Some of the students had the same idea and headed straight to class. Others mingled out in the hallway. Eva couldn’t put a name to any of the circulatory systems apart from Jordan, Max, and Shelby.
And one other person. The only reason Eva recognized her was because she’d been staring at her for the last ten minutes.
Martina Turner strode down the hallway. She entered the classroom’s open door with little flourish. After giving the classroom a once over, she took a seat at the very back of the room.
All conversation died as everyone, including Yuria and Shalise, took notice of the dean.
“Carry on as you were. I’m here to observe. I’d like to see how my staff operate their classrooms.” Her voice carried throughout the classroom just as easily as if she had a microphone and a stage to stand on. A real speech giving voice.
“Of course,” Yuria said hesitantly. If Eva had to judge by her heart rate, the poor professor was both intimidated by and not expecting the dean.
Martina Turner seemed to pick up on some cues as well. “You’re not in trouble. This is not an audit. I merely wish to know the ins and outs of my school.”
Conversation slowly resumed and Shalise asked another question. The professor quickly pulled out her own wand and began waving it around. Very nervously. If she hadn’t been a water mage by trade, Eva imagined that Yuria would be spilling the water just as much as Shalise.
Eva almost rejoined the conversation between her two friends. Her mouth snapped shut before a word could spill out. Something at the edge of her sight caught her attention.
A cow stood outside the windows to the Infinite Courtyard. At the very edge of her vision if she pushed it as far as she could.
Eva stood up and walked over to the windows, trying to glean an extra few feet.
Cow was wrong. It was a bull for sure. It stood still, almost staring at the classroom.
“Something wrong?”
Eva jumped a good three feet in the air. Her jump startled Shalise into jumping. A brief smile passed between them as they got control over themselves.
“Nothing wrong,” Eva quickly assured her. “Just an odd animal outside. Some sort of bull.”
Eva turned her attention back outside, but the animal had wandered off.
Shalise leaned forward and began peering out the window. Her heart rate picked up.
Excitement over seeing an animal? Or is she worried about something?
They hadn’t talked about Halloween apart from Shalise referring to it when she asked about Eva’s eyes. Shalise seemed mostly smiles since she got back. Eva wondered if she should talk about it with her or if that would just bring up memories she wanted to bury.
“There are wild animals in the Infinite Courtyard, right?”
“A lot of them,” Eva said, “but this one might have come from the zoo.”
Shalise tilted her head to one side as the two headed back to their table. “What makes you think that?”
Eva shrugged.
“It’s just that most wild cows don’t have wings.”
—
“There, see?”
Eva didn’t bother to comment.
“All five of our lamassu are in their habitat.”
Despite his confidence, Bradley Twillie’s heart rate had been hammering when Eva mentioned seeing a winged bull.
It worried him enough that he even took them out into the zoo enclosure to personally check. Normally, he kept the students far away and only begrudgingly allowed them in during certain lessons.
“I thought lamassu had human heads,” Jordan said from his place half leaning over the railing.
Bradley Twillie took on his lecture pose. One hand pointing out at the students and the other in his jacket pocket. “Myths and nonsense,” he said. “Lamassu are considered good luck and will protect their territory from anything they perceive as enemies, but are not part human nor overly intelligent.”
One of the bulls raised its head and snorted out a breath of air.
“I said overly. You’re still the smartest bovines around.”
The lamassu shook its head in a disturbingly human-like manner. It flopped back down, basking under a pair of heat lamps set up near one wall of their snow-covered pen.
“Could it have been a stray?” Eva asked.
Bradley snorted in his usual nervous manner and rubbed his hand against the lumberjack hat he always wore. “Not unless we’ve been transported to Egypt without noticing. There are other schools and zoos, but I’m sure I would have been notified days before one could fly out here.
“How clearly did you see–” He looked off to one side. His eyes shifted back to Eva in a distinctly uncomfortable manner. The already lacking professorial demeanor he usually had vanished in a second. “I mean… It’s just that–”
Eva just sighed–he already said it once without even noticing. Another reason she needed new eyes, though how she got them might raise worse problems. “What were you going to say?”
“There are other winged creatures about that size you might have mistaken it for. Griffins, anzu, garuda, hippogriffs, roc, plenty more.” He brought a hand up to rub the back of his neck. “Well, maybe not roc. If you saw a roc everyone in town would have noticed too. They’re not exactly small.”
