Fairies and Felicitations (Scholars and Sorcery) (4 page)

My mind relieved and comforted, I drift asleep.

When I wake up, it is because Kitty is bouncing on my bed. “Well?” she hisses.

“Well, what?”
 

“Well, did you come up with a better plan, grumpy-head?”

“Oh, that.” I rub my eyes. “Not really.”

Kitty opens her rosy little mouth, presumably to say something extremely, but Emily shouts across the room: “Kitty Eversleigh, it’s not even dawn yet! Go back to bed this instant! You may have got some sleep last night, but you made sure no one else did!”

“Whatever do you mean?”

“I mean that terrible racket you make when you snore.”

“I don’t snore!” Kitty says indignantly. A chorus of groans and derisive laughter rises up from the beds around us, and she flounces back to her cubicle, highly miffed.

She probably drops right back asleep like an angel without a speck on her conscience. I toss and turn.

It’s all very well for Kitty to say I can put it into Esther’s head that Cecily left something important in the chapel. It doesn’t necessarily mean that Esther will desert the common room to go looking for it or, for that matter, that she would do it alone. She’s far more likely to take Charley with her, and in that case, she will be unlikely to give any kind of genuine reaction when she finds it. She’ll wait until she is alone, and I will have no chance of seeing her true feelings about the poem.

Besides, surely it will be more interesting if Cecily was around, too. Otherwise, I won’t see any fireworks there are to see.

I am horrified by myself. I know it is best if there are no fireworks at all. Only… what if there are, and I miss them? Then I will keep wondering what happened forever.

Idiotic Kitty. She never thinks the details through. Good thing she has me at her back.

When morning starts properly, I manage to evade any intimate conversations with my friend. Everyone else is a trifle out of sorts after the interrupted night, so my quietness and the bruised shadows under my swollen eyes don’t attract any attention. Kitty can’t exactly bring up the topic of the prank at breakfast or prayers, and I manage to get under Emily’s eye before Kitty can corner me during break.

Halfway through Maths, a first former comes in with a message for the mistress. She’s a timid little thing with big elfish eyes, and she looks at the Fourth form as if we are giants waiting to devour her. It’s hard to believe I was that young only three years ago. I didn’t have Kitty plaguing the life out of me then, either, as she was off getting expelled from some more exclusive school. If only I had known that was to be the most peaceful year of my school career, I would have made sure to enjoy it more.

Fernleigh Manor doesn’t have a fagging system or anything. The prefects can ask any girl they like to run errands, and girls generally tend to hop to it when a Sixth former commands them, but there’s no general authority of older girls over younger. That doesn’t mean, however, that the younger girls feel that way.
 

The kid gives a scared little look at us, and I smile reassuringly at her. I don’t know if she’s actually reassured by my attention, or even more scared.

Watching her, I find I know exactly what I’m going to do about Esther.

I have no intention of telling Kitty, however she plagues the life out of me. It doesn’t involve enough magic for her dramatic tastes.

Well, if she wants magic, I will give her just a little bit. As we file out after lunch, for an afternoon of being rained in and doing prep and jigsaw puzzles and plotting against the Fifth, we walk past Mabel, one of the Senior Pres.
 

I elbow Kitty in the ribs. “Hi! What’s up with old Mabs?”

“What do you mean? She’s quite as dull as ever. Now, Anne, about more important things…”

“She’s staring straight at you, and she doesn’t look too happy. What have you been up to?”

“Nothing! I’ve been good as gold.” I can feel Kitty’s shoulders stiffen beside me. It’s a sure bet she’s always been up to something in the last few weeks, however minor. She’s the kind of girl who doesn’t see the point of studying herself when there are other girls simply eager to learn everything, for starters.

Mabel is innocently chattering to one of her friends, but it’s an easy matter for someone with my Gift to put into Kitty’s head that Mabel is speaking to Drusilla about her, in the most ominously meaningful way.

“Emily! Emmie, I need your help.” Kitty skitters down the hall, grabbing at Emily’s sleeve.

“Oh, Kitty, for heaven’s sake, what is it?”

“I need your help with those problem sets.” She looks plaintively up at Emily, and I know, from the way Emily’s cross expression is already softening, that Kitty is exerting every ounce of Gift in her. “Will you come to the common room with me? Right now?” She clings onto Emily as protective camouflage as Mabel and Drusilla obliviously wander in the direction of their study.

I grin to myself and slip up to the dorm, liberating the jar of fairies and the love poem from Kitty’s cubicle. She’s already folded it into an intricate heart, and as much as I want to unfold it to check that she hasn’t massacred my lines of poetry with clumsy improvements, I’m not sure I could get it back into shape.
 

The fairies seem rather less happy now. One flaps her wings against the glass is a decidedly annoyed fashion, beating tiny little fists at me. I wonder again about the foolishness of the ritual. I mean, a couple of furious fairies might be less dangerous than a trapped wasp, but I still don’t think having them unleashed at you would be much fun. I wonder, a bit too late, if Kitty made the whole tradition up herself. It’s the kind of half-witted thing she would do.

I unscrew the lid of the jar, lift up the fold at the very top of the heart to open the gap a little, and tip the fairies in very quickly, before they have a chance to recover themselves. I have a dab of putty ready to seal their new prison, and I’m done. I shove the paper heart in my pocket, and go in search of the First form.

As I suspected, they are outside in the partial shelter of the courtyard, disconsolately watching the rain. That’s little girls for you. They hate being kept inside on their half day, poor babes, even with the comfort of a warm fire in their common room.

I tap my friend from the morning on the shoulder, and she jumps like the devil has hold of her.

“Don’t die of fright!” I say, laughing. “I don’t bite. I just wanted to ask you a favour.”

“Of course,” she says, earnestly. Nice little thing.

“Cecily—you know my friend Cecily Kettler, don’t you?” Her big eyes are even wider as she nods. She might have no real idea who I am, in fact I’m counting on her not knowing my name, but the Games Captain is a person of some importance. “Right. Well, she gave me a message for Esther Carmody, but I have a music lesson and I’m running late, so I don’t dare try to find her. Would you be an angel and run and knock on the Fifth form common room for me?”

The child nods, even though she looks like I’ve asked her to beard the lion’s den.

“Do you know who Esther is?”

She nods again, less surely this time. I pat her shoulder.

“Never mind if you don’t. Just knock on the door and ask for Esther, there’s a lamb, and tell her that Cecily left something important for her in the chapel. Now, I’m late, I must go. Thanks, kid!”

I turn and race toward the chapel, hoping that my little messenger isn’t too terrified of knocking on the Fifth’s door to deliver the message at all. It will be a terrible let down if she is. An escape, but also a let down.

The fairies aren’t rattling around in the paper heart any more. I hope that means they are enjoying the cologne, and not that Esther will be tipping out little fairy corpses when she opens it. Hardly a romantic touch, that. I almost unfold the top to check, but fairies are untrustworthy little creatures and they are just as likely to try to escape, possibly biting me en route. Fairy bites are no joke, let me tell you.

The chapel is not very impressive, just a few benches set up in rows and a platform at the front where Miss Carroll delivers prayers and, if she is in the mood, sermons, to make sure we start our day on the right note. It’s not part of the original Manor, just a square box built on to the newer West wing as part of its conversion to a school, and has a kind of depressingly institutional feel even when it’s not inhabited by crowds of bored or pious schoolgirls, according to character. I wonder what made Kitty choose such a dull, unromantic place for her trick. At least it’s reliably likely to be empty in the afternoon.

I consider leaving the paper heart on the Fifth form bench. The trouble is, if Cecily had left something there, one of the other girls would have picked it up for her. Under the bench, as if it had been kicked there? That seems too casual and careless, really. Especially as the fairies might have been trodden underfoot in the general exodus. Cecily is kind hearted to a fault.

In the end, I stop trying to think of ways to make it look like the heart has been left accidentally. When I think about it, if Cecily had misplaced a token to another girl, she would hardly ask the girl in question to go looking for it.

I put it squarely in the middle of the table on Miss Carroll’s platform, front and centre. I’ve spent too much time messing around; Esther might be here any moment, if the babe did indeed give her message. I don’t want to run out of the room and straight into Esther’s arms.

I turn to flee.
 

Then the demon curiosity seizes me. I may have been spiteful enough to ensure that Kitty misses the fireworks, but I do desperately want to see Esther’s reaction for myself. After all, it’s my work of genius.

The broom cupboard. Obviously.

I plunge into it. I make a bit of a racket tripping over a bucket wedging myself in, and cross my fingers that no one is close enough to see and investigate. I leave the door open only a crack, and trust to luck that Esther won’t notice. I can’t see much, but she’ll have her back to me when she goes up onto the platform and I can peek then. If she comes at all.

It’s a completely cracked idea, and I’m in a ridiculous position. I need to get out now, while I have some dignity intact.

As soon as I formulate the thought, I hear the main door scrape open, and the clunk of sensible schoolgirl heels on the wooden floor. Too late!

Oh, well, I can resort to just a little magic. I mentally suggest to Esther—assuming it
is
Esther I can hear— that she might want to head straight up to the table to see what has been left for her; after all, I don’t want her glancing around at the broom cupboard.

The footsteps go, lightly and unhurriedly, up to the front of the room, and then I hear a distinct rustling of paper and an indrawn breath. I ease the door open, very cautiously, just enough to see Esther gently capturing the fairies in her hands. The weather is clearing a little, and watery sunlight streaming through the back window makes her hair gleam as if it has been burnished. No wonder they don’t bite her.
Leaving the pretty paper behind, she carefully carries the fairies to the door, opens it, and tips them tenderly out into the soft drizzle. She watches them fly away, then shows every intention of following them out of the chapel.

My heart lurches with discouragement. All that effort, and she didn’t even bother to look at my poem! Before I can stop myself, I send her a mental nudge back toward the platform.

She hesitates, her hand still on the door, then closes it behind her. I pull the cupboard door to before she turns. When her footsteps have passed me again, I take a deep breath and open the crack wider.

Esther is unfolding the heart again in her usual lazy, graceful way. I wish desperately I could see her expression. There’s no sigh, no change in breathing or stance as she reads. I don’t know what I expected, really.

She folds the paper and puts it into her uniform pocket. Casually, not with sentimental care, but without scrunching it in irritation or disgust, either. As far as I can tell, she is disappointingly lacking in any response whatsoever.

“You can come out, now. I’ve read it,” she says, mildly.

I freeze, not daring to breathe. Surely Esther doesn’t think Cecily has skipped a prefect meeting to spy on her? I quickly shoot a mental thought, telling her she was mistaken, no one is here at all.