Pennyroyal Academy (4 page)

“I am your Fairy Drillsergeant, and I am your new reality. There is very little chance you'll like me and even less chance I'll care.” As she flew closer, Eleven could just make out her features. Her hair flowed blond, and her nose and cheeks and ears were as dainty as lace. She almost looked like a princess herself, albeit a fraction of the size. “You,” she said, stopping in front of one of the highborn girls. “Why do you want to be a princess?”

The girl's spine was straight, her hands folded neatly in her lap. Each hair on her head was perfectly in place, and polished jewels dangled from her ears. Yet with each passing moment, her composure crumbled.

“Urm . . .”

“Well? You didn't just stroll in off the street, did you? Why do you want to be a princess?” The girl wiped her brow, her hand quivering. “Come on, Cadet, this is the easiest bloody thing I'll ask you all year!”

“I suppose I'd like to meet my prince,” she blurted out.

The Fairy Drillsergeant's tiny jaw tightened like a noose.

“Get out!” She turned to the coachman: “Stop the coach!” And back to the hapless girl: “GET OFF MY COACH!”

As everyone looked on in astonishment, the coachman reined his team to a stop. The girl hurried down the aisle and disappeared off the coach as fast as she could go.

“You are no longer highborn or lowborn or sidewaysborn or anything else,” said the Fairy Drillsergeant as the coach jerked forward once again. “You are third-class princess cadets. And that's all most of you will ever be.”

Eleven slumped a bit lower as the Fairy Drillsergeant floated by. “I am not here to make friends, ladies, I am here to make princesses. For those of you willing to work harder than you ever have in your life, I will transform you into a Princess of the Shield, sworn sister to all who have come before and all who follow . . .”

She trailed off. Cadets began to look up in confusion. She was hovering in the aisle, staring at something in the back of the coach with an expression of utter shock.

“Excuse me,” she said, her voice cold and even and ready to explode. “Boy. What exactly do you think you're doing?”

Heads began to turn. A confused murmur broke out. Eleven followed the Fairy Drillsergeant's glare to the very last bench where, indeed, a boy casually tried to shield his face with his hand. He was thin and snub-nosed with floppy hair, and he was pretending to look out the window. The moment became so heavy he could no longer ignore it. He looked up from behind his hand, cheeks red as fire. “Sorry, were you talking to me?”

Her face contorted into a pained grimace, as though the universe had just disappointed her yet again. “And we haven't even left Marburg yet,” she muttered to herself.

“Uh, my apologies, Fairy Drillsergeant,” said the boy. “This is where they told me to go . . . Your Highness.”

Muted laughter spread through the coach. Malora dangled her arms across the back of her seat, watching with amusement.

“What's your name, boy?”

“Basil. It's . . . Basil. Of Witch Head Bay, near the sea.”

“Well,
Basil of Witch Head Bay near the sea,
Ironbone Company is a princess company, is it not?”

“Yes, F-fairy—”

“And you,
Basil of Witch Head Bay near the sea,
are a boy, are you not?”

“Y-yes, Fairy—”

“THEN WHAT ARE YOU,
BASIL OF WITCH HEAD BAY NEAR THE SEA,
DOING IN MY PRINCESS COMPANY?”

“My mother wanted a daughter, a princess,” he stammered, the words flooding out of him now. “But she just kept having boys. Twenty-two of us. She couldn't bear to have more children, and I was the last, so here I am.” The Fairy Drillsergeant floated toward him with barely contained fury. “F-f-first was Balthazar, he's my eldest brother, then Benjamin, Bartholomew, Bannington—”

“SPARE ME YOUR FAMILY TREE, CADET!”

Basil stopped talking, but his jaw kept moving. The Fairy Drillsergeant flew right down in front of his nose and gave him a withering look. “You'd better be a cracking princess, boy,” she said, her voice so low that only the last few rows could hear her. “Because I'll enjoy watching you fail. And you won't like it when I enjoy things.” She turned and floated away, showering him with the dust from her wings.

Basil slumped over and clutched his head in his hands. Eleven sympathized with him, but she never wanted what had just happened to him to happen to her. She began to formulate a strategy in her mind:
Stay quiet, keep to yourself, and do not do even the slightest thing to attract her attention.

“You will have academic and practical training with other members of Pennyroyal staff. But all of your fieldwork is with me,” said the Fairy Drillsergeant. She glanced out the window as the coach rumbled through Marburg's massive curtain walls and into the great, green world beyond. The horses snorted and stomped their hooves as they pulled the coach up a steep path and into a dense, dark forest. “This is the Dortchen Wild. It is the most dangerous enchanted forest in all the land. And Pennyroyal Academy sits bang in the middle. So enjoy your last breath of freedom, ladies. Because as of now, you belong to me.”

She flew out the window and joined the coachman. Inside, silence descended like snow. The excitement of enlistment was gone. The cadets became lost in their thoughts.

Eleven stared past Maggie out the window. As the coach jostled through the forest, and the endless black-green of trees and shadows rolled past, she was overcome with an exhaustion unlike any she had felt before. And for the first time in days, she fell into a deep sleep.

Y
OU MUST NEVER
bow to fear . . .

Through the mist of a gently falling rain, her eyes opened, deep and piercing green in a world of gray. She stood on the roof of a crumbling tower above a sea of trees.

Yours are a warrior's eyes . . .

The voice was older, and although it had the ethereal quality of a daydream, Eleven knew it was real. She turned and found a woman standing there. She had seen this woman before, but couldn't place where. Her thoughts seemed slower, dulled in a mist of their own. The woman stepped forward. She wore a simple tunic dress, a rich shade of purple with pale sleeves, and had the small bud of a lily in her hair.

Your blood is the blood of Saudade . . .

Now Eleven stepped forward. She
had
seen this woman before, in the vision in the dragon scale that night by the fire. But just as this realization came, a wave of coldness hit her, so intense it caught her breath. She wheeled. There, nearly twice her height, stood the faceless, hooded witch from that same vision. Her sleeves fell back as she lifted her arms, and Eleven saw her skin, slick and thin as spider's silk. Black creeping things were pushing out from inside her, like caterpillars made of smoke trying to escape their cocoons . . .

Eleven startled awake. She wasn't on a tower. There was no princess, and there was no witch. There were only girls staring back at her in wary judgment.

“All right?” said Maggie. Eleven nodded, but in truth her terror remained, like the cold droplets on her skin when she had climbed out of the river. “You've been asleep all afternoon. Nothing but endless trees.”

Eleven glanced around the coach. It had all
felt
so real, and yet it wasn't. How could a dream provoke such fear that it carried over into life?

“Maggie,” she said. “Do you know a place called Saudade?”

Maggie faced her, puzzled. “No, I don't think so. Demetra, have you heard of Saudade?”

“I haven't, but that doesn't account for much. My knowledge of the world beyond the Blackmarsh is woeful.”

Maggie and Demetra started chatting about all the places they hoped to see some day. It quickly became a discussion of where the Academy might place them should they complete the three years and earn their titles. Eleven didn't join in. She pretended to listen, but her thoughts were far away in another part of the land where the cliffs were as high as the moon and the trees were bigger than dragons. Her homeland. She thought about her father. When she had left him, he was recovering from injury. She hadn't said goodbye, and she very much regretted that now. It had only been a superficial wound, but a fluttering in her stomach was telling her that something was wrong. Minutes passed, one by one, and that feeling of dread slowly began to build into panic.
I must get off this coach. I need to go home, but . . . no . . . I can't do that. I can't do that to them.

Suddenly, sunlight flooded through the windows as they emerged from the gloom of the forest into a vast clearing. Eleven heard gasps all around her. She blinked away the light, and once her eyes had adjusted, she gasped, too.

A rippling plain of yellow and green wildgrass stretched on for hundreds of yards, then the cliffs and valleys of the Dortchen Wild began anew. In the distance, the diamond-white glint of the Glass Mountains cut a jagged ridge in the sky. The coach veered right, tracking through worn mud ruts around a low stone wall, crumbled and ancient, that ringed the clearing like a piecrust. But what had captured everyone's attention, what brought the excitement boiling back for the first time since they'd left Marburg all those hours ago, was in the center of the meadow.

Pennyroyal Academy sat atop a grassy plateau, a kingdom unto itself. Its towers, keeps, and battlemented walls gave it the look of a jeweled crown. Every cadet on the coach leaned to Eleven's side to get a better look.

“Right, here we are, ladies,” said the Fairy Drillsergeant, floating back in through the window. The cadets reluctantly returned to their seats, desperate to see their new home but unwilling to risk her ire. “Now, before we reach my beloved Academy, I'd like you all to note the wall. It is bewitched. Princess Pennyroyal herself tricked a witch into enchanting it many, many years ago, and it is utterly impenetrable. Anyone may pass freely
out
, but the only way back in is through a fairy's wand.” She lifted hers, the size of a small splinter. “Nothing gains entry to the Academy unless a fairy lets it, and that includes runaways and sneakabouts. Do you understand?”

“Yes, Fairy Drillsergeant,” they replied.

“Good. I don't want any trifling with that wall. There are wolves and witches and even the odd giant out there.”

The coach rumbled up to a break in the wall. Two tiny fairies, visible mainly by the shimmering sparkles falling from their wings, waved their wands. A transparent, rippling sheet of magic lifted off the stone wall, and the horses pulled the coach underneath.

Demetra looked out her window, then those on the other side of the coach. “Is that it?” she said. “Where's the curtain wall? Where are the soldiers?” But the other cadets were too enchanted by the Academy to worry about security. The closer they got, the more its incredible scale came into focus. It loomed above, ancient and bursting with history, yet new to them all, waiting to be explored.

“I can't believe I'm actually here,” said Maggie, her voice quiet with reverence. “Can you imagine it, Evie? The princesses of legend . . . the most storied romances . . . all the tales we've been told since we were little girls were formed
right here.
”

“Evie?”

“It's better than Eleven, don't you think?” said Maggie with a smile.

“Oh, absolutely,” said Demetra. “It quite suits you, actually.”

While everyone else focused on the Academy, Evie settled into her new name.
Funny,
she thought,
I've never had a name before, but this one just feels . . . right. Evie.
It was as though some part of her she hadn't even known was missing had somehow been found again. For the first time in days, she smiled.

“There's the Queen's Tower!” said Maggie, pointing to a colossal crystal spear rising high above campus. It dwarfed the other towers sprinkled across the grounds, giants of cut limestone and granite and sandstone and flint. The reflected sunlight made the Queen's Tower glow from within like an icicle in spring thaw.

“I've never seen anything like it,” said Evie.

“The Queen commands the whole of the Academy.”

“What about Princess Beatrice?”

“Beatrice reports to the Queen. They say no one's ever seen her before, but some believe she's actually Rapunzel.”

“Blimey! Rapunzel?” said Demetra. “That's brilliant.”

Evie smiled politely. She wasn't familiar with the name, though she could tell by Demetra's reaction that she should be. There was another round of gasps as the coach finally crested the plateau and the campus stretched out before them. A vast marsh sat beneath the Queen's Tower surrounded by networks of roads that snaked between timber-framed buildings and giant stone structures. The Academy looked to be two or three times the size of Marburg.

“Right, ladies, listen carefully,” said the Fairy Drillsergeant. “This next bit is very important. Those buildings there . . .” She pointed out Evie's side of the coach to a series of long, low structures with arched roofs. Each flew a different-colored banner. “Those are the knights' barracks. Yours are on the other side of campus. Should you choose to tour the knights' barracks, I suggest you enjoy yourself so you'll have something to think about on the ride home. Do I make myself clear?”

“Yes, Fairy Drillsergeant.”

Evie regarded the knights' barracks with a frown. Although it was true she wouldn't have made it this far without Remington, and in fact, would probably be dead, she would much rather there weren't knights at the Academy at all. Would she ever truly feel comfortable knowing they were just there across the marsh? And why did no one else seem bothered by them?

“Before us is the Grennilieu Bog. It is named for the troll who brought water back to the Academy after the Seven-Years Summer. And if you go in there without permission, you will also be dismissed.”

The Fairy Drillsergeant continued to point out the larger features of the Academy, but it all sounded like gibberish to Evie. So she gave up trying to understand and focused instead on what she could see. The campus was a maze of moss-covered castles; giant fortified keeps with exposed walkways and staircases; circular towers and square towers and octagonal towers and bartizans that started halfway up the wall, blooming into towers above; arrow slits and murder holes and words from long-dead languages etched in stone, nearly worn smooth by age and weather. She could
feel
the weight of the Academy's history in every brick of cut stone. It looked immense, exciting, and above all else, fun.

The coach rattled across a wooden bridge and into a courtyard. A huge stone fountain sat in the center, creating a circular reception area. Two twenty-foot statues, a knight and a princess, rose from the sparkling pool.

As the Ironbone coach rolled past the fountain and joined the others, Evie's eyes remained fixed on the statue of the princess. The heroic pose. The expression of quiet fortitude. This was the girl on her parchment. Evie had found the thing she'd been searching for since she'd left home on that terrible night.

“I want you to look round this coach,” said the Fairy Drillsergeant, spreading her minuscule arms. “These are your company-mates. These are the people with whom you will train. On whom you will rely. These are the princesses you will follow into battle.” Evie's eyes shot forward. Battle? What did she mean by that? She glanced at Maggie, who didn't seem bothered. “Ironbone Company has been around since giants roamed those woods. Some of the greatest princesses ever to live were Ironbone girls. Do them proud, or get out.”

The coach sagged to a stop behind the others. Outside, fairies barked orders at their scampering cadets. Huge, bearded woodsmen chased after the boys, shouting commands. It was the chaos of intensely structured order.

The girls bubbled with anticipation, but the Fairy Drillsergeant didn't release them just yet. Evie clutched her dragon scale necklace. She was nervous, excited, scared.

“Ladies, I don't know where you've come from or who your parents are, and quite frankly I don't care. Except your mother,” she said, scowling at Basil. “I wouldn't mind a word with her. The rest of you, I don't know if you've always dreamt of being a princess or if this is just a good laugh, but there is one thing of which I am absolutely certain.”

Evie, heart racing, glanced at Maggie, who couldn't contain her smile.

“Your life as you know it is now over. Welcome to Pennyroyal.”

The cadets filed off the coach and into chaos. Demetra dragged Evie along by the arm, but she couldn't run very fast on the cobbled stone, her ankles threatening to buckle with each stride. She caught a brief glimpse of Remington before he disappeared among the other knight cadets; the staff was funneling the girls in a different direction, toward Pennyroyal Castle, a massive structure of glazed red brick with great circular towers topped by crenellated walls. This was where the process of becoming a princess cadet, third class, would officially begin.

“Excuse me,” came a gentle voice from behind. “You dropped this on the coach.”

It was a small girl in a patchwork dress, lowborn, judging by her gnarled hair. She was holding the dragon scale necklace. Evie's hands shot to her own throat and found it bare. As panic coursed through her body, she took the necklace and immediately began tying a more secure knot.

“Thank you.”

“It's Amaryllis,” she said with a smile. “And you're welcome.”

Evie's panic began to recede as she slipped the scale over her head and tugged on the knot to test its strength. Then she continued on to the castle with the rest of her company.
That must never happen again,
she promised herself.

The next few hours were a blur of queuing up, answering questions, being poked and prodded and inspected, then racing through narrow, torchlit halls into different chambers to do it all over again. Finally, exhausted and thin of nerve, Ironbone Company emerged through a stone archway into a dank, windowless room where a fire crackled in a hearth. Beyond that, more arched doorways led to other hidden parts of the castle. The cadets stood shoulder to shoulder. Evie took her place next to Sage, Malora's friend from the coach, who glanced at her spiderwebs with a sneer.

“So,” came a strange voice, wet and raw. “You'd like to be princesses, would you?”

Heads turned to search for the voice, and a troll with tight, leathery skin and bulbous warts arrayed across his face emerged from the shadows. His right leg was considerably shorter than the left, giving him an ambling stride and a hump in his back, and his cane, a lumpy piece of black wood, looked as if it might disintegrate with each step. His eyebrows were thick and white, and his beard was a bundle of taut, brittle strands. He wore a luxuriant velvet suit in burgundy, shoes of polished leather, and a crème silk ascot with matching pocket square. Though he looked like he had come out of a rotting stump, his dress was undeniably fashionable.