The next morning, Simon got up shortly before everyone else. He got dressed and checked on Luna’s food and water while Jesse was in the shower so as to avoid any awkwardness with him. Finally, he got his seeker’s compass out of his safe and placed its lanyard around his neck. He then left just as Jesse was getting out of the shower and headed for the Great Hall.

  He sat by himself in the Great Hall to eat breakfast, until his roommates arrived. Jesse and Ricky didn’t come to sit with him, but Tom did.

  “So tell me,” asked Tom, “what’s going on?”

  “Going on with what?” asked Simon.

  “You and Jesse are hardly talking to each other!”

  “That’s because Jesse’s being mean to me,” said Simon.

  “Why?” asked Tom.

  “Because I told him how to pronounce ‘Producite amicos’,” explained Simon.

  “Well,” said Tom, “that’d explain why he’s been calling you ‘Professor Pronunciation’.”

  “Professor pronunciation?” replied Simon, flustered. “What was I supposed to do? Just let him pronounce it wrong and have the summoning chip blow up on him during the trip?”

  “Hey,” said Tom, “I’m not saying he’s right. But you two are bros! You can’t just go the rest of the school year not talking to each other.”

  “You’re sounding like Ethan and Lacy,” retorted Simon.

  “Don’t know them too well,” said Tom. “Don’t know Lacy at all. But they sound like they know their stuff.”

  * * *

  After breakfast, Simon made his way to Lumière Tower. Instead of heading up to Professor Hathaway’s classroom as he had on the weekdays, though, he searched the ground floor for the Adventure Room. It didn’t take him long to find it.

  It was a fairly large room — over twice the size of the typical classroom. It had more locker ports than most — a group of them on each wall — but not nearly as many as the base of the North Wing Needle Tower did.

  The perimeter of the room, aside from the door and the few groups of locker ports, was lined with chairs. A few first-year students whom Simon didn’t really know were on those seats, but not many, as Simon was clearly one of the first students to arrive. There was only one table, at the far end of the room, with a few large boxes upon it. Behind that table, Professors Sinclair, Hathaway, and Pendleton were seated.

  “Good morning, Simon,” said Professor Hathaway as Simon came into the room.

  “Good morning,” he said, nervously.

  “Eager to get a core for your wand?” she asked.

  Simon nodded his head, vigorously.

  He found a seat on the left-hand side of the room that wasn’t too close to anyone else and just sat there in eager anticipation. He couldn’t wait till the trip was over and he had the core for his wand in hand.

  A few minutes later, he heard the door open and someone else come in — but as he was fixated on the patterns of wood on the floor, he didn’t see who it was. “Hey there, Clara,” he heard Professor Sinclair say. He looked up and saw a familiar face, Clara Lawson.

  “Hi, Professor,” she responded.

  “Hi, Clara,” Simon called — still somewhat nervous, but happy to see his friend.

  “Oh, hi, Simon,” she said, turning toward him. She came and sat next to him. “Haven’t seen you in a while,” she said.

  “That’s because we’re not in the same class,” he responded. “I take it you are in Professor Sinclair’s homeroom?”

  “I am,” she answered. “And I guess you’re in Professor Hathaway’s homeroom?”

  “I am,” said Simon. “I wonder why Professor Pendleton’s here.”

  “I don’t know,” admitted Clara.

  As the two sat, more and more students arrived. As the seats at the room began to fill up, Professor Hathaway came forward with an orange shoulder-bag and got out from it a brown box the size of a matchbook. About a halfway out from the center of the room, she unfolded it. Immediately, one of the two parts that it opened up to sprouted four metal legs from the outer side as it grew to the size of a seat. The other one of the two parts that the box opened up to grew into the form of a backrest — and before Simon knew it, there was a chair in what had previously been standing area in the room.

  No sooner was this transformation was complete than did Professor Hathaway pull another such box from her shoulder-bag and repeat the whole process. She kept doing this over and over, leaving a little more than a foot between any two seats. She kept doing this until the part of the room that previously had been just standing space had several chairs in it.

  “If you want,” Professor Hathaway called out on her way back to her seat, “you can start picking your groups. You’re going to be going in groups of three or four.”

  A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  “Wanna team up?” asked Clara.

  “Sure,” answered Simon, “but don’t we need another person or two?”

  “That’s okay,” she said. “We’ll find someone.”

  A few minutes later, Lilith and Samantha came into the room. They waved at Simon, who waved back at them.

  “You know them?” asked Clara.

  “Yes,” answered Simon. “They’re Lilith and Samantha. They live in the same tower as me.”

  A few moments later, Clara got up and sat next to the two new arrivals. After talking to them for a few moments, she motioned for Simon to come over. Reluctantly, he got out of his seat and moved over to the vacant one that Clara directed him to.

  “Well,” she said, “it turns out that Lilith and Clara’s roommate is in the infirmary.”

  “Oh no, she got out of the infirmary last night,” corrected Lilith. “She’s alright now, but the nurse said she should go on the field trip with the Sunday group instead of the Saturday group.”

  “Oh, I’m glad to hear that,” said Clara, happily, and then turned back to Simon. “Anyway,” she continued, “they also need another person or two to join them. So what do you say to teaming up with them?”

  “Okay,” said Simon.

  After a while, once the room had filled up more, Professor Hathaway repeated her instructions for the students to form groups, but added one more thing. “And once you have your groups,” she said, “I’d appreciate it if you move your seats together so Professors Sinclair, Pendleton, and I can tell who’s in a group. I’ve left enough room between your seats that you should have no trouble doing this.”

  Simon, Clara, Lilith, and Samantha moved their seats just a little bit closer to one another, as Professor Hathaway had instructed. A few minutes later, Professor Pendleton approached them with a clipboard in hand.

  “Okay,” he said, “Let me see if I’ve got it right. Simon Corbin, Clara Lawson, Lilith Collins, and Samantha Rogers. Is that right?”

  “Yes,” said Clara. The other three nodded in assent.

  “Okay,” said the Professor. “I’m going to need one of you to go up to the table and get four bags from Professor Hathaway.”

  “I’ll do it,” said Samantha as she stood up.

  She headed off to the table. A few minutes later, she came back with four brownish off-white felt tote bags. She handed one bag to each of her team-mates and sat down with the one that she kept for herself. “Professor Hathaway says we shouldn’t open our bags yet,” she said. “She’ll explain in a few minutes what’s in them.” She then held up a folded sheet of parchment. “This is for whichever one of us is going to be the group captain,” she added.

  Simon and Lilith both looked at Clara, and Samantha handed her the parchment.

  The room continued filling up. More and more students kept going up to the table to get their teams’ tote bags. Simon sat in his seat, his tension rising by the moment. Finally, when he felt that his heart was beating in his throat, Professor Hathaway stood up with a tote bag of her own and addressed the students again.

  “Okay,” she said. “In a few minutes, we’ll be heading out to the woods, where y’all will have your chance to get cores — which as I’ve previously said are the only thing you need to put together your wand that isn’t included in your wand construction kit. You should all have gotten a bag by now — but you shouldn’t have to open it, though, till you’re in the woods.”

  She lifted her bag, pointed at the side-pocket, and continued. “In the side pocket of your bag, I’ve put three summoning chips. We went over in class how to use them. Three chips might not seem like a lot, but really one is all you should need to do what you’re setting out to do. The other two I put in there just in case — so I expect that each of you will be leaving here with three summoning chips and coming back with two.”

  She then opened the main compartment of her bag. “The main compartment is where you will put the core for your wand once you receive it,” she said. “You will know when something you get from a creature is intended to you for that purpose because of an unmistakable blue aura that will shine around it when you hold it.” She lifted a jar from out of her bag and continued. “You each have a mason jar, which you may or may not have to use. It’s in case your core is something that is small enough that it might get lost if you just put it in your bag by itself. So don’t worry if your core doesn’t fit in the jar — because if it’s even close to being large enough for that to be a problem, then you obviously don’t need the jar. Any questions so far?”

  A first-year from Hickory Tower raised his hand. “You there, Tony?” the Professor pointed at him.

  “What are these parchment things you gave each group for?” asked Tony.

  “I’m about to get to that,” said Professor Hathaway. “Are there any questions about what I’ve said so far?”

  She waited a moment, and nobody else raised their hand.

  “Okay then,” she continued. “I’ve given each group an enchanted map of the woods around Misty Peaks. The map clearly lays out what part of the forest you’re to be in when doing your activity. Each map also has a tiny red mark that moves to show exactly where you are in the forest. That map is to be held by whichever member of your team y’all decide is the team captain. The team captain’s job is to keep the group together and keep the group on course. Everyone got that?”

  She paused as several murmurs of assent came from the crowd. “What are the compasses for, then?” Simon asked Clara, who just shrugged her shoulders.

  “Now,” said Professor Hathaway, “some of you might be wondering why you need your seeker’s compasses if you have the map.” Simon was sure that there was no way she could have heard him ask Clara exactly that question. “Well, you need them in case something goes wrong. If someone gets separated from the group, if the map gets lost, or if anything else goes sideways, you need to be able to find the map and each other. So that’s why I’m going to have you all do some bookmarking here. First thing, I want each of you to bookmark the location of this very room in this very tower. How you do it will depend on what model of seeker’s compass you have — and you should have gotten instructions how to do it when you got your compass.”

  Simon looked around the room to establish a clear visual reference to it in his mind — with the knowledge that it was this exact room, and not merely one like it, that he might have to find later. For the kind of seeker’s compass he had, that was all he had to do to bookmark the location.

  “Next,” she said, “I need each of you to bookmark your team’s map, so you can get your compass to point to it wherever it is.”

  As Clara held up the map in front of her, Simon focused on it with the same intentness that he had moments earlier focused on the room itself.

  “Now,” said Professor Hathaway, after everyone had had a chance to bookmark the room as well as their team’s map, “If you’re the team captain, I need you to bookmark every other member of your team. And if you’re not the team captain, then you just need to bookmark whoever is.”

  This time, Simon didn’t really have anything to do. He knew Clara well enough that he already had her bookmarked as far as his model of seeker’s compass was concerned. He still took a quick intentional glance at her anyway, just for good measure.

  “Okay,” said Professor Hathaway, after a few minutes, “now that everyone has their bookmarks — if you get separated from your team, I need you to use your seeker’s compass to find your way back to wherever your captain is. And team captains — if anyone in your team gets separated, I need you to guide your group to wherever they are. Got it everyone?”

  Again, the crowd offered only murmurs of assent.

  “Very well,” said Professor Hathaway. “Let’s get going then.”