As Cary ate dinner, she started to relax. Started to settle in to this new school. She still wanted to go home, still wanted to get away from the witches that she had fallen in with. But the lasagna tasted like lasagna. The water was just water. And other than the floating metal torches of magic and the spells the older children were throwing around, everything there in that overly large room seemed normal. Just kids enjoying their time together.

When she was finished with dinner, Cary started looking around the room more. There were several banners and postings all over the walls, not just the ones marking the tables. The ones in front of them were all about a sport called Cadavraball, which Cary had no idea what was involved in. But tryouts were in a couple of weeks, and there was a team for the underclass. Off to the side, she saw a poster about a lost hamster, and advertisements for tutors. It all seemed so normal to her, but she knew that could be just as dangerous. That the people there might just be lulling her into a sense of familiarity, of safety, before turning her to Satan.

"Well, I'm bushed," David said, as he finished the weird side dish that he had picked up. Whatever it was, he seemed to enjoy it, though he didn't go so far as to lick the remnants off the plate. "Want to head over to the dorms?"

"Uh, the longhouse," Sam said.

"Yeah, I'm not calling them that," David said.

"No one really does," Siobhan said. She was the girl that had butted in before, though she seemed nice enough. "And don't worry about getting lost out there. People will already be heading to the dorms. Not many places to go late at night besides the dorms and the mess."

"The mead hall," Sam said. Siobhan just stuck her tongue out at him. Sam rolled his eyes right back at her.

"Yeah, let's go," Cary said, nodding towards the doors.

As Cary got up from the table, she started to look around the room, searching for where they were meant to return their trays. But when she looked back at the table next to her, her tray, as well as David's, was suddenly gone. There was no sign that they had ever been there, including the spot where she had dropped a dollop of sauce. The table looked spotless, and ready for the next student to eat there. A shiver ran down Cary's spine as she pointedly turned away from there, trying to ignore the magic in plain sight.

Cary looked around at the fifth grade table as they headed out of the room, watching for the return of Greg. His earlier arrival had been so brief and unexpected that she had almost convinced herself that he wasn't really there. But then she spotted him in a cluster of other boys near the end of the table. As they came up near that group, Cary turned away from him, trying to hide as they made their way past. However, Greg still spotted her, and gave her a parting call of "Freak". The call was echoed by the boys that he was sitting with.

"Well, at least that part of my life isn't going to change," Cary muttered, as the two of them headed outside. As Siobhan had said, there was already a long line of people heading into the distance, making their way around the fountain in the center of the area. None of the students in the line seemed to think twice about the torches that were floating there around them, but Cary still tried to give them as wide of a berth as the cluster of them allowed.

"I'm not sure that's a good thing," David said. "I would have figured getting away from Greg and his group would have been the best thing about coming here. Even more so than learning magic. And, I mean, come on. It's magic."

"Yippee," Cary muttered. She twirled her finger in the air to show her utter lack of excitement at the prospect.

"Oh, come on. It's not that bad. It's not... I mean, it's magic. What are you so worried about?"

"Losing my immortal soul," Cary said, quickly, easily, and honestly. "They keep saying there are no witches here, but... Well, I mean, Satan is the prince of lies for a reason."

"I don't think it's that bad," David said.

He was looking around at the people walking in front and behind them, as if searching for someone to help confirm that. But no one was looking at them, as each of the groups kept to themselves, walking along in twos and threes as they made their way across campus. It reminded Cary of the walkers back at their school, only there everyone was a walker. Everyone lived within easy walking distance of the school. Everyone lived at the school. But that also meant there was no distance from the other students. No safety from the witches hiding among them.

"Maybe they have religious services here. That would help, right? Satan can't enter a church, right?"

"I think that's vampires, or something," Cary said, only half joking. "Satan was an angel. He wouldn't have a problem entering a church. But, yes, there are services here. Sunday."

"Which is just a few days off. Why don't you just relax until then? Give it time. If I think your immortal soul is in jeopardy, I'll tell you. And you do the same, okay?"

"I think our immortal souls are in jeopardy," Cary said.

"No, I mean from something that's actually happening. Not from fears about what might be happening here. Alright? Trust me. This is a magic school, not a witch school."

"David, you've been here for all of two hours. You don't know any more than I do about this place."

"Only I do, because I've read about places like this and you haven't."

"That's fiction. This is real life."

"Hey, you make decisions based on your fiction. I make them based on mine."

Cary just rolled her eyes at David as they came up next to the dorms. It had been the one disagreement between them over the years, as David had been raised to be an atheist, and Cary was raised to be a good Christian. Usually, Cary didn't hold it against him. But if his blindness got in the way of their safety, she was afraid that she would need to leave him behind to save herself. David was obviously buying into the whole thing.

The crowd that they had been following split just as they were coming up in front of the dorms. What Cary had first thought of as two buildings were actually four, with the other two hidden behind the first. She hadn't noticed that on the map. But as they came up next to them, it was clear that the older kids were all heading towards the further buildings, and the girls were all heading towards the buildings on the left. Cary and David followed along with the other underclass boys, heading to the first building on the right.

The doors to the dorm were on the far end, facing the doors for the girls' dorm across from it and the path between them. They were held open, revealing the inside even as they were coming up next to it. Cary tried not to look towards the door, not wanting to see more magic out in the open like that. But she couldn't help but glance that way as they passed the large, wooden doors. When she noticed the very normal looking door jams beneath them, she started to breathe easier, despite the fact that the room was just as filled by the metal glowing rods as the path was.

Just inside the doors to the dorm, the room opened up into a large sitting room. Cary looked around the place, searching for a TV or bookshelves, finding neither. Most of the seats were already taken as they passed through the place, but neither of them had any interest in staying down there. David was looking dead on his feet, and Cary felt just as drained. She only hoped that wasn't by design. That they hadn't done something to make her fall asleep while she was still in danger.

The crowd only seemed to get thicker as they made their way across the sitting room. On the far end of the room, there was a long banner stretching across the doors to the hallway. The banner said "No Girls Past This Point" in large, glowing letters. Cary wasn't sure if the glow was from a different kind of magic, or if it was the light from the glowing rods playing across it.

As they came up next to it, Cary reached her hand over to David's, needing that additional connection to him. Needing that reassurance that everything was alright. He smiled over at her, patting her hand, as they followed the rest of the boys past the banner. Cary felt a small spark come off of David's hand, just as they crossed into the hallway beyond. The crowd ahead of them seemed to slow down a little, holding the two of them under the banner for a moment. But as they headed deeper into the building, she felt nothing else coming up to keep her out of the rest of the dorm.

There were only a few rooms on that first floor, with the crowd heading through to the stairs at the end. As Cary and David followed along with the rest of the kids, Cary looked around for an elevator. Their room was 563, which meant they were on the fifth floor. But with no sign of an elevator, and all the students filing through that one doorway, Cary quickly realized that they would need to walk up those floors, every time they headed for their room.

It felt like forever before Cary and David were heading inside of their dorm room. The door opened freely for them, without the need for a key. Cary wasn't sure if that was more magic or if the doors were always unlocked; nor which option she would have preferred. But all thoughts of such things, and the magic that surrounded her, disappeared the moment that she saw her suitcase on the bed in front of her.

"Thank the lord," Cary said, as she rushed over to her suitcase. "They must really have spoken to Grandma and Grandpa."

"Or they broke into the house while they were away," David said. When Cary glared back at him, he raised his hands in surrender. "Or they spoke with them. I'm sure they spoke with them. Your grandparents would hunt across the worlds to find you. My parents, on the other hand, probably wouldn't notice that I was gone."

Despite his words, his own suitcase was on the bed right next to hers. They each had an envelope on them, with a letter from their parents in it. Cary just glanced at her letter before putting it away. But then she was left looking around at the small dorm room that they were in.

The bed that the suitcases were on was the lower bunk of a two bed bunk bed. The room was small for the two of them, but when she noticed a third bed across from theirs, it seemed much smaller. After seeing the grandness of the mess hall, stuffed in that small building, Cary felt that she would have preferred a similar arrangement for the dorm rooms. Worse were her fears that Greg would be taking that third bed, as he must have come to the school the same day as they had.

"Uh, so, you want bottom or top?" David asked, pointing to the bunk bed.

As close as the two of them were, they had never slept in the same room together before. Cary's grandparents never liked letting her stay at sleepovers. And as she looked around at the small space, she suddenly felt shyer than she ever had before, not liking the idea of the lack of privacy. The idea of being stuck in that room with two other boys.

"Why don't you take the bottom," David said. "You can put up some curtains to make the space yours and give you a little more privacy, eh?"

Without waiting for a response from Cary, David pulled his suitcase off the lower bed, sliding it onto the upper one. Before he could climb up after it, though, the door to the room opened up. Cary quickly climbed onto the lower bunk, pulling her suitcase onto her lap and holding it up as a shield. Even as the door opened, she knew that it would be Greg. She knew that her worst nightmare was about to begin.

Only it wasn't. Instead of Greg, the boy that came in was short and stout. Shorter than Cary even.

"Great," he mumbled, in a low, deep voice. "That's just great. Gone from a single to a triple in one day. Just stay on your side and out of my way, and we'll get along fine."

"Uh, sure," David said. "Wait, are you a dwarf?"

Cary looked the boy up and down, trying to compare him to the driver that she had seen earlier. To her, he had just seemed shorter. But as she got a better look at him, she realized that, despite probably being their age, he was already starting to grow stubble.

"What of it?" he scoffed.

"That's just so cool," David said. "I'm David. That's Cary."

"Nelgomi," the dwarf said. "Is this one mute or something?" He nodded over at Cary before jumping up onto the third bed. There was no talk of them being on his bed, or anything about moving beds around.

"He's a bit shy," David said, before climbing up onto the bed above Cary. "It's all a bit new for us. Plus, he's afraid that people are trying to get him to sell his soul to Satan. So, please, don't even joke about that sort of thing, alright?"

"Sure, sure," Nelgomi said. "I can understand that. Dwarves have our own aversions to magic, but it's not so much about religion for us. Still, used to be a lot more of us at this school."

Nelgomi continued to stare over at Cary, as she sat there, trying to hide behind her suitcase. She looked around at the space under the bed, wondering just where she would be able to get curtains. What she could use to hide from the two boys that were in her room with her. Under Nelgomi's continued stares, though, she never felt comfortable enough to move from her place against the far wall.

"Here," Nelgomi said, as he stood up. His previously gruff voice seemed to soften as he came over to stand next to her. "Use the comforter for a curtain. You can tuck it in right up here." He pointed under the rim of the bed above her, where the mattress hit the support frame. "It's not that cold at night just yet, but you can look into something more long term if needed. But I'm sure they'll figure out the mix up soon enough. They usually don't make that kind of mistake with your kind."

"My kind?" Cary asked. "Wait, what kind of mistake?" She felt the first few wisps of hope rise up in her when she thought that maybe he was talking about her not being a sorcerer. But when Nelgomi saw the confusion on her face, he just gave her a half smile.

"Or, maybe not," he said. "You know, the genders are a lot closer to each other in dwarves. It's harder for some to tell. Dwarves get something of a sense for it."

"Oh, right," David said. "Because the women grow beards as well, right? Or is that a stereotype. Sorry."

"Nope, that's dead on," Nelgomi said, smiling up at him.

"Well... you are a boy, right?" David asked.

"Well, I am," he said.

Those words hung in the air as Nelgomi helped Cary put the comforter up as a curtain, blocking off her space. Once it was in place, she was left alone on her bed, with the other boys hidden from her view. Moreover, the glowing rods were just as hidden. Still, Cary didn't quite feel comfortable enough to settle into the bed just yet. Instead, she sat there in the far corner of her bed, clutching the letter that her grandparents had sent with her clothes, wishing more than anything that she could hear their voices once more. That she could be home, instead of in that strange place.

"Night, girlie," Nelgomi said, as the room suddenly got darker. Cary thought that they must have turned off the glowing rods outside of her little hideout. As the night settled in, and she drifted closer to sleep, those words played through her head over and over again.

As well as the fact that they didn't seem odd in any way, not even when directed at her.