The Magician's Tower by Shawn Thomas Odyssey

said indignantly. “It is a private matter, and … we’re not supposed to have letters from boys in our rooms. Academy rules. Anyway, Roderick doesn’t … um … well, he does not wish for others to know he is a poet. He’s afraid they will think him unmanly.”
    â€œThat’s ridiculous,” said Madame Iree, and Oona had to agree. For a boy so concerned with being chivalrous, she thought it silly for Roderick to worry about what others thought of his poetry. Madame Iree wandered to the dressing table, where she picked up the blue ribbon Isadora had won earlier that day. “Have you figured out your clue yet, Miss Crate?”
    The question took Oona by surprise, and she couldn’t help but feel a hint of challenge in it. Perhaps even a taunt.
    Like mother like daughter
, Oona thought before saying: “I … um … am working on it.”
    Madame Iree nodded confidently and glanced at Isadora. The two of them grinned at each other, as if they held a great secret.
    â€œAnd you, Isadora?” Oona found herself asking, and hating herself for giving in to the trap. “How are you doing with the clue?”
    Isadora sank back into her pillow and waggled her eyebrows. “Figured it out hours ago. Really, I’m surprised you haven’t gotten it yet.” She feigned a yawn, and then snapped her fingers. “Easy as one … two … three.”
    Madame Iree clapped her hands together. “That’s my girl. Smart as a whip.”
    Oona knew that if Deacon had been there, he would have been helpless to correct Madame Iree, explaining that the saying was actually “
quick
as a whip.” She suddenly wished for his company.
    It was only moments later that she had reason to wish for his company a second time, though this time for protection rather than grammatical advice.
    â€œLook at the hem of that dress!” said a sharp, foreboding voice from behind Oona.
    She turned to find Headmistress Duvet looming in the doorway. Her glass eye gave the impression that it was looking sideways at her good eye: the good eye that presently leered menacingly at Oona’s feet.
    Oona looked down for the first time that evening and could see where the hem of her dress had been burned in the ape house challenge, and it became painfully obvious what the girls on the stairs had been laughing at. She hadbeen so preoccupied with losing to Isadora—not to mention the mystery of the missing punchbowl—that she’d neglected to change her dress. Oona’s white, stocking-clad ankles showed beneath the dark burned fabric, and the dress appeared several inches shorter than when she had first put it on that morning.
    â€œOh,” she said, examining her ankle. “That’s … um … well … that’s—”
    â€œHighly improper!” said Headmistress Duvet, her good eye all at once gleaming even brighter than her glass one, and it wasn’t until it was too late that Oona noticed the cane from the entryway in the woman’s hand. The headmistress raised it up, the word IMPROPER printed on the paddle as large as a newspaper headline, and Oona closed her eyes in anticipation of impact.

S he actually swatted you?” Deacon perched himself atop the mirror, sounding aghast.
    Oona eased herself onto the chair in front of her dressing table, a bag of never-melting ice beneath her aching bum.
    â€œShe did indeed,” she said, “and I can’t believe you let me go out dressed like that. Either of you.”
    Samuligan stood attentively near the door, his crescent grin just visible beneath the shadow of his cowboy hat. “I thought it rather becoming. Though, admittedly, ahead of its time. Just wait, three months from now, all the girls will be burning the hems of their skirts, and the dress shops of Dark Street will reek of smoke from the Glass Gates all the