Shana Abe - The Deepest Night

A boulder the size of this bloody island.

Up the side of bloody Mount Everest.

I began to break into a sweat. Monsieur’s eyeballs burned an itchy hole in the center of my back.

“No, no, no! Mon Dieu, what was that? Do you not see the score before you, Miss Jones? Do you not see what is inscribed right there before you?”

“No,” I mumbled. “I mean, yes, I see it.”

“Seems her garden is scorched earth,” jeered Beatrice in a whisper, but everyone heard her.

“Again!” barked Vachon.

Fumble. Fumble. I was awful at this, I really was.

My classmates began, one by one, to snicker.

Vachon moved to my side. I saw the wand in his fist and switched instantly to the ripple of sound falling down around me like droplets from a waterfall, lovely and soft and intricate. It made him pause, as I’d hoped. The hand holding his wand gradually lowered to his side.

Ah, this—this was easy for me. Easy to let the rock crystal music sink into me, lap through me like the ocean’s tide, bones, blood, cells, my fingers dancing faster and faster now, everything beautiful, everything effortless. My soul lifting free.

It ended, though. I let it end, and before some new song could take me, I tucked my hands in my lap and gazed up at my professor, trying for Armand’s trademark stoic expression.

Vachon removed his spectacles. He wiped the glass lenses on a corner of his coat and then carefully put them back on, wrapping the wires behind each ear before speaking.

“You have made your point, Miss Jones. I hardly wish to embarrass myself by presenting you to the faculty and parents of Iverson with your practical skills in such a state. You may play what you wish for the graduation.”

“But, sir,” protested Mittie, either because she hated me the most or loved whining the most (probably both), “is that fair? All the rest of us have to show what we’ve learned—”

“Do you desire to sit through a ten-minute cacophony of sharps and flats, Miss Bashier? I do not. I assume your parents do not. Let us accept with grace what we cannot change in a week, ladies.”

“Or in a lifetime,” muttered Caroline, provoking a fresh round of snickering.

After class, as everyone was crowding through the ballroom doors, Sophia swung into step beside me and sent me a slanting look.

“Are you really that poor a player? Or is it on purpose?”

“No,” I answered grimly. “I really am that poor.”

“That’s too bad. I was rather hoping you were doing it deliberately. To put a tweak in Vachon’s nose.”

“Vachon carries a stick with him, in case you didn’t notice, and he’s very glad to use it. I have no interest in tweaking any part of him.”

“How disappointing,” she sighed. “And all this time, I thought you such the rebel.”

I was surprised into a laugh, and her pale eyes grew just a tad too wide.

“Well, after all, there was that business of you getting shot. Certainly no other girl here would ever have done such a thing.”

“Yes. It was so rebellious of me to have put myself in front of a bullet I never saw coming.”

She went on as if I hadn’t spoken. “And the fact that you’ve captured Armand’s attention, if not his heart. The mudlark and the aristocrat! If that’s not the out-and-out definition of rebellion, I don’t know what is.”

“Lord Armand and I are friends, Sophia. That’s all.”

“Oh, come! We’ve been chums for weeks! I thought we were beyond all these silly lies. He practically salivates whenever he sees you.”

Ahead of us Stella and Mittie were strolling arm in arm, whispering and tittering.

“Friends,” I said again, firm.

“Is that why he was driving you back from wherever you went yesterday? Just to be friendly?”

“He was driving me and Westcliffe,” I pointed out.

“Hmm. Where did you go yesterday, by the way?”

To see the mad duke. To hear a mad idea.

“Nowhere,” I said. “Just to the village, to see the doctor.”

“I say, Eleanore.” Mittie broke off the whispering to throw me a glance from over her shoulder. “Stella and I have had the most marvelous notion.”

“Yes!” Stella gave me a big grin. “We’re all so concerned about how you have nowhere to land soon. Summer and all that. So why not go stay with Sophia for the holiday? She could always use—” She paused, brimming with glee; I braced myself.”Another maid!”

This sent them both into peals of laughter. Lady Sophia shook her head. She walked up between them and put her arms around their waists.

“I have all the maids I need, thank you. But perhaps the scullery? I can check with the cook, I suppose.”

More laughter, and I watched the three of them saunter away down the corridor, rich and happy and secure in their world.

I confess, sometimes I daydreamed about Turning into a dragon and biting their heads off.

But they were probably poisonous, anyway.

The conversation I’d been dreading came two days later.

Again, in Westcliffe’s office.

“Miss Jones. You will be pleased to know I’ve received notification regarding your new residence for the summer.”

“Oh?”

“I’ll not draw out the suspense. You’ve been assigned to the Sisters of the Splintered Cross Orphanage. It is in Callander. In Scotland.”

“Oh.”

“Southern Scotland, I believe. Have you ever been?”

“No, ma’am.”

“Ah. Well, I’m certain it’s a fine place. Scotland is, by all accounts … quite interesting. I have your schedule here, your train tickets and such. You are to depart the day after graduation. A fortuitous bit of timing, I think! I suggest you begin packing soon. It’s never wise to leave matters to the last minute, is it?”

“No, ma’am.”

“I shall be candid with you, Miss Jones. It may not be practical to plan for your return to Iverson next fall. The war has forced many unfortunate changes upon us. Shipping you all the way back from Callander a few months from now might not be in anyone’s best interest.”

“But it will, of course, be up to the duke to decide my fate?”

“Er—of course. The scholarship is entirely in His Grace’s control. In his current state, however …”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“You are a sensible girl, Eleanore. I will not encourage you to cling to false hopes; they will not serve you well.”

“No, ma’am.”

“We understand each other. Excellent. I know I may count on you to make the most of your final days here at Iverson, the better to shape your years to come.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Good afternoon, then.”

“Good afternoon, ma’am.”

That night before dinner I visited the library. It was mostly deserted, only a trio of ninth-years at a table poring over a fashion magazine stuffed with drawings of coy, smiling debutantes in viciously expensive gowns.

I sent them a look; they returned it. None of us spoke, and they all went back to cooing over the gowns.

I had no interest in magazines, at least not in any of the ones Mrs. Westcliffe deemed suitable for proper young ladies. I’d come for a book I’d noticed in passing not long ago, one of the few books here that wasn’t about housekeeping or sewing or the care of husbands: Charts of the Principal Cities of the World, Including Railroad and Telegraph Lines.

It was large and heavy, with a jolly thick layer of dust along the top. I hefted it from the shelf and dropped it onto the nearest table, earning me another look from the trio, which I ignored.

I flipped through the pages. Buenos Aires, La Paz, Havana, New York. Cairo, Dakar, Cape Town, Riyadh, Angora, Budapest … Rome, Paris. London. Glasgow.

I squinted at the Glasgow page, which was indeed cobwebbed with lines representing every railroad and telegraph line imaginable. I turned to the previous page, which showed the city as a dot in the big, flat map that was Scotland.

Callander was inked in there, a speck on the page. It wasn’t even in southern Scotland, as the headmistress had claimed. From what I could tell, it was much nearer to the middle. Far from Wessex. Far from the impeccable Iverson School for Girls and the eligible youngest son of a duke.

I studied it a while longer, trying to measure the distance with my fingers, but all I could figure was that it was hundreds of miles north of where I was sitting.

Hundreds.

I rifled through the pages again until I found Prussia (principal cities: Berlin, Königsberg). I didn’t know exactly where Aubrey’s medieval prison-ruin would be, but honestly, it hardly mattered. Prussia was huge and impossibly remote. Past England and the Channel, past all of France and Belgium, too. It made the distance to Callander look like a jaunt to a neighbor’s house.

I slapped the book shut, sending motes of dust aloft and forcing the trio to coo even louder over the absolutely dreamy smocking on a plaid taffeta dinner frock.

You’re waiting for the moment I Turn into something more than just smoke. You’re waiting for Lora the dragon.

Lora-of-the-moon, Jesse used to call me.

It’s not yet. But soon.

To my great astonishment, the graduation ceremony was to take place out-of-doors, upon the wide, open green of Iverson’s front lawn. It was a picturesque enough setting, with the cerulean sky and trimmed grass, the rose gardens framing it all in pathways of flouncy bright blooms. Even the animal-shaped hedges looked nearly benign. But out-of-doors meant the sun, and the sun meant parasols, a bobbing sea of them above the audience in their wicker chairs, a handful more held by those of us stranded in our row upon the makeshift stage.