The next few days, maintaining the transformation took a considerable amount of care on Rosemary’s part. During classes, her sheer euphoria of being in the right body greatly helped her focus in class — but even then, in the back of her mind, she wondered where she could go to renew her transformations without being seen doing so.

  After lunch, she went to her dorm room. Fortunately, none of her roommates were there, so she went into the bathroom and locked the door. She withdrew her wand, held it in her right hand, pointed it at her left hand, and chanted, “Somamorpho renovatio.”

  Immediately, a grey beam of light shot out from the tip of the wand, hitting her on the left hand, and enveloping her entirely in an aura of grey light. “Et hic subiectum,” she chanted, and four digits with a colon in the middle appeared in front of her indicating how much time remained in her transformation. She didn’t pay much attention to exactly what the four digits were, focusing on the ballpark figure instead. Nonetheless, she could see that the digit on the far left was zero, meaning that a significant amount of her initial twelve-hour transformation had passed.

  Quickly, with her wand, she pushed all four of the digits all the way up to nine. “Formam nunc retine,” she chanted. Once again, the numbers she had set to all nines went down to a lower number. It clearly wasn’t going to allow the spell to remain without further renewal for another ninety-nine hours and ninety-nine minutes. However, she could see that the time remaining was over fifteen hours, which was progress from the twelve hours of the initial transformation. She wouldn’t have to cast the renewal ritual again until the evening, possibly just before bed.

  The numbers vanished and her grey aura flashed brightly for a moment before it, too, vanished. Happily, she went back down to the common room to join her classmates waiting to be escorted to Professor Thorn’s Warding Basics class.

  The evening renewal, of course, was slightly trickier. Now, unlike in the afternoon, her dorm room wasn’t empty. Lilith, however, helped her out by finding somewhere for her to cast the renewal. She took her to the fifth floor, where Rosemary had previously been to speak privately with Amy and Lacy. She had also gone through this floor earlier that morning to get to the wall walk.

  “What if someone comes here and sees me?” she asked.

  “That’s why you go into one of the booths,” explained Lilith. She pushed open one of the doors on the wall opposite the window.

  Timidly, Rosemary stepped inside and saw a chair pulled up to a desk with a mahogany disc that looked like an orbis from the magical levels underneath Lenox Square. The orbis seemed to be connected to a long cylinder of the same wood that sat on the table beside it. The desk faced a circular mirror that was mounted on the wall.

  “What’s all that for?” asked Rosemary.

  “It’s a correspondence mirror,” explained Lilith. “You have to have tokens for that day to use it, but you don’t need that right now. You just need a moment by yourself. All you have to do is turn the latch once you’re in, and nobody will walk in on you.”

  As soon as Lilith had left the room, Rosemary closed the door, turned the latch, and performed the renewal ritual. This time, after she chanted “Formam nunc retine,” and the numbers decreased to the maximum that was allowed, the time remaining was over nineteen hours.

  The next morning, when Rosemary returned to that booth to cast the renewal ritual, she noticed that what appeared before her wasn’t four digits, but five. To the left of the four familiar digits sat a new zero. It was separated from the other four digits by a hyphen. Rosemary realized that this new digit represented days, and had appeared because she had now remained continuously transformed for long enough that she could extend the remaining time of her transformation to more than a day.

  Again, she pushed all the numbers all the way up to nine. Once again, the time remaining went down to something significantly lower than what she tried to set — but for the first time, what remained was still greater than a full day. She still decided to cast a renewal that evening anyway, as she felt that waiting till the next morning would be cutting it too close. Only the next day, Thursday, did she feel safe reducing the frequency of her renewals of the transformation to once a day.

  Thursday was also a special day in Enchantment class. It was on that day that Professor Hathaway provided instruction on the actual use of the wands that the students had constructed on Monday. The first such lesson was on how to send letters magically.

  The students spent the first ten minutes of class writing letters to their parents. As much as she liked it in Misty Peaks, Rosemary missed her parents. She loved every moment of writing to them, except at the very end when she had to sign her name. As much as she was coming to resent being called “Simon” by others, she felt even worse having to refer to herself by that name. However, as she didn’t feel ready to tell her parents about her change, she didn’t really have a choice on that matter.

  It was after the letters were written that Professor Hathaway had the students select from a box a seal stamp that they would use until some time during their third year at Misty Peaks when they’d be able to make personalized stamps. Rosemary selected a stamp that would feature the face of a cat on every seal it made. Then, Professor Hathaway walked the students through addressing the envelopes, stuffing them, sealing them with wax, and casting the spell to send a letter on its way. Rosemary smiled as the letter to her parents floated off of her desk and faded away as it passed through where she could see the classroom wall was.

  Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

  * * *

  That evening, before dinner, Rosemary and Lilith found Professor Brown on her way to the Great Hall and decided to ask her if she got the message from them about the rancid trees in the forest.

  “We got the message,” said Professor Brown, “and we went to check it out. We did find trees that aren’t doing too well, but no sign of any magical drainage of their vital essence.”

  “The harpy seemed really sure they were being drained,” insisted Rosemary.

  “Yeah,” said Lilith, “and the only reason it believed us when we told it that we weren’t the ones doing the draining is because it said it would know if we were lying when summoning perfume is being used.”

  “Okay,” said Professor Brown, “aside from the bit about it having given Simon its father to use in a wand, this is the first I’m hearing of a harpy.”

  “So Ms. Carter didn’t tell you about it?” asked Rosemary.

  “No,” said Professor Brown. “She just mentioned trees being under a life-force drain. Did you mention it to her?”

  “I think Clara mentioned it,” said Rosemary.

  “She did,” affirmed Lilith.

  “Well,” said Professor Brown, “harpy or no harpy, there’d be a nasty smell if there’d been any magical drainage of that sort. And that smell takes twenty-four hours to fade.”

  “It smelled like a dumpster!” said Lilith.

  “We’re sorry,” said Rosemary. “We should have told you about it right away, so you could have checked it out before the smell faded.”

  “Oh no,” said Professor Brown. “If someone’s draining a tree of its vital essence, they’re rarely going to stop till the tree’s to the point of death. Those trees weren’t doing well, but they weren’t that bad. Now, run along y’all to the Great Hall and go eat. I know that’s what I’m gonna do.”

  “I can’t believe it,” said Samantha, as soon as Rosemary and Lilith had relayed to her their conversation with Professor Brown over dinner. “She’s going to just drop it? Like that?”

  “Well,” said Lilith, “she says they don’t usually stop draining the trees till they’re to the point of death.”

  “But this time, they did,” pointed out Rosemary. “If that’s so unusual, they had to have a reason to stop.”

  “Well, of course,” said Samantha. “But why?”

  “Maybe,” suggested Rosemary, “they’re doing it to cover their tracks?”

  “And how did they know the teachers were going to go check on those trees?” asked Samantha.

  “I don’t know,” admitted Rosemary. But as she said that and glanced at the red gem in her bracelet that was storing her wand, she realized that she had her suspicions. “One moment,” she said. “That harpy I got a feather from — it was there trying to get revenge on whoever was hurting the trees. Right?”

  “That or just trying to protect them,” suggested Lilith.

  “But I thought that harpies, what they do is get revenge,” said Rosemary.

  “Yes,” said Lilith, “but in the last two hundred years, they’ve sometimes been seen just protecting parts of nature.”

  “Okay,” said Rosemary, “but anyway — if someone knows that there are trees being drained in the forest, like whoever’s doing the draining would know — and they then find out that someone got a feather from a harpy. Wouldn’t they know that that person saw the trees too?”

  “Yes,” said Lilith, “but they’d have to know about someone having gotten a harpy feather.”

  “Okay then,” said Rosemary. “So doesn’t this mean that whoever is draining the trees knows about my harpy feather?”

  “Oh, everyone knows,” said Samantha. “The whole school was abuzz about it for a day or two!”

  “Then maybe it’s someone in the school who’s doing it,” suggested Rosemary.

  * * *

  The conversation with Lilith and Samantha about how the harpy feather might have tipped off whoever was draining the trees of their vital essence reminded Rosemary of something. As extensive as her knowledge on the mundie version of Greek Mythology was, she was woefully uneducated on the ways in which the versions of the myths told in the magical world differed from the mundie versions.

  Wednesday the previous week she had been to the library, and Madam Harvey the librarian had promised to get her the books she needed to begin learning these differences. Rosemary had intended to return to the library earlier this week to get those books and begin learning — but the preparations on Monday to make her final transformation into female form, and the effort since Tuesday morning to maintain it, had distracted her to the point that she hadn’t gotten around to it. When she was reminded of this on Thursday evening, it was too late to go to the library that day. However, Friday, after Professor Thorn’s Warding Basics class, she finally made her way to the library.

  “Hi, Simon!” Madam Harvey greeted Rosemary with a smile when she saw her enter.

  “Sorry it took me so long to get back here, Madam Harvey,” apologized Rosemary.

  “It’s okay,” said Madam Harvey. “First few weeks of school are always hectic. Anyway, I’ve got a lot of books for you — but —”

  “But what?” asked Rosemary.

  “The one you want the most,” she said, “the one on the difference between the versions of Greek mythology in the mundie and magical worlds? I can’t find that one.”

  “So when’s it going to be back in?” asked Rosemary.

  “Be back in?” asked Madam Harvey.

  “Yes,” said Rosemary. “I mean — if someone checks out a book, isn’t there a day that they have to bring it back before?”

  “There is,” affirmed Madam Harvey, “when a book’s checked out. But this book isn’t checked out. According to our records, it should be in. On the shelf. But it’s — not.”

  “So what?” asked Rosemary. “Is it lost? Or stolen?”

  “Yes,” said Madam Harvey. “Lost — or stolen. And we haven’t figured out yet which one it is.”

  Rosemary froze. She didn’t say anything.

  “I hope it’s just lost,” said Madam Harvey. “That way, there’s a chance that it’ll eventually turn up again. But in the meantime, there’s some other books you might want to check out. Not that one, but some other ones.”

  She reached under her desk, pulled out a stack of books, and laid them out on the table in front of Rosemary. Rosemary looked at the books, somewhat disappointed that they didn’t include the one that she was hoping for, but still interested in those that were there. Finally, she chose a book titled “Myths of the Nordic Lands”. Her understanding of Greek mythology had gaps where the magical world’s versions of the myths were concerned — but Nordic mythology was something that she altogether knew very little about.