by Kirsten Liedl (@kirstenwrites)
YA Fantasy
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Query
Sixteen-year-old Margot never expected to walk through the gates of the elite Sir Isaac Newton Academy for Mages, let alone sneak onto campus zipped inside a duffel bag. But when her oh-so-special golden boy brother, Brendan, vanishes in his third year at the Academy, Margot has no one left—that she can tolerate, at least. And when the Academy refuses to investigate Brendan’s disappearance and rejects Margot’s own application for admission, she has no choice but to cast aside her couch-potato ways and put her armchair detective skills to the test.
There's just one little problem: she doesn't have a single drop of magic.
Spying from air ducts and attics, Margot scours the school for Brendan with help from a hidden cohort of other non-magical students, all while dodging the Eyes—clairvoyant enforcers who weed out insurgents. One misstep will land her in a Spirit Lab for reprogramming wayward citizens, and Brendan will be lost forever. But when even more students vanish without explanation—including the non-magical students who, shockingly, might even be her friends—Margot descends into the depths of the Academy and uncovers a decades-old conspiracy that the school will do anything to conceal. And to save her brother, Margot must reckon with her lack of magic and outwit a system that preys on the weak to feed the powerful.
NOT A WITCH is a 95,000 word young adult fantasy with dark academia and dystopian elements. Merging the enigmatic magic academy found in Lovely, Dark, and Deep (Elissa A. Bonnin), the darker atmosphere of Unhallowed Halls (Lili Wilkinson), and the prickly heroine and dystopian elements of the Scholomance series (Naomi Novik), NOT A WITCH features a twist on the genre by following a non-magical student who navigates the complexities of a magical world. It is a standalone novel with series potential.
My background includes teaching legal writing at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, drafting legal opinions as a law clerk for the Connecticut Supreme Court, and serving as a Comments Editor on the University of Pennsylvania Law Review.
Thank you for your time and consideration.
First Five Pages
Chapter One
Dear Margot Lane,
The Committee for Admissions at the Sir Isaac Newton Academy for Mages has completed its assessment for the upcoming school year, and we regret to inform you…
I hid behind the crisp sheet of parchment that had, in one paragraph, destroyed my life. Possibly ruined us all, actually. I read it again and again, long after the words burned a hole in my brain where hope used to be.
Dad rested his hands firmly on Mom’s shoulders. To anyone outside our family, it might look like he was comforting her, rather than restraining her from rocketing out of the chair towards me. But I knew better. The kitchen table creaked as Mom leaned forward, her shaking shoulders threatening the blob of concealer holding on for dear life under her left eye.
Pressing my nails into my palms, I risked a desperate glance above Dad’s head to the framed image of Noble Natalia and the Founders. I could clearly picture their faces in my mind—Natalia’s peaceful in death, the Founders’ full of awe and sorrow gazing down upon her—even if the actual image on the wall had faded after years trapped behind dusty glass. The ticking clock next to the frame counted down the seconds to my doom.
I had to tell them. I was totally going to tell them. In just a minute.
Because once my parents knew that the Academy had rejected me, Brendan would be gone forever.
“Well?!” Mom demanded. A familiar surge of resentment punched me in the gut; did it not occur to her that I, the recipient of this most important news, might need a minute to process?
But I knew—at least in Mom’s not-very-subtle opinion—this was her moment, too. She had stayed up late, carefully pasting new paper over the answer sections in the old Academy prep books that Brendan had filled out years ago in his meticulous handwriting. And Dad had gotten up from his recliner, more than once, to go out into the dark or the rain to find obscure Sir Isaac Newton Guild texts that Mom would use to quiz me late into the night.
And sure, they were a bit delusional. Okay, totally nuts. Transforming me into a student at the most prestigious mage academy in the country to save their only son…was a bit of a stretch. No pressure, right? But even if I hadn’t ever shown an inkling of magic, I memorized the spells that I hoped—no, knew—would someday allow me to send objects flying through the air. I learned what ingredients made the most obscure potions, and started to believe that maybe, possibly, I’d someday create them in some lantern-lit gothic classroom over a bubbling cauldron.
Only, in typical Margot fashion, I’d completely and totally blown it.
But honestly, even when Mom told me she believed I could become a mage—her eyes wide with naked desperation—I was pretty sure she was lying.
I opened my mouth, but the words stuck in my throat. My stomach rolled with the nagging queasiness of sitting in the back seat of the car.
Only seconds until I no longer mattered.
From the moment Brendan learned his first word and accidentally sent his bottle flying through the air towards Mom’s face, everyone knew he mattered. Mom would loudly repeat how Brendan spent his childhood followed by stray cats, cushioned gently by the wind whenever he fell, and nourished by the perfectly ripe vegetables he grew on our window sill. And then, after he was accepted to the Sir Isaac Newton Academy for Mages, his destiny was sealed: he’d graduate from the Academy with flying colors, get a prestigious Guild job with a salary to match, lift us out of our magicless, plebeian existence, et cetera, et cetera. All part of the job description for our special, charming, remarkable, once-in-a-lifetime golden boy.
Mom had poured her entire essence into his success. “When Brendan wins, we all win!” was her refrain whenever I complained—which was a lot. But it was like saying that the kids who brought water bottles to the football players were also part of the team’s success. We all knew that Brendan was the star.
I, Margot Lane, was another matter. Second-class Lane sibling, reporting for duty. My skills included plowing through a family-sized bag of Fritos in one sitting, including dips if I was feeling particularly peckish. I tore through every detective book in our house, and then every book in the library. I watched a lot of TV. Just waiting for Brendan to change my life, because it was quite clear that I had nothing to add to the arrangement.
So now, when Mom repeated, “Well?! What does it say?!” while gripping the edges of our peeling kitchen table with tears in her eyes…I just needed another minute, okay?
At least I was being honest when I replied: “Um, just as expected?”
Mom screamed. She flung her arms around me, burying her face in my hair, then turning as my curls tickled her.
“I can’t believe it. I can’t believe it! You know, I had moments of wondering…but I never thought…no, that’s not true, I always just…”
“Give the girl some space,” Dad muttered. “Congratulations, Mouse.”
“No, I mean…” I attempted to explain, my face hot. But Mom sprang out of her chair, buoyant without the weight of a missing son on her shoulders. As if she suddenly realized that our apartment was full of dirty dishes and unfolded laundry, terribly unbecoming of a home with not one, but two future mages.
It had to be two. I felt in my bones that Brendan wasn’t dead. But—as I’d heard my parents whisper a thousand times—we couldn’t afford to pay one of the Guild-controlled search companies to find him. My parents had exhausted their savings to send Brendan to the Academy in the first place, even with his scholarship. Mom had combed through every single non-Guild search company, even those beyond the city limits, but not a single one had ever found a student lost on Academy grounds. And as Dad always reminded her in a voice that no longer held any feeling, after months of begging the Academy to look just one more time, they weren’t going to hunt for him any longer. “Probably a case of a misfired vanishing spell,” the receptionist would assure us through the speaker of our corded kitchen phone, at first kindly and then increasingly dismissive. “You never know—sometimes they become more visible a few years later, and within a decade they’re practically solid.”
I wracked my brain, sifting through mental file after file on everything I had read about Academy admissions. There had to be a loophole. There had to be a way.
One musty history of magic textbook had smugly recounted that: The Sir Isaac Newton Academy only shares information on an as-needed basis. And for those who are not students, faculty, or Guild members, the Academy considers very little information, if any, to be needed.
The Academy admissions pamphlet, reinforcing that cryptic message, had shared that: The Academy’s location will only be disclosed to students, faculty, and Guild members.
Could you be a little more mysterious and inscrutable, please? This was all way too helpful.
Dad grunted and sneezed from his comfortable perch on the recliner, shaking out his newspaper. Mom hummed merrily as she scrubbed the same pot over and over again.
I had been their last option. They didn’t have any more bright ideas, of that I was sure.
Brendan would know what to do. He’d have a plan. I didn’t even care—okay, barely even cared—that not having anyone else to talk to was kind of pathetic.
“What in the Founders’ names am I supposed to do now, Badger?” I whispered under my breath to my missing brother.
We all called him Badger because he was always digging. You’d be talking to him about one thing, but then his brain would dive underground, creating extensive tunnel networks going through a hundred scenarios, before finally popping back up into the conversation and giving you an answer that wasn’t what you wanted to hear but, obnoxiously, was totally right.
My family called me Mouse because, well…that part should be obvious. Easily overlooked with hoarding tendencies, I’d say. Resourceful and adaptable, Brendan would say.
Resourceful and adaptable. I thought of all my favorite detective novels and the characters’ skills in Morse Code, deciphering facial expressions, picking locks, and chasing down evil-doers. My childhood heroine, Nancy Drew, wouldn’t have given up; she’d have found a way. And in The Hidden Staircase—which I must have read one hundred times before it went missing, possibly due to Mom wanting me to do literally anything but sit on the couch—Nancy investigated a haunted house where objects are mysteriously stolen by a culprit sneaking in through a hidden staircase…
Was there a hidden staircase into the Academy? I couldn’t use magic, but then again, neither could Nancy. If I could somehow get onto campus, maybe I’d have the tiniest, itty-bitty-smallest chance to find Brendan.
Everyone in the greater Philadelphia area knew that first-year Academy students left from 30th Street Station on the last Sunday of August, at 9 a.m. exactly.
My parents thought I would be leaving on that bus.
Who was to say they couldn’t be right?