Surviving Magic (School of Magic Survival Book 1) Read online

  Valerie couldn’t remember where she was, when she woke up.

  Her pillow was on the wrong end of the bed, or the wall was wrong, or something. It smelled wrong and she couldn’t remember where the door was.

  And then she heard Sasha get up and she remembered.

  Valerie rolled over in bed, not sure if she was going to sit up and scream or pull the blankets over her head and cry, or if something else entirely was going to happen.

  “Light School, the dorm rooms each have their own bathrooms, but we have a shared bathroom down the hallway. That’s why the flip-flops. I’ll wait, if you want to go with me,” Sasha said.

  Valerie swallowed and sat up slowly.

  She wasn’t screaming yet.

  And she wasn’t crying yet.

  So far, so good.

  She nodded, sticking her toes under the bed to find her flip flops and then digging in the top drawer of her dresser for toiletries. Lined up by size, just the way Ivory had left them.

  “Your mom is…” Valerie started, then put her fingers to her eyes, trying to hold the tears there.

  “You okay?” Sasha asked, and Valerie shook her head. There was a pause, then Sasha put her arm around Valerie’s ribs and pressed her head against Valerie’s shoulder.

  “I miss home, too,” Sasha said. “And I’ve been working toward this my entire life. I can’t… I can’t imagine.”

  Valerie nodded, steeling herself and putting the things she needed into the shower basket, then following Sasha down the hallway to a bathroom with six toilet stalls and six showers. There were a couple of girls there, already, and no one talked as Sasha and Valerie went to brush their teeth.

  “They called me a Freshman,” Valerie said quietly after she washed out her toothbrush and put it away, taking out the hair brush to put her hair up.

  “I am, too,” Sasha said, nodding.

  “I’m sixteen,” Valerie said. “I’m a junior.”

  “Oh,” Sasha said, glancing over her shoulder and shaking her head quickly. “No. I’ll turn seventeen this year, too. I finished my sophomore year at a civilian high school, last year. The magic schools are four year schools that graduate you at twenty.”

  “Twenty,” Valerie said. “What about college?”

  “You can go to another magic school after that and just do the upper class material, and as many as you want and you can get into, really.”

  “They all live in the dorms all that time?” Valerie asked, and Sasha shook her head.

  “No, that’s what the cottages are for. You can move out of the dorms after your sophomore year, if you choose to, and you aren’t allowed in them, after you graduate your first school.”

  “How many kids are there, in all of the schools?” Valerie asked.

  “I don’t know,” Sasha answered. “Hundreds. Maybe a couple thousand. There will be fifty girls and fifty boys in the underclasses at the Survival School.

  Valerie’s school back home had a class of more than four-hundred.

  “Fifty,” she whispered. “That’s just two classes.”

  “Classes,” Sasha said. “You haven’t picked any. We should ask Mr. Benson for the list so that you can go through it.”

  Valerie looked at Sasha in the mirror, feeling helpless.

  “I have no idea what I’d pick.”

  “Most of it’s foundational,” Sasha said. “A little bit remedial, if you’ve been working hard on your own. So… It’ll be fine. Okay? We’ll get the list, we’ll just… you know, pick, and… I’ll help you, okay? It’s going to be okay.”

  Valerie looked at her own reflection, wondering just how much panic was showing.

  “I need to tell Hanson I’m okay,” she said. “He probably called me last night…”

  Her phone.

  Her mom had left Valerie’s phone on the desk in her room, and it hadn’t gotten into any of Valerie’s bags.

  “I need to call Hanson,” Valerie said again. “Can I borrow your phone?”

  “Is he your boyfriend?” Sasha asked, and Valerie shook her head.

  “My best friend. And he was there when they came and got me. He’s going to think that I’ve been abducted.”

  “I don’t have a phone yet,” Sasha said. “I’m not strong enough to manage it.”

  Valerie looked at her and frowned, holding out one finger.

  “It’s like… that heavy…”

  “No,” Sasha said. “It’s that you have to ward it really hard to keep people from being able to track it or listen in on it. It’s really, really advanced magic.”

  “So I can’t call him?” Valerie asked.

  “No, you can call, it just has to be from the office, and Lady Harrington has to be there,” Sasha said lightly. “So… Well, I guess it would need to be really important.”

  Valerie nodded slowly, looking over at the showers.

  “Why don’t we get our own bathroom again?” she asked, and Sasha smiled, twisting her mouth to the side.

  “They pay someone to clean this one,” she answered. “If we had our own we’d have to clean it ourselves.”

  Valerie frowned with a slow nod.

  “I can see how this could be better, then.”

  She picked up her things and followed Sasha back to the room, changing and going for breakfast.

  “We only have a couple of easy days,” Sasha said over their meals, turning her head as more new students showed up. “After this, classes start at seven-thirty and run through five, four days a week.”

  “Four?” Valerie asked. Sasha shrugged.

  “Wednesdays are for special activities, studying and homework, and practicing. I’ll show you where the labs are, once I find them, and that’s where I’ll be spending all of my Wednesdays.”

  Valerie nodded slowly.

  “What do you do in the labs?” she asked.

  “Try things,” Sasha answered happily.

  “Right,” Valerie said.

  She actually ate her breakfast with some appetite, then went to the main office with Sasha.

  “This is Mrs. Young,” Sasha said, indicating the woman at the desk. “She’s the one with all of the real power.”

  “Miss Mills,” Mrs. Young said. “You oversell me.”

  “You are,” Sasha said. “She can get you into classes and move your schedule around, she can get you permission to be off campus, and she knows all of the teachers’ favorite things. At the School of Light Magic, her name is Mrs. Pepper. Both of my brothers told me that I needed to meet Survival School’s Mrs. Pepper first thing and make sure she liked me.”

  “And what favor is it you’re hoping for today?” Mrs. Young asked, and Sasha held out a hand.

  “This is Valerie Blake,” she said. “She doesn’t have a schedule yet.”

  Mrs. Young stood.

  “I… Yes, I knew that you were here, but I hadn’t had a chance to look over what was available. I was going to send for you, but I’m glad you’re here. Mr. Benson said that he wanted to sit down with you and go over your final plans, given your… special situation, but I can give you the list of what has openings and when, and Miss Mills can at least help you work it down to your best idea. Mr. Benson is in faculty meetings all morning and won’t be available until after lunch.”

  “I needed to make a phone call,” Valerie said, and Mrs. Young shook her head.

  “No, I’m afraid that isn’t possible. Lady Harrington told me herself when we found out your circumstances that you will not be allowed to make contact outside of the school for at least a few weeks.”

  “I have a friend who is going to send the police looking for me, if I don’t let him know I’m okay,” Valerie said.

  Mrs. Young pressed her lips and nodded.

  “I do know it was rushed,” the woman admitted. “If you wrote him a note and Lady Harrington approved of it, I could see that it made its way to him.”

  “I guess I can just e-mail him,” Valerie said. “Do you have a wi-fi password?”
/>   Sasha glanced at her, and Mrs. Young shook her head.

  “Internet is not available on campus,” the woman told her. “I’m sorry, but it’s too much risk. You’ll need to hand-write a note for your friend and have Lady Harrington sign off on it.”

  Valerie stared at her, and the woman spread her hands.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “Those are the rules.”

  She pulled a stack of papers off of a printer and put them down on the counter.

  “Is there anything else you need?” she asked, and Sasha swept the printout up and waved, heading for the door.

  “No. Thank you.”

  Valerie looked at the woman for one more moment, and Mrs. Young gave her a very dry look, then turned her attention back to her computer.

  No internet.

  No phones.

  No outside contact.

  Surely Valerie’s mother hadn’t meant to send her to a convent, right?

  Valerie followed Sasha out into the hallway and threw her hands into the air.

  “What kind of people are these?” she asked. Sasha’s arms flew out from her sides as she tried to motion for Valerie to be quiet without actually grabbing her.

  “It’s… Those are the rules,” Sasha said. “And they’re important. If we weren’t careful with our phones…”

  “What?” Valerie asked. “What would happen? Someone out there in the big bad world would know what color we’re planning on painting our fingernails tonight? It’s not like any of us actually have any important secrets.”

  “We do now,” Sasha said, taking a step back. “That you’re here.”

  Valerie let her shoulders drop, but then she was angry again.

  “They didn’t say that it’s just a rule for me. This is the entire school. No computer, no phone. You knew those were the rules. Why? It’s just a power grab. Do we have to wear uniforms, too?”

  Sasha flapped again, looking around quickly.

  “The magics we’re learning,” she hissed. “They’re secret. You have to… You have to apply and get in and they have to know you, in order for you to be able to be here.”

  “What is this stuff, if it’s all some big secret?” Valerie demanded. “I mean, is it all some big cult ritual that I’m going to go be in, now?”

  Sasha backed into the wall, squeezing the stack of papers against her chest.

  “It’s because we have to protect it,” she said. “From people who would steal it and use it against us.”

  “Who?” Valerie demanded. “Sure, there’s a war on, whatever. Day in, day out, year after year, who is going to tap my cell phone to see if I might mention something about something I learned in class today? Nobody.”

  Sasha shook her head.

  “You don’t understand,” she said.

  Valerie closed her eyes, willing her temper back into its corner.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s not your fault that they have stupid rules.”

  “They aren’t stupid,” Sasha said, and Valerie kept her eyes closed, wondering why Sasha wouldn’t take an apology and just let it be.

  She looked at the redheaded girl and pressed her lips between her teeth.

  “Okay,” she said. “Okay. I’m sorry. Can we go back to the room and look at a schedule?”

  Sasha nodded quickly, walking along ahead of Valerie all the way back to the room.

  Valerie didn’t think she’d yet felt this alone, like she’d burnt the one bridge she had left.

  She didn’t know if she could do this.

  But she knew she had to.

  Basics of Magic Improvisation

  Potions 101

  New Old Languages

  Tactical Herbtending

  Diction

  Stance

  Traditional Magic

  Group Spellcasting

  “How can there be this many classes, when there are only like five students?” Valerie asked, and Sasha looked up from the class list.

  “Because the classes are small and you might not get to all of them at once, so even the upper classes will still have a few people taking the last of their foundations courses,” Sasha said without guile.

  Valerie twisted her mouth to the side and lay on her back again on her bed.

  “Do you think you’re more interested in Color in Magic or Geometry of Magic?” Sasha asked. “You still have that gap at three.”

  “They both sound miserable in opposite directions,” Valerie answered.

  “You still have to do it,” Sasha answered. “Geometry of Magic is really, really important, but if you don’t understand the way that color plays into magic, you leave yourself really short on the things that you can do. I mean, the way that it ties into Improvisational Magic?”

  Valerie sighed.

  “I don’t even know if I can do magic,” she said, and Sasha sat up.

  “Well, that’s easy enough to test,” she said, stacking the papers and tossing them out of the way under a desk chair. She motioned to the floor in front of her and Valerie sighed, sliding out of bed and going to sit in front of her roommate.

  This had stopped being fun an hour ago.

  When she found out that she was going to be expected to memorize a dozen or more languages in order to be able to do magic.

  Apparently Mr. Jamison was the upper-level language teacher.

  “Wow,” Sasha said, putting her hands palm-up on her knees and shifting back and forth as though settling herself. “I haven’t thought about this in a long time.”

  “Am I supposed to do that?” Valerie asked.

  “You need to remember that right now I’m your only friend,” Sasha said, her eyes closed. “Stop being so sarcastic.”

  Valerie frowned, looking at the girl’s face.

  She might not have been friends with her, at her regular school with Hanson and the kids she’d been in classes with her entire life.

  She was kind of weird and totally a geek.

  But.

  She’d been really kind and really sweet to Valerie, and Valerie knew that she had been… unreasonably sour back at her, especially since she’d found out that she couldn’t talk to Hanson.

  “Okay,” Valerie said. “Right. Magic. Let’s do magic.”

  Sasha smiled.

  “Just… kind of settle. Sit in a way that makes you feel calm and centered and strong.”

  Valerie thought about that for a minute, then shifted to sit on her ankles, drawing a deep breath and crossing her arms.

  “Okay?” Sasha asked without opening her eyes.

  “I’m here,” Valerie answered. “But I don’t get it.”

  “Your mom says you have power,” Sasha said. “But words and ingredients are only as powerful as the person using them. And the precision with which you use them, but that’s a different thing.”

  “Diction,” Valerie said, and Sasha laughed.

  “Yeah, I’m not really looking forward to that one, either. But it’s mandatory for freshmen.”

  “Okay,” Valerie said. “What do I do?”

  “There are lots of families of magic, but they basically come down to three types. Things you mix, things you say, and things you do. The stronger and more specific a magic is, the more it tends to mix those three types together. Bradley told me that one of the first things you want to do when you get moved in is ward your room. Lock it down so that people can’t cast on you.”

  “Who would do that?” Valerie asked.

  “Well, normally it’s just pranks and stuff, but it’s kind of a lot more important now with the war and you and stuff. So the first thing we’re going to do is just lock the door so that the only people who can open it are you and me. And the teachers and Mrs. Gold, but that’s mostly because I don’t think I’m strong enough yet to lock it against them. But the other underclassmen? We ought to be able to keep them out.”

  “Okay,” Valerie said. “I’m good with that.”

  “The only way I know how to do it is for us to work together,
” Sasha said. “If I did it on my own, I’d probably lock you out, too. So this is a good test.”

  “Okay,” Valerie said.

  “You have magic,” Sasha said. “Your mom said you do.”

  “So either she’s right or she’s crazy,” Valerie said, and Sasha opened her eyes.

  “Valerie,” she said sternly, and Valerie twisted her mouth.

  “Sorry. Just… It’s a lot to just jump in with both feet.”

  “Okay,” Sasha said, standing. “You stay. I’m getting my basic spell kit. You don’t know any of the languages, so I’ll do all of the incantation. We’re going to mix noon oil with tell weed and burn it and… There it is.”

  She came and sat down across from Valerie again with a shower caddy full of bottles and bags and she started taking things out of it and laying them on the floor in front of Valerie’s knees.

  “Can I look at them?” Valerie asked, and Sasha nodded.

  “Most of my basic stuff is pretty benign,” she said. “You have to work it pretty well in order to get it to do anything, and I don’t think there’s even anything poisonous in there.”

  Valerie started going through the bottles first, holding them up to the light and spinning them to watch the fluids inside move. Some of them were just like water, and some of them moved more like oils. Others had things suspended in them, bits of leafy flotsam, mostly, and a couple she wasn’t able to see through.

  “What are all of these?” Valerie asked. Sasha sighed.

  “You need to be able to name all of them, like, as soon as you can. I’ll make a list or something to help, but if you can’t name just this stuff? You’re going to be so far behind…”

  She’d taken out a black piece of slate and put it between them and then made a tiny pile of some kind of dry grass, which she set fire to with a flint-and-steel. Valerie knew what it was, watching Sasha work it, but she’d never seen one before.

  “Are we allowed to burn things in here?” Valerie asked, siting straighter.

  “Of course,” Sasha said without looking up, as though it had been a dumb question. The redheaded girl was tipping a bottle of thick fluid slowly over the burning grass, murmuring words that Valerie couldn’t make out. The oil hit the grass and for a moment it appeared it might put the whole thing out, but then it caught and burnt an ethereal green.