by Webb, Holly
The girl, who had long gingery plaits, hurried them into a thicket of bushes, and gave an enormous deep gasp – as though she’d been holding her breath ever since they were back in the library. Several of the other girls from the class were squashed together on to an old stone bench, and they stared curiously at Lily and Georgie.
‘Should we ask them about Peter?’ Lily breathed into Georgie’s ear. ‘Or about the prison? If any of them know where it is?’
Georgie shook her head. ‘Not yet. We don’t want people to know we’re from Merrythought too. If Mama’s plot has been discovered, they might think we’re involved. We’ve no idea what Aunt Clara told the Queen’s Men. We have to be careful – we should wait.’
Lily nodded, eyeing the girls cautiously.
‘Thank you for picking up Lottie,’ the ginger-haired one told her gratefully. ‘I’m Elizabeth.’
Lily looked at her curiously, and remembered that the little child who’d fallen over had gingery hair too. ‘Is she your sister? Isn’t she too young to be showing any magic?’
Elizabeth shook her head. ‘That doesn’t matter. Our grandfather was a magician, and once I started showing signs they took both of us away. Lottie might never have any magic, but it doesn’t matter.’
‘What sort of magic do you do?’ Lily asked interestedly.
‘I don’t!’ the other girl sounded horrified. ‘I don’t do any! I’ve almost completely lost the taint. I just need to work a little harder, and then they’ll let me go home. Once I’m properly clean.’
‘Oh…’ Lily nodded. She wanted to argue, she hated the words the girl was using – magic wasn’t dirty – but she didn’t think it would be any use. ‘How long have you been here?’
‘A year…’ Elizabeth’s eyes reddened. ‘I wish I could go home. Lottie’s almost forgotten what our parents look like. They sent us a photograph, soon after we came here, but we haven’t had any letters for ages now.’
‘Don’t families visit?’ Lily asked. She didn’t actually want Mama to visit, of course, or even Aunt Clara. But perhaps Daniel might come, if they wrote to him.
‘Of course not,’ Elizabeth muttered. ‘How could they? We’re dangerous.’
The other girls glared at Lily, as though they thought she was trying to upset them on purpose. ‘Don’t you know anything?’ a small dark girl with curls asked disgustedly.
Lily’s cheeks went pink, but she didn’t snap. ‘Not much. Our family lived on an island. We didn’t see many other people. We don’t know a lot about magic – the rules about it, I mean.’ She had a sense that explaining Merrythought, and the plot, any more than this would be dangerous. By rights these girls should be in favour of breaking out of the school and restoring magic – it wouldn’t even have surprised her if they thought assassinating the queen was a pretty good idea. But instead they all seemed to think they were in exactly the right place. It was as though they hated magic, far more than anyone else she’d met. No one had been this disgusted by it at the theatre.
‘Doesn’t anyone ever try to – er – get out?’ she wondered. ‘To go and see their parents, or anything like that?’
The little dark-haired one snorted. ‘Of course not! Miss Merganser knows who all our families are. What do you think would happen to them if we ran away because we missed home?’
‘Oh.’ Put that way, it was rather obvious.
‘It isn’t worth getting into trouble trying to escape. It won’t take you long to lose your magic, if you really try,’ one of the other girls told Lily encouragingly.
‘What happens if we don’t lose our magic?’ Georgie asked huskily.
The girls shrugged, and looked at each other twitchily. ‘You stay…’
‘There weren’t any older children in that class, though. Hardly anyone as old as me even,’ Georgie pointed out.
‘It isn’t good to fight the spells,’ Elizabeth said slowly. ‘It wears people out. And all magicians die young anyway,’ she added matter-of-factly.
‘No, they don’t.’ Lily stared at her. ‘Our mother and father are still alive.’
‘They really do.’ The others nodded earnestly at Lily, and she could see that they believed it was true.
‘They won’t listen,’ Georgie whispered in her ear. ‘They must have been told it all their lives; magic’s wrong, and magicians come to a bad end.’
Lily nodded. The other girls were looking at her and Georgie as though they were truly strange. ‘Does everyone here feel that way about their magic? You all want it gone?’ she asked cautiously. ‘No one misses it? Even a little?’
They were staring at her distrustfully. At last, one pale, mouselike girl muttered. ‘You can’t say things like that. We’ll all get into trouble if you say things like that.’ And they all got up, and hurried away through the overgrown shrubbery, casting suspicious glances back at Lily and Georgie.
Lily slumped down on the bench, her head hanging. ‘I thought at least now we might be with some people who understand about magic. Those girls aren’t anything like us.’
‘I know.’ Georgie scowled, and then she gave a little snort of laughter and sat down by Lily. ‘Even I thought they were feeble.’
Lily went pink. ‘You’re not feeble.’
‘You and Henrietta spend your whole time complaining about how feeble I am,’ Georgie pointed out. She sounded almost cheerful, and Lily glared at her.
‘What are you so happy for? We’re stuck here!’ she hissed.
‘I know. It’s what we’ve been dreading all this time – we’ve been found out. I can stop worrying that we’re going to be found out now, don’t you see?’
‘It makes a certain sense,’ a growly little voice put in from under the bench. ‘We’re going to have to escape though – you can start worrying about that instead. Don’t draw attention to me, Lily, you idiot girl!’ Henrietta snapped, as Lily jumped off the bench and came to hug her. ‘What do you think would happen to a talking dog here? Any one of those girls would have turned me in for a biscuit. I may have to hide out in the gardens for most of the time – which means we really do have to escape, and soon. I am strictly an indoor creature.’ She glanced resentfully at the shrubbery and shuddered.
The bell clanged dolefully again, and the girls looked back at the house.
‘I suppose that means we have to go in,’ Georgie sighed.
‘Be sensible and try to fit in,’ Henrietta told them, peeping round Lily’s feet. ‘I shall go exploring. If I can get into the house safely I will, so for goodness’ sake be discreet if you see me. No, “Hello, Henrietta,” mmm?’
‘I won’t,’ Lily promised. ‘It’s a lovely house,’ she said suddenly, and then stopped, surprised. She hadn’t realised quite how much she liked it. ‘There’s something special about it,’ she added thoughtfully. ‘I just haven’t quite worked out what it is yet.’
‘We’d better run, look, they’re all going back into the house,’ Georgie tugged her arm, pointing at the stream of children hurrying across the terrace.
Elizabeth, the red-haired girl, saw them coming, and waited reluctantly by the doors, as though she’d been told to watch over them. ‘Come on. We have to go down to the kitchens now for our cookery lesson.’ She eyed them nervously. ‘Just don’t say anything else stupid, will you?’ She glanced around carefully. ‘Miss Merganser will be watching us all extra-carefully. She always does when new ones arrive, and we’ve needlework this afternoon.’
Lily wasn’t entirely sure what this meant, but Georgie asked, ‘She teaches needlework?’
Elizabeth nodded. ‘Yes. The boys are lucky, they do gardening instead.’
Lily frowned. Less chance to speak to Peter, or ask the other boys where he was.
‘She almost always bluebottles someone,’ Elizabeth went on, shivering a little.
Lily giggled, and Elizabeth looked at her, shocked. ‘It isn’t funny!’
‘Bluebottles! Yes, it is. Those great big flies, you know?’
‘You’ve neve
r seen her do it,’ Elizabeth muttered. ‘You wouldn’t laugh.’
‘They did it to us to get us here,’ Lily told her soberly. ‘I’m only laughing because I’m scared.’
Elizabeth nodded, as if this was an answer she understood. ‘There are other things too,’ she added. But then she glanced over her shoulder and closed her mouth quickly, as though she couldn’t say anything else.
Lily and Georgie stared at her anxiously, and Lily wondered if it was the spells on the house that had silenced her. Or if she was just too frightened to speak.
‘I can’t sew,’ Lily added at last, to break the eerie silence. ‘Georgie can, but I’m terrible at it.’
Elizabeth sighed. ‘Well – perhaps as it’s your first day here…’ she began, not very hopefully, but then she trailed off. ‘Anyway. Kitchens.’
She hurried them in and out of wood-panelled passages, and through doorways where they half-fell down odd deep steps, where one part of the house seemed to have been joined on to another, as if they’d been clumsily stuck together. Lily had a sense that the house was very, very old. Much older than Merrythought. It was comforting. Fell Hall had been here a long time, and this was only a small part of its history. She could feel the difference between the house, and the sticky layer of spell laid on top of it. Under the spell was more magic, she was sure. Proper, lovely magic, that liked her. She wanted to tear apart the muffling spell with her nails.
‘Do we get to explore?’ she panted hopefully, as they raced after Elizabeth. Perhaps they could find Peter themselves. He had to be somewhere.
Elizabeth looked back, shrugging. ‘I suppose, if you want. There’s time after lessons. There isn’t anything very exciting though. Just lots of empty old rooms.’
‘Are there…?’ Lily trailed off, not quite sure how to ask. ‘Are there any other children? You know, kept anywhere else?’
Elizabeth shook her head, but her eyes had widened. ‘I don’t know what you mean,’ she muttered, and hurried on ahead of them, fast, as though she wanted to get away.
Lily shrugged helplessly at Georgie. What could they do, if everyone was too scared to speak?
The kitchens were dark and burrow-like, but they smelled nice, and the kitchen staff weren’t as frightening as Miss Merganser, or as shouty as Mr Fanshawe. One of the kitchen maids muttered something about magic being unnatural, especially if one tried to cook with it, but it sounded as though she’d been told to say it at every lesson, and she was getting it over in between rolling out the pastry. No one paid very much attention.
The rather lumpen, misshaped pasties they made were served up for lunch. After the way the girls had backed off from them in the garden, Lily wasn’t too surprised that no one seemed very eager to sit close to her and Georgie. They were squashed up at the end of a table, next to Mary, the thin girl they’d first seen in the entrance hall, and a few seats away from Elizabeth, and her little group.
‘Where did you come from?’ Lottie, Elizabeth’s little sister, asked them, stabbing uselessly at her pasty. Georgie cut it up for her, and the little girl nibbled pastry like a squirrel.
‘A house on an island first,’ Georgie explained to her. ‘And then we lived with our aunt in London.’
‘Were you hiding your magic?’ Mary whispered curiously. ‘You’re very old, for it only just to have shown.’
Georgie glanced at Lily uncertainly. Should they admit to this or not?
Lily shrugged. It was fairly obvious that they must have been.
‘Yes…’ Georgie said slowly. ‘Our family didn’t submit to the Decree. Our mother taught me magic.’
Lottie’s eyes widened, so that she looked even more squirrel-like, all eyes and gingery hair, nibbling away. ‘Can you do real spells?’ she whispered.
‘Not here,’ Lily said hurriedly. It wasn’t quite true. She was sure she could, if she tried hard enough. Georgie could too, but if she used all the power she would need to fight the enchantment around the house, it was sure to summon up the spells that Mama had set inside her. Those spells were quite capable of disappearing a small squirrel-child, and who knew what else.
‘Oh.’ Lottie nodded sadly. ‘No one can.’
Perhaps she was too young to have understood all the evilness of magic, Lily thought. She certainly didn’t seem as horrified as the others had been. Lily glanced around, and whispered, ‘Perhaps you will, one day.’
Lottie laughed delightedly, and Lily saw Elizabeth giving her a suspicious glare a little further up the table.
‘I wish I came from an island,’ Lottie said chattily, shedding pastry crumbs everywhere. ‘Me and Elizabeth used to live in Suffolk, until she made our front door fall down. Our mother forgot her key, you see, and we were locked out. Elizabeth was frightened, and the door hinges just went.’ Lottie glanced around secretively. ‘Lots of people saw,’ she whispered. ‘Someone told. Our mother didn’t want us to go, but the men said we had to, and we might hurt people if we stayed. But we’re going back when we’re better.’
‘Oh dear…’ Lily murmured, and Georgie looked sympathetic. The thin girl, Mary, shivered.
‘Did something like that happen to you?’ Lily asked her curiously. She knew it was nosy of her, but Mary had talked about Georgie’s magic, so it seemed a fair swap. And if Mary was happy to talk, perhaps she could lead her on to the subject of prisons.
Mary shook her head slowly. ‘My parents…’ she muttered, with her eyes fixed on her plate. Lily noticed that a burning red flush had spread across the tops of her hollow cheeks. ‘I was a baby.’ Suddenly she pushed her plate away, and jumped up, racing out of the room, leaving Lily staring after her, guilt-stricken.
‘Well done!’ Elizabeth hissed at Lily, and even Lottie looked rather accusing.
‘I didn’t mean to upset her,’ Lily protested. ‘We were just talking. Why did she run away?’
‘She’s one of the stone children.’ Elizabeth sighed at her, in a patient sort of way. ‘We’ll show you, afterwards. For now, why don’t you just keep quiet?’
After the meal, Elizabeth beckoned to Lily and Georgie, and Lottie ran after them, slipping her hand into her sister’s.
‘Where are we going?’ Lily asked, as Elizabeth led them out past the kitchens again, to a little side door.
‘The wall. Come on.’
The wall had been built at the same time as the house, Lily guessed. It was the same honey-ish stone, but mortared together in massive blocks, and topped with spikes. The spikes looked shinily new.
Elizabeth led them along in the lee of the wall, wading through the thick, damp grass that flourished in the shade. ‘Here,’ she muttered at last.
Lily looked where she was pointing. There was a strange, rounded lip jutting out of the wall. It seemed newer than the wall itself, as though it had been added not all that long ago.
‘Is it a fountain?’ Georgie asked, stroking the edge of the stone. It was almost basin-shaped, Lily thought. Half a bowl. There had been a little niche set in the stone pavilion at Merrythought, which had been a fountain once, pouring water into a shell-like stone basin.
Elizabeth laughed shortly. ‘No. It’s a wheel.’ She touched the stone edge gingerly, as though she didn’t like it. Then she steeled herself, and gave the stone circle a shove, so that it creaked and ground, and juddered around like a millstone. Once she’d started it, it turned more easily, and spun full circle, revealing the matching half of the stone bowl on the other side.
‘I don’t understand,’ Lily said, shaking her head. ‘What’s it for?’
‘Children.’
Lily started as Mary slipped out of the bushes behind them, her grey pinafore streaked with green, as though she’d been curled up there a while.
‘It’s to put children in,’ she repeated, watching Lily’s face. ‘Children people don’t want. Magician children. Little witch babies.’
‘You put the baby in the half of the circle that’s outside the wall,’ Elizabeth explained.
‘Then yo
u ring the bell, you see?’ Lottie put in, pointing up to the black iron bell dangling above their heads.
‘And someone comes and takes the baby in,’ Lily said slowly. ‘Are there a lot of the stone children?’
‘Only me, and one of the boys, at the moment. I think it was commoner just after the Decree, when people were really scared. Seeing magicians everywhere.’ Mary stroked the smooth stone.
‘But you can’t tell if a baby has magic, can you? It doesn’t show till later, I thought.’
Georgie shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Maybe sometimes. Or perhaps if people were just frightened? If a baby had strange-coloured eyes, or something like that.’ She managed not to look at Mary as she said it.
‘Nothing magical’s happened to me yet. So maybe I just looked wrong,’ Mary said, in a flat little voice.
Lily wanted to say something comforting – something to cheer Mary up. But she really couldn’t think of anything at all.
Lily had expected that a reform school would mean working all the time. She’d even had vague ideas of a giant treadmill hidden in the cellars, perhaps powering some strange furnaces. But from what the others told them, apart from lessons in the mornings, and needlework and suchlike after lunch, it seemed the children at Fell Hall were left to amuse themselves.
The girls had been given one of the parlours, where there were a few tattered books, and an assortment of old furniture that had been exiled from the smarter rooms. A similar room further down the passage housed the boys, but in the summer weather they stayed mostly in a hideout down by the lake, so Elizabeth told them.
Upstairs there were two long, chilly dormitories, with rows of ugly metal beds. Lily stared down the girls’ dormitory in horror. She had always had her own room at Merrythought, and at the theatre she’d only had to share with Georgie, and there had been plenty of other hidey-holes around the warren-like building. How could she ever be on her own here?
‘I’m not sure how Fell Hall is supposed to be reforming us,’ Lily murmured to Georgie as they got ready for bed on that first night. ‘It can’t just be lessons where Mr Fanshawe shouts about how awful magic is, can it?’