Academy of Magic Collection

by Angelique S Anderson et al.

  Maybe that was what I had heard. Memories of forgotten eras, whispered to me by these ancient, knowing walls. I didn’t believe in ghosts or anything, but I did believe something lingered on after we died, a certain vibration or energy.

  “Earth to Alanis,” Cora said, waving her hand in front of me. “You look miles away.”

  “Sorry,” I said. The good thing about my temporary drowsiness was that it kept me from focusing on Nate, but now I was feeling a little better, my eyes involuntarily searched for him in the mass. It didn’t take me long to find him, but just when I looked at him—at the back of his hair, while I was wondering how it would feel to let my hands run through it—he turned toward me.

  “Oh god,” I mumbled. “Nate just caught me staring at him.”

  Cora swirled around and then focused back on me. “He’s grinning and coming over here,” she whispers.

  “Wha…” I got up quickly—too quickly, because the room started spinning again. I reached out and leaned my hands against the walls for support.

  “Hey Cora, Alanis,” Nate greeted us. I was slightly surprised he knew Cora's name, but if he was truly as nice and friendly as she let on, then I guessed he probably knew everyone. “I didn’t know you two signed up for dance class.”

  “First time ever waltzing,” I blurted out. “I’m not good at all the swirling around.”

  “She’ll get the hang of it,” Cora said, coming my rescue.

  “I bet.” Nate smiled, and my heart melted.

  I was like one of those silly tween girls crushing on a guy for the first time, but I couldn’t help it.

  “I was wondering if you’d like to rehearse playing the violin today?” he asked me. “Since you mentioned you could use some practice, and I don’t have anything else to do anyway.”

  “Uhm. Sure,” I told him, while an army of butterflies escaped in my tummy. “Around what time?”

  “We can get started right away, if you’d like. I was going to practice this afternoon anyway, so I already booked a rehearsal room.”

  “Okay,” I said, barely believing my ears. “That sounds great."

  "Awesome. I’ll say a quick goodbye to Elise, and then I’m all yours," Nate promised before he rushed off.

  Seriously? Then I'm all yours? He had no freaking idea what that sentence did to me, and the kind of images it put in my brain.

  “You’re falling for him. Big time," Cora said. It wasn’t a question, merely a statement. She looked at me like she was going to fire off a million questions at me, like a detective interrogating a suspect. “Just… Don’t do anything stupid.”

  “I won’t,” I assured her as I followed her to the ballroom exit. “What are you going to do the rest of the afternoon?”

  “Work on my composition,” she said. “I’m teamed up with Aaron, and I know next to nothing about him, so we’ll spend some time getting know each other before we work on our songs. Anyway, want to go to dance class again next week?”

  I knew she’d drop the dance-class bomb, but I never expected her to start about it this soon. Part of me wanted to say no, because although I did somewhat enjoy it, the dizziness and weird whispers freaked me out. But she looked at me like a sweet puppy that wanted to get hugged so badly that I couldn’t say no.

  “Of course!” I said, faking enthusiasm. “I had a blast.” Besides, it wouldn’t hurt to make some actual friends. I had been hanging out with Cora and Dante, but if we were ever going to move from being acquaintances to being friends, I would have to step it up.

  Cora smiled, and she seemed about to say something else, when a familiar voice interrupted us.

  “Are you ready?” Nate asked.

  I held up my violin case demonstratively. “Yep. Bye, Cora.” I waved at her before following after Nate.

  To me, Allegro Academy was like a maze riddled with secrets lurking around every corner, but Nate navigated the hallways with such ease it seemed as if he had lived her for centuries.

  Chapter Six

  Nate and I played the violin for what felt like an eternity, but in reality, was only about an hour. It felt so good, though, to be able to practice with him, to have him give me pointers on where I could improve my technique, and what parts of the compositions I should focus in.

  He was an amazing violin player, his skills levels above mine, and during our practice, I temporarily forgot how good-looking he was, an instead was completely enamored by how excellent he played.

  After our rehearsal, I went back to my room, floating on clouds. As I dropped my violin case next to my bed, I kept on repeating the scene in my mind, of Nate standing there, so close to me, us playing the violin together…

  Eventually, I must’ve fallen asleep, because a knock on the door startled me awake. My room was shrouded in darkness. How long did I sleep? Those near sleepless nights must be getting to me.

  I got up and walk over to the door. The alarm clock standing on my desk told me it was eight o’clock sharp. I opened the door and mustered a small smile before I told Dante to come in. He looked good, with the early moonlight shining through the window and landing on his face.

  “You have that ‘just out of bed’ look, Scared-y Cat,” Dante said, his tone light and teasing. “Hair all messed up, wrinkled clothes…”

  “Oh God.” I rushed toward the small mirror hanging in front of the wash basin and realized he was right. “I look terrible,” I declared.

  “Nah,” Dante said. “At least not when compared to soldiers who’ve just spend four years battling for the sweet land of home. Compared to regular human beings who had plenty of sleep the last few days, yeah, you look terrible.”

  “Thanks for the kind words.” I rolled my eyes. “That’s the pot calling the kettle black. You look like you could do with some sleep yourself.”

  “It’s those damn rats. Or mice. Whatever they are,” Dante said as he came further into the room, and put his bag down on the floor. “They only come out at night, and they toddle from one side of the attic to the other. You’d think they’re on drugs, the way they never slow down.”

  “Strange. I haven’t heard them at all, and I’ve been lying awake most of the night. We had mice on the attic of my home once and getting rid of them was hell.”

  “Anyway, how was dance class?” Dante asked, changing the subject.

  “It was all right. Cora and I danced together. I got kind of dizzy though, after a while.”

  Dante looked up at me, his eyes large and suspicious. “What do you mean?”

  “We kept on making circles, and all the spinning around made me dizzy.”

  “Ah.” He let the word linger on, as if he was waiting for me to say something more, but I was done talking. I didn’t want to tell him about the strange voices. “So, tell me about yourself,” he said eventually.

  “Uhm. That’s an open question…”

  Dante took the liberty to sit down on my bed. He crossed his arms behind his back and lay down, resting his head on my pillow. Color rose to my cheek. Not only did I have a guy in my room, for the first time in ever, and two minutes later he was already lying down on my bed, acting as if he was at home. I was about to tell him to take his shoes off, when he kicked them off.

  “Tell me your life story, Scared-y Cat. The more you tell me about you, the better my concerto will be. And yes, I’m going for a concerto.”

  “Uhm…” I didn’t really know what to say. “Well, I like to play the violin. I grew up in the United States. No siblings. My Grandma taught me how to play.”

  “Booooooring,” Dante said, stretching the o. “Sit here,” he ordered, and I blindly followed his command, sitting down on the spot he indicated, at the edge of my bed.

  He had infiltrated my territory and turned it into his own. Already I felt like a stranger in my own room.

  “Don’t tell me stuff I can find out easily enough if I ask for your file. Which would be kind of creepy, I admit. Tell me things no one else knows. Tell me about you—what are your dreams
? What inspires you?”

  “You're stepping on personal territory here,” I tell him reluctantly. “If you're going to ask such difficult questions, you can start yourself.”

  “Very well then. I grew up in Florence in Italy. That was the best time of my life,” Dante said, a longing look lingering on his features. “We lived in a palezzio in one of the most beautiful cities of the world. We went on trips to Rome practically every weekend. My parents were big fans of ancient architecture and history. We visited Assisi, where my grandparents lived, about once a month. Summers were spent in Venice, or down the coasts." He paused for a second, and looked at me, his eyes burning intensely. “I wish you could've seen it too, Scared-y Cat. Tourists visit the great cities and tell me how beautiful they are, but when you're from there, when you spend your childhood there, you know the true jewels, the loveliest of places, the ones tourists have no clue about.” His eyes glistered in the dark, fire burning in his pupils.

  “You must miss it,” I said, my voice low.

  Dante shrugged. “My parents reckoned I had talent. I was homeschooled most of my life, had the most expensive teachers money could buy. But they wanted me to interact with people my age, so they send me off to here." He took a deep breath. “For most people who pass through these gates, that’s their dream come true. For me, it was pure hell. It was the last place on earth I wanted to be. I was a snob, convinced I was the best one in here. Boy, was I wrong.” He let out a dry laugh. “Compared to some of the other people here, I was mediocre at best. My mind was full of inspiration, but all of that evaporated the moment I entered the academy. I had zero inspiration. Zero.”

  “How come?” I asked. My voice had faded to a whisper. I was well aware of how vulnerable he was right now, now he had opened up to me, and shared some of his secrets. The atmosphere demanded me to speak softer. Loud words would disrupt whatever was going on here.

  “I don’t know,” Dante replied. “I felt trapped here; I used to travel the world, be inspired by the seasons and discover things. Here, I was a prisoner. The house felt claustrophobic, the walls closed me in. I grew depressed, and the more depressed I came, the more trapped I felt. When summer holiday came around, I was ready to beg my parents to let me out of here. The place was killing me. I felt like I was slowly dying.”

  “What made you change your mind?” I asked.

  “I didn’t. They asked me to hang on: one more year. And I did, I returned. At first, I was still plagued by the depression, but then something changed.” He paused, as if contemplating if he was going to tell me the rest of the story or not.

  “I found inspiration,” he said eventually. The words hung in the air, only partially hiding the things he didn’t tell me: what exactly inspired him. I wonder why he wasn’t telling me, considering he had been so talkative already.

  “Where?” I asked, trying to find out more.

  “The symphony you heard,” he said. “It came to me one day, and it drew me to it. First, it was just a few notes. As time progressed, it became longer, more complex, more exhilarating. It was my masterpiece, my so-called piece de resistance.”

  “It’s a beautiful symphony,” I agreed.

  Dante snorted. “After that, it was gone again. One good symphony, one brilliant song, and my muse abandoned me again. She’s a strict mistress, but I never thought she’d be that cruel.”

  I didn’t know what to tell him. The sadness in his eyes was so immense, so overwhelming. And then in that moment, the moonlight touched his face, and I realized he was the true thing. A true artist. A person who lived and breathed music, a veritable genius, bordering on depression like Voltaire used to, the kind of mysterious enigma that was an artist: sometimes full of energy, inspired by the smallest joys of life, at other times, cold, distant and saddened by everything he sees.

  I reached out, for reasons I didn’t really comprehend, and grasped his hand.

  He looked up at me, his mouth slightly open. His hand felt warm and comfortable, almost familiar.

  I pinched it softly. “You’ll find inspiration again. I promise.”

  A darkness clouded Dante’s eyes. He yanked his hand from mine, like I've burned him.

  “Tell me about you,” he said, but his tone wasn’t very inviting. It was neutral, uncaring. Not like the conversation we were having before I touched him.

  Since he was brave, I decided I should be brave too.

  “Your nickname for me fits me,” I told him. “I used to be scared of everything.” I shrugged, as if it hardly meant as much as I was letting on, although it meant more than I wanted him to know. I wanted to be honest, because he was, but it was harder than I ever thought possible. “Back home… People used to tease me. Well, tease is saying it nicely. They said pretty mean things about me.”

  “What did they say?” Dante raised his eyebrows and looked at me curiously, as if he honestly had no idea of the kind of crap high school teenagers tell each other. Maybe he actually had no clue, considering he never went to real high school.

  “The usual,” I explained. “They called me names. Said I was ugly.”

  “You’re not ugly,” Dante said, quickly.

  “Thanks,” I said. “But you don’t have to do this to make me feel better. They wanted to bring me down, probably because they felt insecure about themselves. But the more they said those things, the less I… The less good I felt about myself. After a while, I couldn’t stand to look at myself anymore. I thought I was as ugly as they said I was. That was why I was so glad I could go here. Fresh start. No more stupid people calling me names.”

  “I’m sorry that happened to you,” Dante said, sounding like he meant it. The darkness that had lingered in his eyes seconds ago, had vanished. “I think I have enough to write that composition now.”

  “You have?” My eyes grew wide, curious. “You’re going to write a symphony based on me being scared of everything?”

  “No, no,” he replied. “I’ll write one based on you overcoming those fears. An ode to the new you. No more fears.”

  I shrugged. “Everyone is afraid of something.”

  “I already feel a wave of inspiration coming up,” Dante said, suddenly enthusiastic. “This will be great. Do you feel inspired?”

  “I guess. Your travels sound inspiring.” But so did his descent into depression, although I didn’t want to mention that. But even though I now had a basic grasp of what he was all about, how the heck was I going to write a piece based on that? What notes does one associate with a feeling?

  I could put my feelings, my emotions in playing music on the violin, but I had never tried transferring those raw emotions to paper and ink before.

  A noise from above us startled us. We stared at each other; our eyes wide.

  “You heard that too?” Dante asked me, his voice barely more than a whisper.

  “Yes,” I replied, looking up at the ceiling. My hands felt clammy. At first, the noise was fast, something quickly rushing from one end of the attic to the other, like a pack of mice or rats. But then, the noise slowed down, and it grew heavier and more threatening.

  “Those aren’t mice,” I whispered. I had the ominous feeling that something was going to fall from the ceiling, through the floor, and end up in the middle of my room. The attic must be gigantic, if it spanned the entire house, but the noise was more focused—whatever was roaming up there, it never went beyond the boundaries of my room, and perhaps the adjoining room. And it was too slow, the moving too deliberate, too heavy to be mice.

  “Then, what do you suppose it is?" Dante asked me, although his gaze told me he didn’t really want to know.

  I bit my lower lip. “Maybe a larger animal. A dog,” I offered, knowing full well it sounded way too heavy to be a dog.

  “How would a dog get up there?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe it’s one of the teachers, maybe they need something from up on the attic.”

  “No.” Dante shook his head. “The attic is off-limits. It’s dangerous,
the floorboards are rotten, and you could fall through.”

  That knowledge didn’t make me feel any better.

  The footsteps stopped suddenly—that’s what they were, footsteps! —turned around, and started their slow trek through the attic again, only this time it sounded as if they were dragging something along. Something heavy. The stomping noise of the footsteps was accompanied by a long, slow sound.

  “It has to be a teacher,” I said with more certainty than I felt. “If you listen carefully, you can hear the person dragging something with them. They probably went to get something.”

  “I already said it’s off-limits,” Dante said. “Besides, why would a teacher keep on walking the same four meters?” His eyes were large with fear, his face deadly pale.

  My hand instinctively reached for his when I realized he was right. The noise shifted again, the footsteps turning, still dragging along their ballast.

  Dante’s hand trembled as much as mine.

  “What is it then?” I asked him.

  “I don’t know, but I plan to find out.” Dante stood up, dragging me along.

  He was about a head taller than me when he stood up straight, but he looked impressive and impossibly tall when he was being this courageous.

  “Are you sure this is a good idea?” What I wasn’t asking was if he had considered the possibility that the culprit was a serial murderer waiting for the right time to come down and kill us in our sleep.