by S J Howland
Xander swallowed. He had no idea what Flint meant by ‘lean into’ his orb, but he took a deep breath and stared down at it, trying to do what Flint wanted. He felt the response immediately, a strange sensation as if his strength had been magnified, and focussed through the stone. All at once, the depths of the crystal began to spark with the contained lightning that Xander had seen before in the Travellers’ orbs, and his eyes widened with amazement as he looked back up at Flint.
‘Okay, stop now,’ Flint said. ‘Well, you definitely seem to have Traveller abilities or that stone would just have stayed inert.’ He looked away, down the garden with a frown and then glanced back at Xander. ‘As long as that orb’s on your wrist you’ll need training, for your own safety as well as those around you. I can’t stay right now but I’ll send Ari over to start you off, and in the meantime,’ his voice hardened as he eyed Xander sternly, ‘you are absolutely not to try anything by yourself. We don’t know how powerful that orb is and you’ve had no training. Do you understand?’
Xander nodded, and Flint swung around and walked away. ‘Unbelievable,’ he muttered again as he disappeared in through the kitchen door, and Xander was left to wonder whether he was talking about the hobs, the orb or Xander himself. The next moment, Ollie shot out onto the terrace, staring at the orb on Xander’s wrist.
‘I saw it light up from the window,’ he burst out. ‘That was incredible. What did Flint say to you?’
Xander grinned at him, feeling a rush of excitement as he remembered the sensation of the orb activating.
‘He says I have to train, and he’s sending Ari over to do it. Also, I think he’s going to kill the hobs for giving it to me.’
Having activated his orb once, Xander found it very hard to wait for Ari to come and give him some training, although Flint’s dire warnings prevented any temptation to try again without her. However, Ari appeared at Woodside soon afterwards and met him with a wry look and an amused shake of her head.
‘You do like to keep life interesting, don’t you?’ she said. ‘It’s driving Flint to distraction.’
Xander just grinned back at her.
‘He’ll have to take that up with the hobs,’ he returned unrepentantly. ‘This is all their doing, not mine.’
‘Oh, believe me, he is,’ Ari replied, and then jerked her chin at Xander’s wrist. ‘Go on, then. Show me the cause of all the fuss.’
Xander offered his wrist to Ari. He noticed that, like Flint, she kept a careful distance while examining the orb. She looked up at him after a moment, her eyes thoughtful. ‘I’ve never seen a black one before,’ she said. ‘Flint says he thinks it’s similar to ours though, so we’d better get training you before anything else happens.’
Xander beamed at her, and she shook her head in warning. ‘Don’t get too excited. Like I told you before, you need to start small with fine control before moving onto anything bigger.’
She led the way onto the grass and sat down, plucking daisies and dropping them into a small pile. With a strong suspicion of what she intended to have him do, Xander sat in front of her, his orb hand resting on his knee where he could see it.
Ari glanced up at him with a grin.
‘You know what’s coming,’ she confirmed and gestured at the pile of flowers. ‘Lean into your orb, like Flint showed you, and try to lift them up into the air. Don’t worry if it doesn’t work immediately; these things take time and practice.’
Xander took a breath and then did what she told him, seeing the orb bloom into gentle light as he bit his lip and focussed on the flowers. The pile of daisies floated serenely up and hung in the air just in front of his face. As Xander followed them up with wide eyes, he caught sight of Ari with her mouth hanging open.
‘Huh,’ she said, looking completely thrown. ‘Have you been taught this before?’
‘No,’ said Xander quickly. ‘This is the first time.’
He turned back to the self-supporting flowers and, on a whim, gave them a little nudge with his thoughts. They began to weave in and out of each other, whirling faster and faster into a blur of white, green, and yellow. A huge grin stretched across his face and he looked at Ari in delight.
‘This is amazing.’
‘Okay, stop now,’ said Ari, looking baffled. ‘Apparently you’re a natural, but it’s still a good idea to practice until you have complete control over each individual flower. It hones your precision and makes it second nature, so you won’t have to even think about the mechanics.’ She shook her head again, huffing a little laugh. ‘You are certainly full of surprises.’
Xander let the daisies float down to the ground again, arranging them in little patterns on the grass. He grinned up at Ari, feeling a sense of exhilaration surge through him. He had never thought of himself as having a particular talent for anything, and it felt wonderful to see her obvious astonishment.
‘Can you show me something else, like how you blasted those shades?’ he asked eagerly.
Ari laughed out loud at that and rolled her eyes.
‘Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,’ she said firmly. ‘You definitely have an aptitude for this, but you still need to master the basics before I train you in lethal force.’ Seeing his disappointed look, she stood up and pulled him to his feet. ‘Come on,’ she said with a quick grin. ‘I’ll show you a defensive ward. It’s always useful and you can’t get into any trouble with that.’
She stood alongside Xander and lifted her wrist, the orb glinting in the sunshine. ‘You need to visualise a shield pushing in front of you, protecting you. I always think of an impenetrable glass barrier, but other people have different techniques. Watch, I’ll show you.’
Ari’s orb flared and a shining barrier burst out in front of her, a vivid reminder of the last time he had seen her do that in the museum. A moment later, it had gone and Ari turned to him with a quick smile.
‘Your turn,’ she said. ‘I’ll throw these daisies at you and I want you to repel them, okay?’
Xander nodded, staring in front of him as some of the flowers shot up in the air again and hovered. There was a moment’s pause, and then the flowers showered all over him and he blinked in surprise. Ari just grinned.
‘Well, that’s rather a relief. If you mastered everything at the very first try, I might start feeling inadequate.’
Xander grimaced, frowning as he tried to understand what she had meant. ‘Am I supposed to be pushing them away?’ he asked.
‘Sort of,’ she replied. ‘You don’t want to get hold of individual flowers. It’s more that you’re shielding and pushing; imagine that the daisies are really dangerous to you. Do you want to try again?’
Xander nodded, trying to visualise the bright ward Ari had thrown up. The rest of the daisies shot up to hover in a little arrow head a short distance away from him, and then they all launched at him again. This time, Xander immediately shoved forward his mental image of a shield and the air flared into brightness, sending all the daisies flying in a wide semi-circle around him. He laughed out loud in delight and turned to Ari, who was once more shaking her head ruefully.
‘Okay,’ she said, with a little grin. ‘I officially feel inadequate. You’re definitely a natural at this.’
‘What else can we do?’ begged Xander, a huge smile on his face.
‘Practice, practice, practice,’ said Ari firmly. ‘I’m serious about mastering the basics, Xander. It’s very important and you don’t want to be hampered later by a lack of preparation. Keep practicing what I’ve showed you and I’ll check when I come by again, before we move onto anything else. All right?’
Xander nodded. He had just decided that he would practice every moment he could when Ari chimed in again, as if she could read his thoughts.
‘Don’t overdo it, okay? You can exhaust yourself doing this too much, particularly if you’re inexperienced.’ She gave him a knowing look and Xander grinned back at her.
‘All right, but when’s my next lesson?’ he asked.
Ari just smiled and turned back towards the house.
‘Don’t worry, I’ll make time. It’ll be worth it just to see the expression on Flint’s face.’
As soon as Ari had left, Ollie was keen to see what Xander had learnt and amazed at his progress.
‘That’s incredible,’ he said, gazing up at the whirling objects above his head. Xander had gathered up the rather wilted-looking daisies again, and augmented them with some tall stems of grass and the cores of several apples he and Ollie had eaten. ‘It usually takes years to get that kind of control. I still struggle to hold things level and I’ve been doing this for ages.’
Xander grinned at him and sent his mini tornado of objects weaving in and out of the trees in the orchard. ‘Maybe it’s the orb that the hobs gave me,’ he said. ‘They might have designed it to be easier to control.’
‘Hmm,’ said Ollie, thinking it over. ‘Being helpful and making things easy for you? That doesn’t exactly sound like them.’
Xander smiled wryly, acknowledging the truth of that and brought his little whirlwind to settle down on the grass next to them. He sighed and leant back on his elbows, looking up at the clear blue sky. ‘I just wish I knew what all this was about,’ he said.
‘Well, we’ll think about that tomorrow,’ returned Ollie with a quick grin. ‘First we have to survive Len’s entry into high society tonight, and I have a sneaking feeling that it isn’t going to go well.’
Xander laughed at that and lay back in the cool grass, closing his eyes. If the evening was as eventful as the time he had already spent in Haven, he thought he could probably do with the rest.
*
Mrs Stanton had been most insistent that both boys cleaned themselves up before donning the formal wear which she had laid out for them, and so it was not until he had finished towelling his hair that Xander turned to the rather curious looking clothes spread out on his bed. The plain grey trousers looked familiar enough but the white shirt had a strange collar, and the deep grey jacket buttoned up one side, with dull silver buttons. It also had an embroidered, high neck, rather like the mandarin’s robes in Xander’s history books; a wide silky sash, in rich dark silver completed the outfit. It was very different to the evening wear that Xander was familiar with at home, but it had a rather stately grandeur to his eyes. He was just struggling with the stiff button fastenings on the jacket when Ollie came into the room, also with wet hair. He sent a sympathetic grimace to Xander and began to rub his own hair dry.
‘We’d better get a move on or Gran is likely to do her nut. I think she’s still expecting Len to throw a last-minute wobbly,’ Ollie said, his voice muffled under the towel.
Xander glanced towards Len’s room. There had been a rather menacing silence from that quarter since they had come upstairs. Ollie had knocked but there had been no reply and the door, when he tried it, was locked.
‘Bit ominous, isn’t it?’ he said.
‘Nah, she’ll go,’ said Ollie with certainty. ‘Len knows it’s not worth the hassle of getting Gran really wound up.’
Xander finished buttoning the high collar of his jacket with some difficulty and turned to pick up his sash, turning it over helplessly. Ollie, who had thrown on his own clothes at high speed, reached over to take it out of Xander’s hands. He had already fastened his own sash around his waist, and Xander noticed the fine-drawn lines of a strange, ornate-looking symbol embroidered in glittering thread on the dark silver sash where it fell down Ollie’s leg.
‘It goes on like this,’ explained Ollie, twisting it around Xander’s waist and hooking up fasteners which were so well concealed that Xander had missed them earlier. Ollie tugged the sash slightly so that the fastening sat just above Xander’s hip and the slight flare of material trailed down his left leg; his was plain silver, with no symbols on it.
‘Thanks,’ said Xander. He nodded towards Ollie’s sash. ‘Does that mean anything?’ he asked.
‘It’s the Peverell family sigil,’ explained Ollie. ‘Members of the family wear it on formal occasions. All the Families have them – you’ll see them on display tonight; anyone with the least connection to a Family will be out flaunting it.’
He pulled a face as he glanced down at his sash.
‘The sigils are part of the family crests. It’s tradition, Oliver, and that is not such a terrible thing,’ came Mrs Stanton’s voice from the doorway where she stood framed in the light from the hall in an elegant green dress, jewels glittering in her upswept hair. ‘You boys look so handsome,’ she said, the briskness with which she adjusted both their sashes belied by a certain mistiness in her voice.
‘We scrub up all right,’ said Ollie, admiring himself with an exaggerated swagger in the mirror. ‘You look amazing, Gran.’
‘Yes, dear,’ she said calmly. ‘I know. Now for goodness’ sake, let’s get going before one of you spills something down yourselves.’ She hustled them both out of the room and then paused on the landing. ‘We’re leaving, Len. Are you ready?’ she called.
There was a silence and then Len’s voice floated back, unnaturally sweet.
‘I’ll be right down.’
Xander and Ollie glanced at one another, eyebrows raised.
They had all been waiting in the downstairs hallway for several minutes before Mrs Stanton made an impatient noise and moved back towards the stairs. She stopped as they heard Len’s door shutting, and then careful footsteps along the upstairs hall. Mrs Stanton clasped her hands together, her face lighting up as she got her first glimpse of the long flowing dress, softly shimmering, with an elegant waist and creamy bodice.
‘Oh Len, you look beau-’
Her voice cut off as Len’s face came into view, innocent smile firmly in place and her hair standing out in a multi-coloured halo around her head, the vivid streaks of midnight blue and shocking violet all the more startling amid her natural silvery pale.
‘You told me to do something about my hair, Gran,’ Len reminded her. ‘You didn’t specify what.’
Mrs Stanton stared speechlessly at Len for a moment and then swung around to the front door. ‘Let’s just go before I have a nervous breakdown,’ she sighed.
Once her back was turned, Len caught Xander’s eye and looked meaningfully towards her feet; Xander followed her gaze. Len had hitched her long skirt several inches off the floor, far enough to reveal that, rather than the delicate little sandals Mrs Stanton had bought, Len was in fact wearing her usual, favourite boots hidden under the length of the dress. Xander smothered a laugh as Len winked at him and then clumped noisily down the rest of the stairs.
*
Xander felt rather conspicuous as they all walked down the lane towards the Wykeham Gate in their elegant clothes, but Mrs Stanton swept along in front as if she wore nothing else. Once they had passed through the gate, Xander began to see others wearing formal wear, heading in the same direction along the narrow street to a courtyard filled with smartly dressed people, all off to the Solstice Ball. Many of them seemed to know each other, greeting newcomers with loud voices and enthusiastic waves as they inched forwards. Standing alone in the centre of the courtyard was a large archway set atop a flight of stone stairs.
‘Where exactly are we going?’ whispered Xander, as they moved forward to join the queue.
‘No-one knows,’ replied Ollie, with a twinkle in his eyes as Xander turned to stare at him. He laughed at the reaction. ‘It’s all part of the mystery, you see. This place is only used once a year during the Solstice, to hold the ball, and no one knows where it is. It’s supposed to be bad luck to find out.’ He grinned and rolled his eyes. ‘That’s what they say, anyway.’
Mrs Stanton glanced back at them as they climbed the steps. ‘Keep up, you three. Don’t dawdle.’ She disappeared through the giant archway and, walking in line with Ollie, Xander passed through the gate after her.
As usual, there was only the faintest tug to indicate that anything more than the obvious two steps had occurred. As Xander looked around, the fir
st thing he saw was a steep grassy mound, up the centre of which ascended a wide stone staircase. Steady streams of people were already heading up, the women carefully lifting long skirts as they walked. Xander noticed that the men, while all wearing the same style of formal wear, wore a myriad of different colours with equally varied sashes, some of which had stylised sigils while others were plain.
Once Len had cleared the gate, muttering darkly under her breath, Mrs Stanton led the way up. Elegant lamp-posts flanked the steps, with the glowstones already glimmering although the evening sky was still light, while the faint sound of music and the hum of many voices grew louder and more distinct as they climbed. When they reached the top of the mound, Mrs Stanton took Xander’s arm and drew him to one side so they could pause without blocking the way for the many people following behind.
‘The Pavilions,’ she said, glancing sideways to see his reaction. She was not disappointed. Xander had never seen anything like it and his eyes were wide as he gazed in awe.
Rising before him were three enormous stone edifices, the lower two set back into the rising slope while the uppermost sat on the top of the large hill itself. Xander stared in awe at the wonderfully carved archways and tall, fluted columns which looked almost too slender to support the weight of the vast stone ceilings of the buildings. The most striking thing of all, however, was the stone itself: it glowed and shimmered with its own soft light, making the whole structure look like it was carved out of the moon. On the far side of the hill the slope fell away steeply, and just past a copse of trees Xander could see the clear waters of a wide lake, gleaming in the soft evening light. It was, without a doubt, the most beautiful place Xander had ever seen.
‘It’s amazing,’ he said in a soft voice, and Mrs Stanton smiled at his obvious sincerity.
‘Isn’t it?’ she replied, her eyes slightly misty as she gazed up at the glimmering buildings. ‘I remember my first time at the Solstice Ball. My mother had finally agreed that I was old enough to go, and I was so excited to climb these steps and see the Pavilions for the first time.’