Earlier that year, elsewhere in Rootworld and Firewise of the center sea, students were attending classes at the Rootworld Academy of the Arts.

Ian sat in his introduction to science class with his textbook in front of him. The thermalagenic glue that was holding the textbooks together was still fresh, so the pages would often turn themselves while he was trying to keep up with what the teacher was reading.

This would have been a great help if he had been trying to sleep through the class without being noticed like Jamie. But Ian was actually trying to learn something, and you could only squeeze as much knowledge out of words strung together as you had time to spend considering their meaning.

He was happy they had finally lifted the ban on Science and started teaching it in the universities, but he wasn't sure he agreed with the title of the textbook being "Science is Magic."

"Jamie!" Mr. Winsome said suddenly, smacking his ruler on the wooden podium.

The pages of Jamie's textbook had gotten away from him and were turning so rapidly they were blowing his hair back away from his face along with a tiny rivulet of drool. Jamie snorted, and the eyeballs that had been painted onto his glasses seemed to shift when his real eyeballs snapped open behind them.

Ian was thankful for the interruption. It gave him more time to go back over the passage in his book about the White hole keeping everything firmly on the ground.

"If you would please not get ahead of the class, kind Sir!" said Mr. Winsome.

The rest of the classes' books seemed to be behaving because Ian could hear slight snores from at least two thirds of the other students.

Ian raised his hand.

Mr. Winsome rolled his eyes. Ian wasn't the kind of student that asked questions. Regardless, he held out hope that one day he just might. "A question, Mr. Stein?"

"An observation, actually," said Ian.

The teacher prepared himself with a swig of coffee from his favorite mug. As he was naturally high-strung, it had a soothing effect on him.

On the other side of the room, Tess had stopped folding her pages into an elaborate array of triangles long enough to hear what Ian had to say.

Ian pretended not to notice her attention. "It says on page two hundred twenty-seven that the White hole holds everything down, right?"

Mr. Winsome would have answered had he not learned long ago that all of Ian's questions were rhetorical. Regardless, he lifted his finger and began to open his mouth in order to encourage the young lad.

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"So, if the hole is holding everything down, then there must be some opposing force lifting everything up," Ian said before he could mutter a word.

Mr. Winsome was just off his internship, and because there had been no science wing last year, he had interned under his aunt who held a Completion of First Year Culinary Art Certificate. The Dean had decided that basic cooking was the closest thing to science that the university had to offer. At least that department knew how to follow a recipe! If he'd interned under someone with a master's degree, he'd be downright exposed to general alchemy!

His Aunt Jemima had been a fine teacher. She had shown him how to keep the students in line, what to expect and all that. But beyond what the book had to say about science, Mr. Winsome was about as good as the words on the page.

"Supposing you're right, Ian," Winsome said. "Then, the heat in the oven that holds down baked bread would have an opposing force that helped it rise. As of yet, it is only done by magic."

Ian's mouth froze. There had been words there poised to come out, but he had seen Peggy noticing him from the corner where she had been flirting with the quarterback, and the words had broken apart and gotten whirled away in the kind of pondering that only Tess could manage from where she sat.

Ian blushed and decided it best to resort to writing down the thought if he could recapture it. But when he picked up his pencil it snapped between his fingers. Bloody hell, he wasn't aware of his own strength. That was three pencils this week!

Ian was digging into his backpack when the bell rang.

There was an orchestra of closing workbooks accompanied by a flash mob of Poindexters wiping the fake eyeballs from the front of their glasses.

"Hup, hup," said Mr. Winsome, trying to keep above the rising octave of students in a hurry to their next nap, "Don't forget I'd like two questions submitted next week complete with totally logical answers. This will be a weighted grade!"

Tess had closed her book and was making her way through the throng toward Ian who was still trying to work out why the pencils he broke never broke in exactly the same way. Of course, he broke them in the same way as always, by simply squeezing them, but the cheap sandalwood always seemed to splinter quite differently.

"Ya know, Tess," said Ian as she put her book down on his desk, "I'm starting to think they are making these pencils just to be broken!"

"It's the sandalwood," said Tess, "they make em weaker and cheaper every year."

A handful of students had red hair like Tess, but hers was unique. A grey streak in the shape of a lightning bolt ran right through from her brow to her bottom.

Her sixty-seconds-of-fame had come upon her in the middle of a field on a cloudless day. She was struck by lightning, leaving her hair permanently marked. Everyone was talking about it, and if you asked her why it happened, she would tell ya that nickel runs in her blood. It was only a coincidence that her last name was Nikola. Her popularity ran out when the first thunderstorm approached and everyone realized that it was best to stay as far away from Tess as possible, unless you wanted to be charged with something unexpected.

Ian wasn't frightened. He'd read that lightning never strikes the same place twice and was hoping that would hold well for people. Really, he'd not gotten around to figuring out exactly what lightning was yet, besides the lighted end of a wizard or witches whatchamacallit. But he would in due time now that he was allowed to take his Science is Magic textbook home.

"Did you hear me?" said Tess.

"Oh," said Ian, still considering her hair. "Yeah, sure."

Tess scoffed and headed to third period, not walking with him as usual. She was upset that he'd not asked about her new experimental glasses which she had purposely perched on her head.