Alex didn’t know what to say, and all he could think of was, “Oh.”
“I do not want you to blame Ms. Octavia, for she was following my orders.” Mr. Today rested his fingers on the edge of Ms. Octavia’s desk, but he did not sit down. “All I can tell you right now is this: I held you back because I thought I was protecting you and Artimé, but I was wrong, my boy. You have gifts beyond compare. I look forward to watching your progress.”
“I—thank you, sir.” Alex desperately wanted to know how holding him back was protecting anyone, but he dared not ask.
Mr. Today nodded, and though his eyes were weary, there was a slight twinkle in them as well. “Now get to work.” He smiled and left the room.
Alex blinked.
“Well, that’s settled now, isn’t it,” Ms. Octavia said hurriedly. “Let’s do get to work, shall we?”
Alex nodded swiftly, and a grin spread across his face as Ms. Octavia pulled a component vest from her classroom closet. She handed it to him. “Congratulations,” she said, her smile toothy and genuine.
Alex put it on. “Thanks,” he said, too choked up to say more. Finally, he thought. Finally.
“First,” Ms. Octavia said, “we’ll discuss the fundamentals of magic.” She opened a drawer and pulled out a handful of ordinary art supplies: a paintbrush, a pencil, a rubber eraser, several paper clips, and a piece of chalk.
Alex watched her lay them all out on the desk.
Ms. Octavia took a paper clip, unwound it, and bent it so that it looked more like a triangle, with the two ends of it crossing and sticking out prominently. With her other appendages she did the same to the other paper clips. “Everything we create here in Artimé has a little bit of magic in it already, Alex, so the true basis for these tools to work as weapons is in your mind and your ability to concentrate and direct the objects to do what they are supposed to do.”
She handed five of the newly shaped clips to Alex and kept five for herself. “In this shape, we call them scatterclips,” she said.
Alex soon saw why.
Ms. Octavia glided around the desk and pulled one arm back as if she were going to throw a baseball. “Right now, Alex, I’m concentrating on that picture on the wall across the room. I’m focusing on the center of it, and that is where I want to direct my throw.” She threw the handful of scatterclips, and together all five soared toward the center of the portrait. At the last second they separated and veered to the edges of the canvas and stuck soundly through the wooden frame, into the wall.
“Cool,” muttered Alex under his breath.
Ms. Octavia flashed him a toothy grin, but grew serious again. “Your mind must be able to focus on the center of your target, Alex, and you need to trust that the scatterclips will find the edges on their own. If you do not have faith in the clips, they will not veer properly, and they will not work correctly. So it is important to be calm and to be thinking clearly when using these items as weapons if you wish to be successful.”
Alex nodded, the scatterclips in his hand becoming moist with nervous sweat. “May I try?”
“Fire away, indeed.”
Alex pulled his left arm back and focused on the center of the portrait, then flung with all his might.
The scatterclips smacked into the center of the portrait and clattered to the floor.
Alex’s face fell.
Ms. Octavia smiled. “If you’d managed to do it the first time, you would have been the first in Artimé’s history to do it. Try again! This time, focus on throwing accurately rather than forcefully. The clips have the magical power to get there—we don’t want you throwing your arm out of its socket on your first day.” She chuckled as Alex scurried over to the wall to pick up his clips.
Alex’s second try resulted in one clip veering off beautifully to the upper left-hand corner of the portrait, while the rest of the clips fell uselessly to the floor again. “Well done,” Ms. Octavia praised. “I’ve a theory that left-handers pick up on the throwing spells more easily than the righties do—it was a good one to start with, and you have proven my theory worthy, my boy!”
“Thanks!” Alex said, not quite as delighted as his instructor seemed to be over the progress, but thrilled nonetheless to finally have the chance to use art as a weapon.
“Mind you,” Ms. Octavia warned, “scatterclips are not to be toyed with. They can be lethal, or at least cause great harm when coupled with a verbal incantation. But for now we’ll stick with the silent method. Try again.”
Alex concentrated and threw again and again and again. When their hour of training was nearly over, he had succeeded in skillfully embedding the scatterclips into the edges of the portrait five times in a row.
“Now,” Ms. Octavia said, “throw them at me.”
“What? No, I can’t!”
“Yes, you can,” she said smoothly. “I trust you. You’ll do fine. But I want you to see what the clips will do when you have a live enemy.”
“But—”
“Alex, it’s an order.” Ms. Octavia stood as tall as she could against the wall and made sure all of her appendages were down at her sides and not floating about as they sometimes did when she was thinking hard.
Alex hesitated, staring helplessly at his instructor. “How can I? What if something goes wrong?”
Ms. Octavia stared at Alex. “Alex, I cannot express how urgent it is that you get over your fear. Because one day, I expect sooner rather than later, you will have to fight. It is my job to prepare you. So concentrate, focus, and throw. Do it now.”