Restless

That night, Airi couldn’t sleep. She tossed and turned on the watery bed conjured by Wendolyn and gazed up through the glass dome of the tower. The stars glittered, but she thought they were dimmer than when she’d first arrived in this world.

As she watched, a star fell across the dome. Then another.

“How often do stars fall?”

“Once every hundred years,” Nestor had replied.

The falling stars, the increased monster activity. Even Esther’s escape. It felt like the moment Airi had noticed Kazuko missing in math class, like the start of something bigger.

Staring at the sky made relaxing impossible. Airi cast one last envious glance at Mildred, and began the spiraling climb to the bottom of the tower. The pool contained a perfect reflection of the starry sky. Airi walked to its edge and looked at her own reflection.

Miraculously and eerily, her injuries had vanished, leaving only the gold scar around her crystalline neck as proof that she had fought Gold.

Her hair was getting long. It hadn’t been that long since she’d arrived in this world, had it?

“You are a monster too.”

Weighing the star shard in her hand, Airi thought about slicing her hair to its original length. She tried to imagine her reflection as it had looked before: an unassuming schoolgirl with short black hair and Mom's summery blue eyes. That imaginary reflection felt like a stranger.

Instead, she wound her hair around the star shard. It made a sturdy hairpin.

Morning came, and sleep still eluded Airi. Sunlight illuminated the blue-green willows, and birds flitted in and out of sunken fountains. Mildred and Airi watched Wendolyn levitate across the lake and disappear into the distant fog.

“Shouldn’t you have used the wayfinding spell on her?” Airi asked.

“She can return safely on her own. It’ll only take a day.” Since they were returning to Magisbury, Mildred had donned her white mage robes, though she kept her hair down. Regretfully, Airi had put on her mage robes, too. How much longer would she have to keep up the charade of a false mage?

“I guess we should go too,” Airi said, secretly dreading The Magical Map.

“I guess.” Mildred looked around at the beautiful scenery and closed her eyes, as if visualizing the palace in its place.

This time, Airi broke into a run right away, pulling Mildred across the lake. Ducks swam and frogs hopped for their lives. When they zipped past Wendolyn, Mildred briefly made eye contact with the red-eyed mage, who smiled and waved.

The wind overturned a few unlucky boats tethered to the docks in Swamp Glade. They blew through the parasol ferns, which bobbed violently and scattere dewdrops everywhere, and soon the cliffs of Stonecliff loomed on either side of them. Airi saw very little of the town itself, since the wind took them along the river and straight up the waterfall.

They flew over the Lullaby River, countryside whizzing by all around them. It looked utterly empty to Airi, who was used to every available tract of land being filled with houses.

The great terraced city of Magisbury rose into view. Airi saw that the river they were following flowed to a waterfall, just like the Wrath River.

“The Lullaby Gate,” Mildred shouted.

At the bottom of the waterfall, there were people lined up, even this early in the morning. She and Mildred leaped over the crowd, lifted by the wind, and landed in the opulent streets of Magisbury. The only people out and about were the blue-robed waterway mages; perhaps nobles preferred to sleep in.

Even arriving at the palace, Airi had no idea that anything was amiss. However, when they arrived in the Lower Palace, it became clear.

The first thing Airi noticed was the silence. It was never this silent in Lower II, not on a school day.

Then she saw the people stationed every few paces in the hallway. Mages? No, their insignias had swords and shields on them, not stars. Their eyes followed her and Mildred down the hallway, and when they saw Mildred’s gold crest, their hands tightened around their spears.

“Who are they?” she whispered into Mildred’s ear.

“Shh. Royal inspectors.”

“They look more like guards...”

Walking down the hallway, they reached Marianne’s office, where four burly inspectors stood in the waiting room. Airi tried not to make eye contact with any of them. The lily gramophone played softly in the background, oblivious to the tension in the room.

Mildred knocked on the door with the wolf's-claw knocker. The door swung open, revealing Marianne, prettier than ever in her rose-colored robes. “Mildred, Airi! Welcome back!” Her pink eyes gleamed joyfully.

Airi closed the door behind them.

“So, Gold...?” Marianne said.

“Defeated,” Mildred said.

“Perfect!” Marianne sat down, resting her elbows on the giant map. Airi noticed more red Xs on it than before. “That was faster than I expected. I knew you could defeat that nasty old monster!”

“Speaking of.” Mildred’s eyes flashed. “Have you found the mons—”

“The missing quills? Why, yes, I have! I misplaced them in my own bedroom; can you believe it?” Marianne interrupted, giggling.

“No, I meant Esth—”

"You must be tired," Marianne said, with a warning glance at the door. "I think you should go to bed now. Get a good night's sleep! You've certainly earned it." Her smile didn't quite reach her eyes.

Gradually, Airi got used to the ever-present royal inspectors. She noticed that most of the mages just avoided looking at them and continued life as normal.

Mildred still disappeared for most of the day, but sometimes she invited Airi to come along. Airi would sit in the Wind Study Room, watching Mildred funnel tiny paper cranes through miniature tunnels and study the contents of rattling glass jars.

One day, Mildred took her to the Library of Living Spells on Lower IV.

“Why’s it called—”

“It contains the newest version of each spell.”

Airi hadn’t seen any stairs leading to Lower IV. She wondered if they were hidden. Mildred walked to the middle of a large room, where the floor tiles formed a mural resembling the night sky, and cast Wolf at the Door. The starry mural sank, descending into a vast, lamplit library. The ceiling was a giant dome surrounded by a ring of statues. Bookshelves formed pillars all the way to the ceiling, and mages levitated to find the books they were looking for.

Murals of famous fairytales decorated the walls. The floor was a glittering sea of turquoise-and-blue tiles with flecks of white.

The Great Ocean.

On the highest dome of the ceiling, there was a mural of a gorgeous, golden-haired princess asleep on a bed of red roses, her face pale as death.

The Sleeping Princess.

Painted on the backside of every door was a wolf, claws reaching for the lamb’s-head knob. Its yellow eyes and slavering teeth were so realistic that Airi had to look away.

Wolf at the Door.

Avoiding the wolf’s eyes, Airi browsed through the shelves, choosing the books that looked most interesting. She was especially curious about Wolf at the Door, The Great Ocean, and The Sleeping Princess—the three Legendary Tales.

She and Mildred settled down at a quiet desk. Mildred had chosen three thick books: Greenwillow Park, Coming and Going, and When the Wind Dies Down. Literature-wise, they were definitely on the difficult end of the fairytale spectrum. Airi couldn't imagine someone memorizing any one of them, let alone reading the whole thing to cast a single spell.

"Are those really spells?" she asked. "How do you memorize that?"

Mildred looked up from her book. She wore an annoyed expression, as she always did when Airi interrupted her reading. "With time and concentration."

"Is that why you can cast spells so quickly? Because you read the book over and over?"

Mildred sighed and slipped a bookmark into her book, closing it. "It's not just brute repetition. It's understanding. Over time, you start to understand the essence of the story. It's like... like navigating somewhere. At first, you need to follow a map, but over time, your mind automatically knows where to go."

“Why fairytales? Why not... I don’t know, textbooks?”

“Which would you remember better, a fairytale or a textbook?" Mildred asked. "What's the last textbook you read that you actually remember?"

Airi thought back to her math class with Kazuko. They'd had a textbook for that class, but all the numbers and formulas blurred together. Something about sine and cosine...? A lot of triangles, for sure.

"People forget textbooks, or they become outdated. Stories get passed down." Mildred put her hand on The Sleeping Princess, pointing at a name in the corner: 'Elowen.' "That's why everyone writes their own spells. It's a way for the soul to live on, a thousand years later.”

Leaving the library, Airi studied the statues circling the dome. Their marble eyes glared down at the library, watching over generations of mages to come. Each held a spellbook, presumably the one they'd written. She saw beautiful Elowen holding The Sleeping Princess against her bosom and shuddered, remembering her last encounter with a statue of Elowen.

One of the statues stood out. Unlike the others, it was only a child: a girl with star-shaped pupils, hugging The Magical Map. Her face wore a curious expression, as if she wasn't quite sure how she'd ended up on the dome.

Airi glanced at the mage by her side. Mildred's star-shaped pupils met Airi's. "What?" she asked, tilting her head slightly.

"Nothing." Airi smiled. She thought she could still see a fragment of that curious child in Mildred.