Beech immediately became the favorite tutor of all the students of the class forty-four B. He wasn’t magic-talented, or knowledgeable in spells, but his words always left on them a deep impression.
After he had demonstrated his tutoring skills using Spruce's dagger, the students told him about the floating leaves exercise, which Juniper did on Monday. He quickly went out to gather some leaves, and brought them inside the classroom.
Afterward, the students took as many or as little leaves as they wanted. Beech sat down in the middle, closed his eyes, told the students to do the same, and then he calmly spoke, while the students listened to his words.
“The weather is warm and peaceful. The afternoon wind of the month of Byzh blows between the trees and swirls around the leaves. This wind steals the leaves from the trees, and heated up by the sun, it gains speed, and circles back to pick up more leaves, which have just begun falling down from the trees.”
Like this, Beech started to describe actions of a sun-warmed wind, which he continued to spin like a master storyteller. As he spoke on and on, students began floating their leaves. Those students, who opened their eyes, were amazed at the large number of leaves floating around. It looked almost as if the whole class was made out of geniuses, and all of it was due to a story, which they were listening to with their eyes closed.
Beech’s words had the power to attract, and they caused the students to unwillingly see the images of whatever he described. With such a clear image in their minds, concentration came naturally, and all of the students were able to float their leaves.
What only some accomplished on Monday, all of them have accomplished on Wednesday, including Spruce, who didn’t even understand how he had managed to levitate his leaf. Nonetheless, he was levitating the leaf in front of him. However, it only lasted for as long as he was concentrating, because at the moment, when he got distracted by his own success, his leaf fell to the ground.
Yew, who sat next to him, could clearly feel the warm air, which was blowing around Spruce’s leaf, while that leaf was still in the air. And he had no doubt that Beech intentionally included the temperature in his description of the wind.
Two hours passed, and all the students felt as if the Exercise class ended too soon. Beech left first, saying that he was pretty busy and he didn't have time to stay afterclass.
When the students were leaving the class, they already knew that none of them would be skipping Exercise on Wednesdays.
The Thursday passed without any major events. With Maca as their tutor, most students came, but some didn’t show up. Then came the Friday afternoon, and another Exercise class with yet another new tutor. By this time, all of the first year students had heard of the amazing Wednesday tutor, and not wanting to miss another amazing tutor, all of them, except Linden, arrived for the class.
The students of the class forty-four B were surprised from the beginning, because even though they came ahead of time their tutor was already inside the classroom. She was sitting by the wall, and doing her homework on the floor. She didn’t look up to greet them, but when the first students walked in, she did wave her hand and an arrow, directed at the center of the classroom, appeared above her head.
When the clock pointers met the hour to start the class, the thin girl with braided bright orange hair looked up at the students, and commanded, “wait two more minutes". Then she went back to doing her homework.
Exactly two minutes later, she closed her notebook and textbook, and put both books together in her backpack. Afterward, she put her backpack under the wall, where it was far away from being a bother.
Before she began talking to the students, she walked several steps forward.
“So, as you may have already heard, I’m Sage Solhatt Spurge Moss, and I’ll be your tutor for Fridays. Also, you may have wondered, why only your class has five tutors, whereas other classes have six tutors. Well, the answer to that is simple. The sixth tutor changed his mind right before the school started. The teachers are still looking for someone to replace him, but it’s unlikely to find one now, so I bet they won’t find another one until the end of this year. It’ll be either the five of us as your tutors, or that guy will change his mind once again. And I wouldn’t be surprised, if he did.”
She looked around the class, and scratched her hair. When she saw Spruce, she quickly approached him and asked, “why are YOU in Hecate? Everyone in the Fire household is magicless.” She sounded like she knew him.
“I want to be a wizard,” Spruce responded to the gal, showing no strangeness to the older student.
“Hmmmm…” she said for a long time before she looked at the other students. “There should be one more magicless student in this class.”
Yew raised his hand.
“I see,” she said. “So both of you are magicless. Well, in that case, I allow you two to skip my class forever. Because I don’t know anything about magicless people, and I have nothing to teach you. Your presence in this class will be nothing but a bother to me.”
Spruce got up, and spoke to Yew, “let’s go.”
Yew looked at him, then at the tutor, who nonchalantly turned around and spoke to others, “for your info, among all your tutors I am the most talented in magic.”
Spruce caught Yew by his arm, and dragged his friend toward the door, while Sage continued, “I have the highest scores among all the students of the fifth year, and I don’t have any patience for those, who are slow, so I hope all of you already know how to levitate objects.”
Spruce opened the door, pushed Yew out, then closed it behind them.
“What's going on?” Yew asked, confused by the odd initial interaction with the new tutor.
Spruce rolled his eyes before he gave him the explanation. “The Moss household used to be just a bunch of poor magicless nobles, but about four generations ago, a woman from the Sea household fell in love with a man from the Moss household. Then her descendants were born with quite a lot of magical talent. And ever since then, the Moss household has been full of those arrogant pricks.”
“So what do we do?” Yew further inquired.
“We do as she said. We skip Fridays,” Spruce answered as he began walking away, and Yew went along. “Anyway, let’s go downtown. I want to eat some of that tasty street food for dinner," Spruce proposed.
Yew nodded in agreement, and both boys walked away from the classroom.
Inside, Aspen sat quietly and observed the tutor, who wasn’t tutoring at all. She was bad at explanations. She didn’t understand how magic worked. She was only willing to assist those students, who were exceptionally talented just like her. However, nobody could deny that she had an outstanding magical talent, and she wasn’t hiding her contempt toward those students, who weren’t as talented.
At the end of the class, the opinion about her was divided. The more talented students saw her tutoring skills as average, but her talent as truly exceptional, and enjoyed watching her spell. On the other side, the less talented students saw her as a tutor far worse than Chervil Sun.
The class ended. Half of the students left immediately. The other half of the students were enamored with their new tutor, and stayed behind to ask her questions. She didn’t mind the attention at all. Quite the opposite, she liked to be the center of all that attention.
Aspen took a final look at her, and followed those, who had already left the classroom. Outside he headed toward the Western Park, where he found Chervil Sun sleeping on a bench with a book on her face. The title of the book was: Effects of Herbs on Magic Spells.
He took the book off her face, and looked at the content inside. Chervil grimaced, at the sudden sunlight hitting her face. She turned around, and sat on the bench, slowly opening her eyes and looking at the boy.
“This book looks interesting,” Aspen said. “I’ll be borrowing it.”
“Sure,” she agreed instantly. “Just mind that this is a book from a fourth year, so it may be a bit too hard for you.”
“It’s fine,” Aspen assured. He put his backpack on the ground, opened it, and put the book inside. Afterward he took out two other books from inside his backpack and passed them to Chervil, who took them back.
“Wow, you’re already done reading these?” she said, as she looked at the books. “You’re fast.”
Aspen closed his backpack, and threw it back on his shoulders. “Thanks for the books,” he said. “It’s really bothersome that I cannot borrow any of the library books, which I’m really interested in.”
“Have you even looked at the books in the first year section?” Chervil asked him.
“Yeah. I have already read most of them, before I came to Hecate.”
“Oh, that explains a lot,” she smiled. “So how are the classes? Boring?”
“Sometimes,” Aspen acknowledged.
“This is why I say, skip, skip, skip, skip the class,” she half-sung the second part of the sentence.
“I don’t think it’s a good idea," Aspen shook his head. "I’m only a first year student.”
“I assure you, nobody cares,” Chervil waved her hand. “And you get a lot more free time to study the stuff, which they don’t want to teach you.”
Aspen didn't even consider her words. “Thanks for the books, see you later,” he said as usual, then walked off, ending their conversation.
Chervil waved at him as he was walking away, but he didn’t look back.
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