Volume 1: Pickpocketing

by R. A. Consell

  “How are you so good at this?” demanded Marie who had barely managed get the pea to move in circles around her desk.

  Charlie let her objects fall to her desk and sat up to face Marie. “It’s just practice is all,” she said, as if her mastery of the art were no big deal. “It’s the thing I learned to do on my own, like Kuro’s fast running thing.”

  Kuro had to observe this from across the room. While heating a cup of water had gone poorly, telekinesis was disastrous. He had gotten a pea to move quite quickly, but with it went the desk, as Kuro and his chair flew in the other direction.

  It wasn’t that he was some sort of telekinetic prodigy like Charlie. Instead, he was having a terrible time not conjuring the same burst of air that helped him jump and run. After his flying desk sent Magna Singh to the infirmary with a bloody nose, Kuro had been relocated somewhere safer. He stood, as his chair had also been taken away for safety reasons, in the corner. A mattress had been installed to catch him after every inevitable explosion of air.

  Others offered frequent and universally unhelpful advice almost every time he flew across the room.

  “You j-just n-need to concentrate,” said Oliver Kagen, without any explanation as to how that was done or what exactly it meant.

  “Don’t think about it too much,” advised Arthur, though it was hard to sort out what “too much” might be, especially since Arthur hadn’t blinked in minutes, he was so focused on his hovering ring.

  Kuro hoped that Charlie would be more helpful than the others given her skill, but she was just cryptic and weird. “You can’t make it move with your eyes. You gotta feel it in your brain, like how you know where your bones and the chairs and walls are.”

  The final piece of advice came from Evelyn. She waited until Mr. Ogonov was well out of earshot before strutting past his desk with a couple of her friends to offer her brand of support to Kuro and Marie. “Don’t feel bad if you can’t do it. Your primitive mind just isn’t built for such challenging things.” She and the other girls laughed derisively.

  Marie scowled briefly at the trio from her nearby seat, but she kept her cool and returned to rolling her pea in circles.

  Kuro was not so composed. He clenched his fists and glared menacingly up at the light fixture slightly to the right of Evelyn. “I’ve always wondered if royal blood really is blue.”

  Evelyn blanched at the threat and made a hasty retreat. Kuro’s dangerous reputation was good for something, at least.

  He did not get to enjoy his small victory over Evelyn for long. The next day was their final test on telekinesis. Mr. Ogonov brought them all out onto the lawn just in front of the school, where he had covered something in a large silk sheet.

  “For your final assignment you will have a chance to try out a magical transport of your choosing,” he said as he waved his hand toward the sheet with a flourish. It burst into a thousand silk butterflies that fluttered away, exposing a broom, a carpet, and a giant mortar beneath.

  He paused to let the excitement in the class die down. “Magical transports are enchanted so that they should be no more difficult to move than what you have been working with in class. The broom”—he lifted the sturdy stick with stiff sorghum bristles lashed to it—“should feel no different than a pencil.”

  He moved to the mortar, a heavy hardwood bowl with a silver rim and a broad base. “You should be able to move the rim of the mortar like you did the rings in class. Don’t be fooled by the weight of it. The enchantment should make it feel no heavier than what you’re used to.”

  Finally, he displayed the carpet to the class as though he were trying to sell it. It was plush and soft, with intricate designs worked into it. “The most challenging of the three is the flying carpet. I wouldn’t recommend trying this one unless you were quite comfortable with the silk in class. Now line up in front of the one you would like to try.”

  There was a mad rush to be the first in line. The broom was the most popular, by far, as it was the easiest and the most fashionable. Those looking to impress piled up by the carpet. Despite being the most comfortable to ride in, giant mortars were seen as old-fashioned, so only a couple people chose that. Kuro decided that it didn’t matter which one he failed to move, so he got in the shortest line to get it over with quickly.

  To Kuro’s surprise, he found Charlie at the front of the short line. He’d expected her to go to the carpet, as she was the best in the class, but she climbed into the oversized bowl eagerly. Kuro guessed that she just liked it because it was the weirdest. She nestled down into it so only the top of her head and her excited eyes could be seen above the rim.

  “At signal, lift off, fly once around the fountain, and come back. You’ll be evaluated on your stability and precision in your landing.” Ogonov snapped his fingers and a sound like the crack of thunder came out.

  The first three lifted off. Leif Ivarson from Vertheim shot out ahead of the rest on his broom, though he failed to lean in to the turn enough and nearly fell off as he rounded the corner. A Summerhill resident, Veronica Langston, inched her way shakily around the course on her carpet, mere inches from the ground. Charlie seemed oblivious to them both and flew at her own pace, smiling placidly and reclining in her wooden bowl.

  She landed casually right in front of Kuro and poured herself out of the mortar like a marionette whose strings had been cut. She grinned at Kuro as she found her feet. “That is super fun,” she said as she slapped him encouragingly on the back. “You’re going to love it.”

  That seemed incredibly unlikely. Not only did he doubt that he’d be able to get the mortar to move, he’d accidentally ended up in the same group as Evelyn. She was stepping proudly onto the carpet while tying her hair back, as though she would be flying so fast that she would need to keep it from blowing in her face.

  Before their entirely opposite displays of skill could be performed, though, the third in their trio shot off without warning. Charles Tewkbury III let out a “yip” as though he was goading a horse to move and sped off toward the forest.

  “Oh, good grief.” Ogonov rolled his eyes. “There’s one every year. Stay put. I’ll be back in a jiffy.” He swept his cape off, threw it at his feet, and stepped onto it. It carried him into the sky after the showboating Summerhiller, who was already doing loop de loops over the trees.

  Given the lack of warning against such behaviour and how ready Ogonov had been to give chase, Kuro suspected that the teacher had been hoping for an opportunity to display his own skill and remarkable cape.

  Evelyn turned on Kuro, relieved of her supervision and reason for pretending to be civil. “What are you even doing in that bowl? We all know you cannot fly. Are you hoping that an ogre will come with a matching pestle to grind you down to make his bread and put an end to your shame?”

  Her gaggle of cronies laughed along with her, and Kuro did his best to ignore her by slouching down into the bowl of the mortar.

  “Oh, l-like you're so g-great,” stuttered Oliver Kagen, jumping to the defence of his fellow Lodger. “I b-bet you’re n-no b-better than Veronica.”

  Evelyn sneered dismissively at the insult. She thrust her nose haughtily into the air, planted her hands on her hips, and began to rise. The carpet stayed flat as a board and perfectly steady as she rose nearly ten yards into the air, standing like the statue of a triumphant hero. “It's really quite a trivial thing for anyone with any skill whatsoever.”

  With Evelyn proving herself so effectively, the other Lodgers turned on Kuro to do the same. “Are you going to let her talk to you like that?” asked Sean Cassidy.

  Obviously he was. He hadn’t much choice in the matter.

  “Go on, then,” urged Jennifer Tanaka. “Show her what you’ve got.”

  Kuro wondered if any of them had been paying attention in class. He was already showing them what he had: nothing. Their urging did not cease, however, and just to make them stop, he decided to try. At least they would go back to ignoring
him after he embarrassed himself.

  He did his best to still his mind, feel out the silver rim of the mortar, and pull it skyward. As he expected, it did not work at all. Like always, the air exploded beneath him. Unlike in class, though, the explosion was contained by the bowl of the mortar and directed skywards. Kuro shot up into the air faster and farther than he'd ever jumped.

  Kuro arced up and over Evelyn on her flying carpet. As he began to fall, he reached out and grabbed a tassel on the end of the rug to stop himself plummeting back down on top of his classmates. The class below him whooped with approval as though he’d planned it all.

  He pulled himself up onto the rug and waited for Evelyn to insult him. She didn’t do anything of the sort, however. All she managed was a tight squeak of a command: “Get off.”

  She hadn’t moved from her heroic pose, but from up close, Kuro could see that it was a front. She was concentrating hard and visibly shaking. His additional weight was unbalancing the carpet, and in her struggle to keep it steady, they were rising quite fast.

  Magic carpets, brooms, and the like were enchanted to drift gently to the ground if their driver lost focus. Otherwise witches and wizards would be falling out of the sky constantly. Besides, he had jumped from nearly this high before, so he wasn’t too worried about crashing. “I thought this was easy for anyone skilled like you,” he said, bouncing a little on the balls of his feet.

  Evelyn was not so calm. Rather than holding the carpet firm in the air, or releasing her control and letting it drift slowly down to the ground on its own, she overcorrected. The little ripples Kuro had made became bigger and bigger. In her panic, Evelyn flipped the carpet, sending them tumbling earthwards.

  A peaceful stillness filled Kuro as the pleasant and familiar sensation of weightlessness swept over him. He watched above him as the rug stilled itself and began a slow and safe descent of its own. He saw the distant form of Mr. Ogonov stop chasing Charles and begin racing back in a vain attempt to save the falling children. He watched the other students on the ground beneath them scattering away like frightened ants. He saw Evelyn, who did not find the experience nearly as calming, screaming and thrashing as they fell.

  Kuro rolled over like a cat and let his magic build up a cushion of air beneath him so he could land softly. Evelyn did not look like she knew how, though. Falling from great heights was apparently something else that proper witches and wizards did not do. She had completely come apart. If nothing was done, she would probably break every bone in her body on impact.

  Kuro felt for a moment that she deserved it, that she could do with a couple broken bones. His heart wasn’t in it, though. She was stuck up and mean, but he didn’t really want her harmed and certainly not dead. Even so, he was helpless to do anything. The ground was coming up fast, and Kuro didn’t know any real magic to save her.

  Or did he? He could do one bit of magic reliably, though it didn’t work quite as it was supposed to. He pulled an eraser from his pocket and held it out away from him. He tried to move it with his mind, and as always, he failed, and an explosion of air threw him violently backwards into Evelyn. She clung to his back and shrieked continuously into his ear.

  They tumbled downward together. Kuro’s intention was to cushion their fall the way he did his own when leaping from roofs in Detritus Lane. Evelyn’s panicked screams made it hard to concentrate, however, and her added bulk made it hard to get pointed in the right direction. The ground was rushing up at them frighteningly quickly. It was only a few feet away when Kuro got his hands and feet back under him, too late to build up a cushion of air. Kuro prepared himself for what would likely be a fatal impact, but he never reached the ground.

  He hung in the air, dangling by his shirt collar as if caught on a coat hook. Evelyn was caught in the same way, though she was still gripped by fear and thrashed against the invisible captor as they were slowly lowered to the grass.

  The other students rushed to variously congratulate, berate, and check up on the pair of students. There was little agreement on whether what had just happened was awesome or terrible. In the same moment, Kuro was asked if he was hurt at all and told in no uncertain terms that he would have deserved it if he’d smashed on the ground.

  The swarm was broken by the return of Mr. Ogonov, who landed and hit the ground at a run. He shouted everyone away and fussed over the two students, making absolutely certain that they were not hurt. That took considerably longer with Evelyn, who was still a blubbering mess and was quite convinced that she had, in fact, died. Kuro heard little of it, though. He was too distracted by Charlie.

  She had been in a crumpled heap on the ground when Kuro landed, and she rose slowly and clumsily. While everyone else was fussing over him and Evelyn, she’d been nursing a bloody nose. He worried that she’d been trampled in the race to evade the falling students.

  Ogonov sent everyone back to the classroom while he escorted Evelyn to the infirmary. She was clearly uninjured, but her protests claimed otherwise. Kuro hung behind, partly to check on Charlie, who was still moving sluggishly, and partly because those who hadn’t had a chance at flying were shooting him dangerously unhappy looks.

  Marie and Arthur were already helping to steady her when Kuro approached. “Are you okay?” he asked.

  “Yeah, yeah,” Charlie said, waving him away. The effort of doing so made one of her legs give out.

  “You don’t look okay,” said Marie, struggling to keep Charlie stable. “We should take you to the infirmary.”

  “No, don’t do that!” Charlie protested. “I’m fine, really.” She shook off her friends and stood on her own. She was wobbly but argued that she could walk just fine and urged the others to all go back to class. The stairs defeated her, however, and she tripped on the second one and failed to catch herself at all.

  “You are not okay,” Arthur informed Charlie as Marie helped her sit up on the steps.

  “What happened to you?” asked Kuro, fearing that her condition was somehow his fault.

  “I caught you,” she said, her head flopping to the side as she tried to look at Kuro.

  “That was you?” he asked. “That’s amazing. I thought it was the teacher.”

  “Nah, he was too far away. I could tell.” Charlie had steadied herself again and shrugged off Marie as she stood. “I’d have got you sooner, but you kept moving around and other people are slippery. It was hard to get a grip. Evelyn is heavier than she looks. You’re not but still kinda heavy.”

  “Thank you” was all Kuro could think to say. He didn’t have the words to express his gratitude for not being smashed like a bug under Evelyn. “But why did you fall down. Why can’t you walk properly?”

  Charlie pouted and looked away from the others. “Promise you won’t tell anyone?”

  They all agreed readily and leaned in, curious what Charlie might consider a secret worth keeping from them.

  Charlie had to chew on the words a bit before she could get them in order and out of her mouth. “I’m paralyzed,” she said at last, so quickly that Kuro had trouble understanding the words.

  “You’re what?” he asked.

  “I’m paralyzed,” she repeated, now looking ashamed and fearful. “The neck down. I broke my neck when I was little.”

  Something didn’t quite add up about her claim. Kuro didn’t know a lot about being paralyzed, but Charlie did an awful lot more moving around than he thought should be possible if she were telling the truth. “But,” he managed to say before Charlie cut him off with more explanation.

  “I pretty much can’t move without magic. I had to learn to do telekinesis on myself to get around at all, and I can’t feel much of anything on my right side and only bits and pieces on my left. Standing up and moving around isn’t so hard anymore, but I can’t do that and also catch you. So I fell down. And you’re heavy, so my brain muscles are kinda tired, maybe sprained. Can you sprain your brain? I hope not. I need it for walking.”

  Kuro
was still puzzling together what Charlie was saying. Arthur was much faster at sorting it out. “So that’s why you’re good at telekinesis?”

  Charlie brushed off the compliment as if her skills were nothing special, but Arthur wouldn’t have it. “Mr. Ogonov said that it was very dangerous to use it on your body. How do you do it?”

  “I dunno, I just do,” answered Charlie. “I was really young when I started doing it. I guess I was too young to know it wasn’t supposed to work. At first I just turned pages in my books; then I figured out how to move my bones the same way. Pretty soon I was walking again, sort of.”

  Arthur continued to pry. “Can you fly?”

  Charlie shook her head. “No, I tried that once. It hurt a lot. I don’t think my bones are supposed to hold things up like that. I guess I could do it by lifting my clothes up like I did today to Kuro, but that kinda sucked, too.”

  Marie interrupted Arthur’s interrogation with her own. “Is that also why you fall down every time you get surprised?”

  Charlie nodded, her face flushing with embarrassment.

  “And why your handwriting is so bad?”

  Another nod.

  “And why you never unbutton your shirts or untie your tie, and slide off your chair when you get distracted, and didn’t move at all on the ferry ride outside the veil?”

  “Yeah,” she mumbled. “All that stuff.”

  “And why you never pick up your clothes from the floor?” Marie asked of her roommate with a half-smile and a raised eyebrow.

  Charlie’s expression shifted quickly from shame to evasive guilt. “Oh yeah,” she agreed vigorously, “definitely that too.”

  Marie stormed up to Charlie, scowling, and gave her a stiff flick on the forehead. “Why did you not tell me? I would have helped you.”