Jacob stumbled out of the rainbow tunnel onto a bright lawn. He nearly tripped over his suitcase. His backpack lay next to it, but the other boxes were nowhere to be seen. Maybe they'd been dropped off at another location. Could they do that?

It took Jacob a second to orient himself. Chicago had been a cloudy, windy day, but here the sun was high in the sky. Birdsong filled the air. The sweet smell of grass and pollen drifted along a faint breeze. The lawn ran away from him, opening up on what at first glance looked like a fairly normal college campus. Ahead of him stood three stately stone buildings in a semicircle. A tall, hemispherical clocktower sprouted up from the central one. Behind them were other buildings, pastures of lawn, and what looked like a field of some sort, stretching off into the distance.

Wait. Something was off. The entire campus seemed to be congregated in that direction. To Jacob's left and right an endless field stretched away from him. He turned around. Behind him there was no sign of the portal, just more endless field. It looked unnatural. Too flat. Too perfect.

Jacob took a step in that direction and bumped his nose against something. He reached out his hands. A smooth, invisible wall prevented him from going any further. He took a few steps and trailed his fingers along the wall, mildly curious.

Now he could see that it wasn't an endless field at all but an image of one, like a too-real, life-sized screensaver. The sunlight felt weird as well. On a bright day like this one he should feel the burning tingle of the sun on his bare skin, but the sensation was faint, as if before sunset. Other things felt off, but he couldn't put his finger on them.

Jacob grabbed his bags and lugged them down the slender granite path that led to the three stately buildings. Voices drifted on the breeze, and laughter. He could see people moving in and behind the buildings, crossing campus on unknown errands. He perked up. Large bronze letters above the entrance of the clocktower building labelled it the Vanderbilt Building. Jacob entered.

The interior of the Vanderbilt Building was polished marble. A man sat at a reception desk near the entrance. As Jacob stepped onto the marble it flashed green. The walls, floor and ceiling changed like television screens to an image of a bustling downtown intersection. Jacob recognized it as the Vancouver City Centre where he'd emerged from the magical world. He stopped short, enthralled by the flashing streetlights, the silent cars flowing along the walls, the people with blurry faces marching along to destinations that didn't exist. It must have been the same spell at the refuge.

The man at the reception desk looked up sharply as this change happened. The reception desk had changed too. Segments of street life flashed along it, warped as through a fishbowl.

The man sighed, pressed something, and the images disappeared. "You are a first-year?" The man asked in an eerily deadpan voice.

Jacob dragged his bags over to the desk. "Yes. My name is Jacob Caibo." He cut short. The man watched him with flint-chip eyes completely devoid of life. Jacob had seen eyes like them before. "Are you... Are you a golem?"

The golem's eyebrows artificially raised. "Where have you seen my kind before?"

"I met a couple that worked for Antonio D'Angelo," Jacob said.

The golem did not respond to this. Instead, it clicked away at its computer rigidly, as if every part of its body but its fingers and hands had been frozen in time.

"Your guide will be here shortly." The golem said. It sat back in its chair and didn't move.

Jacob leaned against the reception desk and waited, wishing the spell that changed the walls would start up again. He noticed a black banner hanging above the entrance with a crest on it. A short castle tower with a circular sun behind it on a red background. It must have been the school crest.

Rapid-fire footsteps broke the silence. A young woman maybe a handful of years older than Jacob rounded a corner and came pounding down the hallway towards them. She threw out her hands and stopped herself on the reception desk, feet leaving the ground momentarily, before landing again. A glowing orb the size of a basketball drifted around the corner and bobbed towards her.

"No!" The woman cried as she saw the orb. "Go away, goddamnit!"

She made an exasperated sighing noise and rolled her eyes as the orb slowed to a halt about a foot above her head. It shone like a lamp.

"You must be Jacob!" The woman said in a voice that betrayed that she loved meeting new people no matter who they were. She was a little shorter than him and dressed in a pink blouse and jeans. A bright smile illuminated her pretty face and her straw blonde hair was tied back in a loose ponytail.

Jacob nodded. "That's me."

"I'm Claire!" The woman said. She shook Jacob's hand as if she were testing the integrity of his shoulder socket. "Pleasure to meet you!"

"Pleasure to meet you too," Jacob said, reclaiming his arm.

"I'm your guide for the day! I'm going to be taking you on a super duper fun Claire-patented tour of Tisdale Academy and helping you get settled in!" She patted a clipboard she held in one hand. "I read in your file that you're not from a magical family—exciting!—so I'm going to try and fill in as many blanks as I can but if you have any questions please ask!"

"Okay. What's that thing?" Jacob pointed at the glowing orb. Was it a familiar? A magical pet that followed you around? A communication device?

Claire jumped and swatted the orb. It floated away, then righted itself above her head. "Argh! That's just a light orb. It's a basic spell I cast last night to follow me around the library and give me light to study, but it won't seem to go away! Didn't get much sleep last night, haha, but that's what coffee is for!"

"Okay," Jacob said. Claire's wide, energetic eyes suddenly seemed like they were straddling the edge between enthusiasm and insanity.

"Golem, take his bags please and leave them at dormitory 222 in Harrison Hall!" Claire instructed the golem. "Are those instructions sufficiently detailed?"

The golem unfurled from its seat. Counter to Arturo, this one was only a little over five feet tall. It nodded sharply once. "Those instructions are sufficiently detailed. It will be as you say."

"Leave your bags and follow me!" Claire said. She marched off, swinging her arms like a soldier.

Jacob followed.

Claire led Jacob around the campus. It turned out the empty Vanderbilt Building housed campus administration and once they left it the campus exploded with life. They walked along a broad quad where a group of students played a variant of ultimate frisbee where every time the frisbee hit the peak of its throw it split into two. Claire called it Ultimate Split. One of the frisbees was real, and the other was an illusion and you had to guess which was which. The students looked to be around his age, but they passed pairs and small groups that looked older, like Claire. She was a third-year student who had her Ranger Exam next spring. They passed another group of students playing a game that involved little sticks and balls and what looked like magically generated obstacle courses but Claire was babbling away about all the campus clubs and activities so he didn't get a chance to ask what it was. There was a junior theatre club that did a performance of either The Wizard of Oz, Macbeth, or Peer Gynt and made all of its props with Production magic. There was a varsity Ultimate Split team that played against other schools around the world during the spring, a chess club with nothing magical about it, an arts and crafts club that strictly made objects with magic, and on.

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The orientation wasn't a single day but a whole week of activities. What Jacob was doing now was just something his sponsor had signed him up for. Most of the first-years had already been to campus at some point during the last year to tour.

They passed by the two blocky dormitories. One for girls and one for boys. To keep things civil, Claire said. The boys' dorm was Harrison Hall, named after the Chicago Mayor Carter Harrison Jr. who had granted Tisdale Academy the original plot of land Jacob had come through on Earth with the little old academic building. Claire called it the Shell House, which operated with a skeleton crew year-round to keep up the illusion of a functioning academy. The girls' dorm was named after Sara Schumann, who was one of the Great War's Big Three, which Claire said as if Jacob should know what it meant. Before he could inquire further she'd launched into an explanation of how the campus worked.

"The campus exists within the barrier between Earth and the magical world. The technical term for it is called a pocket dimension, which you'll learn about in second-year, unless they've changed the curriculum. Don't worry about the technicalities of it, it's major complex and involves a lot of Decomp and Production magic, but basically, they use magic to force open a space within the barrier between the worlds. Think of it like blowing up an oil-soaked balloon underwater. Voila, campus! I'm supposed to tell you the reasoning behind this, but it's all boring stuff about keeping the students and campus safe from prying eyes and in a space where they can cast magic freely. The really interesting part is that because a pocket dimension is an empty space, they have to fill it with all this stuff. Everything from the buildings down to the ecosystems was imported from Earth."

"Ecosystems?" Jacob asked, as if the word had triggered an automated response.

"Yeah!" Claire said. She stooped down and ripped up a handful of grass and dirt. "All the grass, the trees, those birds you hear. They've been imported from Earth to this artificial ecosystem. Everything was a conscious decision by somebody. Robins but not bluejays, oak trees but not evergreen trees, and a bunch of stuff I don't know. There's a whole section of the faculty dedicated to maintaining the balance of the ecosystem here at Tisdale."

Jacob was thinking about the wall he'd pressed up against earlier, and now all this imported dirt and grass? "It's like a big zoo enclosure." He said absently.

"Exactly!" Claire clapped her hands together. "Each year they do a student survey on what flora and fauna they'd like to see added to the campus. Keep an eye out for that in the next few weeks! That brings me to one of the other things I have to talk about. Did you bring Vitamin D pills?"

Jacob nodded. There had been a whole list of things he had been supposed to bring that he'd received via text the same day Agent Marks had compelled his parents. He'd made sure he had everything and had double and even triple checked, even the silly-sounding things like the vitamins.

"You may have noticed but the sun here isn't very strong. Since we're in the barrier between worlds some of it slips through, but not enough for what are considered 'healthy levels for young adults' so the faculty advises you to supplement vitamin D once a day. If you run out you can ask at your dorm's reception for more!"

"So that isn't the sun, then?" Jacob pointed up in the sky.

"No! It's part of the illusion that surrounds the campus." Claire explained the wall Jacob had run into earlier and how the campus was ovoid, almost like a little snow-globe.

"So, does it ever rain here?" Jacob asked, suddenly very excited to be away from the Fraser Valley rainfall levels.

"Yes! The faculty regulates the weather based on a standard Chicago year. A few years ago a student messed with the regulating spell and caused it to rain every day for a hundred and twenty-eight days straight. The faculty generally do a pretty good job of regulating the weather, but occasionally we'll have weird things like hail in summer or sudden temperature snaps."

"Is there a club or group for students that handles the ecosystem here?" Jacob asked, hopeful.

"Mmm, no, it's only faculty. But there is a Magical World Club that meets weekly and discusses the magical world and magical creatures!"

Jacob could work with that. He wondered how many of the other students had been to the magical world.

A girl blew past them, running at least forty kilometres an hour, sending Jacob and Claire stumbling back. She vanished into Schumann Hall.

"Slow down!" Claire called belatedly. "I will report you!"

"Are you allowed to use magic like that?"

"Technically, you're not! There's a big old document on the school website that details the penalties and punishments for various magical incursions but the faculty only enforces it if it's serious. Augmenting strength and speed like that is still stated as ten straps on the wrist with a wooden ruler. Talk about outdated!"

They walked through a sparsely furnished copse of trees Jacob could tell had been planted there deliberately. On the other side were three identical, angular buildings fronting a small triangular courtyard. Claire introduced these as the Production, Consumption, and Decomposition Magic Buildings respectively. The buildings were almost luminescent white, but soft red lights pulsed in the surfaces of the Production one, evergreen in the Consumption, and violet in the Decomposition.

They passed this and walked briefly by the library, which housed the campus's only coffee shop: Fireball Roast, which Claire seemed more enthusiastic about than anything else. Jacob listened to her lengthy ramble about the history of the place halfheartedly. He simply did not understand the hype around coffee.

In the distance lay a small residential town that contained the campus clinic, the permanent faculty housing, a supermarket, a barber, a movie theatre that was free for students every Tuesday, etc. One of everything someone might need in a normal human neighbourhood. It was eerily idyllic, the paint colourful and smooth, the paths free of dirt and garbage, like one of those little futuristic towns out in the desert they tested nukes on. Then they went back past the Equilibrium Building, and the Elmore Building, passed the Tisdale Stadium, a small outdoor sporting arena where the matches of the Tisdale Tournament were held every year.

Jacob had been a little unhappy when he found out he was going to be literally stuck here for four months without a chance to get out and see Chicago or even just to get off campus. He knew how stifling being stuck in one place could be. But the more Claire showed him, the more he realized that he wasn't at a boarding school for gifted children, or a cult-like academy. This place was its own little city, hell, its own little world wrapped up in the magical barrier. You could live in here and never set foot in the outside world. In fact, he bet some people did exactly that.

They completed the circuit back to the Vanderbilt Building and stood outside in the now-setting sun. Whoever had generated the illusion spell had done a pretty good job. The sky flowered with hues of gold and orange and red no simple screen could replicate.

"The last thing I have been instructed to tell you is about the time dilation," Claire said, her tone losing some of its bubble, which probably meant she was getting as serious as she could. "Every summer, Tisdale enters into a time dilation to allow its students four months to learn the fundamentals of magic instead of two. This locks the campus down, physically preventing anyone from leaving. The device used for the time dilation requires an enormous amount of energy to function. Because of this, it pulls magical energy from everyone on campus. You, and everyone else, will be running at about 90% magical capacity during your time here. The faculty likes this, because it forces students to be tighter with their spell-casting. How it works is that every two seconds that pass here, one second passes in the outside world. Light, magic, and other forms of EM radiation are the only things that can pass through the time dilation, so while you won't be able to leave, you will still be able to communicate with people 'on the outside' as we call it. Communication can be slow sometimes, and it can be hard to keep track of dates on the outside, but you are encouraged to communicate with friends and family. Phone and video calls are not recommended, as anything you say and do will appear to be done at twice normal speed. Emails and various messaging services are suggested."

"Will we be able to enter the magical world?" Jacob asked.

Claire shook her head. "The device the faculty uses to generate it only works within the barrier for some reason. But don't worry about that! Tisdale Academy is the safest place in the world to practice magic."

"When does the time dilation start?" Jacob asked.

Claire smiled. "It started this morning, before you came."

Jacob blinked. It was already affecting them?

Claire led him back to Harrison Hall, talking animatedly about all the first-week activities they had scheduled for the first-years. Everyone seemed normal and nice so far, and the activities seemed like a mix of both the magical and the mundane, like Ultimate Split. He was somewhat relieved that they'd be doing relatively normal things like Ultimate Split and icebreaking activities. Hopefully, the other students were normal people.

That reminded him, he was sharing a room with someone.

Claire left him in front of Room 222 in Harrison Hall with a final comment.

"Oh, and one last thing!" She said. "For the first few nights here you might feel like you're sleeping on a boat. Some people even have a little motion sickness. That's a perfectly normal side effect of the pocket dimension. If you're still having issues in a week, go to the campus clinic! They'll get you right. Okay, any questions?"

Jacob shook his head.

"Have a fun term! I hope I'll see you around! Bye!"

Claire left, her orb bobbing along behind her. Jacob turned and stared at the perfectly normal dormitory door.

He swallowed.