Building || Variable fifteen

Upon arrival at the History building, the boys were surprised that it was much smaller than they expected. The structure appeared to be only two-story tall, thirteen meters wide, and twenty-four meters deep.

However, once they looked more closely, they realized, that there were a total of four such buildings next to each other, and they were connected by a balcony in the front and another one in the back.

The boys once again examined the guidebook's map more closely, and realized that the four adjacent buildings were a single structure called the History building.

They approached the entrance to classroom A. Yew pulled on the handle, but the door was locked.

"The classes don’t start until tomorrow," Aspen pointed out the most likely reason.

They tried to peek in through the windows, but the view into the classroom was blocked by dark green curtains. So they decided to walk around the building in order to check on the other classroom. At the moment, when they arrived at the classroom B, its front door opened from the inside.

The boys paused in their tracks, surprised, while Sorrel Cave stepped out and looked at the students, who were a mere step away. She looked neither confused nor surprised - merely interested in their presence.

Spruce felt brave around the teacheress, whom he had already met ereyester. "Hello, professor. We wanted to see the classroom, can we?"

"Which group are you?" she asked, while closing the door.

The boys had no idea which group were they, so they looked at each other, puzzled by the question.

Hearing no answer and seeing their confusion, Sorrel tried again, "do you have your schedule with you?"

"Ah, yes," Yew uttered. From his backpack, he took out the letter, which he had received earlier this morning, and showed it to the teacheress.

Sorrel skimmed the paper, as she nodded. "Yes, you’re in my group. If you want to see the classroom, then come and help me out."

She began walking down the road and the three boys followed her. Even though the route wasn't short, none of the boys dared to chatter around the teacheress. In silence, they dutifully trod behind her all the way into her office inside the schoolmanor.

Sorrel's office was a small room with one desk and many shelfcases on every available wall. The shelves were overflowing with books, notebooks, binders, boxes, packages, and scrolls, all of which were crammed together in an organized manner like puzzle pieces.

"I want you to help me take these to the classroom, since I’ll need these for tomorrow," Sorrel pointed at the three rather big boxes by the door. The first one was packed full of textbooks, the second one had notebooks, and the third one was filled with pens.

"Are we going to… carry them?" Aspen hesitated to ask, as he found the idea absurd.

"Of course not," Sorrel refuted it altogether. "The boxes will walk after me. All I need from you is to keep an eye on them. When I try to take all three at once, they tend to stray away. And it is so time-consuming to look for one, when it gets lost somewhere."

"You mean, they run away?" Yew furrowed his eyebrows. "On their own?"

"Unfortunately," Sorrel said and put her hands at her hips. "The more magic-talented a person is, the harder it is to keep things under control. Sometimes I wish I was magicless. Life would be so much easier."

Aspen looked at Yew and Spruce, who looked back at him.

"Anyway, I’ll be taking the scrolls, so I'm depending on you three to watch over the boxes."

She extended her hand toward four scrolls, which were standing behind her desk. All of them were two meters long, and weighed a lot. Yet they easily lifted themselves off the floor and began levitating, after Sorrel's palm, which at first was facing the ground, rotated in order to face upward.

"Wouldn’t it be easier to make them smaller?" Yew spoke out his thoughts.

"Magic, which makes things smaller, removes details," she replied. "If it’s a blank piece of paper, you can decrease its size, then return it back to its original dimensions without any loss, but if you shrink a detailed piece of art, you will lose a lot. In the worst case, you may end up with a paint smudge instead of a painting."

Using both hands, she carefully navigated the scrolls, which slowly floated outside without touching anything in her office. She was moving them with the precision of a talented magus, who had been diligently practicing magic over many years.

Once the scrolls were levitating in the hallway, she stepped outside her office. On her way, she commanded the boxes with one word, "come."

Immediately, the boxes stood up. Every one of them had four table legs underneath it, which rhythmically struck the floor as they trotted a meter behind Sorrel, who walked onward with the scrolls ahead of her.

"Keep them near me," she commanded the boys.

Just as the teacheress had explained earlier, the boxes were acting as if they had their own mind, and tried to trot away. Whenever one of the boxes began to swerve in a different direction, Spruce ran after it and guided it back to Sorrel, like a kid supervising an adventurous puppy.

He was amazed at the magic, which the teacheress was using. His eyes, gleaming with curiosity, wouldn't let any of the boxes out of his sight.

Aspen pensively observed the boxes, but he didn't need to do anything else, because Spruce kept running around and preventing all three boxes from escaping.

Yew, on the other hand, couldn’t take his eyes away from Sorrel’s hands. Her movements were normal for a magus, but to Yew it appeared as if she was performing a mystical dance.

When they arrived at the classroom B of the History building, Sorrel kept her left hand motionlessly extended toward the scrolls, which stayed still in the air. Then, with the index finger of her right hand, she wrote an invisible word on the classroom's door.

As soon as she took her hand away, the door opened all by itself to its maximum width, and Sorrel carefully glided the scrolls inside. Once all four of them flew in, she followed.

Two boxes readily trotted after her into the classroom, but the third one resolved to run away. Spruce quickly blocked its way and pushed it toward the classroom, but it refused to budge.

Inside the classroom, Sorrel let the scrolls rest in the corner, where she secured them with several protection charms. Afterward, she looked at the boxes. Two of them already sat under the blackboard, but the third one was wrestling with Spruce just outside the doorway.

"Enough," she barked. "Get inside," she commanded the box, which instantly stopped resisting.

Obediently it entered the classroom, and sat down next to the others.

"Good boxes," she complimented them, and stopped her magic. All three boxes became once again normal immobile objects.

Sorrel approached the boys, who were standing at the entrance. "As you can see, this is an ordinary classroom like any other."

The classroom had a total of twenty-five tables for students. Each table had two chairs, and each row had five tables. In front of all the tables, there was a blackboard, which stretched across the wall from one edge to the other. The teacher's desk stood in the center between the blackboard and the tables, and one extra lonely chair was stashed away in the corner next to the scrolls, which Sorrel had just brought in.

"This classroom was assigned to me," she said. "And you were assigned to my class. So starting tomorrow you'll be visiting here for your lessons, while I'll be staying here the whole day," she sighed with a mild grimace on her face.

Spruce got confused by her words, so he felt a strong need to question her statement, "the whole day? Even though our class is only one hour long?"

"I have other classes to teach in here," she chuckled. "It's just that sometimes I'm jealous of the students. You get to travel from one classroom to another, while I have to stay in the same room all day long." She clapped her hands together, "aw well. At least I get a different classroom every year."

"Professor," Aspen raised his hand then pointed toward the corner. "What are those scrolls?" He had been curious for a long time, but only now he had gathered enough courage to ask.

"Ah, these," she prolonged the word as she smiled. "You’ll find out tomorrow."

She walked up to the door, and stood in the doorframe. She gave the boys several moments to look around the classroom, before she said, "this should be enough for today. You'll be here so often that you'll get bored of this place."

The boys looked at her. She pointed toward the outside with her hand. They understood the gesture, and left the classroom. She closed the door and tapped it once with her palm. The door squeaked and a low-pitched chime came from inside, sounding a bit like beeng-baahng.

"Good. It’s locked," the teacheress murmured to herself.

The three boys stood around her like stone columns, quietly observing her actions.

She found their lack of incentive to leave amusing, so she addressed them with a grin, "if you have nothing to do, I can find more work for you."

Her words immediately awakened the boys from whatever thoughts they had. Yew and Aspen shook their heads, looking apologetic as they began to hurry away.

Meanwhile Spruce stayed. He was so interested in magic that he wouldn't mind doing more chores as long as he got to see more magic. He was about to verbally agree to Sorrel's offer, when Aspen ran back, caught Spruce by his arm, and dragged him away.