It was like an invisible dome around the Earth, they way it kept whatever wanted to attack us at bay. Recently it had been introduced in schools, to children younger than 5. The explanation from the world government was that the more people who could cast a curse there were the better. There was no knowing what these alien lifeforms would come up with to counter our defense..
Being a teacher carried a heavy burden, but the sense of accomplishment that ensued when the students were competent enough to blast a spaceship in half with a flick of a thumb was worth it. We were nine teachers at a school that worked with mainly children in their early teens. We all taught them the same thing: how to destroy a spaceship when it was still many kilometers from earth, how to kill the aliens quickly should you fail to destroy the aliens, and how to free yourself once abducted. Other schools, in Africa and Europe, taught other things, although we in India thought they were not necessary.
On a day that was awash with sunlight, my fellow teachers and I decided to let the children off to relax their senses. All went down to the lake; from the staff room we could hear the faint beating of a boombox. We had tea and the biscuits Mr Dhariwal brought.
"How are your children doing?" he asked me, joining me by the window. He stuttered and nearly spilled his tea trying to get the words out.
"Same old, you know," I said taking a sip. "Although one student has already advanced to the Death Spell."
Dhariwal made a face as if to say "naturally" and bit down on a biscuit.
"What's that?" Gupta eyes were wide as she rose slowly from her seat. "Do you hear it?"
A faint whistling, growing louder and louder. Everyone put their cups down, gently so as to not unsettle the tea. Mitra let out a sigh of contempt as he rolled up the sleeves of his shirt.
"Let's get this over with," he said.
We teleported to the lake, and I was blinded for a moment by the sun being reflected in the water. The children were already in formation, the faces of the younger ones looking apprehensive. Everyone looked to the sky as the whistling reached a high that was unbearable. But everyone knew to not flinch; letting your guard down might be the end of you.
The spaceships weren't big, each the size of an ordinary house and with ease, as they plummeted towards us, pummeling us with laser beams, we blasted them to smithereens. The right hand did the spell casting whilst the left hand provided a shield that could be penetrated from one end only.
"Keep at it, don't falter!" Gupta screamed. I saw she was mainly talking to her students.
The laser beams were phase one of the aliens' attack. Phase two was them getting to the ground in person and attacking us in a swarm that was meant to overwhelm. They came to us like a wave of green and yellow, their guns firmly in their tentaclelike arms. They bombarded us with more beams of light and we bombarded them with explosions and rocks and trees and even the water from the lake. To a person who had never seen an alien confrontation this might have looked like the end of the world.
Afterwards, in the staff room, Dhariwal offered to reheat everyone's tea. He swished his hand and everyone grunted appreciatively.
"You know, it's a wonder how these aliens see themselves as superior," I said to Dhariwal. "They've been doing the same attack for the past two weeks and we've kept winning. You'd think they'd have caught on by now."
Dhariwal nodded and put down his cup because his tea was too hot.