Chapter4 The best magic academy in the world

Wren Hale's POV

Ruth never talked about them. There wasn't a single photograph of the two of them in the house. I didn't even know what my parents looked like. If the school still kept old enrollment photos, that would be enough.

She went out to sort the papers in the car, and I stood in the yard by myself for a long time. Since I quit school and came back to work the farm, I'd never once thought about leaving this land again.

I never thought I'd become a student at Aurelis Academy. Me, a mage — if Ruth knew, she'd be angry enough to come back to life to yell at me.

I thought about the way she used to slam the hoe down on the doorstep when she was mad, and I laughed out loud without meaning to.

I walked to the farm gate. There was an apple tree there, the first one I'd grafted myself with Ruth's help when I was small — the first one that lived, and flowered, and actually gave fruit.

I liked being needed. It made me feel like I mattered to someone. On this farm, I wasn't extra. I was the one thing it couldn't do without. That was why I loved it here.

Iris must have read something on my face, because she said, "The Academy has a break every month. You can come back and see it then. We'll send people out to help manage the farm, so you don't have to worry about it."

"Are we leaving today?" I walked over to the car and asked her.

She looked at me. "We need to run a full evaluation of your abilities. This year's Resonance Test is set for tomorrow. There isn't much time, so yes — we leave today."

I'd thought there was plenty of time. After she said it, it felt like there was none at all, because Aurelis Academy was half a world away from our farm.

But Iris was a faculty member in the best magic school in the world. She clearly had her own way of getting back fast.

The transfer node was set up in an empty lot outside town. Iris had me stand inside a circle she drew, and told me not to move, not to talk, and not to throw up.

I had one small pack over my shoulder — a change of clothes and forty dollars I'd saved. There hadn't been much to pack. Iris looked at the pack, then at me, and didn't say anything about it.

The circle flipped shut under my feet, and the ground was gone before I had time to be scared. When it came back, I was standing on stone instead of dust, and there were people on every side of me.

The transfer hit me hard. I made it about four steps before my stomach turned over and I threw up in a planter by the side of the road.

My head was spinning, and I couldn't stand up straight. I kept one hand on the rim of the planter and just stood there, breathing, waiting for the world to stop moving.

Iris didn't look surprised. She took a small wrapped candy out of her coat pocket and held it out to me.

"Everyone gets sick their first time through a transfer node. You'll get used to it." She nodded at the candy. "Take it. Academy issue. It helps."

I unwrapped it and tossed it in my mouth, and the thing wasn't sweet at all. It was sour, sharply sour, like biting straight into a lemon rind — so sour that my nose, eyes, and mouth all scrunched up at once. I almost spat it out.

But the sour faded after a second, and underneath it there was something faintly sweet, and the pressure behind my eyes eased off. My stomach stopped turning over.

That was when I finally got a good look at the place everyone called the best magic academy in the world.

The Academy's main gate didn't look much like a gate. Floating magic lamps hung in two rows above the road. The automatic shuttle buses slid along the stone paving without a sound.

Farther off, a black building stood in the air, and I couldn't shake the feeling that it was watching me back.

Many other new students had gathered at the gate, talking and laughing in groups. Then Iris and I walked forward, and one by one they noticed her behind me. The talking stopped, or dropped to almost nothing, and the ones nearest the path shuffled back and made room.

Iris stopped at the top of the steps and checked her watch, a flat silver disc. "I have to go. " She pointed past the doors, toward the far end of the hall. "You go straight in and register. Someone's meeting you there. I put it in the file, so they'll find you."

"Who?"

"One of the Academy's best students." She said. "You'll know when you see."

She was already walking when I said goodbye.

Registration was in the hall inside the main gate, and the line was long. The front half was new students in uniform, the back half was parents carrying their kids' luggage. Nobody else had come alone like me.

The woman behind the counter wore round glasses and a whole row of badges, and her fingertips were stained with ink that wouldn't wash off.

She typed my name into the system, a line of red text came up on the screen, and I only had time to catch one word of it before the wolf ears on top of her head twitched hard.

"Sorry—sorry, sorry," she said quietly, turning the screen back toward herself. "The system does that sometimes. Sign here, please. This one, and this one."

Neither of us pretended not to see it. I signed the last name, and something moved at the edge of my vision.

A cat sat on the edge of the registration desk — short cream-and-gray fur, ear tips faintly pink, a notch missing from its left ear, green eyes fixed on me. I knew it. It was the cat I'd saved on the farm that morning.