by S T G Hill
The gray-robed man leaned forward, “We’ve discussed your results, and we don’t believe you’re capable of advancing past the neophyte stage.”
The red woman frowned and her jaw worked, but she said nothing.
“Neo-what? What does that mean?” Ellie asked. From their tone, it didn’t sound good.
The blue-robed man leaned forward. His lips stretched in a thin, conciliatory smile.
It was the same smile Ellie’s caseworkers often offered. Her stomach went icy.
“There is a continuum to magical ability,” he said, “Everyone living has some, if only the smallest touch. You have more than a touch, but not much more. Enough to teach you the rudiments to keep yourself and those around you out of danger. A few months of classes, perhaps.”
Ellie couldn’t speak at first. Some part of her had been hoping beyond hope that this was it. That this was the part of the fairy tale where the little orphan girl learned that she was really a princess.
Only it hadn’t been simple hope, it had been belief.
Her stomach seemed frozen solid, and her throat locked up. She blinked hard a few times.
“That… that can’t be right,” she said.
The two men looked at each other. The woman in red sighed and shook her head, not looking at anyone.
“The test is as accurate as a test like this can be,” the gray-robed man said.
She thought now that he sounded like he was from somewhere up in New England.
“No, it can’t be,” Ellie said. She recalled again the fight in the alley and the way the two boys had looked at her. She recalled that sense of power.
Then she told them about it. They listened politely at first. When she told them about breaking through whatever held the door back they looked at each other.
When she told them about that strange blast that saved her, they frowned.
“Why would I lie about all this?” Ellie finished
They three seemed indecisive at first. Then the woman in red said, “Get Thorn in here.”
“Thorn?” Ellie said.
The gray-robed man touched two of his fingertips against his brow and seemed to frown a little.
Before Ellie could ask what was going on, someone knocked at the door.
“Come in,” the blue-robed man said.
The door opened, letting the light from the courtyard on the other side of the hall spill into the room.
The sandy-haired guy from the Linden theater walked in. He wore street clothes still, a pair of jeans with a button down, the shirtsleeves rolled up to his elbows.
“Thorn, please tell us how you brought Eleonora to us,” the woman said.
Thorn? His name is Thorn? Ellie thought. What kind of a name was that? If the circumstances had been different, she might have smirked when she learned that.
Of course, she didn’t have the most usual name herself, she knew. Kids at school liked to remind her of that at every opportunity when they learned what Ellie was short for.
Besides, she didn’t want to smirk at him: he was the only one who could corroborate her story.
Thorn crossed his arms. He looked from the trio to Ellie. Did he shake his head at her there, almost imperceptibly?
She frowned and mouthed, What? at him.
“Thorn,” the blue-robed man said.
“Yes, Master Shaffir. I was just collecting my thoughts,” Thorn said, “I approached her at a movie theater in Brooklyn. She freaked out and made a run for it. I used a small spell to slow her down, and I guess she couldn’t take it. She made it to the emergency exit and then fainted in the alley on the other side,” he looked at her hard, like a reproachful parent, “Why, if I may ask?”
Ellie couldn’t believe it. She whirled back to the trio, “That’s a lie! Why would you lie about this? Tell them the truth! Tell them about…”
Her mouth kept moving, but no sounds came out. She stopped talking, frowned, and tried to say something else. Still no sound.
When she looked up, she saw how Master Shaffir, the man in the blue robe, held up one finger towards her, like a librarian casting an eternal shush.
“That is everything?” the woman in the red asked. She looked the most perplexed of the three.
Thorn nodded, “Yes, Master Thrace. Why would I lie?”
Ellie screamed so hard her throat hurt. Still no sound. She didn’t know why this particular betrayal cut so deep. She had probably only been around Thorn for 20 minutes of her life.
But they were 20 important minutes. Defining minutes.
Only he was giving the wrong definition.
Why? she mouthed at him. He glanced at her, then back towards the people he referred to as Masters.
The gray-robed man, the farthest along the table, leaned over more so that he could see Thorn past the other two, “She just told us a rather different story. If it were true, then it would belie her test results.”
Thorn smirked.
She hated him. She hated him more than she hated Mr. Fichtner. She hated him so much the pressure of it pushed at the back of her eyes and burned in the pit of her stomach, thawing all the ice that had been there.
“So she’s just an ab and doesn’t like it. That’s all.” Thorn said. He pronounced the word ab like the Abe in Abe Lincoln.
“Is there a problem with the test?”
Everyone turned to the far corner of the table. Aurelius had just appeared there. Ellie had never been so relieved in her life.
“More of a disagreement,” Master Shaffir said. He lowered his silencing finger finally.
“Magister Cassiodorian…” Thorn said, looking down at the floor. His smirk disappeared. He clasped his hands behind his back.
“What disagreement?” Aurelius said.
They filled him in. Even though she was no longer muzzled, Ellie didn’t talk. She knew how she could fix all this. All she had to do was wait her turn.
“Just look,” Ellie said, “Please, magister.” She tripped a little over the unfamiliar word. “Just look at what I’m thinking.”
Then she squeezed her eyes shut and recounted the memory as clearly as she could manage. So clearly she could smell the garbage in that alley again.
Then she opened her eyes and looked.
Aurelius Cassiodorian regarded her from the end of the table. “I’m sorry your results disappoint you, Miss Ashwood. However, I saw nothing that would cast doubt on Thorn’s account of your recruitment.”
“I don’t understand,” Ellie said, poleaxed.
Aurelius offered her a conciliatory smile, “It isn’t everyone’s destiny to become a sorcerer, Miss Ashwood. Please don’t feel too disappointed; I believe I can say with some confidence that life isn’t done with you yet.”
Then he winked and disappeared.
Chapter 5
She wanted to find Thorn and make him tell her why he lied.
Actually, she intended to beat it out of him. It didn’t matter that he had almost a foot on her and probably 50 pounds.
The way’s there if there’s a will. One of her foster parents had told her that little pearl. She was too angry to remember which one.
The trio of Masters dismissed her from the testing room and told her to go rest and take in the school, and that someone would be in touch with her shortly to arrange her dormitory accommodations and place her into the appropriate college of sorcery, whatever that meant.
Instead she rushed out of the testing room. She looked both ways down the beautiful hallway, searching for Thorn.
He was tall enough that the bobbing of his sandy-haired head caught her attention in a crowd of students.
She marched at him, legs pumping so hard that her calves got all tight and sore. The hall was so much longer than it looked!
A moment before her hand landed on his shoulder, he whirled around to face her. Some sort of magic, Ellie knew.
She also didn’t care.
She pushed him and he rocked backwards, but caught himself easily. A few of th
e passersby regarded them curiously, but they didn’t linger.
“What?” Thorn said. He crossed his arms. The gesture made Ellie think of an irritated parent.
“What do you mean what? You know exactly what. So tell me why right now or—“
“Or you’ll what?” Thorn said.
Ellie balled her hands into fists so tight that her fingernails dug into her palms. Her whole body trembled. “I think you know that. And I also want to let you know right now I think I’m just about as mad now as I was scared right before I knocked Caspian out. Do you want that to happen to you?”
She said it all through tight-clenched teeth.
He regarded her a little longer with his admonishing pose. Probably he hoped to call her bluff, she knew.
It wasn’t a bluff.
His arms dropped to his sides and he worked his jaw a little, looking at anything but her.
“Now!” she said. That got his attention.
“All you need to know is that it’s for your own good. Just take your classes, learn a little spell or two, and how to control that temper. Then go back to Brooklyn and live your life. And try to forget this place ever existed.”
She shoved him hard, both hands planted on his chest. This time he fell back against the wall.
He grabbed her hands and looked down at the left one. And the missing tip to her left pinky.
She tried to yank away, but he held fast. “How did you lose this?”
“I didn’t lose it! I was born like that, okay? Why are you like this? Why are you such a jerk?”
He let go of her hands. Right away she stuffed the left one into her pocket. Then she blinked hard and fast.
I will not cry in front of him! I won’t! There’s no way!
“Really, just keep your head low and get out when they’re finished with you. That’s the best thing that could possibly happen. And if anyone asks, you lost the fingertip in an accident when you were little.”
She wanted to press him more about that, but something else occurred to her. And in her angry state she couldn’t keep her mind from bouncing around.
“What’s an ab?” She said it as Abe, like he had.
He sighed and looked away. “It really doesn’t matter. They’re going to call you soon.”
Then he turned and started away.
She needed to know. She put her hand on his shoulder. Not hard. She just placed it there. He stopped and looked back at her, his face impassive.
“Please? You owe me that much. This is all so new. I don’t understand anything.”
Was it his shoulder or her hand that was so warm?
His jaw worked, but he didn’t shake away from her touch.
“It’s short for an old Latin word, abecedarian,” he said. He pronounced it like the first three letters of the alphabet, A-B-C, with a –darian after the C. “It means beginner. It’s what we call people who only have a little bit of the magic. Don’t take it too hard.”
“Yeah, right,” Ellie said. She knew when someone was teasing or mocking or making fun of her or calling her names. And that was definitely name-calling. Mean-spirited name-calling.
“I guess even schools for wizards have bullies,” Ellie said.
Thorn smiled. It was a thin, I’m-humoring-your-stupidity smile.
“What?” Ellie said, wondering what she’d done wrong this time.
“There are no wizards here. Wizards and magicians do tricks on stages and wave silly wands around. Sorcerers do real magic.”
“Did I touch a nerve?” Ellie said.
“No, just trying to keep you from making an idiot of yourself around here. As long as you are here, that is,” he said.
“Eleonora? Miss Ashwood?”
Ellie and Thorn turned and saw Master Thrace, the woman in red, standing not far from them.
In the clear daylight that bathed the hall, she looked even prettier than in the testing room. Even more radiant, ethereal, and ageless. Like some beautiful elf out of a fairy tale or something.
Ellie let her hand drop from Thorn.
“Just keep your head low,” he told her, then, “Master Thrace, I was just heading to class. I’m going to be late.”
Ellie didn’t want him to go. She wanted to know so much more. Like why Magister Cassiodorian hadn’t seen the true memory.
“Go, then,” she said.
He didn’t look at either of them and stalked his way quickly down the hall. Ellie and Thrace watched him.
She then noticed that the hall had emptied. The only sound was the soft rustling of the leaves on the other side of the glass.
“We were never properly introduced. My name is Arabella Thrace. Please, call me Arabella. Unless there are students or faculty around. Then it’s Master Thrace,” she said. “But never Bella; I’m not a big fan of vampire romances.” Her pretty little nose crinkled when she smiled, Ellie saw.
They both laughed.
Arabella. That’s a pretty name, Ellie thought. “What are you master of, anyway?”
“Let’s walk and talk,” Arabella said. She laid one arm gently across Ellie’s shoulders and led her down the hall, “I know it’s all so jarring and sudden. I don’t really agree with the way recruitment works here, but it’s tradition. And Sourcewell Academy loves its traditions. But to answer your question, I’m the Kinesist Prime for the school.”
For the first time since the test, Ellie felt calm. Not quite happy, but content. Things didn’t seem so bad.
She had no idea why she felt that way. Not that she was complaining.
“That makes it sound like you teach yoga or something,” Ellie said.
Arabella smiled at that. Ellie did, too. She couldn’t help it, she realized.
“A kinesist,” Arabella began, “Is a sorcerer whose powers derive mainly from touching and physical contact.”
Ellie remembered meeting Caspian. She remembered what happened when he held her hand, how he’d almost made her go with him.
And now that she thought about it, her spine tingled in that exact same way.
She stopped dead in the hall, so abrupt that the bottom of her loose-soled shoe squeaked against the floor.
“You’re doing something to me right now, aren’t you?” Ellie said.
“You were so upset after the test, and it seemed like Thorn hadn’t really helped matters at all—“
“Stop. Just stop, please,” Ellie said.
She shrugged against Arabella’s arm, cold panic piling up in the pit of her stomach.
Arabella let her arm drop. “I’m sorry, I thought you were a little overwhelmed.”
“Yes on the first bit. I just don’t like that being done to me. Is that okay?” Ellie said.
Because even though the memory twisted around in her stomach every time she thought of Caspian, she wanted Arabella to like her.
She’d been alone for so much of her life that it never really bothered her. But this was a whole new level.
Arabella smiled, “Of course. Normally the Prime faculty don’t do orientation, but I thought it would be nice and let us get to know each other a little better. Does that sound okay to you?”
Ellie didn’t answer at first. “I think this is the first time a teacher ever asked me what I wanted to do instead of telling me what I should do.”
“And what do you think?”
“I think I’d like you to do my orientation,” Ellie said.
Arabella gestured for them to continue walking down the hall. She kept her hands clasped in front of her.
The campus was a sprawling country estate consisting of dozens of buildings. Paths, paved and cobbled, wove their way across the rolling grounds.
Arabella took her outside first, to a beautiful courtyard lined with statues of various robed figures.
The statues moved, the figures on the pedestals shifting their weight or assuming different poses.
The nearest was one of an old man who reminded her of Aurelius. This man had a longer beard, though. And as they passed
by his marble hand reached up to stroke those marble curls.
Ellie goggled and stared all around her. It reminded her of going into Manhattan and seeing all the tourists and the way they looked at the city with its gleaming skyscrapers.
There was nothing of the sort here. The air itself felt so warm and clean, and the sunlight, no longer reflected off towering buildings of glass, was pure and clear.
“It’s quite the place, isn’t it?” Arabella said, “This building we just left is the Magister’s Hall, where the current magister and all the primes have their offices. And also, as you know, where the admission test gets administered.”
Ellie turned around and walked backwards, trying to fit the entirety of the broad building into view.
It reminded her of a fortress with its stone walls and high crenellations. But then that long hallway with its high windows broke it up.
She stopped and spun in a slow circle, trying to take it all in. A light, sweet breeze blew by and filled the air with the light sounds of fluttering leaves.
Then the sole of her shoe fell off.
“Give me a sec,” Ellie said, not quite looking at Arabella.
She knelt down and snatched up the well-worn sole and hobbled over to a nearby stone bench.
It sure had picked a great time to come off.
She sat on the bench and set her foot across her knee and held the sole up to the remains of her shoe. Her socked toes wiggled at her.
How embarrassing, she thought. Her cheeks got hotter and hotter as she tried without success to put it back on.
Then Arabella knelt next to her, “I can help with that, if you like.”
“That’s okay,” Ellie said. She kept thinking about how her test results and how she wasn’t apparently good enough or strong enough or whatever.
And now Arabella had to be thinking to herself about how the test was right. And why was such a poor girl in this amazing school in the first place. And…
“It’s okay, don’t worry,” Arabella said.
She then took the floppy sole of the shoe gently from Ellie’s hand. Ellie gripped it for a second, her cheeks so hot she thought they might burst into flame, before letting go.
Then Arabella fixed her shoe. She placed the sole against Ellie’s sock foot. Then Arabella’s lips moved, just a little, in a whisper spoken only to herself. Little threads of light ran down her wrist and hand and up into the rubber sole.
