Petra Price and the Last Dragon: Chapter 6
I've really been meaning to post more than just these chapters, but I never have anything interesting to say when I think of it. This story is also posted here on FictionPress.com.
Description: Petra Price was perfectly ordinary, until a world of dormant magic was revealed to her and she became a witch. Taken away from the life she's always known, she's faced with new friends and a new power to be harnessed. Someone's life may be at stake!
If Cecelia's home looked magnificent from the outside, the inside was more than a match. Petra and her child-like teacher were taken to an ornate sitting room by a very pretty girl. Petra wondered just how many companions Cecelia had made for herself.
She couldn't help but notice how very old everything looked. There was nothing to be seen that wasn't spotless and fresh, but it was as if Cecelia had found the most well-preserved antiques.
“I guess she was down there for a long time,” Mister Glover observed.
They only had to wait a matter of minutes before Cecelia walked into the room. She was accompanied by a tea trolley that seemed to roll in and come to a halt under its own power.
“I'm so glad you could make it! I'd forgotten how lonely it could get up here.”
Petra thought she heard the sound of someone scoffing. She glanced at Mister Glover and he gave a little shrug. Cecelia's expression remained unchanged.
“May I offer you anything?” she asked politely.
Mister Glover declined and Petra followed his lead. Cecelia seemed like a perfectly ordinary little girl, but she had been trapped in the records room for some time. Who knew how many years it had been since she'd last interacted with other people. She might have been conscious all that time, driven into some kind of insanity by the solitude. She obviously had a vast array of power at her disposal and Petra could imagine she could do any number of things with it, like curse their food to see what would happen.
Petra chided herself for being overly cautious and letting her mind run away with her. She still didn't accept any of the treats or beverages Cecelia had out for them.
There was a bit of an awkward silence. Mister Glover was the one to break it after a few long minutes had passed.
“This is quite the home you've established for yourself,” he complimented their hostess, “Quite advanced magic for a girl your age, isn't it?”
Cecelia waved him off with a small motion, releasing a tiny giggle before speaking, “Oh, you forget I'm really much older than I appear. I've been down in that school for ages. My body may have remained the same, but my mind was as active as ever. Not only was I inside the school in the physical sense, my thoughts were linked to its very magical essence. It was able to teach me things I might never have known if I'd been left to learn the normal way.”
“I hope you won't mind if I ask,” Petra spoke for the first time since they had arrived, “How exactly was it that you ended up like that?”
“My father was a teacher at the school. It seems he figured out that trouble was coming just the shortest while before everyone else caught on, and he wanted to keep me safe. I've really no idea what happened to him or everyone else I knew, but obviously it must have been something terrible. You're here and they aren't, after all.” Cecelia sniffed quietly.
Petra looked to Mister Glover, assuming he would know more about the subject than she did. He turned out to have only the smallest amount of information.
“I haven't been around very long myself, but it's my understanding that the school was found in a state that would indicate it hasn't been used for quite some time. I would assume that whatever happened, it was only shortly after your father took the precautions he did to keep you safe.”
Cecelia admitted to them that she had extended an invitation to someone from the school in hopes that they would be able to tell her about everything that had happened since she had last had knowledge of the world in general. She had gravitated towards Petra for being the one to discover her.
Mister Glover promised her that he would see if there was anything more he could find out. It was only shortly after that when he made apologies for himself and Petra and said that they simply must be getting back to the school.
Once Cecelia's carriage had deposited them back at the gate, Petra was more interested in discussing the afternoon with Mister Glover than she'd been in talking to Cecelia herself.
“I can't just put a pin in it, but there's something about her that I don't like. For starters, how come she never told us her last name?” She was speaking more freely than ever. For the time being, Mister Glover seemed more like a peer than a teacher and she was going to treat him as such.
“It's not even in the school's records,” Mister Glover informed her, “My present theory is that her father had to displace the real record or erase it completely to hide the real Cecelia in its place. If there's any information about her left at the school, it's a secret that only the walls themselves know about.”
The tree Mister Glover had charmed to have pink leaves was like a beacon guiding them homeward, though the color had faded while they'd been away. Petra couldn't wait to get back to the school and talk to her friends.
The anticipation and curiosity she'd felt on her way to Cecelia's house had been firmly replaced during the return trip with mild trepidation and a certain edgy feeling. At one point, Petra was sure that she was being watched. She spun around in a quick circle and found nothing but a small creature like the one they had seen earlier. It could very well have been the same beast altogether.
“Who found the school?” Petra asked as they grew closer to the portal that would take them down to the cavern full of staircases.
“What's that?” Mister Glover glanced at her, brows raised.
“The school, you said it was found it a state of disuse.”
“Oh, I don't know. Miss Blake, I suppose. She's the one that brought us all here in one way or another, isn't she?”
“Well yes, that's true, but who is she really?” Petra wondered at her own question. It was strange that the thought hadn't crossed her mind before. If the school hadn't been used in years, maybe even decades, who was Charlotte Blake to be taking charge of it all of a sudden?
It took almost the entirety of the weekend for Mister Glover to resume adult appearance. It had been quite alarming for Petra when they had returned to the school and he hadn't sprung back into the proper shape immediately. He had told her not to worry.
In the coming days, Petra started to pay more attention to Miss Blake. The more she thought about it, there didn't seem to be any way she could learn more about the mysterious principal of Rosebury Academy.
Miss Blake always joined the rest of the staff at mealtimes and she seemed pleasant enough, judging by what Petra saw of her then. She would carry on conversations with Mister Glover and the other teachers, she would laugh and be as amiable as the rest of them.
For all the explaining she had done about magic, Miss Blake had scarcely revealed anything about herself other than her name. Petra couldn't know for sure if it was her real name, either.
Like Cecelia, Charlotte Blake had become something of a mystery, though there was one major difference between the two situations. Being around Miss Blake didn't give Petra that uneasy feeling in the pit of her stomach.
She was almost certain that a direct approach was out of the question. She very much doubted that any inquiry she made would be met with the same forthright honesty she had come to expect from Mister Glover. She was almost tempted to ask him what he thought she should do, but she didn't want to put him in an awkward position by asking him to go against the woman that was more or less his boss.
After bringing her friends up to speed, Hilton thought they might as well check out the library. He thought there might be some kind of spell or something that they could use to find out if Miss Blake was keeping any secrets.
As far as Petra knew, the library had remained mostly untouched since their arrival. Their text books had been passed out to them by the teachers in class, and their magical education so far hadn't included any research. Petra hoped that meant their little personal project wouldn't be interfered with. She also hoped it wouldn't draw any unwanted attention in their direction.
“How do you suppose we look anything up in here?” Hilton asked after getting his first look at the library.
Shelves full of books lined the walls, even more of them taking up the better part of the room. There were so many books stuffed into them that Petra had to assume the wood they were made of was held together by magical forces.
It was hard to know where to start. Petra looked around for some kind of index. The only thing to be found other than the furniture of the seating area and the shelves upon shelves of books was a large glass sphere in the very center of the room. It was by far the biggest thing in the room, taller than Petra herself.
After only a moment's hesitation, she approached it. Like the displays in the records room, it activated when she drew near. A soft light was glowing within it.
Petra placed her hand on it after a moment. It was slightly warm to the touch, but nothing happened. She lowered her hand to her side and tried a greeting.
“Hello?”
“How may I help you today?” said a pleasant voice from within the sphere.
“Um,” was Petra's response. She was unsure of just what they were looking for. After watching her look around at all the books for a short time, Hilton came up beside her.
“Are there any books about spells that can tell you when someone's keeping secrets from you?” was his question.
“Indexing, please wait,” the voice replied. Nothing happened for a short period of time, except for the color of the light within the sphere shifting colors.
“Results indicate the best source for the information you seek will be The Magic of Lies by Betty Butler.”
With that, an arrow appeared within the sphere and then spun around much like that of a compass, pointing them in the right direction. To go a step further, it sprouted a pair of wings and flew delicately across the room. It soon came to a halt, hovering around the top of a very high shelf that sat on a balcony overlooking the library.
Petra held out her arm and tried to magic the book into coming out of its shelf by summoning it, much as she had seen Mister Glover do the day they had gone to see Cecelia. The book seemed to rattle between its neighbors for a moment but remained where it was.
“To protect the sanctity of knowledge, students may not use magic on the library's books,” the magical librarian helpfully told them.
“It sure would have looked cool, though.” Petra sighed and followed the little winged arrow to the book. It had flown back and forth between the middle of the room and the book shelf it was trying to direct them to several times, looking like it was in a bit of a tizzy.
“Relax, I'm coming,” Petra told it, climbing the stairs to the balcony and then pushing a wheeled ladder to the right shelf. She couldn't help but read the spines of some of the other books as she climbed up to get the one she needed. Seeing such titles as When Magical Mops Attack and Caring for Orphaned Centaurs, Petra made a mental note to come back another day and thoroughly explore the library.
She was soon returning to her friends with The Magic of Lies tucked under her arm. Unsure if she could actually check the book out and feeling pretty certain that she didn't want it on record that she had been reading it, she sat down at a table. Marnie joined her, explaining that the boys had asked for other suggestions. Petra could see Budgerigar trailing after another winged arrow. Hilton was hidden between the shelves somewhere.
Petra placed the book between herself and Marnie so that they could both look at it. Trailing a finger down the bullet points at one side of the index, it seemed that the majority of the book focused on curses that you could use on someone that would visually indicate on their person when they were telling lies. After a little bit of convincing, Marnie let Petra try one on her.
“What now?” Marnie's face showed her worry, even though Petra had assured her she would remove the curse straight away.
Petra glanced down at the book, “Just tell me something that isn't true.”
“It's hard to think about something to lie about when I don't have a reason!” Marnie pouted, “My name is Wilma?”
With that, her nose grew quite long. Her eyes crossed to try and look at her new nose until Petra laughingly removed the curse.
“I guess we can't use anything like that. We can't have Miss Blake knowing we're casting magic on her, she'll get all suspicious.”
Budgerigar was making his way back to them. He bumped into things along the way, as he had decided to start reading the book he'd found straight away. He'd closed it by the time he reached them.
“I don't think there's anything helpful in this one. There's only a small section related to deception, and it's only about how to tell if your love is being unfaithful.”
Hilton was absent from the group for a further few minutes before he finally returned with a large tome cradled in his arms.
“There's a whole other level full of shelves below us. It's like a maze down there!”
He perused the book for some time before looking up with a smile, “I think I've found something we can use. There's a bit in here about finding the truth. You can cast this spell on someone to gain the answer to a single question, and then they'll forget having told you anything.”
Petra frowned, “Just one question? That doesn't give us a lot to work with.”
Hilton looked down at the book to check something before responding, “Apparently, magic has a hard time interacting with a person's mind. A person's own magic protects them. It takes a lot of power to break through that protection, according to this book, and we're all novices.”
“I guess that makes sense,” Petra replied, “Though it makes me think. All of our minds had magic used on them, after we received the letters telling us to come here. Something or someone made us want to come here and stopped our families from asking too many questions.”
“We didn't have any magic ourselves, not then. There was nothing to protect us from being influenced.” Budgerigar grinned before continuing, “I'm glad of it, really. I wouldn't have met all of you otherwise, and having magical powers doesn't hurt.”
Petra returned his grin before taking the book from Hilton to read the particulars of the spell. Once you cast it on a person, you couldn't cast it on them again until your magic dissipated from their mind. According to Mister Glover, magic could still cling to things weeks or months after it had been used on them. Petra assumed that was true for people as well.
Petra conjured herself a pencil and a small pad of paper to copy the spell out before passing the book off so that Marnie and Budgerigar could take a look.
“There are four of us. That means we have four chances to figure Miss Blake out.”
It wasn't much, but it was a good place to start. Now they just had to figure out what they could ask the woman that would reveal the most about her.
Description: Petra Price was perfectly ordinary, until a world of dormant magic was revealed to her and she became a witch. Taken away from the life she's always known, she's faced with new friends and a new power to be harnessed. Someone's life may be at stake!
If Cecelia's home looked magnificent from the outside, the inside was more than a match. Petra and her child-like teacher were taken to an ornate sitting room by a very pretty girl. Petra wondered just how many companions Cecelia had made for herself.
She couldn't help but notice how very old everything looked. There was nothing to be seen that wasn't spotless and fresh, but it was as if Cecelia had found the most well-preserved antiques.
“I guess she was down there for a long time,” Mister Glover observed.
They only had to wait a matter of minutes before Cecelia walked into the room. She was accompanied by a tea trolley that seemed to roll in and come to a halt under its own power.
“I'm so glad you could make it! I'd forgotten how lonely it could get up here.”
Petra thought she heard the sound of someone scoffing. She glanced at Mister Glover and he gave a little shrug. Cecelia's expression remained unchanged.
“May I offer you anything?” she asked politely.
Mister Glover declined and Petra followed his lead. Cecelia seemed like a perfectly ordinary little girl, but she had been trapped in the records room for some time. Who knew how many years it had been since she'd last interacted with other people. She might have been conscious all that time, driven into some kind of insanity by the solitude. She obviously had a vast array of power at her disposal and Petra could imagine she could do any number of things with it, like curse their food to see what would happen.
Petra chided herself for being overly cautious and letting her mind run away with her. She still didn't accept any of the treats or beverages Cecelia had out for them.
There was a bit of an awkward silence. Mister Glover was the one to break it after a few long minutes had passed.
“This is quite the home you've established for yourself,” he complimented their hostess, “Quite advanced magic for a girl your age, isn't it?”
Cecelia waved him off with a small motion, releasing a tiny giggle before speaking, “Oh, you forget I'm really much older than I appear. I've been down in that school for ages. My body may have remained the same, but my mind was as active as ever. Not only was I inside the school in the physical sense, my thoughts were linked to its very magical essence. It was able to teach me things I might never have known if I'd been left to learn the normal way.”
“I hope you won't mind if I ask,” Petra spoke for the first time since they had arrived, “How exactly was it that you ended up like that?”
“My father was a teacher at the school. It seems he figured out that trouble was coming just the shortest while before everyone else caught on, and he wanted to keep me safe. I've really no idea what happened to him or everyone else I knew, but obviously it must have been something terrible. You're here and they aren't, after all.” Cecelia sniffed quietly.
Petra looked to Mister Glover, assuming he would know more about the subject than she did. He turned out to have only the smallest amount of information.
“I haven't been around very long myself, but it's my understanding that the school was found in a state that would indicate it hasn't been used for quite some time. I would assume that whatever happened, it was only shortly after your father took the precautions he did to keep you safe.”
Cecelia admitted to them that she had extended an invitation to someone from the school in hopes that they would be able to tell her about everything that had happened since she had last had knowledge of the world in general. She had gravitated towards Petra for being the one to discover her.
Mister Glover promised her that he would see if there was anything more he could find out. It was only shortly after that when he made apologies for himself and Petra and said that they simply must be getting back to the school.
Once Cecelia's carriage had deposited them back at the gate, Petra was more interested in discussing the afternoon with Mister Glover than she'd been in talking to Cecelia herself.
“I can't just put a pin in it, but there's something about her that I don't like. For starters, how come she never told us her last name?” She was speaking more freely than ever. For the time being, Mister Glover seemed more like a peer than a teacher and she was going to treat him as such.
“It's not even in the school's records,” Mister Glover informed her, “My present theory is that her father had to displace the real record or erase it completely to hide the real Cecelia in its place. If there's any information about her left at the school, it's a secret that only the walls themselves know about.”
The tree Mister Glover had charmed to have pink leaves was like a beacon guiding them homeward, though the color had faded while they'd been away. Petra couldn't wait to get back to the school and talk to her friends.
The anticipation and curiosity she'd felt on her way to Cecelia's house had been firmly replaced during the return trip with mild trepidation and a certain edgy feeling. At one point, Petra was sure that she was being watched. She spun around in a quick circle and found nothing but a small creature like the one they had seen earlier. It could very well have been the same beast altogether.
“Who found the school?” Petra asked as they grew closer to the portal that would take them down to the cavern full of staircases.
“What's that?” Mister Glover glanced at her, brows raised.
“The school, you said it was found it a state of disuse.”
“Oh, I don't know. Miss Blake, I suppose. She's the one that brought us all here in one way or another, isn't she?”
“Well yes, that's true, but who is she really?” Petra wondered at her own question. It was strange that the thought hadn't crossed her mind before. If the school hadn't been used in years, maybe even decades, who was Charlotte Blake to be taking charge of it all of a sudden?
It took almost the entirety of the weekend for Mister Glover to resume adult appearance. It had been quite alarming for Petra when they had returned to the school and he hadn't sprung back into the proper shape immediately. He had told her not to worry.
In the coming days, Petra started to pay more attention to Miss Blake. The more she thought about it, there didn't seem to be any way she could learn more about the mysterious principal of Rosebury Academy.
Miss Blake always joined the rest of the staff at mealtimes and she seemed pleasant enough, judging by what Petra saw of her then. She would carry on conversations with Mister Glover and the other teachers, she would laugh and be as amiable as the rest of them.
For all the explaining she had done about magic, Miss Blake had scarcely revealed anything about herself other than her name. Petra couldn't know for sure if it was her real name, either.
Like Cecelia, Charlotte Blake had become something of a mystery, though there was one major difference between the two situations. Being around Miss Blake didn't give Petra that uneasy feeling in the pit of her stomach.
She was almost certain that a direct approach was out of the question. She very much doubted that any inquiry she made would be met with the same forthright honesty she had come to expect from Mister Glover. She was almost tempted to ask him what he thought she should do, but she didn't want to put him in an awkward position by asking him to go against the woman that was more or less his boss.
After bringing her friends up to speed, Hilton thought they might as well check out the library. He thought there might be some kind of spell or something that they could use to find out if Miss Blake was keeping any secrets.
As far as Petra knew, the library had remained mostly untouched since their arrival. Their text books had been passed out to them by the teachers in class, and their magical education so far hadn't included any research. Petra hoped that meant their little personal project wouldn't be interfered with. She also hoped it wouldn't draw any unwanted attention in their direction.
“How do you suppose we look anything up in here?” Hilton asked after getting his first look at the library.
Shelves full of books lined the walls, even more of them taking up the better part of the room. There were so many books stuffed into them that Petra had to assume the wood they were made of was held together by magical forces.
It was hard to know where to start. Petra looked around for some kind of index. The only thing to be found other than the furniture of the seating area and the shelves upon shelves of books was a large glass sphere in the very center of the room. It was by far the biggest thing in the room, taller than Petra herself.
After only a moment's hesitation, she approached it. Like the displays in the records room, it activated when she drew near. A soft light was glowing within it.
Petra placed her hand on it after a moment. It was slightly warm to the touch, but nothing happened. She lowered her hand to her side and tried a greeting.
“Hello?”
“How may I help you today?” said a pleasant voice from within the sphere.
“Um,” was Petra's response. She was unsure of just what they were looking for. After watching her look around at all the books for a short time, Hilton came up beside her.
“Are there any books about spells that can tell you when someone's keeping secrets from you?” was his question.
“Indexing, please wait,” the voice replied. Nothing happened for a short period of time, except for the color of the light within the sphere shifting colors.
“Results indicate the best source for the information you seek will be The Magic of Lies by Betty Butler.”
With that, an arrow appeared within the sphere and then spun around much like that of a compass, pointing them in the right direction. To go a step further, it sprouted a pair of wings and flew delicately across the room. It soon came to a halt, hovering around the top of a very high shelf that sat on a balcony overlooking the library.
Petra held out her arm and tried to magic the book into coming out of its shelf by summoning it, much as she had seen Mister Glover do the day they had gone to see Cecelia. The book seemed to rattle between its neighbors for a moment but remained where it was.
“To protect the sanctity of knowledge, students may not use magic on the library's books,” the magical librarian helpfully told them.
“It sure would have looked cool, though.” Petra sighed and followed the little winged arrow to the book. It had flown back and forth between the middle of the room and the book shelf it was trying to direct them to several times, looking like it was in a bit of a tizzy.
“Relax, I'm coming,” Petra told it, climbing the stairs to the balcony and then pushing a wheeled ladder to the right shelf. She couldn't help but read the spines of some of the other books as she climbed up to get the one she needed. Seeing such titles as When Magical Mops Attack and Caring for Orphaned Centaurs, Petra made a mental note to come back another day and thoroughly explore the library.
She was soon returning to her friends with The Magic of Lies tucked under her arm. Unsure if she could actually check the book out and feeling pretty certain that she didn't want it on record that she had been reading it, she sat down at a table. Marnie joined her, explaining that the boys had asked for other suggestions. Petra could see Budgerigar trailing after another winged arrow. Hilton was hidden between the shelves somewhere.
Petra placed the book between herself and Marnie so that they could both look at it. Trailing a finger down the bullet points at one side of the index, it seemed that the majority of the book focused on curses that you could use on someone that would visually indicate on their person when they were telling lies. After a little bit of convincing, Marnie let Petra try one on her.
“What now?” Marnie's face showed her worry, even though Petra had assured her she would remove the curse straight away.
Petra glanced down at the book, “Just tell me something that isn't true.”
“It's hard to think about something to lie about when I don't have a reason!” Marnie pouted, “My name is Wilma?”
With that, her nose grew quite long. Her eyes crossed to try and look at her new nose until Petra laughingly removed the curse.
“I guess we can't use anything like that. We can't have Miss Blake knowing we're casting magic on her, she'll get all suspicious.”
Budgerigar was making his way back to them. He bumped into things along the way, as he had decided to start reading the book he'd found straight away. He'd closed it by the time he reached them.
“I don't think there's anything helpful in this one. There's only a small section related to deception, and it's only about how to tell if your love is being unfaithful.”
Hilton was absent from the group for a further few minutes before he finally returned with a large tome cradled in his arms.
“There's a whole other level full of shelves below us. It's like a maze down there!”
He perused the book for some time before looking up with a smile, “I think I've found something we can use. There's a bit in here about finding the truth. You can cast this spell on someone to gain the answer to a single question, and then they'll forget having told you anything.”
Petra frowned, “Just one question? That doesn't give us a lot to work with.”
Hilton looked down at the book to check something before responding, “Apparently, magic has a hard time interacting with a person's mind. A person's own magic protects them. It takes a lot of power to break through that protection, according to this book, and we're all novices.”
“I guess that makes sense,” Petra replied, “Though it makes me think. All of our minds had magic used on them, after we received the letters telling us to come here. Something or someone made us want to come here and stopped our families from asking too many questions.”
“We didn't have any magic ourselves, not then. There was nothing to protect us from being influenced.” Budgerigar grinned before continuing, “I'm glad of it, really. I wouldn't have met all of you otherwise, and having magical powers doesn't hurt.”
Petra returned his grin before taking the book from Hilton to read the particulars of the spell. Once you cast it on a person, you couldn't cast it on them again until your magic dissipated from their mind. According to Mister Glover, magic could still cling to things weeks or months after it had been used on them. Petra assumed that was true for people as well.
Petra conjured herself a pencil and a small pad of paper to copy the spell out before passing the book off so that Marnie and Budgerigar could take a look.
“There are four of us. That means we have four chances to figure Miss Blake out.”
It wasn't much, but it was a good place to start. Now they just had to figure out what they could ask the woman that would reveal the most about her.