At the Academy of Magic on Copernicus Hill, ducks outrank common sense, biscuits have a mind of their own, and Janek is dragged into a mystery that may flood the whole place by afternoon.
The Academy of Magic on Copernicus Hill had never been a sensible institution. The canteen biscuits had a bad habit of bolting under tables, the professors lived in the clouds quite literally, and the ducks behaved as if they had founded the place themselves. They waddled through the library, occupied the washrooms, and during exams had a talent for parking their feathers on the very page a student needed most.
Janek, who survived on bad jokes, worse ideas, and the occasional burst of genius, had long ago stopped asking questions. His friend Susie claimed she could spell the internet, though she refused to say in which programming language, which only made her sound more dangerous. Between them, they had seen enough oddities at the academy to treat the extraordinary as background noise.
That illusion lasted until Thursday morning.
Janek woke to find a scrap of paper tucked beneath his pillow. No signature. No explanation. Just two words, written in a sharp, hurried hand: Look under the fountain.
It had the unmistakable smell of a prank. Janek blamed Zuza at once, because Zuza was exactly the sort of person who would think a cryptic note was an elegant way to start the day. She denied it with impressive indignation and, after a few minutes of arguing, agreed to come with him to the garden.
They did not get far.
Professor Partridge stepped out from behind a topiary swan as if he had been waiting there all morning. The alchemy master wore his usual absurd hat, today shaped like a pizza slice, and he looked at them with the suspicious gravity of a man who had already seen three disasters before breakfast.
“And where do you think you’re going?” he asked.
“Er... to watch the ducks,” Janek said, because panic had robbed him of every better lie.
The professor narrowed his eyes.
“Do that carefully,” he said. “Today they have unusually much to say.”
Zuza went pale. Janek was already regretting the lie when, from somewhere beyond the marble fountain, came a sharp, angry squabble. Not human. Duck.
They moved closer, every step suddenly too loud. The fountain stood in the middle of the garden, white stone glistening in the morning light, its basin crowded with ducks who were not behaving like ducks at all. Voices rose from behind it, clipped and urgent, as though the birds were in the middle of a council meeting and the chairman had just lost his temper.
Then Janek saw it.
A duck he had never seen before, pink as sugared gum and wearing a tiny blue bow, stood on the fountain’s edge like a prosecutor addressing court. It flapped one wing for emphasis and shouted something about the lost Heart of the Fountain and a terrible afternoon flood risk.
Janek and Zuza stared at each other.
Before either of them could decide whether to laugh, run, or pretend this was normal academy business, the pink duck turned its head and looked straight at them.
And then it opened its beak and said...