Chosen (9781742844657)

by Morgansen, Shayla

  ‘Telepathy has many uses, and there are many branches of it,’ Glen began. ‘Some will find it an easier subject than others, depending on your natural perceptivity and concentration skills…’

  Already, my heart was sinking. Natural perceptivity? And as for concentration, well…I’d already stopped listening. I made an effort to tune back in.

  ‘…the simplest of which is detecting deceit or untrustworthiness,’ Glen was saying now, ‘a skill we will work on here, and the most extreme of which is magical interrogation – which you realise, of course, is not only illegal but deeply wrong,’ he added flatly. ‘There are three main goals we will work towards in this class. First: to learn how to enter another’s mind legally and safely without putting that person’s dignity or safety at risk. Second: how to recognise and resist an unwanted presence in your mind. Third: to learn how to communicate with others using the powers of the mind and the aura. There are many ethics and laws associated with our first and third goals, which we will cover in theory; not so many laws for our second. I suggest you worry less about protecting an intruder than protecting your own precious minds in the event of a mental attack.’ His soft features went serious. ‘These are not stable times. There are people outside these walls, everywhere, with the ability to break into the minds of others, to harm and control through means of telepathy. You are talented, good sorcerers – it is important you remain safe from his dangers.’

  The dove fluttered nervously in Glen’s hand, and immediately he dropped the ominous tone and reverted back to his air of steady calm. We, the students, glanced at one another with slightly unsettled expressions. By his, we had to assume that Glen was referring to Lisandro, the former White Elm councillor who was now apparently attempting to undermine them.

  ‘Yesterday, when you arrived here for the first time, you gave myself and Susannah permission to search your minds,’ Glen said, pleasant and informative again. ‘All of you. By gaining your permission and following certain ethical restrictions on what we could and could not view, Susannah and I acted within the law. We accessed enough memory, personality and emotion within your minds to be sure of your identities, your trustworthiness and your skill levels, but left everything in its original “place”, so to speak, without disrupting the natural order of the mind. This is a part of telepathic safety procedures, which you will all learn before you do any deep-mind diving. I learned enough about each of you to be able to recognise your minds at first touch. Mind-touch is something I expect you all to be familiar with.’

  The lesson began swiftly – we were paired up and instructed to search for the other’s aura. I’d never seen an aura, although I had a pretty good idea what I was meant to be looking for. Theoretically, there should be a glowing frame of colour around my partner, representative of the energy that radiated from every living thing. I’d always been able to feel them, sense them, but never actually see them.

  Sophia, with whom I was partnered, squinted at me for a while before insisting that I had no aura.

  ‘Of course I do,’ I said, although I had never before seen it, nor anyone else’s.

  ‘I can sometimes see them,’ Sophia admitted, ‘but either you don’t have one or I’m not looking hard enough.’

  ‘I would say that you weren’t looking hard enough,’ Glen said, looking over me as he passed, ‘but Aristea possesses a very unique aura. It has…holes.’

  ‘Holes?’ I asked, worried. That sounded bad, like I was faulty or something. Glen laughed.

  ‘I’ve not seen that particular characteristic in many individuals, but it’s nothing to worry yourself about. It’s like a birthmark, I’d guess. Irrelevant.’ He turned to address the class. ‘In order to properly view auras, one needs to slip into a different frame of mind. Staring at the physical world isn’t going to give you access to what lies just outside your visible spectrum.’

  Annoyed, I realised that this was more meditation.

  ‘I hate meditation,’ I told Sophia bitterly. Glen glanced over at me, and I realised I’d spoken a little too loudly.

  ‘It’s not really meditation,’ he said, putting a hand over my eyes, obscuring the grassy green grounds and Sophia’s face from my view. ‘It’s more like…focussing your eyes. Try again.’

  I felt his presence brush past mine, felt him alter something in my mind. When he took his hand away, it was like he took away something else, too, like a veil or something equally immaterial. I blinked, and my mouth fell open.

  Sophia, who hadn’t moved, stood before me, a misty turquoise green glow around her body. She seemed unaware of the change, and was watching me curiously. I looked around at the others, who were facing their partners, squinting and screwing up their faces in concentration. Kendra’s aura was similar to her twin’s, although probably bluer. Hiroko glowed with slowly swirling shades of red and pink. I turned back to Glen, and was impressed by his very solid aura of shimmery ivory and its shining outline of the brightest white – the White Elm influence on his life, I supposed.

  ‘How did you do that?’ I asked him, but already the glowing auras were slipping away. I had lost my focus.

  ‘I’m not doing anything,’ Glen answered. ‘This is your ability, Aristea. All I did was remove its biggest obstruction – doubt.’

  That evening at dinner, I sat with my new friends and we shared stories of our first classes. Hiroko had her telepathy notebook open in front of her and was reviewing the laws and ethics we had written down. Sterling was telling the twins and me about her earlier class – spell-writing.

  ‘I always thought writing your own spells was, like, illegal or something now, ‘cause there was this thing my mom used to rant about, years back, something about people getting in trouble for trying to write their own spells,’ she was saying. ‘So I asked Aubrey about it, and he told me that all new spells that are written need to be approved by White Elm before they can be performed and put into practice, and what they teach us here about writing spells is a council-approved method, and that everything we write will be reviewed by one of them before we can use it.’ She picked at her nail-polish. ‘Aubrey’s kinda hot, too, actually, but he’s got nothing on Renatus.’

  ‘I had sword-fighting practice this morning,’ Kendra said cheerfully. ‘Tian studies martial arts and sword combat. He was saying that swords and knives are typical weapons and tools for witches and that it can be useful to know how to use them for more than magical purposes.’ She grinned. ‘It’s so much more fun here than I expected.’

  ‘Yeah, I thought there’d be a lot of hardcore study and examinations and whatnot,’ Sophia agreed, swirling her peas around her plate, wistfully gazing in another direction with her crystalline eyes out of focus. ‘I expected some kind of urgency, I suppose. This is a much more comfortable pace.’

  ‘This place is absolutely awesome,’ Kendra added, stealing a lamb chop from her twin’s plate.

  ‘It is a beautiful location,’ Hiroko agreed, looking up from her notes. ‘I have never been so far away from home as here before. It was far to displace. Ireland is very different to Japan.’

  ‘Is it more difficult to displace over large distances than within a smaller vicinity?’ I asked her. She nodded.

  ‘Yes, it becomes harder to, uhh…pin…’ She hesitated, searching for a word. ‘Harder to get it right.’

  ‘Pinpoint?’ I suggested, and Hiroko nodded.

  ‘Yes, exactly,’ she said, blushing slightly. ‘It becomes harder to pinpoint an exact location when the distance is greater. When my father and I arrived yesterday, we were very lucky to arrive so close to our intended destination. We knew the general location and knew we could expect to find ourselves anywhere within a one kilometre radius of this property.’

  ‘I can’t wait to start learning stuff like that,’ Sterling said enviously. ‘Displacement and healing and all that.’

  ‘I had a healing lesson this morning, with Lady Miranda,’ Sophia said. ‘She’s so amazing. There
was a newborn foal from a farm not far from here that had deformed ankles – it wasn’t going to be able to walk properly, left alone. And she fixed it. We didn’t do much more than transfer positive energy from ourselves to one another and take notes about ethics and laws and stuff like that. I can’t wait to have a go at it myself.’

  ‘Soph has always been really good at that sort of thing,’ Kendra said, now stealing potatoes from her sister’s plate, having finished the lamb chop. Sophia was still staring absently in another direction, but lowered her fork over the third potato when Kendra attempted to relieve her of it.

  ‘Really?’ I asked, amused by their behaviour.

  ‘Natural ability, our mom keeps saying,’ Kendra continued, digging into the potatoes she had already taken. Once she had swallowed, she continued, ‘We used to have a mouse, when we were about ten, and it managed to get its foot trapped in its little running wheel thing. Its foot and toes were all demented and stuff.’ She twisted the fingers of one hand around in a way that was obviously meant to convey a mouse’s broken and mangled foot. ‘Soph picked it up and held it, and did…well, something, and she healed it.’

  Sophia didn’t appear to be listening, and it was to my surprise that she nodded in response. Some more people entered the dining hall right then; some students, some White Elm. Sterling’s attention was riveted when Renatus entered, followed closely by a small fan group of female students. These three girls were some of the oldest here, and they were practically falling over themselves to keep up with Renatus’s quick strides as they flashed bright, flirtatious smiles and all tried to talk to him at once.

  I watched, along with most of the students in the dining room, as Renatus strode up to the White Elm table, followed by his admirers. He stopped, and turned to face them – blatant annoyance was, I thought, an easy expression to read, even on an unfamiliar face. The girls either could not recognise it, or chose not to, because they kept smiling, though they stopped talking now.

  ‘That’s all very nice.’ Renatus’s low voice carried to where I sat with my friends. ‘Perhaps now you’d like to find a seat and have your evening meal?’

  The girls, beaming, turned and hurried towards the buffet table, giggling and whispering frantically to one another. Sterling looked outraged.

  ‘They shouldn’t be bothering someone like him!’ she hissed across the table to me. ‘He’s the headmaster! He’s obviously been working hard all day, and he wasn’t at lunch – it might’ve been all day since he’s had a break to eat anything. And all they’re doing by following him and badgering him with questions is prolonging his wait for his dinner.’

  The twins and I laughed, and Xanthe, who had not said much since we’d started dinner, now spoke up.

  ‘You’re very defensive of our headmaster, considering he’s a person you’ve never actually spoken to,’ she commented slyly.

  ‘He might be an ass, once you get to know him,’ Kendra agreed.

  ‘He may not be very nice,’ Hiroko said, having apparently not understood Kendra. The Canadian kindly explained to her, in an aside, what an ass was.

  ‘He might be gay,’ Sophia added quickly.

  ‘He could be a total creep,’ I suggested, but Sophia’s comment was the best, being the only possibility that would mean Sterling could never have him.

  ‘He can’t be gay, there’s no way,’ Sterling disagreed confidently. ‘I have a very good gaydar. He’s definitely batting for the side I need him to be.’

  We all laughed as she continued, ‘And there’s no way he’s a creep or an ass or whatever, I can just tell. Look at him. He’s beautiful.’

  I did as she said, and knew that she was right – Renatus was a prime example of physical human beauty – but I knew as well as the next person that external beauty had very little to do with internal beauty.

  ‘Maybe he knows it, too,’ I said, turning back to Sterling. ‘Remember what Emmanuelle said yesterday? Maybe she was alluding to something. You reckon he’s not into lads, but he could still be in love with himself.’

  ‘Mightn’t be any room in his life for you,’ Kendra teased, but Sterling was too busy laughing at my comment to hear her.

  ‘Lads,’ she giggled, trying not to choke on her mouthful. She managed to swallow. ‘Aristea, you say so many things that are just so cute. I adore your accent.’

  This time I didn’t laugh, though I did smile pleasantly. The girl was in Ireland…what did she expect the locals to sound like?

  ‘That cutie’s looking at you again, Ken,’ Sophia said softly, staring into the distance once more. Her sister casually turned a little to itch a spot on her back, and stole a glance over her shoulder. I resisted the urge to look as well, not wanting to give the act away.

  ‘Are you sure?’ Kendra asked, her voice doubtful as she turned back to her dinner. ‘He glanced up when I looked, but he wasn’t staring or anything.’

  ‘He has been,’ Sophia responded, finally turning her attention to her dinner plate, which, after Kendra’s raids, was somewhat empty.

  ‘Does anyone know yet what classes we have in the morning?’ Hiroko asked, looking mainly at me. I shook my head.

  ‘We should check after tea,’ I suggested. ‘And we should probably write down the entire week while we’re there.’

  Just as I had suggested, the six of us finished our meals and visited the library. Very few people were here (most were still finishing up dinner) so we had an easy time reaching the noticeboard and finding our names amongst the lists of subjects, days and times.

  ‘I have scrying on Thursday morning!’ I exclaimed, leaning close to the noticeboard to read the details. ‘Level 3 Scrying, with Qasim. Hey, Xanthe, you’re in my class!’

  She looked up from her handwritten timetable to give me a vague smile, although it was not a particularly warm or excited smile. I turned back to the noticeboard. Well, I was excited about the prospect of learning to scry.

  ‘The rest of us have scrying tomorrow afternoon,’ Kendra commented. ‘Level 2. You two must be more advanced than us.’

  I wondered whether there had been a mistake – I certainly had no prior knowledge of scrying, nor any experience. Maybe enthusiasm made up for lack of talent.

  Later that night I wrote to Angela, telling her about all the subjects I had and everything I was learning. I told her about my new friends, and how different they were from me and from each other. I withheld a smirk as I wrote about Sterling and the fascination with Renatus that she shared with half the female students in this school. I left the letter on my nightstand, uncertain as to how to go about sending it, and went to sleep.

  When I awoke the next morning from another refreshing, dreamless sleep, I was surprised to discover that I hadn’t slept in. The other three girls were just starting to wake up, too. Apparently the breakfast bell had just sounded.

  There was something very magical about this place, and it could have been due to any number of things. I was sleeping better than I had been in years. My dream had left me alone for two whole nights.

  Throughout the day, I tried my best to concentrate as Anouk spoke about the history of the White Elm and its purpose in her warm, purring Russian accent, as Aubrey explained the ins and outs of spell-writing, and as Elijah dictated the laws surrounding displacement. I knew it was important, all of it, and I made sure I took notes in case I needed to reflect on these lessons, but my mind was very firmly stuck on Thursday morning’s scrying lesson. It didn’t help at all that while I was carefully writing out law after displacement law, Hiroko, Sterling and the twins were all in their own scrying lesson, learning the beginnings of everything I had ever wanted to know.

  One might even go so far as to refer to this phenomenon as “unfair”.

  At dinner I drilled the other girls on their scrying lesson, desperate to know everything they had learnt.

  ‘It wasn’t that exciting, to be honest,’ Sterling said in a bored voice, as she scooped a meatball out of
her spaghetti with her fork. ‘We wrote a whole lot more laws and ethics and stuff, and then did some visualisation exercises. It wasn’t much different from our other classes. And Qasim’s too old to check out.’

  ‘That’s all you did?’ I asked Hiroko as she sat beside me, trying to quell my disappointment.

  ‘Yes, it was very basic, but as with everything I am sure we will begin more difficult tasks later on once we have a grasp of the regulations,’ she said encouragingly. ‘Your class may be more involved than ours was.’

  ‘I’m excited to start divination with Susannah,’ Kendra said. ‘Soph makes it sound boring but I’m pretty sure my class will be much more exciting. I’m in Level 3.’

  ‘I’ve been reading the timetables that are up in the library, and I can’t see Renatus’s name beside any subject,’ Sterling commented in a slightly concerned voice. ‘I don’t think he’s teaching a subject.’

  ‘Like you said yesterday,’ Kendra pointed out, ‘he’s the headmaster, and probably extremely busy already without the added stress of organising his own class.’

  ‘What do you suppose he’s got to do?’ Sterling asked after a moment of thinking. ‘I’m sure he is very busy, but it’s not as though he’s writing school newsletters or signing class reports, is it?’

  ‘Usual White Elm business, I’d assume,’ Sophia suggested without a lot of interest. She turned to me and firmly changed the subject. ‘That cutie that keeps checking Kenny out was in our class today, in scrying. He came over and talked to us.’

  ‘His name’s Addison and he’s Australian,’ Kendra continued with sparkling eyes. ‘His accent is gorgeous.’

  Hiroko and I willingly joined in this conversation, lest Sterling captured our attentions and started on Renatus again.

  By seventeen, most girls have been in some kind of relationship, serious or otherwise. I was probably sitting very firmly in the late bloomer category. I’d never been involved with anyone; never had a real boyfriend. I attended primary school with the mortal children but never attended mortal high school so I missed out on all that. When I was young I liked a boy in my neighbourhood called Shane, who was a year older than me. His family were sorcerers as well, and his parents were friends with mine. When I was eight I told my parents I was going to marry Shane when we grew up, because he kissed me at the park. We stayed friends until he started high school and I didn’t. He made new friends and we started to drift apart. I hadn’t seen him since my parents’ and Aidan’s funerals.