Something totally unexpected happened to me today. This was stranger than anything I’d ever witnessed before. It was even more surprising then the time that John couldn’t move anymore because I’d glared at him, or the time that the snowman came to life because I’d been thinking about Frosty. It was even stranger then the day that the public swimming pool turned into an ice skating rink because I had wished for it. No, it was even more astonishing than all those things combined. Well, to start, have you ever heard of Ravenwood School? ….. No? Well then, maybe I should start from the beginning.
It was a cool fall day in October. I was sitting outside of the orphanage. The cold never seemed to bother me. Since I was an orphan, I never knew my last name. All that the owners of the orphanage will tell me is that they found me alone by the ocean. That is why they named me Sierra. It’s like “Sea” and “arra” combined. They said they never knew how I’d gotten there, but they thought that I must have been abandoned. So, they took me in.
Even though the owners of this place are nice, I’ve never felt at home here. The other kids always make fun of me. They call me a “freak” because of the strange things that happen to me. I hate this place. So, as usual, I was alone. Outside I was looking at the orange leaves on the beautiful trees. Almost all the leaves were gone now, because it was getting very close to winter time. I sighed and thought all about the things that have happened to me before. Earlier I had accidentally “turned the refrigerator into a freezer”. Somehow the temperature in there had gone from 40 degrees Fahrenheit to negative 40 degrees Fahrenheit. I had gotten blamed and sent away from the kitchen. I wasn’t allowed in there until tomorrow morning, meaning I couldn’t have any dinner. So I was hungry, tired, and dismal. As I was looking up at the setting sun, I noticed something strange. There was an owl in the tree in front of me.
Of course owls aren’t anything supernatural. But they were unusual to see around here. In fact, I thought it was impossible for them to be even near here. But there he was, sitting calmly on a branch. His giant eyes were staring right at me. Even though I knew he was just an owl and couldn’t hurt me, I squirmed uncomfortably. He almost seemed to be examining me. Maybe he was just afraid that I would hurt him. But somehow, I felt like there was intelligence behind those observant owl eyes. I stood up and began to walk toward him.
He stood stationary and continued observing me.
“Shoo!” I said. He just cocked his head to one side and kept staring.
“What are you doing here? Go away!”
Then, he suddenly straightened up and quickly looked around. Then he cleared his throat. Yes, an owl cleared his throat! Then, he began talking:
“Are you the one they call Sierra?” He (or should I say it) said.
I don’t know why, but I answered him. “Maybe. Why are you wondering? And who are you?”
The owl flew down to the ground in front of me. I jumped, guessing he would hurt me. All it did was laugh and replied “I am Gamma, Headmaster Ambrose’s pet. I need you to come with me.”
“What!” I exclaimed. None of this was making any sense at all. Who was “Headmaster Ambrose”? I decided that this must be a dream. None of this was possible.
“Well,” said the owl, “I suppose I’m getting ahead of myself. I guess I just forgot what world I am on…” World? Oh yes, this was definitely a dream.
“Sierra, you’re a wizard.”
I think my heart skipped a beat. “A…a wizard?” I repeated. “That’s not possible!” Then I reminded myself that anything was possible in a dream. But when had I fallen asleep?
“Yes, a very talented wizard in fact. Or at least, I’m guessing you are. The headmaster wouldn’t have accepted you into our school if you weren’t.”
“A school? You mean with other wizards?” Now I was beginning to wonder if this were a trick. It seemed like the perfect thing that John would think of to prove that I was a freak. It all sounded a lot like Harry Potter.
“Yes. It is called Ravenwood School. You are very lucky, Sierra. It is the most prestigious school in all of Wizard City. So, I need you to teleport with me to-“
“Teleport?” Oh, I’d love to see how John did that. Because I had now convinced myself that it was his doing.
“Yes, teleport,” said the owl impatiently. “Will you hold onto my wing?”
“Um…”
“Come on!” The owl laughed. “It’s completely safe, I assure you.”
So, I grasped hold of the mysterious animal’s wing and suddenly, the world around me was gray and looked as if I were inside of a hurricane. It was windy too, and yet strangely relaxing. It almost looked like we were in a tube of wind. And suddenly, my feet touched solid ground, and I was in some sort of office. There was an old man who, coincidentally, was dressed as a wizard, complete with a snow white beard. “Hello!” He greeted.
“Welcome to Ravenwood School!”
“Ravenwood? What? So, it’s not a trick.”
“Of course not.”
Now I was back to thinking it was a dream. What was going on?
“Now Sierra, answer these questions and we will decide which type of wizard you are.”
I curiously peered at the book he had placed in front of me. It was labeled “Book of Secrets” and was brown and old. I opened it. Inside, there were questions and a couple of answers. When I answered them all, the old man took the book from me and said, “Well, it turns out that you’re ice! That means that you will be taught by Professor Greyrose.”
Ice? Apparently he knew me well. It did make sense that I would be ice, because I did all those strange things that seemed to be related with ice.
“I guess now we should take you to your family…”
Now my heart had stopped. That couldn’t be right. Even in a dream, that seemed impossible. I couldn’t have a family. It just didn’t make sense. I must have heard wrong.
“Excuse me,” I said to the old man. “What did you say?”
“I said your family!”
“That’s what I thought. Um, but sir-“
“Oh, we haven’t been properly introduced, have we? I am Merle Ambrose, Headmaster of Ravenwood School.”
“Oh, well I’m Sierra. And as I was saying, Mister Ambrose-“
“Please call me Professor Ambrose.”
“Ok!”I exclaimed, because he kept interrupting. “Well ‘Professor Ambrose’ I was going to say that I think you’re mistaken. I don’t have a family. I’m an orphan.”
“An orphan? Well goodness, is that what you thought? I guess we have much to explain to you, don’t we. Well then, sit down. This could take a while.”
I sat in a big blue chair across from his desk. Then he began:
“Sierra, all I am going to tell you today is just what we think. We can’t be completely sure. When you were younger, you loved to use teleporting magic. Only at 6 days old you had learned how to teleport an entire mile! So, we believe that you somehow teleported yourself all the way to the world called Earth. We had no idea where you were for the longest time. We only discovered you just a few months ago! Even though your parents had another daughter, Rowan, they still never forgot you, the baby who they never got to even name.”
“So wait. Even after I was born they still hadn’t named me?”
“No, but since they heard that the people at the orphanage had named you Sierra, they decided to keep that name.”
“Wow,” I breathed. “Well where are they?”
“They are at their home of course! Why would they be here? They don’t even know that you have arrived.”
“Oh. When can I meet them?”
“After you meet all your teachers.”
So, Headmaster Ambrose sent me on a “quest” and I met all the teachers. There were so many new sights to see! I met the storm, balance, fire, life, myth, and of course the ice professor. I also found out that the poor death school had fallen into a giant hole. Since I felt sorry for them, I decided to use the training point I’d received earlier to learn the Dark Sprite spell. When I finally finished, I went back to the old guy and he finally told me the location of my family’s house. He teleported there with me. When he opened the door, a man with brown hair opened the door. He wore long white robes and dark blue shoes. He smiled a warm smile at the headmaster. “Hello, Merle.” Then he looked at me. “Oh, is this your newest student?”
“Yes, but she’s more than that.”
“What do you mean?” Then his eyes lit up. “You can’t possibly be…” He turned around. “Angela! Oh Angela, come here! And Rowan too!” He turned around. “You’re Sierra, right? Sierra Winterbreeze?”
“Uh… I don’t know my last name.”
“Well if you’re my Sierra then your last name is Winterbreeze. What school are you? Life? Ice? Or something completely different?”
Just then two people appeared beside him. One of them was a woman who could possibly be my mom. She had light blonde hair and wore light green robes with a darker green trim. Next to her was a young girl a little bit younger than me. She was also wearing green robes, but her robes were trimmed with a silver color. “Who’s that?” she asked.
“Rowan,” her (and apparently my) dad said with a smile, “this is your sister, Sierra Winterbreeze.”
She looked at me and gasped. After taking in my appearance, she walked over to me awkwardly and smiled an uncomfortable smile. “I’m Rowan Willowleaf,” she said.
“Willowleaf? Don’t you mean Winterbreeze? She is my sister, correct?”
“Yes, she is,” answered Professor Ambrose. “But unlike in the world called Earth, wizards do not always have the same last names as each other.”
“Oh.” Then I turned and asked, “So what are my parent’s last names?”
“Your mother here is Angela Unicornrider. And I am Caleb Frostsong. What school are you? Your sister and mother are life, but I’m ice.” Then he glanced at my clothes. “If you’re ice, I can get you some normal clothes.” I was still wearing blue jeans and a purple T-shirt from Earth.
“I’m ice,” I replied.
He smiled the biggest smile I’d ever seen. He turned to his wife and second born daughter. “Did you hear that? We finally have another ice wizard in the house!” He was obviously very excited. He turned back to me. ”Come on inside. I’ll give you some clothes and show you where you will sleep.”
I followed him inside and he took me into a small room. It was dusty, but cozy.
“Here,” he said as he sat down on the bed. “I know it’s a little dirty, but it will work, right?”
I joined him on the bed. “Yeah, it’s fine. Where are those clothes you were talking about?”
“Oh right!” He stooped over a wooden chest that was in the corner of the room. He took out two robes that were white trimmed with purple. But they obviously weren’t made for young girls like me. They actually looked like they belonged to an older man.
“Um, they’re boy clothes.”
“Yes, I hoped you wouldn’t mind for now. They are from when I was a boy, just after I’d graduated from Ravenwood. Are they okay?”
“Great,” I mumbled, “Not only am I going to be wearing boy’s clothes on day one, but I’ll be wearing outdated clothes as well.” Of course I didn’t say that to him. All I did was pick them up and I put them on.
“Good.” He grinned. “Now you’re ready for classes.”
“Classes?”
“Yes. You only have a short time to see Professor Greyrose today, but maybe it’ll be long enough for you to learn Frost Beetle.”
“Oh, you mean those kinds of classes? I took some of those from Malorn Ashthorn today.”
“You mean the student who teaches the death school? What were you training there for?”
“I felt bad for their school so I used my training point to learn Dark Sprite. I didn’t get it much. Pretty much all that happened was that he summoned a fairy thing and handed me these cards.”
“The death school. I can’t believe you decided to train second in the death school! Your mother and sister are both life, and therefore they despise the death school! Your mother won’t be happy about this.”
“Sorry! Why do they hate death?”
“It’s sort of how we don’t like fire.”
“We don’t like fire?”
“No, we don’t.”
“Oh.” I didn’t like that. I had really enjoyed meeting Professor Falmea today.
He sighed. “What’s been done has been done and we can’t change that. But I’d better tell your mother. Angela!” He called.
Within a minute, Rowan and our mom appeared at the door. “What is it?”
“Guess who just decided to train second in death?”
Then Angela (or should I start calling her mom?) glared at me and asked “It wasn’t you, was it?”
“I’m sorry! I didn’t know!”
Rowan was looking at me wide eyed. “You decided to train second in death? Wow, that’s totally awesome!” Then Angela glared at her. “Um, I mean, you should be ashamed of yourself. Death is terrible and evil.” She rolled her eyes and glanced at her mom. Angela just smiled at her encouragingly. When Rowan looked at me again, no longer did she appear uncomfortable. Now she just looked curious and maybe even a little respectful.
“You’d better get going anyway. You don’t want to get a detention on your first day of school!”
So, I went back to the ice school. I was late because for most of the day I had been on Earth or meeting teachers or getting to know my new family. Classes had started hours ago. When I came in, I immediately noticed that the entire room was blue or white. The walls were decorated with snowflakes, and even the other wizards clothes were white, blue, or purple. At the front of the classroom, Professor Greyrose was drawing something on the board that looked like a big circle with little swirl marks coming off of it. When she saw me (which actually took about a minute because she was so absorbed in teaching) she smiled and said, “Hello Sierra Winterbreeze! Welcome to ice class.” She turned to the other students. “Everyone, say hello to Sierra. She is a new student in this Novice Ice Magic class.”
Everyone mumbled “Hello Sierra” before they returned back to doing whatever they had been doing. It looked like they were waving sticks around.
“Well Sierra, have you gotten your wand yet?”
“Um, I’m supposed to have a wand?”
“Yes. I guess that means you don’t have one yet. Here, I have a few.” Then, after rummaging through some of the stuff in her desk, she pulled out a black handled “wand” with a pretty white gem on the top. I held it in my hand. I tried to wave it around, and little snowflakes fell off of it.
“Now that you have your wand, you can take a seat. Go ahead, chose anywhere you want.”
I sat at the back where no one else was sitting. I guessed here wouldn’t be any different from the orphanage. I was used to people calling me weird, so this feeling of loneliness wasn’t new to me. But here, I wasn’t a freak. The people nearest to me were accidentally freezing their desk or giving their friends frostbite. It resembled the things I had done on Earth.
“Ok Sierra,” said Professor Greyrose, “Right now we are trying to make the ice symbol in the air. The ice symbol is on the board over there.” She pointed to the circle she had drawn. “The first person who manages to make it gets to learn Frost Beetle first!”
“Um, alright, but how do I do that? I don’t even know how to do any kind of magic!”
“Just focus your energy and think about what you have to do.”
I groaned in frustration as Professor Greyrose walked back to her desk. First, I tried to draw a circle in the air with my hand. Nothing happened. Then, I decided that I would use the wand and make the snowflakes come out again and try to get them to form a circle. But when I waved the wand again, no snowflakes would fall. I wanted to scream. I glanced around the room and tried to see if anyone else had any good ideas. But everyone seemed to be having as much trouble as I was. Some were even saying random words to make it appear. I guessed that might work, so I tried all the Earth wizard words I could remember. “Hocus Pocus! Abracadabra! Alakazam! Um, uh, I don’t know! Magicy icy thingy!” I finally realized that it wasn’t going to work. So, just then I remembered what my teacher had said to me: “Just focus your energy and think about what you have to do.” So, I grabbed my wand, closed my eyes, thought about the ice symbol, and tried to trace it in the air with my wand.
I heard a strange noise that reminded me of a blizzard. When I opened my eyes again, in front of me was a floating blue sign that looked exactly like the one on the board! I had done it!
“Well done Sierra! You did it!” exclaimed Professor Greyrose. All the other kids turned around to stare at me. I blushed. “Since you have done so marvelously, why don’t you come up here and show the other kids how to do it?”
What? I had to come up in front of the class? This wasn’t mentioned! Still, I didn’t want to get in trouble on my first day here, so I stood up reluctantly and placed myself in front of the Professor’s desk.
“Um, well, ok…” I began. “I, um, think that all I did was close my eyes and trace the symbol in the air.”
“No way! That can’t be true. I tried that and it didn’t work” called out one boy in the second row.
“You have to focus you energy on it.”
All the other kids began to try, and they found out that they could do it too. Professor Greyrose was beaming. After everyone had managed to do it, our teacher taught me how to do the first ice spell: frost beetle.
When I was walking out the door, I accidentally ran into a girl wearing a completely white robe with a blue hat and blue shoes. “Sorry!” I exclaimed.
“Oh no, it’s not your fault. I should have been watching where I was going. I’m sorry.”
Wow, that was a surprise to me! If this had happened back on Earth, the other kid would have started yelling right away. For someone to apologize for running into me was a huge difference!
“What’s your name?” I questioned.
“I’m Jasmine Iceflame. Your name is Sierra Winterbreeze, right? I thought you did a wonderful job at showing the class how to make the ice symbol.”
“Thank you.” I smiled at her. This girl was really nice!
“You’re welcome. It’s only true.”
“I guess I will see you in classes tomorrow then, right?”
“Actually, no. I graduated to Apprentice Ice Magic today. I will be taking those classes tomorrow.” “Oh,” I said sadly. “Well, I hope you have fun in your new class tomorrow.”
“I hope you have a good time in Novice Ice Magic as well. Good luck!”
“You too. Goodbye!”
“Bye!”
After school, I walked back to my new house with Rowan. I had found her waiting outside my classroom after I got out from class. I found out that Rowan didn’t always like the life school. She said that hardly any of her spells actually hit anything. They all healed. “I normally have to rely on my secondary school, fire,” she explained.
“Fire?” I asked, surprised. “How on earth did you get your father to agree to that?”
“Well, my mother thought that it would be a great school for me. So, after a lot of arguing, my dad finally agreed. And by the way, what is ‘Earth’?”
“Oh yeah, I forgot that you wouldn’t know that. Sorry. What are you going to do after school? I am probably going to do my homework, which is practicing making the ice symbol in the air and trying to improve the aim of my frost beetle. Do you have homework?”
“Not tonight. I’ll probably go to Triton Avenue to finishing up helping some of the people there.”
“Triton Avenue? Where’s that?”
“It’s in a gate in Olde Town. But you can’t go in there yet.”
“Why not?”
“You aren’t a high enough level.”
“Oh. What level do you have to be?”
“I don’t know. I’m level 8 and you’re level 1. So obviously, you must be at least my level to get in there.”
“How come you’re a higher level but I’m older?”
“Because level doesn’t matter how old you are. It only depends on how much magic you know.”
“Aww, that’s not fair!”
“Yes it is. I know Leprechaun, Imp, Legend Shield and Unicorn. I even know Fire Cat and Fire Elf and Glacial Shield. All you know is Frost Beetle and Dark Sprite! You wouldn’t be able to defend yourself against the monsters there. But I have heard that Unicorn Way needs help. Higher levels like me are too busy to deal with small low level monsters like the ones in Unicorn Way. Maybe you can go there to start.” Then Rowan had to stop talking, because we were at our house. That night, I was lying in my new bed when my mother came up. She smiled at me lying there. I smiled back. “Are you comfortable?” she asked.
“Yes, these sheets are nice and warm,” I answered.
“Well, just tell us if you need anything, sweetheart.” Then, she leaned over and kissed me on the forehead as if I were just a little girl. But I didn’t mind, because I had never been kissed by my mother before. I loved the feeling.
“Goodnight, Sierra.”
“Goodnight Ange- I mean, Mom.”
And before she left, I thought to myself, if this is a dream, then it sure is the greatest one I have ever had.
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