Chapter Twelve

“Where are we going?” you ask Abigail as you look away from where her hand is holding onto yours and up to her back.

You find that you’re just a teensy little bit lost as Abigail leads you deeper into the city. There are lots of mortals around, with little hats on their heads and long coats to protect them from the foggy weather.

You don’t have a long coat though, you only have one of Abigail’s old dresses on, and Abigail herself is still just wearing the dress she worked in without the apron.

“I have a whole list of things I need to buy if I want to make it to the Academy. They expect you to show up on the first day with the equipment for the whole year on hand.”

“That’s weird,” you say.

Abigail nods even though she’s not looking at you. “Yeah, well, they want to make sure that every student can prove that they’re ready even before they’re accepted. It’s how they work.”

“Okay,” you say. “So what are we buying first?”

Abigail’s hand tightens around her hand. “You need some clothes first,” she says before reaches with her other hand into the big bag she picked up before leaving the shop. It’s a sort of purse, you suppose, but it’s bulky and made of stained canvas. She searches within it for a moment before pulling out a sheet of paper with a list on the front. Half of the objects on it are crossed out already. “Then I have a few things to grab too. We’ll need to be careful with how much we spend.”

You try to reach for it, but your little fingers are way too short. Fortunately, Abigail sees your attempt and hands the list over.

Entry Requirements for the Five Peaks Academy of Magic and Magecraft

To be eligible to enter the finest academy one must present themselves with the following equipment on the day of acceptance:

1x Familiar

1x Set of Carving Knives (Types A through D)

1x Scale

1x Set of Circle Crafting Tools (compass, triangles, rulers, tracing papers, chalk)

3x Regulation Uniforms, matching your gender

1x Grade One hat

Notebooks, pens and other note-taking equipment is strongly encouraged.

Also, be aware that all students MUST have the following books for Grade One lessons:

Crafting the Circle, by Sir Roun D. Cunference

How to Train Your Familiar, by Raven D. Agger

The Call of Magecraft, by C. Thulhu

Alchemy All in One, by Yog S. Othoth

Inscribing for Beginners, by Clearence Carver

“No food?” you ask as you take in the list.

“There’s a cafeteria in the Academy,” Abigail says. “But I heard that it’s a little expensive to eat there. We’ll have to pack sandwiches every day.”

Clearly she underestimates your ability to find things to eat in the most unusual of places. You’re pondering taking a nibble out of some of the passing mortals when Abigail tugs your hand.

“We’ll pick up the uniforms here,” she says before gesturing to a shop across the street.

The store is pretty, with big pillars before it and stonework around the windowed front. A few mannequins in black robes are standing behind the glass to one side, and on the other there’s a long ball gown that reaches all the way down to the floor.

You let out a low ‘ohhh’ as the two of you step into the shop. There are lots of people here, most of them around Abigail’s age and concentrated around the racks and racks of black robes and hats sitting atop strange boxes.

“The first graders are the ones with the red trim,” Abigail explains as she brings you to the back of the store. “Then in second year it’s yellow, then green, and the final years have purple trim. The hats are also different for every year.” She gestures to a rack with four hats sitting on it. The first has nearly no brim and a really tall crown that ends in a point. The others all have shorter and shorter crowns and brims that grow longer with every year until the last one is hardly more than a bump with a huge brim.

“Those look silly,” you say.

“It’s tradition,” Abigail says. “Which does tend to be a bit silly, sometimes.” She looks around, then spots all the pretty dresses on the other side of the store. “How about you go check out those dresses and find something you like? I, I don’t think I can afford anything like that here, but it will give us an idea of what to look for.”

You want to stay with Abigail, but she seems busy wincing at the price tags on the ugly robes around her. So you decide to wander off and do as she asks.

The dresses are very pretty here, with ruffles and lace and all sorts of poofness. There’re some in pastel blues and bright yellows that stick out a whole lot. They’re nice, but they’re not very... you.

And then you find it.

Tucked away in a back corner of the shop, left almost abandoned by the staff on a mannequin that looks a little worse for wear, is the perfect dress. It looks a little worn, but that only adds to its charm. There are big lacy petticoats and a floofy skirt and there’s even a capelet draped over the shoulders.

You approach it carefully, as if it’s a wild animal that might bolt at any moment. A beige tag is dangling from one of the dress’s arms so you snatch it and look at the numbers. There are two zeros before the dot, which in mortal number theory means that this is a very expensive dress.

Abigail seemed worried about money, so there’s no way she would buy this, not unless it meant not buying all of her other things and you wouldn’t test her love that way for a dress.

You chew on your lip as you think, chew so hard that you don’t even notice the girls walking up to you.

“Poor thing, are you lost?”

You look up to see three girls in the ugly uniforms that Abigail was looking at, two of them with tall hats with red trim and one in a slightly shorter cap and with yellow trim around the hems of her dress. “I am not lost,” you tell the one in the middle of the pack.

She kneels down, blond hair cascading around her shoulders as she drops to your height. “You’re not? Well, you’re too young for the Academy,” she says, then she looks at the dress you’re wearing. “And you’re too poor for this shop.”

Her friends titter and giggle. You look down at your dress. It’s a bit dusty, and it doesn’t fit you at all, but Abigail gave it to you, so it’s a good dress. Maybe she has another way of knowing that you have no money. “Okay,” you tell her. “You’re boring now. Go away. I’m getting that dress and you’re distracting me.”

She’s the one giggling now. “Oh, you are?”

“Obviously.”

You reach out with tentacles that the girls can’t see and grab the dress. You don’t grab it here though.

There are an infinite number of universes, each one layered atop the next like the pages in a book. So, just like someone opening a book up and tearing out a page, you reach into one dimension to the left and tear the dress out of it.

Your nose scrunches as there’s an explosion of cloth and lace and frills and the corner of the shop you’re in is swamped by a thousand near-identical copies of the same dress.

You’re bowled over and the girls are buried under a tsunami of frills.

You blink when the tumbling stops, only then realizing that you might have been a little enthusiastic with your cross-dimensional tearing.

Oh well, now you have lots of pretty dresses! You’re sure they’ll be cheap once the people in the store stop screaming. But just in case, you tuck a few of them away in the dimensions where you store most of your mass.

Your real body deserves a pretty dress too, after all.