Next to that was a picture of giant snake eating circles, squares, triangles, octagons, and hexagons.

The question read:

What will be the 20th shape he eats?

Oliver rubbed his eyes. How was this even harder?

He slumped forwards and put his head in his arms, covering his eyes and ears. The darkness was soothing and helped his thoughts settle. He blocked out the sound of scribbling around him, and slowly began to think again.

Maybe he was overthinking it. Maybe the question was simpler than he was telling himself.

He looked at the snake with new eyes and noticed a pattern to the order of shapes in his belly. In the working area provided, Oliver haltingly wrote out the sequence. He then counted along until he reached...

‘Square’ he murmured, writing it down. And he knew it was right. It was so simple; it was just counting.

Invigorated, he moved on to the next question, and the next. Each looked even more baffling and nonsensical than the first. But every time, Oliver made his mind slow down, and approached the question carefully. Over the next forty minutes, he deciphered codes, filled in drawings, solved mazes, and completed a dozen other puzzles. He was just writing in telephone numbers when the wizard said

‘Five minutes to go’

Panic immediately flared in him. The REASONING paper was now done, but had he done enough on the other two?

He grabbed the READING paper and began adding more to his answers.

No, surely he’d done enough there. It was the MATHS paper he needed to work on.

Questions seemed to jump out at him. He tried to use the calculator to check his earlier answers, but, for some reason, it wouldn’t work when he tried.

Flipping to the triangle questions, his random answers seemed to loom out at him. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

Frantically, he tried correcting them, but his brain seemed to have frozen up. The numbers wouldn’t make sense.

Feeling the seconds drain away, he filled out every answer he’d missed as fast as he could.

He wasn’t even sure he was writing down numbers when he heard

‘The exam is now over. Pens down, everyone’

With a clatter, everyone dropped their pens, as if hit by an electric shock.

Oliver collapsed backwards, feeling strangely exhausted, as if he had run fifty kilometres. His hand was cramped, and his brain felt drained. He became aware the wizard was speaking again.

‘Place your papers in the envelope provided with your candidate information page on top. Then leave it on your desk, and silently exit the hall. You are not to speak until you reach the bottom of the steps. If you make a sound, you will face instant failure.’

Looking underneath his papers, Oliver found a large purple envelope. Quickly stuffing his papers inside, he then stood up and made for the door as fast as he could, while not making a sound. He needed to get out into the air and didn’t even notice that his name had appeared on the front of envelope in flowing silver letters.

He passed Hannah, half expecting her to try and trip him up. But she was apparently absorbed with tucking her papers neatly away to notice him.

Outside, the cool air was a welcome relief from the increasingly stuffy hall.

Sighing, Oliver sat down on the steps to wait for Jacob. Around him, other children were bursting into chatter as they spilled out into the courtyard.

‘That MATHS paper was insane’ he heard one boy groan.

‘I dunno, I think I bombed READING’ his friend replied unhappily ‘I didn’t know what to put for the last question’

‘How’d you do?’ came a voice from behind.

Oliver glanced up at Jacob who was standing over him, looking as tired as he felt.

‘My hand started cramping in the last hour’ Oliver said, getting up and beginning to walk back to the classroom.

‘I think I did OK on the READING paper’ Jacob said ‘but that REASONING one was weird. I didn’t have a clue what it was asking’

He stretched out his arms.

‘What about you?’

‘I screwed up in MATHS’

Oliver didn’t say anything else, but perhaps his tone made it clear he didn’t want to talk about it because Jacob changed the subject.

‘The guy behind me kept muttering and chewing on his pen. Drove me insane, I just wanted to turn around and...’

Jacob carried on, but Oliver wasn’t really listening as they reached their class and climbed the steps. He’d failed MATHS. It didn’t matter how well he’d done on the other two. Mulberry Academy would never accept him now.

When they reached their desks, he slumped down in his chair and closed his eyes.

Around him, the other kids were talking and shouting as they took their seats. Miss Wilson was trying to quiet everyone down.

‘I must say, that was much easier than I thought it would be’

He could hear Hannah and Sophie pass by and caught a whiff of Hannah’s perfume.

‘I can’t believe they thought that MATHS paper would challenge anyone’ she scoffed ‘I’ll be shocked if I get anything less than an Exceptional’

‘Quiet, Hannah, please’ said Miss Wilson firmly from the board ‘Now, I hope you all did well, and will all congratulate the two who do win’

‘When will we find out?’ called out Lucas. Oliver opened his eyes.

‘We should receive the results by the end of the week, and they will be announced in Assembly on Friday’

The class began murmuring to each other.

‘Until then’ said Miss Wilson, raising her voice ‘we’ll put it out of our minds, and focus on our class work. Everyone get out your math books and copy down the following problems...’

*

Despite what Miss Wilson said, though, Oliver couldn’t put the exam out of his mind. The memory of the MATHS paper hung over him like a storm cloud.

He went to Miss Wilson at one point and asked her about finding x’s for triangles. She had explained it in his exercise book, and though it made sense at the time, the diagrams and formulas blurred in his head once he left the room.

Thoughts of Mulberry and wizards and rainbow fish swirled in his mind. Once again finding no books in the school library, he searched online, using the ancient library computer.

Mulberry Academy, he found out, had been established over five hundred years ago by a pair of wizards, thought to be the first ones ever.

It quickly grew as people were eager to learn this new marvel they called ‘magic’.

Wizards were those who devoted themselves to the craft and had graduated from the school.

They often used their magic to assist the rest of the population. Oliver found accounts of wizards helping turn dead land fertile, aiding construction projects, and causing breakthroughs in medicine.

Or they would bury themselves deep in their studies, and work to expand their knowledge of magic and unravel the many mysteries that still remained. Many of these worked at the Academy.

Oliver couldn’t find anything specific about the latter and remembered what Jacob had said about them hoarding knowledge.

It was Thursday night, and Oliver, Emily, and their father were eating dinner at the kitchen table.

‘You still don’t know the results’ his father tried to comfort him ‘you never know, they could surprise you’

‘Dad, the MATHS paper was a disaster’ Oliver said, exasperated ‘they’re not going to give a scholarship to someone who failed a third of the exam’

‘So what if you failed?’ asked Emily. She was watching TV through the lounge door but spoke to Oliver.

‘Sheppardton High isn’t so bad. Just don’t look the seniors in the eye and hold your breath when passing the changing rooms. And don’t forget your books, because the teachers, like, scream at you if you do. One guy kept losing his ruler in Maths and got detention for three days. Also, don’t take your wallet or anything with you. People steal them from your pockets between class. The halls get sooo crammed, it’s easy to just reach in and- ‘

‘Yes, Emily, thank you’ their father broke in quickly.

He looked at Oliver, who was listlessly stirring his porridge.

‘If Jacob doesn’t pass either, at least you can still go to Sheppardton High together’ he tried to console him.

‘Nope’ said Oliver.

While his father looked confused, Oliver sighed and explained.

His father blinked, and even Emily looked around in surprise.

‘Whitecliffes?’ his father repeated, bemused ‘But... why go so far away when there’s a school right here?’

‘Probably because of what Emily just said’ Oliver stabbed his porridge ‘it’s his parents making him go’

‘I’ve known Kurt and Tina for years, and they’ve never mentioned anything like this’ his father murmured.

‘Oh yeah, it’s probably because students have, like, lit a fire in the toilets, and locked a teacher in the supply cupboard,’ Emily carried on ‘and fight with the burners in science, and...’

‘Is it certain he’ll go?’ his father asked him.

Oliver nodded.

‘The only way we’d stay together is if we both won the scholarship. And if I didn’t...’

He was silent for a moment, then pushed his chair back.

‘I’m going to bed, I’m not really hungry for this stuff’

He left his half-eaten bowl on the bench and trudged slowly upstairs.

‘...and once a kid stole a teacher’s car and drove it into a fountain, and once some girls pulled the fire alarm so they could sneak off to the shops and...’

Their father sat in thought.