by Cari Thomas
Rowan grabbed Anna’s arm. ‘What just happened? We’re dead! Connaughty’s going to string us up, I know it. Seriously though, what just happened?’
‘I – I – don’t know.’
‘We’d better go,’ she said, her voice hoarse and miserable. ‘You coming, Miranda?’
Miranda was still frozen in her seat, the little chin dimple in her heart-shaped face wobbling, tears running down her cheeks. She had the kind of face that might have been easy to like, but there was something haughty about it – the way her nose turned up and the way she held her head too high as if everyone around her was privately distasteful to her. She raised it higher. ‘Not with the likes of you. I’ll go on my own.’
‘Suit yourself.’
‘Have fun.’ Effie waved as Anna and Rowan made their way out.
‘People are staring, aren’t they?’ Rowan asked.
Anna looked around at the emptying hall and nodded.
Rowan groaned. ‘Can’t blame them. We just lost our shit in front of the whole school. It was like – like I couldn’t control it, like this thing had taken over me, like – well – something unnatural …’ She gave Anna a strange look. ‘I mean, hell, the whole wig thing wasn’t even that funny. Actually, don’t let me think about that, I don’t want to start again.’ A stray giggle ran free from Rowan’s lips and she slapped a hand over her mouth, eyes panicked.
They reached the secretary’s desk. ‘We’re here to see Headmaster Connaughty,’ said Anna, afraid to open her mouth for more than a moment.
The secretary pursed her lips. ‘Wait there a moment. I’ll call you in, one at a time.’
They sat down and Rowan turned to her again. ‘Did you – er – have anything in your locker this morning? Anything weird? Anything that wasn’t supposed to be there?’
Anna widened her eyes momentarily, unsure what to say – what to give away. She shook her head. ‘I didn’t notice anything.’
Rowan gave her a searching look that made her feel exposed. ‘OK. If you say so.’
‘Miss Greenfinch, you can go in now.’
‘Pray for me.’ Rowan smiled. Anna put her hands together in consolation, feeling awful for Rowan as she disappeared into the room. She stared at the closed door, wondering at Rowan’s questions – the way she had said unnatural. How could she know anything?
‘Excuse me.’ Anna heard Miranda say behind her. ‘I’m here to see the headmaster. Miranda Richards.’ Her voice wavered.
‘Wait there.’ The secretary pointed at the seat next to Anna. Miranda looked at her with open disdain and sat down, tying her black hair back into a neat ponytail. After a few moments she put her head in her hands and started to whimper.
‘Are you OK?’ Anna whispered, but Miranda fastidiously ignored her, then proceeded to cry harder.
After what seemed like hours Rowan was released, looking utterly deflated.
‘You next.’ The secretary pointed at Anna. Her heart began to hammer against her ribs, the taste of apple turning bitter. How could she possibly explain herself? She could hardly blame it on a piece of fruit. If Aunt found out … She didn’t want to imagine it. Her life would be over. No, not over: bound.
Connaughty was sitting at his desk, his chair not pulled all the way in, to allow for his expanse of stomach, on which his fingers lay, looking as plump and shiny as slugs after the rain. His face was slug-like too, features drooping into one another. His eyes, though, were sharp against the formlessness; they followed Anna to her seat. She sat down and gave him a smile, hoping that would help.
‘Anna Everdell, is it?’
‘Yes, Headmaster Connaughty.’
‘I haven’t had you in my office before, have I? I suspect it’s because you are normally a very well-behaved girl. Which is why this out-of-character outburst concerns me all the more. Do you wish to explain yourself?’
Anna looked down. ‘I don’t know what happened. I can’t explain it.’
He tapped his stubby fingers together. ‘I don’t know isn’t really good enough.’
‘I’m sorry, Headmaster Connaughty. I promise it will never happen again.’
‘Was this some sort of prank? Was it something to do with that Effie girl? Did she make you do it?’
Anna shook her head, despite her strong inclination that Effie had everything to do with it.
‘I see. So you’re telling me three students who have never put a foot wrong before are suddenly all visiting my office and it comes after Effie’s little performance on stage? Wish I’d never let her in. It’s not as easy to expel a pupil as they make out, all sorts of red tape these days, forms and bureaucracy, otherwise that girl would have been gone from day one.’
Anna held his gaze. ‘It wasn’t Effie.’
He walked around and sat on the edge of his desk, leaning towards her. Uncomfortably close. ‘I can tell you’re a good girl, Miss Everdell.’ His breath smelt like wet slugs too. ‘I suggest you don’t end up with the wrong crowd. So many promising students lose their way at this age. Do you think I would have made it to where I am today if I had gone off the rails? The headmaster of one of the most prestigious schools in London?’ Anna shook her head. ‘But if you get caught up in anything else like this, I’ll be finding a way to expel you instead, are we clear?’
If she got expelled Aunt would find out what she’d done. She’d be locked away at home forever. She would die doing correspondence practice with Aunt and no one would ever have known she existed. She’d never get the chance to live her own life.
‘Nothing like this will happen again,’ she promised.
‘Good. However, I can’t let it go without punishment.’
Anna clasped her hands together. Please don’t tell Aunt.
‘I want you to write me a five-thousand-word essay entitled “The Meaning of Respect” and attend a week of evening detentions starting Monday.’ He took a long look at her. ‘On account of this being your first misdemeanour, I won’t send a formal letter to your parents, but I will trust you to tell them why you’re going to be late every night next week.’ He returned to his seat.
‘I’ll let them know,’ said Anna, deciding not to tell him her parents were dead. It’s not as though he cared. He wasn’t going to tell Aunt. Nothing else mattered. Now she just had to find some convincing reason for why she would be late every night next week, which would be easier said than done. Aunt always knows.
‘I suggest you go now before I change my mind.’ Connaughty raised his short arms above his head and sat back, rearranging his sparse hair into an ineffectual combover. Anna felt a small bubble of laughter rise in her throat, she coughed loudly and ran out of the room.
‘Miss Everdell.’ He stopped her at the door. ‘I expect to never see you in my office again.’
She nodded and left. Miranda was still weeping quietly to herself, face spotted with bits of tissue. Anna took a fresh tissue out of a packet in her blazer and offered it to her.
‘I don’t need anything from you, thank you very much.’ Miranda swatted it away. ‘You and your friends can stay away from me.’
‘They’re not my friends,’ said Anna, but Miranda hadn’t heard, she was already being called through for her reckoning.
IRON
Our vision is a world purged of the sin of magic – the Great Spinner unspun; the Eye closed back up. Until this is achieved, we must carry out our duties: prevent magic from being discovered, protect our hearts from sin, and bind the Unbound. The greater our number, the greater our silence.
A Binders’ Duties, The Book of the Binders
Anna remembered the sound of the stem snapping.
She had felt the sound in her body back then, when it had happened. Selene had broken one of Aunt’s closed rose heads off the rose bush. Anna’s heart had begun to pound with childlike confusion and fear, knowing that Selene had done something very wrong.
‘Don’t look so worried, matchstick.’ Selene’s voice had twinkled with her eyes. ‘I’ll cover our trac
ks. It’s just a little game. Your aunt won’t be back for hours – she’ll never know. Here, take it.’ Selene had held out the rose to her. Anna had been reluctant but Selene had insisted. In her hands the rose didn’t feel so scary and Selene’s smile was so encouraging …
The memory had been looping around Anna’s head all day – one of Selene’s games during her first visit, when Anna had first experienced magic.
‘Now,’ Selene had said. ‘What does that look like to you?’
‘A rose,’ Anna had replied, not knowing if she was teasing.
‘Describe it to me.’
‘Um … it’s red. Dark red. And pretty even though it’s all closed up.’
‘What does it feel like?’
Anna touched her finger along the petal. ‘It’s soft, like cotton wool, no, like Aunt’s velvet cardigan, but different, more alive …’
‘What does it smell like?’
Anna breathed it in. It was hard to know what it smelt like other than like a rose. ‘It smells sweet, like the garden in summer.’ She took another sniff. ‘But – it smells dark too, like the night, like a secret …’
‘How does it sound?’
Anna looked up at Selene, puzzled. ‘It doesn’t have a sound.’
‘Are you sure?’
Anna held the rose to her ear and – though now looking back she had no idea how she’d done it – she remembered replying: ‘It whispers, doesn’t it? Like lots of whispers all at once, like questions, like, I don’t know …’
‘How does it taste?’
Anna frowned.
Selene pulled away an outer petal and took a nibble. ‘See, perfectly fine. Go on, try some.’
Anna giggled and tried the edge of it. ‘It tastes nice actually … like strawberries and marshmallows, like …’ Anna had no words for the things she could taste. ‘Like perfume, like midnight, like love …’ She did not entirely understand what she was saying.
‘Marvellous. Now. What did the taste feel like? What did the sound look like? What did the smell feel like? What did the look feel like? What did the feel of it sound like?’
Anna’s seven-year-old mind had boggled.
‘Don’t answer out loud. Just focus on the questions. Hold them in your mind all at once, let them become one.’
Anna remembered staring at the rose, trying to hold all of its … rose-ness inside her. After a while she’d called out. ‘I can feel it! I can feel it! What is that?’
But that was where the memory began to fade. What did I feel?
‘Magic.’ Selene had clapped delightedly. ‘You found the world of the rose. You see, everything has a world inside of it.’
Had the rose begun to open in her hands? Anna had a faint recollection of petals fanning open … The memory pulled at her, but she couldn’t bring it back and she couldn’t feel what she had felt then no matter how hard she tried. There was no magic left in it.
No magic left in me.
She couldn’t remember ever being told off for the incident, which meant Aunt had not found out, and yet Anna felt that on some deeply buried level Aunt had known – that she always knew – every lie, every deception.
It was not a comforting thought as she trudged her way to her first evening of detention. The day had been hard enough – she’d had to ignore everybody commenting on her outburst in assembly, but it was the lie she’d spun Aunt that was really unsettling her. Over the weekend she’d told Aunt she wanted to attend extra study sessions after school. Aunt had only relented after Anna had insisted just how much they could put her ahead. She had a week to try them out – so long as you’re home before seven and not a moment later! Anna still couldn’t believe she’d got away with it but as she left the house that morning, she’d looked at the rose bush in the hallway, unable to shrug off the feeling that the roses were watching her. Sealed up, closed tight – but watching.
It was all Effie’s fault. That bloody magical apple! What does she want? Why did she do this? Anna didn’t want to contemplate the answers as she knocked on the door to the detention room.
‘Come in.’ A young, blonde-haired female teacher was sitting at the desk.
‘Is this detention?’
‘Yes, take a seat. Do your school work, no talking, no eating, no laughing …’ She gave Anna a pointed look. ‘You’ll be released in an hour.’
Miranda was already working in the front row, a squadron of highlighter pens laid out on the desk. She studiously ignored Anna as she passed, raising her snub nose in the other direction.
Rowan swung the door open with a bang. ‘Sorry, Miss Pinson.’ She was out of breath. ‘My last class overran and I didn’t want to be late but then I needed the loo so I had to find a toilet – detention is not exactly a common occurrence for me. I mean I’ve had a few lunch ones over the years but not for anything serious. Once was for trying to take the school hamster home, but I wasn’t stealing it, it just looked lonely and—’
Miss Pinson put a finger to her temple. ‘Please take a seat.’
‘Yes. I brought books. Wow, I am sweating.’
‘No talking.’
‘No talking.’ Rowan dropped into the desk next to Anna.
Effie arrived late. Her black hair had grown quickly since she chopped it off, almost past her shoulders again.
‘The starting time of detention is not a suggestion.’ Miss Pinson glared. ‘If you’re late tomorrow we will extend your detention by another week.’
Effie turned around and smiled at them. Anna felt her anger subside a little, but then she saw what was in Effie’s hand: an apple. She took a bite out of it with a crunch and sat down.
‘No eating, Miss Fawkes.’
Effie placed the bitten apple at the end of her desk. Rowan and Anna looked at each other. This is all just a game to her.
The first few minutes passed in slow, seething silence, the only sounds the ticking of the clock and the scratch of Miranda’s pens. Then, without warning, there was a loud thump. Anna looked up to find Miss Pinson’s head slumped on the desk.
‘Oh my God.’ Anna jumped out of her seat and ran forwards. Effie started to laugh. Miranda started to scream.
Rowan took out her phone. ‘I’ll call an ambulance.’
Anna studied her. ‘I think she’s asleep.’ The teacher was definitely breathing. Her eyes were shut and she murmured under her breath as if dreaming. Anna shook her shoulder lightly but she didn’t wake up.
‘She’s going to be that way for at least the next hour,’ said Effie, taking another bite of the apple.
‘You …’ Anna spun round to Effie. She did this! In front of others – non-witches! It would have been one thing if it had just been them in the room together, but this was unthinkable! Every Binders’ tenet she’d ever been taught began screaming at her in her head.
She tried to keep calm. ‘Look, we can just carry on with detention until she wakes up—’
‘Oh, good idea,’ said Effie. ‘The teacher is sleeping, but let’s just carry on like good little girls. Wait. I have another idea. We could do magic.’
Anna froze. Effie had said magic. Out loud. The word hung awkwardly in the air, at odds with the dull, institutional surroundings of the classroom. She made desperate eyes at her – What the hell are you doing? Even Selene would be mad. There were rules – you couldn’t just go around talking openly about magic. Rowan shifted uncomfortably. Miranda, still holding a highlighter in her hand, looked terrified.
‘Ice-breaker.’ Effie laughed. ‘You’re all witches here. No secrets, nothing spoilt. I’ve gone to a lot of trouble to get us all in detention together. Can’t say it wasn’t fun though.’
Silence followed. Anna’s heart hammering in her chest. They surveyed one another. Can it be true? Perhaps Rowan, but Miranda? A witch? She’d once branded someone a follower of the Antichrist for swearing in class.
‘Come on,’ Effie rallied. ‘You all want it; I know you do. You bit the apples after all …’
‘We didn’t c
hoose that. You enchanted them!’ Rowan folded her arms.
‘Oh, but you did choose. You bit deep into the fruit of hidden knowledge. It seemed fitting.’
‘You could have got us expelled!’
‘It was just a little cantrip.’ Effie sat herself atop one of the desks.
‘Those apples – magic—’ Miranda’s voice shook. ‘What’s going on?’
Effie exhaled loudly. ‘I’ve been watching you all closely. Rowan, you’re a witch, from a family of witches, am I not right? Miranda, you’ve been upping all those desperate prayers in church because you suspect you have the Devil in you. Congratulations, you don’t! You’re just a witch. Anna, you might be one of the most subdued witches I’ve ever met but you are one. You know I know so you have nowhere to hide.’ Effie twisted a finger at her. ‘Now we’ve cleared all that up, shall we discuss the details of starting a coven?’
They were silent again. The teacher murmured under her breath. Eventually Rowan shrugged. ‘Fine, I’m a witch, big whoop.’ She looked at Anna apologetically.
That was when Miranda began to panic. She grabbed at the pens on her desk and started stuffing them into her bag. ‘You’re freaks! Freaks, the lot of you! What is this? Some kind of sick joke?’ Her voice oscillated like the leg of a mouse in a trap, her mouth trembling. She looked over at the teacher fearfully, obviously torn between her desperation to leave and an inbuilt reservation about leaving without permission. ‘If anyone has the Devil in them, IT’S YOU!’ Miranda pointed at Effie, storming towards the door. The handle turned but it didn’t open. She twisted at it frantically.
Effie made eyes at Anna and Rowan.
‘What have you done?’ Miranda cried, banging against the door. ‘We’re locked in here, it’s locked! HELP! HELP!’