Winterspell, page 43
Pangs of loss came to Clara every time she paid Mr. Hoffmann a visit, and every time she stood beneath the mobile in her bedroom and spun it, letting the shadows of dragons and nightbirds flit across her skin. But she knew Godfather would have been proud of her—had been proud of her—and that, though it pained her to think it, he had probably been glad to die, after those long, lonely years of being so near her mother and yet never near enough. Several times since hearing Nicholas’s story she had tried to muster up anger against Godfather—for loving her mother so blindly, for betraying Leska not once but twice. But Clara could not manage anger for long; he had suffered enough by his own doing, and so she kept the memory of him close and dear and free of blame.
Clara snapped the shears closed. The bright red ribbon floated away on either side of her, and applause rippled up from the crowd.
Beside her, plain-garbed, rosy-cheeked Mrs. von Meck grabbed Clara’s hand and shook it. She was to be the headmistress here, and was without doubt one of the most pleasant and intelligent women Clara had ever met. The girls would be in good hands.
It was one less thing for her to worry over, one less thing to feel guilty about leaving.
“This,” Mrs. von Meck gushed, “is the most remarkable day, Miss Stole.” There were tears in her eyes. “This will be a place of hope for many.”
Clara smiled up at the imperious gray facade with its marble pillars and the words HARROD HOUSE etched severely into the stone. It still unnerved her somewhat, to think that this place had once been Dr. Victor’s, that the classrooms now gleaming with polished wood and lined with books had once been cells holding bloody cots and shivering girls.
No longer. Now it would be a school, and those girls would not be cowering in their cots but rather huddling in them late at night to study for examinations or share the latest gossip. It would be open to any who wished to further their education, who looked to university and beyond. Their classes would keep their minds sharp, and their exercises would keep their limbs strong, and none of them would have reason to be afraid.
Clara squeezed Mrs. von Meck’s hands. “It already is a place of hope for me,” she said, and turned to smile for the photographer.
* * *
Later Clara stood in front of her mirror, her bags at her feet, and raised her chin.
“I have done what I said I would do,” she told her reflection. “I have put Father back on his feet and on the path to righting Concordia’s wrongs. I have looked after Godfather’s work, ensured my family’s safety, and helped rebuild my city . . . and I have flourished doing it.”
She paused, stepped closer to the mirror. Her nose almost touched the glass.
“So, you can try to make me feel guilty any moment now,” she said firmly, “but it won’t work. I have nothing to feel guilty about.”
She waited to feel it, some lingering sense of responsibility that would keep her here, but none came. Her reflection was calm.
She had finished here. It was time.
“What are you doing?” came Felicity’s sharp voice from the doorway.
Clara immediately returned to her packing, tucking her mother’s portrait beneath a layer of underthings. “Packing, of course.”
“No, I meant before.” Felicity sat primly at the vanity, arranging her skirts. “You were talking to yourself in the mirror.”
Clara smiled. She had rarely been able to truly fool her sister, and that ability had lessened even more in the last two years. If Clara had flourished during that time, then Felicity had done so tenfold. She still enjoyed her pretty things—the lace on her skirts, her silver hairbrush, her favorite ribboned hat—but she was constantly at her father’s side, learning politics, learning government, and everyone who met her whispered to John Stole, “Watch out for that one; her mind’s twice as keen as yours,” and every young man who met her grew flustered and tongue-tied, much to John Stole’s dismay.
“I was giving myself courage,” Clara said, tying the bag shut. “It’s a hard thing, leaving home for the first time.”
Felicity was quiet, watching as Clara went about her room, straightening things that didn’t need straightening.
Finally she said, “Clara, are you really going to university?”
Clara turned at the window. The biting air outside pulled at her, insistent.
“Of course I am,” she said, laughing. “I’m boarding a ship this afternoon. You know that, you silly thing.”
“Yes, going abroad to school. To see the world and find adventures. To stretch your legs.”
“You’ll want to do the same yourself someday.”
“Perhaps.” Then Felicity leaned closer, thoughtful. Clara had never seen her so serious. “Will you come back?”
“I’ll visit often.” Clara kissed her cheek, then teased, “Perhaps I’ll even bring a husband back with me!”
Felicity burst out laughing, and with that the moment had passed. “You? Clara Stole? The day you bring home a husband is the day I sprout wings and fly.”
Clara threw a pillow at her, and Felicity squealed and rushed out the door, her ribbons streaming behind her.
Alone, Clara waited until she heard Felicity’s voice mix with her father’s down the corridor, then grabbed her bags and hurried downstairs. They would be upset with her for leaving without a formal good-bye, but even though her blood was ringing like bells in her ears, and she could hardly keep the nervous smile from her face, she feared that seeing them and being wrapped in their embraces would stall her courage.
She hurried out into the oncoming winter and shut the mansion’s great doors softly behind her.
As she turned the corner onto Sixty-Sixth Street, a coach-and-four splashed muck onto her skirts and a group of boys raced past, tossing a ball between them. The daylight was dimming, washing the city in shades of cold pink and gray. When she reached Trifles & Trinkets at Twenty-Third and Sixth, Clara paused at the window and let her fingers touch the glass.
She closed her eyes and let the sounds of the city wash over her—the streetcars and the clomps of horses’ hooves, the bells of shop doors and the laughter of passersby and the deep barge horns from the river.
Then she took one last look at the familiar shopfront and its curling gold letters, and turned into the nearby alleyway.
She set down her bags and took out the headset from the folds of her coat. Hands trembling, she placed it on her head, beneath the ribboned brim of her hat, and switched on the mechanism at her ear.
“Hello?” She sounded uncertain, and younger than she had felt in a long time. “Is anyone there? Bo?”
A pause. A heavy, unbearable stillness. She heard nothing but a dim crackling noise, thin and spotty. Then a high whistle and the sound of someone clearing her throat noisily.
“Well,” said Bo, “it’s about time.”
Clara heard the familiar grin in her voice, though it was older now, and she went weak with relief.
“Bo, I—”
“Not to worry. I’ll patch you over to him right now.”
“What?” Sudden panic struck her. She wasn’t ready; it was far too soon. “Bo, wait—”
A snap, a change in the silence, as if whatever magic connected the two worlds had tilted, shifted.
Then a voice said, “Clara? Are you there?”
It was different, this voice. Older, richer, lined with the passage of several years and the wisdom that came with it.
Clara pressed her fingers to the headset, bringing his voice closer. Her vision was hot with tears. “Yes. It’s me. Hello, Nicholas.”
His name sat strangely on her tongue, although she had said it many times over the last two years, alone in the intimate safety of her bedroom. She found herself laughing. Her heart swelled, lifting her.
He let out a slow breath in her ear. “I’ve missed you, my Lady,” he said after a moment, and his voice was thick. She wondered what he would look like now, if his hands would feel the same, if his kisses would be as irresistible, and how beautiful it would be to learn to know him, finally, as two people who had done what they needed to do and survived to celebrate it.
“Come home to me,” he murmured, and it was like arms enfolding her. “I’m here.”
Clara closed her eyes, slipped the glove from her bandaged palm, and emptied the vial’s contents onto her fingertips. Then she let it fall. The glass shattered on the cobblestone. Somewhere on the road, bells jingled merrily. She focused her senses, tasted winter on her tongue, and reached out into the cold. A sense of going home filled her, and she whispered: “Take me home.”
When the Door formed, she felt its light without opening her eyes. She smiled, took hold of it, and stepped through.
© Ellen B. Right
CLAIRE LEGRAND
used to be a musician until she realized she couldn’t stop thinking about the stories in her head. Now a writer, Ms. Legrand can often be found typing with purpose at her keyboard, losing herself in the stacks at her local library, or embarking upon spontaneous adventures to lands unknown. She has written two middle-grade novels, The Cavendish Home for Boys and Girls, a New York Public Library Best Book for Children in 2012, and The Year of Shadows. Claire lives in New Jersey with a dragon and two cats. Visit her at claire-legrand.com.
SIMON & SCHUSTER • NEW YORK
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Also by Claire Legrand
The Cavendish Home for Boys and Girls
The Year of Shadows
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An imprint of Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing Division
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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Text copyright © 2014 by Claire Legrand
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Sources of quotes at beginning of each section are from an edition of the Nutcracker fairy tale by E. T. A. Hoffman: Hoffman, E. T. A. (1984). Nutcracker. (Ralph Manheim, Trans.) New York, NY: Crown. (Original work published in 1816.)
The text for this book is set in Adobe Jenson Pro.
Map endpapers by Catherine Scully
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Legrand, Claire, 1986–
Winterspell / Claire Legrand.—First edition.
pages cm
Summary: To find her abducted father and keep her sister safe from the lecherous politicians of 1899 New York City, seventeen-year-old Clara must journey to the wintry kingdom of Cane, where Anise, queen of the faeries, has ousted the royal family in favor of her own totalitarian, anti-human regime.
ISBN 978-1-4424-6598-5 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-1-4424-6600-5 (eBook)
[1. Magic—Fiction. 2. Fairies—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.L521297Wi 2014
[Fic]—dc23
2013019385
Claire Legrand, Winterspell
