Singer of Worlds

Chapter Fourteen: Paper Lanterns Among Dark Trees

“Love is blind; friendship closes its eyes”

--Friedrich Nietzsche

The journey through the device had been a dud.

The class was extremely disappointed that nothing much had happened. They’d followed a path through the forest and come out at a lake, where they’d watch the crowning of a king. Unfortunately, only a few had even ever heard of him, and they were grumbling when they returned through the window.

Scholar Bicurck assured them that there would be more interesting journeys using the device, and by the way she was smiling, Danny was inclined to believe her.

Another unfortunate thing was Scholar Bicurck’s insistence on a research paper. She had used the students’ complaints against them, and assigned them a paper on the king they had just seen. The purpose was the write about why he was important.

So, at the hour when school was normally let out, Danny found herself wandering around in search of the library, which Bicurck had assured them all was on the fifth level. Danny had not known there was a fifth level. In fact, right about now, she was becoming more and more convinced that there was not.

And then, just like that, she found herself before two immense doors with gold and silver inlay and two giant handles. She knew without question that there was no way she could muscle those doors open. However, she hesitantly approached them, reaching out to touch one smooth twist of metal.

Just like that, the door on the right swung open.

It reminded her of Beauty and the Beast, the movie, when the Beast led Belle into the library. Every single wall was covered with books up to the ceiling. Each bookcase was actually four bookcases stacked on top of each other, and at the bottom of each bookcase was a walkway that led all the way around the room. She looked behind her and saw staircases climbing both sides of the doors. Apparently, to move past the doors on this wall, one had to climb all the way to the top level and sidle past the uppermost bookshelves.

A strange thing about the library was that it was completely empty. There was no one there. No students, no librarians, no teachers. It was deathly quiet.

Danny coughed and it echoed. With a slight shiver, she began to wander around, wondering how she was supposed to find a book on King Solomon XII with no help whatsoever.

She lifted a random book from the shelf and saw the word Incantum on the cover. She quickly put it down.

She came to a bookshelf that was actually separated from all the others around it by a one or two-inch gap of space. Curious, she tugged out a green leather-bound book from the strange shelves and studied it. She did not want to get in trouble for doing something she was not supposed to.

All that graced the cover were strange symbols and the outline of what looked to be an animal. Danny ran her fingers over it curiously, tracing it and eventually deciding that it was a fox. The bushy tail was what decided her, coupled with the pointy ears. It certainly was not a squirrel.

Looking around, making sure there was no one else present, she settled down at a table and opened the cover.

At first, every single page within the book was blank.

Then, slowly, as if a ripple passed over the page, she caught a glimmer of writing. It came again, shimmering gold before disappearing once again.

And gradually, like a shade was slowly being drawn, the characters appeared, clear as day, across the pages. They were like nothing she’d ever seen, which was not surprising. She ran her fingers over the writing, much as she had done with the engraving of the fox. She tried to translate the characters into the letters they resembled, but the only ones she could see as being vaguely earth-like were the occasional ‘b’, ‘y’, and ‘m’.

Without realizing it, Danny began to fumble with the coin in her pocket again. It was becoming familiar, warm, and she often slipped her hand in her pocket now to flip it through her fingers.

And it happened. Strange things were always happening around her, it seemed, but this one took the cake. The book snapped shut, barely missing the tips of her fingers.

She scooted back quickly, making a screeching sound on the stone floor that she did not even notice.

As if magic were wrapping itself around the book, a swirl of color blanked it from view, and then a ghostly outline of pale yellow began to shudder and crackle around it.

And then there was a fox sitting on her desk.

She jumped to her feet, and the creature regarded her curiously. Cautiously, she reached out. It immediately began weaving itself around her hand, chittering happily.

The doors opened. She turned, saw Scholar Raxin, and shoved past him without a word, running the rest of the way to Miss Gungalor’s house.

“Okay, tell me it’s not strange that, even though she has absolutely no affinity for Earth magic, the Earth Methodi are all over her.”

A mumbled agreement.

“She shouldn’t even be able to see them, she’s so abominable at the magic, and yet, here we are. She’s conjured a fox without doing anything.” Raxin whirled around when Net only said something under his breath. “What is wrong with you?”

“I just think we should wait for Scholar Wimple,” he said with a sigh, straightening in his chair as he prepared to appease his friend. Scholar Raxin shook his hand and his head at Scholar Net.

“No, don’t. Don’t get that look on your face. I don’t need to be calmed down. Don’t start with this condescending ‘he’s going to go out of control again’. I can’t stand that. Okay, we’ll do it your way. We’ll wait for Beatrix. But she never showed up last time, and she may not this time.” With that, he slumped in his chair, his brown hair falling across his eyes and giving him the appearance of a mangy and pathetic puppy. Dante smothered a laugh.

The door burst open mere moments later, and Beatrix Wimple swept in, her eyebrows high and her lip curled.

“Why exactly did you call me out of class, Scholar Raxin?”

“How could we have called you out of class, Beatrix. Classes ended hours ago,” Adonis Raxin retorted. She hated it that he was so informal with her; she had seniority, and believed it made her akin to headmistress, a belief Adonis never tired of relieving her of.

“Scholar Wimple, we have discovered something else about this Danarre Keys. Even though we were all aware that she had absolutely no affinity for the powers of Earth, she called into being a fox from one of the books in the library. Apparently without saying a word.” Dante said it calmly, trying to end the impending argument before it could start.

Scholar Wimple glared at Adonis a moment longer, then turned her full attention to Dante.

“That’s impossible.”

Raxin could not help but snort out loud in derision. “You saying that it is impossible doesn’t change anything, Beatrix. It happened. And you merely muttering the obvious in those snippy tones is pointless and self-defeating. We’re trying to figure out how it could be possible,” he said loudly. Her eyes turned a furious green, and her nostrils whitened.

“How dare…”

“Adonis,” Dante admonished. “This isn’t helping anything. We need to figure out who will be going to the Singer’s Isle in December.”

“It’s only the end of October,” Scholar Wimple dismissed with a scoff. “And you aren’t seriously considering taking her along, are you? Why, she shows absolutely no promise. That would be a complete waste of a spot.”

“That’s not entirely true,” the Sorcery teacher said in a more subdued tone than usual. “She shows an immensely mature understanding of fire. And Dante…excuse me, Scholar Net has mentioned that, aside from her inability to use Earth in his class, she has enormous potential. Dinitus mentioned something earlier this year, though there has been no follow up. In fact, the only name I’ve heard mentioned more is that of Sala Aladar. And of course Felix.” He sneered at this last name.

“You leave that poor boy alone,” Scholar Wimple admonished. He openly rolled his eyes at that.

“That ‘poor boy’ uses every opportunity available to piss me off…”

“Don’t pretend like you don’t do the same to him. You use his family against him. It thought you were above that, Adonis,” Net interjected, seemingly indolent in his scholars’ robes, but his eyes alert.

Scholar Raxin looked like he wanted to respond angrily to that, but he got himself under control with a bit of effort.

“All right. But bringing the Keys girl would not be a waste. She could be one of the Charn, for all we know. Many signs point to it. And we need to figure out what’s wrong with her, magically. And if the Council isn’t impressed with her, there’s always…Felix.” He spat out the name and waved away Scholar Net’s steady gaze. “He’s a good student, I know. I had him last year, remember?”

“Yes. I also remember him nearly failing that last semester. In fact, if Ardanata hadn’t intervened…”

“So I resent him. Is it any wonder? At any rate, I’m very nearly over it, so you should try to get over it as well. Is that all? I need to ready the room for tomorrow’s exercise.” He straightened briskly, not expecting either of them to object.

“I want you to stop belittling the Keys girl,” Net finally blurted out. He appeared to be slightly amazed he’d mentioned it, but he meant what he’d said. “Every day she looks terrified to leave my class.”

“I’m toughening her up.”

“You’ll break her.”

Scholar Raxin studied him silently for a moment, and then left without another word.

November came quickly and passed even quicker. The Scholars made it a point not to challenge her with too many Earth exercises, and though she kind of resented their coddling and concern, at the same time she was relieved. She had not made a fool of herself in quite some time.

She was incredibly excited about visiting Roe’s family, and had almost forgotten about the incident in the library. Almost.

The eve of Celedarn came and everyone was packing in a panic. People were shouting at each other, the streets were packed with students, and there were cries of “where’s my other sock???”, “give me that pie! I baked it for my mom!” and “Oh gods! Grandmarm’s coming to our house! Oh gods, she’s a monster”.

Danny’s day was relatively calm. She and Roe helped each other pack, laughing a lot and constantly shooing Bas out of their rooms, where he was making things worse by trying to aid them.

Max stopped by and Danny could see clearly by the way he was so attentive to Roe that he had a slight crush. It was just like school back home. Roe, of course, was oblivious. Throughout the afternoon, the red head oft times demanded to know just why Danny was standing, staring, and shaking her head, but so far Danny had yet to give in to her threats.

“So, what are your brothers like?” Danny asked as they waited on the front steps of Miss Gungalor’s house. Roe’s mother was supposed to pick them up a little after noon, but they’d heard that the portals were backed up.

“Well, there are twelve of them,” she began, grinning wickedly at Danny’s astonished expression. “Yeah. My parents were definitely in love.”

“Ew.” Danny wrinkled her nose.

Roe cracked her knuckled and chuckled. “All right, I won’t make such comments anymore. So, there’s Arthur, he’s the oldest. He’s been working for the Northern Guard for almost three years now and he’s won a lot of medals to award vigilance. Which just means he’s not blind, and if someone or something illegal tried to pass the border, he pointed it out.”

Despite those words, Danny could tell Roe was proud of her oldest brother. He was probably the guiding force of her life. Danny wished she had had an older brother.

“Do they all look like you?” she asked.

“You mean red hair? No. My mom’s a redhead, but my dad has boring old brown hair. I’m actually one of only three of us that have red hair. After Arthur, then there’s Thomas, he’s…I think he’s two years younger than Arthur. He’s been trying to live up to him ever since he was born. He joined the army and he’s some sort of sergeant or something. Dad’s really proud. Brutus just turned twenty-one. He’s the nicest, and he was married as soon as he graduated from the Academy.”

“Which Academy?” Danny quickly asked. Then she added, “sorry” when she realized she’d interrupted.

“It’s okay. The Academy of Combat. He wanted to go into Medicine, but dad wouldn’t let him. Now he’s actually an apothecary in some backwoods village no one’s ever heard of. But he’s happy.” Roe shrugged nonchalantly, but it was obvious to Danny that she did not understand how one of her brothers could settle for a life like that.

“Then there are the triplets. They have black hair, and dad always says he thinks they’re the war children. Meaning that mom took up with someone else while he was fighting. He’s just joking though. Jeremy, Caymon and Jason are all losers. None of them have figured out what they want to do, although I think Caymon might be an artist eventually. He’s great at sketching stuff.” Roe paused and squinted at the end of the street, then dropped her head back down. “Thought that was her, but it wasn’t.”

“So, are you the youngest?” Danny ventured. Her friend snorted.

“No. There are three younger than me. They’re Jonathan, Orestes and Paul. They’re all annoying and they spent all my childhood trying to get me in trouble. But I’m my dad’s favorite. He always wanted a girl, and he hardly ever believed them.

“Archimedes is nineteen now. He’s graduating in a few months; he went into medicine. Dad had learned his lesson with Brutus and he let Archi enroll. Then there’s Marbrach.” Here Roe rolled her eyes. “It’s ridiculous, he spends all of his time reading, and he says he wants to be a scribe. He looks like a wimp, really, but he’s actually pretty tough. When it came to those mock battles, we were an invincible team. He’s gotten a lot more serious lately, though. He wants to graduate early.”

She cracked her knuckles again and Danny winced. When Roe remained quiet, she mentally added up the brothers her friend had described thus far.

“Is that all of them?” It wasn’t, unless Danny had added wrong.

Roe thought a second. “Oh, and Richard! I can’t believe I forgot him. He has the same eyes as me. We’re the only two with the same eyes. Everyone pretty much just calls us the twins since I was born so close after him.”

Danny studied Roe’s eyes, having noticed them the first day and then pretty much forgotten since. One was teal, one was grey with red speckles.

“There she is!” Roe cried, jumping up and, in her excitement, abandoning Danny to go hug her mom hard. A little uncomfortable, Danny remained where she was, and beyond standing hesitantly and holding her hands awkwardly at her sides, she made no movement.

“Oh, another redhead!” Roe’s mom cried, spotting Danny. “Good. We need more of them if we’re to outnumber the mutts.”

Danny smiled slightly and dropped down a few stairs, still remaining apart from the daughter and mother.

“Danny, get over here and stop lurking about,” Roe yelled with a burbling laugh. They were a very close family, apparently. It gave Danny a little twinge of jealousy, but she came to them and was enveloped in a hug that told her she was part of it too, if only for a little while.

After a stressful month of school, it was as if summer vacation had snuck up on her, and she smiled happily.

The portal left her with absolutely no ill effects besides the suitcase she dropped on her toe upon finding herself in a brilliantly green meadow with the sun beating down hotly. Gritting her teeth, she quickly spun around, taking stock of these new surroundings. Trees were behind her, lush and brilliantly green.

It was the most beautiful place she’d ever seen. It felt like spring, without the cloying heat of summer, and the sounds of rushing water reminded her of the mountains she and her father had camped in when she was nine. The hill overlooked a huge dip in the ground that led to, of all things, a sparkling white beach. Along the beach were a series of caves. In front of the caves stretched houses on stilts with cranks and hinges, which led her to believe that they could be raised.

But the bubbly Mrs. Roe did not start down that hill to the caves. Instead, she headed further inland. The top of the hill was crowded with laughing, happy people, and Danny was glad to be a part of it all.

It grew quieter, more muffled as the sounds of people faded. And the roaring of a waterfall took their place. Very strange indeed, Danny thought.

The waterfall was not very tall, she saw once they reached the clearing. But midway down the drop, a huge, glass dome jutted. Most of the water parted to the sides, but some slid over the panes, distorting from view whatever was inside. Where the dome hit the pool of water at the bottom of the falls, a platform spread outward, just underneath the surface until the middle of the small lake or pond. A second building stood there.

“Is that…?” Danny started, gesturing at the entirety of the structure.

“My home,” Roe finished smugly.

Danny felt a prickling on the back of her neck and turned quickly, but not so quickly as to alarm her friend and Roe’s mother. Seated at the edge of the forest was a family of foxes, their heads tilted to the side in curiosity.

This is not a cliff-hanger