TWO
Mira leaped out of the bin, yelling at the top of her voice.
‘AAAARRRRRRGGGGGGH!’ came the reply, as she collided with someone.
Mira looked down to see a boy on the ground, staring up at her with wide eyes. Behind him was a man cowering by a bike rack.
‘Oh, hello!’ said Mira, as she helped the boy up. ‘Sorry about that.’
The boy stared at her warily.
‘So this is Unicorn School,’ she said, looking around.
To be honest, it didn’t look very different to the leisure centre car park.
‘Uh – no,’ said the man by the bike racks. Mira supposed he must be the boy’s dad because they looked quite alike and had matching briefcases. ‘This is where you go through the Magic Portal to get to the school. Raheem is just about to go through.’ He gestured at the boy, who gulped.
‘But –’ said Mira, as she looked around for her sister – who was nowhere to be seen. And then she realized – Rani had tricked her and gone through on her own! TYPICAL.
‘We can show you if you like?’ said Raheem’s dad. ‘It’s Raheem’s first day. We’ve had twelve practice runs, just to be safe.’ He squeezed Raheem’s shoulder.
‘Do . . . do you live in that bin?’ squeaked Raheem.
‘No! I was just . . . resting there before I went through the portal,’ said Mira. ‘It’s my first day too – I’m Mira. It would be brilliant if you could show me.’
She followed the two of them past the bins and to a little clump of bushes at the edge of the car park.
Raheem and his dad showed her a gap in the branches where the air looked kind of wobbly and shimmery. Magic, thought Mira. Her tummy gave a little lurch. This was really it!
Mira waited for Raheem to say bye to his dad. It took a while because they checked Raheem’s briefcase twice and then sang a song about the ten Rules of Keeping Safe. But finally Mira and Raheem crawled through the gap in the bushes and into a clearing. Everything looked just a little bit sparkly.
‘Okay,’ breathed Mira. ‘Ready?’
‘Erfg,’ said Raheem.
Mira decided to take that as a yes. She grabbed his arm with one hand and reached out towards the sparkles . . .
There was a flash of light that split into the seven colours of the rainbow. Mira felt herself being lifted up and before she knew it they were hurtling through the air.
Mira’s toes tingled and a giggly feeling tickled up her legs, into her tummy and arms and head. Even her hair felt excited. Everything was already so magical, she could hardly stand it. She was on her way to Unicorn School!
‘HOW FUN IS THIS?’ Mira yelled to Raheem, but he was too busy screaming to reply.
Just as quickly as it had appeared, the rainbow light vanished, and for a moment the two of them hung in the air, before dropping with a thump onto a soft haystack.
They climbed off the landing haystack, just as the next children were deposited by the rainbow. Mira looked around her and pulled strands of hay out of her hair. In front of them was Unicorn School. It was HUGE. It had turrets and a clocktower and looked a bit like a castle, but lots of it was all on one level, like a bungalow. (Because unicorns don’t like stairs, Mira thought. There was nothing about unicorns that she didn’t know.) Rani had told Mira that the dormitories, where the pupils slept at night-time, were up in the turrets and that the unicorns slept in their stables.
The stables were in a large cobbled yard in front of the school. On the other side of the yard were fields with jumps set up. Those must be where the riding lessons are, Mira thought. She had never been horse-riding, but she had ridden a one-eared donkey at the beach last summer. She thought that unicorn-riding must be easier than that – and there would be less chance of falling in the sea.
Behind the school, Mira could see the forest and, behind that, enormous ice-capped mountains. Rani said that the Fearsome Forest was where lots of the quests took place. It was huge – stretching as far as Mira could see.
Mira’s toes were still tingling. She turned to Raheem and grinned. He still looked a bit vomity from the journey.
The rainbow had dropped them off to the side of the Grand Paddock, which seemed to be the school playground for humans and unicorns. Real. Live. Actual. Unicorns! Groups of older kids stood chatting, each with a unicorn next to them, like it was no big deal. Mira realized her mouth was open in astonishment, and quickly closed it.
One group were playing football, but they were riding their unicorns, and the unicorns were kicking the ball with their hooves! And over in a far corner of the field some unicorns and their riders were leaping over the jumps. Mira thought they looked a bit like they were flying. Rani had told her that the unicorns developed magical powers as they got older, and that some of them could fly!
The excited feeling in Mira’s chest got bigger and bigger until she felt like she might burst. The unicorns were all amazing – different colours with long legs, sleek, glossy manes and glittery horns. It was amazing to think that soon Mira would meet her very own unicorn!
Just then Mira heard a burst of laughter to her right. There was Rani and her friends. They were in the third year now – Class Yellow. You started in Class Red and then moved up through the colours of the rainbow. And each year you had another stripe added to your school badge. Mira looked at the badge on the sleeve of her T-shirt. What would it look like when she had a full rainbow?
‘Um,’ said Raheem, taking her out of her daydream. ‘I think we go over there.’
Turning away from her sister, Mira followed Raheem over to a big banner near the stables that read:
WELCOME TO UNICORN SCHOOL, CLASS RED!
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