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Authors: Robin Stephen

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Tessili Academy

BOOK: Tessili Academy
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Tessili Academy

Chronicles of the Tessilari: Book I

Robin Stephen

 

text copyright © 2015 Robin Stephen
Deutschendorf

 

robinstephen.com

 

All rights reserved. No part of this
publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any
form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other
electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written
permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations
embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses
permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, please contact
the publisher.

 

PRINT ISBN: 978-0692498385

EBOOK ISBN: 978-0-9844912-5-4

 

Cover design by Robin Deutschendorf

 

 

 

 

Brown Wing Press

Iowa City, IA

brownwingpress.com

First Brown Wing Press Digital Edition

 

for my parents, for always
supporting my wildest dreams

 


Principal Frane and Dean Balist strode
through the thriving quad. Sunlight fell on their faces, glinting
off the silver threads spun into their robes. Around them, the
academy was alive with life. Flowering brillbane grew along every
walkway, attracting tessili to dart around the blooms like bright,
delicate jewels.

Balist walked with his hands clasped behind
his back, feeling pleased with his surroundings. Surely, the campus
had not been so well-tended in centuries. Ever since he’d risen to
his current station in Masadon and thus inherited the dean’s
position ten years before, he’d seen the gardens here attended to
with particular devotion. And it showed.

The two men reached the murmuring central
fountain. Balist paused for a moment to regard the shimmering
shapes of the golden fish that shifted beneath the dancing surface
of the water.

In the distance, three girls sat on one of
the lawns. Their long skirts pooled around them like spilled milk.
As Frane and Balist stood looking on, one of the girls said
something. The other two burst into bright laughter. Balist, too
far away to have heard the joke, found himself smiling along with
them anyway.

Frane, at Balist’s elbow, spoke. “That’s the
one, sir. The one in the middle. I mentioned her in my report.”

Balist felt the smile leave his face. The
sun, warm and pleasant a moment before, suddenly seemed overly
bright. He shielded his eyes with one narrow hand. “Frane,” he
said, “I spoke with Nylan. He disagrees with you. He told me she’s
our best. An early graduation for her would be a loss for the
academy. Six more months won’t make such a difference.”

Frane was shorter than Balist. He had the
reddish hair of the people of the Fog Isles, now shot with gray. He
frowned as he listened to Balist’s argument. Balist knew very
little about the older man, other than he’d been the principal at
the academy for longer than Balist had known of its existence. The
man struck Balist as overly conservative. If it had been left up to
Frane when graduation occurred, the academy would have hardly any
students at all by now.

Frane made no reply. He squinted towards the
girls. They were smiling, their tessili flying loops around their
heads. They were such sweet things, Balist thought. They sat in the
sun, their cheeks smooth, hair shining, the picture of health and
ease. It was the one with the blonde hair and chocolate eyes that
had Frane all worked up. Over nothing, Balist was certain.

Frane said, voice grim, “It’s my job, sir,
to watch out.”

Balist set a hand on the older man’s
shoulder. Frane was thin, but the wiry sinews of his arm were taut
beneath Balist’s fingers. “And you do your job so well. Nylan said
he’ll submit a full assessment after her next opportunity. We’ll
see what the data say. Now, come on. I’m ready for lunch.”

As they turned from the girls and continued
across the courtyard, the flashnodes on the walls reached full
brightness. It was hard to see their progress in the sun, but now
they flared to brilliance, then went out. Balist glanced over his
shoulder one last time, noting how all three girls had gone still
as statues. It always fascinated him, the way that worked.

For a moment, the quad was silent. The
colorful tessili continued to fly, but otherwise the scene was
still. For several heartbeats, it remained so. Then, one of the
girls spoke. Her voice was distant, tone vague.

Balist turned away. As he waited for Frane
to work the complex lock that would let them off student grounds,
he felt a momentary pang of sadness for what was to come – for what
always came, at the end of each year. Then, Frane swung the door
aside. Balist stepped into the domed exit hall, feeling a mild
relief to be out of the sun.

 

 


Jey ran her fingers through Elle’s long,
dark hair. On the other side of the room, Kae sat at her desk,
doodling with a loose ink pen as her brilliant green tessila chased
the nib and nudged it this way and that, adding hiccups to what
would have been smooth, flowing lines.

Outside the tall windows, the sun was
dropping. The light was growing warm and rich. Soon the academy
walls would throw their long shadows over the dorms.

Jey’s tessila, scarlet hide brilliant in the
late light, clung to the swaying sleeve of her dress. He grasped
the fabric with his tiny talons as it moved with the rhythmic
motion of Jey’s hands.

Elle leaned back against Jey’s legs, eyes
closed. She hummed a vague tune while her purple tessila lay
stretched out full length on her thumb, wings drooping in contented
relaxation.

Jey’s fingers continued their dance. Elle
hummed. Jey found herself humming as well. She seemed, somehow, to
know the tune.

She reached the bottom of the braid and tied
it off with a golden ribbon. “What are you humming?” The room was
quiet, the cloister still around them. It seemed to Jey the academy
had once been crowded. Now it was silent all the time. She
remembered, when she’d been young, seeing classes of six or seven
girls. Now, every class seemed smaller than the last. She, Elle,
and Kae were the only seniors. Younger classes had two members
mostly, or sometimes just one.

“My mother used to sing that song.” Elle’s
voice was drowsy as she spoke, but Jey felt a strange little stab.
Mother
. The word gripped her heart like an invisible
claw.

Out of reflex, Jey glanced at the flashnode
tucked discreetly up near the ceiling. But the light was dim, the
bulb not yet a quarter full. They had time.

At her desk, Kae had stopped doodling. She
turned, setting down her pen, which her tessila nudged and sent
rolling across the spattered paper. Kae stopped it with an idle
hand and said, in a bemused, distant voice, “Mine too.”

The three of them stared at each other. Jey
felt something rise up in her, some strange feeling of knowing
something she did not know. She looked down, frowning. She noted
the ribbon at the end of the braid she’d made was crooked. She
untied it to redo the bow. As her fingers brushed the delicate
contours of Elle’s neck, a thought surfaced in her mind.
One
hand on the throat, the other on the base of the skull. Now
push.
In her mind’s eye, Jey seemed to see a flash of light.
She felt the memory of an exhilarating rush inside her own head.
I could kill her, just like that.

The thought shocked her into sitting back.
The ribbon fell from her fingers. The braid began to uncoil, the
ends unwinding in lazy loops. Jey shot out of her chair and hurried
to the counter, where the spritzer sat. She gripped the hollow
crystal base and inserted the golden nozzle into her nose. She
squeezed the white balloon in one hand. A mist shot out of the
nozzle. She sucked it in.

Immediately, the thoughts faded. Her mind
turned soft and blank. She let out a deep sigh.
It’s been
happening more and more lately
. But the thought had no power.
It faded like a dream.

“Anyone else?” Jey said, turning back to
face the room, spritzer in one hand. Elle had sat up and was
completing the work of unwinding her braid. Kae’s eyes had the
stunned look Jey recognized too well. “Both of you,” she said,
setting the spritzer in Kae’s hand. “Come on. And Elle, stop
humming, will you?”

As Kae accepted the spritzer, Jey lifted the
dangling end of her long, white sleeve. She remembered how, long
ago, she had looked at the seniors and envied them their pure white
dresses. Now, her tessila was brilliant against the pale folds of
fabric. She raised her sleeve so he was level with her eye. She
held him there for a moment. Diminutive as he was, he stared back
at her with his dark, fierce eyes. Unafraid.

She heard Kae inhale, then pass the spritzer
to Elle.
It takes more each week
. But again, the thought was
nothing. It was as pale as a shadow in the moonlight, and meant
even less.

 

 


Jey hurried out of the rooms she shared with
Elle and Kae, pulling the door closed until she heard the click of
the latch. The dorm cloister was deserted, all the other students
off at class already.

Jey was running late. She was running late
because her tessila had hidden from her that morning. He’d been
doing that with some frequency lately. When she’d found him at
last, tucked underneath a quill, he’d hissed when she’d picked him
up. Now he sat in the curl of her hand, inert, refusing to climb up
her sleeve or stow himself anywhere more convenient.

The morning light was pale. The delicate
columns threw shadows over the shrubbery and lawn that occupied the
cloister’s center. She hurried down the south walkway. It was cool
in the shadows – too cool for the tessili to have come courting the
flowers.

Jey had nearly reached the set of double
doors that lead to the quad when a small shape darted through them
and all but ran into her. Startled, Jey jumped back, clutching the
hand that held her tessila protectively to her chest.

The girl, for it was a girl, wore the dark
dress of a pre-initiate. She dodged to one side, ran past Jey, and
hurried onto the lawn to dive under one of the brillbane bushes.
Before Jey could decide what this might mean, ringing footsteps
sounded around the corner. Professor Dail strode into view, his
face rigid with frustrated impatience. He saw Jey standing in the
cloister doorway. “Have you seen anyone? A girl? B412? She ran out
of my classroom not a minute ago.”

Jey didn’t know why she did it. Lying was an
affront to Priam, the god of honor. She’d been taught from her
earliest days never to do it. Jey didn’t know if she’d ever lied
before. If she had, she couldn’t remember. Now, the words slipped
out of their own accord, “No, sir.”

Her tessila chose that moment to emerge,
poking his narrow head from the cave of her fingers. Professor Dail
looked at her, eyes flicking from her face to her tessila, then
back again. He seemed to weigh her with his hooded eyes. Then he
turned away, heading up the walkway that led towards the center of
the quad and the fountain.

Feeling a strange thrill, Jey made her way
to the bush. Mindful of her white skirts, she crouched and peered
underneath the waxy branches. The girl was not very well hidden.
The bush was too dense to let her in much. Her small feet weren’t
even in shadow. Jey could hear her quick, ragged breath and smell
the sweet musk of the brillbane blooms.

Jey didn’t know what to say, so she said
nothing. She reached under the bush and gave the girl’s bare ankle
a quick, gentle squeeze. Then she stood and walked a few paces away
to settle herself on one of the stone benches that stood on the
grass, soaking in the weak morning sun.

It took only a moment for the girl to
emerge. She was a thin child, no older than five, with huge bright
eyes and hair that needed to be rebraided. She scrambled out from
under the bush and flung herself at Jey. Her dress was askew. She’d
lost a slipper. Startled, Jey caught her, her tessila leaping from
her hand to fly in an agitated loop around her head. The child,
warm and heavy, collapsed against her legs. Jey held her, feeling
the deep, silent sobs that racked the small body.

BOOK: Tessili Academy
11.84Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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