The Magic Factory

“Butterfingers,” the headmaster said. “You’d best catch her before she smashes. I’d hate for all that potential to be destroyed.”

Oliver caught on quickly. This was the test. Whatever he did to save the infant world would in some way reveal his specialism.

He leapt upward, surprised to find that gravity had loosened its hold on him. Using his arms to propel himself, he was able to swim through the air. Professor Amethyst sat watching from the couch, shrinking into the distance as Oliver swam on.

He could just make out the light of the pearl in the distance. But around him everything grew quiet. The silence was almost tangible. And soon it was joined by an almost suffocating darkness.

Oliver felt his heartbeat begin to quicken. The light of the orb was growing fainter as it disappeared into the vacuum that had suddenly opened around him. He was moving too slowly to reach it. No matter how hard he pumped his arms and legs, he couldn’t get enough speed up to gain on it. But there was a yearning feeling in his chest, like a calling. It was overwhelmingly strong, a force compelling him to save the infant world.

There was only one thing for it. He would have to summon his powers.

Oliver gave himself one more propulsion forward with his arms. As he soared upward he took a deep breath to steady himself and closed his eyes.

At first it was too difficult for Oliver to slip into the strange half-awake, half-asleep state within which he could summon his powers. But then, as though calling to him from somewhere far away, he felt the call of the pearl. Felt, not heard, for it was like a deep yearning feeling that took hold of every fiber of his being.

All at once, as if suddenly switching to the correct frequency, Oliver’s mind clicked into gear. He felt his powers ebbing inside of his mind, growing and swelling. He visualized the orb—delicate, lost, and in danger—and fixed the image in his mind.

He opened his eyes, his focus hazy, barely there, barely in reality, but with the pearl still fixed within the center of his vision. Slowly, he held his hands up, palms cupped, and gently raised them to cradle the pearl. But he couldn’t feel her. The orb was just a mirage.

So Oliver pushed out with his mind, willing the orb, wherever she was, to disband her atoms and rearrange them in this place, in the safety of his hands. He pushed and pushed, demanding the new reality take place, the one that existed in his mind. His forehead began to bead with sweat. But he wouldn’t give up. Until the little orb was safe in his hands he would not rest. He felt a duty to bring it to safety, to care for it.

Suddenly, a feather-like sensation made his fingers tingle. It was coming from the orb. It was working! He was making it real, literally plucking it out of space, atom by atom, and rebuilding it within his gently cupped hands.

He felt the weight of the pearl increase. The light it emitted grew stronger, brighter, hotter. She began to feel heavy in his hands, then all at once she was too heavy and the muscles in his arms began to strain. But still he held on and willed the orb to submit to him. It grew hotter still, until it felt like he was holding a lightbulb. Oliver’s whole body began to tremble from the effort. He gritted his teeth. Pain raced through his hands, searing his skin.

Then suddenly everything stopped.

Oliver blinked. He was back on the couch, sitting opposite Professor Amethyst. The orb was gone.

Panting, disorientated, Oliver looked down at his hands. They weren’t blistered at all. There was no sign he’d ever held the searingly hot pearl.

“Where did she go?” he said with anguish, looking at the headmaster. “The pearl! I lost her.”

Professor Amethyst leaned back. One eyebrow slowly rose up his forehead. “The pearl…?”

Oliver felt dazed from the abrupt change, from the sudden absence of the tiny world he’d felt so drawn to protect.

“I lost her,” Oliver stammered. He felt a heaviness on his chest. “Does that mean I’ve failed?”

“You cannot fail the test, Oliver.” The headmaster smiled. “The test is to see in what way the sixth dimension affects you. You report your visualizations back to me and I evaluate your experience. Tell me more about this pearl.”

Oliver blinked. “Wait. Visualizations? You mean to say none of that was real?”

The headmaster nodded.

Oliver sat back with a huge exhalation. He tried to collect his thoughts, to accept that there was no lost infant world floating out there in danger. He couldn’t quite believe that none of what he’d just been through had really happened. It had felt so real. And that pull inside of him to protect the baby universe wasn’t something he’d ever felt before in his life. How could he have just thought it up out of thin air?

“The pearl…” the headmaster pressed. “I’m intrigued to know more about it.”

Oliver came back to his senses. “It looked a bit like the little balls of light that were floating around when I first came in. Only more spectacular. You told me it was a pearl. An infant world, or dimension. And I had to protect it.”

The headmaster’s expression was unreadable. He seemed to be grappling with his thoughts. Then he stood. “Come with me.”

Oliver stood and followed him across the room. As they walked, the facade of the study that Professor Amethyst had created around them began to melt away until Oliver was walking across a black marble floor in a vast, dark room. From far in the distance, he saw a small glow. Immediately, he felt a tugging sensation deep in his gut.

“That’s her,” he exclaimed. “The pearl!”

His desire to be near her grew even stronger with each footstep.

“Very interesting,” the headmaster muttered.

They drew up to a plinth upon which, floating in midair, was the pearl from Oliver’s visualization. Seeing her again caused a wave of emotion to race through him. He reached for her instinctively.

Suddenly, the headmaster batted his hands away. “Don’t touch!” he said sternly. “This is the Orb of Kandra. It powers the entire School for Seers. It’s our life force. The most precious item in the whole universe.”

Oliver stared at it, mesmerized. It was exactly the same as the pearl in his vision. But how? How had he conjured this item in his mind when he’d never before seen it in his life?

“I don’t understand,” Oliver told the headmaster. “What does it all mean? What am I?”

“Visualizing this is a very good sign, Oliver,” Professor Amethyst told him. “It means you are deeply connected to the universe. It means your specialism is indisputably atomic. You are the one we’ve been waiting for.”

Oliver was stunned. He’d all but given up hope that he may be the powerful atomic Seer everyone had been waiting for. The news left him with a mix of emotions. Excitement but also apprehension and a little bit of fear. It was a big piece of news to get his head around. The weight of expectation pressed down heavily on his shoulders.

“But tell me more,” the headmaster prompted. “What happened next in your vision?”

“You threw the pearl and I had to try to save it,” Oliver said. “I floated through space but couldn’t get to it fast enough. So I used my powers. I visualized it appearing in my hands.”

“And it did?”

Oliver nodded. “Yes. At first.”

“What do you mean at first?”

“It burned me,” Oliver replied. “It got so hot it made my skin hurt.”

Professor Amethyst stared at him with rapt attention. “What did you do with it?”

“I held on,” Oliver told him. “Then suddenly, it was all over and I was back here.”

A small smiled played across the headmaster’s lips. “Well, well, well. What an intriguing outcome.”

“What does it mean?” Oliver asked.

“A bromine Seer would not get burned. But a cobalt Seer would not hold on.” His grin widened. “Which means you, my boy, are neither cobalt nor bromine. You are both.”

Oliver’s jaw slackened. Of all the outcomes he’d been imagining, that was not one of them.

“Both?” he questioned. “How can I be both?”