by Jason Letts
“Yay!” they cheered, faking enthusiasm while Fortst gave them harsh glances. Chucky was covered in smeary, thick oil. Mira chuckled, realizing why everyone always called him “Mucky Chucky.”
Now that everyone had returned, the students dug through their packs for lunch. They used leaves as gloves when handling food, trying not to get red paint all over it. Most of the students sat together in the grass, and a few sat in the shade. Mira sat alone, leaning against the trunk of a tree. She nibbled at her food with her paint-free hand.
After a while, Aoi walked across her line of sight.
Mira scrambled to put down her food and stand up.
“It’s too bad all that strength can’t help you do something about those front teeth!”
“What did you say?” Aoi said, astonished.
“If you were any smaller, people might mistake you for a rabbit.” Mira crossed her arms and stuck her chin out.
“This is the dumbest thing you’ve done in your entire life!” Aoi said, clenching her fists and striding up to Mira.
“What’s that? No, I don’t have any cheese, little mouse,” she retorted, putting her hand to her ear.
“You asked for it!” Aoi ran forward, about to take a swing at Mira who ducked out of the way just in time. Aoi’s punch struck the tree. The bark cracked and the tree shook. A bucket of paint, tied to the branch right above Aoi with a tape measure, shook loose and dumped its contents on Aoi’s head. She froze in shock when the cold, wet substance splattered down on her head and shoulders. Everyone turned to look.
“You better have another trick up your sleeve because you’re in big trouble now!” she screamed. But Mira did not have another trick, and her face turned pale. Aoi effortlessly launched Mira into the air with a sideways push and sent her flying into the trunk of another tree. She collided with it and came down hard on her ankle.
Before she had time to move, Aoi was on Mira again. A terrifying look in Aoi’s eyes, she pulled her fist back for another punch, but Forst stepped in. He caught her punch with one hand and lifted her off Mira with the other. Aoi rocketed upwards, snapping a few branches and clearing the top of the tree by twenty feet.
“No fighting!” Fortst bellowed, while Aoi’s ascension slowed. She hung weightlessly in the air for a moment before quickly falling back down into Fortst’s arms. He set her down and looked at the girls. Mira couldn’t get up and tears trickled down her cheeks, even though she restrained herself from any overt pouting.
“What’s the problem here?” he said. “You better believe I’m not one to miss out on a fight, so the next one who starts anything will have to take me on as well!”
Fortst looked to make sure all the students were listening, and Aoi returned to the group.
“Let’s pack everything up and head back to the school house!” he ordered. He started to walk away when Mira spoke up.
“I can’t get up,” she said. Fortst took a look at her ankle, already red and swollen.
“This looks serious. We’d better get you home as quickly as possible.”
Carrying her on his shoulder, Fortst marched through the woods. The students, still wearing the paint they couldn’t rub off, followed behind. Arriving at the school, the students lined up so Fortst could announce the winners. At the end of the line, Mira sat down on the grass. Her nerves built up in anticipation of the results.
“Everyone did a great job today. I’ll turn you lot into fearsome fighters yet! So, finishing in first place is Roselyn!” The students clapped weakly as Roselyn stepped out of the line to join Fortst. “For second place, Vern, who beat Aoi by a hair. There you have it, the three captains for the team competition!”
“Wait a second!” Mira burst out. “Aoi is soaked in paint and she couldn’t have finished more than fifteen or twenty seconds ahead of me! And Rowland only had me by ten seconds and he has a lot more paint, too. How much paint equals how much time?”
“Eh heh heh. That’s a good question,” Fortst said. He looked around sheepishly. “Enough to give you fourth place. Congratulations!”
He promptly dismissed the class. The students, excited about the weekend, gathered their things and prepared to leave. Mira, steaming, remained stranded on the ground.
“The least you could do is carry me home!” she shouted, upset that the gaping hole in his scoring had cost her victory. Up on his shoulder, the only thing that could distract her from the pain of her ankle was imagining ways to get back at the man who carried her. If he had to learn to take her seriously too, then so be it.
Jeana met them and immediately flew into a raging panic.
“What happened? Where did all this blood come from? How could you let this happen, Mr. Fortst? Of all the irresponsible things!”
“It’s just paint, Mom, not blood. I did hurt my ankle though, and I can’t walk on it.”
The bloodthirsty look that Jeana gave Fortst made him recoil.
“Just wanted to make sure you got home OK. Great job today,” Fortst muttered, turning tail to run for it and not daring to look back.
Mira couldn’t get out of bed the next morning. It didn’t help that the pain had prevented any sleep, no matter how many times Jeana worked her magic. Restless, Mira twisted and turned but couldn’t find a comfortable position. She wished for anything that would make the pain go away.
Soon the darkness receded from her room and the sun shone through the window. Jeana said she would run into town and drag the healer against her will if necessary. While waiting for Jeana to return, Kevin kept Mira entertained, preparing breakfast and playing games with her. The sound of the door opening got their attention.
“Finally!” Mira exclaimed. Soon, Jeana and another woman entered Mira’s bedroom.
“Hi, I’m Nora the healer,” the woman said. She only had hair on the left side of her head, the length of which gradually increased the closer it got to her ear.
“Hi,” Mira replied, barely able to look away from her ragged, patchy hair.
“What seems to be the problem?” Nora asked.
“My ankle has transformed into a tomato. OK, that was a joke. Sorry. It just really hurts and I think it’s broken,” she said.
“Well, either way, I have just the thing for you.”
“How do you heal, exactly?” Jeana asked.
“It’s pretty simple. She just needs some of my protein.” Nora took a pair of scissors out of her pocket and cut a hunk of hair from her head. She held the clump of scraggly hair in her hand.
“I recommend you cook it in something so it goes down easier.”
“How interesting,” Jeana said.
“Are you saying I need to eat that for my ankle to get better? I don’t think so!”
“Yes, it is interesting,” Nora replied to Jeana. “But you know, I heard that in Darmen all you have to do to be healed is get in the water with the local healer.”
“How far away is Darmen? Let’s go there!” Mira pleaded.
“Oh, it’s much too far,” Jeana said. “This is your best option.”
“You know, the body does heal itself. I could just wait it out.”
Nora looked at the inflamed ankle and stuck out a finger to poke it.
“Oww!”
“I don’t know. It looks pretty bad. You might have to stay in bed for weeks or months for it to recover fully.”
Disappointed and annoyed, Mira gave in.
“Fine. Let’s get this over with. This is the worst thing I’ve ever had to do.”
“I’ll put it in anything you want. How about your favorite, chocolate chip cookies?” Jeana asked.
“No, I think it would ruin them for me forever. Just throw it in some eggs or something. Might as well be something slimy and gross to begin with.”
Jeana returned a short time later with a plate of scrambled eggs. The hair poked out in all directions and the plate had a strange smell. Mira already knew she would be sick to her stomach.
“Choke it down and you’ll be better in no tim
e,” Nora cheered.
Mira raised a forkful of the yellow and brown concoction to her mouth. Having her parents and this strange woman watch her made it even worse. Closing her eyes, she stuck the fork inside and immediately felt the hairs brush along the roof of her mouth. It tasted like old mayonnaise and rotten fish. She chomped down once and tried to swallow. The snaky hairs slithered down her throat.
“Yuck!”
“Don’t stop now. You’ve got to finish the plate.”
“I wouldn’t have to be doing this if I had something to defend myself with,” she said between mouthfuls. “And I’ve been thinking that the best thing would be if I didn’t have to fight at all and something else fought in my place.”
“You’ve got to be careful. Look at what happened to you yesterday,” Jeana said.
“I’m not any more fragile than anyone else. It’s just that they can inflict so much more damage. Some of them don’t even have powers that have anything to do with fighting, and so they’re in no better a position than I am. There’s this one girl, Mary, who doesn’t even know what her power is.”
“Well, what could you make that you could use?” Kevin asked.
“I don’t know. I haven’t come up with anything good yet. A chemical probably wouldn’t be a good idea. There are so many reasons why conventional weapons like bows and arrows wouldn’t work. I need something that would prevent people from being able to hit me. I’ll have to think about it.”
By the time she finished the plate of hairy eggs, most of the pain had vanished. The healer had left. Mira went back to sleep, and when she woke up she found she could walk again. By the next day, it seemed like the injury had never happened.
On Monday, Mira went to school early to repair the slant in her desk. When she opened the door she was surprised to see that someone had already arrived. Vern sat at his desk, studying notes from Fortst’s lecture. Paying him no attention, she went to work. Moments later, she heard him throw down his pencil, get up, and walk over to her.
“Can I help you?” she asked. She had just begun sawing a piece of wood.
“You’ve got to stop what you’re doing,” he said.
“It’s my desk and I can fix it if I want,” she shot back.
“No, that’s not what I’m talking about. You’ve got to stop fighting with everybody. I heard some people from our class talking over the weekend and they are terrified of you. They say you’re acting like a bully.”
“Me? A bully?” Mira said, getting up. “I haven’t done anything to anyone that wasn’t provoked. I’m not going to let people walk all over me or push me around, no matter how much hair I have to eat. And if they think it’s fair to use their powers on me and unfair for me to do what I can to get back at them then that’s their problem.”
“Look, you started that fight with Aoi. We all saw it. You can’t be doing that. The bottom line is, we have to depend on each other and work together. I’ve got to know that we’re all on board here, because I’m the one who is meant to lead us when it’s all said and done. We all know Aoi is impulsive and short-tempered, which would be dangerous for all of us, so I need everyone’s support.”
He had a point, and she grudgingly accepted that being mean worked as well as being invisible in the class when it came to making friends.
Mira also noticed how his words kept drifting back to himself no matter what he was talking about. He was serious and honest, deeply believing in what he said, but it gave Mira a weird feeling.
“I realize this isn’t easy for you because of your condition. But I know what you’re going through.”
His words struck a nerve. A wave of anger swept over her. “Don’t you dare pretend you know what it’s like to be me! You couldn’t even imagine it! To be so much less than everyone else, pray you never know what it’s like.”
Her shouting startled him and he took a step back, bumping into another desk. His expression softened.
Mira continued. “How can you say you know what it’s like to be me when you don’t even know what it’s like to be you? I know more about you than you do!”
A puzzled look came across Vern’s face.
“It’s gravity! Your power doesn’t attract things to you. Things fall to you, just like this,” Mira said. She grabbed a nail from the seat of her desk, held it out to Vern, and let it slip between her fingers and drop to the ground.
“That is your power, but here’s what you don’t know. Gravity doesn’t just pull things to the ground. Gravity exists between any two objects anywhere in the universe. So you are already connected to all of the things you try to move; your power is just to amplify what is already there.
“And there are other things too,” she continued. “I’m sure you’ve noticed that the farther something is away from you, the less your power works on it. Right? That’s because the gravitational force of an object diminishes over a greater distance. Did you know that how big something is determines how much force it has to attract other objects? I bet you didn’t. If you’d read any of Flip Widget’s science manuals, you would know there’s a relationship between gravity and mass.”
“I have no idea who that is,” Vern said, but Mira kept right on talking.
“Think of how big the sun has to be to hold the Earth in place, or how big the Earth has to be to hold the moon in place. I bet if you tried to use your power on something that was too big you would fall toward it rather than it falling toward you. So if you wanted to become more powerful, you would need to gain more mass, and that means gaining weight, stick boy.”
“Really?” Vern asked, contemplating her words and looking down at his thin frame.
“Yes. And the only thing left to figure out is exactly how powerful you are now. Come with me,” she said, grabbing two apples from her lunch pack and dragging Vern outside.
“The gravitational force of the Earth is 9.8 meters per second squared. Accounting for acceleration, objects will fall half that in the first second.”
Mira set one of the apples on a tree stump and used her tape measure to measure 4.9 meters.
“You stand here,” she said, indicating a spot under a tree. Having him hold the tape measure to the ground, she climbed into the tree and found a spot that was 4.9 meter high.
“OK, if you are able to catch that apple before this one hits the ground then you are more powerful than the Earth, equal is equal, and you’re less powerful if you catch that apple after this one hits the ground. Oh, and don’t stick your arm out to shorten the distance. I’ll count to three. Ready? One, two, three!”
Simultaneously, Mira dropped one apple and Vern used his power on the other apple to move it horizontally toward him. Mira’s apple hit the ground first and a moment later Vern caught the other apple.
“Well, you’re not as powerful as the Earth,” she said, climbing out of the tree. She picked her apple off the ground, and walked back into the schoolhouse.
“Don’t forget to give me that apple back. That’s my lunch,” she said.
Vern remained in the same spot with the apple in his hand for a long time.
Chapter 7: The Diamond Carafe
Weeks passed, the students trudged through thick piles of leaves to get to school, and their desks inched closer and closer to Dennis’s until they all clustered around it. The dropping temperatures and change of seasons left Fortst with fewer options for outdoor lessons, so he got into the habit of spending great periods of time covering the important subject of history, his personal history.
“Back when I was your age, things were way, way different. Back in the day, great, solitary warriors roamed the landscape. We searched the vast unknown looking for something valuable we could bring home to our villages to prove how tough we were.
“Believe me, it wasn’t easy. The harsh environment offered little in the way of food. I’d go weeks without seeing another person. Often I’d have to carry all of my gear as I swam across lakes for days straight, fighting monstrous aquatic life.”
&nb
sp; “Tell us again how you had to eat fire for breakfast,” one student said.
“On occasion; it certainly wasn’t my favorite.”
“Could any of the sea monsters also fly?”
“Yes, there was one nasty critter that flapped his fins so hard he flew right up into the clouds, only to come back and attack me after I’d thought he was gone for good.”
“How many imaginary friends did you have?”
“Sometimes—wait, what?” Fortst finally caught on. “I’m not kidding around here! You have no idea what’s out there, and neither did we. We were just men who set out to prove there was nothing in the world we couldn’t handle. I’ll never forget those days, engaging in heated one-on-one duels from sunrise to sundown, matching muscle against muscle, brain against brain, and power against power.
“My favorite nemesis, the only one who could bring me to the brink of defeat, was Arent. He was a muscular, cold-hearted guy, who probably hadn’t experienced enough joy in his life to fill a paper cup. He was from out west, and don’t I wish he’d stayed there. His grisly face showed up whenever I had a lead on something really great, or whenever he wanted to ruin my day.”
“Who was he?”
“Arent’s power was to send energy through his fingertips, and most things would end up exploding because of it. I’d heard from another wanderer that his village cast him out after he went on an angry rampage leveling most of the buildings to the ground. We’re talking that kind of serious destruction. If it weren’t for my lightning fast reflexes and all around incredible skill, I would have been toast from the get-go. But as it was, we were an even match.
“The first time I saw him I was searching for a village to the east. Word got around that a previously unknown community existed, and I wanted the chance to trade with ’em first. I’d been following strange tracks that didn’t stay the same size or shape. Chased them down into a deep ravine with a stream flowing through it. All of a sudden the tracks end, and I look up to see a filthy man sitting on a rock.
