Beryl lay in bed, unmoving and unsure what to do. Her roommate, Alexis, was sitting on the edge of her bed with her back to Beryl with her bag in her lap as she sorted through it for a clean shirt. Her t-shirt of the day before had been tossed on the bed, leaving her torso bare.

It was this which had given Beryl pause. Not because she was half-naked, any concerns about modesty had vanished shortly after she had realised that she could either wake in the middle of the night to take showers in private, or just accept that nudity wasn’t that big a deal.

Rather it was because of the myriad lines that crisscrossed Alexis’s back. They were made of fibrous tissue and stood out stark against her too-pale skin. It was clear to see that she hadn’t exposed her bare back to sunlight for quite some time and those scars were likely the reason.

From the very base of her spine, all the way to her shoulders, the scars covered nearly every spare inch of skin. Long and thin, mixed with shorter and thicker scars, and what could have made them Beryl couldn’t guess, but she figured it was not something that her new friend wanted people to see.

So, she lay there in silence, unmoving and eyes half-closed as she waited for Alexis to find a top and dress in the dim light of their shared room. After a quick search through the bag, a t-shirt was found and Alexis quickly pulled it over her head.

Taking that as her cue, Beryl made a show of rolling over onto her back and yawning, loud enough that Alexis would hear. She pushed herself up as the other girl turned to look back at her bed.

“Morning, roomie.”

Alexis frowned and reached over to grab her dirty shirt. “Morning.”

“Stick that in the hamper.” Beryl indicated a wicker basket beside the wardrobe on Alexis’s side of the room. “Laundry is collected Monday, Wednesday and Friday morning.”

“I’ll probably need it doing before then. Any hope of that happening?” She looked down at the bag in her lap and gestured helplessly. “Not like I had the chance to bring much with me.”

Beryl offered a smile as she climbed from her bed and padded across to her wardrobe. She pulled open the doors and glanced critically at Alexis. “Take whatever you need from here for now. You’re a little taller than me, but most things will fit I reckon.”

“Thanks,” Alexis said, genuinely surprised by the offer. She wasn’t exactly used to people being generous with her. “You sure it’s okay?”

“Yeah, no problem. We can go into York this weekend and do some shopping to get you a few outfits.”

“Ah, yeah, we’ll see.” Alexis quietly calculated just how much money she’d had on her before coming to the academy. It was a depressingly small amount, and her cheeks reddened. “Might have to wait till I can find some work.”

Beryl paused in rooting through her cupboard and looked back at Alexis with eyebrows arching in surprise as her lips puckered. It hadn’t occurred to her that money might be an issue since it never had been for herself.

“Sorry, I forgot…” she trailed off, not quite sure what to say that wouldn’t embarrass her friend further.

“No, it’s fine.” Alexis smiled as Beryl chewed her lower lip. “You can ask if you want. I won’t be embarrassed.”

“Well, you were homeless, right?”

“Yeah, for about two years near enough.”

“How did you live, without magic I mean?”

It was Alexis’s turn to be surprised and she gave her roommate a curious look. “What do you mean?”

“Like, if I need money I can get it easily enough-“

“From your family,” Alexis interrupted. “Mine weren’t able or willing to help out.”

“No, I mean.” She bit her lip and lifted her shoulders in a half-shrug. “You know, there are spells that can get us money when we need it.”

Alexis simply stared at Beryl, not sure what to say to that. She had questions, sure, but far too many to put into any coherent order. She had spent two years on the streets, sometimes begging for money, other times dumpster diving for food behind bakeries and restaurants. She had found other kids in the same situation and they had all looked out for each other, sharing what they had, but nothing was easy and it was certainly never free.

“What do you mean?”

Beryl grabbed the flowery dress that she liked, it had a high collar and was made of warm wool that helped keep the cold at bay. She moved back to her bed and set it down before turning back to her friend.

“Okay, I keep forgetting how new to this you are.” She lifted her hands so that Alexis could see and she began to move through a series of movements, fingers moving slowly so that Alexis could follow. “This spell will activate a cash machine.”

“You what!”

“It’s not that effective,” Beryl said, almost apologetically. “It basically has it recreate the last transaction. Use it once, and you have to wait till someone uses the machine again.”

“So.” Alexis frowned as she stared with rapt attention at those hand movements. “If someone took out a tenner, doing this spell would make it do it again?”

“Sure. It’s a lot of effort for a little bit of cash, unless you get lucky and someone pulled out a fair bit, but it gives you some ready cash if you’re short.”

“Won’t the banks notice if their machines do that?” Alexis considered the possible ramifications. “I thought cash machines had cameras. Wouldn’t people see you casting the spell?”

Beryl snorted and looked askance at her friend, then started as she realised the question was serious. Once again, she reminded herself of how little her new friend knew.

“The Third Casting,” she said. “It’s why we can do magic without people noticing. Little things, like this spell, if someone sees it they will just rationalise it to themselves and not connect the spell casting with the effect, yeah?”

She paused in her movements.

“If it’s something big, something supernatural for example, they forget what they’ve seen or their mind creates some alternative that kind of makes sense.” She thought for a moment, eyes going blank as she searched for an example. “Like, okay, say a vampire attacks someone-“

“Vampires are real!”

“Well, yeah.” Beryl shook her head as Alexis tried to set aside the whole new set of questions she suddenly had. “Right, so a vampire bites and kills someone, yeah? If they don’t do the sensible thing and get rid of the body, or if they can’t do it in time and it’s found, the police will be called and forensics will come out.”

“Right.” Alexis slumped back down onto the bed, trying to digest what she was hearing.

“The forensics and police look at the body and the wounds and instead of seeing fang marks and a lack of blood, they see knife attack, someone stabbed in the neck.”

“What about the lack of blood?”

“They just don’t really question that. I mean, who measures how much blood is spilt? Even if they did, anyone who read the report would just… kind of, gloss over it.”

“This is really fucking weird,” Alexis murmured. “You get that, right?”

“Yeah.” She smiled brightly and gave a slight shrug. It was still weird to her and she’d lived with it all her life. “So as long as you don’t get too blatant with it, like throwing fireballs down the street and blowing up cars, most stuff is just sort of, hand-waved away, by the people who see it. They rationalise it because magic can’t be real, and the Third Casting does the rest.”

Alexis sat for a while, thinking about that while Beryl busied herself getting dressed. It was a surreal feeling that had crept over her and she wondered, idly, if she had actually fallen and hit her head in the subway and would at any moment wake up in a hospital and find out she’d dreamt it all.

“Ow!” She rubbed at her wrist where she’d just pinched herself as Beryl looked around at her yelp. “Sorry.”

“No worries.” Beryl looked at the old wooden clock that hung on the wall. “Right, time to brush teeth, pee and get some breakfast before class. You ready for your first class?”

Alexis shrugged, not entirely sure whether she was or not. She had spent the day before with Beryl going through what seemed to be a long list of spells that most kids learned before they even entered the academy.

It was, supposedly, so that Alexis could become familiar with casting spells, something that she couldn’t help but notice came ridiculously easily to her since she had cast the first one. Apparently, that was an actual phenomenon. The first one was the hardest, but after that, like a wall had broken down inside of her, the magic was freely available for her to use with nothing to really stop her.

Which was pretty alarming, when all was said and done, and she was beginning to understand why the academy existed. Once that first spell was cast, all it took was the right words, gestures and often ingredients or tools, but that was it. Anyone could cast a spell that could either kill them or everyone around them.

The Academy was there to teach control as much as anything, which scared the hell out of Alexis considering she was starting years after everyone else, and the potential consequences of using magic were so great.

She followed her roommate to the shared bathrooms and joined the crush of girls who were preparing for their day. There were more than a few side-eyed glances cast her way, along with lowered voices as they gossiped between themselves.

Alexis ignored them as best she could, brushing her teeth in silence. She was the new girl, she understood that, but word was out about the other night with the Crawler in the showers and any minor celebrity she might have had from how she entered the academy had just grown.

A couple of girls made to walk over to her, but Beryl intercepted them and shooed them away, much like a mother hen protecting a chick. It made Alexis smile at the image that was conjured up, but she appreciated it. She was already feeling overwhelmed with everything she was learning, she didn’t need a barrage of questions that she either couldn’t or just didn’t want to answer.

They left the dormitory building and set off across the grounds towards the dining hall. The light rain didn’t warrant an umbrella and with a small start, Alexis realised that anyone really bothered by the rain simply cast a quick spell that kept it off themselves.

She shook her head at that and filed it away as another of those strange things she would have to get used to, just how comfortable the young witches were with their magic.

Alexis grabbed an apple and a glass of fresh-squeezed orange juice, something simple and quick. Beryl, seeing this, did the same eschewing her usual bowl of sugary cereal to ensure her friend didn’t have to hang around waiting.

Beryl chatted away, quite happy to fill the silence with the sound of her own voice. She reasoned it would keep away the others who might see silence as an invitation to invite themselves over, and she filled it with as much detail about the Academy and the students as she could.

For her part, Alexis was grateful to be able to sit silently and just listen. She was fast warming to her roommate and while she had a learned wariness of people, she couldn’t help but be drawn to the young witch who seemed to have no hidden agenda.

Once they had eaten, they took the short walk from the dining hall, along wood-panelled hallways lined with oil paintings and wide windows that looked out over the well-kept grounds, to the first of her classes.

She had a schedule that Miss Buttle had provided, along with a pocket-sized leather-bound journal and pen. It was in the journal that she was to write down the spells that she learned and she had done a good job of it to start with those that she had learnt the day before.

As with all the other doors, the one that Beryl stopped beside had a small brass plaque beside it with a number and nothing else. Beryl pushed open the door and led the way inside. Alexis blinked at the brighter lights within and hesitated in the doorway as her eyes adjusted.

Workbenches filled the floor in the centre of the room while around the sides were filled with various pieces of bulky steel machinery that Alexis couldn’t recognise for the most part. Those she did were the saw and drill which were opposite what looked to be a row of small kilns.

She looked at her friend, arching one brow questioningly as Beryl grinned and held up a hand festooned with rings. There was one on each finger and each different from the next. One silver, another brass with a wide, thick band that had script of some kind engraved on the outer edge. Another was iron, thin and black with a look of weight about it.

“You need to make your first ring.”

“Why?” Alexis asked, confused. “I’m not really a jewellery person.”

Beryl just grinned and slipped off the smallest of the rings, made of brass with a few etched lines on its surface that meant nothing to Alexis. She handed it over and gestured for her friend to slip it onto her finger before ushering her back out through the door.

“Now what?” Alexis asked. The ring was a little tight and she didn’t feel any differently for having it on her finger.

“Touch it with your thumb,” Beryl instructed.

Alexis pressed her thumb against the thin metal band and gasped, eyes opening wide as she stared about the hallway. A few of the students passing grinned as they grasped what was happening while others turned their noses up, pushing past the two girls standing in the hallway.

None of it was noticed by Alexis who stared in wonder. While her thumb pressed on the ring, above the brass plaque on the door a symbol had appeared. It was about the size of her hand and glowed with an ethereal luminescence.

Beneath the symbol in a flowing script, was a name, Professor Burrows, Metallurgist. Beryl grinned wider, as she said, “This Is why you need to make your first ring.” She gestured at the plaque. “Will make it a lot easier to find your way around if you can see the magic.”