Curling up on the floor against her door, she hoped her roommate would reappear before morning. Class started at 0800, and it wasn’t until ten minutes before the hour that she heard footsteps approach.
She didn’t look up as she sat with her knees pulled to her chest, head resting on them, until the feet stopped right in front of her.
And it wasn’t Giselle. It was Fin. With Hailey sitting directly under him, he pulled a skeleton key from his pocket, shoved it in the lock, and pushed open the door. He looked down at her without backing up, and Hailey had to wrench her neck to see him.
“I’ll have my jersey back now,” he said.
She scooted away from him on her bum and stood slowly, unbelievably stiff after spending a very cold, very itchy night crunched up on the hard wooden floor. Hobbling into her room and without uttering a word, she closed the door in his face.
He could wait for his impossibly itchy jersey.
Giselle’s bed and the ceiling above it lay empty, but Tomas greeted her by urgently tapping the back of his wrist.
“I know, I know,” said Hailey as she frantically searched her room. “Where are my books?” Not only were her books missing, but her backpack was gone too, along with her boots.
Tomas shrugged. He flew out of the mirror and wrestled her crazy hair into a braid while she pulled on her socks. He’d only just finished pinning back a stray frizzy with a sparkly barrette when she dashed out the door in stocking feet, using both hands to hold up Fin’s sweatpants.
Bounding down the stairs three at a time, she slapped the switch in the tunnels and sprinted across the rough-cut stone floor toward Olde Maine, arriving only a minute or two late and just as Professor Woodfork was writing “Envoy History” on the blackboard.
Holding onto her gigantic pants and breathing way too loudly to sneak into the auditorium unnoticed, she snapped her mouth shut and went to all-nasal huffing as she nudged open the auditorium door. The latch was silent. The hinges, however, unleashed a screech that Uncle Pix probably heard all the way in Pittsburgh.
Everyone, human and human-looking non-human alike, turned to see who dared come late to the first class of the semester.
Slinking inside with her head ducked, Hailey put her butt into the first open seat in her path, shamefaced and still panting. It wasn’t until she sat down that she realized she’d stepped on a wasp, or at least that’s what it felt like.
As discretely as she could, she pulled her foot onto her lap and found it bleeding through her sock. Pushing her sock down, she surveyed the damage. It looked like a pretty good gash. Hoping to stop the bleeding, she pressed her sock against it. What else was she going to do with her hands? She didn’t have a pen or paper or a book to occupy them.
“Uh…continuing,” said Dr. Woodfork once Hailey was seated and the class once again turned their attention to the front of the auditorium.
“Over three thousand years ago, a man with no unnatural powers tore a hole in the barrier between the Earth and the Aether—no one knows how he did it, butwe do know why. He, like all men, coveted power. He sought to steal the energies of the Aether and wield them as one might a nuclear weapon. Not unlike our own government, who by the way fund our research here, but I digress. What the king didn’t know was that the energy in the Aether was not there just floating freely, waiting to be plucked like a flower from a garden. Rather, the energies were kept by beings called Envoys.
“Now, an Envoy’s purpose in the universe is to shuttle life energies out of those who die and in to those who are born—”
A hand went up.
“A question. Yes, Mr. Lorn.”
“What about God? Where does God fit in?”
“Good question. Your life energy is not the same as your soul, you see.”
He slid a chalkboard out of the way to reveal a clean one behind it. There he drew three circles and connected them with lines, making a triangle.
“There are three realms,” he said, and he pointed to one of them. “One realm is the Earth, where physical things, like your body, exist. That’s where we are right now, we’re on Earth, obviously. The second—” he moved his hand over another circle, “—is the heavens, a home for your soul. This is where your soul comes from…and where your eternal soul ends up. It is God and Heaven, if you behave, or fire and brimstone if you don’t. The third realm—” he moved his hand to the third circle, “—is the Aether, home of life energy—the energy which binds your soul…” He pointed to the Heavens with his right hand. “…to your body.” With his left hand he pointed to the Earth.
“Does that answer your question? Yes? Good.”
He slid the three realms out of the way.
“When the barrier between the Earth and the Aether was breeched, energy flowed from the place of high concentration—the Aether—to the place of low concentration—the Earth. In effect, the Earth was a giant suction and the Envoys who were near the great tear, were sucked through the barrier and flung ontoEarth. No one knows how many Envoys crossed over, but there were at least seven and maybe as many as a hundred.
“For the remainder of the term, we are going to talk about the history and science surrounding this phenomenal event and come up with our own theories as to how a man with no unnatural charms, did the impossible and tore the barrier. Any questions?”
A hand went up.
“Yes, Miss Watters.”
“Does my soul leave my body when I dream?”
