LGBT friendly children’s story, part 3 (Patreon)

Now we’re getting into the things that annoy me about HP.

1. The assumption of Christianity and Christian holidays.

2. The idea that evil goes by house or family

3. The invisibility of LGBT people

4. The use of ”fat” as an insult.  You can have a heavy person without making them lazy/evil/selfish.

5. The lack of disability/academic diversity

6. The lack of minority characters.  Is all of England / Scotland white?

and on with the story.

- - - - - - - - - 

Dakota walked between Chester and Ms. Salvi, each keeping a hand on a shoulder. When he’d run away from Aunt Anita at the store, she had left him to walk home. When he’d tried to run to Sir Knight’s den while they levitated torn comic books and dusty clothes out of the attic under an invisibility charm, Chester had chased him, and one of them had done something to make him trip and then charmed the sidewalk to feel like a mattress as he face-planted into it. He appreciated the second spell, but not the first.

So now they both held him tightly as they walked a much nicer neighborhood than where Dakota had always lived. A few car passed, but no one loitered on the corner and the streets were shaded by old trees and quiet and clean. Two story houses in beige and brick and gray lined the road, each separated by a narrow strip of daylight.

“That’s our place,” Chester said as he gestured toward a blue house near the end of the block. It looked like it had come from a storybook. Every other house had square white or black trim around the windows and door, but this house had half-moon shaped trim above each window and colorful window boxes with brilliant flowers blooming in each and greenery hanging down over the edge. The double doors were gold with a pearly finish that made them glitter and the railing leading up to the stoop was decorated with dragons that dueled and danced between the upright spokes.

It didn’t whisper with magic like the cafe—it screamed it.

“Why doesn’t everyone stop and stare at the house? It’s so beautiful.”

Chester laughed. “That it is. And prosaic folk can see some of it—the unusual shape of the trim and the color, but most of the magical details are hidden. When you build a new house, you need and inspection from the Building and Facades division of the Agency for Prosaic Protection. They make sure that none of the magic is visible.”

“Really? Is that how you know I’m magical? Because I can see this stuff?”

“In part,” Ms. Salvi said. “However, the Agency for Magical Children had already noted a new child in your area. We thought someone magical had been born, but then it turned out that magic was now recognizing you. Everyone was quite excited.”

“That’s an understatement,” Chester said with great cheer. “Your mother and I were so excited that we got to bring you home. We’ve missed you. We should have checked up on you. I told you mother we should have.”

“Mr. Dromos,” Ms. Salvi said wearily.

“I have a right to say the truth,” he snapped back.

She sighed again. Chester wasn’t her favorite person. They walked up the steps, Chester beside him, although Ms. Salvi walked right behind as if afraid Dakota might run again. He only wanted to find Sir Knight, though. He would have to figure out how to get back to his own neighborhood first, and that mean he had to learn how to use the arches. Running could wait until then.

Chester opened the door that was right next to the outside wall of the house, and Dakota expected to see a narrow hallway or maybe the two doors would open onto the same living room.

Instead, the door revealed a huge courtyard with trees and a fountain and a tiny park with colorful flowers and butterflies and benches lining stone paths. He stepped inside and turned in a full circle. Through the open door, he could see the street and feel the cool breeze of the Chicago spring, but inside birds sang and the sun shined down like one of those perfect summer days before the heat and humidity made the air feel thick. Even the sky looked different in here—bluer, brighter.

The park was surrounded by a building that seemed to be made of white marble with gray streaks through it. Carved columns held up a balcony, and created a shaded area around the park, and after a second, Dakota realized the carvings were moving, just like the dragons on the railings outside.

Dakota stepped onto the path, and a cloud of butterflies descended on him—blue and yellow and red and orange flutters surrounding him until he couldn’t see anything else.

“See? The house loves him.”

“I expected nothing else,” Ms. Salvi said. She still sounded tired.

“So you can leave now.”

“I will wait until I can speak with his mother.”

Dakota turned around. “So you are my father?” he asked.

“Really, Ches, you didn’t introduce yourself?” The butterflies scattered, and the woman Dakota had seen at the park stood in front of a wide, glass double-door that led into the shadowy interior of the first floor. A boy stood next her.

Was that his brother? Dakota studied his face for signs that this could be his twin. The boy had lighter hair than Dakota and a bored expression that faltered when their gazes met. However he could see the similarity in their noses that flared out a bit at the bottom and their high cheekbones and even the color of their eyes. However, the other boy had a more pointed chin.

“So, you’re Dakota,” he said.

“Yes.”

“Our parents put your room next to mine. I have the Cipactli carved on mine because that’s the symbol for my Challenge Room team. Mother says that prosaic people don’t have challenge rooms.”

Dakota didn’t understand most of that.

“Do you play Challenge Room?”

“No.” Dakota looked at the woman who might be his mother.

“I’m sure you can teach him how to play, Ambrose.” She stepped forward. She had the boy’s sharp chin, but she had the same brown eyes as Dakota. The other boy’s eyes were bluish gray.

“I’m your mother, Mildred Drogos, and this is your twin brother, Ambrose.”

“I’m Dakota.”

Ambrose wrinkled his nose. “I thought he was named—”

She flicked her hand, and he quieted. “It doesn’t matter. Dakota Drogos, that’s a fine name. Welcome home, Dakota.” Dakota wondered if he was supposed to call these people “mom” and “dad.”

“Yes, welcome home,” Chester added. “Oh speaking of coming home, what can travel all over the globe and find anyone in world, all without leaving their little corner?” Chester gave Dakota a bright smile as if expecting something, but before he could say anything, Ambrose scoffed.

“That’s too easy. A postage stamp.”

Chester ruffled Ambrose’s hair, and Ambrose waved his arms like he was trying to chase away a flock of birds. “Get off, Dad. Leave my hair alone.”

“Let’s give your brother a chance, how about that, kiddo? So, what kind of band never plays music?” Chester’s smile made Dakota want to vanish into the shadows. He had never been good at riddles. Chester raised his eyebrows, and Dakota took a step back as the silence grew longer.

“Maybe we should do this later,” his mother said.

Ambrose verbally exploded. “But it’s so easy. He’s playing with the word ‘band’ so you just need any kind of band other than the one with people. You could say a lap band, the kind that people get when they’re getting surgery to lose weight or a rubber band or even a band saw or the elastic band on your pants or a Band-Aid.” Ambrose’s scorn made Dakota yearn for the privacy of his attic.

“Ambrose,” their mother said sharply.

“But’s it’s true.” His tone reminded Dakota of Bob, who was his least favorite cousin.

“So what is your favorite thing to do?” Ambrose asked in a sulky voice.

“Play with Sir Knight.”

Their mother looked toward their father. Chester sighed. “The boy’s dog. The Mishaps worker and I both explained that dogs aren’t safe in the magical world. I offered to get him a qilin,” he glanced over, and Dakota realized that Ms. Salvi had followed them into the courtyard.

She stepped forward. “Mrs. Dromos, nice to meet you. I’m Ms. Salvi from the Magical Mishaps division. I was hoping to speak with you and your husband.”

Mrs. Dromos drew herself up, becoming taller and more formal and even her hair seemed to pull itself into a tighter bun. “Ms. Salvi, of course. However, I believe the roof incident is covered under the rule of initial magic.”

“The roof, yes. The tree, not as such.”

His mother frowned deeply. “The tree?”

“He got upset and uprooted a tree,” Chester said in an airy voice.

“A tree? During Verdant?” His mother sounded far less relaxed about it.

“It was an accident,” Dakota offered, even though he wasn’t sure he was even to blame. He wasn’t sure about a lot of things right now, and the more people talked, the more ignorant he felt.

“You’re not to blame,” Ms. Salvi said. “Not in the least. Would you like to go look at your room with your brother?” she asked. Dakota didn’t, but he knew that tone of voice meant that adults were actually telling him something while making it sound like a question. Aunt Anita did it all the time. So he did the sensible thing and agreed.

“Sure.”

Ambrose looked as enthusiastic as he did.

- - - - - - - - - - - - -

“So, this is your room.” Ambrose stepped back, and Dakota looked away from the phoenix carving on the door that was caught in a cycle of eternally burning and being reborn. When Dakota saw his room, shock made him audibly gasp.

Boxes wrapped in animated wrapping paper were stacked to the ceiling in one corner, the whole tower leaning precariously to one side so it looked like it might tumble at any second. The wall behind had a mural of a medieval town and a brilliantly colored bird flew over it, flames trailing behind.

On the other side of the room, a four-poster bed with red and orange curtains that reminded him of flames stood between two side-tables with drawer knobs that looked like bird heads.

“Dad picked the whole phoenix theme. You can change it if you want.”

“How?”

Ambrose walked over to the wall and laid his palm against it. “You wish for it to be something different and you visualize it. If the family owns the art or the furniture, the magic will swap it out.”

“This is fine.”

Ambrose might not have heard because he kept talking. “I used to have a tiger room, and before that, I had a cockatrice room, and Mother has pictures of us in our unicorn-themed room when we were little.”

That startled Dakota. “She kept pictures of me?” He didn’t know why that bothered him more than the fact she had abandoned him.

“Sure,” Ambrose said with a careless shrug.

Dakota didn’t want to talk about his parents anymore. “Show me how the picture changes,” he said.

“I can’t do it in here. This is your room.”

“Oh.” Dakota scratched his elbow. “Can you show me in your room?”

Ambrose seemed to think for a second before shrugging. “Sure.”

Dakota followed him to the next room. The door had a carving of a creature with a crocodile head, a fish tail and back legs that looked like a frog. The creature snapped long jaws at a passing fish carved into the dark wood. Ambrose stood inside his room painted in shades of blues and greens, but when Dakota tried to pass the door, the monster lunged out of the wood and snapped at Dakota, his teeth clacking inches from Dakota’s arm as he stumbled away.

Ambrose cackled. “You should see your face! That’s hilarious!”

Dakota pressed his back to the opposite wall. “It tried to bite me!”

“It’s a children’s door. It couldn’t do more than scratch you,” Ambrose said carelessly.

“It tried to bite me,” Dakota said louder.

“It was a joke. Merlin and May, you don’t have to get so upset.” He threw himself backward onto his bed, and his curtains shimmered like flowing water. Dakota stood in the hallway. “Do people in the prosaic world not have a sense of humor?”

“I know what humor is, and that wasn’t funny.”

“Says you.” With a sigh, he got up and went over to his wall where a desk was stood in front of a mural of an underwater scene. The water had spears of sunlight through slowly drifting murky clouds and debris. The same monster from the door swam through the shadows. Ambrose pressed his hand to the wall and the image shimmered for a moment before it turned into an ocean scene with a shark drifting through dark waters.

“How did you do that?”

“Come touch the wall, and I’ll show you how to push the magic.”

Dakota studied his brother without coming into the room. A pink tinge colored Ambrose’s cheeks. “I’m inviting you in. It’s not like I’m going to tell you to walk into a practical joke. That wouldn’t be funny.”

Dakota edged closer to the door, slipping past it when the monster didn’t seem to pay attention to him.

“Touch the wall and feel for my magic,” Ambrose said. Wary of another joke, Dakota rested his fingertips against the wall as the scene shifted again to two unicorns grazing in a field of wildflowers. “Did you feel that?”

“No.”

“Really?” Ambrose looked confused. “Try harder this time.” He shifted the wall again, this time back to his alligator monster. “Did you feel it this time?”

Dakota wondered if Ambrose was playing another prank, but he looked genuinely confused.

Ambrose laid a hand over the center of his chest. “There’s a warmth here. That’s your magic. You can channel magic through an object, usually a jewel or charm, but the wall acts like a focus, so you don’t need that. You just need to push the warmth from your chest into your fingers.

Dakota pressed his hand against his chest, but all he felt was his buttons pressing against his palm. He didn’t have any more head in his chest than he did in any other part of his body.

“We can go back to your room and practice switching the picture. So, do you play any sports? I always wanted to play football, but Mom and Dad say it’s too violent and undignified. I could talk Dad around because he gets how annoying it is to always be so proper, but there’s no way Mother would ever let me roll around in the mud. It’s so boring to be a Dromos sometimes, but Challenge Room is a close second to football. At least I assume it is since I haven’t played footfall. Have you?” Ambrose finally stopped.

“No,” Dakota said since he was fairly sure Ambrose didn’t mean the flag football games they played during P.E.

“Too bad. So, do you want to go change the picture in your room?”

“No.”

Ambrose threw his hands up in the air. “Then what do you want to do?” he demanded.

Dakota wanted to be alone, but that seemed rude. “We could explore.”

“Explore? My own house?” His voice rose in disbelief.

This was not going well. Dakota changed the topic. “So, what is Verdant? Everyone keeps talking about it, but I’ve never heard of it.”

“You’ve never heard of Verdant? Seriously? Prosaic people are so weird.” Before Dakota could defend himself, Ambrose kept talking. As he talked, he laid back on his bed and waved his hands like a conductor. Streaks of light darted around the room, following every wave of his hand. The dance of color made the whole room feel like an underwater scene as blue and greens filled the air. “Verdant is the celebration of spring. When the heart tree has twelve buds, that starts eight days of starting new projects and everyone’s magic gets a boost. That’s why you showed up now. Your magic is weak, but with the Verdant boost, you tripped the wards in the Prosaic world.”

“Oh.” Dakota wondered if Ambrose hoped to offend him or if that was his personality. “I’m going to head back to my room.”

“I’m sure want to open all your presents,” he said bitterly.

Dakota didn’t know what to say, so he went back to his room with the phoenix artwork and tower of gifts. He chose a gold foil wrapped gift with animated leopards batting at the ribbon ends and carefully unwrapped it. Inside a book with a soft leather cover sat in a wooden box. Dakota opened it to find blank, lined paper, like a diary or a notebook. Dakota set it aside. Maybe he could use it at school. He opened the next box—a small red one decorated with gold string. A ring with a huge red stone sat inside.

When someone cleared their throat, Dakota jerked back from the pile. His parents stood at the open door, his father’s hand around his mother’s waist.

“I’m sorry. Ambrose said they were mine,” he said.

“Of course they are, kiddo,” his father assured him. “We bought presents for every birthday, every Christmas, every Verdant and Reaping and school promotion that you missed while you were with Norbert’s family.”

That explained the size of the stack.

His father came in and crouched next to him while his mother stayed at the door. “This,” he said, picking up the red ring, “is a focus gem. It will help you use your magic. A lot of people carry them in their pockets, but when it’s in a ring, you only have to spin the stone around so you can wrap your hand around it, and you’re ready to go.” He took Dakota’s hand in his and slid the ring on. The band shrunk down to fit Dakota’s finger, but that made the rounded gem look twice as big. “Now you spin it around so the stone is inside.” He twisted the ring and Dakota obligingly closed his fist around it.

“Now what?”

“Now you feel for your magic.” His father touched Dakota’s chest exactly where Ambrose had suggested that the magical fire lived. But Dakota couldn’t feel anything.

“How?”

His father glanced over to his mother.

She came a step closer. “It feel like warmth, like safety. There’s a sense that you want to touch the feeling.”

Dakota looked at her blankly.

“Doesn’t anything make you feel like that?” his father asked.

“Sir Knight,” Dakota answered.

His father picked up a present. “Think about how much you want this. Focus on pulling it to you through the air.”

“That’s too hard for him. He would need magical schooling to do that,” his mother objected.

“But I would feel some tugging.”

“Just have him touch his magical core. Dakota, reach inside and touch the magic. You’ll know when you connected.”

“How?” Dakota asked, but he obliged by closing his eyes and thinking about his chest. It felt as awkward as the time Ada had insisted everyone should learn to meditate to support her spiritual journey.

“You’ll feel it,” his mother said, but Dakota didn’t feel anything. He didn’t feel anything as first his mother and then his father tried to talk him through dozens of different exercises to get him to feel his magic. When Ambrose appeared at the door and stood watching, all Dakota felt was embarrassed. By the time his new family gave up on him, Dakota’s butt hurt from sitting on the floor and he had a vague fear that they had made a mistake. He didn’t have magic and they were going to send him back.

And that wouldn’t be so bad except Aunt Anita and Uncle Norbert were going to be furious about the roof. However, after watching his parents exchange concerned looks before lying to him about how everything was fine, Dakota couldn’t figure out any other possibilities. Maybe if he went home soon, Sir Knight would only yell at him a little bit. When Sir Knight worried, he yelled a lot. Sometimes it got a little scary.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

“Don’t worry, Sport. School will get you fixed right up,” his father said. “Before we go, a quick one. People make me, want me, raise me, but then they change me.” Dakota ignored the hopeful look his father gave him.

“Money,” Ambrose said.

“Right you are.”

Ambrose darted to the side when their father reached for his hair.

“Let’s get going.” He escorted Ambrose and Dakota through a new courtyard door. For a second, they were in a normal living room, and out the window, cars passed by on the street they had walked up when they first reached the house.

“There will be a lot of people, especially since everyone is going to want to see you, a child returned from the Prosaic world. Magic reborn. It’s all very exciting. But you just stay close and we’ll get you to school.”

His father waved a hand, and the scene changed. They were in a marble hall with row after row of desks. Workers typed on computers, but also colored streamers darted overhead and people shimmered into existence behind a rail before walking into the crowd that milled the waiting area. “Bright smiles,” his father whispered.

“Mr. Dromos!” someone cried out when they spotted them. “Is this Felix?”

“He goes by Dakota,” his father said as he urged Dakota to take a step forward.

“Welcome back, Dakota,” a woman in a lime green suit said happily. “It was a most blessed Verdant this year, wasn’t it Mr. Dromos?”

“Indeed it was,” his father said.

“He looks just like you.”

“I remember his grandfather. He looks more like his grandfather.”

“So sad that the man didn’t live to see his grandson return to his proper home.”

“I’ve heard some people wondering whether other children might return home. It’s possible.”

Dakota looked around at the crowd gathering around them. People in jeans and florescent green shirts, pink suits, purple jackets over orange shirts, dresses covered in multicolor paint splatters. The crowd made a chaotic rainbow at people pressed close. His father smiled brightly.

“Shake hands,” he said, nudging Dakota. Dakota dutifully shook with everyone who pressed close.

“Do you have any Verdant goals?” an older woman with animated cat hair clips asked while two of the clips fought over a stay lock of hair.

“He’s making a challenge for Merlin’s sword,” his father said loudly.

“Of course, of course. Every boy should challenge. It’s only right,” the woman said before someone else pressed in and took Dakota’s hand.

“How exciting. I’m so proud to welcome you home, young Dromos,” a heavyset woman with enough sparkly jewelry to blind him offered.

“I’m challenging, too,” Ambrose said loudly. “We can go on adventures together.”

“Of course, of course,” their father said. “The boys are as close as ever, but you know how it is waking children up in the morning the first day of a new school year. We’re running late and the school will not be pleased if I don’t get there two there before the bell.”

Dakota was almost pulled off his feet when an older man didn’t let go of his hand fast enough and his father pulled him in the opposite direction. “Happy first day of Sumra everyone. Happy Sumra all around.” He added in a softer voice, “the arches are this way. I’ll be back to pick you up after school until this crowd thins out, so Ambrose, don’t come straight home. Wait for me at school.”

“I was going to visit Gregory.”

“Tomorrow. Now Dakota, you’ll have to test to see where you are in classes. We have the same sorts of classes, but the focus will be a little different than the Prosaic school. For example, it isn’t enough to do multiplication tables—you have to see the patterns in the numbers. The more you can recognize the underlying structure of the universe, the more control you’ll have over your magic.” He hesitated, and Dakota could hear what he wasn’t saying.

Dakota still didn’t feel his magic and he couldn’t control the picture in his room or make any of the family focus stones heat up.

“Anyway, we don’t have an arch in our quarters because that would be inviting trouble,” he father continued in an airy voice.

“We’re famous, you know,” Ambrose added.

Their father chuckled. “Some would say infamous, but yes, we would have everyone knocking on our door if we allowed arches or shimmering on our property, so any time you want to go somewhere, you’ll need to go through the office. This is the headquarters for Wiz World Travel and Technology, so it’s always open. If you get lost, Dakota, you only have to go to any arch and think as loud as you can that you want to come to the office, and any arch in the world and connect to ours.”

Dakota assumed making an arch connect required magic, so he doubted he could manage that, but he didn’t say anything.

They turned the corner, and Ambrose hurried toward a corridor with a series of narrow arches on one side and wider ones on the other. He stepped up to the nearest narrow one and said, “Descartes Traditional School.” The flat surface shimmered like water and Ambrose stepped through.

“We’ll get you sort, Dakota. Just you see,” his father said before urging Dakota to follow while keeping a hand on Dakota’s shoulder the whole time. The room they reappeared in was bedlam.

The space was enormous with a balcony on three sides—a little like the Dromos’s house but much larger. And children of all ages gathered in clusters and chased each other and played games and generally claimed every corner. Lines of benches had become boundaries for the different groups, and magic was everywhere.

A banner with “Sumra Success” in huge letters was animated with a whole zoo of fantastic animals, some of which Dakota recognized—a dragon, a unicorn, a phoenix—and others that looked too impossible for imagination. Ambrose insisted that phoenix and cipactli were real and just very good at hiding from Prosaic people, but Dakota couldn’t imagine that birds with human heads or creatures shaped like umbrellas with huge tongues were real. Yet those creatures danced around the words, cavorting for attention as the students largely ignored them.

“Let’s go check in. You never want to stop for long in front of an arch or someone is going to knock you over,” his father said. Dakota walked forward mechanically, his gaze darting to every part of the school. Carved gargoyles slowly surveyed the room, and teachers floated above the students’ heads.

“No kissing!” A man with a long, black ponytail and a mustard yellow shirt yelled. The whole room exploded with “oohs” and “aaahs” and someone loudly whistled.

“That brings back memories,” his father said with a chuckle. “I guess Ambrose found his friends, but that’s fine. He has his class schedule.”

They headed for the bright red pillars on the far side of the room, and as they got closer, Dakota saw the huge entryways on either side of an office, complete with windows just like the school back home. The office workers could slide the windows open and give someone a pass to get to class. However, his father ignored the window and walked right into an unmarked door.

“Chester and Dakota Dromos to see Mrs. Vion,” he announced to the room the moment he stepped in.

“Appointment?” A woman with narrow eyes asked.

“Yes. We have to get him tested to start today.”

“Where are his transcripts? We can get placement from that,” she said with clear disapproval.

“He was going to a Prosaic school.”

Every head in the office came up and everyone stared at him. Dakota shrank back against the wall.

“Mr. Dromos, and Dakota,” a woman in a light blue suit said as she came out of her office. “Come in, come in.” She shot the others in the office a cold look that sent them scurrying back to their jobs, and Dakota decided to never make Mrs. Vion angry. They followed her down a short hallway to a room with a picture window of the main area where all the students had gathered. However, this office was too far away for it to be a real window. Dakota wondered if it was a camera or more magic.

Considering that she had a tree growing inside her office and birds making a nest above the guest chairs, he assumed it was magic. “So, come inside. I have a few placement tests for you, Dakota, but you don’t need to stay, Mr. Dromos.” She stood beside the door to her office as though inviting him to leave.

“His mother and I are concerned about his magic. He doesn’t seem to channel it easily.”

“Oh? And are you sure—” She stopped.

“He brought down the roof of his Prosaic family’s house and knocked over a tree when his uncle and I got into a fight. He has magic. He just isn’t channeling it well.”

“Ah. Perhaps that explains…” she waved her hand grandly, and his father nodded.

Dakota assumed that meant that it explained why his parents would have abandoned him for ten years, but he didn’t think it did. He knew that their laws said that non-magical children couldn’t live with magic parents, but he thought their laws were horrible and should be changed.

“Well, we have a few ways to address that. I would recommend tutoring.”

“Of course, of course.”

“And we can have him use a training wand for now.”

His father winced.

“A training wand?” Dakota asked.

“Ignore the stigma attached to wands. It’s just a tool to help you develop your magic and learn to channel it, that’s all.” She smiled at him, which made her face look even sharper.

“I don’t know about the stigma. Do I need a wand?” Dakota thought wands were normal for magic, but now that he thought about it, he hadn’t seen any yet.

“Young children use them before they learn to channel magic,” Mrs. Vion explained. “The long crystal structure encourages magic flow. It’s like training wheels on a bicycle.”

Both adults looked at him. “Okay,” Dakota said. Maybe they thought he should be upset, but if something could help him control his magic, that seemed reasonable to him.

“Excellent.” Mrs. Vion clapped her hands. “It’s settled then. We’ll get you a good school wand and then have you take your placement tests.”

“Will he have to use it for long?”

“It depends on how much practice he gets in,” she said. “If he works hard and practices at home, he might be able to give up the wand in a few months or it might take years for him to get over the need for it. The other children have been practicing magic for ten years now, so you can’t expect him to overcome that easily.”

“Of course not, and if you think he needs a wand,” he father said weakly.

She cut him off. “I do.”

His father winced again. “Right. Of course. Anything to help him reintegrate. So, I will come and pick him up after school. Could you keep him here? And maybe make sure he’d not around everyone at once?” His father slipped a hand in his pocket and looked everywhere except at Dakota.

“We’ll look after him,” Mrs. Vion said.

“Right. Excellent.” He shifted on his feet before looking at Dakota again. “So, before I go, the more you take, the more you leave behind. What are they?”

Dakota stared at his father.

After a few seconds, he visibly drooped. “Right. I should go. I’ll be back after school,” he said before he almost dashed out of the room.

Mrs. Vion sighed. “Let’s get you set up in the other room to take your tests. And Dakota, welcome to Descartes Traditional. We’ll get you throwing spells around in no time. Just please promise me that you’ll put your magic to better use than getting the girls’ bathroom mirrors to insult anyone who looks in them.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Dakota said, wondering if she was talking about his brother or his father. Both seemed like they might do that.

- - - - - - - - - - - -

“Can I sit here?” a girl asked.

Dakota looked up to see a pair of girls standing there. He recognized one from his remedial math class. Faye. She looked a little like what he thought a pixie might look like—fair and blonde and very small. Like him, she seemed like she would be good at disappearing, although with only twelve people in their math class, that wasn’t easy. Her friend looked older or at the very least much bigger. She was blonde as well, but her hair was curly and wild. She’d pulled it back with either a hair clip shaped like a snake or an actual snake. The way inanimate objects moved, Dakota had trouble telling what was alive and what wasn’t.

“Sure,” he said.

“This is our table,” the taller girl said.

“We can share,” Faye said. “We like this table because it’s kind of hidden,” she said with a gesture toward the tree limb that blocked most of the view. They were in the same main hall with the travel arches, but now that it was lunch, dozens of trees and round tables had appeared. “I’m Faye Hook if you don’t remember, and this is my best friend, Fikru Abebe. Fikru, this is Dakota Dromos.”

“The ex-normy?”

Faye elbowed her. “That’s not nice.”

“What isn’t?” Dakota asked as they both sat at the round table with him.

“Normy. It’s sort of like making fun of Prosaic people for claiming they’re the normal ones. It’s like suggesting they’re stupid.”

“Oh.” Every day brought new ways that Dakota didn’t fit into this world. And today he had about five million new ways that was true. He was in remedial history for not knowing that Merlin had a partner named May. He was in remedial math because he didn’t understand why long division and multiplication worked. He could do both, but he couldn’t explain it using boxes and patterns. He was in remedial science because he didn’t know why some animals had magic and others didn’t. He was in remedial health because he didn’t know the signs of magical exhaustion. The only class he wasn’t having to take remedial classes in was art.

“So, the Prosaic world. What’s it like?” Fikru asked as she laid her hand on the table. A menu flashed on the shiny surface and in a flash, a spicy chicken stew with thick bread appeared. Dakota blinked. That was the best magic ever.

“Well?” she asked.

Dakota shrugged. “It seemed normal enough to me. The food wasn’t that good,” he said as Faye touched the table and a grilled cheese sandwich and salad appeared. There wasn’t a single wilted leaf in it. At his old school, everyone knew to avoid salad because sometimes you got mouth-slimed.

Dakota put his hand on the table and tried hard to push heat toward it. That’s what everyone told him, but nothing worked. After a second, he took out the long, black wand with the red tip Mrs. Vion had given him, but even when he pointed the wand at the table, nothing happened.

“Here, I’ll help,” Faye said. She laid her hand over his, and a menu appeared. She looked at it. “Sorry. I think that’s mine. I guess my magic overpowered yours.”

“That’s fine. How do I get the fried chicken?” he asked. A second later, a plate of fried chicken, corn on the cob and a biscuit appeared.”

“Is food the only difference?” Fikru asked. “My brother works in Prosaic relations, and he says the Prosaic world is mad. Just crazy. He said that if you want to travel from one place to another, you have to actually move through all the space between. Like if I wanted to go to Africa, I would have to go through all the air between here and Africa. Crazy.”

“They don’t have travel arches or shimmering, although they can take airplanes.”

“Still. That must take weeks. I’d rather take an arch, even if it costs a fortune to travel internationally. I suppose that’s not an issue for you.” She gave him an unpleasant look, and Faye elbowed her.

“How are you liking classes?”

Dakota shrugged. “I’d like it more if I didn’t feel like I was behind everyone.”

“At least you have a reason to be behind. I can’t get math, and I’ve been here the whole time,” she said with sympathy in her voice. “I get that math is important. I mean, a mage architect can’t randomly make the inside of a house bigger. He has to stabilize the mage-space by making he numbers balance. And you have to test the strength of magical ingredients using formulas and if you can’t afford long-distance arch travel, shimmering across oceans requires you to do complicated calculations with the spin of the earth and altitude. Every day my mothers give me a new reason why it’s important for me to understand math, and I still can’t understand it. The numbers don’t make sense.” Faye almost wailed.

Fikru patted her arm. “Hey, it’s going to be like touching your core. One day you couldn’t do it, and the next it all just made sense.”

“I doubt it,” Faye said with a gloomy look in her eye. She looked at Dakota. “But I shouldn’t complain. I know you have all those remedial classes, more than me. But I also know you’ll earn your way out in no time. If your parents had kept you in the magical world, you’d be in advanced classes with your twin.”

“Speak of the devil,” Fikru said dryly. She jerked her head to one side, and Dakota looked over to see Ambrose and three other boys their age walking their direction.

“There you are,” Ambrose said. “I told Gregory,” he gestured toward a boy with violet hair, “Harvey,” the boy had long hair held back by a troupe of monkeys, “and Jack,” the last boy wore an orange and pink zig-zagged sweater that made Dakota’s eyes bleed, “that we’re working together on our Merlin challenge. So we need to publicly declare. Come on. We need to make plans.”

“I’m eating lunch,” Dakota said.

Ambrose’s trio of friends gave Dakota disbelieving looks. “Look,” Ambrose said, “I know you don’t understand the school, but you need to be careful. You don’t want to hang around with just anyone. The Dromos name has a certain weight to it around here, and I want to make sure you live up to it.” He sneered at Faye and Fikru.

Dakota stood up. “What does that mean?”

“Nothing. Just that you should come with me. I never would have let you sit over here if I’d seen you at the start of lunch.”

“I can choose my own seat.”

“Clearly not,” Ambrose said. His trio all cackled.

“Yeah, come on Felix. We have some great ideas for a Merlin challenge. We can all do it as a group,” violet-haired Gregory offered.

“My name is Dakota, and I am happy sitting here, thank you.”

Gregory rolled his eyes. “He’s as annoying as you said,” he told Ambrose.

“Yeah, but I told my father that I’d look out for him. I mean, he can’t even change the picture in his room. I bet the school gave him a wand.”

Gregory and Ambrose studied Dakota while Harvey and Jack snickered. Dakota’s fingers twitched and he controlled an urge to make sure his wand was tucked far enough into his bag to avoid being seen.

“Get lost,” Faye said.

“Who’s going to make us?” Gregory asked.

Faye was on her feet in a second, and Fikru followed immediately after. Faye threw up a hand. At first, Dakota thought nothing happened, but then the most horrific smell started to spread.

“I’m going to tell!” Harvey yelled before he turned and ran off. The others, including Ambrose, quickly followed. Luckily, they took the nauseating stench with them.

“No offense, but your brother is an idiot,” Fikru said.

“Yeah, but I don’t want you to get in trouble.” Dakota hadn’t had time to read the student handbook, but he imagined that making other students smell like a backed up toilet would be against the rules.

“They aren’t going to tell,” Faye said.

“They aren’t?” Dakota settled back down to his meal when the girls did.

“Nope. Because then I’d tell the teacher that they were laughing at you for using a wand, and trust me, that’s a way bigger deal,” Faye said.

“You’re assuming they have some common sense. That might be a bad assumption,” Fikru warned.

Faye shrugged. “Then we can all get detention together. That would keep me out of after school math tutoring, so win-win.” She picked up her sandwich and Fikru settled back down to her stew. “Besides, getting in trouble is like traditional for sumra.”

“It is?” Dakota asked while Fikru raised her eyebrows.

“Sumra is about growth and learning. My mom says that learning requires mistakes, so if we get caught, I’ll just call making those four smell like a toilet a mistake. It’s all part of sumra.”

“What is sumra?” Dakota asked.

Both girls looked at him, food halfway to their mouths and frozen for a moment.

“Oh dear,” Fikru said softly.

“He can catch up on mage traditions faster than I’ll learn math,” Faye said brightly. Then she launched into an explanation. “So, at the end of Verdant, the celebration of new life that lasts for eight days, you have sumra, the growing season. It goes from Verdant until Reaping, or when the first twelve autumn leaves fall from the heart tree. It’s a little like summer only not really because there are things you’re supposed to do during sumra, like start a new project or learn a new skill. Joining the magical world after being in the Prosaic one all this time makes you the undisputed king of sumra, but if you want to learn how to make a Merlin challenge, we can show you that, can’t we, Fikru?” She turned to her friend with a bright smile.

“Great.” Fikru didn’t even pretend to be enthusiastic as she bit off a chunk of her bread and dunked it into her stew.