The Ring of Five by Eoin McNamee

still. Soon he was winning hand after hand.
    The next class was geography. As Danny began to file into the classroom he saw a woman with bushy hair standing at the head of the class. She was wearing old-fashioned goggles pushed up onto her forehead. When she saw Danny she reached behind herself and snatched up a wooden-backed blackboard duster from under the blackboard. In the same smooth movement she threw the duster at Danny's head. It ricocheted off his temple with a resounding thwok, half stunning him and sending him staggering several paces backward.
    Beside him he could hear Les's low whistle at the aim and execution of the throw.
    "That Spitfire," Les said, his voice full of admiration, "what a woman!"
    "Get that boy out of my classroom," the woman said, her voice clear, almost musical in contrast to the violence
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    of her actions. "There should be no uninducted cadets in this class." She peered into the gloom at Danny. "Are you all right, dear? I threw underarm since you're a new boy." Danny nodded groggily. "Good, good," she went on. "Now kindly leave the room. Knutt, replenish the ammo." Les hesitated, then picked up the duster and brought it back to her. He came back to Danny and steered him by the arm out the door.
    "See you after class," he whispered apologetically.
    Danny stood uncertainly in the corridor. Every time he went somewhere on his own something happened to him, and he was getting a little tired of it, so he resolved not to move. There was a comfortable-looking armchair with a strangely shaped back in a little alcove off the corridor, so he sat down in that to wait for the others to finish.
    He found a pile of well-thumbed magazines on the table beside the chair, and he picked up the top one and began to look through it. It was called On Wings of Gold , and it was full of photographs of Messengers getting awards for things like ballroom dancing and quilt making and flower arranging. There were advertisements for ointments to rub on aching wing joints, and a product promising to "bring out your natural feather color," with a lady Messenger half turned and smiling broadly as she showed off a very unnaturally bright pair of silver wings. Danny particularly liked the ad that said "Fed up with carrying those heavy wings around all day?" and showed a grumpy Messenger sporting what looked like a corset worn backward.
    The next magazine in the pile was called Perils of the
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    Air and seemed devoted to showing how dangerous flying was. There were drawings of spindly Messengers plummeting to the ground, or in midair collisions, or being struck by lightning as they flew perilously near to thunder clouds. There were pages of stories about real-life disasters--whole squadrons of Messengers who took off and were lost over the "Bodminster Triangle," and a tale of a flight of Messengers lost in snowy peaks who survived for days--with dark hints that some of the survivors were driven to eat the others.
    The back pages of Perils of the Air were given over to handy hints on what to do if someone closed a car door on your wings, and how to avoid getting sucked into the intake of a jet engine. Danny was so fascinated that he didn't notice when a tall shadow fell over him.
    "Errr ... hem!" The throat clearing was like a gunshot, and Danny leapt to his feet in surprise, scattering magazines all around him. A Messenger stood in front of him. He was tall with long sideburns, and wore a threadbare lounge suit with black shoes that might once have been elegant but were now scuffed and battered. He had a long nose, and he looked down it at Danny as though he was sighting along the barrel of a gun.
    "I knew things had gone to pot at Wilsons," he said, his voice like that of a professor who has found his prize student cheating, "but I didn't think we had gone so far as allowing a Cherb to sit in my chair, reading my magazines."
    "I'm not a Cherb," Danny said, hurriedly picking up the magazines.
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    "I suppose not," the