The Midnight Queen by Sylvia Izzo Hunter Read Free Book Online Page B

she would discover it and let him know.
    Please give my love to all.
    Your affectionate brother
G
    Gray made a second copy of the letter, then folded and sealed both copies and scrawled directions on their outsides, first to Jenny at Kergabet, her husband’s country seat, and next to their London lodgings, having, to his chagrin, no very clear idea of her present whereabouts. Then leaving them on the desk, he rose and went to the window, where he stood for a long time, yearning for wings.
    *   *   *
    From the beginning of his magickal education, what Gray had most desired to learn was the art of shape-shifting, and the warnings of his undergraduate tutor, Master Alcuin—“This is a difficult and exacting magick, Marshall, one that most who attempt it will never master”—had only fuelled his determination to succeed.
    The first step—he had learnt by now that this was always the first step—was to study: the anatomy and habits of a wide variety of animals, the histories of other successful shape-shifters, the means by which such transformations may be accomplished.
    The second was to choose a shape. For Gray the choice was half made already: His desire to learn this magick had begun as a dream of flight, of soaring out of reach of boyhood tormentors. He pored over drawings of birds and spent hours—both by day and by night—observing the avian species that haunted the College grounds. Finally, on a rare visit to London, he spent a day in the city’s famous Menagerie, and there a marvellous bird caught his eye: a large owl—round yellow eyes framed by rings of white and dark grey, long grey wing- and tail-feathers crossed with pale mottled bands—blinking solemnly on a tree-limb. As Gray watched, fascinated, the owl spread huge wings and dropped off into space, gliding silently across the aviary to alight on another perch. Then its head revolved almost completely, so that it seemed to look directly at him.
    â€œPlease, what bird is that?” he asked a passing menagerie-keeper.
    Smiling at his enthusiasm, the old man replied, “The Great Grey Owl.”
    After months of repeated attempts, Gray’s first successful shift lasted only moments; the second, less than half an hour. But within a fortnight of that first success, he had taken to owl-shape as if born to it.
    Only now, when it was lost to him perhaps forever, did he recognise how profoundly he had come to depend upon his ability to escape into the sky.
    *   *   *
    Jenny’s answer, when it came several days later, eased Gray’s mind, at least on one subject. Her husband, she wrote, despite disapproving of her disobedient brother and her continued correspondence with the same, was an honourable man who would never dream of opening or reading her personal letters; nor had her scrying detected the interference of any other person, so that Gray might safely write whatever he wished.
    And I hope you will take the earliest opportunity to do so, as I have heard much about you this past month that requires explanation.
    â€œI should imagine so,” Gray said aloud, ruefully, as he sat down to answer Jenny’s letter.
    *   *   *
    The following week, seizing his moment while both the Professor and Joanna were temporarily silenced by mouthfuls of rabbit with onions, Gray took the unprecedented step of asking leave to go sight-seeing—largely as a means to test the length of his tether.
    â€œI have heard, sir,” he began, “that the Temple of Neptune at Kerandraon is very fine. I wondered whether I might have leave to pay a visit there.”
    When the Professor, despite ostentatious raising of eyebrows at this description of the local
pèlerinage
, did not immediately refuse, Gray, emboldened, went on: “Perhaps Miss Callender and S— and Miss Sophia might be persuaded to accompany me—”
    â€œI should be pleased to act as