Hollowpox The Hunt for Morrigan Crow - Jessica Townsend Page 0,9
door opened, and Elder Quinn entered the room. She started a little when she saw them on the floor.
‘Goodness me,’ she said, pointing up at the safety loops dangling from the ceiling, which they had all failed to notice. She made a little hooking gesture with her finger. ‘Didn’t any of you bring a brolly?’
Morrigan closed her eyes again, silently willing her lunch to stay just where it was.
Slightly battered and wholly baffled, Unit 919 followed Elder Quinn out of the tiny room and down a long, brightly lit hallway. It was wide and rather grand, lined with portraits of former Elders and gas lamps set in sconces, and it reminded Morrigan of the Hotel Deucalion.
‘Containment and Distraction is like trying to plug a thousand tiny leaking holes using only ten fingers,’ Elder Quinn told them as she shuffled along more quickly than Morrigan would have thought her able to. ‘It is an endless, thankless, dirty, dangerous, repetitious job, but one that we are privileged to perform. And now, that privilege is also yours.’
She turned her head to either side, glancing at the scholars scurrying along behind her.
‘I know what you’re all wondering. Same thing they wonder every year. What does this mean for you? Have you been unwittingly drafted into an army to fight against the forces of darkness, to spend the rest of your lives battling the creatures of the night?’
That was not at all what Morrigan had been wondering, but now she was.
‘Well, perhaps. If that’s what you want. If that’s what you’re good at. Or perhaps you will never have to see any of these wretched things again. Perhaps your destiny, your lifelong role in the Wundrous Society, is to bring light to the world, in whatever form that might take – music, or art, or politics, or making a truly excellent leek and potato soup – to balance out the dark. To distract people from it. To keep Nevermoor from being consumed by it.’
Elder Quinn stopped at the end of the hallway, just outside the doors, and turned to face Unit 919. She was several inches shorter than most of them, but Morrigan felt she was being stared down by a giant.
‘I do not know what role each of you scholars will play in the vital work of the Wundrous Society,’ she said in a low voice. ‘That is up to you.’
The doors opened behind her.
‘Welcome to the Gathering Place.’
CHAPTER THREE
The Gathering Place
It was a bit like walking into the Trollosseum. Except indoors, and darker, and smaller, and the arena-style seating was filled with reasonably well-behaved Wundrous Society members, instead of rambunctious louts bellowing encouragement at trolls to spill more blood and knock each other’s heads off.
‘This week’s gathering has already begun,’ murmured Elder Quinn, directing them to a knot of empty seats towards the back of the amphitheatre. ‘Usually the junior units sit closer to the centre, as you can see, but as it’s your first time attending, you may sit here in the back and observe.’
She left them to get settled and headed down an aisle of stairs to the centre of the circular room, where Elder Saga had kept her a seat. Elder Wong was standing on the dais, holding court.
A few older Society members turned around to peer curiously at Unit 919, and she might have imagined it, but she thought their eyes lingered longer on her than the others.
She felt a weight on her shoulders. The words of Elder Quinn’s speech were still ringing inside her mind, and she had a sudden, deeper understanding of her place here.
It was even more obvious to her now why she had felt so much quiet animosity from the older scholars since they’d learned she was a Wundersmith. It wasn’t simply that everyone in Nevermoor knew Wundersmiths were dangerous. The Society knew exactly how dangerous they were. Exactly how chaotic and messy, exactly how their actions – even from many years ago – could leave scars and unhealed wounds on a city, hiding in plain sight. They knew because they were still cleaning up the mess.
Still, Morrigan said to herself, sitting up a little straighter and shaking off her glumness. It wasn’t me. I didn’t make a load of snake thingies and vulture-people, for goodness’ sake.
She resented being lumped in with Ezra Squall and every other Wundersmith who ever lived. She wasn’t a cursed child any more, hiding in the second sitting room at Crow Manor, writing apology letters for ruined jam and broken