by Cora May
When Arbella came to the school, she came with a resume and asked to be placed as Head of the House of Amethyst. With the power she wielded, it wasn’t possible to say no.
There was more, but Chanta stopped reading. Again, in light of her assignment, she was focused on what similarities she could draw between herself and the people in the stories. In this case, she was drawing even more of a blank than with the Pyrite stone. At least they had a physical ability still. But a mind reader? Or a Gypsy? That seemed highly unlikely. She had no connection with a mental ability, and definitely no connection with people’s thoughts.
She knew she could have read further, if for no other reason than to learn about the people she was living amongst. But she didn’t. Something about the possibility of a mind reader set her uneasy. She almost wanted to meet Nessi before she met Arbella, but she knew that was out of the question to ask for. Besides that, she still didn’t want to meet Nessi anyway.
It felt like a waste of time, though. The tests she would be put through tomorrow were obviously not her stones.
Except for maybe the Jasper, of course, which was the first test she had tomorrow, she reminded herself. She realized she had been trying not to think about it, trying to put it off in her mind. It would be best to get it out of the way, though.
And then maybe she wouldn’t even have to meet Arbella anyway.
She had a feeling it didn’t matter what stone she was connected to. She would be put through all seven tests anyway. She had a feeling that, as much as Reiter was hoping there would be a different reaction to some specific stone and it would be an obvious connection, there was nothing about her that was normal.
There was something not right about her. Reiter knew it, Prisanni knew it, even Chanta herself knew it. She was as much of a puzzle to these people as she was to the priests back home. The question was, what were they going to do about it? Would they pretend to fix the problem, all the while masking it instead?
When the knock at the door came, she wasn’t even hungry. She had no appetite for even the finest food, her mood dampened wholly. She realized she had actually started to let a bit of hope creep into her heart. Perhaps she had even started to share the faith that these people presented to her, listening to Reiter and taking his words to heart more deeply than she was willing to admit even to herself. And now, even that shred of hope had been taken from her.
There was a second knock at the door.
Chanta sighed as she rose from the desk. She knew if she didn’t answer, they would begin to question her. She had been cooperative so far; it was best that it remained that way.
She swung the door open as she told Maleka, “I really don’t feel like eating tonight. You can just—”
The smell of the food was what interrupted her train of thought. It completely derailed it, in fact. That was because of the rich smell of cinnamon and chocolate.
Maleka noticed her pause, noticed the way she stared at the silver platter. She extended the plate toward Chanta. Chanta hesitated only for a few seconds before pulling in the plate. She stared at it, and only it, as she turned around and closed the door behind her. She didn’t bother saying hi to Maleka, or even thanking her for the food. She didn’t even consider how rude she had been as she shut the door in her face.
Her appetite had returned, apparently.
She shoved the books to the side of the desk to make room for her dinner. Then she took a seat and stared at the covered platter. She was savoring the moment, really, unwilling to have it end in some brutal destruction of her hopes.
Then again, how could that smell be misleading?
She was projecting her own fears now onto the food, and that was ridiculous, she told herself. She put her hand on the top of the platter and breathed in one more big, deep breath, taking in each wonderful scent.
She uncovered the platter.
In front of her was a classic plate of chewy looking steak, covered in a barbeque sauce that smelled sweet and spicy at the same time. There were five long, buttery strips of asparagus on one side, and a pile of fluffy, buttery mashed potatoes, covered in a deep brown gravy on the other. It looked more than amazing, but that wasn’t the best part of the meal.
On its own plate was the source of the chocolate and cinnamon smell. It was a single serving sized cake. Judging by the look of the texture, it was a moist devil’s food cake. Judging by the scent, Chanta had no doubt there was cinnamon baked into the recipe. What a beautiful trick, she thought. Even though the dinner looked more than amazing, her newfound appetite wasn’t for the steak or the potatoes. She only had the stomach for that piece of cake.
She picked up the fork and immediately broke open the center. Out of it gushed out a deep brown chocolate pudding, slowly oozing onto her plate with steam.
It was a lava cake. Could this day get any better?
As she lifted the fork into her mouth, she realized that it absolutely could. The cake was heavenly. It burned the roof of her mouth ever so slightly, but she wasn’t even bothered. It had been everything she had hoped for and more.
It was chocolate and cinnamon. It was lava and squishy cake. It was warm as it slid down her throat, bringing comfort into her body with every little bite. She couldn’t decide which she liked more, the cake or the lava. She practically licked the plate clean as she tried to make that decision, but down to the very last bit, she couldn’t say for sure.
CHAPTER FOUR: CHANTA
S he stretched out on her bed after a nice, long rest. The cake had filled her belly and sent her into a food coma. In fact, she still felt full from it. She was starting to really enjoy the food service. It made her forget about all her other troubles.
She cursed herself, rising up from the bed in a rush. She had let herself fall asleep right after dinner and forgot all about the crying. She looked around the room for a clock again, as if by reflex. But when her eyes landed on it, it was still just a broken clock, stuck on the same time it had read when she arrived.
She had no clue what time it was or how much time she had before breakfast. She took a moment to consider. She had gone to bed pretty early—that possibly meant that she had also woken early. She would have time, theoretically, before breakfast arrived and before she was taken off to the first test of the morning.
It was worth the risk, she decided.
She stepped out of bed and crept toward the door.
She poked her head out.
Standing at the door, with her hand outstretched as if to knock, was Maleka.
Drat, Chanta thought.
“Where were you going?” Maleka finally asked once she had her wits about her enough to say anything at all.
Quite unusually for her, Chanta thought quick on her feet.
“I was looking for you,” she answered without missing a beat. “I don’t have a clock in here, you see, and I was wondering when you might be around.”
Maleka considered for a moment.
“You’re not supposed to leave this room,” she said, her voice dropping. She wasn’t buying Chanta’s lie one bit. “You could get in a lot of trouble.”
“What are they going to do to me?” Chanta retorted. “They’ve already gotten me locked up.”
“They don’t mean it to be a prison,” Maleka explained. “It is only that you need to be respectful of other people. The students down here are not so… put together. They need more help than we do upstairs. They are not quite there… You know,” she said, using her free hand to point to her head.
Chanta understood well enough.
“Are you the person who serves them all their meals, too?” Chanta asked bravely.
“No,” Maleka said. “That is not my job. I don’t like to see them.”
“Why not?”
“It makes me sad.”
Chanta had been hoping to trip her up in some way, but the girl was hard to crack. She pulled information slowly, absorbing most of what she learned through inferences.
“Am I going to end
up like them?”
She had asked the question thinking she might learn something of what the school was planning to do to her, but the minute she let the words out, she realized that she truly was afraid of that.
She wasn’t comforted by the long pause Maleka took before she answered.
“I should hope not,” the girl finally stated. “They are like that because they are far too unique. I don’t think they could handle that pressure… Or something like that. Maybe you’re different. Maybe you’re stronger than them. You seem like it.”
Chanta considered her words. Maybe she could let those ones comfort her. After all, she was strong. She had already put up with plenty in the way of her uniqueness—both situations she caused as well as situations that were imposed on her. She was capable of dealing with a lot more, too, she knew that.
Besides, these tests Reiter was giving her were not that hard to pass. Or, at least, they weren’t that hard to get through—she certainly wasn’t passing any of them.
“He will be down in twenty minutes,” Maleka told her, almost reading her train of thought, “along with the next professor. I suggest you are eaten and changed by then.”
Chanta looked down at her clothing. It was still the same clothing she had entered the building with. She was sure she stunk, and that wasn’t going to make any good impressions on the new professors. She had already upset Sahira over it.
Maleka was suddenly pushing the plate of food into Chanta’s hands and motioning that she should gather her old dishes. Chanta understood. She was trying to help her, to make sure she was ready when Reiter came to get her, and to make sure everything was normal by the time he got down there.
She was giving her a warning. Chanta had twenty minutes to make herself presentable and to keep in the good graces of the professors.
And, more importantly, she had twenty minutes to make sure she was in the room.
Even after Maleka left, Chanta took that warning to heart. She didn’t bother exploring the basement halls that morning. Instead, she went to the dresser that she hadn’t touched yet. Inside was a small collection of plain clothing. She pulled out a black pencil skirt and slipped it on. She dug around and found a gray tank top to wear with it. She knew there was a shower in her small bathroom, but she didn’t bother with it. Perhaps she would get to that some other time. For the moment, she was going to make everything else looked touched and done.
She went over to the plate of food. She wasn’t hungry, and she was sure that Reiter wouldn’t look at the plate anyway, but she ate a couple of bites of the scrambled eggs and moved the remainder around the plate. She did the same with the toast, tearing off the crust and crumbling bits and pieces around the plate. She was given an apple that time, and she moved it to the desk beside the banana, which was beginning to brown. She kept the muffin, too. She would definitely eat that later. The breakfast looked tasty enough, but she wasn’t in the mood to eat.
She was in the mood to think. To explore. To discover the mysteries of this place.
But even that would have to wait. The next knock on the door did, indeed, come about twenty minutes after Maleka had left. At least, by Chanta’s own estimate, it felt like it might have been around twenty minutes. She sighed and opened the door, quickly stepping outside beside the professor and waving him forward. He was shocked by her compliance that morning, but he accepted it and led her down the hall.
Again, the room had not changed from the day before, save for the woman that was sitting in the spot that Sahira had been. This woman was clearly very much taller than Sahira, even though she had been quite tall. This woman was also more muscular, but not in an unattractive way. Her muscles were defined, but not bulging. Chanta wouldn’t want to get on her bad side, though, because it was obvious that those muscles were no small joke. The woman had long hair, a dull brown with streaks of gray as its color. It was braided in a simple braid, straight down her back. She wore a brown leather vest that was buttoned, but low cut. She also wore an expression of absolute seriousness—even worse than Reiter’s expression. Her brown eyes did not sparkle or smile in any way, and neither did her straight, light pink lips. She didn’t even greet Chanta as she walked in, she merely nodded her head at the chair in front of her.
Chanta had a feeling this test would be quick. This woman—Nessi—wasn’t going to waste time with introductions like Sahira had. She didn’t seem to have the patience for that.
And that suited Chanta just fine, as she had some other exploring to do.
“Professor Nessi,” Chanta greeted her, her head held high and her ego way too inflated for the moment. She wasn’t sure where that confidence had come from. Perhaps it was just a response to this woman’s blatant attitude. She took a seat in front of her.
“So you know my story,” Professor Nessi said. “Good. I have less to explain.”
Chanta would have laughed if she wasn’t secretly afraid of the woman. She hit the nail on the mark. The woman was going to rush the test.
“As the Head of the House of Jasper, I’m here to test you as a fit for the stone.”
“And if I fail, which we all know I will, we move on to less and less likely stones,” Chanta said plainly. “I know the drill.”
Professor Nessi tilted her head.
“Perhaps you think you do,” she told Chanta, “but you’re not understanding just how much study goes behind every test and every result. You realize the stone of Gold is still a possibility, don’t you? So far, it’s a stone you have connected with, even if we never would have believed it to be your stone.”
Reiter chuckled beside her.
“Speak for yourself, woman,” he told her. “That was still the first stone I picked.”
Nessi rolled her eyes.
“Regardless,” she continued, “the Jasper stone is a highly likely pick for you as well. You understand its ability, don’t you?”
“Yep,” Chanta said blandly. “Superhuman strength, I’m sure speed and agility come with it, and you get to wear a pretty red stone, right? Will I get a cape, too?”
Nessi was not amused by her attitude.
“The Jasper stone is a highly physical stone. Yes, strength, speed, and agility are part of it. But with those must come control and skill. If you were to be placed into my house, you would be trained not only to control your ability but to home in on the physical skills as well. My students rise early to practice in the fields, and they dedicate themselves to a healthy diet as well.”
Chanta grimaced at the thought of the chocolate muffin she had just saved. Her eating habits were clearly not up to Nessi’s standards. She hoped there was no way she could be associated with the Jasper stone.
Still, part of her could already feel a connection. She could feel the heat rising in her heart, and she knew where in that room the stone was. It was like it was as eager as she was to hold it.
“It is a hard life, that of one who has been Blessed by the Jasper stone,” Nessi continued. “But it is also a great triumph. Would you be willing to learn and serve as my students do?”
“Would I have a choice, should this be my stone?”
Nessi’s mouth twitched a little.
“Everyone has a choice,” she told her in a way that didn’t sound quite like it was the truth. “Most students find, though, that this is their last chance school. Especially when they are Blessed with the Jasper stone and have caused so much damage in their homes that they are no longer wanted around.”
Chanta gulped. She couldn’t tell if Nessi had said that on purpose to hurt her on not. After all, wasn’t that her story, too?
“Okay, so let’s get this over with, shall we?” she said to change the subject.
Nessi nodded. She reached into the breast pocket of her leather jacket—exactly where Chanta felt the heat come from—and pulled out a tiny drawstring bag. It was brown in color, and its drawstrings were equally as dull. She pulled open the bag and let the little red stone fall out onto her palm.
C
hanta’s jaw dropped.
It was the most gorgeous stone she had seen so far. It was a shiny red in color, with a few black flakes here and there. It was perfectly oval-shaped, like an egg. It was far more beautiful than its picture in the book that she had been studying, and she almost wanted to take it over the Gold.
Almost. Nessi was the reason she was hoping not to have the slightest connection with the stone.
She extended her hand toward the stone, toward Nessi.
The woman dropped the stone in her palm, never touching Chanta’s skin. Her face remained hard as her frown deepened.
Chanta closed her eyes, blocking out that frown and the other distractions in the room. She blocked out the Jasper stone, too. She forced her mind to dwell on the Gold. She told herself to remember the warmth it offered, the tingling sensation it had given her palms.
She blocked out the image of Nessi sitting in front of her, and of the headmistress. They both reminded her of her mother. She blocked out the image of Reiter sitting across the table, too. He was nothing but a goon, and his part in this confused her. She didn’t want anything to do with anyone.
Except for Sahira. She was a motherly figure—and not like her own mother, but like a mother she would want to learn from.
As she concentrated on the feeling of the Gold, she started remembering it more and more. She could feel its shadow on her palm, and the warmth it had emitted. She felt a tingling so strong, springing from the center of that shadow, it caused her whole hand to clench in on itself. She formed a fist around the Jasper stone as the tingling reached the tips of her fingers.
She felt a command in her core.
It was like a voice, coming from inside her chest and booming out in every direction as the command tried to reach her head. Except there was no voice, and she could not decipher the command. In her heart, she knew it to be the demon inside of her.
