Letter || Variable four

Kapok looked at Nettle, hesitating over something. Yet when Nettle slowly but surely nodded, Kapok bit his lower lip. He took out an envelope from his shirt and handed it to Yew.

"What's this?"

"This one surprised us, to say the least," Kapok said. "And honestly, we didn’t want to give it to you. But if all these schools aren’t to your liking, then this one is still better than nothing."

The envelope was addressed to Yew, but it had already been opened by his parents. He took out the letter from inside the envelope, and read the short sentence written at the top of the page: Yew Chirabilva Araukaria Sky, thou hast been cordially invited to the school of Hypnos. Sincerely, Chairman of Hypnos.

Hyssop, who sat next to him, leaned over in order to read the content, and was just as shocked as her brother. "What?!" she yelped.

Yew was speechless.

The school of Hypnos was a mystery. At first glance, the schoolground was nothing but abandoned ruins. Sometimes the students were spotted on the premises from a distance, but none could ever be found from up close, making these encounters no different from ghost sightings.

No one knew where Hypnos held its classes, if it did hold any classes, or what was taught in those classes. The only thing widely known to the public was that the school accepted no applications. Instead, it would send out invitations, but no one ever figured out the criteria, which was used by Hypnos to select its students. For all these reasons, a letter from Hypnos was always as unexpected as a shooting star.

"We would prefer for you to study in a school, which we can trust," Kapok said, "but if you decide to go to Hypnos, we won’t stop you."

Nettle put her hand on Yew’s shoulder, and said in a concerned voice, "but I want you to tell us everything, what happens there."

Graduates of Hypnos were as mysterious as the school itself. No one really knew what they could do, but every so often, an incident here and there shed some light on their skills. The most famous of those incidents happened roughly two hundred years ago, when two students of Hypnos got into a fight in a forest adjacent to the town of Lizardtongue.

When the town's authorities arrived to stop the fight, the graduates had fled, leaving behind a white flame. This mysterious magic defied all known laws, because even though the flame had been blazing for centuries, it never scorched anything or anyone. All kinds of scientists and wizards studied it, but no one ever figured out its composition, and the manner of its creation remained a mystery to this very day.

This artifact, adequately named the Eternal White Flame, became worldwide famous in the following decades. Nowadays, it was the most-visited tourist attraction, and the main profit source for Lizardtongue.

"Can you give me some time to think it through?" Yew asked.

"Of course, as much time as you want," his father said. "The most important thing is that you like the school, which you choose."

Yew took all the letters and went to his bedroom. He put the letters on his desk, closed the door, and sat on his bed. The sight of so many acceptance letters would make anyone else explode with gaiety, but it made him feel sick to his stomach.

Mpingo had gotten rejection letters from every school except the school of Hestia. Whereas Yew was accepted by every single one of them. On top of that, he got the invitation from Hypnos, which Yew decided to decline without any deeper consideration. He didn’t want to attend a school, which would crush his best friend’s soul.

He decided that, if he must choose a school, he would choose the worst of the best.

He sat down at his desk, took the envelope from Hypnos and threw it onto the floor. He did the same with the papers from Athena, Ares, Hermes, and any other school with a good reputation. In the end, he was left only with the school of Hestia - the very school, which accepted his best friend. He couldn’t go there either, because Mpingo wouldn’t forgive him for "wasting his talents" like that.

He added the paper from Hestia to the pile on the floor, leaving nothing on his desk.

In the end, he couldn’t decide.

He wanted neither fame nor success. He wanted to go to a school, which wouldn’t put him in the spotlight or make him a celebrity. Yet apart from Hestia, all the other schools had a good reputation. In other words, there was no other "bad" school among the acceptance letters, which his parents gave him.

He sighed in defeat, knelt down by the pile, and started looking through the papers again. This time he wasn’t looking for the worst school, but instead he was looking for an odd school - an outcast, which stood out from the rest.

The acceptance letter from the school of Hecate had caught his eye, and he pulled it out from the pile.

Hecate was a school of magic with a fairly good reputation, but it wasn’t common to attend this school. The magical talent, which was required in order to learn magic, was rare and just like any other talent, hereditary.

Neither Kapok nor Nettle, nor their parents or grandparents, had any magical talent. This meant that their children would also remain magicless. This was true for his sister, but not for Yew.

He put the letter from Hecate on the desk. Then he pulled out a book from an adjacent shelfcase. He ran his fingers on the ornamental cover around the title «Magic for Beginners», before he opened a random page, and read the content. It described a spell to create a water bubble shaped like a butterfly.

As instructed by the book, he drew the shape of a butterfly in the air. Then a water butterfly manifested right above his open palm.

It was always the same. No matter which spell he had tried, it had always worked. That was how he knew that he was magic-talented, but his parents weren’t. He understood what it meant, and it vexed him.

He closed his hand into a fist, causing the water butterfly to drop down onto the floor, where it left a small puddle, which quickly evaporated.

Yew sighed as he recalled the day, when he first saw this book in a bookstore almost a year ago. Back then, he had thought that he was magicless. Nevertheless, he had begged his mother to buy him this magical book, after seeing so many beautiful images of animals behaving as if they were alive on the paper pages.

Nettle had smiled upon seeing her son so fascinated by moving images, so she had bought him the book with a caring warning, "in order to use magic, you need to have a talent, so don’t cry if the spells don’t work for you."

Later that day, Yew had tried the spells. He had no desire to embarrass himself in front of others, so he had tried them alone. And they had worked, and he had no idea what to do about it. Afraid to tell anyone, he had kept it a secret.

Many months have passed since then, and he was still the only one, who knew about his magical talent.

He frowned at the book, as if he didn’t know whether to blame or thank the object. He merely wanted to have it out of childish curiosity. Yet if he hadn’t seen this book, or if he hadn’t been so enamored by its images, or if his mother refused to buy it, he would have never found out about his magical talent.

He would have never found out that he was adopted.

It was common for children, who lost their parents due to an illness or an accident, to be adopted by another family. However, it was uncommon for adopted parents to keep the adoption a secret.

In the past, Yew had asked his parents why he had no more siblings, and his mother explained that she couldn’t get pregnant anymore after she had a surgery. This satisfied Yew’s curiosity into the matter, until he found Nettle’s medical papers two years ago, when he was eight yrold.

At that time, he was looking through her drawers, trying to find his favorite chocolate.

In one of the drawers, under a pile of papers, he had found a wooden box, and in the box he had found her medical documents. He couldn't understand most of the content, but he certainly understood that her surgery had taken place on the third day of Tsun in the year fifty-seven-hundred eighty-nine - a month before he had been born.

Back then, he had ignored this confusing info, and continued his search for chocolate.

Nonetheless, after discovering his magical talent, Yew had became certain that he wasn’t Nettle’s biological son. He also realized why Nettle and Kapok had adopted him. They wanted more children.

He understood that both Nettle and Kapok saw him as their real son, and Hyssop saw him as her younger brother. There was no reason for him to bring up the topic of his adoption, and destroy the harmonious life of his family. Especially, since he assumed that his parents were waiting for him to grow older, before telling him about his adoption.

However, today his secret had turned into a problem. His parents were sending him off to a school, and this was the time, when all family secrets ought to be revealed and explained.

Despite that, Yew’s parents were ready to send him to a school with no word about his adoption. And there could only be one reason for this silence. His biological parents were criminals, and his adopted parents might have deemed it better for Yew not to know about them. Yet if this was true, then Yew felt an even stronger desire to find out about them - who were they, and what crime had they committed.

Once again, he looked at the application to the school of Hecate. No one knew that he could use magic, so it wouldn’t hurt Mpingo too much, if he went there as a magicless student, or so he tried to lie to himself.

Although Hecate was a school of magic, even those without a magical talent could apply. Unlike magic-talented students, who studied in order to become magi, magicless students studied in Hecate in order to become wizards. The second option required no magical talent, but a lot of reading and memorization in order to acquire the knowledge necessary for making magical items.

Like this, Yew could kill two birds with one stone - keep things a secret from his adopted parents, and search for infos about his biological parents. Not to mention, that he could keep his relationship with Mpingo as cordial as possible, and that mattered the most.