Fantastic Schools, Volume 3 Read online

  Fantastic Schools

  Volume 3

  Edited by

  Christopher G. Nuttall And L. Jagi Lamplighter

  Wisecraft Publishing

  Copyright © 2021 by Christopher G. Nuttall and L. Jagi Lamplighter

  All rights reserved. No part of the content of this book may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database retrieval system, or copied by any technology yet to be developed without the prior written permission of the author. You may not circulate this book in any format.

  ISBN: 978-1-953739-05-6

  Edited by: Christopher G. Nuttall and L. Jagi Lamplighter

  Cover art by: Tan Ho Sim

  Copyright Notices

  “The Way of Wind-Walking” and “Introduction to Fantastic Schools, Volume Three” by Emily Martha Sorensen. Copyright © 2021 by Emily Martha Sorensen

  “Summoned” by Jay Barnson. Copyright © 2021 by Jay Barnson

  “Lap Partners” by Frank B. Luke. Copyright © 2021 by Frank B. Luke

  “Ted Talk” by Karina Fabian. Copyright © 2021 by Karina Fabian

  “Troll in the Garden” by J.F. Posthumus. Copyright © 2021 by J.F. Posthumus

  “A Crisis of Conscience” by Roger D. Strahan. Copyright © 2021 by Roger D. Strahan

  “How Jon Came to Put Chickens on the Ceiling, as Told by Master Magician Roberto the Wise” by Barb Caffrey. Copyright © 2021 by Barb Caffrey

  “Kidnapped” by George Phillies. Copyright © 2021 by George Phillies

  “School for High Fliers” by Rhys Hughes. Copyright © 2021 by Rhys Hughes

  “Dorm Wraith Outrage” by Becky R. Jones. Copyright © 2021 by Becky R. Jones

  “Handfasted to the Dead” by Denton Salle. Copyright © 2021 by Denton Salle

  “Star Pupil” by Peter Rhodan. Copyright © 2021 by Peter Rhodan

  “Under the Sublime Moon” by Aaron Van Treeck. Copyright © 2021 by Aaron Van Treeck

  “The Cunning Man’s Tale” by Christopher G. Nuttall. Copyright © 2021 by Christopher G. Nuttall

  Contents

  Introduction

  The Way of Wind-Walking

  Summoned

  Lab Partners

  Ted Talk

  Troll In the Garden

  A Conflict of Conscience

  How Jon Came to Put Chickens on the Ceiling, as Told by Master Magician Roberto the Wise

  Kidnapped

  The School for High Fliers

  Dorm Wraith Outrage

  Handfasted to the Dead

  Star Pupil

  Under the Sublime Moon

  By Christopher G. Nuttall

  The Cunning Man’s Tale

  Afterword

  Introduction

  Why do we love magic schools?

  Well, I perhaps can’t speak for you, but I can speak for myself. I can think of four reasons I find the genre fun to read and to write. Perhaps you feel the same way.

  The first reason is relatability. Chances are you’ve gone to school at some point in your life. And even if you’ve never gone to school, you’ve probably seen or read enough stories set in school that you’re familiar with the idea and have a strong sense of what it’s like.

  In other words, school is such a familiar setting that it’s an easy comfort zone to snuggle into while we wait for a wild ride into an exciting new adventure to start.

  The second reason is wish-fulfillment. Have you ever sat in a really boring class, wondering why it had to be this dull, and wishing you could be learning magic instead?

  I have!

  For me, the worst offender when I was in junior high was history class. My history teacher was one of those types who made everything boring, and I hated the subject with fiery passion.

  Ironically, in high school, I had such an amazing history teacher that I became wildly enthusiastic about the subject and ended up minoring in it in college.

  Have I ever mentioned that the story of how Charlemagne got crowned Holy Roman Emperor is hilarious? Charlemagne said that he didn’t want the Pope to crown him because he didn’t need the Pope’s permission to rule, thanks so very much. The Pope insisted that yes, Charlemagne did need his permission, thanks so very much, and plonked a crown on his head without permission. This made the Pope look more important, which was the point. Charlemagne was annoyed. Seriously, the Middle Ages is full of true history that would fit well in an epic fantasy book.

  Ahem. I digress.

  The third reason is conflict. Schools, being highly organized and highly imperfect systems, are rife with familiar and inherent conflicts to weave stories around. There could be social conflicts, such as loneliness or one-sided crushes or bullying. They could be academic conflicts, such as cramming at the last minute to finish a test or trying to figure out what to write a paper on. There could be physical conflicts, such as being forced to play sports in P.E. despite the fact that you have asthma and are clumsy and who cares about where that stupid ball ends up, anyway —

  Ah. Not universal? Just me? Well, then.

  The fourth reason is worldbulding, and this is where magic school stories, as opposed to school stories in general, really shine.

  The thing about a school story set in our world (such as Malory Towers, or Sweet Valley High) is that we already know the rules of the world we live in. We probably know everything the students are being taught. We’ve taken those subjects; we’ve learned all those lessons; we’ve snoozed our way through those boring teachers.

  But with a magic school, the author can feed us information in a way that feels natural and interesting, because the reader gets to learn it for the first time along with the characters. A teacher can explain the rules of magic, the history of the culture, the geo-political situation that’s going to affect the plot — anything they want to!

  Not only that, a good writer is going to excise all the boring parts, which means you’re only going to get lectures on things that matter to you.

  Yessssssssss!

  So, why do we love magic school stories?

  Well, all kinds of reasons, of course. But most of all: because they make school fun!

  Emily Martha Sorensen

  Author of Black Magic Academy

  The Way of Wind-Walking

  By Emily Martha Sorensen

  Mildred’s aunts want her to be a bad witch. She wants to be a good witch. When a unicorn shows up to snack on her aunt’s garden, she discovers the joy of wind-walking and a new path for her future.

  The Way of Wind-Walking

  Mildred woke up to find a unicorn poking its head in through the empty space of her bedroom window.

  Her mouth opened and closed silently. At last, she managed to say, “Hello?”

  In a flash, the majestic creature was gone, disappearing into a gust of wind.

  “Oh, good, you’re awake!” Aunt Lilith announced, bustling into the room. “We have a busy morning ahead of us. We’ll be dusting and cleaning everything in the common areas and bedrooms!”

  She proclaimed this as if it were a wonderful gift, which perhaps from Aunt Lilith’s perspective it was.

  “Even Aunt Hurda’s?” Mildred asked with trepidation.

  Aunt Lilith was excessively tidy. Aunt Hurda was excessively sloppy. This rarely resulted in goodwill between the sisters.

  The youngest of her four aunts was a tremendous
slob, and squabbles between her and the second-youngest were frequent. They’d never gotten along, but it was far worse now that Mildred and her aunts were living in a tiny, hidden hut in the forest, rather than the enormous family manor they’d left behind.

  Sure enough, Aunt Lilith’s face went sour. “No, Hurda refused to allow that, and, in fact, she went out to the forest to collect a bag of live scorpions, which she dumped all over the floor.”

  Mildred put a hand to her mouth to suppress a giggle. That sounded like Aunt Hurda, all right. She hoped those scorpions weren’t for dinner. Aunt Hurda never removed the stingers properly.

  “But!” Aunt Lilith said in a grand tone, “Anklistine’s cultivated a new kind of berry that will help in our cleaning efforts!”

  “Are they flameberries?” Mildred asked hopefully.

  If most of the effort would involve sterilization with cleaning fire, she wouldn’t be expected to help with the cleaning. She was a wind witch, so she couldn’t activate flameberries.

  “No,” Aunt Lilith said in a reproving tone that implied she knew why Mildred had asked. “They’re windberries.”

  Oh. Mildred sighed. She had known Aunt Anklistine was growing elemental berries, but she hadn’t known which kind.

  “They’re very hard to grow in Restva,” Aunt Lilith said proudly. “They prefer the dry soil of Sukanil.”

  “Well, Aunt Anklistine can grow anything.” Mildred shrugged.

  “That doesn’t make her achievement any less worthy of praise,” Aunt Lilith scolded. “In fact, you should go thank her right now. She’s in the garden. Get out there! Get!”

  She held out her hand to summon a broomstick to swat her niece, so Mildred hastily scrambled out of bed and hopped out the window. She landed in a patch of damp mushrooms that must have sprung up overnight. Perhaps Aunt Hurda had left filth there as fertilizer.

  She picked a few and carried them in her skirt to the other side of the house, snacking on them as she went. Aunt Anklistine was weeding by making the earth rise up and spit out any plants that she didn’t want among her magical crops.

  “Is this poisonous?” Mildred asked, retrieving a purple flower from the weed pile. She liked the taste of most edible flowers.

  “I’ll check.” Aunt Anklistine didn’t bother to glance back before she grabbed the plant and tossed it in her mouth. She chewed for a moment. “Mmm. Not a bad flavor. Shame it’s useless for brews. Yes, don’t eat it; it’s poisonous.”

  Earth witches were immune to natural poisons. Everyone else was not. Mildred was always very nervous to eat Aunt Anklistine’s cooking, because her aunt sometimes forgot that small detail when sprinkling in her favorite spices that made everyone else sick.

  Not to mention the mushrooms. Ever since she and her aunts had settled in the Forest Beyond to stay hidden from potential assassins, Mildred had made herself an expert on which forest mushrooms were poisonous out of self-defense. Aunt Anklistine grew them all, even the ones that had particularly nasty magical aftereffects. There was one variety that could turn anything, including people, inside out — well, the less she thought about that, the better.

  “Where are the windberries?” Mildred asked quickly, trying not to shudder. “Aunt Lilith said you’ve grown some.”

  “Oh, right, so you can vacuum-seal the walls to keep unwanted insects out.” Aunt Anklistine turned to the left. “They’re over —”

  She stopped abruptly.

  “Where?” Mildred asked, looking off to the left. She saw some nibbled bushes, but no berries.

  “Oh, for crying out loud!” Aunt Anklistine exploded. “What kind of animal would be stupid enough to eat windberries?!”

  “Are they poisonous?” Mildred asked nervously. If so, she’d be very careful about touching them.

  “No, they’re not poisonous,” Aunt Anklistine said impatiently. “They just kill most creatures that eat them.”

  “That kind of seems like the definition of ‘poisonous’ . . .”

  Aunt Anklistine stood and brushed dirt off her skirt. Her brow was furrowed, her lips twisted in a sour line. “You could eat them without dying, but you wouldn’t find much nutrition in a tornado filling your stomach. I’m given to understand some wind witches enjoy the cooling sensation on hot days, though.”

  “Ohhhhh,” Mildred said in realization. “So other creatures would just . . . explode?”

  She really hoped Aunt Hurda wasn’t going to come home with a bunch of exploded birds. She’d probably pick her teeth with the feathers and use the guts as hair ornaments, and Mildred was tired of hearing Aunt Lilith shriek over her younger sister’s lack of hygiene.

  “Unless they were magical and connected to wind.” Her aunt frowned. “A griffin, maybe? They’re known to like windberries, but they aren’t native to Restva. And I think I would have heard one crashing through the forest. They don’t hunt quietly.”

  “How about a unicorn?” Mildred asked without thinking.

  Aunt Anklistine stiffened and looked at her sharply. “Why do you ask that?”

  Mildred backtracked. The last thing she wanted was for her aunts to decide unicorns were garden-munching pests and go out hunting them. “Oh, nothing. Um, it just sprang to mind because they’re my familiar.”

  Aunt Anklistine removed one of her sharp-heeled gardening boots and threw it at her. Mildred tried to dodge, but the boot sailed back and stabbed her shin.

  “Yeouch!” Mildred yelped.

  “You never — say that — in public!” Aunt Anklistine ordered. “Your familiar is a karkadann, and once we get you back to Black Magic Academy, you will prove it to them all!”

  They KNOW I have a white magic familiar! Mildred wanted to yell. That’s why I got expelled from the school!

  Aunt Anklistine had a vicious temper. So it was never a good idea to argue with her.

  But I’m not going back, Mildred thought with angry determination, accepting the herbs Aunt Anklistine handed to her to take in to the kitchen. She wouldn’t fight back, but that didn’t mean she’d agree. I’m done forever with school.

  All they ever taught at Black Magic Academy was ways to hurt people. How to be cruel.

  Aunt Anklistine had graduated. Aunt Hurda had been expelled. Aunt Lilith had never been admitted in the first place.

  Mildred knew exactly which aunts she wanted to be more like, and which she didn’t.

  Without windberries, a very put-out Aunt Lilith set Mildred to work doing her usual chore: vacuum-sealing fresh ingredients in packets for winter so that they wouldn’t spoil before then.

  “If we’d had windberries, you could have sealed up the walls,” she kept saying. “We could have even had you build a trap to kill Tractia!”

  Mildred was sick and tired of hearing about the windberries.

  She was even more sick and tired of hearing plans for her to kill High Witch Tractia, as if that were something she wanted to do.

  There was a tradition at Black Magic Academy that if an expelled student managed to personally kill the High Witch who’d expelled her, she would be readmitted into the school. Only two girls in hundreds of years had ever managed that, for unsurprising reasons.

  But Mildred’s aunts had fixated on the idea that there was a way for her to go back to the most prestigious school in the world and finish her education. Despite the fact that Mildred had said over and over again that she wouldn’t do it.

  After hearing Aunt Anklistine scold her for hiding the book on building death traps instead of reading it, Aunt Lilith scold her for sweeping dust into corners instead of capturing every single speck, Aunt Anklistine scold her for not remembering anything from her Menacing Spells classes, and Aunt Lilith scold her for labeling five packets of winter spices incorrectly, Aunt Hurda returned.

  She tracked filthy mud across the inside of the house with great relish, hung dead flies from greasy strings in every window, and then grinned in pleasure, displaying her filthy teeth, as Aunt Lilith exploded about how impossible to live with sh
e was.

  Mildred took that as an opportunity to slip out of the house and go for a walk on her own. On days when her aunts were nagging, and those days were frequent, she appreciated that they lived in the middle of a forest, so it was possible to make herself scarce.

  Wild mushrooms weren’t the most dangerous thing in the forest, and she’d had more than a witches’ dozen of close calls where she’d wound up crouching, terrified, inside invisible wards she’d hastily cast while some Forest Beyond monster snarled around the edges, trying to figure out how to get through and eat her.

  But there were some things you just had to do, and getting away from your nagging aunts was one of them.

  She was carefully avoiding a parasitic glassberry vine protruding from a tree it was feasting upon, making sure she got nowhere near the vine’s curved slivers of thorns, when she heard a sound behind her and turned.

  The unicorn was there. The one from this morning.

  Mildred gave a sharp intake of breath.

  The unicorn didn’t move. He just watched her.

  Slowly, she moved closer towards him. He didn’t run off. She reached him and touched his side. He didn’t flee.

  “I’ve heard unicorns are skittish,” Mildred said quietly. “But you’re not running from me. Is it because I have a unicorn familiar? Do you recognize me as one of you?”

  The unicorn swished his tail, brushing a fly off his back.

  She wished the unicorn could talk. But animals didn’t talk, not even the magical ones. Not in words that humans understood, at least.

  “Where are you from?” she asked anyway. “What brought you here?”

  As far as she knew, unicorns didn’t live in the Forest Beyond. They were native to Sukanil, a country further south. The flat plains of their climate were more conducive to windstorms, which unicorns loved, and the frequent droughts didn’t faze herbivorous creatures who could make suffering plants flourish just by tapping them with their horns and healing them.