by EJ Wozniak
“Thank you, Allister. I want everyone here to give Al a round of applause. This is the fourth year the Paxum has been open. Allister came to the board about 11 years ago with the idea of opening a schooling center for the people of Bonumalus to teach right from wrong and how to use our power properly. He, Sasha, Janis and Aiden came together to form this, the Paxum, where we can all safely learn to use our power, as well as Bonumalus’ past and present. You wouldn’t be here without the work of these four. Let’s give them all a round of applause for what this place has become.”
Pare stepped back and clapped and the rest of the quarry followed suit. Allister and the others all put their hands up for thanks and bowed.
“Thank you, Pare. Okay, if you are staying here at the Paxum, please head to your quarters and unpack. If you are not, you can head back home whenever you would like.” Allister waved his arm, and the air stopped vibrating.
Lumen went over to Alec.
“What is the Imperium?”
“They’re like the governors of Bonumalus. They control what comes in and out of our world to yours . . . Have you seen Chester? He disappeared halfway through the introductions.”
Lumen looked around at all the people moving.
“No, sorry.”
“Okay, well everyone else in our group is staying at the Paxum, except for you and Lucy, so I need to find him and show everyone their quarters. You can get home right?”
“Yeah, I’ll be fine. See you later.”
Alec jogged away and yelled for the others to follow him. Lumen thought Alec was really in his element in Bonumalus. Same great looks and leadership without the sweating.
Lumen turned away. Most of the people had left. Allister opened a window, and the four leaders and Pare went through, presumably to Allister’s cabin.
Lumen stood around until everyone was gone. They had all gone to their respective areas of the Paxum. It became quiet. Lumen looked around at his surroundings. This quarry was incredible. How Allister and the others were able to build these four sections around the quarry was incomprehensible to Lumen. How did they get the clouds to remain where they were in that section of the quarry? How did the snow not pour over into the forest, and how were the trees contained to just that parcel? It was beyond Lumen’s understanding, but he didn’t care. He felt like he belonged there. For the first time in a long time, Lumen felt comfortable where he was. Lumen felt his ring get warm again, and then someone tapped him on the shoulder from behind. He turned around, and there was Till.
“Hey, whatcha still doing here?”
Lumen was again perplexed at Till. She was beautiful. Her smile really caught Lumen’s attention.
“Uh, I’m just, uh . . . looking around before I head home.”
“It’s amazing isn’t it?”
Lumen nodded and gulped his saliva before speaking.
“Yeah, it’s unbelievable that they were able to build something like this.”
“Bonumalus’ possibilities reach much further than that of where we are from. We are lucky enough to experience it.”
“You’re from Earth? Wait, is this Earth? Where is Bonumalus exactly?” Lumen asked curiously.
“Yes, a little town called New York City, not sure if you’ve ever heard of it. Bonum, I would say is between Earth and the heavens.”
Till winked at Lumen. Lumen’s heart dropped. He thought of another question quickly.
“How did you find out about the lights and your abilities?”
“Allister actually found me in a burning building. The building I was living in caught fire. I was the only one to survive. My family was gone just like that. . . Allister says I survived because I subconsciously covered myself with water.”
Lumen’s eyes widened. He wasn’t sure how to react. He changed the subject.
“I’m sorry to hear that . . . What about the lights? They didn’t bother you growing up? I was a diagnosed schizophrenic because of the way they distracted me.”
Lumen wasn’t sure why he told Till that.
“Oh yeah, they were there. I learned to ignore them at a young age. It’s like your nose. You can always see it but your mind blocks it out when it processes what is in front of you.”
Lumen focused for a moment on seeing his nose. He realized she was right.
“I wasn’t lucky enough to learn that growing up,” Lumen said as he rubbed the back of his neck.
“Well you’re lucky enough to be here now. I’m glad you’re here,” Till said.
Till grabbed his hand. Lumen looked at her in confusion and turned pink again.
“Hey, what are you two doing?”
Lumen let go of Till’s hand quickly and turned to see Alec walking toward them.
“Till you’re supposed to be moving into your quarters. Go ahead now. You should get some rest.”
Till turned to Lumen and waved as she headed back. Lumen waved back.
Alec waited until she was out of earshot.
“What the heck was that about?” Alec said as he pushed Lumen softly.
“What do you mean? We were just talking.”
“I saw you two holding hands. What about Sofia, man? You can’t have a girlfriend in both worlds, it’s still wrong you know?”
“She’s not my girlfriend yet. And I don’t know what that was. She came up here and started talking to me about her house burning down, the lights. . .and then grabbed my hand. I hardly said anything.”
Alec laughed at Lumen.
“I’m just giving you a hard time, man. But seriously, you should pick one. Big man now. Went from no friends and never ever speaking to a girl to having to choose between two.”
“I don’t have to choose between girls. I’m going to ask Sofia to be my girlfriend. I don't even know Till really. I met her an hour ago.”
Lumen imagined for just a moment holding hands with Till and kissing her. His heart was racing.
“Good idea, man. I can tell Sofia really likes you anyway. Have you thought about how you’ll ask her?”
Lumen’s thoughts went straight to everything that could go wrong with asking Sofia. His date was on Friday. He needed to plan something out.
“No, I have no idea what I’m doing.”
Alec laughed again.
“It’s okay dude, she likes you. Don’t freak out about it. Just be yourself.”
Lumen gulped and told Alec he needed to go. He looked around one more time and waved to Alec.
“See you tomorrow.”
Lumen imagined where he wanted to be, opened his eyes, and opened a window. He stepped through and was standing in his room. Wrigley was asleep on the bed. He looked at the clock.
10:17 PM.
“Let’s go, Wrig. Bathroom time.”
Lumen took Wrigley out and went to bed. He was exhausted from the day. Paxum was an incredible place, and he couldn’t wait to return. He had a lot to learn and think about. He kept thinking of Till grabbing his hand. She had such a pretty smile. It was burned into his memory. Lumen tried not to think about it. When Till popped into his mind, he decided to imagine Sofia’s smile instead.
He sighed. “This is way more stressful than having my head shoved in a toilet. You know what I mean?”
Wrigley turned his head sideways to try and understand but just trotted away and peed on the newly planted flowers.
“You know Mom would be upset if she saw you do that. C’mon, back inside.”
Lumen had a hard time sleeping. Till and asking Sofia to be his girlfriend weighed heavily on his mind.
When he finally fell asleep, he dreamt of himself somehow standing between the Paxum and his home. In the Paxum, Till was pulling his arm to follow her to a deep and snowy expanse. Lumen looked in her direction and could see snow falling behind her amongst pine trees. The snow had a gray tint to it and Lumen felt an odd warmth in the air. In his home was Sofia pulling his arm to follow her to his living room. The TV was on and a puzzle was sprawled out over the coffee table. Wrigley lay on the gro
und, chewing on a block of ice, and his mom was cooking something in the kitchen. Lumen couldn’t decide who to follow and ended up waking up in a cold sweat before falling asleep again to the same unfinished dream. The dream never led to anything, just two girls pulling Lumen’s arms.
* * *
Lumen woke up to Alice yelling.
“Lu! Lumen! School starts in 5 minutes!”
Lumen jumped out of bed, threw on some clothes, ran to the kitchen, and quickly asked his mom why she was awake.
“I just got home. Sarah called in sick, so I stayed overtime.”
Lumen took the banana out of her hand and ran out the door.
“Get some sleep!” he yelled before the door closed shut. He came back immediately after closing it.
“Actually, Can I get a ride?”
Lumen was 8 minutes late, the first time that had ever happened to him. The school counselor smiled when Lumen said he overslept. She handed him a tardy slip.
It was a typical day at school, and the day passed quickly. Lumen did get pushed into a wall when passing Blake, but no swirly. Lumen could live with that. The fire must be wearing off on the bullies conscious.
He saw Sofia twice. Both times they hugged and asked how their days were going. Both times Lumen felt guilty over Till. He wasn’t sure why, nothing really happened. She grabbed his hand, he didn’t do anything. Plus, he and Sofia weren’t even technically dating yet.
The school day went by and ended, and Lumen headed home. He still wasn’t sure about when he should return to Bonumalus; Alec hadn’t told him a time to be there. He decided he would head back at 7:30 that night.
His mom was still sleeping when he got home. He decided to help around the house; he folded the clothes, washed some dishes, swept the kitchen floor, walked Wrigley, and planted one of the new flowers his mom bought. It was the same kind of flower that was left behind in the fire, a thistle.
“I decided to plant one to remind us of how lucky we are to still have this house,” Alice said as she popped her head through the back door, wearing a robe with her hair up in a bun.
“Good idea. Maybe it will warn us of an intruder next time.”
Alice laughed.
“Hopefully, there won’t be a next time.”
Lumen agreed in his head and finished planting the thistle. He poked his finger on one of the thorns and immediately yelped, “Ow!”
Alice popped her head out, laughing again.
“Can’t get too close to them; the beauty will bring ya in, but it’ll really bite ya once you get too close.”
“Yeah, I see that now.”
They both went back inside and Alice cooked some dinner for the two of them. Lumen had to figure out what to tell his mom tonight so that he could sneak off to the Paxum. She wouldn’t be at work tonight.
“Hey, I, uh, think I’m going to go study at Alec’s tonight.”
Alice raised her eyebrows.
“Since when do you study? I’m not sure how you pass all your classes, but I’ve never seen you study.”
Lumen thought quickly on his feet.
“It’s to help Alec. Plus, this history class is kind of hard. I could use it.”
Alice nodded in agreement.
“Okay, do you need a ride?”
Lumen thought of another lie.
“No, I think I’ll run there. I haven’t got a run in lately.”
“Okay, whatever you say. Just be home by 10 please.”
Lumen nodded. He never liked lying to his mom but had become good at it the last few weeks.
Lumen helped clean up the dishes and grabbed all of his school stuff, an extra jacket, and made sure he had his ring on.
He put on running shorts with a big jacket and a beanie. He had to at least make the lie look real.
“Bye, Mom!”
“Be safe please! Home by ten, don’t forget! You better have your medicine handy!” Alice yelled from her room. She didn’t even see Lumen walk out.
“So much for the shorts . . .”
Lumen jogged a few houses down the block. It was cold. The snow had already melted from last week, but it was definitely cold enough to snow again. The sky was full of dark, ominous clouds and looked poised to start snowing again any minute.
Lumen looked around when he was a block away from his house. The lights began to appear. He ran onto the side of a random house’s yard, glanced around to make sure no one was looking, thought of the Paxum, quickly pieced together the lights, and opened a window. He stepped through.
* * *
Lumen landed in the quarry. It was very crowded again with what looked like even more people than yesterday. Lumen saw the man from the luxem shop in Entropolis, Nemo, talking to one of the new kids. He was showing the kid a watch, presumably a luxem. The man nodded towards Lumen. Lumen was still confused as to how this man knew who he was.
Lumen headed toward his group near the part of the Paxum where his training would be. He was nervous about seeing Till. Alec bumped into him.
“Hey man, you’re on time.”
“Yeah, nobody has told me a time to show up yet.”
“Well now is good.”
“Okay . . .” Lumen wasn’t sure if that meant to show up at this time from now on.
Alec chuckled.
“Yes, 7:30 is good. Monday through Friday. Saturdays will be longer days. We’ll start first thing in the morning and go until four or five. Make sure you get your story straight with your mom.”
Lumen didn’t answer as he thought about what he could possibly tell his mom.
“Also, have you set up your luxem yet? There will be a class regarding travel. It’s a good idea to have that set up.”
“I can’t figure out where to set it to . . . It was going to be my house but that almost got burnt down, so I prefer to keep my mom and the house out of this,” Lumen said.
“Yeah, man, I get that. Set it for Allister’s cabin. He wouldn’t mind that.”
Lumen felt the ring warm up. He glanced down at it.
“Go ahead, man. Open a window to Allister’s cabin; the luxem will know what to do.”
Lumen didn’t know how a ring would know what to do, but he listened to Alec. He focused on Allister’s cabin, moved the lights and a window opened. Lumen looked at Alec, and Alec signaled for him to hold the ring in front of him. Lumen held his hand out in front of him. The window shimmered and funneled toward Lumen’s hand. In a matter of seconds, the window had been swallowed by the ring and was gone from sight.
“What the . . . how do I get it out?”
“Don’t worry; it will know when to open up for you. You’re good to go now.”
Lumen nodded but still wasn’t sure how exactly this worked. He took the ring off to hold it up in the light. He didn’t see anything on the ring that could possibly hold light. It didn’t make sense. Then again, neither did any of this here. Lumen shrugged it off.
They walked over to the rest of the group. Alec and Lumen both said hello to the group. Till came up behind Lumen and jumped on his back.
“Uh, hello there.”
“Hi, Lu!”
She jumped down and came around to hug Lumen. Lumen looked around the group, and everyone was staring at them. Alec had his eyes opened very wide and looked as though he was trying not to laugh at Lumen.
Lumen mouthed “shut up” to Alec.
“All right, group. We are going to head to the cabin right over there.” Alec pointed to the nearest cabin in the snow.
“Why are there so many more people here today?” Yu asked.
Alec looked around him.
“Oh right, yesterday was mostly new students. The more seasoned students were not required to show up yesterday.”
Lumen looked at his group, and he counted five people. Someone was missing from the group he met yesterday.
“Hey, are we missing someone?”
Alec turned around and counted five also.
“Lu, Lucy, Till, Yu . . . Where is Chester?
”
At that moment a window opened in the middle of their group, and Chester fell through.
He gathered himself, fixed his zip-up jacket and wiped off his jeans. His white shirt looked to have a blood stain on it. Lumen didn’t remember his head being shaved yesterday.
Chester looked around at everyone looking at him.
“What? I had stuff to do. I’m here now, aren’t I?”
Alec regained everyone’s attention.
“Great, let’s head this way.”
Everyone followed him up out of the quarry, into the snow. The snow wasn’t that thick and was easy to walk through. Lumen was surprised. The trees leading to the cabin were covered in snow. Overhead, the clouds were a calming shade of gray. The group was in awe of the surroundings. The trees looked like pine trees on a postcard; they were picture perfect. Lumen kicked a pinecone that was perfectly square. He was awestruck by the perfectly cubed pinecone. Lumen caught up with Alec after Till attempted to grab his hand and missed.
“Dude, this place is incredible.”
“Yeah, Allister is an artist when it comes to this stuff.”
They walked into the log cabin. There was nothing inside except for a desk with a lady filling out some papers. She had bright red hair with lots of freckles, and was dressed like the rest of the people from Entropolis. Smiling, she stood up when the students started to file in.
“Welcome, welcome! We are very excited for you all to get started today! I am Gretchen. Nice to meet you all! It is my job to watch this cabin. We call the area down there the Genaqua. Before you go down to the Genaqua today, I would like to tell you that there is no light travel down here. Even if you were to try, it wouldn’t work. You come in through that door and leave through that door. Me, or another watch, will always be here monitoring. Everyone understand?”
They all nodded their heads. Lumen was curious how they could limit light travel there and what she meant by “down there.”
“Great, that’s all I have for you guys! Have a great rest of your day!”
Lumen whispered to Alec, “How is it that no one can use light travel in here?”
