Amethyst Night - The Secrets of Nightingale Academy - Chapter 8

Whirl Wind

The woman closed the door after I had entered the room. She hung her cloak on a coat peg and dropped a couple of bags on the floor by a table that stood next to the door. Then she turned to me and looked me up and down.

“You’re shaking,” she said. Her voice had the same stern tone and clipped words as it had had in the dream. I had recognised her immediately. “Is it because you were scared or from the cold?”

I simply looked at her with a bewildered look on my face. She smiled at me and urged me into a room with a couple of sofas in it by placing a hand lightly on my back.

“You’re definitely cold,” she said, seeming slightly amused. “I’ll make some tea to warm you up.”

“Do I know you?” I asked distantly.

The woman smiled. “In a way, you do. My name is Serena Launders. Feel free to call me Serena, seeing as I’m not like the other teachers at this school.”

I looked around the room I was in. On one wall was a fireplace, on the other was a bookcase and in the corner between the two was a television. It was a lounge. Serena left the room and the sound of running water and a boiling kettle came from the direction she’d gone in – the sort of sounds you would hear in a kitchen.

“You live here,” I realised as I spoke.

“Yes I do,” she called back to me from the kitchen. “I like to stay as far away from the dormitories as possible. I’m not very fond of a lot of the little brats that come here, you see.”

“So you don’t like children?” I said sounding slightly disappointed.

“It’s not that,” she assured me. “I just can’t stand politicians’ children. They think that they’re amazing because their parents are important people with a lot of money.” She moved to stand in the doorway. “But there are certain children at this school that I simply adore. That’s why Miss Chariot gave me this house. I look after the woods and help the students who are struggling at school.”

My ears pricked up and I was listening then. I looked right into her eyes and tried to make my joy slightly less obvious. “You teach struggling students?” I said.

She smiled at me. “Yes. But I don’t get too many students and those who do come to me often leave to be taught by the normal teachers once they’ve caught up to the class.” She moved further into the room and looked at some pictures that stood on a small shelf attached to the wall. She beckoned for me to join her, so I stood at her side and was drawn to the photo in the middle. It was of Serena and a young woman with mousy brown that fell to just below her shoulder blades, rounded, pale features and beautiful, blue eyes. The woman was holding a delicate gold plate that had a design painted in blue, stating that it was the “Nightingale Plate for Excellence in Magic”.

“That is Emily. She came to me when she was just a year younger than you. She was hopeless at all her subjects when she came to me, mostly because the idiots they call teachers at this school had given up on her, but by the time she was preparing to graduate from the high school section she was one of the best students in her year.”

“Wow. Is she a really powerful witch now?” I asked, staring at the photo of the young woman in awe.

“She was,” Serena said her voice now quiet with a tone of regret. “Nobody’s seen her for almost 13 years.” A sombre look came over her face.

“I’m sorry.” I looked down at my feet, shifting awkwardly from side to side.

“It’s fine.It’s been so long since I looked at this picture.” She was now gazing at the photo as if lost in some dream of a time that had long since passed, her eyes unable to even glance at anything else. I could feel her pride for her student and her sorrow at losing her and wondered, briefly, what had happened to Emily.

I looked closely at the picture of Emily, at the massive grin on her face, at the woman at her side who was brimming with pride. “She looks like a wonderful person,” I said distantly.

“She was,” Serena agreed. “She was overlooked by all the people around her but she never let it get her down. She came to me herself, desperate to learn magic, and she stayed with me up until the moment she left Nightingale Academy.”

“You really cared for her,” I said, more to myself than to Serena.

She simply nodded, forcing back tears that threatened to spill from her eyes. Then she closed her eyes and shook her head, before turning toward me and away from the photo. “I was supposed to be making you some tea,” she said, the tone of her voice forbidding me to return to the subject of Emily. She left the room and the noise of water pouring into cups came from the kitchen behind me.

I looked at some of the other pictures. There were two more of Emily, ones where she was younger, and two of other people. I noticed that in the photos with the two different students, Serena didn’t look nearly as proud or happy as she was in the ones with Emily in them. I sat down on one of two sofas in the room, which was much more comfortable than it had initially looked, and scanned the spines of a few of the books on the bookcase. The collection mostly consisted of magic theory books and research into new magical techniques, with a few magic text books on the bottom shelf arranged in year group order. On the top two shelves, however, there was a considerable collection of novels, a lot of which, to my surprise, were titles I recognised. I was tempted to pull out the books I hadn’t read and look at the blurbs but wondered if that might be slightly rude.

A cup of tea appeared on the coffee table in front of and my eyes rushed to find the source. Serena smiled at me, placing another cup of tea on the other side of the table, closer to other sofa, and walked over to the bookcase. She reached up and took one of the books from the top shelf, which she held out to me.

“I think you’d like that one,” she said.

Without asking the obvious questions about how she knew that, I took the book and turned it over to read the blurb – she was right, the book was definitely appealing to me.

“So why are you so upset?” she asked, sitting down on the sofa opposite me.

I hesitated, passing the book from one hand to another and turning over repeatedly, but when I looked up at the serious look on her face I realised that I couldn’t delay telling her any longer. “Apparently I’m not Amethyst Night,” I said, acting like the words hurt less than they actually did. “And the real Amethyst Night is dead.”

The sombre look returned to her face. Then she smiled to mask her true feelings. “Don’t pay attention to people who say things like that,” she told me. “They’re just rumours.”

Even though she’d said that I couldn’t help but think that there would have to be some reason for that rumour to have started – there was something that the people at this school were keeping from me. I knew that I had to be Amethyst Night. I was Amethyst Night. That thought in itself brought another, incredibly disturbing thought into my mind. If the rumours had roots in the truth and I was Amethyst Night, then did that mean the rest of my family was dead? I shook the thought out of my head. I knew that if I asked Serena about it she probably wouldn’t tell me, so I simply smiled at her.

“It’s ok. I was just a little shocked,” I explained. I placed the book down on the table.

“So why’d you come into the West Woods of all places?” she asked, leaning back in her chair and letting all of the previous tension in her body float away.

“Um, I followed this presence,” I said. When her brow furrowed I continued. “I don’t have a broom so I’ve spent both of my flying lessons trying to find one and I sensed this presence that I thought was it. It led me here.”

Serena’s smile lit up her face in that moment. She stood up and walked towards a small fault in the wall that I now realised was a concealed door. She waved her hand in front of the door and it popped open with a faint clunk. Slowly, Serena pulled it open and then there was a moment where we both just looked at the pitch black hole where the door had been.

Suddenly something flew out at incredible speed, bounced off the ceiling and ricocheted around the room. As it moved through the air it left a trail of purple and blue sparks behind it. I could hear how fast it was travelling, cracking like thunder whenever it changed direction or speed. Its movements were accompanied by the sound of the wind whistling or rustling the trees. From every direction, I could feel the wind whipping at my hair and cooling my face, like someone had trapped a tornado in the room. When it finally crashed into the ground, I realised that the object was a broom.

“This is Whirl Wind,” she told me, lifting the broom gently from the ground. “It was Emily’s broom. And now, I believe, it’s yours.”

She held the broom out to me and I took it without really knowing what I was doing. I ran my hand along the rough wood and let it rest on the tangled bristles at the end for a moment. It was old and damaged and more beautiful than any of the top of the range brooms that they had in the shed in the courtyard, with splintering wood and an untamed brush that was still shedding a sort of purple-blue fairy dust onto the floor.

“Is it really ok for me to have it?” I asked, unable to stop myself from smiling.

“It chose to be with you, Amethyst. That is a rare honour. Before you, only Emily has been able to ride that broom. Whirl Wind’s name was given to her for a reason; she isn’t easy to control. She doesn’t let many people ride her.” Serena smiled at me.

There aren’t many people who are worthy of riding me, a voice spoke in my head. It was soft and deep but resonated through my bones. Like whispers getting lost in the wind or the sound of leaves rustling, the voice sounded mystical, like a secret voice that only I could hear. I looked down at the broom in my hands.

“Did you hear that?” I asked Serena; though I suspected I already knew the answer.

She shook her head. “Only you can hear what your broom says,” she explained to me.

For a moment I just stood there in silence staring at the broom in my hands. Then a smile came over Serena’s face and she placed a hand under my chin to make me look up at her.

“Are you struggling in your lessons, Amethyst?” she asked.

I nodded, slightly hindered by the hand under my chin.

“Would you like a private tutor?”

I looked straight into her eyes, struck dumb by my disbelief. Finally I was having some luck at this school. As soon as I regained my voice I nodded and said, “Yes. I’d love that.”

Serena’s smile spread further across her face, though a slight look of guilt seemed to reveal itself in her eyes. She opened her mouth to speak, and I was sure she was going to confess something to me that she wasn’t really supposed to say, but at that moment there was a sudden, frantic knocking at the door. Serena stopped, mouth still open but the words she was about to say now gone probably never to surface again. Then she turned and left the room to answer the door. For a moment I just stood there, not sure what else to do, cursing whoever was knocking on the door for ruining one of my chances to find out the truth as to what was going on here. I heard door open and then someone bustling into the house. Miss Chariot appeared in the doorway, a look of disapproval mixed with relief disfiguring her beautiful face.

“What the hell were you thinking?” she said sternly, having to force herself not to shout and not quite succeeding. “These woods can be dangerous at night, especially if you don’t stick to the paths. And leaving in the middle of a lesson.”

I was used to being scolded by adults who had no right to tell me what to do, so I had learned not to bother explaining to them or coming up with some stupid excuse. Instead I just said, “Sorry.” That one word made the look of disapproval on her face disappear and be replaced by a look of regret. She looked me straight in the eyes but quickly looked away.

“Well, let’s not dwell on it,” she said, awkwardly. “There are other things we need to deal with.” She turned to the door behind her. I now noticed that she wasn’t the only one to have arrived. Stood in the hallway of Serena’s house were Gemini, Leo and Parker.

“Why are they here?” I asked, not bothering to hide the spite in my voice.

“To apologise,” Miss Chariot said.

“We’re not going to apologise,” Gemini objected. “We’ve only spoken the truth.”

“Gemini,” Miss Chariot admonished him.

“I don’t care,” I interrupted. Everyone looked at me, surprised by what I’d said. “I don’t want their apologies. They told me the truth. And their apology isn’t going to make that truth any less hurtful.”

Serena smiled at me.

Well said, Whirl Wind said approvingly.

“What’s that?” Parker asked, his eyes fixed on Whirl Wind. He’d obviously chosen to ignore what the rest of us had been talking about, thinking, as usual, that what he wanted to talk about was more important. I had no objections to his arrogant demeanour today, because his subject choice happened to be something that I wanted to talk about too.

I grinned at him. “My broom,” I told him proudly.

His expression didn’t change, his ice cold eyes locked onto my vivid purple ones. Then he smiled, which was the last thing I had been expecting.

“So you are a witch after all,” he said. “I was wrong.” I became overwhelmed with joy by those words. “You are just a disappointment to the Night household.” My joy was swept away and replaced by anger.

I could see Miss Chariot and Serena readying to scold him. I cut them off before they could; I wasn’t going to let him win this one.

“We’ll see about that,” I said, giving him my most victorious grin.

The look on his face finally changed, flickering to utter disbelief for a moment before he contained himself again. I could hear Whirl Wind celebrating our victory in my head. Miss Chariot smiled at me, sharing in my relief now that I had finally found my broom – my proof that I was a witch and I was Amethyst Night. Then she took us all back to the dorms in silence. No one dared to talk, as if something in the way she held herself as she walked forebode us to. By the time we arrived Fey was already asleep, so I placed Whirl Wind up against a wall, changed and quietly climbed into bed.