Magyk

The wind fails as the bullet boat nears, and Muriel’s occupants paddle hurriedly toward the marshes. Jenna urges Marcia to use her Magyk to help them, and she conjures a thick white Fog. The bullet boat nears Muriel, and the Hunter calls out, “We are only concerned for your own safety and wish to escort you back to the Castle before you have an unfortunate accident” (124). Boy 412 tries to reveal their location, and Jenna covers his mouth. Furious, the boy kicks the deck, and the sound alerts the Hunter. As he aims his pistol at Jenna, Marcia creates a magical Projection of Muriel, and the Hunter chases after the illusion.

Maintaining a Fog and a Projection simultaneously taxes Marcia’s energies, especially because Projections are a form of Darke Magyk. When Muriel reaches the Marram Marshes, Jenna lets go of Boy 412. She fumes, “We saved his life when he was buried in the snow and he betrayed us” (129). Boy 412 struggles to reconcile the kindness the group has shown him with the Young Army’s lessons about Wizards. He still believes that he has been kidnapped but finds himself “awestruck in the presence of Magyk” (131) as he gazes at Marcia.

The Projection of Muriel is a mirror image of the boat. The 10-year-old Apprentice Wizard realizes this and tells the Hunter to turn around. Seeing the searchlight turn toward them once more, the Princess and her companions hide their boat in the Deppen Ditch leading into the marshlands. Marcia casts a spell on the Hunter that compels him to dive into the water. When he hauls himself back into the bullet boat, he reluctantly accepts that the trail has gone cold and returns to the Castle.

Alther can only travel to the places he visited while he was alive, and he spent some time fishing in the Marram Marshes, so he is able to visit the group there. The living members of the group share a meal of barley cake and hot chocolate that Sally packed for them. Alther reveals that DomDaniel appeared before the Wizard Tower, banished the Wizards to the Badlands, and took Marcia’s chambers for his own. Alther now realizes that the Princess’s presence acted as a failsafe keeping DomDaniel away from the Castle as her mother did before her.

DomDaniel was once the ExtraOrdinary Wizard, and Alther was his Apprentice. Alther tells the tale of his former master’s demise. DomDaniel made a deal with the Darke Side, pledging Alther’s life in exchange for power. When Alther discovered this, he fought DomDaniel atop the Wizard Tower and seized “the gold and lapis lazuli Akhu Amulet” (146) from him. DomDaniel declared that he would one day return “with the seventh of the seventh” (148) and then leaped from the tower into the Abyss. With his Master gone, Alther became the new ExtraOrdinary Wizard. That very day, Silas Heap, the seventh son in his family, was born.

Marcia wants to return to the Castle and fight DomDaniel, but Alther urges her to focus on protecting Jenna. He promises to do what he can in her absence. Silas transforms Muriel into two canoes. He, Marcia, and Maxie sit in one while the children take the other. They row deeper into the marshes.

Aunt Zelda sends a seal-like creature called a Boggart to guide the party into the Marshes, but Maxie scares him away. Silas leaves the canoe and follows the treacherous Marshlight despite Marcia’s warnings, convinced that the light is Aunt Zelda coming to meet them. Brownies seize him and start to drag him into the Quake Ooze. Jenna tries to go to her father, but Boy 412 stops her because the ooze claimed the lives of other members of the Young Army. The Boggart saves Silas and leads them to Aunt Zelda’s cottage.

Alther flies back to the Castle, passing the shivering Hunter and his weary oarsmen in the bullet boat and the charred remnants of Sally’s cafe. He finds DomDaniel in Marcia’s rooms. When the young Apprentice confesses that the Princess and her companions are still alive, the Necromancer declares that the boy is “nothing but a disappointment” (179). DomDaniel storms off to see the Supreme Custodian, and the exhausted Apprentice falls asleep. Alther takes pity on the boy and stirs up the fire. Then the ghost tries to ensure that DomDaniel’s stay in the tower will be unpleasant by dispersing cockroaches and rats.

The next morning, Jenna awakens in Aunt Zelda’s cottage and reflects on how her life has changed. She’s still wearing the circlet that Marcia gave her, and she recalls how she always wondered why she was the only member of her family with dark hair and violet eyes. For a moment, Jenna worries whether “Sarah would still want to be her mother” (186). To distract herself, she explores the cottage, which is full of the herbs that Aunt Zelda brews into medicines and potions in her work as a White Witch.

Aunt Zelda’s morning greeting startles Boy 412 because he has to stand at attention first thing in the morning or risk being splashed with icy water by his superior officer. She gives toast and a mug of hot milk to the wary boy, who reminds her of “a small and very frightened rabbit she had rescued from the clutches of a Marsh Lynx” (194). After breakfast, Jenna, Nicko, and Boy 412 explore the island that the cottage sits on. The marshy mist rises, and Boy 412 becomes separated from the others. Nicko is surprised that Jenna cares about the boy after he gave their location away to the Hunter, but she explains that the boy is frightened and never had loving parents like Nicko. When she implies that she doesn’t have parents either, Nicko retorts that Sarah and Silas are still her parents and that it’s silly to think that could ever change.

Boy 412 grows bored of following Jenna and Nicko around the island and tries to sneak back to the warmth of the cottage and Aunt Zelda’s presence. He falls into a dark hole with a sandy bottom and smooth stone sides. Although he’s nervous at first, he soon relaxes because “his tormentors in the Young Army” (209) can’t reach him there. Boy 412 discovers a ring in the shape of “a gold dragon, its tail clasped in its mouth” (210). The ring begins to glow after he puts it on, illuminating the mouth of a tunnel. As he travels through the tunnel, he briefly loses the ring, but it sings so that he can find it again. The boy passes through a passage decorated with hieroglyphics, climbs up a ladder, and finds himself in Aunt Zelda’s cupboard. He falls asleep by the fireside. Marcia consults Aunt Zelda’s copy of an ancient book entitled The Undoing of the Darknesse.

Jenna and Nicko return to the cottage long after Boy 412 because they struggle to find their way through the fog. Jenna is relieved to see that Boy 412 is unharmed and resolves to be nicer to him. A Message Rat comes to the cottage, and Marcia hides with Jenna in the attic in case the rodent is a spy. The rat, which was sent by Sarah, informs Silas that his eldest son, Simon, has gone missing in the Forest and that Sally survived the fire. After Marcia learns that the rat is a confidential message rat, she and Jenna come downstairs. She orders the rat to escort Silas to Sarah so that Silas can retrieve Marcia’s KeepSafe charm for her. Silas already intended to go to the Forest and assist with the search for his missing son, and he’s irritated that Marcia never listens to him. The next morning, Silas and the rat start their journey out of the marshes in a canoe.