“So, why were you using a Wind’s Whispers spell to send your idle chatter into the maze?” Nelson shoved his face past Wendy and asked the question in a deliberately provocative manner.
“What do you mean, idle chatter?!” As expected, Norish was incensed.
“You heard what I said!”
“Stop it, both of you!” Wendy pushed Nelson away again.
“But why did you cast the Wind’s Whispers spell at Lord Boruqe’s statue?” Almark asked, standing behind the two.
Norish hung her head bashfully. “It doesn’t…mean anything…”
“Lies!” Nelson chimed in.
“I said stop it!” Wendy snapped.
“So you have your reasons. It’s okay if you don’t want to tell us,” Almark said. “But when I heard your whispers… Norish, the way you talked… I mean, I haven’t known you for long so I can’t really say, but it was like…”
Wendy turned around to look at Almark. Nelson did the same, curious to see what he’d come up with.
“…your voice was really kind and gentle… Yeah. It was like you were talking to a grandfather you really love.”
Norish gulped, which Nelson instantly spotted.
“Norish, are you…Lord Boruqe’s granddaughter or something?” he asked.
“No, you dolt!” Norish hollered and turned to look at Almark. “You’re a strange one, Almark. It’s like you can see right through me.”
“It’s just the impression I got, is all.”
“Do you have time to go out to the garden again?” Norish said, glancing into the room.
Almark glanced over her shoulder and saw Lilty facing the desk. Right; Norish was her roommate.
“Can we talk over there?” Norish asked before shutting the door behind her.
It was much darker the second time they visited the garden. Nelson cast an illumination spell in his hand, and the four friends walked in silence. Before long, they arrived at the maze’s entrance, and after walking through it for a while, Norish spoke up.
“…Back when I was a first-year, people teased me a lot for being a crybaby. Eston and Porois, especially.”
She mentioned two boys Almark wasn’t familiar with.
“They’re a couple of really mean boys,” Wendy told Almark. “Both are in Class 3 now.”
“I have a bit of a harsh tongue, but I cry at the drop of a hat, so they kept having fun at my expense. They’d bully me pretty much every day.”
Nelson guided them silently, lighting the way with his spell.
“When I’d come back from class, I was so hurt and angry I always wanted to cry, but my roommate, Lilty, was really lonely too, and I didn’t want her to see me like that.”
Almark listened to Norish’s story wordlessly. Lilty had mentioned that she cried all the time during her first year because she missed her parents. Did Lilty notice Norish was crying every day, too?
Nelson’s flame gave the occasional crackle.
“One day, I went into the maze on a whim. I thought I could cry here, and no one would spot me. But since the boys played here all the time, I never ended up doing that …”
She must have meant Nelson and his friends.
“But then I discovered something incredible.”
Nelson silently turned left at the opening in the thicket, and the others followed.
“And that was…him.”
They reached the central plaza, and Norish looked up at Lord Boruqe’s statue.
“I never noticed it until then, but when I looked up at it that day, I realized…he looks a lot like my dead grandpa. I always loved him.”
Norish was from a relatively wealthy farmer’s family and had a beloved grandfather. He was originally a scholar, but for as long as Norish could remember, he had been retired and simply worked on his farm. He wore a robe every day and needed glasses because of his old age. He lived the best of his golden years with his nose always in a book.
“So when we got the news I could enter the institute, Grandpa was the happiest out of everyone.”
Norish explained, with a very soft voice, that her beloved grandfather passed away before she entered the institute, and that the Lord Boruqe statue looked just like him.
“Obviously, it’s not exactly the same if you look at the little details. But at the time, the only thing on my mind was, ‘Grandpa is right here!’”
After that, Norish would go see “Grandpa” whenever she felt down. In their second year, the classes were shuffled, and her bullies were sent to another class, meaning she didn’t have to cry as much. But the habit stuck.
Since Norish had a knack for wind magic, she had recently started experimenting with the Wind’s Whispers spell, and decided to send her messages to “Grandpa.”
“I just told him whatever came to mind. What I had for dinner, what happened that day, I’d tell Grandpa about anything. I’d use the window in my room to send my words through the wind.”
Norish would no doubt have done the same if her grandfather were still alive, but she was so embarrassed she always waited for when Lilty was out, and since she was still practicing the Wind’s Whispers spell, her messages ended up fragmented, or they would either fail to reach Lord Boruqe’s statue or disperse the moment they did.
“So that’s how the mysterious voice happened…,” Wendy whispered. “But Almark, I’m surprised you figured out it was the wind, though.”
“Yeah, I just figured since the maze was covered in hedges, the only place the wind would be blowing would be at our feet. But I felt a weak breeze on us the whole time. And based on the garden’s terrain, I thought the central plaza would be where the wind would gather the easiest. So I thought, maybe… But in the end, the reason the wind gathered there was because Norish sent it. I didn’t consider magic at all.”
“No, I think it was impressive. That kind of perspective is important,” Wendy said. “Besides, Nelson and I didn’t notice the breeze.”
“I didn’t expect this to end up becoming that kind of ghost story,” Norish muttered bashfully. “I guess I should rethink how I practice…”
“Awww!” Nelson suddenly exclaimed. “I was thinking I’d get to go on a manly adventure, but it was all just magic in the end!”
“Hey, Nelson, you shouldn’t put it like that,” Wendy chided, but Nelson ignored her and made right for the exit.
“And Norish, if you want to practice magic to talk to your ‘Grandpa’, that’s fine!” he said, his back turned to them. “But if you need someone to lend you an ear, you could always just talk to us!”
“Huh?”
“You said it was Eston and Porois, right? I’m looking forward to seeing those two doofuses in the martial arts tournament!” Nelson then walked off, not looking back at the other three. “Come on, let’s head back! Can’t believe we wasted our time coming here.”
“Hey, Nelson, why do you have to put it like that?” Almark groused, but Wendy tugged on his arm.
When he looked at her, she giggled and whispered, “Remember how his light spell wavered on the way here? Nelson got pretty mad when he heard Norish was bullied.”
Almark did remember the way Nelson’s flame crackled and wavered occasionally. That was because his heart was wavering.
“It’s how he expresses his friendship… Even if it is a little hard to tell,” Wendy explained, to which Norish smiled.
“Back in our first year, Nelson called out to me when I was crying in the maze here. We were in different classes then, so he was just a stranger to me. But he invited me to play hide and seek with a really carefree smile. I was so startled I ended up saying no, but honestly, it made me happy.”
“So from now on…”
“Yeah. Maybe I can talk to him, but…” Norish trailed off for a moment, her expression composed. “I’m not sure if he’s exactly dependable.”
Almark looked at Nelson walking away, uncertain he’d heard her correctly. As far as he could tell, Nelson seemed like a pretty dependable person.
“Wait up, Nelson!” Almark called. “Let’s go back together!”
“I’m good. You can go before me,” Nelson said without turning around. “Make sure you walk the two of them back.”
Nelson’s flame grew distant. Wendy, still giggling, produced a flame of her own to light the way back.