Violet Flowerfoot Goes to Grimbriar
Violet looked up at the castle looming before her, its shadow darkening her brown fur and casting a chill over her. The cobbles beneath her paws were massive, and the furrows between each one felt more like canyons than cracks. Her entire family, all twelve of them, could live comfortably on just one cobblestone.
“Watch out, wee one!” a human girl shouted as she dodged the fieldmouse.
Violet squeaked and scrambled to the side of the walkway, clutching her satchel as she drew great heaving breaths. Students of all sizes and species rushed into the castle, trunks and packs stuffed with belongings for the new year. A goblin girl hauled what looked like a bag of pastries and sweets, while a human boy clung to his older sibling, surverying the Academy with nervous eyes. Wands and staffs had already been whipped from their holsters, and older students sent sparks flying over the entry in celebration. Professors clucked and shooed and guided, spotting the nervous first years in the throng of festivities. They did not, however, spot Violet.
Her whiskers twitched, despite her best efforts to soothe them, and the world suddenly felt much scarier than before. Of course, fear was baked into the life of a field mouse. It was expected, it kept them safe, it kept them alive. She recalled the large, red hawk that lived in the pine next door. Her mother would drape her with mosscloaks and spritz earthy-smelling tea over Violet and her sisters as they trotted out the door, masking each tiny mouse in the comforting camouflage of the woods. She felt scared then, dashing between toadstools, feeling the ever-watchful eye of the hawk dance across the forest floor. And that was only foraging; this adventure was so much bigger.
The letter arrived in the spring, carried by Theben the mail snail. The rain had muddied the walkway to the Flowerfoot home, and Violet's baby sister, Marigold, tracked mud inside as she frantically waved a soggy envelope over her head.
“Violet! Violet! There’s a letter for you!” Marigold shouted, Mother Flowerfoot tsking over the mud.
“For me?” Violet asked, taking the soggy envelope in her paws.
Her siblings gathered around her, noses twitching and whiskers waggling as they murmured and rumored and mumbled.
“Smells like magick,” whispered Bluebell.
“Looks like magick, too! Watch!” pointed Aster with a chubby finger.
The letter inside the envelope gleamed with bits of gold as Violet pulled it out. The ten Flowerfoot siblings watched silently, perhaps the quietest they’d ever been, as they scanned over the words on the parchment.
“What is this about?” Mother asked, straightening her spectacles to join the crowd. Even Father Flowerfoot stood from his chair and shuffled over to investigate.
“It’s from Grimbriar,” whispered Marigold, her little voice filled with awe.
“My, my…” Father said, “A field mouse? At the Academy?”
Inside the castle, trailing cautiously after the stampede of other students, Violet gawked at the opulence around her. Her little stump home in the woods had been all she’d known until now. She didn’t realize places could be so big. Great, dangling bits of crystal hung from the ceiling, lights dancing in and out of the facets and washing over the walls. To her left, a roaring fireplace warmed the space, and Violet swore she could have seen a face among the dancing flames. The carpet under her paws was more like a pool of woolen fibers, some tall enough that they tickled under her chin as she scampered across.
The smell of cinnamon floated into the room, almost carrying Violet off with it, she was so entranced by the scent. It smelled like Mother’s apple pie, a yearly treat to celebrate the harvest. Violet was in charge of the crust, making sure it came out perfectly golden, flaky, and buttery. They’d all gather around the table, warmed by the hearthstove, mugs of steaming milk sweetened with honey at their fingertips. As Violet came out of the memory, a terrible pang hit her stomach. She wouldn’t be home for harvest this year.
“Violet Flowerfoot?” a voice called.
Violet looked up to see a tall, human girl. Of course, they were all very tall to her. The girl’s face was splashed with lovely freckles, and she had tied her brown hair back with a yellow ribbon.
“Me?” the fieldmouse murmured, pointing to herself.
The girl smiled as she kneeled down, offering her index finger to Violet, who shook it with both paws.
“I'm Lorena. We’re roommates!”
Violet did not like being carried. It made her feel small and childish. As the oldest of ten sisters, she did not want to feel childish, especially in front of her new friend. Lorena, in her second year at Grimbriar, was kind enough to show Violet around. As they began their tour of the expansive Academy, Violet riding on Lorena's palm, she felt a bit self-conscious about it all. As though the other students pointed and whispered behind their hands, eyeing the small mouse with judgement.
“Look at that field mouse, she can’t even walk through the school without help!” she imagined they said.
“She’s going to get stomped on. Why is she even here?”
They weren’t really saying these things, of course. What Violet didn’t know is that every other student felt much like she did. They tugged at their jumpers, and fussed about their hair or whether their breath stank, so much so, that they didn’t have time to worry about her.
She wanted to be a brave field mouse. The very first of her kind to attend a magick academy! Father Flowerfoot had beamed with pride. He puffed out his white belly, buttons on his vest straining, and loudly proclaimed on his front step that "there will be a Flowerfoot at Grimbriar!" She thought she was ready, but she felt smaller than ever. Violet didn’t like these feelings, and though every ounce of her vibrated with nervous energy, she decided be brave and say something.
“I-I don’t think I want to be carried, I-” she started.
“Oh!” Lorena exclaimed, hurrying over to a bookshelf. She placed Violet next to the spine of a worn, burgundy book. “I’m sorry, Violet. I should have asked-” she began.
Violet interrupted, “-but I also don’t want to get stepped on!”
The two froze after talking over one another, eyes wide and hands palms outstretched in apology, and then they laughed.
“Don’t worry, Violet. Let’s find a way for you not to get stepped on.”
As the sunlight dipped behind the pine-covered hills and the color purple stretched across the sky, Violet and Lorena shared a spot in front of their dorm room fireplace. The faces in the fires, Violet learned, belonged to fire sprites. They chirped and crooned like crickets, turning over the coals with their round, flaming bodies. Now and then, they peeked out of the hearth to see what the girls were doing. Around the girls, bits of tape and glue littered the rug as they studied the paper plane in front of them.
“Try it now,” Lorena said, placing it in front of Violet.
Violet climbed into the central fold of the paper plane, gripping the tape-handles on either wing.
“Waugi-Will-Me to the threshold-of-the-door-to-the-dorm-of-Lorena-Hennetuck-of-the-East-Dormitories-of-Grimbriar,” Violet said, carefully annunciating each word.
This creation, however finicky, would be Lorena’s most useful magical invention yet. While the room they now shared boasted no less than a dozen bizarre inventions, each more convoluted and involved than the last, she couldn’t rightly say that any of them were useful. One contraption, intended to tuck her into bed at night, had only successfully managed to beat her over the head with her own pillow. Another, meant to remind her to brush her teeth, instead shouted profanities at odd hours of the night. This newest invention, though, this would finally be it.
Violet’s incantation floated in the air for a moment before taking root in the paper airplane. It shot upward, launching Violet up with it, and wavered before dashing toward the door. It spiraled in the air, doing a single loop-de-loop, before gently descending to the threshold. Violet, gripping the handles tightly, felt a small wave of sickness wash over her belly, though she shook it off.
It worked! Their frivolous, too-long spell had worked. It seemed silly, to speak so specifically. The girls fretted the whole evening over it, learning quickly that their creation wanted instructions down to the last atom. Previous attempts had landed Violet on the windowsill, under the bed alongside a forgotten sock, and during one attempt, all the way to the potions classroom, which smelled of feet and burnt hair. This time, the plane landed precisely where she had intended.
“That’s it! Well done!” Lorena clapped.
“I’m only the pilot,” said Violet, delighted with the success, “it was your idea!”
In the months following, you would hear Violet Flowerfoot coming before you spotted her. A small voice, shouting a string of silly instructions, bounced off the stones of Grimbriar’s hallways and classrooms.
“Waugi-Will-Me to the halfway-point-of-the-dining-room-table-four-third-row-left-side!”
Whizzing by with a woosh, a paper airplane with The Flowerfoot written across its wing launched across the dining room. A little mouse, holding onto tiny handles with all her might, landed precisely where she intended to, amongst her friends.
The candles in the dining room burned low. Their warmth danced across the spread of food before them, reflecting in the plum glaze on the ham, the stacked pile of glossy meringue on the chestnut pie, and the bubbles of the fizzing apple cider. As they celebrated the harvest, students clinked their glasses together, gathered in front of the fires, and ate their way through the feast. Violet smelled cinnamon, and a longing filled her chest. She thought of her family in their little stump home, far less grand than Grimbriar, but still home. She pictured her sisters and Mother gathered around their table, slicing apples and rolling out the dough. Bluebell would be in charge of the crust now, as the second oldest. Violet wondered if it would taste the same for everyone. She wondered if they missed her.
“Violet Flowerfoot,” a student courier said, hovering near Violet’s seat at the table, “here’s a delivery for you.”
The student placed a tiny paper box tied up with a ribbon in front of the field mouse, whose nose began to twitch at the smell coming from the box.
“What’s that?” Lorena asked, leaning forward.
“Did you get a present?” asked their friend Dottie.
Violet untied the bow, and the sides of the box fell outwards, revealing a still-warm, mouse-sized apple pie. Curls of steam vented through the crust, perfectly golden, flaky, and buttery, carrying the scent of cinnamon and nutmeg. The apples and their warm golden syrup bubbled at the edges. A card in the box said: We miss you.
Signed by all eleven of her family. Violet wiped at her eyes, feeling suddenly very grateful for everything, and took a bite of the pie…and Grimbriar felt a little more like home.
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