High School Magical

Chapter 7

Three, four, five, six unicorns appear. They shower us with a shimmering light show. Then a dragon and tiny fairies take the stage. The fire, sparkle, and shimmer are spellbinding. Next, a troupe of elves does a lyrical dance. They glide gracefully, smoothly, otherworldly. Then the singing begins by several other figures that look somewhat human but have a certain quality that I've never seen, or rather felt, when the Hamilton High choir took to the stage. The light, the dancing, and the music feels like it enters me, like I'm a part of it and it's a part of me.

By the finale, my mouth hangs open as the dragons breathe fire, but it's more like a display of fireworks, with the shapes the blasts take: hearts, stars, and miniature dragons.

The elves do acrobatic feats that no gymnasts, not even Olympians—and I've seen many—could possibly do. They levitate in the air. At last, the stage lights up with glitter that rains across the audience.

I'm astounded. I'm awestruck. Gobsmacked.

I'm clapping along with what sounds like the entire assembly when the lights go down and the stage clears.

When the doors open, flooding the auditorium with sunshine, what must be nearly two hundred students surround me. Like on the stage, not all of them are human.

The girl next to me says, "To answer your question that was Chancellor West. Head of school. Most powerful wizard in history. Educator. Legend. All around hero in the magical world. I'm surprised you haven't heard of him. I'm Yassi by the way, and no, I am not a unicorn. They come every year for the ceremony, but this is the first time other magical beings have taken part." Her laughter reminds me of the wind in the woods. "Who are you?"

"I'm Maija. Maija Wessels."

"No way, I'm your socium."

My eyebrow lifts.

"Social partner if you don't know. Sounds like Gibberish—it's an old school thing. I have a list of definitions if you'd like to borrow it. I definitely needed to refer to it at first."

I must look confused because she goes on. "Every secondary student is paired up with a primary student to help them get used to life at Applemoor. I thought maybe you weren't coming." She looks sad as though she somehow knows my tardiness had as much to do with my reluctance as it did Minnie's careful driving.

"Well, better late than never." I try to keep my voice light.

"Never, ever be late to Derrington's class. Her detentions are the worst. Popperwell is good as long as you don't have him right after lunch. He tends to get sleepy and loses track of what he's saying and blathers on and on. In fact, he tends to be long winded no matter when you catch him."

We get to our feet as our row empties.

"Let me see your schedule," she says.

I pass it to her.

"Ah, so you have Derrington first for conservation."

"Conservation? What exactly is that? Like, saving the forest and stuff?"

"No, not exactly. You'll learn about it in detail, but conservation and creation are more like good and evil. Well, evil and good respectively. Conservation is how we protect ourselves against the bad stuff, so conserving the good so to speak. Creation is straightforward: creating good using our magic skills. They could have simplified it and called the classes fighting evil or creating good. Would have made more sense, I suppose."

All I can say is one round, "Oh." I was not expecting that. Wand work, spell casting, bubbling brews, maybe a hex or two, but not good and evil.

"Yeah, it's serious stuff. What else?" She reads my schedule. "You have language arts—you'll learn lots of spells, alchemy that's like potions, arithmetic—all this magic stuff really comes down to energy equations. If you want to get geeky about it, it's like a math and science fusion class. And futurism, which I love. It's a class to explore how the past informs the future of magic."