DER FEHLER

German, "the mistake; the error".

A bully with charisma and top marks is still a bully. -- Patrick Ness, A Monster Calls

When someone relived a situation with no memory of how things had turned out because of their decisions the last time, they naturally made the same decisions. Naturally those decisions had exactly the same consequences. And naturally those consequences built up until they became something far worse than the choices that spawned them.

Some things were out of anyone's control. Karandren planned to visit Diarnlan, give her the professor's gifts, and beg her to talk to her teacher about taking him on as a student. He had no way of planning for her teacher to hear about the monster attack and pay her a visit just as he reached the village. He certainly didn't know that her teacher had noticed Diarnlan's abrasive personality and come up with a hare-brained, ill-advised scheme to change her for the better -- or so she hoped.

As mages went Teivain-ríkhorn-hrair was neither the wisest nor the most powerful. She was, however, the most eccentric. Her methods of teaching included posing absurd questions about ridiculous situations, such as what sort of spell was needed to rescue a cow who'd been catapulted to the moon. And now she had devised a new way to teach her long-suffering students.

That decision was one of many small factors that cemented the course of the third time loop.

"What do you mean, I have to teach some imbecilic teenager?!"

Diarnlan had thought she was used to her teacher's oddities. Pointless questions, riddles without answers, practicing the same spells over and over then being told to cast a completely different one... Those were all the things she had learnt to expect. She had even come to accept them to some degree. At least they made her learn something, though not quite the things she expected to learn. But this? What could she possibly learn from this?

Teivain-ríkhorn-hrair continued to drink her tea placidly, looking as if she'd solved all the mysteries of the universe. There were times when Diarnlan dearly wanted to punch her teacher in the face.

"It's not just you. I've decided all of my students would benefit from teaching someone else for a few months. Or longer, if this works as well as I hope. It'll give you all an opportunity to discover how much you really know. I'm going to write to the academy's headmistress today and ask her to send students for all of you."

Diarnlan ground her teeth.

Her teacher frowned. "Stop doing that. It's terribly bad for your teeth."

Out of pure petty spite Diarnlan ground her teeth more fiercely.

A year of teaching one of the most prickly and overly-sensitive magicians in Avallot had taught Teivain-ríkhorn-hrair a few things too. When to back down over something trivial, for instance. She shook her head like a disappointed parent but said no more about it.

"The students should arrive in two weeks' time. You can draw up lesson plans and decide what you're going to focus on before they arrive. Try not to teach them anything dangerous. No meddling with dragons, no matter how much they ask. And--"

Someone tapped the front door. Diarnlan stifled a growl. Could she never have a minute's peace? She remained seated at the table and ignored the noise. Whoever it was could just go away.

Tap-tap-tap. Tap-tap-tap.

Her teacher raised an eyebrow. "There's someone at the door."

"I know," Diarnlan said through gritted teeth.

"It's common courtesy to answer the door." The blasted mage had the audacity to use what her students called her lecturing voice, as if she was imparting knowledge most people would never hope to gain.

Diarnlan had never cared for common courtesy or other people. She stubbornly refused to move.

Teivain-ríkhorn-hrair shook her head sadly. Anyone would have thought she was surprised and disappointed by her student's behaviour. Diarnlan knew better. She had never made any attempt to conceal her real personality. Her parents knew it, her fellow students and teachers at the academy knew it, and her current teacher knew it before she accepted her as a pupil. If the mage found her too obnoxious to deal with, she should have sent her away long ago. It was too late now to expect to change her.

Knock-knock-knock. Whoever was at the door hit it more loudly this time.

The mage got up and went to the door. Diarnlan watched with a mixture of exasperation and disgust. Could no one give her any peace? Was her house to be constantly invaded by unwanted visitors?

"Hello," a voice said outside.

It sounded like a young boy's voice -- or perhaps a young teenager's. Diarnlan scowled. She'd had trouble with the village boys taking short cuts across her garden before. If this little brat dared to bring the news his friends had squashed her tomato plants again, she'd throw him into the sea.

"My teacher's sent me with some gifts for the magician who saved us yesterday."

In hindsight it had been a mistake to kill that monster. All day yesterday she'd had to deal with obnoxiously grateful people who'd never given her the time of day before the monster-slaying. Now there were more blasted visitors bearing useless gifts. At this rate she'd have to leave the country until they forgot about her.

The boy continued, "Are you the magician's maid?"

Diarnlan had intended to pretend she wasn't in the house. That remark startled a laugh out of her anyway.

Her teacher made an offended noise. "I most certainly am not, young man. I am one of the Great Mages."

For a moment the boy spluttered incoherent apologies. Diarnlan could just imagine how red his face must be. Luckily for him her teacher decided to change the subject.

"You say your teacher has sent gifts? Who is your teacher?"

"Professor Thýrvul. From the academy. She's just one of my teachers, but she was with me yesterday when the monster attacked so she thought--"

The memory of Teivain-ríkhorn-hrair's ludicrous scheme was all too fresh in Diarnlan's mind. A sinking feeling filled her chest. Someone somewhere had a very twisted sense of humour. This was the sort of coincidence that should only happen in potboilers and threadbare alibis. It had no business happening in real life, and especially not when she would be dragged into it.

"Indeed!" Teivain-ríkhorn-hrair's voice showed her thoughts had gone along exactly the same line. "What a coincidence. I'm about to write to your headmistress. Perhaps you can help answer one of my questions before I write. Do you know if any of your classmates would be interested in a few months of studying with a different teacher? With the magician who killed the monster, for example?"

Oh no. Oh no, no, no. This couldn't be happening. From where she was sitting Diarnlan was hidden from the door by part of the kitchen wall. She couldn't see her teacher and her teacher couldn't see her. She glared fiercely at the wall anyway, in the vain hope her displeasure would somehow travel through the brick and halt Teivain-ríkhorn-hrair before this insanity went any further.

"Everyone would want that," said the boy. "Can I put my name down first?"

The mage laughed. Diarnlan ground her teeth so loudly it was a miracle the other two didn't hear. "I'll have to talk to your headmistress first. All the details still have to be ironed out. But I'm sure you'll be one of the students chosen if this plan goes ahead. What's your name?"

"Karandren," the boy chirped. "Karandren Hriaþansson."

That afternoon the headmistress of Laoivere Academy received a letter. She received many letters every day, but this was the first one in years from a Great Mage. She read it several times. Then she called a staff meeting and showed it to all the other teachers. Everyone exclaimed and wondered at it. There was never any doubt of what the answer would be. If a Great Mage wanted to do their students the honour of letting her students teach them for a while, then of course the academy staff would accept.

No one ever spared a moment to wonder if the mage's pupils were qualified to teach. That would have been downright insulting. No one asked any of the questions that should have been asked before they agreed.

And so their fates were sealed.

When the students arrived Diarnlan had not warmed up to the idea at all. She had, perhaps, resigned herself to it. But the thought of teaching a group of spoilt, selfish brats only worsened her already near-perpetually bad temper.

True to his word, Karandren was the first of the little pests to put his name down for her to teach him. He wasn't alone. All but one of the twenty students wanted Diarnlan to be their teacher. (The only one who didn't was the niece of one of Teivain-ríkhorn-hrair's other students, and wanted her aunt to teach her.) It turned out that slaying a monster was just the sort of thing to make teenagers think you were the greatest magician in the world.

Diarnlan really regretted ever interfering with that brute.

In the interest of fairness Teivain-ríkhorn-hrair assigned two students to each of her pupils. She only had ten, so that worked out well enough. Just to prove the world was cruelly unfair, the two Diarnlan got were Karandren and Erdreda, the student who hadn't wanted her to teach them. She wouldn't have been happy with any students, but these two were especially annoying.

Karandren was by far the worst. Erdreda was an idiot who couldn't tell the difference between a grimoire and a cookbook, but Diarnlan had expected nothing else. Karandren, on the other hand, was actually good at magic. Very good at it. Frighteningly good at it, some might say.

On the very first day of lessons she walked into the room she'd set aside as a schoolroom and found Karandren levitating his books above his desk while he made his lunchbox fly around the room. Such control over magic took years of long, hard study to master. Diarnlan still couldn't do it and she was at least ten years older than this arrogant little upstart.

He had the audacity to smile at her and greet her with a cheery, "Good morning, teacher!"

A bitter, unhappy little voice at the back of her mind said, full of self-loathing, There's nothing you can teach this boy. He's a better magician than you can ever hope to be.

When she was unhappy Diarnlan knew of only one thing to do: make everyone around her equally unhappy. She glared at the boy with such fierceness an onlooker would have thought he was the vilest criminal in the kingdom.

"Stop that absurd display at once. Your teachers at the academy might let you waste your time with this nonsense, but I most certainly won't."

Karandren's smile vanished. It was replaced by a look of hurt and confusion. That only infuriated Diarnlan more. How dare he look as if she was being unreasonable? The fact she knew perfectly well she was being unreasonable just added more fuel to the fire.

Once upon a time Karandren had been delighted at the thought of a monster-slayer teaching him. That was before he met Professor Diarnlan. Now he longed to be back at the academy. The teachers there at least tried to hide their dislike of him behind a veneer of courtesy. Diarnlan clearly thought he wasn't worth that much effort.

Nothing was ever good enough for her. If he understood a lesson as soon as he heard it she accused him of not paying attention and lying to hide it. If he went over the lesson again just to make sure he really did understand it, she complained he was taking too long. If he handed in an essay that was the required length and finished in the required time she would ask, in that horribly icy voice, "Who did you copy it from this time?"

Displaying his ink-stained fingers only made her snort and tell him there was a sink and soap in the bathroom, and civilised people knew how to use both. The use of the word "civilised" reminded him of all his most hated classmates at the academy. The ones who thought a half-human hybrid couldn't possibly be as good as them. The ones who actively tried to harm him when they found he was much better than them.

There was only one good thing he could say about Diarnlan. She didn't play favourites, unlike his teachers at the academy. She treated Erdreda with exactly the same scorn she showed Karandren. In that case her scorn was actually justified. On the very first day Erdreda botched a spell so badly she incinerated part of the floor. Some teachers would have whipped a pupil for such a catastrophic mistake. Diarnlan didn't have to. She told Erdreda exactly what she thought of her. Mere minutes into that lecture, her hapless pupil was crying her eyes out.

Karandren hated many of his teachers. He hated how they dismissed him at best and treated him like something they scraped off their shoe at worst. He hated how they overlooked his magic skills. He hated how they accused him of hurrying through his work when he completed a lesson long before everyone else -- for Diarnlan wasn't the only one of his teachers who did that. He hated how they reserved all their gushing praise for some imbecile who had less magic in their whole body than Karandren had in his little finger. Above all he hated how they looked down their noses at him as soon as they heard about his parentage.

(That was just about the only thing he couldn't complain about Diarnlan doing. He went to considerable pains, including bribing one of the academy teachers with money he'd "borrowed" from a bully, to keep his parentage hidden. No one could tell he wasn't fully human just by looking at him. It was both annoying and -- in a bizarre way -- slightly reassuring to find someone whose dislike of him had nothing to do with who his parents were.)

Of all the teachers he hated, Diarnlan was the only one who he truly wanted to impress. She'd killed a monster as if it was just a pesky insect! She was a student of one of the Great Mages! No one could doubt her magical powers, while there was considerable room to doubt if some of the academy's teachers had enough magic to light a fire. So Karandren tried harder and harder to get just one word of praise from her.

It never came. No matter how well he followed her instructions, no matter how good his spells were, she never gave him so much as an approving nod.

His only consolation was that she never gave anyone any signs of approval. That wasn't much of a consolation for a boy who had never heard any teacher tell him, "Well done."

Day after day, week after week this unpleasant state of affairs dragged on. Diarnlan continued to hate Karandren. Karandren continued to hate Diarnlan while at the same time miserably longing for her approval. Such a situation could never last forever. It was destined to end in an explosion.

At last the explosion came.