By the time Alistar came to find Elvie, she’d moved on from the doorway. It wouldn’t be good to be found staring. No, that would give away her interest. Hopefully, nobody would notice her footprints in the dust but there wasn’t much she could do to hide that.

‘Find a room you’d like to move into?’ Alistar yelled down the hallway when she came into sight. ‘Actually, did you find anything at all?’

Elvie gave a small smile but didn’t reply. She focused on a younger man walking behind Alistar. He was around six feet tall Elvie guessed, and of African descent with a solid frame.

‘Hello, I’m Callum.’ He reached out to shake her hand with a reassuring smile. ‘I’m one of the three – now four – magicians of Elder House.’ Elvie had a natural affinity towards him. ‘I thought I should come with Alistar in case he steers you wrong, which he does, to everyone he meets. He thinks it’s funny.’ Callum gave her a wink Alistar didn’t see.

‘Steer? That would suggest I plot a course! But it’s well known I’m plotless. Yes, I’m coarse, but I don’t plot.’

‘If you listen to every tenth word and exclude the rest, he starts to make more sense.’ Callum said to her on the side.

Alistar snorted in reply. They had a natural chemistry, one calm, one not, but each content with that. A comradery built from working together for some time.

‘We’d both like to walk you over to Ash House,’ Callum said with a sideways glance. ‘But we’ve been summoned. There’s a meeting of the Houses tonight, one which we cannot ignore. But the good news is you now won’t have to walk, we have several cars stored in a small garage, so we can at least drop you off.’

‘Thank you,’ Elvie smiled.

‘And don’t worry, there will be plenty of time to visit and ask any questions you might have in the future. Settling in is the priority of your first day – at least, it should have been if someone knew how to do his job.’

Callum and Alistar walked Elvie back to the main entrance.

‘Is it meant to be such a maze?’ she asked, realising that she had completely spun around at some point in her search.

Callum gave a small laugh. ‘Possibly. It does take some time to adapt.’

‘It’d be interesting if we ever got invaded,’ Alistar supplied. ‘You could just hide in a room somewhere… what are the chances anyone would ever locate you? Just imagine, sleeping away an entire invasion.’

‘Not quite the correct response to an invasion,’ Callum murmured.

Alistar pushed open the entrance door to reveal a rickety old car parked outside, with spokes for wheels and worn brown leather throughout the interior. The paint was a deep green, although it was scratched in more places than Elvie could count.

At Callum’s request, she clambered into the back and they rolled away.

‘I don’t really understand; why make the house like that?’ She watched it recede into the distance.

‘Many people ask – but we don’t tell them.’ Alistar smiled secretively. ‘You should see how annoyed it makes them!’ His smile turned into a grin but he didn’t expand on his response.

Elvie tried a different tact. ‘So there is one more magician who’s in Elder House?’

‘Nina,’ Alistar said with a grimace.

Callum clarified. ‘She’s taking a break... Needed to take some personal time to see family, recover from Alistar… all the usual things.’

Elvie was uncertain, because she’d not known either of these men for longer than a few minutes, but was there tension in their voices? They were, if anything, trying to avoid saying too much.

They travelled in silence, and Elvie appreciated her surrounds as they drove. The island was flatter as the car made its way towards the northern edge. The north had grassy expanses, and what appeared to be cultivated fields running right the way to sandy shores. Rocky headlands wrapped around the expanses of beaches, and on one of these headlands resided Ash House.

In contrast to the ugliness of Elder House, Ash was beautiful. It sat partly on the hard rock of the shoreline, but also partly expanded over the ocean. The structure was predominantly made of wood painted in a traditional white, apart from exposed beams which remained a natural dark brown. That was typical of some English period – Georgian or Edwardian perhaps – it had never been Elvie’s interest but she was sure her father would know.

The most impressive part of the house, however, was the way it swayed gently on the ocean swells. Elvie could instantly tell a spell or effect was at work on the waves – gone was the bustling froth of a shore break, and instead, gentle swells pushed in and out in an endless cycle. If she squinted her eyes, she could see big swells forming into waves in the distance, before they settled as they approached the house. Ash’s domain was water and the sea, so it did make sense.

‘Would you like us to walk you in?’ Callum asked.

‘I’m sure I’ll be right.’ Elvie replied. She hadn’t seen Rilla or Flynn on the road, so hopefully they were back by now.

‘It was a pleasure.’ Alistar doffed an imaginary cap and swept it to his side.

‘Come visit when you get a chance,’ Callum countered. ‘And good luck with your lessons.’

Alistar and Callum waved as they left, chatting again as the car rumbled on. They’d restrained their conversation in her presence, but from Alistar’s animated hand gestures, they didn’t hold back any longer. Her eyes followed the car until it became an ant in the distance, which wove up and over the gentle incline of the next headland.

For the second time that day, she made her way to the door of a Great House and knocked on the polished wood. This time the door opened swiftly, and a round boy filled its frame.

‘Good day. I’m Larcen Visgray,’ he said with a small smile on his large face. ‘Of the Great House of Ash.’

‘Elvie,’ she replied, ‘of Elder House.’ That appeared to be the formal way to introduce yourself on the island, though it seemed unnecessary if you only had to look at the cloak someone was wearing.

Something was wrong. Larcen’s small smile vanished, to be replaced by a glare as his eyes left her face for the first time, to take in her cloak. Surely he noted that before he started his greeting routine?

‘Elder? What are you doing here? Go back to your own house.’

‘But... But I’ve been told to stay here,’ she protested.

‘An Elder staying in Ash? That’s like a tick sucking the blood of a lion. And you have a commoner’s accent to boot.’ Elvie protested again, but he cut her off. ‘You get it, don’t you? You have no place here. Elders have no place anywhere.’ He turned and walked away, leaving her with mouth agape.

What was so wrong with Elder House?

She didn’t know whether to step into Ash House, stand in the doorway, or knock again and hope for a nicer reception. But the boy had left the door opened when he stormed off, and while it wasn’t much of an invitation, at least it was something.

Warily, she poked her head inside the doorway and looked around. Nobody was nearby, so she moved farther into the foyer of the building.

In contrast to Elder, this house was plainly adorned but clean. Each cornice was painted a crisp white, and the beams buffed to deep brown, almost to the point of being black. The floor was adorned with polished tiles that looked to have been made in the Mediterranean regions.

‘Hello?’ Elvie called tentatively. ‘Is anybody there?’

A woman with high-swept blonde hair wandered from a side room and gave her a smile that took in her cloak without an issue. ‘You’re the Elder, huh? I was told you might be coming this way, although I thought I’d already done the rounds for the day. You’re a straggler. All that aside, welcome to Ash House.’ She had a rigid smile, which suggested a no-fuss attitude and inner iron waiting to be unleashed.

‘Thank you,’ Elvie replied. ‘I didn’t get the best reception earlier.’

‘I’m Ghirstwen – the supervisor of Ash House, particular the pesky first and second years. You are?’ Elvie told Ghirstwen her name. ‘Nice name, quite traditional. My great-grandmother was an Elvie. Or an Evie. I can’t remember now.’

‘I was told to stay here by Miss Elspeth,’ Elvie ventured.

‘Of course you were. As I said, we’ve already had one new student pass through today – but you’ll be going to a different area of the house. Boys have the left wing, girls the right. Makes life easier when you know where people need to be.’ Elvie nodded like she did – that was happening more and more each day. ‘But we’ll see if we can find you a roommate and go from there. Come on, follow me.’