‘Don’t think of it as lying,’ he said, as though he’d read my thoughts. I was sure he hadn’t, couldn’t have, because my wards were up, shielding my mind and all of its facets. I glanced at our hands, clasped across his desk. Did skin contact make my wards useless? ‘No, your wards are very good – impenetrable to most sorcerers.’
‘Then how can you get through and read my thoughts?’ I asked, wondering why I didn’t feel more threatened. Renatus almost smiled – his mouth hardly moved, but his eyes softened and brightened a little.
‘You may not yet have noticed, but I’m not like most sorcerers,’ he answered. ‘You’ll have to work with Emmanuelle to perfect your wards. You’re already very established at protecting yourself from telepathic attack, but there’s room for improvement. Anyway,’ Renatus said, getting back on track, ‘the story about your argument with Qasim is the story that we will allow to circulate, because there is nothing in that story that implicates you in any crime.’
‘Why are you helping me if I’ve done something so awful?’ I asked carefully, not wanting to sound ungrateful. I wondered whether he had fought Qasim on the matter for my sake, or simply because he didn’t want to agree with the Scrier.
‘Because in this version of the truth, everybody wins,’ he said simply. ‘Emmanuelle’s pride is kept intact. Qasim is secure and placated knowing that you are disciplined for your wrong doings. You are able to continue with your studies without fear of exclusion, which I feel is in the best interests of both yourself and the council. And I will be in much less trouble if Lord Gawain or Lady Miranda ever learns that I chose to ignore and conceal a serious breach of magical law. At least this way I can defend my actions by showing that you have been punished.’ He paused, as though waiting for me to interject or ask a question. When I did nothing but stare at him silently, he said, ‘So we are in agreement?’
‘Yes, Sir,’ I said, and he shook my hand again and finally released it.
‘Good. Your detentions start this evening. Please avoid Qasim until your next lesson, or until you really must see him – I intend on doing the same. I expect he’ll need some time to cool off.’
‘Will he even let me back into his class?’ I asked, feeling doubtful.
‘Absolutely. He wouldn’t pass up the chance to teach you everything he knows – you’re a once in a lifetime opportunity for him. He just needs some time to remember that.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘You don’t need to,’ Renatus answered. He stood and walked to a tall, thin cabinet behind his desk. The glass was smoky and too dark to see through. He opened the door of it and withdrew a small box. ‘It seems that your accidental Haunting was caused by putting your mind under a great deal of stress and pressure to scry. I imagine that during your practices, you may have flipped the switch, so to speak – opening yourself up to your potential. With your mind still open, you went to sleep, a deep state of relaxation, which is when your soul left. Very few sorcerers have the power to Haunt. However, Qasim is right. It is an extremely dangerous activity. Your body was defenceless, and had you touched one of us, you would have possessed that person. Unskilled as you are, you may never have been able to disengage; it may have been permanent. It mustn’t happen again, or I really will have to expel you.’
I blinked, shocked. No wonder Qasim had been so angry; no wonder it was illegal. I remembered almost touching the books in the shelf. What if I had tried to touch Renatus or Emmanuelle on the arm or shoulder to get their attention? I shivered.
Renatus held out the little box to me, and I hesitantly took it and looked inside. The box held a roughly cast pendant on a dark silver chain. The carved symbol on the pendant was entirely unfamiliar to me.
‘What is it?’ I asked.
‘Very old,’ Renatus responded. ‘It will lock your magic inside your body and prevent you from scrying at all, so if you wear it at night until you learn to control your abilities, it will stop this from happening again. Don’t wear it during the day – always take it off first thing in the morning. It prohibits a lot of magic.’
‘Thank you,’ I said, re-examining the pendant. Renatus nodded his acknowledgement and raised his hand, and in the corner of my eye, I saw the door open.
‘Please don’t return to class,’ he said. ‘Enjoy this spare lesson. I’m glad we had this talk. I will see you this evening straight after tea.’
I nodded, recognising the dismissal, and headed for the door. I didn’t look back until I heard the heavy oak click shut behind me.
I went to my empty dorm room and sat down on my bed. My head was reeling. So much had happened in the past day.
I kept thinking about the things Renatus had said. He was correct in saying that he wasn’t much like most sorcerers. What was it that made him different? How had he read my thoughts, without me even noticing? He hadn’t broken my wards, so how? Hasty wards could often be smashed down with enough mental force (it had never happened to me, but it was common knowledge – like a wobbly, badly constructed fence, a strong shove could push it down). However, I imagined I’d feel the sort of strength that would be required.
He’d suggested I use the detentions as time for scrying practice so I could impress Qasim with my skill. He’d said I presented an opportunity that Qasim couldn’t pass up. He’d implied that I had the potential to become a Scrier for the White Elm…
I looked at the pendant again. It looked very old and handmade. When I lifted it from its box by the chain, I found that it was heavier than I’d expected. It seemed heavier out of the box than when it was in it. I stared at the pendant and tried to focus on its energy, but I felt nothing at all. Was it even real? I touched it with my fingers. It was cool and rough. Experimentally, I looped the chain over my neck and settled the pendant against my chest.
It was the magical equivalent of turning off a light. My magical senses immediately shut down and beyond my skin, I could feel nothing. Even the feelings of others, which usually passed over me constantly, were unreachable. I took my wand in my hand but it was like holding a stick. I felt dim and powerless, and I didn’t like it. This was what it was like to be mortal. No idea what was around me, except for what I could see. No idea what people felt or thought about me…I hurriedly took it off, and immediately felt so much lighter. It felt heavy to wear, not just in weight but in the way it held my powers down. I carefully laid it back inside the box and tucked it away in the drawer of my bedside table.
I felt compelled to talk to someone, but I was alone, so I decided to write to my sister. As I wrote, however, I realised that there wasn’t a lot I could say. Most of what was looping over and over in my head had officially not happened. I wondered if this was what it was like for the White Elm when they visited family members after a hard day, and, unable to set aside the red tape and political secrets, had to say, ‘Yes, work’s been fine – I’m great.’
In the end, I wrote a rather short and uneventful letter outlining my scrying practice. I said that I was progressing rather well. I dedicated one sentence to Peter – We attended a funeral for an ex-White Elm councillor on Thursday morning, which was sad for the people who knew him. I didn’t mention my “dream”, or Renatus, or Qasim.
Angela was very perceptive, and would probably read between the lines and realise that there was a lot left unsaid in my letter. But really, what more could I do?
I had just signed my name when the door banged open, and Sterling bounced in, followed closely by Xanthe.
‘What happened?’ Xanthe asked of me, taking Sterling’s key from the still-swinging door and handing it to its owner. ‘Qasim didn’t say anything about it when he came back to class, but he was really angry.’
I hesitated for only a second. Xanthe and Sterling were both watching me, waiting patiently for the juicy gossip they were sure they were about to hear.
‘It was stupid,’ I began, and the lie tumbled easily from there. ‘I told Qasim I knew a better way to scry, and we
had a bit of an argument. He took me to the headmaster.’
I waited for that damning energetic spark to give me away, but it didn’t happen. Later, when I really thought about it, I wondered whether how I felt about the lie made a difference.
‘Ooh,’ Sterling said excitedly, dropping onto my bed. ‘Then what?’
‘I got detention,’ I shrugged. ‘I shouldn’t have said anything. I guess I was still unsettled from the funeral.’
‘Yeah,’ Sterling agreed, although I could hear in her voice that my feelings about a funeral were not a concern of hers. ‘What’s the office like?’
‘Uh, big?’ I said, as though I hadn’t seen it twice and hadn’t had a good look around. ‘It has a big desk that’s covered in paperwork, and some cushy chairs.’
‘When’s your detention?’ Xanthe asked. She put her scrying things away in her cupboard.
‘I have three weeks, starting tonight,’ I told them. ‘It’s an hour a night, on weeknights, straight after tea, in the head’s office.’
‘In Renatus’s office!?’ Sterling demanded, eyes wide. I nodded, and she pouted. ‘But that’s so unfair! How come you get to spend time with him?’
‘If you piss off a teacher, you’ll get to join her,’ Xanthe suggested.
‘You have to tell me everything,’ Sterling instructed me. Her bright brown eyes were beggars. ‘I need to know everything you see or hear. Anything he says.’ She sighed, and looked away. ‘You are so lucky, Aristea.’
‘Yeah,’ I said in a sarcastic voice, but I meant it, because I knew I was. I had been given a way out of exclusion from the school.
Sterling fell into one of her monologues, as she was prone to do, wondering aloud what level of trouble she needed to get into before she, too, could be sent to the headmaster’s office. Xanthe and I went about collecting our things for our next classes, nodding at Sterling periodically.
I shouldn’t have worried about how difficult it would be to lie to people about the day’s events, because all I’d had to do was tell the lie to Sterling, and she did the rest for me. Over lunch, she enviously retold the story to Kendra and Sophia, and then to Hiroko when she turned up.
‘I see,’ Hiroko said, once Sterling had finished. Her dark eyes shifted to me, questioningly. I met her gaze, wishing I could use telepathy already. I’d shared the truth with her that morning about my dream – I fully intended to fill her in on the rest, but only her. I hadn’t known Hiroko long, but I trusted her implicitly, and I felt that leaving her to believe the story she’d just been told would be ten times worse than lying to Sterling or Xanthe.
Luckily, Hiroko didn’t bring up the dream all day, even when Sterling continued talking about my detentions to anyone who’d listen right through the afternoon and into the evening. I didn’t bother but Hiroko tried valiantly to change the topic, especially when Sterling noticed Renatus enter the dining hall.
‘He, like, never comes to dinner,’ Sterling reminded us. Her bright eyes followed him from the tall doors over to the table where the White Elm sat eating. As usual, she wasn’t the only one – most of the female student population did the same thing. I glanced over the White Elm.
For the first time, I noticed that most of them didn’t share the girls’ interest. A few councillors glanced at him quickly and then turned back to their conversations; most of them paid very close attention to their meals. It wasn’t like they just didn’t notice him. I got the distinct impression that the headmaster was being ignored. I had once imagined them all to be close friends, but what I had seen of Qasim and Renatus together told me that there was at least some animosity within the council. Were there others who disliked Renatus, too? Why?
Emmanuelle, however, nodded respectfully to Renatus and glanced once to the empty seat beside her, offering him the spot. He pulled the chair out and sat down, the only councillor without a meal in front of him.
‘That must be how he keeps his figure,’ Sterling commented, shoving her plate away and dusting off her hands. ‘He never eats. He just sits in his office all day. It’s about getting a balance between energy input and output.’ She frowned slightly and tilted her head to the side. ‘But Emmanuelle just eats and eats, and she stays looking amazing, too…’ She eyed her plate suspiciously but didn’t pull it over again. She suddenly turned to me with bright eyes. ‘It’s your first detention tonight!’
‘Elijah’s lesson today was very good,’ Hiroko interrupted – rescuing me – and she kept talking, recounting her whole lesson. The whole group latched onto the conversation desperately.
‘I wish I could displace like you can,’ Kendra said jealously. ‘Teleportation is so, so cool. Are you the best at the school?’
‘Probably not,’ Xanthe mentioned, not in a nasty tone but I felt a flash of annoyance at her for needing to even say that, and then a second bout of annoyance at Xanthe for ruining my good mood.
‘In my Displacement class, I am the only student which can displace unassisted for more than ten metres,’ Hiroko told the group. ‘Elijah was very pleased.’
‘That’s great,’ I said. ‘How far can you displace?’
‘Probably one hundred metres, because I have never been anywhere with enough to space to practise further distances,’ she said. ‘I may be able to displace further, but in such a case, the destination must be visible to me, and in Sapporo, there is nowhere with such wide open spaces as here. Soon, Elijah plans to take us out of the school grounds to some hills, and then we can practise long-distance.’
‘Our mom has had a go at teaching us to displace,’ Sophia said. ‘We’ve both managed some pretty dodgy results.’
‘But results, nonetheless,’ Kendra asserted. ‘It’s because we’re awesome.’
‘I believe that.’
We all looked up at the newcomer who had spoken. The tall, dark-haired stranger was the twins’ admirer, and he was standing beside them, his plate in his hand. He was so tall that he cast a shadow over Sophia.
‘Hey,’ Kendra said, and both she and her sister’s faces were lit by identical smiles.
‘Do you mind if I sit here?’ he asked, indicating the seat beside Sophia with his cutlery. Sophia pretended to dust it off.
‘All yours,’ she said, as Kendra began introducing us.
‘I don’t know who knows who,’ she said with an air of easy confidence, ‘but this is Addison. Addison, that’s Sterling and Hiroko from our scrying class, and these two are Xanthe and Aristea.’
‘Hi,’ he said, grinning around at us all as he took the seat beside Sophia. We echoed his greeting in a girlish unison that embarrassed me – were we twelve?
‘So,’ Kendra said, before the conversation could lapse uncomfortably. She leaned past her sister to address Addison. ‘What brings you all the way from your group of mates to brave our lame, girly conversations?’ She nodded once to the other side of the room, and we all glanced over – at the other end of the table, a small group of lads were pretending not to watch our reaction to Addison’s presence. They all turned away when they realised that they’d been caught.
Perhaps, after all, we were all only twelve.
Addison grinned.
‘Don’t mind them,’ he advised. ‘They just wish that they had the balls to talk to cute girls, too.’
Kendra grinned back, and went back to her meal, unable to stop smiling.
The flirting went on all night, and although Addison was generous with himself – making every effort to engage every member of the group in honest, friendly conversation – it was obvious that his pick was Kendra.
‘What’s wrong with him?’ Sterling asked me quietly just as I finished my beans, shaking my arm and pointing discreetly at the staff table. I shrugged as I turned to look, pretty sure I knew who she was talking about. Renatus was standing, but he looked strange. His head hung and his hands were braced on the table as though for balance. I saw Emmanuelle touch his arm worriedly but he did not react.
‘No idea,’ I murmured back, slightly disquieted by my own worry. What did I care that the headmaster was experiencing a migraine? It was none of my business and I didn’t know him well enough to let his problems concern me.
It was only a few moments later that Qasim strode into the hall, too. My stomach turned anxiously and I tried to look away, not wanting any further contact with my scrying teacher today. It was hard not to watch, though, as he beckoned once to the unresponsive headmaster, face grim, before turning on his heel and leaving again. Renatus couldn’t have seen; however, he blinked and murmured something to Emmanuelle, then hurried after the Scrier. The other White Elm stared after the two men in something like shock – perhaps because despite their earlier disagreement they were now presumably off to do something important together – and I started to feel queasy.
‘Wonder what that was about?’ Sterling said. She seemed only mildly worried. My stomach was still turning like it had when I’d seen Qasim, but he was gone now.
‘Does your lasagne taste strange to you?’ I asked, scraping some of the béchamel cheese sauce from the top. It had seemed fine, but could it be causing the ill-feeling in my tummy?
‘No, it’s good.’ Sterling frowned at me. ‘Are you alright?’
What else had I eaten? A ham and cheese toasted sandwich for lunch, those beans and a few potato wedges before starting on this lasagne…
‘You look a little pale,’ Kendra agreed. She reached flirtatiously across Addison and nudged her sister. ‘Don’t you reckon?’
‘Hmm,’ Sophia said non-committally. She looked critically at the air around me. ‘It’s not you.’
I was going to ask what she meant when suddenly it clicked.
It wasn’t me, and it wasn’t my anxious ill-feeling. How many times had this happened before? When someone else nearby was feeling something really strongly, I often found myself unconsciously tapping in and feeling it, too, despite not understanding the cause or the context.
I jumped as I felt a hand on my arm and suddenly I was overcome with mental pictures and strange feelings.
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