Class Dis-Mythed

"That's the last piece," Pologne said with satisfaction. They all stepped back to admire their handiwork. "But what's it do?"

"It's a shade-caster," I said. "I told you that the natives are desperate for ways to get out of the sun. It's for them."

"Why should we give it to them when they stole all of our things?" Freezia asked with a toss of her head.

"Do you want your stuff back?" I asked. "Then trade this to them."

They looked skeptical until the red dots began surging up out of the ground under the shadow of the yellow sail. I invoked the activator, and the shadow spread out twice as far in every direction. More and more Sear natives popped up, cooing audibly as they enjoyed the opacity that shielded them from the pounding sunlight. Then I deactivated it.

The Sears let out a surprised squeak, retreating into the center, chasing the shrinking shadow. The yellow canvas umbrella collapsed until it was nothing but a palm-sized dot.

The red spots sank into the sandy soil. Soon, things began to pop up like bizarre mushrooms. Pologne's backpack was the first to reappear. Tolk's collar came up next,

followed by an upheaval that revealed a heap of standard army issue items.

"Well, there's my axe and fire-starter kit," Bee exclaimed. He thought about it for a moment. "I was kind of fine without them, I guess."

Freezia's and Jinetta's packs returned very close to the supporting member, as if the Sears were hinting they would like the umbrella opened again.

"Not until I see MY stuff," Melvine said, folding his arms.

A flask, a yo-yo, a couple of books with lurid covers, a travel pillow, a box of candy popped up, as did a silky fragment of cloth. Melvine grabbed for them and began to stuff them in the concealed pockets of his overall. A pair of purple panties emerged next.

"Oops, that's mine, too," Melvine said, diving for it. His face scarlet, he put them away. I raised my eyebrows, but Melvine wouldn't meet my gaze. I made a mental note of it. Those panties looked suspiciously like one of Bunny's that I had frequently seen drying on our clothesline.

"Mission accomplished," I said. "Let's go home."

As soon as we returned to the inn, I took Melvine aside by the ear.

"Ow! Hey, what's your problem!"

"About those panties," I said in a low voice. "If those ARE yours, fine. But if they do belong to someone else, they had better be back where they belong in one second flat."

"You're accusing me of stealing?" Melvine whined defensively.

"I'm not accusing you of anything. I'm putting a hypothetical situation to you. And hypothetically, the next time anything belonging to anyone goes missing, you're out the door whether it's your fault or not."

"That's not fair! I'm telling my auntie on you!"

"So what?" I said. "I'll tell your auntie on YOU."

The rosy cheeks paled.

"Fine," he snarled, and vanished.

After a nice normal lunch and a relaxing bath, I set up some exercises in the courtyard for the students to practice basic levitation and traction spells. I had dropped back to Sear and brought one of the tiny red creatures with me to Klah. In exchange for a large supply of fresh water, the little creature agreed to run around the stableyard and dodge spells for the afternoon. I was monitoring the situation closely so it didn't get hurt by the clumsy maneuvers of my students, but I didn't have to worry. Most of them couldn't or wouldn't hit him. Only Tolk had made a successful attempt so far, clapping the Sear into an invisible cup of force. I had made the mistake of praising the simplicity of his spell. His smug scorn of the others had finally prompted me to send him out to take a walk on his own until he regained proportion. After Bee he was the weakest magikally.

I wondered how it was, watching Melvine and Jinetta having yet another argument about how much power to use for a simple levitation spell, that Aahz had never wanted to rip my head off for being an obstreperous pain. On the other hand, perhaps sometimes Aahz DID want to rip my head off He had never done it. In retrospect, I admired his restraint. Melvine reminded me a lot of myself in the early days, when Gar-kin was trying to hammer the basics of candle-lighting and feather-levitation into me. I whined a lot, too, preferring to complain instead of putting in the grunt work. To complicate things, Melvine had tons more magikal potential than I ever did. He had already proved he was capable of misusing it. I was afraid he would get the others hurt or killed if he got careless at the wrong moment. I had to counteract his cockiness somehow. It didn't help that the Pervects put him on the defensive. They had their own insecurities.

"Don't overthink it," I cautioned Jinetta for about the millionth time, as we went over a practice exercise in the yard at the inn. "Just use a whisker of power. The process doesn't have to have a fancy name. Just do it."