Sparks by RS McCoy Read Free Book Online Page B

they weren’t in the dining hall. I didn’t want to spend more time there than absolutely necessary.
    If I knew Micha at all, he would be with the animals, so I headed for the only ones I could sense. I wasn’t as nearly skilled as Micha, but they were clear enough to point me in the right direction. I found the stables on the southern side of the grounds fairly quickly.
    Sure enough, Micha stood in dark green coverings like my own and stroked the nose of a horse. “Micha,” I shouted. I remembered how I must have looked when he saw me and his thoughts became concerned. “My mentor and I got off on the wrong foot,” I explained. A bit of an understatement, but oh well.
    “Really? I like mine a lot.” Micha pulled up the image of a middle-aged man named Edmon. He’d be tutored in his abilities to track and communicate with animals. From what I could tell, Edmon was kind-hearted, and Micha was excited to learn from him. That’s how it’s supposed to be.
    “He seems great,” I said honestly.
    “Have you seen Khea?” he asked me, though he thought it well before he spoke aloud. I was more than a little disappointed; I had hoped he would be able to tell me where she was.
    “No, you’re the first I’ve seen. Did she go back to the common room after I left?” Micha shook his head. She never came back. His curiosity about where she was and what type of Spark she had paled in comparison to my relentless fear for her safety. Where could she be?
    “I’m going to go look for her. Do you want to come?” Of course, Micha wanted to stay with the horses; he felt better there. “Never mind, you should stay,” I added when I sensed his answer.
    “You sure?”
    “Yea, I’ll see you around. Let me know how it goes with Edmon.”
    “I will.”
    I glanced around the open area that surrounded the stables before I left. She was possibly the smallest person at the school, which reminded me of Mother’s old idiom about needles and haystacks, though I wasn’t sure what it meant exactly. Either way, I knew I had my work cut out for me. I walked the grounds, always keeping track of how to get back to my room since each corridor looked much like all the others.
    At one point, I came upon a large open area where several students engaged in combat training. Some were as young as nine or ten summers. They wrestled in pairs, some even going so far as to tumble on the ground like angry siblings. Older kids fought each other with knives or swords and, for all intents and purposes, seemed ready to kill each other. They wore no protective gear, and their blades seemed sharp enough to cause serious damage if one of them made even a single mistake.
    Past another set of corridors, I found an open lake, densely surrounded by trees on three sides. I moved the other direction; it was all I could do to avoid my urge to run back to the woods. The next few hours passed slowly, and I found just about everything except for Khea. Myxini was far more vast than I could ever have imagined, filled with botanical gardens, libraries, an archery range, and countless other rooms meant for study or training. I didn’t see Khea anywhere.
    I managed to make my way back to my room by dusk, though I’d failed to find the girls’ quarters. Without the daylight, there was little more I could do. I was starved, so I hoped, of all places, I’d find her in the dining hall. I dreaded the thought of going back, but I had to eat sooner or later.
    I was relieved to find the dining hall far less crowded than it was at lunch. There was a considerable amount of mental chatter, but it was a vast improvement. Micha didn’t appear to be anywhere, let alone Khea, so I went through the process and sat alone with a plate piled with roast duck and steamed cabbage. I tried not to think of Khea, or Avis, which just pushed me toward Edmon and how I wished I had a mentor like him. Instead of an instructor that wanted to teach me to control my Spark, I managed to be assigned