This semester the students of Writer’s Lab chose to write a group story. We did most of the work in the last five live sessions of the semester, with some students donating time during the week to tie up loose ends. It was a wildly creative process—and it ended up being as smooth as you could imagine. Each student started by writing a short character sketch of the time “right before IT happens”…. without any idea what “it” would be! After we had the character sketches, we brainstormed a plot. With nothing but their character sketch and a runaway train to board, the students took off and created “The Prismatic Rail.” Enjoy!
The Prismatic Rail
By the students of Writer’s Lab at Athena’s Advanced Academy
Authors:
- Isabella by Cate Gordon
- Ya-ong by Sarah
- Waltinysa by Quinnian
- Eva by Attie
- Olivia by Alexa Alisse Gordon Mellema
- Cedar by Lila Shah
- Edmund by Jack
It was just another day… or was it?
Isabella
I stared out the window at London’s overcast skies, my gaze vague and unfocused. The clouds hovered above the city like my brush over my canvas, as if waiting to pour down their paint: the rain. What a dreary day it was. Surely Auguste, my French correspondent, was enjoying the sparkling sun right now in Paris. But I, Isabella Ashton, was trapped here in a city that was, at present, less than inspiring.
I tore my gaze from the window and back to my easel, and my glance morphed into a glare as I took in with disgust the green paint that had dripped from my brush, staining the white canvas with a deep emerald. It was only a small spot, but my mentor, Henry, would be livid.
Not like he wouldn’t be in any case. Often it felt as if everything I did failed miserably to please him, no matter how professional my use of chiaroscuro was. I had been a failure ever since I splashed water on the edge of his newly finished portrait of Lady Clementine while I was cleaning his brushes. Not to mention the fact that I was a woman—he barely put up with me because of my sex.
The drop of green paint slid in a slow track down the canvas, reminiscent of one left by a lethargic snail as it slimed its way across the rain-soaked pavement. Perhaps I could make an artwork from this after all. A forest path, if I added texture and a sense of dappled light.
I had always enjoyed the effect of dappled light on soil, or on canvas. Henry scoffed at me for it, commanding me to focus on proper subjects like his simpering portraits of wealthy nobles in yards of fine velvet drinking tea in their ornate sitting rooms, in proper classical style. But I had always enjoyed depicting nature in my works—the ephemeral, fleeting character of a moment, light dancing across the grass or sailboats floating in calm, sunlit waters. How I longed to focus on the beauty of the world, rather than the stuffy high society of sixteenth-century London.
I knew that was not the proper way, as Henry had reminded me countless times before.
But that wouldn’t stop me from continuing it.
Olivia
It was one of those mornings that would have been perfect for basking in if only I had nothing to think about. Potion-making is busy work, often smelly and occasionally explosive. On that morning though, the villagers were having their yearly festival, something about Spring and agriculture I had never bothered to learn the details of. I never liked festivals, far too crowded for my tastes, but I do like full days off. I had planned out the day for weeks. I was going to take Nettle for a ride through the forest, all the way to the lake. We would have stared at the stars together. It would have been glorious.
Unfortunately, Nettle wasn’t interested in being ridden. She didn’t scorn my presence, she let me get on her just fine, but refused to stand. I checked for eggs, just in case she was still laying, but there was nothing beneath her. The eclectic mannerisms of giant geese were seldom understood, even among true witches, and I wasn’t a witch at all. I knew how to brew potions, but nobody in the family since grandma had the slightest talent for spellwork.
If there’s one consistent thing about giant geese, it’s that they are firmly in favour of movement. They don’t sit still unless they’re sleeping, have an egg, or something is seriously wrong. I looked her up and down. Her feathers were a healthy gray, her beak glistened orange, and the expression in her eyes was as inscrutable as always. Was she sick?
I had always been glad Mother had left Nettle with me when she left, but at that point I thought it would have been nice if she had also left me with an instruction manual.
Eventually I decided to do something rather than nothing and made the long walk to the village. I told myself they might have medicine for Nettle. I searched the markets and even the structurally unsound general store. Predictably, I could find nothing useful. It was loud and crowded and I wished something could happen to just make Nettle better.
At first, I thought it was a beast. It moved like one, roared like one. In shape, it was something like a giant serpent, if a serpent was made of metal and ran on wheels. It had fatter rectangular bits, connected by metal bridges. It stopped before me, as if it had some form of intellect. I stared up at the strange automaton. Was it part of the festival somehow? I didn’t know enough about the event to say for certain it didn’t involve constructing a metal serpent. No, it couldn’t be. Parents were shielding their children, while everyone else stumbled away from it. I saw their mouths move as if crying out, but the noise was covered by the roaring of the beast. Serpents aren’t supposed to roar.
I glanced back at the store I had just left. There hadn’t even been medicine for people in there, let alone something that would help Nettle. This serpent could have been sent by fairies or come to town of its own volition, but either way, it didn’t look like it was staying long. I could see its wheels starting to turn again, slowly, as if it was still tired. Where had it come from? Where was it going? I could turn away from the beast and my own curiosity. I could go back home and scour potion books for anything that might help my friend, and forget about all of this.
…But what if this was what I had been wishing for? If I just let the serpent leave I would never know what was on it. It was possible that whyever it came here, it would take me somewhere magic. It certainly looked magic. Maybe the destination would have a cure for Nettle. It was a foolish thought. You should never assume magic has good intentions, and even when it does, you should never assume it will do what you want. Even if I found a cure, I didn’t know if I would be able to get it back to her. I was at my wits end, though, and the serpent’s patience was running out. It made a stretching rumble I felt in my bones.
I ran up to the animal machine, and pulled myself onto a metal ledge. The two fatter bits it was stuck between both had what looked like doors on them. I opened one at random. From the crowd below I saw looks of shock, concern, and excitement. I tried to memorize the village I had lived just outside for all my life. Would I ever return? I closed the door behind me as the serpent lurched forward.
Cedar
He knows, I thought, a pit falling into my stomach. Of course, with Scoutmaster Niall it was always hard to tell. He always had a sort of glare comfortably perched in his eye, which wasn’t a glare itself per se. It was rather a glare that had taken a leave of absence and had settled into the crook of his pupil to rest. This dormant glare was especially present every time he spoke to me, but I could swear that this time it was particularly eager to spring back into action at any moment.
“Scoutmater Niall, do you have an assignment for me?” I asked, trying to contort my muscles into a smile that signified I was absolutely delighted to have arrived here at five o’clock in the morning and that I was practically overflowing with a desire to embark on a scouting trip this early.
Scoutmaster Niall shook his head in blatant disappointment. “Cedar, you present yourself in a sorry form. Your eyes are bloodshot, your hair is messed up, and your drooping and awkward figure conjures up the painstakingly sharp image of a stringy weed that has burst out of the dirt yet is not yet aware of the direction it is supposed to grow.”
Oh no he’s realized that the weed is a metaphor for my moral code and that I don’t have a moral code and not knowing the right direction is a reference to how I don’t know what’s good or bad which stealing isn’t inherently bad but really it’s the thought that counts, and of course I stole from Min’s hoard out of selfishness, but we all have to be selfish once and a while right? BUT FOCUS ON THE LARGER PROBLEM HERE Cedar he knows I stole from Min’s hoard and he’s telling me through this weed metaphor!—my mouth struggling to catch up with my brain, words tumbled out of my mouth.
“Scoutmaster Niall I’m so sorry! I know I did something extremely selfish and evil and I have no excuses at all!” I blurted.
Scoutmaster Niall frowned. “You—what? What did you do?”
“Uh—nothing.” I smacked my palm to my forehead. Scoutmaster Niall hadn’t been using the weed imagery as a metaphor, and now I had messed everything up by informing him exactly what I did.
“CEDAR, YOU WILL TELL ME EXACTLY WHAT SELFISH ACT YOU HAVE COMMITTED RIGHT NOW.” There it was. The glare rose out of its comfortable roost and consumed Scoutmaster Niall’s eyes, burning into my flesh with its ice-cold fire.
“I—I might have stolen a few things from the hoard of the Sacred Dragon Min and spit into the Sacred Goblets of Knotalis while brushing my teeth but I’m sure—”
“Dear Min.” Scoutmaster Niall shook his head. “Why am I not surprised?”
After a painfully long moment, Scoutmaster Niall reached into the pocket of his cloak and pulled out a long string of gold beads and a small dagger. My muscles clenched, preparing to flee in case Scoutmaster Niall tried to kill me with it. Unfortunately, when it came to the Sacred Dragon Min and her precious hoard, even stabbing someone with a dagger couldn’t be done without a giant ritual leading up to it.
“Cedar, these golden beads represent droplets of Min’s blood. If you return to Min’s hoard when the sun is highest in the sky and lay your stolen items back in the hoard, you are able to use the sun’s binding powers to merge your blood with the blood of Min. Only by doing that will you be forgiven. HOWEVER.” The glare bared its teeth at me and snarled. “If you steal from Min’s hoard again, you will have two options. Be forever cast away from this land, never to return, or die. And, of course, if you do not perform the ritual by the next high sun, you will also die.” Scoutmaster Niall nodded after a brief pause, as if by taking a moment to muse over this logic it made perfect sense.
“Are you sure this will—”
“GO, OR DIE!” With those encouraging words, Scoutmaster Niall handed me the dagger and string of beads and left me to the ritual. As I trekked through the woods, my hand rested on the glittering prism that was buried in my satchel between sacred goblets and sandwich bread. Of course, it wasn’t currently glittering, hidden in the shadows of my satchel. And yet I could imagine it so clearly before my eyes, seven rainbow fingers reaching out to touch the air. Its glittering light spread across my mind and vision, in some strange way…that was the magic of it, and that was why I had chosen it. It didn’t seem like an ordinary prism. For one thing, it was most definitely not made out of glass. But I couldn’t say what it was made of. And when I held it up to the light, I swore I could see blurry shapes. A silhouette talking to someone (their friend?), a group of figures each at their own table, watching some sort of rectangular screen. And, of course, I had stolen the sacred goblets because I needed somewhere to spit in when I was cleaning my teeth.
After a long journey through the woods, I came across the Shrine of Min, where her hoard lay scattered in front of a stone statue depicting Min, her wings unfurled and fire flickering around her tongue. The hoard wasn’t even buried or anything! Shining precious gemstones, golden goblets, quarterstaffs and enchanted items belonging to fallen wizards, heroes’ swords, elven-crafted bows and arrows, scrolls that contained knowledge from the Ancient Years, a train nestled in between the trees…all of it left to rot in a grassy clearing just because it used to belong to some sacred dragon.
Wait, a train? That wasn’t there before! I thought with a gasp.
I touched the prism again, lightly, and pulled it out of my satchel. The sun touched the surface of gnarled crystal, creating a fierce rainbow light that seemed to flow out like a current. Just below the rush I could see a figure with a brush in her hand step away from a canvas, surprised. It was unusually clear, such that I could make out the figure’s long braid and paint-splattered apron.
A few speckles of light dappled the train, which was in better shape than I had originally assumed. Although it was half-hidden in the undergrowth, a continual puff of smoke was rising out of its chimney stack, and it was on some tracks that led into the forest.
I swear that wasn’t there before, I thought. Is it part of Min’s hoard? Is it some kind of magical train that randomly appears?
I took a few steps closer to the train. The nearest door was open, and its chimney was making a warm puffing sound that seemed almost inviting.
Wait, maybe this is part of Min’s forgiveness ritual? I mean, one of her symbols was the steam engine, which represented her place as the bridge between the humans and dragons.
I stepped onto the train, the prism in my hand. The inside was like nothing I’d ever seen before. Green leather seats lined wide windows, and a flower-patterned velvet carpet stretched across the floor. On the ceiling hung multiple chandeliers. Once I was on, the prism seemed to glow and flicker with a strange excitement.
Maybe I’m doing something right for once! I thought enthusiastically. Maybe this is a sign that the ritual is working! Maybe Scoutmaster Niall will actually be proud of me for—
The door slammed shut and the train sped off into darkness at an impossible speed, sending myself and the prism flying across the car.
Never mind, I thought with a sigh.
Ya-ong
My legs hurt, so I’m going to take public transportation to school today. There’s a metro station right in front of me (though I haven’t used it before, I’m sure I can figure out when to get off), so I’ll take the train. I pay with my metro card—I only have around 5,000KRW left on it, I should top it up when I go home, maybe try to spend the remaining money on my transport card on a rollcake—and walk down the remaining stairs into where the train waits for people to get on. After a few minutes, the train pulls in and stops. I step inside and am greatly surprised by how empty the train is (even now, in the middle of the school year, there’s at least one tourist or someone who’s moved here and is delightfully ignorant that they’ve gotten off at the wrong stop). I stand to the left on the door and turn on my phone. Maybe I can sneak in before the next class starts.
I keep looking up at what the next station would be, but it reads something in English or something that I don’t understand. I keep waiting, but it never changes. It normally goes to Chinese or Japanese after English, but it isn’t this time. Speaking of which, it’s been ten minutes and I’ve gotten through the comics I’ve downloaded on my phone. I should probably review stuff for school, but I guess I can use the excuse that I’m just trying to immerse myself in a foreign language (I say, reading the Korean translation of this comic. I’m sure the translator’s notes are good enough).
Come to think of it, I should have gotten to the station next to my school a while ago. I guess I’ll keep waiting, this train hasn’t even stopped once.
Waltinysa
It is a hot sunny day, and for the first time in 20 years I headed to work on the day of my Daughter’s birthday. Previously it had been the one day a year I didn’t work. Now there were no days of that sort. Last year she’d turned 13 and I took her all over the city, every great place I could think of, I wanted her to see it all.
I walked the last half-mile to the train station quickly, and as soon as I got there I was joined by the familiar greeting I’d heard every day but one for the last 35 years.
“Heyy! Morning Walt!” said Dominik, always so excited to see me. To him it was only another day in life. He didn’t know.
He’d always been the cheery one, but recently he’d tried to tone it back after he’d been promoted to Crew manager. This day he tells me about his underlings, or his “guys” as he called them.
“So, Waltinysa, you know, it’s really so hot out here today, yeah? So, I got something funny to tell ya. Alright, I told my guys to keep hydrated this morning, cause you know, it’s crazy hot today, but I don’t quite think they got the message, cause all of them, and I won’t pretend like they’re really all that in the brain department, but this is just too stupid even for them, so you know the decorative fountain they opened a few weeks back, to celebrate, the big boss, Lord Glenestame’s passin’, bless him. Anyway, so my guys, they’ve just been dunking their heads into the fountain pool. Doing it all together, see—in who can make the biggest splash, it’s hilarious ain’t it? Anyway, what’s with you Walt?”
It was quite funny, and we had a quick laugh, and a hug. After that we had a short talk but nothing serious, however we had decided to go out to the Well House, for a Drink or 4 and a chicken sandwich tonight. That was the last thing we spoke of before I went to the clerk and marked my arrival. Then went on inside and looked at ‘The Big Board’. The Big Board, was a large blackboard with everything that currently needed to be seen to by maintenance, and sorted it, A – Z, and marked which department for maintenance needed to see to it. For all my 35 years, I’ve been a plumber, the only one for the whole railyard and train maintenance building, despite the massive area, and many bathrooms, and drinking fountains, and train cleaning and refilling stations. I shouldn’t be the only plumber here, the pipes are so decayed at this point.
My first job today is to go down into the basement and replace some of the worst pipes down there. I’ve not done this before. Not in 35 years. Something serious must be up. I really don’t want to deal with this today.
I transport myself down the mudded stair-stones through a variety of slipping, walking, falling, and butt-sliding, all the way down to the cracked stones upon which the pipes lay. And thus we study the scene. The third pipe is busted, and leaking massively. Water is spurting all the way up from the ground, spitting on the roof, spitting on the wall, spitting on my face.
Eventually, I did fix it, but I was soaked. So utterly soaked I’m shaking. As I reach ground level, I hear the train coming in. The clerk stares at my soaked existence, and sends me off to the bathroom to clean up and dry off. The bathroom is a long way across the train yard, and I set out. After a few minutes walking towards the bathroom, something odd happens. Another train comes in. Adjacent to the first. So I walk towards the train, and peek into the singular open car, to see nobody. I take 4 steps up the stairs and inside, and still nobody. After a few moments, the train is sent onwards, the doors shut and I am left inside, un-dried, too stupid to resist the impeccable urge to investigate.
Eva
I woke up. It was going to be a long day. Today I had all my hardest subjects: math, Chinese, chemistry, history, English, then a random assembly on women in STEM. I was not mentally prepared for the day.
“Hi Oliver!” I greeted Oliver, my cat, as he headbutted my feet. He’s a tuxedo cat and is super sweet. His only problems in life are making sure he stays in the sunlight and to get fed WAY too often. I’m so jealous of his life.
I was tired enough during math class that the first half hour passed quickly, but the other half hour dragged because of boredom. In Chinese, the entire hour dragged along. Finally, by history, I was completely out of mental power. While my history teacher presented a 20-minute-long slideshow of pictures from her trip to her friend’s wedding in Portugal, I felt like it had been days in that class.
I knew that I should’ve listened to the actual history portion of history class, and the math during math, and the English during English due to my grades being an A-minus for all those classes, but I just couldn’t focus.
Finally!! I have successfully survived an especially hard day at school! I’m so proud of myself. I quickly said bye to my friends, then walked over to the train station to go home. Yes, I have to take the train for 40 minutes to and from school. This is because my school is one of the best private schools in the state, so of course the daily commute is worth it. Not with my A-minuses, though… Well, that’s a problem for later!
Crossing the last crosswalk after looking both ways for cars, of course, my favorite song came on my earbuds. I started vibing to it to mentally prepare for the homework and studying I would do on the train. I had a 50-point history assignment that I really needed to do well on to boost my grade from a 90.6, an A-minus, to an A. On the more positive side, it seemed my history teacher really enjoyed her week in Portugal as a bridesmaid. I especially liked all the cat photos of her hotel’s stray cats that she included on the slideshow. I’d have to talk with her about cats sometime.
Walking into the train station, I greeted the regulars that I see every day. One of them was my choir director. He’s always supportive of me, even with my voice cracks when practicing for duets and solos. Sometimes I have time to talk with the other regulars, like this one woman whose name I learned was Clara who works at a nearby office at a boring job. Today, though, I didn’t have much time, so I quickly just scanned my train pass, and entered the train.
Edmund
God sure does hate me. Not only is this extreme output of magic linked to some random no-name witch in a town so far away from the capital that it took three months to get here, especially since the train lines don’t reach here from the capital. I mean, who builds a village directly on the border of a country? What sadistic jerk does that? It doesn’t matter anyway because now I have no leads, no idea what to do next, it only just stopped raining a few days ago after a constant downpour, and Edmund Junior clipped his tail on a door and has been whining about it for the past hour. I scratched Junior’s furry head absentmindedly while sitting on a hillside with a perfect view of that witch’s home. The inn owner had offered me a place to stay, but his inn was old and broken-down. He probably would have murdered me in my sleep if I had stayed, so it wasn’t a big loss. I just had to continue camping out as I had been for the past few months.
Edmund Junior finally quieted down as I set him down next to Roxanne, Nerple, and Boris. Boris proceeded to bite me, but that was okay. Rabies is rare in rats.
Now that same no-name witch was crying over some goose, or something, I know I said I had a perfect view from this hill, but I lied, I do that. I knew that goose. It bit me when I tried to break into the witch’s home. I bet it had rabies. I hadn’t cast anything on it yet. Unlike blessed ones, I couldn’t exactly regenerate mana over time just by existing. I just had to fall back and wait for that stupid goose to sleep to sneak in again. Except it didn’t sleep. Ever. A few days later, when I tried fighting it, I was forced to return to my camp in rags. Junior nursed me back to health the best he could. Geese are scary.
As that witch scurried into town, I turned back to my ritual. I was going to get something out of this useless trip, no matter how much the forces of fate tried to stop me. I have yet to confirm fate as an existence, but I’m working on it. The ritual was probably some of my best work. Since I couldn’t gather mana myself, I had to use rituals as nets to catch mana actively flowing in one direction. That direction is directly to the goose witch. I wasn’t necessarily stealing mana from her, I was just preventing it from getting to her. It’s like robbing a, uh, never mind that doesn’t matter.
The only thing that did matter was the effect of my ritual. A wish spell. Don’t let its simple patterns deceive you; this spell takes an astronomical amount of mana, but nobody has ever pulled it off. Usually, the wish sigil is used as a search spell instead, like giving you a little hint at what you need to do. Of course, this still takes a ton of magic, and under ordinary circumstances, I would never be able to pull even this simple ritual off. These weren’t ordinary circumstances. By diverting mana from a massive stream being pulled into the orbit of the weird witch, I would be able to pull it off. Of course, it was going to take at least a month gathering mana. My request was so large that even a hint on achieving it would be costly.
I wondered what I was going to do for this month: teach the rats how to play chess? Yeah, that could be f—why was my ritual circle glowing? Why. Was. My. Ritual. Circle. Glowing. Can I never catch a break?! I quickly scrambled to the circle. The spell was definitely activating, but why? I hadn’t started the incantation, only finished the circle, but that was around two hours ago. What was the trigger? Can I still use the spell? Should I run away? Where were my rats? I whipped my head around so quickly that I was going to have neck pains for weeks. Roxanne and Nerple had scuttled over to me, crawling into my breast pocket. Boris was on his way over, too. Where was Junior? Not at the camp, not behind me, most definitely not at the house or in town. Then there he was, skittering towards me out of some thicket. The only problem was that the main obstacle between us was the ritual. The super-dangerous activated ritual.
“Junior, stop!” I yelled. The good news is Junior did stop. The bad news is that he stopped, skidded for a bit, then came to a standstill right on the border of the magic circle. Smudging a few of the lines. Picking him up as fast as I could, I started to run. Boris had made it into my jacket pocket with Roxanne and Nerple. I stuffed Junior in there so they could all snuggle close before dying. Because when magic circles get messed up 10/10 times, it leads to death. This was the last thought that crossed through my mind before the lights in my brain went out.
Click to continue… >>>>>>>>>