Hollowpox The Hunt for Morrigan Crow - Jessica Townsend Page 0,29
Arcane Arts. Murgatroyd the Scholar Mistress had promised her an education in being a Wundersmith, and Morrigan was planning to gather up her courage, march right into her office and demand that she finally fulfil that promise.
Something caught her eye – the golden circle on the black station door was pulsating with a soft golden glow, the signal that Hometrain was on its way. With a resigned sigh and a last sip of tea, she snatched up her brolly and pressed the W imprint on her index finger to the circle. It swung open to reveal the small brightly lit room she knew well.
In Morrigan’s Wunsoc wardrobe her usual uniform hung on the back of the door, but alongside it was a second jumper, a heavy coat, a pair of leather boots with thicker-than-normal woollen socks, leather gloves and a scarf – all in black. Morrigan’s lip curled at the sight of it; clearly, the Wunsoc weather phenomenon had something unpleasant in store.
She sighed again, wondering whether she might just get away with climbing back into bed. Unfortunately, the door was one step ahead, and had locked itself behind her.
‘Rude,’ Morrigan said under her breath, and reluctantly got dressed.
Miss Cheery welcomed Unit 919 back to school with a rousing cheer she’d written herself that went for a full seven minutes. (She’d even made her own pom-poms from leftover Christmas tinsel.) She handed out their new timetables, stuffed their coat pockets full of biscuits for the walk to class and then waved them off at Proudfoot Station like a proud mother hen.
On the chilly walk through the Whinging Woods, Hawthorne wasted no time in regaling Morrigan and Cadence with dramatic holiday tales from the Swift family. Their house had been invaded by a swarm of aunts, uncles and cousins from the Highlands on Boxing Day, and Morrigan hadn’t heard from him since Christmas Eve.
‘I’ve been trapped in a hell made of toddlers,’ he moaned, ‘with no news of the outside world. My cousin Jordy did a wee in my left dragonriding boot! I am so glad school’s back.’
‘That makes one of you,’ said Cadence with a sigh. ‘I had a brilliant holiday. My gran treated Mum and me to a volcanic spa break in Moonrise Bay. Ten days steaming in a hot lagoon and watching molten lava pour down the side of a mountain. It was lush.’ She tugged her collar up against the wind, looking highly resentful.
Morrigan recapped all that had happened at the Deucalion in the week since Christmas. ‘Oh – and we lost Frank for three days!’ she finished. ‘Turned out Fenestra had buried him under six feet of snow in the lobby and forgotten about him. I mean, he’s a vampire, so it’s not like he was any more dead than usual when we dug him up, but I’ve never seen him so cross. He still isn’t talking to Fen.’
They said goodbye to Cadence outside in the grounds – her first lesson was in identifying poisonous fungi in the Whinging Woods, something she could not have been less excited about.
‘Does anything normal ever happen at your place?’ Hawthorne asked Morrigan sincerely, as they climbed the marble steps of Proudfoot House and headed inside to the bank of brass railpods. Even at this early hour, a massive queue was already forming.
She snorted. ‘No. If I had my own dragon, it’d be called Lives with Lunatics. Oh – I almost forgot! Remember that leopardwun from Christmas Eve?’
‘I was trying to forget it, to be honest,’ he said, cringing. ‘Still haven’t told Mum and Dad about that.’
‘They’ll probably hear about it anyway,’ said Morrigan, ‘because she’s famous!’
She proceeded to tell Hawthorne all about Juvela De Flimsé (he’d never heard of her either) and about Dame Chanda’s visit to the hospital with Jupiter.
‘But they were turned away,’ she said. ‘Even with their W pins. Then the next day they tried again but she’d been taken somewhere else, and they weren’t even allowed to know where. Isn’t that weird?’
‘Bit weird,’ agreed Hawthorne, sounding only vaguely interested. He craned his neck, counting the people queueing in front of them. Railpods whooshed in and out of the platform. ‘We’re gonna be late.’
The large brass spheres were part of the Society’s internal-external travel network and could take you anywhere inside Wunsoc (if you had permission to be there), and to most of the Wunderground stations in Nevermoor. They hung suspended from a cable in a long line, and as each pod disappeared into the narrow,