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“How did it happen though?” Jupiter was puzzling over the breakfast table. “I mean, it’s like some kind of miracle, but we thought- we had no idea that it would just spontaneously fix itself. It’s wonderful but no one saw it coming.”
Morrigan picked at her toast. They’d all been alarmed to see her come out of her room that morning, particularly because she hadn’t yet been discharged from hospital, but the news was so full of the other thing that had happened in the Sub-Three Teaching Hospital, that her little escape was quickly forgotten.
She kept quiet, and gave up on her toast, reaching for the teapot instead and pouring herself a cup. Oversteeped, and they had just finished the milk jug, but she drank it anyway. The heat barely bothered her, which was weird but not necessarily unexpected. After all, couldn’t she breathe fire? If that didn’t scald her throat, why would awful tea?
“Mog?” Jupiter said, looking at her. “What do you think about this?”
She blinked a few times, “It’s wonderful,” she said. “I’m really happy about it.”
And she was, that wasn’t a lie. She had never lied so blatantly to Jupiter about something important, but she figured that if she didn’t say things, they might not show up like black marks on her face. What was the Witness signal for lies of omission anyway?
“Are you okay, Mog?”
“I’m fine,” she said. “I’m just tired. You know, from-” she jerked her head to the side, half as a stretch and half as a shorthand of saying when I jumped off the Deucalion roof and summoned every wunimal with the hollowpox to Courage Square and destroyed it and got knocked out for two days. It was a little less wordy.
“Yeah,” he rubbed his face. “Yeah, of course.”
“When do I have to talk to the Elders about that anyway?”
He shrugged, “I haven’t spoken to them yet, unfortunately. They’ll let you know when they want you. Although, they asked me what you said yesterday, and I told them our, ahem, version of events.”
“So they might not talk to me at all?”
“It really depends. It might be when you go back to school.”
“When is that, exactly?” she crossed her arms.
He looked at her, he really looked, and for a second she was worried that he was going to see something, see the deal she’d made. Would it show on her? Was it a great big flashing sign like at the Nevermoor Bazaar gate except: I AGREED TO BE SQUALL’S APPRENTICE.
She had been so consumed with thinking about power and excuses and the universe that had been inside her, and she hadn’t thought about how she would even begin to explain herself otherwise.
His eyes narrowed a little, but he smiled sideways at her, “If you’re feeling up to it, you could go back on Monday.”
She’d been out of school for over a week already. How had it already been a week? How had it only been a week? The events of the last ten days should have filled a year. She missed school, and sub-nine, and her unit. She wanted to go back as soon as possible. But she was also still so exhausted. Not the kind that a nap could shake off. A sort of bone deep exhaustion that she had felt ever since she had woken up.
She rubbed her face, trying not to yawn.
“I think a couple more days of rest won’t do you any harm,” Jupiter said. “You look shattered.”
“Thanks,” she said, and lost the fight with the yawn. “I think I’m going to go back to bed for now. Destroying the- the thingy took a lot out of me, I guess.”
“I’ll bet,” he said. “On you go. Jack’s coming home on Friday afternoon by the way. Did you know he skipped an exam last week?”
She left before she had to admit that she had known about that.
“Nice to see you’re alive,” said Jack.
“You’d miss me too much if I actually died,” she said.
“How many times have you ended up in the hospital this year?”
“Only twice.”
“Really? Just twice?”
“Yes, really,” she rolled her eyes.
“I think you’ve gotten into more scrapes than that,” he said.
She held up a finger, “I did, I just didn’t end up in the hospital.”
“Semantics.”
“It was the literal answer to the question?”
“Anyway,” he said. “Anyway, can I just ask? How in heaven's name did you destroy the hollowpox?”
“Um,” she said. “Well. I told it to die. And it did. Because Squall told me to.”
His mouth opened slightly, “Squall? Again? Doesn’t he have better things to do?”
“You’d think,” she said, half bitter. “But no, if they let in the emissary then apparently Wintersea would have invaded Nevermoor, which, you know-”
“Bad.”
“Very bad,” she said. “So I took the other way out.”
Jack grimaced, “Lucky that there was another way out. Dunno what would be done otherwise. Wintersea sounds like a right piece of work.”
“I’m beginning to see that,” Morrigan said. She raised her hands to fix her hair a little - her headband had fallen a bit wonky - and Jack’s eye caught something.
“What’s that on your hand?” he asked.
“What’s what?” she said, looking for dirt or some cut she hadn’t noticed. “Oh! I didn’t know if you could see this. Can you see my Wunsoc imprint too?”
“I can see that there’s an imprint, but the nature of it is pretty,” he waved a hand from side to side. “Fuzzy.”
“Right,” she said. “Well yeah, actually I got this after the fire blossoms but it only showed up last Friday properly. I, ahem, well there’s a hall on Sub-Nine, nine actually, that no one’s been able to open, but I can, with the imprint,” she wiggled the finger, taking a second to look at the tiny flame. It really was kind of amazing. “Which is cool, I guess.”
“What’s in the room?”
“Uhhhh,” she faltered. “Can you promise not to tell Jupiter? I maybe promised I wouldn’t go into any more liminal spaces without him, and the place is literally called the liminal hall.”
“Morrigan.”
She held up her hands, “I know, I know.”
“Fine, I promise.”
She held out her pinky. He looked at it for a second, “You cannot be serious.”
“I am.”
He hooked it, “I promise I won’t tell on you to Jupiter. I wouldn’t do that anyway, by the way. Haven’t you been listening to Fen? Snitches get stitches. ”
“Hush,” she said. “There’s, well, it’s one of the Wundrous Divinities I saw, the Kindling, for whatever I did with inferno.”
“Divinities?”
She shrugged, “I think they’re like gods, but I’m not entirely sure.”
Jack said a lot of words that if Morrigan had said them at Crow Manor, would have resulted in servants drawing lots to see who would risk the curse the most to wash her mouth out.
“Language, Jack.” They both jumped, neither of them having noticed Jupiter come into the Smoking Parlour. Morrigan panicked for a minute. How much had he heard? But if he had overheard their conversation, he didn’t give anything away, so she relaxed after a minute.
“Mog,” he said, smiling slightly at her. “Your friends came to see you, they’re downstairs.”
“Cadence and Hawthorne?” she asked, getting up.
“Your whole unit, actually. I suggest you watch the pickpocket before Fenestra decides he’s stealing the silverware and throws him out of a fourth storey window.”
“Arch wouldn’t steal from the hotel,” she said. “Or at least, he’d give it back later,” but she was already flying out the door and downstairs to the lobby.
She had seen all of them since she’d woken up, but it was one thing to be visited in hospital and another to get to see them when none of them were confined to bedrest.
“We made you a cake!” called Hawthorne when she reached the top of the stairs, taking three at a time as she dashed downwards. She only nearly fell twice, so it was fine.
Francis coughed.
“Francis made you a cake,” Hawthorne amended. “But I helped carry it.”
Thaddea coughed.
“I was there,” he amended again.
“Okay,” Mahir said. “That one’s accurate.”
“The point is,” Hawthorne said. “Cake.”
Cake was a very good point. They ate it in the greenhouses, grabbing fruit off of the trees from all seasons. She had fresh figs with strawberries and brambles piled onto the plate next to the genuinely delicious cake, which made her feel like she had done something incredible like climbing a mountain. Or destroying the hollowpox.
“It’s really good to not be on hospital duty anymore,” Anah said, looking, for the first time since she had been drafted into the Teaching Hospital, not completely shattered anymore. “I didn’t realise how tired I was until I could actually get to take breaks like a normal student again.”
Morrigan passed her a red-skinned apple and one of the mugs of hot chocolate one of the kitchen staff had sent Martha in with earlier. The Deucalion was keeping them warm without roasting everyone in the vicinity, which was a neat trick.
“Everyone at Proudfoot House is talking about you,” Francis said, which made her ears go hot.
“It’s getting a little boring, honestly,” Thaddea grunted, but Lam kicked her in the ankle. “Don’t overextend your ankle there, it loses effect and you could seriously damage your tendon,” she said to her.
Lam stared at her for a minute, “Thanks?”
“You’re welcome. Anyway, Morrigan, it’s not all bad. Most of them are saying nice stuff about how you exploded the hollowpox.”
“What’s the bad stuff?” Morrigan asked, her hands clenching and unclenching. She had been trying to bask in being able to be around her unit, her friends, family even, but she had a horrible desire now to hear the worst things people had ever said about her.
Hawthorne grimaced, “Thaddea don’t-”
“Just stuff about how you couldn’t have possibly managed it on your own and stuff,” Thaddea said. “Or that you started the hollowpox just to make yourself look good later, but that’s just the Charlton five. I kicked Heloise in the shins when I heard it, if it helps.”
“Thanks,” Morrigan snorted. “It does.”
But for the rest of the afternoon, she couldn’t quite shake the feeling that it wasn’t so unbelievable, at least to some people. Especially since the first thing had been accurate. To an extent. A fairly significant extent.
She wouldn’t have taken the help from Squall if she hadn't needed it. But she had. If she hadn’t done that, then either the hollowpox would be rampaging its way through Nevermoor, destroying lives and upending everything, or worse, if Wintersea had been able to come though and subjugate the entire place.
Republic history had been taught by her tutors as very pro-Wintersea Republic. As if they were going to teach the daughter of the State Chancellor of Great Wolfacre anything else, to be fair, but she had never questioned any of it until she got to Nevermoor.
And granted, the history she had been taught here had a certain bent too, the least said about Professor Onstald’s class of Lying About Wundersmiths or whatever he had called it (she thought her name for it was better. At least more accurate), the sooner she could stop being so angry about it, but she had learned some things about the Wintersea Republic. And almost none of it was good.
“You’re quiet today, Miss Morrigan,” Dame Chanda remarked as she struggled to actually read from her book instead of letting her eyes scan over the lines without taking anything in.
“I’m fine,” she said. “Just tired.”
It was Sunday night, and Jupiter had said she could go back to Wunsoc tomorrow but for some reason the idea of returning to school was filling her with dread. The Elders still hadn’t come to talk to her, which meant that she was probably going to have to talk to them there, and if the rumours and whispering before had been bad, there was no way they were going to be better now.
“I can imagine,” Dame Chanda said. “Not that I’ve ever done anything like that but when I did my first full run of a show, I think I slept for half the day and only woke up when I was needed on stage or for a quick rehearsal. Otherwise I was out like I had been knocked in the back of the head by a horsewun.”
Morrigan winced, remembering the less than successful opening night of the Maledictions, “Have you seen him yet? The horsewun, I mean.”
“Yes,” Dame Chanda said. “I went to visit dear Victor yesterday, he’s dreadfully sorry about it, but it wasn’t his fault.”
No, Morrigan thought. It’s mine.
Or rather it was Wintersea and Squall’s but if she hadn’t been at the Opera House, maybe the hollowpox wouldn’t have swarmed to that particular wunimal at the time. And maybe Dame Chanda wouldn’t have been kicked in the head and the opera closed on its first night and maybe, maybe, maybe-
“That’s good,” she said. “That he’s good, I mean.”
“Yes,” Dame Chanda smiled. “And finally those awful people have cleared off the forecourt and the hotel is opening again properly. It’s been dreadfully quiet without all the guests and so many of the staff off on furlough. She’s glad of it too,” she said, looking up at the ceiling.
The Deucalion responded to this by warming up the room slightly, which was nice. Morrigan never noticed how much the temperature was dropping until her fingers started to freeze and stiffen up.
“It’ll be nice getting back to normal,” she said, but she couldn’t stop thinking about her meeting with the Elders or the fact that everyone still knew who she was now. Undoing the hollowpox didn’t undo what the Elders and Holliday Wu and every newspaper in Nevermoor had done to her. Everyone in the Seven Pockets knew who she was now, and she didn’t even know what that really meant for her yet.
People knew who Jupiter was, and often called out to him when they were walking down the street together, or said hello to him, or just smiled. People liked Jupiter and he was known for good things, for the hotel, and for his work in the League of Explorers.
This would not be true for Morrigan. Maybe in fifty years she might have rehabilitated the reputation of wundersmiths enough that people might not whisper about her in earshot, but here and now she was going to actually put up with the attitudes of people who thought about Wundersmiths, Squall, and therefore her, as childhood bogeymen.
It made her want to scream, thinking about it. She hadn’t chosen this. It was how she had been born, and there was nothing wrong with it anyway. There was nothing she could have done about being a wundersmith or not being a wundersmith, and the fact they were all so bothered about it bothered her.
She just wanted to be left alone to do her own thing but she hadn’t missed the fact that she hadn’t seen a single newspaper intact since she had come home, and it only made her wonder about what they were saying about her more.
No one made her first day back at Wunsoc a big deal when she showed up on Platform 919, probably since she had seen all of them since waking up, but Miss Cheery made her take two biscuits in the jar while Francis twiddled the dial on the wireless.
“—rumours of a snap election to be called in the aftermath of what some are calling Steed’s greatest leadership failure yet, but back to last week’s news since we have some interviews with the newly recovered wunimals. Now we have Björn Arthurs, who was one of the first recovered from the events of Courage Square. Björn,” Albie Higgins said. “How are you?”
“Better than ever, Albie,” the person who must have been Björn said.
“You were one of the witnesses to what Morrigan Crow did in Courage Square last week. What was that like?”
“Morrigan Crow is a hero,” he said. “I didn’t see much of what happened, because the hollowpox had just culminated, I only understood flashes. It’s not funny, but in retrospect it’s a little like waking up after drinking too much but I remember her collapsing next to a magnificat who pulled her away, hopefully to hospital, and then the Stealth and the St- Nevermoor City Police Force, showed up so that was that.”
Morrigan’s face felt like she had been sitting next to a fire for entirely too long. Thaddea smirked at her and she wanted to die for a second, but it was nice too. She had done something good, and people didn’t hate her for it. Or a few people didn’t, at least.
She let that feeling cushion her walk up to Proudfoot House, into the lecture hall on sub-six, and through her morning of classes. She had a ghostly hour scheduled for two pm, and there was an odd feeling in her gut, and a bad memory of the last time she had been down there too.
The Kindling. Sofia. The fire burning out. Sofia. Sofia.
Sofia was fine now. She’d specifically made sure of it. She had seen her awake before she had snuck away to sell her soul to Squall or whatever the apprenticeship was, but she still couldn’t shake the feeling of seeing someone she knew - her friend - so lost like that. Squall had said that he could just push them and then they would have been gone completely, whatever it was that separated wunimals from unimals gone completely.
She had done it for all of them. She had done it because it was the right thing to do, and maybe the Wintersea Party and Maud Lowry didn’t care about that, maybe Squall didn’t care about that, and people in Nevermoor too, but she did, and she wasn’t about to give it up because they already had.
She made it down to Sub-Nine without fanfare, which made sense, given that barely anyone in Proudfoot House knew that it existed, managing to work the timings so she could go to her Ghostly Hour without enough time to pop into the study chamber first, but when she exited, less tired than she had been expecting, into Van Ophoven in the present day, where Sofia was waiting for her.
“Hi,” she said, resisting the urge to bury her hands in her pockets and avoid eye contact. “How’s it going?”
“Pretty good, Morrigan,” she said. She had a new jacket on, emerald green silk. Morrigan tried not to flinch seeing the colour. It was only ever a jacket. “How are you?”
“Not bad,” she said. “It’s nice to be back.”
“I agree,” she said. “I wanted to thank you.”
“Oh,” she said. “Oh you really don’t- that’s not necessary.”
“It is,” Sofia said. “It really is, you saved us, Morrigan.”
Her face was probably the same colour as Sofia’s fur as she mumbled something and Sofia smiled at her, “Come on, I’ve put the kettle on in the study chamber.”
“So,” Sofia said, after Morrigan’s cup had cooled down enough to drink from. “Can I ask?”
“Ask what?” she said, although she was pretty sure she knew the answer. “How I destroyed the hollowpox?”
“If it’s alright with you?” she looked up at her, and there was a new look in her eyes that Morrigan didn’t quite know how to feel about. Something like admiration, but not quite. It was stronger than that.
She blew air out from her mouth, “Yeah, it’s okay. I-uh, well the way the hollowpox worked like that,” she looked around the study chamber, making sure the door was closed and there was nobody else there that they had managed to completely miss before. “Because Squall made it, as a monster.”
“Yes,” she said. “Captain North mentioned it to Dr Bramble. I think she dismissed it.”
“Yes,” said Morrigan, feeling more than an appropriate amount of vindication about that, but squashed that quickly. “So it had to be destroyed all at once. And it was attracted to wunder, so that’s why I was in Courage Square with all those wunimals.”
“That could have ended a lot differently than it did,” Sofia said thoughtfully. “I’m glad you’re well now. They said you were out for days.”
“Who did?”
“One of the girls in your Unit, I forgot her name.”
“Anah?”
“Yes,” she said. “Her. They were all worried, even after you woke up.”
She shrugged, “I think I’m fine now.”
She eyed her appraisingly, “Perhaps. I hope so.”
She got the summons she had been dreading after her last class of the day, right when she had been preparing to go down to Proudfoot Station with the rest of 919. It was Rook who came for her, and tapped her on the shoulder.
“The Elders want to speak with you.”