“Auromancy isn’t some showy or extravagant sport, like Pyromancy or, god forbid, Electromancy,” Jo barked at me from inside the Auromantic chamber. She was a big woman in her late fifties; her blue plaid sleeves were rolled up past her thick forearms, displaying a triangular purple Auromantic tattoo. Her frizzy red hair was pulled back in a low ponytail, her yellow safety glasses sat high on the wide bridge of her nose.
“No offense,” she remembered to add.
“None taken.” I watched the rest of the arena through the purple-tinted plexiglass, though nothing interesting was happening out there, either. Other than two women setting up a Bunsen burner in the Pyromancy quadrant, and a worker on a cherry picker re-plastering the charred ceiling above the Electromancy triangle, the rest of the arena was empty.
“But it sure as hell is the most advantageous of the Elemental disciplines,” Jo continued. “You’ll see Auromancers out on fallow crop fields usin’ Wind to spread seeds and mix the nutrients in the dirt, or transferrin’ solar energy usin’ air currents, or even sailin’ across the open ocean without wastin’ a drop of fuel – who needs diesel when you have a constant air stream, am-I-right? –Hell!” she barked, not really paying attention to whether I was listening or not, “I know this one Auromantic adrenaline junkie who paraglides off cliffs and buildings for sport, never havin’ to worry about the wind changin’ directions on him outta the blue. For his next trick, he tells me he’s gonna jump out of an airplane without a parachute. Ha! Show me any old Water-monger who can fly, will ya!”
She laughed loudly then, slapping her thigh.
I skipped out on a hot breakfast with Aiden for this? I crinkled my nose glumly.
“Now, Savannah tells me that you’re already out there, makin’ tornadoes and knockin’ over trucks. Atta girl! Just make sure ol’ Tom knows first, so ya don’t get Mr. Strauss ridin’ up on your ass. I tell ya, that man’ll get his laced panties tied in a bunch if you even use just the tiniest bit of Wind to, say, knock your ex-husband’s front yard oak tree down on his stupid, rusty old truck. How would anybody’ve even known it was Auromancy, huh? Like we can’t get the occasional sudden windstorm in Eastern Colorado…”
I could’ve ordered bacon, extra crispy… A Belgian waffle with maple syrup…
Jo’s sharp voice snapped me out of my mouth-watering food fantasy.
“You with me, girl?” her voice cracked like a whip.
I nodded quickly.
“Now, as I was sayin’, since you’re already out there makin’ tornadoes and what-have-you, I was thinkin’ for today’s lesson we’d focus a bit more on your control an’ precision. Now, I rolled in this real special doohickey that one of the other instructors came up with – real brainy, that lady was.” She gestured to a contraption in the middle of the walled-in triangle that looked like a cross between a clothes line and a protracted windchime. Seven long, silver metal cylinders, each about three inches in diameter, hung half a foot from one another, dangling from a rope that was suspended about six feet in the air by two poles. The poles themselves were fixed to a wooden platform with four wheels.
“It was a pain in the ass rollin’ this thing across the grass, but it’ll be worth it by the end of the lesson,” Jo said, leading me over to the far-left side of the windchime apparatus.
“What do you call this?” I asked, curiously regarding the suspended metal pipes. They were all cut in varying lengths, arranged from shortest, on the left, to tallest, on my right; like a large-scale panpipe. I gently touched the pipe closest to me. The metal was cool and smooth.
“I like to call it the auro-monica, but the name hasn’t caught on with the others yet,” Jo said, shrugging. “Mostly we just call them Wind Pipes.” She pushed one of the pipes closest to us. As it swung, a pendulum inside hit the interior of the metal tube, releasing a long, resonating note. “You know how to play Mary Had a Little Lamb, don’t you?” She pushed on three of the chimes to show me, calling out the notes as they rang out.
“E, D, C, D, E, E, E – got it?”
I nodded, though I was thoroughly confused.
“Good! Well today’s lesson will be you playing those notes perfectly, using only the wind to push the chimes, one at a time… and you can’t go home ‘til the notes are perfect.”
I stared at her like she was crazy. “O…kay,” I answered slowly. “That can’t be that hard.”
“Yep, that’s what they all say,” she grinned widely.
***
Two hours later, I left the Auromantic chamber with my hair a tangled mess, dead leaves and twigs sticking out in all directions, and a worse headache than before. I felt near-manic, too, still hearing those same three notes pealing again and again in my head. Jo was right about one thing – that lesson had to have been the hardest, most frustrating one yet. If I never had to hear “Mary Had a Little Lamb” again, it would be far too soon. I shook my head to try to clear both the horrible tune from my brain and the twigs stuck in my hair.
“Hey Aspen!” Eileen called from the Terramantic triangle. Two young boys, about the age of ten, were milling about behind her. One was setting rocks down on the ground in a line, while the other was kneeling in front of them, breaking the rocks one at a time with his mind.
That’s pretty cool, I thought admiringly.
“What, uh… what happened to you?” she asked as she approached, surveying the dead leaves and detritus in my hair. I spit out a piece of leaf that was stuck to my lip.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” I muttered.
“Jo?”
“Jo.”
“Say no more – I’ve heard the horror stories. You coming to trivia tonight? I convinced Ori to be on the team, too! It was pretty easy, once I mentioned you might be there.” She grinned.
I hesitated. I really did like Eileen; Ori seemed like a pretty good guy, too.
“I had already made plans for tonight,” I said, the regret in my voice authentic. “Can I take a raincheck?”
“Ori’s gonna be so bummed,” Eileen pouted teasingly. “Here, take my number,” she said, pulling out a small notebook identical to the one she had given me yesterday. She saw me looking and laughed. “You caught me – I have dozens of these lying around. Anyway, here,” she tore off a piece of paper and gave it to me. “Let me know if you want to hang out sometime.”
I took the paper and carefully folded it before putting it in my jacket pocket.
“I’d really like that,” I tried to smile warmly.
If I haven’t fled the state by then.