by Katie Cross
I hurried up the wide staircase, leaving the busy dining room, and all its occupants, at my back.
The Second Letter
The letter stared at me late that night, long after the school had bedded down for the evening and tucked itself into silence.
The two flowers had wilted in the twine knot, now nothing more than a droopy pair of petals that once looked beautiful.
That’s just like life, isn’t it? Glorious one moment, ugly the next.
Candles cluttered my desk and provided the only light in the room, casting agitated shadows. Outside, the wind rattled the windowpanes and sent occasional bursts of cold air through the cracks in the glass. I shivered and pulled my shawl closer around my shoulders.
A heavy book on the proper cultivation of herbs and spices lay open in front of me, but every time I looked at the pages, the flash of butterflies in my mind distracted me. My thoughts meandered from the darkness of the first match to the unknown of the second to Leda’s conversation with me before breakfast and then to my grandmother. Did I have time to save her life?
When I snapped out of my troubling thoughts, a long tear ran down my cheek. I brushed it away and shut the book with an emphatic slam. The sound reverberated off the stone walls with a dull echo. Self-pity wouldn’t help.
I glanced back outside. What I wouldn’t give to be able to sneak outside and run through Letum Wood one more time, abandoning all my fear for just a few minutes. I mourned the loss of my time outside with Papa, training and running, deep in my heart. These four walls made me restless. It felt unnatural, being trapped inside, learning by ink and paper.
The flowers tied into the letter dropped even further when I pulled on the twine. A square of paper fell into my hands.
Darling Bianca,
Congratulations! You passed your first match and will advance to the second round with two other Competitors. This match decides the final two. I look forward to seeing you in six days. Meet that evening in the library after dinner.
Your loving leader,
Miss Mabel
The sight of her name made me sick. I shoved the paper back into the envelope and held it over the candle. It caught fire at the corner; the rolling yellow flame left a black trail of ash behind. I forced the window open and threw the remains into the windy night.
An unbearable six days.
I dropped my head to the desk and closed my eyes until the wind faded and sleep overcame me.
“Now remember, students. When you address a Member of the Council, you do not use their first names unless given permission to do so. It’s a breach of conduct that I will not tolerate. If I hear you have done so, I will bring you back to Miss Mabel’s and teach you this etiquette lesson again.”
Miss Scarlett’s voice rang over the dining room with all the force of a rolling storm, filling in the warm cracks and crevices while simultaneously preventing any of us from having a nap at her expense. An etiquette class during our usual free hours after dinner was a fresh form of hell. I stared at the tops of my shoes and wished I could pull my hair out of the tight bun at my neck. It pulled on my temples, giving me a pounding headache. Despite the falling rain and the bone-numbing chill, I’d still rather be outside. It had only been two days since the first match finished, and already my gut churned with nervous fear of the next one.
At least I’m not sitting alone in my room, thinking about how nervous I am, I thought, in my last attempt at being optimistic. Then I laughed under my breath. A dry etiquette lesson only made me think of the second match more, as that would be less painful, surely.
“Can you imagine?” Camille asked, leaning her back against the table and folding her hands on her lap. “I’d love to have tea with a Council Member.”
A distant look came to her face. It was the first thing she’d said all day. An unusually melancholy air hung around her, and I wondered what could be horrible enough to drag Camille into a slump.
“So would I,” Leda muttered. “Then I can tell them what I really think of what they do for a living.”
“Yes,” I said in grouchy response, agitated from being inside all day. “But then you’d be kicked out for calling them imbeciles and telling them how to do their job.”
“Someone needs to tell them how to run the Network,” she replied without taking her eyes off of Miss Scarlett, unruffled by the snap in my voice. “Because some of them don’t seem to get it. Did you see the article in the newsscroll today about the Council Member that wants to put a tax on messenger paper? He plans to charge a sacran for every ten sheets of paper. It’s outrageous.”
I hadn’t seen the article, and, at the moment, didn’t care. A golden sacran wasn’t that much money to spend. I wondered about Leda’s agitation over it. Instead of giving my thoughts too much energy, I stared dully at Miss Scarlett, wishing myself far away.
“Now, if you are lucky and earn a chance to meet the High Priestess,” Miss Scarlett said, annoying me with her strict aplomb, “which I hope all of you do, you will have one opportunity to introduce yourself to her. Use it well. Never address her by anything but her title, and be sure to start by saying merry meet. Everyone practice together.”
A chorus of diffuse voices mumbled it back, but none with as much growl as Leda. I joined, but only faintly. If I ever met the High Priestess, I’d like to find something original to say. She must tire of the same old drivel. I would. Beautiful day to be one of the most powerful women in Antebellum, isn’t it, Your Highness? I imagined myself saying, the required curtsy exchanged with an arm grasp, as a Protector or Guardian would.
“Don’t you agree, Miss Monroe?”
I startled back to the class with a jerk.
“What?”
Miss Scarlett’s bird-like eyes locked onto me.
“We were discussing the importance of punctuality when meeting with a Council Member, or anyone else for that matter. I hardly dare think I need to go into the merits of paying attention?”
A few girls snickered nearby, Priscilla, Jade, and Stephany in particular. I suppressed an embarrassed blush.
“No, Miss Scarlett.”
She eyed me. “Very well. We’ll continue, now that I have your attention again. And won’t lose it.”
Her emphasized words were a command, not a request. I nodded. The class resumed again, with Miss Scarlett rambling off on which blessings and invocations were appropriate in a Network setting. Boredom returned on swift wings despite her reprimand. It wasn’t long before other students became noticeably fidgety and restless.
“You should run for office as Council Member one day, Leda,” I said in a low voice, half-joking, hoping to provoke her into a conversation to remove the misery of sitting there without moving. “I think you’d be wonderful because you’d tell people exactly what you thought.”
“Why else would I be here, Bianca?”
Leda’s cool tone told me she didn’t mean the etiquette lesson. I felt a mixture of amusement and anxiety. If Leda did gain power, I feared for her secretary.
“The Central Network could benefit from your, ahem, gift,” I said, marveling over how Miss Scarlett’s back didn’t seemed to bend or fold at all as she executed the perfect curtsy. Despite her wide shoulders and thick frame, it looked quite graceful. Well, I thought, I’m sure I’ll manage to make it look atrocious.
“No,” Leda said. “The Central Network isn’t ready for me yet.”
I looked out of the corner of my eyes, expecting to see a smirk. Leda surprised me with a serious expression. Did she ever joke?
“Yes,” I agreed after mulling it over. “I think you’re right.”
“Now,” Miss Scarlett called the attention of the class. “Everybody stand and practice together. Any witch who cannot fulfill my expectation will stay after for more practice. Remember: this is the High Priestess. Represent yourself, and Miss Mabel’s, with pride.”
Leda rolled her eyes. Camille and Jackie were already dipping and bowing to each other while critically as
sessing the other’s performance. Jackie folded with a lithe grace I envied. I turned away, watching Miss Scarlett instruct a second-year as I gained my feet.
“Do adults really curtsy to the High Priestess?” I asked. It seemed like an outdated tradition, but then, I felt that way about skirts sometimes too.
“I doubt it,” Leda scoffed. “But we aren’t significant yet, remember? Let’s just get this over with.”
The beauty of Network education. Some traditions never went away, even if the High Priestess didn’t enforce them. While I didn’t know the High Priestess personally, from what I knew of all the positive changes she had brought to the Central Network, she certainly didn’t seem like someone stuck in the past.
“Right,” I muttered. “This wouldn’t be half so boring if we didn’t have to wear shoes.”
“If you wore real shoes then I might feel pity,” Leda said, glancing at the leather sandals Papa had fashioned for me. They had a low rise, making them perfect to wear inside. So far, no one had asked me about them. It made me feel deliciously wicked some days, like I’d circumvented tradition with a careless ha!
“You first,” I motioned to Leda. She bobbed an awkward rendition of a curtsy.
“Close,” I said. “Not so deep next time. You aren’t cleaning the floor with your nose.”
She repeated it. I copied her with dramatic flair.
“Council Member Leda, it’s a pleasure to meet you. I’d like to discuss the current horrors of the first-year common room at Miss Mabel’s. My toes have massive splinters I can’t seem to pluck out because of the deplorable floors.”
Camille sat back down on the bench and stared past us with a distant, sad expression. I recovered from my exaggerated curtsy and motioned to her with a jerk of my head, looking at Leda in question. Leda’s face fell. She opened her mouth to explain but stopped and shook her head. A glimmer of silver around Camille’s neck caught my eye. A chain fell down onto her chest, holding a round silver ball the size of a fingernail. I’d never seen it before. Camille’s curtsy must have knocked it out of its hiding place beneath her dress. My breath stalled.
A memento.
Mementos kept a piece of someone who had passed on, normally a lock of hair, close to the heart. They were meant to be worn on the anniversary of the loved one’s death. I sat down next to her.
“Camille,” I said quietly, startling her from her reverie. “Tell me about your memento.”
Her hand wandered up and wrapped the little ball into a fist. She didn’t fully recover from her daze, her voice sounding wooden and distant.
“It’s my parents,” she said. I looked to Leda, who turned away to watch Miss Scarlett correct the awkward attempts of several first-years. “They died when I was eleven,” Camille explained.
“Five years ago?”
She nodded. “Yes.”
“Is that why you live with your aunts?” I asked, recalling the first day I met her.
“Yes. They died in the kimeral plague. It was so sudden. Within two days. And then Bettina came and arranged the funeral. I moved in with her and Angie, my mother’s sisters.”
I swallowed back the rising hysteria this conversation evoked in my chest. Death. Loss. Failure to save them. Pain.
“What’s in your memento?” I cleared my throat, desperate to get away from my own thoughts.
“A lock of my mother’s hair.” A flicker of a smile came to Camille’s lips and she looked at me for the first time. “She had thick curls just like mine. Papa loved cigars, so I kept some of his favorite tobacco.”
Her hand tightened around the memento until the knuckles turned white. A watery flash appeared in her eyes, but she smiled through it, acting as if the tears weren’t there. I let it go, hoping Camille would cry it out in the loneliness of her room tonight. Part of me told me not to let it happen, to reach out and be her friend, help her through the bitter loss so she didn’t feel alone. But I couldn’t, because grief was too personal.
Too real. Too close to my own future. I wasn’t brave enough to help Camille through hers when I could barely face the possibility of feeling it myself.
Instead, I squeezed her hand, like a coward.
“Will you show us how to do a curtsy? Leda and I did a horrid job, as you probably saw. Leda is going to go into politics, and she can’t jeopardize her career because of a bad curtsy. Miss Scarlett is positive that one breach of etiquette will end it before it begins.”
“Of course,” Camille brightened. “Bettina taught me how.”
We laughed and made a show of our exaggerated curtsies until Miss Scarlett called us back to order. The laughter and merry change in pace jarred the awful gloom in my heart as we sat back down, breathless and giggling. Then Miss Scarlett dismissed us with a wave of her hands, grateful to be done with us, and we all escaped to our freedom.
A couple of days later, Camille fumed at the off-white square of paper in her hands with a cherry-red set of cheeks that made me laugh.
“Agh!” she muttered. “It never works!”
Miss Bernadette sat at her large desk in front of the class, grading papers and remaining purposefully oblivious to the struggling first-years. A list of instructions on the board explained how to fold messenger paper into an envelope that would deliver itself. It was flighty stationary. Most girls that came from bigger villages already knew how to fold it because so much communication in the cities relied on messenger paper. Grandmother ran the Tea and Spice Pantry in the small town of Bickers Mill, which meant I’d been working with it since I could fold a straight line. The rest of the students who came from the smallest villages, like Leda and Camille, had never used it before.
Camille frowned at her fourth misshapen page.
“You’ll get it,” I said in an encouraging tone. “Try starting over again. I’m not sure that one will even fly.”
“Oh, my aunts can hang it. They never write me back anyway.”
“Do you have anyone else you can send a letter to?”
“No,” she muttered, looking more flustered than ever. “Well, maybe Leda’s mother. She likes me.”
Leda bent over her own letter, oblivious to the rest of the world and intent on her task. My envelope, addressed to my mother, tried to escape from the books I set on top of it. The desk jerked and spasmed, forcing me to hold onto the sides to keep from getting bucked out.
Camille rolled her eyes, scrunched the paper into a ball and flicked it off her desk. It flew to the other side of the room and circled around a few desks before landing in the fire. Camille perked up.
“That’s a good thing,” I said, looking down to her other papers flopping on the floor. “At least that one flew somewhere.”
She perked up a little and started to the front of the room to get another one. Isabelle, a first-year with wide glasses that made her eyes as large as the circular lenses, distracted her with a question, and soon Camille was deep in conversation, her task forgotten. I eyed one of her discarded pieces on the floor. Although tattered and wrinkled, it may still fly. I picked it up and smoothed it out with the heel of my palm. After a quick check to make sure no one was paying attention, I started a second letter.
P
I miss you. I don’t have a lot of time, but I’m okay. Things are going as they should. Lots of big tests to pass, another one tonight. I’m keeping track of the news, so be careful out there, please?
Love,
B
Camille returned to her desk when I started to fold the paper. By the time I finished, she’d plopped back into her chair and caught a glimpse of my letter.
“Oh!” she cried, perplexed. “You folded another one. How did you do it so fast?”
I shoved it under the textbooks with the other and attempted an innocent smile.
“Lucky, I guess.”
She didn’t appear convinced.
“Luck, sure. Who was your letter to? You’ve never mentioned any friends at home.”
Leda looked up now, almost complet
e with her third attempt. It was just about ready to fly, which made it squirmy. I stumbled for a viable response to satisfy their curious gazes.
“I-it’s for a friend.”
“At home?”
“Yes!”
Surprised by my vehemence, Camille recoiled, suspicious.
“You must really miss them,” she said slowly.
“Yes,” I nodded, hoping it didn’t come out strangled. “I miss them a lot.”
Camille opened her mouth to say something else, but Miss Bernadette took her chance by calling out a warning for time. Frantic, Camille turned back to her letter, her hands flying with surprising speed. I held back my relieved breath and buried myself in a textbook before they could ask more questions.
Ten minutes later, Miss Bernadette gave us permission to release the letters. A cloud of square papers of various sizes cluttered the air, flying in circles around our heads. A few of them straggled near the desks, flopping like dead fish in an attempt to fly, Camille’s latest attempt included.
When Miss Bernadette opened the window the letters spilled out, fading into the blue sky. My letter to Papa disappeared in the anonymity of the crowd, with no one any wiser.
We left class shortly after, congregating in the hall at the same time as the third-years. Priscilla sent me another false, cheery smile, to which I responded with a twiddle of my fingers, as if we were the best of friends.
“I can’t wait until you crush her in the next match,” Leda said under her breath when Priscilla disappeared with a smirking Jade in tow. “That’s all anyone talks about in the library anymore.”
“Me as well,” I said.
I trailed just behind Leda up the stairs, only half-listening to her talk about a flaw in the Council system that she wanted to correct when she came to power. The rest of the afternoon stretched in front of us, and it felt glorious, like flexing a well-worn muscle. I wanted to take the day for a run. If I had been at home, I’d try to track down Papa, see if he was free to give me another lesson on sword work.
“Are you listening?”
“What?” I asked, jerking to attention. Leda shot me a glare.