The Purple Lampshade

The sport of windsurfing was not just limited to the more daredevil boys who had mastered aeromancy, the ability to control the wind.

Ahead of us, a girl who looked to be no more than ten years old rode the airwaves with confidence. Her short strawberry-blonde curls ruffled as she leaned into the wind, riding through the troughs.

She turned to us and waved with a bright smile, and I recognized the girl as the one I had met in Professor Pomello's Transmutation class the day before.

Her small body, in cute green corduroy overalls and white sneakers was like a precious little doll. She surfed the blast atop her small white and pink floral hoverboard like a pro and I wished, yet again, that I had been given a smidgen of talent that would have allowed me the ability to windsurf.

I was the only Thaumaturge I knew who could not master the wind.

"Lauren!" Corwin called out, and yodeled something at her, to which she yodeled back.

He laughed and yodeled a response.

They waved and she directed her board towards the west end of campus as we moved towards our destination.

"She your friend?"

"Nah. My little sister."

"What did she say?"

"She asked me if you were my girlfriend."

"Oh."

"You're not interested in what my response was?"

"I figured you'd say something like—No."

Corwin barked out a terse laugh.

He tensed his body and concentrated on the oncoming airstream. He leaned into the swirl and we swooped out of the air, landing with a smooth finish at the mouth of the alleyway.

The maneuver was so tricky that it was all I could do just to hold on tight to Corwin and leaned with him so I didn't fight his attempt at blasting the surf.

The ride came to an end far too soon.

As before, his left hand reached out behind him to steady me as we came to a stop, and I reached out to grab his shoulder. If he was this nice to me every time we met, I would probably feel more comfortable around him.

But then Corwin chose that moment to turn and look at me, his glittering blue eyes filled with a strange intensity bordering on animosity. My coward heart sank back into my stomach and all my positive good will swirled down the drain.

Luckily, Simon chose that moment to shout out his exuberance.

"Whoo-hoo!" he screamed and jumped off the board. "Hey Nana, that was fun!" He scrambled towards me.

I was still on Corwin's board which was hovering three feet above the ground, and was debating whether I should just jump the distance to get back down to terra-firma, when he gently lowered the board all the way down to the ground and led me off.

"Thank you!" I flashed Corwin a smile, grateful that he wasn't going to bark at me to jump.

He raised a dismissive eyebrow. "Don't thank me. As short as you are, if I made you jump from hoverboard height, you'd probably twist an ankle or something."

I scowled at his foul manner and muttered under my breath. "Such a beast."

"I heard that." Corwin blew past me, heading towards Connor and Simon.

We made our way to the site on foot since the object was not that far from the mouth of the alleyway.

"There it is." I pointed to the purple lampshade, suspended more than halfway up the building.

Now that I had a chance to inspect it more closely, I could see that it was closer to a lavender shade which almost matched the daytime sky.

It really was not that noticeable, I had to admit. If it had not been for the bats' erratic behavior, none of us would have even realized that it was up there, but that still begged the question of visibility from the air.

Simon noticed the same thing I did and had to ask. "How is it that you guys couldn't see it, flying above the campus?"

Connor shrugged. "It's purple from below for whatever reason, but from above, it mimics what's under it, almost like a chameleon. In fact, if I'm not mistaken, it probably has the Chameleon Command integrated into its makeup."

"You mean 'Beihodaochienmien'?" Simon grimaced, pulling his face into a comedic shape. "Isn't that a basic Sorcery Command?"

"Yeah, but somebody really botched it." Corwin sneered with disgust. "That's why it's showing a purple underbelly. It should look like what's above it, which in this case, is the sky."

He shook his head. "Goes to show, some people really shouldn't claim to be mages if they can't even get a simple Chameleon Command to work right."

I turned away. I could tell he was implicating me with his words. Forget trying to make a Chameleon Command to work correctly, I was barely competent with even the most basic of Commands.

Corwin squinted up at the entity. "Are we going to dismantle that thing up there or do we go to the source and find out what's behind all this vibrational disruption?"

"No, no, no!" Simon protested. "Don't touch that thing until we figure out what's going on. If we mess with it, whoever or whatever that's responsible for that thing will know something's wrong and will come looking for it, and ultimately, for us."

Seeing the twins' unconvinced faces, Simon bravely continued. "I think it's better to find out the real culprit behind this thing without letting on that we know it exists. That way, we at least have the advantage of surprise."

Connor scratched his head. "Blackstone only said to bring Nana and the book to him. He never said anything about disassembling the object or going after who's behind all this."

Corwin glared at his brother. "Since when were we his lackeys that we only did what he asked and no more?"

Connor turned away from Corwin. "Do what you please, but you will have to answer to Blackstone when we next meet up with him."

"Do we really need to do anything to it? It's not really doing anything that damaging." I shrugged.

"As far as I know, the only disruptive thing that it has done is to mess with my bats' abilities to transport my box. That's such a small isolated incident. Are we making too big a deal over just a tiny little issue?"

"Are you kidding?" Simon waved his hand towards the southern end of the Academy. "Did you notice that jacaranda tree at the junction where Garamond Road becomes Garamond Circle?"

"What about it?" I turned to him.

"Oh you are so clueless, Nana. Have you seen the blooms at all?"

I frowned. "Of course. It blooms all the time, and the sticky purple pods drop everywhere. What are you trying to tell me?"

"Nana, jacarandas don't bloom all the time. They're not suppose to." He blew a puff of air upward, dislodging a spike of blonde hair that had gotten stuck in his left eye.

"The reason why they're blooming all the time is because it's so hot. Have you noticed how hot it's been?"

I thought about the intense heat of the day before. "Yeah. I think I just about had a heat stroke walking up the hill the other day."

And then I thought about the mosquitoes in the bougainvillea bush. "Come to think of it, we've been inundated by hordes of mosquitoes too."

"That's another strange indicator, but it's not the heat that's causing the mosquito swarm. It's all the rain we've been getting at night."

My jaw dropped. Simon had brought up something which I had noticed, but only in a vague absent minded manner. I wondered what else was going on which I had been so oblivious to.

Seeing my reaction, Simon continued his rumination. "All that rain creates puddles of standing water during the day, and the mosquitoes love standing water because it allows them to breed."

He raised an eyebrow at me. "It's middle of summer. When have you seen it rain that much at this time of the year? It hardly ever rains in Topaz!"

"You're right. The weather's been crazy lately." I widened my eyes in excitement. "And all those out-of-season cold blasts too."

"Cold blasts?" Simon turned a questioning glance my way.

"Yeah. One of them hit me earlier yesterday, and then Corwin and I flew right through another one later that night. Both incidents occurred right around the area of the jacaranda tree"

Simon scratched his head. "But there's no purple lampshade there at all, so how can there be a weather disturbance at that spot?"

"Maybe—" I murmured, "that's the reason why there's a disturbance…it needs one of these lampshades to broadcast whatever disruptor wave at that spot to resist that particular disturbance."

Connor rubbed his nose in what I had noticed to be the twins' distinct way of mulling over a situation. "Nana, I think we're stumbling across the tip of a massive submerged iceberg. For various reasons, which I won't get into at the moment, I can safely tell you that for a while now, magik has been disrupted in a strange and alarming pattern all over the area."

He raised an eyebrow. "In fact, that was why we nearly knocked you down the other day. We were responding to a serious magikal emergency that happened because of a magikal anomaly."

Simon whistled. "That explains a lot…"

I turned and stared at him. Even a fourteen-year-old truant had enough magik abilities to discern the aberrant disturbance. Here I was, a full-fledge mage and this was the first I'd heard of any such thing.

Of course, my powers were so minuscule, it would have been more impressive if I had actually noticed anything. After all, it's almost impossible to know if a light in the room has been turned off if one is already blind.

"So what exactly is the scope of the disruption?" I asked. "Does it affect one type of mage and not another? Were any of you affected?" I had figured that since the twins had known about this disruption that they would have more answers than I did, but they simply shook their heads in turn.

"No more than any of you have experienced," Connor responded, "but we are trying to figure out what is causing all the anomalies that have been occurring more and more frequently."

His brows furrowed. "I think it's only a matter of time before it begins to get worse."

"Who else knows about this disruption? Does the entire staff at the Academy know?" I asked.

"Hardly." Corwin sniffed, his eyebrows lifted in disdain. "Most of the professors here can't find their butts with their hands even if you gave them a clear diagram to follow." He scowled and turned away as if something bitter was still in his mouth, leaving an unpleasant aftertaste.

"Sadly, once a professor achieves tenure, it almost seems as if he goes into semi-retirement and his brain stops functioning."

Connor smiled, as if trying to make up for his brother's lack of geniality. "Well, lucky for us, there are still many good professors. We're working directly with a few right now. You might know one or two of them."

He started counting on one hand. "There's Professor Nimitz the Head of Necromancy Discipline, Professor Farkworth the levikinesis teacher, and of course, Professor Pomello, the Head of Conjurer Discipline."

"Working directly?" I gasped. "You're not here because of summer school?"

"Summer school? What are you talking about?" Connor raised a quizzed eyebrow.

As it became clear to him that I thought they had failed the previous school year, he bent over double, guffawing till tears ran down his eyes. "No, no, no! We're not here because we failed to graduate. We were sent to your class to make observations."

"You were sent to observe our class?" I was shocked at the thought.

"No." Connor's blue eyes twinkled. Beside him, Corwin waved his arm and jigged about, trying to catch Connor's attention, but Connor was focused on what he was trying to tell me and ignored his brother's antics.

"We were sent to observe YOU!" Connor pointed at me.