They were not an overly large family. Mrs. Ferguson, her husband, Mike, and their five children lived on the homestead with her parents, Leaf and Kiersten Leafson. All of the Ferguson children in order were Pericles, who was the oldest and now worked for an oil company on the North Slope; Hesiod, who was Topher’s age and worked as a delivery driver for the local craft brewery so he could also help his family on their homestead; Sappho, who was just a year younger than Topher and Hesiod; Penelope, who was part-way through high school and already gaining a name for herself as a state biathlon contender; and Temmy.
Topher parked his pick-up at the end of the long gravel drive that led to the Fergusons’ home without bothering to roll up the windows. While a Walking Glass could take him directly from Chase to Anchorage, each Glass needed a partner in the location you wanted to go in order to take you anywhere. The people in Chase frequently used flying umbrellas and bristleless flying brooms to get around the village, just like any Wise or Half-Wary town in the world, but the Alaskan Wise usually preferred to drive trucks or snow machines when they needed to get somewhere outside of the village without a Walking Glass. Automobiles were sometimes more convenient than brooms or umbrellas because they could be used without obscurations, which tended to work better when visiting another small town where folks noticed if they did not see you arrive.
“Good morning, Topher,” Mrs. Ferguson called from the front door, “we still have some lingonberry bread from breakfast. Come inside.”
Mrs. Ferguson presented Topher to her mother before leaving the kitchen to call Temmy. Mrs. Leafson peppered Topher with questions about his family and told him stories about his own father as a boy while pouring coffee to go with the fresh lingonberry bread. She chatted as he nodded and ate until Temmy came into the kitchen.
Temmy had tested in the highest percentile on the 8th Grade Completion Test, including the science section and the unlabeled questions O.I. buried throughout the test in an attempt to identify latent magical talent. He had the complexion and features that showed more of his grandfather's Dena’ina heritage than any of his siblings. His black hair was currently wet from recent washing, and he wore a fresh t-shirt, jeans, and socks. He didn’t say more than ‘hi’ to Topher before filling a bowl with cereal from a plastic container and then pouring what looked and smelled like plain yogurt over it from a ceramic pitcher.
“Temmy,” his grandmother chided, “the coffee rolls will be ready in less than an hour.”
“Mm-hm.” Temmy nodded with his mouth full of cereal. “I know.
“Sorry for making you wait,” Temmy finally addressed Topher. “One of the dogs got into the chicken coop this morning. I got really messy getting him back out.”
“That’s okay,” Topher replied, “I am sure my dad will be happy to hear that I visited with your folks for a while. I hadn’t realized that our families were so familiar with each other. How about you show me around while we start the interview?”
“What’s this for, anyway?” Temmy asked.
“Oh,” Topher stumbled over his words for a moment. “Um, you did really well on your test last week. O.I. is inviting your parents to apply for you to get a scholarship to the same boarding school I go to. It has both a high school and college. If you pass the interview and the final aptitude test, you would get an eight-year full scholarship with a stipend for books and supplies.”
“It’s an amazing opportunity. How many scholarships do you give out?” Temmy’s grandmother asked.
“Um, Ouroboros Industries awards two scholarships to Roanoke each year,” Topher stumbled over his words as he searched his memory for the statistic Mrs. Leafson requested, “one for students starting high school and one for students starting college. O.I. funds scholarships to a number of other schools as well. I am just working for them for the summer to help identify the initial candidate pool. I am not sure how many total scholarships they award to other institutions.”
“Temmy, show Topher around until the coffee rolls are ready.” Mrs. Leafson told her youngest grandson. “I don’t think he has ever been to the farm before.”
The two of them stepped into the warm sunshine and around the left side of the house to the attached barn where they kept the dogs, a few pigs, and the chicken coop. Temmy introduced Topher to the animals that were worth meeting and warned him which ones were ornery and would bite. He explained the long history and practical advantages associated with using an attached barn. Most of the dogs followed them for the rest of the tour.
As they walked and talked, Topher made sure to casually include each of the interview questions compiled by O.I. to evaluate scholarship candidates and then listened attentively to Temmy’s answers that were mixed in with the descriptions of farm life in the far north. Their beehives were interspersed among the trees in the orchard or the berry bushes and lilac trees that divided the family vegetable garden from the orchard. They inspired a lengthy description of Temmy’s favorite science projects that all focused on the medicinal properties of honey or fermentation. Later, Temmy pointed out the tractor barn, which was about twenty yards from the house-barn, and explained how his grandfather had taught him and his brothers the fundamental engineering and mechanics of each piece of equipment when they learned how to keep them all in good repair. When asked about electronics and computer controls in the vehicles and equipment, Temmy admitted that his family preferred his grandfather’s old tools and equipment because they could actually fix them if they broke, unlike the modern tractors that were full of computers that required special tools and network connections to make repairs.
Past that barn were the workshop with a smithy where they repaired tools and tannery to stretch hides to dry; the harvest silo where they kept apples and honey before they were sold; the greenhouse where they tended more delicate herbs and vegetables; and the dairy where they processed yogurt and aged cheese.
“You have a dairy but you don’t have cows in the barn?” Topher asked.
“We milk the goats pastured in the hills. The girls are bringing them in now,” Temmy answered. He gestured toward the northern end of the property, drawing Topher’s attention to an eerie high-pitched singing punctuated by the clanging of bells.
The voices of Temmy’s sisters were ethereal and haunting. They sang nonsense syllables that echoed off the hills and rang across the farm. Topher had never heard anything like it before. It filled his thoughts with images of some kind of fey creature he might encounter back at school, and he started to wonder if Mrs. Ferguson’s Swedish ancestors had opened a passageway to Underhill even though the indigenous fey of Alaska, like most of North America, were mostly animal spirits.
Sappho came around the corner of the barn surrounded by giant wooly mountain goats. Except for the situation, she looked like any other modern American teenage girl. She wore a hoodie from the local brewery, cut-off shorts, and rugged rubber boots with the tops folded over themselves. Her flaxen hair was in a high ponytail that bounced around her shoulders as she tromped to the pen with several mountain goats whining softly and clambering over each other to get closer to her. Her wide round face shone with joy as she sang to the animals, accentuating her high defined cheekbones and long button-tipped nose.
Penelope followed with the stragglers, shooing the last of them into the pen. She was taller and curvier than her older sister with dark eyes and burnished gold hair in a loose braid down her back. She wore jeans with a light jacket over her t-shirt and rubber boots like her sister’s.
Topher stared after the girls as they penned the theoretically wild beasts. Surely, they had to be using magic, but you couldn’t sing spells, at least not without a whole choir to help you diffuse the magical energy that would otherwise make you choke as the power overwhelmed your vocal cords. This was one of the strangest things he had ever seen. He would clearly need to interview the whole Ferguson family for potential candidates.
Topher searched his memory for the reports on the tests of Temmy’s siblings. Penelope h
ad taken the sophomore test which meant that it would be one more year before she could be in the running for the college scholarship. Sappho had taken the high school completion test, could she be a candidate as well? They usually looked for college candidates from among the 11th-grade completion tests since most American students spent their senior year of high school deciding what college to attend. A recent high school graduate would have to be of a high enough caliber to bump an existing finalist out of the running. Sappho’s scores had also flagged all the markers for magical ability, and she was in the top percentile for the language arts and history sections of the exam. Unfortunately, her math and science scores were only high-average with spikes in geometry and biology. She would be a good student and probably a fine sorceress, but she was not what O.I. considered scholarship material. Ouroboros Industries was looking for future engineers and developers who could help the company continue to innovate magical production and invention through the use of scientific principles. They were looking for students who excelled in math, physics, and chemistry that also had broad imaginations and magical talent.
Too bad Sappho was not a STEM girl, Topher thought as he returned his attention to the mountain goat pen and the girls latching the gate. It would have been nice to get to know her again at Roanoke Academy. They had not really even talked to each other since Topher was thirteen, the summer before he went off to boarding school.
Topher pulled himself back to the reality of the here-and-now.
So far, Temmy and his family had scored well enough on the pertinent interview questions to make it to the second round of testing. The Second Round tested overtly for magical aptitude. Once candidates participated in Second Round testing, the family would no longer be Unwary. Even if they had no talent with magic, they would know it really existed by participating in the test. The family would become Wary and need to decide whether they wanted to enter life among the Wise or have their memories wiped of the entire experience. Now, Topher had to broach that subject with the Fergusons. Would they believe him?
“Temmy, Girls, bring Topher in. It’s time for fika,” Mrs. Ferguson called from the front porch.
“Fika?” Topher asked Temmy.
“It’s the Swedish word for Second Breakfast,” Temmy answered casually.
“More like, coffee break,” Sappho corrected as they all walked toward the house where Mrs. Leafson was setting coffee mugs around the large dining table just off the kitchen.
“How did you enjoy the tour, Topher?” Mrs. Ferguson asked while others took their seats around the table, partaking of hot black coffee and fresh cinnamon rolls.
The whole family was home for the O.I. interview, even Perry, who alternated weeks home and working on the Slope. They were only waiting for Mr. Ferguson and Mr. Leafson, Temmy’s father and grandfather, to wash up after their morning chores on the farm.
“It is very impressive,” Topher nodded. “I had no idea there was so much back here.”
“Homesteads are like that,” Mrs. Ferguson replied.
There was something in her tone that hinted she might know more than Unwary were supposed to.
“When was the last time you talked with my parents, Mrs. Ferguson?” Topher inquired, seeming to change the subject.
“Oh, it must have been over a year since the last time I saw your mom or dad, Topher,” she answered. “We just run into each other by chance from time to time now that you go to school so far away.”
Topher nodded, “They pretty much just go straight to Anchorage any time they can’t get what they want in Chase these days.”“As much as Chase is a place,” Hesiod muttered into his coffee.
“Sod! Of course, Chase is a place,” Mrs. Ferguson chided her second son with a smirk. “It has a sign.”
“Apologies, Topher,” Hesiod acknowledged his rudeness to his former playmate.
Topher waved off the offense, much more interested in how much of Chase Mrs. Ferguson was able to see, given that it was hidden from the Unwary world. She would need to have a pretty strong sensitivity to magic in order to see the village behind the obscuration, the kind of sensitivity that would be passed-on to children who could get a maximum score on an O.I. aptitude test.
Topher decided that Mrs. Ferguson had given him the best possible opening to address his real subject.
“Mrs. Leafson was telling me stories earlier about you and my dad as kids. Did you ever get to go visit the house?”
Topher picked apart layers of his unfrosted cinnamon roll and popped them into his mouth as soon as he finished his question, hoping that would prevent his expression from giving anything away too soon.
“We visited each other only a few times when we were young. One of my sisters had such a crush on your dad, and we were all friends with him and his cousins, but it was a long hike at that age. Your grandparents’ place is further up the river than where you live now. Plus, the four of us were all girls, which kept us from becoming very close friends with him,” Mrs. Ferguson finished a little sadly.
“But you have been to Grandpa Evans’ place?” Topher pursued. “You have actually seen all of Chase?”
“Of course, I have seen Chase, Topher,” Mrs. Ferguson laughed. “We drove you home after hockey practice one time when your parents’ pick-up truck wouldn’t start. Don’t you remember?”
Topher nearly dropped his coffee cup in amazement.
“I remember. I was six. I didn’t expect you to remember that though.”
“I don’t remember going to Topher’s house,” Sod interjected at the same time that his mother answered.
“Of course I remember driving you home.”
“So, you know what Chase is?” Topher asked tentatively.
“It’s the village on the other side of the river, Topher. Why wouldn’t I know what Chase is?”
“There’s a village back there?” three different voices exclaimed almost simultaneously.
Topher quickly reviewed his memory to be sure it had been Hesiod, Mr. Ferguson, and Temmy who exclaimed. The others around the table wore slightly puzzled expressions but Topher could not tell if the puzzlement came from surprise over Chase being a real village rather than just an assemblage of homesteads or whether they didn’t understand why this conversation was taking place. Mrs. Ferguson looked very puzzled by the reactions of her family.
“What is so special about Chase, Topher?” she asked.
“You mean, you have been able to see Chase all this time, and you were friends with my dad and his cousins; but you still don’t know? You never saw any of them use magic?”
There, he said it. Almost everyone at the table wore some expression of disbelief.
“What does this have to do with anything?” Temmy’s grandfather, Mr. Leafson, finally asked. “I thought you were here to talk about a test and a scholarship.”
“Well,” Topher swallowed, trying to get his bearings again and hoping he hadn’t ruined everything, “it is a matter of what kind of test and what kind of scholarship. Ouroboros Industries is looking for scholarship candidates who have both an aptitude for math and science as well as magical talent. They reward the best of such candidates with scholarships to schools where they can train in all of those areas with the potential for employment upon graduation.”
“Right, very funny,” Temmy scowled as he pushed away from the table where the rest of his family gaped for a moment in stunned silence. “You really expect the science kid to fall for a prank like that? Magic? After you talked about your family being friends with my mom?”
Themistocles Ferguson stormed out of the kitchen without another word.
Topher dropped his head into his hand and muttered, “This is one of the reasons we don’t tell people.”
“Is that why you were such a weird kid?” Hesiod asked bluntly.
Topher looked up through his fingers and answered frankly, “No, Sod, I was such a weird kid because I was a flaming nerd who was trying to play youth hockey.”
“Really, Sod,�
�� Sappho glared at her older brother, “that’s what you think of right now?”
“What?” Sod asked in response and thrust out his hand, “Mom believes him. I can’t think of any reason for Topher to be playing a prank. Besides, if he were playing a prank, I doubt he would have picked something so far-fetched.”
“I want to believe you too, Topher,” Sappho eventually murmured.
Mrs. Ferguson sighed.
“Tell us about this school, Topher. It’s where you go?”
Topher looked up into the faces of those who were still seated at the table with him. They were taking him seriously. Maybe he hadn’t just ruined his first attempt as a recruiter. Maybe they would be able to get Temmy to reconsider.
“Roanoke Academy for the Sorcerous Arts was established shortly after the old Roanoke colony disappeared from coastal Virginia. The colonists were all sorcerers who uprooted and disguised the island in order to escape Spanish invaders or something like that. The island floated around the world for a couple hundred years and collected instructors for all seven of the different sorcerous arts: conjuration; enchantment; canticle; Enochean warding; thaumaturgy; alchemy; and gnosis. It is the only place in the world where you can learn all of them at once… It’s a really amazing place. Roanoke graduates are among the most prestigious sorcerers in the world.”
Topher continued to describe the academy with its Lower School (which Topher had never attended), Upper School, and college. The majority of students started when they were high school or college freshmen. Very few students tried to apply at points in between. He outlined the standards O.I. used to select scholarship candidates, their goals in providing scholarships, the full scope of the award being offered, the standards recipients must meet in order to maintain their scholarships, and the expectations of scholarship recipients upon graduation, as well as any repercussions for students who do not complete the course of study provided by the scholarship. There was a lot of information for candidates to consider and it invited even more questions. Topher encouraged them to take some time and try to convince Temmy to think about what it would take for him to believe what Topher had said about magic being real. With that, Topher thanked Mr. and Mrs. Ferguson and Mr. and Mrs. Leafson for their time and took his leave.
Fantastic Schools: Volume One (Fantastic Schools Anthologies Book 1) Page 29