‘Watch,’ Hiroko instructed. I waited, and presently I noticed a thought of hers that I could mostly understand passing into my head.
It was a memory. Paying attention to it was exactly the same as reviewing one of my own memories. I could see what Hiroko had seen, feel what she’d felt, all very vaguely and blurrily.
I, or Hiroko, was standing in an elegant, modern apartment that I personally didn’t recognise but that Hiroko felt safe in. A tall, smiling Asian man with thinning hair closed a door to a neighbouring room and stepped back to watch. I as Hiroko used some sense I’d never before used and grasped something immaterial with her magic. Space? Next, she’d visualised the neighbouring room, her father’s bedroom, and grasped that same immaterial substance there, and stepped forward. As she did so, she pulled that second space towards her so that it was in her path. The well-lit sitting room disappeared, and then I (she) was standing in a darker room. The door opened, letting some light in, and Hiroko’s father stood there, beaming with pride.
Hiroko took her hand away from my skin and waited for my response.
‘That’s amazing,’ I said, again. ‘You didn’t even need to see where you were going.’
‘It was the first time I did not see my destination,’ Hiroko said. ‘Did you understand how it was done?’
I remembered how she’d utilised a part of her brain and mind I’d never known existed, and manipulated magic in a way I’d never considered. Like when I’d first learnt to scry, I suspected that displacing was going to be just like straining a wasted, unused muscle.
‘I think so,’ I said. She turned me around so I was facing the ruby-red rug.
‘You must identify the Fabric of this place,’ she explained, waving her hands through the space around me. ‘You must feel it and hold it. You must do the same for this space.’ She went to the red carpet and waved her hands again in demonstration. ‘Then you bring them together.’
I tried, I really did. I felt better armed with her knowledge and advice and than I did with Elijah’s mere encouragement and pages of theory, but a further twenty minutes of hard concentration yielded no results. I officially gave up for that day, and we went on to wards.
‘I think it’s easiest to cast wards without a wand,’ I said, not sure where else to begin. I wasn’t a teacher. ‘Wards are just protective barriers, so you need to consider what you want to be protected from and channel your magic into a barrier against that threat. You might want to be safe from mental attack, or from magic, or you might even want a physical barrier.’
‘Can you make a physical barrier?’ Hiroko asked, intrigued. ‘It can stop anything from getting past?’
I outstretched one hand, facing away from my friend, and summoned the magic required. It seemed natural to channel it through my body, giving it purpose, and to send it along my arm and out of me. A tiny bead of white light shot from my palm, mushrooming outwards at an incredible rate. I cut the power, so to speak, and the whitish, membranous shield ceased to grow and hung in midair, a metre before me, waiting. It was dished, hemispherical in shape, and quivered very lightly as air particles bounced off either side. Nothing was allowed through.
‘Wow!’ Hiroko said, hurrying over. ‘It is a wall of magic! Nothing can get through this?’
‘Nothing physical,’ I agreed, keeping my right hand outstretched to maintain the ward. I was thinly connected to my creation. When I broke the connection by willing it to end or by forgetting about it, it would dissolve. It needed me. It had been a long time since I had properly needed it, and hopefully it would be a long time yet before I needed a ward that badly again. ‘See if you can find something small.’
Hiroko returned to the door, beside which there was an armchair and a small reading table. She came back with a ballpoint.
‘Throw it,’ I suggested. She looked hesitant. ‘It should just bounce off.’
As requested, she tossed the pen at my patiently waiting ward. It sailed through the air and struck my ward. With a faint hiss, it bounced off and landed on the ground, as if we’d thrown it at a wall or window. The ward wobbled slightly, like a taut canvas, and quickly returned to its still state. I dropped my hand, ending the channel, and the ward died. Without my magic to sustain it, the energy dispersed.
‘That is very cool,’ Hiroko informed me. ‘Soon, I will be able to do the same.’
She was a much more confident, optimistic student than I was. Within twenty minutes she was channelling magic through her body and through her hands and casting small, very brief wards. Most of the magic required seemed to be getting lost somewhere between its source and her spell, though, and her wards appeared as puffs of blurry white just a few centimetres from her palm, gone almost before they were created.
Hiroko had still made ten times the progress I had.
‘You are a very good teacher,’ she praised me, as we left the classroom. ‘I am sorry that I am not able to teach you as effectively.’
‘It’s not your fault,’ I disagreed. ‘I’m just not any good at Displacement. You can’t help that.’
We met our friends in the entrance hall, just heading out for a walk. Through the doors of the dining hall, I saw Garrett sitting with Addison and the other boys. I saw his milky white cheeks redden when he noticed Hiroko, and he looked away quickly.
Too cute.
‘Aristea, is Renatus seeing Emmanuelle?’ Sterling demanded as we headed out the front doors. I froze.
‘What? No! I mean,’ I amended, realising how odd that had sounded, ‘I don’t think so.’
‘Oh, good.’ She relaxed, beginning to smile, and I thought I was going to be okay, but then her face fell. ‘It didn’t work.’
‘What didn’t work?’ Kendra asked, pulling her sweater tighter around herself as she stepped out into the quickly cooling breeze. Sterling looked pointedly at me.
‘It didn’t work. Renatus hasn’t changed his behaviour or said anything. I’m running out of patience.’
‘Oh, well,’ Sophia murmured, unsympathetically. ‘Maybe it’s not meant to be.’
‘It is. I know it is.’ Sterling beamed at me. ‘You’ll have to just ask him for me.’
‘Ask him what? What he thinks of you hitting on inappropriate people?’
‘No!’ Sterling laughed while the other girls made various queries and exclamations. ‘What he thinks of me.’
‘Oh. Right.’ I didn’t really know what else to say. I sensed that she would only beg and argue the point if I refused. I looked over at Hiroko for support.
‘It will be okay,’ she assured me. ‘You may be saving the rest of us from listening any longer to hour-long discussions about the headmaster’s eye colour. You will stop talking about him after Aristea talks to him, won’t you?’ she asked Sterling sternly. Sterling grinned.
‘If he tells her that he likes me, you won’t hear another word about the colour of his eyes, which I would definitely say are violet,’ she promised. We all groaned, knowing that this promise meant nothing, because Sterling wasn’t going to get what she wanted to hear.
‘You’ll be saving us all,’ Xanthe agreed. ‘A few minutes of total embarrassment in exchange for our sanity is a worthy sacrifice.’
‘You poor little lamb,’ Sophia commented, linking her arm through mine for warmth and patting my hand apologetically. ‘You’re such a team player.’
‘Apparently.’
‘You have your last detention tonight, don’t you?’ Kendra asked conversationally. I paused, unsure.
‘Uh, well, technically,’ I agreed. Renatus had told me not come if I didn’t want to, and I kind of did want to go, but how to say that to my friends without sounding weird? Fate, I’d suggested, would tell me whether to go or not. So far I’d received no particular sign.
‘Well, that’s perfect,’ Sterling assured me. ‘If you think it’ll be embarrassing, at least you never have to go back. At least until you next pick an argument with another adult.’
‘I’
m sure Aristea never meant to get in trouble in the first place,’ Kendra defended.
‘Maybe she did?’ Xanthe wondered. ‘Maybe she was just beating Sterling to it.’
Sterling and the twins laughed, and I smiled, but I chanced a quick look at Xanthe. Her tone was difficult to determine – it had sounded both playful and meaningful at once. Was she suggesting something? Her face told me nothing.
‘I’m planning to keep my confrontations to a minimum in the near future,’ I informed them all.
The sign I was waiting for hit me like a pile of bricks dropped from a skyscraper. We followed our usual route, circling beyond the rolling hills down the back and passing near to the orchard, which was very dark and creepy and becoming more so with each step closer we came to it. It was windy and the uppermost branches, fresh baby leaves sprinkling the ends, swished about but very little light seemed to be getting through to the ground level. I alternated between gazing absently at the tree line, looking out for rabbit holes and nodding agreeably with whatever Sterling was rambling about. She’d fallen into one of her famous monologues, and everyone was responding appropriately by nodding and taking turns to murmur “yeah” or “that’s right” during the pauses. Sometimes it was really just easier to let her go for it, and in the past six weeks I’d learned that she was quite easy to ignore. She liked the sound of her own voice, and really didn’t require responses or feedback to sustain her one-sided discussions.
‘Yeah, exactly,’ I said, because it was my turn and Sterling had stopped for breath. There was a ninety-five percent chance that my response would work, but I listened in briefly just in case I’d agreed with the wrong thing.
‘And Suki, she’s like an artist, so she’s drawn all these really incredible pictures of him…’
I phased her voice back out, safe for now. A biting-cold breeze cut past us and I felt Sophia’s grip on my arm tighten as she pulled closer and shivered. I was glad now for my change of outfit into the little jacket but somewhat regretted the skirt. I turned my face away from the wind as the ends of my hair got caught up in it, and in the corner of my obscured vision I noticed movement to my right.
Something red, black and white.
In that second of inattention I felt my footing slip. My shoe slid into a rabbit hole, taking my foot with it and rolling my ankle. I stumbled, only managing to stay upright because of Sophia’s tight grip on me.
‘Whoa!’ she exclaimed, almost coming down with me. I steadied myself quickly and looked up, my heart thudding with the fright of falling unexpectedly.
The orchard was quiet and dark, and there was nothing to be seen. There was nothing red, nothing black and nothing white. I was staring right down that pathway again, which remained still and dark even while the treetops rustled about in the wind and even though the sun was hours from setting.
Was that pathway haunted? For half an instant I’d imagined that colourful flash in my peripheral vision to be almost person-shaped.
Was that why I wanted to follow that path, so badly? Because I did – even now, I could feel an almost physical pull that made no sense whatsoever.
‘Are you alright?’ Hiroko asked, moving closer to check on me. I stared past her.
I was imagining things.
‘Uh, yeah,’ I managed eventually, stepping away from the hole and testing my ankle out. It was only a little bit sore, definitely not damaged. I looked up again. Still, there was nothing there to see. None of the other girls had noticed anything, either. ‘Bastard rabbits.’
‘You sure?’ Sophia asked, critically eyeing the air around me. ‘You’ve gone all pale and you’re all messy.’ She waved indistinctly at what I supposed was my aura. Hiroko still watched me with concern while the other three stood a few metres away, waiting patiently for the walk to continue. ‘Coincidence? I think not.’
No page is random for people like us. That’s what Renatus had said. Did that mean the same as when people say that there are no coincidences? I was waiting for a sign. A freaky unexplained vision might count.
Stranger things had happened to me.
‘I’m okay,’ I said. ‘I just thought…’ I didn’t want to say what I’d thought. I didn’t want to talk about the ribbon misadventure last night, or Renatus’s reaction or our ensuing conversation. I didn’t want to start rambling about storms and dead people and a ridiculous desire to walk into the creepiest part of the orchard. I didn’t want to talk to any of the girls about this – not even Hiroko, not right now. There was only one person I wanted to talk to. ‘I just remembered that I have to go to detention.’
‘What, now?’ Sophia asked, surprised. I disentangled myself from her arm. ‘You don’t normally go until seven.’ She checked her watch. ‘Oops, we’re going to be late for dinner. I hope our seats haven’t been taken.’
My assertion that I was going to detention was ignored and I was led to the dining hall to eat with my friends. I picked a couple of odd things for my plate and scoffed them quickly, barely registering the tastes. I’d been waiting for a sign and I knew I’d received it, whatever it was, and now I just wanted to follow it.
‘Alright, see you all later,’ I said, getting up and pushing my chair in. Xanthe frowned.
‘You’re strangely eager tonight,’ she mentioned coolly. I chose to ignore the tone; I didn’t have time to decode it.
‘I want to check something in a book before I head up,’ I said, waving as I turned away.
‘No, wait! Aristea!’ Sterling called me back. I walked backwards as she said, ‘Don’t forget! You have to ask!’
I wondered whether this was the payment for whatever new information I would learn tonight.
Because, though yes, I’d probably imagined it…I was sure that the apparition had been a young woman with white skin and black hair. And blood. A lot of it. And Renatus was the person to ask about these things.
I shook my head. That was stupid. There was no such thing as ghosts, and if there was, they’d have better things to do than stand around on cold, windy days in orchards – the whole point of ghosts was that they had unfinished business, none of which would get done if they wasted time popping up and scaring unrelated people like me.
I went first to my room and dug out Anouk’s White Elm book from my bedside drawer. I sat on the edge of my bed and stood its spine on my lap, and let the covers go experimentally. The covers fell onto my knees and pages fell to either side…by this point, the fact that the book opened to last night’s page did not surprise me at all.
‘It became expected practice that councillors continued the then-common tradition of taking an apprentice to ensure succession of talent and skill within the White Elm,’ I read aloud, tracing my finger along the line that had caught my eye last night.
‘Magic and Fate were drawn on to officiate and formalise partnerships once both the councillor and his preferred student had consented to the ritual. Apprentices of councillors were guaranteed a position on the council at some point following their coming-of-age, usually succeeding their own master following his passing or retirement. This was especially common as apprentices of White Elm councillors were trained for their master’s specific role and…’ I trailed off and skimmed the rest of the page, bored. It was the most long-winded page I’d yet found in this otherwise engaging text. Apprentices had to succeed their masters. If your master was the Seer you had to eventually become the next Seer. You could be something else for a while, as you waited for them to die or retire, but then you had to take their place. It took a whole page to spell that out. I pushed the covers back up to kiss in the middle, closing the dull page inside. ‘Least. Useful. Random. Page. Ever.’ I threw the book back into the drawer, annoyed that I’d wasted my time on that. I saw my grandfather’s book in there, too; today I lacked the patience to try the same no-random-pages theory on that early edition.
Despite his unhelpful page-related advice, I still wanted to speak with Renatus, so I marched up the stairwell to
the top floor and down the hall to his office. I slowed as I got closer, noting a piece of paper tacked to the door. I knew straightaway what it was. I recognised the scrunched paper that had lived for days in the pocket of my jeans, and I recognised the eight names written in the spidery print of Renatus’s handwriting. I battled a smirk; he knew I’d come. I pulled the list free of the door without giving it a proper look.
If I had, I would have noticed new lines crossing out all remaining names, bar one: mine.
Teresa nervously checked the oven again. Her rich vegetarian lasagne was coming along perfectly, cheese bubbling cheerfully on the top. Would the homemade fries be ready in time to be served with the lasagne? What about the steamed vegetables?
‘Relax, Teresa,’ her boyfriend, Samuel, soothed, speaking English. He was Italian, and when she’d first moved in with him they’d only spoken Italian at home and in their community. When she’d been initiated onto the White Elm, the need to speak fluent English had become prevalent, and Samuel had had the idea to speak only English at home so that her fluency could improve.
‘I’m trying,’ Teresa said, tucking strands of curly brown hair behind her ears. ‘I just want everything to go perfectly tonight. I don’t want any hitches…’
‘Everything will be fine,’ Jadon assured her. He, Aubrey and Samuel were sitting around the small table, playing a game of cards. ‘We’re here in case there are any complications. And stop staring at the oven,’ he added. ‘You haven’t managed to burn or ruin a meal in all the times we’ve bludged here. There’s no way you can possibly screw it up.’
Samuel very subtly glanced up from his hand of cards to eye Jadon. Neither of her colleagues noticed, but Teresa did.
Teresa had never been a very social person, but upon her initiation onto the council she had formed very strong and close bonds with both Aubrey and Jadon. Just like her, they were young and new, and just like her, they were mostly treated like outsiders by the rest of the White Elm. It became routine to spend time with them outside of work, hanging out like normal friends did.
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