Pella Lovell

When Pella Lovell finished her degree with a score of 66G - a couple of points above a fail, she was neither surprised, nor worried. If anyone had asked why she had been attending lessons at The Gran Fier University, she would have answered "I don't know really..." then she would have drifted into a crowd, never to raise potential interest again. It wasn't that Pella was shy, or even that she disliked the company of others, she just felt content enough with her own company to not require anyone else's. There were people in her life who would consider her a friend, but Pella thought that most of these people were a little odd sometimes, and downright bafflingly irrational the rest of the time. They all did better in exams though. If Pella had been a different woman, she would have questioned whether she ought to adopt some of their ways. As it was, she wasn't a different woman, didn't want to be a different woman and, if she could help it, would never become a different woman.

So when a crow threw a small roll of purple paper at her feet, and not at the feet of her "friends," Pella bent to pick it up with a certain amount of confusion. This confusion was reflected, significantly magnified and warped into a bitter anger in the expressions of said friends. Pella attempted to drift away but misjudged the level of anger around her and failed.

"Read it." One of the friends demanded. Pella wasn't sure, but thought his name was Peter something.

"We know what it says," she replied with a shrug, moving to put the note in her pocket.

"Read. It." Peter something repeated through gritted teeth. His stare of daggers, which was directed at her hand, seemed to stop time, then reverse it until Pella found the note in front of her again.

"We want to... Check..." Said a girl vaguely. She may have been called Laura.

Seeing no way out and not caring enough to think of one, Pella unrolled the strip of paper and read the note aloud.

"TCS want you. As do Grinny Glip's, Jem, Droto Biffleford and The Paul."

Pella looked up in time to see the crow dropping more purple notes onto some of the balconies above. This was a prank perhaps? Or just a simple mistake? The crow had come to the wrong person. Yes, that was it. There was no way a score of 66G could get her anywhere in life, nor did she particularly want it to. These offers to take her in had to be a mistake. The TCS? They hadn't asked for anyone in years there was just no rational chance that she could have been picked for the TCS, never mind the other four.

She was only partially aware of the angry mumblings emanating from Peter et al as she wandered away, deep in thought. This was perhaps the most exciting thing that had happened to her in at least 12 years. So, naturally, she felt the sides of her mouth turning up ever so slightly, actually threatening to smile. But she didn't smile. An onlooker would not have seen a smile. It just sort of felt almost like one to Pella.

She snapped out of her reverie, or rather she snapped out of her slightly above neutral ponderings, when she found herself facing a huge wooden staircase leading at least 5 storeys up. The sun was yet to dry off last night's rainfall, though it was making a start, causing little wisps of steam to drift in spirals above each step. Pella knew this staircase well, having passed by the enormous crooked thing every day for the last year, but now she was suddenly noticing just how beautiful it was. It was probably the most strikingly beautiful thing she had seen in years. Then again, she just as suddenly realised, she could not take an unbiased view of the world right now, so decided it was the same as it had always been and began to ascend. She was aware of, but for the most part ignored, the astonishing patterns flowing around her feet as she took each step.

"You must be new!" A rather over excited voice piped up from behind Pella. She turned to see what can only be described as a wizard attempting to climb the stairs two at a time without getting tangled in his silk robes.

"Yes." Pella replied, attempting but failing to make a good impression with a smile.

"Oh good!" Cried the wizard, beaming at her almost manically. "I don't know why they didn't get you in sooner... I mean someone, not necessarily you, Pella. Pella is it? I mean... good morning! Can't stay and chat, but I'll speak to you soon!" The wizard began to take the stairs three at a time, followed by four as he gained speed. Pella stared after him for a moment before continuing upwards.

Pella didn't notice as the purple note, having been pushed unceremoniously into her pocket, coiled itself back into a tight roll and slithered as deep as it could.

"Oh hello!" Bellowed the same wizard as before when Pella arrived on the top step. "Welcome! Ah! My goodness! Hello! Particularly good steam eddies today I thought. No? Ah well."

"You just-"

"Passed you on the stairs m'dear? Yes. I did!"

"But... wh-"

"Why did I rush past you to greet you properly from the top step? I think you've answered your own question."

"Couldn't-"

"I have greeted you from lower down-"

"No. I was going to say: Couldn't you have greeted me from over there?" Pella pointed at what looked like a hastily constructed fruit stall, only with no fruit. The wizard looked at the end of Pella's finger rather than at what it pointed towards.

"My goodness! If you have any ideas on how to do that I'd love to know!" He almost squealed with excitement. "I've never seen anything like it. I've never thought anything like it... But maybe Cycero... Or perhaps Benthum could use-"

"Excuse me?" Pella interupted as politely as she could muster. "Can I go in?"

"Oh! Yes of course m'dear! Now?"

"Please."

"I mean... There was... Oh well. I suppose there's plenty of time for all that. Got your roll?"

"Roll?"

"Of paper."

"Yes."

"Very good!" The wizard almost shouted with glee as he began walking swiftly past the sort-of-fruit-stall and through what Pella had thought to be a mirrored door, though she now noticed the lack of reflections.

The building to which the shiny door belonged was unreasonably difficult to describe. It seemed to have been made from everything. This was not a building with any symmetry, or even artistic indifference to symmetry. No two lines were the same angle, no two shapes matched and no two windows, columns, rooftops, statues, gargoyles or ornate lights were anywhere near similar to one another, though there were many of each. These features were not the first thing a person noticed however, the explosion of violently bright colours held that title. It took Pella a moment to understand why the colour seemed to be so wrong, so... off. Then it struck her that it wasn't so much the colours themselves as the way their shading altered in the wrong direction; the sun was almost directly above and yet the shadows reached towards it as though the whole building was lit from a blindingly bright but invisible light source below.

Seven steps into the entrance hallway, the wizard stopped and turned with wide eyes which seemed to penetrate deep into Pella's very existence. He put a finger to his lips. Pella nodded her understanding. The wizard somehow opened his eyes further and added a slight frown. Pella slowly brought her own finger to her lips and considered giving him a sceptical look but decided she probably couldn't manage it. The wizard immediately brightened and, still holding his finger against his lips, he walked noisily past the three doors which lined either side of the passage.

When they reached the fourth door on the left, the wizard angled his finger from his mouth so that it pointed at the door handle. Pella looked at his face where the finger remained outstretched, looking like the trunk of a tiny elephant. She stared for a moment, completely unsure of what emotion she was supposed to be feeling. Then she realised her thoughts on the matter were irrelevant so turned and entered the room with a small "thanks" given to the Wizard.

"Good... erm... morning...?" Questioned what looked like a 15 year old boy in a voice only halfway through puberty. He sat with his hands crossed neatly on a small pine-like desk before him. "Doesn't matter. You must be Pella. I'm Glen. Pleased to meet you! I hope Wrigg treated you well? He's quite far down the line I'm afraid... but he's made his preparations." As he spoke his upper lip kept twitching as if caught by a small invisible fisherman. Pella watched it dancing up and down, mesmerised for an uncomfortably long time. Uncomfortably long for Glen that is; Pella stopped staring the moment just before she felt uneasy.

"Why am I here?" She asked, somewhat politely. Glen looked taken aback. "Because we invited you!" He said, beaming at her. "Although you would have ended up here eventually anyway I suppose. Do you mean why did we invite you? I suppose you do. It's because we wanted you to come... Well... I wanted you to come. I think you are unique. Very unique if uniqueness has a scale. I had a whole thing planned for this but I'm afraid we haven't got much time according to Hercule. Then again he's been wrong about this sort of thing bef-"

"Sorry... but I feel like you're going off topic."

"Yes, very good. Thank you. I'm a bit nervous you know. Not done this kind of thing before. That's why I'd planned... I'll just shorten my introductory notes here..." Glen's top lip went into a kind of samba as he traced his finger down a long sheet of parchment on the desk before him. After a moment he looked straight into Pella's eyes, specifically the left one and began, "I said you were unique. To understand how unique, I think I'll start with what you probably don't know yet. I am the leader of the Sollil for as long as I can hold myself together. You will have heard of the TCS - The Crow Society, from where the city's crows are hired, among other things. That is likely where you think you are. We call it the Sollil - an old word meaning something like 'school'-" He scanned down the page a little further, mumbling some of words he skipped under his breath. Pella, attempting to read the untidy scrawl upside down, was sure she saw 'wobble' written over and over for at least four of the lines.

"So it's a school," Glen continued, "where we teach magic. Sort of. I mean, you've met wizards before right?"

"I've seen wizards." Replied Pella quickly, wanting Glen to get on with it.

"But you've seen magic of course?" Glen's eyes were widening quite alarmingly.

"I've seen bits I think." Pella pondered for a second before nodding with certainty. "Yes. I saw a lamplighter replacing the street lamps once. A wizard suggested the use of a magic lamp which would provide light for as long as he lived. He then quickly created something out of thin air which almost blinded the whole street. I remember thinking the wizard had a lot less hair than I'd been led to believe and it irritated me that I couldn't remember whom it was who had led me to believe that."

"Hmm... wizards have varying amounts of hair."

"I have since learnt that."

"I suppose the lamplighter was thrilled. He'd never need to light a lamp again!"

"Not really. Beside the fact that the wizard had undone the lamplighter's whole purpose in life with five seconds of magic, the lamplighter had been holding the new lamp when the wizard lit it." Glen winced, and began to nod his head in grave understanding. "Oh no," he said, tilting his head backwards with his hands on his face. "His hands...?"

"And face, yes."

"Oh no... Bubbling?"

"And blistering and a certain amount of... leaking."

"Oh?"

"And flaking."

Glen stared blankly through his fingers at Pella for a few seconds before taking a book from a sparsely populated shelf behind him and placing it in front of her. "A welcome gift." He said by way of explanation. "Read it. Let me know what you think when you understand it. Now, back to where we were before I lose the thread." Glen's finger found the appropriate place in his notes. "Ah. So you've seen magic... Unwise magic perhaps, but magic all the same. It does not take long to learn the language of wizardry which gets you halfway to creating. Uh, 'creating' is our name for magic, for that is the base of it. Learn the language and learn the feeling of forcing magic through your body and you are a wizard. Are you still with me?"

Pella had been flicking through the book as Glen had spoken, but the information from his speech was definitely going in. "Yes." She said, sparing Glen a quick single second of eye contact. Then, feeling as though something more was expected from her, she closed the book and waited for him to continue, while she resumed looking around the room.

"This part is the important bit, Pella." Glen eventually continued. "You have no doubt wondered why a 15 year old boy is the leader of... erm... well let's just say many wizards. I could almost see the question coming from you the moment I mentioned it. It comes down to the human mind and its ability to protect a person from what it perceives as nonsense. Think of the mind as an old manor house, with thousands of rooms, windows, doors, passageways, gardens and paths. Now imagine a terrible event happens to you that you would never want to relive. Your mind pops that event into one of those rooms, behind one of those doors and locks it in there, never to be released or revisited. Now imagine you learn how to create lightning which wraps around your fist in crackling flashes of light. Your mind wants to lock that away as something traumatic but, being a wizard, you learn to stop that from happening. So the memory of the lightning fist stays accessible, perhaps in the entrance hall of the manor, until you call upon it again. When you do, your mind still hasn't learned how to deal with it and so tries to lock it away, but again that is stopped by the wizard. Then a ball of pure light is created and the mind isn't allowed to deal with that as it wants. Then flames, followed by water, conjured food, conjured weapons, objects moving through the air unsupported, objects vanishing. The mind, having been forced by the wizard, allows these to take a chaotic residence in the entry hall where there are no barriers between sensible thoughts and the nonsense that is magic. Very quickly, there comes a kind of critical point when the nonsense begins to make more sense than the actual sense. So you see the issue? The more magic you do the closer you get to this critical point. Some wizards choose to create only a few pieces of magic and because of this, they tend to last a bit longer. But even one magical event alone can cause a wizard to forget who he is by the age of 25."

"The rational mind is overcome by the irrational ideas of magical events." Pella said, nodding and almost mirroring the serious, dark expression on Glen's face. Glen blinked. "Nicely put..." He began, then trailed off as his finger searched down his notes again. The dancing top lip transitioned into a violently jolly jig. "At 15 years old," he eventually continued, "I am the youngest wizard here and yet I am also the most experienced. You see, my younger mind finds it easier to accept the nonsense around me, and so remains less affected. Wrigg, the 19 year old wizard who showed you in doesn't expect to make his next birthday. As I said, he is quite far gone. Sense displacement we call it."

"So..." Pella looked marginally more serious, "Why am I here? This doesn't sound like something I want to be involved with." Glen looked suddenly very nervous. His fingers began to tap his bottom lip while the other lip stopped its crazed vibrations. Pella did not know exactly what filled her with a sense of unease unlike anything she had ever felt. Though she suspected it was how weird Glen seemed without a party occurring on his upper lip. Glen threw his chair back and started to pace the room, muttering to himself through his tapping fingers. Pella watched him lap the small room a couple of times before deciding to flick through the book again and wait for him to sort himself out.

Perhaps 23 laps later, Glen stopped pacing. Another 20 or so seconds after that, he also stopped muttering. Maybe 5 minutes passed by at a quite ordinary rate, before Glen turned to Pella with something almost resembling a smile plastered to his face. The expression seemed painful to Pella but she knew that face well, having attempted a fake smile countless times, so knew the appropriate response was to pretend she believed it.

"Follow me!" Glen almost bellowed, spreading his arms in a gesture which would have been inviting, but fell short with the strange grin frozen on his features. He then strode to the door altogether too swiftly for what would have been normally reasonable, grabbed the door knob, turned it the wrong way, shook the door, attempted to smile reassuringly at Pella, turned the handle the correct way and took an overly large stride into the corridor. Pella followed, although somewhat reluctantly.

Glen's bizarre manner of movement continued down the corridor, which incidentally seemed to continually turn sharply right whilst never meeting itself, into a large opening which was marked by a half marble, half compacted dirt archway. Glen slapped Pella's hand away from touching the dirt, seemingly without even noticing he'd done it. Deciding not to stare daggers at him, Pella instead chose to take in the new space beyond where Glen had now stopped. She noticed her mouth open slightly, her jaw threatening to drop as the reflections of an enormous perfect glass dome filled her view. It wasn't so much the glass dome itself which caused this reaction, she had seen glass before, even in a dome shape, but this was literally a whole new perspective; this dome was viewed from the inside. The bizarre nature of this was enriched with the quite unnerving feeling that Pella had stepped out of existence and the fact that beyond the glass exterior of the dome was a darkness so black that her eyes hurt to look into it.

Glen clapped his hands together, breaking the silence with an echo that rippled tremulously around them. "Right," he said, that same fake grin glued to his face, "This is it! This is the reason you're here, Pella! Now, if you'd just wander on into the center there..." He made a shooing gesture at her.

"I would rather you told me what this place is first." Stated Pella with absolute certainty. She could not think of a time when she had made a more true statement. It was the only fact that mattered in her world. It was everything in her world right now.

"Oh... It's just a... a kind of lens, that's all." Glen attempted to smile more sincerely but somehow appeared even more demented. "That gold circle on the floor is the central point. That's why... That's where you... uh... oh no... they were right... Trellsallimdor glamashallifaa glim."

These last three words were directed directly at Pella or rather, directly into her. She felt the words push their way through her senses, softly at first, but as she became more aware and more disposed towards dispelling them, the pushes became shoves which then became violent poundings. Pella's mind shook as the invasion redoubled their efforts to take hold. She had no idea what they tried to take hold of, but she had a good idea that she wanted to keep them. Her mind was her own. She would keep all of it to herself, every bit; absolute selfishness. She became aware that her eyes were tightly shut, and opened them to an image which filled her with a mess of emotions, but two of these stood out in stark contrast to one another: fear and satisfaction. The fear came from seeing Glen balancing on his heels about 5 yards further away from her than he had been, and knowing that somehow she had caused this to happen. The satisfaction was from the look of utter bewilderment Glen now gave her and the fact that he continued to slide backwards on his heels, his feet sticking upwards.

"Why..." Pella began, realising she was panting, "Did you... want me... to go into... that gold circle?"

Glen, still fighting with bewilderment, stared at her. "How...? Who...?"

"Oh I don't know," She said impatiently, "Answer... my question."

"Why... did I...? Oh..." He changed demeanour slightly, attempting to get back some control of the situation, or perhaps just a little dignity. It didn't work. His face dropped and tears began to swell on his lower eyelids. "I had it all planned... but then... but you... you..."

"Don't turn this around on me!" Pella huffed. Her emotions were on a knife edge. On one side lay a sudden pity for Glen. On the other was the beginning of something new. Something which passed through terrible and into a cold, sharp absoluteness; a conglomeration of hideously hateful emotions brought into focus by a lens of truth that Pella had no idea she'd possessed.

Glen looked fearfully between his fingers at her, "I'm... I don't know... Not enough time..." he was muttering, tears now streaming down his cheeks.

Pella stared at him, swaying over the second side of the knife edge, "Explain!" She demanded more heavily than she'd intended, causing slight embarrassment and a shift in weight to the pity side. Glen whimpered pathetically for several long, infuriating seconds before he found his voice again.

"I'm s-sorry..." he squeaked. Pella only stared at him. She could almost feel her life splitting two ways and knew she would have to choose one of the two possible existences soon.

"Why did you push me towards the circle?" She asked, playing for time more than anything while she furiously contemplated her reality.

"It's... the center... I needed to test... you... your mind."

"Center of what? What about my mind?"

"Big question... but... the center of everything I think... The truth is we don't really know. I'm sorry. I'm really really sorry, P-Pella... Your mind is... different. It's not like mine anyway. I should have just told you! The others thought... that... that you wouldn't do it. They said you'd not join us. Then you said you didn't want to be involved. That's exactly what... what they argued you'd say. They said to... to force you. They-"

"Oh just be quiet. If you don't have any answers, just shut up for a minute." Pella suddenly realised she had an overwhelming urge to sit down. Her legs seemed to be straining to keep her upright. So she sat cross-legged with her eyes closed but managed to resist the urge to cross her arms, instead these were placed on her knees. At first, she tried to clear some of the myriad of thoughts from her mind but swiftly realised that was not going to happen. It was, in the truest sense of the word, impossible. Then she attempted to relax and focus on a single one of the thoughts. It didn't work. Pella had never understood what centering oneself was; as far as she was concerned, she had never been off center. Now her mind was beginning to open to the possibility that she needed to realign herself with... something.

"How do I center myself?" She asked the room at large, opening her eyes to find it completely empty. Glen had apparently decided to flee, or maybe go for help. It didn't matter. The idea that she regained control of her raging thoughts was paramount. Or, at least, Pella attempted to make it so. She took a new approach, concentrating on feeling her way to her center but Pella simply could not switch off the piece of her which yelled: "What does that even mean?!" A piece of her which sounded like it came from somewhere off to Pella's right. That didn't make sense. Pella was here, sitting cross-legged on the floor. Wasn't she? Some of her certainly was. Maybe some of her wasn't? "And what does that mean?!" Shouted the Pella piece, again from her right.

"I don't know!" Pella thought and heard at the same time, the sound, or whatever it was, still coming from her right. She looked for the source. There was nothing there except the center of the dome. She stood and took a step toward it, immediately feeling an enormous sense of correctness. And if a single step was that right... she took another, swiftly followed by seven more until she stood less than a yard away from the golden circle. There was no pull, no force, nothing making her take the final step but Pella knew she was close to the pieces of her. It was both a feeling, but also seemed to make a logical sense: She had been split into a few pieces, that was all. Some of those pieces were over here. All that was required now was to step into those pieces and they, or she, would automatically fit back together. If it were dangerous stepping into the center of whatever this dome was, Pella didn't really have much of a choice anyway, so step she would. And step she did.

The world inverted. Everything became exactly opposite. Everything except for Pella. Pella was now the only thing that made sense in the universe, though that was a stretch as she realised something quite unnerving about her breathing. It felt wrong, as though she should have been breathing in when she was breathing out. She held her breath, pausing that variable for a few seconds while she concentrated on the sensation of touch, namely the feeling of temperature on her skin. It wasn't hot or cold, but she could feel both. Then she noticed the ground below her feet, or rather the lack thereof, though it definitely felt like she was standing on something.

"This isn't normal..." Said a piece of Pella. She instinctively crouched and moved her head slightly until that piece of her lined up with the rest. In an explosion of understanding and relief, Pella centered herself. Only, due to random chance, or maybe something beyond human understanding, she centered herself on existence; on everything. She suddenly knew what 'everything' was. The entirety of the universe, of time and of knowledge was focused here and, for a fleeting moment, Pella's mind saw it all. It was reality. It was a perfect truth. It was a kind of off-white colour and it was incredibly loud and painful before it collapsed into the exact opposite of those things.

When Glen recovered some of whatever courage he possessed, he poked his head around the edge of the compacted dirt arch to see the unconscious body of Pella Lovell. Moving into the dome, he saw that she had her fists balled. Upon closer inspection, which involved a certain amount of straining on Glen's part, he found the left hand contained nothing. The right hand however, once unlocked, held a small, simply made, wooden box. Glen took no time to ponder the ethics of what was essentially stealing, instead, he opened the box and tipped the contents onto his other hand whilst walking swiftly from where Pella lay. In his palm he pushed around various tiny items until he found what he wanted, dropping the rest in the corridor as he walked. A genuine smile filled his face as he untwisted a plastic wrapper from the selected item, and shoved what looked like a miniature boiled sweet into his mouth. His top lip, seemingly thrilled at the turn of events, began to dance the foxtrot, but this soon transitioned into more of a salsa.