Two days after the incident, Mel looked out the window from the classroom and listened with half an ear to what Miss Teller was saying. This was the first day back to school, to normal. After the bonfire had exploded, the whole town had gathered to clean up the clearing. Help the few wounded and nurse their wounds.
Mel had been completely covered by Marcus, as well as her brother and Minnie, and none of them had been hurt. Marcus’s jacket had been ruined, and he had minor burns along his arms, but otherwise, he was unscathed. Melissa had visited him yesterday in his house.
It had been awkward, seeing him laying in bed with bandages around his arms and his mother fiddling with his bedding. She had been hovering around them the whole time, worried about her son and Mel had left after only a couple of minutes and a half-hearted comment like ‘get well soon’.
Mel glanced behind her in the classroom and immediately caught Marcus’s gaze. A flush spread on his face and Mel turned back to looking out the window again. Her heart raced and her cheeks felt warm. He had been watching her, maybe the entire day. This made Mel feel both warm inside and uncomfortable about being watched.
“Let’s welcome the elemental warrior, Elennian Mali,” Miss Teller said.
Mel’s head jerked away from the window and she stared at the tall man with broad shoulders entering the room. He had his dark blue coat on and in his hand was his great hammer, shining silvery in the light from the windows. Mel dragged her eyes away from his weapon and met his gaze.
The scar over his left eyebrow marred his features. He wasn’t pretty, not like the elemental warriors in their picture books, with blonde hair and light blue eyes. Elennian had a square face with a prominent jawline and bushy eyebrows. His hair was gray, that of an old man, and his eyes were a deep blue, like the ocean.
For each step he took into the classroom, his hammer clanked against the floorboards. Mel’s anticipation rose in her chest. She wanted him to get closer; she wanted to see his weapon upfront. Study the lines and run her fingers down the smoothed edges.
Today it wasn’t glowing in those strange molten lines, like it had been on Equinox Day. This time the hammer had the familiar color of treated iron, something Mel saw every day. It looked strikingly similar to the axes her father had made for the lumbermen. Only this was bigger and in the shape of a massive rectangle.
The grip was bound in black leather, a thin cord spiraling down to the metal pommel. Mel licked her lips. It was beautiful, a masterwork.
Elennian stopped in front of the class and sat down with a low groan on the chair Miss Teller had provided. He looked around the classroom at all the faces of Melissa’s classmates, taking his time to meet their eyes before he continued on to the next.
“I have been invited today to speak to you all about magic safety,” Elennian said, his voice booming. “What happened at the fire festival was one of your faults.”
Elennian looked at Dorian West in the back. Mel and the other classmates turned to look at him, too. Dorian looked down at his desk, refusing to meet anyone’s eyes. His head and shoulder were bandaged in white cloth and Mel had heard a rumor that his burns would be the kind that would leave scars.
“It doesn’t matter who,” Elennian said. “What matters is that you have clearly not been educated in magic safety. It is rare to have magical items around these parts in the valley. But nonetheless, if only one dagger remains in the old country, we must practice safety.”
Miss Teller stood behind him like a looming ghost, watching over the classroom and making sure no one would misbehave. She would fly over and haunt whoever spoke out of turn, that Mel was sure of.
“Who here has ever held a magic item before?” Elennian asked.
Mel felt a sting of jealousy surge from her stomach. This was as close as she had ever been to a magical item before in her life. Elennian’s hammer was the only magic she had seen, but she desperately wanted to know more. She had wanted to travel all the way beyond the mountains to Aldrion to learn about magic.
Elennian nodded and then pointed to the front, where Mark sat with his arm raised. He was the only one it seemed from her class who had raised their hand. Except everyone knew Dorian had held a dagger only two days ago infused with wind, but he didn’t seem to want to raise his hand or even look at Elennian.
“Can you tell us about your experience?” Elennian asked.
“Yes,” Mark said. “It was during rehearsal with Samantha, High Priest Alcon’s daughter. She has a necklace, a silver one, infused with water. It doesn’t really do anything, though. I didn’t really understand what was so special about it. Samantha could only make it glow in a deep blue if she concentrated on it. I mean, it was pretty and all.”
Elennian nodded.
“What magic items can or cannot do is as much up to the person wielding them as it is to the creator of the item,” Elennian said. “A great mage smith can make weapons or jewelry that can hold great amounts of dragon fire. Smithing them at the Dragon Forge in Aldrion. And a great elemental warrior knows how to drag that power out from the item, creating fire storms or a tsunami.”
The entire class seemed to form circles with their mouths and create awws or oohs that bounced around in the room. Miss Teller watched the class, still with her hawk eyes, not moving a single muscle in her face. Mel’s eyes had widened, and she felt an ooh escape from her mouth.
Elennian put his hammer over his knees, laying it splayed out over the tops of his thighs.
“The first thing you learn in Falden School of Magic is to create the glow,” he said.
He looked down at the hammer in his lap and took in a deep breath. When he released the air from his mouth, the hammer glowed in a deep red color. The strange pattern appeared around the hammer head, spreading all the way down to the grip. Even the iron peeking out at the pommel glowed.
Elennian looked up again at the class, and the hammer’s glow faded. Mel felt like she wanted to scream, to tell him; No, please, don’t stop. But she said nothing.
“But today we will not be learning how to wield these weapons,” Elennian said. “We will talk about how to care for them and how to treat them with respect. Just like you respect the elements.”
He placed his hammer down against the wood again, and a muffled clank rang out through the room. A harmonious sound, making Mel feel at peace at once. She had always loved the tone of iron clinking against wood.
“A magical item imbued with one of the four elements is dangerous,” Elennian continued. “A sword in itself can cut you, but a magical sword can create an explosion. The wind from the dragon stone is as strong as a thunderstorm, a hurricane waiting to be awakened. You must treat it with respect and make sure you never throw it into the fire. For you see, the magical items are all created with fire and only by fire can they be unleashed.”
“So, if you found a magical item today, what should you do?” Elennian asked.
Mark raised his hand.
“Yes,” Miss Teller said and pointed to Mark.
“I should hand it over to my parents or to Miss Teller and make sure I didn’t bring it close to any fire,” Mark said.
“Good,” Elennian said. “You should hand over the item to a responsible adult and make sure no fires are close. That’s correct. Any questions?”
Minnie raised her hand, and Miss Teller pointed to her to speak.
“How do we know if an item is magical?” she asked. “Your hammer looks just like a regular hammer until you use the magic.”
“That’s a very good question,” Elennian said. “Only an elemental warrior with a trained ear can hear the sword's soul speak to them and know. But there is a trick for the common man to know. Every single item that is smithed in the Dragon Forge has a marking on it, for weapons it’s usually put at the hilt.”
Elennian stood up and lifted his hammer in both hands. He turned the weapon around until the sunrays hit a small marking at the beginning of the hilt. It was a symbol of a diamond with five lines drawn away from it, like it was radiating. And underneath there were two letters, A F.
“Good,” Miss Teller said. “Then we have all heard Elennian Mali’s lecture on magic safety and I expect no more incidents will plague this town in the future. We don’t want to clean up after another explosion. You all should be lucky no one died.”
Elennian put his hammer back down to the floor and bowed his head to the class. He turned and bowed to Miss Teller, who got a soft blush on her cheeks. Miss Teller put a hand on her face, feeling at her skin and looking at Elennian.
“Oh, okay,” Miss Teller said. “That’s it for today, class. See you tomorrow.”
“Thank you, Miss Teller. Thank you, Elennian,” the class said in unison.
Mel’s classmates filed out from the classroom, one after one, and Elennian lingered by the blackboard, speaking softly to Miss Teller. Minnie grabbed Mel by her desk and waved Marcus over.
“Today, let’s go to the inn,” Minnie said. “We need to speak about what happened on Equinox Day and about your plans.”
She gave Mel a pointed glare, and Mel swallowed the lump in her throat.
“I need to get home, actually,” Mel said. “I’m working on this big commission for my father. It’s for the new town hall that’s being built and I should really get some nails made today.”
Minnie shook her head.
“No, Marcus, tell her,” she said. “We three need to speak before you do something stupid. Both of you.”
“Yeah,” Marcus said, brushing the hair out of his face. “We should talk, the three of us, and we need a new plan.”
Mel sighed.
She needed a new plan alright, since the last one had been blown up to pieces by Dorian West. Mel shifted her weight to the other foot and rolled around her thoughts in her head. Her father would be okay, and she had a couple of more weeks for the order. She didn’t really think she needed to work today, she just didn’t want to be chewed out by Minnie again.
“Okay, sure,” Mel said. “But can I meet you there? There’s something I want to do first.”
Marcus and Minnie shared a look, but then Minnie shrugged.
“Sure, fine,” she said. “But if you're late, you’ll drink your chocolate cold.”
“That’s fine,” Mel said. “I won’t be long.”
Marcus and Minnie walked out from the classroom together, heading toward the inn in town square. Mel walked up to Elennian and Miss Teller who was still conversing by the blackboard.
“Could I ask you something?” Mel asked.
Miss Teller and Elennian turned to look at her. Miss Teller looked down at her dress, then stepped away from Elennian and walked out of the classroom.
“How did you become an elemental warrior?” Mel asked. “Like, how did you get into Falden?
“I applied,” Elennian said.
“Yes, okay, sure,” Mel said. “But hypothetically, if someone were to apply to Falden School of Magic and get rejected. Why would they be rejected?”
A frown spread over Elennian’s forehead when he looked down at Mel.
“Look, I grew up in Aldrion and I was trained to become an elemental warrior as a child,” he said. “My father was a wind dancer and his father a fire summoner. It was my family's duty, their profession. I followed in their footsteps.”
“Oh,” Mel said. “So you’re not from here? From the valley?”
“No, I was born and raised in Aldrion,” he said. “I only moved out here after my retirement. I met a beautiful woman and moved to be with her in Auburn Hills. Then I fell in love with the valley. I understood why we’re fighting in Aldrion to protect this place. It’s green grace, blue rivers and apple orchards. It’s like heaven to me.”
“You don’t have that in Aldrion?” Mel asked.
“No, the places beyond the mountain are dark, lonely places,” he said. “Aldrion is beautiful in its own way, all that man made construction and architecture, but none of the nature you have here. It’s all rock you see, placed alongside the mountain, built to hold the mountain pass.”
“Hmm,” Mel said. “But so you’re saying that no one from the valley can get accepted into Falden?”
“Well, no, not exactly,” Elennian said. “You can get accepted and most of the classes are made up by the nobles from Stonehearth and the people of Aldrion. Only a few from other places. But it’s not impossible.”
“Okay,” Mel said. “So it was me then. I failed.”
Elennian gave her a wide smile.
“Perhaps,” he said. “But in that case, you failed when trying to pass through a needle's eye, and that is not a small feat at all. I think you are brave for trying at something hard. Only the true failures in life never try for anything at all.”
Two days after the incident, Mel looked out the window from the classroom and listened with half an ear to what Miss Teller was saying. This was the first day back to school, to normal. After the bonfire had exploded, the whole town had gathered to clean up the clearing. Help the few wounded and nurse their wounds.
Mel had been completely covered by Marcus, as well as her brother and Minnie, and none of them had been hurt. Marcus’s jacket had been ruined, and he had minor burns along his arms, but otherwise, he was unscathed. Melissa had visited him yesterday in his house.
It had been awkward, seeing him laying in bed with bandages around his arms and his mother fiddling with his bedding. She had been hovering around them the whole time, worried about her son and Mel had left after only a couple of minutes and a half-hearted comment like ‘get well soon’.
Mel glanced behind her in the classroom and immediately caught Marcus’s gaze. A flush spread on his face and Mel turned back to looking out the window again. Her heart raced and her cheeks felt warm. He had been watching her, maybe the entire day. This made Mel feel both warm inside and uncomfortable about being watched.
“Let’s welcome the elemental warrior, Elennian Mali,” Miss Teller said.
Mel’s head jerked away from the window and she stared at the tall man with broad shoulders entering the room. He had his dark blue coat on and in his hand was his great hammer, shining silvery in the light from the windows. Mel dragged her eyes away from his weapon and met his gaze.
The scar over his left eyebrow marred his features. He wasn’t pretty, not like the elemental warriors in their picture books, with blonde hair and light blue eyes. Elennian had a square face with a prominent jawline and bushy eyebrows. His hair was gray, that of an old man, and his eyes were a deep blue, like the ocean.
For each step he took into the classroom, his hammer clanked against the floorboards. Mel’s anticipation rose in her chest. She wanted him to get closer; she wanted to see his weapon upfront. Study the lines and run her fingers down the smoothed edges.
Today it wasn’t glowing in those strange molten lines, like it had been on Equinox Day. This time the hammer had the familiar color of treated iron, something Mel saw every day. It looked strikingly similar to the axes her father had made for the lumbermen. Only this was bigger and in the shape of a massive rectangle.
The grip was bound in black leather, a thin cord spiraling down to the metal pommel. Mel licked her lips. It was beautiful, a masterwork.
Elennian stopped in front of the class and sat down with a low groan on the chair Miss Teller had provided. He looked around the classroom at all the faces of Melissa’s classmates, taking his time to meet their eyes before he continued on to the next.
“I have been invited today to speak to you all about magic safety,” Elennian said, his voice booming. “What happened at the fire festival was one of your faults.”
Elennian looked at Dorian West in the back. Mel and the other classmates turned to look at him, too. Dorian looked down at his desk, refusing to meet anyone’s eyes. His head and shoulder were bandaged in white cloth and Mel had heard a rumor that his burns would be the kind that would leave scars.
“It doesn’t matter who,” Elennian said. “What matters is that you have clearly not been educated in magic safety. It is rare to have magical items around these parts in the valley. But nonetheless, if only one dagger remains in the old country, we must practice safety.”
Miss Teller stood behind him like a looming ghost, watching over the classroom and making sure no one would misbehave. She would fly over and haunt whoever spoke out of turn, that Mel was sure of.
“Who here has ever held a magic item before?” Elennian asked.
Mel felt a sting of jealousy surge from her stomach. This was as close as she had ever been to a magical item before in her life. Elennian’s hammer was the only magic she had seen, but she desperately wanted to know more. She had wanted to travel all the way beyond the mountains to Aldrion to learn about magic.
Elennian nodded and then pointed to the front, where Mark sat with his arm raised. He was the only one it seemed from her class who had raised their hand. Except everyone knew Dorian had held a dagger only two days ago infused with wind, but he didn’t seem to want to raise his hand or even look at Elennian.
“Can you tell us about your experience?” Elennian asked.
“Yes,” Mark said. “It was during rehearsal with Samantha, High Priest Alcon’s daughter. She has a necklace, a silver one, infused with water. It doesn’t really do anything, though. I didn’t really understand what was so special about it. Samantha could only make it glow in a deep blue if she concentrated on it. I mean, it was pretty and all.”
Elennian nodded.
“What magic items can or cannot do is as much up to the person wielding them as it is to the creator of the item,” Elennian said. “A great mage smith can make weapons or jewelry that can hold great amounts of dragon fire. Smithing them at the Dragon Forge in Aldrion. And a great elemental warrior knows how to drag that power out from the item, creating fire storms or a tsunami.”
The entire class seemed to form circles with their mouths and create awws or oohs that bounced around in the room. Miss Teller watched the class, still with her hawk eyes, not moving a single muscle in her face. Mel’s eyes had widened, and she felt an ooh escape from her mouth.
Elennian put his hammer over his knees, laying it splayed out over the tops of his thighs.
“The first thing you learn in Falden School of Magic is to create the glow,” he said.
He looked down at the hammer in his lap and took in a deep breath. When he released the air from his mouth, the hammer glowed in a deep red color. The strange pattern appeared around the hammer head, spreading all the way down to the grip. Even the iron peeking out at the pommel glowed.
Elennian looked up again at the class, and the hammer’s glow faded. Mel felt like she wanted to scream, to tell him; No, please, don’t stop. But she said nothing.
“But today we will not be learning how to wield these weapons,” Elennian said. “We will talk about how to care for them and how to treat them with respect. Just like you respect the elements.”
He placed his hammer down against the wood again, and a muffled clank rang out through the room. A harmonious sound, making Mel feel at peace at once. She had always loved the tone of iron clinking against wood.
“A magical item imbued with one of the four elements is dangerous,” Elennian continued. “A sword in itself can cut you, but a magical sword can create an explosion. The wind from the dragon stone is as strong as a thunderstorm, a hurricane waiting to be awakened. You must treat it with respect and make sure you never throw it into the fire. For you see, the magical items are all created with fire and only by fire can they be unleashed.”
“So, if you found a magical item today, what should you do?” Elennian asked.
Mark raised his hand.
“Yes,” Miss Teller said and pointed to Mark.
“I should hand it over to my parents or to Miss Teller and make sure I didn’t bring it close to any fire,” Mark said.
“Good,” Elennian said. “You should hand over the item to a responsible adult and make sure no fires are close. That’s correct. Any questions?”
Minnie raised her hand, and Miss Teller pointed to her to speak.
“How do we know if an item is magical?” she asked. “Your hammer looks just like a regular hammer until you use the magic.”
“That’s a very good question,” Elennian said. “Only an elemental warrior with a trained ear can hear the sword's soul speak to them and know. But there is a trick for the common man to know. Every single item that is smithed in the Dragon Forge has a marking on it, for weapons it’s usually put at the hilt.”
Elennian stood up and lifted his hammer in both hands. He turned the weapon around until the sunrays hit a small marking at the beginning of the hilt. It was a symbol of a diamond with five lines drawn away from it, like it was radiating. And underneath there were two letters, A F.
“Good,” Miss Teller said. “Then we have all heard Elennian Mali’s lecture on magic safety and I expect no more incidents will plague this town in the future. We don’t want to clean up after another explosion. You all should be lucky no one died.”
Elennian put his hammer back down to the floor and bowed his head to the class. He turned and bowed to Miss Teller, who got a soft blush on her cheeks. Miss Teller put a hand on her face, feeling at her skin and looking at Elennian.
“Oh, okay,” Miss Teller said. “That’s it for today, class. See you tomorrow.”
“Thank you, Miss Teller. Thank you, Elennian,” the class said in unison.
Mel’s classmates filed out from the classroom, one after one, and Elennian lingered by the blackboard, speaking softly to Miss Teller. Minnie grabbed Mel by her desk and waved Marcus over.
“Today, let’s go to the inn,” Minnie said. “We need to speak about what happened on Equinox Day and about your plans.”
She gave Mel a pointed glare, and Mel swallowed the lump in her throat.
“I need to get home, actually,” Mel said. “I’m working on this big commission for my father. It’s for the new town hall that’s being built and I should really get some nails made today.”
Minnie shook her head.
“No, Marcus, tell her,” she said. “We three need to speak before you do something stupid. Both of you.”
“Yeah,” Marcus said, brushing the hair out of his face. “We should talk, the three of us, and we need a new plan.”
Mel sighed.
She needed a new plan alright, since the last one had been blown up to pieces by Dorian West. Mel shifted her weight to the other foot and rolled around her thoughts in her head. Her father would be okay, and she had a couple of more weeks for the order. She didn’t really think she needed to work today, she just didn’t want to be chewed out by Minnie again.
“Okay, sure,” Mel said. “But can I meet you there? There’s something I want to do first.”
Marcus and Minnie shared a look, but then Minnie shrugged.
“Sure, fine,” she said. “But if you're late, you’ll drink your chocolate cold.”
“That’s fine,” Mel said. “I won’t be long.”
Marcus and Minnie walked out from the classroom together, heading toward the inn in town square. Mel walked up to Elennian and Miss Teller who was still conversing by the blackboard.
“Could I ask you something?” Mel asked.
Miss Teller and Elennian turned to look at her. Miss Teller looked down at her dress, then stepped away from Elennian and walked out of the classroom.
“How did you become an elemental warrior?” Mel asked. “Like, how did you get into Falden?
“I applied,” Elennian said.
“Yes, okay, sure,” Mel said. “But hypothetically, if someone were to apply to Falden School of Magic and get rejected. Why would they be rejected?”
A frown spread over Elennian’s forehead when he looked down at Mel.
“Look, I grew up in Aldrion and I was trained to become an elemental warrior as a child,” he said. “My father was a wind dancer and his father a fire summoner. It was my family's duty, their profession. I followed in their footsteps.”
“Oh,” Mel said. “So you’re not from here? From the valley?”
“No, I was born and raised in Aldrion,” he said. “I only moved out here after my retirement. I met a beautiful woman and moved to be with her in Auburn Hills. Then I fell in love with the valley. I understood why we’re fighting in Aldrion to protect this place. It’s green grace, blue rivers and apple orchards. It’s like heaven to me.”
“You don’t have that in Aldrion?” Mel asked.
“No, the places beyond the mountain are dark, lonely places,” he said. “Aldrion is beautiful in its own way, all that man made construction and architecture, but none of the nature you have here. It’s all rock you see, placed alongside the mountain, built to hold the mountain pass.”
“Hmm,” Mel said. “But so you’re saying that no one from the valley can get accepted into Falden?”
“Well, no, not exactly,” Elennian said. “You can get accepted and most of the classes are made up by the nobles from Stonehearth and the people of Aldrion. Only a few from other places. But it’s not impossible.”
“Okay,” Mel said. “So it was me then. I failed.”
Elennian gave her a wide smile.
“Perhaps,” he said. “But in that case, you failed when trying to pass through a needle's eye, and that is not a small feat at all. I think you are brave for trying at something hard. Only the true failures in life never try for anything at all.”
