Seventeen Stones (31 page)

It
generally behaved if Professor Cavendish or Mia were nearby.  Professor
Cavendish was already very fond of the tree.  “Now, now, none of that!”  His
tone was that of an indulgent uncle.  The tree’s root stopped inching toward
the leg of a passing student and returned to the ground.  The boy gulped and
hurried along, eager to get out of reach of the roots.

A
few high-ranking parents complained about the behavior, but the headmistress
stood firm.  The tree was staying; those who didn’t like it could find another
route to class.  Professor Cavendish complained that the apple tree was better
behaved than a lot of his first year students.  “At least the tree has never
slipped a behemoth into the orchards or let pixies into the greenhouses.”  He
was still looking for the person who had endangered his fruit trees earlier in
the year. 

The
Professor had placed a powerful magical barrier between the tree and anyone else. 
The ripe red fruit hanging from its branches might have overcome some people’s
common sense, and he didn’t want that on his head.  “Fruit from a magical apple
tree?  We’ll have to test it of course, but it could do anything, anything at
all….it could give the person who took a bite immeasurable wisdom, or turn them
into a yak.  There’s no way to tell unless someone wants to volunteer.”  No one
wanted to volunteer so the Professor had to use a battery of tests instead.

The
Professor had a small but complete lab set up in the back of greenhouse two. 
“This powder will ignite if the substance it comes in contact with causes size
changes.  That normally only happens with mushrooms, but one can never be too
careful.  We’ll put another slice in this mixture” he muttered as he swirled a
bright red potion in a glass beaker “if it turns blue we’ll know that the
apples have transformative properties.”  He hurried to another table where he
turned an open flame on high under a strange looking glass tube.  His frenzied
battery of tests, random scribbles on a small note pad, and constant muttering continued
until there were experiments on every surface.  “That’s all we can do for
now…no wait.”  He motioned her outside and summoned a battered bird cage from
some dusty corner. 

In
the stone courtyard in front of the greenhouses, he pointed his wand at a
particularly fine looking pigeon.  “Domina Avain”.  The bird hopped into the
cage.  He willingly gobbled the slices of apple the professor fed him.  “Good
enough.  I’ll have the results of the test by next class…you and I will discuss
it then.  I think you deserve that much, since you were the one who nearly
died.” 

Mia
was certain that the polite thing to do in this instance was thank the
professor, though she didn’t feel much like thanking anyone.  She was of two
minds regarding the tree.  It
had
nearly killed her, it was an unknown
magical organism, and it had demonstrated a slightly cruel sense of humor by
tripping the students.  On the other hand, it was a plant who demonstrated a
sense of humor.  That was so amazing that it almost negated the rest.  One
moment she was certain that she would never let anyone harm it, no matter how
dangerous it turned out to be.  The next second she was contemplating taking an
ax to it herself.      

Professor
Cavendish couldn’t hide his excitement when Mia walked into Botany again.  He
quickly assigned the rest of the class to re-potting seedlings, and
half-dragged Mia into the lab.  The pigeon was sleeping in the cage; his green
head nestled under a wing.  The sudden light woke him.  Mia automatically
apologized. 

“Oh
that’s alright.” said the pigeon.  Mia looked up at him and looked back to the
professor.  “Wow.  How’d he do that?”  The Professor shrugged.  “I’m not sure. 
Normally I wouldn’t think a bird’s beak would make human sounds, but parrots
do…but I’m no expert on animals, you’d need Professor Stoats for that.  I’m
glad you could hear him.  I was worried at first that I’d developed animal
speech, and I’m far too old to be developing new powers.”  That was the truth. 
Normally a person’s full array of talents showed up in one form or another by
thirteen, though there were a few exceptions.  Some people developed new
talents as late as eighteen.  

Professor
Cavendish continued.  “It seems to work for about six hours on the pigeon. 
I’ve fed him six or seven slices over the past few days.  I haven’t noticed any
untoward side effects…”  The bird bristled its neck feathers indignantly. 
“Well jolly good for you!  No untoward side effects indeed.  Do you know what I
was just thinking about?  Tomorrow, that’s what!  No self -respecting pigeon
thinks about tomorrow.  Honestly!  And that’s not the worst of it either. 
You’ve stuffed all this human nonsense into my head…you see that sign over
there?  It says Warning: Dangerous Potions!  How in the sky would I know that? 
Oh, and worst of all, I know I’ve been in here for four days.  That nest-wrecker
Short-Wing is probably preening over my mate!” 

Mia
asked “Who is Short-Wing?”  The bird made a sound much like a disdainful
snort.  “He’s the dark green male with the purple markings that likes to roost
in the statue of Horatio Humphries near the theater building.  I really do have
other things to do Professor, besides sit around eating my own weight in apples!” 
Professor Cavendish smiled a bit.  “I’m afraid you’re stuck with us for a
bit.”  He opened his beak and the Professor held up a finger.  “Another word
and I’ll being Fluffy, my wife’s cat to visit you.”  The bird squeaked and
tried to unsuccessfully hide behind its water dish.

Mia
looked at the pigeon in concern.  “You wouldn’t really feed him to the cat,
would you Professor?”  The Professor grinned and whispered “I might bring
Fluffy in to give him a bit of a scare, but truthfully, she’s so lazy that she
wouldn’t eat that bird unless I killed him, plucked the feathers, and cooked
him for her.  She’s my wife’s cat, which means she’s terribly spoiled.” 

Professor
Cavendish led her to a small table and chairs and asked her to pour the tea
that was suddenly there.  “Mia, if anything bad happens I want you to call Mrs.
Bennett and leave.  This is my decision.”  She’d been so preoccupied that she
hadn’t noticed the apple in his hand until after he’d taken a large bite.  She
stared up at him.  He shot her an apologetic look.  “Someone had to try it. 
None of the tests indicate toxicity, and it didn’t hurt the bird.  We’ll just
give it a few minutes and see.  Whatever happens ought to happen quickly.”  He
encouraged her to eat some of the jam tarts, and she did, though she didn’t
have an appetite.  He didn’t even sip his tea.  He was in the middle of
discussing the herbal field guide when his eyes suddenly lost focus. 

Mia
lifted her wand, quite ready to haul him to Mrs. Bennett if need be.  Professor
Cavendish shook his head and seemed to focus on something in the corner of the
lab.  He pulled out his wand and a mouse zoomed out of a corner and landed at
his feet.

It
was without doubt the oddest conversation Mia had ever been privy to.  The
Professor spoke in his normal voice while the mouse answered in squeaks and a
lot of whisker twitches.  It seemed to wear off quickly, before ten minutes had
passed the mouse suddenly scampered off to the edge of the lab and disappeared
into a hole in the wall.  The Professor chuckled.  “I owe that little fellow a
slice of cheese.”  Mia, who didn’t like mice, wrinkled her nose at the thought
of deliberately feeding them anything, other than a departure draft.

“I believe that this is the end of our lesson for
today, my dear.  In fact, I think I’ll cancel the rest of my classes for the
day.  This sort of adventure is a young man’s purview.  Jot down a note, won’t
you, and hang it on the door of the greenhouses.  I forget sometimes that I’m
not a young pup of fifty-seven anymore…”  He grinned and she saw the shadow of
the man he’d been in his youth.  “In fact I’m not a young man of ninety-seven
anymore.  In two weeks I will be 166 years old.  My wife teases me about being
a younger man; she’s eight months older than I am, turned 166 last fall…”  He shook
his head and smiled again, this time obviously thinking about something that
happened years before. 

***

Professor
Cavendish took no visible harm from eating the apple, but the stress affected
him more than Mia would have believed.  He moved slower, thought slower, and
began to show those little signs of ageing that he had avoided for so long.  No
one was surprised that he announced that he would be retiring at the end of the
year.  Mia broke into tears when he told her, but he patted her hand, loaned
her his handkerchief, and invited her to tea at his home.

“My
wife insists on it my dear.  She wants to meet the young lady she’s heard so
much about over the last months.”  He chuckled softly.  “I’ll give you fair
warning that she probably intends to set you up with one of the
great-great-great grandsons or nephews.  She keeps up with all that.  I don’t
even recognize most of them when I see them.  Well except Rosy of course. 
She’s my oldest great-great-great granddaughter.  She’s my wife’s favorite,
spends lots of time helping my Betsy with the flowers…I wish she’d shown more
talent for Botany, but she’s not interested in growing the plants.  She likes
to chop them up and make them into something else.  Always has.”  It hadn’t
occurred to Mia that her Alchemy professor might be related to anyone at the
college.  To think of Professor Ambrose as her doting however-many-times-great-grandmother’s
favorite was interesting. 

***

Several
weeks passed with no visible repercussions from the apple tree incident. 
Professor Fain was still worried.  He pushed her as far as he dared in each
session.  She started meeting him on some afternoons as well.  She walked into
the music room after her last class.  He pulled out his leather satchel and dug
around inside for a moment, finally pulling out a book.  “You won’t find this
one in the library.  It’s been outlawed for thirty years because it was linked
to too many fatalities in legal duels.”  It was entitled
Fighting Dirty: A
Wand Wielder’s Guide
.  Her eyes sparkled as she read the title and he
laughed.  “This isn’t dueling.  There are rules in dueling.  This book contains
spells that are beneath the dignity of any respectable wand wielder, and some
purely physical tricks for self defense.  I’ll bring a dummy next practice
session and you can try a few of them out.  Read it.  Learn it.  Use it only if
your life is in danger.”  Very soon, if someone tried to harm her she’d be able
to protect herself, and any friends who might be nearby.  It made her feel much
better about the situation.  This was much better than the poor excuses for
lessons that she’d managed with Professor Patrick while he was so ill.

“Mia!” 
She looked up when Sarah shouted her name.  She’d been practicing the wand
movement for a nasty hex that melted the floor beneath an opponent.  The book
had a whole section of those sort of spells.  They were aimed at the
environment around the wand wielder, and not the wand wielder themselves.  It
avoided any shields that a person might have set on their clothing or shoes. 
It wasn’t wise to anchor a shield spell to your skin.  If the shield was
overtaxed it could rebound and burn the wand wielder, sometimes killing them. 

There
was another informative section entitled “Using What You Have”.  The author
instructed duelists to blind their opponents with sand, dirt, leaves, snow, or
any other thing that might be in the area.  It made a lot of references to
Dueling
for Dunces
.  That book was also out of print, probably because it had a lot
of good information in it.  She was going to do her best to find a copy.

“We
have a snack, if you’re interested.”  Sarah’s tone implied that she had better
be.  Since the tree incident the girls were bossing her with apparent relish. 
Mia marked her place in the book and grabbed one of the sandwiches. 

The
others were doing homework.  Vivian had her cauldron out and was using her
natural gift for flames to control the temperature on what looked like a very
passable cold and congestion concoction.  Lizzy and Beth were complaining about
Professor Stoats’ latest project: each student was supposed to hatch a golden
goose egg.  The shiny eggs would hatch only if they were kept at an exact
temperature for the entire incubation period of sixteen days.  The birds were
notoriously bad mothers, so for commercial purposes the eggs were hatched by
wand wielders.  Their shiny shells (which were pretty, but chemically far
removed from gold) were ground up and used to tan the inside of furs.  The
process left them as soft and flexible as leather, but totally waterproof.  It
was very important to the inhabitants of some of the northernmost citizens of
the City.

Sarah
was doing a special research project for Professor Tate.  “I’m going through
these old diaries and looking for any mention of the spells they used to set up
the City.  Our founders had appalling handwriting.”  Sarah was wearing a pair
of multiple lens glasses just like the pair Professor Tate had worn the first
day of class.  Apparently some of the diaries were encoded.

Mia
poured another cup of tea and went back to her own studies.  There was other
homework waiting for her, but she ignored it.  Learning what was in this book
was more important.

“Are you with us Miss Rusticov?”  Professor Petrov
glowered at Mia from the stage.  She’d been demonstrating the difference in
tempo for a new piece of music.  Mia had been practicing her wand movements. 
She’d thought that the Professor couldn’t see what she was doing.  “If I spent
half the time that you do practicing music, I expect I would show more
progress.  If you can’t be bothered to pay attention in class, I might just
have to clear your standing practice schedule and let other students, who are
more serious about the subject take the time slot.”  That evil shrew!  Mia
apologized.  She couldn’t lose her practice room.  The Professor shot her a
dirty look and continued class.  Mia couldn’t wait to drop the hag’s class.