~Chapter Six~
I kept touching my face as I descended the stairs. My skin was as smooth as it had been before Eleanora’s whip. When I reached the bottom of the steps, my classmates were filing out of the doors. Dena and the others saw me coming down the stairs and waited for me to catch up.
“Your face!” Ispin said when I got closer.
“What about it?” I asked, trying to reign in all kinds of sarcastic responses.
“It’s healed!”
“Well I hope it’s an improvement on before,” I said, and then, eager to get off of the topic, “Where are we headed now?”
“Riding lessons,” Dena said, still examining my eye suspiciously. “Should be interesting.”
It was. The sun was burning down, and the stables were even hotter. We spent the first half an hour in there, learning how to take care of the tack and our horses. After polishing leather for what felt like half of my life, aching with muscles I didn’t know I had, we were allowed to lead our horses to the paddock beside the stables, and mount.
I managed to get my left foot in the stirrup, but I was too short to hoist myself off of the ground. After a few seconds of struggling, our teacher, Professor Alena, gave me a leg up, and I sat up proudly in the saddle. To my dismay, I realised that I’d been the last one to achieve this, and everyone was having a laugh at my struggle.
Everyone except Phoenix, who stared blankly ahead. I pulled a face at him when he turned away, and then immediately felt childish.
Once we’d managed to get lined up, Professor Alena began to instruct us in how to communicate with our horses. When we began to negotiate a course made out of old barrels at a walking pace, I noticed everyone else had to dig their heels in to convince their steed to move. Echo seemed more than eager to move off, and I adjusted my weight as I needed to. We manoeuvred the course with the most ease out of everyone and I was feeling a little better about myself when we were told to dismount. I did so, not very gracefully, my legs almost buckling when they hit the ground. The sun was beginning to set, but even so, we groomed our horses and cleaned the tack and then limped back to the Academy for dinner.
Classes didn’t really end when dinner did. My classmates set off to the practice hall to redo their lesson with Professor Yu, and Eleanora and I were assigned to the kitchens.
“Wash these,” the red faced head cook told us, pointing us towards a staggering stack of dirty dishes. “Clean enough so you can see your reflections. I’ll be the judge of whether they’re clean or not. No magic.”
She bustled off to yell at someone else, and Eleanora and I set to cleaning the dishes, avoiding looking at each other. After an hour, I couldn’t take it anymore.
“Do you really think yourself above them?” I asked her quietly, beginning to dry the plate she handed me.
“It is how we’ve lived,” she repeated. “For thousands of years.”
I didn’t try to speak to her again. I knew it was pointless.