Way of The Wand
Chapter 25

Witches’ Cove and Tartian District were on polar ends of the city, which presented somewhat of a problem for Jira. How was she supposed to get that many students across town, everyday for several weeks? Maybe she ought to have listened to Arron’s idea of having only Tomi come to the Tartian Mansion.

Jira would have suggested they flew on their brooms, but of her fifteen pupils, only Lila would probably be able to successfully complete a journey that long on broomstick. Dizziness and fatigue would hit the remaining faster than a baby falls asleep.

It turned out the problem was no problem at all once Jira communicated her quandary to Arron Tartian.

He simply sent a fleet of carriages to Jira’s house, five in all. Jira wasn’t even aware that one person could own so many carriages. It seemed a bit excessive. Even her family owned just three. Nevertheless, she was grateful Arron was willing to lend out his carriages transport her pupils.

It delighted her pupils to know they’d be travelling in such chic style as none of them had ever ridden in a carriage before.

Brooms, carts and good old-fashioned walking were how they got from point a to b.

The comfort of travel made their one-hour long journey seem like a few minutes.

They alighted at their destination to find Arron waiting at the gates to welcome them in person.

While Jira went ahead of her pupils to exchange greetings with him, Tomi sidled up to Lila at the back of the file.

“Isn’t he the man your parents work for?” Tomi asked.

“Yeah, it’s him. This is the man responsible for overworking my parents.”

Tomi frowned. Arron’s extreme demands from his workers had denied Lila the opportunity to spend enough time with her parents. All the best carriages in the world could not make her overlook that.

“What are you going to do?” Tomi asked, keeping her voice low so the other students would not hear.

“What can I do?”

“Confront him,” Tomi suggested.

Lila stopped, her face taking on an expression of wild disbelief. “What’s that going to do?”

Tomi shrugged. “I don’t know, but if you don’t, I will.”

As Tomi stormed off, Lila remained motionless. Tomi was usually the timid one, not the girl threatening to challenge a powerful individual like Arron about his company’s policies.

What had gotten into her recently?

It been less than a week since Tomi was announced as the witches’ champion for the task of strength, and she was changing already.

Lila scratched her head. She hoped all was well with her friend.

Arron’s confident voice beamed into the crowd, snatching Lila’s attention.

He was going on about how his house would be their school until the tournament ended. They were welcome any time and had his permission to explore the grounds as much as they liked.

But as he went on and on, all Lila felt was a seething disgust. Her parents had missed her task because he wouldn’t give them the day off, and yet, here he was talking about how witches had to have one another’s backs. He claimed by inviting them to his mansion, he was doing his part to contribute to effort of making sure witches emerged victorious in the tournament. Lila wished his definition of contributing to effort did not include denying her parents the chance to watch her performance.

She wanted to stop him and scream “hypocrite.” But of course, that was out of the question. Jira might be the kindest person she’d ever met, but even the golden-hearted teacher wouldn’t tolerate such mannerless behaviour.

The group started with a tour of the mansion, stopping at the orchard, the mini art gallery, his garage with his collection of carriages and carts, and his stables, before finally entering the main building itself.

“Here it is,” Arron said, waving his arms around when they arrived at the courtyard. “This will be Tomi’s training ground for the next few weeks.”

Tomi scanned the scene.

It was to her liking. Eight columns lined each side of the courtyard, with long flowing banners pegged to the top.

Her eyes flicked to the arsenal of weapons mounted on a wooden platform down the end of the courtyard, and then to the twin cabinets adjacent to it, the first filled with books and scrolls, no doubt about fighting skills and military tactics, and the other holding an assembly of armour: helmets, gloves, chest plates and boots.

The coat stand sat a few feet away from the twin cabinets, holding old and worn out cardigans and cloaks

A dark teenage girl in brown robes was standing by the assembly of weapons to come over, waiting to the introduced to Jira and her students.

Arron Tartian motioned for her to come over. He patted the young lady on the shoulder and made the needed introduction.

“This is Zaria, a student from Thatchel Wizardry. It’s no Airad, but it’s the best I could do given such short notice—” He paused, bopping his head from side to side. “I did reach out to Airad but they made it crystal clear they weren’t going to let me have any of their students.”

“Thatchel is ranked fourth on the list of best wizarding schools in Edoh,” Zaria said, her soft voice a marked contrast to the hard lines of her beautiful face.

Tomi stepped forward and removed the cardigan she was wearing, unveiling the yellow dashiki underneath. “I’m ready.”

She handed her cardigan over to Timi, who then went with the others to take his seat on one of the benches arranged at the far left corner of the courtyard.

Tomi wanted to get this over with. She flexed her arms and moved to whisk out her wand, but just then, the large oak doors to the courtyard were pushed open, and a woman who Tomi figured was in her early fifties walked in.

Arron popped up from his seat like there was a nail on it. “Mother!”

Leornaria Tartian pinched the hem of her long black dress and raised it so that it stopped dragging on the floor as she walked. She paused and looked to Arron like he was the only one in the room she acknowledged.

Something in Arron’s countenance changed. “I didn’t know you’d be showing up today. Thought you said you had to go on a vacation.”

Lenoaria resumed walking, stopping again a few strides later in front of Tomi. She stared down the little girl like she wanted Tomi to melt. “I decided to postpone it. And you know, the reason I need that vacation is because Jira dragged all witches into a tournament we can’t win. I wanted to go away to forget about it, but it kept nagging at me, so I returned. I might as well come and see for myself how Tomi’s going to perform against Ms. Kalinda’s oldest child.”

“It wasn’t Jira,” Tomi said shrinking away from Leonaira. “Jira didn’t want to agree to the tournament. It was me. I insisted.”

“You?” Leonaria could not keep the surprise out of her voice. “You dragged us into this?”

“It wasn’t just her.” Timi’s voice came from behind. “We all made the decision.”

Leonaria laughed a laughter that made everyone in the room uncomfortable. Her throaty and guttural cachinnation seemed to have come out of nowhere considering the shrill and thin unnerving voice she spoke with.

She noticed the room’s coldness to her laughter and it only served to make her even more delighted.

“So, we’re in this mess because of the naivety of children. Why am I not surprised?”

Jira could tolerate a lot of things; the mockery of her students in her presence wasn’t one of them.

It was nothing but blatant disrespect to her, to her students, and to her profession.

“I don’t appreciate you calling my pupils naïve.”

The words came out of Jira’s mouth slow and deliberate, passing on a hint of rising anger.

Leonaria swivelled her neck so her eyes fell on Jira. “Do you think this is the first time someone has tried to pull something like this? How old are you? Eighteen? I know you might be too young to remember, but this isn’t the first time we’ve had a wizard fight a witch to prove a baseless point. It’s happened many times before, and it always ends the same way, with the witch losing.”

The older witch dragged her flowing black dress after her as she stepped away from Tomi to get into Jira’s face.

“You what happens after? Witchcraft loses more and more of its prestige. And this loss you’re walking towards might just be the last straw. But I guess I can’t expect you to be concerned. After all, you come from wizardry, not witchcraft.”

“My heritage has nothing to do with this,” Jira argued. Every time Leonaria brought up her wizard heritage, it cut into Jira like a knife.

She had to cut back, else Leonaria would never stop bringing it up and would continue to use it to invalidate her identity as a witch.

“And, I do understand what’s at stake here,” Jira said, “maybe you’re the one who doesn’t. You might be a witch, but you live a life of privilege and don’t know what life’s like for other witches. You don’t see how much they need this, how much the prejudice against witchcraft makes their lives miserable. You don’t understand how important it is to challenge that and put an end to it.”

Leonaria winced like she’d been hit by a painful spell. But her discomfort vanished as quickly as it came.

“You must be really silly if you think a tournament is going to end the prejudice against witchcraft. Besides, you have no idea what you’re talking about. I might have married into wealth, but I wasn’t born into it. I’ve seen all those things you talk about. I’ve lived it. I can’t say the same about you. You were born and raised in a cocoon of wealth, power and influence. Try as much as you can to run away from it, you’re still the queen of privilege.”

All subdued emotions had risen to the surface now and Arron knew should he allow this confrontation to stretch any longer than it already had, things would turn sour.

He threw himself into their midst and called his mother to order.

“That’s enough Mum.”

Leonaria swallowed the rest of her words and went to sit down. She took the spot to Arron’s left since Jira was already seat on his right.

She was careful not to glance in Jira’s direction, not wanting to push things above the tipping point. The tension in the room was ripe to burst, but she would not be the one to do it.

“Very well then,” Leonaria said to Tomi, “fight. Let me see if your skills match your naïve confidence.”

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