Hawthorn Academy- Year Two

by D. R. Perry

  At practice, I stood at mid-court with Lee, where I could get the tension out of my body if not off my mind. Dylan sat on the bench with Faith, watching. He’d been switched to reserves instead of taken off the team entirely, pending his results. Coach Pickman didn’t want to replace him. If poison was one of his magical elements, Alex would end up taking his place.

  At lunch, he came right out and said so to my face. I’d brushed it off, but the anger festered, so I overdid my next fire orb by a country mile.

  "Rein it in, Aliyah!" Elanor hollered behind me. "Let’s keep our eyebrows!"

  "Sorry." I tried banishing the big fire energy between my hands, which shrank but turned a much hotter blue.

  "Time out!" Coach Pickman’s whistle cleared the court. "Morgenstern, deep breathing exercises now! The rest of you run laps."

  "This sucks." Noah glared as he ran past. Lee jogged behind him, shrugging.

  "Said I was sorry." I sat on the court’s hardwood floor to begin my breathing exercises. I even closed my eyes but didn't have much success relaxing.

  "Come on, you can do this." Elanor made like a good team captain and sat across from me, reaching her hands out to take mine. "We're fire, so it's hard for us to chill. Plus, you're related to Noah, so I expect you to be over the top sometimes."

  "Thanks." This time instead of closing my eyes, I stared at our interlaced fingers. A tingle of energy passed between us. "Are you banishing?"

  "Uh-huh." She nodded. "After what Logan said you did in Lab last year, I'm surprised you’re having trouble banishing over a year later."

  "There's too much going on."

  "Like there wasn't last year?" She raised an eyebrow. "Charity was a megabitch. Every day feels like vacation since she graduated."

  "I'd trade the stuff happening now to deal with her again instead."

  "I wouldn't." She shook her head. "She was a powder keg. Tempe is too, but Grace has her checked better socially than I ever managed with Charity. Thank goodness Faith is the black sheep of that family."

  "Last year, familiars didn’t get hurt. How did you do it?"

  "Performance art." She shrugged. "Improv. Guess I'm decent at playing pretend."

  "I'm not. I worry about everybody. I need to keep them safe."

  "That's not your job description."

  "I'm not sure what is." I sighed, finally feeling my fire bank down.

  "And you think I do?" One corner of her mouth turned up. "It's not your job to save the world, Morgenstern."

  Maybe she wouldn’t say that if she knew the whole story.

  Coach Pickman blew her whistle again. I managed to get through practice without burning the gym down. I tried to follow Dylan afterward since I wanted to ask him about the next day’s testing, but he was nowhere to be found.

  Because of the High Holidays, I went to my room, skipping dinner since Yom Kippur meant fasting after sundown. Tired and hungry, I took a bath, got into pajamas, and listened to music to pass the time. I fell asleep before Grace returned to our room.

  The next morning I could barely pay attention at Lecture, so I made use of our magical notebooks to keep track. I could always study later, at home after Yom Kippur services and dinner. I found it ironic that Dylan’s test came on my religion's day of atonement. He’d be judged for something he couldn’t help, and if he failed, he wouldn’t get a chance to make up for it.

  When Lecture let out, we left Ember and Gale in the infirmary with Nurse Smith, who put them into the cart that housed unbound critters during Familiar Bonding. They peered at us, Ember peeping incessantly and Gale rattling the wire around the enclosure. Nurse Smith crooned something at them as we walked out.

  Professor Luciano led Dylan and me all the way down the hall in the academic wing. The section past the library hadn't been used since long before Noah's first year at Hawthorn. A few classrooms were occupied by Gallows Hill and Messing students. I saw Izzy through one of the windows, eyes wide and eyebrows raised as she watched us file by. I couldn’t have told her or Cadence about it anyway.

  At the end of the hall stood a set of double doors, fitted with stained glass like the ones in the lobby. I'd never seen these before. Professor Luciano stopped and stared, one hand on the latch, pinned in place like a butterfly to a card, transfixed.

  The artwork was striking, no doubt. Red and orange flames flickered above a landscape of purple ice, tinged blue where the firelight touched it. Somehow, the ice and fire together created a heat more intense than the inferno I'd banished last year. It was terrifying and beautiful at the same time, the art even more masterful than the glass on the other door.

  That didn't explain why it had so much impact on our professor. He was faculty, so surely he'd seen it before. I almost wished the Evil Inside Voice would chime in and throw me some trivia about this mural, but it was silent about the art.

  "Fire and Ice?" Dylan read the title, then shook his head. "Impossible."

  I died a little inside. Only the Evil Inside Voice noticed.

  What did you expect?

  "Why do you say that?" I cleared my throat, wishing I hadn't sounded quite so strangled.

  "It's by a Morgenstern in 1979. That was before your grandma's time, but after her parents."

  "It's by her late brother." Professor Luciano's voice was low-pitched and quavered. "His name was Noah."

  "How did you know about my great-uncle?" The professor didn't reply or even bother looking at me, but his strix did.

  Her head turned all the way around, and she blinked at me twice. I wondered what that meant until the strix trilled in the voice she used to calm other critters. She pressed her head against my temple and tried to help me understand. It hurt the professor to look at me, but the reason was either lost in translation or a mystery to the professor's familiar.

  "Why's the ice purple?" Dylan shook his head. "It looks like poison. Still impossible."

  "We are the masters of untold elemental forces, Mr. Khan. More things are possible with love and magic than not, beyond imagining for some, at the edge of memory for unfortunate others."

  With that cryptic sentiment, Professor Luciano pulled the door open, holding it as we walked through. I glanced up to see his eyes watery, focused on something far away in either distance or time. Possibly both.

  Chapter Thirty

  The doors led into an auditorium, where the fresh scents of wood soap and polish permeated the air. The entire place had recently been cleaned, likely for the talent show after Thanksgiving. But while the stage lights were up and the curtains open, only one row of seats stood in the front, with two chairs empty.

  That Board of Trustees, no doubt.

  We arrived last. None of the seven trustees, my mother, or the headmaster had prior commitments that day. What caught me by surprise was the iron dais on the stage. It wasn't just a platform, though. As we approached, light reflected off the clear sides of an enclosure around it.

  Whether it was made of glass, crystal, or something else, I didn't know. Dylan found out, because Nurse Smith led him up to it, opened a panel at the back, and locked him inside. My mother had grossly understated things, calling this process rigorous.

  It looked downright draconian. Locking anyone in a cage was wrong, extramagus with unknown powers or not.

  You don't know the half of it, my sweet summer child.

  The Evil Inside Voice never made a physical sound, but my mind usually perceived it as a drolly sarcastic baritone. Now it seemed throaty and hushed. I couldn't fathom what was different just then, how it could carry more than the vague foreboding sitting in my gut. Wasn't the voice part of my brain? Didn't it come from me, some fragment of personality given autonomy by the extra power flowing across the barrier between my body and Faerie's Under?

  "Aliyah, take a seat, please." My mother patted the arm of the chair next to her.

  I sat between her and Blaine Harcourt. I couldn't muster happiness at seeing him again or a greeting. His presence was ancillary to Dylan's
plight, and all of my mental and emotional energy focused on my friend. That was my charge, my reason for being here: as his peer and witness.

  One thing was missing, something I should have realized. Somebody had to administer the test, and though I knew little about it, no individual present had authority with the Extrahuman Registry. Headmaster Hawkins rose from his seat, then turned to face the rest of us with his back to the stage's apron.

  "Ladies and gentlemen, to ensure this process follows guidelines set forth by the United States and by extension the International Registry, I invite Director-General Rockport of the New England Regional Extrahuman Registry branch."

  I almost turned around to look back through the door I'd come in by. If I had, I would've missed the director's entrance from stage left. He must've waited in the wings all that time, watching everyone arrive.

  Instead of addressing us or even acknowledging the existence of an audience, Director-General Rockport paced across the stage with his eyes on Dylan. A charcoal suit covered his tall, rangy body, but it did nothing to diminish the wolfishness of his frame. A fringe of salt-and-pepper hair ringed his otherwise-bald head. His expression was so neutral, I couldn't determine his age. I made a mental note to ask Cadence if he'd ever shown up in the social papers.

  Blaine Harcourt tightened his right hand on the arm between our seats. The wood creaked, which made me nervous. If a powerful dragon shifter who could take on a form the size of a football field was scared of this guy, Dylan was in serious trouble, and I couldn’t help him. This was a test of his elements and abilities as an extramagus. Interference might force him to repeat the entire process.

  "It's okay, Blaine." Kim put her hand over his, but it trembled. After their fingers interlaced, their knuckles went white.

  I blinked, unsure what had them on edge. And then I remembered that dragon shifters could see magical energy and tanukis could see the flow of luck. Was it the box that frightened them or Dylan? Or him being inside it? Did Director-General Rockport inspire all that terror?

  Be glad you're seated beside your mother.

  "I am."

  "I will brook no comments from witnesses." The director spoke without turning to face me, but his words hit like a blow to the stomach.

  He reached for his interior jacket pocket and produced a pair of metallic spectacles. I sensed they weren't ordinary, but before I got a good look, he put them on, his head obscuring them from view. After that, he put his left hand in his outside pocket. I watched it move under the fabric. The iron and glass box on stage made a noise.

  It sounded like the air conditioning compressor outside Bubbe's office. As Dylan's eyes widened with alarm and his hands went up to his neck, I understood. The Director was creating a vacuum in there.

  "Use your registered element," he said in an impossibly level monotone. How could any sentient person address another so calmly in a situation this dire? How many times had he done this?

  Trust me, you don't want to know.

  Dylan set his jaw and responded instead of panicking further. He raised his hands like a mime pressing against an invisible ceiling, then I watched him open his mouth and practically gulp in the air he created around himself. The compressor noise stopped and the director nodded, his hand moving in his pocket again.

  "Now, the temperature rises."

  This time Dylan nodded, expecting what was coming. I breathed a premature sigh of relief, confident he'd keep cool.

  But either he was too unaccustomed to ice magic, or he lacked confidence. It had taken me months to control solar, so I couldn't blame him, especially with how his school year had gone so far. This test was designed to be rigorous, challenging, and exacting. And worse, as it turned out.

  Admit it. This is pure cruelty.

  I watched as the clear enclosure glowed red. The Director even pulled a handkerchief from somewhere and dabbed his forehead with it. Sweat beaded on Dylan's brow, but finally, he managed the concentration to call on his second element. Rockport nodded again, adjusting whatever control hid in his pocket.

  "Additional element ice, confirmed. Now, the temperature drops."

  The process repeated with a new element. Did he intend to run him through the entire gamut of magic elements? How could anyone consider this test within humane parameters? Was it new since the Reveal or something that had been in use for ages? How many extramagi had they done this to? Dylan shivered until his teeth chattered, but nothing happened. Before long, that segment ended.

  "Fire element negative. And now, darkness."

  I felt numb, detached from everything. Everybody still saw Dylan; nothing looked different to the witnesses. But his eyes went wide and wild, and he wrapped his arms around himself, seeming to shrink in fear from nothing.

  Being immersed in impenetrable darkness was a primal fear, one shared by most sentient beings on the planet other than vampires, Umbral Magi, and their kindred critters. But none of us had to endure that terror today, only Dylan.

  I glanced down the line of people, four of whom I’d never seen. I recognized Mrs. Onassis, Mr. Pierce, and Mr. Fairbanks. They yawned like Dylan was up there method-acting instead of being punished.

  Punishment for being what he is? Horrific.

  I'd promised to be his witness, so I couldn't look away. Dylan quaked and quivered in there, terrified but unable to mitigate the absence of light around him. I grasped my mother's hand.

  "How long?"

  "Another minute." My mother laced her fingers through mine and squeezed. I wished I could get into her lap and curl up there the way I had as a small child, but I was seventeen, and a formal witness for an official Registry test. And an extramagus. No comfort could erase my horror at this cruel procedure. It shouldn’t have been an approved global standard for anybody, even Uncle Richard.

  "Make it stop." Blaine trembled in his seat, shoulders hunched.

  Kim put her arm around him. "Ten seconds."

  That small humane act made me feel impossibly guilty. Someone should have been here for him. Not as a witness in a chair, but inside the box beside Dylan, so he wasn’t alone. Maybe a shifter or a psychic. Why wasn’t that allowed?

  "Solar element negative. And now, light."

  Who does he think he is, God? Lucifer, more like.

  Dylan covered his eyes with his hands, fruitlessly from the way he screamed. This was not a test. It was torture and utterly inhumane. That was why the Registry didn’t designate a support extrahuman inside the box.

  I'd go through this exact ordeal in less than a year. Everyone with more than one magical element had to, suspicion of crime or not. No wonder Uncle Richard had lied about his abilities.

  I’d grown up in Salem and had known the history of witch-trials here for as long as I could remember. Never in my wildest dreams could I have imagined they still existed in an internationally-sanctioned form for any percentage of magi.

  "Umbral element negative."

  The test progressed, and yes, Director Rockport went through every magical element known to extrahumanity. He ended by testing for the rarest ability in existence, mind magic.

  "Now, Mr. Khan, ask to be released without using your voice or body language."

  Dylan leaned his forehead against the front of his prison. The tawny skin of his brow was pressed flat and his eyes were closed. Every one of us watched tears pour out, roll down his face, and splash against his already sweat-stained shirt. His hands balled into fists at his sides, and that small act of defiance guillotined my last scrap of composure.

  I no longer felt far-off or detached, instead breaking into a series of wet sobs that shook the entire row of chairs, along with my body. My limbs felt stiff and weak all at the same time, my face blazing like the sun, feet as frigid and heavy as blocks of ice.

  The seven Trustees at the other end of the row leaned forward to peer at me. One, a very elderly man I didn’t know with a thick white beard, sniffled and wiped away a tear. The fox in his lap whined.

  Mom ha
d her arm around me, but it did no good. She couldn't offer me any comfort. She could never understand how horrifying this was, watching my friend, already in anguish, endure even more. Knowing I’d be in his place soon enough.

  Kim Ichiro got it. Not caring one bit what anybody thought, the tanuki rose from her seat and ushered me out of mine, leading me off to the side and giving me a bear hug I wouldn't have thought possible from someone so short and slight.

  "This is the most horrible thing I've ever seen in my life," she whispered in my ear. "My father’s a lawyer, and I’m telling him everything. This can’t continue."

  "Even after Richard Hopewell?" I managed.

  "Especially after Richard Hopewell." She patted my back. "He was terrible, but we have to do better than this."

  Finally, it was over. In the end, Dylan had aptitude for only the two elements he'd initially admitted to. They could've taken his word for it, but either the system distrusted us or considered us too mentally unstable to give an accurate accounting of our abilities.

  Dylan and I might have been born with extra magical power, but the world did its best to make sure we had plenty of other disadvantages.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  We went to Yom Kippur service in Beverly, the same as every year. Crossing the bridge felt different, heavier somehow. On the way there and during the service, I wanted forgiveness more than ever.

  At first, I wasn't sure what I'd done wrong, but failure to act hurt others as much as direct harm. I wanted to take a stand and change how extramagi were treated, but it all felt hollow and false because I hadn't spoken out about it.

  When the shofar blew, my heart opened along with my mind and cleared away all fear of what my family might think. There was something I could say, maybe even something to do.

  The idea couldn’t change the past, but it could help tip the balance toward equity for extramagi. I couldn't change the system, but maybe I could expose it.