“Oh.” Her face fell again and she scuffed her feet, not meeting my eye. “You won’t think that when you get to know about me. If you want normal, then you should make some other friends.”
“Don’t be silly,” I said, slipping my arm through hers. “We’re going to be great friends, I can tell.”
“We are?”
“We are. Besides, how am I going to find my way around without you? This place is a maze.”
“It is rather easy to get lost,” she agreed with a chuckle. “Oh, that reminds me! We need to get you to the magical market so you can buy your uniform and books.”
My thoughts went back to the handful of coins in my pocket. I didn’t think they were going to buy me very much, and books were expensive.
“What’s wrong?”
Kelsey was watching me closely, her face creased with concern.
“I, uh, I don’t have any money. Not with me, anyway, at least not much. Not enough for books and uniforms.”
“Oh, don’t worry about that. The academy gives each student a small stipend at the start of the year. It’s not much, but it should cover all the equipment you need. And you can get a job here on campus to earn anything else you need.”
“Seriously? That’s brilliant news. In that case, let’s go shopping.”
Getting to the market, unsurprisingly, meant using another portal. This one was set into a wall near the main hall, shaped like a doorway, and was entirely less unsettling that my first experience of portals had been. A prefect stood in front of it wearing heavy blue robes, stopping each student before they were allowed through. A strange black and gold bird was perched on his shoulder, and occasionally bent its head towards his ear like it was speaking to him. Both bird and prefect looked me and Kelsey up and down when we reached them.
“Names?” the prefect asked in a bored tone.
“Kelsey Winters and Lyssa Eldridge,” Kelsey answered quickly.
The bird bent its head to his ear again, and I could see its beak moving. It was speaking to him.
“First years aren’t allowed through the portal during their first semester,” the prefect said flatly.
“But Lyssa needs to buy her books and robes, or she’ll be in trouble.”
“Bit late for that, isn’t it? The semester starts tomorrow.”
“I didn’t know about the academy until today,” I said. “Besides, you said we couldn’t go through during our first semester, right? But it’s not our first semester yet.”
The prefect narrowed his eyes, but I thought I saw a flicker of amusement in them.
“Very well, Lyssa Eldridge. You may go through. Wouldn’t want you to be in trouble.”
“And Kelsey?” I pressed. “Otherwise how will I know where to go and what to buy?”
“Like to push your luck, don’t you? Alright, you can both go through. But I’ll be keeping a close eye on you, Lyssa.”
The look he was giving me wasn’t entirely unpleasant, so I gave him what I hoped was an innocent smile, and stepped through the portal.
If I lived to be a hundred, I would never get used to the sensation of lifting my foot up in one town, and putting it down in entirely another. One moment, we were in the calm, dimly-lit confines of the corridor beside the main hall, then next we were in a bustling street, with sunlight beaming down on us, and people jostling all around us. None of them so much as looked twice at us stepping out from the middle of a wall, which told me everything I needed to know: they were all druids, too. We were in a magical town.
“Fantail Market is the best place to get your magical supplies,” Kelsey said. “You can get pretty much everything you could ever want right here.”
I could believe it. The street we were in was lined both sides with shops, and in the gaps between them dozens of street traders were hawking their wares. The window to my left was hung with chalices and cauldrons, and to my right a bookstore carrying books with titles like ‘First Year Alchemy: Changing Perceptions’ and ‘A Hundred and One Uses for Dragon Dung’. I was trying to think of a single use for dragon dung when something brushed my leg. I look down and saw a tiny green figure – no taller than my knee – wearing a tattered white shirt and bent over a walking stick. Fierce yellow eyes stared up at me and the creature’s wide forehead furrowed into a scowl as it caught me staring.
“What’s the matter wit’ yer, girl, have y’ never seen a Leprechaun before?”
It shook its head in disgust and hobbled away, while I stared in its wake. I lost sight of it behind a large fountain, the centre of which appeared to be an ice sculpture of a mermaid tail.
“Why doesn’t the sculpture melt?” I wondered aloud.
“Huh?” Kelsey followed the direction of my gaze. “Oh, it’s enchanted. Actually, it’s what the marketplace is named after – you know, fantail – and as long as the sculpture is still standing, it means everything is safe and well here.”
“Cool.”
“Come on,” she said, tugging lightly on my sleeve. “We’d best not stay too long, or we’ll miss dinner.” And if her eyes lingered just a little too long on the window we were passing, hung with all manner of cuts of meat, well I figured she must just have missed lunch. Who was I to criticise a girl for having a healthy appetite?
I hurried along next to her, barely getting chance to look at all the shops we passed.
“We should get your robes first,” she said. “Flounders is bound to be running a sale this close to the start of the semester.”
A sale sounded good, given that my stipend was likely to be extremely modest, and it was also likely to have to last a while. Kelsey was right, I saw as we reached Flounders. The window was hung with banners that danced and twirled where they hung, advertising up to fifty percent off. A portrait of a man in one of them beckoned to me, almost causing me to walk right into a cloaked figure hurrying in the opposite direction, carrying what looked to be a heavy pile of books. I stuttered an apology as he glared at me.
It was a relief when we stepped inside and found it almost deserted, save for one bored-looking sales assistant, who pointed us in the direction of the Fire element cloak without bothering to glance up from whatever was occupying his attention behind the counter. I wondered if it was the dragon dung book.
I tried on several of the ridiculous looking red cloaks before Kelsey nodded in satisfaction and declared the one that just barely touched the ground as I walked was perfect. Perfect wouldn’t have been my word of choice – it weighed an absolute tonne and was insanely hot. I pulled it off with relief which was short-lived: Kelsey had already plucked half a dozen skirts and blouses from a rack and was shoving me towards the changing rooms. I tried them on with an air of resignation. The whole thing reminded me entirely too much of school shopping with my parents and my little sis– Wait, if mum and dad weren’t my birth parents, did that mean Holly wasn’t my sister?
“Hello, earth to Lyssa?”
I snapped back to my senses to see Kelsey waving a hand in front of my face.
“I’m sorry, what?”
“I said, we should pay for this stuff and get a move on.”
We dumped my small mound of clothing in front of the bored clerk, who rang it up and declared the total was eight solarins, while the clothes folded themselves into a tidy pile. My mouth popped open as I watched. I had to learn how to do that.
“How do I, uh, pay?” I asked, not quite able to wrench my eyes away from the answer to all my laundry-related prayers.
“Hold your hand out,” the clerk said, with a roll of his eyes. I stretched my hand out tentatively towards him. “Palm down.”
I flipped my hand over, feeling my face turning pink. A blast of heat tingled against my palm but it wasn’t entirely unpleasant. I looked more closely at the desk and saw a small crystal embedded into it: the source of the heat. It stopped as suddenly as it started, leaving me with my hand stretched over the desk and a clerk looking at me like I was the biggest idiot who’d ever crossed his threshold.
“You can take your hand back now.”
“Oh. Right.”
I thrust my hand back into my pocket and grabbed my bags from the counter, then made my way with Kelsey back onto the street. I recognised the Dragondale uniform on the trio of girls walking past the store, and was about to call out a greeting when one of them turned and caught sight of us. Her pretty face crumpled into a sneer and she flicked her blonde hair over her shoulder.
“Oh, look,” she said to one of her friends, “Dragondale has let in another charity case. Having to shop at Flounders, how pathetic. Next they’ll be offering places to beggars.”
The three of them erupted into laughter. I gritted my teeth and my hands curled into fists at my sides. I was not a charity case. Something touched my arm and I was about to shake it off irritably when I realised it was Kelsey’s hand.
“Lyssa, leave it. She’s not worth it.”
“Yeah, leave it, charity case,” the blonde said, her blue eyes flashing with amusement.
“What are you even doing here?” Kelsey said. “The prefect wasn’t allowing first years through the portal.”
“You obviously don’t know who I am.” The blonde looked her up and down. “When your father is as rich as mine is, you don’t have to follow the same rules as the riffraff. No prizes for guessing how you two got through – you must have begged the prefect. Good practice for your future.”
She laughed again and three trio flounced off with their hands full of expensive-looking bags and boxes. I didn’t bother to keep the look of disgust off my face as I watched them go. Rich brats. Turned out you found them in all walks of life, and they were all as bad as each other.
“Forget about them. Come on, let’s get the rest of your stuff.”
Chapter Six
Getting the rest of my stuff was easy enough, but forgetting about the blonde, not so much. Her annoyingly beautiful face with its arrogant sneer was still burned behind my eyelids when I woke up the following morning. The good news was Kelsey had been right – I was sharing a room with her. The bad news was it turned out she talked almost as much in her sleep as she did when she was awake, and between her and the blonde girl’s taunts, I was absolutely exhausted by the time light was streaming into our dorm.
“Hurry up, Lyssa – we don’t want to be late for our first class.”
“Yeah, yeah, I’m up,” I grumbled. By the time I was actually up and dressed, and looking half-way human – the best I was going to achieve on three hours’ sleep – Kelsey had sorted both her and my books for the day, and was practically bouncing on the balls of her feet by the door.
“Alright, what’s first?”
She looked down at her schedule, although I was sure she had it memorised by now.
“Elemental Manipulation 101 first, and then breakfast. Then we’ve got Botany, and Gaelic. Then this afternoon–”
“Gaelic? You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“Gaelic is one of the primary magical languages for druids. It’s absolutely essential you learn the fundamentals if you want to be able to cast effective spells and incantations. And charms, and– Well, there really are no limits to its use. I started learning it when I was eight.”
“Eight? You mean I’m ten years behind?”
“I’m sure you’ll pick it up. I know it seems complicated, but it’s actually really straightforward once you get the basics.”
“Let’s just hope I excel enough in these other classes to make up for it. Who knows, maybe I have a natural flair for–” I glanced over her shoulder at the schedule, “–potions.”
I chucked a bottle of water in my bag, then we headed out through the common room and followed a handful of other students who apparently had the same class as us.
“Oh, great,” I groaned as I stepped into the classroom, nodding to a trio of girls who were sitting in the middle of the front row. The blonde and her friends. Figured they’d be in the same class as us.
“Oh, look,” the blonde said, a hint of ice beneath her saccharine tones. “It’s charity case. Did you manage to beg for all your books?”
“Oh, look,” I mimicked her tone. “It’s the bimbo. Too bad all your money can’t buy you any class.”
I shot her a sarcastic smile and brushed past her, knocking her elbow. It might have been childish, but I can’t deny that it was satisfying to see her face turn purple with anger. I made it four steps towards the back of the room when I heard her voice.
“I heard she was summoned to Professor Talendale’s office yesterday. They say the Tilimeuse Tree couldn’t tell what her primary element is. She probably doesn’t even have enough magic for it to register. I bet she gets kicked out before the end of the week.”
I started to turn round, but Kelsey stopped me with an angry whisper.
“Not in our first lesson. Are you trying to get expelled?”
I took a slow, deep breath and kept moving. The room was quite small and there were only six rows of seats – thirty seats in total. I sank into one of several empty chairs in the back row – but four rows separating us wasn’t enough for my liking. Four miles wouldn’t have done it. Kelsey took the seat on my right, and a moment later, a pile of books dropped onto the table on my left. A tall, dark-haired guy had taken the seat.
“You really don’t want to make an enemy of Felicity,” he said. “On the other hand, it’s nice to see her taken down a couple of pegs. I’m Sam.”
He stretched out his hand and I shook it, feeling a little awkward.
“Lyssa. This is Kelsey. And trust me, I can’t wait to teach her a little humility.”
He chuckled.
“Felicity, humility? There’s not enough magic in this whole academy to do that.”
“Settle down, settle down, everyone,” a shrill voice announced from the front of the room. It belonged to a tall, slender woman with long blonde hair that flowed down past her shoulders and settled half-way down her back. She wore a pale blue dress with long sleeves, and a blue robe that looked much lighter than mine. She unclasped the robe and hung it on the back of the door while the excited murmurs faded to near-silence.
This was it. My first class was about to begin. I was going to learn magic. Real life magic. Butterflies started to flutter in my stomach, and my excitement turned to anxiety. What if Felicity was right – what if I didn’t have much magic? Or any at all – what if that incident in the clearing was a fluke, and my whole invitation here a mistake? I chewed my lip, then reached down for my bottle of water. My throat was suddenly parched.
The lecturer turned back to us.
“My name is Professor Swann. In my classroom you will learn the fundamental skill of controlling your primary elements. Those of you who show great flair will one day have the opportunity to master a second element.”
She sniffed, and the look on her face suggested she didn’t think very many of us would reach that standard.
“But first things first, a little housekeeping. Everyone will move back one row. Those in the back row will move to the front, where I can keep an eye on you.”
Her mistrustful face fell on the five of us who’d taken up the back row, and I wasn’t quite clear whether she had an issue with us personally, or just with anyone who chose to sit at the back. I hoped the latter. The last thing I needed was one of the lecturers taking a disliking to me on my first day. I gathered up my books and my bottle of water, snatched my robe up from the back of my chair, and traipsed through the aisle to the front row with as much good grace as I could muster – which was to say, not much. I caught the smirk on Felicity’s face on the way past, from her new seat in the second row, removing any doubts I might have had. She’d known Professor Swann was going to do this. Probably a higher year had told her, trying to win her favour. And now she was sitting right behind me. Great. One of her friends whispered in her ear, and the three of them broke out in cackles.
“Quiet, quiet!” Professor Swann snapped as everyone settled into their new seats, and sil
ence fell again. It was a little too much like being in school for my liking – not the nice, anonymous university experience I’d had planned. On the other hand, I was about to learn magic, so on balance, I wasn’t complaining.
She glanced around the room, and her eyes settled on the bottle of water sitting on my desk. For a moment I thought I was about to get a lecture – and not the good kind – but instead she simply looked at the bottle, her face serene. The sealed lid burst off and I jumped back, almost toppling my chair, to the delight of Felicity and her cronies. I ignored her, staring at my bottle. A steady stream of water rose out of it like a ribbon, until there wasn’t even a single drop left clinging to the plastic sides – it was all floating through the air in a single elegant strand. It twirled around the professor’s head, and then gathered itself into a ball in front of her.
I watched, rapt, as the water twisted within the ball, like tiny waves hitting invisible rocks. She flicked her eyes to one side and the ball flung itself across the room, spinning and twisting as it raced through the air, stopping just inches short of a student’s head. The boy gasped and flinched back, but the water was moving again, this time in a more leisurely fashion. The ball drifted towards me, and I fought the urge to reach out and touch it, succeeding only because my limbs were beyond my control right now, with so much wonder was I staring. The water stopped above my bottle and then poured itself carefully back inside as though through a thin funnel, not spilling a drop. When it finally settled back into place, I stared at the bottle in amazement. It was just as full as it had been to start with.
“Those of you who make the effort will be rewarded with excellence,” Professor Swann said, turning her eyes on us again. “Those who do not will find themselves failing this year. Elemental control is the foundation for all your magic. Fail to give it the respect it deserves, and all of your magic will be mediocre, at best.”
“Those of us who have magic,” I heard Felicity whisper behind me.
“Did you see the look on Liam’s face?” one of her friends whispered back.
Druid Magic (Druid Academy Book 1) Page 4
