Chapter Four- Friendship
The next week at school, Echo was very quiet to everybody around her, including Pepper. It wouldn't seem so odd last year but this year she was becoming popular. Last week she was the centre of attention, making everybody laugh from her jokes and finally appreciate she wasn't just a snooty rich princess but a good friend to have. Now Echo stayed out of all conversations even when all the people were asking her questions. She would usually sit in the circle, thinking about how they must love having a real future. They weren't going to die a fool and a failure, they would probably be happy when they died. Echo hated herself and whoever would stray her away from being a real warrior was worthy to loathe. Echo stayed particularly astray from the boys, not wanting to fall in love with them. Blue noticed her cold voice and stopped answering the door when she knocked for Pepper each night. They would talk and Pepper would try out her cheering up spells, but they were unsuccessful and only brought a weak smile to Echo's lips for ten minutes. In school Echo walked with her nose in her books and after a week of nonverbal communication, people were starting to wonder if she wanted friends at all.
Echo wandered into the library one lunchtime, hoping she could find a book on the fates to see if they could be changed. It was a long shot to shoot for, but Echo was willing to find a cure to what the Oracles had besotted upon her and become a warrior. In the library, she saw two of the stone gargoyles were crowding around a student, probably pestering him to listen to their history of the building. The gargoyles were created by Sterklin, the wizard who made the school, and were once positioned on the roofs to help protect the castle from harm. Now, after having no use for protectors, the gargoyles were moved into the library and spent their time telling their versions of the history of the witch world. In their stories it was as if stone ornaments were the reason there was still an Other Realm to live in.
"Please, just let me read�" Echo heard a boy say and she looked up momentarily to see it was Zodiac flicking through a large edition of books and trying his hardest to ignore the gargoyles' proud voices.
"Young man, the tales of wisdom we hold are nothing you will find in these books!" A stumpy gargoyle with an arm missing and half his nose chipped off threw one book across the room, right next to Echo's chair. Zodiac jumped up and ran to pick up the book before it could be damaged any more.
Echo caught his eye and he smiled. "Don't worry, they always hassle me at lunchtime. Only because I'm the only student who'll usually listen to their stories."
"I wasn't worrying." Echo said stiffly and turned back to the book she was pretending to read.
"Oh, right." Zodiac replied sadly and walked back to his table.
Echo started to read about the conquering nations of the Earth and sighed loudly. She felt she had sunk so low; why shouldn't she hang around with the school misfit? Getting up, she pulled out her stone and pointed it at the gargoyles.
"Petrify!" She yelled and they stopped pulling Zodiac's bag and were motionless, as all stone figures should be.
Zodiac looked up at her, amazed. "You could have told me that earlier." He pulled his bag out of the gargoyles' grasp and sat back down.
"Why didn't you just read my mind again?"
Zodiac laughed. "My brother is the better psychic. Makes it a lot harder to lie to him."
"You mind if I sit down?" Echo asked.
Zodiac nodded and moved a chair to his table with his finger. Echo sat down and looked at the book Zodiac was reading. "Immortals versus Mortals. What's this?"
"It's about the origin of witches. Apparently this guy Moonbeam was appointed by the Oracles themselves to begin the first family of witches." He flicked to a page and pointed out a picture. "That's the very first spell ever written down. Strangely he chose an old warrior's spell instead of an easy one."
"Yeah, strange." Echo said, looking at the picture of a sword being raised towards a great silver light. "You don't mind this school any more then?"
"Couldn't hate it more if I tried." Zodiac replied and picked up another book.
"Then why are you here? You're powerful enough to train in the City of Origin, instead of being bullied in this fourth-rate high school."
"My parents thought it was best if I stayed here." Zodiac said and tried to change the subject. "You ever found a dragon's egg before? Apparently they're five hundred degrees when five days old�"
"Why don't you just train anyway? Who cares what your parents think!"
Zodiac was the one pretending to read now. "I don't care, at least I'm learning. Besides, why have you decided to start talking to me again?"
Echo shrugged. "I don't feel like being popular at the moment."
Zodiac smiled at her. "You can choose when to be popular? You must wake up feeling good for yourself then."
Echo laughed, thinking how she really felt in the morning when finding herself still in her home prison. "Not exactly. I can't stand the castle."
"Castle? You have a castle?"
"Yeah, why wouldn't I?" Echo asked slowly.
"Because nobody has a castle. Not even that rich Prance kid in my PE class has a castle."
Echo stared at him. "You have no idea who I am, do you?"
"Should I?" Zodiac asked, paying attention to his book again, looking bored.
"No, not really." Echo smiled. Her smile faded as Zodiac placed something on his face, something Echo had never seen before.
"Hey!" Zodiac jumped up as Echo grabbed his glasses from his face and examined them as if they could infect both him and herself.
"What the hell are these?"
"Uh, my glasses?" Zodiac replied irritably, snatching them back. "What? You never seen glasses before?"
"No, what are they?" Echo asked, watching Zodiac closely as he cleaned the lenses on his shirt.
"Um, well, if you have bad vision, like your eyes can't focus on close-up objects like mine, then you wear these and they help you see. I don't even wear them unless I've been reading for a while and they start to hurt."
"Wow. I always thought a pure witch had perfect, well, everything." Echo looked at him closely. "You're not contagious, are you?"
Zodiac grinned. "No, I think you're safe. Anyway these are nothing. You wanna know imperfection, you should see the braces my brother had to wear for three years..."
Maybe I should stop being popular for a little longer� She thought as she found her liking for Zodiac was not just pity; she could feel it would become a real friendship.
With Zodiac and Pepper as friends, Echo felt a little better about her fate chosen by the Oracles. She told Zodiac how she would never become a warrior and was relieved to know he had also been chosen a fate against what he had wanted. He didn't tell her what, though Echo could tell it made him feel just how she felt. All she knew about his fate was that it was the reason why he wasn't studying at the City Of Origin. The three of them developed a friendship quickly, sticking together in school against bullies. Even Pepper was starting to leave her big group of friends to spend her lunch times in the back room of the library learning new spells. For once, they had decided to sit by the purple trees on the edge of the hedges, relaxing under the sun that was glowing brighter than ever from its victory over the darkness the night prior. There Zodiac was being taught valuable lessons in cheating.
"Have you ever felt a sudden urge to drop your pen and scream in an exam?" Pepper asked him.
Zodiac, who was trying to find his lunch after making it invisible, looked up. "Yeah, I get them all the time."
"Next time you do, whisper the first line of a song that is the same as its title backwards then do so."
"What will that do?" Echo asked, conjuring her lunch out of nowhere.
"Nothing, but they'll think you're mad so you won't get detention." Pepper grinned and swirled her wand until an assortment of berries appeared on a small leaf-shaped tray. "Mmm, poison ivy, my favourite."
"What cheats could I use then?" Zodiac asked, ignoring the disgusting thought of eating what Pepper was.
"The usual. Saint Slickington is a good one. This witch was so desperate to enter the academy he turned his hand into slime, touched the teacher's head before the exam and the answers stuck to his hand."
"That's the dumbest thing you could try." Zodiac remarked.
"He got in though!" Pepper said, spitting a few berries at him.
"He's on the council. His real name isn't Slickington though; nobody knows it. Everybody betting he's the one who'll drop off." Echo explained.
"No, it'll be Titania." Zodiac said, making his sandwich reappear and taking a bite.
"It can't be Titania, she's the smartest on that whole table! She can't be killed by the strongest of demons if they all tried at once." Echo was amazed at his remark.
"What makes you think it'll be her anyway?" Pepper asked.
Zodiac swallowed. "Just a hunch."
"Look out, my brother is coming." Pepper remarked sourly as a small blue light flew towards the three of them.
Blue grew to his witch size and looked at them with a grin on his face. "Guess what?"
"What?" Pepper asked, pretending to yawn.
"I could be the winner of the School Champion award this year!"
"Yeah, so?" Zodiac replied. "Everybody knows you'll win."
"Nobody asked you." Blue said angrily and turned to Echo. "Echo, do you want to come to the awards with me?"
Echo was stunned. "Um, why me?"
"You'll love it. They have the champions of the training warrior witches demonstrating. You could learn a few tricks from them."
Pepper and Zodiac felt her anger. "I don't think so, thanks anyway Blue."
Blue suddenly turned a deep shade of red and cleared his throat. "Well, would you like to go with me anywhere out of school? Could I make it clearer that way?"
All eyes shot to Echo and she blushed like Blue. "Okay." She squeaked.
"Cool, I'll meet you at the school gates after class and we'll find something fun to do."
"Okay." Echo repeated, still squeaking.
"See you later!" Blue waved and with one more look of disgust at Zodiac, he flew away as a tiny dot.
"I can't say stuff about him because he is your brother, can I?" Zodiac asked.
Pepper lazily pointed her wand at him, as if he had tried insulting Blue many times before. "Just try it."
Zodiac sighed. "Well, he doesn't make my school life easier. He told the whole school I've been studying how to kill fairies in my spare time."
"Ignore him." Pepper replied. "The important thing is I hear wedding bells!"
Echo looked at Pepper with amazement. "Wedding bells? No chance."
"Maybe he's the commoner you'll die for." Zodiac said bitterly.
Echo stared at him for a second before she stormed off towards the school, not saying a word.
Pepper gave Zodiac a hard stare before following Echo in the form of a tiny green dot.
Echo sat down on a bench, trying to calm down before she tried to place a curse on her new friend. He had a point, and a very good one at that. What if Blue was her reason to die young? Would she save him over love and kill herself over stupidity? Echo sighed loudly and put her face in her hands, wishing her life could be simple.
"Want me to beat him up?" Pepper asked, sitting down next to her troubled friend.
Echo looked up. "I thought fairies were peaceful?"
"Oh yeah." Pepper answered. "Want me to make flowers sprout from his ears?"
Echo laughed. "That would make me feel a little better."
"Look, just date Blue. If you like him then fine, you'll die for him. If you don't then you'll die happy."
"I'll die a fool." Echo replied.
"No, you'll die in love. That's the best I can make it sound, all right?"
Echo smiled. It was the only way of looking at her death. She would die in the arms of her true love.
In the nest lesson, Zodiac made attempts to apologise to Echo, but she ignored him. The lesson was as boring as her parent's balls. The teacher, always indulged in the sound of his own voice, droned on about the geography of the Other Realm and how the weather in the mountains was controlled by the Fairies of Ice- or the Water Fairies who stayed on earth during the Ice Ages. It was a hot day and nobody could even hear his voice over the sound of tiny tornadoes at every desk, bought by Zephyr; a half witch, half Wind Fairy, during break time. Everybody was letting the cool air play on their faces and was becoming oblivious to the teacher's voice.
Echo was staring into space, wondering where Blue would take her on their very first date. As she dreamed of horse-drawn carriages and the possibility of wedding bells, she heard music being played. Looking into her tornado, she saw a tiny girl dancing in the wind, smiling up at Echo.
"Zodiac is sorry." Then the little girl faded away until Echo was staring at the tiny tornado once again.
As the bell rang Echo rang to Zodiac, who was trying to make his way out the room before she could speak to him.
"How did you do that?" Echo asked.
"I have two little sisters who love ballet. It was the first thing I could think of." Zodiac replied. "I'm sorry I said that, I just want you to be careful."
"It's only a date Zodi, and if I have to die happy then so be it." They began to walk towards the school gates.
"You're very chipper about dying young all of a sudden." Zodiac was impressed.
"Well, I can't avoid it. I'd have saved a life, that's almost like being a warrior, isn't it?"
"Yeah I suppose so." Zodiac replied and stopped at the gates. "Well, have fun on your date."
"Don't worry, I will."
Echo watched Zodiac walk down the lane paved with blue leaves. She watched him until she felt a tap on her shoulder.
"Ready to go?" Blue asked.
"Yep." Echo replied, taking his hand towards the lane paved with green flowers, feeling happier about her fate than ever before.
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