The Eyebright's Dimension

Chapter Four: A Common Lesson

“Louder, girls!” cried Miss Roma, their teacher, a short woman with dull red hair and large spectacles that magnified the wrinkles around her eyes. “Repeat after me. The girl was hungry.”

“The girl was hungry,” chanted the first steps in Common dutifully.

Kasity mouthed the words as she sat in the very back of the room, bored. She knew Common well enough for these simple sentences. This lesson took place in the one of three Dining Halls located around campus. This particular Hall was on the Centre Quad, where most of the school buildings were located. Here the tables were long and rectangular, and the stools much higher. Small, square windows dotted the walls, and one set of doors on one wall led to the Quad; another set on the opposite wall led to the kitchens, from which the faint clanging of dishes resounded. Miss Roma stood at the front of the hall near the kitchen doors, and Kasity sat nearest the doors leading outside, which lay slightly ajar, allowing a tantalizing breeze to flow into the stuffy room. Despite the dullness of the lesson, she felt glad that all the tests were over.

The first two weeks of Kasity’s Academy life had been characterized by tests: mundane ones, like her eyesight test, difficult ones of arithmetic, literature and logic, and fun ones, like running, jumping, and throwing. Some were just downright confusing. For one test, she sat in a classroom with an older student with pool-like black eyes for ten bewildering minutes, the older student refusing to answer any of her questions and acting like she wasn’t even in the room. After leaving that classroom, the examiner asked Kasity to decipher a message encoded on a sheet of paper. Kasity had stared at her tester with a look as blank as the paper in front of her until she was dismissed. She had done so, feeling sure she had failed, although what she had failed was a mystery.

But now the testing was done, and all the first step girls took Common lessons together in the Dining Hall in place of the usual morning test. Kasity yawned and focused her attention on the Cloud standings blazoned on the wall to her left. Wyvern was first, Sylph was a narrow second, Hydra a far third. Kasity couldn’t yet to figure out exactly how the Academy ranked Clouds; she surmised that academics and athletics had some part. The large bulk of the rankings, however, seemed to be derived from those mysterious contests that she didn’t really understand.

She turned her attention to the wall on her right, where the names of the Council Leaders of every Cloud were displayed in order of their ranking. Morwenn for Wyvern. Gautier for Sylph. All the way down to the last Cloud in the standings—Hadia for Golem.

The bell rang, signaling the end of the class. A loud crash at the front of the Hall indicated that Miss Roma had knocked into an unfortunate older step student carrying a large stack of dishes as he emerged from the kitchens.

The girl across from Kasity pretended to trip, too, and crowed, “The girl was hungry,” in an accurate impression of the Common teacher. This caused titters in the back row, and all eyes in the vicinity turned on the speaker, whom Kasity recognized as Adely's friend, Cairbre, who was also popular and pretty. Cairbre, noticing that she now held everyone’s attention, smiled and smirked. Then, all of a sudden, Cairbre turned away from the teacher, who was still gathering the pieces of the broken dishes, and towards the girl at the table across from them and shouted, “The girl was hungry because she was fat and ugly.”

Her victim, who had the bad fortune of being the chubby owner of a delicious-looking pastry, seemed surprised.

“Haven’t you got enough to eat, Lis?” someone yelled. The chubby girl, who was apparently named Lis, pushed her scraggly hair out of her eyes, which held a bemused look.

“We’re talking to you, Lis,” said Cairbre as everyone around her sniggered.

Lis blushed and looked at her lap.

“Hand over the pastry. You definitely don’t need it.”

Kasity stood up. “The girl was mean,” she imitated in a singsong voice. “The girl was mean because her parents named her after a boy.”

Cairbre’s face crumpled. Everyone knew that Cairbre had been named after her grandfather and that her name was, in fact, a boy name.

Kasity sought Lis’s eyes and smiled reassuringly, but Lis just looked even more terrified and pathetic, cowering at her table and clutching her pastry.

“Our idiotic teacher is still picking up the dishes, Cairbre. I bet we could make it to the dwelling before our next lesson,” said Adely, arriving on the scene from a couple tables over. Kasity grimaced, sure that things were about to get much worse. Adely had a curious expression on her face.

“Cairbre, darling,” Adely said, “whatever is the matter?”

“She called Cairbre a boy,” someone whispered, pointing a finger at Kasity.

Adely turned on Kasity. “Oh. You again,” she said, turning her nose up.

“It’s Kasity,” she said defiantly. “I was just reminding Cairbre that she doesn’t need a fattening pastry any more than Lis does. She already looks like a boy as it is,” she continued, taking a mean pleasure in her words. “A little more weight just might—”

Kasity’s words broke off as she watched Adely stride toward a horrified-looking Lis.

“Here, Lis darling. Let me see the pastry,” Adely coaxed charmingly. Lis, as though compelled by some unseen force, handed it over. Adely took a giant bite of it, smiling a little. But then she turned her face and spat it out, throwing the pastry to the ground. All the girls shrieked as Adely cried, “Disgusting! It tastes like peasant ¬bread! What did you do to it, Lis? Roll it in dirt?”

“You shouldn’t have eaten it!” cried Cairbre, with a hyena-like shriek.

“Where did you get it from, Lis?” yelled one girl, and Cairbre laughed and repeated, “Where did you get it from?”

“My mother,” said the poor and dull Lis, and Kasity grimaced to herself as a whole new wave of laughter started.

“Her mother feeds her dirt!” cried Adely. “That’s why she’s so fat and slow, it’s from eating all that dirt—”

“I saw her trip, and thought she was clumsy. But she must have been going to the ground for some more mud—”

“To visit her friend the worm—”

“To eat with her friend the worm—”

Lis burst into tears.

“Shut up, all of you,” said Adely, and everyone shut up. She walked over to Lis and put her arm around her as Lis continued to sniffle.

“It’s all a joke,” Adely said. “We don’t really think you eat dirt.” Adely turned towards Kasity, a malicious smile on her face. “But do you know who does?”

Lis shook her head as Kasity felt a sudden sense of foreboding. Adely turned towards Kasity.

“Come on, Kasity, darling. I think you are—I mean—know the answer.”

“Come on, Kasity!” yelled several more girls, and Kasity felt herself trapped—she couldn’t talk, couldn’t think—but her body reacted without her mind; her foot found the abandoned pastry on the floor and sent the half-crushed thing was flying through the air. It landed with a smack in Adely’s hair. Adely shrieked and started towards Kasity…but a loud, clear voice broke through the commotion.

“What is going on?” It was Calixte, and Kasity stared at her, flabbergasted. She felt a hot, scarlet tinge in her cheeks. Had Calixte been there the entire time? Adely found her voice much quicker.

“Kasity threw a pastry at me—”

“Adely was calling people names—” Kasity responded, crossing her arms.

“She said Cairbre was a boy—”

“Enough,” said Calixte. “I do not like fighting, but I cannot tolerate tattletales. If you have a problem with each other, work it out when I’m not around.”

Adely and Kasity glared at each other.

“Adely Aé and Kasity Ké,” Calixte sighed after a moment of awkward silence. “I have come to offer my congratulations to both of you. You were the first two to be Cloud-chosen out of a very strong group of first steps. Adely, you are in Wyvern. Kasity, you will be in Sylph.” Calixte applauded, and all the other girls followed suit.

Kasity stared at Calixte. What was going on?

“Ah, Calixte,” said another older girl in a Wyvern uniform, the same authoritative girl Kasity had seen standing near the docks on her first day at the Academy. The crowd parted, silent, to make room for her as she approached Calixte.

“Morwenn. I didn’t expect you to come personally,” Calixte said pleasantly. “I am sure you are here to take custody of your student. Kasity and I will take your leave.”

Morwenn didn’t answer; just stared at them all with a sneer on her face. Kasity remembered the name on the wall. Morwenn for Wyvern. This girl was the Wyvern Council Leader.

As Calixte glided out of the Dining Hall and onto the Centre Quad, Kasity followed, trying to keep up. “You’ll be living in Sylph dwelling starting the end of this week,” Calixte said with an amicable smile. “Oh, and I have your schedule. You did horribly on your SPQ. That’s your Sensory Potential Quotient, by the way…” Calixte smiled at Kasity’s confused face. “You know, the test where you sat in a room with a Sensory student and she tried to make you sense a message…”

Kasity nodded with a dawn of realization, realizing what that odd test had been.

“You’ll be taking Meditation this trimester instead of Intro to Sensory. That’s the only major deviation in your schedule. Have you ever heard of kinesthesia?” Calixte asked.

Kasity shook her head no.

“It is the sensation of moving in space; more specifically, the ability to feel movements of the body. Sensory magic is the mastery of all types of kinesthesia—not just your own movements and sensations, but also the movements of things around you—thoughts, feelings, ideas, subtle shifts in balance. Few people are good at it. Aptitude at sensory is not something one can learn.”

“I’m abysmal,” Kasity said, depressed.

“Yes,” Calixte agreed, a little laugh dancing in her eyes. “But it’s quite alright. Your flying scores are wonderful, as are your Academics. We chose you first, Kasity. You’re good, and you should know that. Just don’t let it get to your head.” Calixte stopped as they reached the end of the Centre Quad. “I need to head back to my dwelling, Kasity. I’ll be seeing you soon.” She paused. “I do have a piece of advice. Sometimes those who deter an argument are stronger than those who fight back. Be careful with Adely.”