“This is where you should’ve entered,” the Professor said.
“Please,” I cried, “I can’t go back. I can’t. Don’t send me back.”
Harriet’s lids fell onto his cheeks. He sighed when he looked back at the gate. As we walked outside, it screeched and locked itself behind us.
Harriet had a proud look on his face, almost adoring and while he kept a calming presence, my head burned through. The tears had stopped.
“Officially, the gate is now of paper instead of stone but the vintage way should still work.”
I looked at him puzzled, following his gaze.
It was gigantic.
Black stones and tree trunks were woven into each other, surrounded by an iron frame. They showed signs of axe-wounds and fire damage. In the middle, an orb was floating. Its toxic glow spewed to all sides. Perhaps poison.
“You seem desperate enough to try. If you succeed, you have earned your right to stay and not even the council can take it away from you. The rules of Tholome Di Centi revealed themselves as unchangeable,” he said, gave me a nod and stretched out his hand toward the orb.
My gut decided to grab for it since I had nothing to lose.
It pierced my fingers with ice until they cooked with heat as I came closer to the core. I would have opened my mouth in pain but was worried that the last bits of my strength would escape with my breath. I had endured worse and didn’t let go of the sphere. When the heat vanished, dreadful moments of my life flashed before my eyes as if I was reliving them.
Storming through the memories forced upon me, I knew what I would see: The tight grip around my wrists. First, with hands, then, with a rope. Behind me blared laughter, but it was a different kind of pain.
I clenched my knees and fell to the ground. The last thing I saw was the inside of the gate mixed with vanishing shadows of my memories.
“I finally made it,” I said, and passed out.
3. Moon-Face
Light beamed through the white linen curtains of the infirmary. I awoke with a fizzle in my ears and noticed Professor Harriet sitting at a table nearby.
When I struggled to get up, a woman, dressed as white as the curtains, rushed to my side. She must have been a nurse even though her attire confused me. Blue was a nurses’ colour. Had always been. But no more. Urai’s rules did not apply here.
“Slowly, slowly,” she whispered and helped me sit upright.
“It worked,” the Professor said and sent her away to get me a meal. The first in two days. The anticipation gave me strength, I straightened up.
Please, let it be anything but dried beans.
After Harriet lit a cigarette he handed the box over to me but I declined since I only smoked on occasions. It gave off a nutty odour instead of the sweet Sosden smell I knew.
“You fainted as soon as you passed through. I suppose many did, those who entered through Tholome’s lock. I didn’t know what to expect, but the gate accepted you. That’s what really counts.”
The nurse appeared with a tray in her hands and the odour of onion soup made me drool. He smiled at her without showing his crooked teeth.
“Myrn knows how to work her spells. Her soup will make you jump by the time you’re done,” he said.
Struggling to understand his words, my confused face spoke for me.
“I imagine you have a lot of questions. I will answer as many of them as I can. After your meal, of course.”
Indeed, I had an infinite amount of questions. They all whirled inside my head. Before I dug into the soup, I had to ask, “So, I made it? I can stay?”
By nodding, Harriet launched the feast.
As I gulped down the last bits of broth, the control over my limbs came back. My vision cleared up again, and I stretched my body, nearly hopping out of bed. Myrn's onion soup had a greater effect than anticipated and energized me from within.
I focused my eyes on Harriet and forgot the questions that rushed through my mind just a few minutes ago.
“I’ll start. Does that sound all right?” he ruffled his paperwork.
I jerked my head and leaned in, glimpsing my name on the sheet.
“Tholome’s lock is an ancient protection tool. It’s designed to read your past, to see if you should gain access. It hasn’t been used for over a hundred years. Some tried, of course, with no success,” he explained.
“Why did it let me in then?”
Professor Harriet shrugged his shoulders. “You tell me. It’s the first time I’ve seen it. I didn’t expect it to work right away.”
He lit a cigarette immediately after putting out his current one and proceeded. “Even though the refuge was reformed, the spirit remains. It’s above every other law and can’t be altered. Over time, the council found ways to open the gate manually but nothing changed. They can’t ban you from the campus now, the gate will open every time you touch it.”
As much as I strove for progress, I was glad the ancient rules still applied. Northern traditions seemed more rational and useful.
“Will they try to get rid of me anyway?” I asked.
“No. At least not for a while,” Professor Harriet smiled. “I smoothed things over and filled out the paperwork while you recovered. You’re incredibly lucky.”
It relieved me to be alive after passing the gate, but Harriet chuckled and I sensed that he wasn’t talking about entering through the lock anymore.
“What about my grandfather?” I asked.
The Professor laughed out loud. “Grandfather? I didn’t know Gerogy had descendants or a woman. He was my first Professor and my Tutor after I graduated. As a student, you wouldn’t imagine that the teachers have lives beside academy duties. I don’t. But now I know that others do.”
He sighed, put out his cigarette and leaned back with crossed arms. “It’s like he knew you’d come,” he added.
“How so?”
“He left too many coins in his vault. It belongs to you now, as you are the rightful heir. It’s enough to pay the academy fee, housing, and catering, supplies. Anything, really. I was suspicious from the start, but it all makes sense now. The vault’s code is 200-5-3.”
The day of my birth, calculated in the Northern form. Two hundredth year, fifth month and third day of the current era.
But it didn’t explain to me why he was certain of my arrival.
“I’ll rename the vault, make it accessible for you. If you stay on campus, the fees will be withdrawn automatically,” he explained.
I nodded and combed through my hair with my hands. “Did today’s courses start already?” I blurted, not wanting to miss out on more than I already have.
“Not until next week. Besides, you didn’t choose any courses yet.”
Back at the desert, I didn’t have a choice, just set courses everyone took. Overwhelmed, I scanned the sheet that the Professor was showing. Art, athletics, history, geography alongside, music, theatre, trade, and many more. Courses that sounded more like activities instead of skills worth studying.
“Three courses corresponding to your magical abilities should be enough to keep you busy. I assume you are a Magician, Mage in this case, like Gerogy? We recommend spellwork,” Harriet said.
Avoiding the question, I thought if I didn’t answer he would take it as a yes, and my real identity would stay hidden. I didn’t know what it meant to be a Mage, how it would reveal itself. I connected everything I knew to witchcraft. The rituals, the amulets, even that I dressed in black. I reassured myself that I wasn’t lying to him but rather withheld information for the greater good.
“Which ones do you teach?” I asked instead.
“Art and ethics. They’re the only ones. I’m sorry to disappoint. You don’t have to choose right away.”
“No, it’s fine,” I said. “Spellwork then, with ethics and art.”
He circled my choices with black ink and squished his lips, suppressing a smile.
“I’ll get back to you tomorrow morning, pick you up for your first d
ay. This week is celebratory, so to say, to get to know the campus and your Professors. You may rest until then.”
“But I’m ready to start today.” I jumped out of the bed and rushed to get my coat. “I feel better already.”
Professor Harriet chuckled. “Of course you do. You slept through the whole day,” he said. “Myrn worked on you for many hours.”
He was standing beneath the doorframe, ready to leave. I didn’t realise yet what a great deed he’d done for me by running errands for paperwork and negotiations with the council.
“You’ll get another chance tomorrow.”
When he left, I fell back into the bed and let the foamy mattress swallow me, wondering if this was the prestige my grandfather was preaching about.
After a meal of fried potatoes, Myrn suggested that I take the nightly bath. I imagine it was difficult to not pinch one’s nose after getting a whiff of my odour. The fresh and earthy smell of the moss couldn’t cover up the weeks I spent among pirates.
First, she showed me a few soaps for different purposes like hair, body and face with intense fragrances and later got rid of my clothing. She wanted to assist, but I insisted that I would manage it on my own. I scrubbed my fingernails clean to prove it.
While I finished the bath, a set of clothes had been prepared for me, which I figured must be the uniform but later found out it was just sleepwear. Its smooth texture seemed too valuable, almost like a gown, and its dark blue colour reminded me of the ocean that had become my home for a little while. I would’ve loved to wear it in front of Deg and wished for a way to send him a letter.
Afterwards, I scouted the campus to get familiar with it.
It seemed huge from outside but revealed itself to be a tight castle-complex of dorms on the west and lecture halls on the east side. Their walls consisted of grey rock, common for the area. The main building connected them and included the entrance hall, the infirmary as well as the break and working rooms for the teaching staff. All together they surrounded the gymnasium. Candlelight inside the buildings illuminated it.
While I made my way up North, the sun was setting. The candlelight didn’t reach further, though a few spheres highlighted an avenue which led to a single building in the North. A library, as the stacks of books inside the windows suggested.
That was where I first saw her. The olive skin and silver hair stood out as she was the optical opposite of me. Especially the length of her locks and her plump body. Her chubbiness spread to her cheeks while I was drained of substance.
I stared at her from the middle of the crosswalk, dumbfounded by her appearance. Still, she didn’t notice me since she was busy scanning the night sky. Her pace was fast, but before she bumped into me, she startled in confusion.
“Oh no,” she mumbled. “I mean, excuse me.”
And without further notice rushed away.
Without revealing her name, or asking mine, she left me speechless and if I wasn’t sweating uncontrollably, I would’ve dared to run after her.
My heart was beating inside my throat. I ended up focusing on the lavender smell she left behind until it vanished and I returned to the infirmary. There, I would sketch a map of the campus into my grimoire.
A grimoire, one of the useful things I learned in the desert, was a collection of rituals, ingredients, or general knowledge about your magical practice. A scientific approach to a diary. Though there were few books left in Urai containing traces of magic, I got my hands on a few pages of an older grimoire at the black market. The rest I figured out myself and wrote down whatever seemed relevant.
Then, I began sketching her.
For weeks my thoughts had been consumed by worry. It was the last night before I would begin my new life—but all I could do was hope that the next day I’d find her moon-face again.
4. Strawberry
As promised, Professor Harriet picked me up the next morning. Before we took off, he handed me new garments to wear as my Southern dress up was unfitting to the cold temperatures, not to mention the stench that came off it. They were his, back in the day when he was ‘the athletic kind of guy’. I didn’t mind wearing trousers but the cigarette scent bothered me. Still, it was more appropriate than my dress.
After re-dressing, we walked to the lecture halls.
“I’ve assigned you to my class since you take two of my courses,” he said. For this, I was grateful but too nervous to say out loud, so I bowed instead and he continued talking.
“As a Mage, you’ll reside in the night tower. I understand you need the freedom of space for your experiments. It may sound noble, but is merely a matter of safety and comfort for the other students. Burnt potions have been a complaint for many years. Your floor is the attic loft. It is being set up as we speak. Don’t thank me, you’ll learn to hate the steps.”
In front of a wooden door, he stopped and introduced his classroom. I had a tight grip around the handle when the sound of bells invited the other students inside.
Anticipation and noise spread in the hallway.
My grandfather would have given me a gentle push, as far as I knew. I took a deep breath and entered the room.
All would go well, if I just followed the rules, stayed undercover as a Mage, pulling no attention to me. This time all would go well. But when I scanned the room and found the moon-faced girl in the last row, I knew that my plan would fail, eventually.
I caught her looking at the clouds again and scribbling on paper for a while. Fully absorbed, she didn’t turn her head to either me or other students entering the room.
As the front rows filled up, I made my way upstairs. No one dared to sit beside her, which made me feel sorry for her and secretly for myself since I had always been the outcast.
I laid my bag on the table beside her and stood there, paralysed. In cold morning-light, she was even more breathtaking. Her silver locks held me captive until Professor Harriet’s voice released me from their grip, checking the attendance. And though his class had a manageable amount of participants it took an eternity until he reached the name that had made me curious all night.
“Di Centi, Claire,” he called and the moon-face nodded in return.
While the Professor engaged with the class, I chewed my lips. Sometimes, I caught her staring at me, and she didn’t hide it. Every time it was me who looked the other way, anxious of appearing suspicious.
I wondered what she stared at outside. Clouds? And if so, why she did it with such concentration.
When I looked through the window, I had the chance to appreciate the Northern landscape. The dense woods offered endless shelter for wildlife. The vapour that rose from it moved up and down, breathing. Further, a chain of mountains stretched across the horizon.
On campus grounds, I spotted two crows sitting on one branch. They enjoyed the warming sun until one of them noticed me and sent shivers through my spine by staring at me.
Though the birds were rare, I didn’t like them—they always seemed to know something that you didn’t. Their population was connected to Oracles and as they thinned out, so did the crows. In folklore, it said that they would be the second pair of eyes to the Oracles, that they exchanged whispers of information—but no one was sure how they did it. Seeing two birds, there must’ve been an Oracle amongst us. Perhaps it was the teaching staff, as Rose’s beak suggested. The campus used to be a refuge for them, Harriet had told me. I wouldn’t investigate any further. Sooner or later the Oracle would reveal him- or herself.
On this day, the classes had to go through a series of lectures and presentations held by other Professors while ours avoided it successfully. We relaxed in the park. During daylight, the entire campus was visible from there.
Harriet would’ve loved to start his course but he wasn’t allowed to, and since he didn’t like the activities of the first week, he refused to do anything at all. A small group of eager students formed around him and engaged in discussions anyway, as he couldn’t stop talking when he sensed the demand.
Furious, Professor Rose ran across the gymnasium to ask Harriet what he was doing.
“It’s against the rules, Toms,” she cursed, to which he replied by lighting another cigarette.
“All right,” he said, holding the tip with his lips. “Breakfast is over, kids.”
The class returned to his room, while I stood behind and enjoyed the sun for a little longer. The eagerness of the boys to enter the building first wasn’t something I wanted to compete with. While I watched them, I noticed a small chapel. During the night it wasn’t visible and I had assumed it was a blind spot. At the top of its tower, a bronze bell was peeking at us.
“It’s beautiful in there during sunset,” the Professor said and exhaled the smoke. “Never been religious, never thought about changing that but when I look through the coloured windows, it’s something else.”
He beckoned me over to him and laughed, “I don’t need a week to get to know you.”
His tone was off but I liked the way he was, he didn’t expect me to answer. Finally, I was comfortable in a teacher's presence. This time, I wasn’t on my way to receive punishment.
When we stepped into the classroom the giggling abruptly stopped and the girls rushed back to their seats.
We all were different, perhaps I was the oldest with nineteen years of age. Some looked as young as eight while others were obviously enduring their puberty. I recognised varying hair and skin shades, though no one was as pale as me or had my Southern slit-eyes. Still, we all had one thing in common: The long wait for lunch-break.
For me, there was nothing to wait for since I didn’t take any food with me and convinced myself to not feel any hunger.
Claire, on the other hand, jiggled, excited and ready to storm out of the room. She drummed with her hands on the table.
Usually, I had waited until everyone else left the room before I would sip tea and read something new that I had found at the black market. This time, I didn’t have a book but would stay in the heated room nonetheless. I was used to being alone with my restless thoughts. The others were free to go wild outside.
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