Rainbow Rowell - Carry On

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For Laddie and Rosey

May you fight your own battles

and forge your own wings

SIMON

I walk to the bus station by myself.

Theres always a fuss over my paperwork when I leave. All summer long, were not even allowed to walk to Tescos without a chaperone and permission from the Queenthen, in the autumn, I just sign myself out of the childrens home and go.

He goes to a special school, one of the office ladies explains to the other when I leave. Theyre sitting in a Plexiglas box, and I slide my papers back to her through a slot in the wall. Its a school for dire offenders, she whispers.

The other woman doesnt even look up.

Its like this every September, even though Im never in the same care home twice.

The Mage fetched me for school himself the first time, when I was 11. But the next year, he told me I could make it to Watford on my own. Youve slain a dragon, Simon. Surely you can manage a long walk and a few buses.

I hadnt meant to slay that dragon. It wouldnt have hurt me, I dont think. (I still dream about it sometimes. The way the fire consumed it from the inside out, like a cigarette burn eating a piece of paper.)

I get to the bus station, then eat a mint Aero while I wait for my first bus. Theres another bus after that. Then a train.

Once Im settled on the train, I try to sleep with my bag in my lap and my feet propped up on the seat across from mebut a man a few rows back wont stop watching me. I feel his eyes crawling up my neck.

Could just be a pervert. Or police.

Or it could be a bonety hunter who knows about one of the prices on my head. (Its boun ty hunter, I said to Penelope the first time we fought one. No bone ty hunter, she replied. Short for bone-teeth; thats what they get to keep if they catch you.)

I change carriages and dont bother trying to sleep again. The closer I get to Watford, the more restless I feel. Every year, I think about jumping from the train and spelling myself the rest of the way to school, even if it puts me in a coma.

I could cast a Hurry up on the train, but thats a chancy spell at the best of times, and my first few spells of the school year are always especially dicey. Im supposed to practise during the summersmall, predictable spells when no ones looking. Like turning on night-lights. Or changing apples to oranges.

Spell your buttons and laces closed, Miss Possibelf suggested. That sort of thing.

I only ever wear one button, I told her, then blushed when she looked down at my jeans.

Then use your magic for household chores, she said. Wash the dishes. Polish the silver.

I didnt bother telling Miss Possibelf that my summer meals are served on disposable plates and that I eat with plastic cutlery (forks and spoons, never knives).

I also didnt bother to practise my magic this summer.

Its boring. And pointless. And its not like it helps. Practising doesnt make me a better magician; it just sets me off.

Nobody knows why my magic is the way it is. Why it goes off like a bomb instead of flowing through me like a fucking stream or however it works for everybody else.

I dont know, Penelope said when I asked her how magic feels for her. I suppose it feels like a well inside me. So deep that I cant see or even imagine the bottom. But instead of sending down buckets, I just think about drawing it up. And then its there for meas much as I need, as long as I stay focused.

Penelope always stays focused. Plus, shes powerful.

Agatha isnt. Not as, anyway. And Agatha doesnt like to talk about her magic.

But once, at Christmas, I kept Agatha up until she was tired and stupid, and she told me that casting a spell felt like flexing a muscle and keeping it flexed. Like crois devant, she said. You know?

I shook my head.

She was lying on a wolfskin rug in front of the fire, all curled up like a pretty kitten. Its ballet, she said. Its like I just hold position as long as I can.

Baz told me that for him, its like lighting a match. Or pulling a trigger.

He hadnt meant to tell me that. It was when we were fighting the chimera in the woods during our fifth year. It had us cornered, and Baz wasnt powerful enough to fight it alone. (The Mage isnt powerful enough to fight a chimera alone.)

Do it, Snow! Baz shouted at me. Do it. Fucking unleash. Now.

I cant, I tried to tell him. It doesnt work like that.

It bloody well does.

I cant just turn it on, I said.

Try.

I cant, damn it. I was waving my sword aroundI was pretty good with a sword already at 15but the chimera wasnt corporeal. (Which is my rough luck, pretty much always. As soon as you start carrying a sword, all your enemies turn out mist and gossamer.)

Close your eyes and light a match, Baz told me. We were both trying to hide behind a rock. Baz was casting spells one after another; he was practically singing them.

What?

Thats what my mother used to say, he said. Light a match inside your heart, then blow on the tinder.

Its always fire with Baz. I cant believe he hasnt incinerated me yet. Or burned me at the stake.

He used to like to threaten me with a Vikings funeral, back when we were third years. Do you know what that is, Snow? A flaming pyre, set adrift on the sea. We could do yours in Blackpool, so all your chavvy Normal friends can come.

Sod off, Id say, and try to ignore him.

Ive never even had any Normal friends, chavvy or otherwise.

Everyone in the Normal world steers clear of me if they can. Penelope says they sense my power and instinctively shy away. Like dogs who wont make eye contact with their masters. (Not that Im anyones masterthats not what I mean.)

Anyway, it works the opposite with magicians. They love the smell of magic; I have to try hard to make them hate me.

Unless theyre Baz. Hes immune. Maybe hes built up a tolerance to my magic, having shared a room with me every term for seven years.

That night that we were fighting the chimera, Baz kept yelling at me until I went off.

We both woke up a few hours later in a blackened pit. The boulder wed been hiding behind was dust, and the chimera was vapour. Or maybe it was just gone.

Baz was sure Id singed off his eyebrows, but he looked fine to menot a hair out of place.

Typical.

SIMON

I dont let myself think about Watford over the summers.

After my first year there, when I was 11I spent the whole summer thinking about it. Thinking about everyone Id met at schoolPenelope, Agatha, the Mage. About the towers and the grounds. The teas. The puddings. The magic. The fact that I was magic.

I made myself sick thinking about the Watford School of Magicksdaydreaming about ituntil it started to feel like nothing more than a daydream. Just another fantasy to make the time pass.

Like when I used to dream about becoming a footballer somedayor that my parents, my real parents, were going to come back for me.