Tenthé was in heaven, Bear was in hell.

“Read it again! One more time!” Tenthé demanded.

“No! Get a different book! There’s plenty! I’m already going to be dreaming of ducks dancing with pigs!”

They’d discovered an extensive collection of picture books, donated to the library by someone or another. Who could have imagined such a thing! Pictures that told a story! In just the first day, Tenthé’d learned how to tie his shoelaces! Up until now, whatever Magister Weddig had done was a mystery. His solution had been to leave the laces alone and slip his shoes on and off.

Not only pictures, the book also had a little poem to help out.

“One over the other,” he sang. “Tuck and loop, then loop the other, so nice. Then again, one over the other, tuck and pull, there you are!”

“Kill me, kill me, kill me now! It doesn’t even rhyme!” Bear moaned as he held his hands over his ears and flopped to the side.

And the creatures, they had such fun! Parties, hide and go seek, tag. All sorts of stuff he’d never experienced, growing up as he had. Sure, he’d done other things, but those mostly involved blood and fewer alive at the end than at the beginning.

Why weren’t all books like this? It made so much more sense.

Bear told him the stories were all pretend, but even so, they had lessons about stuff that Tenthé thought everyone had to figure out on their own!

The librarian came up to their table and quietly requested, “Please keep it down, there are people studying.”

“Shove off sister, we’re talking,” Bear responded, at his diplomatic best.

The lady stepped back, made a few arcane gestures, and Bear disappeared.

From the other side of the library door, they heard, “I’m free! I’m free! Ha-ha-ha-ha!”

The ha-ha-ha’s faded into the distance.

Tenthé glanced up at the librarian and sighed. Longingly, he looked at the books spread out on the table, then slid off of his chair and walked out to the hallway. As expected, the toy was nowhere to be seen.

Bear didn’t have much magic, but he did have an amazing ability to get into trouble, the main reason he’d ended up as only a head. On the other hand, he did like his muscleman body. Maybe he would be careful this time.

Yeah, right.

What he was, though, was small and fast. Without expending a great deal of effort, Tenthé usually had to wait until he returned on his own, which could take days.

At that moment, a bunch of screams drifted down one of the hallways. Tenthé sighed and headed back to the dorm. Likely, he could find someone there to talk to until it was lunchtime.

Drat! With Bear absent, he’d be forced to ask other people when it was time for things. Was there a way so he wouldn’t have to? Some kind of alarm? He’d have to see. Maybe there was some good in all this: even though he wasn’t that impressed with the College, it was forcing him to find ways to deal with his disabilities.

“Hey, Tenthé,” George yelled as Tenthé walked in.

“Hey.”

“Come over here, I’ve got something I want to try.”

“Okay… what?”

George held up a sheet of parchment. “Look at this.”

“I’m looking.”

“Now, I’m going to give you a bunch of stylos.”

“Gee, thanks.”

“No! Not to keep. For this experiment.”

“Oh, okay.”

“Now see these drawings here?”

“Uh, where?”

George put a parchment down on the table in front of him.

“Study the whole thing and memorize the pictures.”

No problem, he’d done it, anyway.

“Okay.”

“You sure? That was fast.”

“Yeah.”

“Alright, then. Now, put one stylo on each drawing.”

Tenthé did so, then George swept the stylos off the drawings onto the table.

“This next bit is the hard part. In your head, picture what you memorized, then take a stylo from the pile. In real life, keep it in your hand, but in your head, put it on top of the first little drawing, then take another and put that stylo on top of the next drawing, and so on, until each of the drawings has a stylo on it.”

Tenthé did what George asked. It was easy.

“Okay… done,” he declared.

“Are you sure?”

“Yep.”

“All right! Let’s call this sheet… I don’t know, Fred, okay? Here, I have another set of drawings on a different sheet. We’ll call it Tammy. Give me back the stylos you have, then look at Tammy and take enough stylos to put one on each of the little drawings, but only do it in your head, like we just did.”

“Okay.”

“Good, put the stylos back. This time, I’ll hide the parchments, then say either Tammy or Fred, and again, in your head, you take stylos from the imaginary pile until there’s a stylo on each of the little drawings. Okay?”

“Sure, but this is stupid.”

“Just stay with me. We’ll see what happens. Okay… Tammy.”

Tenthé imagined the parchment in his head and took stylos from his imaginary pile until each little drawing was covered. For some reason, George seemed excited.

“Done,” he said.

“Okay, now do Fred.”

He did so.

“Done.”

George and the boys watching started cheering and clapping Tenthé on the back. He had no idea why.

“What’s the big deal?” he asked.

“What if I said that Fred was for, not a number, but the word, and Tammy was too, again, not the number. Could you do the same thing?”

“Yeah, I suppose.”

“Well… if you can do that, then you can count!”

“What?”

“When you do Fred, you have four stylos, but we call it for, not a number. And with Tammy, you have too. Again, not two.

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

You see! Those are numbers. It’s awkward as all hells and we’ll have to work on it, but it is counting!”

“Really?”

“Yeah! Up ‘til now, I’m pretty sure that everyone’s tried to make you count like they do. But instead, if you try to match things, you’ll be doing the same thing!”

Tenthé was past excited! Over the next hour, they managed to get him to recognize numbers won, too, tree, for, fife, sex, see van, and ate using their new system. Declaring success, the boys piled into the hallway, aiming for the little dining room. On the way, they merged with everyone coming back from class, and after some chaos, the mob continued on toward lunch.

Progress halted when they found the doors locked.

“Oh, yeah,” Nicolaus groaned, “I forgot. They’re opening the other dining room today. This one’s only for snacks between meals now.”

The mob had to backtrack a short way, then take some hallways Tenthé hadn’t explored yet. Eventually, they reached a big fancy entryway that opened into an even more elegant space, many times larger than the small dining room.

Fortunately, the food in the buffets kept to the same high standards. Everyone loaded up and descended on a table. Looking around, Tenthé noticed the presence of a few Magisters. Maybe Magister Manuel… uh, had spread the word.

“Hey, guys, does anyone know the last name of the guy who teaches the old gods’ course?” he asked.

Oddly enough, no-one did. Someone pulled out their calendar, and couldn’t find it in there either. Not that important, but it was a little peculiar. Tenthé knew his first name, but yelling “Yo Manuel!” to get his attention probably wasn’t a good idea.

Speaking of good ideas, “Guys! I have something to share. Keep it a secret, though.”

Tenthé pulled out the platter he had stolen and put it in front of him. Nothing happened.

“Um, nice plate,” said Dhal.

Just then, a pile of bacon appeared. Everyone gasped, then lunged in a feeding frenzy, which wasn’t odd enough to draw attention. A second load materialized and was inhaled as fast as the first. This repeated a number of times until group satiation was reached. At that point, Tenthé put the plate back in his Pocket.

“Oh, man! I knew we kept you around here for some reason,” Roger groaned as he patted his very full stomach. “Where’d you get that?”

“Stole it from the Magister’s dining room. It was the only really good thing they had. They’ve got lots. This… won plate won’t be missed.”. Counting was still a work in progress.

They laughed their way through the rest of lunch, then split up for their various classes. Tenthé was the only student who had Mystic Studies, and managed to convince the others he’d be okay getting there by himself.

Arriving at the classroom, Tenthé found himself in a peculiar position. The door wasn’t there. He almost never got lost, so this was very strange. Maybe it was hidden? He searched up and down the hallway, with no success. He returned to where he started, and stared at the doorway that hadn’t been there just a moment ago. Cautiously, he peeked in.

On the other side was an ordinary classroom, filled with students, except that all the desks had been removed and replaced with rugs. Tenthé entered and sat cross-legged at his preferred place of halfway down the tiers, near one wall. Magister Grenville was in a similar pose at the front, with her eyes shut and her hands resting on her knees. The clock glyph bonged, and the doors closed.

“Everyone copy my position, or as close as you can,” Magister Grenville said, except her lips didn’t move. It wasn’t the same as the mind-speak he had with Bear, but sounded just like normal spoken words.

“Welcome! We’re done with all the introduction prattle, so today when we begin our delve into the true depths of Mystic Studies. You’ll find this class boring, confusing, shocking, and annoying; all the ‘ings’. Unlike Physics, we have little control over what will occur, or what we’ll see.

“What I am going to show you are the best methods I have found for achieving success. What do I mean by that? In Physics, success means we do something and get the expected result.

“With Magic, success is more elusive. Suppose we do something and end up with an odd result. Assuming we survive, we can look at this result and see if there is anything useful about it. If so, that is a type of success. If we don’t find anything useful, we document what happened, and as time goes on, we may discover that it relates to other results. That is a different type of success.

“To state it in highly technical terms: we do stuff and look at stuff.

“With that encouragement, I’ll now ask you to clear your minds and think about nothing… Ha! Just kidding!” she chuckled.

“While I have been talking, this room has sunk closer to the Center. There is much more potential here, so what we are going to do is sit and let our thoughts wander. We’ll do this for roughly half an hour, then compare notes concerning what we were thinking about. This is Magic. We will perform a task, then look at the results. Nothing as dangerous as casting a spell, but I never said that is what we had to do.”

She stopped “speaking” for a few moments, then continued, “Tenthé, this is only for you. The others cannot hear me. Yes, as you suspected, the Center is what you call the Heart. Intriguing name. We could talk about it later. Please be careful. Keep your thoughts light. No-one else is ready to deal with the voices at this point. Okay?... good.”

Everything here was familiar to Tenthé. He relaxed and let his senses wander. He could feel the students and, in the distance, the voices nattered, too far away to be an issue. Very faintly, he heard the beating.

Magister Grenville had asked that he think about things, so he did.

He wondered why he was still here, at the College. Was there any point? After chewing on that for a while, his thoughts drifted over to the shooting game and how much fun it was. Then he giggled as he pictured Bear lying in a sink filled with Magister Tomas’ best whiskey. His thoughts drifted on to ponder why “blue’ sounded so strange. “Blue, blue, blue,” he said to himself. He remembered a few of his old mates from the Pools and how they avoided him after almost everyone died. He watched himself laughing as he matched body parts up to various warriors from the Horde. Then he tried to figure out how Magister Grenville found his secret room, why bacon was so good, and a lot of other random things.

After some time had passed, the Magister addressed the class, speaking normally. “Okay, everyone! Open your eyes and let’s investigate what happened. I want each of you to take the parchment you’ll find beside your carpet and write a short description of what you thought about.

“Tenthé, don’t worry about it. Hopefully, your little friend will be with us for the next session.

“And, to the few who are tempted, keep the erotic thoughts to yourself, and yes Malissa, that includes you.”

A tittering rose on the other side of the class, which died down as people started writing. More than a few grumbled about the lack of desks, but they managed.

“Tenthé, come down here, and I’ll read what you wrote.”

When Tenthé stepped down to the front, he asked, “What did you mean? I can’t write.”

The Magister waved a parchment at him.

“This list is what you would have put down. Let me read it for you.”

When she finished, Tenthé was surprised. She’d captured everything, as far as he could remember. He did not understand how she’d done it; he had decent shields against mind reading.

“Do you have any thoughts about what I read?” The Magister asked.

“Um, that one about Bear in the sink is kind of random. Is it real?”

“I don’t know. You’ll have to find out.”

“Oh… okay.”

“Anything else stand out to you?”

“Uh, no. Not really.”

“Hmm. Go back to your seat and we’ll see what the others have written.”

As Tenthé returned, the Magister addressed the class, “All right! Everyone’s close enough to being done; the rest of what you have to say is redundant, or you’re embellishing. The parchment you’ve used is tied into an aggregation spell and just this second, I’ve grabbed everything.

“For the most part, you did well, except for you, Master Milton. There is a bucket beside you. I suggest a little less partying next time.”

The unmistakable sounds of someone puking filled the room, along with unflattering comments from those nearby. A few spells cleared the air.

“Now that’s over, here are the results.”

A chart appeared on the back wall. To Tenthé it looked like a hill, with glyphs lined up below it.

“As you can see, there are a lot of random topics, but are you surprised to find a few have a number of repeats?

“Many are things we have in common. Here we have that you are hungry, another that Malissa is hot, and this one where you think this class is a waste of time. These are the typical day-to-day thoughts we all have.

“On the other hand, there are these three that most of you wrote down. One is about hearing far away voices. The second is about a faint heartbeat, and the third about taking a bath in strong drink.

“The first two are a result of being closer to the Center. We’ll learn more in future classes. The last item is novel. I’ve never seen it before.

“At this point, we ask, is this Physics, or Magic? If it’s Physics, it could be that you picked up the thoughts of someone else in the class. On the other hand, if it’s Magic, then I have no idea what it means.

“You start to see the problem with relating dreams to current or future events. First, we have to ensure the dreams aren’t caused by ordinary things: mind reading, thought projection, or last night’s spicy food.

“Once we rule out these sources, the job gets harder. It’s common for dreams or visions to be confusing, and only after something has occurred can we approach any sort of understanding. Each Seer has his or her own way of presenting information, so it takes time and effort to build a lexicon to understand what they tell us.

“The best foreseers are individuals who have a good track record at predicting events and are also somewhat comprehendible.

“But do not forget that this is MAGIC! Its nature is to obfuscate and mislead! Verify, if at all possible!

“Your assignment (general groans) is to write down your dreams the instant you wake up and bring them to class. We will repeat this analysis and see if any of you are doomed to the life of a Prophet.

“Bye… Tenthé, stay behind, please.”

Tenthé trudged to the front of the classroom.

Magister Grenville laughed, “Tenthé, this isn’t a punishment! Don’t look so gloomy. I just wanted to tell you that I can’t read minds. I use Magic. This time I received your list, other times I might not. And, I would like to congratulate you. You did very well today. Be patient. It’ll take a while to get to the point where the others will be safe when they’re closer to the Center.”

“Okay. Can I go now?”

“Sure… but please try to make it to my class. It’s important!”

With a quick “Uh-huh.” Tenthé spun around and raced up the tiers to the exit.

Now that she was alone, the Magister turned back to the graph. She made some passes and a few more data plots appeared. Some of the titles were quite lewd, but there was one worrying trend.

This close to the Center should have resulted in a good number of students getting faint echoes from their future selves, not anything specific, but trends and general hints.

In fact, though, what she had after filtering out the typical hopes and plans of any student, was… nothing. A big fat zero.

Now, that was troubling.