The Chronicles of Brendan Earle, Apprentice Mage.

Dancing

Phoebe

After the meal, the tables in the main hall were cleared back, ready for a dance. Jinnie told me that we could get fixed up very nicely since the Poles were here. That sort of freaked me, to be honest. I mean, dad’d throw a fit that’d get him in the Olympic squad if he knew I was going out with eighteen-year-old boys. Well, he didn’t know, so it wouldn’t hurt him. It was more me I was worried about. I mean, there was no booze or anything, but just, like oops, eighteen-year-old boys, y’know?

As it turned out… Well, no worries about the boys. The Polish guys were just like wow. I mean, it didn’t hurt that the two who came to ask Jinnie and me to dance were very good-looking, but they’d got such lovely manners. Sara always says she gets attacks of desert disease at school discos, but I didn’t have to deal with any wandering palms with Jan. The dancing was all that folk stuff, but there was a caller to tell you what to do. Loads of people made mistakes, but everyone just laughed it off. After a couple of dances Jan and Marcin went off to get us some drinks (lemonade). That’s when I saw Max. He looked a bit down and was heading for the door. I mentioned it to Jinnie and asked what she thought was wrong with him.

“Well, I think that right now he’d like to be Polish and called Jan, ‘cos that’d mean he’d be dancing with you.”

I couldn’t believe it. “Max likes me?”

“Oh, come on girl. He’d carry a torch for you to the next Olympics, Max would. Serious case he is.”

“Erm, Jin. Could you say sorry to Jan for me? I’m just going out and I may be some time.”

“Well, alright Captain Oates. I promise I’ll make sure no one sends out a search party for you an all, right?”

I didn’t understand what that bit meant, but I was in a hurry to catch up with Max, so I just said thanks and ran. I never did see Jan again to say sorry, but Jinnie said he was okay about it. Probably meant he pulled someone else in seconds.

I caught Max up just outside of the main building. “Max,” I called. He stopped and looked around and my heart nearly stopped too. “Erm, could we er, could we just sort of sit down somewhere and erm, talk for a bit?”

Rebecca

When we all got back to the house Ali talked about his idea for another house site and an emergency cache. We could all see the sense in it and sat round chipping in thoughts.

Dara suggested that we shouldn’t wait to get rumbled before starting another house, but should scout out a few good places and establish bases in each of them to be used as and when, a sort of extension to our actions on list.

Ali liked the idea, but wanted to get the whole thing approved by East Gard. He didn’t think it’d be good to just go ahead as we’d not know if we were getting in the way of another operation or not. As we had no sign of another supply train in the area we decided to scout out sites on the next day and Dara’s familiar would take the message up to the Gard once we’d got some.

In the meantime, we’d sort out an emergency pack of stuff that we didn’t need in the house and cache it, then make a list of things that we’d store at the ERV every time we left the house unattended. We all thought we were getting the hang of this stuff.

Xianjin

My heart belonged to Marcin, an’ you could carve that in stone. He was coming to Cardiff after summer to study medical engineering on a scholarship. And after the snogging I gave him outside after the dance he was going to have to see me again or all of his socks would turn pink spontaneously. Well, he was gorgeous, very intelligent, spoke three foreign languages fluently, could fight like a Shao Lin monk, had lovely manners (my Nan would try to steal him off me for that) and would be dead convenient, being in Cardiff. What more could you want?

 Jan, of course, pulled someone else in seconds. I tell you, if I could bottle Polish boy, I’d be rich.

I know that Lai got back in about two in the morning ‘cos she came through the door barely a minute after me. So I asks her how it went like and she ses they were just talking. Grand, thinks I, good start made there, but then I saw she meant it. They probably didn’t give each other so much as a peck on the cheek when they said good night. Well, maybe a quick smooch, but from the look on her face they’d filled in their time well enough without it. And then she just looks at me an ses, “I’m going away for a week tomorrow!”

Aye, well, I knew where that one came from, right enough. So we went off to her room and spent half the night talking about our new men. Rufus the dog I was the next morning, but what a great night it had been, eh?