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What happened next was hard to follow.
At first it looked like the smoke was thickening, circling and jamming into an ice cream-like swirl.
The first tiny flash of lighting inside the handful of fog was a pretty surprise.
The second, larger one was accompanied by a slight crash as it hit the grass at Cori’s feet, and we all realized that instead of a smoke screen, Cori had created a storm cloud.
“That’s enough, Cori,” Eve called out loudly.
But Cori’s face was smooth and calm now, her eyes focused on something far away, as if she were no longer present in her body.
The thunderstorm in her hands ballooned outward, sprinkling anyone within a ten-foot radius of her with a small, but driving rain. Several students squealed and scrambled out of the way.
“Smoke screen, Cori, not thundercloud,” Eve called out, striding over to try to put a stop to it.
Cori blinked as if waking up and lifted her hands slightly.
At just that moment a bolt of jagged lightning blasted out of her hands, hitting a statue of an archer on the edge of the circle.
Amazingly, the statue wasn’t harmed, but instead blinked to life. He lowered his bow and arrow, and looked around at all of us in confusion as we stared up at him.
There was just enough time for him to take a breath and open his mouth as if to speak, before he turned to stone once more.
For one golden instant, we all caught our breath.
Then the statue toppled over, his body position no longer balanced in the way the sculptor had intended.
After that, everything seemed to go in slow motion.
My eyes traced the trajectory of the falling statue to Esme’s head below, but there was no way for me to get to her in time to do anything about it.
Eve flew across the circle, moving faster than I would have thought possible, muttering the words of a spell as she did.
Esme barely managed to raise her arms over her head as the statue fell.
A gust of air moved past us all, rustling our skirts and playing in our hair, and somehow halting the fall of the statue long enough for Esme to move out of the way, but not before the archer’s stone arrow made contact with her outstretched arm.
Eve released her spell and the statue hit the grass with a resounding thud as it cracked into two pieces.
“My arm,” Esme yelled dramatically, as her friends gathered around her. “That thing almost killed me.”
I looked over to see if Cori was okay, but she was already running back toward the school, sobbing.
I moved as if to go after her.
“Stay, Bella,” Eve commanded. “Let her be.”
I stepped back, sorry that I had to leave my friend, but unwilling to argue. I was in enough hot water already with being so distracted all day.
“Okay, let’s see this injury,” Eve said, striding over to Esme with a dubious expression.
The other girls stepped back to reveal Esme, sitting on the ground with her dress arranged becomingly around her, clutching the nasty-looking cut on her forearm.
“It’s going to scar,” she moaned. “How can I be forced to take classes with an out-of-control gutter witch who is allowed to put anuglyscaron me without punishment?”
“If you’re worried about ugliness, you might want to watch your mouth, Esme,” Eve said sharply as she snatched a scarf from the neck of one of the onlookers and wrapped it tightly around the wounded arm. “We don’t use those slurs here. I’m going to the library for a healing book. Try not to start a war, or any more rumors, while I’m gone.”
The group went silent.
