Diana Alderoot and the Gilded Mage

by Trista Shaye

  She straightened her posture, brushed down her dress, and marched towards the school. “Come along, children,” she called. “You’ll be late for class.”

  Diana slipped into the seat next to her friend, Ebony, who gave her a sweet smile and fluffed her bouncy curls. Diana pulled her backpack off her shoulders and slid it under her chair. Then, she clasped her hands in front of her and leaned her elbows on the desk, waiting. She had been taken by surprise at the sight of their new teacher and again, at the state he had been in. And then, once again, at the butterflies and smoke, and well … today was just turning out to be one large surprise. It wasn’t a bad thing, just surprising, obviously.

  Miss Mardell had run through the roll call and checked all the students off her list. She had nodded approvingly and then folded her papers, given the mage a snobby nod and snooty harrumph, and then flown off to fix her appearance since her part in the day was taken care of.

  The mage now stood at the front of the classroom, sorting papers and dropping them just as quickly and sorting them again. As he faced the class, his deep blue eyes darted about from face to face and his cheeks warmed with color.

  He bobbed his head in greeting and stuttered, “Wel-welcome. Such a turn out.” He chuckled nervously and as he did so, he noticed his long robe was still covered in soot and ash. His eyebrows jumped and he began to brush at his clothes with alarm.

  “Oh!” he exclaimed, his voice and character entirely unlike what Diana had been expecting. In fact, he was utterly and completely not what she had been expecting in the slightest!

  He seemed so nervous and eager to make a good impression and he seemed so young. But she guessed he must have been very knowledgeable for him to have been invited to teach them. Diana hoped he wouldn’t stuff up the very first time in fairy history that a mage had been welcomed here. She knew Miss Mardell already didn’t find him very sensible. But then again, she didn’t find anyone sensible, it seemed.

  The fairy children shifted in their seats and gave each other one of several types of glances: the “this is going to be the worst”, the “what in wings is going on”, or the “should we help him”, glance. But no one spoke.

  After a moment of vain brushing and smudging of the soot, the mage peered up through the hair that had fallen over his eyes. He gulped and straightened, pulling his robe straight as well. He then muttered a few words and the soot utterly disappeared from his face and clothes. All the children gasped at the suddenness of it and the new, put-together appearance of their summer teacher.

  He smiled at them, his hair combed back neatly and not a speck of dust upon his person. He clasped his hands behind his back and bowed a bit more formally to his class. “I apologize for this morning and the incident with the smoke. I had hoped to make a good first impression,” he explained, seeming to have gathered his wits and gotten his nerves more under control.

  “My name is Kendel, Kendel Morlemph and I am delighted to be here in The Magic Vale to spend the summer with all of you lovely fairies.” He swallowed and paused, looking as if he didn’t know where to go from there, but desperately trying to put something together in his mind.

  “I hope during this summer you’ll be able to learn something from me about magic, about the wizards’ realm, and about the world around and beyond you.” He began to pace, his hands behind his back fidgeting with each other as he grasped for words. “I … you see …”

  Diana blinked rapidly and wished she could just whisper him some advice about what their teachers usually did, but she knew she couldn’t.

  “You see,” he turned to face them once more, his eyes wide and a sad expression on his face. He looked more overwhelmed than anything else. “I haven’t the foggiest idea as to where to start. I’ve never actually been to school before.”

  An audible gasp could be heard circulating the room and several of the more boisterous fairies, who didn’t want to be here at all, elbowed each other – perhaps this would be easier to avoid and skip out on than they’d first imagined, perhaps their summer didn’t have to be spent in the classroom.

  “Never been to school?” someone asked aloud, directing their question at the mage. “Then how do you know anything about anything and why are you here to teach us if you don’t know anything?”

  “Oh dear,” he muttered, and perhaps he was thinking it might have been better not to have been honest with them but to pretend and fake his way through. “I do know a lot, thus the butterflies and my robe. But it seems wizard school is much different than fairy school, and we don’t call it school at all!” he shook his head deeply. “Much too dreary of a word, that. And we don’t sit about in desks, and listen to someone leecture from the front of the room.”

  “They’re called lectures,” Midge corrected, after having raised his hand. “Then how do you learn?”

  “Through experience!” Kendel exclaimed excitedly, and then it seemed he realized he was getting ahead of himself and that these fairies knew nothing about him nor he about them. “But I do believe I need to know your names. You do do that in school, do you not?”

  “It’s called roll call and Miss Mardell already took it,” a girl said, her chin resting in her palm, and her elbow on the desk. She looked bored.

  “Ro-oll call,” he sounded the word out. “But then, do I call out your rolls? Wouldn’t that be student for all of you? How do I learn your names?”

  Diana’s eyebrows rose for the umpteenth time that day. Here she had expected to be learning so much her brain wouldn’t be able to contain it all, but who was actually teaching whom in this situation? She felt bad for the poor fellow. Wizards certainly did things differently and she was sure there were reasons for it, but he did need a bit of help or he would be drowning in misunderstandings before they even made it to lunch.

  She popped out of her chair, snatched the past school year’s sheet out of the folder by the door, and went forward to offer it to him.

  “Here, this will help with names. We should all be on it,” she said, handing him the paper.

  He squinted at it and turned it this way and that. “Is … this your language?” he asked, showing the paper to Diana, who hadn’t sat down again just yet.

  “Um, yes,” she said tentatively. “Isn’t it yours?”

  “My goodness!” he exclaimed, excited at the new discovery. “We speak the same language, but I was always taught to write in the old magic tongue. So this is what our words actually look like!” Then his cheeks went red again and he dropped his head.“I am qualified to teach you,” he began after a moment. “Trust me, you will learn a lot.” He seemed a little desperate.

  Diana didn’t doubt he was aware that he was the first mage in The Magic Vale, and she was sure he didn’t want to mess it up.

  “Please, take your seats.” He was mostly talking to Diana when he said this, though a few had half stood in their places with surprise, finding out he didn’t know how to read. “We shall begin the day. It seems you now know quite a bit about me, Kendel, your teacher and mage, but I don’t know as much about yourselves. Please state your name, where you’ve grown up in The Magic Vale, and what you hope to learn from me. Starting here.” He tapped the desk of a fairy boy, startling the lad slightly. “And going across and back.”

  “Why should we listen to you?” asked a grumpy, slightly older fairy lad in the back, his arms crossed over his chest and his eyes narrowing. “You don’t know anything about anything, we’ve learned that!”

  “I’m not here to teach you what you already know,” Kendel replied, an odd expression on his face. “Though, I shall try to learn your writing and names and do my best to be a good schoool –”

  “School!” someone corrected.

  “School, teacher.” He looked out at the sea of wary faces and doubting expressions. “I am not here to teach you what you know. I am here to teach you what you don’t know. And this,” he tapped the de
sk of the same boy again, startling him a second time. “Is where we shall begin.”

  Three

  The first day of summer school had been … well, Diana would probably describe it as interesting. And she did, to the bakery shop keeper, Mrs. Marrow, the following morning when she went to pick out her lunch for that afternoon.

  “He’s not what I expected.” Diana said, popping the wrapped sandwich and sweet roll into her backpack and flipping the top flap closed. “He’s …” She paused and thought for a moment.

  The baker substituted some words for her thoughts, trying to guess what the girl was meaning to say. “Meaner or nicer? More knowledgeable? Grandiose?”

  “Mm, no.” Diana shook her head, one hand lifted to her chin as she sorted through her mind. “Normal. I suppose is the word I would use.”

  “Normal? Normal as what? More normal than what?” Mrs. Marrow asked, a look of surprise on her face. “You’ve never seen a wizard to know what their normal is, how can you say he’s normal?”

  “Not normal for a wizard, perhaps he is and perhaps he isn’t like any of the other mages – like you said, I don’t know. But he’s normal, like … like us.” Diana decided.

  “Like us? He ain’t got wings, nor anything like a fairy.” The shop owner made several disapproving sounds and landed her hands on her hips. “He’s not like us, Diana, that’s why he’s here. To show you what another world is like. To be different.”

  Diana shrugged and let her words sink in.

  “But he is like us,” she whispered to herself, careful not to let the baker hear her words, sure she’d ruffled her feather enough for one morning.

  The golden plumed bird began to shake its feathers, preparing to sing out the hour in just a few moments. Diana had determined to do better about being on time today and she quickly snatched her pack from the floor.

  “I gotta go! I’ll tell you more about school tomorrow,” she shouted over her shoulder as she headed to the edge of the shop’s threshold and hopped off onto the cool breeze that was lifting all the fairies’ wings that summer morning.

  “Another day of this. Another day wasted inside when I could be out in the glorious sun and summer,” sighed Midge over dramatically as they walked from the school’s boarding station to the building for class.

  Diana hoisted her pack up on her back a little higher and gave a half smile. “Don’t you at least think it’s interesting to learn about the differences in our cultures?” she wondered aloud at her grumbling friend.

  “Not much. It’s different, I knew that already, though. It’s weird and I’m glad I live in The Magic Vale.”

  “Then, aren’t you at least excited to learn some spells? Imagine what kinds of things he could teach us to do!” Diana tried out another subject matter to see if that, too, was a sore spot.

  “Yeah, maybe. If we can even do magic like him.” He shrugged and they ambled on.

  “What do you mean?” she asked, confused. Wouldn’t it just matter what words you used and making sure to say them in the right order?

  “Think about it,” Midge reasoned. “He’s a mage, we’re fairies. Two different species, two different cultures – as we so obviously found out yesterday. I think the reason why wizards and mages use magic is because they’re built for it, naturally. We’re not. What if magic and spells and all that jazz is something you have to have in your blood, something you have to be born with?” He snorted. “Then we’re gonna learn a whole heap of nothing this summer. Could’a told everyone that and saved us all the trouble.”

  Diana let him walk ahead and enter the school house before her. She stood back from the flow of students and watched them slowly trickle inside.

  Her mind and thoughts ran. She hadn’t even considered that they might not be able to do magic like a mage simply because of who they were as a species. It seemed outrageous, and yet, it also held a ring of something else to it, something she didn’t like – something that almost seemed true. What if fairies couldn’t use magic and what if there was a reason the five races had been separated into their own realms instead of sharing one large one? What if this was all a huge mistake? What if the council had been wrong to invite him here? What if they did, indeed, learn nothing?

  She shook her head, realizing those thoughts would get her nowhere productive. She’d only manage to distract herself for the rest of the day and paint their new teacher in a light that was unappealing, as opposed to letting him paint his own character for her and everyone else.

  She tried to bolster her spirits as she fell into line to get through the doors and into class.

  Diana unwrapped her sandwich as she listened to Midge and the other fairies at her table talking to each other over their lunches. She took a bite from her bread and looked around, not really interested in what the other students were discussing – the best places to fish during the summer – and caught sight of Kendel entering the dining room. He looked a bit out of sorts and unsure of where to sit among all the fairy students, most of which were still deciding if they liked him or not.

  He hadn’t been around all morning. The substitute teacher had said the council was meeting with him to get to know him, see what he planned to teach, and give him a place to stay in the city. Apparently he’d spent the last evening in the schoolhouse.

  All that morning their sub had gone over things they had learned last school year, resaulting in even more sour moods and ill temperes toward the mage, though it wasn’t his fault the council had summoned him. Not everyone saw it that way, though, since it was his fault they were stuck here in the first place after all.

  Midge caught sight of the undecided mage as well and scoffed a bit, shaking his head. “Bet he’ll sit by himself. No one will sit with him. He’s a joke.”

  Diana didn’t say anything at first, she just watched as Kendel scoped out the area and then did indeed sit by himself in the corner of the dining room. He set a crumpled, brown bag down on the table and, casting one more awkward look about, sat down and began to pull out his lunch.

  “He should never have come to The Magic Vale,” another fairy at her table said and the rest of the group chuckled and chorused their agreement.

  Diana had had quite enough. They were being entirely unfair to the poor mage, making assumptions and accusations without actually knowing him. He was just a poor, lost fellow trying to figure out an entirely new culture. On top of that, he didn’t have any help and was handed the burdensome task of teaching the children of the realm. Diana thought that if she were in his shoes, she would be pulling out her hair and high tailing it back to her home as fast as her wings – or his feet, in this case – would take her.

  “I will,” she stated, pushing her seat back, grabbing her backpack, and standing.

  Her table fell quiet and a few of them coughed or cleared their throats awkwardly.

  “You’ll, what?” Midge finally asked what everyone else was obviously thinking.

  “Sit with him,” she said. And she did, leaving the table and the whispers of her classmates behind.

  Diana knew they would talk badly about her, but when had they not? They all thought she was a freak and they had only stopped openly mocking her because she had made it known she would not be bad-mouthed to her face. But some still did it behind her back, which might have been worse. Some of them accepted her for who she was and some just wanted to be her friend because she was confident in who she was and that seemed to them like a strange kind of strength they didn’t know existed.

  Diana was used to being the underdog. She knew exactly what it felt like to be left out, laughed at, and maybe almost hated. She knew how Kendel might be feeling right now and she didn’t want him to have to face that alone. It hurt to do it alone, and only a handful of people actually worked through the issues instead of running from them if they were left to themselves.

  She plopped herself down along with
her half eaten sandwich and leaf backpack and began munching on her lunch once again, as if nothing had changed and she had been sitting there with him the whole time.

  Kendel stared at her, his mouth full of what she thought might be a half chewed biscuit with some meat and cheese added for flavor and protein. His cheeks looked like a fall chipmunk’s, fat and ballooned out with the food in them. He had stopped all movement and his eyes were wide.

  After a moment, she honestly couldn’t take it any longer and lowered her own lunch to give him a look that said, “What”?

  He realized he had stopped chewing and quickly finished and swallowed. Though it was more of a gulp then a swallow in Diana’s mind. She had to remind herself he was the “new kid” and he had no idea how to handle any of this. She couldn’t allow herself to feel so overwhelmed by his social awkwardness that she gave up her mission before it started and went back to the other table. So, she straightened her back and smiled instead, trying to seem welcoming. She would not, could not, give the handful of selfish fairies at the other table the satisfaction of being right. She was sure, deep down, under all the initial shock and weirdness of this new place, that Kendel Morlemph was indeed a nice fellow.

  “Hello, I’m Diana,” she said. “In case you didn’t remember from yesterday with the massive amount of names that got thrown at you.”

  “Oh,” he said finally. “Thanks, that’s nice of you. My name’s Kendel, but, you knew that of course. Of course you did.” He made a face and scratched his head. “Wouldn’t you rather sit with your friends?”

  “Them?” she asked, shrugging. “No, they’re talking about fish, I don’t like fish. And most of them are rude. Midge is my only real friend at that table and even then, he can be quite the mean mouth at times too.”