Chapter Text
Mal wasn't scared of the fairy's punishments. The chains had freaked her out at first- magical chains, tingly and unpleasant to the touch -but now she was used to them. She was used to their weight. She was even used to the annoying jingle when she moved her arms. She kind of had to be- she was interrupting class more, nowadays. Losing her patience more. Losing her temper.
She could pretend to be good. She had learned how, mostly to amuse herself or get away with stuff whenever the prospect of being punished became worse than the prospect of acting like some goody-goody hero. She made sure to laugh about it later, to make sure the others knew it was pretend- that she would never really make that pitiful face or say things like "I'm sorry; I won't do it again." She wasn't going soft, and she wasn't scared, either. It was just a joke. She was making fun of how pathetically gullible Fairy Godmother was. It was funny.
She could be "good" on purpose, or she could be bad on purpose, depending on what she wanted. Sometimes, magical chains felt like the merciful option; magic she could feel was better than magic she couldn't.
She still couldn't feel her own magic, and it was frustrating, because she knew that she had it. It was like there was a growing pressure building up, but she didn't know where or what to do with it or even if she could still reach it.
What if she popped?
...
"I think," Jay said, slow with consideration as he idly poked at mashed potatoes with his spork, "that we might actually be able to escape, sometime soon."
The others stared at him expectantly. They were one short, today- two short, if one counted Fairy Godmother. Ever since their tenth birthday, three days ago, Uma spent lunchtime in "control lessons", which meant the other six spent that time unattended. Before, they'd mostly used it to eat messy, swear as loud as they wanted, and get into petty fights, but today they were using it to conspire.
"Why do you think that?" Harry asked.
Jay frowned at his resigned tone and his resigned posture. He remembered that he had once believed that he and Harry could escape together, because Harry was a fighter. He knew that the fight in Harry wasn't gone, but he didn't know if the belief was. Had Harry suffered too many defeats to contemplate victory? That would be inconvenient. "We know more than we used to."
"What do we know?" Evie asked.
"You said that the fairy has a daughter."
"Yeah, so?" Mal pressed her finger against the tip of her spork and catapulted a lump of potato across the room for no reason.
"So, she's with us all day, and we never hear anything about her daughter. We've never seen her daughter. And there's no way she hasn't seen her kid in four years."
"Why not? I haven't seen my mom in four years."
Jay did not respond to this. Mal didn't really want an answer; she just wanted to gripe a little. "Remember how I asked the fairy in class yesterday if she sleeps?"
"Yes," Evie answered. "She said she doesn't, because she's made of more magic than flesh."
"We never see her at night. If she doesn't sleep, maybe that's when she leaves."
"You think she goes away at night to see her daughter?"
"I think she must."
"It makes sense; she made it sound like she's been around her daughter, when she was saying that her daughter has trouble controlling-"
"What difference does it make if the fairy's not here?" Harry cut in. "Her magic still is. Even when you pick the lock, you can't leave the dorm before morning."
True. They'd tested that the first year. Uma had asked Jay if he could make a magic lockpick. Of course, he couldn't, but he'd made a regular lockpick, and it had worked. But it wasn't the locks; it was the doorway. It was impossible to pass through to the hall.
"It's good to know that she's not always around," Jay maintained.
Harry scoffed. "Sure."
"He's just grumpy because Uma isn't here," Evie said.
"We'll fill her in later," Jay said. "For now, we should focus on-" He trailed off, staring at Carlos's tray. "You have more meatballs than me."
"No I don't," Carlos said. "You just ate all yours."
"No, I had four; you have five."
(Harry and Gil exchanged a look. It was like this all the time, in the boys' dorm. Jay and Carlos had been bickering a lot, lately.)
"Oh well. So what?"
"So, split your fifth one with me."
"No way. It's mine."
"Oh my gods, shut up, both of you," Mal groaned, taking the fork on which Carlos had skewered one of his meatballs and clearly resolving to solve the problem by eating it herself.
"Hey!" Carlos protested.
The meatball was halfway to Mal's mouth when the fork suddenly flew out of her hand and into Jay's.
Everyone stared.
"What the tits was that?" Mal asked.
Jay looked as surprised as them, but he focused on quickly shoving the meatball in his mouth so no one else could get to it.
"Magic," Evie answered. "You have magic, too, Jay."
"Since when?" Jay said, with his mouth full.
"Well, you're at that age. And the fairy did say you were one of the magic ones."
"Give me my fork back," Carlos said, snatching the utensil. "And knock it off," he added to Gil, who had been gesturing with his hand in a way that he'd clearly hoped would summon the rest of Carlos's meatballs to him.
"Well, look who's feeling brave," Harry mocked.
Carlos rolled his eyes, adolescent crankiness and his familiarity with Harry and Gil superseding his sense of caution.
The rest of the Four were thinking along the same lines, though; while he didn't act it, Gil was pretty much twice Carlos's size, and growing. Those Gaston genes had already been evident when he was little, but now they were really beginning to show. On the Isle, almost no one would have dared start something with Gil, least of all Carlos. And for that matter, on the Isle, Mal would have been livid if someone had snatched anything from her, even with accidental magic; she would have ruined them.
The fact that they were all different than they had been when they'd arrived was nothing new, but still. The dynamic was strange.
Jay decided he liked that Carlos was comfortable snapping at Gil. He liked that they were all comfortable with each other.
...
The fairy told Uma to picture all of her magic being gathered up and stuffed into a little box inside of her.
"You feel that power," the woman said. "It's in your arms and legs and head. Now, imagine rolling all of it back towards your stomach. Imagine pushing it all into a tight little ball in your stomach and shoving it into a little wooden box. Are you picturing that?"
"Yes," Uma said flatly.
"I don't think you're telling me the truth, Uma; I can feel your magic in the air. Really try. Take all of that power, and roll it up."
"How come you don't have to roll up your power?"
"Because I am old enough to understand it. Now, you're going to push that power down into the box, and you're going to shut the lid on the box, and you're going to lock it tight."
"How can I ever understand it if I'm locking it up?"
"You won't ever have to understand it, if you lock it up. I can feel that you haven't done it yet; go on."
Uma experimented with moving her magic. She had no interest in putting it away, but she wondered if she could move it from one place in her body to another. Was it even a part of her body in the first place? She was most aware of her magic as an intangible force between her and some other thing- water, usually. Thinking of it as something that existed inside of her before it started interacting with the world was new, and perhaps the most dangerous lesson the fairy had ever taught her.
She focused for a while, and she thought that she could feel something like the tide; a strong force emanating from her center, growing and receding with each breath she took. Nearly in time with her pulse but not quite. She tried to change the rhythm; make it flow when it wanted to ebb and ebb when it wanted to flow. She managed to make it stutter for a second.
"I felt a change," the fairy said.
Uma didn't like that the fairy could tell. She needed quieter magic, that could do things secretly.
"Try doing what we talked about yesterday: take a deep, deep breath, and then hold it. Imagine holding your magic in place like you're holding your breath in place. That can be a good way to get into it."
Uma did not try what they had talked about yesterday; she kept figuring out the rhythm of her magic. It was weird, because her magic felt like it existed in a confusing marsh between her mind and her body, and it was too indistinct at the edges to even identify except when it was moving. So she focused on the motion. She thought of a song she'd heard many times on the docks of the Isle, and she tried to make her magic pulse to its rhythm.
"Uma, deep breath, and hold it. Go on."
She did the fairy's little breathing ritual, but holding her breath did not make her feel like keeping her magic in like she was keeping her air in; holding her breath reminded her of the illusion of being trapped underwater, of the way Prince Eric had apparently felt, and it made her magic swell defensively.
The fairy's shoulders tensed, not like she was scared or apprehensive, but like someone had suddenly scraped their nails against a chalkboard. (Harry had done that once. Awful sound, but funny how it annoyed the fairy.) "No," she snapped, before reining in her annoyance. "No. Try again, please."
Fortunately, there were only so many hours in the day.
...
In the boys' dorm, the earliest riser was usually either Gil or Carlos. The latest was always Harry.
It was best when Gil woke up first (in his own opinion), because those were the days when he could shower in peace. Jay always woke up as soon as Carlos got out of bed, which meant that when Carlos woke up first, Gil could only be third in the bathroom. And without fail, Jay would try to wrestle Carlos for the sink or the shower, just to bug him. Gil was pretty sure Jay just wanted Carlos's attention, but instead of just saying that, Jay chose to make it impossible for the rest of them to sleep in.
"Gil," Harry groaned, clamping his pillow down over his ears. "Make them shut up."
"Guys," Gil called, from the bed. "Harry's trying to sleep."
"Yeah, well Jay's trying to climb on my shoulders," Carlos said.
"No, I'm trying to use the sink," Jay said obstinately.
"Just use the other one!"
"I want this one!"
"You just want it because I'm trying to use it!"
"Yeah, pretty much!"
Harry abruptly sat up, flinging his pillow across the room in annoyance. "If you two don't shut the f-" That was as far as he got, because as he tried to shout the swear word, his voice seemed to crack for a second, and then...a sound like tinkling bells rang from his throat. He slapped a hand over his mouth, eyes wide with horror.
He had successfully gotten the others to shut up, as they all turned to gawk at him.
"What was that?" Jay asked.
Harry shrugged helplessly, still with his hand over his mouth.
Gil pulled Harry's hand away. "Can you do it again?" he asked eagerly.
Harry smacked at him. "Back off." His voice was back to normal.
"Dude, you just spoke fairy," Carlos said. "Like, the pixie kind. From Neverland."
"Did not. Everybody shut up. And no one tells Uma about this, or I'll..."
While Harry was still thinking of a threat, Gil offered, "I thought it was cool. I think Uma would think it's cool, too."
"Could Old Hook do that, too, or was your mom a fairy?" Jay asked.
"Shut up! I'm trying to sleep." Harry pulled the bedcovers over himself.
Gil decided to let him; he took his chances with the bathroom.
...
In the girls' dorm, Mal was fluffing up her hair to hide her horns. "Can you see them?" she asked Evie, careful to speak quietly enough that Uma couldn't hear her, from the shower (and over the sound of the water).
"No," Evie said. "The fairy's taller than us, though. Bend down."
Maleficent had always said not to bow to anyone, but Mal found that it was easy to ignore that. Maleficent wasn't here, so she would do what she wanted. And it turned out that bowing wasn't so bad, when she did it on purpose. It was nice, to feel Evie's deceptively dainty hands tousling at her hair. And Evie smelled nice.
Once she was satisfied with the concealment of Mal's horns, Evie said, "Okay. You look good."
"What are you two doing?" Uma asked.
"My hair," Mal snapped, standing straight at once, startled that she hadn't noticed the water stopping. Her face felt hot, from bending over. "Who told you to snoop on us?"
"Who told me to get out of the shower?" Uma raised an unimpressed eyebrow. "Gods. I don't actually care what you were doing."
"Then butt out."
Rolling her eyes, Uma held up her hands and walked away, more nonplussed by Mal's defensiveness than offended by it.
"You can't do that in front of Fairy Godmother," Evie said, once Uma was gone.
"Do what?"
"You were flashing your eyes again. If she catches you, you'll end up in control lessons right along with Uma."
Mal huffed. "If she forces me to do those stupid lessons, it better be for something way worse than flashing my eyes. I want to learn to breathe fire or something. Or even turn into a dragon, like my mom."
Evie paused. "Do you really miss her?"
"Miss her?" Mal echoed. Missing someone was like loving someone, and the idea of it felt wrong. Villains didn't go around missing people; at most, they wanted people, or used people. Missing someone was when you cried about them, like Uma had maybe cried when they'd been split up into the girls' dorm and boys' dorm. She wanted to get back to her mom, and she wanted to show her mom that she wasn't falling for the fairy's goodness stuff, and she wanted people to look at her and think that she was just like her mom, but she wasn't crying about it. When she imagined living with her mom all of the time instead of with her friends and the other three, she wasn't really sure that that would feel all-the-way good.
Maybe she would miss them.
Ew.
She shook the thought away. "Do you miss yours?" she deflected.
"I don't know," Evie said. "I think I do. But when they were taking us away, I called for her over and over, and she didn't save me. I guess she couldn't save me, but...I don't know, it's like...all this time fearing you, and trying so hard to impress you, and you can't even save me when it counts? And then we got here, and at first the fairy seemed really nice, so I thought...I guess I..." Evie seemed to look Mal over, and assess whether it was safe to say what she thought. "I guess I thought that maybe she would be a better mom. She was actually powerful, and she seemed like she actually liked me. And sometimes I think maybe if I had stayed on her side, things would have worked like I thought they would."
"You think she would've adopted you or something?" Mal said, unable to keep the note of dry derision from her tone, thinking of a different world where Evie hadn't agreed to be her friend. Where Evie had been Fairy Godmother's instead of hers. "You could've been her other daughter?"
Evie's reflective, sharing look shut down all at once, at Mal's flat mockery. "No. That would be stupid," she said lightly.
"Yeah, it would. You know you don't mean anything to her. She just wants to make you good so the king will think she's doing a good job, and she'll say anything she has to to make it happen."
Mal could see the hurt and anger pass over Evie in waves, before the blue-haired girl put on a calm smile and said, "I know that, Mal," and started to walk away. She would bear whatever Mal said to her, no matter what, because she had built herself in the shape of endurance, not aggression. She had been taught how to maintain relationships as long as they benefitted her, no matter whether they hurt or not.
Mal's heart felt like it stuttered for a second. She knew that, as far as Maleficent would ever be concerned, she had done the right thing, shooting down Evie's little fantasy, but she didn't like feeling that wall go up between them. She had done the right thing, but it felt really crappy and...and Mother wasn't here, anyway! "Wait," she said, catching Evie's wrist. "I'm...sorry."
Evie looked at her, astonished.
But Mal didn't want to be someone who Evie just allowed to push her around because their friendship was useful. "I'm sorry I'm mean." Well, that wasn't exactly true. "I mean, I'm sorry I was mean to you."
Evie kept staring. Eventually, she said, "Okay."
They went on with their morning like everything was normal.
...
"Okay, show me," Uma said to Jay, at breakfast. Harry and Gil had told her about Jay summoning Carlos's fork to his hand, but she hadn't been able to ask for a demonstration without raising suspicions; the fairy had been watching too closely, yesterday.
Jay put out his hand, and the Auradon Constitution Uma had gotten from the prince (and tended to keep on her lap, during meals, to read) flew to him. "What's this?" he asked.
Harry snatched it back from him and gave it to Uma.
"Constitution," Uma said.
"What's a constitution?" Mal asked.
"List of laws and stuff. Ben gave it to me."
"Let me see," Evie implored, putting out her hand.
"Okay, but it's hard to read. That's why I keep asking the fairy for a dictionary."
Evie opened the little booklet and immediately furrowed her brow- a relatively new expression, for her; her mother had forbade any look that made wrinkles on her face. "This is gobbledygook," she pronounced, handing the constitution back. "Can you actually understand this stuff?"
"Not all of it. But I can figure out some of it, just because a lot of the hard words come from smaller words, or Latin words, or French words. But a lot of it is still gobbledygook, yeah. I've started saying the words to the fairy to see what she says back; that sometimes works. Sometimes she just asks where I heard it."
"And what do you say?" Jay asked.
"On TV."
Mal huffed. "That just means she might stop letting us watch TV, genius."
"Shut up, Mal," Harry snapped.
"What?" Mal said coyly. "I called her a genius."
"Yeah, but you were being sarcastic," Gil said, with a disapproving frown. "Like if we called you...someone who can do magic still."
Carlos's eyebrows rose. Harry cackled. (Gil clearly hadn't meant to say something funny, but he appeared pleased to have made Harry laugh.)
Mal growled, her eyes glowing green, and it was possible that a small amount of smoke issued from her nose. "I can do magic, Dumbo. I'm just not stupid enough to do it in front of the fairy and end up in her stupid lessons."
Uma could already tell that Harry was about to get up out of his seat, so she grabbed the front of his shirt collar before he could. "Don't. The fairy'll just..." She shivered slightly. "We can't keep getting in trouble."
Jay frowned. Hopefully Uma wasn't losing her fight; she was too big an asset to start going soft now. Already, Harry was clearly losing hope, but he would fight with them as long as Uma did. If Uma started giving up, who would still be willing to fight?
Mal smirked. "That's right, Parrot."
Immediately, Uma said, "Mal, if you don't shut the f-"
Jay attracted Carlos's fork to his hand, just because.
"Will you stop that?" Carlos snapped.
Jay let him snatch his fork back, having succeeded in earning attention. "Did Harry tell you my theory about the fairy's daughter?" he asked Uma.
"'Course I did," Harry said, affronted.
"I think we should test to see if the fairy really isn't around at night, before we try anything else," Uma said.
"How do we do that?" Evie asked.
"Make a bunch of noise?"
"No," Jay said. "What if she has spells or alarms to tell her if we do anything crazy? Security stuff, like on the Isle. We shouldn't do anything bigger than what we would do if we were really sneaking out. If she's not here at night, we don't want her to start thinking she should be."
"Well, if we're not going to do anything that she would do something about if she was there, then how can we check to see if she's there?" Uma asked sensibly.
Jay paused and admitted, "I don't know."
...
The chains left marks around Mal's wrists. Not bruises; rashes. They irritated her skin, leaving behind red circles as visible proof that she was still Bad, and still made of magic. Made of the kind of magic that didn't like the fairy's magic and didn't like chains.
Her wrists looked bad. She knew they looked bad, because when she went to wash her hands and hot water came out of the tap and she winced at the sting, Uma turned the water a little cooler for her. They both pretended it wasn't Uma doing it, just to avoid having to give or accept any gratitude, but it was clearly her.
The marks started to fade after a few days, though, so Mal said a curse word in class to end up in chains again.
She didn't like the chains, but she liked the rashes. She felt her magic the most when something was provoking it to discomfort, and being punished by the good fairy was proof that she wasn't going as soft as she felt. Her magic was still there, fighting for her. Strengthening itself against the chains so that maybe one day it would be strong enough to melt them into a puddle at her feet.
...
Jay got all of the putty off of one corner of a window. It was enough that he could slip his finger into the gap between the window and the wall and pull at it a little. "Carlos," he whispered, calling his friend over with a gesture of his head.
"Yeah?" Carlos approached, but gave him a wide berth. Like Jay might be pulling some kind of trick.
Jay demonstrated that his finger was holding a corner of the windowpane and then peered into the gap. "What does that look like to you?"
Curious, Carlos took Jay's place and peered into the gap, as well. His hands were smaller, so he slipped his finger past the frame of the window, almost sticking his hand all the way out before he had to retract it. "Lots of little light bulbs," he said perplexedly, "and a sheet of black metal, past that."
Jay's heart was racing. "That's what I thought. There are light bulbs on the other side of the windows."
"And metal. So they aren't windows at all," said Carlos, looking extremely disappointed. (Jay couldn't blame him. Knowing that what he'd taken to be sunlight all these years was just more artificial light was making him feel twice as cooped-up as before.) "There's no way to get out."
"Carlos. Why would she give us fake windows?"
"So we can't escape."
"No, there are types of glass that can keep bullets out; they don't have to fake a window for that- just make a better one, or enchant the one you already have. But there's black metal here, and lightbulbs. Why would they do that?"
"To control what light gets in," Carlos realized. "And when it gets in."
Jay nodded. "What if the fairy doesn't spend the night with her daughter? What if she spends the day with her daughter-"
"...and the night with us," Carlos finished for him. "We wouldn't know; the lightbulbs can turn on when they want us to think it's daytime and turn off when they want us to think it's night. The metal keeps real daylight from getting in...Still, why trick us?"
Jay shrugged. Really, there could have been a lot of reasons. Even just the convenience of letting them think they were on a normal sleep schedule while the fairy got to use her actual daylight hours around other people could be a reason. Maybe it helped that, if they were to plan an escape, they would plan it for nighttime and end up in broad daylight.
Which was something they actually had to plan around, now.
"We have to tell the others."
"You think it's true?" Carlos asked. "You really think it's night, out there?" His eyes were very brown. A very specific shade of brown that could really draw one in.
"Yeah, I think so," Jay said. Then he noogied Carlos's head, and Carlos wrestled him, back.
...
"Uma, I can feel you changing your magic, but I don't feel you reining it in," Fairy Godmother said.
Uma had mastered the art of making her magic pulse to the rhythm of whatever song was in her head, and she was working on localizing it to certain parts of her body, but she wasn't there yet. She could approximate where the magic might connect to her body, but not how to move it.
It occurred to her, at a point, that if she wanted to move her magic to particular parts of her body, then the beginning stages of that would be a lot like the beginning stages of doing what Fairy Godmother wanted. So she listened to Fairy Godmother's instructions a little more.
They weren't always helpful, but they weren't always not, and learning what didn't work was kind of useful for figuring out what did.
When she rolled her magic back from the fingers of her left hand, Fairy Godmother clapped her hands like she actually liked her, and Uma felt light-headed from the feat and confused by the novelty of feeling proud of herself at the same time when the fairy was feeling proud of her. It was weird to have the fairy's approval. To have her smiling like there was nothing bad between them at all. It felt kind of good, in a way that Uma hated. It wasn't fair that she kind of wanted the fairy to be proud of her. It didn't make sense; she hated the fairy.
Focus on the magic, she told herself.
Pulling the power away from some of her, even just her fingers, made the power in the rest of her feel stronger.
Now that she knew how to sort of pull her magic in from the edges, she wondered if she could put it all in one hand, or one foot. She was squeamish about the thought of putting it all in her head, but anywhere else was fair game.
She practiced in the girls' dormitory at night. It was hard to make her magic pull in, but she was the boss of herself, so she would get it to obey eventually.
"What are you doing?" Evie asked.
"What do you mean 'what am I doing'?" Uma asked back. She knew that she was rolling her magic, straining to compact it enough to only connect to one half of her body, but Evie had no way of knowing that; for all anyone else could see, Uma was just laying in bed.
"It feels like you're doing something different," Evie said.
Uma sat up excitedly. "You can feel that?"
"Yes. It feels like...something is moving, but it's not. I don't know how to explain it."
"I'm trying to move my magic around."
"What, you can do magic, too, now?" Mal asked Evie, trying not to sound as envious as she was (now that she knew that she didn't like being mean to Evie).
"I can't do it; I can just feel it," Evie said.
"Maybe you can do it, if you try," Uma suggested.
"Why does no one ever say that to me?" Mal demanded.
"Because you call us stupid all the time and you would probably use your magic to do mean things."
Mal couldn't argue with that.
...
"So, it's really nighttime?" Gil frowned. Jay and Carlos had briefed the whole table on their day/night idea, but it still seemed weird, to Gil. "Like, we wake up at sunset and go to sleep at sunrise?"
"We don't know exactly what time it is," Jay said patiently, "but I think so. I think they have our time swapped." He had asked Evie, who had actually been out of the facility for that one interview, if she could confirm or deny his theory, but she could only say that the fairy had put her to sleep for the journey, and so she didn't know whether the sun had been rising or setting, when she'd left.
"So if we did escape at night, it would be daytime once we got out," Uma said. "Harder to hide."
"We can't escape, if the windows aren't really windows," Mal pointed out. "The doorways to the dorms are enchanted, remember? We can't get out even if we pick the locks."
"Meaning..." Uma trailed off, deep in thought.
"Meaning?" Jay prompted.
"Meaning what?" Gil prompted, too.
"Meaning maybe it would be better if we tried to escape during the daytime- our daytime, I mean. It would be dark outside, and we wouldn't have to worry about the dorms at all."
"What, are you saying we should all run in different directions, once we're in the hallway?" Mal asked dismissively. "We've tried that."
"And we don't know the exit," Carlos said. "Or whether it's spelled, too."
Jay considered Uma's idea, though. "One of us could get the fairy out of the way while the rest of us explore," he mused. "Uma..."
"The fairy wards off the cafeteria when she's doing her lessons with Uma," Harry protested. "We can't explore anywhere but here."
"But maybe Uma could get her out of the way some other time, when we aren't in the cafeteria."
"The fairy would still ward us in, wherever we are."
"He's right," Evie said. "She'd never leave us alone without barriers."
Jay kept thinking, clearly not done with the idea.
Next lunchtime, he watched really closely how the fairy waved her wand to make it so they couldn't leave the cafeteria. What if he had his foot outside, when she did it? Would he be able to pass through? Or would his foot be chopped off? Surely not that, right? And even if it was, she would probably just reattach it with magic. Right?
He stood at the doorway, pressing his hand to the magical barrier. Could he summon things through here? He tried summoning things that he knew were in his bed, but he'd never summoned something from far away before. When night came, he dropped a piece of chalk into the corridor just outside the dormitory; after the fairy left them, he picked the lock, opened the door, and summoned the chalk to his hand.
So he could summon things through the barrier.
He ran back to bed and waited tensely, to see if Fairy Godmother would come to demand who had been doing magic; she could always tell when Uma was doing something. But even the next morning, the fairy said nothing. Like she couldn't tell, even though it was her barrier he'd summoned the chalk through.
If she couldn't tell when he was doing magic, then that meant he had a lot more options.
The next time she took out her wand, he tried summoning it to his hand, but it seemed he couldn't. It was like trying to pick up a million-ton weight.
But she didn't notice that he was trying, and that was huge.
At breakfast, Jay asked the girls, "Do any of you know how to pick a lock?"
They didn't. Fair enough; they hadn't been raised for petty thievery; they'd been raised to someday reclaim their birthright. And they hadn't lived long enough, before their abduction, to pick up petty thievery (at least on a level higher than basic pickpocketing and sleight of hand) from someone other than their parents.
"I'll teach you," he said. Turning to the other boys, he added, "And you guys, if you want. If we can get both dorm doors open, maybe I can pass things between the rooms."
"Can you summon things from that far away?" Carlos asked.
"Not yet, but I've been practicing."
"Will your magic be able to send things back, or just take them?" Evie asked.
"So far, just take. I'm working on it."
"Can you summon a person?" Uma asked.
Jay paused. "What?"
"If you can summon things through the barrier, could you summon a person out of one room and then stop summoning them before they cross the barrier into your room?"
"I don't know. I've never summoned a person before."
"Go over there and try," Mal ordered.
"The fairy's watching."
"Do it during lunch," Uma said.
During lunch, he tried summoning people. He made Gil fall over, but on the whole it didn't work.
...
Carlos didn't normally raise his hand in class, so when he did, the fairy was always eager to call on him. He was probably the only one of them who could get away with asking, "How does the power in lightbulbs and the TV work different than the power in your wand?" in the middle of one of her precious history classes.
(The wording of the question had been something he'd worked on for about half an hour. He wanted to ask, "How is electricity different from magic?" or more broadly, "How does electricity work?", but asking the former would have risked getting an answer like "We don't talk about magic," and the latter wouldn't have gotten him any information about magic. He wanted to understand power in general. Both kinds. All kinds, if possible. He couldn't harness the big kinds of power, but he really, really wanted to understand it.)
Fairy Godmother glanced at the chalkboard, momentarily thrown by the change in subject, before the novelty of Carlos voluntarily speaking up inclined her to go with it. "That is a very interesting question, Carlos! Electricity and magic are actually very similar, because both are caused by flowing energy. Put simply, electricity is the flow of energy through physical particles, that are smaller than you can see, and magic is the flow of energy that can't, on its own, be observed. While a scientist can detect changes in electrical charges, only a magic-user can detect changes in magic. It isn't a part of the physical world; it only impacts the physical."
"Can you teach us about energy, please?"
"Well, it's not a part of my lesson plan...but you asked very politely, and I love that you love to learn."
Carlos learned.
...
"It doesn't matter if we know where the exit is," Carlos said, at dinner. "One of...you guys..." (He gestured at Uma, Harry, Jay, Evie, and Mal.) "Needs to find a way to get through the enchantments on the doorways. Gil and I haven't been able to do any magic."
"We want to, but it's not that easy," Evie sighed.
Uma stared at Harry, wordlessly questioning why he'd been included with the magic-users. Harry scratched the back of his neck sheepishly and admitted, "I've only spoken a bit of fairy, by accident. Nothing else."
"Why didn't you tell me?" Uma asked.
Harry murmured something about it being embarrassing.
"I still think Uma is our best chance at distracting the fairy from the rest of us," Jay said. "She hasn't seen most of us do magic; if Uma really surprises her with something big, maybe she won't think to lock us up before pulling her aside."
"I'm sure the door out of here will be enchanted, though," Carlos insisted. "Learning to get past that spell has to be first, before anything else."
That night, Evie picked the lock to the dorm door, like Jay had taught them, and immediately felt the presence of the barrier. It was like a vibration in the air, humming against her skin. She put her hand to it (and with direct skin contact, it felt almost like ants crawling under her palm) and wondered if she had the power to bring it down. She didn't believe so. If she could sense the magic around her, then she ought to be able to sense her own.
Mal crawled out of bed to sit next to her on the floor, mirroring her position with her hand against the barrier. "Do you guys really care about leaving?" she asked. "At first, I thought it was just fun to make Fairy Godmother mad, but you guys keep talking about barriers and windows and stuff all the time now, like you really want to get out."
"Don't you?" Evie asked.
Mal shrugged. "And go where?"
"Away," Evie said, in an impassioned whisper. "We don't have to go back to our parents; we could go to Neverland."
"Neverland isn't safe anymore," Mal reminded her. "The fairy said..."
"You pay attention in class?"
"She said Auradon is in control of Neverland now." After a second, Mal added, "If I got free, I'd go back to the Isle."
"But what about the green grass, and the blue sky?" Evie wheedled.
"I want to go back to my mom. I want to show her that I didn't fail- that I'm strong and powerful like she is, and I beat the fairy."
"So you do want to leave?"
Mal let out a sigh. "I know I'm supposed to, and I want Mom to be proud. I know she's upset that I'm gone; she made big plans for who I would be, and I still want to be who she said I'd be. But..."
When it took Mal a while to finish, Evie tried to guess what she meant to say: "It is nice to have friends and good beds and clean food and water."
"I want to go back to my mom, but I don't want you to go back to yours," Mal finally said. "Or Carlos. And I don't want Jay to go back to his dad. Even..." Again, she didn't finish, but Evie gathered from the look of performed disgust that briefly crossed her face that Mal had been about to mention the other three, as well. "If we can be a team against the fairy, then we should stay a team."
"So, you're scared we won't stay together anymore if we escape?"
"I'm not scared of anything."
"Right. Sorry."
"But I don't want us to all split up. If I can go home to Mom, I want to take you with me. I'm sure she'd let me keep you."
"Keep us?" Evie huffed. "We're not pets."
"You know what I mean. If I tell her you're my henchmen, I can still keep you."
The second time she said it, Evie's cheeks heated up with embarrassment. In that moment, she felt as though a ripple ran through the barrier under her hand. "Did you feel that?" she asked Mal.
Mal frowned, confused at her suddenly excited whisper. "Feel what?"
"The barrier. Something changed."
"Changed like what?"
"Like it sort of..." Evie thought of a way to put it. "Winced? Like, the way the fire on a candle gets a little smaller when you breathe on it."
"It must have felt my power," Mal decided.
"Must have," Evie agreed, but she had her doubts. Somehow, it had felt as if the magic of the barrier had felt her embarrassment and gotten embarrassed with her.
...
"Why are they like that?" Harry demanded, his face too close to a TV screen, in the cafeteria. "Why are they acting like that?"
Not for the first time, the screen was full of the images of smiling Isle children in the separate facility afforded to everyone else. Harry always watched this footage like a hawk, hoping one of these days he would see one or both of his sisters in the background, but so far no luck. There were those they recognized- invariably cleaner and fuller-faced than they had been on the Isle -and once there had been a brief sighting of Diego de Vil (a little fuzzy and smiling wryly in the background) and a back-of-the-head that might have belonged to Freddie Facilier, but no Harriet or CJ. Not so far.
"They seem happy," Gil said.
"Exactly! Don't they want to escape?"
"If they get a million pictures of them frowning and one of them smiling, the one of them smiling will be the one that makes it on TV," Uma pointed out. "We don't know what they're really feeling or how they're living. This is just what the heroes show each other, to feel all Good."
"So y'think they're trying to escape, like we are?" Harry asked hopefully.
Uma pressed her lips together. "I don't know. Most of them aren't separated from anyone; they got their siblings and their food."
"So you think they're happy?" Gil said.
"I'm sure they're all different. Some are probably comfortable, but some probably want to get out."
"That's why they won't show Harriet or CJ on TV," Harry gasped. "Because they never stopped fighting."
Uma pursed her lips and hoped it was true. The idea seemed to cheer Harry up...and anger him, at the same time. "We're gonna get you back to your sisters," she promised Harry. "And we're gonna get you back to your brothers," she added to Gil.
Harry looked at her, seeming to realize that he had nothing to promise her. No lost loved ones to return to her. "Well, we're gonna make you queen of the world, lass," he said, squaring his shoulders and drawing himself to his full height.
Uma wondered what to make of the fact that he placed his promise at the same level as hers. But she was shortly distracted by an odder observation. "You're taller than me!"
"Yeah," Gil said, like it was obvious. "He's been taller than you for a while."
"Since when?"
"I don't know. A while."
Harry flashed a sheepish smile, then pantomimed taking off a hat, and he swept into a low bow.
Uma couldn't help cracking a smile and laughing. "That's more like it," she conceded.
"Uma."
She turned and saw that Jay was approaching. Harry straightened, and he and Gil naturally drew to either side of her. "Yeah?"
"I need to ask a favor."
"Do tell." She wasn't going to hassle him about the price of favors, as she was still on the hook for him teaching her to pick locks.
"I need you to distract Fairy Godmother, so we can do some more tests on the magical barriers."
"So you mean you want me to do something magical so that I'm stuck with her in a control session for who-knows-how-long and she's out of your hair."
"Yeah."
Uma sighed. She had been wanting to see how her control of her own power was coming along. As much as the consequences would suck, letting her magic free for a bit could be nice. "I think I can get her out of your way for a while," she said. "You'd better learn something useful while I'm gone."
"On my honor," Jay said, with a cheeky smile.
Harry brushed his hand against Uma's elbow. "You don't have to do it," he whispered.
"I know. But maybe they'll come up with something good. And it might be cool to see what I can do on purpose."
At the spark of mischief in Uma's eyes, Harry's stiff, concerned posture relaxed slightly. He was still worried about what Fairy Godmother would do, but he couldn't deny that the thought of Uma claiming her full power excited him.
"But what if she gets in trouble?" Gil fretted.
"I'll be alright. You want me to do it now?" she asked Jay.
"If you can. Whenever you-"
Uma exerted her magic, and she heard a pipe inside the wall burst loudly. Heard water spurting against the facility's inside parts.
"UMA!" Fairy Godmother shouted.
"Not bad," Jay said.
"I've done better," Uma griped, twisting her lips a little. Was she getting like Mal? All blocked up? Losing her ability to do magic, all because she sat in those stupid sessions?
The fairy was stomping over. "Uma, knock it off!"
Uma tried again, and she burst another pipe. Come on! Weren't my ancestors gods of the seas?!
"That is enough!" Fairy Godmother took out her wand, and everybody tensed. With a flick of it, she levitated Uma up to eye-level. (Not too far a trip. The woman was small, and the kids were growing up.) "What on earth are you doing?"
"Want to see what I can do," Uma answered, with an irreverent shrug.
"You know that magic is against the rules!" When she couldn't detect anything penitent in Uma's face, the fairy made an irate noise and announced, "Come with me! We're going on a field trip. The rest of you, stay out of trouble." She strode briskly from the room. Despite having directed Uma to come with her, like it was a choice, she kept levitating her the whole way.
Uma could feel the fairy's magic constricting her, preventing her magic from reaching out again. The weight of it was overwhelming. It was...exhausting.
She fell asleep before they could make it out the front door.
...
Uma and the fairy had been gone for over an hour when Jay successfully summoned an eraser that had been under his pillow all the way in the boys' dormitory. When it flew to his hand through the barrier in the cafeteria doorway, first he celebrated the feat of magic. Then he asked Evie, "Feel anything?"
"When it passed through, there was something," Evie said. Her hand was pressed to the barrier. "Kind of a ripple, but a really, really small one."
"What if a person went through? You think it would be a big one?"
"I don't know. We haven't done it with a person yet."
Harry made a scornful noise, from over by the wall where the waterstain from Uma's distraction had been, before the fairy's magic mended up the leak. Gil was there with him, not as scornful but visibly worried.
"What did you say was happening when you felt the ripple last time?" Jay asked Evie.
"I was just talking with Mal," Evie said. "We were talking about what we would do if we could get out."
"Maybe Mal could go over there and try to do whatever she did last time?" Carlos suggested.
"My magic just happens; I don't know the rules," Mal said, but she did go to sit with Evie, placing her hand on the barrier again. "Now what? Am I supposed to just think about getting out?"
"If that's what you were doing last time," Jay said.
"Last time, I was thinking about keeping you three as my henchmen; that was when Evie said she felt something change."
"Are they your henchmen?" Gil questioned. "I kind of thought you guys were just friends."
"Tomato tomahto," Mal said. "Point is, they're mine."
Evie blushed and was glad to feel the stir of the force field, to take her mind off Mal's words. "Another ripple," she informed the others.
"Just now?" Jay said.
"Yeah. Just now. A bigger one than before."
"When I said 'tomato tomahto'?" Mal asked, scratching her head in a way that deliberately ruffled her hair over her horns. Evie had noticed that she did that often, lately. Did the horns make her head itchy, or did she just get really preoccupied about covering them?
"A little after 'tomato tomahto'," Evie said.
"Hmm." Carlos eyed Evie as if he had a theory.
"What?"
"Nothing."
"If you have an idea, then say it," Mal ordered.
"It's just, Evie started blushing when you said 'they're mine'. And then she said she felt a ripple."
"So the ripples make her blush?"
"Or whatever made her blush also caused the ripple."
"Like, when Mal feels possessive, she ripples the force field?" Jay suggested.
Carlos was silent for a second, then said, "Or something, yeah."
"Well, Mal. Think possessive thoughts. See if something happens."
Mal shut her eyes for a long time. "Feel anything?"
"No," Evie said, avoiding Carlos's gaze because he was clearly thinking too deeply about something and she wanted no part in it.
"I really feel like we're getting close to a breakthrough," Jay said, and Evie had to check to see if he was joking, because she felt no such thing.
Little did she know, they would have many hours to figure it out.
...
"Wake up. Come on." Evidently, the fairy was still mad; after ensuring that Uma was awake, the woman merely exited the car primly, waiting for Uma to follow.
The smell of the air struck Uma as different (in a good way) before she was even out of the car, wincing against the light of the sun, and getting her first real lungful of it. Fresh air, indeed. It wasn't full of the staticky pressure of everyone's growing magic; it didn't feel all tight and heavy; this was air that moved, air that filled the whole sky. Free air, open air, fresh air. And on it was the taste of salt.
The sea was here.
Or rather, they were at the sea.
Uma's eyes adjusted to the sunlight- either Jay's theory was wrong or she had been passed out for hours; it couldn't be a coincidence, that Evie had been asleep when she'd left the facility, too -and she saw it. Bluer than she had ever known it to be, on the Isle, but unmistakable.
Being near the sea felt like...a conversation. And the sea always spoke to her with the same voice. The sea was kin to her, and she was kin to the sea.
"Come on," the fairy ordered again, more irately. She had started walking towards a little building on the shore, and Uma had been ignoring her in favor of just breathing in the first wide open outdoor space she'd literally ever occupied.
The fairy was being so casual about this. Did she know? She always seemed to sense what Uma's magic was doing; didn't she know that Uma could feel the power of the sea as if it were part of herself? That her body and her magic tensed with it in the same way one instinctively tensed before falling out of bed? (The way one instinctively tensed from self-destruction?) That without her putting any effort or will to it, she could already hear the waves slapping the shore to the rhythm of the sailor songs that were running through her head?
"Uma. Now," the fairy pressed.
Fine.
Uma followed her.
"Someone has been wanting to see you for a while now. I told him that you were being good and there was no need to disrupt your education, but now I think it might be for the best if you did visit, at least once. Maybe he will get through to you, where I have clearly failed."
Uma eyed the fairy, wondering if that little comment was supposed to make her feel sympathetic or something. Was she expected to want to reassure the woman?
Fairy Godmother tapped the little building's door with her wand, and it swung open, and they both entered. It was just one bland sitting room, with sofas and magazines. At the far wall, a bored-looking young blond woman sat behind a desk, filing her nails. Behind her was a golden elevator that was already opened.
"You drove?" the blond lady said, raising an eyebrow at Fairy Godmother. "When you said you were on your way, we kind of assumed you'd be here hours ago. Since you can just poof and be wherever you want."
"I do not use my magic frivolously, Andrina. The ban applies to me, too."
"Andrina is my mom. I go by Andie."
"Sure. Is she sighed in?" The fairy tapped Uma's head.
"Yup. Right this way, short stuff." Andie offered Uma a smile and pointed backward at the elevator, with her thumb.
"It's Uma," Uma said, sizing up the daughter of Andrina and trying not to appear anxious.
"That is for you," the fairy said, also pointing to the elevator. "I will be here when they send you back up."
Uma walked into the elevator alone. Andie pressed a button on the desk she was sitting behind, and the elevator doors started to close between Uma and the two women.
"Don't worry," Andie said. "It'll come naturally to you."
And then the doors were shut, before Uma could even ask what she meant. As the elevator started to lower, she had a hunch.
...
The fairy and Uma were gone for a long time.
The children fell asleep in the cafeteria, most of them on the floor, some across the seats. Mal and Evie both slept leaning against the force field.
When Carlos crept up to Mal and suggested that she get up and that they should try startling Evie awake, she did actually know what he was trying to do. She did. She pretended not to, though, because if she acted like she knew that this was a test of Evie's capacity for magic, then she would have to make a show of putting Evie in her place, making sure that she knew that Mal was in charge and still the most powerful even if she didn't know how to actually do stuff with her magic yet. That was too much to ask of her, in the middle of the night. It was easier if she just pretended to buy that Carlos had planned an unprompted prank.
They startled Evie awake, and Evie yelped, and-
...and she fell back against the floor, as if the force field weren't even there.
"Whoa!" Mal exclaimed.
"What's going on?" Jay asked blearily, still rubbing sleep out of his eyes as he made his way over.
"Evie," Carlos said excitedly. "We scared her, and she disrupted the barrier. I knew it!"
Harry groaned at them to keep it down.
Evie sat up and bumped her head on the outside of the forcefield. "Um..." She experimentally wiggled her legs, which were on the inside of the forcefield. She was half-in, half-out. "How do I get back in?"
"Back in?" Jay said. "Try pulling your legs out; you can go explore!"
Evie pressed her hands to the outside of the barrier and tried to pry her hips through the barrier's grip. She could feel herself slowly slipping out, maybe a millimeter a minute, but it was like she was fighting the strength of the magic on the doorway.
At some point during this lengthy process, Harry and Gil got up and came to see what all the fuss was about.
"What if the barrier chops her legs off?" Harry asked, in what sounded like a mix of genuine distress and morbid curiosity.
Evie let out a squeak of fear, which was apparently enough to disrupt the barrier again, for suddenly the rest of her was free and she was pulling her legs through to the other side.
"Good job, Harry," Carlos said.
"Ehh. Wasn't on purpose," Harry said, scratching the back of his neck.
"You got out. Now, you can find the exit," Jay said. "You can make a map to-...Do you have a pen?"
"No," Evie answered.
"There's one under my pillow, in the boys' dorm. If you can make us a map to the exit, then that's one big problem solved."
"B-But..." Evie wiped her palms on her clothes. She hated sweating. "But how will I get back in the barrier before Fairy Godmother gets back?"
"I'll summon you through," Jay said, with unearned confidence. "Now, hurry! We have to learn something, while we can."
"But-"
"Go, E," Mal said, in a hard voice. "If you guys care about escaping, then this is important. Right?"
"Right," Evie said softly, quailing at the fire in Mal's gaze.
"Then go."
Evie ran.