“Glass wouldn’t melt in her face.”
“What?” I looked over at my neighbor. Like me, she was clad in the dark, prickly uniform of St Bestoras College for the Dark Arts, and also like me, she wore a fierce glower on her features. Unlike me, she sported a fine crop of bright red curls that belied a fiery temper. I was far more restrained, my shoulder length brown hair neatly brushed and tied back behind my head as the manual had dictated was appropriate for new students.
“Glass. It wouldn’t melt in her face,” she repeated, gesturing towards the dour looking woman with the golden wings embroidered on her robes who was doing her best to assemble the thirty or so first years who were arriving at St Bestoras into some kind of order.
“Glass wouldn’t melt in anyone’s face,” I pointed out.
“Precisely.”
And that was how I met my best friend and worst enemy in the world, Isogarde the Terrible.
Isogarde was her given name. The suffix was one she coined herself. It saved her listening to the other descriptors people hurled at her throughout the course of her days. Most of them ended with an unpleasant ‘tch’ sound and were quickly followed by gurgled apologies and requests for the re-opening of important airways.
I did not know that at the time of course, all I knew was that my first year’s college grades and the result of an entry examination had qualified me for a scholarship at the St Bestoras College for Dark Arts, and like every girl who had dreamed of being a witch growing up, I hastened to attend. Since childhood, I had dreamed of mastering magic, of turning the world to my will. As a child, I had once seen a witch once at a county fair. She had turned the town drunk into a sheep and won my admiration for a life time.
St Bestoras, the patron saint of the college, was a saint known for having annoyed pious clergy into slaying him with toothpicks. It was known, naturally, as the death of a thousand pricks. The stained glass depictions of his sufferings that decorated the high windows of the Great Hall were always stimulating to look at during long assemblies.
It later turned out that Isogarde’s real last name was Feuerkind My last name is Frost. At first, our friendship was nothing more than a coincidence brought about by militaristic alphabetization. We found ourselves in all the same classes, where we were invariably assigned to sit next to one another, and sharing a dormitory room to boot. We also found ourselves sharing the trouble Isogarde would cause all too often.
“Take this,” Isogarde whispered to me. I had not known her longer than five minutes and I dare say that had she been making a request rather than an order, I would have refused her, but before I knew what was happening, a newt was making itself at home in my blazer pocket. I dared not question her about the source of the newt as a sharp eyed woman with ice white hair was ascending the dais at the front of the hall.
Isogarde and I sat towards the front of the hall, in the middle of the second row. Out behind us, the room stretched on and on with rows of seats reaching into infinity. St Bestoras had been built with expansion firmly in mind, and space and time had been forced to take a back seat. It was not uncommon for first years to be lost amongst the back rows of the Great Hall for years, and occasionally a bedraggled old woman would emerge from the depths having survived only on spiders, flies and licking condensation from metal chair legs.
St Bestoras enjoyed a reputation for turning out the finest witches in the land. That was because only the toughest, the quickest and the least flavorsome witches escaped St Bestoras alive. At least, that was what the initiatory handbook warned ominously as I thumbed through it. It also noted, ‘No refunds will be given for unexpected deaths or cosmic translocations occurring after a thirty day grace period.’
“Welcome, new class of the year of our lord, Thornus,” the professor announced, raising her eyes to sweep across us. A tangible chill ran through the room as her ice gaze seemed to freeze the very air. “I am Marguerite Frostmourne, Mistress of Discipline. It would be best for you if we did not meet often,” she said grimly. “St Bestoras is a college for the elite. Here we do not mollycoddle, we do not cosset and we do not give extensions for any reason. I do not care if your entire family was consumed by dragons. In fact, consider your families consumed by dragons at the outset and your lives will be much easier here.”
I thought that I perhaps caught a wry twist to her blue lips as she said the words, but it was gone in an instant. “Accepting a place at St Bestoras means accepting possible death, dismemberment or worse. This is no place for the weak of heart of the soft of mind. If you are here, it is because you have shown promise in the Dark Arts, or perhaps because the Dark Arts has chosen to feed upon your soul. At this point in time it is too early to tell. In a moment, you will enter through the portal yonder,” she pointed dramatically with one long, blue finger to a bolted side door, “and take your place amongst the initiates who dare face the Dark. There is a small chance you will be consumed alive if you do. If you would like to change your mind, please assemble in the car park.”
Behind me, I heard creaking as several first year students lost their nerve and made their way towards the car park. Some of them sobbed into their initiation handbooks.
“What a cow,” Isogarde whispered under her breath. I could not agree in good conscience, Marguerite Frostmourne was anything but a cow. She was rather slim, in fact. She was cold though, and she seemed cruel.
“More like a Popsicle,” I whispered back.
At our words, Mistress Frostmourne’s eyes swept towards us and narrowed.
“She heard you,” I whispered to Isogarde.
“No she didn’t,” Isogarde whispered back.
“She did,” I assured Isogarde.
“She didn’t.” Isogarde disagreed.
The dispute was settled as a loud whistling sound pierced the hall. Shrieks erupted around us as a stake of ice crystallized in mid air at the top of the hall and fell swiftly towards us. We had but a moment to move before it slammed into the desk, embedding itself several inches into the hard wood. I looked at Marguerite Frostmourne, my mouth agape. Her only response was a slow raising of an eyebrow.
“See, she definitely heard you,” I said as the cries continued and several more potential first years high tailed it towards the car park.
“Maybe,” Isogarde replied with a careless shrug. “If only there was some way to tell.”
I stifled a laugh At the front of the hall, Mistress Frostmourne crossed her arms over her chest and looked at us ominously.
Mistress Frostmourne did not frighten me. I had seen worse, I had lived worse. When I was but a child, my family had traveled as missionaries to live amongst the wild accountants of the Jungles of Algebra. There I had seen people quartered on a regular basis. On rare occasions, they would be divided by decimals. Sometimes those who ran afoul of the chieftain would be staked out and left for days, not knowing the value of x, y, or z. The screams still haunted my dreams. Mistress Frostmourne would have to employ something much more fearsome than an icicle to scare me.
***
Ace Frost is beginning her first year at the St Bestoras College for the Dark Arts. She’s already made a new friend, the fiery Isogarde the Terrible and things are looking good for the young woman who always dreamed of becoming a witch.
Having bonded in the first few minutes of their time at St Bestoras, Ace and Isogarde set their classmates on fire, shoot one another with elemental bolts, rip doors off hinges and earn the ire of the Mistress of Discipline who has no qualms about using a sturdy cane to make her point.
Will they ever learn to behave themselves? Or will they go down in history as the Brats of St Bestoras?