The Sinister Sweetness of Splendid Academy

by Nikki Loftin

  “A snack?” I smiled weakly, but stopped when I saw she wasn’t joking.

  “There are many kinds of witches. This one is, at least, not wasteful,” Vasalisa replied, and picked up another small crab shell. She sucked out a small piece of meat that clung to the inside of the claw. “And I have eaten worse.”

  “Worse than this?” I couldn’t help it: My voice rose and cracked. “Worse than crab shells? You can’t be serious.”

  A dark-haired, tall boy rushed past us, carrying an empty tray. “Keep her quiet, or La Llorona will be back in here with death for us all.” He stopped when he saw what Vasalisa was doing, and made a face. “Here,” he said, taking the plate of crab shells from her and dumping them into a pot on the stove. “You boil them first, with vinegar. They get soft, they are easier to chew. Women!”

  Vasalisa stuck her tongue out at his back—the first time I’d seen her look even vaguely playful since we’d met—and dragged a stool over to the stove so I could stir the shells while she washed dishes.

  “What did he call her? La Llorona?”

  Vasalisa shrugged. “There are a thousand names for her. Antonio comes from Mexico. She is the ghost witch in their children’s stories. It doesn’t matter what you call her. Better not to speak of her at all.” She laughed, a dry sound she obviously hadn’t made much. “The Morrigan told us all to speak when you tasted her food, but forgot to command our silence when she left. It is . . . rare for us to be able to converse. We must not draw attention to her mistake. No more talking for now.”

  “But I need you to tell me what she’s done,” I insisted. “I have to know. I mean, I’ll admit I suspected Ms. Morrigan was a witch. And maybe she is. But that doesn’t matter. Somehow, I have to get to Principal Trapp and let her see what’s going on here—the way she treats you, us. Me. It doesn’t matter if it’s magic or not. It’s abuse, plain and simple. If she can actually see what’s happening to me, she’ll make Ms. Morrigan let me go . . .” I stopped.

  The kitchen had fallen silent again, and everyone was staring at me as if I’d sprouted a horn.

  “What?” I said, when I saw Vasalisa’s face change from horror to pity. “I meant, she’d let all of us go. Not just me.”

  “You don’t even know, do you?”

  “Know what?” I wanted to disappear. But why should I be embarrassed? What did they know that I didn’t? “That my teacher is a witch, probably? You said it yourself.”

  Vasalisa waved the others back to their work, and lifted her hands as she spoke. Her skin was rough and chapped from dishwater and scouring pads. “You believe the witch to be the Morrigan?”

  “Yes, Ms. Morrigan,” I said softly, wondering why she was asking this. They had to know—she was keeping them here, wasn’t she? “And I think Ms. Threnody might be one, too. But I’m not sure about that. I’ve only met her two times.”

  “Twice more than enough. Yes, the Rusalka, she is also one of the evil ones. But there are three, little one. Always three.”

  “Three?”

  “Do American parents not tell the tales anymore? Do they leave their children ignorant as well as defenseless?” She turned her head down and to the side, like she was thinking of spitting. “They guard their homes full of plastic but leave their true treasure to be plundered by the wicked.”

  “What are you trying to tell me, Vasalisa?” I glanced at the door. I could hear the classes running past the cafeteria on the way to recess. Ms. Morrigan would be outside, making sure they all ate their snacks. If I hurried, I would have time to run to the office and tell Principal Trapp about the kitchens before lunch. Show her the crab shells! That would do it.

  But a soft voice stopped me. “The Morrigan is only the stepdaughter of the witch,” Vasalisa whispered, her voice trembling. “She and Threnody are witches, yes. But their leader, their stepmother—the true witch—is the one you call Principal Trapp.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN:

  IN THE SOUP

  I refused to believe it. Principal Trapp as the head witch? They had to be wrong. I was one hundred percent certain it was Ms. Morrigan.

  I didn’t say it out loud, but some of them must have been able to tell I wasn’t convinced. Gustav, for one, spent the next hour slicing garlic bread and salamis and telling me the stories of how Principal Trapp kidnapped him and his brother, Otto, from their home in Austria.

  “We had a third brother,” he murmured, “named Nicholas, with the voice of an angel. But Threnody grew jealous, and they sacrificed him to her envy eight years past this October.”

  I didn’t ask what he meant by “sacrificed him to her envy.” I had a bad feeling I knew.

  Gustav told dozens of horrible stories about Principal Trapp, and the ways she had captured children all over the world.

  “The worst was when she built her school next to the favelas of Rio de Janeiro,” Gustav whispered, his eyes full of dark memories. “Some parents there knew what she was, but they sent their children to the school to die anyway. ‘Better to die with a full stomach in a witch’s mansion, than from hunger in a shack made from cardboard and wire,’ they said. They were wrong. There is nothing worse than what she has planned for her students.”

  I didn’t ask what she had planned; I couldn’t. Gustav seemed to think the students at Splendid were being fattened up for a feast. I wanted to tell him that I had thought that too, but Andrew had come back. He hadn’t been eaten. But I could tell Gustav believed it. It all made sense, if what he said was true: the enormous quantities of food, the mandatory meals and snacks all day long, and the trance that came over the students whenever they came into contact with food.

  Vasalisa spent her time in the back of the kitchen convincing the wait staff that I wasn’t a spy sent by the principal. Some of them were eyeing the knives and me in turn, and I was grateful for her help.

  I needed help. But I couldn’t trust any of them, not really. And they were too scared to draw attention to themselves, not that I blamed them after hearing Gustav’s gory tales of what had happened to the few brave, foolish kitchen workers who had resisted in the past.

  Then I remembered. There was one person who might be able to help me.

  Andrew.

  Lunchtime was drawing closer. Vasalisa was tracing swan designs on the edges of the crème brûlée dessert plates with fruit puree. The designs were beautiful—Vasalisa could have been an artist if she hadn’t been captured and forced to work in the kitchen. I waited until she was done, then touched her sleeve. She backed away, then asked what I wanted.

  “There’s a boy out there who can help us. The boy who was making me eat the . . . the sand. He knows something’s going on. He could help. ”

  “Who?” She faked a smile, like I was a child telling a wild story, and she was humoring me.

  “His name is Andrew.”

  “Oh, no.” Her smile vanished. “The fat boy? Tell me he is not your friend. Stop thinking of him now, little bird. It will hurt less if you do.”

  “Hurt less? What are you talking about?”

  Her dark eyes shone with tears again. “He is to be eaten in two days. Gustav has already been sent to prepare the soup pot.”

  “The soup pot?”

  “Yes, in the teacher’s room. We do not have any pots large enough to boil a child.” She paused. “Not whole.”

  My mind raced. The teacher’s room? Then I understood. The copper gleam—the kettledrum.

  I shook my head. “But Ms. Morrigan doesn’t eat them. I thought that,” I explained when Vasalisa looked at me as if I’d lost my mind, “when she took him to the office. But he was back at school today.”

  “She didn’t eat him last week,” Vasalisa explained slowly, “because the ceremony was not prepared. But now the wood has been chopped, the pot filled. He will be the first sacrifice since he is the largest. I am
sorry to tell you this.”

  “W-why?” I cleared my throat. “Why would he be eaten?”

  “The bone broth is almost gone, and all of the witches’ magic will fade soon.”

  “Bone broth?” I was so confused. What was she talking about?

  With a quick glance at the door, she stopped washing and pulled me to the back of the room. In the corner, a squat, black cast-iron stove sat with a lidded copper pot on one of its burners. Vasalisa picked up a metal hook from next to the stove, and used it to take the lid off the pot.

  The pot was almost empty, but at the very bottom, I could see some small pieces of bone moving in the simmering water. The bones were small and bright white, each one no longer than a child’s finger.

  A child’s finger? Your imagination’s running away with you, Lorelei. Focus.

  “What . . . what is it?” I asked, when I could breathe again.

  Vasalisa took a ladle full of water from the plastic bucket at her feet and splashed more water into the pot. The steam rose up around my face and I breathed in.

  For a moment, it smelled like the noodle soup my mom had always cooked for me when I was sick. Then the smell changed, overpowering me. If grief had a scent, it was coming from the pot in front of me. Something fell into the broth, and I realized I was crying. I stuffed a fist into my mouth, and backed away. Vasalisa dropped the lid back on, looking worried.

  “It is what they eat,” she whispered. “What they have always eaten to restore their magic. Broth made of the bones of children. They eat the meat first, and then the strong stock. When that is gone, they boil each bone until every whisper of magic has been leached away. When the bones turn bright white, the magic is gone. These are the last of the bones from the school in Brazil. And this broth is now almost too weak to fuel their spells.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN:

  A MESSAGE IN CODE

  The best part of nightmares is the waking up. You find yourself in your own bed, with your favorite pillow under your head, the familiar sounds of your house at night all around you. I found myself wishing for my old nightmares—the monster under the bed, the man in black at my window, the ghosts that slid under my door—instead of this new one that would not let me wake up.

  I sat on a stool, trying not to hyperventilate. Vasalisa sat next to me. “You are well?” she asked. Black spots danced before my eyes, but I took a slow breath and asked the question before I could lose my nerve. “They eat children? For real?” She nodded once. “Why?”

  Her eyes fluttered shut. “Maybe long ago they ate magical creatures. I have heard them tell stories of unicorns and manticores. They might be legends, or lies. In these times at least, children are the only magic the world has to offer. But they must eat many to grow stronger. They adore America, with its neighborhoods full of well-fed children, its parents who trust strangers as long as they call themselves teachers.”

  “But I’m not even a kid! I’m eleven, almost twelve. And my brother, Bryan? He’s thirteen already, and huge. Nobody would call him a kid.”

  She just shook her head. “Were you enticed by the playground? Was your brother attracted to it?”

  I nodded, remembering how we had both reacted to the sight of all the new equipment.

  “Then you are children. Only children would be drawn to it. You may not call yourselves such in this country, but you are still children nonetheless. And food for the witch.”

  She walked back to the front of the kitchen, stopping to stir the softening crab shells as she passed. She handed me the dishtowel again, and went back to washing the dozens of plates that were piling up next to the sink.

  Lunch must be half over, I thought, with the small part of my brain left that could think. My thoughts felt cloudy, dreamlike. Could it all be my imagination? Could it all be a dream, a horror I had stitched together from threads of guilt and sadness? I pinched myself, hard enough to make red crescents rise up on my arm, but the nightmare didn’t end.

  “I need to get out there,” I whispered to Vasalisa a few minutes later. “I have to warn him.”

  “Impossible. The Morrigan watches very closely at mealtime. Servers are not allowed to speak at all, and never to the children, not that it would do any good to try. The children fall under the spell of the food. They would not hear us if we shouted in their ears.”

  “Andrew would,” I replied. “He doesn’t eat like the others. He can control himself.”

  Vasalisa just shook her head.

  “Too dangerous. And if they see he is not eating, they will kill him that much sooner, before he grows too thin. Your friend is lost to you, Lorelei. Best not to think of him. Think instead of a way to get your parents to listen to you. You must not return tomorrow.”

  I put a hand on her arm. “I need to get a message to Andrew. A note. A piece of paper, maybe, on his plate. He’ll see it.”

  “The witches would know if anything came from the kitchen that was not food,” she scoffed. “There is no way to send this message, unless you can write a letter with mashed potatoes and butter.”

  “That’s it!”

  I spent the next few minutes trying to write with mango puree on the side of a fresh plate of crème brûlée. I couldn’t put much there, and it had to be in code. A place to meet, a time, my name. That was all.

  “You cannot put your name,” Gustav said, sighing, and wiped the letters from the small plate. “She’ll kill you outright when she sees it. And me as well.”

  He had agreed to carry the dessert out, but only after Vasalisa had asked for me. I could see why he had agreed, looking at her blush as she smiled at him. She wasn’t beautiful, of course; it was impossible to be as malnourished as she was and stay attractive. But her eyelashes were thick and dark, and her eyes so large in her narrow face, I could tell she had been pretty once. As I watched her fish another crab shell out of the pot on the stove and chew the soft-boiled piece without complaining, I realized she was still beautiful, in a way that would never fade.

  She reminded me of my mother, I thought, watching her work to swallow again. Near the end, Mom had been thin like that, too, and swallowing had hurt. Everything had hurt; even the touch of the sheets on her skin. But she had called me up onto her hospital bed when she saw my tears, folded her arms around me, singing our lullaby until I had cried out. Her arms had been every bit as thin as Vasalisa’s, and her eyes just as beautiful.

  “It’s okay, Gustav,” I said. I grabbed another plate. “I won’t write my name. Not exactly.”

  I reached into the pot, took out a crab shell, and placed it in my mouth as I wrote slowly, saying each letter out loud as I went, on the edge of the dish. Some letters were bigger than they should be, some smaller, but I got them all down: Persephone @ Open Flame. Then I placed two pomegranate seeds at the bottom of the plate.

  I hoped he would get it. I hoped he would see it. I hoped against hope that he would come, and listen to my story, and believe me.

  I forced the crab shell past the lump in my throat, and reached into the pot for another one. I had to finish them all and sneak out before two o’clock.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN:

  THE SECRET OF THE SAND

  The kitchen staff helped. I don’t know why I expected them to stop me. Maybe because I knew, and they knew, that their lives were at stake if the witches caught them doing it. Still, they helped me eat the shells and told me the best way to get to the science wing without being seen.

  “Won’t she know?” I asked, swallowing the last shell. It didn’t taste all that bad, to tell the truth. The water had softened it down to rubber, and Vasalisa had smothered it in lemon and melted butter left over from the lunch plates. But the idea of eating shells still made me choke. “She has to have some sort of detection system or something.”

  “She did, once. But in this school, with her magic so deplet
ed, she has been conserving. Also, the children have been allowed to walk wherever they want until today, yes? So the hallways have no alarms. She has made it easy for you. Now eat.” She handed me a chicken leg and some French fries.

  “But—we can’t,” I started to protest, but then saw that the whole staff was picking through the leftovers from lunch, choosing pieces of food that had been left uneaten when lunchtime had ended.

  A gruff voice at my elbow startled me. “Scraps for the dogs. It is the only meal we are allowed. Eat quickly.” Gustav handed Vasalisa a plate with an untouched pile of mashed potatoes and a veal cutlet with only one bite missing. “Eat, Lisa.”

  “Thank you,” Vasalisa murmured. She was blushing, I noticed, and wouldn’t look Gustav in the eye.

  She liked him, and from the way Gustav was holding out the plate of food to her, he liked her, too. She took the plate with a trembling hand, and their fingers brushed. When they touched, both of them looked toward the window in the kitchen door.

  “I’m sorry,” Gustav said softly, his voice horror-filled. “I didn’t mean to touch—”

  Vasalisa interrupted. “No, it was my fault. If she comes in, I will tell her I was clumsy.”

  “Maybe her magic no longer works for this,” Gustav said, and raised his hand to brush her face, almost. His fingers traced the outline of her cheek, centimeters away.

  Of course they weren’t allowed to touch, I realized. They weren’t allowed to talk. If they talked, they would plan an escape. And if they touched, if they grew that close, they would help each other. Work together. Fall in love. They would become family, and protect one another.

  All of the other kitchen workers were suddenly busy with tasks that kept their backs turned to Vasalisa and Gustav, giving them a strange sort of privacy in the middle of the bustle. I couldn’t help but stare as Gustav’s hand sketched the line of Vasalisa’s profile in the air. How terrible would it be to fall in love with someone when you were a prisoner? They had nothing to dream of, nothing to plan for. They were just a few years older than Bryan and me, with their lives before them. Only their lives would be filled with backbreaking labor and silence, not dates and high school proms. No holding hands, no first kisses. No love, no marriage, no future.