Namu’s hard, beating pulse sent a wave of panic through him, forcing his eyes to open and a gasp to escape his trembling body. He was on the floor. One of his legs was pressed against the cold metal leg of a desk, and his free hand was trapped under his back. He tried to sit up.
Mr. Vero was there helping him. Namu clasped his hand tightly, needing something to hold onto to keep from slipping back to where he had come from.
What happened? Had the tree…
Namu ignored Mr. Vero’s face and looked over his shoulder. The tree was dead. Its leaves had fallen and were brown and crusted around the twisted and now rotting stump, proving that it was one of the many things that needed a spirit in it to be kept alive.
“Namu! Are you okay?”
Namu tore his hand away.
Mr. Vero seemed taken aback by his reaction. “Do you want to check?”
He did not. He knew he wasn’t healed. He knew the holes were still there like before. He could feel them. Big, gaping, empty, hollow, and hopeless.
“No. This was stupid to try.” Namu scrambled to his feet.
“We’ll figure it out.”
“How can you say that!? You haven’t had to go through this! You don’t even know if it’s possible! You don’t know if I’ll ever heal!”
“I may not have chosen to heal myself, but I do understand how it may feel at a level—”
Namu cut him off. “How? You have only a couple of holes inside you! How could you possibly know how…” He made himself stop, focusing instead on trying not to grab one of the marble slabs and throw it at Mr. Vero’s face.
The symbol on the marble was mocking him.
If only he had been smarter like his teacher had been when he had gone through the door. No, not smarter: if only he had known magick for years like Mr. Vero had, maybe he would be ok. Mr. Vero had grown up in the magickal world and would drink the same transformation drink to turn into a weasel and play tricks on his friends for years. Because he had devoted himself to only that one drink, and his soul had become accustomed to it, he could use transformation magick on himself and turn into a weasel at will. That was what Mr. Vero had done as soon as his body had been turned into a metal husk beyond the door. Before the husk had glued itself to his skin, he had turned into a weasel and stayed inside the metal statue of himself for days, far enough away from the walls that it kept those other creatures from obtaining access to every bit of his soul.
Unlike Namu.
It had been when the world had released Mr. Vero by melting the metal casting away from the weasel inside it, that Mr. Vero had fallen to the ground and turned back to a human, too exhausted to keep himself a small animal any longer. He then did a spirit ejection, just as Namu had done, by expelling his entire soul from his body, even though it might have killed him to do that. But he had done it just in time. His body had been turned to metal again a second later.
Mr. Vero had then had made his way out the door as a spirit and had astral projected to get into a teacher’s dream. It was then that the teacher had gone in to get Mr. Vero’s body out.
If their souls stayed outside their body for too long, their souls became too easy to destroy. If the creatures would have eaten a majority of their soul, they would have died. That was probably what had happened to the other students who had gone in through the door. The creatures most likely had eaten all if not most of their souls through their bodies.
The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.
After Mr. Vero had been the one to save Namu, Mr. Vero had been surprised at Namu’s ability to eject his soul from his body while he was in the husk. He had said he had been unable to do that while in animal form and that he couldn’t turn back into a human because he was too scared to be trapped in a much smaller space. But it didn’t matter what Mr. Vero was impressed with because it didn’t matter what Namu had done for himself. Whatever it was that he had done, it had been too late. Mr. Vero’s actions had worked. Mr. Vero had survived without losing too much of himself.
They both turned when they heard rustling behind them. Someone was at the door.
Lily.
“Something wrong?” Lily’s already tall stature looked even taller with their shoulders pressed back and their arms crossed, leaning against the door frame. Lily was studying Mr. Vero intensely and then examining Namu with their big brown eyes of calculating judgment.
Namu shook his head and put up his hand up to wave goodbye to his mentor without giving him another glance. He was over the day and over hoping. Hope just ate him away from the inside.
“What’s wrong?” Lily asked as he walked right by them.
Although Lily was Namu’s best friend and had been since non-magickal elementary school, he had not told them about the door. Mr. Vero had begged him not to in case someone else got hurt. Namu knew that if he told Lily, Lily would want check it out, and Namu couldn’t let that happen. He couldn’t put them in danger and almost let them get killed.
But it was hard since they used to tell each other everything. They used to be the most comfortable around each other and only with each other. Especially since Namu never judged Lily when many changes had happened. Those changes weren’t when Lily had realized they were gender-fluid. They had found that out at a very young age, and Namu respected that. Lily leaned more toward girl but sometimes was a boy, so they decided to go by they/them. No, the real changes had occurred when Lily’s family became rich and known for the Pathon Airlines.
Lily’s dad had been the one to mix techno magick and science to create the magick needed to make airplanes that could go through a cloud and appear wherever they needed to go in an instant. This worked by accessing memory magick within water vapors in the clouds. That meant it only worked if the airplane had been where it needed to go before, but it was still really impressive. Although right now, that type of magick was only used for the magickal schools and certain rich and magickal people. It was because the magickal division of the government called the Magickal Society still wasn’t ready to mass release it. They wanted to use it slowly to phase out the everyday modes of transportation used over the years so that not everyone would lose their jobs all at once and panic wouldn’t arise. Lily had hinted at their dad working on many other secret projects but had never elaborated.
After Lily’s family had gotten rich, they moved away from the apartments where they had grown up together into a mansion instead. But even after Lily’s move, Lily and Namu had remained good friends. Their parents were also friends, which was why Namu was at Lockdrest. Lily’s parents did not want them to go to Lockdrest, one of the magickal schools that their dad had gone to, alone. Namu had then agreed to go with them.
And he ended up here with holes eaten out of his soul and a secret about a door that made it impossible to connect with Lily like he used to.
“Namu.” Lily’s hand was on his shoulder, stopping him from heading up the grand staircase from the basement. He knew they were heading to lunch together before they broke away. He then would head to Symbols One while Lily went to Runes Two. “What. Is. Wrong.”
“Nothing. Just got in an argument,” Namu answered, avoiding Lily’s eyes.
But Lily got in his face and made him make eye contact. He could feel their small, pointed nose almost inches from his since they were the same height. “An argument? With your mentor? When no one else gets that privilege?”
He could almost breathe in their jealousy as Lily stepped back and crossed their arms. They looked menacing, their long glossy brown hair hanging dead straight over their wide shoulders, paired with their piercing brown eyes.
“Yes. It happens. I didn’t like how he was teaching me.”
“With a dead tree?” Lily paused. “How did it die?”
Namu sighed. “That…that was my issue. I didn’t want to kill anything. He had me draw the spirit out.”
“But for what reason?” Lily didn’t sound shocked. They sounded calculating.
Namu could not come up with an answer fast enough, so he started heading up the stairs to the cafeteria to give himself an extra second to think. “To see how different it is compared to unalive spirit essences.”
“But we already know that from books. Trees don’t need to die for us to learn that hands-on. Seems unreasonable, especially for a Spirit Magicks Four teacher.”
Namu shrugged, trying not to show his annoyance. He tried to calm the festering buzz under his skin and in his veins that made him want to lash out. “I don’t know what to tell you, Lily. I just do what he says.”