The Awful Truth About Forgetting (Books of Unexpected Enlightenment Book 4) Read online

  “Wait, I’m sorry.” Ivan rubbed his hair with the towel, “are you being serious? I can count the number of times I have spoken at length with your sister on one hand. No, I am not planning on marrying her. When did this turn into not a joke?”

  “Oh. I didn’t…”

  Thoroughly embarrassed, Rachel turned and ran away.

  • • •

  CRAAACKKKK!

  As Rachel emerged from the girl’s locker room, where she had run to hide, cry, and wash her face, thunder rattled the windows. The front door of the gym slammed shut and locked. Rachel ran to the door and banged on it—she even put down her broom and yanked with both hands—but it would not budge.

  “What’s going on?” Evelyn March, an upperclassman with aquiline features and an olive complexion, stuck her head out of one of the doors. Over the older girl’s shoulder, Rachel could see a zapball court and several other college girls leaping about, wide mallets in hand, trying to keep the glowing neon shuttlecocks from striking the walls or floor. Rachel recognized Kitten Fabian’s older sister Panther (whose real name was Anthea); a pretty half-Japanese girl named Iolanthe Towers, who was the head of the Roanoke Bird Fanciers Club; and Minnie Forthright, a plump girl with red hair from Raleigh Hall.

  “Lock down,” Rachel called back. “It’s thundering.”

  “The Heer again? Haven’t they caught him yet?” Iolanthe called cheerfully. Despite her Japanese features, she spoke with a Mid-West American accent. She stuck her head out of the room sideways, her long black hair draping downward like a dark sheet. Her familiar, an Australian Shepherd—an unusual-looking canine that was part tan, part spotted black and gray—stuck its furry head out as well. “Who’s in charge of doing that?”

  “My father,” Eve said with an expression that was half amused and half resigned.

  “Ooo! The Grand Inquisitor!” Minnie’s eyes widened.

  “I’m not afraid of him,” Iolanthe declared, tossing her head with a cheerful smile.

  “You should be,” murmured Panther Fabian, slamming the emerald green shuttlecock across the small court with her mallet. Even while playing zapball, she comported herself with an old-fashioned grace seldom seen in modern girls. “Fear of the Grand Inquisitor is one of the three certain signs of sanity.”

  Iolanthe shrugged cheerfully and popped back into the zapball court. Another bright shuttlecock, this one electric blue, shot over the girls’ heads. They all jumped for it. Eve pulled the door to the court shut behind her.

  All by herself, Rachel stood in the middle of the gym hall, listening to the thunder. To either side, there was nothing but a row of doors, doors that would not open into anything, unless she made a request. Had Ivan Romanov left? If he came out of the boys’ locker room, and she was stuck in here with him until the thunderstorm broke, she did not think she could bear it. But it would not do to spend the time cowering in the loo. That would only make her feel worse.

  Rachel approached one of the doors and tried it. It opened to reveal a blank wall, which meant that no one was using it. She shut it again and thought. What did she want? The Knights of Walpurgis dueling chamber? That was not much use without another person. The swimming pool? She had not brought her bathing suit. She leaned her steeplechaser against the wall as she searched for other options. The gym had a state-of-the-art conjuring system that would produce any athletic equipment a person requested, but one had to make a request.

  “I know! Gym, I want a course to practice flying!” Rachel called, holding up her steeplechaser. She opened the door. “Oh, my!”

  Beyond the doorway was a vast chamber that rose at least a hundred-and-twenty feet to a set of distant skylights. It was four times as large as the grand track, the oval chamber they used for flying class when the weather was bad. At the center stood a three-dimensional representation of the roof of Roanoke Hall made from painted foam: the six rounded bell towers with their elongated cupolas, the cylindrical turrets, the narrow chimneys, the myriad spires and gables, the external spiral staircases, the central belfry with its empty lantern housing and its bell that never rang, the triangular roof peaks surrounded by their own turrets and spires.

  Only, unlike the real top of the main hall, which had glass everywhere, these windows, of many shapes and sizes, were open—to allow an intrepid broom jockey an opportunity to dart through them. Either it was all larger than life, or it was a representation of the roof of Roanoke Hall’s sister castle, the Chateau de Chambord. Both castles were rumored to have been designed by the same man, the great alchemist Leonardo da Vinci.

  Around this architectural wonder ran a wide track with obstacles to fly above or below, wide padded pillars to spin around, tunnels to fly through, and a rack of dummies, weights, and other apparatus that could be used to create interesting flying conditions. In the left front corner was a good-sized pit filled with chunks of foam rubber, presumably so that anyone who fell while practicing tricks could land safely on the soft foam below.

  It was a steeplechaser rider’s dream.

  Rachel leapt onto her broom and flew the outer course. As she came to each obstacle, she turned, spun, rose, or dove as required. Parts were so easy that she literally flew them with her eyes closed. Others were so difficult that she had to go very slowly or skip an obstacle all together. When she had successfully circled the chamber several times, she turned her attention to the replica of the roof of Roanoke Hall.

  Not all of the openings were big enough for her to fly through at her current skill level. Avoiding the smallest ones, she set her sights on those that she was reasonably confident she could manage. Maneuvering through narrow spaces at high speed took her entire concentration. She stopped worrying about being locked in the gym, her missing friends, or rude upperclass boys who might have misled her about their intentions toward her sister. The sheer exhilaration of flying drove all else from her mind.

  She was approaching window forty-three, a diamond-shaped opening in one of the more squat rectangular towers, when a crack of thunder, like cannon fire, reverberated through the gymnasium. Startled, Rachel jerked her broom, accidentally toggling one of the levers. Her steeplechaser spun at high speed, flying erratically and nearly slamming into the tower wall.

  Throwing herself forward until she was on her stomach, she kicked the fan blades. The broom jerked and twisted, spinning in the other direction. Her head slammed against a stiff foam wall. Ears ringing, she shoved her feet into the back stirrups, gripped the short brass and cast iron handles jutting from the forward portion of the shaft, and used the stirrups to maneuver the fan blades back into their proper alignment.

  Her steeplechaser righted itself.

  Exhausted, Rachel flew to the ground and dismounted. Her legs were trembling. The back of her head throbbed. Flopping into the foam rubber pit, she lay with her arms outstretched, staring up at the sky lights.

  What a rotter Ivan Romanov was!

  How dare he deceive her and Laurel in such a fashion!

  Rachel closed her eyes and remembered the moment on the commons, under the giant glowing wisp sculptures illuminating the night sky, when Laurel had blushed so prettily at Ivan’s request to be allowed to ask his parents to speak to hers. Wrath shook her at the notion that he had been toying with her sister’s affections.

  And, if she were entirely truthful, with her own.

  Because if the offer to marry Laurel was false, then the hint that he might have considered proposing to her was false as well. And that was a very great let-down. Not because she had any interest in marrying him, but just because it had made her feel—well, it did not matter if she could not put the sensation into words. Whatever it had made her feel was a lie.

  High above, lightning branched across the stormy sky, arching repeatedly from Storm King Mountain in the west, where the Heer of Dunderberg and his lightning imps had holed up since escaping from their prison in Stony Tor. Rachel imagined what it would be like to fly through the storm with a good charm of solid oak around
her neck to protect her from the lightning—the winds buffeting her and spinning her in circles, as it had the time she and Gaius had tried to outrun the Headless Horseman. She imagined flipping on her calming enchantments and sailing peacefully amidst the tempest, perhaps while standing atop her broom, like Mr. Gideon.

  Standing on a broom.

  The idea still amazed and appalled her. It seemed so impossible.

  But was it?

  Climbing to her feet, Rachel placed her bristleless on the ground next to the pit of foam. Even when it was lying flat on the ground, she could hardly keep her balance atop it. After a number of tries, she balanced long enough to coax the steeplechaser up an inch and…

  With a shrill cry, she tumbled from the broom shaft, landing on her back in the soft foam, which folded tight around her before bouncing her up again. She lay there, bouncing, catching her breath, and gazing at the gray-black clouds that rushed by the rain-splattered skylights. Then, stiffening her resolve, she climbed out of the pit and stepped onto the broom handle again.

  Fifty-seven tries later, Rachel again lay nestled amidst the cushiony foam, panting. The rain had stopped, and a single triangle of blue could be seen between the silvery clouds.

  Too exhausted to move, she reached out her hand and called, “Varenga, Vroomie.” Obeying the cantrip, the steeplechaser leapt immediately to her hand. She hugged it to her chest and lay still, her eyes half closing.

  She had managed to stand on the broom for a full six and a half seconds, her best time so far. Not that it mattered. Any notion she had entertained of flying around in mid-air while standing atop a broom, as Mr. Gideon had done, were crushed. Currently, she could hardly balance on such a narrow beam, even when it was resting on the ground. She would do better to practice on a regular balance beam.

  But even if she were to master the standing trick close to the ground, how would she ever learn to fly about freely? The chance of falling off was too great. It would never be safe to practice anywhere other than above this foam pit, not unless she wore a floating harness like a little child—and floating harnesses produced drag, which made many maneuvers impossible. Lying on her back, staring at the sky, her eyelids began to close. Physics and flying blurred together in her mind: flying, standing, equations, falling. A falling object, William’s voice repeated in her memory, accelerates at a rate of 9.8 meters per second per second. And he’d shown her how to derive the equation for distance fallen: one-half the acceleration times the square of the falling time. Thus, she reasoned, half asleep, in the first second, a falling object would drop 4.9 meters. After two seconds, it would have fallen 4.9×4 or 19.6 meters, roughly twenty meters in two seconds. And two seconds was longer than the time it took to…

  Rachel sat bolt upright.

  Carefully, she recalled the last few minutes, exactly as they had happened. She noted the time intervals for each action she had taken. Could it work?

  Climbing out of the pit, she put her broom on the floor and walked some distance away.

  “Varenga, Vroomie.”

  The steeplechaser leapt immediately to her hand. Rachel recalled the memory in real time, twice. Each time, she measured how long it had taken. Without question, the broom had taken less than two seconds to come to her. In fact, it had taken less than one. It was only when she called it from across campus that it took a significant amount of time to reach her.

  Very slowly, Rachel inclined her head upward toward the hundred and twenty feet of air above her.

  • • •

  “Siggy! Come and meet me in the gym. I’ve had a most superior idea! Come see!” Rachel spoke into her calling card.

  “I can’t. We’re locked in.” Sigfried sounded petulant, as if the security measures had been designed to personally stop him. “Lucky and I are burrowing through the basement floor with flaming acid. But we won’t be out for another hour or two.”

  “Storm’s let up. The doors have been unlocked for a while.”

  “Coming!” Sigfried announced. She heard him say, “Lucky, our brainy sister needs us. We’ll have to finish this later. Cover the hole with some carpet!”

  A couple of minutes later, she heard the outer door of the gymnasium banging open.

  “Where are you?” Sigfried’s voice came over the calling card.

  “Just walk up to a door and ask for the pool.”

  When Sigfried arrived, Rachel was sitting on the edge of the gym’s Olympic-sized pool, swinging her feet. She wore a simple black and white one-piece swimsuit with a blue racing stripe that she had discovered, after poking around the girls’ locker room, in a cabinet marked “suits.” When her blood brother entered the room, she jumped to her feet.

  “Want to see something that is just the craic, as Oonagh and Ian would say?” Rachel grinned.

  Sigfried put his hands in his pocket. Lucky zoomed around him, curling left and right. The serpentine dragon dived into the warm pool water and came bursting out again in a spray of droplets.

  “Sure. What is it?” he asked.

  “Watch this!”

  The ceiling over the pool was normally the height of the gymnasium, but Rachel had asked a gym door to give her the pool but still keep the impossibly high ceiling of the flying course. To give herself as much distance as possible, she flew up nearly all of the hundred and twenty feet.

  Up there, gazing down at Sigfried and Lucky, far below, a tremor of fear shot through her. At this height, the water would not give her any protection. According to an encyclopedia in the grand library of Gryphon Park that she had once read from cover to cover, a hundred feet was high enough for the speed of the descent to make hitting the water feel like striking concrete. Rachel recalled how much belly-flopping off the raft in the lake behind her parent’s house had hurt, and the raft had been only a foot above the waterline.

  With a snort of disdain, Rachel dismissed that fear as unworthy. She had done the math. This would work. Besides, she had tried this maneuver twice before showing it off. Taking a deep breath, Rachel pulled her feet out of the forward stirrups and dove from her broom.

  She plummeted head first toward the pool. The air rushed against her face, Her hair streamed upwards. Below, she could see the look of sheer terror on the face of Sigfried. Lucky streaked toward her, as if hoping to catch her.

  Rachel reached out her hand. “Varenga, Vroomie!”

  The falling broom shot into her outstretched grip. Rachel curled her body around the steeplechaser and pulled back on the handles. The bristleless swung upward with Rachel atop it again. Grinning and waving, she flew gently down to land beside her blood brother.

  “Smashing trick, eh? What did you think?”

  Sigfried’s face was entirely white. “I think you should warn a chap before you do that!”

  Rachel’s expression did not change, but inside she danced a victory dance. After all, it was not every day that she succeeded at disconcerting Sigfried the Dragonslayer.

  Chapter Nine:

  The Unfortunate Fate of Zoë Forrest

  “Rachel! Something’s happened!” Gaius’s voice sounded next to her ear. “Can you talk?”

  “Yes, I…oomph!” For the umpteenth time, Rachel fell off the narrow balance beam into the softness of foam rubber.

  “I thought you would want to know,” Gaius’s voice blurted in her ear, “Your friend the princess apparently came back from dreamland without Zoë Forrest. Zoë’s been lost!”

  “Lost?” cried Rachel, flailing in her attempt to regain her feet. “Lost how? Wait.—Dreamland? When?—I t-thought Nastasia had gone home for a few days!”

  “That was apparently after she lost Miss Forrest. From what Vlad has learned, the two of them went somewhere in dreamland. While they were traveling, something snatched Zoë. Nastasia came back and contacted her family.”

  “W-what!” Rachel’s voice grew unnecessarily shrill. “You mean she lost Zoë, and she didn’t tell us? For days?”

  Gaius sounded apologetic. “That’s all Vlad kno
ws.”

  Rachel let out a howl of outrage.

  “Look, Rach. That’s all I know. Really. If I knew more, I would tell you. I swear.”

  Rachel gave up trying to rise. She threw herself backward into the clumps of foam and sighed glumly. “It’s—not your fault.”

  “I—I thought you would want to know.”

  “Thanks. I appreciate your telling me, Gaius.” She was silent a moment. “Poor Zoë. Can anything be done?”

  “Vlad is doing everything he can, Rachel. If she can be found, he’ll find her.”

  • • •

  Dinner was a muted affair. Rachel had passed on the news about Zoë to Joy and Sigfried, who passed it on to Zoë’s two friends from the same home town in Michigan where Zoë lived during the rare periods when she stayed with her father: Sigfried’s partner-in-crime, Seth Peregrine, and Misty Lark, a sullen girl from Marlowe Hall with a head of short, straw-like hair. Rachel knew that the vile Mortimer Egg had forced Misty to watch the murder of her family.

  Joy was especially distraught. She ate none of her meal but asked a thousand questions, none of which Rachel could answer. She kept crying, “First the elf lady and now Zoë!”

  Siggy, on the other hand, chowed down with his usual enthusiasm. He did not seem particularly worried about Zoë, who he seemed convinced would soon reappear. His fury at the princess, however—for going adventuring in dreamland without him—knew no bounds.

  • • •

  “Nastasia!” Rachel raced through the slush to where her friend glided solemnly across the commons. Snow fell softly about them, illuminated by the lampposts supporting glass globes filled with fluttering will-o-wisps. Nastasia Romanov wore a long blue coat with white fur trim. A golden curl or two poked out of the voluminous hood. Her face in person was far lovelier than Rachel had remembered it, a phenomenon that Rachel always found mildly disturbing.