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I compacted it first, made it into a planet hovering before me, smoothing out its edges until it was near perfect, then I made it spin.

I’d yet to try charming earth so pliable. I made the sphere into a cube next, then a funnel, a small windstorm, and finally I lifted all those specks of dirt higher, higher, until they were suspended in that vaulted ceiling like a thousand muddy stars.

I knew Dumley and Theo were on their feet, as I was, staring up at the galaxy I had made. And then my mind shuddered, the pressure grew insurmountable—elastic stretched to the furthest extent.

Then it snapped.

Dirt rained to the floor, onto the settee, into the teacups. It plinked off Dumley’s head, clung to his whiskers.

His eyes remained on me.

“Well,” was all he said. “Well, well, well.” It seemed he was coming to some grand summation. He looked around his drawing room, at his sullied rug.

I suddenly felt foolish. “S-sorry,” I said, gesturing lamely to the tea table. “For the mess.”

A grin dawned slowly over Dumley’s face.

I heard Theodore mutter a curse. Quite unlike him.

Then Dumley walked over to me. He gripped either side of my face in his papery hands. “My word,” he uttered. A laugh escaped him. “Idia has blessed us.” And I thought I saw tears in his eyes as he took my hands and patted them. “What a blessing you’ll be.” His chest ballooned. He turned to Theo. “What fine assets you willbothbe.”

An hour later, Theodore closed those ornately carved doors behind him, the ringing trills of Dumley’s goodbye following us.

“Well,” Theodore uttered. And from his pocket, he drew out two handkerchiefs. “Our headmaster is insane.”

Perhaps it was the heat trapped in my skin, or the absurdity of the meeting, but a laugh escaped, then more of it.

“Here,” Theodore said, waving a handkerchief toward me. I took itgladly, mopping the sweat from my throat and the back of my neck. Theodore did the same with his own.

I giggled again, half relieved that I’d not been thrown from the school, half feverish. “Do you think the rest of the class will notice us drenched in sweat?”

Theodore took a moment to respond, and when I looked back at him, his eyes had stuck to me. They narrowed with interest. “Where did you say you were from?” he asked.

I realized then that I’d allowed my tongue to slacken. A drawl had snuck free. “Sommerland,” I said, tightening the consonants. The letter at my hip burned.

“Huh,” he said. “Not far into the brink, then?”

“Near enough.” I hoped my voice had morphed smoothly into something less graveled.

“You sound almost Northern,” he stated, smiling easily.

Eastern, I wanted to say.

“I’ve always wanted to travel out to the brink,” he continued, and somehow he managed to loosen the knots in my stomach, if only slightly. “Do you have many friends there?”

“No.”

He frowned at me, gesturing that I go first down the stairs. “Have you met any new ones here? It seemed like you were sitting alone at breakfast this morning.”

He would have seen me blush if my cheeks weren’t already mottled with heat. “Not many.” I had the strange urge to tell him about the taunts in the hallways and the worms in my bed, but I saw pity in the way he averted his eyes, and I was suddenly sure he already knew about them.

“Sit by me,” he said. “Whenever you’d like.”

My answering smile was grim. “You don’t mind worms in your food?”

He turned a brilliant crimson, and it was as good as a confirmation.

“Thank you, Theodore,” I muttered. “But I’m all right.”