I also thought that meant it might be a good day to give you the next part of The Present, a story about going to a magical land and being a total git about everything in it, including the lack of indoor plumbing. The first part of the story can be found here.

The Turn of the Story, Part II

Thirteen

It wasn’t that Luke caused all the terrible things at the Border camp to happen. It was mostly just that he was the one who told Elliot about them, and so it seemed like they were all his fault.

Elliot chose to blame Luke anyway.

“What is the point of parents’ day?” he demanded at yet another Bad News Lunchtime.

“Men are naturally attached to their homes,” Serene said sympathetically. “I believe that parents are allowed to visit to ease their hearts and assure them of their familial affection. I have been going on hunting expeditions away from home since I was a squire, of course, so a visit from my parents will not be required. Are your parents not capable of crossing the Border?”

“Nope,” said Elliot, whose father believed he was at military school and who he would never have dreamed of asking anyway.

“My parents are coming,” said Luke.

“Okay.”

“So’s my sister Louise.”

“Good for you,” said Elliot.

“Serene’s going to come with us,” Luke said. “We’re going to have a picnic.”

“This is a very boring story, loser,” said Elliot, instead of saying ‘Quit rubbing it in.’ “Did it sound different in your head?”

“You can come if you like,” said Luke. “Since nobody else is going to ask you, and everyone should have something to do on parents’ day.”

“That’s all right,” said Elliot. “I actually can’t imagine anything worse than having to attend an all Sunborns, all the time parade.”

On parents’ day he went to the library, because it was amazing in the library and he loved it there, and today he had promised himself a special treat: he was going to read a contemporary account of the great harpies battle over the Forest of the Suicides.

He had to put on special gloves and turn the pages carefully, under Bright Eyes the librarian’s watchful gaze.

It was a really enjoyable half hour until Luke showed up.

“So sorry,” said Elliot politely to Bright Eyes. “Are you lost?”

Luke was giving the library his usual look of unhappy mistrust. In fact, now Elliot was paying attention, he looked more downcast than usual: it probably could not all be attributed to the library. Possibly someone had made fun of his hair.

“You have to come to the picnic,” he said.

“Why?” Elliot snapped.

“My parents are expecting you,” Luke said reluctantly, as if each word was a tooth that had to be pulled.

“Why?” Elliot repeated, inflexibly.

“I don’t know why, Elliot!” Luke snapped back. “I didn’t tell them you were coming. But they asked where you were, and I said you were in the library, and they said to go fetch you, then.”

“How did you know I was in the library?”

“Oh, come on,” said Luke.

The whole thing seemed very mysterious to Elliot, but he trailed after Luke out to the fields—oh, lovely, Elliot could never get enough of fields. Even if Luke had not known where he was going, it would have been easy to spot the Sunborns: every one of them was tall and the kind of person you looked at, with golden hair that shone in the sun as if a whole host of tiny suns had congregated on a picnic blanket. Serene sat among them looking very dark and pale and solemn indeed, but if you knew her you could tell she was happy to be there.

There was a man who had to be Luke’s father with shoulders basically the size of a mountain range, they should probably have a name, and the girl Serene was sitting beside who Elliot assumed was Louise. She was very grown-up looking—she was eighteen, Luke had said—and her hair was all done up in a coronet of braids, and she was about the most beautiful person Elliot had ever seen. Weird magic land might not have electricity, but he had to admit it was full of hotties.

The other woman stood up, her bright hair flying like a flag, as they approached.

“Well here the boys are at last,” she said, and gave Elliot a hug.

“Oh my God,” said Elliot, somewhat muffled, into Luke’s mother’s bosom. It was not entirely covered, and she was wearing a very large, very ornate golden necklace. Elliot was not sure if he should be worried about being suffocated or having his eyes put out by one of the jewels.

“I’m Rachel Sunborn,” said Luke’s mother. “You must be little Elliot.”

She released him and Elliot reeled back, breathing in deep grateful lungfuls of air.

“I may be slightly below average height at present, but I am the same age as Luke,” said Elliot. “I’m very sorry for being late. I didn’t realize you were expecting me. I think Luke must have confused the issue somehow. His command of the English language is not all it could be. Well, you must have noticed that for yourself.”

“Nice command of the English language you have there, genius,” said Luke. “Very appropriate way to talk when you’re a guest.”

Elliot took a deep breath. Rachel Sunborn laughed.

“You are just like I thought you would be from Luke’s letters,” she said. “Come sit by me, Elliot, and tell me how you got Luke to actually learn facts about ancient history.”

“Mum!” said Luke.

“And he knows his way to the library and everything!” said Rachel Sunborn, rumpling Luke’s sunny hair as he went by her on a quest for consolation and sandwiches. “My little man. It’s a miracle.”

She patted the place beside her. Elliot cautiously went over to it, and sat beside her. She ruffled his hair, too, and pulled him in occasionally for another suffocating hug. She asked him to tell her the story about the throwing knives in his own words and laughed when he did.

Elliot got the impression, due to all the laughter, that she didn’t take him particularly seriously. But she was a very lovely lady, he decided after a while. It must be nice, to have a mother like that.

“And you don’t have to worry about your safety if the camp is attacked,” Louise Sunborn added, with a lazy stretch like a lioness. “We’ll all protect you. None of us have ever missed a target with a knife. Except Luke.”

“I was six!” said Luke.

Louise laughed and they had a casual wrestling match, there on the picnic blanket, which was only interrupted by Michael Sunborn asking about Luke’s Trigon games. Elliot bore nobly with this boring subject and was relieved when it turned to the fact that Luke and Serene were going to be sent on their first mission, accompanying a new captain and a band of the third and fourth years to witness the signing of peace treaties between a small village and the nymphs who lived in a wood near them.

“You’re going into the forest?” Elliot asked. “To talk to nymphs? I want to go!”

“Right, Elliot, but you can’t,” Luke explained. “Because only those in war training go on missions, since they are the ones who can protect themselves. Those in council training stay where it’s safe in camp, and go over the papers.”

“All we want is your safety,” Serene contributed.

“Do you hear what I’m saying, Elliot?” asked Luke. He sounded anxious. Elliot thought that was very wise.

“I do, Luke,” he said, so earnestly that it made Rachel Sunborn laugh again. “I do hear what you’re saying.”

He didn’t know why Serene and Luke had to act so surprised when they uncovered the supplies wagon on their mission and found that he had stowed away in it. He understood everyone else wandering around saying that they couldn’t believe his behaviour, but he’d hoped they were coming to know him better than that.

He forgot that disappointment, and stopped paying attention to the lecture Captain Whiteleaf—who seemed a dull and unimaginative man—was giving him, when he looked around at the woods.

This far from the Border, there were harpies in the skies, like lion-sized eagles pinwheeling in the sky. He could hear water trickling somewhere, and if he followed the sound he might find mermaids. There was light brimming around and wind rushing through the leaves of the trees, and as the leaves rustled together Elliot heard a few words in the wind, and knew it was not his imagination. He knew it was nymphs.

Elliot forgot about the wonder of the woods when they bullied him into helping with the tents, despite his protests that he’d left Boy Scouts at their first meeting, within the first five minutes, when they had told him that he had to make his bed every day.

Elliot spent a good deal of his time on the mission explaining that these living conditions were too horrible to be borne, and speculating on who would die of a chill first because nobody had proper medical care available in the otherlands.

Eventually they gave him the treaties between the nymphs of the Aegle Wood and the nearby village to shut him up, with the air of people offering a toy to a child. ‘See, council course people like papers,’ the captain might as well have said. ‘Lovely papers!’

Then Captain Whiteleaf went off to hunt rabbits with the rest of the mission. Serene always brought home more than the captain or any of the others did: the older boys, Elliot noted, had grown more and more polite the more they saw her use her bow.

Elliot was huddled by the fire when he saw them coming back, reading the papers over and over.

“Something’s very wrong,” he announced as Serene and Luke sat down.

“You’re not going to die of a chill,” said Luke. “I will give you my cloak if you promise to shut up.”

“I may well die of a chill, I refuse to shut up, and I’ll take your cloak,” said Elliot. “But this isn’t about that. Look at these papers.”

Serene drew close to him and began to read them with some interest. Luke stared blankly.

“They’re the treaties for the nymphs and villagers to sign,” he said. “There’s one treaty, and there’s the other. What’s your point?”

“Sometimes people like to do this cool thing with words called ‘reading them,’” Elliot explained. “These treaties say different things.”

He looked toward Serene, who he had faith would understand, and saw the pin-scratch line of a frown between her dark eyebrows. “Considerably different,” she observed.

“There are all sorts of restrictions in the nymphs’ contracts,” said Elliot. “Conditions for this peace, ceding territory to the villagers, agreeing to stay off the villagers’ paths while the villagers can go into their woods and chop down their trees.”

“Well,” said Luke. “Naturally they’re going to be a bit different. The villagers are human, and the nymphs aren’t. I mean—it’s not like the elves, who are practically human—”

“Speak for yourself,” muttered Serene.

“The nymphs are our allies, of course,” Luke said hastily. “And they’re not like—like the beast kind, like mermaids and harpies, they’re good mostly, but they’re a bit… well, different, you know?”

“They’d better be really different,” said Elliot. “If someone gave me this treaty to sign, I wouldn’t do it. I’d be insulted.”

“You are insulted by people saying ‘good morning,’” Luke pointed out.

Elliot paid no attention to this slander, thought for a few more minutes, and climbed to his feet. “I’m going to talk to the captain.”

Serene got up silently to join him, and Luke said: “Oh no, no you are not.”

“I am simply going to reason with him,” said Elliot, extremely reasonably.

“You chose to come on this mission, so you’re a soldier. You cannot disobey your commanding officer on a mission.”

“I’m not a soldier,” said Elliot. “Not ever.”

He looked around the woods, listened to the snap and crackle of the fire and the rustle of leaves that were nymphs talking just beyond the cusp of human hearing. He let the magic calm him, and then he spoke again.

“I’m just going to talk to him and point out a few things that may have escaped his notice,” he said. “There’s no harm in that.”

“Fine,” said Luke. “Then I’m going with you two, to make sure that’s all you do. This is no time for your stupid games. I mean it.”

Elliot started to wonder whether they were brainwashing everyone in the war training course to think alike when Captain Whiteleaf listened to Elliot’s description of what was wrong with the two treaties and said: “Why do you think this is a good time for your stupid games?”

Elliot stood in the centre of the captain’s tent, which he had set up to look like a miniature version of Commander Rayburn’s office complete with desk and candle, and stared.

“We want peace between these two peoples,” he said. “A peace achieved like this won’t hold.”

“And how would you know?” the captain asked. “You’re a child.”

“I know because it’s… really obvious?” said Elliot, and Luke gave the cough which was a signal for ‘Too insubordinate! Back up!’ “Look, one person chops down the wrong tree, and they’re at war again,” Elliot tried.

“Then they will break a peace negotiated by the Border guard,” said Captain Whiteleaf. “And the guard will march back to deal with them.”

“Right, okay,” said Elliot. “But then people will die.”

Captain Whiteleaf said: “So?”

Elliot stared some more. The captain was talking about how the guard kept the peace through their willingness to defend it with blades, and about how battle was a regrettable but necessary consequence of disobedience. Luke was coughing as if he actually had caught a chill. A beautiful peace was descending on Elliot: he knew precisely what he had to do.

He looked back at Serene, who was standing at the mouth of the tent. She met his eyes with her own tranquil gaze, drew her bow, and fitted an arrow to it.

“What are you doing?” Captain Whiteleaf snapped.

“If you call for someone to help stop him,” Serene explained apologetically, “I will shoot them. In the leg, of course. I do not wish to murder any of my comrades.”

“Stop what?” the captain demanded.

Elliot stepped forward and shoved the two treaties into the candle flame. The fire caught the parchment, curling it up with a rich thick crackle, and the flame leaped to show the sudden fury in the captain’s eyes.

“You little brat,” the captain breathed, raising his fist, and Elliot lifted his chin.

Luke drew his sword. The sharp edge glittered in the light of the burning papers, pointed across the desk at the captain. “Don’t touch him.”

Elliot took a deep shaky breath, relieved not to be hit and annoyed at how relieved he was.

“You pack of stupid, traitorous children—” Captain Whiteleaf began, and then he cut himself off and just glared at them, as if he was memorizing their faces and thinking of punishments to visit upon them.

Elliot knew what he saw. Serene at the tent with moonlight in her dark hair and her bow steady in her hands, Luke and his sword glinting in the candlelight, and Elliot. Elliot held firm. The treaties were ashes in his hands by now.

“Listen to me,” said Elliot. “You don’t bring councillors on your missions. So you don’t have anyone who can write up a new treaty. Either you go back, admit you’ve failed in your mission, disappoint the people who are expecting you to come bring them peace, or you let me and Serene write up new treaties. We can do it.”

“Elves remember everything that they read, down to the framework of the sentences to insure that treaties are binding,” Serene observed. “Elliot tells me that is a helpful skill.”

Captain Whiteleaf stared at the ashes, and then at Serene, and at Elliot.

Matters might have gone very differently, but this was the captain’s first mission. He let them write out the treaties. The villagers signed theirs, and seemed to think the restrictions about not cutting down certain trees perfectly fair.

The nymphs were beautiful, green-gleaming wraiths of women who leaned out of their trees like gorgeous women leaning casually out of windows. Elliot could not stop staring at them, or the way their leader smiled when she read the words he had written. She had not been smiling before: it was like sunlight dissolving mist when she did.

“We expected something quite different,” she said. “I would be happy to sign this.”

“You’re still a pack of impossible brats,” said Captain Whiteleaf, on the ride home. “But I suppose you meant it for the best. This once, I will not report your wild behaviour to the commander.”

He spurred his horse and rode to the front of the company.

“ ‘Oh, thank you for saving my first mission,’ “ said Elliot. “ ‘No, no, Captain Whiteleaf, it was my pleasure, please do not mention it, all this fulsome gratitude is so embarrassing!’ “

“Shut up. That was really good of him,” said Luke. “And the mission would have been fine if you hadn’t destroyed the treaties like a maniac.”

“Oh, would it?”

“I’m not saying—” said Luke. “You did the best you know how. You did a good thing. But they’re just bits of paper, in the end. The Border guard enforcing peace is what will keep people safe. Either way, the mission would have been successful.”

Elliot looked to Serene for help, but her expression did not betray anything. Least of all who she really agreed with, when it came right down to it.

“I’m glad we’re not expelled,” she said.

Elliot did not have long to brood about how misunderstood and undervalued he was. As soon as they were back at the camp, everyone was panicking about exams, even Serene and Luke who should really have known better. Elliot had to forcibly shepherd them to the library and make piles of what he’d decided was the assigned reading.

“Now, loser, let’s start with the basics,” Elliot added kindly once he was done telling them the list. “This is a book. You open it like this, see? Not along the spine. That’s very important.”

They all did extremely well in their exams, and Elliot was happy until he heard Serene making plans to come stay at Luke’s over the summer holiday.

“You can come too, if you want,” said Luke. “My mum will probably be expecting you. I don’t know why.”

“I guess if Serene’s going to be there,” said Elliot. “And since the year’s not up yet, the truce isn’t quite over.”

First, though, he had to go home. Captain Woodsinger escorted Elliot and the very few other kids from the human world who had stayed back through the hole in the wall. She left them to walk down the steps on their own, down and down, until they reached the real world.

Elliot lifted his eyes to a line of tall buildings standing against the sky, all metal and glass. He realized he had become rather used to the endless fields.

At home every day was the same, just as it had always been. His dad would come home late, when the day was already getting dark and cold, and put his briefcase down neatly on the table in the hall. They would sit at either ends of the polished rectangular table, and eat dinner. Conversations would stop and start, escaping from Elliot’s hands like a balloon in the wind. That was what conversations with his father made him feel like: as if he was a little kid, surprised every time at the loss and later seeing the empty shreds of a balloon in a ditch or hanging from a tree, all that had been bright and buoyant lost.

Elliot had become all kinds of dumb and unguarded at the Border camp, though, because one day when his father went and poured himself his first glass Elliot did not go away to his room and read a book.

It wasn’t that his father ever got angry, or ever hit him. It was just that it was like sitting in a room where all the air was escaping, to stay in a room with a man who was grimly, methodically drinking: to know that he had once been happy, and never would be again.

“What was Mum like?” asked Elliot, who had truly grown stupid at the camp if he was asking that.

His father looked out the window, where gray shadows were snatching away the very last of the light.

“She was the first thing I saw when I walked into a room,” he said at last. “And once I saw her, I never wanted to look anywhere else. She would speak, and whatever she said was brilliant and startling. She was like that, a constant bright surprise. She was always talking, always laughing, always dancing, and she was never what I expected. I was even surprised when she left.” He looked over at Elliot, who was sitting with his hands clenched tight around his knees. “You’re not like her,” he added. “You’re like me. Nobody will ever love you enough to stay.”

His father was very thin. Even his hair was thin, gray strands so fine that it seemed as if it had been worn away, as the grooves in his face seemed to have been worn in. Elliot wasn’t sure, sometimes, if he was like his father: the patient, desperate ghost who had waited until all hope was worn out. He couldn’t imagine his father going to school and antagonizing everyone in sight, being too short, too smart, too awkward, too unguarded, too wildly unused to company, until it was easier eventually to antagonize people on purpose.

His mother had stayed with his dad for ages. She’d left pretty soon after Elliot had arrived. Elliot could do the maths.

He supposed it didn’t matter if someone left because you weren’t good enough or left because you actually drove them away. The result was the same.

He left the room quietly, went and sat on the stairs, pressed his hot face against the cool banister. He could see through the staircase at this angle, could see the front door, flanked by windows that shone with gray light. He sat and looked at the door as if someone was coming home.

Nothing changed, not permanently. Elliot had known that even when the miracle happened, and he was taken away to somewhere fantastical: every bit of reality in the fantasy reminded him that miracles were not for him.

Even if you found yourself in a magical story, there were no guarantees that you were the hero, or that you would get of the things you dreamed of. Elliot knew no way, being who he was, to deserve that.

*

No questions were raised about him going to the Sunborns’ house, and Elliot found directions for how to get there on a rolled up parchment that was wedged between the hinges of his door. Magic’s postal system was sneaky.

In the midst of gardens and woodland was a tower, in the same brief, round style as the towers at the Border camp, looking like nothing so much as the rooks in the chess set his father had gathering dust in a cabinet. There was ivy climbing up it, in cascading green profusion over places where the stone was jagged and worn. Elliot climbed the broad, flat steps.

From within the Sunborns’ tower came the loud sound of swearing. Elliot ran.

The swearing was coming from a cavernous kitchen, where Rachel Sunborn was wrestling a stewpot. Half the stew was already on the wall.

“Um, let me help you with that,” said Elliot, and grabbed the other handle. The pot tipped dangerously down to Elliot’s level, but they got it on the ground.

“Thank you, Elliot,” said Rachel. “I bloody hate cooking, but Michael’s on campaign, and what are you going to do? Welcome, by the way.”

“If Mr Sunborn is gone, aren’t we going to be a lot of trouble?” Elliot asked apprehensively.

“Oh no,” said Rachel. “We all go on campaigns, and the one on leave gets the kids. We always have Louise’s friends over, and this summer we have my sister’s boys Adam and Neal staying too. You guys can all distract each other. And frankly, it’s my turn for a houseful of kids: Michael had Luke at the Northmark fortress from when he was nine to when he got sent off to camp, I was on an expedition to traverse the entire otherlands. It was meant to be a two-year mission but it ran long.”

“The Dewitt mission,” said Elliot. “The one that improved all the maps! How was finding an entire lagoon full of mermaids? I wish I could meet a mermaid.”

“Kid, they drown people.”

Elliot waved this off. “Is it true that the river mermaids have a common tongue but the mermaids who live in lakes have all entirely separate languages, though they can usually speak the language of the people who live near the lakes, and the salt-water mermaids seem to only speak the languages most common to sailors? Do you think the sea mermaids do have their own language but only use it in the deep? Because that’s what I think.”

Rachel threw back her head and laughed. “How would I know, funnyface? But I can harpoon a mermaid at a hundred paces from a moving boat. Not bad for an old lady, eh?”

“How old are Adam and Neal?” asked Elliot.

Rachel frowned in thought. The expression was not made for her face: it slid off the golden surface like water. “Close to your age,” she said. “A year and two years older, about.” Elliot must have made a face without meaning to—he’d been hoping for as old as Louise, which was old enough to not bother with Elliot much—because Rachel laughed at it. “Don’t worry, you’ll like them!” she said. “They’re just like Luke.”

“Oh,” said Elliot, in a hollow voice. “That’s fantastic.”

“Bit more outgoing than my shy boy, but that’s all to the good,” said Rachel. “I think it’s nice for Luke to have his own friends here. You’re all going to have fun! Don’t let anyone dare you to jump off a tower, though.”

“Don’t worry,” said Elliot. “… Luke’s not shy. Everyone likes Luke.” ‘Except me,’ he would have added, but it seemed rude when he was a guest.

Rachel frowned again, this time more deeply, a woman even less used to explaining herself than frowning. “Maybe that was the wrong word,” she said. “But you know how he is. My point is, Neal and Adam are lovely lads. I’m sure you’ll all get on. And Serene, when she gets here. Luke’s crazy about Serene.”

“Serene’s not here?” Elliot asked. “Where’s Serene?!”

“Oh, her mother took her on a hunting party for a magical stag that ran long, or somesuch.”

This was a complete disaster. Elliot wondered if he could claim that he’d left the oven on at home and make his escape.

This fragile, beautiful hope was crushed when Luke barreled into the house, calling for his mother and attended by vicious animals.

“Mum!” said Luke. “When do you think he’ll get—oh. Hi.”

“Hi,” said Elliot. He should probably, as a guest, not insult Luke in front of Luke’s mother.

“Why are you wearing those clothes?” Luke asked. “They’re weird. The Border camp gave you proper clothes.”

“Because, A: these are my clothes,” Elliot said. “B: the Border camp gave me ridiculous clothes and C: I cannot believe that you, a loser who I have literally never seen wear anything but leather, are setting yourself up to be some sort of fashion expert and critiquing jeans and a hoodie. Worst host ever!” He glanced over at Rachel. “Not you, you’re a very charming hostess,” he added hastily.

“Thank you, Elliot,” Rachel told him.

The two wild beasts Luke had brought in with him—into the house, in fact into the area of the house were food was prepared–wandered over to Elliot. Their long, plumy tails waved cautiously: their long, sharp teeth were bared.

“I haven’t had my rabies shot,” said Elliot, circling. The dogs circled after him in what he considered was a menacing fashion.

“How can you be scared of the puppies?” Rachel asked.

“I am not scared of them,” Elliot replied with dignity. “I am just not accustomed to them, so I do not trust them.”

He had to admit that the dogs did not seem currently interested in devouring him whole. However, this might change at any moment.

“Cavall, Culaine,” said Luke, and the dogs backed off a little. “You like mermaids and centaurs and stuff, though.”

“They’re not animals,” said Elliot. “I can talk with them, so they’re people. I enjoy intelligent conversation. You know, the polysyllabic kind. I realize you’re still at monosyllables, but I have faith you’ll get there one day.”

“Uh-huh,” said Luke, not doing anything to justify said faith.

Elliot regarded the dogs with suspicion, and then glanced up at Luke, who was looking at him. It was a shared moment of mutual embarrassment: they were not used to being without Serene, and yet they should obviously pretend to be friends, or Luke’s mother would wonder why Elliot was here.

“The thing is,” Elliot announced. “I think I left the oven on in—”

“Mum,” said Luke, rudely interrupting. “Can we have the key to the library?”

“The library?” Elliot asked, diverted from his purpose.

“My Great-Uncle Theodore was wounded in the wars and couldn’t fight again, so he spent his whole life collecting books,” Rachel said. “Poor old boy. Don’t let the dogs in with you, Luke.”

She took a ring, heavy with keys, off the wide belt slung around her hips, and tossed it to Luke, who caught it easily, and Elliot followed him as he went out of the kitchen and round and round and round the stairs to the very top of the tower, where they stopped at a large oak door.

The library was as big as the one at school, but quieter, with the air of long disuse. Sun streamed through half-closed curtains, and the air was thick with sunlight and silence, with gold and dust. Books rose to the ceiling, which rose to a point, with ladders that leaned against the walls.

“Is it OK to touch the books without gloves?”

“Why would you need gloves to touch a book?” Luke asked, looking mildly alarmed. Elliot decided that meant yes.

He climbed one of the ladders to get to one glinting embossed spine, to see if it could possibly be what he hoped it was going to be. It was.

He climbed down the ladder to display his prize to Luke.

“One Thousand Leagues Across A Sea of Blood,” Luke said. “That’s a good title.”

The subtitle was ‘Seamonsters Demanding Sacrifice, Fanged Octopi & Murderous Mermaids I Have Known.’

“It’s the account of a famous exploring party told by Maximilian Wavechaser. This voyage is how his family got their name,” Elliot explained, going over to the window and pulling the curtains open. He climbed onto the broad wooden windowseat built into the window, which was many-paned and rose to a point like a window in church. Luke climbed up to sit on the other side, and Elliot turned the pages until he found some of the drawings of the great naval battle four hundred years ago, made out in cerulean and gold, which he thought Luke would like.

In return Luke said that he did think it was possible that the mermaids of the deep sea communicated through hand gestures rather than speech, and asked Elliot to read the awful bit about battle tactics again. It was a long and fascinating book, and Elliot was surprised when Luke said that he had to set the table for dinner.

“Have you boys been in the library all day?” Rachel asked, amazed. She ruffled Luke’s hair as he went by with the cutlery. “Who are you?”

“Elliot found a good book,” Luke said, shrugging.

“I didn’t miraculously find the only book in there that was good,” Elliot argued.

Luke gave a tiny shrug. “I don’t know that. I’ve looked at other books in that library and they’re boring.”

“You don’t know anything,” Elliot told him severely. “Statistically, you have to see that book being the only good one is not at all likely. The problem is you don’t get books. You tend to be an auditory or kinesthetic learner.”

“Hey!” said Luke.

Elliot was going to tell him that it wasn’t an insult, but then he decided it would be more hilarious not to. “I wish I had a radio,” he said. “They do readings of the classics on Sunday afternoons.”

“What’s a radio?” asked Rachel, while Luke sulked about being called a kinesthetic learner.

Elliot gave some thought about how to describe it. “It’s a magic box that says stuff and plays songs.”

“A music box?” Luke asked, scornfully. “We have music boxes.”

“No!” said Elliot. “It plays quite different songs.” He thought about the classic hits he listened to at home, filling his whole empty house with song, something that a mother might like, and sang a few lines of ‘When I’m Sixty-Four.’ Rachel beat time on the lid of her pot.

“You have a nice voice, kid,” she said. “You could be a minstrel.”

“Oh, thank God, there are other jobs for people besides being a weird conscripted soldier on the Border camp,” Elliot said. “Logically there had to be, someone has to make the food, the world would be stupid and make no sense otherwise. But I was terrified it was all dumb killing people in the face.”

“Excuse you?” said a voice from the door. “Being a soldier is the noblest profession in the world.”

“Killing people in the face is a downside,” Elliot said. “You have to admit that. I’m Elliot Schafer, by the way.”

“Adam Sunborn,” said the boy, marching in. “And this is my brother Neal.”

The two boys clattered in, big and walking as if they owned the room and possibly the world. They were Sunborns, clear as day and about as bright: big and blond and blue-eyed. They looked like rough sketches of Luke, before the artist had got him quite right. They spent all of dinnertime talking about how they hadn’t gone to the Border camp because they had been born and raised to fight, and Luke shouldn’t have either but should have come to serve in one of the lesser fortresses with them and learned through action.

“He could have been our comrade in arms,” said Neal.

“I’ve got one,” said Luke. “Her name’s Serene.”

“A girl?” Adam sneered.

“I think you should meet her,” said Luke, deceptively mild.

“I don’t think you need any more of this delicious stew, Adam,” said Rachel.

“I deplore violence in all its forms,” said Elliot. “But she’d kick your ass.”

“Why wait until Serene’s here?” inquired Louise, coming in late and mussed with her dark-haired friend, who would have been very pretty standing beside anyone but Louise. “I’ll kick both the brats off the tower as soon as dinner’s over.”

Louise spoke with friendly menace, and Rachel hit Adam’s hand when he reached for more food with a spoon. Neal and Adam didn’t pursue an argument, but Elliot saw their darkling look at him when he spoke, and knew they did not like him.

He hadn’t expected them to.

*

The next day Elliot figured that Luke would probably like to do one of the awful things he enjoyed, something outside involving weaponry, and so like an excellent and considerate guest he decided to entertain himself.

Since he was pretty sure Luke would expect him to be in the library, Elliot acquired a book and cunningly hid out of doors. He wandered around the woods for a little while until he found a tree that he thought looked appropriate and comfortable, then carefully stowed his chosen book into his hoodie and climbed up into it.

He was reading peacefully for an hour or so in the green-glowing quiet, until he heard the sound of twigs snapping underfoot and bodies shoving through the undergrowth. He looked down and saw the glint of two blond heads, and Adam Sunborn looking up at him.

“Well, well,” he said. “Look, Neal. There’s a snotty little bird up in a tree.”

“That’s not a terribly good insult,” said Elliot. “The mixed metaphors, with the bird and the snotty thing, it doesn’t work. Maybe if you’d just called me obnoxious. Wait, I’m sorry, should I define obnoxious for you?”

He was not terribly surprised when Adam grabbed one of the lower-hanging branches. He expected him to climb up, but instead Adam shook it violently, Elliot clutched his book protectively, and Elliot fell out of the tree.

Falling out of the tree was extremely unpleasant. A branch bashed him on the face on his way down, he hit his head, and his whole body felt jarred by the stupid ground. Elliot levered himself up on one elbow.

“Wow,” he said, tasting blood in his mouth. “That was a witty retort. I certainly have learned the error of my ways, and that I should hold you in far higher regard!”

Adam strode towards him, and Elliot was just considering whether he was going to get punched or kicked when Luke emerged from the trees and knocked Adam off course.

“Where have you been?” Elliot demanded.

“Looking for you!” Luke snapped back. “How was I supposed to know you were off hiding in trees, you lunatic?”

“Don’t be rude to me when you’re rescuing me, loser,” Elliot told him. “That’s terrible manners. You’re the worst.”

Luke made an incoherent sound of rage, which for some reason seemed to encourage Adam Sunborn, who moved toward Elliot. Luke held up a hand.

“You’re not doing it!” said Luke. “Where’s the honour in hurting someone who’s not as strong as you? What does that prove?”

“It might stop him being such a brat,” Adam suggested.

“Doesn’t,” Elliot contributed. “This is not the first time somebody’s ever wanted to punch me in the face.”

Luke frowned for some reason, but supported him by saying: “That is obviously true. He’s extremely annoying.”

“See, you two are not original souls. Kids at my old school used to hit me all the time, I have collected the data on this subject, and I am in the perfect position to tell you that it has no useful results whatsoever. It just means I’m bleeding as well as annoying.”

“Also, the value of someone does not rely on their ability to hurt others,” said Luke. “You guys aren’t proving you’re better than him if you knock him out of a tree.”

Neal’s lip curled as he looked down at the ground where Elliot was still lying. It didn’t seem a great idea to get up, when the two Sunborn cousins were obviously dying to knock him down again, plus his head and his face hurt. Elliot touched his mouth, and his fingers came away red.

Neal said: “What value does he have, exactly?”

Luke had to give it some thought, which Elliot found offensive. Eventually, he said: “He’s clever about some things. And he makes up songs.”

“No I don’t,” said Elliot, even more vastly offended.

“Yes you do,” said Luke. “You sang the song to me and Mum.”

“That was not my song,” said Elliot. “That song belongs to the Beatles.”

Luke rolled his eyes. “Elliot, beetles do not write songs.”

“Uh, do you guys mind?” Adam demanded.

“Oh, I’m sorry, are we not paying enough attention to you loathsome weasel bullies?” Elliot inquired. “Do you feel your dignity as someone who pushes little kids out of trees is somehow being slighted?”

“You’re not a little kid, Elliot,” said Luke.

“I’m considerably below average height!” Elliot snapped.

“Oh my God, what a little snot,” exclaimed Adam, and surged forward. Luke was suddenly in his way, pushing him back with a small shove that obviously made Adam more mad.

Violence was like that, Elliot had noticed. One move toward it and all at once everything was allowed: anyone could be hurt, out of a mix of pride and anger and stupid disregard for the fact that you could be hurt just as easily as someone else.

“You think you can take both of us?” Adam asked.

A corner of Luke’s mouth kicked up. “Yeah,” he admitted. “I really think I can.”

Neal started forward, and then stopped abruptly because the end of a whip had sailed out from among the trees, and curled itself around his wrist.

“I do not like to hit a gentleman,” Serene said, emerging from behind a screen of leaves, “but since you are responsible for shedding the blood of the defenceless, I am prepared to make an exception.”

“Serene!” Elliot exclaimed. “You’re here! And you’re my hero!”

“You’re the elf girl, then?” asked Neal Sunborn.

“I am Serene-Heart-in-the-Chaos-of-Battle. Keep a civil tongue in your head or lose it.”

Neal and Adam stared at her.

“Are you going to make your name known to me, knaves?” Serene asked dangerously.

“Neal Sunborn,” said Neal, getting a look that Elliot had seen before on the faces of boys in the war training course about to be soundly beaten by Serene: both hunted and smitten. “This is my brother Adam.”

“I’ve been meaning to ask,” Elliot said conversationally to Luke. “If they’re your mum’s sister’s kids, how are they Sunborns too?”

Serene frowned. “It makes perfect sense. Of course the children bear their mother’s name. The woman is the strong one, who bears the child and begins the family. You can’t be sure who any child’s father is.”

Elliot considered. “That’s a good point, actually. It’s why the Egyptians married their sisters.”

“I don’t know that family,” Serene said, “But that does not seem to me like a good solution.”

Adam and Neal looked defeated by the whole situation—having to fight a girl who was looking pityingly down on them, and the way people kept having conversations without including them. When Luke began to explain that while actually a lot of men took the Sunborn name when they married Sunborn women—having met Rachel and Louise, Elliot thought he understood—his mother and father were both born Sunborns, from different branches of the family, because the Sunborns were a vast clan and long might their glory shine so on et cetera. Which made Serene start talking about the house of Chaos. At which point Adam and Neal gave up and simply slunk away.

*

The rest of the stay at Luke’s house, graced with Serene’s shining presence, was rather nice. There was sunlight and the woods and Rachel Sunborn and the dogs proved to be all right after all—Culaine was Elliot’s favorite. Sometimes everybody would get together and play terrible games, like throwing knives at trees who had done nobody any wrong. Elliot would fetch a book at those times, but he was obscurely gratified to see that either Luke or Serene always won.

The only real problem came at the end of the holiday, when Rachel and Louise Sunborn had to ride away with a border patrol in order to deal with a gang of brigands who were waylaying people on the northern roads.

She and her men were gone all day, and still gone when it was time for bed.

Elliot finished his book in bed and pondered going to get another one. He only had so much time left, and he had so many books to get through. He slipped out of bed, and as he was making his way to the library he stopped to investigate the fact that a candle was still burning in Luke’s room.

“What are you doing here,” said Luke in a flat voice, who was staring at the ceiling. Elliot didn’t see why he needed a candle to look at the ceiling. It wasn’t going anywhere.

Elliot came to a decision. “I’ve come to bother you.”

“Isn’t it enough to bother me every day, all day? Do you have to bother me through the night as well?”

“Yes. You shouldn’t sleep with animals, I’m sure it’s unsanitary. Come here, Culaine,” said Elliot, and when both dogs shuffled over across the bedclothes to be patted Elliot pushed Cavall gently away. “Not you. Culaine’s my favorite.”

Luke sat up. His blond hair was sticking straight up: he looked like an offended dandelion. “They’re both good dogs. You can’t have a favorite.”

“Of course I can, loser,” said Elliot. “I’m very judgemental.”

The door creaked open and Serene stood it it, looking severe and beautiful in her sensible black pajamas. “Oh good, you’re here,” she said to Elliot. “You can administer manly sympathies and sweet comfort.”

“I could,” said Elliot haughtily, “but I have no intention of doing so.”

“I was worried that you would be fretting, Luke,” Serene continued. “I know how boys do.”

“Get out of my room, both of you,” said Luke, and put a pillow over his own face.

Serene climbed up on the bed as well, and entered into an argument with Elliot about which was the finer dog. Serene thought Cavall was the best at hunting: Elliot was firm in his conviction that he did not care.

When the riders came home from battle it was so late the darkness was turning to light again, as if the moon had dissolved in the sky and flooded it with pale radiance. They rode home victorious, and Serene and Luke ran downstairs with the rest of the household.

Elliot stood at Luke’s window and saw the torchlight falling on triumphant, desperate and grieving faces alike, saw Luke, Neal and Adam in a cluster of children relieved their parents were safe. He saw Rachel Sunborn with her gold-ringed fist raised in triumph, and saw the empty saddles of those who had not come home.

He said, aloud into the night wind and with no-one to hear: “I find war very annoying.”

Everyone else seemed to think that the whole situation was perfectly all right, just because the Sunborns had prevailed. It put Elliot into a terrible mood.

When it was time to go back home, Rachel talked cheerfully about how much she was sure they would enjoy the second year of camp at the Border: more swordplay, larger bows. Piles of weapons, which was about as enticing a prospect to Elliot as piles of cat poop.

“And are you looking forward to it?” Rachel asked Elliot, beaming but vague. Elliot suspected she had no idea what went on in the council training course at all.

“Sure,” said Elliot, and when Rachel was no longer paying attention but Luke still was, he added: “Truce is over then. I’ll finally have peace and quiet.”

Hope you enjoyed! In the next part… this is very exciting… everybody gets to be FOURTEEN!

And there is something I have been writing on and off for a while, for fun, for a present, and to promote a short story I have coming out next year in the anthology Monstrous Affections.

And the other day I thought to myself: Self. This has got REALLY LONG, oh my God, WHAT DID YOU DO? So I thought… might be time to give the first part of the gift. Because the gift is TOO BIG to be given all at once. Because I am a human disaster.

This story does have notable literary ancestors I’m reacting to, so I will name ‘em! Thanks go especially to Jill Murphy for The Worst Witch, the first magic school adventure I ever read and which brought me to all the others (honorable mentions to Diana Wynne Jones’s Witch Week, Harry Potter, Neil Gaiman’s The Books of Magic, Eva Ibbotson’s Which Witch? and many more) and to Tamora Pierce, who wrote such amazing fantasyland military adventures that even I, confirmed coward that I am, wanted to go. (Also, she wrote Rikash ‘Babe’ Moonsword. That’ll be important later.)

Thirteen

So far magic school was total rubbish.

Elliot sat on the fence bisecting two fields and brooded tragically over his wrongs.

He had been taken away from geography class, one of his most interesting classes, to take some kind of scholarship test out in the wild. A woman in odd clothing had ‘tested’ him by asking him if he could see a wall standing in the middle of a field. When he told her “Obviously, because it’s a wall. Walls tend to be obvious” she had pointed out other people blithely walking through the wall as if it was not there, and told him that he was one of the chosen few with the sight.

“Are you telling me that I have magical powers?” Elliot had asked, extremely excited for a moment, and then he added: “… because I can’t walk through walls? That doesn’t seem right.”

The woman had told him she was prepared for questions, but she did not seem prepared for that one. She blinked and told him to come away with her to a magical land.

Normally, Elliot would have refused, but there was the wall, and the undeniable fact that other people could not see or touch it, and this was like something out of a book. Elliot did not think he would be able to live with the curiosity if he did not go.

“Okay,” Elliot had said finally, brandishing his phone in the woman’s face. “But I have the number of the police and I will have my finger on the call button at all times, in case you are a child predator.”

She had seemed confused, but she had let him keep the phone with no objections as she led him up a narrow stone stairway built into the wall. They climbed and climbed, and when they had gone so high that they were surrounded by clouds they walked through a shining hole in the wall, and onto soft grass.

Actually, the magical land seemed to be mostly grass.

There were fields, more fields, several more fields, a couple of rough round stone towers which men with weapons were exiting and entering. Elliot had cheered up when he saw a few men and boys with long hair and pointed ears–there were elves—and dwarves—like from fairytales, girls and boys both with beards and carrying elaborately carved hammers.

He looked around for other marvels.

Mostly there were other kids. Some of them quite big and some of them looking no more than Elliot’s age—thirteen. They had all lined up at different tables to be signed in, and now the kids Elliot’s age were all standing together in a cluster waiting to be told what to do.

It was all so unfair. Elliot had not expected a magical land to be all fields—some of the fields had cows in them, and he was pretty sure they weren’t magic cows–and other kids.

Elliot especially did not like the other kids aspect of the matter. Elliot was fine with small groups like a book club, or for a group project, but when the group was big enough to be a class, that was when trouble happened. Elliot had ‘does not interact well with peers’ on all his report cards.

If the teachers had been more precise, what they would have said was ‘does not shut up well around stupid people,’ but that was teachers for you. And there were always kids who were confounded to be crossed, as if they had expected that life would go their way forever.

Elliot had already spotted the two kids who looked as if they thought life was a song. Practically all of the relatively few girls were staring at them.

One of the boringly human pair of boys, the obvious leader, was tall and broad-shouldered with golden hair as if Nature had said ‘No worries, buddy, I gotcha, no nasty tiring thinking will ever be necessary, also have a crown.’ The other had wavy brown hair with sunny glints, and a sunny smile like an empty vessel that could be filled entirely with light.

The blond guy was wandering around from kid to kid, talking kindly to them and taking hold of them by one shoulder with the patronizing air of a kid who thought he was as good and wise as a teacher. He knelt and spoke to one much smaller girl in a My Little Pony T-shirt, then rose to his feet and turned easily away, leaving her staring after him with shining eyes as he obviously forgot all about her: as if he was a king dispensing largesse to the peasants. The other boy was following the blond guy around, nodding easily at everything he said. Both of them looked entirely self-assured about the whole situation. Elliot knew their type. The first looked like he would throw the first punch and the second like he would throw the second and the third, in eager imitation.

Elliot had mentally christened them Blondie and Surfer Dude.

He looked around, peering, to the woods where perhaps there were more elves, and to the skies where he was almost sure he’d seen something that was winged but too big to be a bird.

A cough distracted Elliot from his perusal of the skies. He looked down into blue eyes and saw that it was apparently Elliot’s turn on the condescension rounds.

“You should stop sitting on that fence,” Blondie instructed.

“Oh, I see,” Elliot muttered darkly. “Even this is to be taken from me.”

Nobody Elliot was aware of had made Blondie the boss of the fence, but being tipped over backwards into the mud was not Elliot’s idea of a good time. He slipped off the fence and looked resentfully up at Blondie and, of course, his sunny shadow. He found tall people tiresome.

Elliot scowled. Blondie frowned. Surfer Dude kept smiling.

“Don’t worry, little guy. I know this must all be very confusing for people from the other side of the Border,” said Blondie.

Elliot stared for a long moment. The moment grew uncomfortable. Elliot was glad.

“This is all terribly confusing,” Elliot agreed. Blondie smiled, relieved, and Elliot held up a hand to stop him saying anything. “I was so hoping,” Elliot continued, soulfully, “that somebody would come explain all this to me. Preferably someone who would do it in small words? And you two look like the small words type.”

“Sure, what do you need explained?” asked Surfer Dude.

Elliot rolled his eyes and saw that Blondie’s sweet blue eyes had narrowed. He tilted his head and grinned.

“First off, this,” said Elliot, and produced his phone from his pocket. It looked a little bit melty and was sending off sparks. Surfer Dude took a step back.

“You’d better give me that,” said Blondie. “You could hurt yourself.”

He stepped forward. Elliot took a step to the side, and the group as a whole moved away from Elliot. Everyone else had discarded their technology when it malfunctioned, because they were quitters.

“Nope,” said Elliot. “It’s mine.”

“I think it’s about to go on fire.”

“It’s my thing that’s about to go on fire, and not yours,” Elliot said firmly. “Now, why have all our methods of communication just literally gone up in smoke? Are we kidnapped? Are we going to be ritual sacrifices? Is there some sort of magical spell that destroys our ability to call for help?”

A distressed murmuring spread across the group. Blondie looked around in dismay.

“No,” he said. “Everything’s fine. Your little gadgets from across the Border just don’t work here, that’s all. They never have. You don’t need them here.”

“Of course not,” Elliot murmured. “The Industrial Revolution was a silly business, anyway.”

Everybody looked confused now, not just Surfer Dude.

Elliot raised his voice. “Are you telling me none of us are going to be able to play video games?”

Blondie looked like he had his doubts about answering, but he did anyway. “I’m not sure what a video game is… but I’m pretty sure you can’t play them here.”

One of the other boys, who judging by his clothes was from what Blondie called ‘the other side of the Border’ and Elliot called ‘the real world where stuff made sense and phones did not explode,’ burst into tears. Blondie’s head whipped around.

“Oh no,” Elliot exclaimed, sadly. “Look what you did.”

“I didn’t–!”

“He seems awfully upset,” Elliot continued. “You must feel really bad.”

Blondie did not look as if he felt bad at all. He looked, in fact, as if he was going to punch Elliot in the face.

He took a deep breath and did not, which was a pleasant surprise and made Elliot feel quite cheerful.

“Go on, then,” Elliot said brightly, and made an encouraging yet dismissive gesture. “See to the children!”

Blondie turned and moved toward the crying boy, but he glanced back over his shoulder at Elliot, eyes still narrowed.

“Not everyone who can see the Border belongs on the right side,” he observed. “Being trained to protect the Border is a sacred duty. And my father says that some people are too weak and too concerned with their own comfort to fight the good fight.”

“That’s fascinating. Run along.”

“You can choose to go or stay,” said Blondie. “So I don’t think I’ll be seeing you again.”

“Yes, oh my God, I already understood the implication that I wasn’t man enough to tough it out beyond the Border, your attempt at an insult was extremely clear,” Elliot informed him. “You’re just making the whole thing laboured and awkward now.”

He waved Blondie away again, and on his retreat Elliot squinted suspiciously up at Surfer Dude.

“When he said all that stuff about duty, and protection,” he said. “Is this a military operation?”

Surfer Dude looked pleased to be asked. “Yes. They train you up, those who can pass through the Border on either side, to be guards and keep the peace between the peoples in this land and anybody who may come through from the other. You learn how to handle all sorts of weapons, how to form a unit, all this cool stuff.”

“Oh my God,” Elliot said in a hollow voice. “We’re child soldiers?” He considered this and then said: “I need to sit down. I’m going back to the fence.”

“You’re not supposed to—“ Surfer Dude said, echoing his master, but Elliot was already walking away and making another emphatically dismissive gesture.

He did take Surfer Dude’s point, and he did not want to be pushed off the fence, so he meandered along it a little, moving further away from the group, and as he did so he came in sight of someone else who was standing slightly removed from the crowd.

She turned as Elliot approached.

She was tall, slim and strong-looking as a young birch tree, and as she turned her long dark hair spun out in the steadily blowing wind. It formed a trail of darkness, touched by autumn leaves twined around her tresses: her pale face stood out in sharp relief, and so did the pearl-pale curling points of her ears.

This was an elf maiden.

This was, bar none, the coolest person Elliot had ever seen.

Elliot only had to look at her solemn face for one long moment, robbed of breath by both the wind and her beauty, and he knew. This was love: not the passing fancy he’d felt for Miss Tolliver his music teacher (in which he’d become confused by having a good relationship with an authority figure), or Simon Bae (confused by admiration for his skill in their shared art project) or Clare Winters (the guidance counselor had approved and hadn’t said Elliot was confused, but Clare had turned out to only understand a quarter of Elliot’s jokes so she’d been confused all the time).

Elliot wasn’t confused now, looking into those clear eyes, at once dark and bright like pools in a deep forest.

He tried to collect himself. Now was no time to stare like a hypnotized sheep.

Now was the time to woo.

There had not been any other elven girls he had seen, not in the whole camp. So clearly she was defying conservative elven customs by coming here, brave and alone and the victim of cruel oppression. Elliot’s heart went out to her. She was probably feeling scared and shy.

“Hello,” said the beautiful elven maid. “I was just thinking, and I mean no offence, but—how can any fighting force crowded with the softer sex hope to prevail in battle?”

“Huh?” said Elliot, brilliantly. “The softer what?”

“I refer to men,” said the elf girl. “Naturally I was aware the Border guard admitted men, and I support men in their endeavor to prove they are equal to women, but their natures are not warlike, are they?”

Elliot offered, after a long pause: “I don’t enjoy fighting.”

She favored him with a slow smile, like dawn light spreading on water. “Very natural.”

“In fact,” Elliot confessed, encouraged, “I never fight.”

“You should not have to,” she said. “There should always be a woman ready to protect a man in need. I take it that you are bound for the council course, then?”

“I don’t understand,” said Elliot, and then he shamelessly looked up at her (taller, why was everybody taller) through his eyelashes, and confessed: “I’m from the other side of the Border, and this is all a little overwhelming—” and distressing? Yes, Elliot felt that he was definitely distressed—“and distressing,” he added with conviction. “If you would be so very kind as to explain a few things to me, I would so appreciate it.”

He was going for a combination of shy and winsome. As he had never tried to act like this ever before, he wasn’t sure how well he was succeeding, but the elf maid unbent further. So he couldn’t be doing too badly.

“Certainly,” she said, and offered him her arm. Elliot, a quick study, accepted it with a sweet smile. “The council course is a course in diplomacy, mapping the lands to this side of the Border, learning about other cultures. Elven culture, for instance, is quite different from that of humans.”

“I am beginning to see that.”

“War training is seen as more prestigious, and has far more recruits,” said the elf.

“That is totally unreasonable! These people are idiots, I suspected it all along.”

“You are very forthright for a man,” said the elvish maiden. “But I understand that human men are not reared as delicately as elven gentlemen. I agree with you, moreover: both courses should be considered equally important.”

Elliot had not said that, but he was already unbecomingly forthright, so he fluttered his eyelashes and remained demurely silent.

He did not think the demure silence thing was going to work out, because he was only able to keep it up for a minute.

“What’s your name?”

“Serene.”

“Serena?” Elliot asked.

“Serene,” said Serene. “My full name is Serene-Heart-in-the-Chaos-of-Battle.”

Elliot’s mouth fell open. “That is badass.”

Serene’s serious countenance did not change, but Elliot felt a subtle shift of that slim body: he was fairly certain she was preening.

“I’m Elliot Schafer,” he added.

“A strange name,” said Serene, adding gallantly: “But not unpleasing.”

Take that, every jerk at school who had ever laughed at Elliot’s name. No badass elven maidens had ever told them that their names were not unpleasing, had they?

“Are you interested in the cultures of the otherlands?” Serene asked in a courteous tone.

“Super interested,” declared Elliot. “When you said peoples, you mean humans, elves, dwarves and–?”

Please say mermaids, he thought. Please say something cool with wings.

“Mermaids,” said Serene. He could have kissed her. (He would have been really delighted to kiss her.) “Trolls. Harpies. Centaurs. Nymphs, and various other peoples.”

“Badass,” Elliot whispered again.

That was when they both noted that the woman in odd clothes was there again. She turned out to be called Captain Woodsinger, and she was collecting them all for a roll call, which Elliot thought was ridiculous considering they had all just lined up to sign into the Border training camp.

He cheered up when she started reading out names, and Blondie turned out to be called Luke Sunburn.

“Sunborn,” hissed Surfer Dude, once Elliot was done loudly making fun of this. “He’s called Luke Sunborn. Of the Sunborns, you know!”

“I don’t,” said Elliot. “And I don’t want to.”

“You see, we bring in, um, some humans from across the Border, and some volunteers from the, uh, otherlands,” Surfer Dude proceeded, eyeing Serene uneasily, which Elliot thought was an odd way to look at the most beautiful and badass girl in the entire world. “But the backbone of the Border guard are the families who settled on the Border centuries ago, and have protected it ever since, raising their suns and daughters in the tradition.”

He buffed his nails on his leather jerkin. He and Captain Woodsinger and Luke Apparently-Not-Sunburn and many of the other humans were dressed like that, in a lot of leather and straps. It looked pretty ridiculous to Elliot, especially compared to Serene’s form-fitting clothes, soft and green as moss.

“I’m a Wavechaser, you know,” Surfer Dude added proudly. “Dale Wavechaser.”

“Ha!”

Dale Wavechaser frowned. “Sorry?”

“Nothing,” said Elliot. Mocking people who didn’t get it was kind of pointless, like throwing sharp weapons into pudding.

Dale returned to his favourite subject.

“Of course, the Wavechasers aren’t anything compared to the Sunborns,” he said. “They were the first family. They held the Border on their own for a generation. There are songs about them: the shining ones, the golden guard, the laughing warriors. The Sunborn family is an army unto itself. Whenever there is a Sunborn acting as Commander of the Border guard, we cannot lose. Luke is the great Trigon champion Eleanor Sunborn’s nephew, you know. He was taken to his father Michael Sunborn’s last post with him and trained by him personally for three years. They say he’s shaping up to be the best Sunborn of his generation. I was so excited to meet him today!”

Elliot raised his eyebrows. “Congratulations. I’m sure you will be very happy together.”

So Blondie was basically the scary warrior equivalent of a trust fund kid, the kind who had their pictures in the paper on the regular. One of life’s born winners, with golden luck to go with the hair. No wonder he was glaring over at Elliot, looking betrayed and unhappy as a wet cat, as if nothing like being laughed at had ever happened to him before.

“The elven clans do not pay much heed to the brief fame and even briefer lives of men,” remarked Serene.

She was a stone cold elven fox.

“Tell me about your clan,” Elliot invited her.

Serene launched into a long tale of bloodshed, kidnapping gentlemen, highwaywomen and foresworn oaths. The Chaos clan were apparently kind of rogues. Elliot was so into it. Dale Wavechaser wandered off at some point early on, which was his loss.

Serene was actually laughing at one of Elliot’s jokes, her pale face bright as sun on snow and her dark hair swinging into her face, when Captain Woodsinger approached them and said, her voice very dry: “Schafer. Chaos-of-Battle. Have you made any decisions about whether you are staying or going?”

Elliot looked around the clearing, which was largely empty. Most of the kids in jeans and hoodies like him were long gone. He vaguely recalled seeing the kid who had cried over video games leading the way.

“It is a very different world to the one you are accustomed to,” Captain Woodsinger observed. Elliot thought she was talking to him until she added, “We have never had a female elf wish to join the Border camp, though of course we have heard of your legendary prowess in battle. You may be surprised and dismayed by the reactions of those around you, which you will consider unnatural. And your lady mother has expressed serious reservations about your behaviour in joining up.”

Serene tossed her dark hair. “My mother was the wildest elf in the woods until she met my father,” she said. “I can have an adventure of my own. Anyone who thinks I am not equal and more than equal to any human challenge will soon realize their mistake.”

Elliot regarded her with his chin propped on his fist and sighed dreamily.

“And you, Schafer?”

Phones exploded here and there was way more nature than Elliot was comfortable with, but there were mermaids and harpies and also true love.

Besides, it wasn’t like there was that much to go back to.

“I’m in,” said Elliot.

He began to regret his decision as soon as he was separated from Serene and sent off to his sleeping quarters.

His sleeping quarters were a large bare wooden cabin, with several bunk beds and chests full of clothes and—oh good—weapons. There were already other boys there, and two of them were conducting a fight with daggers. Elliot saw no evidence anywhere of plumbing, and it was freezing cold in magic land. Elliot had never given much thought to the importance of plumbing and indoor heating, and he had never wanted to long passionately for double-glazing.

Magic lands in the books had always seemed closer to nature, but in a nice way, without all the unpleasant details.

A dagger landed in the wall, far too close to him.

“Oh no,” Elliot moaned, and sat down heavily on his bunk bed. “This is magic Sparta.”

*

Forget fancy luxuries like telephones and toilets. The Border camp did not even have writing implements.

In his first class Elliot was presented with a quill, which he promptly broke in two and threw against a wall. He’d brought a pencil with him in his pocket: he clung to it as his only hope, and insisted on writing on the parchment with it as he took notes.

It was geography class again, though they called it mapping, but the maps were of a world Elliot had never seen before. He stared, fascinated, at the lines and circles that formed strange mountains and lakes: at the alien names that he would learn, and the places he was suddenly determined to go.

He still would have been happier with a pen.

He would also have been happier if he’d been able to keep his hoodie and jeans, but this morning he had woken to find his clothes stolen and had thus been forced into the uniform of those in council training. The others called his clothes a tunic and breeches: Elliot called them a dress and leggings, and it looked pretty terrible combined with the fact Elliot’s wild curly hair needed cutting and there was no hairdresser apparent in this magic land. If anyone from his old school had seen him, Elliot would have been destroyed on sight.

What would have made Elliot happiest of all was if he could see Serene, but she was nowhere to be found. He looked for her in every class, and saw her in none. He had no idea how to find her, so at the end of the day he stuffed all his new books (they were awesome) and his parchment (it was stupid, and nobody had listened to his impassioned speech on the topic of notebooks) into his bag, and went in quest of her.

The Border camp was all cabins, tents, a few stumpy towers like a couple of broken gray teeth in an otherwise toothless mouth, and endless fields. It was very difficult to navigate.

Elliot was fairly certain that he had gone around the same cabin twice, so in order to prevent the same thing happening for a third time he took out his house keys and made a small notch in the wood round the back.

“Hey!” said a voice behind him. “You can’t vandalize the camp!”

“I do what I want,” said Elliot.

He turned and beheld the most horrible sight imaginable: Luke Sunborn and his beautiful Serene. Actually walking together, and obviously getting along, their arms brushing, their gold and dark heads bowed together. They were both wearing the uniform of the cadets, and Elliot had to admit the leather and straps actually looked good on Serene. They looked like a natural pair, a matched set. They looked like a couple from a storybook.

Elliot’s despair was put on pause when Serene’s mouth turned up slightly at the corners, and she said: “Oh good, Elliot. There you are.”

Elliot beamed. “Here I am.”

“You,” said Luke Sunborn. “Why are you still here?”

“I’m sorry,” said Elliot, and paused. “Who are you?” he asked. “Have we met before? What’s your name?”

Luke opened his mouth and no sound came out.

Elliot grinned. “Sorry. I guess you’re just not very memorable.”

“This is Luke Sunborn,” Serene informed him efficiently. “Luke, Elliot Schafer. Did I say that right?”

“Perfectly,” Elliot assured her.

“I know his name, they said it at roll call,” said Luke. “How do you know this guy, Serene?”

“He’s a new friend of mine, like you,” Serene answered, and Elliot was torn between delight and disgust as she continued: “I was hoping that you would both accompany me to Commander Rayburn’s rooms and support me as I make my petition.”

Elliot had several questions, like: who is Commander Rayburn, how are we supposed to find these rooms, how are we supposed to find anything, what is your petition?

He did not voice any of them. He went to Serene’s other side, taking her offered arm, and privately vowing that he would be amazingly supportive. Way more supportive than Luke.

*

“I wish to be enrolled in both the war training and council training courses,” said Serene. “I cannot be content with simply taking one. There is no such thing as too much learning and both have too much of value to offer me.”

“Absolutely not, get out of here,” said Commander Rayburn.

“With respect, sir,” Serene began.

“No,” said Commander Rayburn, a big burly guy in the standard excessive leather. He had an actual candle burning much too close to a stack of parchment on his desk. “The war training course demands total dedication and extreme discipline. It leaves no time for anything else, certainly not another course. The council training course also, I have no doubt, takes up considerable time. You would not be capable of studying both.”

“With respect, sir,” said Serene. “And meaning no offence to you or my fellow cadets, but while it might certainly be too much for the delicate, I am a woman, and scientifically we have more endurance than men—”

Commander Rayburn’s face grew darker. Elliot tried to gesture to Serene to cease with this line of reasoning.

Which turned out to be a terrible mistake, because the commander’s eye lit upon him. “Do you have something to say, cadet?”

“No,” said Elliot prudently, and then his actual personality reasserted itself and he said: “Well, actually yes. Okay, I’ve only been in the otherlands for a day and so far it’s all horrible and confusing, but this much I understand. Serene is the first female elf to join the Border camp, and the women of her kind are more highly valued socially than the men. She’s also of a very high rank. If you send her home saying that you doubt her capabilities, you will be insulting the elves, and they are one of the few nonhumans the humans actually have an alliance with. Why insult the elves when you do not have to? Moreover, she is extremely intelligent and by all accounts really good at stabbing stuff and whatever. You should want to have gifted students who may excel in both courses, and you should be encouraging students when they show interest in their studies. Do you not want warriors who are brilliant, and diplomats who are brave? The war training course is also obviously the command track course. Do you want the next generation of commanders and captains to be idiots like Luke? If the coursework proves too much for Serene—which I do not anticipate—she can always make a choice between the courses, and at that stage it will be a choice made with more information than she has now, and with mutual goodwill.” He took a deep breath. “Also, that candle so close to your papers is a fire hazard. I thought you should know.”

Commander Rayburn’s lip curled. “You’d be in the council training course, I assume.”

“Yeah, you can tell by my pretty dress,” Elliot snapped.

“Well, your deluge of slippery words and Chaos-of-Battle’s burgeoning insubordination fail to convince me, for some reason,” Rayburn said drily.

“My mother always said men’s minds were unsuited to the rigors of command,” Serene murmured. “With respect, sir.”

“What did you say?” Commander Rayburn thundered.

“I agree with them,” Luke said loudly.

He had not spoken before, only saluted and stood to attention, hands clasped behind his back and listening seriously to what his commander was saying. He stepped forward now.

“I beg your pardon, Sunborn?”

“I agree with everything Serene and Elliot are saying,” Luke said. “Except the stuff about guys, obviously, remember the cultural differences.”

Serene inclined her head. “My apologies.”

“And the fact that Elliot insulted me, which was completely rude and uncalled for.”

Elliot smirked.

“Aside from that, sir,” said Luke. “It does no harm to let her try. She’s amazing with a bow. You should see her in the ring. If she was asked to choose between courses, she might not choose war training, and she would be a real loss to the camp.”

Elliot did not miss his implication, as clear as the commander’s, that council training was useless.

“She has a brain, you know,” Elliot said. “She’d be right not to choose war training.”

“I speak for myself,” Serene announced, her arms crossed. “And I am brilliant with both a bow and my brain. But if you do not know how to value a daughter of Chaos, that is your loss.”

She walked over to a chair, which she flung herself into, in a rebellious slouch. Elliot looked at her with love and joined her in sitting down, though he didn’t think he had quite Serene’s elan. Luke remained standing, but he moved to the other side of Serene’s chair.

It was Serene’s absolute refusal to be cowed or to submit that changed the commander’s mind, Elliot thought. But the support of a Sunborn and Elliot’s statement of some shatteringly obvious facts about diplomacy didn’t hurt.

“You can take both courses,” he said eventually. “On trial. For a year. If you do not perform satisfactorily in both, you will be asked to choose at the end of a year, whether you wish to or not.”

“Thank you,” said Serene.

“And I hope I don’t regret this.”

“I intend you will not,” Serene informed him. “I intend to excel.”

They left the tent with Serene striding in the centre, and both of them flanking her.

“Well, Serene, you were amazing,” Elliot told her. “Now, you’ll want to learn what you missed in council training today. Come with me to the library and we will go over the lessons. Goodbye, Luke.”

“Right,” said Luke. “See you in archery at dawn, Serene?”

“Indeed,” said Serene.

Elliot was calling that one a draw. For him and Luke, that was: obviously Serene had triumphed in her altercation with the commander, because she was wonderful.

*

Serene was obviously in way over her head.

It was not her fault. She was brilliant and amazing and perfect, and if anyone in the world could have done it she could have, but there simply were not enough hours in the day. Those in council training were meant to burn the midnight oil (literally, God grant Elliot patience but he would rather have electricity) and those in war training were meant to rise at dawn.

She was not getting enough sleep.

Elliot came forcibly to this realization when he was reading to her aloud in the library about the adventures of a dwarf prince and the elven commander of his armies. It was also an interspecies romance, because Elliot’s courtship was both intellectual and sneaky.

Their burly elven librarian, Bright-Eyes-Gladden-the-Hearts-of-Women, walked over and coughed pointedly as Elliot was reading.

Elliot ceased doing the voice for the dwarf prince. “Am I talking too loudly—” he began, and then saw that Serene was asleep, her dark head cradled in her arms. “…Oh.”

He shut up the book, slipped off his chair and went into the stacks where he could give himself furiously to think. He had only been brooding there for a few minutes when he was interrupted by Luke.

“What are you doing here?” Elliot demanded.

“I’m worried about Serene,” said Luke.

“No, I didn’t mean why did you come here,” Elliot explained. “How did you even know how to find this place? Did you get somebody to show you the way? Do you know what these objects on the shelves with all the words in them are called?”

Luke did look somewhat out of place in the library and mildly uncomfortable about it, but in response he stopped looking uncomfortable and started looking annoyed.

“We were having an archery competition this morning.”

“How is that different from having archery practise every other morning?” Elliot asked. “Wait, don’t tell me, I just remembered I’m not interested. So?”

“She missed every bull’s eye,” said Luke. “She could barely focus on the target. She still did better than a lot of the other cadets, mind you,” he added with notable pride: it almost made Elliot have a positive feeling about Luke.

“Who won the archery competition, then?”

“Me, of course,” said Luke. Ah, there went all positive feelings. Status quo restored.

“Okay, loser, quit bragging,” Elliot commanded. “We have a real problem here. This has been made deliberately impossible for Serene. They won’t go any easier on her. We have to coordinate our efforts.”

“I don’t understand,” said Luke.

“I don’t know how to express the depths of my surprise,” Elliot told him. “How would it be if Serene skipped the earliest classes, and you remembered the lessons and trained her? And while you train her, I could read to her and try to catch her up in our lessons so she won’t have to study late. She’ll have to multi-task, but she won’t be too exhausted to do it.”

Luke thought this over, and then nodded. “All right. So we’ll work together on this. Truce?”

“For the year,” said Elliot hastily. “We’re not friends.”

“I’m not confused on that issue,” said Luke. He spat in his hand and held it out. “Deal?”

Elliot backed away. “Ugh, no, I’m not touching your spit. That’s disgusting.”

Luke flushed and wiped his hand off on his trousers. “It’s a totally normal—”

“Save the performative manly exchange of bodily fluids for the people in your military training, loser!”

“Why are you helping her?” Luke asked abruptly, and loud enough so that Bright Eyes the librarian elf gave them a sharp warning look. Of course Luke had no idea of appropriate manners in the library.

“Why are you helping her?” he shot back.

“She’s my comrade in arms,” said Luke. “And this isn’t fair. But you hardly have a code of honour, so why are you helping her?”

So Luke was saying that he was helping Serene out of the goodness of his heart, but naturally he assumed Elliot had no goodness to speak of. Because if Elliot’s code of honour wasn’t the same as Luke’s, it might as well not exist at all.

Elliot did note that Luke had not mentioned any romantic interest in Serene, so he chose this time to stake a prior romantic claim.

“If you must know, she is the one soul destined for my own and we are going to be together forever,” he declared loftily.

“That’s weird,” Luke told him. “We’re thirteen.”

“I don’t care what you think!”

“Elliot, don’t yell, we’ll get thrown out,” Serene grumbled, appearing rumpled in the stacks. “Merciful goddess, Luke, what are you doing in the library?”

Luke looked betrayed.

That was how the study-slash-stabbing lessons got started. Luke would sign them up for one of the good practise rooms in the towers, because the kids in the council course didn’t get to sign up for practise rooms and people had been known to scribble out the elf girl’s name but nobody was going to scribble out a Sunborn.

There were a few benches at the back of the practise room. Elliot sat on those and perfected his lesson plan. It all had to be sharp, short bursts of information: all purely aural and oral learning, striking enough so that Serene would remember what she needed to.

One method was to quiz her at the same time as Luke and Serene were fighting with quarterstaffs: using the clash of wood on wood as a rhythm for belting out questions, like a song.

“Name the lake where mermaids have historically murdered the most sailors.”

“Lake Atar,” said Serene, whirling and striking her staff against Luke’s.

“Correct! You’re the greatest.”

“The place where the largest host of the harpies resides.”

“The Forest of the Suicides,” she said, whirling away as Luke struck back, her plait flying.

“One thousand per cent correct, you’re amazing. The richest dwarf mines?”

“The Edda mines,” Luke chimed in, circling Serene.

“No, no, shut your face, these questions are not for you,” Elliot said sternly. “But actually that is the correct answer, thank goodness, because if you had confused Serene with another wrong answer there would have been consequences.”

Torchlight caught Luke’s grin before he lunged forward and met Serene’s defence.

There were a few dark weeks in there, in which Elliot was very glad that a bunch of the guys were distracted playing some dumb magic-land game with a glass ball, he was tired enough to snap at a couple of people who couldn’t take it and make them cry, and he passed out in his cold uncomfortable bunkbed every night without noticing the cold or the discomfort until morning when he woke aching all over.

It was worth it, because they were both getting rather good, Elliot thought. He would’ve thought about being a teacher when he grew up, but he was afraid that he’d just reduce any slow students to tears and possibly permanent emotional trauma. Elliot knew himself, and he knew that the impressionable and tender-hearted should be protected from him.

When Luke and Serene both got merits in the two classes the council and war courses shared, and Serene merits in all the others, Elliot felt like he could finally relax.

Until, naturally, Luke ruined everything.

“We could help you, you know,” he said over lunch one day.

Elliot looked to Serene for translation, but she was nodding, so it was one of those military things they both understood and felt he should too.

“I don’t need or want your help, loser,” he said, rather than betray any uncertainty. “But I will take your pudding.”

He took the pudding. Luke let him. To reward Luke for this, and also because Elliot did not trust green food, he pushed across his apple.

“Because basic self-defence training is going to start up soon,” he said. “Even the people in the council training courses have to do it. You signed up to fight when you signed up to guard the Border. You don’t have a choice. I mean, what if the camp was under attack?”

“I hope you and Serene would have the decency to protect me!”

“Yes, of course,” said Serene, and Elliot smiled gratefully at her.

“I’m not saying this to upset you. I’m trying to tell you what you absolutely have to do. What if we were both dead?” asked Luke.

Elliot looked at his pudding and was very sad about his life and his choices. How had he wound up here, in a place where all he had was pudding—Elliot would have sold his soul for a chocolate bar—and people who at the age of thirteen asked questions like ‘What if we were both dead?’

“Amazing choice of mealtime conversation, loser,” he said. “Now I’m not even hungry.”

“Give back my pudding, then.”

“No,” said Elliot, on general principles.

“Your gentle nature is unsuited to war,” Serene told him. “It’s all right to be frightened. I think you have a valiant spirit and you will rise to the occasion.”

Elliot glanced up into the steady light of Serene’s eyes. She might sympathetically express her opinion of men’s weakness at every turn, but she had this belief in Elliot, despite the fact that she was the best cadet warrior in the Border camp and based on what Elliot did not know.

She had misunderstood the situation, but her faith in him meant a lot.

“I’m not frightened,” said Elliot. “And I know just what to do.”

He finished his pudding.

*

Elliot had been to the practise grounds before, for when Serene and Luke wanted to do their fun pretend murder outside. The other kids from the council training course had not, and they were all looking at the cleared dirt with what seemed to be nervousness and excitement. Elliot sat with Peter or Myra when Serene was not there to sit with, and he had hoped for better from them.

“Don’t worry, you guys,” said Dale Wavechaser, coming up with a giant box of throwing knives. “All of the war training class are going to come and help you learn, since it’s your first time.”

Dale was exactly the type a teacher would trust with equipment: he could lift any heavy things, and he was reliable.

Elliot smiled at him winningly. “Hello.”

“Oh, hello,” said Dale. “Elliot, right? I bet Luke will teach you.”

“How thrilling for me,” said Elliot. “Actually, I know how to throw knives.”

“Really?” Dale asked. “That’s great.”

“So great,” Elliot agreed cheerfully. “So can I have them?”

He looked around, and from the cluster of cabins, coming across the grass, was Captain Woodsinger and other students from the war training course. Including Serene and Luke. Now was the time to act, or never.

Dale blinked. “Have them?”

“I like to pick my own,” said Elliot, and seized the box.

Dale did not actually resist his grab, which was excellent as the box was horribly heavy and Elliot almost tipped over and right into the big container of knives. He dropped it into the dirt instead and clung possessively to the side.

He smiled reassuringly at Dale, and across the field he saw Luke break into a run. He picked up the first knife that came to hand.

“Watch this,” he said, and threw the knife at Dale.

Dale stumbled backwards, and Elliot grabbed up several more knives and hurled them in random directions. The council track class let out screams and scattered.

Elliot grabbed more knives.

“Forcing groups of teenagers to learn how to use deadly force is really weird and disturbing!” he announced, throwing another knife, and another, and then one over his shoulder. “Everyone has a choice, if they choose to make one, and I choose not to do this. The value of people does not rest on their ability to hurt others.”

He threw the knives down viciously, as if they were grenades. Puffs of dust rose when they hit the ground.

“I am not winning any arguments because I know how to hurt someone. How does that prove that you’re right? How does that prove anything, being stronger or more vicious, except that all this talk about honour is stupid? Where’s the honour in being better at hurting somebody? Telling me I have to do this is insulting, as if I can’t win any other way. As if I can’t win in a better way.”

Luke and Serene got there just before the captain did. Elliot threw the last knife at their feet.

“He said he knew how to throw knives,” Dale Wavechaser said, faint and traumatised, somewhere in the distance.

“I do know how to throw knives,” Elliot said. “I can already do all it is that I want to do with knives, which is throw them away.”

Luke and Serene were both pale, breathing hard, looking around and looking visibly pleased that nobody had been accidentally knifed. They were also wearing looks of deep apprehension…about Elliot’s fate, Elliot assumed, since the knife box was empty.

“Yes, your point was extremely clear,” said Luke. “You’re just making the whole thing laboured and awkward now.”

Elliot rolled his eyes as he was dragged off to the commander’s rooms, where Commander Rayburn walked in and said, “Oh, the elf’s little ginger boyfriend,” in a despairing and, Elliot considered, unprofessional manner. “What have you been doing now?”

“Staged a pacifist protest,” said Elliot. “Also Serene and I have not defined the parameters of our relationship yet, though I have high hopes.”

“He staged a pacifist protest by throwing knives all over everywhere,” reported Captain Woodsinger from her place at the door, throwing the commander a snappy salute. Elliot suspected she had never forgiven him for the child predator remark.

“Unusual,” said Commander Rayburn. He sounded very, very tired.

Elliot shrugged. “I’ve been called worse.”

He got dishwashing duty for the next three weeks and was sent away, possibly so Commander Rayburn could have a soothing nap. Serene and Luke were waiting outside, and once they had established that Elliot was not expelled they told him very firmly that he should have been expelled.

“Your behaviour was very rash,” Serene said. “And you called enormous amounts of attention to yourself, which is not the way my mother taught me gentlemen should behave.” She was wearing that tiny smile, designed to be missed, except that Elliot never missed it. He smiled at her, and she told him: “If the camp is attacked, I swear to protect you.”

“And if we’re both dead, the odds are pretty good you’ll annoy people until they chop off their own heads in sheer frustration,” said Luke.

Elliot was pleased by this tribute. Luke and Serene stopped leaning their overly tall leather-clad selves against one of the endless fences surrounding the endless fields, and they walked away from the commander’s tower back toward their cabins as Elliot told them about his actual punishment.

“Oh, what?” Luke said. “You’re going to miss my first Trigon game.”

“Is that the stupid game with the glass ball and the weird hills that some of the war training guys keep playing?” Elliot asked. “Oh no, do you play that? The others have been playing it for ages.”

“It’s a good game,” said Luke. “But I didn’t really have time to play until we got into the swing of helping Serene. She’s more important.”

Serene shoved Luke’s shoulder with her own in a rough affectionate gesture. Everything had gone downhill so fast.

“So, what, they just kept a place for you on the team?”

Luke blinked. “Sure. They were upset I couldn’t play, of course: they know they won’t win against the other years without me.”

“But with you they will?” Elliot inquired sweetly.

“Well,” Luke said. “Yeah.”

“He displays great prowess in every physical activity,” Serene said in her measured way, and Luke buffeted her in the shoulder in the same way she had just done to him.

“I have no idea why you would think I might want to go and watch your ridiculous game, loser,” Elliot said. “The truce doesn’t extend that far. I have no interest in it or you, and I already see your face far more often than I would prefer.”

“Suit yourself,” Luke snapped. “Have fun washing dishes while I’m winning and everybody else is cheering for me.”

Washing dishes, or literally anything else in the world, sounded better than that. But when the day came, Serene appeared and announced that she had got Elliot off early.

“That’s so great, Serene,” said Elliot. “Except I don’t want to go.”

“I want to go,” said Serene. “You have both made a sterling effort to support me, as my true and trusted comrades, and I wish to show support for you in my turn. And if I appear at an event without a gentleman by my side, people will assume that I couldn’t get one.”

Trigon was just as stupid a game as Elliot had imagined it was. It involved a lot of jumping—someone was going to sprain an ankle, if not break a leg—and grabbing at a giant glass ball. Someone was going to get hit in the head and get glass shards embedded in their skulls.

At least nobody was actively trying to hurt each other, and Luke was quite good at jumping, if you considered that something to brag about. For about five minutes, Elliot almost wanted him to win.

But then Luke looked over at Serene a few too many times and the crowd leaped up and cheered for him a lot too many times, and Elliot retreated to his book and sulking because Serene did not understand his Tigger jokes.

Luke won. His team carried him around on their shoulders, his hair shining in the sun, their glad shouting rising up into the sky. He came over to them later.

“So?” he asked, grinning with what Elliot found to be offensive bashfulness. “What did you think?”

“I do not see the point of this game, but you were excellent,” said Serene.

Elliot looked up from his book. “Is it over?” he asked. “Who won?”

Hope you enjoyed, my dearest dears! More soon.

… More is now here.

Every generation suffers in Untold, I like to think…

Kami heard the creak of the front door opening, and instantly afterward the loud sound of her father’s voice.

He sounded furious in the same frightening way he had before.

“You just wanted to protect me, and protect our children, and protect the town.”

“Yes,” said Mum.

“So you told lie after lie, all for the best, until you had told so many lies you didn’t know how to begin telling the truth.”

“Yes,” Mum said again, desperately.

“I could have forgiven you for any of those lies,” Dad said, though he didn’t sound forgiving. “But there were so many of them. You didn’t know how to begin telling the truth? I don’t know how to begin trusting you again. There was no time in our lives when you weren’t lying to me. There’s nothing to go back to.”

Kami could see their shadows, black against the yellow wall, and how far apart they stood.

“There was nothing you could have done,” Mum said, low. “I did wrong, but I did it because I love you and I love the kids.”

“It wasn’t your choice to make!” Dad said. “They’re not just your kids. They’re our kids. That’s what it meant when we got married, that we promised to make those choices together, and I always have.”

“I know you gave up a lot to come back to Sorry-in-the- Vale when I told you I was going to have Kami,” Mum told him unsteadily. “And you never threw it in my face, until now.”

“That’s not fair.”

“I wanted to make it up to you, I wanted to make things right for you,” said Mum, her voice changing, becoming more like her usual voice, trying to be calm, trying to explain matters. “So I did a spell, and it hurt Kami. After that I was sure I could never tell you any of it. I was sure you would never forgive me.”

“Well then,” Dad told her. His voice had changed too: it was very soft. “At last we find something we can agree on.”

They went into the kitchen. Kami heard the clatter of their movement, the absence of noise that was their furious silence. Her hand was still locked around the banister, gripping the wood as if there might be some comfort there. As if wood and stone were what her home was made of. She thought of Aurimere House, where Angela had said people were going to Lillian, where there might be answers.

Angela had said Jared was there too.

No. She wasn’t going to do it. She was going to go back to bed and sleep, and in the morning she would be in control of herself. In the morning she would fix this.

So what must one do to win all this suffering?

(Also, the font of the cover was based on the polkadots on my dress in this picture. Check skirt and font. True story!)

So. Four books. Four challenges. No waiting.

1. Art Challenge. Drawing, manipped photo, tumblr gif with hilarious words on, anything Unspoken-related visual and artistic, and I shall give the most artistic artiste a prize!

2. Words Challenge. Song, poem, story: anything Unspoken-related under a thousand words. We wordsmiths must stick together.

3. Picture Challenge. Take a picture of yourself reading Unspoken somewhere–the weirder somewhere it is, the better.

4. Surprise Me. Everyone tends to be better at this than me, so if you think up something that doesn’t fit in the three categories, by all means–hit me! (Street/library posters. Pictures of people mildly concussed by Unspoken. Cosplay as the unicorn princess. Anything. Hit me! (DO NOT LITERALLY HIT ME.))

I will post the books to anywhere in the world. The contest will end at the end of this beauteous month of May. Just put links to your entries in the comments to this blog post, or its mirror on livejournal. I am looking forward to seeing what you guys come up with!

http://www.rtconvention.com/

THE TIMES WHEN YOU CAN FIND ME (and my Untold chapter ones!)

THURSDAY May 2

The Professional Liar Panel

Moderator: Kelley Armstrong
Panelist(s): Sarah Rees Brennan, Rachel Caine, Leanna Renee Hieber, Colleen Houck, Jeri Smith-Ready, Rachel Vincent
Location: Ballroom Level
Room: Chicago A

(We give away prizes if you can tell we’re lying! Also, reveal awful secrets about our lives. I believe that nobody will ever think I’m lying because whatever terrible thing I’m accused of will seem pretty plausible.)

FRIDAY May 3

Stop Wasting My Time

‘We had such a resounding demand for another marketing panel that we’re once again tackling the ever-shifting publishing landscape for YA authors. From e-books and anthologies to group tours and conventions, we’ll discuss the pros and cons of some of these options, as well as the more traditional library and store signings.’

Moderator: Kelley Armstrong
Panelist(s): Sarah Rees Brennan, Heather Brewer, Rachel Caine, Sophie Jordan
Location: Mezzanine Level
Room: Chouteau B

(Other brilliant authors talk about strategy. I will also share my strategies. I will perhaps at some point be quietly smothered by the rest of the panel, for my own good and the good of others.)

And on Saturday May 4, I will be sitting in the Teen Alley hoping people come chat to me, and at the Teen Day Partay!

But I shall not be in America long. I am in fact going to be in London very soon.

On Tuesday the 14 May, at Foyle’s in Charing Cross at 6:30, to be precise!

I am lucky enough to be emceeing for the lovely and talented Rachel Caine, and I shall also be happy to answer any questions and sign any books for me. (And I shall have prizes there also. )

http://www.foyles.co.uk/Public/Events/Detail.aspx?eventId=1908

Also, the first of The Bane Chronicles, the series of e-short stories starring Cassandra Clare’s (powerful, immortal, bisexual and snarky) Magnus Bane, is out. What Really Happened In Peru, by Cassandra Clare and, well, me.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Bane-Chronicles-Happened-ebook/dp/B00C9ZHZOS/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1367264361&sr=8-1&keywords=what+really+happened+in+peru

Not only is it out, but it hit number four on the New York Times bestseller list.

I have said this elsewhere, but know not what else to say: I am so humbled and grateful, I feel like there should be another word for it. Gratebled. Humbful. ANYWAY. Cassie and Maureen have been fancily bestselling before, for they are beautimously fancy ladies, but this is my very first time on the New York Times list. It is awe-inspiring. Cassie called me to tell me and I screamed down the phone: I maybe took all her hair off with my screech.

I know that I owe this to all the loyal fans of Magnus, and to my lovely Cassie and Maureen.

Moreover, the audiobook of What Really Happened In Peru was read by Cabin In The Woods star Jesse Williams, who did an absolutely fabumazing job, and the audiobook of The Runaway Queen, written by Maureen and Cassie and out in May, is going to be read by Les Miserables and Vikings star George Blagden, who we met at Wondercon and who is a dote.

Who can even cope with all these things? I just put my head down and try to finish Tell The Wind and Fire in a timely fashion, but I did want to say that for all those who come to see me and read my writing, I am truly thankful.

And of course if you have any questions about any of this, I am here.

And the cover of Untold…

Here is also a little more about Untold…

‘Free from bonds, but not each other

It’s time to choose sides… On the surface, Sorry-in-the-Vale is a sleepy English town. But Kami Glass knows the truth. Sorry-in-the-Vale is full of magic. In the old days, the Lynburn family ruled with fear, terrifying the people into submission in order to kill for blood and power. Now the Lynburns are back, and Rob Lynburn is gathering sorcerers so that the town can return to the old ways.

But Rob and his followers aren’t the only sorcerers in town. A decision must be made: pay the blood sacrifice, or fight. For Kami, this means more than just choosing between good and evil. With her link to Jared Lynburn severed, she’s now free to love anyone she chooses. But who should that be?’

Untold comes out September 24th.

The Booksmugglers very kindly hosted the reveal and are currently doing a giveaway of Unspoken> http://thebooksmugglers.com/2013/04/two-smugglerific-covers-giveaway-unspoken-and-untold-by-sarah-rees-brennan.html

And now, A Note On Kami’s Boobs on Unspoken. For posterity.

The boobs are my fault.

We knew we wanted a silhouette cover, to go with the old Unspoken cover and Gothicness theeeeematically. Silhouette pictures are hard to find, and posed professional pictures of people who are not super skinny are hard to find, because Society.

This girl is thinner than Kami in my head—but she does look like she’s got some badonkadonk going on, and I liked that. It would have felt very wrong to have the silhouette of Kami slimmed down.

LOVELY EDITOR: I was thinking we might, er, bring the boobs down a notch. (Just because they are prominent!)

SARAH: I BEG THAT YOU DO NO SUCH THING.

SARAH: *sends textual evidence of Kami being a well-fleshed young lady.*

EDITOR, PROJECT MANAGER, COVER DESIGNER: Others send us messages about the themes and colors… and Sarah has just sent us a giant email all about boobs.

I had lunch with my Random House peeps in March, and we were discussin’ the covers, and this happened…

SARAH: I was wondering if you could change the color for the Untold font.

LOVELY PROJECT MANAGER: Let’s put that on it. *gestures to front of Sarah’s dress*

SARAH: My… boobs?

SARAH: … I mean you can if you want…

PROJECT MANAGER: Um, no. The turquoise polka dots on your dress.

SARAH: Oh that makes more sense.

PROJECT MANAGER: It’s always boobs with you, Rees Brennan.

Welp, my petals, let me know what you think. And now that you’ve seen the covers of Untold, soon it will be time to set up the competition for the Advance Readers’ Copies…

Maureen, Cassie and I got started on writing the Bane Chronicles through chatting to each other, and we thought it might be fun to have a chat about the Bane Chronicles after the release of each story.

So… you want to talk to me, Cassie and Maureen on Thursday at 6 PM EDT? We are around, my lovelies, and here is the link to where we will be:

The Cassie, Maureen and Sarah Chat

Hope to see you there!

Obviously, I want people to read my books, because that is what keeps me in cheese and electricity and the more people who read my books the sooner the better for me and it makes me feel all sad and useless when people do not, but I also think that probably it’s a better experience to read the snippets when you know the characters and with luck care about them, and where they are in their story. Plus snippets are there to be dramatique, and you’ll be missing out on the casual and funny bits and the bits that only make sense in context, and those are my own favourite bits to read. When reading. Other books, that is.

So it would be my expert opinion that it’s better to read Unspoken and then the Untold snippets. HOWEVER, I am not the boss of anybody, this is the internet which is Freedom Central, do as you wish!

I did think to myself, maybe time to take a break from being a princess of evil, though, just in case there are those who did read Unspoken (hi guys love you!) and yet who are worried there may be no casual or funny or SLEUTH-y bits in Untold. For there will be!

So I thought I would ask on twitter which character people would like to see happy.

SARAH: So I thought I’d put up a happy snippet–
TWITTER: WHO ARE YOU AND WHAT HAVE YOU DONE WITH SARAH REES BRENNAN?
TWITTER: What evil game are you playing now, wanton mistress of the night?
TWITTER: Back devil, we know your tricks!
TWITTER: Is this some kind of cruel joke?!
SARAH: Whoa, who hurt you guys so you’re all so afraid and untrust…
SARAH: Sorry, no, I remember now, it was totally me.

… Eventually it emerged that people wanted Jared to be happy. I presume this was for the novelty value. So here is a short piece in which Our Heroes steal stuff from evil sorcerers. Enjoy, m’dears. Evil princessing will re-commence in 3… 2…

Kami herself was turning loitering into a fine art at the post office.

“I always wondered what it would be like to work behind the counter here,” she told Mrs. Jeffries, being energetically charming while keeping one eye out the door. “I want to write an article about it, in fact.”

Mrs. Jeffries patted her dark hair. “I do like that paper of yours.”

“I would call it . . . ‘The Secret Lives of Postmistresses,’ ” Kami said.

“I don’t know about that,” Mrs. Jeffries told her doubtfully. “Sounds a little saucy to me.”

“Oh no,” Kami assured her. “Mine is a worthy publication. Completely lacking in sauce.” She spotted her quarry coming down the High Street, letters in hand, and texted a group message requesting immediate assistance. “So could I possibly come behind the counter?” she asked.

“Weeeeeell,” said Mrs. Jeffries.

Kami jiggled the gate invitingly, and Mrs. Jeffries swung it open. At the precise moment Kami slipped inside, the phone in the back rang. Mrs. Jeffries gave Kami a questioning glance, and Kami nodded encouragement.

Mrs. Jeffries went to answer the phone, while Kami spared a moment to hope Holly could keep her occupied long enough. Then the door of the post office swung open, and the stranger came in. She was tall, with hair so red it was almost vermilion. She had clear green eyes and Kami decided as soon as she saw her that her name must be Carmen or Veronica. Some classic evil name.

Carmen/Veronica gave Kami a skeptical look. Kami drew herself up and tried to look like a youthful but dedicated postmistress. “New here, are you? Welcome to Sorry- in-the-Vale,” Kami said. “I’m Mabel Jeffries.”

“Indeed?” said Carmen or Veronica.

“And you are?”

“Ruth Sherman,” said the woman, handing over her letters. Kami was tempted to keep them, but Ruth Sherman—shame about the name, possibly her evil sorceress title was Ruth the Ruthless—had propped her handbag up on the counter and was watching her carefully.

Kami stuck on stamps and deposited the letters in the postbag with an innocent smile, resolving to fetch them out when Ruth was gone. The door jangled and Kami was relieved to see Jared burst into the room. Ruth turned at the sound, and obviously recognized Jared. Or rather, recognized a Lynburn when she saw one.

“Staying with friends, are we?” Kami asked loudly, to attract her attention. “Enjoying yourself?”

Jared sidled up. He was not very good at sidling; he was more of a loomer.

“I plan to,” said Ruth.

Kami gave up on conveying messages to Jared with her eyebrows at the same time Jared gave up on subtlety. Instead he just knocked Ruth’s handbag onto the floor.

“Oh no,” he exclaimed. “Clumsy me.”

Kami clicked her tongue against her teeth. “I am so sorry,” she said. “What must you think of us? Those stamps are on the house. I mean the post office.” She spoke very fast, because she’d just heard the click of Mrs. Jeffries hanging up the phone. Jared rapidly stuffed the contents of Ruth’s bag back inside and thrust the bag into her arms.

Then they both stared at her intently and expectantly.

Ruth Sherman raised her eyebrows at them and backed out of the post office.

“Who was that?” Mrs. Jeffries asked, bustling out from the back just as the door swung shut after Ruth Sherman. She started at the sight of Jared, still crouched on the floor. Then she did a rapid scan of her post office. She instantly caught sight of the lone lipstick rolling on the floor.

“The poor lady must have dropped that,” she said, and undid the gate, stepping out to get it.

Jared put his hand on it. “No.”

Mrs. Jeffries stared down at him. “What do you mean . . . no?”

Jared and Mrs. Jeffries stared at each other, neither breaking eye contact, in a perfect deadlock.

Then Jared smiled at her. “I mean,” he said with conviction, “it’s mine.”

“It’s what?”

Jared stood up, pocketing the lipstick. “I know,” he responded. “Everyone tells me I’m more of a summer.”

Mrs. Jeffries continued to stare.

Jared continued to speak. “I’m going to go now. Me . . . and my lipstick.”

Since the gate was already open, Kami seized her chance to escape. “I too will leave. I have soaked up so much post office ambiance today already!”

Mrs. Jeffries visibly gave up on the youth of today with their random comings and goings, and even more random cosmetics.

Kami and Jared escaped out into the chilly brightness of the wintry air, sunlight pouring on them clear and cold as if through a crystal.

“Good save,” Kami told him. “I mean, it’s going to be all over town by nightfall, your reputation is ruined, but it was a noble sacrifice.”

“That’s me,” said Jared, and tossed her the lipstick. Kami caught it in both hands. “Chivalrous.”

“Oh, chivalry,” Kami said. “You get it from those old books of yours. Alice Duer Miller said chivalry was ‘treating a woman politely / As long as she isn’t a fright / It’s guarding the girls who act rightly / If you can be judge of what’s right.’”

“You be the judge of what’s right,” Jared said. “If you like. I wouldn’t know.”

Kami glanced over at him. “You do okay.”

“However, you’re not allowed to judge my books,” said Jared. “I am not the one who has actually read a book actually called The Bride of the Cursed Emerald.”

“Quality literature,” Kami told him, used to defending her mystery novels. “Turned out the butler did it. With the cursed emerald as a murder weapon. But the bride still loved it. The emerald, I mean, not the butler. Nobody loves a butler.”

It was ridiculous how simple it was to talk to him now they had something to laugh about and an adventure behind them. It was such a relief to have him with her, and not to hurt any longer.

(Worth it even though Maureen Johnson says the desert around us is snake country…)

I have been extremely flattered by the many messages I have received reminding me to send it along. I sometimes worry I am too cruel to you guys. But I see now, you enjoy it.

I hope you enjoy this. I made Holly Black pick this, because I felt that her pick last month went well…

Ash closed the piano lid with a flourish, crossed the floor, and held out his hand to her. Kami looked down at her tap- ping fingers as if they had betrayed her, and realized she was standing in the exact place Jared had, the night he said he wanted nothing to do with her.

“I can’t actually dance,” Kami objected, suddenly shy. “I mean, I’ve done it. But people tell me . . . that I shouldn’t.”

“What do they know?” Ash asked, his hand still out. After a moment more of hesitation, Kami put hers in his, and Ash pulled her away from the bookcase into his arms.

Ash could dance as well he could play the piano. He moved in gentle circles across the floor, navigating sofas and chairs with effortless grace. Kami just had to follow his lead. He’d been trained for this sort of thing, she supposed, being the young prince in the castle. Being a fairy-tale prince who could waltz any girl around a room, him all gold and the room all arched stone, the moment perfect no matter who the girl happened to be.

Ash twirled Kami and pulled her back in against his chest. When he dipped her, she had a moment of unease because she couldn’t stand up by herself and would have fallen without his arm supporting her. But she looked up into his eyes, soft and sparkling with laughter, and smiled up at him instead.

Ash bent and kissed her. The kiss went through Kami like summer sunlight.

Just then the door opened with a creak.

“Sorry,” said Jared. “Aunt Lillian was looking for Ash.”

They all stayed still for a little too long. Kami and Ash did not drop each other’s hands, and Jared was standing braced as if waiting to be hit.

“Great,” Kami said at last, the word falling like a drop of rain into a pool, absorbed into the silence. She tugged her hands out of Ash’s and took a step toward Jared; he took a step back, still not looking up. “We’ve found out a lot of stuff we need to tell Lillian.”

“She’s in the drawing room,” Jared said, backing up, and they both followed him. When he got there, he opened the door for them.

When Kami gestured for Ash to go in ahead of her, he touched Kami’s arm. She turned to him and he gave her a worried glance, as if he thought he had done something wrong but was unsure of what it was. Kami gave Ash a quick reassuring smile, then looked back at Jared, catching a glimpse of his face as he looked down again.

“Hey,” Kami said softly. “Is everything okay?” She felt dumb asking. It wasn’t like Jared was ever subtle about it when he was upset: this was just him being quiet and not meeting her eyes, a little withdrawn. He was just feeling awk- ward about interrupting; he wasn’t unhappy.

That was confirmed when Jared answered, in a level voice, “Fine.”

“Okay,” Kami said uncertainly. She lifted her hand to bridge the space between them somehow, and a faint shudder ran through Jared’s body. He stepped away from her and into the drawing room, going to stand by the fireplace.

I like doing appearances! As with all things, I learned by trial and error (that time the bookshop was expecting someone different and the poor babies got me instead, that time I fell off the stage) that I can’t give a practiced speech, and cannot be counted on for, like, any wisdom. At all. Whatsoever.

But I do like having fun around lots of people who love books, and celebrating books with people. I love talking books and telling stories. People who love books are my people, and seeing them fills me with a sense of hope and community.

And the fun hardly ever… well, sometimes… occasionally doesn’t… gets out of hand.

So, I wrote Unspoken, and I thought to myself: Self, you love this book and would like to spread the word about it a bit, maybe you could arrange some sort of… touring event… style thing? I am sure not TOO MANY disasters will take place.

This is what happened next…

THE SMART CHICKS TOUR

So, Melissa Marr and Kelley Armstrong organised, for three glorious years, an annual Smart Chicks event where they gathered many writers to celebrate awesome fictional ladies and awesome real-life reader ladies. I came on the 2010 one, couldn’t come on the 2011 one, and thought to myself that I sure would like to come on the 2012 one.

So, while hanging out with several author ladies in Arizona, I decided to cunningly and coolly bring this up.

MELISSA: Any Smart Chick author of the past is always welcome.
SARAH: Can–can I come?
MELISSA: Of course you can-
SARAH: *casually backflips into a pool to escape any awkwardness*
MELISSA: Is she dead?
ROSEMARY CLEMENT-MOORE: I think she might have hit her head.
MELISSA: I think she drowned.
ROSEMARY: O God what will we tell her mother.
SARAH: What’s up, my homies?
MELISSA: Of course you can come on the tour! That’s what I meant! You’re invited! But please don’t do that again.
SARAH: Do what? Why do you all look so upset?

On one of the memorable Smart Chicks tour stops, Charles de Lint, who is a Fancy Person who brought modern urban fantasy to the masses and other fancy things, was there.

Also, there was a very large, carved desk. Now, when I am doing an event, I like to move about. Other writers, they are very fascinating people, they have a lot of compelling stuff to say, they are awesome no matter where they are, but I like to be moving around a bit. Maybe doing actions. Dances. Mimes. I think you see where I’m going here.

Later he and Holly Black were somewhere, hanging out. I don’t know where fancy people hang out. Let us say they were in Fancylandia.

HOLLY: I think you just met Sarah?
CHARLES DE LINT: No, I don’t think so.
CHARLES DE LINT: Let me tell you who I DID MEET! A crazy lady who climbed over this huge desk in a floofy skirt and high heels. She went right over it, Holly, like a squirrel on stilts!
HOLLY: … Oh you met Sarah, all right.

MELISSA: It’s always fun to have you at events, Sarah.
SARAH: *genuinely touched*
AUDIENCE: What is Melissa’s Carnival of Souls about?
SARAH: Oh, oh I’ll do an impression!
WRITERS: Oh boy she’s rolling around on the floor.
AUDIENCE: She’s stolen a child! Call the police, she stole a child!
MELISSA: I mean it’s always such an interesting experience.

Possibly our moment of deepest shame was shared by all my fellow writers save one.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Who’s your favourite member of One Direction?
KELLEY ARMSTRONG: Is that a band?
MELISSA MARR: Are there boys in it?
ROSEMARY CLEMENT-MOORE: I think so but I don’t know their names.
SARAH: Guys, I’m pretty sure they’re fictional, I’m pretty sure they’re on Glee.
MEL DE LA CRUZ: Oh my God. I apologise for them. I apologise for everything. HARRY STYLES, and what is WRONG with you people?

When my little brother heard about this, he was deeply shocked at my ignorance. I have now been taught all about One Direction.

THE AUSTIN TEEN BOOK FESTIVAL

I was super honoured to be invited to the Austin Teen Book Festival, and to be appointed moderator for two very fancy panels!

Now, a moderator is someone chosen to run the discussion for a group of writers. Keep them in line, as it were. I took this duty very seriously.

RAE CARSON: She’s standing on a chair and giving commands. What should we do?!
LIBBA BRAY: I’m going to hold that chair. (Always kind, Libba.)
LEIGH BARDUGO: She’s strangling Margi Stohl. I don’t understand and I have to understand because I don’t want to be strangled!

As I understand it, no other moderators strangled people that day. I scorn their lack of commitment to the cause.

Also, there were signing lines for each author, and I totally had one. A line. I love you, Austin! For the beauteous people in my line, I had drilled English penny necklaces. (For those who have not read Unspoken: this gift will make sense only if you have read Unspoken.)

LOVELY LADY: Can I have a penny necklace?
SARAH: Uh… nope.
LOVELY LADY: Oh, you’ve run out, never m-
SARAH: I cannot lie to you, lovely lady. I haven’t run out.
SARAH: *produces several chains which have become hideously tangled*
SARAH: I can’t untangle them. I don’t know what to do!
SARAH: THEY’RE LIKE MATING SNAKES–WHICH CAN NEVER BE TORN APART-
LOVELY LADY: It’s cool, the book’s fine.
SARAH: Thank you for understanding.
LOVELY LADY: I hope the snakes will be very happy together.

I also now own a bright pink T-shirt proclaiming ‘KEEP AUSTIN WEIRD.’ I’m pretty sure I didn’t make it any less weird.

THE POWELL’S PORTLAND EVENT

At Portland I did a lovely event with several authors much lovelier than I: Cindy Pon, Malinda Lo, Mette Ivie Harrison, Janni Lee Simner. (And Kate Elliott came because she is fab.) And maps of Sorry-in-the-Vale were being printed to give people who came. So, we walked into Powell’s bookshop, and…

BOOKSELLER: There has been a terrible incident!
EVERYBODY: *looks at me*
BOOKSELLER: Yes, it does have to do with Sarah Rees Brennan! … How did you all know that?
EVERYBODY: *shrug*
BOOKSELLER: The maps were sent to the wrong bookstore!
SARAH: I will go get th-
BOOKSELLER: And that store is closed on Sunday.
SARAH: noooooooooooo
BOOKSELLER: What should we do?
SARAH: I HAVE A PLAN.
EVERYBODY: What did she say? Stop her!
SARAH: Quickly bookseller, take me to the back room.
MALINDA: Did Sarah just drag someone into the back room literally within minutes of walking in the store?
CINDY: Well, we all saw that one coming.

I dashed in the back, logged into my email and performed a tricky maneuver which got me into the site where I could print off the maps. I forgot to log out, so: Powell’s bookstore, I like you guys very much, I hope you are enjoying my emails, I’m sorry if you were expecting more literary insight.

A thing I like to do when there are a bunch of authors (and the more the merrier, always, because then it feels more like a fun conversation, and also I can rely on someone else to say something wise) is buy all the books so I can give them to an audience member as a Gift Package. So I nipped the books up really quickly after the Maps Incident, and promised to pay for them later, and then with all the carry-on (excellent writers saying excellent things, me pretending to be buried alive behind a bookcase, me being the worst at recognising people–HI JULIE–me being given a beautiful gift of cookies) I forgot. We exited and bundled ourselves into a taxi to the airport, and then I let out a shrill scream.

SARAH: I MUST GO BACK I STOLE THE BOOKS! I STOLE THEM ALL!
CINDY: What’d she say?
MALINDA: She committed a crime.
CINDY: Well, we all saw that one coming.

I was going straight from Portland to my tour in England, and this meant a series of flights that added up to two nights and a day on a variety of airplanes. DEAR GOD I WAS SO TIRED. And the airplane food was a special kind of dreadful.

However, at Powell’s bookstore a lovely lady presented me with cookies, baked with chocolate chips and sea salt for all the tears people cried at the end of Unspoken. (That’s a direct quote. Good cookies and a rapier wit. ) What I’m telling you is that I lived on those cookies for two nights and a day. Those cookies were my only friend.

A MAN WHO WAS MY FELLOW PASSENGER ON ONE FLIGHT: Did you bake these yourself?
SARAH: No! *proudly* a fan baked them for me.
A MAN: Wow. Are you famous?
SARAH: *preens* Well, no, but-
A MAN: Yeah I thought not, because famous people travel in first class. And also you just fell asleep on my shoulder and drooled.
SARAH: …
A MAN: There were some cookie crumbs in the drool.
SARAH: Well, I’m not sharing my cookies with you now.

THE LIBBA BRAY AND HOLLY BLACK EVENT

HOLLY: I’m doing an event in September, too! With Libba.
SARAH REES BRENNAN, INVITING HERSELF ALONG TO EVERYTHING THAT LOOKS LIKE FUN SINCE THAT TRIP OUT OF THE HOSPITAL IN 1983: Can–can I come? Ask Libba! I mean if it’s cool.
LIBBA: It’s cool. *plays a chilled out tune to herself* Everything is cool, bro. (Musical people are more relaxed and friendly. I think that’s science.)

Of course, at the event, I shamed myself as I always do.

SARAH: Do you guys want to know what Libba’s book is about?
HOLLY: Why–why is she dancing?
SARAH: This is FLAPPER dancing. I’m being a JAZZ BABY. (note: Libba’s The Diviners is set in the 1920s, I didn’t just take a funny notion into my head.)
LIBBA: Shhh Holly, I want to know how the book ends.

But I scored cupcakes (it was my birthday… I don’t demand baked goods everywhere I go) and I think everybody had fun. I call it a win!

So you can see why I think of book events as times to celebrate books, have fun with friends, talk about books with new people, and generally have a gloriously nerdy time.

So I am much looking forward to travelling about in the charming Cassie Clare’s fancy, decorated bus next month. I have such plans: to do mimes that will embarrass her, to do impressions that will embarrass her, to make fun of her bus (I’m going to be working on a theme here). The glorious Maureen Johnson will be accompanying us on several stops, and so those stops will be even more fun.

I will be there the whole time! I hope to see you there. http://sarahreesbrennan.com/appearances/

I will sign everything presented to me. I hope I will have prezzies.

I cannot promise to behave.

And I have brought you a gift! HOWEVER, you are not to blame me for this gift, because Cindy Pon and Holly Black chose it. They felt it was absolutely the right one. So if you don’t like it… come after them…

Thus without further ado…

It took her a moment to realize there was someone else in that small dark corridor.

He was standing against the wall in the shadows. The only light was the stripe cast through the door Kami had not quite shut behind her; the iron doorknob was still pressed against her palm. His face was shadowed, but in that pale strip of light, she saw the gold glint of his hair and the line of his body, shoulders squared and arms folded.

“It doesn’t matter,” said Kami. She let go of the doorknob and reached for him. Miraculously, he did not flinch away. He let her fingertips rest against the worn leather of his sleeve.

“Listen,” Kami whispered, braver now. “I don’t care what Lillian says, or what anyone says. It doesn’t have to matter. You don’t have to hate yourself. I know you. Better than anyone. Don’t I?”

She felt sinking disappointment when he uncrossed his arms and her hand fell away, certain he was about to move farther away.

But he moved nearer. Surprise ran through Kami at that simple action, his warmth so close to her chilled body. His breath was a whisper of heat against her cheek. As she swallowed in the dark, she felt his fingers lightly touching the collar of her dress, trailing back to the nape of her neck.

Then his hand closed tight in her hair, and he pulled her in against him and kissed her. Kami arched up against him, sliding her hands up along his chest, feeling muscle move under thin cotton against her palms. She clenched her hands and held on tight to the fabric of his T-shirt, knuckles pressing into the lines of his collarbone.

She kissed him, pulling him down to her, as his fingers tugged at her tie and her body drew in closer to his with each tug. She felt the material give, the buttons pulling free so her collar drew open, and he slipped his hand just inside the warm space between her collar and her throat, his fingertips curling against her skin.

His other hand was stroking her hair, pulling at it a little too much but with a frantic attempt at gentleness. He was pressed against the wall and she was pressed against him. She was finally close again, inside a circle of warmth, his leather jacket around her and his body against hers. She was almost close enough.

The door to the pool room opened, and Kami tore herself away, throwing open the door of the parlor and hurling herself inside. She found herself blinking in the impossibly bright lights. When the dazzle cleared, she saw everyone looking at her curiously. Holly was leaning across to Angela, as if they had been talking at last, and Rusty looked as though he had just woken up from a nap.

Kami resumed her seat on the sofa in complete silence, and found out who had opened the door to the pool room as Lillian walked into the parlor. Lillian, naturally, had not a hair out of place and gave no indication that she had witnessed any torrid corridor encounters. Kami watched her walk calmly toward the mantelpiece, and jumped like a hare at a gunshot when the door opened again.

Ash walked in.

Kami had not noticed before that he was wearing a leather jacket. His was black, and looked a bit newer than Jared’s battered brown leather jacket, but she hadn’t been able to see colors in the shadows.

Oh no, Kami thought, surely not. Life could not be that ridiculous or that cruel. It could not be true.

Ash met her fixed stare and offered her a smile, shyer than Ash’s usual smiles. Kami forced herself to smile weakly back. It wasn’t one of her best efforts, but Ash looked pleased. He went back to his chair, glancing at her and smiling again.

Then Jared marched into the room and headed straight for the window seat. Once he was at the window, he leaned against the glass and looked out at the night.

So if Kami did the making-out mathematics, and weighed the chances of it being the guy sneaking looks and smiles at her, or the guy who was keeping up his perfect record of stonily ignoring her . . .

Kami sat stricken. She could not imagine what expression was on her face, but she saw Angela giving her an odd look out of the corner of her eye.

Rusty leaned in to her, settling his arm around her shoulders again. “Everything all right, Cambridge?” he murmured.

Kami said numbly, “Never better.”

HAPPY VALENTINE’S DAY! (Sorry!)