The shop was fairly large and well-equipped, brightly lit and obviously just for initiates, because the house-sized clothing section was a field of black, white and grey. The shopkeeper looked about sixteen, wore a pink blouse (which was none of the student colours) and had her eyes glued to a tablet.

I strode up to the desk and put on my biggest friendly-customer-smile. She glanced up. “How can I help you?”

“Do you have pitons?”

“Pitons?”

“Yeah. You know, those spikes you hammer into cliffs to climb them?”

“Uh… no. We do not. I can get some in, but they’d take awhile.”

“Never mind, it’s not all that important.”

The girl looked back to her tablet. She didn’t roll her eyes, but I got the distinct impression that she wanted to. I turned to survey the shop.

“You’re new, right?”

“Well, yeah. It’s the start of term.”

“No, I mean new-new.”

“I’m here on a scholarship.”

The girl gave me that automatic once-over that I was quickly learning to hate; a raking of the gaze down and back up my body, looking for the witch mark. “Well, if you need help, just shout out.”

“I’ll do so if I somehow get lost in this K-mart.”

It did look like a K-mart. Beyond being cut into the stone of a mountain and lacking windows, there was nothing about the shop that distinguished it from a normal shop in a normal town. Even the lighting was white instead of blue, which made it much easier to shop; I hadn’t noticed how hard the blue light was on the eyes until that moment.

To my right was a vast sea of clothing in more cuts and designs than I’d ever seen in one place, all colourless. Near at hand were plain trousers, and much further back were t-shirts and polo shirts, but between them were sarongs, those sailor shirts that Japanese schoolgirls wore, and what turned out to be a rack of turbans. There was no organisation by culture, gender, or even body part. And of course, right up the front was an extensive selection of mage robes, belts and hoods in a surprising array of designs for such a limited colour palate.

To my left, beyond the checkout and service desk, were books and stationary. A handy sign reminded me to check the New Students Information Page on the intranet and told me that while hardcopy textbooks were available for purchase, they were also free digitally on the intranet. Most of the textbooks were in Ido, but a handful of translations to other languages were available – I found “Campbell’s Biology 9”, “Fundamentals of Mathematics 6 – Algebra, Graphs and Basic Statistics” and “Basic Magical Fundamentals, Volume 3” in English.

Right. I should probably pick my classes soon.

Behind the books was an array of cutesy stationary in a rainbow of colour. I didn’t know how much actual physical writing I’d have to be doing and how much I could do on my tablet, so I grabbed some basic pen-and-paper supplies and moved on. The kitchenware and homewares sections were of no use to me, and I’d brought personal grooming stuff with me from home, so I moved through those sections without pause until I ended up in the very back of the shop.

Now, this was a magic shop.

The shelves in the back were as clean and well-lit as everything else, but they contained yellowing paper rolled into scrolls, metal and glass plates with unreadable diagrams etched into them, and rows of quills, calligraphy pens and brushes. Under a shelf of different coloured sealing wax was another shelf of ‘special’ sealing wax with labels like ‘contains 10mL/L virgin’s blood’ and ‘blessed under a blue moon’ and a bunch of others written in languages I didn’t know. A row of calligraphy pens was labelled in seven languages with “Runescribing pens – NIBS ARE VERY SHARP. DO NOT SHARE.” Above that were jars of gritty white powder labelled ‘wolf bone’, ‘bird bone’ and ‘monkey bone’.

After finding a jar labelled ‘human bone’, I decided I’d seen enough for one day.

I turned to head for the counter, but someone was blocking my path. He was about my height, and comfortable enough in his Initiate mage robes that I surmised he was probably from a mage family, like Max and the Magistae. His dark hair framed a round, pale face, hanging to just below his shoulders, and his cool eyes were fixed, unblinking, on mine.

“Um… hi?” I tried.

“They say you’re a witch.”

“Do they now.”

“They say you marched in and upset Alania Miratova and you won’t last two weeks.”

“’They’ are awfully gossipy, aren’t they? They haven’t told me anything about you, though.”

The boy crossed his arms. “You shouldn’t be here. We’re here to get a proper education for a very dangerous job, we don’t need you distracting us.”

“Yeah, well, you can take that up with the teachers or whatever. Can you move, please? I need to get past.”

He stepped aside. I rushed to the counter to pay for my things.

When I got back to the dorm, Max was in the room. As in, in the main room part, not behind his forcefield. He’d moved a desk out from behind an unused bed and was absorbed in one of many hardcopy textbooks.

“Getting a head start on studies?” I asked.

“That would be pointless,” he said. “I don’t expect any of our classes to be difficult enough to warrant it, and anything I wanted to study out of interest I would already have started on at home.”

“So what are you – ”

“Something I might need your help with, actually. This book has an exceptional section on the history of Skolala Refujeyo and it still doesn’t have the answers I’m looking for. Unless I want to bother a teacher over something extremely trivial, I’m going to have to resort to…” he shut the textbook with the unnecessary force of an irritated reader. “Physical investigation.”

“You know you don’t have to be this circular when you say stuff, right? You could just say, ‘Kayden, will you help me? I’m trying to figure out this thing.’”

“Very well. Kayden, will you help me? I’m trying to map this part of the school.”

“We have a map.”

“You have remarked yourself that it is a terrible one. It shows only a small radius around the tablet’s user, with directions to one’s destination. The selection of destinations is incomplete and poorly categorised, and there are no full-school maps, or even maps of a reasonable area, anywhere that I can find on the intranet. That is strange, right?”

“Everything I’ve seen here is strange. Honestly, with the staff behaviour, the intranet, this weird bed forcefield thing that’s way more complicated than just putting in doors, and the lake monster that nearly drowned me, I’m running on the theory that this whole school is just run really really badly.”

“That is very unlikely. In any case, I think I may have figured out why there are no maps.”

“Well? Spill it.”

“It is because the school cannot be mapped. I’ve been trying, to figure out efficiency of classroom and facility use and build a schedule. It’s not possible. The school does not seem to obey the normal rules of three-dimensional space.”

“Well, that’s just stupid.”

“I know, it sounds ridiculous; but my investigations show that – ”

“Oh, I’m not doubting your investigations. I totally believe that this place would have weird dimensions and violate physics. I’m saying that it if that’s true, it was a stupid way to build a school. Or build anything.”

“Well, I’m given to understand that you have more experience in this sort of work. Would you verify my conclusions?”

“You want me to pace out the weird areas myself.”

“Yes, please.”

“Sure. Take me to the impossible physics.”

Twenty minutes later, I was carefully pacing a series of corridors for the third time. I glanced behind me at a piece of tape on the wall, and nodded.

“Yep,” I said. “This is impossible. Non-magically, I mean. I start outside the bedroom door we marked, pace approximately one hundred and fifteen metres, turn left, another hundred and fifteen metres, left again, another hundred and fifteen metres, another left, and one hundred and fifteen metres later I look left to see an unmarked door in a completely different corridor.”

“But you said last time that your distance measurements are imperfect and you might be walking a spiral, as ridiculous a design as that would be,” Max said. “Or there might be a slope too small to detect and you’re walking a helix.”

“Yeah, but see that bit of tape on the wall? That’s the corridor I marked next to the bedroom, to the right instead of the left. Both corridors open onto the same corridor, but the previous corridor isn’t here any more. This one’s replaced it. That’s impossible physics, alright.”

“That’s good information to have,” Max said, jotting something down in a notebook. “I suppose we should confirm the other two anomalies I found, and then try to figure out the patterns of movement that reach to different corridors.”

I groaned. “Are you going to make me brute-force this through endless corridor walking?”

“No, no; that would be unnecessary. I will simply look up the directions to and from various destinations on my tablet, and note the paths. I can’t make a two- or three-dimensional map of the school if we’re correct in this, but I can make a… multidimensional one, as sets of paths and locations.”

“I think your goal of ‘efficiency’ is going to be a lot less efficient, given all the work you’re gonna do to achieve it.”

“Oh, this is no longer about efficiency.” There was a light in Max’s eyes. A slightly worrying enthusiasm I hadn’t seen in him yet. “I was told a lot of things about this school, but nobody ever warned me about the changing corridors. I don’t think my family knows.”

“And that’s… good? Bad?”

“It is interesting. Oh, look, company.”

Four initiates were walking toward us. The Magistae, a girl with a heavily scarred face whom I didn’t know, and the rude boy from the shop. I did my best not to look annoyed.

“Max! Kayden!” Magista rushed over and gave each of us a hug. I tried to figure out what to do with my arms. I wasn’t used to being hugged by girls – Melissa and Chelsea weren’t huggy people. “Look, Max; Clara’s here.”

“You’re too young,” Max told the new girl bluntly. She shrugged.

“My parents insisted. I’m at a fourteen-year-old academic level.”

“Forget academic level. You need to grow more before you channel magic. The strain could kill you.”

“Some seem to have survived under the influence of magic when young,” the rude boy said, his eyes on me.

“Simon, don’t be rude!” Magista gave his arm a playful swat. “Max, Simon, have you…?”

“Acanthos, right?” Simon asked, his unsettlingly solemn gaze resting on Max instead. “We might have met at a party or two, when we were very little.”

“That’s right. But you have the advantage of me, I’m afraid.”

“Madja.”

“Madja? Really?”

Simon smiled a slow smile. “I know; it surprises a lot of people.”

“And you’re… keeping the name, Simon?”

“How about you, Max?”

Max inclined his head a little, conceding the point.

“This is all very interesting,” Clara cut in, “but don’t we have, y’know, places to get to?”

“I’ll escort you, Clara,” Simon said, offering his arm like an old-timey gentleman. “You know how Magista is when she gets talking.”

“You mean, civil?” Magista fluttered her eyelashes at Simon, who gave her a very solemn smile and lead Clara away.

“Sorry about him,” Magistus said. “Kind of a buzzkill, I know. But you know all about that kind of thing, right, Max?”

I cut in. “Max has in fact informed me that he is exceptionally fun at parties.”

“Have you seen him at a party?” Magista asked.

“Well, we’ve known each other less than two days, so…”

“So we’ll have to have one!” Magista grinned. “A start-of-term party. I’ll see if we can organise the right kind of food, and there should be plenty of rooms free. Both of you are invited, of course, and do bring that other roommate of yours, um…?”

“Kylie.”

“Yes! Kylie! I think she and Clara will get along fantastically! We can introduce the both of you to everyone properly… do you have proper clothes?”

“I’m wearing clothes.”

“No, real clothes, not commoner stuff. You know, robes. You should buy some. I’ll set everything up and then inform you of the date, so try to keep flexible for now.”

“We should catch up,” Magistus said.

“Right. Yes. Great to see the both of you!” Magista rushed down the hall after her brother.

“Well,” I said after a minute. “I can see why you didn’t want to share a dorm with them, but at least they’re friendly.”

“Oh, yes. You can’t fault them for being unfriendly. If you decide to go to this party, be careful. She’s being political.”

“With me? Why? I’m not even a mage! I’m just here to control this curse, and in six months I’ll be gone.”

“Yes, you’ve made that abundantly clear. But how is she to know that?”

“I told her I’m cursed.”

“Which is how you got here, yes. But your scholarship doesn’t have a time limit; there’s nothing that says you can only stay six months except your decision. Plenty of wit – of cursed people go on to become mages, so unless you tell her otherwise, she’s naturally going to assume you will, too.”

“Wait,” I said. “What?”