Test || Variable thirty

Then came the eighth day of Byzh, a Monday morning, which had arrived way too fast. The students headed to their classes, and nobody could understand why Linden was so happy early in the morning.

When they were close to the History building, Spruce asked him, “what makes you so happy? Your negative hundred twenty-five points?”

“Who cares about homework points?" Linden shrugged. "Free food is only for test points,” he responded and walked into the classroom with a smug face.

After Cacao Bark arrived, the students greeted him and he greeted them back. Then he walked up to his desk and tapped it twice. Upon his action, a pile of papers appeared on top of his desk next to his hand. He grabbed the first answer sheet.

“For those of you, who don’t know. Any score of ninety percent or more grants you seven days of free meals in the cafeteria. Since this test was for a total of hundred points, this means anyone, who scored at least ninety points, will receive from me a free meal pass. Let me start, Aspen Breeze, ninety eight points.”

Aspen walked up to the teacher and got back his answer sheet together with the free meal pass, which looked like a small sticker, which he could stick onto his student badge. The sticker was less than two centimeters long and had the word “bread” in the center. Aspen stuck the sticker at the top of the number one in his student badge, which he kept on his chest.

The students started to accustom themselves to the school's tradition to openly announce their scores together with their names, so no one reacted strongly to it anymore. And no one was surprised at Aspen’s score, because he always had the highest score.

One by one the students took their papers.

“Yew Sky, eighty three points.”

Some more names were called, then...

“Linden Cave, hundred points.”

It was the first time someone received hundred points, and most students thought that they had misheard the name, but when they saw Linden walking to the front, they could no longer doubt their ears.

Before Cacao handed Linden his answer sheet and the free meal sticker, he warned in a rather threatening voice, “allow me to remind you that your total score is still negative twenty five points. You won’t pass this class with a negative score."

Linden showed no reaction, and upon receiving his items, he nonchalantly went back to his seat.

Afterward the teacher read the next name, “Spruce Fire, thirty two points.”

It was the lowest score in the class. And even after all the names were read, the second lowest score was only fifty six points. Spruce couldn’t hide how horribly he felt. He remained silent throughout the class, and he wasn’t in the mood to talk, even when they headed to the much nicer Process class.

There, Sorrel Cave walked up to each student, checking if they succeeded moving the pen. Everyone, except for Spruce, succeeded in magic, and that included Yew, who shook it twice, a bit faster than he intended, but the teacher didn’t see anything odd about it.

No matter how many attempts, Sorrel gave to Spruce, the boy couldn’t do it, and he ended up to be the only student, who had a mandatory afternoon meeting with Sorrel in her office. Yew felt sorry for him, but he had no means to help him, so instead of accidentally hurting Spruce with words, he kept his mouth shut.

During lunch in the cafeteria, Linden paid for Yew’s and Spruce’s meal, and tried to cheer up the poor magicless student, “did you hear that a bad beginning is a sign of a great ending?”

Spruce however remained gloomy, “if I don’t finish the first year as a top student of my class, my father won’t allow me to attend Hecate anymore.”

“Ignore your parents, and chase your dreams,” Linden declared. “Don’t let others tell you what to do.”

Spruce narrowed his eyes. He wasn’t in the mood for jokes, but Linden looked totally serious, so Spruce didn’t say anything in response.

After the meal, they went to the Exercise class, and were surprised to see Juniper Root, with a bag in his left hand, leaning on the wall near the entrance, and no sight of Maca Waterfall.

“Come in, come in,” he said. “Welcome to the greatest class ever.” When all the attending students went inside, Juniper closed the door and walked right to the center of the room, “so you wonder, where’s Maca, I bet. Our tutoring group had a meeting yesterday and arranged a schedule, which will allow us to have more time for our own studies.”

He turned his body around, taking a good look at everybody in the class. “Since you’re only first years, there ain’t much to teach you, so each day you’ll have a different tutor. Monday it’s me – Juniper Root, Tuesday it’s Chervil, Wednesday it’s Beech, Thursday it’s Maca, and Friday it’s Sage. On Saturday, it’ll be whoever volunteers.”

Then he rubbed his hands, “so unlike last week, by today you ought to know a little bit of magic, so let’s do this...” He took the bag and turned it upside down. A rain of green leaves fell to the floor.

“Make them levitate,” he said, “like this...” And then all the leaves began floating up and then around the classroom.

“I don’t expect you to move them all at once,” he said, while the leaves began moving toward the students. Then each leaf fell on the head of a different student. “It’s one leaf per student, so you only need to move your own leaf. When you succeed I have a little reward for you.”

The students took the leaves off their heads, and began trying. All except Spruce, who didn’t even bother removing the leaf from his head. Juniper saw that and came over to the boy. “What’s up?” he asked.

Spruce looked up at him, and said, “I cannot do it.”

Juniper squatted next to him, took the leaf of his head, and held it in his hand, “why do you say so?” he asked genuinely curious.

“Because I couldn’t even shake the pen in the classroom.”

Juniper blew air at the leaf, which changed color from green to orange. He let go of the leaf, which floated and rotated sunwise in one place, right in front of Spruce.

“You know, not everybody gets accepted to Hecate,” he said. “Do you know why?”

Spruce shook his head sideways.

Juniper moved a finger forward in the air. The leaf moved closer to Spruce, and landed on his lap.

“Do you remember your last day of kindergarten?” the guy asked.

“Somewhat,” Spruce answered. “We had a test, but it wasn’t scored. We had to write answers to some questions. They were testing us on orthography and reading skills.”

“The copy of those answers were sent to Hecate together with the application,” Juniper stated.

“So what?” Spruce was getting agitated.

“Do you remember this question: Is there anything in your life, which you want but cannot have?”

“Yeah.”

“And what did you answer?”

“Yes.”

“Just one word?” Juniper smiled, and Spruce nodded. “You know, some people write more than that. They write many details about their dreams. However, all schools around the world prioritize those, whose answers are short or mysterious. Can you guess why?”

Spruce slowly shook his head sideways.

“Because if someone keeps his dream a secret, it’s because his dream is far bigger than possible. They don’t want others to laugh at them.”

“So what?” Spruce got irritated by the unhelpful chat.

Juniper stood up and looked at other students, who were practicing hard with the leaves, then he looked back at Spruce. “There are two kinds of geniuses in the world, those who start earlier than anyone else, and those who start later than everyone else."

Right after he said that, he walked away before Spruce processed the sentence.

Juniper approached another student, who already managed to float his leaf. “Good job,” he complimented the boy, and from his pocket he took out a candy.

Yew, who sat nearby, heard the last comment Juniper told Spruce and furrowed his eyebrows. He wondered how geniuses could start later than everyone else, because that couldn’t make them geniuses, but the very opposite - incompetent failures.

The Exercise class ended with twelve students successfully floating their leaves. Spruce sat the whole time, while doing nothing, and Yew wasn’t even trying. He decided to practice later in secret, with nobody around.

After the class ended, Spruce went to see the teacher, while Yew and Aspen went back home.

Back at his cottage, Yew decided to tell Linden about the Exercise class, “you know, today our tutor wasn’t Maca. It was that other guy, Juniper.”

“Hmm…” Linden responded, barely interested. He was lazily lying on his stomach on the sofa, and hugging a pillow under his chin.

“And he said something super weird," Yew continued. "He said that there are two types of geniuses, those who start earlier than others, and those who start later than others. Weird, right?”

“Sounds about right,” Linden murmured into the pillow.

“How is it about right?” Yew furrowed his eyebrows again.

“He said that about Spruce, yeah?” Linden raised his head a bit, and Yew nodded in answer.

“Then you’ll understand tomorrow,” Linden ended the conversation, and without any further explanation, he put his face on the pillow and ignored the whole world.