A Fantastic Holiday Season: The Gift of Stories (11 page)

The teachers and students might live in separate buildings, but everyone
ate
in the same place. The Dining Hall was in the East Building, but although she was starving, Vickie paused for a moment to take in the sight of the School resting in the silence, with soft snow falling gently into the Court.

It was gorgeous. Like something in a book.

The buildings looked a lot like many of the buildings at Oxford University in the UK, actually; Gothic, but in the pretty way, not the morbid way. Stone made graceful. More of the “dreaming spires” that poets talked about. It was hard not to feel a little awe. The buildings were a gorgeous, pale, pale gray, nearly the color of the raw stone they had been built from, rather than the darker gray of buildings aged and darkened by years and pollution.

North and South were the classrooms, East was the dorms for the live-in students, and West was home to the teachers’ apartments, theater, gym, library, guest rooms … all the other things that weren’t classrooms or dorms. The place was set in the middle of an extensive garden. Outside the garden were thick woods that looked really, really old, and impenetrable, although Vickie knew for a fact that the students were actually encouraged to explore them.

Right now everything was softened by snow. The pigeons and doves that lived here on the grounds were all wisely settled in their roosts, and at the moment, so were the ravens and crows that were as much pets here as the tamer birds. Silence hung over everything.

The area in the very center of the Central Courtyard was
completely
clean, but it wasn’t shoveled clean—magic kept the snow off, and for good reason. This was the “landing platform,” the Magical Circle that you Apported to when you came here.

The Magical Circle was a construction built of several circles, carved into the granite of paving in the middle of the Courtyard; it was one of the most complex permanent Circles she’d ever seen. Literally a Master Piece; carefully inlaid in the granite of the paving, it had been put together by the Founders as one of the first constructions of this School. There were five smaller primary circles within the huge circle that enclosed the entire construction, one at each of the cardinal points, and a slightly bigger one in the middle. When someone Apported here, they landed in the smaller circle that corresponded to their Element. Vickie was North, which was Earth. South was Fire, East was Air and West was Water. Your magic wasn’t necessarily restricted to that of one Element, of course, but you, yourself, always had a Prime Element associated with you.

You didn’t
need
to Apport to an Elemental Circle, but it kept things less crowded when there was a lot of coming and going, and it kept the central Circle free for mass Apportations. Just in case, for instance, there was an entire class having a Field Trip. There weren’t too many Day Students like Vickie, so it wasn’t likely there would be much competition for the Elemental Circles when school was in session, but if there was, well, you activated your Apportation Spell, and then you waited, and when it was your turn, you Apported in.

As Vickie stood just in front of the doorway, the door behind her opened, and Dean McGregor stepped out, a tall, gaunt woman with graying brown hair, wrapped in a worn velvet cloak with a muffler that would have been the envy of a Doctor Who fan wrapped around her shoulders, neck, and head. “New to snow?” the Dean asked, dryly. Vickie laughed.

“Well, we don’t get much in Virginia,” she replied. “But I’ve been all over the world, so, not so much.”

The Dean chuckled. “I had momentarily forgotten about your parents,” she admitted. “Well, shake a leg, Miss Nagy, or we shall be getting cold apple pancakes, instead of piping hot. There is only one cook on duty during vacation, and she is justifiably disinclined to linger about for the sake of someone tardy.”

Vickie was exceptionally short, and the Dean was exceptionally tall, so she had to trot to keep up. “What do we do if there’s a blizzard?” she asked. “Or if we get sick?”

“If there is a blizzard, there is a small, well-stocked kitchen available to us in West Building. It’s right next to the laundry-room. Given your self-sufficiency, I assume you can cook?” At Vickie’s nod the Dean continued. “You may feel free to use it at any time, of course, although during vacation we assume you will clean up after yourself, as we allow most of the employees their holidays as well as the students. If you are ill, you must let me know, and I’ll make sure that meals are brought to you and someone keeps an eye on you.”

“Is anybody staying here besides me?” she asked, trying to
not
get a lump in her throat at the thought of being all alone here, with no one her age, for three weeks.

“Not staying the entire vacation, no.” When Vickie looked up, she saw the Dean’s mouth was slightly turned down. “It seems that no matter how little our pupils’ parents may care for them, even the most despised are expected to come home for Christmas. But there are a half dozen that will be leaving just before the day itself, and returning almost immediately. You won’t be left
entirely
alone for most of the break. And of course, there will be myself, Professor Sidhe, Professor Dav of Eastern Studies, Professor Yiu, Professor Stanislova, Professor Hakonen, and Professor Higgins here as well.” The Dean smiled as Vickie felt her own expression brighten at the mention of her favorite instructor. “Professor Higgins is looking forward to working with you uninterrupted, so I doubt you will be bored.”

By this time they had entered the ornate brass-sheathed doors of the East Building. The Dining Hall was the first door just inside the foyer, a beautiful piece of wood and leaded glass.

Vickie politely held the door open for the Dean, who nodded her thanks, and the two of them entered.

Since the entire School was based on the architecture of Merlin College in Oxford, it was scarcely surprising that the room was monumental by American standards. And it was
stunning.
Wood-paneled, with stained- and leaded-glass windows along one side, the walls featured oil portraits of accomplished alumni any place there wasn’t a window, and if the ceiling lacked the vaulting of its model (as well as the three-story height—there were dormitory rooms above it, after all) it still boasted more wood panels with carved borders. There was one long table elevated slightly on a dais at the far end—the literal “High Table” where the faculty ate—and three rows of tables for the students placed perpendicular to it. And they were proper tables too, not the picnic-style common to American schools, with proper chairs. There were lamps placed at intervals along the tables, but although there were usually place settings at each place, right now the tables were bare. Only the High Table had been set. There were also sideboards set against each wall, and one of them was loaded down with buffet-style warming trays. Clearly you were expected to help yourself.

Professors Higgins and Sidhe were already seated at the High Table, along with three other students. Vickie recognized two of them, both a year ahead of her. Naomi McCoy and Ralph Emory. She and the Dean hung their cloaks—cloaks were part of the standard uniform here, which tickled her no end—on a coat-tree at the end of the buffet, and helped themselves. Either the Dean had already known the menu, or she was prescient; there were indeed apple pancakes, as well as oatmeal, bacon, fruit and cold cereal and a few other items.
Pretty much what you’d find at the breakfast buffet at a motel,
Vickie decided. But of course, better. She might have hesitated in picking a seat, not certain what the protocol was during vacation, but Professor Higgins looked up and grinned at her and gesticulated broadly at the chair next to him. Feeling relieved, she made her way around the table until she came to the seat next to him. Vickie was one of the very few magicians, ever, in the entire history of the school, to see magic in terms of mathematical and algebraic equations. Everyone saw magic differently, of course, but because Vickie saw it as math, she was not only able to easily learn and replicate spells, she was able to deconstruct them and derive new ones, or new applications of old ones. The more math and physics she learned, the better she was able to do that. Professor Higgins, who looked very like a hobbit but spoke like an Einstein, was the
only
teacher who saw and understood magic in the same way. She was his first pupil in twenty years, and he was utterly as delighted to have found her as she was to get him as her mentor.

The two of them chattered like a couple of magpies about mathemagic while the other students who were going to be here for most of the vacation and the remaining teachers came in. Unlike meals while school was in session, there didn’t seem to be any formality; students and teachers mingled at the High Table, although Vickie was the only one deeply engrossed in conversation with a teacher.

The last to come in was a very young student, much younger than the usual. She looked to be nine or ten at most, when most people came to the school in their early teens. She was very blond, wore her hair in two braids, and looked like a little Dresden doll.

She slipped up to the sideboard like a timid mouse, quickly filled her plate, and sat as far from everyone as she could. “Who’s that?” Vickie asked the Professor, who had paused in his discussion to finish his pancakes before they turned cold.

He swallowed the last bite. “Heidi Dortmund,” he said. “Sad case, that. Her parents died last year, and her grandmother has charge of her.”

Instantly, Vickie felt a surge of sympathy—and a little bit of fellow-feeling—for the little girl. Not that having your parents
dead
was anywhere near the same as having them gone, but … well the others were chatting to each other and Professor Sidhe, and she was sitting there all alone. Professor Higgins picked up on what she was thinking without her even needing to say anything.

“Planning on acquiring another stray already?” he asked, his eyes twinkling—since last semester she had been the one to champion her friend Paul against the popular kids in the school who were secretly bullying him. Well, they
had
been popular. They weren’t quite so arrogant now that they’d been caught and punished in their covert bullying, and humiliated by Vickie and Paul to boot.

“Oh, I just think she could use a friend,” Vickie demurred. “She’s kind of young to be here, isn’t she?”

Professor Higgins shrugged slightly, and ran a hand through his mop of curly, sandy hair. “There aren’t many as young as she is, but I gather circumstances were special for her.”

It looked like the little girl was almost done with her breakfast—she’d all but bolted it. Vickie finished hers before the child could escape. The Professor saw very well what she was about to do, and gave her a little wink by way of encouragement, while taking his own sweet time with his own meal. Well, he ate like a hobbit, too; she had never seen anyone who enjoyed food as much as he did, and if he hadn’t been a magician, he’d have been too round to fit in his chair. Before the girl could scuttle off, Vickie came over to her chair. To Vickie’s relief, the little girl didn’t look frightened or alarmed, just wary. Probably not used to the older kids approaching her.

“Hi, I’m Vickie,” she said, with an encouraging grin. “You want to help me build a snowman?”

The little girl just lit up. “Yes!” she said, and that was all it took. Since both of them were already dressed for the weather, and had their cloaks and mittens with them, they ran out to the courtyard together to turn words into actions.

By the time the bell for lunch sounded, both of them were snow-caked, and Vickie had a
very
good idea of why Heidi had been looking so cowed.

On the one hand, Vickie wished there were two of her, so she could spend time with Professor Higgins as well as with Heidi. On the other hand, at lunch, the Professor had been giving her
very
encouraging looks that she read as “stay with the child” over lunch. She was used to being extremely active—she not only took Staff Fighting, she was taking Folk Dance and Introduction to Free-Running—and it was pretty obvious Heidi wasn’t, so by the time supper came along, Heidi was exhausted, and said she was going to go to bed early. After watching Vickie spend all day in the company of the much younger child, the Dean was evidently curious, and intercepted her on the way back across the Courtyard to the West Building.

“You are up to something, young lady,” the Dean said, although in an amused, rather than accusatory tone. “I should like very much to know what it is.”

Vickie hunched her shoulders against the cold. “Heidi’s Grandmother hates her. Or at least, that’s what Heidi says. Heidi says her Grandmother never liked her father, and that her Grandmother thinks Heidi is the reason why her parents died.” She frowned. “I didn’t
say
anything, but she must be the meanest, nastiest woman ever. She treats Heidi like a failing cadet in a military school, and you wouldn’t
believe
what she thinks is good reading for a little kid. Brothers Grimm. The original, unedited stuff, with kids eaten by bears, and dismembered, and drowned, and left to die in the woods.”

She glanced up at the Dean, and saw that the woman had been taken entirely aback. “Well … you
have
been busy,” the Dean said, finally. “That’s more than any of her teachers have been able to get out of her. All we knew was that she was quiet and very unhappy, as what child wouldn’t be, who’d been orphaned?” She pondered a moment, then shook her head.

“Is there any way you can figure out how to keep her here instead of going back for Christmas?” Vickie begged, then ran forward to open the door for the Dean. “What if you said she was sick? Like, bad stomach flu? If her Grandmother dislikes her that much, wouldn’t she just hate having to take care of someone who was throwing up, or worse?”

She paused on the stair that would lead her up to her own room, as the Dean stopped at the foot of the staircase and pondered that. “It’s an option.…” the woman finally said, but with some reluctance. “But I don’t have to tell you that it is a very bad thing for a magician to lie. Words have power for a mage, and what if we
made
her ill?”