The Elementals of Edgewood

Chapter Six

The bird swooped down and landed next to Miss Evernethy's crumpled body, focusing its beady eyes on Jessica's traumatised expression.  Her eyes were flickering back and forth between their teacher and the massive bird less than a metre away from her.

As if the actions of the bird hadn't already been bizarre enough, it squawked, before dipping it's head down, beak touching the floor.

George realised it almost looked as though it was...bowing down to Jess. She staggered backwards.

The classroom was filled with a shocked silence. Nobody dared to move.

It was broken when the door crashed open, causing George to jump. A teacher barged into the classroom, taking a bewildered look around at the disarray of chairs and desks, the bird, and their bloodied teacher lying unmoving on the floor.

"What the hell happened in here?" He yelled, eyes wide with alarm.

The commotion startled the bird who squawked, flapped it's wings, and soared off out of the classroom through the broken window. George felt the sigh of relief reverberate throughout the class.

The teacher ran over to Miss Evernathy and crouched beside her, gently trying to shake her awake. Her body was limp, motionless.

"You," he said, pointing at Harrison Cole, a tall, lanky guy who George didn't know that well. "Help me carry her to the nurse's office."

George watched Harrison shake off his shocked trance and clamber towards the front of the classroom. He grabbed Miss Evernethy's legs, while the teacher supported her head and shoulders, and the two of them slowly carried her out of the room.

The suspended shock that paralysed the class was shattered once again by the shrill of the bell.

Slowly, they picked up their books and began to trickle out of the class in a flutter of alarmed murmurs. George's  mind raced with a thousand questions about what he had just witnessed and the absolute insanity of it.

"Oh gross!" Nate exclaimed. George turned to see him pick his English textbook off his desk, which was covered in a white sludge. "The bloody thing crapped on my book!"

--

The rest of the day continued counteractively normal for George, and he managed to make it through to his last period- art- without any more eagles flying through windows and attacking his teachers.

But many questions had surfaced in his mind- the majority of which focusing on Jessica Barker.

He couldn't help thinking she had something to do with it, despite Nate's efforts to shut the idea down. He knew it was impossible, but the bird had seemed so trained on her, and she had been arguing with Miss Evernathy literal seconds before.

This, combined with the strange gust yesterday afternoon, and the weird silver he swore he'd seen in her eyes before the attack, all added up to something suspicious. But George had no idea what it was.

He contemplated it as he walked into his art class on the bell, taking a seat next to his friend Thomas who was also in the swim team.

"You're in Miss Evernethy's class, aye?" Thomas asked him with wide eyes. 

George sighed. It was all he'd been asked about all day. "Yeah, I'm guessing you heard what happened."

"Well, I heard something, but it doesn't seem very accurate." Thomas leaned in, lowering his voice. "I heard that Jessica Barker summoned a gigantic seagull to attack the teacher because she said she was a nobody and that everyone hated her."