Alexandra stood quietly in disbelief for a moment. "You were there? But that would mean… you're both members of the Thorn Circle!"
Lucilla and Drucilla nodded.
"All this time? You knew what our father was up to? All his plots and — and the Roanoke Underhill!"
"No, not that," Lucilla said. "He doesn't share everything with us, especially not since the Circle went into hiding."
"You knew my mother," Alexandra said. "You knew… you knew all along that Claudia wasn't my mother!"
"We've never met Claudia," Drucilla said. "And until Maximilian's funeral, we hadn't seen you since you were a baby."
"It was her choice to sever contact with the wizarding world and Father's side of the family," said Lucilla.
"You knew Ben Journey, too," Alexandra said.
"Yes. I always did think he was rather creepy," said Lucilla. "Calling us 'little cornstalks.'"
Alexandra had experienced this before — the sudden revelation of a secret everyone but her had known — and while that lessened the shock, she also felt the familiar sting of resentment, of bitterness that things had been kept from her.
Lucilla spoke placatingly. "Remember, much of what relates to the Thorn Circle we couldn't tell you, because of the Fidelius Charm. We still can't tell you who the others are, so don't ask."
Alexandra breathed in and out rapidly. Then she did some quick math in her head.
"Wait a minute," she said. "You couldn't have been much older than me…"
"We were thirteen," Lucilla said.
"Our father let you join the Thorn Circle when you were thirteen?" Alexandra exclaimed.
"He did have reservations," Lucilla said.
"Oh, that's good. At least he had reservations about—"
"About letting thirteen-year-olds risk their lives for a cause they believed in?" Drucilla's tone was dry. "About allowing them to choose for themselves whether they wanted to fight the Confederation that had so mistreated their older sister, and committed crimes against wizarding folk and Muggles alike?"
Alexandra hesitated, her indignation blunted. "It sounds like you had more choice than I did, actually. He told you a heck of a lot more than he ever told me."
Lucilla smiled sadly. "Well, your being kept away from wizarding society was Claudia's decision."
Drucilla said, "As for the rest, if you have grievances against our father, you will have to bring those up with him. We certainly can't speak for him, and we have grievances enough of our own."
"Is Valeria a member of the Thorn Circle too?" Alexandra asked.
"We wouldn't tell you if she was," Drucilla said, "but no. She was only eleven when Father became the Enemy of the Confederation. She'd barely gotten her wand. Father would not have allowed that."
"So she doesn't know that you're members of the Circle?"
Drucilla sighed. "I think she suspects."
"I think she very strongly suspects," said Lucilla. "Now please, Alexandra, no more questions about Valeria, or who else is or isn't in the Circle."
"I want to know!" Alexandra said.
"I'm sure you do," said Lucilla. "We've just revealed ourselves to you. We don't have the right to do that for anyone else."
"Even though you revealed all of us to the Wizard Justice Department," Drucilla said.
Alexandra went very still.
The twins watched her without malice or condemnation. Alexandra carefully set the Seven-League Boots she'd been holding back on the bench.
Two years ago, at the Sweethearts Dance at Charmbridge, her father had come to her, and she had demanded a boon from him. She wanted to free Anna's father, who was being imprisoned at the time for suspicion of being a member of the Thorn Circle.
Abraham Thorn had extracted the memory that was still in Alexandra's head from when she was a baby, of the Thorn Circle gathered around her as he whispered their names in her ear and made her their Secret-Keeper. He had warned her there would be a cost, but she'd given the extracted memory to Diana Grimm, and so the Confederation had finally learned the identities of all the Thorn Circle.
"That's why you've been in hiding for the last two years, and had to put a Fidelius Charm on your house," she said. "Oh my God. And you just go into town even though the Aurors and Special Inquisitors would arrest you on sight?"
"The Aurors aren't very smart," Drucilla said.
"Special Inquisitors are another matter," Lucilla said.
"But you still go out. I mean, you were gone overnight—" Alexandra hesitated. Lucilla smirked, as if daring her to finish the thought.
"Lucilla does like to take risks," Drucilla said.
"Yes, let's just hide in our house until the war begins," Lucilla said.
"War?" Alexandra asked.
Drucilla said, "Father did warn us, before you and he gave us up to the Office of Special Inquisitions."
Alexandra lowered her head. "I didn't realize."
"You knew you were giving someone up," Drucilla said. "You just didn't know it would be us."
"Don't be harsh, Dru. Alexandra might not have entirely understood what she was doing, but Father did, and I'm sure it was his plan all along. He'd warned us that sooner or later the Thorn Circle would lose its protection of secrecy, and he made sure we were prepared before it happened."
"But why tell me now?" Alexandra asked.
"Because you want to go to the Junior Wizarding Decathlon, and we want to know why," said Lucilla.
Secrets, Alexandra thought. They were right, she was always keeping secrets. Always for what she thought was a good reason, but she knew her sisters, her friends, even her father, would probably tell her there was a time for keeping secrets, and a time for revealing them.
She finally met her sisters' eyes again. "I suppose you know about the Deathly Regiment."
"Yes," said Lucilla. "Some. We've never been able to get all the details — Father either can't or won't tell us. But we know enough."
Alexandra nodded. "Well, there's something hidden in Storm King Mountain that has to do with the Deathly Regiment. It's somewhere in the Accounting Office there. I want to find it, and the only way I can go to New Amsterdam without getting arrested or kicked out is if I'm representing the Ozarkers as their champion."
Now Lucilla and Drucilla were the ones to fall silent.
At last, Drucilla said, "I am not sure how you intend to get into Storm King Mountain. I doubt they will let you simply stroll in and ask for the Accounting Office's secret records."
"Yeah, I doubt that too," Alexandra said.
"But if you're going to go on such a foolhardy mission, I suppose it behooves us to make it less foolhardy, if we can," said Lucilla.
"And," said Drucilla, "we may as well try to improve your chances at the Decathlon."
Lucilla chuckled. "Wouldn't that vex the Governor-General, if you won?"
Their idea of preparing her turned out to involve more study and less practice with spells than Alexandra would have liked.
Lucilla and Drucilla had an enviable library, and they were the sharpest minds Alexandra had encountered outside of Charmbridge Academy. Yet she felt increasingly restless. The education she was receiving in Alchemy and Artificing was better than she would ever have gotten at Charmbridge, but when it came to practical wizardry, the Whites were less adept.
"Dueling?" Drucilla said, when Alexandra brought it up during a lesson on quenching goblin iron. The evil-looking dagger lying on the bench in front of them twitched and spun when Drucilla held a wand over it, and the motions she made as she tried to dissolve the anti-wizard wards laid into it reminded Alexandra of dueling movements. "No, this isn't like that at all. I never studied dueling."
"You should," Alexandra said.
"Whatever for? I don't duel."
"For protection?" Alexandra suggested.
Drucilla shrugged. "We know basic self-defense charms, of course, and Father taught us a few nasty curses, but we never planned on dueling with Dark Wizards."
"We were only thirteen," Lucilla pointed out.
"You're not thirteen now," Alexandra said.
"We've spent the years since then perfecting our craft," said Lucilla. "I know you're very fond of hexing and blowing things up, but magic is so much deeper than that."
"All that flashy wandwork may impress boys, Alexandra, but we can teach you to employ your passion in far more subtle, yet effective ways," said Drucilla.
Alexandra rolled her eyes. "I'm not trying to impress boys."
Drucilla set down her wand, and spoke with unusual fervor. "Artificing is putting your soul into your work, literally. We can show you, Alexandra. How to channel your great ambition into a Great Work worthy of your talents."
Lucilla said, "Artificing isn't just putting charms in objects. We do more than create puissant tools. Enchantment is the very engine of power, driving the entire wizarding world. Charms and hexes and transfigurations are spells rippling the surface of the world. We put our fingers on the machinery of magic itself."
"I believe you," Alexandra said. "I want to learn all that. I wish I had years to spend mastering it. But I really don't. And for the Junior Wizarding Decathlon, I only have a few months. And you know, hexing and blowing things up has worked pretty well for me so far."
"Has it?" Drucilla sounded disappointed.
"I'm still alive," Alexandra said. "Maybe I'd be alive if I were a great Artificer as well. I will study, like I promised. I'll learn everything you have to teach me. But I don't think I should abandon what I'm good at."
Lucilla sighed. "We aren't asking you to do that. But I can see you will always be attached to your wand. Most wizards are. The wand is just a tool. Perhaps the greatest tool we have. But it isn't where magic lies."
Alexandra could not entice either of the twins to practice dueling with her. Frustrated, she tried to content herself with practicing dueling charms in the marshes behind the house. She hexed and blew up an acre of mud and grass, but it wasn't very satisfying.
The Whites' instruction was otherwise everything she could have hoped for. They directed her little, only answering her questions and examining her work.
A week after Lucilla revealed to Alexandra the true nature of her Seven-League Boots, she decided to try them out.
Lucilla and Drucilla had warned her that leaping about with them blindly could be as disastrous as a splinching. Alexandra had tried using Scrying Charms, but decided that Charlie would help her with her first test.
"Fly, Charlie," she said, standing on a cold, windy hillock just a little ways from the Whites' house. "Fly up high and let me see what you see."
"Fly!" Charlie repeated, and took off into the air, a little disgruntled. The raven had not wanted to leave the warmth of the seven-gabled house to go flying around in a New England winter, even if the weather was clear. But soon Charlie was a remote speck in the sky. Alexandra closed her eyes and focused on what Charlie could see… and then she stepped.
Previously, her Seven-League Boots had carried her seven steps at a time, but that just felt like running, with the world accelerated. Now that she had unlocked their true power, with help from her sisters, the first step was as dizzying as her first Apparition. She stepped from the marshes to the middle of a woods, miles from the river and the town, with all the space between passing by in an incredible rush of wind.
She stopped and gulped in air, and looked up to see Charlie now a speck in the opposite direction.
Just one step! she thought.
She knew she should just go back, and could feel Charlie's worrisome cawing in her head, but what was the point of Seven-League Boots if they couldn't carry you for leagues? She took another step, and flew through the air too fast to see the landscape speeding past.
She was on the edge of a precipice looking down into a small valley, with people behind her. One of them made a startled exclamation. Rather than face whoever it was and try to concoct an explanation, she stepped toward the horizon again. She could see where she was going only to a limited extent. She had decided to follow one of those cracks in the world that her Witch's Sight revealed to her, emanating not far from the Whites' home, but while it was a guide of sorts through woods and dale, it did not help her anticipate where she would next set her foot down. According to Lucilla and Drucilla, the magic of the boots would carry the wearer where she wanted to go in some semblance of safety — she would not step into empty air above a valley, or into the middle of a lake.
She had asked about lava. Lucilla asked where she expected to encounter lava. Drucilla was pretty sure the boots wouldn't let her step into lava either.
But, Alexandra discovered, the boots would not keep her from stepping into traffic. Her next step brought her to a busy freeway, where she stepped directly in front of a truck, and only by taking another step immediately did she avoid being splattered across its bumper. She could still hear the panicked air horn and smell the diesel after the roaring wind carried her to a playground at the edge of a small town. Several children and their mothers jumped as Alexandra whooshed into sight before their eyes.
"Hi," Alexandra said. "Where am I?"
As they stared at her, she said, "I mean the name of this town?"
Both women screamed. The children began to cry. Startled, Alexandra took a step back the way she'd come, hoping to avoid the highway this time. Her feet settled onto a muddy shoulder rather than the middle of the road. A car went past and honked a horn at her.
Alexandra stepped again, and she was back in the woods. The trip had left her dizzy.
Far away, she heard Charlie caw, complaining about being abandoned.
"I'm back, Charlie," she murmured. Charlie could never keep up with her if she took more than a step at a time. Would the raven be protected in a cage, or would the wind rushing past, seven leagues at a step, be fatal? The boots protected her, but she'd have to ask Lucilla and Drucilla if they thought she could carry others with her.
March arrived. It was sunnier but not much warmer. Alexandra had seen little of the sun, buried in the library or the workshop of her sisters' house.
In the third week of March, she woke before dawn, left a note on the kitchen table, and left Charlie croaking mournfully in the cage by her bed.
"I'll be back soon," she said. "Don't worry, greedy-guts. Lucy and Dru won't let you starve."
"Troublesome!" Charlie scolded.
She left her room quietly and walked outside. It was early on the morning of the 22nd, her sixteenth birthday.
Standing on the foggy marsh by her half-sisters' seven-gabled house, she opened her eyes to her Witch's Sight, and considered doing something truly reckless: using her Seven-League Boots to step into and through the cracks in the world. It was an insane thought. She pushed it aside, while composing the spells she'd prepared for this journey.
Her first spell was a Navigation Charm to guide her, with help from her Lost Travellers Compass and a Scrolling Map Parchment she'd prepared. It was one of her first works of Artificing, and Lucilla and Drucilla had approved of her work, and its intended purpose, without realizing quite how soon she meant to put it to use.
She cast a Warming Charm, remembering how chilly the rushing wind could be.
Finally, she cast an Unnoticeability Charm on herself. She wasn't sure it would work if she stepped out of nowhere in front of someone. She hoped it might at least deflect the attention of someone who was inclined to ignore things they couldn't explain — which she had learned seemed to be most people.
She thought about adding a rhyming incantation as well, a bit of doggerel verse to give her luck. But that bordered on superstition. If her "doggerel verse" worked, it was because it was actually ritual magic without structure or mastery. It wasn't, as she'd thought when she was a child, because rhymes themselves were magic.
Packed and ready, she faced west, with the sun rising behind her.
"I'm coming home," she whispered. "Let anyone try to stop me!"
She stepped seven leagues, and then another.