by Maria Amor
“I don’t know why you even left the music industry, man,” Ben said, as he chomped on bacon. The fire-aligned Guardian shook his head. “You’re famous as shit there.”
“I’m not that famous, and it’s not all it’s cracked up to be,” Dylan said. “A lot of it’s just the same as being in the world here.”
“Yeah, except you had private tutors and didn’t have to wear a uniform,” Kevin countered. “What happened?”
“I just stopped liking it,” Dylan said. It wasn’t precisely that simple, of course, but he didn’t want to get into a big discussion of the issues he’d had that brought him back to his people; at least, not yet and not over breakfast at seven in the morning. “Plus, the council was mad at me for almost outing our existence, so there wasn’t a whole lot I could do to move forward.”
“Why is your grandmother so worried about things?” Keegan looked surprisingly aware for so early in the morning, and Dylan almost found it suspicious. But then, Keegan was coming into her own abilities too—and fire-aligned Guardians had almost as much nervous energy as air-aligned ones did.
“She’s a bigwig, she gets paranoid sometimes,” Julia said with a shrug. She started in on her eggs, eating them in quick, neat bites—isolating the white from the yolk and then salting the yolk separately. “She made me go to these stupid events all summer.”
“I saw that,” Magda said, grinning slightly. “The two of you gallivanting around in designer clothes.”
“Dylan in designer threads? No way,” Kevin shook his head in disbelief.
“Tailored suits,” Keegan countered. “That’s what you get when you’re a big shot musician.”
“I’m not a big shot,” Dylan protested. “I’ve had a little success with two albums and that’s it.”
“Two albums in two years is reason enough to want out of the industry for a while,” Julia said pointedly. “Plus, the tours attached to them, I’m surprised you didn’t burn out sooner.”
“He’s not burned out, he’s re-building his inspiration,” Ben suggested. “And when it comes time to graduate he’ll put out some huge smash-hit album and we’ll never hear from him again.”
“It wouldn’t hurt you to remember the little people, Dylan,” Kevin said, smirking. Dylan rolled his eyes.
“I’m just here to go to school and make sure nothing terrible happens to Julia,” Dylan said, finishing off his food and gulping down some coffee. “That’s it.”
“But why are people so convinced that something terrible is going to happen to Julia?” Keegan looked around the table. “What do the two of you know that we don’t?”
“Nothing that we can talk about, so it’s pointless to keep asking,” Julia said irritably. “I’m ready for class—as ready as I’ll ever be, at least.”
Dylan grabbed his tray and rose to his feet as soon as Julia started off towards the dirty dishes window, looking around the dining area. He felt a little more awake, but he knew it would be second or third period before he was truly useful for anything other than basic function. There were changelings at a table together, glittery magic floating around them, and Dylan smiled slightly to himself in spite of his sleepiness. All things considered, there are worse places to be. Some part of him—a small part, but it did exist—had missed being among his own kind, among other supernatural beings—human and otherwise—that made up an entire world that the rest of humanity knew nothing about.
He dropped off his tray and followed Julia out of the dining hall, out of the building and towards one of the paths on campus that led to the academic building. The classes that involved elemental energies, either magic or simply refining skills, had special guards and wards on them to make sure the energy didn’t escape or destroy anything; the ones for regular academic subjects just had standard wards to block off excess elemental energy, and none of the special created blocks.
The place looked ancient and somehow brand-new at the same time, the stonework and raw gems in the walls giving it an eerie kind of glamour. Earth-aligned creatures did most of the work as part of their contribution to the school, sometimes even offering their magic and skills in place of paying the usual private school fees that Sandrine charged.
Dylan was disappointed when he remembered that their professor for English wasn’t going to be Levy, but instead some new fire-aligned Guardian named Hayden. It’s still English, so at least it won’t be completely awful, Dylan told himself, following Julia into the room. A few of the over-achieving students had already arrived and chosen seats; Dylan hoped that the teacher wouldn’t assign new ones, or at least if he did, he would stick with the general need for Dylan to be reasonably close to Julia.
He knew, as Julia didn’t—at least, she didn’t quite know—that the spasms could come at any time. He would need to be there to help; Ruth had made that clear to him before Julia had even arrived, and underscored the point during the evening before they’d gone back into the city together. “One of the more important functions you’ll serve is to dampen Julia’s excess energies when she has a spasm. As a water-aligned Guardian, your energies can calm and suppress hers without harming her.”
Ruth had pointed out that while earth-aligned Guardians could do the same thing, it would hurt Julia—and potentially stunt her development—to be damped down by the heavy, grounding, contrasting energy of an earth-aligned creature. Fire-aligned and air-aligned Guardians alike would just stimulate her more.
The new professor came into the classroom just as the last of the students sat down and looked out over them. “Good morning, class,” Hayden said, looking out over them. He was one of the less-common types that Dylan had seen in fire Guardians: short and slim, with big blue eyes and dark hair, he resembled something like a smoldering ember instead of giving the impression of dancing flames.
The man had a crate of books under his arm and set them down on the desk at the front of the room. “First things first: everyone get a book. We’re going to be doing this a little differently from your previous professors in English, so you’ll just have to hold on and hope you can keep up.”
Dylan rose to his feet and walked to the front of the class with the rest of his row, wondering what was going to be so different about this professor. As if the man had heard his mental question—or maybe it was the accumulated curiosity of all of the students in the room—he spoke again. “I expect all of you to be capable of getting through at least one novel a week. This year’s studies will focus on American literature, and we’ve got a lengthy list—so there will be a lot of reading in your dorms.” Dylan looked down into the crate to see that the first book for the year was going to be The Scarlet Letter and sighed, claiming his copy before going back to his desk, one spot away from Julia’s.
The syllabus for the semester circulated around the room, and Dylan raised an eyebrow as he realized just how much the new professor expected them to get through: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, The Jungle, The House of Mirth, Little Women, and more, all in the first semester—before the break—alone. He was used to the School of Sandrine professors asking a lot of their students; after all, it was a prestigious school. But it seemed a bit extreme; how would they even have time to cover the material in class?
“Let’s start out with a discussion of Nathaniel Hawthorne,” Hayden said. “Since I can’t just have you all sit there and read, we’ll get some context on the book you’re assigned first, and then tomorrow we’ll dive into the material itself.” Dylan opened his notebook and found a pen, setting the book aside to pay attention, as much as he could, to the lecture. It was shaping up to be a long year.
CHAPTER NINE
“Is it just me, or do the new teachers all seem to want to load us down with so much homework we can’t do anything else?” Julia tucked her skirt around her legs and leaned back against the sun-warmed wall, looking at her friends and Dylan. It was Thursday afternoon, and in a little more than twenty-four hours, the stud
ents who lived in the tri-state area would be headed home for the weekend, while those whose parents lived elsewhere would stay behind.
There wasn’t any sign yet that autumn was just around the corner, but Julia had already—tentatively—begun to plan the last birthday she would have before coming fully into her abilities. That birthday, she knew, would be some kind of special event; her parents would likely rent an event room at some huge hotel, and there would be as much to-do about it as normal humans made at a Sweet Sixteen or a Bar Mitzvah. It would be embarrassing.
For her last birthday before that major event, Julia wanted something a little smaller and much more fun: a night of dinner and theater and one of the few all-ages clubs that existed in New York City, dancing the night away with a handful of her few close friends, and Dylan. That depended on a lot of things, though—and Julia thought glumly that it was just as likely that she and her friends would be too busy doing homework over the weekend after her birthday, or the weekend before it, to be able to go out.
“If we have another pop quiz in Algebra two, I am going to have a screaming fit,” Keegan said, sighing.
“There should be a rule that professors for a subject shouldn’t have members of their own alignment in their subject...except for the classes for that element,” Ben asserted. “I swear, Aurelian gives preferential treatment to the Earth guardians.”
“That’s just because they’re naturally good at math,” Magda countered. “He likes anyone who’s good at math.” She rolled her eyes.
“It still sucks,” Ben insisted. “I miss Professor Michaels.”
“We all miss Professor Michaels,” Dylan said. Julia made a face; it was becoming a more and more common complaint as the school settled into the academic year. Several professors had disappeared seemingly without a trace over the summer, and although the rumors had been flying since Orientation, no one seemed any closer to finding out what had happened, or why the dean and the professors had left the school. For once, it wasn’t just coming from the air-aligned students of the school—everyone seemed to be speculating about what had happened, and whether or not it was fair.
The new dean was the subject of a huge number of rumors as well; no one had ever heard of him before, and the first couple of weeks of school hadn’t really done much to clarify what the man was like. Dean Dimitrios kept to himself most of the time, contrasted with how he’d bounced around the Orientation, introducing himself to everyone; he’d started to sound almost bored during the morning announcements, and whenever he did interact with students, it was like he wanted to get the interaction over and done with as quickly as possible.
But then on the other hand, he was in meetings with the teachers who had been at Sandrine the longest seemingly every day. “Anyone got any good intel on what’s going on with the dean?” Julia looked up at Keegan’s question.
“No idea,” Julia said. Everyone assumed that the air-aligned creatures and humans at the school would have special insight, special ability to get information that the other element-aligned students didn’t have. “Nobody seems to have heard about him, nobody knows anything about him other than that he’s the new dean.”
She glanced at Dylan; he’d suggested that when they were home for the weekend—at her home, no less—that they should see about getting in touch with Ruth to ask the high-ranking Guardian and Regina Undinae what she knew about the staff shake-up at Sandrine. As much as Julia wanted as little to do with her grandmother as possible, it seemed likely that the older woman was the only person she knew who might have insight.
“We know he’s earth-aligned, and all the new hires are either earth or fire-aligned,” Ben pointed out. “There’s gotta be something in that.”
“Well obviously, he’d hire people that he knows,” Julia said dismissively. “That just makes sense. The real question is why Lilgrace is gone, and why all those other professors that got replaced are gone.”
“We’re not likely to ever know anything about it,” Keegan said. “And even if we had a chance to figure it out, we wouldn’t have time to—not with all the homework that’s coming out.”
“It doesn’t really matter anyway,” Kevin said. “I mean, apart from having a heavier workload than usual, it’s not like we have anything to really complain about.” Julia considered that.
“Does it seem like the non-school-hours rules have gotten stricter?” She looked around the little group. They’d gathered, as they usually did, in neutral territory near the entrance to the school, just on the other side of the gate.
“I noticed that,” Dylan agreed. “Fewer opportunities to leave campus, and an earlier lights-out time, things like that.”
“There’s also that study hall thing they started this year,” Magda said, frowning in thought. Julia pressed her lips together, thinking about it. On the first day of classes, after the usual morning announcements, the Dean had added that students would be expected to spend six hours per week in “study hall,” outside of their class schedules; there wouldn’t be a grade for attendance, but if students fell under six hours per week, they would be subject to punishment: demerits, and if they accumulated enough demerits, loss of privileges.
“At least club week is next week,” Keegan pointed out. “Fencing club is putting together a big presentation for our booth.” Every year, at the beginning of the school year, the School of Sandrine hosted “Club Week,” where the leadership of the various school clubs put up booths in the courtyard at the middle of the school and explained what their clubs did, trying to gain more members.
The week was supposedly for the benefit of new students to the school, but there were so many clubs, organizations, and activities at Sandrine that it was impossible for anyone to try all of them, and the politics and interpersonal drama attached to the different clubs developed so intensely that there were endless drops and adds.
“Aria asked me to man the Linguistic club booth for two lunches,” Julia said. She glanced at Dylan again; Aria had asked her during one of her element-oriented classes, Advanced Language Acquisition, shortly before the end of the day. She hadn’t had time to mention it to Dylan, and didn’t know if he was in demand for any of the on-campus clubs.
“I quit all the clubs I was in when I left and no one seems to be all that interested in re-recruiting me,” Dylan said with a little grin. “I can hang out, even if I don’t understand one word out of every twenty that leaves your mouth.” Julia half-grinned and smoothed her hair from the top of her head down to where her braids began.
They had fallen into a kind of routine, a kind of understanding in terms of their “relationship”—such as it was—that was slowly becoming comfortable. Julia had to admit that Dylan seemed to genuinely try not to get in her way, that he seemed to sort of be a background presence, supporting and bolstering her, there if she needed him, or just as general companionship when she was otherwise alone. It was strange; in spite of the fact that she still hadn’t quite gotten over the betrayal of him abandoning her for a life—however short-lived—of fame and music, the fact that Dylan had come back in time for the beginning surges and spasms of her transition into a fully-developed Guardian almost seemed to make up for it.
She was waiting for the next spasm to arrive; almost anxious for it. Julia knew that in the last year before Guardians came into their abilities fully, they got increasingly intense spasms like the one she’d had in Dylan’s room in her parents’ apartment; based on how intense the first one had been, the thought of another one, even more powerful than that, gave her more than a little touch of fear. They could come on at any time, Julia knew—and she was worried as much about the reaction of her friends and classmates as she was about the actual sensation and experience of the spasm itself.
“All School of Sandrine Students, please report to the convocation hall in twenty minutes.” Julia looked from one friend to another, confused; it was after school hours—why would the entire student body need to be in the convocation hall?
They
all stood nonetheless, and Julia led the way, intrigued and alarmed by the summons. Her mind worked in circles, trying to figure out what could possibly be happening; it was so beyond the pale that it was impossible for her to think of anything that could come up that would make sense. Julia briefly felt a flurry of panic at the press of all of the students in the hallways, heading for the convocation hall at the center of the school, in the central building.
She could feel Dylan’s reassuring presence close to her and looked until she spotted him, not quite touching her but close enough that his energy could flow in her direction, damping down her reactions.
The convocation hall had just enough space to hold every student, teacher, and staff member that would be at the School of Sandrine campus at any given time; it certainly looked packed to the limit when Julia passed through the doorway from the hall she’d been in. The hall was enormous, with tiers upon tiers of seats on all sides of the big, vaulted room.
There was a raised portion in the center, where the dean and the professors sat, waiting for the hall to fill. The ceiling was ringed with silver and gold, a humming presence that damped down elemental energies just enough to keep them contained. Inset into the walls, just below the gold and silver, mosaics of cut gems gleamed in the dimness: rubies, sapphires, emeralds, and lapis, signifying the different elements, each studded in the center of a rough compass-cross shape with a diamond.
Julia, Dylan, and their friends found an open patch of seats, and Julia sat down farthest from the aisle, looking around her curiously. Nobody in the audience seemed to have any real idea of what was happening; the murmurs that came to her ears were full of confusion, wonder, questions. She looked at Dylan. “Nobody has a clue,” she said, just loud enough for him to hear.
“Looks like it’s going to be a surprise then,” Dylan told her. “Why don’t I like the sound of that?”
“I don’t either,” Julia admitted. She fidgeted in her chair and tried not to take in the energies she could feel flowing around her, barely contained by the wards in place. She took deep breaths, watching as the rest of her fellow students entered the hall, found seats—separately from their friends or together—and settled into them. Come on, people! You have to want to know whatever this is about just as much as I do.
