The Marvellers

This summary section includes Chapter 4: “Midnight Lanterns,” and Chapter 5: “New Beginnings…and the Marvellian Way!”

At midnight on the first night of the new school term, all the students gather for a familiar ritual. After receiving a welcoming address from the faculty, they all write wishes on slips of paper and release them in magic lanterns that float up into the sky. Since Ella’s dearest wish is to be accepted, she writes, “Everyone will like conjure—and me” (58).

Her wish for friends is thwarted almost immediately when two of her three roommates instantly dislike her. The following morning, Ella is surprised to learn that she has been magically shifted to a different room while she slept because her roommate Clare Lumen complained about having to share quarters with Ella. Instead of three roommates, Ella is assigned to live with a surly girl named Brigit. Like Ella, Brigit grew up in a non-magical Fewel town, so the faculty decides that the two girls might help each other assimilate into the Marveller school. Headmarveller Rivera says, “Brigit’s been raised outside of this world … much like [Ella], but among only Fewels. Which is so rare for Marvellians. Living with them and not knowing your heritage can be challenging” (63-64).

Ella gets Brigit to tell her story. The girl was an orphan living a perfectly average life until she was plucked out of it and told she has magical abilities. Brigit knits compulsively, creating beautiful quilt squares but claims she doesn’t know where this ability comes from. Aside from her developing friendship with Brigit and Jason, Ella also forms a connection with her assigned mentor, Masterji Thakur—a Paragon of Taste with a spice marvel and teaches a class on elixirs. Ella warms to him when he defends her right to attend the school against classmates behaving disrespectfully toward her. She’s also grateful that her godmother, Sera Baptiste, is the newest member of the faculty and will be teaching Conjure Arts. Sera runs interference when Ella’s overzealous parents become too intrusive. They are worried about their daughter at the new school and need constant reassurance that she is well.

This summary section includes “The Lady with Many Faces,” Chapter 6: “Jumping Jollof,” Chapter 7: “Spices & Deathbulls,” and “Pocket Doors.”

Over the course of a few weeks, Ella finally melts some of Brigit’s reserve and learns to better tolerate the high-strung Jason. On their way to visit the menagerie animals that Jason tends, Ella feels a strong pull to enter an elevator marked “Restricted.” When she goes inside with Jason and Brigit, they plummet down multiple levels to an area marked “Founder’s Room.” Before Ella can exit, Jason demands that they go to the menagerie instead. The elevator doors slam shut and take them to Jason’s requested destination. They find many unusual species and Jason has the gift of speaking to animals. Ella is surprised to find a baby deathbull among the animals: “A pair of these beautiful massive pit bulls sat at the entrance of the Underworld back home ready to stare into the pits of a person’s soul” (122). Ella is mystified that such a creature found its way into Jason’s menagerie because these creatures are only drawn to Conjurors.

Ella finally learns the reason for the hostility that so many of her classmates exhibit toward her. Conjurors are treated with suspicion because of a group of rebel students known as the Aces, who developed unnatural abilities. In a book about them, Ella reads, “Five trainees with rare marvels experimented, learning to share their talents unnaturally. Each one had a monstrous marvel that did not fit neatly into the Five Paragons, leading them to reject the categorization system” (90). Although Ella tries to learn more about the Aces, all the books in the school library on the subject are redacted.

Meanwhile, as Ella settles into her new surroundings, the former leader of the Aces, Gia Trivelino, devises a way to escape from the prison cell to which she was banished. Gia, known as the Ace of Anarchy, remains held in a cage in the Underworld constructed of playing cards called the Cards of Deadly Fate. Gia possesses a particularly alarming talent: “The ability to see the threads of the universe and manipulate them,” an ability “labeled dangerous. Rare. Scary. Chaotic. A monstrous marvel” (84). Gia plots to escape the prison where she’s been held for 11 years with the world “never know[ing] that she sat inside a deck of cards suspended in the middle of time, in the middle of life and death. Her eternal punishment. Marvellians loved their rules” (26).

While imprisoned, Gia’s guards give her access to newspapers and she learns that Ella has been admitted to the academy as the first Conjuror student. Gia draws a parallel between her own outcast status and Ella’s. Shortly after she learns about Ella, Gia’s fellow Aces find a way to slip her a skeleton key. She takes the time to construct a simulation of herself so that the guards won’t know she has left her cell. When the illusion is complete, she slips away into another dimension: “the door close[s] behind her and [she] disappear[s]. The Ace of Anarchy [is] free. Now the show [will] begin” (126).