Chatoyant College Book 8: From the Earth

Chapter 5: Lighting the Candle

Edie was scowling at the suggested revisions to her essay for French and seriously contemplating printing it out, if only so she could use a lot of red ink (and possibly tear it up), when Corrie came in. She turned quickly, grateful for the interruption. "Hey! How was your day?"

"Great!" Corrie tossed her backpack on her bed, like usual, but it was quickly followed by a small plastic bag of what appeared to be metal cups of some sort. They clattered, anyway. Edie frowned at them. Before she could ask about them, though, Corrie was talking again. She had taken off her coat and hung it on the back of the chair. "Jeez, it's cold in here."

"Yeah, they're really cheap with the heat. I wish we had individual thermostats." Edie tugged at the handknit scarf she was wearing, then looked up at Corrie and couldn't resist a giggle. "Of course, it would help if you were wearing something other than a T-shirt."

Corrie looked down, hugging herself, and sighed. "But I don't like long sleeves. They itch."

"How can every long-sleeved shirt itch?"

"I don't know, they just do!" She tugged the coat off her chair and wrapped it around herself once again. "Oh, wait, I have a great idea! How many candles do you need to actually heat a room?"

"What? Is that what those are?" Edie looked at the bag again and now recognized its contents as tea lights. "I think you'd need a lot of those little candles to heat this room. Besides, it's against the rules to light candles in the dorms."

"Really? Oh well. Since when do we care about the rules?" Corrie threw herself down into her seat and reached for the candles. "Besides, it was Professor Lal's idea."

"I care, because there are smoke alarms in every room, and even if Lorelei and Charlie do like us I don't think they can cover that up. Why does Professor Lal want you lighting candles?"

Corrie gave a demented grin and pulled one of the tea lights out of the bag. "I'll show you."

Edie sighed and crossed her arms, but though it occurred to her to protest that she had homework to do, she still wasn't ready to get back to those revisions. So she just stared at Corrie. "Okay, let's see... whatever it is."

"Ready?" Corrie pushed some papers aside, then set the tea light down on her desk. She stared at it. Edie could hear the seconds ticking by, and she was just about to ask what was going on, when suddenly the candle flared to life.

"Oh my gosh!" Edie jumped up from her seat and hurried over to the candle. "Is that magic? Wow! How did you do that?" She looked closely at the candle, but it didn't look any different than an ordinary one; the flame didn't look unusual at all, either.

Corrie was grinning. "Well, it's hard to explain. And maybe I shouldn't explain it to you, since you're going to take magic classes next year, aren't you?"

Edie poked her. "Of course I am." Definitely after this demonstration. She'd known that taking magic would be (at least theoretically) helpful in her life—with all the faeries and other supernatural creatures they dealt with, it surely couldn't hurt—but she hadn't realized before that it could be simply practical. She couldn't help imagining Sabbath dinners and Hanukkah celebrations once she had this skill. Maybe her parents wouldn't approve, but they wouldn't have to buy so many matches, and no one would have to fuss with burnt fingers...

"It actually is hard to describe," said Corrie. "To find the magic, it's like a mental looking within yourself... but not like psychological, when people say that and mean to examine your thoughts. The magic really has a physical place that I can find inside me. And then you have to take hold of it. But not too hard—that was my problem. And you just focus on what you want to do, and if you're doing it right, it happens."

"Can you do that with anything? Like, look at a skein of yarn and make it wrap itself into a ball?" Corrie had held the yarn while Edie rolled balls to knit from; she would know what she was talking about.

"I guess so. I don't know. Professor Lal told us not to try with anything we hadn't been specifically taught. Maybe it works differently with things other than fire."

Edie glanced down at the candle again. There was a little puddle of wax around the wick. "I thought it would be like a magic fire and not burn anything..."

"I hope we can learn to do something like that later. But no, it's just a regular fire. I guess the magic is setting something on fire, not creating fire."

Edie finally sighed and sat down. "Your homework is so much cooler than mine."