The Magic Mirror of the Mermaid Queen - Delia Sherman [16]
I wiped sweat out of my eyes, shoved back my hair, and stepped onto the beam.
At the other end was Tiffany, the Debutante Terror.
She wasn’t sweating, not that I could see. Her grin said that in a minute I was going to be floating with my butt in the air, a stupid expression on my face, and everybody in the room laughing at me because there’s no rule against laughing when somebody takes a fall. It was a Wild Hunt grin, a troll grin. It made me mad.
Iron beams are a whole lot easier to walk on than log bridges. I felt pretty stable as I walked toward Tiffany, who was walking toward me. Neither one of us held our arms out for balance.
We met somewhere around the middle.
“Back up, Wild Child.”
“No way.”
Tiffany gave me her best menacing stare. It was like being hit with ice balls. “Don’t tell me you expect me to back up?”
I shrugged. “We could cooperate. Everybody else seems to have managed. I’m sure we could think of something.”
“You could jump.”
“So could you.”
The Quester shouted up at us. “Move it, you guys. Time’s a-wasting.”
“You heard the Quester,” Tiffany said.
“I heard.”
Faintly, I heard the Easts and Wests who’d made it up to the roof yelling at us to hurry. Tiffany grinned evilly.
“You’re holding everybody up,” she said. “That’s selfish, you know. Nobody likes a selfish mortal. Everybody’s going to hate you even more than they already do.”
“I don’t care,” I said, and took a step toward her.
I intended to take her hands and swing around as I’d seen the other kids do, but Tiffany must have thought I was going to push her off. She flailed her arms wildly and fell off the iron beam.
I was so surprised, I nearly followed her, but managed to wobble over to the other building, where I sat down and put my head between my knees. I heard a few muttered “good work”s and a “right on” or two, along with several variations on “you’re in big trouble now.”
From down below, I heard laughter, and somebody, probably Tiffany, pitching a fairy fit.
After I’d slid down the drainpipe, the Quester lectured me about fair play and cooperation and made me spend lunchtime scrubbing the West brownstone’s steps with salt. Tiffany had to wash the East brownstone’s windows. Every once in a while, I’d look over and see her glaring at me.
I hadn’t been at Miss Van Loon’s a full cycle of the moon, and already I had a mortal enemy.
Chapter 5
RULE 968: STUDENTS MUST PAY ATTENTION AT ALL TIMES.
Miss Van Loon’s Big Book of Rules
Six days later, I wore my spidersilk dress to the Full Moon Gathering.
The dress was soft and silver-gray, with leaves woven into it. I’d found it in the Shakespeare Garden last summer, right before the Solstice Dance. I loved it. I thought it made me look like a wood elf, or maybe a hawthorn dryad—something bushy, anyway. Astris had hinted, more than once, that it was far too magic for a mortal, but I’d worn it on my quest, so she couldn’t tell me not to, even with her whiskers.
It’s always confused me, how the Folk can consider mortals important enough to steal, take care of, play with, and even use as heroes and champions, and still treat us like inferior beings. But that’s Folk for you. Not even Astris really understands that mortals have feelings, just like trolls and magical animals do.
The Autumn Equinox was only a week away. Even though the weather was still hot and humid, summer was definitely dying. The grass was brown, the dryads were getting sleepy, the days were growing shorter. During my before-Gathering