Chapter Text
“Today’s lesson,” Mr. Wentworth announced, “is about taking things apart.”
He wrote the word electrolysis in large letters on the chalkboard. Next, he held up a nine-volt battery and tapped it with one finger. “Now, I’m sure you can all guess what the electro part means — did you have a question, Simon?”
“It’s more of a comment, really, sir. I just wanted to mention that we get the term electron from the Greek word for amber. A sample of amber rubbed with cloth will accumulate a static electric charge.”
Nan Pilgrim groaned softly, recognizing this as a direct quote from their textbook. Beside her, Charles Morgan rolled his eyes heavenward. Nan risked a tiny smile in his direction, and was rewarded with a minute sideways quirk of his mouth in return. She still didn’t like Charles, but at least they could be united in disdain for Simon Silverson.
“Thank you, Simon.” Mr. Wentworth set down the battery to take up his chalk again, heavily underlining the last five letters of electrolysis. “But what about the ending of the word? Not so familiar, perhaps? Lysis also comes from the Greek, meaning… splitting. Unbinding. Setting free. Today, using only the simple equipment you see before you, we shall be ruthlessly dismembering water into its component parts, which of course are…”
“Hydrogen and oxygen!” Simon piped up.
“Correct. The energy from the battery will rip the water molecules into these two gases before our very eyes. On your lab tables, each group should have a battery like this one, two pencils sharpened at both ends to act as our electrodes — yes, Brian?”
Nan cringed a little on Brian’s behalf. If one of her parents were teaching a class with her in it, she’d hide under a desk and not come out until the end of term. But Brian seemed to delight in peppering his father with ever-more-outlandish questions, and Mr Wentworth, in turn, seemed in his own way rather proud of Brian. Being under the aegis of Simon Silverson protected Brian from any torment that might otherwise accrue from such behavior. And at least Brian’s interruptions, unlike Simon’s, were sometimes interesting.
“How are we going to tell the hydrogen and oxygen apart?” Brian was asking now. “They’re both colorless, odorless gases. I don’t think they make any distinctive noises. Could we taste the difference?”
“Well, in fact, you could, in a way,” Mr. Wentworth said. “The electric current is going to ionize the atoms as they come out. Now, a hydrogen atom without its electron is just a naked proton.” There were a few scattered snickers at the word naked, which Mr. Wentworth ignored. “A proton donor is…”
“An acid,” supplied a chorus of voices, Estelle Green’s and Nirupam Singh’s among them. Nan kept silent, as did Charles, although she suspected he had known the answer as well as she did.
“Yes,” said Mr. Wentworth. “Acids taste sour. So our sense of taste has the ability to detect electric charge. It’s said that a sour taste can be detected if the tongue contacts the terminals of a battery, for the same reason.”
This was an unwise thing to say. Dan Smith immediately picked up the battery from his lab table and touched it to the tip of his tongue.
Nan couldn’t help herself. “That thing’s been sitting in a cupboard full of dust and spiders and old chemicals! People probably picked their noses before handling it!”
Dan waggled his tongue obscenely at her and then slowly, deliberately, began another lick. Abruptly, he grimaced and dropped the battery.
“Yes, if you lick both terminals at the same time, you complete a circuit,” Mr. Wentworth said. “Luckily it’s not a large enough current to be dangerous, but still not very pleasant, I expect.”
As Dan spluttered and wiped his mouth, Lance Osgood poked his unfortunate lab partner – Heather Young, who had transferred to Portway Oaks Comprehensive after a terrible year at the Gate House School for Girls – with one of the doubly-sharpened pencils.
“Stop that!” Heather yelled at Lance. “Mr. Wentworth, could we get lead poisoning from these?”
“No,” said Mr. Wentworth, “because it’s not really lead, it’s graphite. But don’t eat it,” he added, with a sharp look at Dan. “Now. As I was saying…” He lifted a beaker full of dark-purple liquid to display to the class. “I expect most of you will be glad to know that I won’t be requiring any taste-testing of the acids and bases in this experiment. Instead, we’ll be using this red cabbage solution as a pH indicator. And before you ask: yes, you can drink it. It’s just boiled cabbage and water. I can’t say I especially recommend the flavor, but then again it probably beats what they served at High Table today.”
Under Mr. Wentworth’s direction, each pair of lab partners began assembling the experiment. Nan filled a beaker with water from the tap; setting it back down on their lab table, she glanced at Charles and met one of his full-blast glares. The glare didn’t bother her quite as much, these days. She had come to realize that it was simply Charles’s default expression. It was like being soaked by a wave breaking as you walked along the shore: the water hit you not because it bore you any particular malice, but simply because you happened to be in its path. Still, she listened a bit wistfully to Estelle and Nirupam chatting and laughing at the table behind them. Imagine being assigned a lab partner you actually liked!
At least they managed to collaborate fairly efficiently, if silently. Nan measured and stirred salt into the beaker while Charles finished wiring the pencils to the battery. When little bubbles began to form around each of the pencil tips underwater, Nan had a satisfying sense that matching little bubbles of joy were fizzing up inside her brain. The sensation felt oddly familiar, though she wasn’t sure why. She carefully measured out a few drops of the red cabbage solution into the beaker, and watched as the water bloomed into pink at one pencil, greenish-blue at the other.
It was funny, she thought, looking around for the lid to the salt container: little bubbles of clear gas popped up on one side, and little bubbles of different clear gas popped up on the other. Neither kind was anything like water. And yet that was all there was to the water, those two gases. It was as though you had cut an apple in half, only for each half to turn into a bird and fly away.
The image took over Nan’s brain so completely that she forgot all about finding the salt lid. She wished she had her story-writing notebook with her. But she knew better than to bring that notebook to class: there was too much risk that someone would find it and read it here, in its raw fragile state before it was ready to be shared. For now, the only paper available was her black-and-white composition book for official lab notes. She opened the book to a page near the end and began to write, pressing lightly with a pencil so that she could erase later.
“Oh, well done, Nan and Charles!” Mr. Wentworth said suddenly from over her shoulder. “You’re really ripping those water molecules limb from limb. And taking careful notes, I see.”
Startled, Nan quickly closed the notebook to hide what she was writing.
“Could we ever put the water back together, now that we’ve broken it?” Charles asked. Nan found this nearly as jarring as Mr. Wentworth’s unexpected appearance – Charles so rarely spoke in class.
“Oh, certainly,” Mr. Wentworth replied. “Hydrogen and oxygen want to be together terribly badly, you know. All it takes is one tiny spark, and…” He flung his hands outward, miming an explosion. “Kaboom. Then once the dust settles, you’re left with water again.”
As Mr. Wentworth moved on to another lab table, Nan opened her notebook again to write down what he had said. A story idea was teasing at the back of her brain, something tying into the spark and the explosion…
“What are you writing?”
Nan looked up, straight into a caustic Charles Morgan glare. “Oh… nothing really. Just notes.”
“Let me see,” Charles said, reaching out a hand.
Nan instinctively slid the notebook toward her own side of the table, away from him. “It’s not any good yet; it’s just rough. I can show you the report when I have it written up properly.”
“Come on, just let me have a look,” Charles said. “You always get better marks on your lab notes than I do, and it’s because you write more. Mr. Wentworth always puts `add more detail’ on mine. We’re supposed to be partners. Do you think you’re better than me?”
He reached for the notebook again, and grabbed it. Nan tightened her grip and pulled back. For a moment, they were at a standoff. Then Charles gave an extra-hard yank, and Nan lost her hold on the slick cover. Released from her grasp, the notebook shot across the table, pulling everything else on the table with it – not only their electrolysis beaker, but also a nearly-full beaker of cabbage indicator, as well as the still-lidless salt jar. Charles overbalanced and tipped over backwards in his chair. There was an almighty crash as chair, glassware, and all hit the floor.
In the silence that followed, Charles stiffly got to his feet. He held out the notebook, now damp and cabbage-stained, while favoring Nan with an intensely focused and personalized extra-strength glare. Nan took it from him, numbly, and looked down at the mess spreading across the grimy, peeling linoleum.
If you spilled salt, you were supposed to throw a pinch over your shoulder, but that was hard to do when the salt was slowly dissolving in a puddle of purplish water mixed with shards of broken glass. Breaking glass meant seven years of bad luck— no, that was only for mirrors. She guessed they were in for some bad luck in any case, however, because Mr. Wentworth was approaching rapidly with grim, heavy strides.
“What have I told you every day about lab safety and respect for the equipment?” he said – not quite shouting, but on the edge of it. “Nan and Charles, you’ll clean this up, and you can take a black mark each.”
The unfairness of this struck Nan like a slap in the face. “I wasn’t even –” she began, at the same time Charles was saying, “But she –”
“I don’t want to hear about it,” Mr. Wentworth snapped, rummaging in a drawer. He unearthed two pairs of thick work gloves, which he flapped angrily at them. “Wear these, so your parents don’t sue me for allowing your hands to be cut to ribbons. Go to the groundskeeper’s shed and get whatever other cleaning supplies you need. It’s nearly time for class to end anyway. I won’t be here when you get back, because I’ll be at a budget meeting – which, I’m sure, will be the perfect conclusion to this already joyous day. If I find one single speck of broken glass or clump of muck on the floor when I return, there will be consequences. Is that clear?” He tossed the gloves onto the lab table and stalked away without waiting for an answer.
Nan could hear whispering from behind her; she knew the eyes of the whole class would be on her and Charles in their disgrace. A hand rested lightly on her shoulder for a moment, and she turned to meet Estelle’s sympathetic gaze.
“I’ll be in the library,” Estelle murmured. Nan nodded, not trusting herself to speak.
Within a few minutes, the classroom had emptied out around them. Charles flung open the side door and walked out without looking back. Nan followed, imagining she could feel Charles’s glare even through the back of his head.
They stepped out into the windy space known as “around the back.” At the end of the day’s last class, the sun was low in the gray sky. Dry leaves crunched underfoot. Charles was walking almost too quickly for Nan to keep up. Why bother hurrying? She deliberately hung back, gazing up at the last few yellow leaves clinging to the skeletal branches of the trees.
Today, she reminded herself, was Halloween. That ought to be a cheerful thought. Hard to believe it had been a whole year since… since what? Well, since last Halloween, obviously, but why did that date feel so momentous in her head? Her memories of the previous fall felt maddeningly slippery; she would catch hold of something only for it to slither away again. What had her costume been last year? A witch, she was almost sure… but then why did she also seem to remember a ridiculous pink ball gown?
There was a creak of hinges as Charles opened the door of the shed. It immediately tried to swing shut again, but he propped it open with a large bucket. By the time Nan had trudged over to join him, he had disappeared inside.
When Nan cautiously peered into the shed, it was so dim that she could see nothing at first, even with the open door letting in a bit of light. She got an overwhelming whiff of fertilizer, and heard a few indistinct clunking noises from somewhere in the back. Suddenly, she felt a tap on her shoulder.
“Charles!” she yelped. She was honestly surprised: for all his faults, Charles had never seemed the type to lie in wait and then jump out to scare her. And indeed, he apparently hadn’t: when she reached out a hand to push him away, her fingers encountered only empty air. Something hit her again, this time hard enough to sting a bit.
Nan’s heart was pounding in her ears. This was it. Some hideous ghoul or poltergeist or vampire had awakened on Halloween and emerged to hunt for prey. Now she would die, in a dirty toolshed, her fate forever a mystery…
Her eyes began to adjust to the dim light, and she found herself looking at an old broom with most of its bristles missing. She let out a breath, feeling silly. She must have accidentally bumped the broom, so that it had tipped over and hit her. Except, how could it have managed to hit her twice, and still be standing upright now?
The broom, of its own volition, leaped joyously toward her. Automatically, she held a hand up to catch it.
At the moment the broomstick touched her hand, she felt an immediate sense of fizzing excitement, like the bubbles rising to the surface in lab. Something gave her mind a brisk stir, whirling up a sediment that had lain undisturbed for the past year. Suddenly she had two contradictory stories of her life, extending back to earliest childhood, each now fighting to gain the upper hand. The new (old?) memories assaulted her at once with their terrible bleakness, and with an equally terrible longing for something precious that had been lost. She was a witch-orphan. No, her mother was alive and well. Witchcraft was a myth. No, witchcraft was a crime punishable by death. No, witchcraft was the best thing that had ever happened to her, and now it was gone.
When the first rush of memories had subsided, it occurred to Nan to wonder what had become of Charles. She spotted him on the other side of the shed, holding a ragged-looking mop that bounced in his hand, every bit as excited to greet him as the broom had been to greet Nan herself. This in itself would have been evidence enough, but when their eyes met she knew without question that he remembered too.
There was some comfort in the discovery that someone else shared the double memories, that she wasn’t simply losing her mind. But it would have to be Charles Morgan, of all people. If only it had been Estelle, or Nirupam, or literally anybody else in the entire universe. Well, all right, maybe not Brian Wentworth.
“What do we do?” Charles said.
Nan shared his immediate intuition that something needed to be done. She found it both flattering and irritating to be the one expected to come up with a plan. Charles didn’t look any happier about the situation than she felt, but he continued to look at her expectantly.
“We’ll still have to clean up the lab, so Mr. Wentworth won’t come after us,” Nan said at length. “Then we’ll tell Estelle, and Nirupam. They’re part of it, just as much as we are.”
Charles nodded. He didn’t mention Brian Wentworth – presumably, Nan thought, for the same reason she herself had not. It occurred to her that they were possibly being unfair. The double memories told her that Brian had been far nastier in the other timeline; having both parents safe and escaping much of the relentless bullying had mellowed him considerably. She supposed some of her dislike of him was merely residual. Still, she decided, she couldn’t quite bring herself to suggest inviting Brian to join them in… whatever this was. He was still a condescending know-it-all.
“Then the four of us can meet, and talk about what to do,” Nan continued. “We’re lucky it’s Halloween; our parents will already be expecting us to go out tonight.”
“All right, then,” Charles said, hefting the mop as if it were a lance. “To the lab first.”
The broom and the mop seemed happy to follow Charles and Nan back to the lab, frisking along beside them like puppies. However, both implements refused categorically to take any part in sweeping up the mess. When Nan, holding a dustpan, reached for the broomstick, it fled to the other end of the lab, followed at top speed by the mop. They chased one another in circles near the ceiling, apparently absorbed in some game whose rules were impenetrable to mere humans.
“If the brooms can fly again, you don’t suppose we still might be able to, er, you know…?” Charles rubbed his index finger with his thumb. Nan wasn’t sure exactly what the gesture signified, but she immediately understood what he was getting at.
“I don’t think so,” she said. Now that she knew what to look for, she could feel the hollow place of no-magic inside herself, like encountering a missing tooth with her tongue. “But we may as well try, just to be sure.”
Charles glowered at the floor. “Abracadabra,” he said, in the same flat, slightly hostile tone he used for reading aloud in class. “Hocus pocus. Clean yourself up.” Nothing happened.
Nan stared. “Is that really how you do magic?”
Charles scowled at her. “Well, how would you do it, then?”
“I used to make up little rhymes to describe what I wanted to happen.” It was almost unbearably awkward with Charles watching, but she managed to come up with
“Cabbage and glass shards, politely we ask it:
Get off the floor and go into the basket!”
She even tried snapping her fingers like Mary Poppins at the end of the rhyme, but this proved no more effective than Charles’s attempt. In the end, they each collected a large supply of paper towels from the toilets, put on the work gloves, and scooped everything into a bucket by hand.
“Fat lot of help you were,” Charles told the mop disgustedly. It tossed its head saucily in reply. The broom tapped the mop handle with its stick, as though giving a high five.
Once he and Nan had emptied the bucket into the skip out back, Charles said he needed to pick up his brother Graham from primary school. He promised to stop by Nirupam’s house afterward, and they agreed to meet back at the shed in two hours. He scarcely even glared at Nan at all as they made these arrangements.
“Come on, mop,” Charles called as he turned to leave. The mop displayed no inclination to break off its chasing game with the broom. “Oh, all right,” said Charles carelessly, opening the lab door. “I expect you don’t want to be a part of our boring secret plan to restore our magic powers. Bye, then.”
The mop reversed direction abruptly and zipped out the door. Nan laughed.
Charles almost smiled. “You can’t say I’ve learned nothing from having a younger brother,” he said, and set off after the mop.
Abandoned by its friend, the broom returned demurely to Nan’s side, as though this had been its intention all along. Nan was a little worried that someone might see it cruising along independently of her, but the grounds appeared nearly deserted. Even Simon Silverson wouldn’t hang about looking for extra credit on Halloween night. Anyway, it was already growing dark enough to provide concealment. The sun was now setting in earnest, and a nearly full moon was rising, artistically wreathed in streamers of cloud.
As she walked, occasional new fragments of memory from the alternate past continued to bubble up. Nan did her best to work them into the mosaic that was gradually taking shape in her mind. The pink balldress appeared again; it had made her cold and wet and envious of Estelle’s riding clothes, because they were sneaking through the woods to… do what? She nearly had it, and then it slipped away.
When they reached the library, Nan sternly ordered the broom to wait by the door. Inside, Estelle was curled up in a battered armchair, reading Silver on the Tree. She looked up at the sound of Nan’s footsteps. “This is your fault! How dare you recommend this series to me?” she exclaimed.
“Did you not like it?” Nan asked, rather nonplussed.
“I loved it! That’s why this ending made me so angry! They’ve had this whole magical adventure, and then at the end the Old Ones just make them forget everything. Can you imagine?”
“Yes,” said Nan. “As a matter of fact, I can.”
The librarian was giving them curious glances from her desk across the room. “I need to talk to you about something,” Nan went on in a lower voice. “Could we go outside?”
Estelle immediately set down the book and stood up. “Of course,” she said, giving Nan a kind, sorrowful look. Clearly she thought Nan was still upset about what had happened in the chemistry lab. Well, no matter; that would be straightened out soon enough.
Once they were outdoors, Nan hesitated. She wasn’t quite sure how best to introduce the subject, but the broom quickly took matters into its own hands – well, bristles, she supposed. It bounced in the air and wriggled back and forth to express its great joy at encountering Estelle again.
Estelle laughed and clapped delightedly. “How did you get it to do that? Is it going to be part of your costume?” The broom nudged up against her hand, and she patted it as though it were a friendly pony.
Apparently, the touch of the broomstick was the catalyst. Nan could see the moment when Estelle’s memories took hold. It was a strange thing to observe from the outside. A year’s worth of emotions flashed across Estelle’s face in less than a minute. Afterwards, she stood frozen, eyes wide with shock.
“So it was real,” she said wonderingly. “I knew it! Does anyone else remember?”
“Charles does,” Nan said. “We both remembered when we found the broom and the mop in the shed. And he’s telling Nirupam now. We’re all going to meet tonight to try to work out what to do.”
“Well, it’s obvious what we need to do,” Estelle said. “We’ve just got to talk to him.”
“Talk to who?” Nan was baffled. “Brian Wentworth?”
“Nan! Obviously not stinking Brian Wentworth! We have to talk to him. What’s-His-Name. The enchanter in the pretty clothes. We’ll ask him to fix it.”