Metal and Magic: A Fantasy Journey

by Steve Windsor

  Nothing happened.

  The room remained silent, waiting.

  Then, slowly, the penny began to wobble like jelly. Tristan thought he could see Lincoln’s face expanding slightly before the picture turned to liquid—the penny gushed lazily across the table like melting wax. A second later there was nothing but a copper-and-zinc blob where the penny had been.

  “It’s going to ruin the table,” Hayley said into the silence. For some reason she sounded indignant.

  Tristan didn’t know what he had just seen. There had been no sleight of hand, he was almost sure, because Brikkens hadn’t moved during the demonstration. In that case, what had happened? He frowned at the molten blob that had moments ago been a penny, trying to puzzle out a rational explanation. None came to mind.

  “Wow,” Rusty said, his voice hushed. “How did you do that?”

  “That, my dear boy, was magic.” With one finger, Brikkens worried at the glob of metal until it peeled away from the wood. Then he passed the melted penny around the circle of students.

  When Cassidy handed the penny to Zeke, he finally took his feet off the table and leaned forward for a closer look. Casually he drew a knife from his belt and plunged its tip into the hardened puddle of metal. The blade struck with a dull metallic thud—the melted penny was real.

  “Well, it’s not a complete farce,” Zeke said, tucking his knife away.

  Rusty frowned. “I thought Merridy took everyone’s weapons,” he said to no one in particular.

  “Yeah, and there’s no way at all to find a new knife.” Zeke flipped the penny to Damian.

  As the penny finished going around the classroom, Brikkens reached into his pocket again and produced a whole handful of marbles, which he set onto the table with a series of metallic thuds. “I should clarify—with these orbs, I will only be able to influence processes that already happen in nature.”

  Then he began taking suggestions from the students of further ‘magic’ to perform. Cailyn was the first to shyly suggest he turn the ceiling purple; after that everyone started calling out ideas.

  During the next hour, Brikkens grew himself a remarkable black moustache, turned Zeke’s shirt a shocking shade of pink, froze a rubber band from Hayley’s hair so it shattered when he threw it on the table, and created a dense round cloud of vapor over the table which began to spin in a miniature funnel.

  By the end, Tristan’s head was beginning to ache. His carefully devised explanations grew thinner and thinner with each demonstration.

  Finally Brikkens released them to their next lesson; Zeke’s face fell when his shirt resumed its usual blue. Everyone sat motionless at first, stunned, while the cloud of vapor continued to spin lazily over the table.

  Rusty was the first to move, though he was so dazed that he fell out of his chair when he tried to stand. He hit the tiles with a thud, breaking the startled silence, and the students began shuffling their things together.

  Rusty sat on the ground for a moment, cursing and rubbing at his elbow.

  “Do you reckon it’s real?” Tristan asked Leila as they ambled through the door.

  “I really don’t know.” She bit her lip, watching Rusty struggle to his feet. “Like I said before, there’s definitely something wrong with this place.”

  Tristan nodded fervently.

  Chapter 4: An Affinity for Magic

  None of the other lessons that day came close to surpassing Brikkens’ magic show.

  Professor Grindlethorn—the short, hook-nosed teacher—took their next lesson. Grindlethorn had a brown beard cropped close to his face and serious, beady eyes that missed nothing. His classroom was narrow and dark, and from his brusque introduction Tristan gathered that he would be teaching medicine.

  “The school’s hospital is the next room down this hall,” he said, his voice deep and gravelly. “If you ever need medical assistance, you will come to me.”

  It wasn’t long before Grindlethorn released the class, handing each student an enormous gray textbook. Tristan groaned and heaved the textbook into his bag.

  Their next lesson was on the lowest level of the school, a flight of stairs below the bunkroom. The narrow passageway and classroom were much dimmer and less airy than the rest of the school, though they were carved from the same white stone. A dark tunnel gaped open directly across from the classroom door, and Tristan hugged his arms over his chest as he walked by. After what they had seen that morning, it seemed that anything could be lurking down there.

  This teacher, Professor Delair, was bald apart from a long white moustache. Despite his apparent age, he looked hale and strong. As he handed around copies of a purple textbook entitled Discrete Elementals, he said, “We will be studying the fundamentals of earth, air, fire, and water—the foundation of all magical processes.”

  Tristan nodded vaguely, massaging his temples; by this point he wouldn’t be surprised if a teacher announced that they would tame dragons or learn to fly.

  Delair continued speaking as though he’d said nothing unusual. “Classes won’t be meeting every day, but if you fail to appear on the day of a lesson, you will receive no less than one hour of punishment.”

  “What do you mean, punishment?” Damian asked.

  Delair explained that misbehavior would earn students hours of punishment, which they would have to work off with the teacher of their choice.

  “And if we don’t work it off?” This was from Zeke.

  Delair’s moustache twitched. “We thought of that,” he said. “You will have until each Friday at midnight to work off your weekly punishments. If you fail to do so, you won’t eat until you complete the hours.”

  At that, Delair stood. “Homework—read the introduction of the textbook. There will be a quiz next time we meet.”

  Oblivious to the groans from many of the students, he turned and left the room, disappearing into the dark tunnel across the hall.

  “I was hoping for more magic,” Rusty said as they retraced their path up to the ballroom. It was lunchtime.

  “I’m glad it’s over,” Tristan said, adding the Discrete Elementals book to his bag.

  “But aren’t you excited? I didn’t think it was gonna be like this. Aren’t you glad we’re not in juvie?”

  “That doesn’t mean we have to be excited,” Leila said darkly.

  Several teachers were already in the ballroom when Tristan, Leila, and Rusty arrived. There was Brikkens, eating heartily from two overflowing plates; Grindlethorn sat to his left, sipping from a steaming mug.

  Merridy got to her feet and stopped Leila before she could take a seat. “The other students are on their way down to the bunkroom,” she said. “As I mentioned upon our arrival, you must relinquish all of your personal items. Each of you may choose one belonging to keep, and the rest must go. Your peers are currently sorting through their things.”

  Tristan had forgotten about this; clearly Leila had too, because she dashed off, leaving her book bag at Tristan’s feet.

  “I don’t have anything,” Tristan said.

  Rusty reached in a pocket and drew out a small woodcarving. “This is all I’m keeping,” he told Merridy. “I’ve been carrying it around ever since you told us that we’d have to get rid of our stuff.”

  Merridy gave them both a thin-lipped smile and let them take seats on the dining platform.

  “Can I see that?” Tristan asked, eyeing the carving.

  Rusty opened his fist and showed him what looked like a fairy girl kneeling in prayer. As Rusty ran his fingers along the tips of her tiny wings, his eyes grew sad. “A friend made it for me.” After a moment he blinked and stuffed the carving back into his pocket. “Well, this’ll be different.” Tristan couldn’t tell if his enthusiasm was faked.

  As the students began returning to the ballroom, most looking disgruntled or downright angry, Quinsley came around with grilled cheese and tomato soup. Both were hot and delicious and soothed Tristan’s headache.

  “I thought you didn’t have an
ything valuable other than your knives,” Rusty said to Leila, who was sitting in an irritated silence.

  Leila snorted. “Slitting people’s throats isn’t the only thing I enjoy doing.”

  Tristan hoped she was joking, but her expression made it hard to tell.

  Professor Gracewright’s class was immediately following lunch. She led the students up the grand staircase to the clearing above the school, passing again through the insubstantial barrier on the stairs. The sudden darkness and drop in temperature was just as unerring as before.

  Outside, the clearing was still shrouded in damp mist. Tristan could barely see the outlines of trees beyond the native longhouses.

  “This is my classroom,” Gracewright said, gesturing around the clearing. Her sunhat wobbled dangerously. “I will be teaching botany, so our classes will deal with everything around us. However, for days like today, we have a greenhouse and an indoor garden to shelter in.”

  The greenhouse only materialized when they drew near; from afar its glass walls had looked like wood panels. It had to be an illusion of some sort.

  Instead of making for the greenhouse, Gracewright turned left and pushed open the door to one of the longhouses. When she vanished through the dark entrance, Tristan realized that it was guarded by another one of the strange barriers. He held his breath as he stepped into the black emptiness.

  Once through this barrier, Tristan could see that the floor of the longhouse was nothing but packed dirt, with patches of grass covering most of it. Flowers, vines, and small trees clustering along the walls gave it the appearance of a well-tended garden.

  Four large purple blankets were spread across the grass—following Gracewright’s example, the students settled onto the blankets and looked around.

  “We’ll begin the semester by identifying basic varieties of useful plants,” Gracewright said.

  They got to work right away, examining the lawn they were sitting on until each student could pick out five different species of grass.

  They were given two new textbooks at the end of the lesson, each as heavy and tedious-looking as the ones from their morning classes. One appeared to be a standard textbook entitled Encyclopedia of Botany. The other one, unfortunately, was called Beyond the Basics: Magical and Medicinal Herbs.

  When Gracewright dismissed the class, she handed each student a drawstring bag filled with herbs to identify before the next day’s lesson.

  “Can’t we just do something normal?” Tristan complained as they trudged back towards the stairs. “I’m getting sick of all this crazy talk about magic.”

  Leila nodded pensively. “I know what you mean. It’s a bit too strange to be completely fake, don’t you think?”

  “What are you talking about?” Rusty stopped in his tracks, surprised. “Didn’t you see Brikkens? This stuff is real!”

  Tristan sighed. “That’s what I’m worried about.”

  Their next lesson was taught by the vampire, who greeted the students in a tall, echoing chamber two stories below the ballroom. Here the walls were hewn from icy gray stone, entirely at odds with the marble floor. Four long tables were arranged in a square, partially enclosing what looked like a stone-ringed fire pit in the center of the room. There were no seats, so the students clustered around the tall tables with some confusion.

  “Good afternoon,” the teacher said, once the muttering had subsided. “My name is Brinley Alldusk, and I’ll be teaching chemistry.”

  When he smiled, Tristan was almost surprised that he lacked fangs.

  “First of all, I want to make it clear that ‘chemistry’ is a bit of a misnomer for this class.”

  “Oh, great,” Tristan muttered to Leila. “More bloody magic, no doubt.”

  Alldusk heard, and his smile widened. “You’ve got that right,” he said. His features softened, and he suddenly looked very friendly. “Tristan, is it?”

  Turning back to the other students, he said, “I believe Professor Brikkens showed you the gold orbs?”

  Rusty was one of the few who nodded eagerly at this.

  “Good. This class will involve the creation of those orbs; in other words, we will be collecting magic and condensing it into a functional form.”

  As Alldusk strode to the center of the room, Tristan leaned forward, suddenly curious. The gold marbles had fascinated him.

  “In order to capture this free-floating magic,” Alldusk continued, “we must destroy something and collect the vapors released in conjecture to the destruction.”

  “Sir?” Hayley Christiansen said. “I don’t think I understand...”

  “The fire pit,” Leila whispered, nodding towards the ground. “We’re going to burn things.”

  Leila was right. While he began to explain, Alldusk bent and unfastened a rusty grate that had been covering the fire pit. The hollow was filled with glowing coals, which Alldusk scooped into a metal bowl.

  “Unlike your other teachers,” Alldusk said, “I believe you deserve to know exactly how the collection of magic is made possible.”

  He brought the metal bowl over and set it on the table in front of Eli.

  “To release the magical vapor, we burn various materials, and the vapor is given off along with the smoke.”

  Reaching beneath the table, Alldusk produced a small leather pouch and an empty glass jar.

  “The volume of magic given off depends on what is being destroyed. This is where chemistry comes into play.” Holding up the pouch, he tipped a small pile of brown powder into his palm. “Certain combinations of plants and minerals create more magic than others when incinerated, and a greater magnitude of destruction produces more magic. Watch carefully—the vapor is subtle, and most of you won’t be able to see it.”

  At this, Alldusk dropped the powder onto the coals. The powder sparked as it hit the embers; Tristan squinted at the air directly above the bowl, waiting for something to happen. After a moment, he thought he saw something like a wisp of pale gold, which drifted up from the bowl in a hazy cloud.

  Once the gold cloud had floated away from the trail of smoke, Alldusk turned the empty glass jar over and scooped the gold vapor out of the air.

  All was silent, aside from the faint cracking of the embers. Then—

  “You didn’t catch all of it,” Amber Ashton said faintly.

  Tristan turned and stared at her. He wasn’t the only one; many of the students wore confused frowns, as though they had never seen her before.

  Leila shifted impatiently on his left. “What are we supposed to see?” She was still peering at the jar. “You didn’t even catch the smoke.”

  Rusty and several others nodded, while Eli continued to stare at Amber.

  “You mean you can’t see that gold stuff?” Tristan asked, surprised. Now that it was in the jar, the magic vapor was growing brighter and more substantial than before.

  Alldusk smiled. “As I said, it is rare for a student to spot the magic immediately. Raise your hands if you can see it.”

  Tristan put his hand up slowly, and was amazed to find that Amber was the only other student to raise her hand. Meeting her eyes, he shrugged.

  “Excellent,” Alldusk said. He nodded at them both. “Both of you appear to have an affinity for magic. And well spotted, miss...”

  Amber didn’t supply her name, so Alldusk cleared his throat and continued.

  “You’re quite right that some of the vapor slipped away. Unfortunately, we don’t have a more efficient way of collecting the vapors. We could use larger jars, of course, but they are extremely impractical.”

  “What are you talking about?” Rusty asked. “What happened?”

  Alldusk moved over to the next table and held the jar up for Rusty to have a closer look. “It should begin appearing to the rest of you as it grows thicker,” he said. “Watch carefully.”

  The gold was deeper now—more concentrated, Tristan realized—and it was swirling towards the bottom of the jar in a lazy spiral.

  While Rusty continued to fr
own at the jar, eyes screwed up in concentration, Alldusk made his way around the room to give everyone a closer look. When the jar came back around to Eli, he jumped and drew back.

  “I see it!” He gave the jar a look of wary scrutiny, eyebrows arching. “There’s something spinning in there.”

  Across the room, Cassidy had struck a haughty, bored pose, though her eyes kept flicking back to the jar of gold mist. Meanwhile, Zeke followed the circling vapor with the lazy unconcern of a cat tracking a string. Damian and most of the other students continued to frown in confusion.

  When the gold was almost dense enough to be solid, glowing brighter than ever, Rusty let out his breath.

  “Oh, there it is,” he said, rocking back on his heels. “There’s definitely something there.”

  “What is it?” Leila hissed in Tristan’s ear. “Why can’t I see anything?”

  “Look near the bottom,” Tristan said quietly. “Right in the middle—if you squint at it, can you see anything moving?”

  Leila shook her head.

  Holding the jar by its lid, Alldusk crossed to their desk and held it in front of Leila.

  “There’s a bright gold streak there,” Tristan said. Leaning over Leila’s shoulder, he put his finger on the jar. “Right...there.”

  Leila breathed a sigh of relief. “There it is. Thank goodness.”

  “Not to worry,” Alldusk said. “No one knows why some people have an easier time spotting the vapor than others; when I was learning, it took me weeks before I was able to see anything. Good work, everyone.”

  He set the jar on a dark wood shelf, where it joined a line of similar jars.

  “For those of you who are able to see the orb beginning to form, the vapor will continue spinning for many more hours. By our next lesson, there will be a golden ball of pure magic sitting at the base of the jar.”

  As the students began gathering their books to leave, Alldusk said, “For homework, you should practice observing. Everything has an aura; those of you who had difficulty seeing the magic vapor would do well to begin searching for auras wherever you go. This will make your future work in my class much easier.”