The Unwanteds (15 page)

“Cute,” Samheed said sarcastically. He set his scripts on
the table in front of him and peered more closely at the three-dimensional paper animals that lay strewn about the table. He picked one up, a green dragon no bigger than the palm of his hand. “What are these supposed to do again?”

“That one doesn’t seem to do anything,” Meghan mused in a puzzled voice. “I can’t figure it out. The thing just flies around in a circle and fizzes out. What good is that?”

Samheed tried throwing it like a paper airplane. And indeed, it circled around the table, flapped its wings a few times awkwardly, and crash-landed on the table. “What gives, Alex? Isn’t this in your specialty?”

“I’m trying,” Alex muttered. “I have a distinct disadvantage here, you realize.”

“That old crutch,” Samheed said. “You’ll never catch up with that attitude.”

Alex made a nasty face.

“Stop it, you two. We’re supposed to work together, remember?” Meghan was growing exceedingly frustrated and cross.

Lani looked up, somewhat bewildered. “Oh, you’re here,” she said evenly to Samheed, but he was busy studying Alex as
he worked. She glanced at Alex briefly and immediately buried herself back in her book.

Alex picked up the dragon and turned it around gently in his hands, mentally going over every precise folding instruction and matching it up to the proper fold of the dragon. He shook his head. “We have it folded properly,” he said. “So why …?”

Samheed furrowed his brow. “Well, it hasn’t got any eyes,” he said. “How’s it supposed to see where to go without them?”

“That’s the most ridiculous—,” Alex began, and then stopped short. Begrudgingly, he withdrew a handful of colored pencils from his art case. “All right. Eyes.” He expertly outlined two eyes and colored them in, giving the dragon deep yellow irises and large black pupils. “There—so he can see better at night,” he said dryly.

He sent the dragon afloat once more, and it circled nearly the same as before. But this time, it landed gently on the table in front of Alex. It blinked once and looked up at the boy. “Oh, hello,” Alex said to the dragon, and then looked back up at his friends. “That helped the landing, at least.”

Meghan grinned. “He’s adorable! I want to keep him.”

Samheed rolled his eyes and snorted, bringing Lani back to awareness. She blinked, taking in the mess of papers and origami animals scattered about the table, and began to watch curiously as Alex started drawing on the dragon again.

“A tongue.” His own tongue poked out the side of his mouth as he drew. “And flames, of course,” he said when he’d added a bright orange burst inside the dragon’s mouth. When he was finished, he sent the dragon flying again. It circled just as before, landed softly in front of Alex, and blew a flame from its mouth that singed the hair on Alex’s arm. “Yeowch!” he cried.

Samheed and Meghan laughed as Alex shook his arm in surprise.

Lani, still watching, said with a bored look, “You have to tell him where to go, you dolt.” She’d picked up that word down in the lounge from Earl, who used it liberally. “Or else he’ll keep coming back to you.”

Meghan slapped her hand to her forehead. “Ugh, that’s it! Of course you’re right, Lani.”

“Mmm-hmm.” Lani nodded absentmindedly as she engaged herself with her reading again.

Alex picked up the dragon again, looking around the library.
“Attack the statue!” he said, and sent the dragon through the air.

This time, the dragon flapped its wings and raced to the statue, streaking through the air so quickly that all the children could see was a green blur. It sent flames shooting brightly from its mouth when it made contact, hovering against the statue’s body for a moment until the dragon itself exploded into a little ball of fire and dropped to the floor.

The statue, a grim-looking ostrich, opened its eyes and glared at Alex. “Do you
mind
?” the bird said.

“Oh—sorry,” Alex said hastily. “I thought you were one of the, um, the nonliving ones.”

“We’re
all
alive, thank you very much. Some of us choose to not to reveal that in front of bratty, unreliable, spell-casting children, however.”

“I won’t do it again,” Alex said with a sheepish smile.

“Sure,” muttered the ostrich. She stretched out her bent leg carefully, as if she’d held that position a very long time, and then limped off to take cover behind a tall bookshelf.

The dragon had, by now, burned up completely, leaving a small heap of ashes on the floor. Samheed went to pick them
up and toss them in the waste can. “Not bad, Stowe,” he said. “Can you make an army of them?”

“Sure, now that I know how,” Alex said.

Meghan caught Alex’s eye, then looked at Lani meaningfully.

“Oh!” Alex said. “Oh, I mean, thanks to Lani.”

“Hmm?” Lani said, looking up, blinking her long lashes.

Alex held her gaze for a moment before he hurriedly looked away. “Hi. I mean, thanks. Never mind,” he said, suddenly feeling terribly self-conscious. In the back of his mind he began to wonder when it was that Lani had stopped acting—and looking—like a little kid.

And then he noticed her book.

“What are you reading about?” he asked.

She turned the gilded page. “Killing spells,” she said.

“Seriously? Wow.” He tried to imagine Lani killing someone. He thought for a moment, and his eyes narrowed. “You’re not going to practice on me, are you?”

Lani laughed. “Depends,” she said. She didn’t tell him that there weren’t any actual spells in the book, just scholarly discussions on the topic written by people with names she’d
never heard before. “I guess you’d better be nice to me.”

Alex felt the heat rise to his face as Lani, grinning, watched him squirm. “Okay,” he said lightly, and then he scrambled to pack up his things and disappeared.

Gaining Ground

B
y the end of the week all the students were ready to begin practicing their fighting skills. Team Warrior class was held on the lawn, and in addition to the hundred-or-so teen students were another hundred-or-so adults and instructors, including Sean Ranger and many other recent graduates. Leading the instruction that day was none other than Florence herself. The enormous ebony stone woman glided across the lawn so gracefully that the children had to remind themselves she was actually a very heavy statue. They kept their toes tucked in whenever she walked past, just in case.

“Students, line up with your backs to the water,” she boomed. “Experts, take twenty paces and face the students.”

Everyone moved to the requested locations. “Experts, prepare your defenses.”

The experts held up rusty shields that looked to be similar to what the Quillitary might use if attacked.

“Where’d they get those?” Alex whispered to Samheed.

“Stole them, maybe?” Samheed guessed. “Or just made them in some class.”

“Stole them? How?”

“I’m not saying anybody stole them,” Samheed said impatiently. “I just figured somebody went invisible in the middle of the night to the Quillitary yard, made the shields invisible too, and snagged them. It’s more likely we just made them here, though.”

Florence cast a withering look at the two boys. “Students! Prepare to fire. Five rounds!”

Alex hurriedly pulled five newly created weapons from his pocket and stood ready. “How would anybody be able to get out of here, anyway?” he whispered again as Florence walked down the row to inspect the weapons. “Just open the gate?”

“Nah,” Samheed said. “That wouldn’t work. It’s locked from the outside.”

“What, then?”

“I don’t know.” Samheed sounded irritated. “Why are you asking me? I wouldn’t know anything about it.” He glanced uneasily around.

“Quiet!” thundered Florence. “Students, fire five rounds on the count of three.”

Alex bit his lip and prepared his first origami dragon. When Florence called out, “Three!” Alex whispered to the dragon. “Attack enemy one.”

He tossed the dragon a little too hard in his excitement. It stumbled in the air and got caught in a nosedive, unable to recover. It hit the ground, exploded into a small fire, and fizzled. “Blast it,” Alex muttered, as Samheed’s dragon hit its mark.

“There’s art in the toss, Alex,” Florence said.

Alex tried again as small explosions could be heard up and down the lawn, some hitting their marks, others missing quite horribly. His second try worked better, but still fell short of the expert twenty paces away. “Blast it!” Alex said again.

He gave up on origami and instead pulled out a splatterpaint
brush. Holding on to the handle, he drew his arm back over his head and, with all his force, snapped his wrist, sending a shower of brown paint toward the expert across from him. When it hit its mark, the paint spread across the expert’s shield and crept over her arm, and within seconds the woman’s entire body was encased in a magical mold of splatterpaint. Indeed she quite looked like she was coated in a crisp chocolate shell, good enough to eat.

“Yes!” Alex cried out. The expert across from him stood frozen in place. Alex looked down the row as students tossed, pointed, and spoke artfully at the willing adults. He watched Lani project resounding words of destruction at her partner, and slowly the adult’s face grew fearful. He began to sob, and soon he turned and ran away toward the jungle.

While Samheed offered random stage-direction orders, causing his partner to run this way and that, banging into other adults and knocking over Alex’s stiff chocolaty partner, Meghan pulled out her piccolo and caused her partner to fall asleep. And so it went, all the way down the line.

Soon Florence clapped her hands. The sound was like thunder. All effects of the spells vanished immediately, and the
experts got up from the ground or came back to their positions, good-natured grins on their faces. “Not bad, not bad,” Florence said. “For the first time, anyway. We’ll do a few more rounds. This time, students, please assist the other students around you once you have successfully rendered your expert defenseless. We are a team, and working together yields the greatest rewards with the least amount of energy.” The statue glanced up and down both rows. “Try different spells this time,” she said.

Lani pulled a handful of paper clips from her pocket. Meghan put her piccolo away and positioned herself to do a fire step. Samheed withdrew a long black ink pen from his vest, and Alex rolled a small ball of sculpting clay between his thumb and forefinger, ready to try his very own creation. At Florence’s go they all attacked and, more confident now, all succeeded within the first three attempts. The experts were immobilized.

“We’re amazing,” Meghan said proudly, as her partner ran off shouting, his feet growing unbearably warm.

“Yes!” Alex said. His clay had formed handcuffs and bolted the wrists and ankles of his opponent to the ground.

“Not bad at all,” said Lani as her partner wriggled to get
loose from the scatterclips, which had gone right through the shield and pinned the expert’s clothing to a nearby tree. “You know, there are lethal ways to use lots of these ordinary spells,” she whispered to Samheed, who was next to her. “I’ve been reading about them.”

“I wish we could start learning them now,” Samheed said impatiently, as Florence released the spells and once again the experts returned.

“Very good,” Florence said. “One more round and we’ll dismiss for the day. At our next class I want you all to return with magic spells of your own design. Nothing lethal, remember.” She paused and gave the students a weighty look. “We’ll save those for another time.”

Samheed’s stomach flipped with anticipation.

The Mostly Secret Hallway

A
fter weeks of intensive warrior training, Alex was so exhausted that he fell into a deep sleep immediately after dinner. It was late at night when he awoke with a start, drenched in sweat. He had been dreaming again, that same dream about Aaron, but, as always, it turned nightmarish at the end when Alex looked back at his brother. Each time he dreamed it, Aaron transformed into the High Priest Justine, who cackled evilly and came at him with a rusted trident. Alex always woke up just before the high priest skewered him.

Whenever Alex woke from this unsettling nightmare, he
couldn’t get back to sleep, so he took to roaming the halls or getting a snack from the kitchen, trying to forget it. Sometimes there were other people around, but generally very few except the nocturnal creatures spent their nights moving about.