“Now the thing about curses,” Seth said. He paused and bowed in Maggie’s direction, “If you don’t mind my building on Bethany’s response, Miss D’Iver?”

Maggie shooed a hand at him.“No go ahead. I’ll copy you.” She backed a few steps away to observe.

“No, no,” he replied, motioning her near again. Erik was reminded of two overly-polite gentlemen trying to enter a building and having an implied argument over who was politer: After you. No, no, after you.

“You’re never going to find your own way if you let me take the lead all the time,” Seth said.  “Consider me more of a scaffold. I’ve been doing this longer and I know the shortcuts, but it also means I’m set in my ways.”

“All right,” Maggie said. “But let me decide when to lead from over here because you’ve got a six foot wingspan and you gesture a lot.”

There was a ripple of laughter among the students and some nodding.

Seth smiled. “You’ve better judgment than I do, Miss D’ver. So!” he said, stabbing the air with a finger. “The reason curses are most often used to make something bad happen to a person, is because they are attached to a person, Bethany. It’s easier to say ‘curse’ than ‘magical effect anchored to a human body,’ but because curses are so often used to do something unpleasant, the word itself begins to sound bad and we don’t like to say it when we mean something that isn’t bad. Which just makes it sound worse.”

“It’s like we call pasting a sign on somebody’s back a prank,” Maggie said. “A prank is something mean we do to be funny, but if you put a sign on my back you could write anything. ‘Kick me’ is mean, but you could write, ‘Give me free stuff’ on there if you wanted. And if you wrote it in magic, you could make people do that.”

Erik made a shy smile and turned his head aside. He knew what “free stuff” she meant. Some nice invisible person had pasted a sign on him that specified grape flavour.

“Er, although forcing people to do things with magic is a bit of a war crime, so we try not to,” Seth put in.

“It depends on the thing,” Maggie said. “Anything to do with thought is a no-no,” she told the class. “They call that your ‘internal being,’ like it’s a separate thing in a partnership. Legally.” She smiled and indicated the magical notation, which was still emblazoned across the sky in rainbow glitter. “Using magic to make someone have broken fingers is hurting the external being. That’s just assault!”

Seth put both his hands up as if trying to halt a freight train. “But self-defence is not assault and we would both prefer it if you used Miss D’Iver’s curse in the spirit in which it was intended. Only if someone tries to hurt you. And not near the police because we know they don’t always listen when you try to explain something. Break fingers and then run, children.” He considered the magical notation. “Actually, I believe that’s every bone in the hand, including, by area, those of the wrist…”

“Because when people don’t hear the word ‘no’ we teach them to listen with pain!” Maggie declared, smiling.

“Especially when they are trying to hurt a child,” Seth said. “This is not a terribly difficult spell, but I think, due to time constraints, we will mainly be applying it to each of you individually and teaching you how to use it. Was that your intention, Miss D’Iver?”

“Exactly so, Mr. Zusman!” Maggie said. She lowered her voice and spoke sideways, “I was kinda hoping to shoehorn in the parts of the spell while we did that, and I’m going to have to change it up a little because I’ve specified a human hand and we really shouldn’t practise that on each other…”

“While you work on that, do you mind if I work on dishing out lunch?”

“Not at all. Please save the empty cans for me!”

Soup, Maggie and Erik had considerately used up the last of the mayonnaise, which was about to expire, on a deck of ham salad sandwiches. There were also apples and tomato soup. Seth divided up this and the other offerings with equal gratitude. He folded the paper bags and cardboard containers for later use and saved the cans.

Emily had to leave after lunch, reluctantly.

“Oh, I know you have to work,” Seth muttered. He regarded the magical notation again and sighed. “No, it’s not much good if you don’t know how to use it. Please come back as soon as you can and I’ll curse you and explain it then, my dear.”

Maggie shook her head. “That’s really frustrating. She wanted to learn it. She’s going to forget stuff because she doesn’t know how to use it. Half a lesson doesn’t mean anything.”

Seth lined up the cans on his ersatz desk and spoke softly, “Please lower your voice, Miss D’Iver. Sometimes half a lesson is all they have time for. I know what you’re talking about and you’re not wrong about forgetting, but half a lesson has meaning. It means they’re trying. So let’s try not to talk about it like that.”

“I’m sorry,” Maggie said.

“It’s all right. I’ll have an opportunity to teach your clever spell to another class and she’ll remind me. Ah! And here’s Henri!” He smiled. “Please sit wherever you’d like, my dear. We are having a guest lecture on self-defence at the moment. This is Miss D’Iver, she prefers last names while she’s teaching — as a matter of respect.”

“Oh, my gods,” Henri said, regarding the rainbow glitter and the walking, talking magic bomb known as Maggie D’Iver.

Maggie smiled sweetly at him and offered a sandwich. “Would you like to have lunch while I explain how to break every bone in a man’s hand?”

Henri winced at the sandwich and didn’t quite dare take it. “Uh, are you gonna, uh, are you gonna do a demo…?”

“Not on real people, Henri,” Maggie said. “You need your hands to eat a sandwich and take notes, and you haven’t annoyed me recently.”

“Please let’s not imply violence is an appropriate response to being annoyed, Miss D’Iver,” Seth said.

“You don’t ever switch off, do you?” Maggie said, not without admiration. She cleared her throat and beamed. “Welcome to school, Mr. Whatever-Your-Last-Name-Is. I don’t hurt my students. I love you just the way you are. Sandwich?”

“De Fiore,” Henri said. He accepted the sandwich and collected a piece of paper and a pencil before sitting down.

“Let’s try to keep the sarcasm at about a four, Miss D’Iver,” Seth said quietly. He raised his voice with a smile, “Now, to review, we are learning a curse! For self-defence only, please!”

“I understand why we’re not waiting for Mr. De Fiore to finish the sandwich but it’s throwing me a little!” Maggie announced humbly. She lowered her voice to the established please-give-me-notes level and spoke quickly, “Do these guys know the parts of speech?”

“Bethany and Henri don’t, I don’t know about Erik, and Soup, Jonathan and Natalie should, but you know how easy it is to forget something when you don’t use it.”

“Am I allowed to use foul language if they probably can’t hear me?”

“I try not to, but use your discretion.”

“Joshua X. Tapdancing Christopher on a cracker, this is hard,” Maggie said tightly, still smiling.

“Like trying to keep an ice cube from melting on a hot summer day and all you have is a paper fan,” Seth said. “Still want to teach the parts of a spell?”

“I can’t think of anything else to do while we’re cursing them. You got any ideas?”

“What about… how curses are used as battle magic, if you know it?”

Maggie folded her arms across her chest. “If I answer that, Mr. Zusman, my sarcasm is going to hit a ten. You know who my mom is.”

“I’m just making sure, Miss D’Iver,” Seth said. He returned to classroom volume and clapped his hands, “Okay! I’m sorry for leaving the rest of you out, but we needed to figure out what we were teaching. Miss D’Iver is still learning. Communication is very important! Please raise your hand if you would like to be cursed for self-defence purposes, and we’ll continue the lesson while we do that. It won’t hurt, I promise. You won’t even know it’s there.”

Jonathan, Soup, and Bethany raised their hands. Erik put a hand to his mouth and froze that way, thinking. His uncle probably wouldn’t like it, but his uncle didn’t necessarily have to know about it…

“We try to use odd things that we’d never say accidentally to trigger spells like these,” Maggie added, “so you won’t hurt anyone by accident either. My mom calls those ‘rare phrases’ and she collects them. We’re giving you each a gun, and the rare phrase is the safety. You’ll have to point to aim it and fire. We’ll practise on the cans.”

Henri and Erik both put their hands up.

Heck, I at least want to kill some cans, Erik thought. Maggie can take it off later if it bothers me.

Maggie smiled at him, a genuine smile, and he turned his head aside.

“Do you need any part of Curse Version Two explained, Mr. Zusman?” Maggie said.

“I believe I have it, but what phrase are we using, please?”

“What about fudge suitcase?” Maggie said. She lifted a hand and put both words in the air, above the notation, in gold glitter, for their students who could read: Fudge!… Suitcase! It was only three syllables and had a good rhythm, she thought.

“So long as nobody has a job selling candy door-to-door, that should do nicely!” Seth said.

“When you are in danger seconds count and taking time to do magic in your head can get you hurt or killed,” Maggie informed the class, as she and Seth wandered among the desks dishing out curses. “Putting a curse on yourself that is triggered by words or a gesture, or both, is much faster. My mom always has lots of curses on her, even though we’re not having a war anymore.”

“You may have noticed I’ve kept my shield spell,” Seth added. “It comes in handy! Other common battle spells are…”

Maggie had come to Erik and she lowered her voice and let Seth continue the lesson, “Hey, Erik, that thing where you slow down when you’re excited might make it hard for you to do this. You want me to set yours for music?”

He blinked and then nodded at her. “Thanks.”

“What’s a really dumb song you’d never sing?”

“Oh, man… that’s… hard…” Erik said.

“How about ‘Itsy-Bitsy Spider’ but say ‘pumpkin’ instead of ‘spider?’”

Erik lowered his voice even further and leaned in, “Maggie, I’m… eight years old and I… deserve more… respect than that!”

◈◈◈

After Erik had chosen “Tommy, can you crush me!” as something cool-sounding that he wouldn’t sing accidentally, they practised aiming and crushing cans until the metal fragmented and fell into pieces that were too small to hit. Cinder’s Alley, which was not paved, had developed multiple palm-sized divots — as if infested by distractible gophers. There was also a crack in the teacher’s desk which Maggie had repaired after they realized they needed to put the cans on the ground.

They discussed battle magic, associated vocabulary and anything else that seemed appropriate, while answering questions as needed. Altogether, including lunch, it took about an hour and a half.

“Okay, I think you’ve all got it and I’m kinda scared my mom’s gonna figure out where I am and get mad I didn’t tell her, so I think that concludes our lesson!” Maggie announced.

“I can’t wait till Pablocito pulls my hair again!” Bethany cried. “I’m gonna unload on him!”

Seth put up both hands as if she’d just whipped out a gun. “Bethany, please! That is not appropriate to do to a one-year-old boy! I know younger siblings can be frustrating, but you must remember you love him and you’re older so you have to be the patient one. Next time he does that please remove him from your hair, set him down and walk away from him. He will eventually stop doing it because it doesn’t get him any attention.”

“You really don’t switch off, do you?” Maggie said.

Seth smiled at her. It was a trifle pained but very stubborn. “I can’t, Miss D’Iver!”

“Maggie,” she said. “Erik, come home with me. We didn’t tell your uncle we were going and he worries…”

“Good luck with your mother, Maggie,” Seth said. He clapped his hands and addressed the class. “Now! Can anybody tell me the parts of speech? Group effort! Who knows just one?”