grew confused. A girl at the front was crying too much to continue.

  These poor kids would have practiced these songs for months. Whatever happened at the school, they didn’t deserve to be caught up in it.

  But then something else happened: Cressida and the older students also started to sing the same song. Except they had adapted the words of the song to reflect their protest:

  We want the Earth

  To be for all creatures

  To live in peace

  All the creatures of the world

  Do not serve

  A human master

  The song went on and on, and when some teachers had physically removed a few students from the courtyard—under shouts that the teachers were not allowed to touch the students because they weren’t doing any harm—something else happened: two young students from the junior choir walked down the steps from the stage and joined the protesting students. Mabel handed out sheets with the new text to the audience.

  Veronica was especially struck by the last line.

  You can silence our voices

  But when you do, know that

  This will no longer be a school

  But an instrument of indoctrination.

  Holy crap, that hit her, and also, who had written this? She bet Cressida.

  The singing sounded beautiful. The words were strong and made it clear where they stood.

  The members of the accreditation committee were forced to listen. Fenella Broadmeadow’s face was red as a beet.

  When the song finished, Veronica had expected the students to run, but they did not. A couple of teachers corralled them into a larger group and marched them off to the school hall.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Veronica watched as her favourite, rowdy but independent, students from class 5C were hauled off to the school hall. Both Cressida and Mabel walked with their backs straight.

  She would have to go in there to see what she could do for the students. She had, after all, encouraged them to let their views be known.

  The audience dispersed from the courtyard, walking past Veronica. She caught the odd remark about tomorrow evening’s gala dinner, which was to be the school’s formal farewell to the accreditation committee.

  She was not looking forward to that.

  “Hey, Veronica,” a male voice said.

  She turned around and saw Jasper Bloom. How long had he been watching her?

  He continued, “We should talk about finding that rabbit.”

  Had he not figured out that the rabbit-finding mission was a charade? “We won’t find it. It’s gone, or it was never lost in the first place.”

  “Is that why you’ve been avoiding me?”

  “I’m not avoiding you.”

  “You’ve been doing things and talking to people without me. I thought we were going to do this together.”

  “They were just people I happened to come across.”

  “I could have talked to those people if we had a plan.”

  “But we don’t.”

  “We should write one.”

  “I…” Veronica spread her hands. The feeling of powerlessness in her was hard to explain. “I don’t know.”

  “See, this is what I mean. I want to help. Why won’t you let me?”

  “Well, maybe it’s because I’m not sure who you’re trying to help.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “If I’m honest, I can’t tell where you stand anymore. You pressed on me that the school administration is trying to push pure magic on us, but ever since you said that, you’ve been trailing after Mrs. Everhart, getting cosy with the committee.”

  “I did not.”

  “Then what about going to dinner with them? Are you here because you want to help me, or are you just keeping an eye on things for them?”

  Jasper’s face reddened, and he shook his head. “Veronica, you really think I’m spying on you? There was nothing secret about the dinner. It was between the school board and the committee and the board declared that it would happen. I joined the school board because they asked me to. I didn’t have some hidden agenda—I didn’t even think twice about it. You know who my family is. People assume they’re influential, so they ask me to be involved.”

  And it was just that assumption of privilege that bothered her so much. Why was he on the school board while he was also less than half the age of the next oldest board member? Because of who his father was. It was so tiring to see that over and over again. And now rich city people wanted to control even more of what went on at the school.

  She said, “The timing just feels convenient, that’s all, for you to join the board just before the accreditation committee’s visit.”

  “Look, I’m on the board because I care about the school and the students. I want to help you, Veronica. If finding that rabbit still matters to you, then tell me what you need me to do.” He hesitated, then asked quietly, “Do you think I’m the enemy now?”

  She glanced away, and before the tension could rise further, she turned on her heel and walked briskly in the opposite direction.

  Boy, she was angry.

  If she had a bit of time later, she’d probably regret saying half the things she’d said. But on the other hand, they needed to be said.

  And—she had another theory—what if the school wanted her to find signs of machine magic—which wasn’t illegal—in the school and wanted to use it to get rid of the old teachers. Probably no one would cry over the retirement of Fabricius Stone, but both Augustus Fairweather and Mrs. Marsh were well-liked.

  She made her way to the school hall where the naughty students still sat scattered throughout the hall, quietly writing out their lines of punishment. Cressida glanced aside when Veronica entered. Her father had been at the dinner, too. She had even said in class that different sides of her family supported different types of magic. Different types of magic should be taught.

  Veronica was quite surprised at how many of her 5C students were there. Mabel sat at the very back. She was not touching the pen that danced across the paper in front of her, copying the lines from the board over and over.

  Ah, that explained a fair bit about Mabel’s sudden improvement in her work, even to the point where her work seemed rushed. Well, kudos to her if she was smart enough to make it work. And there was also probably some machine magic involved in this trick, which was further proof that it should be taught in class.

  “Yes, Miss Mayflower?” said Percival Thornbrook, who was supervising the students’ detention in the hall.

  Veronica hesitated and then decided to dodge any questions. “Uh. I was looking for a student, but she is not here. I’ll keep looking.”

  She turned around and left. She was sure Cressida was still watching her.

  Chapter Fifteen

  But when Veronica came to her classroom, she found a package on her desk. It had arrived some time during the morning when Veronica had been away. It was wrapped in thick brown paper and tied with a delicate, silver-threaded ribbon that shimmered with magic in the dim light of the classroom. She recognised the handwriting instantly—precise, elegant, and unmistakably from Professor Mordain, her old mentor at the Academy. What a stroke of luck that the Academy had sent her letter on to him, and—frankly—that he was still alive.

  She wondered what was in the box. It was quite heavy. She undid the ribbon and removed the brown paper so that she could take the lid off the box.

  Inside, nestled in a bed of soft velvet, lay a spyglass. It was a beautiful, old-fashioned thing, its brass surface etched with intricate runes and symbols. The lens gleamed faintly, as if touched by magic itself. Beside it, a neatly folded note rested atop the velvet, written in Professor Mordain’s familiar hand.

 

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