<*>
"Rotate, Rotate, Rotate," that’s all Lilith said as she walked the aisles in-between the silver desk. Corinth was standing amidst a bunch of students he didn't know very well yet. He had classes with Emma, Emmy, and Claudia, but none of them were in his first period. She stopped at Corinth's desk. "Good job," she said, looking down at him willing the key to spin at his chest. "The idea behind rotating your llave; is that special drive from within. That force inside you that you derive your strength from!" she continued on speaking out to the entire class as Corinth tried to focus on doing exactly what she just said. From the will within. From the will within; he kept on telling -himself to hold true to Sena. Lilith’s words.
Corinth had to borrow a spare key of sorts. He didn't have a personal llave like most everyone else. This made him stand out in rotations class. Everyone would compare their llaves, whether the treasured tools possessed protective or specialized spells and whatnot. But Corinth not having one of his own put him on the outer perimeter when that type of socializing went on. No one really wanted to talk to him anyway because of his strange eyes. He scared some people. Everyone had a preconceived notion about whom they were around, dependent solely on the person’s eye color. But Cory’s eyes were so different. Something none of them had seen before, unless they had somehow met Corinth before. He was that supremely unique. Draconians almost never married outside their race. Simply a known fact, not as much a judgment coming from the other students.
He lost his focus while he was looking at the kids around him with faster and steadier rotations. Normally, these keys would just drop out of position if someone could no longer stabilize them. But something always made Corinth's experience with them a lot more disastrous. In a flash of golden light, the llave burst into the pixie dust from which it came.
“NOT again!" Corinth felt as embarrassed as ever. Everyone at their desk around him instantly recoiled. The dust filled the room as they all stepped away, coughing up a storm. A storm stirred by the odd boy that could not wield magik.
Sena. Lilith was the only one brave enough to come closer. She put her hands on his shoulders from the front of his desk. "You'll get the hang of it. I'm sure of that." She used a finger -with pink nail polish on it to lift his chin. "Don't be embarrassed." She turned and looked to all the cowering students in the class, covering their mouths and whispering laughable explanations to Corinth’s weird lack of dexterity with magik. "Who here can say that they've mastered rotations?" No one said a word. "That's right! None of you have. Otherwise, you'd be instructors, not students. This is a place of learning, not judgment. If you see someone like Corinth having a rough go of it. Extend what you've learned from the ministrants if you're truly so much smarter than they are. Don't just stand against the walls like defenseless little children." She smiled at the end to let her pupils know that she wasn't angry, but instead concerned.
A few came up to Corinth with a spare llave from the golden box up front on Lilith's desk. One kid even joked about the golden pixie dust llaves Corinth kept breaking at every class. "You've broken so many of the gold pixie llaves—that I'm surprised the school hasn’t started charging you yet." Corinth forced a grin as all the kids now surrounding his desk laughed out loud. Even with that relatively kind gesture, he was still uncomfortable. But couldn't figure out quite why.
<*>
Math and history class with Emma didn't help him to feel any better. She wrapped herself up in the pink jacket she wore overtop her school uniform, while sitting behind him in the row of desks.
Military-gray jackets, with navy-blue and red stripes going round the collars and cuffs. The creased pants and ruffle skirts were navy-blue, excepting the red and gray stripes at the cuff ends. White-collar shirts underneath and white socks covered by black loafers, which made every student feel restricted and confined inside their own bodies when donning the overly structured apparel.
"Have you ever noticed it’s so much colder on the sixth floor than any other floor? That's why I always bring an extra jacket out with me." She was lying through her teeth. She really just hated the uniforms, so she chose to style them to her liking.
"It's late May," Corinth said while rubbing his head and pushing his growing dark hair away from his face. He needed to get it cut, but couldn’t be bothered to enter that creepy barbershop at the Refectory.
"So!" she shouted like a mad princess. "That doesn't mean it won't get cold some more before summer settles in," she twisted her lips up like she was right, never mind the logistics.
He laughed, which made her turn to him dramatically, inching forward in her desk to see what the turquoise-eyed boy was up to. "Actually, that's exactly what it means. Because it's late May, it's not going to get any cooler. Not at least until September!" With his back twisted toward her, he flung his hands around trying to describe in great detail just how wrong she was.
This pulled the attention of their substitute history ministrant. "Excuse me… back there… but this sure isn't study group time. We're answering the questions at the end of the chapter, if we've wrapped up reading it already, of course." He put his head back inside the newspaper he held after that whole spiel. Why he had a paper—newspaper, none of the students knew. He wasn’t even that old, so they figured he’d be a likely adult to embrace newer technologies. But apparently not.
"What does he mean, 'if we've wrapped up reading.' He's neck deep in a news article. He's not reading what we're reading. He probably just gets the answers from the back of the teacher's book." Corinth seemed unusually agitated.
"What's wrong with you today? Back in math you were so annoying." She was one to talk. "But I liked it. You should be like this more often. It's way cooler than your whole, little distressed boy act." She reached into her pocketbook and pulled out a compact and lip-gloss. As she reapplied, she kept on talking, "...by the way, no one's buying that crap."
Corinth agreed with her about one thing. He had been acting weird. His distressed boy 'act' is really—him. Not that he was unhappy, but many stressing matters had come about in his life. He was surprised by how well he dealt with it all. He was glad that she didn't like him that way. It meant to him that he's generally a reasonable person, because Emma seemed to despise using good reason at all cost. But something else much larger than that was weighing on him. To the point that he thought he'd explode if he didn't work it out soon.
From the last vertical row of desk, he looked out the windows to the left of him. He felt an unsettling twinge of fear in his heart. From the seat behind him, Emma followed his eyes to see what he was glaring down at on the OlympusGrounds. Walker was passing underneath the branches of a sycamore tree. He abruptly stopped during his stroll and looked up toward the sixth floor classroom windows. Corinth knew he couldn't see him because of the broad windowsill, but he stared at Walker all the more since the man’s warming eyes were now facing up. Walker turned his gaze away to the grass beneath his feet, but gave a modest nod while looking down. He went on passing through with his book firmly gripped in one hand. He spat out apple seeds just after he took another bite from the luscious fruit he held in the other hand. Corinth didn't want to, but he knew that he needed to speak with him immediately.
Emma pulled in closer, snapping her fingers in front of his face. But he crept closer to the window, pressing his fingers, and nearly his entire -faceup against the glass. He watched Walker’s every move, like a hawk stalking prey. "What are you doing?" she sounded sincerely concerned for her friend. All her -respectful snapping at him yielded no response. Figure that! Still, the glazed over look in his eyes scared her while she watched from behind, as Cory seemed to break with reality.
He came back to the real world a second later than she would have hoped. He shot her an agile glance, and then turned around quickly, plopping his bottom back down at his desk seat. "Worry about yourself. I'm fine."
It wasn't often that she did it, but Emma took the high road. "I just want you to know—that I'm here if you want t
o talk about it."
He unfolded his arms and looked back at her behind his desk. "Like I said, I'm fine!" He seemed certain that Emma wasn't the right person to bring his feelings up with. He had to get to Walker.
<*>
Corinth decided to skip lunch for two reasons. First, he didn't want to see Anvard. He knew he'd have a ton of questions that he couldn't answer just yet. Second, he figured it was the perfect time to catch up with Walker. After science class with Emmy and Emma, he told them he'd meet them at lunch after he came from the bathroom. That was an obvious lie, but not to them at the time. By now, they'd most likely figured it out. But he was already halfway to Walker’s villa off the West Lake.
The Olympus Grounds were a galactic stretch for someone to walk on an empty stomach. So Corinth decided to cut out the middle man and travel back upstairs, to the twelfth floor of Olympia. From his dorm he retrieved the green whistle his friend had given him. From there he took Oeste skywalk, cutting across the twelfth floor of Olympia to the twelfth of Concordia Nova. The skywalk glided across and through the sky much faster than Cory’s tired legs could carry him by foot. He looked down to the Diamond Atrium as kids sat outside eating lunch and chatting about. The atrium’s structure made it so that the Concordia Nova dormitory set out much farther across the grounds to the left, or west, of Olympia. Walking out of that building from a side exit would put him much closer to Walker’s place along West Lake.
His stroll across the treeless grounds was uneventful. The most interesting thing he witnessed was the beauty of West Lake. The second to smallest, but definitely the most graphically detailed. The way the sun hit the sandy wood docks, and most certainly the water itself, made everything light up in the area. He could see that the silver pixie dust was being put to good use on Walker's villa. The house reflected more light than the lake. It shimmered as Corinth tiredly dragged himself up the many looping ramps Walker had installed outside his front door. It reminded him of standing in line at an amusement park. Minus the dreadful wait, that is.
He traversed the ramps, finally meeting the staircase that would take him to Walker’s front door. He grabbed the black railing as he almost fell down. His stomach was in knots. He figured he shouldn't have skipped lunch, but it was already too late. He fell down, rolling over on his side after his head hit the edges of a few steps. Could this all possibly be just a stomachache, he thought, while billowing in agony? For having hit his head, he now had a thumping headache to contend with too. So he couldn’t tell the stomach pain and it apart any longer. They merged into one solid stinging torment.
He didn't bother opening his eyes as he heard footsteps coming down the long wood paneled ramps he just walked. He made a guess on who it could be. And if he was wrong, he didn't want to know who it was.
"Subsidio Ex Nodus," in a reserved tone the man spoke with compassion. Corinth opened his eyes and saw Walker's not so bright face. His curly blonde hair blew with the wind. He squinted his eyes, which made him look much more serious to Corinth than usual.“Come on youngling, up-and-addy!" Walker leaned over to give Corinth a hand.
"What was that spell?" he asked. "I feel so much better." He grabbed his stomach as they took one stair at a time. Walker held onto him from behind. Making sure he didn't fall.
"Don't you know any spells like that?" Walker questioned the young boy of things he already knew well enough.
"Not really," Corinth said.
"Oh, no!" Walker sarcastically cheered. "Your marvelous father didn't teach you anything?" Corinth shot him a look. Walker paused in a grimace, and then cracked a wide smile across his overall gloomy face. He looked tired and used up. Even more so than he did when Corinth noticed him on the Olympus Grounds that first night. Still, Corinth laughed with him.
"He tried to teach me. Lots of people have. My mom was the only one who could really get through to me. But still I never mastered any spells with her either."
Walker's face turned down. What little smile he had before was wholly erased. "You can't use magik… at all?" his voice cracked when he said it. Not even his wildest imagination ever envisioned a life without magik. He couldn't process the possibility of not possessing all the powers he acquired over the years from reading book after book in the wake of his self-imposed solitude.
"No, not really," was Corinth’s dilapidated response.
Walker's upper lip trembled as he helped the boy into his villa on the lake. He rushed Corinth in through the doorway, because he needed to get a tissue out of his pocket before the waterworks really started pouring down his drudged face. He sat the trite boy down on a long beige sofa in front of a glass coffee table. To the left was an open glass door that covered a half wall. The sheer white curtains fluttered with the breeze coming off the lake. Walker turned his attention to the deck just outside the glass door that overlooked the lake. He then dramatically blew his nose with the tissues he produced from his pea-green pant pocket. He turned back quickly to his guest to see a giggling child stretched out across his plush couch.
He attempted to console Walker with his next statement. "I always thought magik was cool, and still hope to get better at wielding it. But I'm not torn up inside about not being able to wield it." Walker looked down at his used tissues, feeling a little silly now. "That's why I always worked harder on my school work. Making the honor roll every semester is just as cool as blowing something up. And levitating, walking on walls, or whatever people do with their llaves! I'm not sad is what I'm really trying to say. I still haven't given up hope yet?"
That last statement sounded -more like a question to Walker. He figured that was a huge part of why Corinth dragged himself over. "So—" he encouraged Corinth to just spit it out.
"So…?" Corinth knew what he wanted to say, but was reluctant.
"Please, Corinth, I've had a real sloppy day. I would love to forget all about my problems and give you a hand." He took the seat opposite the young boy filling the sofa. The love chair was comfortable enough for Walker, considering he often chose grassy knolls as seats over cushions anyhow.
Corinth's eyes looked around the pretty room. The decor was very peaceful. Mostly serene light shades, with a drop of drama in every few glances. The artwork that covered much of the walls garnered most of the attention. But once again, Corinth realized that adults in Hyperborean, or at least at Aurora Boreal school, didn't like TV much. There was no television in sight inside of Walker's den. "Why don't you have a TV?" Corinth asked instead of what was really on his mind.
"Corinth, just tell me!" his tone was just subtle and excited enough to relax the boy. He decided to let it all out for Walker's ears to hear.
<*>
Over tea and a rather fruity fruit salad, Corinth told Walker about his dreams. They were mostly the same, but came in different forms. Walker didn't seem the least bit surprised to Corinth. In fact, he almost wrote it off. "I know there's something more you want to say. I can feel it," Walker told him with passion resounding in his voice. "I'll have you know, this question is more important than your dreams."
That honestly shocked Corinth. "But did you hear the part about you. It looked like you'd die just falling through the sky like that. I think it killed you even before then."
"Corinth, if anything, I'm more concerned about the part where you were attacked. But no matter, because it’s just a dream."
"You know..." Corinth sounded a lot more like an adult than Walker liked. He didn't want Corinth to rush through his childhood so quickly, but the boy’s grave tone in just two words proved quite contrary to wide belief of his immaturity. "I had a lot of dreams in the coming days before I was kidnapped. That’s why I knew it was my dad even though I didn't see the guy's face."
Walker started to feel worse. His blood pumped through his veins faster and faster. He truly had no idea of how much Corinth knew. Sena. Hendrix didn't inform him of this, but then again, she probably didn't know herself. Walker thought that this would all go over Corinth's head and he could just be a k
id again. But he understood now that Corinth wasn't fated to be an ordinary child. Things had progressed far beyond childhood in Corinth's mind long ago. Trying his best not to defy Sena. Hendrix’s orders, Walker decided to try to pry open Corinth’s thought process in just one sitting.
"You let on very well," he told the transformed child before him.
Corinth perked up. He could sense that they were on the same page now. "It's what's best, I've learned." Corinth's adult demeanor continued to amaze and frighten Walker all the same.
"Well, then," he sat back in his chair and crossed his leg over the other. "What in all the Worlds do you need my help for then? You seem like you've plotted every step of the way already." He challenged Corinth's authoritative handling of the undertone nature of their conversation.
Corinth took a deep breath, and tried his best to shut out the ever seeing eye of the Nexus. He nearly read Walker's mind, but managed to resist the urge, pulling his attentions to more pressing thoughts. "I can't control what's happening inside my head," he started out with.
Original Souls (A World Apart #1) Page 35
