And the thought of how much more horrible he was going to be after this.
Now she wasn’t just a thing that didn’t belong. She had actively thwarted him. She had dragged him back to the beginning with her. He was almost certainly going to be forced into some of her classes, thanks to this stunt. And all these horrid thoughts made her actually hesitate on the path that led to the place she was going to be staying.
The Narrows, her assignment papers said.
Ominous sounding, she had thought when she had read it. And even more ominous with all this weighing on her. Brawls, and burns, and the thought of being murdered for ripping away some of the privileges a man like that enjoyed. Better, she thought, to turn back now, before this probably evil building finished the job he had started.
But then she saw it, between the trees.
A gray, teetering structure, five stories high and as thin as a knife. Thinner than that even. She took a step to the left, and somehow the whole thing seemed to disappear. Then she stepped back, and there it was. A perfectly normal building, housing at least a hundred students.
She could see some of them, in fact.
Candlelight danced in a few of the windows, illuminating all kinds of activity within. A boy was unpacking his things; another was talking animatedly to someone she couldn’t see. Then a little up and to the left, she saw the silhouette of a girl sitting on her windowsill. Single braid over her shoulder, head bowed, book in her lap.
Everything about it so beautiful it made her breath catch.
And she just couldn’t let him rob her of that.
She started walking toward it before the rest of her had even had a say. And she climbed the spiral staircase inside the same way—in a daze of dreaming about what that might be like. That kind of peace, that kind of time to just quietly read, in some gloriously dim and haunted-seeming setting.
Like something out of a gothic novel, she thought, as she got to the room they’d listed and slid the ornate key they’d given her into the similarly old-fashioned lock. Then she shoved at the oddly narrow door to her room and burst in, and there before her was everything she had never had in her whole life.
It was a room of her own, bigger than any in the tiny, cramped council flat she had called home. And it was filled with things she had only ever dreamed of before now. There was a dresser, with a whole oval mirror, on one side. A wardrobe—big enough that she could imagine Narnia waiting for her just beyond its doors—next to a bookshelf absolutely crammed with books, overflowing with books, oh, it was more books than she had ever had at her fingertips in her whole life. She had to physically force herself not to bury her face in them immediately.
And not just because she had other things to explore first.
She was also absolutely filthy. She held up a hand and saw there were still grass stains all over it. When she turned her head, her hair left a trail of twigs and leaves. Her whole body felt stiff with dried sweat and almost stained in all the places he’d touched it.
She had to sort herself out before she lived her bookish gothic dreams.
And she started by flicking through the sheaf of parchment on the dresser. A little welcome packet, with things in it like instructions on how to use the tiny bathrooms that came with each room. There was a sink but no taps. You dipped your hands in, and water was just supposed to appear.
None of which she believed, until she poked one finger at the ceramic bowl and suddenly it was wet. She jolted back, astonished—and even more so when she realized the water had a scent. It smelled like wildflowers and summer grass, sweet and heady, and when she drew a handful of it to her filthy face, it formed a lather.
She managed to soap herself with hardly anything at all, so eager she didn’t stop at her face. She stripped off in that tiny teeth-like-tiled bathroom, then scrubbed until the last remnant of this hellish day was gone. Or at least, she scrubbed most of her. Her shins were too sore to be treated so roughly—they gleamed pink and raw, even in the splinter of moonlight that filtered in from the tiny window above the sink, and required more care.
She had to just dab them with damp toilet paper.
Though it wasn’t really toilet paper at all. It was a cut glass bowl filled with tiny little sheets of what felt like silk. She almost didn’t use them, they seemed so soft and luxurious. It felt like a waste until she tried it, and somehow the sting eased almost immediately—as if they had some healing property she didn’t know about. And sure enough, when she looked in the welcome packet under first aid, it listed this weird tissue.
Many materials in the magical world are adaptable to a number of circumstances, she read, and marveled—not for the first time—at the way these people lived. At all the amazing conveniences right at their fingertips, so much a given that the welcome packet barely really touched on them. It was perfunctory about it, matter-of-fact, almost bored.
Here is where you will find your personal items, she read, under the wordstoragein bold black. And before she could even form a skeptical frown, she unearthed exactly that. All her clothes folded and hung in drawers and in the wardrobe. Even though she’d last seen them in the hall of headmasters, abandoned in a fright.
Do they just magic their way here automatically?she wanted to ask someone desperately. But it wasn’t until she got to page 4—school communications—that she realized she could. She read about it in between shivering and shoving on her nightgown and almost screamed with delight.
She even knew who she was going to message immediately.
Anaya,can you hear me?she scribbled on a torn-off piece of one of her notepads. Then she pushed it into the top drawer of the dresser, as the welcome pack instructed, and shut it closed around that ghostly white scrap of paper. Breath held, half of her sure the pack had to be lying.
Until there came a thump.
And a rattle.
And she opened the drawer up in a fumbled rush, and there it was.
A reply from her new friend.Can you believe this??it said. With a big thick underline to make the excitement extra obvious.Have you seen the mirror? It shows you what you’d look like with different haircuts and outfits on. Please talk me out of giving myself a pixie cut, because I think it might be lying about how good I’ll look.
