Oracle (Book I)

Welcome to Oracle

As Bossa pulled away from her, Caprice shook herself and exchanged incredulous expressions with her brother. They were clearly of the same bewildered mind: Who is this girl? Acting so familiar and casual. They had never seen anything like her.

"'Bossa' who?" Karrigan's troubled and offended gaze traveled from the toes of Bossa's brown knee boots to the gold jeweled pendant around her neck. She eyed her braided hair with distaste before looking at her face again. Caprice could almost hear her thoughts: Why is someone like her dressed in something other than rags?

"Just Bossa," the girl answered politely. Arching a coppery-bronze brow, Bossa then countered plainly, "Who are you?"

Master Alastair stared at her in exasperated disbelief.

"Are you hard of hearing or plain daft? Or are you deliberately defiant? My sister asked your name."

"And I told it to her."

Alastair's expression grew thunderous, brow drawing tight over his pale eyes, shoulders stiff. He had never been talked to like that in his life. Not by a woman and certainly not by one of the kin. Thierry shifted warily, glancing between the two.

Barely moving his lips, he said, "Sister, run, hide, if they—"

"Silence, you. And you: I told you to mind your manners, wretch." Alastair jabbed his wand at Bossa. A dark blue light shot from the tip towards her.

"Don't!" Thierry shouted but it was too late. The hex flew.

Caprice's gasp echoed the hall and she leaned forward, about to throw herself between the ill spell and the young woman who had just embraced her so kindly...as if she were a friend.

In a flash, Bossa dodged to the right. The curse singed the mammoth doors behind her. Quicker still, leaping forward and spinning into a low duck, she kicked out her leg and connected with the back of Alastair's knees.

"Alastair!" Karrigan cried out in horror as he pitched backwards and slammed on the floor, grunting a solid, windless Ooof. His wand flew out of his hand and rolled away across the marble.

At that moment, an aureus light shone beyond the corner of Caprice's eye. It was emanating from the center of the hall between the stairs and the large doors.

Everyone stopped and looked at the source of the light.

A glowing woman floated in the center of the hall before the great doors. Caprice half-shielded her eyes, making out the line of her face and a thick mane of hair. Everything about the vision was opaque, nothing at all like what Caprice knew of common westerland ghosts. As she hovered there above them, her gilded shine slowly paled a blinding white like the walls around her.

Thierry stared through squinted eyes. Eyes mostly closed and frowning, Bossa rubbed at her ear. Caprice couldn't see clearly but she was sure it was looking right at the other girl.

As quickly as it--she--was there, the apparition was fading, taking the warm golden shine with it and leaving the growing, cold white light to seep into white walls. Caprice looked from Bossa, who had stopped rubbing her ear, to Thierry, who was still gaping, and then back to the spot where the glowing woman had disappeared.

Karrigan and Alastair's pale eyes popped open in their faces and darted from three of them and all around the place as if they expected the ground-defying figure to fly out of the walls and swoop down on them; it might have been funny if they weren't all witnessing it.

With Karrigan's help, Alastair stood again and stumbled over to retrieve his wand.

"What is that?" Alastair turned around and actually looked at Bossa with that sincere question in his eyes like she might know.

Bossa shrugged. "It's a magic school." As if shining beings floating in the halls were a completely ordinary occurrence.

At the foot of the stairs, on Caprice's right, one of the normal-sized doors opened with a creak. Perhaps a door opening shouldn't have distracted her from what she was seeing but Caprice turned.  A woman with very short, peppered hair appeared. She was wholly corporeal and, what was more, another kin.

"Ah, there you are. You are the last ones," she said as she briskly approached. Fine chartreuse silk and forest green velvet robes flowed around her. She walked directly into all that fading light like it wasn't there. All at once, the light vanished. The witch spoke on as if unawares. "Alastair Whitehare. Karrigan Whitehare. Caprice Bilberry. Thierry Bilberry." She looked at each of then in turn and inclined her head gracefully. "Welcome to Oracle. I am Professor Earithean." She spared Bossa a glance. "Pupil Bossa. Shouldn't you be somewhere studying?"

Bossa shrugged, holding up her book, "Well--"

Alastair cleared his throat and intoned, "I am Alastair Silvus Whitehare of the Silven Court and I demand to know how we were brought here and why immediately."

Caprice flinched and bowed her head. It was the same tone and voice he and his father used to cow servants all over the village. Impressing their importance upon those they viewed as smaller and simpler than themselves. A self-important declaration like this was routinely followed by casually cruel repercussions for the one it was aimed at.

Thierry's shoulders visibly tightened. Caprice felt the lashes on her arms as she vividly recalled the ones marring her brothers shoulders and back hidden by his careworn shirt.

"You were summoned by The Registry," Professor Earithean said.

"You called yourself professor," Karrigan said. A familiarly nasty sneer curled her lip. "What kind of place is this that people of the same ilk as our servants are professors. It can't be very good, now can it."

"Tour our facilities. Decide for yourself. I am certain seeing what Oracle offers will improve your opinion."

Before she knew what she was doing, Caprice stepped forward. She barely recognized her own voice as she spoke low but clearly to a person of authority. Of her own accord. In the presence of the two eldest Whitehare siblings.

"What is Oracle?" she asked quietly.

Miss Karrigan looked at her as if she was a table that had leaped up and started speaking quite candidly. Caprice shrank into herself just a bit.

Earithean regarded her. "A wellspring of magical knowledge from all over the world and beyond. A place of learning. For you, it is a school ."

Caprice stammered, "U-us? Students?"

Thierry was shaking his head, disbelief etched into the furrow of his brow.

"Do not speak unless spoken to, Cappy," Karrigan snapped, her head turning in Caprice's direction without looking while she eyed Professor Earithean.

With her brother's low warning and Karrigan's sharp reprimand, Caprice's chin started to drop, her voice running back into her aching throat. Her eyes falling back to the floor.

Earithean's voice stopped everything.

"I was, in fact, speaking to the four of you, Miss Whitehare." To Caprice she continued, "That is correct, Miss Bilberry. It is your choice."

"We are already enrolled at the finest establishments our town has to offer," Alastair pronounced. Even so, he shrewdly studied the molding and the sheer size of the pristine hall around them as though his curiosity was getting the better of him. "How big is this place? What is the extent of your facilities?"

"See for yourself. Sir. Miss." She regarded each of them in turn once more, crisply pronouncing, "Oracle is an elite institution. Finding one better? Impossible. Such a thing does not exist. The Oracle Registry summoned you here. Be proud. Consider yourself among a privileged and special class of young witches and wizards."

"Excuse me. I don't think I heard you correctly. " Karrigan gestured at Caprice and Thierry. "What about them again? Why were they summoned here?"

"I see I was not clear," Earithean said. "Miss Bilberry and Mister Bilberry are summoned to Oracle by The Registry. The same as you."