Shaking his head, Delair turned and shuffled to the door.
When Delair was gone, Gracewright sank into a chair whose back had been smashed away and put her head in her hands, looking smaller than ever. “I don’t understand,” she said sadly. “Nothing was stolen!” She looked up and glanced from Merridy to Alldusk. “Why would someone want to destroy this place?”
“What about the kids?” Merridy asked, looking at Alldusk for support. “Most of them were criminals before they came here.”
Alldusk put his hands in the pockets of his black coat and studied Merridy’s face. “I don’t think it was them,” he said at last. “This is their new home—I don’t see why they would try to sabotage it.”
“You don’t know them that well, Brinley,” Merridy whispered. “I was the one who met them first, remember? It was different seeing them straight out of detention centers and jails—I doubt you would have recognized most of them.”
“I agree with Brinley,” Gracewright said. “They’re not evil, Darla. Perhaps they were mean at first, but now they’re polite and obedient for the most part.”
“For the most part,” Merridy insisted. Her face had gone pale.
Alldusk cleared his throat. “You’ll need help putting this back together, I assume?”
“Yes, of course,” Gracewright said. “I should have enough supplies for two more weeks of your Chemistry classes, but after that you may have to stick to minerals for a while. Fairholm and Ashton came to work off their punishment earlier tonight, so I’ve put them to work finding new magical plants.”
Alldusk chuckled. “I heard about the lemon tree. I wonder what Drakewell will do about it.”
Something brushed lightly against Tristan’s shoulder—he jumped back in surprise and tripped. Catching himself on a pine bough, he turned to see what had startled him. It was Amber.
“Don’t do that!” Tristan whispered. “Do you want us to get caught?”
Amber said nothing, so Tristan took her elbow and steered her firmly away from the greenhouse. When they were deep enough in the forest that the professors’ voices had faded into silence, he stopped and released Amber.
“Sorry I haven’t been helping,” he said. “Someone smashed up the greenhouse, so the teachers are all upset.”
“I know.” Amber blinked at Tristan, turquoise eyes reflecting the moonlight. “I was listening.”
“You mean you were standing behind me that whole time?” Tristan shook his head, amused in spite of himself. “Please don’t do that—it makes me nervous.” He had a hard time being angry at Amber, though. The moonlight had transformed her white skin and silvery hair into something magical.
“Can you see the moon’s aura?” Amber asked, tilting her head skywards.
Tristan stepped back until he could see the full face of the moon, nestled between pine branches and dark sky. “You mean the white glow? That’s just the sun reflecting off its surface.”
Amber shook her head. “The true light does not extend so far. That silver light is the moon’s aura.”
“Why can’t anyone else see the magic vapors in chemistry?” Tristan asked carefully.
Amber tilted her head at him, pale eyebrows raised in surprise. “You answered that yourself, only this morning. You told Leila that you have had practice controlling your mind.”
Tristan hadn’t realized that Amber had been listening. “Does everything have an aura?”
“Everything real.”
Tristan didn’t bother to ask what she meant by this. He ran a hand along one of the needled pine branches, smoothing the spikes flat until his hand encountered nothing but their waxy spines. “Who do you think attacked the greenhouse?” he asked at last.
Amber gave him a speculative look, hardly blinking. “Magic can easily be used both for creation and for ruin. The greenhouse was wrecked by someone who dislikes magic.”
“Was it one of us?”
This time she didn’t reply.
After studying Tristan for another moment, Amber turned and began threading her way through the trees. Though she kept her face turned towards the moon, like a flower hungry for sunlight, she stopped every few steps and lifted a plant from the earth. Tristan had no idea which way he’d come, so he trailed behind Amber, squinting at the ground. He found six more glowing magical plants, but eventually he gave up searching and just watched Amber.
By the time the moon had risen directly overhead, casting shadows like the noon sun on a cloudy day, Tristan was sure they’d been outside for three hours at least. “I think we’re done,” he said softly.
Amber paused, looking startled. Then she nodded, cast a final glance at the moon, and turned back towards the school. She hugged an enormous bundle of plants to her chest.
It seemed like ages before they finally reemerged in the clearing. The lights were still on in the greenhouse—when Tristan knocked, Gracewright came to the door a second later, clutching a broom and wiping dirt from her forehead.
“Thank you, kids, thank you so much,” she said, slumping against the doorframe. “You can set those down right here.” She waved to the stone step where Tristan stood. “Sorry—the greenhouse is a bit of a mess right now. I’ll check you off for six hours. Sleep well.” She sounded as though she had a cold; Tristan wondered if she’d been crying. An instant later Gracewright shut the door in his face.
The ballroom was dark and empty when Tristan and Amber descended the steps into the Lair; as they reached the far doors, Tristan slowed. “Do you think we’ll forget all of this next year?” he asked quietly.
Amber frowned at him.
“When we leave, I mean. Will we even remember that magic was real?” He’d been thinking about this as they walked through the woods, trying to decide whether he would be relieved or sad to leave this place. He hadn’t forgotten the feeling of power that had run through him in Brikkens’ class.
This time Amber stopped, though she would not meet his eyes. “The teachers do not intend to let us go,” she whispered. “They are growing old here, and so will we.”
Chapter 7: The Avalanche
Tristan spent breakfast the next morning telling Leila and Rusty about what he’d seen and overheard in the greenhouse. Even as he related the details of the vandalism, he continued to think about what Amber had said. The teachers do not intend to let us go—if she was right, this wasn’t a school so much as a prison. Tristan stared grimly into his cereal.
“Do you have any idea who it was?” Leila asked.
Blinking at the soggy granola, Tristan shook his head.
“It could’ve been Zeke,” she said. “That’s the sort of thing he would do.”
Tristan just shrugged.
After Alldusk’s fifth period class, Tristan hung back as the rest of the students filed out of the high, dark-walled chamber.
“No, you go on ahead,” he told Leila. “I’ll see you in Merridy’s class.”
She looked skeptical, but after a moment she shrugged and followed the others down the hall.
“Professor Alldusk?” Tristan said. Alldusk had been kneeling beside the fire pit, his hands cupped around something in the ashes. At Tristan’s voice, he started.
“Tristan! I didn’t see you there.” He clambered to his feet. “What is it?”
Tristan smoothed his hair over his scars. “I was wondering...uh, how long will we be at this school?”
“Well, you get a break over the summer,” Alldusk said, frowning.
Heart sinking, Tristan said, “And after that? How many years are we supposed to stay here?”
Alldusk gave him a pitying look. “School officially lasts for four years,” he said. “And afterwards...”
Tristan swallowed. Amber had told him the truth. “I have to get to class now,” he said, clutching at the strap of his book bag. His knuckles were white. Turning sharply away from Alldusk’s sympathetic half-smile, Tristan stalked to the door and thrust it open. The halls no longer felt welcoming—the Lair was cold and d
ark, a beautiful prison. He took the stairs two at a time to the fourth floor, where he turned left and slouched towards Merridy’s room.
“There you are,” Merridy said coldly when Tristan threw open the door. “An hour for tardiness.”
Tristan didn’t even care. Joining Leila and Rusty at the back of the room, he folded his arms on the desk and put his head down, staring blindly at the sanded wood. Leila touched his knee beneath the desk, trying to soothe him; Tristan shook off her hand as though it was a bothersome mosquito.
Maybe this was his punishment, he thought gloomily. He’d deprived his brother of a family, so the school had done the same to him. He would never graduate, never marry, never have kids, never leave this damn school.
A week later, Tristan came up to breakfast to find Merridy and Alldusk missing from the great round teachers’ table. Stranger still, Drakewell was filling Merridy’s usual seat, glowering at the other teachers and looking extremely out-of-place.
“What’s he doing here?” Tristan asked Rusty in an undertone.
Rusty paused, his fork halfway to his mouth. “Beats me.” The half-eaten sausage slid off his fork.
Leila turned pointedly away from Rusty. “We should’ve chosen a table closer to the teachers. Then we would be able to hear what’s wrong.”
That was a good idea, except the teachers weren’t talking. Every one of them looked just as confused by Drakewell’s presence as the students. The students were markedly quieter than usual as they ate, barely speaking and taking care to muffle the clank of their silverware against their plates.
Just as breakfast was ending, Alldusk and Merridy came down the stairs into the Lair. Both looked windswept and very upset. Alldusk stalked across the ballroom, Merridy hurrying close behind, until they reached the tables and stopped in front of Drakewell.
“This is unacceptable,” Alldusk said harshly, glaring at Drakewell. “You cannot act without permission. I will not allow this place to become a dictatorship.”
Drakewell sneered at him. “And how do you intend to ensure that?” He glanced around the dining platform. “Perhaps we should continue this conversation elsewhere—where the children cannot overhear.”
Tristan dropped his eyes quickly to his emptied plate.
Merridy cleared her throat. “Maybe they should know some of it, I mean...”
“That’s true,” Alldusk said. “The students have a right to know.” He slammed his fist on the table for emphasis. Tristan was surprised to see Alldusk so riled—he was usually mild-mannered and reasonable.
Alldusk turned to face the students. “Magic is dangerous,” he said carefully, though Tristan could see the anger in his dark eyes. “It can be very destructive if not properly regulated. Now, the purpose of this school may be ethically unacceptable to some, but when we came here we agreed that preserving the natural order was more critical than adhering to any individual’s moral code. This—”
“Enough.” Every trace of a sneer was gone from Drakewell’s face. “Brinley, Darla, come to my office. We need to talk.” Eyes flashing, he swept out of the ballroom.
Tristan sat forward in his seat and caught Alldusk’s eye; when the ballroom doors swung closed behind Drakewell, the professor crossed to his table.
“What was that about? Where were you and Merridy during breakfast?” Though Tristan spoke in a low voice, the other students turned to listen.
Alldusk sighed. “I wish I could give you a real answer. Don’t mention that I said this, but...there was a huge avalanche this morning, not far from this school. It destroyed an entire village.”
Merridy put her hand on Alldusk’s shoulder; the gesture was almost affectionate. “We should go,” she said quietly. “D-Drakewell should not be kept waiting.”
Once Merridy and Alldusk had left the ballroom, the room fell silent. After glancing around nervously and fiddling with his vest, Brikkens pushed back his chair with a loud scrape and lumbered to his feet.
“Class began five minutes ago,” he said gruffly.
Now Gracewright and Grindlethorn were the only ones still sitting at the large table.
“What’s going on?” Damian scowled at the teachers, snatching up his books.
Hayley turned to Gracewright, eyes wide. “Are we in danger?”
It was Grindlethorn who answered. He didn’t bother to point out that the Lair was hardly in danger from avalanches, since it was underground; instead he said, “This is not for you to discuss.”
“But Alldusk and Merridy—” Rusty began.
“—are young and foolish,” Grindlethorn snapped. “Now get to class.”
Reluctantly Tristan gathered his things and followed Leila from the ballroom. The teachers had been so close to telling the truth—if Alldusk had just been allowed to finish speaking...
Though the school was buzzing the next week with rumors about the avalanche, none of them sounded remotely plausible. Merridy remained upset with Drakewell—she was distracted through lessons, missed meals, and gave punishments more readily than ever. The weekend came as a relief from the tense, unhappy week.
October arrived the next week, and within a fortnight the valley was smeared with a frosting coat of snow. Rusty had never seen much snow before, so he was skeptical when Eli and Hayley reminisced eagerly about winters where they’d received upwards of two feet in a single dumping.
Gracewright cancelled her lesson after the snowstorm, saying she had a new shipment of vines to repot, so the students spent the hour hurling snowballs at each other. What began as an innocent snowball fight quickly became nasty; Zeke and Damian rolled rocks into their snowballs, and Leila started doing the same, until it looked like they’d been in a fistfight.
When Zeke’s snowball gave Leila a bloody nose, Rusty suggested a truce while they went inside to warm up.
Quinsley brought lemon tea to everyone who’d been out in the snow, though Leila was too busy nursing her bloody nose to appreciate it. “I’ll get him back someday,” she muttered angrily, shaking snow from the end of her black braid.
“Be careful,” Rusty said. “Zeke doesn’t seem like a very nice person.”
“You’ve noticed?” Tristan said. Turning to Leila, he lowered his voice. “Seriously, though, I don’t know what Zeke’s capable of doing. Try not to provoke him, okay?”
“Why would I do that?” Leila said sweetly. Twisting in her chair, she glared at Zeke.
Tristan rolled his eyes. Charming and lucky at guessing answers, Zeke was a favorite with most of the teachers—if anything happened, Leila would be the one punished, not Zeke.
“Where’s Evvie?” Tristan asked, trying to distract Leila. It worked—Leila turned back to her tea and scowled at him instead of Zeke.
Rusty frowned. “You’ve gotta call her Evangeline if you want her to like you.”
“I don’t,” Tristan said too quickly. “Evangeline’s just such a stuffy name.”
“But I thought...”
“Tristan’s being ridiculous,” Leila said.
The snow lost a lot of its charm when Merridy announced that their first practical exam would take place the next morning. “As I’ve told you,” she said, “this will be a chance to test your proficiency at reading maps and creating shelters.”
Damian cursed. “Are you crazy? It’s bloody freezing out there!”
Merridy’s frown deepened. “The whole point of this class is to learn to survive when faced with adverse conditions. Snow would go under this category, in addition to the related dangers it could cause.”
“Like avalanches,” Zeke said lazily.
“So you’re just going to throw us out there and see if we survive?” Damian said angrily.
Merridy crossed her arms. “It should not prove so difficult. You will each receive a map showing exactly where you will be dropped off, and you only have to walk five miles. If you know your way, you could be finished in less than two hours.”
“That’s stupid,” Damian said. “I’m not going out ther
e.”
“Then you can take a zero on the exam,” Merridy snapped. “And thirty hours of punishment. The proceedings are perfectly straightforward. You will each be given three days—tomorrow through Friday—to find your way back to the school. Each of you will be provided with a backpack and enough supplies to last a week; however, if you fail to return before Friday evening, you will be picked up.”
Finley raised his hand. “Professor? You said this is a test—how will we be graded?”
Merridy gave him an appraising look before answering. “Any student who returns within the allotted time will receive full marks. All others will be given a zero.”
“Er, Professor?” Hayley said, her hand in the air. “Do you give extra credit?”
“Is there a prize for getting back first?” Rusty asked, grinning.
“No,” Merridy said. “However, the other teachers will be suspending their classes during the three days of the test. If you make it back before Friday, you will have something of a break until Monday. Cailyn, would you help me pass these out?”
Together Cailyn and Merridy handed around a set of rather ugly brown backpacks, stained and bulging with supplies. When he received his pack, Tristan lifted it onto his desk and pulled at the drawstring, getting to his feet so he could peer inside. There was a great jumble of tools at the top, including a badly-coiled rope and a water bottle.
“Class is dismissed,” Merridy said. “I suggest you take the evening to familiarize yourselves with the contents of these sacks.”
As the students began to leave, their overstuffed backpacks clattering loudly, Finley’s nervous voice rose above the general clamor.
“What if something happens to us?”
“We will be monitoring you. There is a way for us to...pinpoint your location.” Merridy’s eyes flickered to the pillar at the back of the room. Was she worried about Drakewell? “If you stay in one place for too long—more than an hour, say—someone will come rescue you. We will also check on each of you at nightfall.”
“That won’t help if you’re being chased by a bear,” Zeke said under his breath, casting a wicked grin at Leila.
Metal and Magic: A Fantasy Journey Page 40