Sweet and spicy oil lingered on her lips. With a sweep of her tongue, she swallowed what was left of her meal and got to her feet, bidding goodnight to whom Ingrid considered her new friends.
“I’m going to meet Amelia,” Ingrid explained when Daphne gave her a quizzical look. “She’s my tutor.”
“Oh.” A grin broke out across Daphne’s face. “Well then, good luck and keep your head clear!”
“Thanks,” she replied, finding the latter greeting to be rather odd. “I’ll do my best.”
When she left the premises of the dining hall, Ingrid felt a rush of cool air against her rosy cheeks. Inhaling deeply, she set off in lit passages, round orange capsules attached to the walls burning brightly.
Ingrid soon found herself running upstairs to reach the T level of classrooms where her tutor awaited her. The corridors were eerily empty. The other students were obviously either in the recreation rooms or back in their dorms.
Reaching her allocated classroom, Ingrid cautiously knocked on the door. Light shone beneath the door, spotlighting her shoes but she couldn’t hear a single sound from inside. “Hello? Amelia?”
The knob jiggled beneath her touch and she twisted it open. Nudging it back, Ingrid spotted a figure by the lightboard and shut the door behind her. “Good evening.”
“Evening, Ingrid,” Amelia called over her shoulder, hands moving elegantly across the black screen. Everywhere her fingers touched, it left an imprint of white streaks. It seemed she was writing notes.
“I brought my things.” Ingrid held up her notepad containing her poorly drawn school map from earlier along with a new pen. “Wow. This reminds me of when I was learning history.”
“Did you ever learn about Imaginist history?” she queried, pausing to give her a questioning look. “Just wondering if you had any foundation knowledge.”
Ingrid shook her head. “Not quite as much. I know of the Dark Ages and Cerulean War but otherwise, everything else has just been normal history.”
“Those usually are the focuses of the exams.” Amelia nodded approvingly. “Take a seat and I will show you the basics of some theory you’ll need to know.”
Excitement caused Ingrid’s heart to flutter eagerly. She took a seat at the front and held her pen at the ready, the heading IMAGINATION scrawled neatly at the top. “Should I copy what’s on the board?”
“Hang on, those were my notes for me,” Amelia responded hastily, pressing a panel to the side of the screen. All the white script vanished, leaving the lightboard blank and black. Smack bang in the centre, Amelia’s fingers wrote out the word IMAGINATION, encircling it neatly. “Tell me what you know about imagination, like what its purpose is or what exactly imagination is.” Amelia turned to face Ingrid expectantly, leaning against the board.
Ingrid tapped the tip of the pen to her lips thoughtfully. To be honest, she hadn’t exactly thought or considered such questions before – and she hated herself for it. Now she appeared absolutely helpless as Amelia waited for an answer in the silence.
“Nothing?” Sympathy coloured her tutor’s tone. “You really were sheltered, weren’t you?”
The tutee ducked her head in embarrassment. “My parents weren’t avid imagination practitioners.”
“So I see.” Turning, Amelia swiped her fingers across the sleek surface, drawing a line protruding from the circle. “Well then, we can start from the beginning.” Her fingers spelled out What? “Imagination is, by definition, a mental creation our minds conjure. It is also considered to be mere concepts or images that do not truly exist in reality.” She shortened some of the phrases into bullet points beneath the What? heading. Tapping the panel nearest to her, she drew over the points with a big red X. “Wrong. That is the normal definition of imagination, how people who aren’t Imaginists define it. They don’t understand what imagination truly is.”
That explained why the definition of imagination seemed very different to when Ingrid actually used it.
“Madam Matilda wrote an entire thesis on it in her tertiary studies and she failed her course in psychology for that.” Amelia shook her head with a smile. “Her thesis is now the foundation of this school.”
Ingrid quickly scribbled some notes down:
Imagination
- Different to actual definition
“I want you to remember this because it will be the main concept that all our training will lead back to,” she told Ingrid, erasing the red X and the writing beneath it. “Imagination is a state of mind – or rather, a powerful extension of our minds.”
Ingrid hand was writing quickly as her tutor proceeded.
“I could go into Madam Matilda’s entire thesis but that itself would take several months to wrap your head around,” Amelia continued. “So we’ll stick to the basics to keep it short. Now as I said, imagination is a state of mind, an extension of it too. Like Alfred Eckhart once said, ‘Knowledge is limited. Imagination is limitless. To some extents, what he says is true.”
“What do you mean? Isn’t imagination unlimited?” Ingrid queried with a frown. Even from a young age, she was told – or at least she had read somewhere that imagination had no limits whatsoever.
“I will be coming to that,” she reassured her with a smile. “Glad that you’re on track though.”
Ingrid liked that Amelia wasn’t the harsh tutor she’d expected her to be. She was glad she’d apologised earlier and kept reminding herself never to use her maid voice again. Having someone as experienced as Amelia tutoring her in the art of imagination was an unbelievable privilege. Sometimes, she couldn’t believe her luck, just to be at this school.
“Imagination is as unlimited as it gets. There are no true restraints to what it is capable of. Anything is possible with imagination. But there are some factors that can hinder its full capabilities.” Negative factors printed itself on the board with Amelia’s long fingers. She spun her body to face Ingrid again. “We can imagine anything we want; flying swine, blue trees, extra limbs, anything. But imagining something is very different to conjuring it successfully. This is where knowledge comes in: it is the key factor in hindering imagination.”
Knowledge hinders imagination, Ingrid wrote into her pad, jotting down some further key points she’d mentioned. A previous encounter flashed through her mind, setting a frown on her face. “So when I tried to conjure a car –”
“You could only get the shell but not the engines or the interior,” Amelia guessed, smiling at the dumbstruck look on Ingrid’s face. “I tried that once a couple years back. Felt like a complete fool – but that was before I came to Darlington’s school and realised my mistake.”
Ingrid shook her head, chuckling at her own naivety. That explained a lot, like how she once tried to conjure herself a lock on her door only to find that the latch only twisted side to side instead of keeping her room private.
“These factors,” she pointed to the sub-heading on the board, “are also obstacles. Get past the lack of knowledge and you have unlocked a third of your imagination’s full potential.”
“Are there classes for that?” Ingrid inquired, jotting down further little anecdotes into her book. “Say, if I wanted create artillery for our country’s military, is there a class that teaches the mechanisms of weapons?”
Amelia’s dark head bobbed. “Yes, but those areas are not usually for women. Only Daphne takes those classes.”
Ingrid’s brow shot up in surprise. She’d known that women tended to stick to cooking and healing but only one girl out of thirty in the entire school in an artillery class? She couldn’t help but find that quite extreme. Was it just stereotypes holding them back or were women truly so uninterested in the country’s military?
“The rest of us focus on healing classes.” Amelia handed Ingrid a thin black screen on her desk and turned it on with the press of a button. “Madam asked me to give this to you. She wants you to fill out a form for the classes you would be interested in taking.” She scrolled effortlessly with a flick of her fingers through the multiple touch options, coming across a list with boxes beside each item. “Maximum is six options. There are a total of twenty-four you can major in.”
The tutee’s eyes widened in surprise. “T-Twenty-four possible options?” What if she wanted to do more than six? What if there were many more that she would be interested in majoring in?
“Two extra subjects are compulsory for all Imaginists: History and Basic Defence.”
“Basic Defence? Defence for what exactly?” Ingrid asked warily but the minute the question left her lips, she had a pretty good idea of what danger the school taught them to defend themselves against.
“Tainted.” The word itself sent a chill down her spine and suddenly, the room seemed to drop several degrees. Goosebumps arose along her arms as emotionless black eyes flashed across her mind’s eye. Ingrid shuddered. “Having an imagination comes with the price of danger. Even the slightest slither of imagination in a person can progress into a deadly Tainted weapon. Basic Defence teaches everybody how to defend themselves.” She didn’t need to say the cursed word again; the silent implication was there.
Amelia’s pale blue eyes had grown weary and serious but to Ingrid’s surprise, they did not appear afraid at all. The encounter several weeks ago alone was enough to send fear spiking her veins. Just a mention gave Ingrid a bad feeling. But the dark-haired beauty appeared angry. Ingrid guessed her tutor had had some unfortunate experiences with the dark creatures themselves.
“So, knowledge is the first obstacle but a factor that can be easily overcome.” The tutor forced a smile in an attempt to lighten the tense atmosphere. Ingrid returned the smile but knew her heart wasn’t in it. Just a mention of those evil beings was enough to bring down a parade. “Some Imaginists, before our time, when imagination was still being discovered and studied, dedicated their life to a single profession in order to learn every detail of it possible. Eckhart was one of them; as a renowned physicist, Eckhart devoted every moment of his waking life to uncover the greatest physical mysteries of the world. That’s how specific professions came about today. Some even follow Eckhart’s footsteps in committing their lives to a single occupation in order to conjure successfully.”
“Amazing,” Ingrid murmured, hand furiously noting everything down. “But is it possible to conjure without having to learn everything about the topic?”
“So long as you know the basic structure of whatever you are trying to conjure, it should work,” she answered. “If you wanted a car, you need to know that there is an engine system, what the main components are and how it all works together.” Amelia paused, seeming to contemplate something before opening her mouth. “You might have realised that when we talk of conjuring, it’s all tangible items; animals, objects, vehicles. That will bring me to the second factor: the line between tangible and intangible imagination.
“Tangible is everything you’re probably used to; things you can feel.” Holding a hand out, Amelia didn’t need to blink as a bright red apple materialised into her palm. She wrapped her fingers around it, digging them into the ripe red skin until it let out a small pop! The apple shrank down to the size of a plum, its skin darkening and the stem disappearing. Ingrid watched in awe; she’d never tried conjuring an object only to change it into another before. She made a mental note to try it in her spare time. “Intangible imagination deals with anything that’s not physical. It usually consists of memories, thoughts . . . and emotions.” Her tone dropped at the last word.
“I’ve never heard of such a thing,” Ingrid admitted curiously, noticing the grave look on her tutor’s face. “I wasn’t even sure it was possible to imagine intangible things.”
“It’s a complicated practice that takes many years to master; today we’re establishing that there is a difference between the two types of imagination. Removing the line that separates it unlocks another third of your imagination’s potential – but that won’t be for a while so don’t worry too much.”
Amelia paused, almost hesitant to go on. Ingrid’s brow creased. So far, they’d covered two-thirds of an imagination’s full potential. What was the last third that would unlock it all? What was the last factor? Why did Amelia seem unwilling to tell her?
Before Ingrid could urge her tutor, the older girl’s lips parted. “The last is emotions.”
Spinning abruptly, Amelia smacked a hand down on a panel and the light faded from the board’s surface. She grabbed her books off the teacher’s desk and snapped them shut.
“That’s enough for today,” she said quietly. “We’ll go into the detail with the first two. The third factor will be covered when you’re ready.” Amelia handed Ingrid a small handbook just as she was finished scribbling the last of her notes. “I want you to learn the mechanisms of the catapult on page twenty-three. Conjure it for me by our next tutoring session – I’ll tell you when.”
Ingrid was still scrambling to gather her things when Amelia had left the room, leaving behind an air of solemnity.
Obviously, there was a lot more to imagination than Ingrid initially thought. It was more serious than she’d expected.