The Magic Mirror of the Mermaid Queen (3 page)

I was interested. First, I saw a wide, paved courtyard. Then, as we got closer, a solid red building, like a giant brick with windows and a door. The door was black; the windows were barred.

My heart sank.

I clung to the Pooka’s mane, more nervous than a champion and hero had any business being.

He stopped in front of the front steps, shook me off briskly, and shifted into his man shape. “Go on, knock,” he said. “They’ll hardly eat you with me looking on.”

I climbed to the door and knocked.

A long, brown, wrinkled face appeared, very like a brownie’s. It was kind of oversized, but maybe brownies grew bigger out in the City. “No Folk allowed,” the face said. “No godparents, no guardians, no magic animals. No exceptions.”

Not a brownie, then. A mortal.

The Pooka put his foot on the bottom step. The face’s owner came outside and crossed her arms over her black silk bosom. In the sunlight, she looked a lot more solid than the Pooka. Of course, she was wider than he was, and much better padded. But that wasn’t it. If I had to describe it, I’d say he was air and she was earth.

I wondered if all mortals were like that.

The Pooka flashed her his most charming smile.

The mortal door keeper frowned. “No exceptions,” she repeated firmly.

The Pooka turned to me helplessly. “I’ve little choice, it seems, but to leave you to face your fate alone. Never fret, my heart. You’ve faced dragons worse than this.”

He shifted into a black dog, lifted his leg on the steps of Miss Van Loon’s, and trotted off across the courtyard into the friendly green oasis of East River Park.

The door keeper
tsk
ed. “Tricksters. Well, are you coming in or aren’t you?”

The front hall of Miss Van Loon’s School for Mortal Changelings was long and low and echoing. The ceiling was curved, the floor was a black-and-white checkerboard. A flight of black steps led upward. On the landing stood a tall wooden box with a metal disc stuck into it, ringed with numbers from 1 to 12. A short metal arrow pointed at 9; a longer one hovered just before 12. Below the disk, a long metal rod swung gently back and forth. As I watched, the long arrow jerked forward onto the 12. The box bonged nine times.

I jumped.

“Never seen a clock before?” The door lady was amused. “Well, you’ll learn—that’s what you’re here for. Follow me.”

The door lady led me to a room furnished with more books than I’d ever seen, a big wooden desk, and an uncomfortable-looking chair. Behind the desk sat a mortal woman (I could tell right away, this time) with skin the color of tree bark and gray hair in little coils, like sleeping snails. Despite the heat, she wore a scarlet sweater zipped up to her throat.

“I’m the Schooljuffrouw,” she said briskly. It sounded like “
school
-you-for-now.” “That’s Dutch for school mistress. You’re late.”

“I got here as soon as I could.”

The Schooljuffrouw pointed to a gray bundle on the chair. “That’s your Inside Sweater. Hurry, now. Tester is waiting for you.”

So school was going to be all about following orders I didn’t understand. Fine, I could do that—I’d been doing it all my life. Still, I was disappointed. I’d hoped mortals would be different.

I took the bundle, bowed to the Schooljuffrouw, and went back into the hall, where the door lady was waiting. “Got your Inside Sweater?” she asked, sounding comfortingly like Astris. “Good. Put it on.”

The last thing I needed on a warm late summer’s day was a sweater. I took off the Pooka’s coat, tucked it into Satchel, and unfolded the bundle. The Inside Sweater had two pockets and a little collar and a zipper. It was wool, scratchy, and made me even hotter than I’d been before. I pushed up the sleeves. The door lady pulled them down. “Against the rules,” she said. “You’ll get used to it.”

We passed the clock, its arrows pointing to 9 and 2, on our way up the stairs. The door lady led me to the second floor, where double doors opened onto a low hall lined with more doors. She pointed at one of them.

“In there,” she said kindly. “It’s time to start getting educated.”

I took a deep breath and went in.

The room contained four other mortal changelings about my size. They were sitting at little tables, looking as hot and nervous as I felt. A tall woman stood between a big desk piled with paper and a piece of black slate with TESTER written on it in white.

“Welcome to Miss Van Loon’s, Neef,” the woman said. She pronounced it
Van Lo-ens
. “You’re late.”

The desks had chairs attached. I slid into one, catching the pocket of my sweater on the chair back. The other mortals giggled. I kept my eyes on my desk. There were words scribbled on it: “I hat sppelin” and “Phone likes gnomes.”

This was worse than meeting vampires on Broadway. At least with vampires, I knew what the rules were.

Something big and heavy hit my desk with a crack. I jumped. The other mortals snickered.

“Do pay attention, Neef,” Tester said. “This is school, not a fairy revel. And stop playing with your hair.”

I jerked my hand away from the curl I didn’t even know I was tugging. It was a habit I thought I’d broken last summer. Apparently, I was wrong.

She raised her voice. “Listen, children. You all know that Folk have lots of rules. You also know that they don’t usually tell you what they are until you’ve broken one. Here at Miss Van Loon’s, we tell you all our rules right at the beginning, along with the consequences of breaking one. That way, you can concentrate on lessons without worrying about doing something you didn’t know was wrong.”

I looked at the book in front of me. It was square and thick, with stiff red covers.

“You have until the next full moon to learn them,” Tester went on. “We call this the Honeymoon. Just remember, it’s a grace period, not permission to do whatever you want. You may open your books now.”

The first page was a drawing, in profile, of a very pretty woman with a lacy collar and her hair in ringlets. It was labeled “Miss Wilhelmina Loes Van Loon.”

The second page looked like this:

This was worse than the lists of treasure guardians and fictional bogeymen Astris had made me memorize. I flipped through the pages with growing horror.

I was sunk.

There were two hundred pages in all, with five rules on a page: one thousand rules to learn and follow. At the bottom of each page, in big, black letters was printed:

A boy at the front of the room waved his hand, black as night against the pale green walls.

“Yes, Fortran,” Tester said. “You have a question?”

“What’s Rule Zero?”

“Zero is not a number,” Tester said. “Any other questions?”

We all shook our heads gloomily.

“Good,” said Tester. “Now I’m going to tell you something about our founder, Miss Van Loon.”

If I’d listened carefully, I would have learned exactly when Miss Van Loon had come to New York Between and why she’d founded a school for mortal changelings and a lot of other things it might have been interesting to know. As it was, I didn’t hear a thing. I was too busy hating everything around me.

It wasn’t the
Book of Rules
. I was used to rules. There are rules for everything in New York Between: words to say, rituals to follow, things not to do or else. Astris and Pooka had been teaching them to me ever since I could remember. Why you should never look behind you. (Something might be gaining on you.) When to say “thank you.” (When you want to get rid of a brownie.) What to take on a quest. (A magic bag. Jellybeans. Your five wits.)

They’d never taught me how to deal with mortals.

“Neef,” said Tester. “Have you heard a word I said?”

I stiffened. “Um.”

“I didn’t think so,” said Tester. “You’re the Central Park changeling, aren’t you?” She consulted a piece of paper. “Geas, quest, godparents a magic animal and a trickster. It’s a wonder you survived! Well, don’t worry. You’re with your own kind now.”

If Astris hadn’t taught me to be polite to anybody I didn’t trust, I would have thrown Tester’s stupid rule book at her. As it was, I bared my teeth in what I hoped looked like a smile.

My own kind? I’d never felt more out of place in my life.

I examined the other changelings: Fortran, the dark-skinned boy who’d asked about Rule 0; a girl no bigger than a faun, with sleek brown hair and smooth brown skin; a tiny blond boy; a red-haired girl who looked like an oversized leprechaun with round ears. Were they my kind? Was anybody?

“Now I’m going to ask all of you some questions,” Tester was saying, “to get an idea of your strengths and weaknesses so we know what classes to put you in.” She picked up a pencil and a pile of papers and sorted through them. “Espresso?”

The leprechaun girl sat up straighter.

“Name six storm spirits, please, with their countries of origin.”

The girl called Espresso blinked slowly. It was perfectly obvious that she didn’t know there even were storm spirits, much less their names, and was wondering whether she’d get in less trouble admitting that or whether she should take a shot at making them up.

Invention won. “There’s Buffy the Wind Queen from Transylvania, and Windy Witch from England, and—”

“Very creative, Espresso,” Tester interrupted. “But this isn’t Story Telling. I take it you don’t know any Folk lore?”

Espresso shrugged.

Tester made a note on the paper. “Tosca, you meet an old woman at a crossroads. What do you say to her?”

The little seal girl stuck her thumb in her mouth.

Tester made another note. “Peel, what’s a Genius?”

The little boy, who’d been looking frightened, perked up. “
Everybody
knows what a Genius is,” he said. “It’s the spirit of the Neighborhood, who runs everything and protects all the Folk and the changelings. Mine’s the Burgher of Yorkville.”

“Very good, Peel,” Tester said. “Fortran, tell me about Little Red Baseball Cap.”

“Isn’t that a Boston question?”

They were pitiful. Tosca knew how to say “I am under the protection of the Genius of Lincoln Center” only in French, German, and Italian. I could say the Words of Protection in a hundred languages, including an obscure Slavic dialect spoken only by the kazna peri that lived in the ravine. I not only knew “Little Red Baseball Cap,” but also “Jack and the Extension Ladder” and “Sooty Slush and the Seven Dwarfs.” By the time Tester got around to me, I was convinced that school was going to be a complete waste of time.

“Neef. Tell me what the first mortal changeling was called.”

My mouth dropped open. “Why would I want to know that?”

Everybody snickered.

Tester sighed. “I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. And yet . . . Fortran, would you like to tell her why?”

Fortran wanted to tell me so badly he could hardly sit still. “You know how Folk are always getting into stupid feuds? Well, it’s worse with Geniuses, and more dangerous for everybody because they’re so powerful and everything. So the Folk steal mortals from Outside to make alliances ’cause we’re flexible and know how to lie and stuff. I’m really good at the lying part,” he said modestly. “I’m the best liar at Columbia University.”

Tester’s mouth twitched. “In Diplomacy, it’s called Being Tactful, and it does not necessarily involve lying. Mortal changelings are also Champions and Questers, of course—that’s been going on since Folk were Folk. In this modern age, we can also be Organizers, Personal Assistants, and Secretaries to Geniuses and Business Folk. And there are the arts: Storyteller, Composer, Artist, Magic Tech. Espresso here is going to be a Poet. She’s from the Village.”

We all looked at Espresso, who made a face. “That’s my fairy godmother’s bag,” she said. “I want to be a hero. Questing’s where the action’s at, man.”

Espresso, I decided, was probably my kind, even if she didn’t know about storm spirits and talked funny.

After about a million more questions, Tester made a few more notes, reshuffled the papers, then handed them around.

“These are the lessons you’ll be taking. Neef, it wasn’t easy to decide where to place you. You’ve a very unusual combination of strengths and weaknesses. I’ve decided to assign you to Basic Manners, even if you are a bit old for it, as well as Diplomacy for Ambassadors, even though you’re a bit young.”

I wanted to tell her that Astris had been teaching me manners since I could walk, but I could tell, even without whiskers, that Tester’s mind was made up.

I studied the list of lessons.

Talismans. Fair enough. I knew how to turn on the Mermaid Queen’s Magic Magnifying Mirror, but that was about it. History of New York Between and Mortal History and Customs all sounded interesting. But Questing?
Diplomacy
? After I’d been on an actual quest, dodging giants and outwitting Geniuses and coming home in triumph?