Not far from the fountain of the wise, in a small park, Elizabeth sat at a marble table, with legs carved in the form of elephants holding the table with their trunks. The girl was reading, and Alexander was sitting on the fresh, lush green grass reading too.
"Alexander, do you read this word 'distillation'?" the girl asked.
The boy looked in the book. Bored, he said:
"Yup ..."
"If you mix a feather of a swallow ...swallow tail with frog eyes and ... So if you mix a feather of swallow tail with frog eyes and ..."
The girl closed the book. She looked at Alexander, smiling.
"It was much easier and nicer with pictures. Too bad that spell only took effect for the magic class. But, as Mr. Knudlac said, learning requires work and rehearsal, and I will work and rehearse."
Alexander was reading, so bored that he barely nodded to let her know he agreed with her.
"Thank you for helping me," she smiled.
"It's not my pleasure," replied the boy sarcastically. "It was the professor's wish. A decision that isn't exciting for me."
The girl's smile is gone.
"I like the way you taught me to read. And thank you for your patience ... I mean ... you were a very good trainer."
"I know," the boy said sharply. "But that does not mean I enjoy it. Instead of perfecting my spells and studying to become a great wizard, I waste my time with you. A girl. Girls have nothing to do with great wizards."
"But Miss Harmony. She is a great wizard ..."
"Dad says she's just a poor potion maker. Which is not big deal. It does not mean that she is a wizard. And if I think well, that will be your skill limit too… If you're lucky enough to have the memory she has."
The girl, though affected by the boy's words, did not show this.
"What are you reading?"
Elizabeth got close to him and saw on one of the two pages where the book laid open an image of an odious creature, looking like a giant, with no hair on his head, not even where the eyebrows were supposed to be. But he had a lot of hair on the rest of his body, as if he were an aurochs.
"A book for advanced students."
Indeed, the book had on the other page almost as many words as the whole book that the little girl read.
"What a strange ... and odious creature. What is it?"
"An ogre," the boy said as bored as before.
"All the ogres look so ... hideous?"
"No, some look more beautiful. They've got hair on their head and face, with many insects, flies of all kinds and even birds that nest in their hair and beard," Alexander smiled proud of his joke.
"Can you tell me about him?"
"Nope!" replied Alexander sharply.
But suddenly, as if he remembered who knows what joke, the boy smiled. He got to his feet and looked right into Elizabeth's eyes.
"Still, if I think better, I tell you, because all the land around us is roamed by these evil creatures. Some say there are as many as rats in the canals below London."
The girl was not scared, even though the boy gestured as he turned around her and each time uttered words in a tone that was too loud, trying to scare her.
That's what Alexander needed. The boredom disappeared from his face when he saw that the girl got he tried to scare her, but she kept smiling.
"You smile, of course you smile. Like any outsider. Like any man so poor in spirit, so uneducated, that he does not know about dangers around us. But, I ... I not only read and learned a lot about these hazards, but I also had to deal with them."
The boy took a short break. Elizabeth's smile, little by little faded away.
"My great-great-grandfather had such a creature ... an ogre, as a servant. They are very…"
"Of course he was your servant, he couldn't be your master," Miss Edwards smiled again.
"Do you let me continue or ...?"
"Yes, sorry."
"He was a servant because they are very strong. They were reliable for hard work. They could lift weights. They protected men against any danger. It is said that they could even fight with dragons. But grandfather considered him more than a servant. He built a mansion for him and for his family, larger than ours, to fit their size. He and his family lived happily next to us. Not as servants, but as friends. Until one day when everything got a bad turn ..."
"So ... they couldn't feel like your friends. I wonder why." the girl smiled. "Maybe because it's hard to be friends with the Soimesti family?"
"Everything took a very bad turn," the boy grabbed her arm, a sign that he didn't want to be interrupted. "One evening when all my great-grandfather's family gathered at the mansion, all the relatives from overseas, over sixty people, something terrible happened. And my grandfather personally saw it, as he arrived at the mansion only two days after, because the ship he travelled with was delayed ... to his luck."
The boy had a tear in his left eye. He looked at the girl, straight in the eye.
"When he arrived at the mansion he found broken doors and on the steps at the entrance, blood pools. He entered the mansion, and the main hall looked even worse than it was on the stairs. Blood, human flesh, arms, legs ... heads. A carnage!"