“What?” Louise asked.
“Do you think. .?” Jillian threw up her hand and wriggled her fingers.
“Blast it all!” someone cried from down the hall.
Louise grabbed Jillian’s wrist and pulled her hands down. “People watch us now!” she whispered fiercely.
Jillian rolled her eyes. “Forget about it! What about us? Do you think we can?”
Could they? Were they like the queen and able to wreak havoc with a wave of the hand? The idea was thrilling, but seeing the gleam in Jillian’s eyes, Louise caught hold of her excitement and attempted to drown it under logic.
“The ninjas haven’t figured out how they do that.” Louise pointed out that the more humans understood how magic worked, the more they didn’t understand how members of Elfhome royalty created wildly powerful effects. Earth scientists were still writing papers with conflicting theories even after twenty-eight years of covertly studying the elves. Their stumbling block was the amount of energy that a noble domana-caste elf could channel. Written spells obeyed Einstein’s physics: energy output could be calculated in proportion to available magic. Of course there was the problem that the scientists hadn’t come to agreement on the nature of magic. Unlike Earth, Elfhome had an ambient magical field. It seemed pervasive as magnetism or gravity, but it was fluid in that it flowed like water, creating streams of power called ley lines. A written spell was fueled by local magic and could deplete the area of power, just like fire would use up all available oxygen in a closed system.
While the scientists couldn’t explain the source of magic, they could measure it. Windwolf had been recorded discharging energy on par with a nuclear reactor for over an hour. No human knew how he channeled so much power, and the elves refused to explain. Scientists could only secretly video the elves and attempt to figure it out.
“The ninjas are stupid.” Jillian waved away her point, doing the flourish that Queen Soulful Ember made right before she started to throw fireballs. “Since all elves use written spells on a daily basis, the ninjas are still not sure if the gesture-based spells are limited to the domana-caste or not.”
“Just because we haven’t seen a dragon, doesn’t mean dragons don’t exist.” Louise stated the logic of why the scientists were reluctant to commit to a theory.
“It’s obvious that it’s just the domana! Metal interferes with magic, so anyone who can cast spells with their hands couldn’t wear rings or bracelets. There’s not a single photo of Windwolf wearing jewelry, but all the other elves of Pittsburgh do.”
“That’s hardly empirical evidence.” Louise stated as they walked into their classroom. Everyone was still standing around talking because their French teacher, Mr. Newton, hadn’t arrived.
“I love it when Queen Soulful Ember loses it.” Giselle butted in as if they weren’t having a private conversation. Apparently she’d listened to them the whole way from their lockers. Giselle’s comment made everyone turn and look at them. As Louise wished she could go invisible, the other students joined in.
“Blast it all!” Claudia cried, hands over her head, fingers wriggling. “And then boom! How does she do it?”
“Yes, how do they do it?” Elle obviously didn’t think they knew. “Or did you just make all that up?”
“We didn’t make it up,” Jillian cried.
Louise didn’t want to draw even more attention to them, but Jillian wouldn’t back down now. “All we had to do was study videos of the elves casting spells frame by frame. They do a two-step command sequence. It’s kind of like selecting a toolbar on a computer screen and then selecting an app to run.”
Or at least, that’s what they’d observed. They hadn’t been able to find any scientific studies on the subject, even though it seemed obvious.
Jillian demonstrated the finger positions on the first command. “It’s the combination of both the position of the hand and a spoken word.” She held her right hand within an inch of her mouth. The queen always used the same first command, but Windwolf varied between two, depending on which type of spell he was about to cast, Fire or Wind.
As Jillian spoke the Fire command, Louise explained the rest.
“After the queen activates ‘the toolbar,’ she changes her hand position and uses another command word to choose which spell she’s actually going to cast from the toolbar. Each spell has a different hand position and word.”
By measuring the effects, the twins had determined that the caster then used additional hand movements to enter the spell’s area of effect in terms of direction and distance from the caster, and the amount of damage they wanted to inflict. Jillian demonstrated the queen casting a flame strike directly on top of Elle strong enough to probably reduce the entire school to ashes.
Louise turned her startled laugh into a cough. “We needed to analyze the spell-casting so we could draw it. We wanted to get it right.”
Elle looked confused. “It would have been easier to just make it up. Nobody would know.”
“We would know,” Jillian said.
“Finding out how they do it is half the fun,” Louise said.
“Être assis.” Their French teacher, Mr. Newton, commanded as he walked into the classroom. He waved at their chairs in case any of them still didn’t understand the phrase. And thus started yet another period where Louise hadn’t been able to slip away to the art room.
The play meeting was the last period of the day. They filed into the auditorium to find that the other fifth-grade class was already sitting in the front row.
With broad shoulders, square jaw, and a buzz cut, Mr. Howe looked exactly like what he was: a retired Marine master sergeant. He stood at parade rest, hands clasped behind his back, eyeing the twins’ class as if they were unruly invaders. Miss Hamilton was laughing as usual as she gently but firmly herded them in.
She saluted Mr. Howe. “Class 501, reporting for duty, sir!”
Mr. Howe grinned and returned the salute. “Thank you, Miss Hamilton. All right, listen up, today’s mission is the joint fifth-grade class play. Today, we’re going to vote on a play. .”
Elle’s hand shot up. “I think we should do The Little Mermaid this year. MTI has a junior version of the script for middle school students. The cast has been enlarged to ensure parts for an entire class, and all the music has been simplified so it’s easier for kids to sing. Not that that would be a problem for me, since I take voice lessons. We can get a director’s show kit from MTI that has budgets, press releases, sample programs, cue sheets, glossary, and audition sides.”
“We would call that jumping the gun, Elle,” Mr. Howe said coldly. “I haven’t finished.”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Howe. I just wanted to point out that we could get everything we needed already polished and tested.”
Louise realized that everyone was looking at her and Jillian. They hadn’t prepared a pitch for the teachers. Nor did she have any clue where to find press releases or sample programs. Every other year, teachers took care of getting what was needed after the class voted. Under the stare of their classmates, Louise put up her hand.
“Yes, Louise?” Miss Hamilton said.
“I have a play, too — when we get to nominating.”
Miss Hamilton turned to Mr. Howe. “I think we should jump to nominating, since Elle has opened the floor. We can cover the changes to how we’re doing the play this year after the vote.”
Mr. Howe considered and linked his tablet to the theater’s screen. “Okay, we have The Little Mermaid as play number one.” He wrote the title in small letters on the far left. “Louise, what’s your play?”