UnTwisted

by Elise Allen

  “Deal.” Skeed pressed his hands together like he was going to start that battlefield handshake. Galric did the same, and Sara thought they were about to get up and lean over the table to do it, but instead they just nodded and lowered their hands again. Sara supposed this was the long-distance version of the handshake and made a mental note to avoid pressing her hands together like that in front of anyone ever.

  Then Sara heard something—voices, speaking in a low chant, but she couldn’t make out the words. “Does anybody else hear that?” she asked.

  On the other side of the table, Drew’s kohl-lined eyes went wide. “No. Way.”

  Whatever he saw, Galric and Krystal must have seen it too. Galric’s jaw dropped, and Krystal froze with a spoonful of stew halfway to her mouth.

  Sara wheeled around, but there were too many people and she couldn’t see over their heads. Then she stood on her picnic bench and saw it.

  Nine Keepers of the Light marched toward the lunch area.

  Not real Keepers. They couldn’t be. Those were all gone. But she saw nine people in bright yellow Keepers robes, each with a matching hood that covered their head, except for two small eye-slits for eyes. They chanted together as they marched, and Sara heard a mix of male and female voices, all calling out as they pumped their fists in the air.

  “MAGES BELONG IN CA-GES! MAGES BELONG IN CA-GES!”

  Flissa had already started eating when she heard the chant. She was at a table with Loriah, Zinka, and three other Untwisteds. She’d tried to find Sara, but the dining area was too crowded, and Loriah reminded her that Sara was Sara—she’d have no trouble finding new friends to eat with.

  There were so many people and animals around and everything was so noisy, at first the voices blended into the background. Flissa vaguely registered them at the back of her mind, a new, rhythmic cadence that had joined the din.

  Then she saw them. Nine yellow frocks in a clump. That’s so strange, she thought. It’s odd enough that Jentrie wore a Keeper-yellow dress, but nine people? Apparently the whole kingdom needs Primkas.

  But Zinka was next to her, and when she saw the group, she grabbed the picnic table like she could dig her fingers into the wood.

  “Oh no,” Zinka said. “No. Inexcusable.”

  That’s when Flissa realized the people weren’t in dresses at all. They were in actual Keepers robes, with hoods over their faces. And their voices were a blend of male and female.

  “MAGES BELONG IN CA-GES!” they chanted. “MAGES BELONG IN CA-GES!”

  As they marched closer to the picnic tables, Flissa realized everyone had gone silent. Zinka jounced her knee up and down.

  “Let’s get ’em,” she said. “Right now. Before they get any closer. Let’s do it.”

  “No,” Flissa said. “We don’t want to start a riot.”

  “They’re starting the riot,” said Dallie. She was a friend of Zinka’s who was built like a battering ram, with a headful of bright blue curls and a silver ring through one of her eyebrows. “We’ll just finish it.”

  Flissa’s heart thudded as she realized she was at a table full of time bombs. Every girl there bristled and looked poised to strike.

  Every girl except Loriah, who busily sopped up the last of her stew with a biscuit. “The biscuits are really good. ’Specially with the gravy. Ring-brow, can you pass some more stew?”

  Dallie looked at her, incredulous. “How can you eat right now?”

  “Same as any other time. I put the food in my mouth, chew, and swallow. You think I care what the Genpos are saying? Let ’em come at me. I can take ’em.”

  “Nobody’s ‘taking’ anybody,” Flissa said. “Other people will get hurt.”

  “Not if we take ’em down fast enough,” Zinka said.

  “MAGES BELONG IN CA-GES! MAGES BELONG IN CA-GES!”

  Flissa could feel the tension radiating from every table. She wished she could pull out her message milk and call her parents, but she was afraid if she looked away for even a second, Zinka and her friends would start fighting. She didn’t blame them; she wanted to stop the chanters too. But a battle between Mages and Genpos would be death for Kaloonification. It was her parents’ worst fear.

  “Let’s just wait and see what Amala does,” Flissa said. “She won’t let this go.”

  “She’d better not,” Zinka said.

  Flissa’s picnic table was right next to the faculty tables. She could see Amala eye the marchers as they stomped between her table and Flissa’s…but the Shadow didn’t do anything. It was Teacher Lazando who jumped to his feet and ran into the marchers’ path. “You cannot come here dressed like that!” he yelled, his voice quavering. “And you can’t say what you’re saying! That is definitely against school rules.”

  The first Keeper in line strode past him without even slowing. “MAGES BELONG IN CA-GES!”

  Flissa’s spine tingled. She knew that voice. And when she looked closer, she could see strands of blond hair peeking out from under the hood.

  Jentrie.

  Teacher Lazando looked pleadingly to Amala, but she only met his eyes and shook her head the littlest bit.

  “MAGES BELONG IN CA-GES! MAGES BELONG IN CA-GES!”

  “You’re not making sense, you know that?!” Teacher Lazando shouted after the marchers. “You say you’re against Mages but you’re dressed in Keepers robes! Keepers were Mages! This is only a win for irony!”

  Teacher Lazando may not have convinced Amala to act, but his shouting opened the floodgates for everyone else. As the group marched into the center of the dining area, every picnic table and animal feeder erupted into shouts and screams. People stood on tables. They threw food. They howled.

  And some, Flissa realized, took up the marchers’ chant.

  Zinka looked at Amala, who was still stone-faced.

  “I waited,” Zinka told Flissa. “She’s doing nothing. It’s on.”

  She pushed her plates aside, then climbed onto the picnic table and raised a fist in the air. “GET THE GRUNTS!” she screamed.

  “Zinka, wait!” Flissa said, but it was too late. Zinka’s battle cry carried over the din, and within seconds the dining area was filled with magical signatures: sounds and flashes and mists and scents…too many to possibly distinguish.

  With all that magic mixing together, this wouldn’t just be a riot, it would be a massacre.

  Yet even though magical signatures flew everywhere, none of them hit their targets. The marchers stood tall as every mist, sparkle, and glow hurled at them burst apart on what seemed like a tall invisible dome, then harmlessly dissipated away.

  “They have a shield,” Flissa said, “but they’re not Mages. So how…?”

  Only then did she realize the dining area smelled like an orange grove. She looked at Amala. The woman sat straight and tall on her picnic bench, her waterfall of snowy-white hair draped over her shoulders and down her back. Her eyes were closed, her face calm and expressionless. She was the one shielding the marchers.

  “ENOUGH!”

  Amala hadn’t moved; Flissa was staring right at her. But her voice thundered through the dining area, brash and full of fury.

  “NO MORE CURSES!”

  “That’s a big head,” Loriah said, which made absolutely no sense to Flissa until she turned away from Amala and saw the Shadow had somehow projected a mountainous version of her head into the air above the marchers, her face twisted in absolute fury.

  “What is the fourth rule of the Magical Unification Act?” the head boomed.

  No one answered. The dining area was utterly silent, though Flissa saw that the marchers’ mouths were moving and they looked agitated. The shield Amala put over them must be soundproof.

  “I will wait,” Amala’s head said. It set its enormous jaw, and Flissa had a feeling it would wait a very long time. Reluctantly Flissa moved her plates and stepped up next to Zinka on the table.

  “No Mage shall use their powers to control or harm another human or Magical Animal,” Fli
ssa recited.

  Across the dining area a boy also stood on a table, placing him high enough that Flissa could see his purple hair and glasses. It was Skeed, from her Athletics class. “With the exception of clear acts of self-defense!” he shouted, finishing the act. “That’s what we’re doing; we’re defending ourselves!”

  The massive nostrils on Amala’s projected face flared. “No, you are not. The people below me said loathsome things, and there will be consequences, but their words cannot physically harm you. The combined magic hurled at them was far more dangerous.”

  “Debatable,” Flissa heard Teacher Lazando mutter. Flissa agreed. Words had power too, sometimes more than magic.

  “From the very beginning of the day,” Amala’s projection said, “students from all sects of Kaloon have tried to sabotage this school and what we stand for. I won’t allow it, and you will not win. Maldevon Academy—and Kaloonification—will succeed. We will stand together.”

  “Says the Cleaner,” Zinka snorted under her breath. “Pretty sure she’d be okay if only some of us stood together.”

  Flissa didn’t believe that. If Amala really wanted to get rid of Genpos, she could have let the riot go on. Whoever she’d been before, Flissa was confident she’d changed and truly wanted to bring Kaloon together.

  “I’m canceling classes for the rest of the day,” Amala’s projection said. “Boarders, return to your dorms. Day students, report to the front of the building; we’re already calling carriages to pick you up. All after-school detentions and sports tryouts will be moved to tomorrow. And there will be a tomorrow, have no doubt. This is not a win for those trying to stop Kaloonification. This is a moment to regroup, replan…and consider repercussions.”

  She cast her eyes down to the marchers. “As for the nine of you, you’re right now in the middle of what could become a very angry mob. I suggest you take this moment to go far away, and get rid of those disgusting robes and hoods. And please know—and this goes for all of you”—Amala looked out over the crowd to include everyone—“I see you. Even when you don’t see me, I. See. You.”

  She stopped speaking and waited. The hooded marchers looked at one another, then ran. Amala gave them time to disappear behind the building, then addressed the crowd again. “Don’t look for them. You won’t succeed. Please simply proceed in an orderly fashion to your dorm or the carriage area. Thank you for a highly informative first day of school, and I look forward to seeing every single one of you tomorrow.”

  The apparition of her face dissolved into wisps of smoke, and Flissa watched as the actual Amala blinked her eyes open, then quickly rose from her picnic table and strode toward the main building. The other faculty members got up and roamed through the crowd, shouting instructions.

  “You heard Amala!”

  “Boarders to the dorms, day students to the carriages!”

  “Move it! Let’s get going!”

  Zinka rolled her eyes as she stepped down from the picnic table. “Amala should have let the spells go. It’d serve ’em right.”

  Loriah snorted, and Zinka frowned at her. “What, you don’t agree?”

  “No, I don’t,” Loriah said. “‘Get the Grunts’? What’s wrong with you?”

  “If you don’t want to stick up for us, then something’s wrong with you,” Zinka said.

  “We’re not an ‘us,’” Loriah said. “I stick up for me, and I don’t do it by proving the ignorant Grunts right and acting like an out-of-control monster that belongs in the Twists.”

  “You think I belong in the Twists?” Zinka said.

  “I think you’re acting like it, yeah,” Loriah shot back.

  The two were toe to toe, and even though Zinka was taller and stronger, Loriah looked just as fierce. Their eyes burned with fire, and Flissa knew if one of them threw a punch, the battle wouldn’t end until they were both destroyed.

  “Hey, hi, hello,” said Teacher Lazando as he pushed his way between Loriah and Zinka. “Couldn’t help but notice things were getting a little heated here, so, Loriah, why don’t you head back to the dorms, and, Zinka, you take a couple minutes to cool off here before you go back too, okay?”

  Loriah shrugged like she’d never been upset at all. “Sure.” She grabbed the basket of biscuits and dumped them into a napkin. “But I’m taking these to go.”

  “All of them?” Dallie asked.

  Loriah raised an eyebrow. “You really want one?”

  She tossed a biscuit at Dallie. It smacked her right on her eyebrow ring before it ricocheted into her hands.

  “There you go,” Loriah said. “Bye, Fliss. Bubblegram you later.”

  She walked off, then Teacher Lazando moved closer to Flissa and spoke to her gently. “We really do want to get everyone out of here quickly, so I hate to rush you away from your friends, but…”

  He rolled onto his tiptoes; he clearly didn’t want to give Flissa a direct order. She smiled. “It’s okay. I’ll go.”

  “Thanks,” he said. “And don’t worry. This is a blip. A growing pain. Everything you did, everything people fought for, we’ll get there for sure.”

  He disappeared back into the crowd, ordering students to disperse, while Flissa said goodbye to Zinka and her friends, then walked quickly back toward the main building. She had already reached the top of the stairs when she heard, “Flissa! Flissa!”

  She turned. For the briefest of seconds, the girl with the puffy curls and the earrings was unfamiliar, then she remembered her twin didn’t look exactly like her anymore. Sara waved her arm wildly at the bottom of the stairs and stumbled because she wasn’t looking where she was going. Galric was right next to her and caught her, then she said something to him, and he looked up and waved too. Flissa saw they were with Krystal—the girl from this morning—plus Skeed and a couple of other people Flissa didn’t know.

  “Hey!” Sara cried. She threw her arms around Flissa when she reached her, and Flissa almost cried. She’d done well enough on her own, she supposed, and she’d only been away from Sara for a couple of class periods—they’d spent far more hours apart when they were Princess Flissara—but it was such a relief to be back together that Flissa had no idea how she’d managed without her.

  “Crazy day, huh?” Galric said as they started the walk through the main building and down to the line of waiting carriages.

  “‘Crazy’?” Krystal echoed incredulously. “Somebody could have died.”

  Skeed rolled his eyes. “No one died.”

  “I didn’t say they did, I said they could have,” Krystal retorted.

  “I wonder if they’ll shut down the school,” Galric said.

  “Maybe,” Sara said, at the exact same time as Flissa said, “No.”

  Flissa frowned as she looked at her sister. “You really think Mother and Father will give up that easily? You think the General Council will give up? And Amala?”

  Sara shrugged. “Maybe it’s not about giving up. Maybe everyone just needs more time to get used to Kaloonification. Then we could all go to school together.”

  Flissa was surprised. For the last six months, Sara had urged their parents to open the school even sooner. “You really think that?”

  Sara blushed, like Flissa had caught her in a lie. “I dunno, maybe. I mean, even if you forget all the fighting, the school’s dangerous. The walls stretch and move around. What if they break?”

  Flissa noticed her sister wasn’t meeting her eyes. “I thought you liked the way everything moved around.”

  “I’m just saying, the school isn’t really what anyone expected,” Sara said, her words tumbling faster. “So who knows what anyone will do?”

  Sara, Flissa, and Galric had reached the front of the carriage line. They said their goodbyes to Krystal and Skeed and piled in, then Sara immediately rested her head against the carriage wall and closed her eyes.

  Flissa understood. It had only been half a day, but she was tired too. She mirrored Sara’s position and let the carriage rock her to sleep. As she
started to doze, she thought about how strange it was. This morning Flissa would have done anything to see Maldevon Academy disappear, but after just half a day she was willing to fight for it to stay.

  “How did you not hear about this?” Sara railed. “Are you sure you were at the same school as me today?”

  Sara, Flissa, and Galric were in the ballroom, sitting at one of the big, round tables with the king and queen, Katya, and Rouen. Nitpick was in Galric’s lap, helping himself to the tuna sandwich on Galric’s plate. Filliam had provided an excellent afternoon tea complete with scones, finger sandwiches, and delicate pastries, but none of them were in the mood to eat.

  “It’s not like I heard nothing. I heard whispers and things, but nobody told me the whole story. What happened?”

  Sara couldn’t believe it. A statue of Gilward came to life and shouted “Genpos begone” and Flissa didn’t know? Even Katya had heard the story by bubblegram, and she now explained it to Flissa, who sat back from the table, stunned. “When did this happen?” she asked.

  “After third block,” Galric said. He’d spent the entire story focusing on Nitpick, feeding him tiny bits of sandwich from his finger. “That’s why Sara and I have detention. We were late for fourth block.”

  “Really, Sara?” Queen Latonya sounded disappointed. “Detention? On your first day?”

  King Edwin’s mustache drooped, and he shook his head.

  “Because I was supporting my friend!” Sara retorted.

  “To be fair,” Rouen said, “we have bigger things to worry about than a detention. Now tell us everything that happened. You don’t have to give names if you don’t want to; Amala will know, and she can tell us when we see her.”

  They went through all of it. They started with the stink spell, which Sara very much wanted to say came from Zinka, but she knew Flissa would deny it like she had in Magic Lab. It was fine, though; Rouen was right. Sara didn’t have to say anything, because Amala would know the truth. Same with Skeed and Gilward’s statue; if Krystal saw his magical signature, Amala must have too. As for the people in the Keepers robes, Sara had no idea who any of them were; she couldn’t have named them even if she’d wanted to.