Instrument of Peace (Symphony of the Cursed Book 1)

by Rebecca Hall

  “Already filled the first two spots, word is Angel Girl is really good at public speaking.”

  “Maybe she’s just good at public speaking,” Mitch said, flipping open his book of notable magicians with surnames starting with ‘M’ to make his appearance of work a little more convincing. “She’s good at everything else and no one thinks that’s magic.”

  “Being an insufferable know-it-all isn’t magic,” Bates replied, “phonomancy is.”

  “I’m still not betting on it,” Mitch said looking around for Dr Henly. Apparently satisfied that the class was working, or at least that those parts of it on the third floor, he was explaining the assignment to a pale-looking Nikola. He hadn’t gone downstairs to check on Hayley and she was probably on MyFace or Twitbook or something. Mitch had never seen the point when he didn’t know anyone outside the Academy.

  “Well, like I said you have until the Testing,” Bates replied, bending over his notes. Mitch did so as well as Dr Henly passed them on his way to the stairs. As soon as he was out of sight Mitch stood and stretched, inching towards the banister.

  “Seriously Mitch? It’s way too early in the year to be pulling stunts like that.”

  “I’m just getting another book,” Mitch said, abandoning the notion of eavesdropping on whatever was happening downstairs. They might not be prohibited from using magic but eavesdropping on a teacher was a sure way to get in trouble no matter how enjoyable it might be to hear Angel Girl get lectured.

  #

  Magic wasn’t usually taught in a Chemistry classroom. Of course the more usual venue of the Academy gym was currently unavailable due to the children living in there until their dormitory was rebuilt, but there were plenty of other wide open spaces available for instruction in magic. Or, failing that, classrooms that were insulated against magic. He supposed it was possible but it would probably prove to be as awkward and uncomfortable as making out in a closet.

  Richard was next to him and Sam and Sven sat on the other side of the classroom. Only four people in the class and two of them were his ex and her new boyfriend. It was a weird mix of specialities as well. Maybe they would just be doing general magic today.

  “Who can tell me what this is?” Mr McCalis asked from the front of the room.

  “A beaker,” Sven suggested. Sam giggled though it really wasn’t that funny. Why did his one two-hour class of the day have to be with them? The practical magic classes changed every day and he’d somehow got stuck with Sam and Sven for the first one.

  “Anyone else?” Mr McCalis asked, lowering the beaker to the desk and dropping a polystyrene ball in. It immediately began to fizz and dissolve.

  “Acid,” Mitch tried. They had covered acids and bases last year but this year they had dropped the conventional sciences in favour of magical ones.

  “I suppose asking you which one will prove to be an enormous waste of everyone’s time,” said Mr McCalis, proving that he knew his audience. Mitch didn’t think you could identify a clear acid by timing how long it took to dissolve a polystyrene ball anyway. “This beaker is full of hydrochloric acid.”

  Probably a specialised magic class then, one of the dangerously exciting ones; he didn’t think there were many practical spells that revolved around hydrochloric acid.

  “This is an old fifty cent coin,” Mr McCalis continued, holding one up and dropping it into the beaker. It was old; they’d taken those coins out of circulation in 2006 and replaced them with smaller, lighter currency. There was a clink as the coin hit the bottom of the beaker. “This is your task for the day.” Mr McCalis plunged his hand into the beaker and pulled out the coin. It was pitted and scarred from its brief immersion in the acid. Mr McCalis’s hand was unscathed. “Each of you has a speciality that is uniquely suited to this task,” Mr McCalis continued, turning a tap on and dropping the coin in the sink. “You will use this speciality to retrieve the coin from the beaker. The acid has been diluted so that it will take thirty minutes to dissolve the coin. If necessary I will provide you with a replacement coin. You are not to manipulate the beaker itself but you may try any magic you like on yourselves, the coin, or the acid. Insofar as it is possible you will follow all of the rules of this classroom. Are there any questions?”

  There were none and they each laid claim to a sink, beaker and stack of coins while Mr McCalis provided them with acid.

  Mitch dropped his coin in and watched it sink to the bottom. It was dissolving a lot slower than his hand would if he messed this up. He looked down the bench to where Richard was frowning intently at his beaker. Richard’s speciality was transmutation. Across the room Sam’s beaker was steaming gently; she specialised in a heat-based offshoot of pyromancy. He couldn’t recall what Sven specialised in but it didn’t look as if Sven would be dipping his hand into a beaker full of acid either. This was so unfair.

  Mitch held his hand above the oversized beaker. My hand is immune to acid, he thought, he wasn’t even sure if immune was the right word but it was the intention that mattered. He pushed his safety glasses back up his nose, they made him look like a dork but this was probably going to involve a certain amount of splashing. My hand is immune to acid, my hand is immune to acid. He hand crept towards the beaker even though he knew he should just plunge it in. This was only going to get harder as time passed. My hand is immune to acid, my hand is made of flesh and blood and other easily dissolved things. Mitch snatched his hand away before it could graze the surface of the acid and turned the tap on, saving himself a whole three seconds when this all went horribly wrong. He sidled the beaker a little closer to the sink, saving himself another quarter of a second.

  “My hand is immune to acid and I sound like an idiot,” he chanted under his breath. He switched to Welsh. Language might not have any effect on magic, he had always been slightly mystified as to why the Academy taught so many, but it was a lot easier to sound eldritch and magical if your lame chants were in Welsh. It was probably incomprehensible Welsh but that just added to the mystical-ness.

  His hand hovered over the beaker while the coin grew smaller and smaller. With one last repetition of his mystical Welsh drivel he closed his eyes and plunged his hand into the acid.

  It didn’t feel as if the flesh were sloughing off his hand. All he could feel were tiny pinpricks running up and down his skin. His concentration wavered and the pinpricks stabbed a little deeper. He chanted more intently and the pinpricks stopped trying to pierce him to the bone. He opened his eyes. His hand was still recognisably his hand with all of the skin and fingernails attached. Gaining confidence, he plunged it in a little deeper and began chasing the coin around the bottom of the beaker. Finally he managed to close his fingers around the damn thing and pull it out, thrusting his hand under the tap until he was sure he had washed away every last drop of acid.

  “Fifteen minutes Mr Mitchell,” Mr McCalis said, coming over and taking the beaker away. “Well done.”

  Mitch looked around. Richard had turned his acid a dark red colour and Sam had evaporated two thirds of hers. Only Sven didn’t appear to be making any progress. Mitch smiled. Then Mr McCalis came back.

  “You have twenty minutes this time Mr Mitchell,” he said, putting the beaker down, “and no chant, bad habits are hard to break and you’ll never be a good magician if you handicap yourself.”

  Mitch glared at the coin slowly dissolving in acid. He knew he didn’t need the chant. A lot of their time in the classes on magical theory was devoted to incantations and mystic hand signs and how they handicapped magicians by forming pathways in the brain but that didn’t mean that they weren’t easier to use than sheer concentration.

  Sam shrieked as her beaker shattered. Mr McCalis darted across the room and ensured that Sam hadn’t sprayed herself with acid before using his magic to clean up the mess. Sam got to take a break, the rest of them had to continue fishing out their coins.

  Five minutes later Richard finished his transmutation and fished a round of metal out of the beaker, it was no
longer recognisable as a fifty cent piece. Mitch didn’t think he would have recognised it as a coin if he hadn’t already known what it was. Richard got a new beaker, Sven got a new coin.

  Mitch retrieved his coin from the new beaker of acid. He never would have imagined that immersing his hand in acid would feel like pins and needles. The next beaker of acid would take fifteen minutes to dissolve the coin. Richard finished that one before him, having finally managed to get the hang of his transmutation. Sven’s coin shot out of the acid and into his waiting hand, causing him to yelp and drop the coin back in before thrusting his hand under the tap. Sam came back after twenty minutes and went back to work.

  Ten, five, three, two, one minute, thirty seconds, the deadline kept getting tighter, the acid stronger. Mitch was beginning to hate his stack of fifty cent pieces. No wonder the bloody things had been taken out of circulation. The logical part of his brain pointed out that the newer ones would be harder to fish out but he wasn’t listening to logic right now. It took him two coins to get the ten minute one right, a brief slip in his concentration resulted in him having to hold his hand under the tap for five minutes. Richard had to repeat the five minute one when his acid didn’t transmute as well as he thought. Sven sent the coins flying into the sink one after another, whatever problem he initially had gone. Mitch thought he was using some sort of magnetism and once he’d got the alloy sorted out it didn’t matter how strong the acid was.

  Finally Mr McCalis called a halt and they all sagged back into their seats looking utterly exhausted.

  “Well done class,” he said, “you all did very well today, you may keep the coins you retrieved as mementos of your accomplishments.” Mitch stared at the pitted and scarred pieces of metal before him, none of them were recognisable as fifty cent pieces any more. They probably weren’t worth anything as scrap metal either. Maybe he could use them to play checkers or ludo.

  “Class dismissed.”

  “Why vinegar?” Mitch asked as they made their way to the dining hall.

  Richard laughed, “I was aiming for wine.”

  THE MONSTER IN THE LAKE

  Daily life soon took on the monotony of being at school day and night. Even the odd room allocations soon ceased to be noteworthy. Mitch couldn’t help but be jealous of all the fictional wizards out there even if they were all second rate hacks who couldn’t light a candle without a magic stick and some pseudo-Latin. At least they didn’t have to learn about how their great, great, great, great, great, great grandfather had died falling off a stationary horse or how to conjugate Latin verbs in the past tense. He wasn’t even sure what that meant, or if it was possible, he had almost fallen asleep in that lesson.

  All the handicaps would be worth it if it got him away from Angel Girl. She was at the top of every class he had with her. God only knew how she did it, he sure as Hell didn’t.

  “...Well Mr Mitchell?” their teacher said.

  “What?”

  “I asked if you could tell me the properties of platinum Mr Mitchell,” Miss Sindri repeated.

  “Um...”

  She sighed, “What about you Mr Leiser?”

  Nikola pushed himself off his desk, blinked at her a couple of times and shook his head slightly to clear it before rattling off a list of alchemical properties.

  “And its uses?”

  Nikola recited another long list.

  “What did he do?” Mitch asked in a whisper, “memorise the textbook.”

  “Textbook doesn’t say anything about the Sidhe using it in their weapons,” said Gwen who had.

  “Oh, do you have something to add Mr Mitchell?”

  Mitch ground his teeth together, he hated it when their teachers got like this. Perhaps he could have been paying a bit more attention but that was no reason to make him look like an idiot. Nikola was lying on the desk again and Miss Sindri wasn’t saying anything to him. Mitch was saved by a knock on the door, followed by a runner.

  Miss Sindri took the proffered note, “it seems that you are required in the office on an urgent family matter Mr Mitchell,” she said.

  Cullum. He began to shove everything into his bag and only succeeded in sending everything flying.

  Gwen laid a hand on his. “I’ll bring everything down for you,” she said, “just go.”

  Mitch nodded and tore out of the room with his bag still half open. He sprinted down the corridor and took the stairs three at a time, not caring that he risked a broken neck. He wondered what the problem was, had one of Cullum’s lessons gone wrong? Or was there a problem with the latest cocktail of drugs he was on? They had said that it would take time to find the right combination to treat Cullum’s anxiety but it had been almost a week since they started the current prescription and Cullum seemed fine.

  He dashed into the office and almost bowled into Dad.

  “Whoa, where’s the fire?” Dad asked.

  “Cullum, where is he? Is he ok?” he panted. If Dad was here it couldn’t possibly be good.

  “He’s in class Mitchell,” Dad said, patting him on the shoulder with a large meaty hand. Not for the first time Mitch was glad he had inherited his mother’s looks instead of taking after this short, round man with the thinning hair.

  “What? But they said it was an urgent family matter!” The only reason he wasn’t shouting was because he didn’t have the breath for it.

  “A poor choice of words perhaps,” Dad conceded.

  “What are you doing here?” Mitch asked, slinging off his bag and rooting through it for his drink bottle; he hoped it hadn’t fallen out, he really should have closed his bag properly.

  “I said I would visit you didn’t I?” Dad replied as Mitch finally succeeded in locating the damn drink bottle.

  Mitch nodded, Dad had said he would visit, Mitch just hadn’t thought that he actually would. His parents were very good at going through the motions but there was little evidence to suggest that they actually knew how to parent. Mitch had spent more time at the Academy than he had with either of them.

  “Your mother would have come as well if she’d been able to,” Dad said, leading the way out into the bright morning sun. Yeah right, if she’d been able to. Mitch wondered what Dad would say if he asked what Mum was doing that was so important. Probably redecorating the apartment. Dad used to joke that he had married Mum for her looks and her money, Mitch had never worked out what Mum got out of it other than two children that she only saw for two months a year. “Here,” Dad offered him a couple of hundred-dollar notes.

  “What are these for?” Mitch asked, blinking at them.

  “It’s your birthday next month isn’t it?”

  “Oh, right,” Mitch said, taking the money and stuffing it in his bag. “Where are we going?” They had left the courtyard behind and were crossing the yellowing field.

  “The lake,” Dad replied.

  “Wh... never mind,” Mitch sighed, Angel Girl was by the lake talking to someone he didn’t know. A visiting magician of some sort, it was hardly surprising given the circumstances of her admission. Of course Dad would drag him out of class to thank her properly, something he still hadn’t got around to doing. He could have chosen a better class than Alchemy though, Mitch would have minded a little less if he’d been pulled out of Latin or Xenobiology. He wouldn’t have made himself look like an idiot in front of Gwen in those.

  They hung back a little, watching the lake while Angel Girl finished her conversation and shook the visitor’s hand.

  “What’s that?” Mitch asked, pointing to a dark shadow on the lake. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky, there wasn’t even a freakishly large bird, but the shadow was definitely there and it was getting bigger and closer. The stranger left and Angel Girl turned to look up at them before the shadow caught her eye. It was accompanied by ripples now and Mitch was absurdly reminded of the time he had gone hunting for the mythical Taniwha with Bates when they were eleven. They hadn’t found one of the lake monsters but that didn’t mean that one couldn’t fin
d them.

  A series of long narrow spines pierced the surface of the lake followed by a large lizard-like head with blue green scales. It was massive and it was still getting closer. Mitch wanted to run but his feet weren’t listening and no one else was running from the damn thing.

  It finally stopped, it was that or beach itself, and Mitch found himself staring at an elephant-sized lizard with flippers instead of legs and a halo of spray that coated it in rainbow lights. It was awe inspiring. It was terrifying.

  Angel Girl walked into the lake and extended a hand towards it. By the time she reached the Taniwha the water was up to her breasts. Mitch thought she was insane, who got into the water with a giant lake monster? It shuddered under her touch but failed to bite her arm off. It could probably eat her in four bites but maybe it thought she wasn’t worth the effort. She was shivering now, even in summer Lake Moawhango was freezing. Her hand fell from the Taniwha’s jaw and it reared up above her, revealing a long row of gills on the underside of its neck, before it twisted and plunged back to the water with a splash that bowled Angel Girl off her feet and drenched the rest of her clothes.

  “It’s been a while since I last saw one of those,” Dad said softly as it disappeared under the surface of the lake.

  “You’ve seen one before?” Mitch asked, tearing his eyes away from the now placid lake and staring at Dad.

  “Of course, Magna Lacum Dracone are common enough, if a little anti-social. Apart from Nessie of course, we’re always having to cover up sightings of her. Mitch gaped at him, it seemed like an appropriate response to the revelation that the Loch Ness Monster was real and its cousin was living in your lake.

  “Miss Lake I presume,” Dad said, striding down to the edge of the lake and extending a hand. Angel Girl was dripping wet and her white shirt was completely see through but neither of them seemed to mind. Perhaps they thought that if they ignored it, it wouldn’t matter. “I hope we weren’t intruding upon your conversation.”