by A. S. Oren
“The mountain is called Shishapangma. It is the fourteenth highest mountain in the world.”
I turn to see Roseman has appeared behind me. I didn’t even hear him walk up. “Is the school there?”
“Indeed, it is.”
“Wouldn’t the elevation make it hard to breathe? Not to mention the freezing temperatures?”
“We don’t have to worry about things like that. The important thing is that it is the most remote school in the world. We don’t have to worry about spies of any kind finding us.”
“Spies?” Why would spies want anything to do with a school for freaks?
“Mr. Roseman is just joking with you, Miss Clementine,” Mr. Perlow says as he comes out from a hidden door in the wall. “Did you sleep well?”
‘“Yes, surprisingly.”
“Wonderful. We will be upon the school within the hour. Sit and look outside until then.” I wonder if everyone at this school will talk like a snob.
“Actually, Mr. Perlow, I have more questions I would like answers to.”
He clears his throat. “Yes, well, all in good time. Mr. Roseman and I have matters to discuss. I will schedule a meeting with you soon and answer all of your questions. We’ll come get you when we land.”
“But.” Before I can argue, they go back through the hidden door. I sigh and sit down. The sunrise is gone, replaced by clouds of grey. There’s nothing to look at.
I wonder why they want me so bad, if all they’re going to do is dodge my questions and me? Boredom gets the better of me, and, soon, the hidden door begins to call, the outline barely visible in the wall. What’s behind it. The jet doesn’t seem wide enough to house a separate room.
I get up and walk over to it. Putting my fingers into the crack, I pry it open just wide enough for me to peek through. Nothing. Literally, nothing stands on the other side. I’m met with a void of darkness. Where the hell did they go?
I open the door wider, and my heart hammers. I’m actually scared to get any closer to it. But as they say, curiosity killed the cat. I stick my hand into it. It disappears. Cool air surrounds my skin. I pull my hand back, all in one piece; no ectoplasm hangs from it.
I get ready to step in. Someone touches my shoulder. I scream and stumble on my heels. The hand grips tighter and pulls me back. The door slams shut as I’m pulled out of the way. “Are you stupid?”
I turn to see a boy, not too much older than me, and only a few inches taller—that’s not saying much—with blond hair, brown eyes, and a cute mole on his right cheek. It takes me a moment to get my bearings. None of the boys back home ever made me think they were cute.
“Where did you come from?”
“Mich sent me to watch you. Obviously, he thought right. What did you think you were doing? Stepping into a Void with no training? Of all the idiotic—”
“Mich? A Void?”
He takes me by the shoulders and pushes me into a seat before taking the one across from me. “Michael Perlow. You don’t know what a Void is? Wow, when they said you grew up away from us, I didn’t think they meant you didn’t even know the basics. A Void is a magical plane here for us to shape into whatever we see fit.”
I still don’t understand. I want to snap at him. Him talking down to me isn’t a turn on.’
“Well, I’m sorry I don’t fit the image you had of me. I’ll work on that, just for you, okay?” I roll my eyes and stare out the window. Still a mass of grey clouds.
“Jeez, take the attitude down a notch. No reason to get your panties in a twist.”
I scrunch my nose at his remark. At least, they aren’t all obnoxiously civilized. “Who are you anyway?”
He smirks. Ah, there’s the smugness I was waiting for. He holds his hand out to me. “Triton Lennox.”
I shake his hand. “Avalon Clementine.”
“Avalon Clementine?” he starts to snicker.
I drop his hand. “Like you have any room to talk. Was your mother a child of the eighties? Why not name you Prince Eric instead?” I know his name most likely came from Greek mythology.
He looks at me confused. “What does that have to do with anything?”
“The Little Mermaid?” He stares at me as if waiting for the punch line. “Seriously? You don’t get that reference?”
“You mean the book? I think that came out long before the eighties.”
“Never mind.”
Silence falls over us like a wet blanket. Finally, he decides to break it. “Is it true?”
“Is what true?”
“About your transformation.”
“I guess you’re going to have to spell it out for me. What about it?”
“Is it true you change with the moon, and it’s painful?”
I swallow hard. I wasn’t expecting that. He just answered one of my questions without even knowing it. They don’t change at night, and it’s not painful for them? Why? “You don’t?”
He shakes his head. “I can change whenever I feel like it. See?” He holds his arm up, and within seconds, metallic blue scales rise to the top of his skin with silver talons to match.
My eyes go wide, but I manage to keep my mouth from dropping open. The first physical proof I’ve seen that validates the truth; there are other people who turn into dragons like me. Only one thing bothers me; he never flinched, and none of his skin had to come off in order for the scales to come through. He puts his arm down, and I watch as his scales sink back into his skin with no issue.
Hot, angry tears enter my eyes. “That’s not fair.” I quickly wipe the tears away. I don’t know this kid. He doesn’t have the right to see me cry.
Triton opens his mouth to say something almost concerned I’ve started to cry. “We are here. I cannot wait to show you around!” Perlow says as he comes back through the door, which led to nowhere.
The rumble underneath us stops, and I look out the window. Spearwood stands before me in its massive, mansion-like, glory. It holds the answers to all my questions. I know it does.
SPEARWOOD
As I step out of the jet and onto the ground, the elegance of the school doesn’t distract me from the fact that no snow lays anywhere in sight; I’m comfortably warm. How’s that possible? I stare up at the sky covered with snow clouds. Snow falls from fat, dark clouds, but none of it touches the ground.
“Are we under a dome?” I ask, looking back at Mr. Perlow. Triton stands next to him, holding my suitcases. He rolls his eyes as if I’m supposed to know everything about the new world I’ve stepped into.
“In a way, yes. We have a magical barrier around us. It keeps us shielded from these nasty elements and guards us against unwanted peering eyes.” I frown. What could that mean, ‘peering eyes’?
“Magical?” I guess magic can be possible. I do turn into a dragon at night. Anything is possible.
“We have set up a class for you, so you can learn all about the other aspects of us. Since you didn’t grow up within the families, you were never able to learn about the magic we use.”
I am going to learn about magic? “Are you talking about Harry Potter style magic?”
Perlow walks toward a set of triple wide doors, the entrance to the school. He laughs. “No.”
The entrance has a stone archway over it. In the underside of the stone, five engraved dragons surround what looks to be an artistic interpretation of the sun—a swirl with six triangles circling it. We stop in front of the closed doors. Triton almost bumps into me. I look at him over my shoulder, a flush rises on his cheeks. Perlow claps his hands. The doors open and two male servants in suits hold them. “Welcome back, Mr. Perlow,” they say as we walk over the threshold.
Something about the servant on the right pulls me to him. He looks’ Korean, but his eyes take me off guard: one emerald and one sapphire. I stumble over myself; I can’t stop staring at him. He gives me a soft smile and bows at the waist.
“Isn’t our atrium magnificent?” Perlow asks.
I pull myself away from the servan
t with the breathtaking eyes and look around at the entrance of the school. The ceiling seems to go on forever, but a small hint of shimmering glass shows otherwise; it’s one massive skylight. The sun shines a bit through the thick, dark clouds.
White marble with painted gold squares scattered across it make up the floors and walls—the gold squares don’t move up the wall—they seamlessly meld with each other.
In the center of the room stands a statue of a man wearing armor, a cape, and a crown, his face stern and cold.
“That is the leader of our kind; the man who prayed and made it possible for us to have the gift to turn into dragons. Without him, we would have none of our riches.”
“I wouldn’t call this a gift,” I mumble. All three of them turn to me. I must’ve hit the mute button, a pin could drop right now and it would echo off the walls.
Mr. Perlow looks away from me and clears his throat.
“We’ll do a quick tour of the school, and then we’ll show you where your private rooms are. Mr. Lennox, do you want me to have Jessica carry those bags for you?”
I almost forgot Triton has been holding my bags. I turn to him. “I can take them.” I reach for the bags, but he pulls them away.
“I can carry them. I don’t mind.” He’s stern as if he has to prove a point, but I have no idea why he would have to do that.
“Right then. If you’ll come this way, we will be coming up on the ballroom. This is where we hold most parties and functions. It’s normally reunions for alumni, but on occasion we have charity events.”
I want one last glance at the boy with the pretty eyes, but he disappeared.
I look around the wide hallway we move down. When we came up on Spearwood, it looked like a magnificent English manor or winter resort like how I imagined Malfoy Manor to be in Harry Potter. This place is a lot bigger than that manor, the inside vastly different from the façade it gives on the outside. Lots of marble. I can’t understand why. The clicking of their expensive shoes against it aggravates me a bit. We go through a pair of double doors and into a vast open area.
“As you can see, we have a large space to have both a dining area and a dance floor for our reunions. There is also a large station for an orchestra, which we fly in. It’s quite nice if I do say so myself.”
Is he trying to sell the place to me? As if I’m going to buy it? When he looks to see if I approve, I give a nod of my head, hoping it will appease him enough that we can keep moving.
He moves off to a far door in the back of the ballroom. “Coming out of the ballroom, we enter the class section of the school. There are over five hundred rooms dedicated to teaching first years all the way up to our college students. We have classes and teachers, who will teach you anything you desire to educate yourself about. Along with the normal classes, we also teach our students how to control their new found powers.”
“Mine aren’t new found, unless you count fifteen years as new,” I say. He ignores me, which seems to be the norm. The hall we move down next appears less grand than the last one, the floors a dark redwood and the walls’ half-wood paneling painted a deep green. Every few steps, we go past a door on either side made of the same dark and heavy redwood. Like a maze, many hallways break up the pattern of doors, but Perlow walks on by them without telling me if there are certain sections for each department they teach.
“I don’t mean to be rude, but how am I supposed to navigate through this place? This is only the start of it, and look at all these rooms.” I emphasize my point by putting my arms out and moving them about.
Triton laughs from behind me. I give him a quick glare. He doesn’t have to make me feel like an idiot; it’s a perfectly logical question.
Perlow smiles and pulls something out of his suit pocket; it looks like a card, like the one that turned into the robot Jessica thing. He holds it flat on his hand and it unfolds into a girl around my age. She has a black pixie cut, green eyes and wears what looks to be the school uniform.
“Hello, Miss Clementine. My name is Enid. I’ll be your personal assistant while you stay here at Spearwood Academy.”
“Normally, we make the student’s personal assistants male, but seeing as you’re a female, we thought a girl would make you more comfortable. She can look however you want her to; that goes for her personality as well. Ask her anything about the school, and she will tell you what you want to know. She also works as a phone. Tell her who you wish to speak to, and she will call them. Regular phones won’t work at this elevation,” Perlow says.
“Um, nice to meet you, Enid.” Enid smiles and bows to me.
“Just hold your hand out, and she will transform back into her carrying state.”
I hold out my hand like he had done with Jessica. Enid flies into the air and folds up into a solid black card in my hand. Amazing. I put her in the pocket of my jeans.
“Let’s keep moving, shall we? Up ahead, we are going to be entering our sports and fitness center. Here, you will be able to play any type of sport you desire. You are required to stay healthy while you attend this school. We don’t expect you to be Adonis fit, but you must put some effort in by filling out your fitness log at least three times a week. Your personal assistant will keep track of that for you. We like to do surprise fitness tests here of different sorts, so be ready for that.”
‘Fitness tests’ feels like it has an ominous ring to it. We leave behind the hallways of classrooms and enter a space that has to be as big as a football stadium lined with any and all fitness equipment a person could ever need. Oak wood panels cover the floor. A cerulean blue—my favorite color—makes up every other wall with the opposite ones white.
“Through that door, you will find our two Olympic-sized pools. We added a bathroom specifically for you years ago when we wanted you to come here. The boys know your bathroom is off limits when you’re using the pool or taking part in our swim classes. Do you swim?” He turns to me; his hands in the air at an odd angle near his chest. I almost feel like he is going to do a sassy snap with his fingers at any moment.
“Sometimes, when the weather was nice, I would go swimming in the lake near Edgar’s place.”
“Wonderful. Through that door,” he points, “you’ll find our fields and track. Both are outside, of course. The weather magic in that area is always beautiful if I do say so myself. Would you agree, Roseman?”
“Yes, sir.”
I look at the two men. They are definitely on different power tiers; that much is clear. I glance back to make sure Triton is still following us. He hasn’t snickered at me in a while. He looks bored; at least we have one thing in common right now.
“Next is the recreational area.” It doesn’t take us very long to cross the fitness center. We enter a circular room, the walls a cherry red and the floor a black and white checkerboard. Above each door in gold carved letters: Video Games, Movies, Library, Games, Dorms.
“As you can see, we have rooms dedicated to whatever you wish to spend your free time doing. Our library carries non-fiction and fiction with the latest in everything. You must keep your grades up if you wish to use any of these things with the exception of the non-fiction area of the library. Your personal assistant acts as a key. If your grades are good, you will be able to open any of these doors. If your grades fall below a 3.8, these doors will be locked to you until they are satisfactory again.”
Well at least they aren’t all fun and games. At least they take education seriously. He walks over to the door marked ‘Dorms’ and opens it. “If you come this way, I can show you to your living corridors.”
Again, we enter a circular room, a replica of the last one. This one has five doors. Each one has a number above it except for the last one. Instead of a dark wood like the other doors, it stands pure white with a gold handle.
Perlow walks over to it. “This leads to your own personal dorm. Your personal assistant acts as the key for it. Only you can open it, so you don’t have to worry about anyone trying to enter your space when th
ey are uninvited. Of course, you can have visitors over in your living room, but only you are allowed within your bedroom. If this rule is broken, it means expulsion for the rule breakers. It also applies to you and entering any of the boys’ bedrooms. Is that clear?”
I lift one of my eyebrows. Does he honestly think any of the boys here will want to be with me in my room? “I highly doubt it will be an issue for you, trust me.”
He gives me a look I can’t decipher. I walk up to the door and put my hand on the knob. A beep sounds from the other side of the door and it unlocks. I guess that means I don’t have to get Enid out every time I want to open a locked door.
I walk inside. I step into a high-class apartment. The first area looks like a living room, the carpet pure white, which matches the two loveseats across from each other in front of a large sheetrock fireplace. In between the couches sits a glass coffee table.
Off to the left of the living room stands a kitchen area. It has everything a person would need to have a functioning kitchen, all the appliance made of stainless steel and the wood black in color.
“Though you have a kitchen to yourself, breakfast and dinner are required to be eaten in the dining hall.”
I nod. There are two doors in the living room. “Which one is my room?” I ask.
“That one on the left. The other leads to your bathroom. We hope it is all to your standards,” Roseman says.
My standards? All of this is a thousand times above my standards. I would be happy with a shack. I go over to the door leading to my bedroom.
Once again, another beep echoes in the room. I ease the door open. I almost can’t believe what meets my eyes. The bedroom makes the living room look like a studio apartment big enough to house two of my dragon form comfortably. Like the entrance hall, white marble covers the floor, white with gold Celtic designs painted across it. I wouldn’t be surprised if it isn’t actual gold leaf paint. Murals of a blue sky with fluffy clouds cover the walls. White furniture decorates the room. A massive king-sized bed stands off to the right side of the room along with several intricate bookshelves lining the wall.