The Curse in the Candlelight

by Sophie Cleverly

  “Scarlet Grey,” I said.

  “You too, Little Miss Twin!” she said. “Room thirteen. Unlucky for some.” She handed me the same bits of paper she’d just handed Ivy, and then moved on to the next person.

  “Phew!” Ivy said. “Same room again. And together.”

  “Yes!” I cheered. Everything was going to plan. “I’ll just see who Ariadne got. Maybe she’ll be sharing with Rose?”

  I was pretty sure I wasn’t supposed to leave the line, but considering I had everything I needed, I didn’t think it mattered. I stepped out and wandered forward to find …

  “Ariadne?”

  She was leaning against the window, holding her papers. But her face was white and her hands were shaking.

  “Ariadne?” I asked again, waving my hand in front of her face. “What’s wrong? Who did you get?”

  My friend turned to me, her eyes glazed and distant. “I can’t … I can’t …” she said.

  And then she fainted.

  Chapter Four

  IVY

  ran over to Ariadne immediately. Her legs had gone from underneath her, and Scarlet was trying to hold her up. “What on earth happened?” I asked.

  Everyone was staring now.

  “SOMEONE GET THE SMELLING SALTS!” Miss Bowler boomed.

  Ariadne’s eyelids fluttered. “I’m f-fine,” she mumbled. “Isn’t it hot in here?”

  It wasn’t particularly hot at all, but I fanned Ariadne anyway. “Are you all right?” I took her arm. She didn’t feel that warm.

  “I’m fine,” she said again, standing upright and brushing herself down, but her face looked drawn and she was breathing a bit too heavily for my liking. “Perfectly fine.”

  Suddenly, I got the feeling that whatever the matter was, it was something she didn’t want to talk about in front of the staring eyes of the whole school.

  “She’s all right,” I called.

  “Nothing to see here!” Scarlet yelled, waving people away.

  “Crisis averted!” Miss Bowler shouted. Her voice drowned out everyone else’s. “Carry on!”

  There was the usual low mumbling of gossip, but slowly everyone went back to what they’d been doing.

  Scarlet and I went into a huddle with Ariadne. “What is it?” Scarlet hissed. “What’s really the matter?”

  Ariadne gulped. “It’s my room assignment,” she said.

  “Not Violet again?” Scarlet asked. I didn’t think that was likely. Violet had left last term. I wasn’t sure if she was ever coming back.

  “Worse,” Ariadne replied. “It’s … it’s Muriel Witherspoon.”

  Scarlet and I looked at each other, and then asked in unison, “Who?”

  “Muriel Witherspoon,” she repeated.

  Whoever this person was, Ariadne seemed terrified of her.

  “She was the bully from my old school,” Ariadne explained. “The really awful one. The one who ran the secret club in the shed that I burned down.”

  “Oh …” I looked around, remembering the story of Ariadne’s past and how she had happened to come to Rookwood. I wondered if this girl was someone I’d already seen. “Are you sure it’s the same person? Why would she be here?”

  “I heard the name,” Ariadne said desperately. “How many Muriel Witherspoons can there be? Oh, this is a disaster!”

  “It’ll be all right,” I said. “We’ll protect you. We won’t let her pick on you again.”

  But Ariadne didn’t look reassured. She shuffled her feet about on the hall floor. “But we’re sharing a room! You won’t be there at night. What if she’s nasty to me then?”

  “I’ll give her a good punching the next morning,” Scarlet offered.

  I shot my twin a look. “No punching, Scarlet. We’ll just … we’ll tell her not to. We’ll tell the teachers. We’ll do something.”

  “I’ll go and look for her,” my twin said suddenly.

  “Scarlet, don’t!” Ariadne tried to hold her back, but Scarlet was already striding down the line towards the Ws. Ariadne gave me a panicked look, and then we both set off after her.

  Madame Zelda was at that part of the line, checking through the names. Scarlet lurked behind her, obviously hoping to overhear. I noticed that Josephine Wilcox didn’t seem to have come back to school – which was probably no surprise, given that Miss Fox had pushed her out of a window last year.

  Madame Zelda had just handed a timetable to a fourth year named Harriet Wilson, so this Muriel had to be nearby. When Ariadne froze, I knew she must have seen her. She spun round and looked the other way.

  “Which one?” I whispered.

  “The one with the felt cap and the blonde curls,” she said out of the side of her mouth.

  I tried to have a look without being too obvious, but Scarlet was already ruining that because she was standing by the line and clearly staring at everyone. I soon saw who Ariadne was talking about – near to Harriet.

  I had to admit that, at first glance, this girl didn’t look like a terrible bully. She didn’t have a permanent sneer like Penny’s. In fact her eyes were glued to the floor, as though she was trying to make herself as small as possible.

  “Muriel … Witherspoon?” Madame Zelda said, the name unfamiliar on her tongue.

  The girl nodded. Ariadne squeezed my hand.

  “Here you go.” Madame Zelda gave her the little sheaf of papers. “Now, you’ll be in room fifteen, with Ariadne Flitworth.” She moved on to the next girl, revealing Muriel’s stunned expression.

  I turned back. “She looks almost as shocked as you did,” I said. “But she didn’t faint.”

  Ariadne gripped the back of the seat she was leaning on. “She’s probably just waiting so she can humiliate me in front of everyone.”

  I felt a tap on my shoulder – it was Scarlet. “I don’t want to worry you …” she said, “but Muriel Witherspoon’s coming this way.”

  I turned round to see where Scarlet was pointing. I thought Ariadne was about to start hyperventilating.

  “Oh no,” she said quietly. “Oh no, oh no, oh—”

  But she didn’t get a final oh in because Muriel had appeared beside us. She tipped her hat back away from her face and looked down. “Ariadne?”

  Ariadne appeared to be trying to sink into the floor, but eventually she looked up. “Hello, Muriel,” she said softly.

  There was a tense moment, like a little bubble of silence in the middle of the hall chaos, then Muriel spoke again. “It’s good to see you.” She paused. “Look, I’m really sorry about all that bother at our old school. I hope we can put it behind us. I’ve turned over a new leaf.”

  “Oh,” Ariadne said, but I could tell by the tone of her voice that she wasn’t the slightest bit convinced. “Well. That’s good. Very nice.”

  “I’ll see you in our room,” Muriel said with a small smile. She nodded at Scarlet and me and then walked away.

  “Well, that didn’t seem so bad,” I said.

  “So bad?” Ariadne shook her head. “She’s just pretending. She has to be. She was so horrible, Ivy! You wouldn’t believe it.”

  Scarlet shrugged. “I know how horrible some people can be – we’ve met Penny. And Miss Fox. And—”

  “All right,” Ariadne replied, “I get the idea. But she’s as bad as all of them. Worse!”

  I wasn’t sure I could believe that, especially not since the Muriel I’d seen in front of me had just been so polite. We had to reassure Ariadne somehow, or she was never going to stop worrying about it. “Don’t panic,” I told her. “Perhaps you just need to give her a chance? She might really have changed.”

  Ariadne said nothing, just bit her lip and blinked at me.

  “And if she hasn’t …” Scarlet said, “then she’ll be sorry.”

  “Scarlet …” I warned.

  “What? I didn’t say I’d hit her this time …”

  Finally, the time came for Mrs Knight to send us all to our rooms to get unpacked. The first lessons wouldn’t be s
tarting until after lunch, according to the timetable.

  “All these maps and timetables would certainly have been useful to help me find my way around when I had to pretend to be you,” I muttered to Scarlet as we climbed the stairs, lugging all the bags.

  “I had mine,” Ariadne said. “I think Miss Fox just didn’t give them to you.”

  “Well, at least Mrs Knight is more organised,” I said.

  “And less murderous,” added Scarlet.

  Ariadne came to a halt at the top of the stairs, as if her feet had just stopped working. A bunch of other girls pushed round her, with a draught of angry mumbling.

  “I don’t want to go in there,” she said, staring down the hallway.

  “It’ll be fine.” Scarlet squeezed her arm. “Just leave the door open. You can come back to our room if she’s awful.”

  “All right,” Ariadne sighed. “Thank you.”

  Scarlet and I trudged down the corridor together and dropped Ariadne’s suitcases off at her door.

  “Wish me luck,” she said, pulling a face.

  “Luck,” Scarlet said.

  Ariadne took a deep breath and went inside.

  When we didn’t hear any shouting or screaming, we assumed things were all right. I truly hoped for Ariadne’s sake that this Muriel girl really had turned over a new leaf.

  We headed for room thirteen, and stopped outside the familiar door. In a strange way, it was good to see it again. Scarlet smiled up at her lucky number and then let us in. The room was just as we’d left it: the twin beds, the desk, the wardrobe, the same old threadbare carpet, the same smell of dusty air and freshly washed sheets.

  I laid my bag down on my bed. “Do you think Ariadne will really be all right?” I asked, doubt beginning to creep into my mind.

  “She’ll be fine,” Scarlet sighed. “By the end of the week Ariadne and Muriel will probably be having midnight feasts and knitting each other scarves.”

  I laughed. “I hope so.”

  Scarlet took out her timetable and squinted at it. “It’s not too different from last year, although there are some new lessons on there. Some new teachers too.”

  “And new pupils,” I said, thinking of all the girls I’d seen that I hadn’t recognised. And then there was Muriel, and the mysterious Ebony …

  “You’ve got your worried face on,” Scarlet said. She had thrown her bag on the floor and was already pulling things out of it.

  “It’s nothing,” I said with a sigh, and then remembered that we’d promised not to keep things from each other any more. “It’s … it’s just all this. Starting a new term again. I feel a little lost.”

  My twin stood up. “I was lost once. And you know what happened?”

  “What?” I asked, turning to face her.

  “You found me,” she said with a grin.

  And somehow, that was enough to make me feel better.

  Chapter Five

  SCARLET

  he first class of the year was art with Miss Pepper. I’d never been very good at the subject – I preferred writing – and I didn’t like not being able to do things.

  We met Ariadne waiting in the hallway outside the art room, obviously trying to stand as far away from her new roommate as possible.

  “Was it all right?” I asked.

  Ariadne nodded. “She didn’t really say very much in the room,” she whispered. “But I’m sure she’s just saving up her meanness.”

  Muriel was leaning against the wall, her nose in a book. She didn’t seem like she was about to start bullying anyone. There were a couple of other girls I didn’t recognise as well in amongst the crowd of our class that was forming, two of them huddled together and whispering.

  And then there was Ebony McCloud. She swanned down the hallway and suddenly everyone was silent and staring at her. She acted like she didn’t even notice, and instead just walked up to the art-room door. She really was fascinating.

  Dot Campbell leant forward and said, “Um, Miss said we weren’t allowed in until …”

  But Ebony just completely ignored her and went straight into the room.

  “Well then,” I shrugged. If she was going in, I was going in. And it didn’t take long for everyone else to follow me.

  Noisily, everyone found a seat, Muriel going right to the back as we made our way to the front. The desks were bigger and messier in art and there was no seating plan. At that moment, the bell rang, and not long after that, Miss Pepper walked in.

  She pushed her red glasses down her nose and stared around at us. “I thought I’d told you not to come in before the bell, girls?”

  Everyone looked at the new girl, but no one said a word. Ebony just smiled.

  Miss Pepper didn’t seem to know what to do. “Right then,” she said. “Onwards and upwards. Art to be made. Still life!” She pulled a cloth off her desk, revealing a bowl of fruit of all shapes and sizes.

  Anna Santos raised her hand. “Can we eat the fruit, Miss?”

  Miss Pepper stared at her. “Where would be the art in that exactly, Miss Santos?”

  Anna just blinked. She had always been a few bananas short of a fruit bowl.

  “Moving swiftly on,” the art teacher continued, “let’s start by looking at the light and shade …”

  By the end of the lesson, I had drawn something that at least vaguely resembled a bunch of fruit. I peered over at Ivy’s – it was slightly better than mine, but she was left-handed and had smudged some of her pencil as she’d leant over the page. She made a face at it.

  “Leave them on my desk, please, artists,” Miss Pepper said.

  One by one, we all left our masterpieces for her to mark. But when Ebony went up, Miss Pepper stopped bustling around and peered down at Ebony’s sheet of paper through her glasses. “You, girl,” she called out after her. “What’s your name?”

  Ebony stopped and turned back slowly. “Ebony McCloud,” she answered.

  Miss Pepper reached down, picked up the drawing and stared at it. “What is the meaning of this?” she asked. There was an undercurrent of something in her voice that might have been anger, or perhaps it was fear.

  Ebony just stared at her. “I drew what I wanted,” she said. “Isn’t that okay?” And then she sat down.

  I waited, holding my breath. If she had said that when Miss Fox was around, she’d have been in for a caning. Thankfully, Miss Pepper was a lot less violent, but she still didn’t usually take any nonsense from her students.

  Any moment now, I thought, she’s going to launch into her speech about how you have to follow the rules of art before you can break the rules.

  But something unexpected happened. Miss Pepper just stood there silently for a moment and then said, “Right. Well, that’s enough for today, ladies. You need to head to the hall now to pick your sports.” She put Ebony’s drawing back on the pile and blinked at it. “Right,” she repeated. And then she left the room. The bell hadn’t even rung yet.

  I looked around at the class, but everyone was just sitting there. I had to see what was going on. So I got out of my seat and went over to look at Ebony’s drawing.

  In amongst the many drawings of the colourful bowl of fruit, there was a picture that stood out. It was black and white, and it was of a castle. There was a silhouette of a lady standing in the window, and bats flying from the tower. The lady was weeping white tears, her hair streaming out behind her. She was staring at a row of fresh graves, marked with crosses in the dirt. It was beautiful in a strange and dark way.

  I picked it up and waved it at the new girl in disbelief. “I can’t believe you drew this instead of the fruit!” A murmur started up around the class as everyone stood up to leave, all of them casting nervous glances at Ebony as they went.

  She just smiled at me. “Why? Don’t you like it?” she asked.

  “It’s very … artistic,” Ariadne piped up.

  Ivy was blinking at it, as if she were wondering whether it would transform into a fruit bowl before her eyes.


  I didn’t know what to say. I settled for, “You’re a strange one, aren’t you?”

  It wasn’t meant to be an insult, and Ebony didn’t seem to take it that way. In fact quite the opposite. “Why, thank you,” she said as she stood up. She flashed me a brilliant white smile, swung her black satchel over her shoulder and walked out like she was floating on air.

  “There’s something about that girl,” Ivy said, once her eyes had followed Ebony out of the room. “I can’t quite put my finger on it, but there’s definitely something.”

  My mind was elsewhere. “Why did Miss Pepper act like that?” I said out loud. “Why did she just let it go? How come the new girl doesn’t get a lecture? I painted a tree the wrong colour once and she said I was ‘insulting Turner’s legacy’!”

  “It was most peculiar,” Ariadne replied. “She—” Ariadne paused mid-sentence as Muriel came to stand right next to her.

  “What do you do for games, Ariadne?” Muriel asked, as if they were the best of chums.

  Ariadne gaped for a moment. “Um,” she said, “I quite like chess.”

  Muriel brushed her blonde hair back from her face. “I meant … what sport do you like?”

  “Hockey,” Ariadne said, when she’d recovered enough from the fact that her former bully was trying to make small talk.

  “Oh, right,” said Muriel. “That sounds good. See you at the next lesson, then.” She smiled shyly and headed out of the art room.

  Ariadne still looked horrified. I went over and shook her shoulder gently. “Come on,” I said. “We’d better get going.”

  “Is she going to pick hockey too?” Ariadne wailed.

  Ivy looked up at me. “Would that be so terrible?”

  “I manage to score enough bruises on my own without her getting involved,” our friend replied sadly. “She’ll probably knock me into the goal on purpose. Or try to hit my legs out from under me. Or shoot the ball into my face. Or …”

  “She won’t,” I said. “I told you that I’ll see to her if she does anything like that to you.”

  Ariadne’s head sank on to the desk, her hair narrowly missing a pot of paint. “Perhaps I should just take up swimming instead.”