The School Between Winter and Fairyland

Autumn Malog, 12, is looking for her brother, Winter. Everyone, including her three older brothers and her grandmother, think that Winter was devoured by the fearsome Hollow Dragon one year ago. Autumn, however, has a connection to Winter that the others don’t: he’s her twin, and she has a sense in the back of her head that he is still out there somewhere. It is because of this that she won’t give up until she either finds Winter or knows for sure that he’s dead. The one problem she has searching for him is that she feels he’s trapped in the Inglenook school for magicians, the school where Autumn is just a servant, just a beast keeper, the lowest of servants. She can’t search for her brother when there’s a whole school of people looking down on her and wondering why she’s even wandering around there. So, when Autumn is approached by the one and only Cai Morrigan, the chosen one prophesied to slay the Hollow Dragon, for help, she strikes a deal with him. Autumn will help Cai get over his rather ironic fear of dragons if he helps her search for Winter.

What seems like a rock-solid plan is waylaid by meddlesome family, friends and monsters. There is also the fact that Cai, himself, might be a monster since he seems to be able to understand the Speech that Autumn uses with the various beasts in the menagerie. On top of all this, Autumn and Cai are forced to deal not only with the Boggart that wants to marry Autumn and hates Cai, but, as well, they must deal with the Hollow Dragon that poisons the forest with its anger and is creeping ever closer to Inglenook. Autumn and Cai have to work quickly to both find Winter, who Autumn has seen in the mirrors at Inglenook, and get Cai ready to slay the dragon before his thirteenth birthday as the prophesy foretells. But with Cai’s increasing monsterish characteristics and Autumn’s feeling more and more hopeless in her quest for Winter, things are looking dim for the two heroes. The situation is only made more dire when, in a jealous fit, the Boggart lets the Hollow Dragon into Inglenook. Autumn and Cai must work together to find Winter and save everyone from the Hollow Dragon while also solving the mystery of why Cai is seeming more like a monster and how it is that Winter ended up in the mirrors at Inglenook.

Heather Fawcett’s The School Between Winter and Fairyland elegantly performs a twist on the classic high stakes magic school mystery. Anyone familiar with the “chosen one” narrative will recognize the various tropes at play in Fawcett’s novel as well as the way she plays with and diverts from said tropes. There is the magic school, Inglenook, which will only teach magicians and which treats its servants with a level of disdain because of their lack of magic. This idea is uprooted with Autumn’s discovering that she and her family are actually hedgewitches who possess a form of magic that is traditionally frowned upon. However, after their role in saving Inglenook from the Hollow Dragon, the headmaster agrees to let hedgewitches be taught at the school. Fawcett uses this narrative to call into question the classist nature of the magic school story. Another way Fawcett dismantles the classic tropes is with Cai’s being a monster. While he is originally seen as the perfect hero, Autumn discovers that he responds to her ability to Speak to monsters and that he is ultimately the brother of the Hollow Dragon and has been possessing the body of Cai Morrigan since birth. With Cai’s being a monster, but still ultimately a heroic person, readers are forced to reevaluate their preconceptions of good and bad. This is also explored in the Boggart’s narrative and how he grows increasingly human in contrast to Cai who becomes more and more monsterish. Every step of Autumn and Cai’s story is set up to be a standard story, but Fawcett expertly leads the narrative to subvert reader expectations with an ultimately surprising and satisfying ending.

While the new take on the old story may be a hook to get readers into the novel, the real reason this story shines is the protagonists and the relationships between them. Autumn is an easily loveable girl who is messy and gruff with everyone. While she seems like the perfect beast keeper with her rough ways, her soft sides come out in her search for Winter and her care for Cai. Cai forms a foil for Autumn as the polite boy who cares maybe just a little too much for those around him, a boy who seems like the perfect hero except for the fact that he is actually a monster. These two characters bring out the best in one another and learn to trust and rely on another person completely.

It is in these ways that Heather Fawcett has wonderfully and skillfully crafted a new take on a classic story. Her polished prose is used to great effect, drawing readers into the world of Inglenook and its surrounding forest with graceful descriptions of the landscape and insights into the larger functioning of the society. Fawcett utilizes every plot beat to its full capacity and makes readers think about the implications of the classist structure of Inglenook. The friendship between Autumn and Cai is grounded at all times and heartbreaking but hopeful in the end. The School Between Winter and Fairyland creates a world with a rich history that is inhabited by characters who explore the mysteries of that world unabashedly and bravely, making it a better place in the end.