After they left their classroom, the boys began walking toward their cottages. They didn't traverse more than fifty steps, before they spotted Wasabi Water, who was sitting on a bench with two older students.
Spruce recognized them as the same older girls, with whom Wasabi had lunch two days ago.
When Wasabi noticed the boys, she waved her hand, then beckoned at them to come closer. The boys looked at each other, and wordlessly pondered among themselves what to do. Wasabi, who quickly got tired of waiting, hopped off the bench, and approached them with cheerful jumping steps.
"What are you? Stone columns?" she joked. "You just finished Exercise of Magic, right?" she looked at Spruce.
"Yeah," the boy answered shyly, afraid to have a conversation with a girl.
Wasabi's two older friendesses slowly walked up as well, and quietly listened to their conversation.
"We didn’t have much time to talk before, but it’s a good thing we met again," as Wasabi spoke, her countenance gleamed with anticipation. "I think we have our Exercise of Magic at the same time, but in different classrooms. You had yours in classroom G, right? And I just left a while ago from classroom H.
"Your lesson was that short?" Yew asked her.
"Well, of course. Today was the first day, so there was nothing to practice. Our tutors explained to us about the teaching system in Hecate. Then they told us how older students help younger students. And after each tutor finished his or her speech, they wished us the best, and the class ended."
"Sounds like you have quite good tutors," Linden remarked nonchalantly.
"We have three gals and three guys, and they all seem very responsible," Wasabi further explained. "I already decided that when I start my fifth year, I also want to be a tutor."
"Tutoring sounds hard," Spruce murmured to himself, while imagining his future. He didn't expect a response to his comment, so he startled when Wasabi addressed it.
"You don’t have to do it. It’s optional and only for students with at least ninety percent score on their tests."
"How do you know that?"
"Our tutors explained it," she answered, and was surprised that the boys didn’t hear about it from their tutors.
The boys recalled their Exercise of Magic class, which was mostly spent on a squabble among their tutors.
Spruce sighed upon realizing how little he learned and how much time he wasted. Yew felt discouraged to attend the class again but he didn't show or express his feelings. Aspen, who already read through the guidebook and his textbooks, and Linden, who had no plans to ever attend the Exercise class, didn't care at all about the issue.
"Many students apply to become tutors, because it comes with a lot of privileges," Wasabi continued, "like free food, free rides home and free rides back to school. It also helps to review old material and to build stronger foundations." Seeing that the boys were paying a lot of attention to her words, she asked, "didn’t your tutors already tell you all of this?"
The boys shook their heads simultaneously, except for Linden, who rolled his eyes.
Spruce shook his head more vigorously than others, and feeling anger at his tutors, he momentarily forgot that he was speaking with a girl, and answered, "no, our tutors just introduced themselves." Two of them, at least, did introduce themselves.
"So who’s your magicless tutor?" Wasabi looked at the boys, who had no idea, so they stared expectantly at her, as if she knew the answer. Feeling uncomfortable under their gaze, she added. "In every group of tutors, there should be at least one magicless tutor, as long as there are magicless students in the class."
Once again, she proved to the boys that not all tutors were equal and the ones assigned to her class were far better than theirs.
"We don’t know," Spruce slowly answered, once again feeling the pressure of talking to a girl.
Wasabi tilted her head. "Okay, maybe they’ll tell you at a later time. Anyway," she changed the topic, and introduced one of the two older girls who had been quietly listening to their conversation. "This is my cousiness, Anise Water. She’s the daughter of my mom’s sister."
Anise looked similar to Wasabi, albeit a little older. They had the same hair color, but Anise's hair was curly and cut short around her neck. Their eyes differed as well. Wasabi had a gleam in her eyes like that of a playful crow, but Anise looked more responsible, mature, and gentle like a dove.
Anise raised her hand shyly and waved a bit. "I’m a third year student, so we won’t meet often, but I’m glad that Wasabi already has some magicless friends her age." Her smile was as gentle as her voice, which sounded like honey to their ears.
"Anise is magic-talented," Wasabi abruptly added, and her ordinary voice suddenly sounded so squeaky in comparison to her sister's soft speech. "My mama is as well, but my papa is magicless. And I drew the short straw. That's how I ended up magicless like my papa. However all of my maternal family is magic-talented," she pointed her hand at Anise.
"So which one of you is magicless?" Anise looked at Spruce, presuming him to be the boy, about whom Wasabi spoke so much.
"Me and him," Spruce answered, pointing at Yew, and hoping that Wasabi speaks to him instead.
"Are you both magic-talented?" Aspen asked Anise and the other girl her age, who stood next to her.
She was shorter than Anise, and didn’t stand out at all. She had straight purple hair tied in a ponytail at the side in order to keep it away from her face. She was quiet all this time, and she had the air of someone, who didn’t like to stand in the spotlight, like a deep-sea fish who preferred the darkness of the ocean bottom over a sunny beach.
"Yes," Anise answered his question then introduced her friend. "This is Goolur Sun. We’re roommates."
Goolur waved a hi at the boys, but she didn’t say anything.
"By the way," Anise turned her face toward Wasabi. "When are you going to introduce them?" she winked at her cousiness.
"Oh right, I still didn’t ask you for your names!" Wasabi suddenly realized that she only knew the boys' appearances. She looked at Spruce, who was so stressed that he introduced himself before she asked the question.
"Spruce Fire."
Without hesitation, other boys followed his example.
"Yew Sky."
"Aspen Breeze."
"You don’t need to know," Linden said flatly. "Quite likely, we won’t hang out ever again," he added, then marched away, ignoring everyone like an adult who had an argument at work.
"Did he have a bad day?" Wasabi was genuinely curious and a bit worried.
"Well, since we’re in a different schoolyear, and you’re in a different class, that’s kind of true," Anise gently pointed out.
"Maybe we should also be going?" Goolur spoke in an unusually quiet voice, just a notch above a murmur. "We have quite a lot of homework already," she added in that same quiet voice.
"Sorry, Wasabi," Anise directed her words toward her cousiness.
"No worries, take care," she responded.
The girls waved byes to each other, then Goolur and Anise left Wasabi with the three remaining boys.
"I guess we’ll be going too," Spruce turned around.
"No!" Wasabi grabbed him by the shirt, "There’s something I must show you."
"Eh?" Spruce looked at Wasabi's hand on his clothes. He had never been in this kind of situation before, and he didn’t know what to do in case a girl held a boy’s shirt.
"Come this way," she said and took Spruce by his arm, dragging him along before his brain could process her actions.
Yew and Aspen couldn’t leave the poor boy alone, so they also followed. They passed many school buildings, as Wasabi led them toward the Fountain Garden.
It took them more than ten minutes to arrive there. It was plenty of time for Spruce to fight back against Wasabi's hold, but he was too embarrassed to cause a scene, so he allowed her to pull him onward.
After they entered the Fountain Garden, Wasabi continued to hold Spruce’s arm as she guided them through diverse routes composed of paved paths, flatstone walkways, tiled sidewalks, and stone bridges.
Wild grasses and bushes accompanied each route, while trees grew independently in the distance. Streams and rivers zigzagged around them, occasionally crossing their path, whereas ponds and fountains decorated the area like raindrops on a window.
Wasabi stepped away from the paved route into the two-meter-tall bushes, and followed a barely visible dirt path. When she reached the beach beyond, she let go of Spruce.
"Follow my steps, or else you'll fall into the lake," she said as she parted the reeds, which were growing everywhere. She hopped onto a flatstone pathway, made of large rocks half-submerged in the lake. "Come on," she encouraged the boys.
"Is it far?" Yew asked.
"Almost there," she answered. "Come on, it’s totally worth it."
Spruce, who was curious regarding the hidden path, stepped forward. Aspen followed behind, then Yew, who was least interested.
Hidden by tall reeds, they traversed the waters and reached an isle overgrown with bushes.
Wasabi pushed aside the branches and headed forward between the bushes. Other boys followed her example, and found themselves at an entrance of a naturally occurring cave. It was big enough for an adult to stand upright, and wide enough for three people to walk side-by-side.
The boys looked at each other with mixed emotions, while Wasabi fearlessly went inside. The boys advanced cautiously. After all, if a girl wasn’t scared to enter, they couldn't be scared either.
The cave wasn’t dark, because every once in a while there was a hole in the ceiling letting just enough daylight to see inside. Due to this sporadic natural lighting, shade-loving plants grew on the cave floor and walls.
The deeper they went into the cave, the rarer the ceiling holes became until they all disappeared. It got dark, but at the same time in the distance, they could see hazy blue lights.
Upon approach, they saw countless crystals growing on the walls of the cave. Each crystal gave off a faint blue glow, but together their illumination was strong enough to shine the way.
In front of them, there were stairs leading downward. Each step was very wide, at least half a meter, but no more than ten centimeters high.
They walked down until they reached a right turn at the bottom of the staircase. Then another set of stairs led them upward toward the deepest part of the cave.
Wasabi turned around before she spoke. "My papaw told me about this. I asked Anise, and she came here with Goolur last year. Not many people know about this passage, but you’ll be shocked." She pointed at the deadend wall, as she asked the boys, "Do you know that ninth year students actually fight magic battles as part of their class activities?"
Spruce shook his head.
Aspen responded, "this is the first time I hear this."
Yew didn't pay attention to their conversation as he scrutinized the wall in front of his eyes.
There were eight round holes in the wall. Each hole was cleanly carved out and roughly the size of a walnut. All of them were arranged in a single row about a meter above the ground, and about thirty centimeters apart from each other. All kinds of sounds, noises and human voices could be heard coming from the other side of the wall.
"Take a look," Wasabi said, then peeked through one of the holes.
One by one, the boys chose a hole and looked through. What they saw instantly amazed them. It was a real magic battle. Something, which they had not anticipated to see.
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