“Oh, look, Alex,” Samheed said. “They’ve added bright colors to make sure you don’t miss it.”
On a normal day, when Alex might have been in a better mood, he would have laughed, or fired back a reply just as snide. But there hadn’t been any ordinary days for Alex in well over a month. And even though he was thrilled with his first weeks of warrior training, he was still very hurt that Lani kept knocking him off his feet with spells even though he’d asked her to stop, and he still felt bad about the mess he’d caused with the governors’ visit, and he was still very lonely, missing Aaron, and probably in need of a kind word, but none of his friends seemed compelled to give it now that he’d snubbed them so much. And he didn’t much care for Samheed’s sarcasm this particular morning after he’d gotten a full dose of mocking from Clive already, who had laughed and laughed when Alex had failed several times to cast an invisibility-paintbrush spell on himself.
And so, instead of ignoring it, Alex shoved his chair back and leaned toward Samheed, his clenched fists on the table, a wild look in his eye. “Not funny, Burkesh.”
“Geez, Alex. It was just a joke.”
“I’ve had about enough of everybody’s blasted jokes,” Alex said.
“Ease up, man,” Samheed said, pushing his chair back slowly. He knew Alex was no match for him, and he didn’t want to have to punch him in the face again.
“Me? Ease up? Oh, that’s ripe.” Alex slowly moved around the table toward Samheed.
Lani stood up. “I’ll take him down for you, Sam!” She began speaking an incantation.
Alex whirled around to face her. “And you! One day soon you’re going to be very sorry you did th—” He stopped short and stared as Lani pointed up in the air above Alex’s head and shrieked, frozen mid-spell. She fell to the floor. Immediately the dining room erupted into shouts and fearful screams.
“What—who—” Alex whipped around to see what had happened.
Samheed, a shocked look on his face, pointed upward and then dove under a nearby table, while Meghan scrambled out of her chair and ran for safety.
Alex looked up. Descending toward their table at a rapid rate were the enormous back paws of the great winged-cheetah statue, nearly upon him. He dove off to the side, almost getting slammed across the room when the tip of the cheetah’s stone wing caught him on the back.
Simber landed gracefully, though his wings flapped with such force that the wind blew the teacups right out of their saucers. “Enough!” he roared, looking at Lani. “Save yourrr spells forrr yourrr enemies!”
And after a moment of complete silence, the enormous creature ceremoniously folded in his wings, turned about carefully in the space between tables, and loped gracefully back through the dining room and down the hallway to the front entrance, where he leaped up and assumed his normal position.
Ms. Morning rushed over to the table, helping Lani sit up and checking to make sure Alex was okay. Samheed crawled back out from under the table and brushed himself off, and Meghan returned wide-eyed as well. The room remained hushed as the four stood there looking at each other. Lani was still a bit pale and shaky but otherwise unharmed … that is, if you didn’t count the pointing and laughing from others, for days and years to come, for being the one who drove Simber just a little bit over the edge.
The four, no longer having much of an appetite, turned without further ado and made their way to the tubes, meeting again in the theater a split second later. There was no need to mention the event again; one of them wished to forget it entirely, while another hoped to remember it forever as the time the most frightening creature in all of Artimé came to his defense. Desperately Alex wished it would set in motion a better, happier time.
He bit his lip, thinking he was a big reason things weren’t good now. He glanced at Lani, feeling bad about his outburst. He really needed to get a handle on things. “Sorry, guys,” he said as they walked toward their seats. “I’ve been kind of a jerk lately.”
Meghan smiled, and Samheed punched Alex lightly in the shoulder. Lani just nodded and kept her eyes on the floor. “It’s okay,” she said finally.
The seats in the theater filled rapidly, and one could hear murmurs through the crowd, half of them discussing the drama of the dining room, and the other half wondering what could be so important as to prompt a meeting such as this, with all of the creatures, students, instructors, families, even the little children required to attend. Simber and Florence appeared rather suddenly as well, standing elegant and tall near the back, and Meghan wondered for a moment how they could have possibly fit in the tubes. But when Mr. Today walked briskly to the stage, all stray thoughts ceased along with the buzz of the crowd.
Most of the creatures sat near the front since they were shorter than the humans. The winged creatures hovered at the ceiling, including Jim, who sort of bounced up and down like a yo-yo in his slow-flapping fashion. Each push down with his powerful wings brought him to the ceiling, and each flap up allowed him to sink several feet, sometimes more, such that the creatures sitting directly below him glanced up nervously from time to time just to make sure he wasn’t about to free-fall and make feathercakes out of them.
“Good morning,” Mr. Today said. The crowd was silent. Even the platyprots held their tongues whenever Mr. Today began speaking, though it was surely very difficult for them, especially when they could have had such a large audience.