The Unexpected Enlightenment of Rachel Griffin (Books of Unexpected Enlightenment Book 1) Read online

  The Unexpected Enlightenment

  of

  Rachel Griffin

  Revised and Expanded

  By L. Jagi Lamplighter

  Based on the works of Mark A. Whipple

  Illustrations by John C. Wright

  Praise for The Books of Unexpected Enlightenment

  The action is non-stop, with child’s play, schoolwork, and danger all churned together. Lamplighter introduces many imaginative elements in her world that will delight…

  —VOYA

  The British boarding school mystery meets the best imagined of fantasies at breakneck speed and with fully realized characters.

  —Sarah A. Hoyt, author of Darkship Thieves

  L. Jagi Lamplighter, a fantastic new voice and a fabulous new world in the YA market! Rachel Griffin is a hero who never gives up! I cheered her all the way!

  —Faith Hunter, author of the Skinwalker series

  The Unexpected Enlightenment of Rachel Griffin, a plucky band of children join forces to fight evil, despite the best efforts of incompetent adults, at a school for wizards. YA fiction really doesn’t get better than that.

  —Jonathan Moeller, author of The Ghosts series

  Rachel Griffin is curious, eager and smart, and ready to begin her new life at Roanoke Academy for the Sorcerous Arts, but she didn’t expect to be faced with a mystery as soon as she got there. Fortunately she’s up to the task. Take all the best of the classic girl detective, throw in a good dose of magic and surround it all with entertaining, likeable friends and an intriguing conundrum, and you’ll have The Unexpected Enlightenment of Rachel Griffin, a thrilling adventure tailor-made for the folks who’ve been missing Harry Potter. Exciting, fantastical events draw readers into Rachel’s world and solid storytelling keeps them there.

  —Misty Massey, author of Mad Kestrel

  Published by:

  Wisecraft Publishing

  A publishing company of the Wise

  Copyright © 2016 by L. Jagi Lamplighter

  All rights reserved. No part of the content of this book may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database retrieval system, or copied by any technology yet to be developed without the prior written permission of the author. You may not circulate this book in any format.

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or events is purely coincidental or an Act of God.

  ISBN: 978-0-9976460-0-9 (print)

  ASIN: B01FVJ7DAY

  Second edition

  First edition, 2013

  Edited by Jim Frenkel

  Cover art by Dan Lawlis

  https://danlawlis.wordpress.com

  Interior illustrations by John C. Wright

  Typeset by Joel C. Salomon

  Cover design by Danielle McPhail

  Sidhe na Daire Multimedia

  http://sidhenadaire.com

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One: The Unexpected Benefits of Remembering

  Chapter Two: The Treacherous Art of Making Friends

  Chapter Three: Twinkling of an Eye

  Chapter Four: The Awkward Rescue of Valerie Hunt

  Chapter Five: The Dubious Process of Bonding with Familiars

  Chapter Six: Unfamiliar Classes

  Chapter Seven: Encounter in a Nigh-Empty Hallway

  Chapter Eight: The Rise of the Metaplutonians

  Chapter Nine: The Unforeseen Perils of Breakfast

  Chapter Ten: The Six Musketeers and the Terrible Five

  Chapter Eleven: Lopsided Encounters

  Chapter Twelve: Secrets in the Hallway

  Chapter Thirteen: Comic Books and Flying Classes

  Chapter Fourteen: The Alarming Report of Nastasia Romanov

  Chapter Fifteen: Overlooked and Invited

  Chapter Sixteen: Wraiths in the Dark

  Chapter Seventeen: A Thousand, Thousand Shards

  Chapter Eighteen: The Marvelous Amulet of Sigfried Smith

  Chapter Nineteen: Pay No Heed to the Howling of the Wind

  Chapter Twenty: Of Skunk and Snitches

  Chapter Twenty-One: Valerie Hunt, Fearless Reporter Girl

  Chapter Twenty-Two: The Knights of Walpurgis

  Chapter Twenty-Three: The Ancient and Honorable Art of Dueling

  Chapter Twenty-Four: The Singular Advantage of Employing a Wand

  Chapter Twenty-Five: Without a Trace

  Chapter Twenty-Six: The Tricky Process of Acquiring A Boyfriend

  Chapter Twenty-Seven: Unsatisfactory Alternatives to Saving the World

  Chapter Twenty-Eight: The Unforeseen Dangers of Remembering

  Chapter Twenty-Nine: The Difficulty of Navigating Without a Rudder

  Chapter Thirty: Visions of Evil Tutors Dancing in Our Heads

  Chapter Thirty-One: Dire Occurrences at Drake Hall

  Chapter Thirty-Two: The Midday Ride of Rachel Griffin

  Chapter Thirty-Three: Valiant Efforts

  Chapter Thirty-Four: The Will of the Veltdammerung

  Glossary

  Acknowledgements

  About the Authors

  Dedication

  To: C. S. Lewis, J. K. Rowling, and the folks at Marvel,

  and all the others without whose magic

  this story would not have come to be.

  And:

  To Mark,

  Who thought of it first.

  Author’s Note:

  This is a revised edition.

  Some things have been changed from the original.

  Most notably, Valerie Foxx is now Valerie Hunt.

  Once there was a world that seemed at first glance much like other worlds you may have lived in or read about, but it wasn’t…

  Chapter One:

  The Unexpected Benefits of Remembering

  Even among the Wise, animals did not talk.

  These two were talking.

  Rachel Griffin awoke in her bunk bed in prestigious Dare Hall. It was her first night at Roanoke Academy, her first night in America, her first night away from home. The other girls in her dormitory room were asleep. She could hear their rhythmic breathing. Yet she distinctly heard voices. She opened her eyes and sat up.

  The tall, arched window was open. A chill blew in through it. On the windowsill sat an enormous raven, jet black with blood red eyes. The raven addressed the familiar that belonged to one of Rachel’s roommates. The girl must have been a fan of the new fad of shrinking wild animals and turning them into cute playthings. Her pet was a tiny lion the size of a house cat.

  The raven croaked harshly, “You are not supposed to be here.”

  The lion sat regally beside his human, who lay sleeping across the room, on the bottom bed of the other set of bunk beds. “I was called. Where I am called, I come.”

  “None of my people called you.”

  “You called one of my daughters. I am always in her heart.”

  “You need to depart.”

  The lion yawned. It turned in a circle three times and settled down to sleep.

  The raven cawed raucously and flew away.

  Rachel replayed the conversation in her head. She did not know what the phrases meant, but she felt certain that she had just overhead something crucial, something not meant for her, something not meant for any human ears. It was like hearing a door swing open to another world. She would never forget a word of it.

  But then, Rachel
Griffin never forgot anything.

  • • •

  Rachel opened her eyes and stretched. The peach-colored dawn light peeked through the purple curtains. A cold breeze blew in from outside. Rising, she padded across the room, the stone slabs cold beneath her bare feet. She pushed back the curtains, closed the window, and pressed her nose against the pane. Her breath made little puffs of mist against the cool glass.

  Gazing about, she took in her surroundings: the paper birches with their curling parchment-like bark; the gravel paths leading toward the green lawns of the campus commons that ran between the many dormitories and buildings; the myriad towers and spires of Roanoke Hall rising above the trees in the distance. A few early risers glided down the path that led to the main hall. They flew on bristleless brooms—flying devices that had about as much in common with a sweeping implement as a mundane automobile had with a horse-drawn carriage.

  Her roommates were still asleep. Normally, Rachel would have gone back to bed at this hour. But not today. Today, she was so excited, she could hardly keep her feet from dancing. She could no more have gone back to sleep than she could have walked to the moon.

  All her life, she had waited to come here. All her life, she had gazed at photographs of her parents at Roanoke Academy for the Sorcerous Arts—the best arcane school in the world. All her life, she had wanted to be part of this world, wanted it so badly that she would lie awake at night, her mind afire with hopes and plans.

  She had imagined the friends she might make, the adventures she would have, the secrets she might learn. She wanted to study every Art the school had to teach. She wanted to entrap storm imps with her flute playing. She wanted to conjure roses and to walk with dragons. She wanted to do daring deeds and accomplish marvels never before known to human kind.

  In her dreams, she had imagined accomplishing all these things.

  All her life, she had waited to come.

  Now she was here.

  Rachel was done dreaming. She could not bear waiting even another instant.

  She dressed quickly, fumbling with the buttons in her eagerness. Her academic robes and square, black scholar’s cap were crisp and new. Flipping the cap’s tassel out of her eyes, she grabbed Vroomie the Broom from under her bed and slipped out of the room.

  She pelted down two flights of stairs before becoming impatient. Jumping on her broom, she leaned close over the handlebars and flew down the rest of the staircase. The windy wake of her broom scattered papers across the black and white checkered floor of the great foyer. Dismounting to open the huge oak doors, she stepped outside. Mounting up again, she gasped at the chill of the early September air as she shot upward, high into the sky.

  Rachel loved to fly. Every morning, she spent her first waking hour in the air. Every day, she saw the same thing: the forests, moors, rolling hills, and tenant farms of her family’s estate, Gryphon Park, and the accompanying town Gryphon-on-Dart in Devon, England. Today, for the first time, there were new things to see—her first real glimpse of the place that was to be her home for the next eight years. Flying as high as she could, she drank in every sight.

  The dawn colors still flamed in the east, gold and dusky rose. From up here, she could see the brown waters of the Hudson River, where they ran to either side of the once-floating Island of Roanoke. Storm King Mountain loomed on her left. She could see the path of the railway cut into its slope.

  Looking toward the north, on the island, she could see the rocky tor in which the evil spirit, the Heer of Dunderberg, was imprisoned with his storm imps. Farther upriver to the north, beyond the Newburgh-Beacon Bridge, lay the Shawangunks, their green rounded peaks rolling off to the west. To the east lay the green heights of the Hudson Highlands. To the south, she could see the spires of the Lower School, for elementary students, the campus of which was separated from that of the upper school and the college. Beyond that lay West Point and civilization.

  Everything was so beautiful in the soft glow of the early morning light, as if not only the subjects taught here but also the very school itself was magical. Up this high, the air was surprisingly still. A flock of geese passed by, getting a head start on their journey south. They flew in a V, honking loudly, their cheerful cries echoing off the side of Storm King.

  As Rachel gazed down at the place that she now called home, her heart swelled with an unfamiliar longing. She yearned for something to which she could not give a name, something just outside her grasp, something she could not bear to live without.

  Something wonderful was about to happen.

  Or something terrible.

  Or both.

  From the sky, it all looked intriguing and yet alien. Yesterday morning, everything had been familiar. She had been home, at Gryphon Park. Now she was part way around the world. It had not been a hard trip. Her parents had taken her to London, along with Peter and Laurel, her older brother and sister, and the three children had stepped through a travel glass—which turned out to be a really big version of the walking glasses they used to get around town.

  The travel glass led to New York City. Her parents had taken them through the busy city to see a few sights: the Statue of Liberty, the Empire State Building, the gilded Temple of Apollo on Fifth Avenue, the Shrine of the Goddess Amaterasu. All five of these landmarks had been crowded with mundane folk. Rachel had seldom mixed with the Unwary, those who were ignorant of the magical World of the Wise. She had kept her shadowcloak tucked around her and stayed close to her family.

  After that, it had been a simple matter of stepping through a second glass that exited in a cottage near the dock along the Hudson River, where the ferry, the Pollepel II, picked them up to carry them to Roanoke Island.

  The trip had not been difficult, but it had been disorientating. The worst part, the part that made her chest clench now, as she soared on her broom, had been leaving Sandra behind. For years, Rachel had imagined she would arrive at Roanoke for the first time holding her oldest sister’s hand. All those years, as she had watched Sandra leave for school each autumn, she had never bothered to do the math. Otherwise, it would have been obvious that, by the time Rachel was old enough to come to school, Sandra would already have graduated.

  Rachel hoped she would grow up to look like Sandra; calm, stately, and as beautiful as a swan. Or even like her middle sister, Laurel; spirited, curvy, and appealing to boys. Right now, though, she looked nothing like either of them. Her shoulder-length black hair stuck out in all directions, no matter how she tried to tame it. Like Laurel and Peter, Rachel had the almond-shaped Asian eyes of their mother, who was one-quarter Korean. (Sandra looked more like their Caucasian father.) However, she had not yet inherited her mother’s astoundingly shapely figure. At thirteen years of age, Rachel was still as slender as a boy.

  She was very small and very young. She was also extremely intelligent. She knew a great many things people twice her age did not. She had inherited her mother’s perfect memory. She had only to encounter a fact once, and she knew it forever. Because of this and her scholarly prowess, she had been invited to come to Roanoke Academy a year early.

  Rachel had read a great number of books in her thirteen years: novels, fairy tales, serious literature, nonfiction works on flight or farming or fishing. Her favorite books were the journals of her beloved grandfather, the records he had kept of his experiences, his triumphs, and his tribulations during World War II. Now that he was gone, his journals were all she had of him.

  She knew a tremendous amount about a great many things, but it was never enough. There was always some intriguing fact, some tantalizing notion, some fascinating concept that hovered just out of her reach. She was determined not to let any unlearned bit of knowledge escape her.

  Rachel Griffin wanted to know everything.

  • • •

  As the sun rose higher, the early September day grew warm and sunny. Rachel left off flying above the school and angled her broom upward. Up higher, it was not the Island of Roanoke she saw beneath her�
��with its virgin forests, its open campus lawns, its august stone buildings, and its rocky tor—but Bannerman Island, the obscuration set in place to keep the mundane world from troubling the school. Bannerman Island was small and wooded, with an old mansion and a ruined castle. It was deserted.

  Rachel put her broom into a hover and closed her eyes. She thought back on the last few seconds. The real island spread beneath her in her mind’s eye. The ruined castle and the old mansion were still there, but there was a much vaster tract of buildings and forest between them.

  Now, to see if she could accomplish a trick her mother had secretly taught her. She opened her eyes and gazed down at the false image of Bannerman Island. While looking down, she simultaneously thought back a second. The illusion popped like a soap bubble. Rachel caught her breath. She could now see the real island.

  Letting go of the handlebars, she clapped her hands, delighted. Obscurations might fool the eye, but they could not fool her perfect memory.

  She flew a few loops, a tight spiral, and a zig-zag. Nothing was as wonderful as flying, nothing as thrilling, nothing as exhilarating. Up until her eleventh birthday, the most important thing in her life had been her pony, Widdershins. Then, a year and a half ago, her parents finally allowed her to have a broom.

  It had been love at first flight.

  Below her, something caught her attention. She dived down into the huge evergreens—her memory of a tree guide she had once read told her these were hemlocks. She bent low over the broom, gracefully dodging branches. The woods were particularly dark. Here and there, a single sunbeam broke through. These bright shafts of light looked so substantial against the darkened forest that Rachel imagined she could slide down one. She put out her hand, letting it pass through the ray, but found nothing but dancing dust motes.

  Ahead, a single large sunbeam fell upon the face of a statue that stood otherwise in shadow. Rachel flew closer. A strange sensation overcame her, as if her heart was suddenly too large for her chest. The statue was of a woman with her head bowed. She wore robes that demurely draped over her. From her back sprouted wings, like the wings of a dove.