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Breeder.
I fought back the bitterness, not wanting to give the other students the satisfaction.
“Here,” she said, stopping at a massive pair of chestnut doors.
I followed her into a space so airy, so bright, so enormous it seemed impossible that it could be part of the imposing stone castle that housed it.
The scale of it reminded me of 30th Street Station in Philadelphia, and how small I had felt the first time I stepped inside, clinging to my mother’s hand, Jon holding her other one, his face tilted upward in awe so that I knew what my own expression must look like.
But this room was round and more peaceful than imposing. The ceiling soared in elegant arches, with a glass dome in the center and bright ring of high windows around the circular library, allowing the pale light of dawn to pour inside. Antique rugs even more beautiful than the ones in the halls of our living quarters swallowed up the sound of our footsteps on the snowy white marble floors.
But the most amazing part was the giant oak tree that grew right in the center of the big room, the base of its enormous trunk so wide that I guessed it would take a half-dozen students to encircle it hand to hand. The massive boughs reached up toward the ceiling, branching smaller and smaller as they rose. Bright green leaves that showed no sign of autumn drank in the morning sunlight that bathed the room.
All around the tree, an orchard of bookshelves spoked out from the center of the library in neat rows. But there were statues too, and display tables covered over in glass, and even a few smaller, potted fig trees, and a fountain.
The walls that weren’t covered in books were adorned with paintings of stern looking women and framed scrolls.
“My God,” I whispered.
There were enough volumes in here that I could lose myself, forever if I wanted. And somewhere in this room, was the key to my brother’s happiness. I was sure of it.
“Come on,” she whispered, half-dragging me further inside.
“Ah, Miss Hawthorne, you’re back,” Headmistress Hart said in a way that made it sound like she was more than a little surprised. “We’re glad to see you.”
I resisted the impulse to roll my eyes.
“Where should we go, Headmistress?” Anya asked politely.
“Go with the other first-years, over by Divination,” she replied.
I realized then that while my eyes had been drawn upward to the ceiling and the tree, I had missed the fact that groups of students surrounded the perimeter of the space.
Anya and I jogged over to the place the headmistress had pointed to. Two other women were already standing there. They moved over slightly to give us more space, and I recognized one from yesterday.
“Nina, Lark, this is Bella,” Anya said, pointing to the young Black woman with the puffy ponytail who did the notebook trick during my Price of Magic lecture, and another girl I hadn’t met before, a white girl with mousy brown hair and purple cats-eye glasses.
“Nice to meet you,” I murmured.
From where we stood, I could see the broken glass from one of the high windows and the muddy footprints on the pristine marble floor. Whoever had broken in had been lucky not to break their neck in the process. There were books on the floor in that section as well, as if they had used the high shelves as a ladder and knocked them off on their way down.
Before I could ask about it, the headmistress lifted her arms and everyone around the library did the same, palms up.
I lifted my hands and closed my eyes to clear my mind. It was hard not to look around. Wards were all fine and well, but all I really wanted to do was to find the section with books on healing.
I was expecting some kind of monotonous chant, but surprisingly, the headmistress began to sing, her voice deep and lovely. The language of the song wasn’t familiar to me, but as I listened, its meaning seemed to appear behind my eyes.
I saw a constellation of radiant stars, sliding out into a line and then tightening together in a circle, like pearls around a dowager’s neck.
The air around me seemed to fill with the scent of cinnamon. It slammed me into a memory of baking oatmeal cookies with Jon in our old apartment.
I could see the light bleeding in around the blinds. Jon had a serious expression on his face and flecks of flour in his dark hair.
I snuck a bite of cookie dough while his back was turned. As it melted in my mouth, I watched as he opened the oven, releasing a wave of deliciously warm air into our drafty little kitchen.
Christmas music was playing on the tinny little radio we kept on the counter. Tchaikovsky’sThe Nutcrackercame on.
When Jon straightened, he was smiling. He grabbed me and we pretend ballet-danced all over the kitchen, laughing our heads off.
