Several minutes later, I was regretting my stubborn stance. Any initiates who had been milling around had since disappeared, and I had absolutely no idea where I was. I ducked into one door that looked vaguely familiar and found myself inside the strangest interior that I think I’d ever seen. Every surface was blood red: the floors, the ceilings, the doors. Even the sodding doorknobs gleamed scarlet. Swallowing hard, and hoping that I’d not suddenly just discovered that the Ministry was actually some kind of bizarre sacrificial cult instead of the upright and upstanding organisation it proclaimed itself to be, I darted right back out again. I most definitely had no need to investigate the dark depths of the academy. Ignorance is bliss, I told myself firmly.
I tried re-tracing my steps, but just seemed to be going round in circles as a few minutes later I ended back up at the scary red room. Cursing aloud at my lack of spatial awareness, I briefly wished that I’d already had a Divination lesson. Maybe then I could conjure up some blue snaky light to show me where to go. But then, given the lack of magical prowess I’d so far displayed, it was barely credible that I’d be able to manage even that. I ground my teeth together. I’d travelled through other planes, for fuck’s sake! How could I not manage to navigate my way through one sodding school? This was getting ridiculous. I tried to imagine the layout in my mind’s eye. I positioned the main building, with the dormitories at the front. The weird garden where I’d taken the oath was behind there. The red room was here where I was. Yesterday, I’d been…nope, I was drawing an absolute blank.
Abruptly, up ahead I spied a group of students emerge from another door, walking away from me. I felt a brief surge of hope. Maybe if I followed them, I’d end up somewhere useful. I realised that such rationalisation was probably fatal, but I appeared to have little other choice at the time. I was tempted to jog up to them to ask them where to go, but for some reason I couldn’t quite make my legs move fast enough to gain on them.
“Coward,” I whispered to myself. They were just kids. What did I think they were going to do? Clique me into submission?
Someone pointedly cleared their throat. My head snapped to the right but there was no-one there. I turned round, feeling like an idiot but again there was no-one else even vaguely near me, and the students up ahead had rounded the corner and disappeared. Then something whizzed past and hit me smack bang on the middle of my shaven head. Okay, this wasn’t funny any longer. Frowning, I lifted my gaze upwards and saw that, looking down upon me, was an old wizened looking face.
“Well?” it said irritably. “You’re late. Get up here.”
I threw out my hands in a gesture of utter exasperation, trying to convey that I didn’t have the faintest idea how to get up there. The owner of the face sighed dramatically and flicked a hand in the air. And just like that, a door appeared in front of me. For fuck’s sake.
“What did you expect?” called what I now presumed to be my teacher, with what could only be described as a cackle, face disappearing back inside. “This is Illusion.”
I stood there for a moment, clenching and unclenching my fists. Oh, hysterical. I glanced down at my fingers and saw little flickers of green flame appearing and disappearing. Goddamnit. I was absolutely not going to let my temper get the better of me. No way Jose. I straightened my shoulders and entered the now clearly delineated doorway. The whole red rooms thing had probably been another ‘funny’ trick. I wondered if this happened to all the initiates or if I was getting extra special treatment just to point out how little of a mage I was now or was ever going to be. Muttering the whole way, I stomped up the stairs and entered the room that I was pretty sure the face had called to me from.
Inside was a tiny hunched over figure wearing the now familiar black robes of the fully confirmed mages. It was difficult to judge whether the figure was even male or female to start off with, until the cackling started up again. Okay, female then. I ran my tongue around my mouth, trying to stay calm and not let the continual grating laughter get to me. It was far from easy.
Finally, the figure waved me over to a wooden chair. “Sit there,” she said, with an imperious tone that belied her somewhat frail exterior.
I could feel some inner part of me rebel at even this one small order. Did she think I was a child like the other students? The old woman looked at me. It occurred to me that there was something very odd about her face that I couldn’t quite put my finger on. Her eyes were a sharp blue, even if the skin around them was wrinkled and pale. I bet not much got past this witch. I battened down the overwhelming urge to spin on my heel and walk right out of the room and instead did as she bade, chewing on my tongue to prevent myself from saying anything I might later regret.
The woman cackled again, briefly, then gave me a small bow and withdrew a round stone from within her robes, and placed it on the floor about a metre in front of me. I felt my insides droop with resignation. Another bloody stone.
“The key to Illusion,” she intoned solemnly, “is belief. Believe that you can transform the stone,” she flicked a finger and the thing began to grow before my eyes, “and then you shall achieve. Have faith,” she flicked another finger, and the stone bizarrely elongated itself, twisting one way then another, “and who knows what can occur.”
I leaned forward. What once had been just a lump of rock was now a tiny bonsai tree, its limbs misshapen into a typically elegant Japanese contortion. She snapped her fingers and it returned to its original shape. I tried to look blasé, but I was pretty sure that I completely failed.
“Hold out your hands,” she instructed.
I did as she bade, and she dropped the rock into them. It felt cool and heavy.
“Now close your eyes, and believe. This is not stone. It isn’t hard or cold to touch. Consider the surface. It’s soft and warm, like a blanket.”
I rubbed my fingers over the edge, feeling the minute porous bubbles against my fingertips. It still felt like a rock.
“You do not believe!” she stated sharply.
“Give me a break,” I huffed, eyes still closed, “I’m trying.”“There is no try,” came the old woman’s voice.
“Let me guess,” I said drily, “there is only do.”
“You mock me.”
I opened my eyes. “No, no, I’m sorry. I’m not trying to make fun of you. I’ve just heard that saying before. I’ll try – I’ll do harder.”
She pursed her lips. In that instant I realised what it was that was ever so slightly odd and off-putting about her face: she had absolutely no eyebrows or eyelashes whatsoever. For some odd reason, I found this really rather terrifying.
“It is of no matter. Your time is up.”
“What?” I spluttered. “I only just got here.”
She whipped the stone from my hands and secreted it away in her robes again. “You were late.”
“Only because you hid the fucking door!”
The woman gave me a baleful glare.
“I’m sorry,” I apologised. “I didn’t mean to swear. But I would like another shot. Please.” If nothing else, at least mage was prepared to talk to me, unlike the others I’d met so far. I had to start learning something if I was ever going to get out of here.
She just looked at me. I looked back. Clearly, she wasn’t going to change her mind. I eventually nodded in resignation and left.
Once I got back outside I kicked the wall of the building in frustration, then cursed at myself as my foot answered back with smarting shot of pain. I took a moment to attempt to compose myself but the burn of my bloodfire remained, lingering like heartburn in the centre of my body. Running my hands over my bare skull, I tried to pull myself together. I had to get to Divination now, and I was damned if I was going to be late again.
Fortunately this time things seemed a little easier. I followed the cobbled pathway, heading back towards where I presumed the main building was. Almost immediately I noticed a large red-brick building to my right with a sign hanging over the doorway that proclaimed itself to be for Divination. It seemed somewhat ironic that the one mage discipline that taught you how to find things was the one place that actually managed to signpost itself properly so that you could find it.
Standing outside was a diminutive looking mage, rubbing his palms together. As I got nearer, he smiled slightly and bowed.
“Mackenzie Smith?”
I nodded and tried to smile back, although I was aware that it was probably more of a grimace at this point than a full on grin.
He gestured towards the door, encouraging me to enter. Instead, I gestured back at him, playing the polite game of insisting that he go first. Not that I was trying particularly hard to be polite, of course, I just didn’t enjoy the sensation of having people behind me where I couldn’t see them. Especially when those people had inexplicable and dangerous magical powers. After several almost comedic moments where we silently told the other to ‘please go ahead’, the mage gave up and went in first.
Once inside, he bowed again and introduced himself as Mage Higgins. He had a friendly face, with laughter lines at the corner of his eyes and a mouth that seemed to be permanently smiling. His demeanour was somewhat standoffish, but I could forgive him for that given my academic record so far. At the very least, he was the most approachable teacher I’d had so far and, despite the lingering traces of fire inside me, I felt considerably more relaxed.
“What do you know about Divination?”
I thought for a moment, casting my mind back to what I’d seen Alex do and what had happened when I’d been trying to escape through the Clava Cairns up in Inverness. I shrugged. “It tracks things. Or people. If you want to find someone then you wave your hands a blue light comes out and leads you to where you want to go. Oh,” I added, remembering what Mary had told me, “it also means that you can see into future and read minds.”
I felt ridiculously pleased with myself. There! I knew something and I was not the class dunce for once. Mage Higgins, however, frowned at me in displeasure. “Divination is an art form. It enables the user to ascertain the potential truth, whether that is in the fore-telling of the potential days to come, an understanding and empathy or a situation, person, place or thing, or the discovery of elements unfound. It is not as crude as fortune-telling or mind-reading.”