“Eva?”
“That bull is back.”
Irene glanced out the nearest window. The snow had melted off for a day but returned in full force the first week of February.
Nothing was out the window but snow.
After sighing, Irene rubbed one of her temples. “Are you sure you’re not making it up?” The thought had crossed her mind almost every time Eva ‘saw’ the cow.
Eva frowned, looking back to Irene. “Pretty sure. Sometimes it is hard to tell.”
“Well,” Irene sighed. She didn’t want to get involved. “I’ve got a report to write. You probably do too. I think I’ll just–”
“It’s on the roof this time.”
On the… “Why would a cow be on the roof?”
“Bull. It is definitely a bull.”
“How do you even know?”
“Same answer I gave about your arm.”
That still doesn’t answer anything!
“Wait,” Eva said, “it is moving.”
“Moving where?”
Eva ran, or hobbled, straight to the window. She stumbled part way, but managed to catch herself on the window ledge. “It is right up there, looking down.”
Even pressing her face against the glass, Irene couldn’t see anything. “Eva, shouldn’t we just get Professor Twillie and leave it at that?”
“It’s coming,” was Irene’s only warning.
Snow flew in front of the window as a heavy thud rattled the glass.
A massive bull covered in black fur absorbed the shock of the fall. Its knobby little legs straightened to their full height. Even on four legs, the bull rose over Irene’s head.
Irene fell backwards, landing on her butt. She crab-walked backwards until she was in the middle of the hall.
Eva all but pressed her face against the glass. “It is there, right? I’m not just imagining it? Your heart rate has skyrocketed.”
It was all Irene could do to mumble out an answer. She wasn’t entirely sure what that answer was, but it was an answer.
“What does it look like?”
“I thought you could see,” Irene snapped in a brief moment of sanity.
Eva crossed her arms. “I can’t see very well.” It almost sounded like a pout.
The bull snorted out a steamy breath, fogging the glass up. It turned and spread its massive wings. With a few flaps, it was gone.
Eva’s shoulders drooped, but she walked over to Irene and offered her a hand.
For the second time that day, Irene pulled herself to her feet with Eva’s help. At least this time she didn’t have a massive gash in her arm.
“Well?” Eva had her hands on her hips.
“Well what?”
“What did it look like?”
“It was a bull.”
“Yes.”
“A huge one.”
“I know.”
“It had wings.”
“I could see that much. Tell me something I couldn’t see.”
“I don’t know what else you want. It had a crumpled horn? It was big? It breathed out steam?”
Eva shrugged. “Everything breathes out steam in the winter.”
Irene didn’t have an argument for that. “What do we do?”
“What do you mean?” Eva tilted her head to one side.
“We have to tell someone, right?”
“Of course. You have to tell our friends so they know I’m not crazy.”
Irene flicked her forehead. Eva stumbled back half a step. “I mean a teacher or someone.”
Eva shrugged again. “We already told Bradley Twillie and Zoe Baxter. They said they’d look into it.”
“That was a month and a half ago.”
Eva turned back to the window, sending hair flying behind her. “They never said they were good at looking into things.”
That was true. There were at least three questions she’d asked Professor Baxter about magical theory that the teacher had never gotten back to her on.
“We should remind them at least,” Irene said.
“You do that. School is almost over and I have to get ready for Franklin Kines’ combat class.”
There was a bit of an edge in the way Eva groaned out his name. “You don’t like it?”
“The worst.”
— — —
“There are rules for magic,” Zoe Baxter said.
It was the opening line of one of her fourth year lectures. There are obvious rules and rules that are less obvious.
The most obvious rule–the one students tend to offer first–is that mages cannot use the opposing element to their primary. Fire can’t cast water, earth can’t cast air. Simple and obvious.
Every creature that used thaumaturgy followed this rule. Elves, goblins, dragons and their related kin, and even the species of fae that practiced proper thaumaturgy. Most fae used their own magic but often tried to disguise it as thaumaturgy for whatever nonsensical reasons the infuriating creatures came up with.
Yet one of the books Eva lent her had a creature described within that wielded all four elements.
It was an impossibility.
Thaumaturgy was the only magic capable of manipulating the elements. Even the Elysium Sisters only appeared to use air magics. Their lightning bolts were not true lightning.
The author must be mistaken. The demon must have appeared to use elemental magic when instead it used some form of telekinesis to create the illusion it was manipulating all four elements.
Zoe herself could do a similar trick. As an air mage, she could perform telekinesis on metal or rock and fling the items around.
With a sigh, Zoe dropped the book into her storage pocket in between. Any time she got the urge to test anything she read in the books, she immediately stopped. It was a dangerous mindset to get into.
The stack of ungraded essays on her desk hadn’t shrunk while she was reading. She pulled the top one in front of her and pulled a red pen out of her desk.
She started working on the essay. Her eyes scanned down the tight, neat handwriting of Jordan Anderson. The analysis of learning nonthaumaturgical methods of magical manipulation that he wrote last semester raised several good points on the subject of ‘dark’ magic and how dark was subjective.
He gave the example of using skeletons and flesh golems as a manual labor workforce. Apart from regular work, the dead could go many places the living would be hesitant to enter. People could have donor check boxes on their identification that would allow their bodies to be used in case of death for the betterment of the living. It would allow a morally acceptable use of necromancy in society.
Controversial views, especially for the son of Governor Alex Anderson, but a valid idea nonetheless.
It was always the younger students that surprised Zoe. She had only been teaching for five years–five and a half now–but it was a pattern that held up for all five years. Older students gave textbook answers, the kind of answers that would get them a passing grade without effort.
That magical theory tended to be a highly disliked subject in comparison to the practical magic classes only compounded the students’ apathy.
So Zoe enjoyed reading the essays of students who had yet to learn ways around the system. Bright students such as Jordan were easily the highlight of her grading periods.
Zoe got to the bottom of the essay she held in her hands three times before she realized she hadn’t read a word.
Leaning back in her chair, Zoe arced her back and stretched her arms over her head. This is going to be a long day, she sighed.
She stood from her comfortable chair and crossed the room. The one-way wall showed an empty classroom on the other side. As expected from after school hours. A flick of her dagger and the door clicked locked.
The walls of her office tipped backwards and fell into nothingness as the cool embrace of between took hold around her. An empty side street rushed in to replace the white space of between.
Zoe straightened her butterfly tie and walked down a few steps to a well-worn wooden door. With a gentle push on the brass handle, the door opened without the faintest sound of a squeaky hinge.