Ordinary Magic (10 page)

Amid the cheering and pounding on tables, Frances whispered, “
Is that unusual?
”

Mrs. Murphy held up her hands, and the room quieted down. “Wait. Wait—I’m mistaken. We don’t have the same number of students. With our new Year Ones”—she inclined her head toward our table—“we have more.

“Think of all the wasted opportunities,” she moaned dramatically. “The Red Lady from the other side of the river who wouldn’t leave us alone if we paid her. She wouldn’t leave us alone even
when
we paid her. Did any of you get eaten like good little ords? No-oo!” She pulled the word out as if it caused her pain. “You rallied together and fought her off. Then there was the chimera outbreak. Again: heroism, ingenuity,
survival.
What are we to tell the king? That his ord population is booming?”

“She’s not serious, is she?” Fred asked as someone from across the room shouted, “Hey, I broke my leg!”

“Oh, to be sure, there was one injury. We’re all very impressed, Mr. Naveen. I’m not even going to mention last winter,” Mrs. Murphy continued, throwing up her hands. “Don’t you laugh, Mr. Dane. You have gained at least twenty pounds since you came here. What have you done to help us out, hmm? Have you gotten kidnapped? Did anyone here get kidnapped over the summer?”

“She can’t be serious,” Fred said, and we exchanged another nervous glance before I caught Alexa watching me. She shook her head and fought down a smile.

“I have never met a more selfish, irresponsible … help me out here,” Mrs. Murphy called.

“Disrespectful!” someone shouted.

“Inconsiderate!”

“Ungrateful!”

“Precisely.” Mrs. Murphy let out a sharp sigh, a smile struggling at the corners of her mouth. “I suppose there’s nothing left to do but get through another year.”

More cheering. Somebody whistled.

Mrs. Murphy raised her voice over the noise. “Oh, for—I’m not done yet, you heathens! Has no one taught you any manners? Now, before we get on with all the celebration nonsense, I would like each and every one of you to think long and hard about the trials you are putting your poor teachers through. Look at Miss Corey there. Her nerves are strained to the breaking point, watching after all of you.” She gestured to Becky, who
was standing calmly in the shadows with her hands clasped in front of her. “She is losing her mind.”

“She never had it!” someone shouted from the back.

“
That
is beside the point,” Mrs. Murphy said. “It is still tragic. As for our new students”—she looked at us, and her eyes were bright with suppressed humor—“on behalf of the entire school, which will join me, I know, we hope you have a very dull and educational year. Now, let’s eat.”

Behind us, kids suddenly rushed out of the kitchen doors, faces flushed and eyes focused. One student popped up over my shoulder and spun a basket of bread and a bowl of salad onto our table. Another plunked down a pitcher, water splashing around the rim and ice cubes clinking together. The teachers dispersed, each one edging a chair into one of the full tables. There was a tap on my shoulder and Alexa slid into a seat next to me. “I told you I’d come back.” She laughed when I threw myself at her.

Over crusty bread and salad Frances started talking in starts and stops. She tried to slip in comments when they’d be least noticed, like when we were talking about family and she mentioned she was the third of four girls.

Fred buttered another slice of bread with a sound that might have been
hmm
or
aah
and asked which sister was her favorite.

Peter looked up in what might have almost been surprise. “You have favorites?”

“Yeah,” Fred and I answered together.

“You do?” Alexa shot me a sly look. “And who, may I ask, is your favorite?”

I grinned. “You, of course.”

Alexa speared a tomato in her salad. “You’re a terrible liar.”

Frances nibbled on a roll until she thought we weren’t paying attention. “
Susan. She’s nice. She’s the talented one. She wants to own a nursery. Plants, not babies. She, um … I haven’t heard from her since …
”

Then Fred asked Frances how she found out about being an ord. Frances explained (her face slowly going pink) that she had been out with her family a week before her Judging. She crossed the street a little too fast. “
There was a carpet, and the driver didn’t see me until the last second. He cast at me, to get me out of the way, but nothing happened. Luckily, I ducked. I didn’t even realize until later what it meant that the driver’s magic didn’t work on me.” She shrugged and offered a watery smile. “They had to call off my whole Judging.
”

“So you didn’t get Judged?” I asked.

“No. I
mean … there wasn’t any point
,” she explained. “But Daddy
got some of his deposit back. So it wasn’t … it wasn’t that bad.
”

“Then you don’t know if you’re an ord? Not for sure,” Peter said.

“You’re an ord,” Becky said. She was standing just behind Peter.

“How can you be sure?” Fred asked.

“I’m sure.” She came over, flicking her dark bangs out of her eyes as she crouched in front of Frances. “When you’re an ord long enough, you can tell. You can see it in other people. No, that’s not right,” she corrected herself. “It’s more like you recognize it. There’s just a certain
something
that ords don’t have.” She took Frances’s hand, rubbed it between her own. “It doesn’t make us worse, Fran. Just different. Sometimes it takes a little while to
figure it out, is all. It’s scary, I know,” Becky continued, to all of us. “But ever since King Steve took the throne, things for ords are better than they have ever been. He’s done a lot for us.”

Peter laughed, and looked up from his book. “Like what?”

“Like building this school,” Becky returned with a bit of an edge to her voice. “Like giving us a place to stay. A safe one, where we don’t have to worry about when we’ll eat next,” she added with a pointed look at Peter’s full plate. “Like standing up for us when that fool’s court starts yelling about ords being dangerous. He didn’t need to stick his neck out for us, and heaven knows it’d be easier for him if he didn’t. So I will not hear a word against him, Peter Whittleby. Not from you or anybody else.” She stared him down until he dropped his eyes. Then Becky glanced at Alexa. “He’s a good man.”

“Yes,” Alexa agreed. “He is.”

Around the fourth course, Nate, the boy I’d helped earlier, charged over to our table. “We need some help in the kitchen with the dishes. Murphy said to recruit one of you newbies to lend a hand. Well?” he demanded before anyone could answer.

There was a brief silence when everybody looked at one another. “I will,” I said.

“Great. Come on. Come
on
,” he said, yanking me up out of my chair. He dumped a load of plates in my arms and pushed me through the kitchen door and into chaos—shouting and smells and people and a heat that nearly knocked me back. The place
even looked like heat, with bright yellow walls and red tile floors and constant movement. There were kids wiping down counters and bending over a hot stove and slamming things into cupboards. “Hey! Watch that!” called a stout, hippy woman by the stove—Cook Bella, I guessed. She had round pink cheeks, and her hair was bound back tight and covered with a scarf. “You take those pans out and stack them again, and I’ll thank you to do it nicely this time. If you don’t take the time to learn, I’ll make you do this whole kitchen over again.”

The kid took the pans out, stacked them on the counter, and then put them back again, gently and neatly.

Nate led me to a great double sink on the other side of the room. To the right was a pile of dirty dishes, to the left a crowded drain board, where clean dishes sat drying. “Here, here, here, here.” Nate splashed his dishes down into the soapy water. “You ever wash dishes before?”

I shook my head.

He rolled his eyes. “Oh, for—Okay, pay attention. You take the dirty dish, you put it into the soapy water, you take the sponge—tie your hair back, newbie, nobody wants a hair on their plate—you put the soap on it. You following me? You take the sponge, wash all the gunk off”—he demonstrated—“then under the faucet, you have to turn on the faucet first, then scrub, and into the drain board. Got that? You use hot water, got that? Always hot water. I’m going to dry and put away. Any questions?” He tossed the sponge at me, not giving me a chance to ask. “Wash.”

I turned on the water (“hot water,
hot
”—he twisted the lever to the right) and poured enough soap on the sponge to turn it slick and bubbly.

After the first couple of dishes I paused to roll up my sleeves. Most of the time the gunk washed off easily, but sometimes I had to scrape and scratch bits off. Twice some kid whisked by and dumped more plates on the counter. The hot water stung my hands, turning them red, then tender, then numb. But the pile started shrinking, slowly at first, and then faster as I got the hang of it.

“Wash fast. But not too fast. If you don’t do a good job, she’ll make us do it all over again.” Nate nodded toward Cook Bella, who was taking pans out of the oven. A warm, buttery smell drifted across the room—and for a second I was back in Mom’s bakery, and the sense of home was so strong my throat clogged and my eyes stung. Across the room, Cook Bella set the pans aside to cool and turned off the oven. I inhaled again, trying to hang on to the memory of home.

“Nate, how are you two doing on those dishes?” Cook Bella called without looking up.

“Good, Chef.” The words were clipped and respectful.

“Maybe I’ll just come over and make sure.” Wiping her hands on her apron, she worked her way over to us, tasting here, correcting there, until she poked her head between us. With a sniff, she took a plate from Nate and inspected it. He went on drying and didn’t breathe. She looked at it so long I was surprised he didn’t pass out.

Finally she handed it back to him. “You’re learning.”

Nate’s shoulders sagged in relief.

Cook Bella took a wet dish from the rack. Another careful inspection. She handed it to Nate and turned to me, eyes narrowing in scrutiny. “What’s your name?”

“Abby—” A pot slipped out of my hands and splashed back into the water, splattering bubbles on my face. “Abby Hale.”

“You ever wash before?”

“It’s her first time,” Nate said.

Cook Bella pinned him with a look. “Did I ask you?”

“No, Chef.” He focused on his dishes.

She turned back to me. “This your first time washing dishes?”

“Yes, uh, Chef,” I said.

She looked me up and down. “You’re a Year One, all right.” Before I could answer, recognition lit her face. “Hale. Wait. You’re our watchdog’s sister.”

“Watchdog?” I repeated. Nate elbowed me; I ignored him.

“I hear your family likes you,” Cook Bella continued as if I hadn’t spoken. She took my hands abruptly, and turned them over, back and forth. She didn’t seem to care that they were soaking wet and a dull, buzzing red. “Never had a day’s work in your life.”

Um, no, Chef
was probably a safer answer than
I guess that depends on what you mean by “work.”

“You ever even set foot in a kitchen before?”

“Yes, Chef. At home.” That didn’t seem to be what she
wanted to hear, and I caught myself adding, “Also, my mom owns a bakery. I help out sometimes, but it’s a normal bakery.”

“Did Nate here volunteer you?”

“He asked. He said he needed help; I said I’d help him.”

Cook Bella glanced at Nate, who nodded. She smirked and let go of my hands. “A normal bakery doesn’t count.”

“Yes, it
does
,” I snapped on a surge of protectiveness.

Cook Bella raised her eyebrows. Nate elbowed me again; I ignored him again. The entire kitchen had gone quiet. “Normal bakeries—magic folk? They don’t really cook. They
cast.
Same bland little muffins and tarts as everyone else.”

I said, “My mom makes shortcake.” Which is not what I wanted to say, but Cook Bella was a grown-up, and you’re supposed to show respect to grown-ups, even if they don’t know what they’re talking about.

“Shortbread,” Nate jabbed under his breath.

“No, short
cake
,” I told him. “Shortbread’s like a cookie; Cook Bella just made shortcake.”

Cook Bella looked straight at me. Her eyes were hazel, which I’d always thought was a soft, pleasant color until now. Slow and steady as a snake, she went over to her baking pan, cut off a corner of the cake, and tossed it at me. I had to drop the sponge to catch it. “What else?”

The fragrant golden square burned my hands like a challenge.

Okay, it probably was not my smartest moment. But it wasn’t fair, it wasn’t right, her saying Mom didn’t really cook. I mean, she made this exact same thing. I should know, I spent enough
time watching Mom cast and conjure, and playing official taster for her. Shortcake was one of Mom’s specialties: soft, a little spongy; and the bakery would have that toasted, buttery smell all day.

Then I forgot to be angry for a second because I was picking up another scent. Something faint and floral and silky, something that wasn’t supposed to be there. I took a cautious bite. “Roses. You used rosewater?” I said, surprised. “That’s not right. That’s not in the spell.”