The Fifth Element

I felt my heart go to my throat. Did they just tell me I shouldn’t continue to live or had I just heard that wrong? I didn’t think I did.

“But,” Miss B continued, “some of us see potential in you, including myself. Please lift up your shirt, just enough to show your stomach.

I did as she asked and grabbed the edges of my shirt, and with shaky hands lifted the fabric just enough to expose my middle. There was a collective gasp in the room. All at once everyone began talking.

It appeared that Henry had been lying when he said everyone was in agreement about the sweet little deadly spell on my stomach. It appeared that most of the school board didn’t know about it. Which got me thinking, how did he know about it?

A balding middle-aged fat man, with frizzy red hair, stood and pointed an accusing finger at Miss B. “Vivian, what is the meaning of this.” He boomed.

Miss. B didn’t even flinch as she stood to her full towering height. She flicked her dirty blonde colored braid over her shoulder and met his glare with one of her own.

“What’s the difference whether or not she has a terminating spell on her? If you were to have your way she would be a corpse on the ground already. She could be useful in the future, so it would be a waste to kill her now. If she decides to use her powers against us,F we willuse the spell to kill her...”

She looked me in the eyes, “Will you agree to train in exchange for your life?”

I almost laughed with how absurd her question sounded. Notice that I said almost. Maybe if it wasn’t my own life hanging in the balance I would have found it outright hilarious.

I nodded and she smiled at me, “Okay let’s take a vote. All in favor of her living.”

I felt like I was going to be sick as I watched, one, two, six hands rise into the air.

“She should live?”

Six hands, some a little hesitantly, climbed into the air. Six hands in my favor, and counting Miss B’s vote , that made seven. I was going to live! I felt a smile creep up my lips, and tears of relief spilled down my cheeks. I rubbed them quickly away with the back of my hands.

Miss B looked behind her at the raised hands, and then back in my direction. She was wearing a smile of her own, but instead of one of relief hers was one of satisfaction. “Okay now that is settled, you can go back to your room and have a day off, you deserve it.”

Amber appeared by my side, put a comforting hand on the center of my back, and guided me away from the rows of people and back to the cage. When we reached the top I found Greta waiting for us. I launched myself into her outstretched arms.

“Where were you, you had no idea how scared I was!? They wanted to kill me!” I sobbed into her gray wool sweater.

“Shhh,” she soothed and made circular motions on my back. “Greta’s here now baby, I knew nothing was going to happen to you. You had Vivian on your side, and she tends to make things happen in her favor.”

“Tends to doesn’t mean always! You know you could’ve arranged things, so you could be down there too. I never wanted to come to this school, because deep down I knew that something like this was going to happen!” I shoved her away and bolted up the staircase with Amber on my heels.

“Violet, can you please wait a moment? Violet?” Amber called after me.

She kept calling my name until I finally had enough. I stopped in my tracks and turned around. “What the hell do you want!?” I said through clenched teeth.

“You’re going the wrong way.” She pointed behind her in the opposite direction.

“Oh..well they shouldn’t make everything here look all the same.” I began walking in the right direction, now a little embarrassed but still feeling mad, and betrayed by the only person that I believed to really care about me in this whole world. It hadn’t really hit me that she should have been at the school head’s meeting when they had been deciding her adopted daughter’s fate until I had seen her standing there waiting for me at the top.

“Wait!”

I turned to her again. “Okay, there are only two directions in this hallway.”

“No, that’s not what I’m talking about. I was just thinking that maybe you would rather do something other than sitting in that boring room all day.”

“Okay go on, tell me what you want to do instead?” I crossed my arms over my chest and leaned up against the nearest wall.

Actually, sitting alone in my boring room was exactly what I wanted to do. I just wanted to crawl into my bed and sleep, though I have been having increasingly worsening nightmares. But, I was curious, and lately, I was thinking I should try to cure that trait of mine. Curiosity was not going to do me any good in a place like this.

As if reading my mind Amber gave me a gotcha grin and said, “Well if you think I’m going to tell you where I’m planning on taking you, then you’re dead wrong. No pun intended. You are just going to have to come with me if you’re dying to know. Again, no pun intended.”

Five minutes later I was standing in front of a wooden door; the third door I had seen at the RIGC so far. I gave Amber a questioning look; she returned it with a sly smile, before placing her hand on the doorknob and opening the door to paradise.

I’m not kidding when I said what was behind the door was paradise, and if it wasn’t , it was the closest I’ve ever come to it. The courtyard that we stepped into was three times bigger than the one I had trained in with Henry the other day, and about five times lusher.

The centerpiece of the entire habitat, which was full of trees with trunks so big around I couldn’t wrap my hands around them and flowers and plants of every color known to man was a medium sized cascading waterfall, that emptied into a clear pool. Drinking out of that pool of water from the waterfall was a miniature white horse with a horn sticking out from the center of its forehead. I had a feeling that someone I had once know would’ve loved to see it.

The tiny unicorn raised its head from the water’s surface and studied me with two big brown eyes. I guess I was interesting enough because slowly it began creeping towards me. I crouched down on the ground and uprooted a clump of lush green grass. Holding my breath, I held it out to the approaching unicorn. Without hesitation, the unicorn began eating right out of my hands.

“Pretty neat huh?” Ambers shadow fell over me. “All the animals here are tame. We use this place to study the rarer magical species of plants and animals.”

“Yeah, this is awesome.” I looked over my shoulder at her, but when I looked back, the unicorn was gone. I let out a small sigh of disappointment and brushed the remaining grass onto the ground. That’s when I saw a flash of red which flickered quickly between two of the trees.

I looked back up at Amber. “It’s really peaceful here too, do you mind giving me a moment here alone? You know, to just go through my thoughts.”

I could tell she really didn’t think that was a good idea by how long she took to answer me, but she finally said “I really shouldn’t, but you deserve one request from me after the day you’ve had.”

“Thanks.”

I waited till I heard the door close behind me before trekking deeper into the habitat. I found Lacy looking at a beautiful pink flower halfway in.

“Hi,” she said without looking up at me.

“What do you want?” I said getting straight to the point.

“You know me too well.” She looked away from the flower and stared me down with her holes for eyes. “You weren’t paying any attention when I was trying to point out my two killers back there to you.”

I snorted. “Well sorry if I had more pressing matters on my mind, like people talking about killing me right in front of me.”

She waved her hand at me in dismissal. “Oh suck it up; they were never going to kill you. You are too valuable to them. Haven’t they proved that to you by their actions already? Even one of the Big Four was at that meeting!But never mind that. I’m going to tell you who my killers are. Do you remember that man sitting to the far left with black hair?”

I vaguely recall that a man with dark hair and equally black hair sitting on the far side of the bench. He didn’t talk much.

“His name is Hampton Blackwing and he is my first killer. My second killer was one of the four grand wizard, the woman that was talking to you the entire time, Bevivian Bat, or Vivian as everyone calls her.”