And then I took off. The mage issue shoes weren’t really designed for running, but it didn’t matter. I was out and in the open. Life was good. I jogged at an even pace round to the back of the house, occasionally jumping over the odd bush. Once in the garden where I’d taken the oaths, that somehow seemed almost lifetime away now even though it had actually only been a couple of days, I skirted round the statue and sped up, sprinting now. I passed perfectly planted rose-bushes, void of flowers now it was the dead of winter, but with thorns still gleaming in the moonlight; and pruned hedges and carefully raked soil just waiting for the first sneaking sign of spring before being sown and tended. There was no wind, but the cool night air still brushed arrogantly past my naked skin as I continued to pound my way around.

After a while I veered off left and ended up on the cobbled pathways, which twisted through the buildings that housed the different disciplines. I reached out and scraped my fingertips along the rough walls as I ran, almost as if I was double checking that they were real. When I reached the door that led through to Illusion, I slowed for a moment. The gateway remained firmly in place this time. Then I dismissed it and continued on.

By the time I got back to the windows of the cafeteria, I was breathing hard. My skin and muscles felt pleasantly tingly all over as the enjoyment of exertion rippled through me. I felt better than I had done in a long time. Picking up the robes from where I’d left them, I decided not to bother trying to strain myself to clamber back inside them. Instead I jumped up and clung onto the edge of the window frame and shoved them through, pushing myself after them. The sleeve of the robes caught against something so I tugged hard without thinking, realising too late that had been a dumb move as the fabric ripped violently. Oops.

I yanked them off whatever had snagged them and peered down in the darkness, trying to ascertain what damage had been done. The moon took that opportunity, however, to sneak its way back behind the clouds. Shrugging to myself, I balled them up in front of me and headed back to my room to sleep.

Chapter Seven

When I woke again a few hours later, I stretched out lazily like a cat, enjoying the slight tautness in my muscles. Then, humming to myself, I sprang up and padded over to the sink, splashing my face with water. My night-time jaunt had clearly done wonders for my mood, and I felt lighter and more carefree than I had done in a long time.

Craving several cups of dark chewy coffee, I picked up my robes from where I’d left them in a haphazard heap on the floor and shook them out. The only other replacement robes I’d been given had already been sent to the academy’s laundry room the previous morning, and I knew from what Mary had said that I could expect them back by Saturday, but, even in this era of attempting to conserve energy and water by not continually washing, I felt that I – and everyone else in fact - deserved at least one other outfit. All these magic lessons involved exerting a lot of energy, often surprisingly physically so, and being surrounded by adolescents going through sweaty puberty did not exactly offer much opportunity to enjoy an odour-less society. I gave the robes a sniff, but fortunately my foray into the front gardens had somehow imbued them with the soft but not unpleasant smell of damp grass. Less happily, they had the appearance of having been crumpled into a ball and left for several hours – which of course they had. Sighing, I smoothed them out as best as I could and began the daily routine of contorting my body so I could put them on. At the very point of achieving success, and completing the final maneuver of yanking my head and neck through, I distinctly heard the sound of another fabric rupture.

Looking down, I realised that there was a tear running from the bottom hem of the robes to halfway up my thigh. Shit. Perhaps I could get a safety pin from someone later on, I thought hopefully. I moved around a bit trying to see just how obvious the damage was, but it seemed that fortunately the robes were billowy enough for my modesty to be more than adequately covered. I shrugged and figured they’d just have to do. I quickly changed the dressing on my hand, noting with satisfaction that the lacerations caused by punching through the window yesterday were healing nicely, then ran my hands over my skull, feeling the beginnings of stubbly re-growth. I supposed part of me should thank Thomas for the fact that I didn’t have to worry about bad hair days any more. Then I snorted. The day I’d thank him for anything would be the day that dragons flew again through the sky.

Once back in the cafeteria, which I was oddly starting to feel rather at home in, I ignored the fruit plates and baskets of bread and croissants and instead made straight for the coffee urn. The cups on offer were rather on the small side, so I poured myself three and then balanced them precariously over to an empty table.

I was savouring the dregs of the second cup, when someone plonked themselves down beside me. Startled, I flicked my eyes up.

“Hey,” said Brock, placing down a tray covered with a mass of fried food that only a teenager could eat and not feel guilty about.

“Uh, hey,” I replied, somewhat nonplussed.

He lifted up his plate and gestured at me to try some kind of doughy sugary ball thing. I shook my head, and lifted up cup number three instead. Brock grunted and began to wolf down his food at an alarming rate, finishing before I’d even drunk down to the end of my coffee.

Then he pushed his chair back and grunted. “See you.”

I genuinely smiled. “Bye, Brock.” Wonders would never cease. It would appear that I may have made another, if perhaps rather taciturn, new friend.

“Initiate Smith?” called an unpleasantly familiar voice from the other side of the room.

Fucking Thomas. I’d been hoping that I’d have time to sneak another cup of coffee. I sighed and stood up whilst he crooked his little finger at me, beckoning me over. A flash of heat travelled down to my toes as I walked over to join him. Jeez, wasn’t I just becoming the well trained little sham Initiate?

Once I reached him, he smiled down at me, although it didn’t somehow quite reach his eyes.

“I hope you’re ready to begin your Protection lesson,” he said looking over my wrinkled attire with a disapproving frown.

“I can’t wait, Mage Thomas,” I replied, injecting as much fake enthusiasm as I could possibly muster.

A grimace crossed his flat features. “You’re going to have to, of course, get over your aversion to me touching you if you are going to have any chance of succeeding.”

I started guiltily at his words. I didn’t have a problem with him touching me: he just tried to do it at the most inopportune moments. With no appropriate answer, I just shrugged innocently and followed him out of the cafeteria.

When we were outside in the fresh air and heading towards what I presumed was the Protection building, Thomas chose to speak again. “So, I hear that you are starting to win over some new friends.”

I couldn’t help myself from grinning and nodding. “It’s all Mary really. That girl is like some kind of unstoppable force of nature. Once she puts her mind to something I don’t imagine much gets in her way.”

Thomas gave a short bark of laughter. “I can think of someone else not too far away who is much the same as that.”

I blinked. I rarely got my own way with anything. If I did I’d hardly be trailing after Thomas wearing a stupid powder blue nightgown in the middle of the Ministry of Mages’ national training academy. “That’s hardly true,” I protested.

“Really?” projected Thomas with a heavy hint of sarcasm. He began ticking off his fingers. “The Arch-Mage is prepared to free a potential hazard – your friend - from stasis simply because you asked him to. You are getting mage training at the best,” he put considerable emphasis on those last two words, “training academy in the world, even though you are not a mage. You attack me and, instead of being thrown out as you should be, you are offered counseling. You destroy a priceless painting and send a well respected teacher into therapy and nothing happens. And,” his voice rose half an octave higher, “you have now been given special dispensation to offer Protection lessons to a group of Level Four Initiates at the weekends that focus on attack instead of defense as the rest of us actual teachers are forced to give.”

Wow, bitter much? I had to admit that I was surprised that the Protection lessons I was going to give Mary and her friends were going to be allowed to go ahead, and I still felt guilty about Higgins, but I didn’t think that Thomas was seeing the whole picture.

“Do you think I want to be here?” I snapped. “There are a million places in the world that I would rather be than this sodding place. The Arch-Mage will free Mrs. Alcoon – that’s her name by the way, she’s actually a person, a human being – because she’s not done anything wrong and is no threat to you whatsoever. Of course your amazing Magnificence will only do so after he’s forced me to spend fucking years at this stupid school! Damaging that Escher lithograph was an accident and, anyway, I was just doing what I was told. I’m sorry about your friend Higgins and I hope he recovers soon, but those Level Four Initiates asked me to teach them, not the other way around, so get off your fucking high horse and chill out.”

Thomas was silent. You’d think that spurting off my diatribe of woe and getting it finally all off my chest would make me feel better, but instead I just felt angry. Shooting sparks of heat shot along my veins and arteries. I scowled and went to thrust my hands in my pockets, then remembered that the robes I was wearing didn’t have any and cursed aloud, kicking a stone at me foot instead. It went clattering off across the cobbles, bouncing for several feet.

“And here we get to lesson number one,” Thomas finally said softly.

“Oh right,” I drawled sarcastically, “of course pissing me off is just so you can raise some kind of salient teaching point and show off with just how wise and knowing you are.”

“Look at your hands.”

I glanced down. Flickers of green flame ran along my fingertips. I clenched my fists, hiding them from sight. ‘So fucking what?”

“If you can’t begin to control yourself then you can’t begin to control an attack.”