Metal and Magic: A Fantasy Journey

by Steve Windsor

  “Brilliant!” Rusty said under his breath.

  Tristan nodded fervently.

  Once Merridy had handed the last two books to Finley and Ryan, she returned to her desk. “We will spend the next three days learning magical survival techniques. And, since you all failed so miserably at reading maps,” she said, lips twitching, “I will teach you to locate this school with a spell.”

  A few of the students laughed.

  “Quiet.” Merridy’s smile vanished. “If you continue to interrupt my class, you will each get an hour.”

  They began at once with a spell called Intralocation, which Merridy claimed would render maps useless.

  “Intra—within,” she said briskly. “Intralocation is the process of finding places you have seen before and can visualize. Extralocation is its more complex counterpart, which allows you to locate places you’ve never seen. Open your textbooks to page thirty-eight, please, and read the theoretical description of the spell.”

  Eagerly Tristan pried open his new textbook, titled Everyday Alchemy, and read the passage.

  “How old d’you think this thing is?” Rusty whispered. “Alchemy’s from the middle ages, isn’t it?”

  “Maybe the author was trying to be clever,” Leila whispered back. “Now shut up, I’m trying to read.”

  Tristan had to reread the passage several times before he thought he understood it. It sounded as though the spell involved holding up a marble and imagining where you wanted to go. That seemed easy enough.

  “Any questions?” Merridy asked.

  Hayley put her hand in the air. “I don’t understand, Professor. What does the spell do?”

  “It’s quite simple,” Merridy said. “Once your marble is enchanted, it will float in the direction you must go, remaining at a constant distance from your center of gravity. You merely follow it until the magic has run out, at which point you enchant a new marble. Any other questions?” She looked around. “Yes, Finley?”

  Finley put his hand down and folded his arms on his desk. “I thought magic could only modify processes already existing in nature,” he said. He sounded uncannily like Brikkens. “How is an instinctive knowledge of directions something that exists in nature?”

  “Excellent point,” Merridy said, looking impressed. “Magical theoreticians are still debating that question; only a small fraction of magic is understood at present. However, the best explanation I can give is that the magic takes your own knowledge of two separate locations and links them together like magnets, using your understanding of a destination to draw you along the shortest line towards that point.”

  They spent the rest of the hour trying the spell. Merridy drew a circle on her chalkboard and said that the circle was their destination; if the Intralocation spell worked properly, the marbles would lead them directly to the chalkboard.

  The desks were shoved to the side, and the classroom quickly became a confusion of movement. Tristan watched Amber for a moment; she managed the spell on her first try, of course. Her gold marble bobbed in front of her face while she drifted along behind it, until the marble struck the chalkboard and dissolved. When Merridy congratulated her, Amber returned to her seat and buried her face in her textbook, cheeks pink with embarrassment.

  It was difficult to concentrate with so much going on around him. Rusty released marble after marble, hoping they would stay in the air, and cursed when they plummeted to the ground and dissolved. Leila kept flinching—after a moment Tristan realized that Zeke was pelting her with his marbles. Remembering the time when Zeke had blown up the wall, Tristan dragged her out of Zeke’s range.

  “You don’t think anything bad will happen if the spell fails, do you?” Tristan asked.

  Leila gestured to Rusty. “If he was going to set something on fire, he’d have done so already.” She grimaced as Rusty dropped his tenth marble. “Are you thinking of running away again?”

  Tristan shook his head. “I—probably.” Leila had guessed his thoughts. He didn’t want to stay and deal with whatever the teachers would be doing; it would be so much easier to leave all of this behind.

  Turning away from Leila, who frowned at him, Tristan closed his eyes. With the marble cupped in his hand, he tried to visualize the circle in the chalkboard. It took a long time before he could clear his mind, and longer still before the marble began to grow warm, but at last it was so hot he couldn’t hold it.

  Wincing, he dropped the marble and shook out his hand. Then he realized that the marble was still hanging in the air where he’d cupped it. When he took a tentative step forward, the marble floated with him, as though it was an extension of his body.

  Five steps later, he reached the front of the classroom.

  “Excellent work,” Merridy said when Tristan’s marble collided with the chalkboard. Then she looked at the rest of the students, who were growing rowdier by the minute. “I suppose the other teachers were right to worry,” she said with a sigh.

  Tristan glanced back at Leila, who was still frowning in his direction. “Don’t try and talk me out of it. I have to try.”

  Leila nodded sadly.

  By Friday, all of the students except Cailyn and Ryan Riggs had managed the Intralocation spell more or less accurately. When Rusty successfully enchanted his marble for the first time, causing it to hang in the air so close to his face that he went cross-eyed, he jumped up and down like a little kid. Even Leila was ecstatic when her spell worked.

  “Wow,” she said. “God, this is amazing! I can’t believe...I mean, it’s actually real! Wow.”

  Tristan laughed.

  On Friday morning, the students brought their backpacks and supplies up to breakfast, where Merridy passed them each a large bag of marbles.

  “You don’t look so good,” Leila said shrewdly. She was plainly hoping Tristan would give up his plan to run away.

  Tristan groaned. “I’m just tired.” He had lain awake last night, trying to imagine life without Leila and Rusty. “If I don’t come back, tell the others that they can escape too, if they want.”

  Leila sighed. “I’ll be praying you fail, of course.”

  At that moment, Merridy pushed back her chair and stood. “Everyone will be picked up at five o’clock this evening,” she said, “though I would recommend hurrying—it should snow this afternoon.”

  Just as before, Quinsley packed the students into the helicopter and dropped them each off at separate locations.

  “Be safe,” Leila said, handing Tristan his backpack as he clambered out of the helicopter.

  He smiled weakly.

  As the helicopter took to the air, its propellers whirring so powerfully that the nearby trees bowed away from the wind, Tristan dug in his pocket for a marble. Standing knee-deep in a crisp snowdrift, he studied the marble. His feet were already turning to blocks of ice.

  Then he closed his eyes and thought of home.

  The spell was already becoming easy. Tristan could picture the house as though he’d been there yesterday—torn screen door sagging from its hinges, tiled floor tracked with mud and crumbled snow, fire flickering in the stone hearth...

  No, that wasn’t right. Tristan shook his head to clear it; the marble in his hand was already growing warm, but he’d done the spell wrong. His home didn’t have a fireplace—the hearth he’d imagined was the one in the Subroom. Cursing softly, Tristan squeezed the marble in his fist and waited for it to cool before closing his eyes and trying the spell again.

  This time he thought he’d done it right, so he released the marble and allowed it to hover in front of his face, the orb shifting slightly as he moved.

  With a glance overhead at the snow-dusted pine boughs, he began trudging forward, snow crackling beneath his feet. Apart from the crunch of his footsteps, the woods were unerringly silent; Tristan began walking faster, allowing the downhill momentum to carry him forward. Still the marble kept pace with him, glinting dully in the sunlight.

  The slope grew steeper, until Tristan was stumbl
ing forward, half-running. Several times he caught his toe on a branch or rock, invisible beneath the snow; unable to move his feet in time, he crashed forward, the powder cushioning his fall.

  At last the ground flattened. Breathing hard, Tristan straightened and staggered through a gap between two sentinel trees. Then he realized he was back at the school.

  “Damn!”

  He dropped to his knees in the snow, hating the sight of the dark buildings.

  Why hadn’t the spell worked?

  Tristan snatched the marble out of the air and slammed it to the ground, wondering if there was something wrong with him. How had he managed to forget his own home so quickly?

  Merridy, alerted by his shout, appeared suddenly in the doorway to the greenhouse. “Tristan!” she said. “Well done, indeed.” Though she looked slightly worried when she noticed his expression, she didn’t comment. “You’ll receive full marks, of course. If you would like, Professor Brikkens is waiting in the ballroom with hot chocolate.”

  Tristan nodded stiffly. “Thanks, Professor,” he managed to say. Clenching his teeth, he got heavily to his feet and trudged over to the Lair’s entrance.

  Somehow Amber was already in the ballroom when Tristan came down the stairs. He didn’t know how she’d gotten back so quickly. He joined her at one of the tables, scowling.

  “You don’t look happy,” Amber commented, stirring her hot chocolate with an air of distraction.

  “Well, I’m not,” Tristan grumbled. He poured himself a mug of hot chocolate and stared at its foamy surface, hardly seeing. The teachers were murderers. How could this be his home?

  Amber took a brief sip from her mug and then set it aside, getting to her feet.

  “Sorry,” Tristan said, trying to lighten his expression. “Don’t go—I’m mad at myself, not at you.”

  She turned to look at him, eyes wide. “You have a very interesting face,” she said quietly.

  Though Tristan could tell it wasn’t an insult, he smoothed his hair self-consciously over his scars. “I’ll look for you later, all right?” he said.

  Amber nodded. “The woods are beautiful when it snows.” At this strange remark, she turned and made her way towards the stairs, her steps so light she could have been floating.

  If Quinsley and Alldusk hadn’t been in the ballroom, Tristan would have abandoned his drink and stalked down to the Subroom; instead he finished the hot chocolate, gathering his wits.

  Cailyn returned soon after Amber left, which surprised Tristan—she hadn’t been able to use magic in class, so she must have found her way without the Intralocation spell. Cailyn was followed closely by Evvie and Eli, and each one joined Tristan at his table when they arrived.

  Gulping down the last cold remnants of his drink, Tristan got to his feet and said he was going outside to wait for the others. Evvie, Cailyn, and Eli were silent; not for the first time, Tristan got the distinctive feeling that they didn’t like him very much.

  It was a relief to leave the Lair, though the air had already chilled considerably in the half hour that he’d been inside. Despite the gathering clouds, the mountains seemed to glow—their silver aura radiated off the peaks like a million fragments of light, stark against the softer aura of what Tristan thought was the forest itself.

  Tristan drew his jacket closer around him and tucked his chin into the warm folds of the scarf Gracewright had given him, wishing Amber was there. The air seemed heavy with magic, permeating the trees and threading across the clearing, so strong that Tristan’s muscles tingled with the sensation of power. It felt like a dream.

  Zeke was the next to return. He headed straight into the Lair, not even noticing Tristan, who stood just beneath the trees. Leila bounded into the meadow soon afterwards, beaming when she saw Tristan. “You came back!” Slowing, she joined Tristan at the edge of the forest. “But what are you doing out here?”

  Tristan felt like he’d been pulled from a trance. “Nothing,” he said distractedly. “So you got the spell to work, then?”

  Leila nodded happily. “It’s amazing. Let’s get inside—aren’t you cold?”

  “Wait,” Tristan said. His spine was still prickling with magic; if he went inside now, he was afraid he might never be so keenly aware of the power again.

  With a curious look at Tristan, Leila turned and followed his gaze to the mountain peaks, now shrouded in gray. Tristan’s hands were stiff, so he rubbed them together to ease the biting chill. If only they could build a little fire in the clearing, he’d be able to sit out here for hours, just tracing the magic with his thoughts. It was like a sixth sense, an ethereal awareness.

  When Leila touched his shoulder, Tristan shivered convulsively; he hadn’t realized how cold his entire body had become. He flexed his stiff fingers, imagining the fire down in the Subroom.

  With a sudden thrill of adrenaline, a burst of heat blossomed through his hands, as though he’d submerged them in hot water. Was he going crazy? No—the warmth held, thawing and loosening his fingers.

  “What’s wrong, Triss?” Leila demanded.

  Tristan started and realized she’d been staring at him for the past minute. “Nothing’s wrong,” he said quickly. He reached for one of her chaffed white hands. “Do you feel that?”

  “My god,” she said, looking frightened. “Are you sick? You feel like...like fire.” Giving Tristan a look that dared him to laugh, she reached for his other hand and brought his palms up to her cheeks.

  Tristan swallowed. “I think I just did magic,” he said warily. “And I don’t even know how.”

  “Oh,” Leila said, eyes widening. She released Tristan’s hands. “Of course you did.”

  After a moment, the intense heat in Tristan’s hands began to fade. “But I didn’t use a marble,” he said. “I don’t get it.”

  “Delair mentioned this,” Leila said. “He said we can sometimes use power from our own bodies, right?”

  Tristan nodded, and Leila turned to the Lair’s entrance. This time he followed her without argument.

  “Be careful, though,” she said, stopping to kick snow off her boots. “I think it’s dangerous to draw magic from yourself if you don’t know how to control it.”

  She was right, though Tristan didn’t want to admit it. As he drew the heavy wooden doors shut and followed Leila downstairs, he felt a sudden absence. The strands of free-flowing magic had been severed.

  Chapter 17: The Ultimatum

  On Monday, just as Merridy had warned, the teachers all began very suddenly to teach practical magic. Merridy, of course, had spent the past week on Intralocation, and the others followed her example.

  Grindlethorn began his class by saying, “In order to stay on track this semester, you kids are going to have to work harder than ever. I would advise trying your best to avoid punishment.” His beady eyes lit on Tristan. “Since the headmaster has asked that I teach healing spells in addition to what I planned, we will have to cover twice as much material.”

  When Grindlethorn began passing back a difficult quiz they’d taken the week before, Tristan was not alone in shifting his paper to hide a failing grade.

  “Hey, Professor,” Zeke said lazily. “Ever heard of something called extra credit?”

  “That’s enough, Elwood!” Grindlethorn rapped his knuckles on his desk. “For those of you who did poorly on this quiz, review your notes and pay better attention in class next time. Your final exams this semester will determine how we organize your classes next year, so it is crucial that you perform well.”

  With a yawn, Zeke folded his quiz into a paper airplane. “Now I’m really scared.”

  Delair was actually in his classroom when the students filed in, which was surprising in itself; stranger still, he was in the process of stacking a pile of rocks on each desk.

  “Ah, good to see you,” he said, beaming at the students. His white moustache fluttered as he exhaled. “The headmaster wants me to cover practical magic, instead of just the theory of elementals. That mea
ns we’re done with lectures!”

  That hardly mattered, since Delair had almost never appeared for class last semester.

  Delair explained that each of the rocks on their desks had a scrap of Delairium buried somewhere near the center, and their task was to extract the element in its entirety. He handed around a set of marbles with no further instructions; he seemed to enjoy watching the students struggle.

  Even Tristan couldn’t figure out how to go about separating the Delairium from the plain granite. When the period ended, Delair told them to look through their textbooks for the appropriate spell. “Bring back your pile of rocks tomorrow—those of you who haven’t managed to separate the Delairium from the granite will have to write an essay on the matter.”

  Tristan groaned. Dumping the pile of rocks into his book bag, he followed the others up to lunch.

  Alldusk began his class two hours later with the same announcement about practical magic, though he said, “I’m afraid we don’t have enough time to concentrate much on spells. Our most important job is collecting the orbs; now that your other classes are using them as well, we need to work faster than ever.” He sighed and glanced at the door. “However, I can still teach you how to start fires with magic. That should satisfy Professor Drakewell.”

  Although the lesson itself was interesting enough, Tristan was dismayed when Alldusk followed the other teachers’ example and assigned more homework than ever.

  That night, instead of sitting around and talking, the students in the Subroom settled unhappily into chairs around the room and began struggling through their homework. Even Trey, who was usually ahead on work, stayed up past midnight along with everyone else. First Tristan wrote the introductory paragraph for Grindlethorn’s essay on treating hypothermia and frostbite; afterwards he began diagramming the structure of orchids for Gracewright.

  The room was silent aside from the rustle of papers and the busy scratching of pens, an odd contrast to the rowdy bustle of the holidays. Occasionally someone would ask a question to the room at large, and Tristan flinched when a branch in the fire crackled loudly.