Blue sky, framing a girl's face. It took me a moment to realise she was looking down at me as I laid on the grass. "Who are you?"

I guessed she must be about my age, pale skin and strawberry-blonde hair, wearing a white blouse and grey pleated skirt under a black cloak. "That's what I was about to ask you." It half looked as if she was auditioning to play the role of a student in one of those stupid Harry Potter movies. (I'd rather enjoyed them until I wound up being enrolled in a boarding school located in a remote corner of Scotland. The jokes got old fast.) "Please tell me that that isn't the Minch Grammar uniform."

"What?" She glared down at me. "No! This is the renowned Tristain Academy of Magic."

Of course. Minch uniforms were dark blue, I remembered now that my head was clearing. But how had I come to be here? I had been at the train station in Carlisle waiting for the special train (yes, the school had its own limited train service, laugh it up). And then I'd woken, disorientated, here. Pushing myself up on my elbows I could see that there were a crowd of other kids, within a year or two of my age, examining the two of us. They all wore the same black cloaks and there was a huge castle in the middle distance beyond them, set on a grassy plain.

Well this wasn't Minch unless the prospectus had been lying about it being on an island. Was I being hazed somehow? It wouldn't be too hard for me to envisage some fat-headed psi thinking it would be funny to trap a new transfer in the delusion that she was attending some stupid Hogwarts knock-off.

My moment of contemplation gave the girl a moment to gather her wits, or potentially half of them at any rate. "I asked first, commoner!"

"Ellen Wright." I answered automatically, not fully processing the word 'commoner' for a moment as my eye caught sight of the wand in her hand. Everyone else was holding one as well, of course. Now all I needed was some slimy potions teacher to turn up and dock points to fit with the cliché.

A voice piped up from the crowd: "Louise, what were you thinking, calling a commoner with 'Summon Servant'?"

There was laughter from the other kids, strongly suggesting that the Louise who was the butt of the joke was the one looking at me. "I... I just made a little mistake!" she shouted back, her accent clear and refined. Of course, if one extrapolated from her brief words so far it was possible she considered herself part of a privileged class.

"Of course! After all, she's Louise the Zero!" another voice called back derisively and angry color flooded the pale skin of Louise's face.

I drew my legs up, rolling back on my shoulders a little which was enough warning even for the distracted Louise to back up slightly before I kipped to my feet. There were a couple of gasps from the crowd and even a little half-hearted applause as if I was putting on an act. The hood of my sweatshirt had slipped back a bit as I landed on my feet, causing a few more gasps and an incredulous "It's a girl," from at least one boy. I resent that. I'm not that flat-chested, even if I was only a little taller and curvier than Louise.

Speaking of her, she was shouting again, this time drawing the attention of someone who I presumed to be "Mr. Colbert!" Balding and middle-aged he would have looked a bit like my dad except that he was wearing a long black robe and carrying a big wooden staff, like the stereotype of a wizard from one of my brother's Dungeon and Dragon games.

"What is it that you want from me, Miss Vallière?"

Louise seemed be in something of a panic or even a frenzy, gesticulating wildly with her free hand and her wand (causing some pre-emptive ducking and dodging on the part of the crowd who certainly seemed to imagine that some harm could come from having the wand pointed at them. If this wasn't an illusion of some kind, perhaps they were right. "Please! Let me try the summoning one more time?"

This 'summoning', by implication, was supposedly the manner in which I had come here. I didn't care to assume that this was some strange dream, induced or otherwise, and could only hope that there was a complementary 'dismissal' to return me to the train station, preferably before I missed my train.

"I cannot allow that, Miss Vallière." Colbert seemed firm on this.

"Why not?" Louise's words echoed my own curiosity and I tentatively lowered my guard, so that I could use my telepathic gifts to see if I could pick up more meaning than their words would provide given my lack of subtext.

"It's strictly forbidden. When you are promoted to a second year student, you must summon a familiar, which is what you just did." The surface images of Colbert's thoughts were flickering and of no more use to me than his words saving that when he mentioned Louise's familiar I caught a glimpse of myself, as he saw me. Short chestnut hair and an annoyingly delicate looking face poking out of my baggy sweatshirt collar. Telepathy might sound cool but like most things, it requires control before it can become useful.

"Your elemental specialty is decided by the familiar that you summon. It enables you to advance to the appropriate courses for that element. You cannot change the familiar once you have summoned it, because the Springtime Familiar Summoning is a sacred rite. Whether you like it or not, you have no choice but to take her."

"But..." Louise protested, "I've never heard of having a commoner as a familiar!"

There was more laughter at that and Louise scowled ferociously at the guilty parties, without any noticeable effect upon them. I cleared my throat to draw some attention back to me. "If you will excuse me for saying so, you are very swift to identify me as a... commoner, was it? Perhaps your measure of the word is different than mine?"

A redheaded girl, who seemed to be on the verge of bursting dramatically out of her uniform (I loathed her immediately), stepped forwards from the crowd. "It's very simple, little familiar of Zero. Those who wield magic, like ourselves, are nobles and those who cannot are commoners." She laughed derisively. "How amusing if would be if you could use magic when your mistress cannot."

I was tempted to claim exactly that, but making the claim without being able to back it up would be embarrassing and I was not entirely sure that I could do anything that they would recognise as magic, for all that I had been classed as potentially having enough talent by Minch Grammar's reckoning to be signed up for elementary classes on the subject. It wasn't as if I'd had the chance to attend even one of the classes yet.

"Then I suppose that you would reckon me a commoner then," I conceded ruefully and looked over to see Louise stalking over to me in a state of high dudgeon, clearly having not swayed Colbert's mind as to making a second attempt.

"Hey you."

"Dare I hope you're about to send me home?"

She sniffed. "Just count yourself lucky. Normally you'd go your whole life without a noble doing this to you."

"I'm not so sure about that," came a whisper from a blond lad who was wearing his shirt half undone, presumably thinking that his scrawny chest made him look attractive to women. His voice was low enough that I don't think Louise heard him, but judging by the sudden stomp on his foot by the snooty-looking blonde standing beside him, she had. Not that the words meant much to me, but I quelled the temptation to take a quick rummage through his uppermost thoughts to try and work out what he was talking about. Instead I drew up my shields again and employed them in the manner that had first brought me to the attention of Minch Grammar, forming a psikinetic barrier around myself against whatever Louise was about to do to me. Perhaps if whatever she had in mind failed them sending me home so that she could make a second attempt would be more acceptable.

She waved her wand dramatically. "My name is Louise Françoise Le Blanc de La Vallière. Pentagon of the Five Elemental Powers; bless this humble being, and make her my familiar." And then she tapped me - more precisely, my shield - over my forehead.

"Go for it, Zero," called the redhead cattily.

"What are you doing?"

"Just hold still." Louise grasped my chin, closed her eyes and leant in.

I backed away of course, shaking off her hand easily enough. "Look I'm not one to judge, but I don't lean that way."

"Just be still so I can get this over with!"

I sighed and reinforced my shield over my face. If she was just kissing that then it didn't count, right? As a proper kiss I mean. "Fine, get it over with."

This time I let her press her lips over mine, able to feel them even through the shield, which was itself only micrometers thick. Her face was flushed when she pulled away, hopefully with embarrassment like my own cheeks. If she was getting excited about kissing another girl - me, no less - then I swore I would enact a terrible revenge against her, somehow. Or against whoever was messing with my head, if that was the case, although I didn't think that a delusion would have withstood my telepathy readily: I admit to being clumsy in that regard, but I don't lack mental force if the testers were to be believed.

Colbert seemed happy at least. "Well done, Miss Vallière. You may have failed 'Summon Servant' many times, but you succeeded on your first attempt at 'Contract Servant'."

Even this didn't quell the jokers amongst the crowd and I could hear sly comments that the spell only worked because I wasn't a powerful creature. Hah. I very much imagine they would have been laughing on the other side of their faces had they known exactly what I was capable of. Then again, not even I was entirely sure of that.

"Don't make fun of me!" Louise shouted at the nearest taunter, face set in a scowl. "Even I do things right once in a while!"

"Truly 'once in a while', Louise the Zero," laughed the blonde who was still standing next to the would-be playboy despite his earlier gaffe.

"Mr. Colbert! Montmorency the Flood just insulted me!"

Now it was the blonde's turn to colour. "Who are you calling 'the Flood'? I'm Montmorency the Fragrance!"

"I heard you used to wet the bed like a flood, didn't you? 'The Flood' suits you better!" I had to admit that that was an excellent zinger on the part of Louise.

"I hadn't expected better manners from Louise the Zero!"

"That's enough." Colbert was apparently done naively waiting for the two girls to settle their spat peacefully. "Nobles ought to show each other the proper respect."

I was a little distracted from this by the sudden burning heat that was rushing through my body. It occurred to me, rather too late, that I should have checked that magic cared whether she was kissing my psikinesis or my flesh. Evidently it did not. I like to think of myself as a hardened martial artist, able to take a hit even without my shield - even before my abilities activated this last spring.

This was something else. The heat was most intense, not in my face where Louise had made contact with me, but on the back of my left hand. I doubled over, sweat springing from my brow as my free hand clutched at what my nerves claimed must be some serious injury. "What did you do to me!"

"Don't make a fuss. The Familiar's Runes are being inscribed, it will be over soon."

My response to Louise's admonition would have had Mum rushing to wash my mouth out with soap and water.

"Don't use that kind of language in front of nobles." Louise seemed shocked by my vocabulary. Presumably she had no brothers base enough to curse in front of her.

The relief when the pain ebbed was such that I slumped to the grass once more, still covering the back of my hand when Colbert tried to examine it. I will admit that snatching his staff out of his hand and flicking it between his legs to knock him to the floor was over-reacting - I could easily have broken his fingers or his legs in the process.

"Miss Vallière, restrain your familiar!" he barked, scrambling back to his feet and trying to tug the staff away from me. The attempt was laughable - with my fingers closed around it, so too was my shield and he would have had more luck dragging me off my feet than of breaking my grip, but I let go at a suitable moment and let him overbalance backwards to the tittering of his class while Louise waved her wand at me in what I suspected was impotent threat.

"Right, well." Colbert coughed. "Back to class everyone." With apparent ease he levitated from the ground to a standing position and then continued to rise upwards, turning his back upon me. With the exception of Louise, the teenagers followed his example. Could everyone here fly like superman? Well that was one thing I couldn't match... although if magic could let me fill that gap in my abilities then I'd definitely be having a quiet look to see if I could figure it out.

"Louise, you'd better walk back!" jeered Montmorency as she rose past the strawberry blonde girl.

The redhead from earlier added: "She shouldn't try to fly. She can't even manage levitation."

Rather than exploding at them, Louise apparently decided I would make a better target for her wrath. "Who are you!"

I drew myself up to my full height, perhaps two inches more than her own unimposing stature. "I am Ellen Wright, a British Citizen and soon to enter the Sixth Form of Minch Grammar School."

"Grammar school? You had to attend a school just to teach you how to speak properly?" Louise waved her hand (and wand) dismissively. "Never mind that. I am Louise de La Vallière, second year student at Tristain Academy of Magic. I am your master from now on. Remember that!"

"For your information, where I come from Grammar Schools are the oldest and most prestigious of schools, with the privilege of selecting only the finest students." I didn't think it was relevant to tell her that despite its name, Minch Grammar School had only existed for about five years. My previous school could trace its history over three hundred years. "I don't have any master. Well the queen maybe."

She humphed. "How could I, the third daughter of the Vallière family... a noble who takes pride in her proper pedigree and ancient lineage... end up having to make someone like you my familiar?"

"Can't you send me back?"

"I don't know what backwoods you came from, how can I possibly send you back?"

"You managed to bring me here, didn't you?"

She shrugged. "That's completely different."

Her voice held the certainty of someone who had no idea what they were talking about and was taking an absolutist stance in order to bring the discussion to an end. Either way, it was clear that she was a dead end as far as sending me home went. "So what now?"

Louise pointed at the school. "We walk back to class."

.oOo.

There hadn't actually been any more class and Louise took me up to her room. Apparently the claim to nobility on the part of the students was upheld by the furnishings. The dresser and table were functional enough, although they looked as if they belonged in an antiques store. I personally felt that the four poster bed was a bit much.

Louise had huffed when I took a chair. Apparently a 'commoner' wasn't supposed to be sitting on equal terms to one of the nobility. She chose to take up residence on the bed while we talked, apparently feeling that this gave her back some sort of moral superiority. "Is that true?" she asked after I had recounted what I remembered from before I found myself on the grass outside the Academy.

"No, I was lying to you in order further my nefarious scheme."

Louise snarled slightly at my sarcasm. "Don't talk to me like that! I'm your master, remember!"

"How can I forget when every other thing you say is a reminder?" I leant back on the chair putting my weight on first two legs and then just one. Keeping my balance like that was an interesting exercise. That Louise hadn't even heard of trains made it fairly unlikely I was just at some other school for 'gifted' children. I couldn't think of many places in the world that didn't have trains and none of them would be like this. So either I was in some sectioned off little corner of the globe that hadn't had any contact with anyone for hundreds of years (possible, if far-fetched) or I wasn't on Earth at all. Or a ridiculously powerful mage or psi had me trapped inside an illusion but if that was the case then there wasn't anything much I could do about it.

"I guess this must be some other world," I muttered, trying to think of any information about the notion. So far as was aware it wasn't something that had happened for real although for all I knew it might be an everyday experience at Minch. The only examples I could think of were fictional: Edgar Rice Burroughs' John Carter books that I'd borrowed from my brother and the Gor books that mum had raised a fuss about after he brought one back from the library (I didn't really feel I'd missed much in not reading those).

"Some other world?" Louise parroted. "Do you have any proof you're not just from the countryside somewhere?"

I went through my pockets looking for anything to prove it. My purse didn't have anything to convince Louise - funny money could have meant anything - although she was impressed that the 'portrait' of me on my library card was so realistic (I don't know why I'd brought that, I wouldn't be able to go to the library until I was home from Minch). My watch was mechanical and but apparently that was close enough to their means of telling time here that it didn't arouse suspicion. Eventually I found my I-Pod and convinced Louise to try it. She didn't like the music but agreed grudgingly that she'd never come across anything like it before.

"What element of magic does it use? Wind?" she asked.

"I don't think it uses magic at all. It's electricity."

Louise looked at me blankly. "So what kind of element is electricity? Is it different from the four elemental powers?"

"It's like controlled lightning," I explained. "But like I just said, it's not controlled by magic."

"Controlled... lightning..." Louise said somewhat reverently. I wondered what was going though her head, which naturally caused my telepathy to kick in. The image prevalent in her mind was of charred figures (somewhat resembling what I'd seen of her classmates) cowering away from a ten feet tall Louise who was laughing in a disturbing fashion. "Can you teach me to use that?"

"Nope."

"Hmph."

"I don't know exactly how it works." I admitted. Secondary school physics was high on the theory and rather low on the practicality of creating modern micro-electronics. It wasn't as if I was a gadgeteer or something - otherwise I could kick off an industrial revolution here.

Not that one seemed to be particularly necessary, since Louise responded to the descending sun by snapping her fingers, causing a lamp on the table to flicker to life.

"Neat. Was that magic?"

"Of course," she said matter of factly and then coloured. "I didn't do it myself, the lamp is spelled to respond to commands."

"Really?" I snapped my fingers and the lamplight died.

"Hey!" Louise lit it again. "Stupid commoner. Stop playing with the lamp."

I grinned and held my fingers ready snap them again.

"Don't you dare!" Louise looked around, snatched up her pillow and lobbed it at me. I caught it easily, of course, but doing so without losing my balance meant that my hands were full and I couldn't snap my fingers so I suppose her tactic worked.

"So what are familiars supposed to do?" If I was stuck being her familiar (until I found a way to go home) then I should probably try to do a good job of it. After all, I was pretty much dependent upon her right now as it was clear that no one else at the school cared in the least that I'd been snatched away to be her property. Not that I'd admit that sort of weakness to Louise of course.

She drew her self up self-importantly. "Firstly, a familiar is able to grant its master an enhancement in vision and hearing."

I blinked. "What? Like, infrared vision or something?"

"'What-read vision'?" Louise shook her head. "It means that what a familiar sees, the master can also see. But it seems that doesn't work with you. I can't see anything."

"Don't be so sure of that." I focused on the image of looking at her sat on the bed and tried to gently push that in amongst her thoughts. Altering another's thoughts is the hardest and most restricted sorts of telepathy from what I'd heard and I certainly wasn't able to do so without it being noticed. Which would be illegal. And wrong. And I certainly had not tried. Much.

"Ahahaha!" Louise laughed triumphantly. "Of course it would work now that you try!"

I smirked slightly and then altered the image to show huge floppy rabbit ears poking up out of her hair. Louise's laugh turned into a squawk and she clutched at her head, checking to make sure that such ears didn't really exist. "Don't do that to your master!"

"Right, right, whatever."

She glared at me. "You should speak more formally if you attended a special school for that. It should be: 'I'm sorry master, I will not make that mistake again'."

"Consider yourself forgiven." I waved my hand dismissively as she fumed. "So is that all familiars do, spy for their masters?"

"Not at all. A familiar will also retrieve items that its master desires. For example, reagents."

"That sounds chemical... for potions, right."

"So you do know something useful." Louise sounded surprised.

"I don't know what sorts of things you'll want but I might be able to find them," I agreed. "If you've got a book or something so I know what to look for."

"Alright so that works. And the most important thing of all... A familiar exists to protect its master! The task of protecting them from any and all enemies is a duty of the highest priority! But that might be a little bit problematic for you. A powerful magical beast would almost always defeat its enemies but I don't think you could even beat a raven."

"I knocked that teacher of yours around quite easily."

Louise didn't seem to think that that was very impressive. "He just took pity on you and didn't use any magic. No mage would ever really be defeated by anything that wasn't magical."

I wasn't quite so sure that magic was so decisive but decided it would be best not to argue. "So basically I run errands for you."

"Finally you understand. I'll only make you do things I'm sure you can manage: laundry, cleaning and other tasks."

"And what do I get out of this?"

"You should be grateful for the privilege."

I gave Louise a searching look but as far as I could tell, she wasn't even being sarcastic. "What did your last slave die of?"

"S-shut up!"

"Seriously, the very least you owe me is to feed and house me." I adopted an authoritarian pose: "Having a familiar is a big responsibility, you know." I don't think she realised then just how much mutants like myself need to eat. Our powers don't just happen, we go through huge amounts of energy and have to replenish it somehow.

"Well of course I will." Louise yawned. "Right then, all this talking has made me sleepy."

I nodded. "Where do I sleep?"

Louise pointed to the floor.

"The hell you say!"

"But there's nowhere else. And there's only one bed." She stripped the top blanket off the bed and offered me it at least.

"It's a good sized bed and neither of us is all that large."

"Do you think for one minute that the third daughter of the Vallière family would share her bed with her familiar!"

"We're both girls so it wouldn't matter." I took the blanket and the pillow Louise had thrown at me earlier and stood up, advancing on the bed. Then I paused. "Unless you kissing me earlier was significant somehow?"

Louise's cheeks went pink. "It was the spell! It was the spell!" she insisted.

"Then there's not a problem, is there?" I asked as I arranged the pillow at the bottom of the bed.

My 'master' proceeded to express her belief that there was indeed a problem by taking the other pillow and smacking me with it. As I had my shield up, it didn't make any impression on me but on the second swat I snagged it out of her hands, tossed it onto the floor and proceeded to yank her forwards trapping her under one arm as I delivered two swift smacks with my other hand, one to each butt cheek. Her shocked cry suggested that corporal punishment was not something she was accustomed to.

"Are you done acting like a child?" I asked, letting her struggle fruitlessly against my grip. Her arms were pinned against her sides and even if they had been free, she had as much chance of breaking loose from my vastly greater strength as newborn baby had of wrestling an elephant to the ground.

Once I was sure that she had comprehended her helplessness I released her and let her scoot up the bed until she was pressed against the headboard, eyes wide in sudden fear.

"There was once a teacher, long before I was born," I exaggerated slightly, "Who expressed the great wisdom that life is like a sewer: what you get out of it tends to resemble what you put into it."

She didn't understand, I could tell. Not that I can entirely blame her. It was probably the first time in her life she had ever been faced with a threat beyond harsh and mocking words.

"If you treat me like a dog, Louise, then I will give you no more help or support than you could expect from a dog. A big, hungry dog that destroys everything around it because it doesn't know any better. A dog that bites," I snapped my teeth illustratively "the hand that feeds it."

There was a muffled eep escaped from the other end of the bed where Louise had practically crammed her knuckles into her mouth.

Then I smiled. "But if you treat me as a friend and companion then I will treat you in the same way. Wouldn't that be much more pleasant for both of us?"

I'm not quite sure that she was any more reassured by my smiling than she had been by my vague (and almost entirely empty) threat. Without her being willing to provide food and shelter I would have to obtain them myself and I had only the slightest notion of how I might do so in this strange land. Besides which, while I'm certainly very good at fighting in a dojo I have the unsettling notion that simply leaving might lead to small legions of magic users trying to arrest me. I've no idea how such a scenario would play out and I wasn't at all sure I'd like the answer.

Perhaps it would be best to confide in her a little. "You didn't just summon anybody, you know."

"You see, just as Tristain Academy exists to teach young magi how to use magic, there are schools in my homeland that exist to teach young people with rare and special talents how to use them. These people are called mutants and Minch Grammar is a school set up to teach us how to use these powerful talents without destroying ourselves and those around us."

That didn't seem to reassure her very much.

"In my case, because I haven't been to the school yet I only have a little idea of what I can do and how to do them, but I assure you that certain of my talents are extremely useful."

"W-what can you do?"

I smiled. Louise's curiosity, as I had hoped, was overwhelming her fears. "In world's parlance I am believed to be what is called a Package-Deal Psychic: that is to say, I have a little bit of telepathy, a little bit of clairvoyance and a little bit of psikinesis. And when I say a little bit, I mean that I can only do a few things with them but that what I can do I do with great power. So when it comes to the matter of powerful magical beasts..." I gestured dismissively. "Well, I think I can do more than a mere raven."

"I've not ever heard of any of those," Louise said, unimpressed.

I sighed. "Let's start with telepathy..."