time that has been plucked from the annals of history, to be witnessed and observed in the present day, in the exact same place. Retrieving and saving a ghostly hour is horrendously difficult – only someone with prodigious skill can do it, but done right the hours will relive themselves indefinitely.’
‘For example,’ continued Conall, ‘this one here, look: First Wednesday, Spring of Two, nine o’clock. Room Tarazed. An intermediate lesson in shadowmaking.’
‘Shadowmaking!’ Morrigan shouted in pure delight. ‘Like the man we just saw. Am I going to learn that?’
‘Shadowmaking falls under Veil, so yes, all in good time.’ He pointed to the last column. ‘Now, this is an annually recurring ghostly hour. You see that little circled “A”? That means that every year on the first Wednesday of Spring at nine o’clock in the morning, you can watch the events that occurred in that precise location.’
He pointed out another listing on the same page. ‘But look – you’ll notice some of them have this little symbol here, can you see that? That little arrow circling in on itself? That means the ghostly hour exists on a perpetual loop. You could sit and observe it for the rest of your life.’
‘Though we don’t suggest it,’ added Sofia. ‘The name is deceiving in another way, too, because you’ll notice they’re not always hours. Sometimes they’re only minutes long. Sometimes they go all day, though that’s very rare.
‘Morrigan, ever since we learned there was a Wundersmith among us again, Rook and Conall and I combed through the book, looking for the most useful and interesting lessons. That’s what all these ghostly hours represent – lessons in the Wundrous Arts, from the best teachers in history. You will be taught directly by your predecessors, stretching back through the Ages – hundreds and hundreds of years. There is so much here for you to learn.’
Morrigan flipped through the ledger, more excited than she could ever remember feeling. There must have been thousands of ghostly hours recorded in these pages. Thousands of opportunities to witness the Wundrous Arts in action, to learn them for herself. This book was a treasure chest and a time machine and a dream come true.
She was going to become a proper Wundersmith.
Finally.
‘How is any of this possible?’ she asked.
‘It’s possible, Morrigan, through the Wundrous Art of Tempus,’ said Sofia. ‘Tempus is the manipulation of time in various ways – moving through it, recording and preserving it, looping it, shrinking it, stretching it—’
‘Stretching it?’ Morrigan looked up in surprise. ‘Like Professor Onstald? That was my teacher last year, he … was teaching me the history of Wundersmiths, or at least he was supposed to be. But he could do that, he could stretch time! Are you saying that’s a Wundrous Art?’ She burst out laughing. ‘If Onstald had known his knack was a Wundrous Art, he would have—’
‘He did know that,’ Conall said gravely.
Morrigan frowned. ‘But … he can’t have been a Wundersmith, he hated Wundersmiths.’
‘No, he wasn’t a Wundersmith.’ He shook his head. ‘He was one of us.’
Sofia trotted lightly to the end of the table and stood up on her hind legs, nodding at a small drawing on a piece of paper torn from a sketchbook – a very good rendering of Professor Onstald the tortoisewun’s green leathery face, tufty white hair and enormous domed shell. Morrigan hadn’t noticed it before. It was stuck up on the wall at a careless angle, dwarfed by the many framed paintings and printed maps that surrounded it. Written across the bottom were the words ‘Sub-Nine Academic Group Founder’.
‘His record keeping was meticulous,’ said Sofia.
Morrigan looked down at the pages in front of her. The hundreds of tight, nearly microscopic rows of text in neat, precise handwriting. ‘Professor Onstald did this?’
‘He wrote The Book of Ghostly Hours, yes,’ said Sofia. ‘And he created a few of the ghostly hours himself. But most of them already existed here, preserved by other Wundersmiths throughout history. Ghostly hours have always been used by Wundersmiths as a teaching and learning tool. Onstald found the ones that already existed, annotated them and recorded their details.’
‘This book was Onstald’s life’s work,’ said Conall, tapping the pages. ‘Part of it, anyway. The other part was learning the art of Tempus. That wasn’t his knack, Morrigan, it was his lifelong mission and obsession. His knack was – lord, I don’t even remember, do you, Sofia?’
‘No,’ she said thoughtfully. ‘Something Mundane, I think. I didn’t really know him.’
‘The point is,’ said Conall, ‘anyone