“I was just trying to help!” he complained.
“Just give it time,” said Ethan. “He probably just needs to blow off steam.”
“How long will it be?” despaired Simon.
“Hard to say,” consoled Ethan. “Time’ll tell.”
At homeroom, Simon had to endure sitting next to Jesse, however uncomfortable he was doing so. However, fortunately this only lasted for a little while as it wasn’t long before Professor Hathaway summoned the guide star to guide the class to the base of the North Wing Needle Tower for Ouranourgy.
In Ouranourgy, Professor Feng immediately instructed the students to gather in the courtyard and be ready with their brooms and to form a circle around a twenty-foot pole that had been temporarily set up there.
“Okay,” she said, walking to the pole as soon as she saw the whole class gathered outside as she had instructed. “Today we’re going to be moving our dial not to level one, but to level two. But not till I tell you to! You will today be doing it only for drills. For your first drill, I will call each of you up, and you will come here and turn your broom on to level two. You will then mount your broom and rise up, as you have learned, until you have reached a height of twenty feet. That’s as high as this pole. You will then fly toward the Needle Tower until you are just a few feet from it — after which you will come back, descend back to the ground, unmount your broom, and turn it off. You will then return to your place in the circle. Any questions?”
Nothing but a murmur was heard from the students standing in the circle.
“Now remember,” said Professor Feng, “today we are not on level one, but level two. That means your brooms will be controlled primarily by the verbal commands you learned on Tuesday, but they will also subtly be influenced by mental command as well. This will begin bringing your practice of broom flight from being about what you tell your brooms to do to being about what you will your brooms to do. This means that you can’t get by just on saying the right words anymore. You have to start commanding the broom with your mind.” She lifted up a clipboard she was holding and looked at it. “Scott Ashford?” she called.
Scott came forward with his broom, turned the dial, and stood facing the Needle Tower. “Saddle up,” he said, and mounted the broom. As soon as he was on it, he chanted another command, though not loud enough for Simon to hear what he said, and the broom began to slowly rise with him on it. When he reached the top of the pole, he had the broom come to a stop and slowly sail forward as Professor Feng had instructed until he was close to the tower. At that point he stopped, slowly turned the broom around, and returned.
“Stand by,” he chanted as soon as he had unmounted the broom. He then turned the broom’s dial again and returned to his place in the line.
“Very good, Scott,” said Professor Feng, and lifted her clipboard again. “Now who’s next? Tina Baker.”
Tina did exactly as Scott had done. After her, it was Lilith’s turn.
“Simon Corbin?” Professor Feng finally called.
Simon came forth, nervously, and stood next to the pole facing the tower as the previous three students had done. He then turned the dial on his broom from zero to two.
“Saddle up,” he said, and the broom hovered as he held it, allowing him to mount it.
“Rise Upward,” he said, and the broom slowly began to rise. “And halt,” he said, as soon as he saw he was near the top of the pole, halting the broom’s rise. “Sail forth,” he then called, and began sailing toward the tower. As his nerves began to overtake him, he noticed his broom slightly veering off course. However, before long, he felt he was starting to get the hang of the navigation. “And halt,” he said when he saw he was halfway there, allowing himself a moment to make a minor course correction slightly to the left, entirely by mental command. “Sail forth,” he said, continuing the trip, until he was close to the Needle Tower, about twenty feet above the base.
“Clock right,” he said after halting the broom, and the broom began to slowly turn clockwise. When it was facing the pole, he halted it once more, and said the command for it to more forward again.
“And halt,” he said when he reached the pole, followed by, “Descend down,” at which point he began his descent. When he reached the ground, he halted the broom again, unmounted it, and said “Stand by,” before turning it off.
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“Very good, Simon,” said Professor Feng. Relieved, Simon turned and headed back to his place in the circle.
One by one, Professor Feng called forth the students in the class, each of which performed the drill as she had instructed. “Mika Suzuki?” she finally called. The girl that Ethan had led to Hemlock Tower together with Simon and Jesse on the day of their arrival came toward the pole. Like all the students before her, she faced the Needle Tower, mounted the broom, rose to the top of the pole, and began sailing toward the tower.
It all seemed to be going well — until she was half-way toward the tower. Then, all of a sudden, a strong gust of wind came in from the forest and Mika’s broom started shaking uncontrollably.
“Steady, Mika!” shouted Professor Feng.
As Mika’s broom continued to toss about wildly, Professor Feng dropped her clipboard and produced her wand. “Trampolinum esto!” she chanted and shot a burst of light at the ground underneath Mika.
“Okay dear,” said the Professor. “Just let go of your broom!” However, as the broom heaved left and right, Mika continued clinging to it. Simon couldn’t even tell if Mika had heard the Professor, who continued casting the “trampolinum esto” charm at the ground. Finally, a particularly violent jerk of the broom threw Mika off, flying at the castle wall.
Quickly, Professor Feng cast two more pulses of the “trampolinum esto” charm - one directed at the wall and one more at the ground. Simon winced as Mika hit the wall, and was relieved that instead of crushing her, the wall just bounced her off like it was made of rubber, sending her to the ground, which also bounced her a few times before finally allowing her to just lay there.
Slowly, the students broke the circle formation and started moving to where Mika lay on the ground, groaning, apparently in agony.
“Stand back,” Professor Feng said to the crowd as she walked toward her. “Stay there, Mika,” she said. “I’ll alert the infirmary.”
As she said this, Simon noticed a faint rotting smell in the air — like a trace of a garbage dumpster.
Professor Feng raised her wand and muttered quietly a few incantations. As she did so, the tip of her wand began to glow with a red aura which suddenly exploded with a burst and vanished before she quickly transferred the wand to her left hand, and then hid it away, as though tucking it under her right sleeve.
“I’m sorry,” said Mika, gasping.
“Don’t be,” said Professor Feng. “That gust came out of nowhere. It could have happened to anyone. I just need to make sure you aren’t hurt.”
* * *
It wasn’t long till a witch and a wizard, each wearing a light-blue robe with a red plus-sign on the back as well as one on each breast, came running onto the scene. The witch pulled from a pocket on her side a light blue box the size of a matchbook and opened it. Immediately, it increased in size while changing its shape and growing metal legs out from underneath that in turn grew wheels as soon as they reached the ground. It only took the box twenty seconds from the moment she opened it to completely transform into a stretcher — one that would be hard to tell apart from any stretcher you’d see in a hospital or the back of an ambulance.
By the time the witch had finished deploying the stretcher, the wizard had already produced his wand and was well into forming a gentle levitation field around Mika. Within a minute, he ready to gently lifted her from the ground without disturbing her at all and placed her on the stretcher. As soon as she was securely on it, both of them lifted the rails of the stretcher and began carrying her out.
All the time that the witch and wizard in the light blue robes were tending to Mika, the Professor had her wand out, chanting under her breath in the direction of the sky over the castle walls. As she did so, the gentle morning breeze that Simon was relying on to blow away the dumpster smell gradually came to a halt.
“Don’t worry,” said the wizard, as the two of them headed toward the east wall of the courtyard. “We’ll have her back on her feet in no time.”
Professor Feng went and picked up Mika’s broom, which had landed elsewhere on the grass. “Okay,” she said, after turning the dial. “I know we all are concerned about Mika, but you heard them. She’s gonna be okay. And we’ve still got a lot of class time left.”
Nobody moved. “I can give Mika make-up lessons later,” insisted the Professor, “but if I have to do that for all of you, it’ll be too much. Let’s get back to class. I’ve put up the weather wards so this won’t happen again.”
The rest of the class went on without incident. Professor Feng called the last few students to do the drill that had proven so disastrous for Mika. After that, she had the class do two additional drills before the bell tolled.
The rest of the day went smoothly, too. Jesse was still sour, but Simon was able to avoid him — most of the time. He sat far enough from him in the remaining two classes, and ate lunch and dinner with his seventh-year friends.
“We don’t mind you eating with us,” Ethan said over dinner, “but you really can’t avoid Jesse forever. I mean, he’s your roommate, for crying out loud.”
“I know,” said Simon, “but he’s being mean to me all the time. I can’t deal with it!’
“I know it’s tough,” said Lacy, “but you’re going to have to deal with a lot of tough things in life. I mean, weren’t the two of you, like, good friends till yesterday?”
Nonetheless, instead of going back to his room after dinner, Simon chose to sit in the common room and study. While he was reading ‘The Amazing World of Enchantment,’ a parchment envelope fell onto the pages of the book in front of him. As usual, it was addressed to: “Mr. Simon Corbin — Hemlock 103”.
He opened the envelope and found that, as with the previous time, it was a single sheet of parchment folded into the form of an envelope with the following written on the inner side of the parchment:
To all first-year students in Homeroom 1-C (Professor Hathaway’s homeroom) and Homeroom 1-D (Professor Sinclair’s homeroom)
Tomorrow morning (Saturday) after breakfast, you are all to gather in the Adventure Room in the ground floor of Lumière Tower to go on your field trip to obtain a core for your wand. The only supply that you will need to bring with you for this trip is your seeker’s compass. Be sure not to forget it.
Sincerely,
Professor Vivian Hathaway
Simon felt his heart beat faster in anticipation of the field trip the next day. No longer able to study, he folded the note back up, put the textbook back in his satchel along with the note, and began pacing the hallway near the Common Room. He continued doing this until he felt ready to go to bed.