I glanced sideways at her. One eyebrow was arched into a perfect smirk. “What? I watched you stand off with me sisters, holding more power than the lot of us and you didn’t think I would realize? Not to mention ya blacked out the whole building yesterday. Britta’s been having a bird over it, she has,” she whispered. “Jest bide yer time. The old bitch will like to shite herself.”
Just that fast, my overwhelming anger turned to amusement at the mental picture she’d just painted. In fact, I almost laughed out loud, but kept it to a quiet chuckle. Miss Berg noticed and glared but finished out the rest of her roll call without comment.
“In this class, we will explore what is known about your abilities, what is not known, and what is suspected. We’ll cover some history, learn how these powers have been put to use in different cultures around the world, and we’ll do a great deal of actual practice in developing your full potential. That will be important, class, for many reasons, not the least of which will be that Mr. Jenks will be expecting you to be able to use your gifts under stress in your survival class.
“Now, for the rest of this session, I’d like you all to group up by ability or in my witches’ cases, affinity. Many of you are self-taught; others maybe have some training. You can all learn something from one another. Now go ahead and group up,” she said.
The witches were almost even in affinities, except for myself. I could have worked with either Tami and Zuzanna or the little Earth witch, Michelle. I chose Michelle as it only seemed logical.
She looked at me a touch hesitantly. I was still clutching a fistful of soil and I gestured with it. “Let me go put this back,” I said, pointing at the potted plant.
“That was really cool. Could you teach me to do that?” she asked.
“You never made dirt people?” I asked.
She shook her head. “My mom had me at a commune near Seattle. She mostly used her abilities to help grow the food we ate. That’s how I learned, on plants.”
“Oh, right. Makes sense. My mom showed me this when I was like six or something. I kept up with it for years, making the courses harder and my dirt dudes more complex.”
We were at the corner of the classroom farthest from the door. The lily was a big one and the pot it lived in had plenty of dirt for us to work with, so I just sat on the polished concrete and made a pile of my dirt in front of me.
Michelle dropped down cross-legged and after a moment, she reached into the pot and helped herself to some potting soil. I noticed that the rest of the class had spread out around the room as well. The witchcraft contingent seemed to have this half of the room while the psychic kids were on the side nearest the entrance.
Tami and Zuzanna were nearest to us, sitting on the open concrete, passing spheres of fire back and forth, while ten feet further away, the telekinetic kids were taking turns lifting and moving pens.
“So, first thing is to form it into a shape. I think two legs are easier to move than four, so you might want to stick with a person shape,” I explained, pressing with my will until the soil assembled itself into the same little dirt man I had made before.
“Wait, did you say animals?” Michelle asked, eyebrows up.
“Yeah, at one point, I made a dragon and had it breathe fire on my little dirt warrior. Kind of made up my own little war game.”
“But in three-D. Beats video games all to hell,” she said. Her pile of soil struggled for a moment, fell back down a bit, but then shifted up into a person shape.
“Yeah that’s it,” I said, but she was frowning. A second later, her person took on a decidedly feminine figure, complete with little dirt curves in all the right places.
“Golem Barbie?” I asked.
“Of course. Why settle for a dumb old dirt guy when I can make a lovely young loam princess,” she said, laughing. “Now what?”
“Now the hard part. Actually, it’s probably perfect that you made yours a girl because you have to sort of push yourself into it. Kind of project your mind into the form of it,” I said, concentrating to do