Avis Blackthorn: Is Not an Evil Wizard! (8 page)

That made me get up. I put my dressing gown
and slippers on and crept out of the room as quietly as I could,
there was this floorboard right near the door that squeaked loudly.
I made a mental note to avoid that next time. Out into the corridor
the fire brackets were on the lowest setting, I could barely see my
own feet. I kept my head down as I was frightened silly. Left,
right, left, right, I recalled… then the toilets are on the right.
Yes, success!

I did the business and sighed happily, ahhhh,
that was better. I washed, glancing at my haggard, tired face in
the mirror. And I tell you the next second, my bowel’s nearly
dropped. A face appeared in the mirror behind me, out of nowhere!
Scaring the living bejeezus out of me. “
AHHHHHH
!” I yelled
turning quickly, ready to attack.

“Ah! Don’t hurt me!” said the tall cowering
frame of Robin. I dropped my fists, breathing hard. “Sorry, didn’t
mean to scare you,” he said. “I just heard you leave and realised I
needed a widdle. Just about remembered the route.”

I clutched my chest and leaned against the
sink. “Christ, don’t do that to me… I thought you were… Never
mind.”

After he finished we walked back together, my
heart coming to rest. “Warn me next time, you could have said
something, instead of creeping up behind me.”

“Yeah well, I was kinda sleepy.”

I berated Robin some more, I was never gonna
be able to sleep now! Not after that shock. Then, as we turned out
of the bathrooms I saw something out of the corner of my eye — I
was sure I had just seen someone dart behind a suit of armour just
a way off down the corridor.

“You’re not dreaming again are you?” said
Robin.

“No, I wasn’t before… just down there. I’m
sure I saw someone. Come on.”

Robin protested but soon followed. I was sure
I had seen a person dash behind a suit of armour to the right. We
tip toed along the corridor. And then, I knew I was right because I
could see them, illuminated by the fire bracket above.

“Hello?” I said quietly. “I know there’s
someone behind that armour.”

“Go away,” said the voice.

I looked at Robin who wanted to take it’s
advice, but I was curious.

“It’s alright, we’re not Magisteers or
anything.”

I heard the person sigh then step out. The
gas lamp above illuminated the golden skinned, sparkling eyes and
brilliant white teeth of, “Tina?”

“Avis?” she looked like she had been prepared
to give me a mouthful of verbal abuse, but she completely softened
when she saw me. “What are you doing here?”

“I could ask you the same,” I said.

“Who’s lanky?”

“That’s Robin,” I said, as Robin waved
awkwardly.

“We just went to the toilets,” said Robin.
“Not together, well together but…” he stopped.

“Right,” said Tina eyeing him
suspiciously.

“So what are you doing out here, creeping
around?” I said.

“None of your business,” she said curtly,
then sighed again. “Oh fine, look, you both better promise not to
say a
word
!”

I swore, sealing my mouth. Tina looked all
flustered, her brilliant white teeth glowing in the darkness, her
eyes perpetually scanning the hallways all around us. “I was trying
to get into this door. I have a skeleton key but it doesn’t seem to
be working.”

“A what key?” said Robin.

“A skeleton key,” she said impatiently,
holding it out. Robin was fascinated, he said he’d never seen a key
made out of bone before. “It’s supposed to open any lock, but it
won’t,” she said.

The door looked pretty plain to me. “What’s
in there?”

She flicked her hair back, she was wearing
her pyjamas too. “Well… that’s kind of a secret I’m not willing to
divulge.”

“What if someone catches you?” I said.

“I’ll just pretend I’m sleepwalking,” she
said matter of factly. “I’m in my jim-jams already… I shouldn’t be
telling you this… Let’s just say, someone close to me, whom isn’t
with us anymore left me a quest, a big quest…” She turned away and
fiddled with the key. “He was my older brother, he went to this
school a few years ago. But he died and no one knew why… and then I
found this note in his room with my name on. I’ve been trying to
figure it out from then on,” she didn’t say anything else and after
a few goes of the door each, we gave up. We walked back to our
dorm, at the entrance to our corridor she gave me a rib cracking
hug.

“Promise you won’t say anything?”

“I promise,” she waved goodbye to Robin and
went, back into the darkness towards her dorm.

In bed, I continued to not sleep, but now for
different reasons. After an hour Robin sat up and whispered through
the darkness.

“Avis? You awake?”

I sat up slowly, “Yeah.”

“What do you think was behind that door?” he
sounded like he had been thinking the same as me.

“No idea. It’s a complete mystery…” I was
thinking more about the hug that Tina gave me than what was behind
the door, but still.

“It is… I wish she’d tell us. Wow, imagine
being left a quest.”

I nodded in the darkness, then realised he
couldn't see me. “Yeah, I know.” I lay back and wondered what she
was up to, did she even know? She certainly had guts to be creeping
round the castle on her own at night, all alone on a quest left by
her dead brother. How did he die?

Then I thought about seeing Malakai earlier,
I know I saw him. But what would he come to Hailing Hall for?
Perhaps he was after the same thing that Tina was. I laughed and
finally slipped into sleep.

The next few weeks were ok. I coasted along
quite nicely. Me and Robin became good friends again, the incident
with Tina seemed to bond us together. Anyway, Graham and Simon
seemed to strike up a pretty good friendship. We sat together in
all our lessons, which at the moment were just with Partington and
Straker. The lessons with Partington increased in interest, as we
learnt more and more theory, and he started setting us homework all
about Spells which I worked through each night, next to the fire
with great gusto. Robin next to me, would say things like:

“Is a Solvent-Spell under the Law of
Richardson, or is it an Unrestricted?”

I’d scoff and say, “Unrestricted of course!
Says it right here…” But, if I was honest, he was much cleverer
than me. He picked up Magic a lot quicker seeing as he was an
Outsider and I had already done five or six years of basic theory
at my last school.

The first Sunday was a full day off, my god
that was a sweet day off. It was a gloriously sunny day and I woke
up really early, lit the fire then went down to breakfast with
Robin who had toothpaste all round his mouth. When I told him he
went mad.

“Why didn’t ya tell me earlier, instead of
letting me walk round like a berk?”

We were pretty much the only ones in the
Chamber that early, which was quite nice actually, sometimes it can
get too crowded and because there are no windows, you can get a
build up of condensation on the roof which periodically drips on
you. I sat down as food burst onto the table, I loaded my plate
with bacon and sausages and eggs and fried bread. Robin tucked into
some porridge, orange juice, tea, then a full breakfast like mine,
and some croissants for afters. He could certainly put food away,
but I wasn’t sure where it went. He was so skinny you could almost
see his heart beating through his skin, like a transparent fish.
Newspapers popped into life on the table in front of us too now.
Two copies of the Herrald. On the front page at the bottom was a
small headline about Hailing Hall:

“
New Pupils Start a New Year of Magical
Studies.”

“Wow,” said Robin. “We’re famous!”

The front page of the Herrald was pretty
boring, something about Sorcerers refusing to pay tax, and the
leprechauns scrounging off the Magical Council. I never really read
newspapers before, but I felt quite civilised as I sat there
nibbling a croissant, sipping my tea and thumbing through the
Herrald. There was some good stuff too, this is what I learnt:

• The pig people who are in charge of all the gold
want to go on strike because they are not allowed massive gold
bonus’s.

• Mr. Wolfe, the conductor on my train is up in
court, responsible for biting a piggy banker (the consensus seemed
to be that he was more of a hero than a villain, even though the
judge was a piggy.)

• Malakai and his supporters had stormed a local
council in Gilliggan and taken it over, (so that’s what my parents
had been up to).

Robin was very interested about anything
Magical and asked me constant questions whenever they popped into
his head. He was fascinated with that fact that I was born into the
Magical world. Over breakfast he seemed to think of more questions,
perhaps the newspaper had sparked a few more ideas.

“So do you have different races or species in
your Magical Kingdoms?”

“Yes,” I said sagely, folding the newspaper.
“There’s the pig people, leprechauns, fauns, Imps, Gnomes, erm…
loads really.”

“Cor, in my world, we were always taught that
those things were made up, myths and fairytales.”

“Yeah, course you were,” I laughed. “Who do
you think wants you to think there a myth?” He looked at me
blankly. “We do of course, there’s more of you than there are of
us.”

When me and Robin went back up to our dorm
the others were just rising and milling about like zombies. Me and
Robin had just started a game of backgammon, before there was a
knock at the door. It was some of the girls. I was quite glad
because Robin was beating me and I didn’t like losing.

“Do you boys want to go for a walk around the
grounds?” said Jess, who was joined at the doorway by Gret, Ellen,
Joanna and Florence, who winced at the apparent smell that emanated
from our room.

“Sure,” I said grateful for a reason to
abandon the game. Hunter grunted something and turned back over to
sleep, Jake nodded at his sister and Simon snored louder, which I
guessed was a no.

So we all went for a lovely stroll. The
grounds of Hailing Hall are truly spectacular. We went down these
big stone steps in the hill, that wound down to the forests. Far
ahead lay the cliff edge and a huge canyon. Floating just above the
cliff edge was an island. A great big lump of rock, covered with a
wonderful, heavenly garden floating on a bed of cloud. A long
drawbridge hung across shrouded in cloud. The floating island had a
big fountain in the middle with a stone angel statue fluttering her
wings, the water from the fountain went off in a stream and fell
off the edge of the island in a long, white waterfall down into the
canyon. There were benches, vines and little rabbits running all
over it.

“We must go to that at some point,” said
Robin.

“Hmmm…” I said, I wasn't too sure. I
especially wouldn’t be crossing it with Hunter, he was too accident
prone.

“Oh yes, we must!” Florence said, clapping
her hands together.

The rest of the gardens were like some
horticultural heaven. The statues all spoke to each other
gracefully, and the trees sometimes decided that they didn’t much
like where they were rooted, so pulled their roots out with this
weird snapping noise and re-rooted themselves somewhere else. The
forest to the left was lit up by the morning sun and you could see
all the way through it. I could see some of the older years messing
about and chasing each other. Now and again they would do a Spell
and someone would be launched into the air by their backside, where
they hung limp, robe over their heads.

“Apparently,” said Jake, whose English was
getting much better. “Dat game ‘dey are playin’ is called Riptide…
you have to work in teams to get as many of ‘de other team in the
air…” It actually looked really fun.

The path led down through the forest and on
the stroll, we met many more people. A lot were just sitting in the
sun, in the large grassy open land near the floating adventure play
area. Some were doing work where they sat, others leaning against a
tree and reading, or sleeping. Surrounding the forest and grassy
expanse was a great river, big and wide with a gentle current. We
all sat and watched it for a while. It was so relaxing. Some older
years were sailing past on this handmade raft, we were surprised
because there wasn’t much wind. One of them, at the back, was
sitting there with his hands outstretched muttering something. The
sail on the front was caught, as if by huge gusts of wind.

“He must be a weather worker,” said Joanna
fascinated.

Some part of me really hoped that Tina would
walk past and join us. Only once had I seen her, on the way to a
lesson with Straker as we came out, but she didn’t see me. She was
deep in thought and not paying much attention to what was around
her, I am sure she would have said hello, had she seen me. Robin
wondered if she had been caught sneaking around yet. I imagined
saving her from Straker’s icy grip as he interrogates her about the
quest, then she hugs me and calls me her saviour.

She was very mysterious. I didn’t know what
form she was in or anything. Over the coming weeks me and Robin
caught a little more sight of her. She would eat lunch and dinner
at funny times, often when we were just leaving late. But when she
did eat with her form, who we couldn’t distinguish, she ate without
talking and would be the first to leave.

Me and Robin, whose interest was caught by
her… and her quest, wanted to find out more. So, during free time
on Saturday we went in search of her dorm room, hoping she would be
in there. We searched high and lo, but couldn't find anything.

I had seen a rather haggard ghost float
through a wall towards us near the numerology rooms. Bloody thing
was deaf as a stone. I had to shout at it to stop, then when we
asked it (loudly) where Tina’s dorm might be, it just looked
haughty and said: “
Boys
are not allowed anywhere near girl’s
dorms!” Then it floated off back through the wall in a huff.