Chapter 8: Jack Be Nimble

College is pretty scary. Everything changes and you don’t know what to believe. Some say it’s four years of partying, others that they didn’t get a full night’s sleep after orientation, and there’s all this talk of sex, drugs.

Then you turn up and find that it’s kind of up to you. I mean, you sort of choose who to make friends with, and you end up doing what they do. If you want to party, you’ll probably mention that and someone will say, “Hey, I like partying too!”

Everything changes but you.

Still, you never know when you’ll find something that changes you. For me, it was my second week and (for the second time) I heard some older students say: “Jack be nimble, Jack be quick, Jack jumped off her own broomstick.”

It stuck with me because I thought it was about a suicide. I mean, college is tough. I didn’t want to go around asking about it, though, and nothing came up on the magi-net. I started to wonder if it was an old myth, maybe a student from centuries ago who curses the fresh apprentices that fly drunk or pull an Icarus.

Well, I didn’t have long to wonder, classes starting. I never thought of myself as a genius, but I’d breezed through high school; turns out, when you get into a good college, you’re surrounded by people who are smarter or who know how to work harder than you (or both).

So, yeah….

Anyway, there I was, the same as I was, but everything else was different. Overwhelming. I felt like I was holding my metaphorical breath. Drowning as the tide came in, gasping when it went out. Everyone said they were struggling, no one looked like it, no one looked like they believed it, chuckling and giggling.

I left the dorm one night for no real reason. Sitting in my room just drove me crazy, locked in with my thoughts. Outside, you know, I could empty my head if I kept looking around.

There were the other dorms, each guarded by statues of different knowledge demons. Some also had experiments left behind by past apprentices: a lightning tree, the leaves glowing white-blue (letting off the odd clap of thunder—and it literally sounded like a clap—whenever two leaves got too close); a glass tube, condensed magical essence trapped inside (when it broke in my third year, we got to find out it was a stink spell); an astronomy model, accurate enough that a few masters borrowed it for lessons now and then.

Those were the ones I could see clearly on the moonlit night, bright enough to stand out in the shadows of light spilling out the windows.

Once I left the dorms area, it got a lot darker, campus buildings towering like oversized trees, blotting out the low moon. I carried on walking, distracting myself by thinking of what lectures I took in the rooms I passed, albeit my sense of direction making it unlikely I was all that correct.

That path brought me to the sports field. Wasn’t really the place for me. Well, I wasn’t bad at sports, but “not bad” was kind of really far from “good enough to play on a college team”. That only reminded me that, despite what made me special before—being the clever one—here there were people more clever than me who also were good enough to play on a college team.

“What am I doing here?” I asked myself; no answer came.

I mean, that wasn’t me thinking about quitting, it was me genuinely asking myself why I was at college. The half-baked feelings of superiority, the delusions of how the masters would be impressed by my talent, the wishy-washy dream of changing the world through some casual invention I came up with for a piece of coursework… that all came crashing down.

No, I was pretty much normal, a bit clever compared to the average woz. I thought I’d probably pass with merit (close enough to a distinction that I’d always tell people, “I would’ve got a distinction if I’d taken easier electives, but I wanted to challenge myself,”) and I’d go on to get a normal job, live a normal life, a comfortable life.

There was something incredibly scary about that to the kid who had always thought they were special.

Amidst my existential crisis, I looked up. The night sky was beautiful. At the top of a (vary large) hill out in the middle of nowhere, nothing drowned it out. Well, the moon tried, but it was still fairly low, and I didn’t yet know just how bright the stars shone when the moon wasn’t there—I’d grown up on the outskirts of a town, after all.

So beautiful.

I stared at it for a minute before I sat down on the cold ground, hugging my knees. I didn’t think to cast any kind of spell to keep warm. I didn’t think. I just sat there, staring at a sky so vast and deep that it rendered all my worries insignificant… or something. I mean, the whole point was I wasn’t thinking, so all I can really say is that I wasn’t thinking.

Anyway, an hour must have passed like that. I would have sat there ’til sunrise if not for the growing numbness in my butt and a seeping cold and a twinge from my bladder, all of which picked at my unfocus.

That was when Jack appeared.

The moon had risen some, but was only about halfway to its zenith. And it looked massive. Like, wozing big.

Across that moon flew a witch on a broom.

I couldn’t believe it, could only believe I’d seen something else, conceded that it was the end of the week and a lot of us liked to drink. While I thought through all that, she made another pass. This time, I realised she was really close—about the other end of the sports field. It was a big field, but that was pretty close.

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Third time’s the charm, my eye caught her, followed her beyond the moon. I watched as she raced, as she soared. Never mind a witch on a broom, she looked every bit the hunting owl. Lazily snaking one moment, she arced the next, diving to the ground and flaring at the last possible moment, her toes brushing the grass.

But her dance become only more fantastical from there. In a single roll, she slipped off the side, holding on with her hands, and she used the momentum to throw herself up, landing on her feet, balanced on the broom with arms outstretched.

One step, two step, she came to the front of the broom. Already, the uneven weight pushed the nose down. Then, she began to lean forward, forcing the broom vertical, and she ever-so-slightly drifted off of it; as she did, the broom fell faster (rather, she fell slower).

It looked surreal, like she was gliding along the broomstick. When she was about to hit the bristles, her toes stretched out, tipping the broom that little up. Just like that, it pressed against her feet and, since she now stood at the back, the broom naturally pulled up, an effortless curve that (again) had her bristles rustling the grass.

She didn’t stop there.

Like her earlier roll, she did all kinds of gymnastics using the broom for momentum. She swung with arms outstretched, then pulled herself in, hugging the broom and so making it spin; I couldn’t count, but it must have been at least five rotations before she pushed herself out, letting gravity slow her.

Hanging underneath, she let go with her arms so only her crossed legs held her on. Like that, she leant back, arms outstretched, sending the broom in another climb. As it went vertical, it stalled, coming to a stop mid-air. After a second that felt like an eternity, it started to fall, nose coming over the top of her and leading the broom in a dive. Like she had all along, she stayed perfectly still at the back of the broom; gradually, the nose pulled up, just in time to avoid the ground.

Although I noticed the pattern, that didn’t make it any easier on my heart to watch.

Trick after trick, she treated the broom as an extension of herself, full of grace and elegance. Strength, too. She held herself with such poise and I could barely manage ten chin-ups. Swings and rolls and balances, she did, then strung them together, seamlessly going from one to the next, all while flying at a speed that must have had her goggles covered in bugs.

So beautiful. Not the squashed bugs—her. Well, her routine.

But she wasn’t done.

Jack be nimble, Jack be quick. She gathered even more speed, pulled into a gradual climb, flying high enough to kiss the sky.

And Jack jumped off her own broomstick.

I stared for a moment, sure I wasn’t seeing some part of her still touching the broom. But she fell, fell backwards, fell as if diving into water, arms stretched above her head—now pointed towards the ground—and toes pointed at the sky.

Never mind the pain in my heart any more, it entirely stopped. I felt an intense urge to run out and try and catch her, and I wanted to, I really wanted to, but nothing moved. Not my legs, not my arms, not even my eyelids.

I could only stare, transfixed, no matter what would happen.

And I’ll never forget the sight of her falling figure as it crossed the moon. There was an indescribable beauty, her silhouette against the glowing white.

She kept on falling. The ground came ever closer. Then her broom—I was focused on her, but I guess it stalled—caught up, falling faster than her. When it reached her fingertips, she pulled it close, moulding herself to it.

But she didn’t just pull up. No, she started to spin, to spiral, coming to fly in a huge circle that clipped the ground, a spray of water billowing behind her.

Feeling like an idiot, I realised then that she was above the lake. Well, it still would have hurt like hell if she’d crashed into it, but it was far from as dangerous as I’d thought. Okay, still really dangerous. I mean, like, going from an eight to a seven.

Jerking me out of my thoughts, that spray behind her began to glitter. It wasn’t quite a rainbow, but it felt the same, invoked that same kind of wonder. Droplets in the air, crystallised by the broom’s magic, catching the moonlight.

For the second time in as many heartbeats, she carved the most beautiful picture into my head, looking as if she had black dress with a long, trailing skirt made of crystals.

Then, without any fanfare, no cheers or applause—there was no crowd but me—she flew off into the night.

Whenever I ended up thinking about how normal I was or how pointless my existence was, or really had any kind of worry, my thoughts always drifted to her and I would say to myself: “Jack be nimble, Jack be quick; Jack jumped off her own broomstick. She fell straight down, but missed the ground, and flew home safe and sound.”