Petra Price and the Last Dragon: Chapter 8
That's nearly two full months of Petra Price. I'm feeling a bit accomplished! 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!
Normally, being called down to the Principal's office would be cause enough for any student to feel some sort of trepidation. Petra decided she would rather look at the situation in a positive light. Not only had the intruder and probable thief been apprehended, but she was going to get a look at Miss Blake's office without having to be entirely sneaky about it.
“Did they give back the stolen wand making supplies?” Petra asked as she followed Miss Blake from corridor to corridor. Much to her surprise, they were headed to the area of the school where the offices of the teachers were. She thought she already knew all the rooms in that particular hall. Which office belonged to whom was made obvious by the names carved into the doors. The other rooms were empty.
“I'm not entirely sure that our new guest has any relation to our sudden group tendency for misplacing things,” was Miss Blake's response, “The only thing that's been made clear is that yourself and Mister Glover were followed back to the school after your little field trip the other day.”
“I'm sorry about that,” Petra said, and she honestly was. She could have brought danger to everyone else in the school. She was glad her slip up hadn't had even more serious consequences.
“Oh, don't you worry. I hope it will ease your conscience to know that I consider much of the blame to be on my shoulders. I tried to arrange the security of the school as best I could before you all got here, but I didn't think to explain it to you all. I didn't expect that any of you would have anywhere to go until your holidays, after all.”
They had come to the hall where the offices were. Sure enough, there was no door marked for Miss Blake. The Principal continued on, stopping in front of a stretch of blank wall. After a moment, a faint outline appeared around a section of the wall and it swung inwards like a door.
“I'll have to post a notice in the dining hall until I can enhance the security measures I've already taken,” Miss Blake continued on as she stepped into her office, “You see, as it stands now, no one may enter the school unless they see someone else enter it. Everyone saw me use the entrance in the fountain on the day of your arrival, and our little friend here witnessed your return when you went to visit Miss Cecelia.”
Petra's attention was drawn to one of the chairs near Miss Blake's desk by an excited little yipping sound. Perched on the chair was one of the small creatures Petra had seen in the forest. It promptly scampered over to them, leaving what looked to be a miniscule tea service in disarray.
In no time at all, the little animal had taken position on Petra's shoulder. It pressed its dainty paws against her cheek and for a moment she was treated to an image of herself as she had been in the forest that day. The animal was showing her its memory, she was certain.
“I expect you now see why it was that you were summoned here to meet her, Petra. Showing memories through touch is apparently her main form of communication, and for one reason or another you made a strong impression on her and she followed you here.”
Petra held out her arm and allowed the creature to crawl down into the palm of her hand. She waggled a finger at it, “You know, you've been creating quite the upset over the last few days, making off with things from the classroom. Don't you know you shouldn't take something that doesn't belong to you?”
The little animal was focusing on her intently, as if trying very hard to understand her words. Perhaps it would have been wise to ask Miss Blake if the little beast could understand when it was spoken to.
Apparently, it could. The little animal grabbed hold of one of Petra's fingers and frantically shook her head. Without waiting to be chastised again, the tiny intruder made a hasty retreat out the still open door of Miss Blake's office. Petra had just long enough to think they'd seen the last of her before she appeared in the threshold of the door and beckoned with a paw.
“I think she'd like you to follow her,” Miss Blake coaxed her. Petra stepped out into the hall, turning around when Miss Blake showed no signs of coming along.
The Principal waved her off, “Just come back when she's through with you.”
It seemed only fitting that Mister Glover showed up at just that moment, a book in his hand.
“Ah, Petra, good! Miss Blake informed me of this little fellow here being in the school and asked me to see if I could find anything about him in the library.”
“She's a girl,” Petra corrected quietly, glad when her favorite teacher started to follow the animal along with her.
“Ah, yes. Sorry about that,” he directed his apology at the creature. She paused to wave a paw at him, as if to tell him to think nothing of the mistake.
“She's called a toyffkin,” Mister Glover informed Petra, “If the magic of the school library hasn't let me down, I'd wager she's taking us to her nest right now.”
They had to hurry to keep up with the toyffkin. She would come back to them now and then if they hadn't managed to see which corner she turned. There wasn't much chance of Petra getting lost. Even if Mister Glover had not been there, she knew the school well enough that she'd be able to get back to the dormitory, at the very least.
The toyffkin took them to one of the unused classrooms. As Petra had expected, it hurried to a small pile of items in the corner. Amongst them were the items that had been taken from Mister Harvey's wand-making supplies.
The animal ran over to her nest, greeted by a series of tiny squeaks. When Petra came close, she could see that the toyffkin had had babies. The creature's young, miniscule in comparison to their mother, waddled haphazardly over the things that their elder had tried to shape into a home for them.
“That's a bit dangerous!” Mister Glover mumbled. He pointed his wand in the direction of the things the toyffkin had taken to make her nest. The objects came to life for a moment, spinning around in circles until they all came back to the ground with a small thud. They surrounded the baby animals like pillars.
This drew the mother toyffkin into action. She ran around frantically, paws moving over this and that. What she had didn't seem very much to be making a home out of. There were various bits of wood and plants, tiny bottles full of paints and potions. The animal seemed to mold each thing to the shape she wanted as if it were clay, then she fit everything together. Petra felt she had been standing there a long time when finally the tiny mammal picked each of her children up in turn, depositing them in their new makeshift bed. It had been like watching someone put together the most complicated puzzle.
“Somehow in the past, her kind figured out that magic could protect them, and they developed this way of shaping found magical objects into what they needed. I imagine they might have frequented the school quite a bit back when it was in regular use.”
“I can't blame her for wanting to make a safe place for her babies to live,” Petra smiled down at the little family, “I think we should make something for them so this doesn't happen again, they wouldn't have to go around snitching things if we provided for them.”
“She might be the only one that even knows we're here. I don't know how she even thought to try what she was doing. It must be ages since any of the others were here. There wouldn't have been anything with magic in it that they could use for building. She was getting it wrong, as well, trying to use items that nobody had enchanted in the slightest.”
Petra thought it over for a moment, “It could have been passed down through the generations, with that way they can transfer visions or memories through touch. It might have gotten jumbled after being retold so many different times.”
Mister Glover nodded his agreement that this was a logical assumption.
Suddenly he was frowning, “Oh, I've gone and done it. Mister Harvey will be cross with me. I found his missing supplies and then I went and made them useless, just so I could show you what our little trouble maker could do.”
“I've got to go back and talk to Miss Blake,” Petra told him after observing the toyffkin family for a little while longer.
“Of course, of course! I'll take care of things here, and if anything should happen to me within the next few hours I'll trust you'll point a finger squarely in Mister Harvey's direction.”
Petra giggled, “I promise.”
The door to Miss Blake's office appeared for her as easily as it had appeared for the room's occupant. Petra filed that bit of information away for the future, just in case. Miss Blake only kept her a few minutes when she finally entered the Principal's office, just long enough for her to explain about the toyffkin and its nest. That was fine by Petra, because it wasn't the only thing she had to do.
She had a hunch. First she went to Mister Harvey to explain to him about the toyffkin and hopefully soften the blow for Mister Glover. Her favorite teacher hadn't meant to ruin perfectly good equipment and there was still enough to go around.
Mister Harvey grudgingly accepted the news, quietly listening as Petra listed off what she could remember the toyffkin had taken.
“That sounds to be just about everything that went missing from my storage closet, and Mister Stewart's as well. Thank you for telling me.”
This as much as confirmed Petra's suspicions.
The next thing Petra had to do was make a list. It took her longer than she expected. Through introducing herself and having small conversations with all the students, she was able to find out what, if anything, had been stolen from them. In the end, only about half of the school's pupils had had things taken from them, specifically wand-making materials.
The funny thing about it was, the toyffkin hadn't amassed nearly enough of a collection that it would account for everything stolen from Misters Harvey and Stewart as well as all the students.
Once she had compiled her list, Petra took it to Mister Glover. They were sat in his office early one afternoon, just before classes. He offered her some tea and shooed the mother toyffkin off a stack of assignments on his desk. She ran back to her nest, which had taken up residence in a corner of the room.
After a few sips of tea and some polite conversation, Petra presented her list.
“If I'm not mistaken, this is everything one needs to make a wand.”
Mister Glover took the paper from her and skimmed over it, “Yes, this looks about right. You've been reading ahead, I thought you only just started making your wands this week.”
Petra frowned, “I wanted to know for sure. That's a list of the things that have gone missing in class over the last couple days. I think someone must have followed us back from Cecelia's that day and they're trying to make their own wand without anyone knowing.”
“I don't know who it could be. We didn't see anyone but Cecelia and her servants. She lives in a mansion, she has everything anyone could want. She could make her own wand very easily with her own resources.”
“Unless she made everything around her with magic, even her house! If that place was nothing but a forest before she got there, there wouldn't be anything to make a wand out of and she'd have to come here. If not her, then one of the servants she has up there could just as likely be who we're looking for.” As she said it, Petra knew Mister Glover would go check things out at Cecelia's. She also hoped she wouldn't have to go with him.
“That's quite an interesting theory,” he replied after a sip of his tea.
Despite the fact that Petra had been suspicious of Cecelia even before things had started to go missing around the school, she had a hard time picturing the mysterious girl skulking around trying to make a secret wand. She was also fairly certain that if Cecelia needed anything, Miss Blake and the other teachers would be more than happy to give it to her. There were only twenty students at the school and it was designed to accommodate many times that. They had plenty of everything to go around, assuming nothing left in storage had gone bad during the school's dormant years.
If one of Cecelia's servants was made as uneasy by her as Petra was, perhaps they would think to come to the school and make themselves a wand. If Cecelia's servants were anything like Mister Glover, they would have some magic of their own. Petra could only imagine that Miss Blake would offer such a person shelter, but then Cecelia would know just where they were.
There had been the two boys that had transformed from the horses that pulled the carriage from the gate to the house, and the maid that answered the door. There might have been any number of unknown persons around then and many more since.
In some ways, it would be a relief if the culprit they were looking for was anyone other than Cecelia herself. If it was she, her intentions would almost surely be wicked. If it was someone that worked for her, it would mean there might be someone out there who could eventually reveal themselves and tell someone at the school what Cecelia was really like.
Petra made her first trip to the library since the day everyone had been there doing research. It was the first time she had ever been alone in the large, cavernous room. She didn't have to look up the book she was looking for because she knew just where it was.
She checked out The Magic of Lies by Betty Butler. If there was someone sneaking around the school, they weren't going to get into her room undetected.
As she soon found out, quite luckily, the spell she remembered reading about was something she could still perform without a wand. She said the incantation before crouching down. Starting at the bottom of the door frame, she slid her hand all the way up to the top. She had to stand on the tips of her toes to reach it before moving down the opposite side. Now if anyone who was concealing themselves with magic tried to enter the room, the invisibility charm or whatever they were using would be canceled out.
Petra wondered if it might be a good idea to cast the same spell on the door to the common area, then decided against it. If she used magic anywhere but in her own room, there was a chance she wouldn't be around when the spell activated. Were anything to happen because of spells she had cast, she wanted to be the one to deal with it. It would only be fair.
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!
Normally, being called down to the Principal's office would be cause enough for any student to feel some sort of trepidation. Petra decided she would rather look at the situation in a positive light. Not only had the intruder and probable thief been apprehended, but she was going to get a look at Miss Blake's office without having to be entirely sneaky about it.
“Did they give back the stolen wand making supplies?” Petra asked as she followed Miss Blake from corridor to corridor. Much to her surprise, they were headed to the area of the school where the offices of the teachers were. She thought she already knew all the rooms in that particular hall. Which office belonged to whom was made obvious by the names carved into the doors. The other rooms were empty.
“I'm not entirely sure that our new guest has any relation to our sudden group tendency for misplacing things,” was Miss Blake's response, “The only thing that's been made clear is that yourself and Mister Glover were followed back to the school after your little field trip the other day.”
“I'm sorry about that,” Petra said, and she honestly was. She could have brought danger to everyone else in the school. She was glad her slip up hadn't had even more serious consequences.
“Oh, don't you worry. I hope it will ease your conscience to know that I consider much of the blame to be on my shoulders. I tried to arrange the security of the school as best I could before you all got here, but I didn't think to explain it to you all. I didn't expect that any of you would have anywhere to go until your holidays, after all.”
They had come to the hall where the offices were. Sure enough, there was no door marked for Miss Blake. The Principal continued on, stopping in front of a stretch of blank wall. After a moment, a faint outline appeared around a section of the wall and it swung inwards like a door.
“I'll have to post a notice in the dining hall until I can enhance the security measures I've already taken,” Miss Blake continued on as she stepped into her office, “You see, as it stands now, no one may enter the school unless they see someone else enter it. Everyone saw me use the entrance in the fountain on the day of your arrival, and our little friend here witnessed your return when you went to visit Miss Cecelia.”
Petra's attention was drawn to one of the chairs near Miss Blake's desk by an excited little yipping sound. Perched on the chair was one of the small creatures Petra had seen in the forest. It promptly scampered over to them, leaving what looked to be a miniscule tea service in disarray.
In no time at all, the little animal had taken position on Petra's shoulder. It pressed its dainty paws against her cheek and for a moment she was treated to an image of herself as she had been in the forest that day. The animal was showing her its memory, she was certain.
“I expect you now see why it was that you were summoned here to meet her, Petra. Showing memories through touch is apparently her main form of communication, and for one reason or another you made a strong impression on her and she followed you here.”
Petra held out her arm and allowed the creature to crawl down into the palm of her hand. She waggled a finger at it, “You know, you've been creating quite the upset over the last few days, making off with things from the classroom. Don't you know you shouldn't take something that doesn't belong to you?”
The little animal was focusing on her intently, as if trying very hard to understand her words. Perhaps it would have been wise to ask Miss Blake if the little beast could understand when it was spoken to.
Apparently, it could. The little animal grabbed hold of one of Petra's fingers and frantically shook her head. Without waiting to be chastised again, the tiny intruder made a hasty retreat out the still open door of Miss Blake's office. Petra had just long enough to think they'd seen the last of her before she appeared in the threshold of the door and beckoned with a paw.
“I think she'd like you to follow her,” Miss Blake coaxed her. Petra stepped out into the hall, turning around when Miss Blake showed no signs of coming along.
The Principal waved her off, “Just come back when she's through with you.”
It seemed only fitting that Mister Glover showed up at just that moment, a book in his hand.
“Ah, Petra, good! Miss Blake informed me of this little fellow here being in the school and asked me to see if I could find anything about him in the library.”
“She's a girl,” Petra corrected quietly, glad when her favorite teacher started to follow the animal along with her.
“Ah, yes. Sorry about that,” he directed his apology at the creature. She paused to wave a paw at him, as if to tell him to think nothing of the mistake.
“She's called a toyffkin,” Mister Glover informed Petra, “If the magic of the school library hasn't let me down, I'd wager she's taking us to her nest right now.”
They had to hurry to keep up with the toyffkin. She would come back to them now and then if they hadn't managed to see which corner she turned. There wasn't much chance of Petra getting lost. Even if Mister Glover had not been there, she knew the school well enough that she'd be able to get back to the dormitory, at the very least.
The toyffkin took them to one of the unused classrooms. As Petra had expected, it hurried to a small pile of items in the corner. Amongst them were the items that had been taken from Mister Harvey's wand-making supplies.
The animal ran over to her nest, greeted by a series of tiny squeaks. When Petra came close, she could see that the toyffkin had had babies. The creature's young, miniscule in comparison to their mother, waddled haphazardly over the things that their elder had tried to shape into a home for them.
“That's a bit dangerous!” Mister Glover mumbled. He pointed his wand in the direction of the things the toyffkin had taken to make her nest. The objects came to life for a moment, spinning around in circles until they all came back to the ground with a small thud. They surrounded the baby animals like pillars.
This drew the mother toyffkin into action. She ran around frantically, paws moving over this and that. What she had didn't seem very much to be making a home out of. There were various bits of wood and plants, tiny bottles full of paints and potions. The animal seemed to mold each thing to the shape she wanted as if it were clay, then she fit everything together. Petra felt she had been standing there a long time when finally the tiny mammal picked each of her children up in turn, depositing them in their new makeshift bed. It had been like watching someone put together the most complicated puzzle.
“Somehow in the past, her kind figured out that magic could protect them, and they developed this way of shaping found magical objects into what they needed. I imagine they might have frequented the school quite a bit back when it was in regular use.”
“I can't blame her for wanting to make a safe place for her babies to live,” Petra smiled down at the little family, “I think we should make something for them so this doesn't happen again, they wouldn't have to go around snitching things if we provided for them.”
“She might be the only one that even knows we're here. I don't know how she even thought to try what she was doing. It must be ages since any of the others were here. There wouldn't have been anything with magic in it that they could use for building. She was getting it wrong, as well, trying to use items that nobody had enchanted in the slightest.”
Petra thought it over for a moment, “It could have been passed down through the generations, with that way they can transfer visions or memories through touch. It might have gotten jumbled after being retold so many different times.”
Mister Glover nodded his agreement that this was a logical assumption.
Suddenly he was frowning, “Oh, I've gone and done it. Mister Harvey will be cross with me. I found his missing supplies and then I went and made them useless, just so I could show you what our little trouble maker could do.”
“I've got to go back and talk to Miss Blake,” Petra told him after observing the toyffkin family for a little while longer.
“Of course, of course! I'll take care of things here, and if anything should happen to me within the next few hours I'll trust you'll point a finger squarely in Mister Harvey's direction.”
Petra giggled, “I promise.”
The door to Miss Blake's office appeared for her as easily as it had appeared for the room's occupant. Petra filed that bit of information away for the future, just in case. Miss Blake only kept her a few minutes when she finally entered the Principal's office, just long enough for her to explain about the toyffkin and its nest. That was fine by Petra, because it wasn't the only thing she had to do.
She had a hunch. First she went to Mister Harvey to explain to him about the toyffkin and hopefully soften the blow for Mister Glover. Her favorite teacher hadn't meant to ruin perfectly good equipment and there was still enough to go around.
Mister Harvey grudgingly accepted the news, quietly listening as Petra listed off what she could remember the toyffkin had taken.
“That sounds to be just about everything that went missing from my storage closet, and Mister Stewart's as well. Thank you for telling me.”
This as much as confirmed Petra's suspicions.
The next thing Petra had to do was make a list. It took her longer than she expected. Through introducing herself and having small conversations with all the students, she was able to find out what, if anything, had been stolen from them. In the end, only about half of the school's pupils had had things taken from them, specifically wand-making materials.
The funny thing about it was, the toyffkin hadn't amassed nearly enough of a collection that it would account for everything stolen from Misters Harvey and Stewart as well as all the students.
Once she had compiled her list, Petra took it to Mister Glover. They were sat in his office early one afternoon, just before classes. He offered her some tea and shooed the mother toyffkin off a stack of assignments on his desk. She ran back to her nest, which had taken up residence in a corner of the room.
After a few sips of tea and some polite conversation, Petra presented her list.
“If I'm not mistaken, this is everything one needs to make a wand.”
Mister Glover took the paper from her and skimmed over it, “Yes, this looks about right. You've been reading ahead, I thought you only just started making your wands this week.”
Petra frowned, “I wanted to know for sure. That's a list of the things that have gone missing in class over the last couple days. I think someone must have followed us back from Cecelia's that day and they're trying to make their own wand without anyone knowing.”
“I don't know who it could be. We didn't see anyone but Cecelia and her servants. She lives in a mansion, she has everything anyone could want. She could make her own wand very easily with her own resources.”
“Unless she made everything around her with magic, even her house! If that place was nothing but a forest before she got there, there wouldn't be anything to make a wand out of and she'd have to come here. If not her, then one of the servants she has up there could just as likely be who we're looking for.” As she said it, Petra knew Mister Glover would go check things out at Cecelia's. She also hoped she wouldn't have to go with him.
“That's quite an interesting theory,” he replied after a sip of his tea.
Despite the fact that Petra had been suspicious of Cecelia even before things had started to go missing around the school, she had a hard time picturing the mysterious girl skulking around trying to make a secret wand. She was also fairly certain that if Cecelia needed anything, Miss Blake and the other teachers would be more than happy to give it to her. There were only twenty students at the school and it was designed to accommodate many times that. They had plenty of everything to go around, assuming nothing left in storage had gone bad during the school's dormant years.
If one of Cecelia's servants was made as uneasy by her as Petra was, perhaps they would think to come to the school and make themselves a wand. If Cecelia's servants were anything like Mister Glover, they would have some magic of their own. Petra could only imagine that Miss Blake would offer such a person shelter, but then Cecelia would know just where they were.
There had been the two boys that had transformed from the horses that pulled the carriage from the gate to the house, and the maid that answered the door. There might have been any number of unknown persons around then and many more since.
In some ways, it would be a relief if the culprit they were looking for was anyone other than Cecelia herself. If it was she, her intentions would almost surely be wicked. If it was someone that worked for her, it would mean there might be someone out there who could eventually reveal themselves and tell someone at the school what Cecelia was really like.
Petra made her first trip to the library since the day everyone had been there doing research. It was the first time she had ever been alone in the large, cavernous room. She didn't have to look up the book she was looking for because she knew just where it was.
She checked out The Magic of Lies by Betty Butler. If there was someone sneaking around the school, they weren't going to get into her room undetected.
As she soon found out, quite luckily, the spell she remembered reading about was something she could still perform without a wand. She said the incantation before crouching down. Starting at the bottom of the door frame, she slid her hand all the way up to the top. She had to stand on the tips of her toes to reach it before moving down the opposite side. Now if anyone who was concealing themselves with magic tried to enter the room, the invisibility charm or whatever they were using would be canceled out.
Petra wondered if it might be a good idea to cast the same spell on the door to the common area, then decided against it. If she used magic anywhere but in her own room, there was a chance she wouldn't be around when the spell activated. Were anything to happen because of spells she had cast, she wanted to be the one to deal with it. It would only be fair.