When Austin left her dorm, Mel opened the black case and scanned its contents. There were seven tuning forks, neatly placed in a red cloth to not bang together when carrying the case. She picked them up and placed them in a fan around her on the floor.

The seven options spread around her and Mel scanned the bottoms and edges of the tuning forks, hoping to find some markings of which the four elemental notes were. But the forks were sleek and showed no signs of being marked. Mel rummaged around the black case after a piece of paper or something that might tell her which one was which.

She found nothing.

Mel plopped down on the floor, staring at the tuning forks, feeling helpless in the face of them. Maybe she could go to the library and beg Austin to come back to her room. Mel’s heart thumped in her chest at the idea of asking Austin to show him anything. It sounded too much like she was asking for something else.

Mel felt her cheeks flush with warmth and then her eyes flew up to the door that was opening before her. Her mind immediately thought it was Austin, hearing her thoughts and coming to her room. But that was crazy.

Gabriella entered the room and stared at Mel with a frown on her face.

“What?” she asked.

Mel looked down at the tuning forks on the floor. Her cheeks were still hot and embarrassment rose in her chest.

“Nothing,” Mel said. ”Ehm… can you help me?”

“Help you with what?” Gabriella asked and threw off her coat on her bed.

“I don’t remember which note was which,” Mel said. “I’ve checked and Austin doesn’t have any paper that explains this.”

Gabriella looked down at the tuning forks on the floor.

“You borrowed Austin’s stuff?” she asked. “Wow, you are really getting chummy.”

“No,” Mel said, a bit too quickly. “I mean, yes, he lent them to me. But only because he seems to think it’s funny how terrible I am at this.”

Gabriella gave Mel a smile and then she picked up a tuning fork and hit it against the leg of Mel’s bed. It rang through the room, and Gabriella scrunched up her nose. She picked up another, then another and so on until she landed on one she hit several times against the leg of Mel’s bed.

“Mmm,” she said. “This is earth.”

“It is?” Mel asked, looking up at Gabriella with hope in her eyes.

“Yup,” Gabs said. “It’s the easiest to find. But at least it's a start.”

Gabriella let out a loud yawn and put the back of her hand against her mouth. She handed the earth note to Mel and Mel stared at it with reverence.

“So,” Gabs said. “I helped you find the earth note. Can we go to sleep now?”

Mel shook her head.

“No. You need to find the others, too.”

Gabriella stared at her with a flat gaze.

“I’m not an expert and really, I can’t think when I’m tired. Sleep first? Please.”

Mel looked up at Gabs’ tired face and scrunched up her nose. She placed the earth tuning fork on her desk, away from the others, and then sighed.

“Fine,” Mel said. “But you’re helping me tomorrow.”

Gabs waved Mel off.

“Sure, sure,” she said and crawled into bed with her dress on.

#

In the morning Mel spread out the tuning forks on the floor and looked expectantly at Gabriella for her to tell Mel which ones were the other elements. Gabs pulled on new clothes and put on her shoes.

“What are you doing?” Mel asked.

“Getting breakfast,” Gabs said.

“No, you promised to help me.”

“Yes, after breakfast,” Gabs said. “No, wait, it’s Sunday. I need to go to the sermon first. You can join me and after that, I can show you.”

Mel shook her head. “Gabs? No, you said you would show me.”

“Come on,” she said. “The sermon won’t be long. We will be back here before midday.”

“Fine,” Mel said. “I will wait for you here. But please get back right after church, okay?”

“You’re not coming?” Gabs asked.

“I don’t believe in the sun,” Mel said. “And I mean, I barely believe in my own religion. I won’t take up another one here.”

Gabs rolled her eyes. “It’s the king's religion.”

“Mmm,” Mel said, looking down at the tuning forks with a puzzled expression.

She had already zoned out from Gabriella and focused on finding the notes on her own. Maybe she could find them herself and then Gabs could just let her know she was right. Yes, that was a good idea.

Mel barely heard the door close when Gabriella left. She picked up a tuning fork, hit it against her bed. She tried to remember the note of water that she had heard ringing during class. Mel eventually went through all the tuning forks without finding the note. It was there, Mel was sure of it, but she just couldn’t figure out which one.

They all sounded musical, vaguely familiar, and rang in clear harmonic tones. But that didn’t really help her. If only she had a necklace with water imbued inside, then she could have listened to the tone and matched it.

Mel realized she had something like that, her dagger from her great grandfather. It must be a fire imbue, since the bandit she had stabbed had started to burn. She walked up from her seat on the floor, feeling her legs and knees sore from the wooden planks. Mel dragged out the dagger, wrapped in cloth, from the bottom drawer of her dresser. The dresser was another new purchase from Gabriella during the last couple of days.

She unwrapped the dagger and immediately it filled the room with its ringing. That clear tone, calling to her. She loved hearing the item speak in her hands.

Mel plopped down on the floor again next to her tuning forks and started hitting one after another into the leg of her bed. After hitting all six forks on the floor without finding the fire element, Mel looked up at the one on her desk. The one Gabriella had said was earth. Could Gabs have been wrong?

She picked up the last tuning fork on her desk and hit it against the wooden surface. It rang throughout the room. But it wasn’t a match. Mel scrunched up her nose. How was this possible?

Mel searched her desk for a pen and drew a letter underneath the tuning fork Gabs had said was earth. She sat down on the floor with all seven forks and turned away the marking. She clanked them all together, mixing them up in a jumbled order, until she didn’t know where the earth one was anymore.

For a long time, she sat there on the floor until her knees ached and her hip bones hurt. She taught herself to recognize the earth note with precision; she knew it by heart when the sun shot in through her window and cast a gleam on top of the metal forks.

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Mel looked up at the window behind her desk and saw it was midday already.

She stood up from the floor and accidentally slammed her foot into the earth fork and another one; they clinked together and from the corner of her eye; she saw a flicker of orange glow from her knife.

Mel stopped in her tracks. She looked down at the two tuning forks.

She picked the earth note up and hit it against the leg of her bed, looking at the dagger. Nothing happened. She picked up the other tuning fork and hit it against the leg of her bed. Nothing happened.

Mel let out a relieved laugh. She was going crazy, thinking she had finally found the fire element. But of course she must have imagined the flicker. She had hit all the tuning forks over and over, and none of them were the fire element. She was sure of it.

Austin must have given her faulty tuning forks. Professor Dereey had shown the class twelve forks, after all. It must have something to do with the missing five forks.

Just out of curiosity, Mel hit both the tuning forks at the same time against the leg of her bed and watched the dagger. It flickered again in an orange glow.

Mel’s eyes widened.

She hit the forks another time, another flicker. This time she thought she could hint the pattern of the imbue inside the dagger. Mel’s heart raced in her chest and her mouth grew dry.

She hit the forks again, and again.

Mel was breathless by now. Her mind whirling inside. What did this mean? Were they half the note of fire each and together they became whole? How did tuning forks even work? What was a note?

What she kept coming back to was the fact that she had no idea of what was happening. If it was even possible, or if this experience was just commonplace. She felt amazed and stunned at the same time and also angry with Austin for giving her shit tuning forks and wasting her time.

Mel took up her pen and marked the other tuning fork, the one that was possibly fire or half-fire. She stood with both tuning forks in her hand. The one Gabs had said was earth, was marked with an E and the one she had accidentally kicked, was marked with F?.

She wrapped her dagger inside the cloth and placed it back in her bottom drawer. She left the tuning forks spread out on the floor of her dorm room and ran out from the building.

Outside, the wind tucked at her brown shirt and Mel felt a chill creep into her bones. She wrapped her arms around herself and ran to the main building. She searched the rooms on the bottom floor, looking around her quickly, frantically.

No one was there.

She ran up to the second floor, hoping he was back from the sermon. Hoping he had decided to come to the library instead of going home to his creepy mansion.

There at a table close to the fireplace, she found him sitting with his nose in a book.

Mel gasped for air, feeling out of breath and furious.

“You,” she said in a stern tone.

Austin looked up and caught her gaze. His dark eyes roamed her face and then down at her body, staring at her clothes. The ones she always wore. A frown stretched across his forehead.

“Did you walk outside like that?” he asked. “Melissa, you need to wear a jacket up here. It’s not the valley.”

“Do you think this is funny?” Mel hissed.

Austin leaned back in his chair, not seeming to get what she was referring to.

“What?” he asked.

“Giving me fake tuning forks,” she said. “Where are the other five? Huh?”

“You don’t need the last five,” he said, his voice hesitant. “They are just thrown into the mix to confuse students on the test.”

“Yeah, right,” Mel huffed. “You planned this, didn’t you? You always hated me and now you just made me waste all this time trying to figure out which ones are the elemental tones without giving me a sheet-sheet and without even giving me the correct forks. You’re trying to sabotage me.”

Austin stood up from his seat and took a step forward, toward Mel.

“No,” he said. “I’m sorry about how I treated you before. But I really don’t hate you. In fact…”

His eyes averted from hers and she saw his face getting red, probably from anger at Mel figuring it out.

“I can show you which ones are the elemental tones,” he said. “I didn’t even think about it. That was stupid of me. It was just a while ago since I trained with them and truly I don’t remember how hard it was to learn from the start. It was just so many years ago.”

Mel rolled her eyes.

“Yeah, because it’s just so easy,” Mel said.

Austin took another step forward and then he continued, walking away and passing by Mel to the staircase. Mel huffed and swung around, glaring at his back.

“Are you coming?” he asked.

“What?” Mel said.

“You don’t seem to believe me,” he said. “So I guess I will have to show you. Let’s go to your room.”

Mel followed behind him, alternating between running and walking fast. Austin’s strides were wide, and he seemed to keep a steady pace. A pace Mel wasn’t used to. He almost kicked down her door, and Mel felt her heart pounding in her chest. He seemed furious and picked up the tuning forks, three in one hand and four in the other.

He braided them between his fingers, like they were twigs, and hit one fork against her desk's surface. Austin hit the next and so on until he had heard them all. He arranged them, four at one side of her desk and three at the other.

Austin’s black eyes stared into Mel’s for a second before he turned back to the forks. He pointed to the first one in the group of four.

“Water,” he said.

Then he continued pointing to the next, naming them all. Lastly, he pointed to the three others on the left side.

“Decoys,” he said.

Mel swallowed. Austin took a step back from her desk and stared daggers at her. He crossed his arms over his chest and glared.

“How do I know you’re not lying?” Mel asked.

Austin huffed out a puff of air from his lungs and his jaw flexed. He tapped his fingers against his arm and then released his hands to his sides. He dragged up his sleeve and revealed his forearm. A dust of black hair graced his skin and around his wrist hung a thin leather strap with a small metal object on.

“You’ve seen this before, right?” he asked.

Mel nodded in confirmation, reluctantly.

Austin grabbed the tuning fork he had explained was water and stared into Mel’s eyes as he hit the metal against the desk. The tone rang out through the room and Mel felt it vibrate in her spine. The bracelet around his wrist glowed with a blue light, and a beautiful pattern appeared in the metal.

Mel deflated, and her shoulders slumped. Austin was right. That was the water note. Curious, she stepped forward and looked at the other tuning forks. She turned the other elemental notes on her desk and saw two of them bore her markings. Austin kept staring at her, holding out his forearm to her and the water tuning fork in his other hand.

“So this is fire, then?” Mel asked.

She grabbed the tuning fork she had written an F? on.

“Yes,” Austin said, his voice gritty and hard.

“Hmmm,” Mel said.

“Do you believe me now?” Austin asked. “Do you believe I don’t hate you and that I didn’t give you fake tuning forks to mess with you?.”

“Yes,” Mel said, scratching the back of her neck. “Sorry for accusing you. It’s just so strange.”

“What is?” Austin asked.

Mel caught his gaze, and Austin placed the water tuning fork down on her desk. He pulled down his sleeve and hid his forearm from her. Mel played with the possibility of showing him her dagger and then pushed it out of her mind.

No, she couldn’t trust him like that. Sure he hadn't given her fake tuning forks. But carrying a magical weapon in Aldrion without authorization that could result in her getting kicked out of Falden. It wasn’t something she was prepared to gamble with.

“What if two elemental notes were struck together?” she asked. “What would happen?”

Austin stared at her, frowning.

“Nothing,” he said. “Or something. I mean, if you hit wind and water at the same time, my armband would still react to the water note and glow.”

“Okay,” Mel said. “But what if it would flicker?”

“You mean if I created an impure note?” he asked. “Yeah, that happens all the time in the forge. Or so I am told. A mage smith hits the metal wrong, misses the sword he’s creating, and an impure note comes out. It can cause a flicker, sure.”

Mel turned that over in her head.

“So, can two pure notes create an impure note?” she asked.

Austin shook his head. “No, that’s impossible. If they’re pure, they’re pure. If they’re not, they’re not.”

“Hmmm,” Mel said. “Strange.”

She leaned over her desk, staring at the tuning forks and wondering what her dagger was. It wasn’t a fire imbue, that she was sure of now. She had struck that fire note a million times in its presence and it hadn’t glowed, except for the flicker when hitting both earth and fire. Maybe it was a double imbue. Was that even possible?

“So…” she heard Austin say.

Mel looked up and met his gaze. He looked away, out her window, and rubbed at his chin.

“Are you going to the Last Stance?” he asked.

“What?” Mel said.

“The Last Stance,” Austin repeated. “Your friend invited you yesterday, and the sun is already setting.”

He glanced at her, and Mel frowned. She looked out her window at the last rays of sunlight streaming in through the glass. Right, Marcus had asked her to join him at the Last Stance.

“Do you want to come?” she asked.

Austin startled and took a step back from her.

“What?” he said. “I didn’t mean to invite myself.”

“No, I didn't think you were. But I could use you tonight.”

Austin swallowed noticeably. “Use me?”

“Yeah,” Mel said, shrugging. “I can ask you questions about the tuning forks and magic while we get there and on the way home. We are going the same way, after all. Right?”

“Yeah,” Austin said. “I… I guess.”

“Great. So you’ll come then?”

“Sure,” Austin said.