Mister Impossible by Maggie Stiefvater (good books for 8th graders .TXT) 📕

make law or change the hearts of men; who but a fool or a traitor would speak against the holders of everything important and good, after all? A young man who was not known to them came to the great house and asked to be made a member of this household so that he, too, could change the world, and they asked him why he felt he belonged.

“I am a poet, said the young man.

“No, they replied, we already have a poet.

“I am a swordsman, he said.

“No, they replied, we already have a swordsman.

“I am a smith, he said.

“No, they said, we already have a smith.

“I am a wizard, he said.

“No, they said. We have a wizard.

“But, he said, do you have someone who is a poet and a swordsman and a smith and a wizard all at once?

“They had to admit they did not, and so they had to let him in. And he took over the castle on the hill and changed the world.”

Bryde turned back to them.

“We are that young man. All of us together. This is about your mirrors and her art and his feelings and my weapons. This is about being a poet and a smith and a wizard so they will have to let us in. People who are one thing have never known what to do with people who are more than one thing. They seize existing towers and build them higher. They make the rules. They think the people who are many things are outliers. The people who are many things believe them. So they keep begging for entry to the great house. And the lords and the ladies keep building up the towers to keep you out. You and every other thing they cannot understand.”

Rhiannon touched the corner of her eye in that fast way people do to strike away a tear. Ronan was trying to remember exactly what Bryde had said when he listed their skills. Rhiannon’s mirrors, Hennessy’s art, Ronan’s … feelings? But that was not what Ronan would have said he was good at dreaming at all.

“And you, Rhiannon, have been keeping yourself small,” Bryde said. “You have done well in this world because you have made yourself one thing, stayed in this place where you are one thing. And even if you never dreamed anything more than your mirrors, you would make a difference, because neither of these two dreamers can see themselves clearly without them. But you could do more. You’ve been dreaming with one hand tied behind your back. Ronan, tell her what it is like when there’s actual power running through the ley line.”

Ronan was surprised to be called on, but he was even more surprised to find he wanted to make her believe in what Bryde was saying. He wanted to be one of her mirrors, but showing her the dreaming instead of her face. He struggled. “It’s—I don’t know. It’s French fries from the freezer section, and French fries from the county fair. They’re called the same thing but they aren’t. Because one of them you want to eat and the other is just a thing with the picture of the thing you want to eat on the front.”

Hennessy laughed merrily.

“Would you like to contribute, Hennessy?” Bryde asked.

Hennessy stopped laughing. “You want me to convince her to leave her family?”

Bryde and Rhiannon both looked at Hennessy.

Bryde said, “Her family is dead.”

They all looked at Rhiannon.

Bryde tilted the closest mirror to reflect her. They just had time to see Rhiannon’s true self: face puffy with tears, mouth hopeless with grief, and then he returned it to its place, restoring her dignity.

Suddenly, the emptiness of the house seemed obvious to Ronan. It couldn’t have been long, because he knew from experience it did go away eventually. It was only the first few months that everything inside the walls was still shaped like a family that no longer existed.

That framed portrait Bryde had picked up had been a snapshot of the past.

“Oh,” said Hennessy. “In that case, it’s like fucking Disneyland. Who wouldn’t want to try it at least once.”

Bryde cast a withering look at her.

Rhiannon whispered, “It just feels impossible.”

“We are impossible,” Bryde told her. “You have always been impossible. Tell me how you felt when you opened the door and saw it was us.”

She bit her lip, thinking, but then her expression abruptly changed. “Oh, darling, you’re—” Darling meant Ronan. She was gesturing to him, to his face. “You’ve got—”

He turned back to the mirror. Nightwash was running from his nose. This was why he had been feeling strange earlier. Because his body was betraying him again.

The mirror tried to show him the truth of the nightwash, and it made him feel even stranger. He always saw it as toxic. As defeat. As a symbol of failing to dream, of being weak far from the ley line. But the mirror said: This nightwash is from trying. This is the consequence of striving.

He didn’t understand.

His head hurt.

Rhiannon had jumped up and instantly produced tissues from somewhere: It was that kind of house, she was that kind of woman. She pressed one to Ronan’s face and rested a comforting hand on his back, a gesture so firmly maternal that Ronan couldn’t tell if he felt ill from the nightwash or from grief.

“Is it a nosebleed?” she asked.

“Nightwash,” Bryde said. “Some call it the Slip. Others the Black Dog. It has many names. It means a dreamer is in a place where there isn’t much ley energy or has waited too long between dreams.”

“I’ve never had this happen to me,” Rhiannon said.

“You haven’t opened the door as many times as he has,” Bryde said. “He broke the hinge the moment he came through it and now it’s come right off.”

“Is it dangerous?” she asked.

“Very. If he doesn’t get to ley energy or dream something into being, the most dangerous,” Bryde said. “So we need you to make a decision.”

“Bryde’s right,” Hennessy said abruptly. She was staring