“And then what?” Fred said, eyes widening as Avery flashed his hand with a smirk. “I think you’re all making a mountain out of a molehill. Poor Beatrix never meant to deceive us like that; she’s been so preoccupied that she probably never gave it second thought. Why can’t you just leave it alone and continue like normal?”
I clenched my fist as the maddening thought that had been bugging me for five days finally turned into low, emotional words. “What if Beatrix has the power to open the Boundary?”
Silence followed.
Slowly, the three placed down their cards and raised their heads to gape at me. Even Lucas ceased reading for a moment.
“Penny…no one can open the Boundary. I doubt even He can. It’s a solid part of our world, not an illusion,” Tressa said quietly.
“Why are you so blind?” I uttered bitterly. “Do you want to stay here forever? Somehow, we got in here and there has to be a way back out again.”
“Penny, I…”
I didn’t wait to hear whatever pathetic, reasonable excuse Tressa had come up with this time. Instead I got up and ran out of the room, slamming the door behind me for good dramatic measure.
Tearing into the corridor, I began to pace up and down the worn patterned carpet with a fury boiling through my mind. I had expected a shocked response to my suggestion, but had been certain it would be followed by mutual agreement and serious discussion. Instead they had treated me like a blabbering toddler! Especially Tressa, who I had thought to be clear-headed about everything.
Fuming, I ran to the girls’ bedchamber.
It was cold. Someone had opened the window and rain pelted though soaking the curtains. A chill wind gusted in, a huge contrast from the toasty common room. Maybe it was also the shadows on the walls, and the candle flames wildly flickering, which caused the room to look so threatening, but whatever the case it stopped me in my tracks.
I shook the feeling off and ran to the shutters to close the window. The pane was icy to the touch, and I shivered. I wiped my damp hands on my frock before pausing, listening. From the corner where Evelyn’s bed was, I could hear a muffled sobbing.
“Evelyn?” I called testily. The weeping stopped for a moment, and then continued with renewed sorrow.
“It’s me, Penny!” I tried again. When she refused to respond, I went over to her bed and none too gently pulled back the covers.
Evelyn’s tears plastered her hair to her porcelain face. Her eyes were wide with terror and her whole body racked with deep sobs.
“Whatever’s the matter?”
“I don’t know!” she wailed, trying feebly to prop herself up on her elbows. Another bout of her mysterious afflictions claimed her at that moment and Evelyn doubled over with a loud hacking sound, her slender arms wrapped tightly around her middle.
Rocking back and forth like a helpless child who had just experienced a nightmare, I felt all my previous anger melt with sympathy for her, and I bent concernedly down by her bedside to clasp her shaking hand.
“It’s all right, Evelyn,” I soothed, stroking back her damp curls. “Don’t fret, now. It’s nothing but…an, er…bout of indigestion. Nothing you should worry about. Takes some deep breaths.”
She did as she was told. I squeezed her hand in support, and at last the crying subsided into snuffles and moans of discomfort.
“Oh, Penny!” Evelyn spoke into her pillow as she rolled over on to her stomach. Her voice sounded distorted. “Whatever shall I do? I’ve suffered from a bad tummy before, but it was nothing like this!”
To be truthful, I wasn’t entirely certain how to handle the situation. I wasn’t the first person anyone asked for when they were feeling under the weather due to my lack of compassion and patience, also Evelyn did have a habit of blowing things out of proportion. Yet she did look very uncomfortable to say the least, and I wasn’t about to go begging Beatrix for help. Not now.
“What are your symptoms?” I inquired hesitantly. Evelyn turned back over with a groan to face me, a sparkle of relief in her eyes now someone had taken control.
“I fear I’ve contracted some sort of plague,” she complained. “My throat is so sore, that it feels like I’m swallowing shards of glass! My nose feels stuffed, my eyes are watering, my ears keep popping, and I feel I’m burning up. I don’t suppose you’d be an angel and open the window agai—”
Before she could finish, she sneezed and froze in alarm as mucus began streaming from her nose, which she dabbed away with the bedding. She had my hand in a vice-like hold now, and I had to strain to wrench it free.
“Ouch!” I hissed, rubbing my pinched fingers tenderly. “Right, I’ll go and open that window now.” Giving one last worried look over my shoulder, I hurried to do her bidding. The shutters had blown open again and a gust of wind whooshed in on cue, instantly raising goose bumps on my arms.
“There,” I crooned through chattering teeth. “That’s better, hmm?”
“Much, thank you.” Evelyn sighed, cringing at her nasally tone. “The rain is such a tranquil noise, it helps calm me down. Oh dear, to merely keep myself from panicking is sapping all my strength! What if I’m dying? Surely this isn’t natural?”
Her voice rose, her eyes widening into two pools of horror at the thought.
“Don’t be ridiculous!” I said. “Now, you rest here whilst I go and fetch everyone else. No dire thoughts, all right?”
Evelyn nodded meekly. I gave her an encouraging smile on the way out.
Once I’d shut the door, I ran.
I had no idea what was wrong, if anything, but compassionate or not I hated seeing any of my friends in such discomfort. We had read about the terrible maladies that occasionally plagued the outside world, but not in any detail. The worst sickness that ever happened here was a bad stomach after eating too much, so actually having illness in our presence was frightening.
Just as I rounded the corner, my foot caught on a bump in the carpet, sending me sprawling to the ground with an ungainly thud.
I heard scuffles as everyone inside the common room scrambled to see what the commotion was, muffled voices growing louder until the door burst open and a surprised group encircled me.
“Penny, are you all right?” Fred asked, bending down to help me up. I took his offered hand to haul myself off the ground, wobbling a bit and rubbing my knee tenderly.
“Yes, I’m fine, but—”
“I’m sorry about what I said, by the way,” Tressa blurted out, taking my hands. “Please don’t be angry at me! I was only…I didn’t want you to be—”
“It’s fine,” I interrupted hastily, although it most certainly wasn’t. “Look, can we argue another time? It’s Evelyn. She’s ill.”
A collective gasp rippled, and everyone bombarded me with a tide of individually indistinguishable questions about her welfare.
It was Tressa in the end who having enough of talk, broke out of our circle to stride back down the corridor to the girls’ bedchamber. We stampeded after her, but only I entered the room as the boys were forbidden.
“Dear me, it’s absolutely frigid in here!” Tressa commented, arranging her hair around her lace-covered shoulders for more warmth. “I’ll go and shut the window before we all fall sick.”
“No!” I stopped her reluctantly. “She wanted it like this. She has a fever.
“Tressa? Have you come to help me?” came a feeble croak.
“Of course! Are you all right?” Tressa cried, jolting back into the situation at hand and hurrying over to the bedside.
Evelyn was as pale and sweaty as before, clutching an old pillowcase to her nose with forlorn sniffling.
“Oh my goodness, why didn’t you tell us this morning something was wrong? Lucas might have been able to tell what it was and—”
“I was fine then,” she replied quickly. “But my nose started getting stuffy just after luncheon so I decided to rest. But now…” Evelyn hiccupped miserably, wiping tears from underneath wide eyes.
Tressa p
ulled out the silk ribbon holding her own hair back and tied Evelyn’s locks away from her flushed cheeks.
She turned to me and said sternly, “Tell one of the boys to fetch a dampened cloth from the bathrooms, will you, Penny, and then nip down to the kitchens to ask Beatrix if she has anything that might help.”
I folded my arms firmly across my chest. “I’ll not talk to Beatrix. And I won’t let anyone else, either.”
“Penny, you can be so awkward sometimes!” Tressa groaned in exasperation, but I could barely hear her over Evelyn’s constant whimpers and coughing. “Fine, just get the towel, but be quick about it. And shut the window, for heaven’s sake, we’ll keep her cool in other ways!”
I consented, flying to the door. Fred, Avery, and Lucas were crowded about it anxiously, straining to hear what was going on.
“Go and fetch a bowl of cold water and a cloth,” I instructed, before anyone could speak. “I’ll explain when you get back.”
They scooted away, leaving me free to return to Evelyn.
Tressa was murmuring words of comfort to her, only faltering whenever she sneezed, instinctively recoiling. The scene was so tranquil though that I felt bad disrupting it, and decided instead to sit by the now closed window until someone needed me.
It was a shame, really, that Beatrix had chosen to betray us all now. Whenever one of us felt poorly or hurt ourselves before, she would cure us that very same day with her infallible store of medicinal herbs and remedies that stopped any kind of ache or pain.
Now looking back at it, I wondered whether her miraculous talent was due to her powers rather than an adept skill at healing. Where else had she deceived us?
Bitter thoughts mixed in with ones of concern and sympathy for Evelyn, making my head spin as I rested my head against the window frame, the cold grooves biting my skin. But where my mind had wandered off too there was no feeling, no trouble, just a blissful dreamland…
6
I groaned and opened my eyes. The wooden frame had left a deep red imprint all over the left side of my face, and my body ached from sleeping in such an uncomfortable position. The bright light poured in from a faint morning sun shining bravely through the mist, reflecting off the walls with a blinding furor, and causing me to squeeze shut my eyes again to block it out.
Stretching out with a yawn, I uncurled myself and stood up. Then I remembered my dream. Exactly the same one I’d had before. I was Elisabeth having my baby snatched from me.
Tressa stood beside me, hands on her hips and a poisonous expression on her face.
“I’m up, I’m up!” I muttered with another yawn. “You woke me from such a vivid dream…”
“I should think so. You slept on that ledge so soundly that I couldn’t wake you for dinner!”
“What?” I gasped in alarm, now fully awake. “Then how come He didn’t come right up here and punish me?”
“I told him you were also ill,” Tressa said, jutting out her jaw bravely. “Beatrix backed me up.”
“Thank you!” I exclaimed in awe, choosing to ignore the last part. It took a lot of nerve to lie directly to the Master, and I suspected the only reason Tressa had gotten away with it was because of – if I had to address her – Beatrix.
“You’d better be,” Tressa said grimly. “It took a lot of work from Beatrix, and a lot of guts from me. Anyway, come on down to breakfast. Evelyn only just fell asleep, poor darling; she was tossing and turning all night so I expect she’ll be tired today.”
I hopped off the ledge and tried to straighten the creases from my skirts, and then made a feeble attempt to pull my fingers through my hair in lieu of a comb, with an equal amount of success.
“I hope she feels better soon,” I commented. My ankles creaked in protest as I began to walk – punishment from sleeping in shoes. Never again would I fail to change into my nightgown.
“Yes, so do I. Hopefully it’s just a little thing that will pass quickly.” Tressa nodded.
I noticed bags under her eyes, signs of her staying up all night by Evelyn’s side. Tressa could be very blunt and bossy sometimes, but never could you ever doubt her loyalty to her friends.
We didn’t eat anything but dinner in the dining hall, so breakfast and luncheon were always served in the small room that could be accessed on one of the split-levels where a smaller staircase diverged from the grand stairway about halfway down.
The breakfast room itself was more of a cavern dug out of thick brick, with a low arched door opening into a circular turret. One thing I did like were the doors leading to a balcony, which wrapped one side of the turret and overlooked the western Boundary woods.
“Hello, you two,” Fred greeted us from inside. The three boys were already sitting munching warm porridge oats sprinkled with brown sugar, eyes flicking over to us briefly in case Evelyn had made a miraculous recovery before turning back to the food.
Tressa and I sat on stools beside them and helped ourselves.
“Lucky escape last night, Penny.” Avery smirked, peering at me over the table and egging for a reaction. “Thought you were in for it, snoozing through dinner.”
“I was tired,” I said shortly, not in the mood for his antics.
“I’ll bet, holding a grudge is very exhausting.” He nodded wisely. “Even when—”
“What book is that, Lucas?” Tressa asked, deciding with good justification to stop Avery before he went too far. “I thought we weren’t supposed to take them out of the library?”
Lucas jumped and shut his book with a start, tucking it under the table guiltily.
“It’s only numeracy. I’m sure she won’t mind.”
“It looks like the weather is starting to perk up,” Fred noted conversationally. “Thought it never would!”
“It never does,” I said bitterly, staring at my porridge with an accusatory frown. “The blasted mist is always hanging over us the whole darn time.”
“I beg your pardon?!” Tressa gasped. “Where are your manners? Don’t say those words ever, least of all at the table!”
Avery’s mouth twitched a little at the edges and he coughed as if to hide a laugh. I hadn’t even properly cursed, but to Tressa, there was no difference. Good words, bad words, and nothing in between.
“Oh, I had a dream last night!” I remembered, as if I hadn’t heard what Tressa had told me. She ground her teeth in annoyance but remained silent, stewing as she ate her oatmeal.
“Oh?” Fred inquired with a genial curiosity, though no one else seemed at all interested.
“Yeah…it was really strange. The odd thing is, I’ve had it before. Do you reckon it means anything?”
“Not unless you’re living in a novel,” Lucas muttered under his breath.
“I had a queer one about the ocean – remember, from one of those books, it’s this massive body of salty water? I had a dream that I was doing my numeracy whilst floating along, and you were all…”
I – and I was sure everyone else did too – blanked out as Fred genially launched into a full-blown description of his nonsensical dream with an enthusiastic energy, spurred along by our occasional ‘oohs’ and ‘ahhs’.
I did not grow bored; contrarily, this excuse to sit with my eyes unfocussed and blank at the table gave me a chance to mull over my own dream some more in hopes of fishing out another detail. I wanted to know the story! Having only seen two adults, one of whom hardly seemed human and the other I distrusted too much to even think about, I was very interested in seeing the mysterious characters’ faces.
Then Tressa stood up, so suddenly that she knocked over her stool. I removed my elbows from the table and wiped the corners of my mouth, but she wasn’t looking at me.
Wordlessly, she excused herself and left the room without second glance.
“Any clue what that was about?” Avery craned his neck to glance behind her.
“None at all.” I shrugged, equally puzzled.
A stickler for manners, it was odd she should behave so out of order. Odd
enough that I decided to also leave my now lukewarm porridge to chase after her.
The boys followed suit, trampling back up the stairs to the girls’ common room. I was a few feet away from the door when I began to hear the muffled cries coming from inside.
White-faced, heart hammering, I burst in. Evelyn must have taken a sudden turn for the worst.
I bumped into Tressa on my way in. Her face was ashen with worry, normally strong features seeming weak and powerless.
“What is it? What’s happened?” I gasped, taking her shaking hands in mine. “Is Evelyn all right?”
“I don’t know. I had a horrible feeling that something was wrong with her. And I was right.” She led me to Evelyn’s bedside.
Hardly daring to look, I took in the surroundings.
Evelyn was standing in her flowing white nightgown like some sort of specter. Wild curls tangled in ribbons, tears falling down her pasty cheeks as she explained.
“I couldn’t breathe!” she moaned through a very blocked, very red nose. “Then I got so flustered I – I passed out!”
“Oh my goodness!” Tressa bit her nails. “This is awful! She must be very seriously ill for this to happen.”
“What can we do?” I clutched at the iron bed frame to keep myself from laughing. Yes, it was serious, no, it hadn’t happened before…but that red nose just make me want to giggle, and giggle, and never stop. Was that wrong?
“Get Beatrix,” Tressa decided. I did a double take and stopped chuckling to myself.
“What?”
She repeated herself, gaining confidence.
“No!” I refused, leaving no room for negotiation. I was not going to reconcile now, nor ever for that matter. My protest would mean nothing if I went begging for help a mere week after she had betrayed me so.
“Don’t be selfish!” Tressa yelled. I took a step back, alarmed by her sudden anger and the tears spilling down her own cheeks. “How will you ever forgive yourself if Evelyn gets worse or even dies because you couldn’t conquer your stupid pride? Pull yourself together and think of someone other than yourself for once! It isn’t all about you!”
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