Class Dis-Mythed

A huge, purple form came rushing into the courtyard where I was teaching advanced levitation. It bore down upon the cluster of students who were holding themselves above the ground and a variety of objects at different levels around them. Bee immediately lost focus and fell heavily to the flagstones. Melvine took off for the top of the trees. Tolk let out a whimper of pleasure and started swimming through the air toward the being.

The Pervects screamed then, seemingly caught in mid-shriek, raised their hands as if they were calling the spirits of the dead. The purple form was hoisted into the air.

"Oh, I say!" it exclaimed.

Chumley. I chuckled. "Let him down, girls! It's my friend Big Crunch."

"He is?" Jinetta asked. "Oh! Of course it is. I am so sorry, Mr. Troll. Permit me."

"I'll do it," Pologne snapped out.

"If you want," the tallest Pervect said.

The Troll was lowered gently to the ground. I was reasonably pleased. That exchange had even passed for civility.

The preceding week had tried my patience in more ways than one. I had gained no more insight on who was responsible for the explosion. Bee was still my major suspect, which I based on the absence of a confession and the fact he was the only one of the six who might ever have had close experience with ordnance weapons. General observation would have made him the last person I should ever have considered. He continued to be polite, hard-working and cooperative.

So had the others. In fact, each one was determined to show me that he or she was THE most cooperative, willing and hard-working pupil who had ever lived anywhere in the universe. Unfortunately that cooperation still didn't extend to one another. The distrust had taken firm hold, and refused to be detached. Even the Pervects were beginning to keep one another at arm's length. It distracted me from being able to concentrate. My lesson plan began to look like a dance chart, making sure none of them spent too much time with any of the others.

Instead, they all made efforts to spend as much time as possible with Bunny or me. Each clamored for private instruction and practical training from me. I ran through all the ideas I could glean from my own experiences, and not a few I stole from the shows on the Crystal Network, like having them extract a fragile glass bubble, intact, from a nest of horned weaselsnakes without getting bitten. As usual, each tackled the tasks in different ways. The Pervects still tended to go for the academic approach, but I was pleased to see that more frequently than ever they put aside the books and tried to analyze the situation in the real world. Bee looked at everything from a logistics and supply point of view. I thought his solution was the most elegant of all, setting out the weaselsnakes' favorite prey at a distance from the nest, and retrieving the bubble at his leisure. Tolk tried to make everything his friend, disastrous in the experiment with shield-hornets, but very successful in getting the local townsfolk to lend him enough ingredients to make a pan of scones. Melvine whined and complained a lot, but away from the distraction of others he buckled down. He really was as smart as Markie thought he was. His easy command of magikal force had made him lazy. Once he stopped blasting everything full force, he became more effective. The surgical precision with which he whisked the glass ball out of the snake nest was a beautiful sight to behold. I wished the others had been there to see it, or even evinced

the most remote interest in hearing my recitation of Melvine's success.

They were scrupulously polite at meals, and each vied to take over Bunny's chores. It had escalated to the point where the Pervects had fought over cleaning the windows and ended up making new curtains for all of the inn's many casements. Melvine had made it a matter of honor to seal up every crack in the old building's walls, to the point where the inn was now virtually airtight. When the front door slammed, all of our ears popped. Tolk weeded the garden and 'healed' all the plants of black spot and wilt. The vegetables grew visibly larger after that. Bee inventoried everything not indicated as private property in the neatest handwriting I had ever seen. For the first time, I knew that Isstvan had left me nineteen and a third kegs of beer, four hundred and fifty-three bottles of indifferent wine and eight bottles of wine so good it should be saved for coronations, and three well-hidden casks of hard spirits. I was glad I hadn't known about all of that in my dipsomaniac phase. Bunny enjoyed the leisure to an extent, but told me privately she was getting bored having nothing to do. She spent more and more time each day communicating with her friends through Bytina.