The Sphere (The Magi Series #2) (25 page)

Hannah, on the other hand, seemed to have forgiven Elijah for
yelling at her during class.  She was polite to him and smiled as she did with
anyone who talked with her, but she kept a more comfortable distance from him
than she had previously.  She occasionally sat next to him during class, but
she didn’t wait for him after class or in the dining hall like she used to, and
their trips to the library stopped completely, other than when they worked the
same shift.

Elijah still wanted to apologize, but each day that passed
seemed more and more awkward to bring it up.  Soon, he knew that they would get
to the point where being only casual and polite would be the norm.  There never
seemed to be a good time to talk with her, and when he did say more than a
“Hello” or “Goodbye” or “See you tomorrow”, it never felt like the time to say,
“By the way, I’m sorry for yelling at you in class that one time”.

He tried to keep from wallowing in self-pity, but he began
to feel as though everyone was abandoning him.  Uncle Stan left to be with the
marshals.  Master Roddick acted like he wanted nothing to do with him.  Olivia
was gone until further notice, and his friends were ignoring him.  When he
thought about it one after another like that, he wanted to crawl under his
covers and just sleep until the next day so he didn’t have to deal with his
loneliness.

Master Constantine made the class read old, ancient archives
from the first Magi during the month of September.  While Elijah would have
usually found this subject fascinating, Constantine had a way of making it
boring.  He had a gentle reading voice that sounded more like a voice reserved
for telling bedtime stories, which had the opposite effect for historical
archives.  It sounded forced and childish.  Elijah found himself daydreaming
most of the time.

Physical training continued to get tougher each day.  The
exercises Master Zempke started with the first week were apparently just
warm-ups to condition the students after a summer off.  Elijah had worked on
his physical training during the summer every so often, so he didn’t come to
the barracks completely out of shape, but these trainings were definitely
ratcheted up.  Zempke had all the students increase their morning run to four
laps around the perimeter of the arena, instead of the usual two.  He had them
do the basic obstacle courses like the foam pit—which Elijah remembered
thoroughly detesting last year—and the climbing wall and different balancing
exercises.  However, as the weeks wore on, he began to separate the students
into ability levels, which really just ended up being by age, and gave them
specific exercises designed to test their weaknesses.  Elijah’s group worked
heavily on speed training.  Even after the big morning run, Elijah’s group did
sprints and reflex training.  They had to dodge a multitude of flying objects without
moving their feet.  Then, they had to do it while hanging from a rope.  They
all failed miserably.  Most of them didn’t even get a chance to dodge because
they fell off the rope anticipating being hit by a flying ball or a piece of
thick foam.  Each day after physical training, Elijah went to bed more and more
sore.  It was always interesting to see who showed the most severe bruises in
the following class.

Mental training continued to be a smooth class for Elijah. 
They worked on their normal exercises like denying certain senses and then focusing
on their remaining senses.  One day, all the students were given super heavy
earmuffs that blocked out almost all sound.  Then, they were asked to use only
their sense of sight to observe a scene.  They were supposed to explain as much
as they could about the event.  Elijah’s task was to observe different role-playing
conversations using only his sight.  At first, he tried reading lips, but he
found that a little too difficult, mostly because by the time his head turned
to see the other person, he missed important information.  He instead relied on
looking at hand motions and body language to gauge the information.  At the end
of the exercise, he was supposed to give as much information as he could to the
class about what he observed.  The students who really got into their roles and
characters were the easiest to read, but even so, he was almost spot on with
each conversation.  Master Ismai always beamed with pride after watching Elijah
perform.

By far, the most surprisingly pleasant time of the week was working
in the library.  Elijah enjoyed working there so much that he signed up for
extra shifts, even on the weekends.  He never let a Sunday go by where he
didn’t help Mrs. Roddick and look in on Phinneas, but after he returned, he
would race to the library to work a night shift, even though it made for a long
day.

Part of the reason he enjoyed working in the library so much
was his rekindled friendship with Becca.  Elijah loved her sarcasm and dry
wit.  He had never considered Becca an adversary, not even last year when she
was more defensive and condescending to pretty much everyone, but the more
Elijah got to know her, the more he enjoyed being around her.  She was the
perfect antidote to his loneliness.

While they performed mindless tasks such as filing or
cleaning books, Elijah and Becca passed the time playing a game they
affectionately referred to as People Hunting.  They would walk around the
library, or just observe from where they were, searching for random and
interesting students.  One day, they spent hours looking for students who may
have had a crush on one another.  They looked for odd things like shooting
glances from across the room, or in one instance, Elijah spotted a young lady
who moved seats about every five minutes, inching closer to a group of boys
studying at the far end of the room.  After he reported his findings to Becca,
they spent the rest of their shift, and then some after, deciding which boy she
had a crush on.  It was highly amusing to both of them.

Elijah was quite good at the observation part, as would be
expected, but Becca loved to create a back story for the students, as if they
were characters in a little world she made up on the spot.

“I think that that guy over there with the long, brown hair
is madly in love with that girl reading over there by the window,” Becca would
say.  “But the girl doesn’t even know he exists.”

“You don’t say,” Elijah played along.

“Yes,” Becca continued.  “But what he fails to realize is
that the girl is actually blind, and therefore has never seen the boy.  So
while he thinks she is snubbing him, she actually just can’t see him.”

“Ah,” Elijah said.  “Then if your story is correct, why is
she reading a book.”

“Um…because she is just
pretending
to read.”

“Why?”

“Hold on.  Oh!  Because she senses his undying love for her. 
She just doesn’t know who it is that is creating such energy.  She may look
like she’s reading, but she is secretly pleading for him to make a move and
identify himself.”

“If he only knew.”

“It’s a shame, really,” Becca said, then shoved Elijah
playfully in the arm.

Elijah also enjoyed the library for another very important
reason:  Ruth.  His first encounter with her by the shelves was not the last. 
She showed up frequently during Elijah’s shifts and always had something to ask
him.  She’d ask him about reserving time to go into the ancient archives or would
want him to help her find different books.  Many times, Elijah found those
books returned just a few hours later, or at least the next day.  Becca would
frequently make fun of Elijah afterward, but that never stopped him from
enjoying Ruth’s company whenever it presented itself.

The last training exercise Elijah thought would have turned
boring was his elemental training.  It took until October for Olivia’s
substitute, named Master Young, to completely understand what Elijah could do. 
Elijah always felt like he was treading water waiting for him to sift through
the notes Olivia left him.

Master Young was indeed young.  He looked like he was fresh
out of the barracks.  In fact, Elijah swore he had seen him before.  He had a
clean cut of brown hair and his cheeks sunk in like someone had scooped out a
chunk from each side.  He was slightly taller than Elijah, but since he always
seemed to have his head buried under Olivia’s notes, frequently shifting his
eyeglasses, they were practically the same size.

The thing that annoyed Elijah the most about Master Young,
at least during the first few weeks, was how he acted like he had it together,
but it was painfully obvious he had no clue what he was doing.  Elijah learned
this very quickly when Master Young came to pick him up from the barracks for
their first lesson.

“Elijah Hawk!” he announced with his nose slightly elevated.

“I’m here,” Elijah called.  Truth be told, he was the only
student present.  Everyone else had already left with their mentors.

“I’m Master Young,” he said.  “And who might you be?”

“I would be Elijah.  The name you just called.”  It was hard
not to chortle.

“Of course you are,” Young stated.  “I think we should head
to Jade Lake like everyone else.  That way you can see exactly how you stand.”

Elijah wanted to say, “You mean, that way you can see what
the other mentors are doing,” but he refrained.

Things got even more embarrassing when they arrived at the
lake.  For one, no one was actually working by the lake.  This was the location
mentors took preliminary students when they started, and Preliminaries wouldn’t
start working with elements until the second term, still four months away.

Master Young looked around.  “Or would you rather go
somewhere else so you don’t have to be embarrassed by what you may not know
yet?”

Elijah smirked.  “Well, if we stayed here, I would be just
as alone as going somewhere else.”

“That was my thought as well,” Young said.  “Well then,
let’s talk about the elements.”

Elijah groaned to himself.

“The first thing you need to know about the elements is that
they can be very dangerous.  You need to exercise caution when using them. 
Have you ever seen them used?”

“Yes,” Elijah sighed.

“Okay.  So let’s say for example you wanted to work with
fire.”  Master Young conjured up a ball a fire between his hands and looked
very impressed with himself.  Elijah suppressed a yawn.  “If you didn’t know what
you were doing, you could actually do a bit of damage to you or the area around
you.  Let me demonstrate.”

Master Young let the ball of fire drop to the ground, and it
was immediately doused by the moisture of the wet grass.  Young looked puzzled,
which delighted Elijah.

“Just like I was trying to show you,” Master Young said,
clearing his throat, “you can get a little lucky sometimes, but don’t count on
it.  But then there are times like
this
…” he wiped the ground under him
to rid some of the moisture and then dropped a second ball of fire, which
flickered a moment and then was doused again.

Elijah bit his tongue hard enough for it to bleed.  “Would
you like me to use my overcloak to wipe it this time?” he asked.  Master Young
looked at him unsure whether or not he was being mocked.

“I think you get the idea,” Master Young said with his head
held high, as though his little demonstration had worked perfectly.  “The point
is, you need to be careful when controlling the elements.  If you’re not, it
may be the last thing you ever do.”

“Got it,” said Elijah.  He enjoyed watching Master Young
make a fool of himself too much to actually be irritated that he wasn’t learning
anything during the lesson.

Thankfully, Master Young improved.  He seemed to get the
hang of things after a few weeks, and soon he and Elijah would spend time
poring over Olivia’s notes together to figure out what they needed to do next. 
Most of the time, Elijah only practiced skills in Master Young’s presence, but
every so often, Master Young would try teaching him some pointers.  Elijah
actually found Young to be gifted at block attacking, which was using the
attack from an opponent against them.  Young taught Elijah how to absorb an
attack of fire and throw it back instead of using another element, like he
practiced with Olivia.  Elijah actually wished he had learned block attacking
when Olivia worked with him during their last lesson, but Young was quite good
at teaching this particular concept.  It made Olivia’s absence a little more
bearable.

Elijah split his time on Sundays between helping Mrs.
Roddick and helping Phinneas.  Mrs. Roddick was still looking quite tired, so
Elijah made it a point to get working first thing in the morning.  Then, he
would take the long journey to the Western Forest to check in on Phinneas. 
Most of the time, Elijah found him to be quite lucid.  He would tell Elijah
stories about his days as a soldier and how he and Olivia had met by
happenstance on a trip to Asia with her family.  There were times, however, when
Phinneas would slip back into his confused state and became puzzled at simple
things.  Elijah swore that Phinneas was still with it during these times, but
something was blocking his mind.  Like he knew what was happening and battled
himself over coherency.  Elijah wondered if Phinneas would ever be the same or
if this was the new normal for him.

At the barracks, Elijah eventually found himself a routine
to keep from going completely crazy.  He and Paul had eventually gotten to the
point where they could be polite and weren’t purposefully trying to ignore each
other, but their relationship wasn’t the same.  Elijah purposefully filled his
schedule with as many distractions as he could find.  He picked up extra shifts
in the library.  He studied with Becca in the neutral area almost every night. 
Sometimes Adam would join them.  He even talked Mr. Button into letting him
visit Phinneas every few evenings to check on him after his trainings were
finished.  His busy schedule distracted him, but it still didn’t help him when
he saw Paul and Isaac and Hannah together in the dining hall working on a
project or laughing about an incident he hadn’t witnessed.