Excerpt: Crossing the Wall

A knock at the door. "Hey, guys, time to wake up!"

Lee woke up suddenly and sat up in bed, hearing an unfamiliar voice. He looked over at Eldridge, who was still sound asleep lying on his back, and drooling slightly on his shirt. He then looked back at the source of the wake-up call: a tall, awkward-looking man of maybe thirty, with a long beard that stuck out in random directions, and hair which had organized itself into sort of a reverse mohawk, with tall tangles of it on the left and right side of the man's head, and virtually nothing in the middle. He wore a black T-shirt with the name of some long-since-broken-up metal band, a pair of worn cargo shorts, and a pair of sandals, exposing how much hair he had covering the rest of him.

"What time is it?" Lee asked.

"About nine o'clock. Time to get up, in any case. Oh, right, we haven't met yet. You must be Lee Stone, the new arrival." Lee nodded. "I'm Emmett Wolf, one of the staff here, but everyone just calls me the Wolfman. Oddly enough, I got that nickname before I got interested in transformation... can't imagine why. Anyway, you're supposed to be out of here by nine. This isn't a vacation home, and if you just sleep in all day you'll never get out of here. I think you're working with Aidan again today, and he" -- he motioned to Eldridge -- "should probably be in the library. What's his problem, anyway?"

"I think he knocked himself out with magic last night. Said he was having trouble sleeping."

Emmett slapped his palm against his forehead. "Why does everyone do that?"

"I don't know, maybe it's because you can do everything else with magic..." Lee said, with a bit of a sarcastic edge.

"...as long as you understand it," Emmett interjected, taking several large strides over to Eldridge's bedside. He smelled like a wolf, too, Lee thought. "The problem with putting yourself to sleep is that most people don't know enough brain chemistry to make it so that they'll actually wake up sometime in the next week."

He stood over Eldridge, shook him roughly, and yelled in his ear. Finally Eldridge stirred, swatted Emmett away with his arm, then rolled over and went back to sleep. Undeterred, Emmett put his face near Eldridge's ear, then gave a sharp, loud howl. Eldridge jumped a foot out of the bed, then his eyes snapped open and he turned to Emmett, shaking slightly.

"God damn, Wolfman, you scared me? Why'd you do that?" Eldridge said, breathlessly.

"It's wakeup time, and you didn't wake up. Not only that, but you forgot the first rule: research first, then try something. You'd be sleeping all week if I hadn't done that. Maybe you could spend your morning studying something about the brain. Probably more useful than your usual wannabe evil wizard fare, anyway."

"Yeah, yeah, I'll think about it. Just seemed like a good idea at the time."