Fantastic Schools: Volume 2 Read online

  Or tried to.

  She was blocked at the gate by a giant. A literal giant. Ten feet tall, big boned, and mean looking, the giant glared at her when she approached.

  “No village passes today. No exceptions,” he said as he crossed beefy arms across a massive chest.

  A giant security guard was definitely effective. Kelsey spun on her heels and ran right back to the castle, skidding to a halt in the front entrance hall when she realized she’d let herself in as though she were a student—through the front doors. Yet she was still wearing her kitchen staff uniform. She hadn’t been sure which would serve her better in the village.

  All around her, students and staff didn’t notice her. She might as well have been invisible, except to one man with a single eye. The keenest eye in the school, in her experience.

  “Let’s talk,” he said to her, turning and heading up the large main staircase at the front of the school. He didn’t look back, simply expecting her to follow.

  She did, reluctantly. She liked Frank, but she didn’t trust anyone in this school at all.

  Frank led her into a utilitarian office featuring bare stone walls and a single oak desk. He sat behind it, gesturing for her to take the student’s seat in front.

  She expected him to ask why she’d tried to leave the school, or why she’d come in through the front door, but he didn’t.

  “Why haven’t you asked to be admitted as a student?” he said instead.

  “I’m allowed to do that?”

  “You’re always allowed to ask questions. The answer might be no, but that’s the worst it can be.”

  Kelsey shook her head, thinking of a time when she’d asked her case manager if she could have a new placement. The answer hadn’t just been no, it had been no and we’re telling your foster parents you asked, so they’ll be pissed off.

  In her experience, no was not a simple answer.

  “Do you want to be a student here?” Frank asked.

  She opened her mouth, then closed it again. Her mouth felt dry, her palms sweaty. Yesterday, this would have been her dream but today…today she knew things.

  “Do many kitchen ladies become students?” Kelsey asked.

  “No. But you wouldn’t be the first.”

  “Because we all have magic, don’t we?” she went on. “At least, when we first take the job.”

  “Very few ever figure that out. Most people are content to stay in the roles society carves out for them. You’re rare.” He leaned forward, his single eye fixed on her. “The oracles tell thousands of people their fates every year, and those people accept it at face value. Never questioning. But you didn’t. You questioned. You sought a better life. I don’t have to wonder what the oracles would say about you. Your actions so far prove you have a great destiny.”

  Somewhere outside, a bell rang five times, signaling the end of a class.

  “It’s time for lunch,” Frank said. “Will you go back to serving, or will you stay and find out what else you can be?”

  I’m an idiot. A world-class moron. Stupidest person ever. Kelsey kept berating herself all the way down to the kitchen where she settled back into her place on the line. The runes stared up at her in accusation as, with shaking fingers, she took the ladle.

  She’d turned him down. Not loudly. Not flamboyantly. She’d simply stood up and walked away.

  You’ve thrown away the chance of a lifetime, said an angry voice in her head. This is how life works, or haven’t we learned that by now? The strong prey on the weak.

  It was how her life had worked so far. She saw in her mind’s eye every abuse, every attempt to put her in her place. A place they had defined for her.

  Frank had a place defined for her too. Maybe this time, it was because she’d passed some kind of personality test, but it was still his place, not hers.

  “Are you going to serve?” a student demanded.

  Kelsey stared from the student to the ladle she held in her shaking right hand. She poured a bowl of soup, feeling the magic drain away.

  The student reached for the bowl. Kelsey dumped the soup back into the pot experimentally and could have sworn she felt the magic returning. She might have been imagining it, but wasn’t it worth the experiment? All she had to do was figure out how to reverse the process.

  “What are you doing?” the student asked impatiently. The line was beginning to form behind her, and a few other students grumbled.

  “Just a minute.” Kelsey dropped the ladle into the tall metal pot and began to rotate it on the spot so that the runes faced the other way. In her mind’s eye, she saw Agnes fussing with the placement of the serving vessels at every single meal.

  “What are you doing?” the girl asked.

  Kelsey started to scoop out another bowl of soup but paused and, for good measure, decided to use her left hand. Then she handed the filled bowl to the student who glared at her before taking it and moving on.

  “What are you doing?” Yazmin asked out of the corner of her mouth. “Agnes places those special.”

  “I know.” She was trembling now as she continued to ladle the soup. Bowl after bowl. Student after student. How would she know if it worked? The outflow had been so subtle, it had taken her weeks to notice anything was wrong.

  “Kelsey,” Yazmin hissed a few minutes later. “What’s wrong with your skin?”

  “Huh?” She looked down at her hands, which were no longer shaking. In fact, they felt much stronger.

  And they were glowing.

  “What’s going on?” Yazmin asked.

  She shook her head and thought, trying to figure it out. “Maybe…maybe I’m taking back more than I gave out? Or maybe taking a small amount of power and splitting it a hundred ways doesn’t have as big an impact as taking a hundred small donations of power and pooling it into one person.”

  There was a loud murmur going up in the dining hall. A shout from behind Kelsey alerted her to the presence of Agnes, who had her hands on her hips and was fuming.

  “Do they know?” Kelsey demanded, gesturing to the students. She could see, plainly, from the look on Agnes’s face, that they did not know, and she did not want Kelsey to tell them.

  Suddenly, the path ahead was clear. She didn’t have to make a choice between slowly losing her magic on the serving line or becoming an unwitting vampire. She could tell everyone what she knew and let truth win the day.

  Darting out from behind the serving tables into the dining hall, Kelsey lifted her hands and shouted for attention. When the room didn’t settle, she stepped right up onto a table, kicking aside a grumbling student’s water glass.

  “There’s something you need to know!” she cried.

  Frank was there, near the entrance to the dining hall, his one eye glaring at her in the first sign of anger she’d ever glimpsed there. He was not amused. But he couldn’t stop her.

  She opened her mouth, then closed it as she sensed the attack. She was quick, and with magic siphoned away from a hundred students, she was strong! Stronger than she had ever been before. Strong enough to throw up a physical shield to block anything he threw at her.

  Anything except…a psychic attack.

  In the instant before the world went black, she remembered the four types of shields: physical, mental, spiritual, and complex.

  We start with physical because it’s easy, and because it helps you get the basics down, but few magicians use physical attacks for that very reason. So learn, but don’t get too comfortable.

  Kelsey knew the instant she laid eyes on the man that he didn’t belong down here by the river. Judging by his single eye, he might not belong in this world at all. But none of the others seemed to notice or care, too preoccupied with staying warm on a night that had started out chilly then somehow, between breaths, shot straight to freezing.

  Something about that seemed wrong, but she couldn’t put her finger on what. And the cyclops man was now on full approach, smiling at her as though he knew her.

  “What do y
ou want?” Kelsey demanded.

  From inside his coat pocket, he withdrew an oversized letter on thick paper, a little like cardstock. This, he handed to her with a flourish. “I come from a world of magic. And I’m here to offer you a place at my school.”

  Christine Amsden has been writing science fiction and fantasy for as long as she can remember. She believes speculative fiction is fun, magical, and imaginative but great speculative fiction is about real people defining themselves through extraordinary situations. Christine writes primarily about people, and it is in this way that she strives to make science fiction and fantasy meaningful for everyone.

  Sorcery’s Preschool

  James Pyles

  The day the witch Agatha Pye first took her four-year-old granddaughter Emily to the same magic pre-school she and Emmy’s mother attended, opened up dark gateways to the past. Agatha had been forced to abandon the mystic realms when her daughter Angelique, afraid of her own arcane power, turned her back on her heritage and married a man in the human world. For years, Agatha has kept her daughter’s new world safe for the sake of her family, but would her grandchild’s nascent exploration of the arcane wonder flowing through her veins be a blessing or the herald of disaster?

  Sorcery’s Preschool

  “Are you sure the other school children will like me, Grandma Agatha?” The four-year-old girl folded her fingers around her grandmother’s hand. The human world was fading away behind them, as they stepped into the eldritch realm of Enderwren.

  “They are going to love you, dearest, even as I do.” Agatha Pye, fondly beamed at her youngest grandchild. For her first day at preschool, her mother had put her in a proper, dark violet dress, and a shiny white ribbon adorned the curled, sandy-blond hair on the right side. Only Emily knew that beneath her skirt, she was wearing her special “Upside Down Unicorn” brand underwear. Grandma had given her several pair as a present for her birthday last June.

  “My brother said the kids in the neighborhood don’t like me because they’re scared of me.” Emily’s lower lip jutted out as she pouted.

  “Older brothers can exaggerate a bit.”

  “Danny says I scare him, too, sometimes. I don’t mean to, Grandma.”

  Agatha stopped, the scenery around them still shimmering turquoise and gold as they stood on the threshold between two domains. “Listen to me, young lady.” The woman knelt down, folds of her silken black dress gathering under her. “I know what it’s like to be different. Yes, different can be scary to some people, even brothers.”

  “Even Mommy and Daddy, especially Daddy.” The child looked down at her tan shoes, toes wiggling inside of her black tights. She felt her face getting hot and her eyes tearing up.

  Grandma put her arms around Emily’s tiny frame. “They just need to see you the way I do. I promise, it’s all going to work out.”

  “You’re taking me to preschool so they can teach me to not use magic anymore.” Her voice was muffled against Aggie’s warm chest.

  “It’s the same preschool your Mommy and I went to a long time ago. They’ll teach you, just like they did me, how to practice control.”

  “You mean stop using it at all. That’s what Mommy did.” The girl’s muffled tones didn’t hide her resentment.

  Agatha pulled away and looked at Emily’s wet, reddened eyes. “Your Mommy made a decision about her life. She has the right to do that. But her decision doesn’t have to be yours.”

  “Can I decide like you did?” Em’s lips tried to form a smile, and a wee sense of hope emerged.

  “If you want, but remember this. When you make it, then it will be your decision, not mine. However, if you really desire to follow in my footsteps, that means you can’t do whatever you want, whenever you want.”

  “Why not? You do.” Now she was defiant.

  “Believe me, child, no, I don’t. Why if I did…” The grandmother stopped before she let herself entertain what exactly she would do in and to the world if she lost control.

  “Would people get scared of you?”

  “I don’t want to scare people, well, good people anyway.” Agatha’s smile twisted mischievously causing Emily to giggle.

  “We need to keep walking. Mustn’t be late for your first day.” Grandma stood again, allowing her long, onyx gown to slide to her ankles, sheer material hugging very youthful and robust curves.

  “Part of why people like you and me go to school is to learn to stay safe.”

  “Safe?” Emily wiped the last of her tears from her cheeks and peered up quizzically.

  “You know. Like how Mommy and Daddy have you look both ways before crossing the street. Then they have you hold their hands when you cross. Keeping you safe is part of showing how much they love you.”

  The glistening transition faded like mist giving way to a late summer sun. Now the pair were walking up a gray, flagstone path in what could have been the Scottish highlands. A broad, azure lake was at their backs as they climbed the low hill. The chill breeze whiffed down from above, mussing their tresses.

  “But I can fly across the road like this.” The little girl grinned as her feet slowly lifted above the earth.

  Feeling her rise, a quick series of muttered words left the woman’s lips, and her granddaughter once again took to the ground. “Into your mother’s old, elementary spell books, I see.” Agatha sounded displeased, but hid her secret smile. Then she realized, “But you can’t read yet.”

  “You’re no fun, Grandma,” the child whined, her face scowling. “And I can so.”

  “Love also means keeping everyone else around you safe, too.” The older woman decided to pursue the issue of reading later.

  “How is flying dangerous?”

  The path curved around the grassy hill to the left, and Agatha’s heart quickened in spite of herself. It had been ages since she had visited the Tabbinshire School of Magic and Sorcery, especially the preschool. The long, emerald stalks undulating with the gusts, took her back to a time when she was a young pupil beginning her own journey of discovery.

  “Flying is very dangerous. I got more bumps and bruises when I first learned to fly than you can possibly imagine, and I started older than you.”

  “But flying isn’t dangerous to anyone else.”

  “It is if it makes someone scared.”

  “Why should it matter if people get scared? You always tell me to do my best. Well, magic is what…”

  “Yes, do your best, but you have to know where and when to exercise your abilities. People are…”

  “People are stupid.”

  Agatha rolled her eyes and squelched her initial response.

  “People are, well…people.”

  “You mean people like Daddy and Danny who can’t do magic? Mommy can, but she won’t, and she tells me not to do it, either.”

  “Emily dear, magic is in our blood. We will always have it with us. But we must use it in love, otherwise the gift becomes a curse.”

  “Huh?”

  “I know. It’s hard to understand, sometimes.”

  “I do want to be a good girl, Grandma Agatha. I want to make Mommy and Daddy happy.”

  “And your brother.”

  “He’s a pest sometimes…”

  “And…”

  “I love him, too, Grandma. I guess I don’t want him to be scared of me, either.”

  “Then when you learn what I learned, that’s when you’ll show them how much you love them.”

  “If you say so, Grandma, but…”

  “Yes?”

  “This is a magic preschool, right?”

  “Of course, it is.”

  “And the other kids and the teachers use magic right?”

  “A little more complicated than that, but yes.” Agatha saw where the child was leading but decided to go along.

  “Then part of learning not to use magic is learning when to use magic, right?”

  “Yes, but with control. Remember what Yoda said to Luke.”

  Emily giggl
ed, recalling how much fun it was to watch those old movies with her parents and brother. She could still taste the hot, buttered popcorn they all ate while snuggling together on the sofa every “movie night.”

  “Okay, but just one thing.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Do I get my own wand?”

  “My dearest child, you are far, far too young for a…oh, here we are.” Agatha laughed because it was like the girl was asking if she could pilot her own car…or attack helicopter.

  Completing the half-circle around the hill, nestled between two verdant mounds swept by a perpetual, snow-kissed wind, stood the Preschool of Tabbinshire.

  “Is that my school, Grandma?” Emily stopped, transfixed by the stately vision.

  “That it is, dearest. Like it?”

  “Wow! Danny’s going to be so jealous.”

  “As your older brother, I suppose he will be.” Agatha smiled, both in accord with her granddaughter’s sentiment, and as a wave of nostalgia erupted from a long, dry well of time.

  The pebbles lining the path to the door turned to stones, then rocks, and finally became massive boulders, giving way before the outer walls and towers.

  The Keeper’s Tower was just to the right of the open twin doors, which were fully ten feet in height, and each one half as wide. The tower, made of rough, river stones like the rest of the temple, rose a full three stories, the top becoming a tall, thin spire. There was a warm, golden light shining from each of the five windows, in sharp disagreement with the slate, overcast sky.

  “It’s a converted Druid Temple,” she responded to the child’s unasked question.

  “A what?”

  “Never mind. I’ll explain when you’re older. Come, dear.” Agatha pulled at the little girl’s hand expecting her to hesitate, but instead, Emily tried to run ahead of her. “Wait, Emily.” The old woman, though she hardly appeared such, tightened her grip. “We walk together.”