Vayal Academy

Snow melts on my shoulders as I wait a little ways from the sheltered leaves of the alder-station, skirt brushing my knees. A large group of humans is already clustered close around the snarled wooden bench, leaning against the trunk of the station tree, dressed in the Academy’s winter uniform. They shuffle from foot to foot in the snow, jostle one another, clip and unclip leather satchels.

None of them pays me any notice; I doubt they even realise I’m a student, since I’m not in uniform. They don’t carry sizes large enough, and so I’m permitted to wear my plain black skirt with a white button up and a grey sweater vest. When I take my aptitude exam and am assigned my Arcane Discipline, I’ll be given a coloured tie, which should make me look more like I belong. Apparently, I’m the first Orc ever to attend the Academy.

It’s not as if a uniform could make me fit in, but it would be nice. It’d help me feel like I belong, like there’s a reason for someone as weak as me to be at Vayal Academy — greats like Jakaia the Magnificent and Moldora the Monstrous came out of Vayal. I don’t know how I’ll cope when their portraits are staring down at me in the Academy’s grand hallways.

The tiny crystals embedded along the branches flash, flooding the tree with rotating red light. An ear-splitting alarm shakes me to attention. It blares three times before an urgent and angry voice replaces it. “Girls on the platform, step behind the pink line.” A cluster of giggling girls in Vayal’s slate gray uniform scamper back. “The train will be here any moment and I assure you, girls, nobody wants to clean up the mess.” The unseen woman’s voice is like an angry god.

We’re on Hoshu, part of the Skyward Archipelago. It was the Seaguard Archipelago until Fiseltro the Titan and Damarel the Giant dueled above them for twenty days and twenty nights, sending the islands straight up — they’ve been sinking a few inches each year, but it’ll be centuries before they return to the sea.

So the train has to teleport to our little island, high in the clouds. Sometimes after arrival, though, the excess magical energy shoots right out the sides like a fireball. I learned that from the book Vayal sent me with my acceptance letter. I’ve read it cover to cover six times, because I need every advantage I can get if I’m to have a hope of keeping up — these other girls probably planned to come to Vayal, practiced magic for years. Whereas I thought I’d be on the train to Rithdon University right now — Lislain, if my grades weren’t good enough.

The girls are safely away when the train appears, along with a gust of flame. “You know Joey Divoni died that way?” one of the girls says.

The train is a big cast iron behemoth with a snarling cowcatcher below a steaming metal drum, this chained beast of burden dragging carriage after carriage of ornate, gilded metal and glittering glass, like a long royal greenhouse. My reflection is a massive smudge of blue.

I have to stoop to make it through the doorway, hunching my shoulders so tightly my collarbone aches. Inside, the big red leather seats form a hallway, somehow narrower than the train door, and already filled with First Years. I shuffle tight into the corner to let everybody else by first. The falconish conductor looks me up and down, a few students throw me confused glances as they stream in, but the doors slide shut.

Tragically, there are no empty places left after everyone’s taken their seats, and the conductors gaze stops me from trying to stay standing. I survey my options, target in on a double seater with only a short, plump human girl leaning over a book. She looks quiet, maybe even friendly. I throw my dark blue ponytail over my shoulder, maneuver sideways through the narrow space. The sky outside is massive, globeish.

“Um… Hi,” I say, when I reach her, “Could I maybe sit here?”

Up close I see her hair is a dark, muted purple. When she looks up at me through her thick bangs, the big glasses give her an owlish countenance. A sun-glare yellow tie sits cheerfully at her throat.

“Oh, of course! Sorry,” she says, grabbing her bag and stashing it behind her legs.

Our knees touch as I take my seat. I press mine together awkwardly and place my hands in my lap, staring straight ahead so I don’t scare her. In my peripheral, I see her tilt her head and smile. “I’m Mae,” she says, “Mae Maiven. You’re from Hoshu?”

It’s nice of her to act friendly, but I wish there was a way to tell her she doesn’t have to bother. I guess there are worse things than pity, though.

“The Legions gave my father a plot of land there for his retirement.”

“I never knew there were Orcs in the Legions,” she says, interest faked so expertly I almost think she wants to talk to me.

“Oh, no, haha, sorry — my parents are both humans. My father plucked me from the ruins of Arstakhaz when the orc city smoldered. I was just a baby.”

She’s clearly not sure what to say — people never are — so I quickly add, “my name’s Hattie Hare.”

“It’s wonderful to meet you, Hattie.”

I want to say something interesting, but my tongue’s as clumsy as my magic and all I manage is “you’ve already got your tie.”

Mae glances down at the tie like she forgot, then fixes me with a wide grin. (I smile back, conscious of my underbitten tusks.) “Oh, yeah! I already know my Discipline; I’ve just kind of got a knack for it. Here! See for yourself.” She reaches out and cups my left cheek, which brings heat tingling up my spine, and there’s a cool, minty sensation across my skin.

I reach up and trace the lines of the claw scar, only to find my hard face unblemished. “Oh no!”

“Oh no?”

“That was my only battle-scar!” Granted, I got it from a fox trying to get at our chickens, but still, it was a battle well won. “I’m disgraced.”

“Oh my God, I am sooooo sorry. Just, uhm, okay,” Mae says, rustling through her bag. “Let me fix it.”

I can’t believe I upset her over something as stupid as a fox scar. It’s not like it’s even a human tradition. “You couldn’t know,” I say, before I realise she’s standing above me with a letter opener in one hand. “No, really, it’s-”

Mae grabs a handful of hair on the right side of my head and steadies me. “You gotta stay still and let me fix it or I’ll never forgive myself.” Before I can reply the sharp tip is biting against my skin, tracing a familiar shape. I wince, but part of me relishes the chance to prove my mettle — I keep myself from crying out. “Gosh, thank you,” she says, carving a second channel. My body’s almost used to it by the third, and I could stay still without her help (though she doesn’t release me until she’s done). “Okay, you can hardly tell the difference. Do you forgive me?”

“I already did.” I rub the stinging wound; my fingers come away bloody. “Hurts a bit, though.”

“Oh, don’t worry, Hattie!” Mae holds her palm flat in front of her plump lips. A small prick of golden light appears, rapidly accreting swirling motes. She blows, and they float against my face, sink into my skin. Everything suddenly feels heavy, and the pain’s forgotten.

My body’s an anvil, now, couldn’t possibly lift it. Normally that’d stress me out, but right now it’s like, whatever, who cares? Everything’s just lovely.

A new voice bursts in, a voice that drips venom like an assassin’s blade. “Showing off for the peasant girl, Mae? What’s the matter, Orc, couldn’t afford the uniform?”

I loll my head over to the aisle and see our interlocutor. She’s almost as tall as me, though nowhere near as broad. Her leonine face is twisted into a scowl as she stands over us like a magistrate condemning prisoners to the gallows. A twinkling pink badge sits on her sweater, right next to her fire-red tie.

“Helllllo,” I say, wondering why my mouth won’t work. A fae-faced spider monkey with far kinder eyes than its masters perches on the mountain lions shoulder, licking its fur.

Her eyes screw up. “What the hell’s that supposed to mean?”

“Come on, Vila, she’s just being nice.”

Vila flicks a furred paw at Mae like she’s knocking dirt loose. Her nails are painted a burning blue, like the centre of a fire; the same colour as her scornful, lashed eyes. “Oh, I’m sure she is. I hope you two have a lot of fun being friendly while I’m dominating the lists.” She taps her stellate badge. “No more magic without an Instructor present, Mae — that’s the rule for all you first years.”

Finally my slowed brain snatches up the information it’s been searching for: that badge marks Vila as a member of the Guardians, the Academy’s first-line enforcement against rule breaking and mischief. The monkey must be her Familiar, then. As she walks away, I turn to ask Mae if she knows what year Vila’s in, but it just comes out as “how year?”

Mae blinks.

“Her year? She’s a Second. Made it through a year at the Academy all for the joy of playing hall monitor to keep us newbies in check.” She looks me up and down and giggles. “That magic sure knocked you out. Gosh, looks like you healed well though.”

She reaches out to touch the new scar, fingers brushing lightly over my skin. Her fingers come away bloody, knees knocking against mine as the train judders.

The window goes dark as the train enters a tunnel, and then flashes of bright colour shoot past like comet strokes — first just one or two, then so many that the windows are lit in rainbow technicolour. It means we’ve entered the portal and are now travelling through Ja’lai, the dizzying spectrum of possibilities between worlds. It also means that we’re getting close to the Academy, situated in its own pocket dimension.

The euphoric effect of Mae’s magic still clouds my awareness, but my mind has cleared a little now, enough to notice that she’s suddenly looking very unwell. She meets my eyes and manages a weak, sheepish smile. “Interdimensional travel always makes me sick,” she says.

“I think you’re supposed to, um, stick your head between your knees or something.”

“Never works for me,” she squeaks, “Hey, wanna come hold my hair back while I puke?”

It’s a struggle to get back down the narrow aisle and to the little bathroom at the front of the train, even harder to press my way through the tiny doorway. Mae has locked us in before I realise there isn’t even enough space to turn around. Our bodies are pressed together, and when she keels over to puke, her ass presses hard into me. I blush uncontrollably.

I just manage to grab her long hair and hold it back as she heaves, my elbows pressing against the tight walls to either side of us. Her hair smells like lavender. She’s sick again, pressing harder into me. Gods, I must be bright purple right now. She’s gonna think I’m a pervert.

It’s another five minutes of torture. I keep my eyes on the ceiling the whole time, as if not looking at the stocking clad ass in the hiked up skirt which is pressing into my crotch will make me forget it’s there (I’d already feel guilty enough seeing her in a vulnerable position like this, but the guilt I feel for enjoying seeing her like this is unbearable). A girl can’t control every reaction she has, right? Even if she thinks about hiking her own skirt up for a second or two.

If I weren’t afraid of being thrown out before I’ve even gotten to the Academy, I’d tell her to just use a bit of magic to cure her nausea so I can get safely back to the seat. Instead, I endure. Sometimes an Orc has to plant her feet and square her shoulders.

“You’re a, good friend,” she mutters as she straightens out, and thankfully fixes her skirt so there’s something separating us. She turns, just barely, and reaches around me to dab a square of silvery fabric in the basin. Mae’s face is just above my chest, heat radiating off her body. When she wipes her face clean with the square and dips it again, the enchanted water cleanses it instantly. “Hold still,” she says, though it’s not like I’ve got any space to move.

She cups my chin and tilts my face to the side, so I’m staring into the mirror, embarrassed by the sight of this soft girl fussing over a face as ugly as mine. Once the blood’s all clean, she lets out a satisfied squeak. “Look at that,” she says, craning my face the opposite way so I can see the re-applied scar — she really did get it basically perfect. “Don’t you look just gorgeous?”

“Nothing like you,” I say, stupidly.

“Awh, thank you!” she says, and the blush looks almost genuine, as if people haven’t been telling her for her whole life. “We’ll be arriving soon.”

“How can you tell?” I ask, still holding onto either side of the juddering room.

“The stomach always knows.”