Journey to Mt. Smolder: Never Lore, #1

By Bookerlunds

NOTICE: Explosive content contained within. (Rebel boys and indomitable girls have always been a combustible combination.)

 

All the signs of Fairy's unraveling were there: a strict rationing of pixie dust; the disappearance of a magical species; a reckless reliance on spies plucked from human orphanages. Annabelle was no orphan. Her father was perhaps the most infamous man in Childerbridge—and she'd never live down the shame of it, though she'd also never accept that the charges against him were true—not most of the time.

 

She'll have to go to the end of Never to prove what is true…about Never itself, about her father, and her own work-worn self.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bookerlunds
• Release date: Mar 31, 2023
• ISBN: 9798987558218

Book preview

Childerbridge

Taking a walk with a magician was never an ordinary stroll in the park, though it was no genie’s wishing lamp either. Magicians were unpredictable, even when they belonged you—even when you knew them down to the holes in their mismatched socks. Annabelle loved her papa better than anyone else in the world, but like a lot of magicians , he was as shifty as the weather.

Too often he disappeared on her—abandoning her to Aunt Mercy or to strange friends, or at school. When Aunt Mercy died it was all school all the time until he reappeared on holidays, or in this case, for no reason at all except that she was old enough to learn an invaluable life lesson.

Childerbridge’s towers cast long shadows over the market full of the buzz and bustle of morning commerce. Annabelle flinched as a young schoolboy pushed by her and dashed into the crowd. Her father’s hand shot out, stabilizing her. She glanced up just in time to notice him blink once and waggle his dark eyebrows. Then a clap of thunder rolled, followed by a stiff wind. As if on cue, the crowd parted down the center, clearing the path of everything and everyone but a smattering of red maple leaves.

Lovely autumn day, don’t you think? Her father’s eyes twinkled as they ambled into the now vacant street. Halfway across the bridge they stepped away from the footpath between a sausage vendor and second-hand clothes peddler, to wind their way up a narrow staircase leading to one of the towers.

As Annabelle turned, a blast of cold air assaulted her neck, and she shuddered. No wonder they called it Chill-derbridge. The stairs were steep and dark, punctuated at intervals by bare peepholes affording glimpses of the sky blue river and the steel gray city on either side. This must be the center tower of the bridge, she realized, as they ascended upward. I didn’t know people could come here.

After three turns they reached a landing, and a man in a strange uniform with a big stick—her eyes widened—the stick was a spear! The man spoke to her father, who dropped something that clinked into his palm. The man with the spear opened the door behind him and they went up a second, much shorter staircase into a room lined with granite-framed windows. Standing on her toes, she peered out over the city of Childerbridge at St. Michael’s steeple and out as far as the bald black brick of the prison tower.

Then her father said, Can you read this, Little Bell?

When, oh when would she outgrow that old nickname?

She squinted to where her father pointed up at the stone wall. Read what?

With the wave of his index finger, a wolf spider crept out of the seams of the stone and scuttled to the edge of a broad web. With its spindly legs, it began trimming the web back until it revealed a chiseled out string of words over the windows on the upstream side of the bridge. The writing was a little odd and old-fashioned, but after a moment she sounded out,

Fairies and fools sail by fireflies' lights.

And on this side? he asked.

Turning, she read out with more confidence,

The wise are guided by the constant stars.

So what do you think that means?

She shrugged. Fireflies will get you lost, I suppose.

Her father chuckled. Harold Childer should know. His family fortunes were made in shipping.

"Who is Harold Childer?"

The man who built this bridge. Or had it built. Some say he got the frost giants to do it, and that's why it's so cold.

At this, an elderly man with big walrus whiskers standing near them harrumphed.

No call to be filling the child's head with nonsense of that kind, man. Good gray granite cut from the Wilding Hills, floated down the river, and assembled by human hands, that's what made the Childerbridge, missy. Ingenuity and technical craft, that's all the magic there was in it. Frost giants! Disreputable nonsense. Don't know why such humbug is still allowed in this day and age.

Her father did not respond to this except by raising an eyebrow, but he resisted mischief, lowering his brow and letting the whiskered man move to the other side of the tower.

He doesn’t like magic, Annabelle said, and that made sense. Magic was a little bit like fire, and she’d burned her fingers before.

Guiding her back toward an exiting staircase, her father bent down and peered straight into her eyes. His warm gaze locked on hers and she couldn’t look away. "They lump it in with illusions, tricks, and lies. I know I haven’t always been the constant star you wanted in a papa, Little Bell. But there’s one thing you must know for certain. You can chart your life by it."

Annabelle raised one eyebrow. What, Papa?

All great magic is rooted in Truth.

1

An Abrupt Midterm Dismissal

Annabelle sat still. Still as a glass statue behind her desk in a classroom as chilly as unkindness. The clock on the wall measured out the silence with a soft tick, tick, tick and the air around her mouth frosted with the release of every cautious breath. She had dressed hastily, not in her school uniform, but in last year’s dress, and it pinched her waist. As for her hair, she had not combed it at all, and unruly brown wisps had escaped from her braid, curling around the top of her head like a sort of rogue halo.

Mrs. Brutankle stared down from the front of the room, keeping her distance, as though Annabelle carried a germ. At last she spoke.

Miss Silvers, I realize this will come as a shock, but there’s no helping it. As of this morning, the Justices of the Shiversvalle Commonwealth have locked your father in Childerbridge Tower, dispossessing him of his fortune. You are as penniless as a stray mongrel.

She searched Annabelle’s face, possibly looking for evidence of these tidings’ brutal effect upon her spirit. But Annabelle neither collapsed her shoulders nor dropped her gaze to the floor. She stared back at Mrs. Brutankle, concentrating as much self into her expression as she could muster.

Mrs. Brutankle frowned. Did you hear what I said?

Annabelle didn’t blink. It can’t be true.

Mrs. Brutankle blinked a great deal, and she also sniffed. He was caught red-handed with secret documents, and with the Queen’s brooch in his pocket! There can be no doubt of your father’s guilt. You, child, must learn to feel and to wear your shame in your countenance. It should touch your face and bear down upon your shoulders. You have nothing and you are nothing but a liar.

Mrs. Brutankle paused. A respectable lady has written, and has proposed to take responsibility for you. Leave your uniforms and books; you’ll have no further use for such things. Your educational career is over. Look forward to a future of poverty and ignorance.

Annabelle swallowed, and for the first time that morning, she dropped her gaze, and felt her cheeks burn with an awful, scorching shame.

Mrs. Durham called an emergency meeting of The Ladies Aviary Goodwill Society on account of the delicious gossip that had been stirring up the great city of Childerbridge. Good gossip was perishable and Mrs. Durham wasn’t the kind of lady to let spoil an entree of this quality. She held her tongue through tea service and kept silent during the initial small talk, which was unfortunately necessary, though tedious.

I can’t tell you what trouble I’m having keeping a servant to look after my pigeon deck, Mrs. Holmes complained. I’ve lost my third girl in two weeks.

Poor dear, Mrs. Hathaway soothed, though she’d all but lost her hearing and had no idea what Mrs. Holmes had said.

Mrs. Durham tutted. Iris, dear. Nothing more about your pigeon-befouled roof. We have far more momentous matters to discuss today. You are aware, of course, of what happened at the Shadewick Palace last week.

I never read the newspapers, Sarah, they’re too vulgar, said Mrs. Honey.

Certainly, Mrs. Durham conceded, but a lady always comes to the aid of her Queen.

The Queen! Whatever ails her? Mrs. Holmes was so alarmed, she almost spilled her tea.

The crime of the century, that’s what, Mrs. Durham said. It isn’t strictly corroborated, but there is a very strong rumor going around that the Crown Jewels are stolen!

Now Mrs. Holmes not only spilled, she dumped the entire cup in her lap. What! Oh, this is terrible! She dabbed her skirt with the table linen.

Indeed! Mrs. Durham said.

But who has done it? Mrs. Honey asked.

A perfectly tragic person—an entertainer, Mrs. Durham said. He calls himself a magician.

Not that man with the doves, at the Millenium?

Yes, exactly!

I saw his show last season, Mrs. Hurst put in. That trickster made an entire flock of doves completely disappear. It was astonishing. I wanted to call the humane society and make a complaint!

Well, he couldn’t make a diamond brooch disappear. They caught him with it in his coat pocket.

Then they’ve recovered everything? Mrs. Hurst asked. All of the jewels?

Nothing but the brooch. And the magician maintains he’s innocent, though his grubby prints were found all over it. They arrested him on the spot, blustering that he was set up. And indeed, Mrs. Durham lowered her voice, there seems to have been another person involved, though he’s disappeared.

But who was the accomplice? Mrs. Honey asked.

The Queen’s own driver, if you can imagine! A man called Jacob Unwich. He has a beard as red as a fox, and his lowlife friends call him Red Jake.

Mrs Honey reached for a cookie. But the authorities must find him. They can’t let him get away with such a crime!

The magician claims they’ll never find him because he was magically transported.

Transported? All the ladies echoed in unison.

Overearth or Underneath, or some madness—said it with a straight face! You can imagine the Queen’s fright! The thief from her own staff! The palace must be in a perfect turmoil.

I should say so, Mrs. Holmes said, still dabbing her skirts.

They say, Mrs. Durham went on, the magician had a daughter at school, but she cannot remain at school, of course. She has no living kin and no one will take the child of a national traitor. Pitiful creature.

Indeed, Mrs. Holmes set down the linen and glanced up from the tea stain on her skirt. What do they call the girl?

Haven’t the faintest.

But suppose she’s good at scrubbing? I should inquire.

The ladies around the tea table all drew a unified gasp.

Well, I’ve just got to get somebody. And she’s been turned out of her school. No good school would accept such a child. I doubt there’s anything else for her, Mrs. Homes said, clinking her teacup into her saucer. We may as well face it. She’s for the birds!

2

Proximate Magic

It was a brisk morning in December when the hands of the grandfather clock in Mrs. Holmes’ foyer began winding widdershins—irregular behavior for a clock of age and stature, but it had its reasons. (Magic’s influence will sometimes bring out the worst in even the most punctual timepieces.)

The house mistress lay abed upstairs, so the clock incident passed with little notice, but Annabelle was already awake, dressed and huffing and puffing up the servants’ staircase with a ten-pound bag of birdseed slung over her shoulder.

When she reached the top of the first staircase, she leaned against the banister for a breath. Then came a short hallway and another stone stairway, and a long hallway and yet another wooden stairway, and despite all that height and effort, the top was nothing like heaven—it was the beginning of a wretched job of work.

The stairs opened into a roof garden, which was lovely, except for the pigeons. Mrs. Holmes fancied pigeons, and she’d commissioned a blacksmith to fashion her roof deck with an enormous bird cage—bigger than Annabelle’s bedroom, bigger than two of her bedrooms put together.

Its iron bars were ornate, curving around in charming swoops and curlicues with cupids and angels hanging onto the iron bars like poor, falsely imprisoned jail birds.

Inside the cage, hundreds of pigeons perched upon the bars. Not dozens of pigeons, no. Hundreds of pigeons in a cooing, preening mass of molt and beak. The cage was a perfect storm cloud of raining feathers. Pigeons swooped between swings, or pecked at gravel, or strutted around the floor of the cage.

Feathers clung to Annabelle’s freckled skin and her cotton apron. The feathers itched, and she gave herself rashes from scratching them. Try as she might, she couldn’t get the feathers out of her long brown braids—not if she spent a month of Sundays brushing them out of her hair.

Peering up at the towering cage, she grasped the cold latch, which creaked on a rusty iron hinge, and with a jostle and quick tug, it sprang open, and the pigeons crowded around her boots. It wasn’t bad feeding the birds. The worst part came later. When the pigeons had all stuffed themselves drowsy with birdseed, she had to scrub the entire roof deck on hands and knees until it shined.

It was a vile job, scrubbing molted fluff and pigeon poop until her fingers bled and the vinegar stung the open sores of her hands. The instant she finished scrubbing the floor clean, a pigeon would let go another load of white and gray, smack! all over it.

Annabelle sighed. Reaching into the bag of Parson’s Birdseed, she scattered a handful around the cage. At once the pigeons sprang to life, fluttering their wings and stirring the air with thousands of feathers floating about as their wings unfolded, beaks opened in a chorus of feed me! Feed me! Feed me! (But they said it in Pigeon, of course.)

Annabelle scattered several more large handfuls, then she shut the latch and darted back downstairs. Now that they were fed, she had to get back to the kitchen to haul up the bucket of vinegar water, and quickly. But as she rounded the bottom of the servant’s staircase