The Fifth Element

Henry was waiting for me when I exited the arena, panting, and drenched in sweat. Mrs. B had given me a bottle of water, and I downed it greedily while I followed him to my next class. I noticed as he walked in front of me, that the back of his pants was dusty. Had he been sitting just outside the arena waiting for me the entire time? Probably being that he was my babysitter and all, no matter how many times he denied it.

My next two classes seemed to drag on forever. My elemental water teacher was a fat man, with blue hair and a black tattoo running along the left side of his face. His personality didn’t match his interesting appearance. I caught myself dozing off a couple of times during our private lesson. The only thing I managed to do in that class was trip, knock over the giant tub of water he had carefully placed in the center of the room, and soak both him and me in freezing cold water.

The class after that was wind elemental class. My elemental wind teacher, Mrs. Cliff, was rather ordinary in appearance compared to the other two. She was medium height with brown eyes and light brown hair. She was polite to me, but I could sense that she didn’t like me all that much. She helped dry me off with a warm breeze when I came into her class looking like a drowned cat.

The identity of my elemental fire teacher, which was my next class, came as no surprise to me. They wouldn’t put someone that was incompetent in charge of me, especially if I was oh so dangerous. Henry took me outside into a large courtyard. It was barren, except for giant wooden poles as tall and wide around as a tree. The sky above us was a deep blue, and by the position of the sun I guessed it was around noon.

I looked gloomily at the wooden poles. I was so sick of elemental lessons I could scream. But instead of launching into the lesson, Henry removed a bag he had acquired during my wind lesson and opened it. He took out two paper bags and held one out to me.

When he saw that I wasn’t making any move to take the bag, he let out a long sigh. “It’s lunch, you must be hungry, especially since you haven’t eaten anything in almost a day.”

He brought food! Now that he mentioned it, I hadn’t noticed how hungry I was untiI now. Was he trying to be nice? Well, maybe I could be nice too. This might be the start of a beautiful friendship!

“Thanks that would make sense, seeing that I feel like I could eat a dragon right now,” I smiled at him.

He didn’t smile back, instead, he tossed the bag to me. It hit the ground before I could catch it.

“I brought you lunch because I didn’t feel like taking you to the dining hall. It would take too long, and I really didn’t want to sit across from you and watch you stuff food into your face like a pig.”

Okay scratch the friendship thing, it’s going to be hard enough to keep myself from wrapping my hands around his throat and choking him.

I retrieved my water bottle, before he could throw that on the ground too, and chose a spot far from him. I ended up sitting next to a wooden post in the far corner. I leaned my back up against it and dug through the contents of the paper bag. I pulled out first an apple, then a peanut butter sandwich, and a bag of raisins. I inhaled the sandwich, ate the apple to its core, and left the raisins untouched. I wasn’t a big fan of them, especially after I had gotten one stuck up my nose when I was five.

Once I had finished eating I glanced over at Henry. He was still working on his apple. I soon grew bored watching and waiting for him to finish eating, so I did the only thing that makes sense when you’re bored and have a bag of raisins.

I began tossing raisins into the air and catching them with my mouth. I managed to catch two out of twenty. I stopped when Henry threatened to make me eat all the raisin I had missed off the ground if I didn’t knock it off.

With my one source of entertainment gone, I laid flat on the ground and looked up at the clear blue sky. Something white zoomed past across the heavens and was quickly gone.

What was that?

I rubbed my eyes and wondered if they were playing tricks on me. Another white thing streaked across the sky, and I knew that wasn’t just seeing things. The same thing happened again and again, and each time I felt the answer to the mystery getting closer to the tip of my tongue.

“Clouds!” I yelled and clamped my hand over my mouth. I have a serious problem with yelling my thoughts out loud sometimes.

From behind me I heard Henry sputter and begin to cough. Good, I had made him choke.

I sat up and looked down at my honey colored boots, the only thing that they had let me keep from my original outfit, and began to think. Clouds don’t normally move that fast, so either they were turbo clouds, or we were the ones moving. Well, one way to find out.

I grabbed a rock off the ground and stood. Using all my strength I chucked it straight up into the air. The rock went soaring, easily passing the four sides of the courtyard, and clearing the tallest tower of the school/castle, but then it just stopped dead. It hung suspended in midair for a couple of seconds, and then fell back to the ground. It landed a couple feet away from me. I looked at it puzzled.

I heard the sound of Henry’s boots approaching me from behind. “What are you doing?” He walked over to the spot my rock had landed, and bent down and retrieved it.

“Um, none of your business.” I grabbed it from him and prepared to launch it skyward again.

“Unfortunately everything you do is my business.”

I sent the rock soaring. We watched its flight, and then its sudden and strange stop.

“Why does it do that?” I said pointing at the rock.

“It’s hitting the school’s force field.”

“Force field?”

“You know that thing that keeps everything that’s supposed to be inside in and everything outside supposed to be outside out. The thing that keep us concealed from the outside...?“He must have noticed the weird look I was giving him. “You’ve got to be kidding me!? You watched me walk right through it and disappear! How did you think I accomplished that?!”

I groaned and spat back sarcastically, “Oh yeah, and when I see that you magically become invisible, I’m instantly going to be like, oh he went through a forcefield. That’s why his body automatically disappeared.”

“Why does nothing in this place make sense? Like how does a building become invisible by using force fields, and how other worlds exist and giant squids and black holes can appear out of nowhere!? Nothing here follows the rules of elemental magic!”

“Did you ever consider that your “rules” aren’t the true rules of elemental magic and...?” he stopped himself. “Never mind, forget I said anything.”

“Never mind what?” I pressed. I stepped closer to him.

“Nothing!” he growled. I shrank back from him at his sudden outburst. “Just please forget this whole conversation,” he continued, his voice growing softer.

“Okay then,” I mumbled. I glued my eyes to my boots.

We stood in silence.

“Sorry I didn’t mean to snap, I just almost said something I shouldn’t say. I’ve been under a lot of stress.”

Wait did Henry just apologize?

“Violet...” I raised my head at the sound of my name and was met with electric blue eyes. Conflicting emotions danced behind them. “I have to tell you something about Danny.”

“Danny? Who are you talking about?”

He froze for a second. “I heard you say something about someone named Danny in your sleep. I was just wanted to see your reaction if I mentioned him.”

“That’s weird because I don’t know any Dannys... wait why are you watching me while I sleep?” I looked at him suspiciously.

He rolled his eyes. “Don’t flatter yourself. You said it when I came to wake you up.”

“Whatever creep.” I brushed a stray piece of black hair back from my face.

Henry ignored my insult and instead looked down at his watch. He grimaced when he saw what time it was. “How is it one already?” He grumbled. “We better start our lesson.”

“Maybe it’s because it takes you five years to eat an apple,” I retorted.

“Maybe if a particular six, I mean sixteen years old, could be trusted for more than three minutes by herself I could focus more on eating.”

I clapped my hands together. “Okay let’s start before we end up fighting again.”

He nodded his head. “Agreed.”

And that’s how I ended up learning how to breathe for the next twenty minutes. It’s a miracle that I had survived these last sixteen years, because apparently I didn’t know how to do” this essential function”, Henry’s words not mine. In my defense, it was a little hard to breathe properly, when you’re worried about toppling off a fifteen-foot pole because you’re standing on it on one foot.

By the way, the cloud mystery was officially solved. The school is moving or more correctly flying. I found that out after Henry made me climb this stupid pole.

“You aren’t breathing deeply enough. Breathe from the stomach!” Henry yelled up from the ground.

“How can you tell, you aren’t up here.” I was beyond frustrated now. “And what does this have to do with fire magic.”

“Without oxygen, there is no fire, so you’ve got to learn how to control your oxygen before you can dream of ever making a single spark. Naturally born fire elementals do it instinctually.”

“Of course, they do, and that’s exactly why I’m not going to learn how to use fire magic. By the way, why is the school flying?”

Henry was silent.

“Hello?”

“Oh sorry, did you say something. I don’t talk to quitters.”

“Am not a quitter, I’m being realistic.”

Another moment of silence “I’ll make you a deal, if you can tell me who Emily Howl is, I’ll tell you why it is flying.”

I thought for a minute. “Um is that a famous fire elemental user?” I said weakly.

Henry was silent for a long moment. “No... Climb down. We’ll work on something else.”

“Okay,” I said and began climbing down.

“One more question.”

I let out an exasperated sigh. “What?”

“Who raised you?”

I jumped the last foot down. “Aren’t you supposed to know everything about me? Are you supposed to be some super stalker right? I was raised by the headmaster, Greta, duh.”