After making sure that her students were calm again, she decided to continue her clarification. It was important to her, that her students weren't misguided in their understanding of magic, and weren't foolish enough to think that witches could use magic.
"Witchcraft was very similar to possession," she said in a clear voice, "with the exception that witches had a material body, so they didn’t possess other beings, but instead they marked them as their belongings."
She tapped the chair, which she was sitting on.
"If a witch wanted to move this chair, first she would have to leave a mark on it - some symbol, which would make it hers. Then the rest was pretty much the same as with the possession. The witch would hold an absolute power over the marked object or over the marked creature. And the longer the mark remained, the stronger the bond grew, which would slowly destroy the victim of witchcraft."
Sorrel carefully scanned the faces of her students, some of whom appeared worried but still more intrigued than scared. She shook her head disbelieving herself for going offtopic that much. "Maybe I have said too much," she wondered aloud.
"Oh no," the boy, who asked about witches, responded right away. "No, not at all. I always wondered why witches are always bad characters in stories, and now it all makes sense. I’m so glad they no longer exist."
"Yeah, me too," several other students agreed openly, while others only nodded their heads.
"Well, I’m glad I made it clear for you," Sorrel said, then stood up from her chair. "Anyway, don’t forget about four types of magic: spells, charms, blessings and curses; and don't mix up magic with incantations and chants. Because I’ll test you on that," she smiled toward the students. "That will be all for today. Goodbye, students. God bless you."
The students stood up and responded with "Goodbye, professor." Aspen was the only one, who followed up with "God bless you, too."
Sorrel Cave was the first one to leave the classroom, but all the students stepped out right behind her.
Once the boys were outside, Spruce asked his roommate, "why did you respond with that «God bless you, too»? You made me feel like I’m in a temple."
"It is the Highest Blessing," Aspen responded. "The most powerful blessing in the world."
"What? Really? God bless you! God bless you! God bless you!" Spruce said toward each of his friends.
Aspen looked annoyed.
Linden remarked with a sneer, "the power of a blessing comes from your true feelings. Unless you mean it, it doesn’t work."
"Oh right," Spruce recalled, what Sorrel had taught them less than an hour ago.
"Anyway, let’s go," Linden commanded and moved on.
The boys followed him, even though they didn't know where he was leading them. They assumed it would be something related to food as it was almost lunchtime. His authoritative voice, which sounded confident and assuring, prevented them from asking any questions or confirming their presumptions.
Yew, who was almost certain that they were heading for lunch, spoke out when Linden had missed the turn. "Hey, the cafeteria is that way," he pointed at the road, which they had just passed.
"We’re going to Sheepcrown to buy magical items for you two," Linden finally explained his intentions. "Unless you somehow became magic-talented in the last five minutes."
Yew ignored his sarcastic comment, and asked instead, "what about lunch?"
"We’ll eat at the marketplace. They have plenty of good street food downtown. Also it’s cheaper."
"Won’t we get sick?" Spruce was concerned.
"If you’re unlucky," Linden shrugged. "Never happened to me before."
"Will we make it back to the afternoon class?" Aspen had a completely different worry on his mind.
Linden spun around on his heel, "you want to attend THAT?!"
Aspen said no words, as he recalled the class from yesterday.
Seconds later, Linden turned and moved forward, gesturing to the other boys to follow him.
After passing through the Hecate gate, which marked the boundaries of the schoolground, the boys crossed the traintracks. In front of them lay the beautiful city of Sheepcrown.
Just like the Hecate schoolground, the city was mostly built from white stones, which were abundant in the region. The buildings usually had three or four floors, although occasionally they were taller. The roofs and walls were covered with moss and ivy. The balconies were decorated with flower pots, and from each flower pot, a different flowering plant hung down above the street.
The most impressive part of the city were its bridges, which linked the buildings together. These bridges at the same time acted like pathways and like rooftops, protecting the residents from hot sun, rain, hail, and snow.
Yew recognized the area as the place, which he had already seen several days ago, when he first arrived in the city. He was walking on the same road, but this time instead of heading north, he was heading south. A moment later, he passed the vast train station on his left - the very same station, where he disembarked several days ago.
Afterward, Linden led them to a small station next to tramtracks, where a one-car tram was about to stop. Following his lead, the boys got onboard as soon as the tram doors opened. There was no place to sit, so they stood holding onto the vertical bars.
"Is it free?" Aspen asked after he stepped inside.
"Yeah," Linden pointed at the badge on his arm. "It's free as long as we're students of Hecate," he said but he knew that his answer wasn't exactly correct. After all, nothing in the world could ever be free. Even animals and plants had to pay with their labor in order to eat.
Yet among humans, kids were exempt from this reality. They were allowed to live supported by their parents and whatever their parents paid for was classified as free. For this reason, kids understood the word "free", even though they never understood the true meaning behind this label.
Linden could have explained to the boys, that a part of school fees were used to pay taxes to the city of Sheepcrown, which in turn were used to cover the cost of annual tram travel authorization for all the students, but he concluded that it was not a topic worth wasting his breath on, especially not with his classmates, who most likely would require a lengthy lecture to thoroughly understand it.
Moreover, they might even ask him stupid questions about other vehicles, and he'd have to explain that the city of Sheepcrown had banned all vehicles other than trams many centuries ago, and had turned every road into a tramtrack, creating a robust and convenient way to travel around the city, with trams active even at nighttime.
Once Linden mentally reviewed what he knew about the trams in the city of Sheepcrown, he congratulated himself for not getting into this complex topic with his fellow first year students. Instead, he and the other boys observed their surroundings in silence.
The inside of the tram had a walkway through the middle, with seats at each wall. Most seats were in pairs of two, but some were facing each other in groups of four. Vertical and horizontal bars were present along the walkway, with most of the passengers using them due to limited seating.
The tram travelled at a speed of no more than thirty kilometers per hour, which was so slow that the boys could see people crossing the tracks without even waiting for the tram to stop at the next station.
The sidewalks alongside the tramtracks were often wider than the road, and not all the streets had tramtracks. Some of the streets were too narrow to fit a tram inside, but even they were filled with pedestrians and cyclists.
While Yew, Aspen and Spruce were immersed in observing the city and its inhabitants through the tram windows, Linden announced, "it's the next stop."
The tram arrived at the next station, and the boys disembarked. Linden stood in place, waiting for the tram to move out of the way. Then he and the other boys walked across the tracks to the other side, where they entered a street with an immensely wide sidewalk and no tramtracks.
It was the entrance to the main street of the downtown.
The ten meter wide sidewalk had a walkway in the center, which was six meters wide. Then, at each side of the walkway, there were rows of statues.
The boys began walking down the walkway, with their heads facing the sky as they tried to see the statues, which were elevated high enough to be out of the way of all usual traffic, which was happening at the ground level.
Each statue was placed on a square flat rock. And each rock was supported by a set of four columns. And each column was four meters tall, and covered by ivy, which grew in a pit between the four columns. As such, the statues couldn't be seen directly from below, but they were clearly visible from a distance, and from the bridges, which ran alongside the main street.
The boys saw a group of tourists gathered on a balcony of a hotel, while their tourguide was recounting his knowledge in a clear loud voice.
"... the most famous graduates of Hecate. There are currently a total of two hundred sixty three statues along the main street. The oldest statue is more than twenty five hundred yrold, and has been renovated more than twenty times. That over here is the statue of..."
As the boys moved on, the tourguide's voice became more and more distant, and soon it was lost among the chatter of the people closer to them.
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