CHAPTER ONETHE VELLIAN PORT
Nosy.
That was another word besides marvelous that Ella would use to describe Marvellers. As her family (and their conjure companions) entered the Vellian Port and prepared to catch a sky-ferry to Celestian City to buy school supplies, people couldn’t keep their eyes off them. Some tentatively waved. Others whispered their thanks and congratulations. A few smirked … and many (more than Ella wanted to admit) scowled at her.
Ella was famous again, and this time not for being the first Conjure student to successfully enroll and complete her first year of study at the Arcanum Training Institute for Marvelous and Uncanny Endeavors, the great magic school in the sky, but rather for saving their world from a power-hungry villain named Gia Trivelino and her marvel-stealing elixir.
But the attention made Mama squirm and Papa chuckle. All summer the family had chased away Marvellian newsies from lurking around the house or aggravating Gran in the conjure pharmacy, looking for exclusive stories about that fateful night three months ago. Ella’s face had been projected from every Marvellian news-box—and even the Conjure papers from New York to Colón to Paramaribo reported what had happened in the skies.
Ella felt a little nervous about it all, but she didn’t want to let on and have Mama even more scared or have her make good on her threat to keep Ella home and re-enroll her at Madame Collette’s Conjure École. She thought if she was brave enough, it might encourage more Conjure students to enroll in the Arcanum, and maybe she’d end up with even more friends this year.
Even now, she grinned at onlookers, and each time she glanced up at the Vellian Port’s beautiful domed ceiling, it was filled with flickering heliograms of her face beside the most wanted criminal in the world—Gia Trivelino—and all her various disguises.
Headlines filled the ceiling:
GET TO KNOW THE CONJURE GIRL WHO OUSTED THE ACE OF ANARCHY
ON THE RUN—NOTORIOUS CRIMINAL SPOTTED LEAVING A FAE TEAHOUSE IN ASTRADAM
ELECTION SEASON TO FOCUS ON THE TWO C’S— CRIME AND CONJURORS!
“A star’s blessing to you,” a nearby man whispered to her as they went through the entryway. “Stopped that thorn in our side.”
Ella flashed him a short-lived smile because as soon as they walked into the atrium, a squat woman glared in her family’s direction. “Newsies lie. Feels like a Conjure agenda. You all trying to take over the skies, if you ask me. Hmph!”
“How’d you do it?” A willowy man squinted down at her. “What’s your Conjure secret?”
Mama pulled Ella close. Her voice drifted through Ella’s thoughts: Eyes ahead, keep walking. All of this can turn on a dime.
Ella didn’t have time to worry anyway. She twirled around and around, gawking at the amazing sights, her floating juju-trunk spinning with her, trying desperately to keep up. Massive windows gave a view of gigantic sky-ferries arriving and departing from long, gilded docks. Thick Cloud Nests played peek-a-boo with the morning sun; buttery rays bathed the whole hub in golden tones. Sometimes she couldn’t even imagine that they were floating above the Indian Ocean right this very minute. The walls cycled through vibrant colors as constellation maps chased each other, and the stars arranged and rearranged their names and configurations in hundreds of languages.
They passed a massive tower, one of the Cardinals. Ella gazed up, admiring how it soared into the high ceiling and looked identical to the one in the Institute’s courtyard. Small children threw bronze sonnes into the shallow fountain pool ringing it.
Ella took a step closer, moving away from the nosy people staring at her, and read the placard:
THE VELLIAN CARDINAL
THIS TOWER REPRESENTS THE PRINCIPLE OF ORDER IN OUR GREAT MARVELLIAN WORLD.
Only by the one sacrificing for the many will our synchronized rhythm allow us all to survive far above.
A deep squeeze pulled at her heart, the crossing tug she’d always felt when she went with Papa into the Underworld. The same thing happened last year when she’d visited the Arcanum Cardinal with Masterji Thakur too, and she hadn’t found any satisfactory explanation for it yet.
“Do you feel that?” She turned to her parents, but they were too busy fussing about this trip to hear.
Ella slipped out of earshot before this disagreement about Mama hating to shop in Marvellian cities turned into their never-ending argument about whether Conjure folk should even continue traveling in and out of the Marvellian world given the dangers and the history of Conjurors going missing in the skies. Ella hoped they wouldn’t discuss the sad story about Aunt Celeste, Mama’s twin, and her disappearance again. Every time it was mentioned, Mama stiffened and frowned, and Ella didn’t want her to have to relive painful memories from when she was around Ella’s age. It’d been over twenty years, but the wound remained fresh.
Ella wanted this to be a happy day for everyone. She didn’t want to be any more nervous than she already was with everyone staring at her. She was headed into her second year at the Arcanum, and she had big plans. There was a lot to do once she was back … things to investigate about the building, things to ask her mentor Masterji Thakur. She tossed a conjure coin into the Vellian Cardinal fountain and made a wish that everything would go perfectly, extraordinarily, in fact, and that this year at the Arcanum would be even better than the last.
Text copyright © 2023 by Dhonielle Clayton
Illustrations copyright © 2022 by Khadijah Khatib
Map copyright © 2023 by ChickenLittle, Dhonielle Inc.
