The Midnight Orchestra, page 9
“Ah,” she says, seemingly robbed of words. “Ah-ha. Oh my. My my my.”
“Remember! No rules in Composing—so technically we didn’t break any!” I push Baby Jai into her arms. “Please say you can fix him!”
“It wasn’t my fault!” Darby adds.
And then we’re both talking at once, spilling out the tale in jumbled bits.
“I was just trying to—”
“—and then boom! Magic everywhere!”
“And he peed!”
“—don’t know what went wrong.”
“Both of you just take a breath,” says Miss Motte, putting the baby to her shoulder and patting his bum. He grabs one of her beaded dreadlocks and giggles. On the floor, Janet wiggles in an obvious fit of jealousy. “There, there, little one. I have to admit, I didn’t think this would be in my job description. Amelia, what happened?”
I tell her about our idea to do a time spell at the Composium, how I wanted to find the person who stole my mom’s spells, and how it all went sideways fast. She nods as she listens, studying my face carefully as if looking for any secrets I might be holding back.
“What do we do now?” I ask helplessly.
“Well,” she replies, “we wait.”
I flinch. “For him to grow up?”
“Dear me, no. It’s not transformation magic, which is permanent, but time magic, which usually fades on its own. If we wait a bit, then poof! Jai will be himself once more. A pity really, hmm? What cheeks!” She pinches his wobbly jowls. Baby Jai jibber-jabbers back, staring at her adoringly.
“So what you’re saying is . . .” Darby frowns. “We can’t sell Amelia’s spell as a kind of immortality magic and become mega-zillionaires?”
I stare incredulously at her. “That’s what you’re worried about?”
“It crossed my mind.”
“No one will be selling any spells,” Miss Motte says. “Why don’t you girls sit in here while we wait for the magic to wear off? My sister is away for meetings all day, and this little handsome man needs some cleaning up, don’t you, my squishy-bum? My googly-goo? What a good boy!”
Darby makes a gagging sound, and I laugh weakly, imagining how we’ll explain this to Jai later. Miss Motte disappears with the baby into another room, Janet tailing her.
Cool, sweet relief floods my body as I realize he’ll be okay.
Only to be followed by the vivid memory of what I saw through my time spell.
Shuddering, I pick up a book of Musicraft history from the coffee table and focus my attention on the pictures inside. But after a moment, I set it down again.
“You know, despite Jai turning into a baby and us almost getting blasted by magic . . . that was kinda fun,” I say.
“Yeah.” Darby laughs. “Like old times.”
Before Mia, I think.
An awkward silence falls. I know she must be thinking the same thing.
“Look, Amelia—”
“The thing is,” I say at the same time, “I don’t get why she’s so possessive of you. I mean, I know you’re best friends, and I don’t want to come between you two, but what’s she so scared of?”
Darby’s forehead creases as she picks at a thread on her skirt. “I don’t know. She’s been acting weird ever since she showed up. Almost like . . . she’s hiding something. You know, she never talks about the shipwreck, or the island, or her mom. I suggested that she see the school counselor, and she practically went nuclear on me.” She lifts her gaze to mine. “But she’s not a bad person, Amelia. I think she’s just got a lot of stress and trauma under the surface.”
I nod, knowing she’s right. What Mia went through is probably beyond anything I could imagine.
But still . . .
“Is it something I did?” I ask. “Because it feels like this is personal. Like it’s mainly me she’s angry at.”
Darby shrugs. “I don’t know. I hate being stuck in the middle of you two, believe me. I think maybe—”
But I never find out what Darby thinks, because at that moment, Mia herself appears—knocking sharply on the window, her face livid. A gentle snow has started falling outside, dusting her fuzzy pink coat and bare head.
Darby and I jump.
“What do we do?” I gasp.
“You stay here. I’ll talk to her.” With a grimace, Darby stands and goes to the door, unbolts it, and steps outside.
I sit rigidly on the sofa, pretending to be absorbed in the history book, but I don’t even have to strain to overhear their conversation.
“I told you to stay away from her!” Mia says.
“Amelia’s my friend. You should take it easy on—”
“I don’t care, Darby. I don’t want you hanging out with her, or talking to her, or even waving in the hallways!”
“But why?”
“Because . . . because she’s not good enough for you, Darbs!”
Not good enough?
Heat rushes over my skin. I sit up taller, my hands clenched on the book in my lap.
Not good enough?
“And she’s shady,” Mia continues. “You yourself told me about her black spell.”
“Mia . . . you and I both know you’ve played one too.”
“That was eons ago! And it was to save my poor Sir Fluffington, you know that! This is different. That girl is not like us. She’s from a different kind of world. I heard she’s even here as some kind of charity case.”
How in the world would she know about my scholarship? That was just between Mrs. Le Roux and Gran! And since when does being poor make me a bad friend?
Darby must realize that they’re too loud, because she pulls Mia away and their voices fade. Does she stand up for me? If so, I never hear it.
The rest of the next hour passes numbly. I lie back on Mrs. Le Roux’s fancy velvet sofa and try hard not to let the tears in my eyes fall. Wynk hops up with me and curls against my chest, and I stroke his soft fur, making him purr—only to remember just in time that his purring has the power to make people fall asleep. I settle for hugging him instead, and amazingly, he lets me.
Just when I’d thought maybe things could be normal again, that Darby and I could be friends and work things out with Mia . . . it has all fallen to pieces.
At least I find the perfect distraction when Jai returns. Awkwardly, I try to stare at anything but my rumpled, slightly dazed friend leaning on Miss Motte. He’s his normal size and age again, but he has a haunted look in his eyes, and he keeps twitching, as if to be sure he’s all there.
“Where’s your friend?” asks Miss Motte.
“Oh, she had a . . . thing. Is Jai all better?”
“We don’t talk about this,” he says hoarsely. “Ever ever ever. Ever.”
Miss Motte’s eyes are amused, even though her lips are set in a firm line that makes her look a lot like her sister.
“Do you remember anything?” I ask. “Like how you—”
“I said no talking about it!” shouts Jai, his ears on fire. “And I remember . . . bits and pieces. Like a really, really bad dream. Was Claudia there at some point?”
“Oh, right.” I give a sheepish grin. “If anyone asks, tell them the puppy’s fine and on his way to a nice farm in the country.”
“There was a puppy?” Jai’s eyebrows draw together. “And I missed it?”
Miserably, he pops his thumb into his mouth, then freezes, his expression turning to one of horror. He slowly extracts his thumb and stares at it.
“Ah, yes . . .” Miss Motte says. “There may be some lingering effects for the next few days. You might find yourself mashing your peas before you eat them. And, uh, craving milk more than usual.”
Jai’s eyes bulge.
“Well, I do believe it’s dinnertime!” Miss Motte claps her hands. “Off with you, sonny. Amelia? Stay where you are. We need to talk.”
Chapter Thirteen
Truth and Consonances
OUTSIDE, THE LIGHT SNOW dusts the trees and ground. Mrs. Le Roux’s birdhouses look like they’re made of gingerbread, with sugary rooftops. The rich tones of Louis Armstrong’s trumpet coil through the cottage, and Wynk hops down from my lap and curls up on a cushion in the window.
I wait on the edge of the sofa, unsure whether I’m about to get a lecture from Miss Motte or a recipe for banana bread. I’ve given up trying to predict what she’ll do next.
“You know,” she says, “when my sister asked if I’d come to Mystwick to tutor a young Composer, I told her no at first. I was in Papua New Guinea, documenting indigenous spells. It’s a passion of mine, studying magic from different cultures and discovering links between them. But then she told me more about you, and I realized I couldn’t go another day without meeting this Amelia Jones, whose love was so powerful she pulled her mother’s spirit right from the dead.”
She goes into the kitchen and puts a kettle on the stove, then gestures for me to sit in the breakfast nook. I slide onto the upholstered bench under a window that looks out to the Echo trees. Janet jumps up and rests her head on my knee. I pet her fuzzy head while Miss Motte sits opposite me.
“So. What happened in that attic?” she asks.
“Like I said, I Composed a spell to create a time window to find out who stole my mom’s spells, but I lost control of the magic.” Sighing, I add, “I know what you’re going to say. I should never have messed with time magic in the first place.”
She seems to ponder that a moment, then rises to open a cabinet and take out two teacups. Their handles are shaped like treble clefs, and they have little matching saucers stamped with staff lines and music notes. As she spoons loose leaf tea into a teapot, she says, “You didn’t take anything, did you?”
“Take anything?”
“You didn’t stick an arm through your time window, grab hold of, I don’t know, a book or pen or something, pull it through to our time?”
I blink. “You . . . can do that?”
“Well, you shouldn’t. There are some laws even we Composers dare not trespass. One of them is the Law of Equal Consequence.” She gives a little laugh. “Gracious, I sound like your Mr. Pinwhistle, don’t I? So serious!”
“What’s the Law of Equal Consequence?”
“It states that if you move something from one time line to another, you must replace it with something of as equal consequence as possible. Swap an apple for an orange, for example, but better yet, an apple for an apple. Bonus points if they’re the same color. In essence, something that will affect that time line much the same way it would affect this one. The more ways it matches—size, color, chemical makeup—the better.” She points a spoon at me. “You’re sure you didn’t take anything?”
“Honestly, no!”
“Good. Because if you had, and you didn’t leave behind something of equal consequence, it could leave holes in the fabric of space-time. Basically it would cause a great deal of chaos and the unwinding of events that would unravel our own time lines and . . . well, basically it’d be a catastrophe. It’s happened before, once or twice. Took a massive amount of magic to set it right again, and I believe it also carries a hefty criminal sentence. But if you didn’t take anything—or leave anything—then there’s no problem.” She gives a cheery smile. “So, time magic aside, what do you think went wrong?”
I fiddle with Janet’s soft ears. “I don’t know. It was going so well to start with. Then . . . I guess I lost my concentration. My mind slipped.”
She sets the empty teacups on the table. “What have I told you fuels a Composition?”
“Emotion.” If there’s one thing I’ve learned from her, it’s that.
“And what emotion did you use to fuel your time spell?”
“A . . . grade of B on my World Musicraft test.” Even as I say it, I feel embarrassed. It sounds so small and silly in light of the kind of magic I was attempting.
“Ah.” She studies me closer, then nods to herself. “Let me guess. You got dizzy and nauseated, didn’t you? Felt like your strength was draining out through your fingertips?”
I sit up straighter. “Well, yeah, actually. What happened?”
She sighs. “A Composition is like a long road trip. You have to make sure there’s enough fuel in the tank or you’ll never make it the whole way there. Otherwise, the spell will start feeding on you. Magic cannot come from nothing, Amelia. It requires sufficient energy. If you don’t feed it properly, it will consume you.”
“And it’s emotion that the magic wants to eat?”
“Exactly.” Behind her, the kettle starts whistling. She stands up and pours tea. “And the bigger and more complex your Composition, the more emotional fuel it’ll take. While I congratulate you on your noteworthy test score, I fear that it elicited too weak an emotion given the ambition of your spell. If you hadn’t broken off your music when you did, it might have taken a lot more energy from you. Of course, setting off an explosion of uncontrolled magic isn’t ideal, either. You were lucky it only resulted in a temporary rearrangement of your friend’s cells. You or he could have suffered much worse. That spell might have drained you entirely.”
I shudder. “Meaning . . .”
She gives me a serious look. “Meaning exactly what it sounds like, Amelia. It could have drained you to a husk. And there’s no coming back from that.”
I look down at my flute case, queasy again for a whole different reason. My hand slips into my pocket, curling around the vial with the dandelion seed.
There is great power in that small vial.
Whatever memory is trapped in the seed, it must be an incredibly emotional one, if it really is as powerful as Mr. Midnight promised.
Miss Motte sets the teacup in front of me and I yank my hand from my pocket.
“Which brings me to another matter,” she says, stirring her own cup. “What did you see, through your time spell?”
“The attic,” I say. “But in the past.”
“And your mother’s spells?”
I look down at my tea. “They were stolen.”
“You saw someone take them?”
I nod. The steam rises from the hot liquid in gray wisps, like white magic.
“And? Did you recognize the thief?”
I look past her to the cuckoo clock hanging over the kitchen doorway. It’s almost six o’clock, and I’m going to miss my study session with Jingfei and Victoria in the library if I don’t leave soon.
“Amelia?”
“I just remembered that I have a history report due tomorrow,” I mumble. “I should probably go write that.”
“Amelia.” Miss Motte puts her hand on the table between us. “Who did you see?”
My chest tightens till I can’t breathe. She waits, unmoving, as our tea cools and the cuckoo clock ticks along.
“I saw my dad,” I whisper at last. “He took the spells.”
She sits back, letting out a long breath. I look out the window, where the snow is now thicker. It’s already formed a thin layer on the ground, sparkling white, covering the dead leaves and rotting logs.
Miss Motte asks, “How long has it been since he left?”
I pick up my teacup and tilt it, watching the dregs swirl. “It doesn’t matter. He’s gone, and that’s that.”
“He’s never written or called?”
“I don’t care!” I set my cup down too hard, and tea spills across the table. With a yelp, Janet leaps down and scurries out of sight.
Standing up, I clutch my flute case and glare at the puddle. “I don’t want to talk about him, okay? He’s a loser. He ran away from everything important. He’s gone, and that’s better for everyone. Now I need to go to study hall.”
I take a step to the door, but Miss Motte catches my arm.
“Amelia, look.”
She points at my shirt. I look down and suck in a breath.
The mood beads around my neck glow bright red. I touch them lightly, half expecting them to burn my skin.
“Anger,” whispers Miss Motte. “Remember how Compositions are fueled by emotion? Well, Amelia, it seems you’ve found a mighty source of fuel.”
Of course I’m angry! I’m angry at her for asking questions she has no business asking, and angry at Darby for recommending the time spell, and angry at myself for going along with it all.
“What do you mean?” I ask.
“I mean, with strength like that”—she taps the fiery beads around my neck—“you might Compose a spell to stop time itself. But if you bottle up emotions that are this powerful, they eat you up from the inside.”
My heart thumps in my chest. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m not bottling up anything.”
“Amelia, your feelings about your dad, that anger and pain, they need to be set free—safely. With this.” She pats my flute case. “Composers are lucky, you know, to be able to weave their emotion into sound. Use your anger before it uses you.”
“Lucky? You think I’m lucky?” Blinking back tears, I pull my flute away and step past her. “I’m not talking about this anymore. He’s not—he’s not a part of me, and I won’t let him be!”
“Amelia!”
Rushing out the front door, I nearly slip on the slick snow, but I catch myself and plunge on. Miss Motte doesn’t follow. By the time I leave the woods and look back, the cottage is hidden by a veil of drifting snow.
Chapter Fourteen
A Tough Note to Crack
I CHEW ON MY PENCIL eraser and stare at the blank page, as if words might appear any minute, but the Composition notebook remains stubbornly blank. Empty staff lines stripe the paper, waiting for me to fill in the notes.
But what notes? What notes?
It’s like a puzzle I can’t crack.
With a groan I look up from the page and gaze at the cavernous auditorium of the Shell. Seated in the front of the balcony, I have a view of the rows and rows of blue velvet chairs, the big empty stage, the heavy red curtains drawn shut. It’s the quietest place on campus if you get there at the right time of day. Something about the stage and the dimly glowing footlights usually inspires me, but right now, nothing seems to be working.
