The rest of Aubergine’s “lesson” consisted of him getting to know the students. Fortunately for them, the headmaster had the grace to not force them into some contrived icebreaker. Instead, he managed to lead a conversation that didn’t feel led. A few minutes in, they were all speaking freely as if they had been friends for years. Archie wondered if that was some other form of magic.

Archie learned a lot about his classmates that day. Cress and Akando had come from Kuutsu Nuna, where they spent the last summer following the Kuutsu, a sacred herd of invisible buffalo that roamed in an uninterruptible path. Blanche had a sister who had risen six ranks in six years, a feat that hadn’t been accomplished in nearly twenty years. Benedict was the first Chef in his family’s history.

No one knew if or when the lesson ended. At some point, Aubergine got up and started walking around the lake. Unprompted, everyone followed. Someone expressed hunger, to which Aubergine said not to worry.

The group came upon a picnic area next to the lake, complete with a grill and fishing rods. They cast out a few lines while Aubergine, much to everyone’s wonder, tossed some seeds onto the ground that sprouted into a variety of vegetables in a matter of minutes.

“I always carry around seeds. I love the potential of them. And they’re great for occasions just like this one. And this works as a teaching moment—I already loaded these seeds with essence, and I convert that essence to rapid growth. They use up a lot of their essence in the process, so performing further magic with them would be difficult, but they still have their use in quieting a rumbling tummy.”

Aubergine put a freshly caught walleye on the grill along with some asparagus and carrots. Before long, Benedict caught a bass to add to the meal. Aubergine split the meal in two, setting one half aside. With the other half, he waved his hands to duplicate the food the same way Archie had seen his father do the other day—but with a much greater degree of expertise.

As plates were served, Aubergine put one bite from the unduplicated meal onto each plate. “Furthering the lesson,” he said. “The duplicated dish has had its essence consumed in that process of duplication. In contrast, you’ll find the other unaltered bite to be much more potent. See if you can tell the difference.”

Archie could, but he wasn’t sure if it was just because Aubergine had pointed it out beforehand.

They continued around the lake. They spoke about their hometowns as they watched a heron stalk the swampy shore. They recalled their favorite meals as birds chirped a backing tune. Aubergine told stories about his days as a student and then a Head Chef as squirrels danced and played in a flowery meadow.

Every so often, Archie looked up at the mesa that held Ambrosia City, admiring all the different angles of the cerulean keep that poked over the ridgeline. The summer sun warmed his skin, and the conversation warmed his spirit. His shoulders relaxed. City speed and rocky carriage rides became things of the past. He breathed easily, the crisp breeze hitting the drops of sweat in his hairline with an icy chill. After a couple of hours, they were back where they started, having completed an entire lap around the lake.

Tricked into exercise.

“Five miles, see?” Aubergine said. “Not so bad. The Head Chefs tasked me with making sure you’re hungry for tonight’s feast.”

Aubergine laughed. Barley, drenched in sweat, didn’t laugh back.

“Now, go ahead and wash up and put on your best clothes for tonight’s feast. It will be one to remember!”

On the way back, Archie managed to slip through the other students to Nori, who walked alone in front of the others.

“Hey, hi, Nori?” Archie jogged up beside her.

Nori gave him an uninviting look.

“Hi, I’m Archie. We’re uh—we’re gonna be working together for Rowan.”

Nori looked straight ahead.

“I don’t think you really got the chance to meet him. He’s uh…it’ll be—”

Nori turned back to Archie. “Look, can we talk about this later?”

“Uh—sure.”

She quickened her step, leaving Archie behind. He stopped walking, raising his hands in confusion.

What the…

An arm wrapped around Archie’s shoulders, pushing him back into motion.

“Ooo, ooo. Struck out,” Oliver said. “Don’t worry, you’ll get another chance tonight…once we get you looking right…”

Looking right didn’t come easily for Archie.

“You’re wearing this?!” Oliver asked, grabbing a giant white button-up shirt from Archie’s trunk. Benedict struggled to contain his giggling. “This is your best shirt? It’s way too big! What is it, your dads?”

“Well, yeah,” Archie said. Benedict’s composure broke and he roared with laughter. Archie snatched the shirt away. “He gave it to me before I left!”

“Should have given you some proper shoulders to go with it,” Oliver said. “Go on, put it on.”

Archie put on the shirt and held his arms out to show it off. The fabric billowed and draped from his skinny body.

“Wow,” Oliver said, holding in a laugh.

“Whatever!” Archie snapped. “We’ll get our jackets soon and I’ll just be wearing that.”

“You look like a cloud,” Barley said with a deep chuckle. The other two cackled and grabbed each other for support, thrilled that Barley had joined in.

“Barley!” Archie said. “I expect that from those two. But you?”

“What? It’s true.”

“Archie Archie Archie,” Benedict tried to contain his laughter. “I have a vest you can use. It barely fits me, but it might be good for you. Maybe it can help contain the cloud.”

The black vest fit tightly around Archie, hiding the loose fabric around his torso. The arms, however, still puffed out into little clouds.

“Well?” Archie asked.

“Hm, it’s a little awkward, but it’s an improvement. Now it looks like a stylistic choice rather than just something that doesn’t fit. You just have to wear it right,” Benedict said.

“What do you mean, wear it right?”

“Oh, you know,” Oliver interrupted. “When you wear it, don’t say whatever you said to Nori earlier that made her leave you in the dust. That’s how you do it right.”

“It wasn’t like that.”

“Mhm.”

When the first-years entered the great hall, they screamed with delight. Platters of delicious food lined the long tables from end to end. Quarters of stag and civets of hares and mounds of sugar plums and berry pies and all sorts of wonderful treats filled the hall with an aroma that could not be matched.

Archie rushed to claim a large section of a bench, shooing away others in order to save room for Nori to sit beside him. When she entered, their eyes met again, but she did not approach. Instead, she wedged her way between two other students.

Archie’s worry started to turn into annoyance.

“Hello, first-years!” Aubergine’s voice boomed through the hall. “I hope none of you have snuck a bite in yet. I’d like to get some words in. Before we begin, a round of applause to all our Head Chefs who have been in the kitchen all afternoon. And a special thanks to Head Chef Quince for letting us use his own personal inventory of amazingly grown ingredients.”

The students’ claps echoed through the hall.

“After my speech, you’ll be free to help yourself to as much food as you’d like. As for the drinks…”

Oliver offered a “woo!” that no one else joined in on.

“Head Chef Colby will be coming around to serve one cup of wine to each of you.” Some students cheered. “Just the one cup,” Aubergine said with a playfully stern wag of the finger. “I’m sure you are hungry, so I’ll make this speech short. When I see you all, I see such a bright future. It reminds me of…”

If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement.

The students salivated at the food as Aubergine spent several minutes giving a definitively not short speech that covered his time as a student, his experience as a headmaster, and an odd tangent about a clam he had found in the lake last week that never quite wrapped up to any meaningful point. Finally, the topic turned to something of Archie’s interest.

“Now I would like to draw everyone’s attention to the little bowls of orange pudding that you see scattered about the tables. Tomorrow, you will receive your jackets, but in order for the kalypo fibers to change, your essence must first be ‘colored.’ If you would, please go ahead and eat the pudding. That is what will prompt the color change.”

Archie snatched a bowl before anyone else could. Colored kalypo cloth was the undeniable designation of a Chef. In just a few bites, Archie’s potential would be recognizable for all the world to see. He spooned the pudding into his mouth, hardly swallowing the previous bite before adding another. There was a slight medicinal taste to the pudding, but Archie didn’t mind. It could have been the worst taste in the world and Archie still would’ve finished before anyone else got halfway through.

Once he was satisfied that everyone had eaten the pudding, Aubergine opened the floodgates. “Let us feast!”

The students broke into a hungry frenzy. Archie snatched a giant crab leg before anyone else could get to it. With one hand hovering over the crab leg to prevent anyone else from stealing it, Archie used his other hand to scoop a big heap of creamy pasta onto his plate.

By the time Colby came around with the wine, the crab leg was in splinters and a second helping of pasta was down Archie’s throat. He gulped down the wine. Sweet and airy with a touch of sour.

OIiver snuck from one end of the table to the other, holding up a freshly emptied cup for Head Chef Colby to fill.

“Now, I swear I’ve already given you wine,” Colby said. “When you were sitting right over there.”

“No, see, there’s another guy around here that looks like me. He’s uh…where’d he go? Must be in the bathroom.”

“You know what?” Colby leaned down and whispered. “I think you’re right. Here. But it’s good wine, so make sure you drink every last drop.” He filled the cup with a grin. Oliver considered its contents carefully before taking a sip.

The students moved around the hall in a drunken haze, taking little bites and admiring all of the different food. Archie saw a spot next to Nori clear and ran to take it. When he sat, she looked at him with a soft expression and a sigh. Weariness, not annoyance.

Archie, on the other hand, was annoyed.

“Hey, you keep avoiding me.” His voice came out harsher than he intended. “Don’t you think you should, I don’t know, thank me?”

Her weariness flipped to disbelief. She assessed Archie with a gaze so steely that it could cut through his vest. “Thank you? For what?”

“I saved you from whatever that was during the ceremony. You—you were stuck between Prince Waldorf and…your dad? Whoever it was, you wanted neither of them. You looked at me for help. I convinced Rowan to sponsor you.”

“Oh, well thaaaank you.” She gave him a piercing stare, but couldn’t hold it long. She looked down at her food. Her walls cracked. Her lip trembled. Her eyes watered. Her sudden vulnerability washed away Archie’s impatience.

Archie looked at her with softer eyes. She hadn’t eaten much. She hadn’t touched her wine. Her blue gown fit her worse than Archie’s shirt fit him—it clearly wasn’t hers. No one around them seemed to pay her much mind. No one else was from Uroko. She sat in a room with nearly twenty kids her age, but she was alone.

“Hey…” Archie said. “I’m sorry. I’ve just…I’ve just been eager to talk to you. We’re going to be working together. And Rowan told me to tell you some things.”

Nori turned her face away as if it would prevent Archie from seeing her wipe her tears. A sniffle. Then she looked at Archie, all business except for her pursed lips and the quivering voice she couldn’t overcome.

“I’m sorry. It’s been a…tough couple of days. What did Mr. Rowan wish to convey?”

Archie felt bad enough for her not to make fun of the overly formal tone of her statement.

“He—uh. Well, you know we’re supposed to work for him on Fridays and Saturdays.” Archie paused, considering his next words very carefully. She didn’t need to know about the gold he owed. Not yet. She had enough going on. “He’ll come get us tomorrow. And he said we can have our Saturdays to ourselves.”

“So what are we supposed to do on Saturdays?”

As Archie stalled to think of an answer, he grabbed a noodle that dangled off a nearby serving platter. He kept pulling, realizing the entire heap of pasta was just the one noodle. “I guess just…you know. Relax. Take it easy.”

“Oh. Okay.” They sat in an awkward silence that Nori broke with a bashful voice. “So…what are you going to do to relax?”

“I don’t know. I think—uh. I think I’ll get a job.”

“Oh. Well—”

She stopped and looked at her wine. A drop crawled up onto the lip of the cup and then separated, floating up into the air. Archie watched with her as the rest of the wine floated up in a big pale green blob.

Then the chaos started.

Someone screamed.

Archie jumped to his feet and looked for the source of the scream. Oliver floated upside down, drifting up and grabbing Cress’s arm to stay tethered to the ground.

“Help me!” he screamed.

Cress’s heels started to leave the ground. “You’re on your own!” she said as she let go of Oliver.

“Cress!”

“There’s a ceiling, you’ll be fine!”

“Cress!” The hall erupted with laughter. Even Nori laughed. Oliver floated up and up, narrowly missing a chandelier before bouncing off the ceiling. “Creeeeeess!”

“I don’t know what you want me to do now, you’re way too fa—” Cress looked down at her own feet with alarm. They had left the ground. She screamed with a combination of fear and excitement as she rose. Unlike Oliver, she embraced her newfound floatiness, tucking her knees to do a flip.

Then Blanche started to float. Benedict jumped after her, but he never came back down.

Sutton latched onto Barley, but the pair soon rose to join the others.

One by one, the students floated up to the ceiling.

Archie felt his stomach rise up to his throat. The feeling of water surrounded him, suspending him. He looked down at Nori, who stood ten feet below.

“Oh—oh no, no, no,” he stammered. He still held onto the noodle that now trailed like the string to a balloon. Archie hit the ceiling with a soft bounce. He looked around at his fellow students. Some of them adjusted to their reversed gravity, bouncing and dancing on the ceiling. Others curled into balls, paralyzed with fear. Below, only the laughing Head Chefs and Nori remained.

“Hm, barely an improvement,” Head Chef Anise noted. From above, Archie could see the hunch in her back as her head rested too far forward.

Aubergine, still seated, laughed. “Moondrop wine,” he explained. “A very valuable substance, but it comes with quite a few difficulties. It lessens the effects of gravity. So much so that the wine itself will float off into the sky if it isn’t contained. And even then, if the container isn’t heavy enough, as it would appear none of you are, that container will also float.”

Another chorus of laughter came from the staff.

“Head Chef Anise has been working on a solution that can be added to moondrop wine to temporarily negate its effects to make it easier for transport. This particular version lasted…”

“Two hours,” Anise interjected. “And I do want to thank all of you for being valuable test subjects. I have very little data on its effects after consumption, so this will be most helpful.”

“When does it wear off?” Oliver shouted.

Colby answered with a grin. “I poured enough to last about an hour. So for you, I guess that’ll be two hours.”

Anise set down a pitcher of murky brown liquid. “A sip of this should counteract it. Shame, it’s all the way down here.”

“What! Comon! Hey, Nori? Nori! Do something,” Oliver pleaded.

Nori beamed as she laughed up at her classmates. Her smile, beautiful and sparkling, had finally escaped its tormented cage.

“Nori,” Archie called out. “Pull me down.” He wiggled the noodle in his hand, the other end dangling a few feet above Nori’s head.

She covered her mouth in a failed attempt to contain her giggling. She took a few deep breaths to compose herself and stepped up onto the bench, reaching up and giving the noodle the faintest of pulls.

“It’ll break,” she said.

Archie searched the room for another solution. A broom, five times too small. Maybe he could jump off the ceiling to grab it? He looked to the Head Chefs. They all laughed except for Aubergine, who wore a knowing, closed-lip smile and tapped a seed repeatedly against the table.

That’s it!

“Nori! We can make it stronger!”

“What?”

“It has essence, right? We can convert it into strength. If a noodle can pull a tramcar, surely it could pull me.”

Archie looked to Aubergine, whose smile had grown, his pearly white teeth shining in contrast to his tan skin.

I’m right!

“Archie, I don’t know how.”

“But you have to try. Come on, we’ll do it together.”

Archie focused his mind into a singular thought. He envisioned the noodle turning into a rope. Sturdy. Unbreaking. Nothing.

A surging sensation traveled from Nori’s hands up the noodle. Even without pulling, Archie could tell something had changed.

She’s done it.

The sensation felt to his hands like a foreign word feels to an ear. Another surge came from Nori. This time it felt familiar. He knew the pronunciation. He recreated the sensation in his mind and something invisible moved through him and into the noodle.

It worked.

Nori knew it, too. She pulled. The noodle held strong. Nori pulled him down and took his hand, yanking it down so that he could grab the table for weight.

“Stay there,” she said. She grabbed the pitcher and gave it to Archie.

Archie started to raise the pitcher to his lips but stopped. “Hold on,” he said. “We have to get the others first. Let me up slow.”

He put the noodle back in Nori’s hand and grabbed the end. She used both hands to feed the noodle up, letting Archie rise like a kite. Once Archie reached the ceiling, Nori jumped onto the table and walked across it, dragging him from one classmate to the next. One by one, they took a sip from the pitcher and slowly sank back down to the ground.

Finally, just Archie and Oliver remained. Archie looked into the pitcher.

“Uh oh. I don’t think there’s enough for both of us,” he said.

“What do you mean?” Oliver asked.

“Yeah, I probably should drink first and then give you the rest.”

“Wait, Archie!”

Archie drank from the pitcher. He felt a weight drop into his stomach and the spaces between his bones condense. Just as he started to sink, he handed the pitcher up to Oliver and then hovered down. His feet touched the ground and the returning gravity settled his stomach.

Oliver drank desperately and shook the empty pitcher. A moment passed, but still he floated, pinned to the ceiling.

“Hey! There wasn’t enough!”

The students laughed and went back to eating. Archie shrugged up at Oliver.

“Shouldn’t have double dipped!”

For the next hour, as everyone got back to eating and Oliver hurled insults from above, Archie ate and laughed with Nori, who seemed to have forgotten about her bad week.