Flora's Dare: How a Girl of Spirit Gambles All to Expand Her Vocabulary, Confront a Bouncing Boy Terror, and Try to Save Califa from a Shaky Doom (Despite Being Confined to Her Room) Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Table of Contents

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  What I Learned Last Term

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-One

  Twenty-Two

  Twenty-Three

  Twenty-Four

  Twenty-Five

  Twenty-Six

  Twenty-Seven

  Twenty-Eight

  Twenty-Nine

  Thirty

  Thirty-One

  Thirty-Two

  Thirty-Three

  Thirty-Four

  Thirty-Five

  Thirty-Six

  Thirty-Seven

  Thirty-Eight

  Thirty-Nine

  Forty

  Forty-One

  Forty-Two

  Forty-Three

  Forty-Four

  Forty-Five

  Forty-Six

  Forty-Seven

  Forty-Eight

  Forty-Nine

  Fifty

  After

  Sample Chapter from FLORA’S FURY

  Buy the Book

  About the Author

  Copyright © 2008 by Ysabeau S. Wilce

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  Requests for permission to make copies of any part of the work should be submitted online at www.harcourt.com/contact or mailed to the following address: Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company 215 Park Avenue South, New York, New York 10003

  www.hmhbooks.com

  The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:

  Wilce, Ysabeau S.

  Flora’s dare: how a girl of spirit gambles all to expand her vocabulary confront a bouncing boy terror, and try to save Califa from a shaky doom (despite being confined to her room)/Ysabeau S. Wilce.

  p. cm.

  Summary: Fourteen-year-old Flora Fyrdraaca fights a giant sea creature, rescues her best friend from a mass murderer, and more, all while lamenting her father’s newly strict enforcement of household rules now that he is no longer drinking.

  [1. Fantasy.] I. Title.

  PZ7.W6438Fl 2008

  [Fic]—dc22 2007035764

  ISBN 978-0-15-205427-4

  eISBN 978-0-547-48779-3

  v2.0712

  For Jam, my favorite kind

  In what distant deeps or skies

  Burnt the fire of thine eyes?

  On what wings dare he aspire?

  What the hand dare seize the fire?

  —WILLIAM BLAKE

  What I Learned Last Term

  An Essay by

  Flora Nemain Fyrdraaca ov Fyrdraaca

  Senior Class

  Sanctuary School

  City of Califa

  Republic of Califa

  Do not trust banished Butlers who promise they will do your chores but are actually tricking you into giving them all your Will so that you start fading into Nothing.

  Accidentally inhaling a Gramatica Invocation really hurts and can result in very sparkly upchucking.

  The trick to forging a signature is turning the original upside down before you try to copy it.

  After a week in the bottom of an oubliette, even great heroes smell pretty bad.

  Eight-foot-tall blue praterhuman entities with razor-sharp fangs, needle-sharp mustachios, and shiny sharp tusks can actually be quite nice.

  It is easier to face your greatest enemy when you look fantastic.

  Nothing is stronger than your own Will.

  OF COURSE, these things are not what I was supposed to learn last term.

  When Archangel Bob gave out this assignment (and I’d like to point out it’s entirely unfair to have to do homework over the holiday break), I know he expected me to list the things I’d learned last term at Sanctuary School. And I was supposed to learn a lot. For example, in Charm and Deportment I was supposed to learn how to say no without giving offense. In Scriptive I was supposed to learn how to write beautifully in Splendiferous Script. In Dressmaking I was supposed to learn how to inset sleeves and make cartridge pleats. In Math I was supposed to learn how to calculate square roots.

  Ayah, so I did learn how to read Splendiferous Script (though I never quite managed to learn how to write it—at least not legibly), but who uses Splendiferous Script anymore? Only government clerks and really old people—neither of which I am. I didn’t quite manage the rest of the lessons, but so what? If people get offended when you say no, isn’t that their problem, not yours? I don’t like cartridge pleats; they make your waist look too big, and my waist looks big enough as it is. And who needs to know how to calculate a square root? Only engineers, accountants, and gunners, none of which I plan to be.

  I am going to be a ranger. And rangers do not waste their time sitting in a classroom. The greatest ranger of them all—Nyana Keegan, better known as Nini Mo—chronicled her adventures in a series of yellowback novels called Nini Mo: Coyote Queen. (Coyote being the slangy term for ranger, of course.) There is no yellowback called Nini Mo Sits in Math Class, or Nini Mo and the Curse of the Overdue Library Book, or Nini Mo vs. the Term Paper on the Orthogonal Uses of Liminal Spaces in the Novels of Lucretia McWordypants.

  Rangers are not bound by rules and regulations. Rangers move silently through the world, unnoticed and unknown, and yet they see everything. They are clever, cunning, and shrewd. Rangers are adept at working the magickal Current. They can cross from the Waking World to Elsewhere as easily as moving from one room to another. They follow their own Wills, not the Wills of others. They are to their own selves true. They seek out secret truths, and find that which has been hidden.

  Nini Mo did not let school interfere with her education, and neither do I. To be fair, I will admit that sometimes the stuff they try to stuff down you is helpful: For example, when you are running from a hungry domicilic denizen you are pretty glad that you didn’t skip gym class. And when you have to go to your family’s worst enemy and beg for his help, it is useful to have practiced your manners in Charm and Deportment until they are perfect.

  But overall, after ten years of school, I can state with authority that formal education is all about sitting and listening and repeating and reading, and doing busy work. Calculate, If Udo has four cupcakes and you have six cupcakes, which cupcake is blue? And, Define the word defenestration and use it in a sentence. (Before you defenestrate your math book, you should open the window first.) Write out, I will not return my library books two weeks late ever again, one hundred and fifty times. Maybe these things are useful in school, but they are not very helpful in Real Life.

  And this I learned the hard way—in Real Life.

  My Real Life
education started in the middle of last term, when I accidentally found Valefor, our family’s long banished Butler, locked in the Bibliotheca Mayor. Val was pretty sad about being locked in the library, powerless to keep up our House; I was pretty sad about the decrepit state of Crackpot Hall. We struck a deal: In return for help with my chores (I know—it does sound stupid now, doesn’t it?—but I had a lot of chores), I would share my Anima with him—my Will, my spirit—and try to restore him. (This turned out to be Lesson One.)

  To restore Val, Udo (my best friend, who also does not allow school to interfere with his education—or his fashion sense) and I had to find Valefor’s fetish, which we almost did, thanks to a handy-dandy Discernment Sigil we found in the handy-dandy magickal handbook The Es-chatanomicon.(Here’s Lesson Two.) But before we could restore Val to full power, I discovered that Mamma, who is the Commanding General of the Army of Califa, had captured the infamous Dainty Pirate and was going to hang him. The infamous Dainty Pirate turned out to be Boy Hansgen, the last true ranger, in disguise. Udo and I couldn’t let the last true ranger die, so we tried to rescue him. This involved a forged order of release and a deep-cover infiltration of Zoo Battery, where he was being held. (Lessons Three and Four.) We almost succeeded, but at the last minute, Boy Hansgen was snatched away from us, and killed.

  This failure was crushing, horrific, excruciating, awful. But the worst was to come: I then discovered that Valefor had infected me with Anima Enervation—a dreadful magickal wasting disease of the Will. If we did not restore Valefor immediately, he would dwindle and disappear into the Abyss of Nowhere—and take me with him.

  But the Restoration Sigil required a Semiote Verb—a Gramatica Word so concentrated that it could be in only one place at a time—and that Semiote Verb was kept at Bilskinir House. Ayah, Bilskinir House, the House of the Haðraaða Family, closed ever since the last Haðraaða died years ago. Closed and guarded by a fearsome Butler called Paimon, a denizen whose sharp appetite and sharper teeth were legendary for their ferocity.

  We had no choice. If I was to be saved—if Valefor was to be saved—Udo and I had to get into Bilskinir House, and hope to sneak by Paimon, steal the Word, and scarper without running into any sharpness—teeth, tusks, or otherwise. Lucky for us, Bilskinir was not nearly as boo-spooky as we’d heard, and Paimon, although fearsome, was welcoming. And an excellent cook, too, which I suppose makes sense, as by their very nature domicilic denizens are domestic. (Lesson Five.) But instead of giving us the Semiote Verb, Paimon gave us really awful news. Only Mamma, the Head of the Fyrdraaca House, could restore Valefor. And Mamma was out of town. By the time she came home, it would be too late; Val and I would have vanished into the Abyss of Nowhere.

  After a slight misunderstanding and an accidental side trip into Bilskinir’s past, where we met Poppy, much younger and far less crazy than he is now, Udo and I came up with a new plan. I had only one hope: Go to Lord Axacaya, the City’s greatest magickal adept—and Mamma’s greatest enemy—and beg him for help. I quivered at the thought. But, Desperation makes you desperate, said Nini Mo. I had no choice. (Lesson Six.)

  Well, Lord Axacaya wasn’t so very helpful. In fact, he was downright mean. He pointed out the flaws in my recent behavior: that I had gone behind Mamma’s back to help Valefor in the first place, that I had no business meddling in the City’s politics by trying to rescue Boy Hansgen, and that I had lied, cheated, stolen, and forged. True, in retrospect, I had been quite a snapperhead, but that was no reason for Lord Axacaya to threaten my family, which he did, saying that it was Mamma and Poppy’s fault that I was so badly brought up, that it was Poppy’s fault I was gallivanting around causing trouble. The meaner Lord Axacaya was, the angrier I got. If I’d been a snapperhead, that was my problem—Mamma and Poppy weren’t to blame.

  I exploded in rage—and my fury saved me. My anger strengthened my Will and broke the link between me and Valefor. I refused to be pushed around anymore by anyone, and that turned out to be the thing that saved me. (Lesson Seven.) And Lord Axacaya had only been baiting me, to get me to stand up for myself; once I was myself again, he was really quite gracious. I’m not sure why Mamma hates him so.

  (Oh, and Lesson Eight: Don’t always believe your eyes. Udo and I had thought we had seen Lord Axacaya’s guards kill Boy Hansgen, but they had only made it look like they did. Actually, they had allowed Boy Hansgen to escape.)

  So that’s a short summation of what I learned, and how—and why. A ranger learns from her mistakes, Nini Mo said. I made plenty of mistakes, and I think I’ve done a pretty good job of learning from them.

  Now, I’m supposed to finish up this essay (which, of course, I’ll never turn in —not everyone needs to know everything, said Nini Mo) by discussing what I want to learn next term, my last term at Sanctuary School.

  Well, I would like to learn how to start a fire with a piece of ice. How to load one hundred pounds on a mule. How to hold my breath for ten minutes. And most important: I want to learn Gramatica, the language of magick.

  True Invocations and Sigils require Gramatica, and Gramatica is fiendishly complicated. The words are sounds, but they are also gestures, and colors, and lights. Gramatica is also horribly dangerous. If you mispronounce a Word, awful things can happen. You could try to open a lock and instead turn your head backward. You could try to light a match and instead set your hair on fire. All because you had inflected up when you should have inflected down, or klick ed where you should have klack ed, or stood on one foot instead of three. One mispronounced Gramatica Word and you could evaporate all the water in the Bay or summon up an ice-storm elemental, or turn time back.

  I know a few words of Gramatica, but they are tiny small words that do tiny small things: ignite coldfire sparks, charge small sigils—nothing big, nothing interesting. If I’m going to be a ranger, I’m going to have to learn a whole lot more.

  And Sanctuary definitely does not teach Gramatica.

  One

  Dirty Dishes. A Brief Recap. Woe.

  FINALLY, THE TERM was over and two weeks of freedom loomed. Two weeks of freedom from Sanctuary School, that is. There was no escape from Poppy.

  “I think,” I said, sorrowfully, “that I liked Poppy better when he was drunk.” My back hurt from leaning over the sink, and the dishwater was now cold and greasy. Happily, I was on the last pan. It was crusty and black, but it was the last. The last pan, the last chore, and then, I would be free for the first night of term break.

  “There is no pleasing some people,” Valefor replied from his vaporous perch high on top of the kitchen dresser. Valefor was the one who should have been doing the dishes, and everything else as well. Thanks to his banishment, he was a mere wisp, and his helpfulness was limited to criticism, which I did not find helpful in the slightest. And he had to lay low, too. If Mamma discovered him flitting about, he would be in a World of Hurt.

  Valefor continued. “You complained when Hotspur was drunk and wallowing all the time; now he’s straight as straight, and you complain about that, too, Flora Segunda.”

  I put the last pan in the dish drainer, then straightened up, feeling a hundred years old, and as though I’d been washing up for ninety of those years. It was only Mamma, Poppy, and me at home, yet somehow we were generating enough dirty dishes for an entire regiment. Poppy’s fault, really; he was cooking meals big enough for an entire regiment, even though Mamma ate only breakfast at home, I ate dinner at Sanctuary School, and it was usually just Poppy and me for supper.

  “I never thought he’d turn out to be such a tyrant,” I said. “He’s a hundred times worse than Mamma. At least Mamma isn’t around enough to crawl down your throat. Poppy never leaves the house. He’s always here. There’s no escaping. Flynnie, get out of there.”

  At my gentle kick, Flynn slunk away from the garbage can, looking dejected, as though he’d never been fed before in his life. Which was, of course, false, as he’d not only already had dinner, but had licked the plates before I washed them—save
s on the scrubbing, you know.

  “Hotspur is overcompensating,” Valefor explained. “He always goes too far. When he was brave, he was the bravest ever. When he was in love, you’d have thought no one had ever loved so much. When he was crazy, no lunatic ever howled so loud. And now that he’s sober, he’s so straight you could rule your paper with him.”

  “Can’t he just be somewhere in the comfy middle?” I pulled the plug and let the nasty water glug out of the sink. There, that was it. Punto finale for Flora and the dishes. Punto finale for my last chore of the day. And not a moment too soon. The kitchen clock was about to chime eight. If I didn’t get a move on it, I was going to be late meeting Udo, and I hate being late. The only thing that it’s good to be late for, said Nini Mo, is your own funeral.

  “No Fyrdraaca ever sat in the comfy middle,” Val pronounced. “We are all about the razor-thin edge of extreme. It’s our family hallmark.”

  “Ha,” I said, sourly, for he was certainly right there.

  “Anyway, you wanted things to change, and they did. So stop complaining.”

  “Ha.” Even more sourly, for he was right there, as well.

  My Catorcena—my fourteenth birthday whereon I became officially an adult—was three months past, and things had changed, and yet nothing at all changed, really. Of course, I hadn’t expected miracles—I wasn’t that childish, even at my most optimistic—but immediately after my birthday celebration, things had looked mighty promising.

  Take Poppy, for example. During the Huitzil War, Poppy had been a prisoner, and almost executed for war crimes. At the end of the War, Mamma ransomed him, but Poppy came home sick, crazy, and a drunk. And so he had remained until finally he had promised to try to forget the woes of the past and stay sober.

  He had kept his promise. But Poppy sober was almost as bad as Poppy drunk, only in an entirely different way. Drunk Poppy was a lunatic. Sober Poppy was a tyrant. A martinet. What in the Army they call a whip. What I call a giant huge pain in my hinder.