The Sleepers of Saint Garfir

     ‘Ms. Morchella -- this was an interesting interpretation of a fundamental transmutation spell. I’ll be interested to see this continue to develop.’

     ‘Descent.’

     Miphie had been frowning over a bowl of lukewarm oatmeal when the grades were thumbtacked to the school noticeboard for third years. Once the student mob had disbanded from the bulletin (with mixed emotions), the Draik had finally managed to read her own presentation marks.

     Near the bottom of her leaflet, in a section for mentor and advisor comments, Lucenza had neatly written: ‘Very well done, Miphie. What a creative application to your knowledge! We’ll figure out the next steps soon -- for now, congratulations on passing to your final year!’

     She blinked and forced down the wolfish grin stretching over her face. She had really passed, then. And by the looks of the jury feedback, she had done relatively well, considering.

     Well… there were still final exams to worry about. She adjusted a strap from her overalls that had slipped off her shoulder.

     Weekends at Academia Magika offered a welcome reprieve from classes and studies for most students. Second-years and above were permitted to leave school grounds during the day, and primary and secondary magi enjoyed relaxed curfews. Whatsmore, no one had to wear their uniforms. Most students took full advantage of this privilege, and spent their free time enjoying all that Altador’s capital had to offer.

     Miphie gathered her dishes and brought them to the wash station. The dining hall, usually crowded with students at all hours on weekends, was mostly vacant this morning. Even today, as classes are gearing up for finals week, the majority of the students who were able to have elected to spend the day cramming for their exams away from campus.

     Though Presentation Day was the crucial deciding factor as to whether a student could remain another year at the school or flunk out of the curriculum, it was important for students to pass their exams. The consequences of not doing so would result in repeating a class, and as far as Miphie was concerned, having to sit through History of Magic for one year had been more than enough.

     The end of the term was a mere week away, and with it, two months of much-needed rest away from school. Already, Miphie’s mind drifted to the prospect of seeing Saint Garfir again.

     ⁂ ⁂ ⁂

     The library, dim but for a golden glow of lamps hanging from the vaulted ceiling, was already filled with a hush of students. Now that Presentation Day was over, the school banners used to decorate the bannisters had been tossed back into storage. Near-perfect silence was occasionally punctuated by the scratch of quill to paper and the flutter of turning pages.

     Miphie settled into an empty chair near the circulation desk and set to work. Three years at this school without a friend had taught her to keep to herself. Well. That didn’t bother Miphie so much anymore.

     At Lucenza’s urging (and pressured by Academia Magika’s insistence for academic excellence, or else), Miphie’s schedule this semester had been congested with a palpitation-inducing selection of advanced classes. Advanced Potions I and her Herbology elective were of no concern: Miphie was good at brewing potions, and plants were her particular area of expertise. Her Transmutation III final was settled yesterday at the Presentation. The remaining classes: Alchemy, Advanced Faerie Magics, Altador Culture II, Theory of Magical Weapons, and, of course, History of Magic, promised a long day of cramming ahead.

     Not one hour later, Miphie’s eyes had already glazed over her alchemy textbook (‘Let’s Learn Alchemy: Going for Gold!’). The passage she was reading included a particularly heady formula to transmute a luck elixir from vinegar. Miphie couldn’t make heads or tails of it. Yawning, she stretched her arms—and nearly flew out of her seat.

     Edith Lockwood. Sitting in the seat directly opposite Miphie’s, the Kyrii was calmly observing her.

     “You? How…” Miphie stammered. “How did you get here?”

     “I certainly didn’t fly in.”

     “Well, come on,” said Miphie, “I didn’t hear you. Announce yourself, next time...”

     “How did you do it?” Edith said in her lilting north Altadorian accent. She looked down at her hands folded on the table, a gesture that struck Miphie as totally outside her usual aloof behaviour. “Your presentation yesterday. It fascinated me. You took a spell that normally cannot—should not—react on a living specimen, and it worked.”

     Miphie didn’t speak for several seconds. She was dumbstruck. Then, the heat of a furious blush crept up along her cheeks: a compliment from Edith? She braced herself for the sting that would surely follow.

     “I basically did the same thing you did,” she muttered at last. “I animated a plant.”

     “Please,” Edith scoffed, “do not sell yourself short. My spell was more powerful, yes, but I merely manipulated that shrubbery to my whim. You spoke to that oak seedling. You…” the Kyrii waved her hands in a way that seemed annoyingly elegant to Miphie, “you entered into a dialogue with a seed. I don’t know how else to explain it, but the oak grew not because you made it grow, but because you asked it to.”

     “I don’t know. Oh, I guess, I let myself become an… extension of the plant.”

     “Show me.” Edith’s eyes had widened, hungry.

     “I don’t know,” Miphie repeated, flustered. Again, she glanced around the library. Where was Edith’s posse? Where were the snide remarks? Yet Edith’s icy stare was filled with so much insistence, it almost pained Miphie to look at them.

     “I have to meet with my tutor,” sighed Edith, rising. “So next semester, then. I’ll ask you again, I won’t forget. Oh, and Miphie? You should make flashcards of those alchemical symbols if you don’t want to fail Professor Nidali’s exam on Monday.”

     In a whirl of glossy pink hair, Edith glided out of the library. This left Miphie feeling quite foolish. With a huff, the Draik slammed her textbook shut. Why was Edith Lockwood so interested in her work, so suddenly? Why now, when she had dismissed Miphie for three long years? Had her animation spell really been so groundbreaking? She could see that the nearest students were eyeing her curiously.

     She needed to get away from here.

     Miphie exchanged the chill of the library for the dry warmth outside. Academia Magika was located not three miles from Altador’s Azure coast. On particularly windy days, one could feel the spray of the ocean in the wind. This morning, Miphie could even smell the salt in the air. Judging her alchemy studies a lost cause, the Draik made for the academy’s entrance arch. A change of scenery would reset her mind. And, she reasoned, she would certainly get less attention away from campus.

     ⁂ ⁂ ⁂

     Academia Magika’s campus was flanked by Altador’s city centre. Outside the school gates, the cobblestone paths snaked off in every direction, forming an uneven grid across the whole of the city. The blocks nearest to the school were mostly reserved for official Altador fixtures: the post office and Altador Archives were but a short walk from campus. Then, as the streets neared Altador’s main shopping districts, they narrowed, and shops, cafes, and restaurants crowded the paths. Even during the Altador Cup’s off-season, this part of the city was always flush with visitors, vendors, scholars, street performers, and anyone attempting the land’s famed Altador Plot. It was the perfect setting for an overworked magic student to get carried away in.

     Miphie, for her part, was not generally prone to getting carried away. She was idly daydreaming in line at the Altador post office, when her meditations were interrupted by a shy tap on the shoulder. She turned her head wearily—maybe Edith had decided to deride her after all.

     Instead, who she saw was a lanky Gnorbu, eyes totally hidden behind a pair of thick, round spectacles. Miphie had seen him around school.

     “Yes?” she said.

     “So sorry, are-are you Miphie?”

     “Yeah…” Miphie noticed that his top two incisors peaked out of his mouth slightly when he spoke. They produced a remarkably delicate whistling sound. “Oh, I know you. You’re Piccolo, yeah?”

     “Flute, actually,” said the Gnorbu, “I’m actually in the school of Transmutation too… I mean, I didn’t expect you to know who I was!”

     Miphie did faintly remember that he had presented within her cohort yesterday. His transmutation presentation had been some sort of telepathy spell between himself and another student. And, something about his turn of phrase felt very familiar.

     “You threw me off yesterday,” she said slowly, “about the leaf in my hair. You’re the one who spoke in my head.”

     Flute’s floppy ears blushed: “Y-yes,” he said, “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to—that is, I didn’t want you to be laughed at on stage.”

     “Huh.” Miphie moved up in line. Only one person stood between her and the window clerk. “Well, what do you want?”

     “Just! I wanted to tell you that what you did yesterday was amazing.”

     Miphie froze. Just what was going on? She had led a quasi-invisible existence in school up until today: never excelling, never drawing positive attention to herself. She wondered if someone was engineering an elaborate prank. If so, when would the other shoe drop?

     Flute offered a small smile. Miphie, for her part, had no idea what to say. She was relieved to finally reach the front of the line. She retrieved her mail and hurried out of the post office.

     The Draik usually shared a weekly correspondence with Vaso, her best friend from home. Only, this letter wasn’t from him. In fact, Miphie hadn’t received anything from him in weeks. This particular letter, while also from Saint Garfir, had been sent by her father. This particular letter had the word urgent scrawled across it.

     “H-hey!”

     Miphie jumped out of her scales. Flute again! What did this kid want from her? She shoved the letter into her bag.

     “What?” she said, perhaps more harshly than intended. Flute winced.

     “Sorry. I just wanted to say, I think you should definitely keep practising spells on plants. To see what else might happen…”

     “Yeah, okay…” said Miphie. She needed to read her letter. Alone, if possible.

     “IS THAT HER?”

     For the third time this morning, Miphie wished that today could be normal and that everyone would just, for the love of King Altador himself, carry on ignoring her. This time, a Lutari, whose long brown hair was styled with blunt bangs and—by Miphie’s estimation—alchemically coloured with green highlights, bounced towards her from the cobbled street flanking the post office.

     Miphie had no trouble recognizing her: Acacia, a second-year Enchantment student. She regularly found the lutari studying the plants in Academia’s conservatory.

     “I heard what you did during your presentation,” she said, barely catching her breath, “and in the conservatory yesterday! It was amazing! Who knew you could whisper to a plant like that?”

     Miphie whitened. Had there been other witnesses to her catastrophic experiment with her clay totem the other day? She cringed, recalling the way the animated figurine had ransacked the school’s rare herbs and flowers. Acacia must have seen her desperately reviving the torn-up plants with her animation magic.

     Acacia was bouncing on the post office steps now. Miphie wondered if she was having a nightmare.

     “Please, PLEASE, you gotta teach me how you did it! It’s an anumatum spell, right? What did you add to it to make it work on plants?”

     Miphie could see that both she and Flute were shrinking away from Acacia. Too much. It was all too much!

     “I’m sorry I…” stuttered Miphie, breath catching in her throat, “I have to be somewhere right now…” She hurried away from the post office, away from the excitement and the attention, not waiting for a response. She could feel a trickle of sweat running down her cheekbone. Her heart was racing.

     ⁂ ⁂ ⁂

     ‘Miphina,

     Something strange is happening at home right now. I hope this letter reaches you during your exam week, because it may be best that you stay in Altador for the time being.

     We think some kind of illness is going around town, and I don’t want you to catch it. I’ll write to you when I have more news.

     I hope school is going well and you’re having fun with your friends. I know you’ll do well on your exams.

     Miss you Sprout,

     Augusto’

     Miphie’s hands shook. She sat on a marble bench behind the Altadorian Archives, where the bustle of the city was decidedly more reserved. Man of few words, Augusto hardly ever wrote to her, save for the occasional holiday greeting card. A strange illness befell onto the town? What could it be? By the date written below Augusto’s signature, the letter had been posted over a week ago: what else might have happened between then and today? Could this be the reason Vaso hadn’t written in so long? The letter crinkled under the pressure of her thumbs.

     …It may be best that you stay in Altador for the time being.

     That was absolutely out of the question. She would go home after finals—she’d planned to do so anyway. She would help her father. But then, a small thought wormed its way to the forefront of her mind… What if by next week, things became astronomically worse for her village and this sickness?

     Her bag, heavy with textbooks, was resting beside her on the bench. Could she just leave a day before final exams? And if so, how long would she be gone? Surely there would be no coming back to finish her finals. Even the least motivated students knew such a reckless decision could result in immediate expulsion.

     Miphie stood: she needed advice.

     ⁂ ⁂ ⁂

     “Leave? Now?”

     Miphie squirmed in her chair. Across from her, separated by approximately four feet of antique desk, stood Lucenza. The faerie’s fingers were pale from gripping the edge of the desk as though it would float away at a moment’s notice.

     Lucenza’s office was situated seven flights up the school’s professor tower, that looming brick and marble fixture rising above all other buildings on campus. Located to the southwest, the tower regularly threw a serpentine shadow in the evenings. This produced the dual effects of cooling campus in the summer, and freezing those walking to night classes in the winter. Students rarely made their way up the tower steps, and not only because they avoided office hours. Miphie was still winded from the journey, and wondered whether her lungs would ever recover.

     In search of advice, Lucenza was the first—and only—resource the Draik confided in. Three flights of stairs away from her office, though, Miphie had already guessed her answer.

     “I know, I know,” said Miphie, “it’s finals week, but—”

     “Miphie, you know as well as anyone that students who ditch their exams are automatically failed and held back. I’ve never, not once in my tenure here, I’ve never heard of a student deliberately missing not one, but all of her exams. Miphie: You could be expelled.

     “You’ve been doing so well the last few days—your presentation astounded the school. It did! I was astounded. You’re finding your place at this school now, you’ve started finding your—your power. Surely you won’t throw all that work away?”

     Miphie stared at her letter, sitting open on the desk. They had read and re-read its contents together, and Lucenza’s advice was sound. And yet… and yet it wasn’t fair, was it! She felt so selfish for thinking so, but now that her path at the school seemed finally to have straightened—now that her peers were noticing her, commending her, even, for her abilities, she was being torn in a different direction.

     “As your mentor, I cannot condone or allow you to leave this week, as difficult as it may seem,” Lucenza continued, pulling Miphie out of her darkening thoughts. She twirled a single golden braid in between her slender fingers. “Get through this week, and then catch the next bus to Saint Garfir.”

     “I know you’re right,” said Miphie, who was beginning to feel like a broken record, “but what if…” She bit her cheek: “what if things back home get worse this week and—and I don’t know about it? And I’m not there to help…”

     The light faerie vanished from behind her desk and appeared, crouching beside Miphie.

     “Listen to me. Listen. I will personally go to Saint Garfir next week and look into things, okay? As soon as I learn anything about the situation there, you’ll be the first to know. And you will be safer here while I figure out what’s going on.” Lucenza squeezed Miphie’s arm with a reassuring firmness. “I’ll make sure Augusto is okay.”

     “Okay,” whispered the Draik. She would get through exams week—kicking and clawing and fighting through it if she must—and then, once the last test was turned in, she would rush back home. She could do that.

     ⁂ ⁂ ⁂

     So went the general thoughts that followed as Miphie left Lucenza’s office. She marched down the interminable tower steps with newly-acquired determination. In the academy’s student courtyard, the afternoon sun baked the sandy-coloured cobblestones. Miphie seldom did so, but she was actually formulating a plan for the next week: first on the list was to send an urgent letter back home. Then, she would hunker down and study.

     Unfortunately, she did not account for obstacles in her way.

     “AAAOW!” Miphie stumbled backwards, rubbing her nose. Someone taller than she had planted themselves directly in her path, and she had ploughed snout-first into their frame. “Why don’t you watch where—VASO?!”

     A Spotted Gelert, lanky like a noodle, was gawking rather dumbly across from her. A nest of fire-red hair was fighting containment under a grey wool cap: yes, it was unmistakable. Miphie’s best friend from Saint Garfir had found his way to Altador.

     “How did you—wha—WHY ARE YOU HERE?” She shoved him mildly. Vaso, for his part, appeared to treat this particular interaction with Miphie as nothing out of the ordinary.

     “It’s good to see you too, Meef,” he said. His southern Altador accent, rolling and plainspoken, stood out to Miphie, whose own cadence had been smoothed over after months in the capital. She felt the other students watching them. She wanted to crawl into a log. Or preferably, deep under one.

     “Listen, I came to fetch you, we don’t have much time.” Vaso grabbed her hand. Miphie yanked it away.

     “Not that I’m not pleased—and relieved—that you’re okay,” she said in a harsh whisper, “but explain. Now.”

     “Not here. We’re going to have to run if we wanna make it.”

     “Make what?”

     “If we want to make the last bus,” said Vaso, taking Miphie’s hand again, “the bus to Saint Garfir is only running once a week, on account of the… Anyway, if we don’t hurry, we’ll miss it.”

     Befuddled, Miphie let the Gelert drag her off of school grounds and back into the bustle of Altador. True to his word, Vaso would not explain his being in Altador. They weaved through foot traffic, past merchants hawking their wares and musicians playing lutes and violins on street corners. Finally, once the crowds had thinned and the city’s southern wall came into view, Vaso agreed to enlighten Miphie.

     “The… well, as you may or may not know, Saint Garfir isn’t doing great right now.”

     “Yes! I gathered that. I got Augusto’s letter just this morning. What’s going on? Is everyone alright?”

     “Yeah, uh, well. This… sickness going around. The doctors are doing the best they can, but… well. We think it has something to do with the woods.”

     “The Saint Garfir Forest?” Miphie’s head swam with questions. The forest formed a near-complete border around Saint Garfir. It was a timeless fixture caught in permanent autumn, existing since the hamlet’s founding centuries ago.

     “Yes, it’s… well, it’s dying. And no one can figure out why.”

     They had reached the bus stop. A rusty coach was parked beside the lonesome sign pointing the way to Saint Garfir. Miphie’s hand fell out of Vaso’s grasp. The forest was dying? That couldn’t be right, it didn’t make any sense.

     “Has anyone gone in there to… try and see what’s happening?” The words spilled out of Miphie’s mouth like stones. She already knew the answer.

     “No one will go in there,” said Vaso, “or, no one can. The trees know we’re not supposed to walk through them, and they act like a maze. I tried to hike into the woods a few days ago, thinking if I worked at it long enough, I’d eventually find a path to… something—I don’t know. I walked not five steps and found myself back outside.”

     “Twelve heroes of Altador…” Miphie muttered under her breath. Like many other ancient forests in Neopia, the woods around Saint Garfir held magical, oft inexplicable properties. The inhabitants of the valley revered the forest, so much so that the myth of its creation was cited throughout Altador. Even at Academia Magika, Miphie had at one time stumbled upon a historic text detailing the story of a chimeric garfir casting a powerful protective spell across the woods. This is where Saint Garfir got its name.

     Or so the legend said.

     Miphie had only ever half-believed it. It was some old faerie’s tale, told to children so they wouldn’t get lost in the obscurity of the trees. Perhaps the forest’s supposed enchantment was the result of some residual faerie magic, left there millenia ago. But then… she had always felt a pull and a push from the tree line. Growing up so close to the forest, she had often felt drawn to something deep in the woods, but had never dared to take more than a few steps into the foliage.

     “But Vaso, as much as I want to be home right now, helping you solve whatever this… illness is, helping however I can… I can’t. My final exams are this week, my professors wouldn’t just let me leave, I’d be exp—”

     “Augusto is sick.”

     It felt as though someone had punched the air right out of Miphie’s lungs without a preamble. She looked at Vaso: really looked, this time. He was drained to his limit. His eyes, usually the warmest hazel, were dull.

     “Sick.”

     “He—he would never ask this of you, to drop everything at school and come home, but he needs you right now and… and I had to come get you. The nature of this sickness… I’m so sorry Meef. I shouldn’t be here, putting so much stress on your shoulders like that. It’s not fair.”

     “Shut up,” said Miphie. “Just. Shut up.” She shoved him again, but her arms had lost all their anger.

     ⁂ ⁂ ⁂

     When the conductor appeared minutes later, Miphie knew she wouldn’t have any time to rush back to Academia and tell Lucenza. She knew she would miss her exams. She knew, even, that she had doomed her remaining year at Academia. She knew all this, and yet, her decision came with a certainty that was foreign to her.

     Aboard the bus, the Draik felt as though she was being torn in two. She had the distant, unsteadying impression that the world was crumbling down around her as she floated above it. The coach sprang to life with a grumble: it would take her and Vaso through towns and hamlets, and then through miles and miles of farmland, before eventually coming to a halt in their hometown.

     Looking out the window, just as the bus turned out of the city, Miphie thought she glimpsed Edith.

To be continued…