Becoming a Dragon (7 page)

"How is your transformation practice going?" he asked inquisitively.

"Fine. Why do you ask?"

"I heard you mention to Jenna you were going to practice last night, and I see you've been practicing this morning."

"What! How do you know that? Have you been spying on me?" Crystal was furious. She had practiced on her grounds, where she thought no one could see her. If he had seen her transform, he'd seen her naked.

John shook his head. "Look at your eyes after they transform. They always look a little different. You can always tell if someone has transformed recently."

Crystal wasn't aware of this, but resolved to check in case he was lying, especially after the last conversation they had had. "Oh, is that always the case?"

"More or less; but more so with you. As I said, you're special."

Crystal glared at him and said, "Whatever," before turning her back on him and sitting down. She could feel his eyes on her, and pulled out a text book to pretend to read to discourage him from trying to engage her in further conversation.

The class slowly filled up, and soon there were other people to talk to. Daniel arrived and sat next to her, and she made a point of engaging him in conversation, knowing that John wouldn't want to speak with Daniel after the incident with him yesterday.

Professor Silver took them for several of their subjects, including Culture and Society, the first lesson of the day, a rather dry subject that she hadn't been forced to endure previously. The boredom was felt throughout the class, and the only one really paying attention was John, an act that endeared him to no one, not even Professor Silver, who clearly saw through John's attempts to get back on his good books. Crystal struggled to stay awake and just spent the lesson day dreaming about flying.

To her immense irritation, John tried to discuss the subject with her in the morning break. As if the lesson hasn't been dull enough! If it hadn't been clearly impossible, she'd believe he was actually interested in the subject. She managed to get away from him fairly quickly, and went and joined Jenna as she flirted with Arthur.

The second lesson was geography, which was in one of the other towers with a different teacher, Professor Easthill. He was slightly older than their Professor, and was a jolly man, with grey hair and a plump figure. He was as unlike Professor Silver as was possible, and Crystal found him a little ridiculous with his enthusiastic greetings to the class and his old, crumpled clothes.

"Welcome students, welcome to geography! Come along, sit down, anywhere you like, it doesn't matter. That's right, just sit down, quickly now. Right, I know some of you won't like it, but we're going to start with a quiz. Yes, yes, calm down, this is just to let you know, and to let me know, just how much each of you already know. Help me see what I have to work with. Now what's your name?"

"Daisy, sir," the princess replied brightly. Crystal wondered how on earth the Professor didn't know who she and her brother were. There were hardly likely to be many princesses in the school.

"Ah, good, and what an enchanting smile you have, my dear." Crystal groaned inside, but Daisy's face lit up like a lamp. "Please, can you hand out these tests to everyone?"

Daisy smiled sweetly at Professor Easthill and took the papers, distributing them throughout the class. She seemed to almost enjoy the task. Crystal was starting to wonder whether she actually was a princess.

"Now, don't worry about this test. We have only just begun, so this won't count towards your final grade. There are one hundred questions, but as you will see, they are multiple choice, so it shouldn't take you too long. Please don't write on the test papers, write the answers on a separate piece of paper. Oh, and of course, no talking, and work on your own. Cheating is pointless, as this doesn't count for anything, and I'll know if you have. Please begin."

Crystal turned over the test paper and started reading the questions. Despite the questions being multiple choice, she found the test very hard, and was disappointed to find that even the section on the South wasn't that easy. She was glad it was a multiple choice test, as at least she would get some marks just by guessing at the answers.

Once they had finished, the Professor made them all swap their papers with each other, so they could mark each other's work. He then began going through each of the answers, asking students the answer rather than just telling them the correct ones. Crystal was amazed to find that John knew many of the answers not only to his region, but also all the others. He got some questions on the South right that she had failed to answer correctly. When they finally got to the end of the quiz, Professor Easthill asked them to count the number of right answers, and then he wanted to see who had managed to get the most numbers of questions right.

"Let's start low. How many of you are holding a paper that you've marked above fifty?"

Only eight hands went up in the air. Seth, who had marked Crystal's paper, had his hand firmly by his side.

"Not too many," the Professor commented. "But it wasn't an easy test, so don't feel bad if you haven't scored well today. We'll soon have you mastering this subject. What about above sixty, how many of you managed that?" Four of the hands dropped. "Above seventy?" Everyone but Daisy lowered their hand. "Ah, Daisy, you hold the winning paper. Would you mind telling us the score?"

"Ninety five," she replied proudly, as if it were her own score she was announcing.

A gasp went through the classroom, and even the Professor looked shocked. "That's incredible, Daisy. Quite incredible. Would you mind showing me the paper? Just to check your marking."

He took the paper from her and scanned down the list of answers. "Right, well, yes, this does all look correct. I guess it's easier to count the mistakes than the right answers. Yes, ninety five. Whose paper is this?"

"John's, sir," she replied smiling, pointing over at John. John looked up at the Professor, his face an unreadable mask, showing no emotion whatsoever. Arthur was shaking his head in disappointment. Of course Daisy had taken John's paper. No one else would do so willingly.

"John. Ah, John Wood. I've heard about you from the Keeper. He told me that you were exceptional, and I see that he is right! He told me about your project, the one you submitted for your scholarship test, and asked me to come and have a look at it, and I think I'll have to do that now. Quite remarkable. I don't think I've ever seen a score this high."

The class was silent. Crystal wondered if John would appreciate being referred to as exceptional after yesterday. The Professor gave John his paper back. "Five answers away from being perfect. Very well done. Right, well let's move on. Give everyone their papers back; let them see where they went wrong." John passed Daisy's paper back to her, and Crystal thought she saw him exchange a smile with her. No one else was smiling at John. Getting twice as high a score as over half the class wasn't likely to endear him to any of them. If anything, it probably made them despise him even more, if that was at all possible.

The Professor spent the rest of the lesson explaining the syllabus for the term. They were going to start with Furnace, to help them all become familiar with where they were, as many of them were new to the place, and then after that to move on to each region, to ensure that by the end of the year they had a basic knowledge of the geography of the whole kingdom. The rest of this lesson was to be spent giving them a broad overview of the country.

The class was actually relatively interesting, mainly because the Professor made it so with his warm and friendly manner of dealing with the students, and Crystal regretted writing him off as ridiculous at the beginning of the lesson. She already had a very basic knowledge of the country but he filled in many of the gaps. The Western Principality was the part that interested the most, having never visited there but having heard a lot about it from Jenna, who had spent many holidays there. It only shared a tiny stretch of the border with the Rhino Dragons, and then other than the three internal borders with the Eastern Principality, the centre and the Northern Principality, the rest of the border was a long and beautiful coastline, dotted with exciting and varied towns and cities. It's distance from the more aggressive Blue and Green Dragons meant that it was very safe and consequentially rich and prosperous. It was rumoured to be quite wild, and behaviour that would be unthinkable elsewhere in the Kingdom was quite acceptable in the West. The people had a reputation for all being beautiful, and the students in the class from the West did nothing to spoil this reputation. The Northern Principality was the only other region with a coast, but sounded a much more drab and uninviting place.

After the lesson finished and the students were leaving the classroom, Crystal realised that she had left a book back in the class and went back in to fetch it. She thanked the Professor for the interesting lesson before making her way down from the tower to catch up with the others for lunch.

"How did you enjoy that lesson?" John asked as she passed him. "You looked like you were finding it very interesting."

Crystal gave him a cold look. "Here to boast about your score? Well done. Very clever. Goodbye."

John kept pace with her as she walked, seemingly oblivious to her hostility. "Why would I want to boast? He said that it wasn't an important test, and that really wasn't my intention. I just wondered if you had an interest in geography, that's all. I'd be happy to help you if you ever wanted."

Crystal gazed at him in disbelief. "I like the teacher. He makes it interesting, but I have no real interest in geography, and no, I don't want to have your help with this or any other subject. I'll learn quite enough from him, thank you." She turned and marched away.

"The offer is always there," John called after her.

Crystal didn't see John for the rest of the lunch break, and managed to avoid John during the afternoon break by joining a group of people that included Daniel Thorne, Joel and Jerome. Jerome was from the East as well as John, but seemed to have no affection for him either, joining in and leading some of the jokes the others were making about him. Daisy was right, Daniel was a little cruel, although he could be quite amusing, and was very handsome and quite charming to her. Jerome was much harder to read. She had learned that he was the one who had come second to John in the test, and was clearly very clever and was good at reading people. He may not have John's academic ability, but he understood people and knew how to win them over. However, just every now and then there was a slight edge to what he said, a sudden meanness, but it disappeared just as quickly in the next thing that he said.

Unfortunately for her, Arthur was right about Daisy risking her reputation. At lunch Daniel and Joel were laughing about her quite a lot, retelling some of the brief encounters they had with the young princess before back in the west, and her gullibility and childish ways. She might look charming, and was loved by the simple folk in the west, but they assured them that there was very little going on behind that vacant expression and anyone of any real value saw that very quickly. Crystal suspected that her refusal to shun John was going to cost her, as she was mentioned in connection with him a couple of times. A little unfair, as she was sat beside him in the class through no decision of her own, but then again she had been warned by Arthur not to associate with John and had paid little attention.

When the day finally ended, Crystal left school quickly, looking around furtively to see if John was waiting for her. She walked quickly from the school building, hoping to avoid him, only to find him waiting for her just around the corner.

"Hi, Crystal. Mind if I join you?" he asked, starting to walk beside her without waiting for her answer.

She shook her head. "Have I ever given you the impression I want your company? How many times do I have to tell you to leave me alone?"

John shrugged. "No one else lives near you, Crystal. Are you really that worried that you'll be seen talking to me?"

"Yes!" she shouted at him. "You may not care what the class think of you, but I do. I don't want you dragging me down the way you're doing with Daisy."

John looked shocked. "How do you mean? What am I doing with the princess?"

"No one likes you! No one likes a know-it-all, which you are, and they didn't like you much before that test. Daisy is the only one who has time for you, so how do you think her popularity is going to fare over the next few days? It's the second day of school and people are already talking about her behind her back, and not in a nice way. She's a princess. You'd expect her to be popular, but thanks to you she's being ridiculed."

John looked genuinely concerned about this. "Oh, I didn't realise. I hadn't encouraged her
—
well, not intentionally anyway. She's just, well, pleasant to me. I don't think it's in her nature to be unpleasant to anyone. Do you really think she should be punished for that?"

Crystal sneered at him. "That's your choice, John. You're the one ruining her chance of making friends at school."

John frowned and looked away from her. "Alright, thank you. Thank you for telling me. I'll need to think about what to do." He continued walking beside her in silence.

"Well, are you going to go?" she asked. "Do you want to ruin my life as well as Daisy's?"