The Crickhowell School for the Muses

by Waxman, Rachel

  Awen reached for the doorknob, just as Vivienne opened it from the other side.

  “Oh!” Vivienne exclaimed. Then, seeing Awen’s eager face, she let out a giggle. “I thought you might be in here!”

  Awen smiled.

  “Are you doing anything now?” Vivienne looked down at the paper Awen held, but Awen shrugged and shook her head no. “All right, good good good!” Vivienne gushed. “I want to do something! I’m bored. Have you had dinner? I’m starving!”

  Awen raised her eyebrows and smiled. She had not eaten in hours. In fact, she was not so sure she had eaten at all that day. Her stomach gurgled.

  “Very well, let’s go then!” Vivienne turned abruptly and began to skip down the hallway.

  Awen placed the music on her mattress, left her room and shut the door quietly, as if she were about to do something forbidden, then followed Vivienne at a slow pace. This hallway was always so strange at night. Rooms that were normally open and filled with light were now obscured in darkness. The students who occupied them by day were probably off in their rooms somewhere, and with them went the music, the plucking of strings, the thumping of feet on wood floor.

  “Awen!” Vivienne’s voice echoed.

  She broke from her fantasy and realized she had almost reached the curved staircase at the end of the hall. She shivered, still unable to push away the memory of her tumble down the stairs.

  Vivienne called her name again. Where was she? Awen began down the stairs. Lightly. Carefully. One step at a time.

  “Ah, there you are!” Vivienne was waiting for her halfway down. “You’d better hurry, because they might run out of food!” She ran the rest of the way, but Awen kept her pace.

  When Awen reached the dining hall, Vivienne had already found a small table in the back corner. Most of the room was empty, with only a few girls sprinkled here and there, eating something out of ceramic bowls. Mouth full of food, she motioned Awen over.

  “Stew again.” Vivienne crinkled her nose as Awen sat in the chair next to her. “Already got you a bowl.” She pushed over a turquoise ceramic dish and dull metal spoon.

  Awen twisted one side of her mouth, but the gurgling in her stomach made her reach for the serving dish in the middle of the table anyway. She poured a ladleful of the thick substance into her bowl, counting the chunks of carrot, beef, and rice as they fell in. She poked at them with her spoon, then gave in to the biting hunger.

  “So, I have a question.”

  Awen, still chewing, gazed up at Vivienne from her bowl.

  “Do you ever…talk?” The question did not sound accusatory, simply curious.

  Awen swallowed and crinkled her nose. She was not really sure of the answer.

  “Hmm, all right then. I don’t mind it one bit. In fact, some people say I talk enough for two! Hahaha!” she giggled. “I’ve even been asked, once, if that’s what I’m here for! The Talking Muse, they call me!” She took another bite of stew. “But really, I’m here as a dancer.” She smiled proudly. “I’m one of the best!”

  Awen nodded, hoping to hear more of her new friend’s story—how long Vivienne had been at the school, how much longer she would stay, where she would go. Mostly, Awen wanted to hear those answers because she did not want to be asked any of the questions herself.

  Vivienne leaned toward her. “So, why are you here?”

  Awen frowned. She drew her tongue across her lips, and pointed to them.

  “Hmm,” Vivienne pondered a moment. “Oh! A singer, yes?”

  Awen nodded.

  “I know another one like you. Hmm,” her eyes flitted around the room. “Right…there. That girl.” She pointed to a black-haired girl at a table in the middle of the room. “I don’t know if she’s nice or not, though. Hmm. So, can you read music?” Her eyes brightened.

  Awen shook her head, wishing there was some way to tell her she would be able to read it soon.

  “Huh,” she said. “Well…all right, so I’ve been here for…” she counted on her fingers, “seven months. You must be new, though. How long?”

  Awen held up two fingers.

  “Two…weeks?”

  Awen nodded.

  “All right. Well, so seven months for me. So I have…” she counted again, “five months until I leave to live with my patron. We usually stay here for a year. Sometimes more, sometimes less. I think it depends on how good you are.” She smiled brightly. “I’m really excited though!” she exclaimed. “I will have a new family and everything, and dance all the time, and maybe my room will be bigger!”

  Awen had not really thought about any of this. Her future life with her patron seemed so distant, and the thought of it did not make her smile as Vivienne did. She was more concerned with making it through the next month. The next week. Just the next day. She wondered if she would even be able to keep up with the time anymore. It might just fade into a stream of nothingness.

  “So, who is your patron? Do you know anything about him?”

  Awen racked her brain. She had heard the name just once, her very first night in the castle. But with each day, the details of that night became cloudier. Some memories, she would prefer to forget.

  “Oh, I guess you wouldn’t really be able to tell me.” Vivienne looked disappointed. She turned back to her stew, scraped the very last bit onto her spoon, and licked it off. “Oh! Oh oh oh! I have an idea!” Vivienne’s eyes burned with excitement. “We should…” She looked warily around the dining hall for eavesdroppers, then lowered her voice to a whisper. “We should sneak into the library tonight and read about our patrons!”

  Awen remembered the dark room full of monstrous leather volumes. There had been some lengthy words written about her patron in one of the books, and it was deliciously tempting to read it. She licked her lips and let half of her mouth form into a smile.

  “Let’s do it!” Vivienne exclaimed in a whispered yell. “It’s been too long since I’ve gone down there.” She lowered her voice even further. “We’re not supposed to, you know. But wouldn’t it be fun!”

  Awen could taste the temptation like sugar on her lips. Her muscles ached to move, to go somewhere other than the two rooms—her bedroom, the dining room—that acted as permanent fixtures in her new life. The little seed of adventure crackled in her stomach. But there were so many reasons not to go. Or, really, only two. But here, those two reasons were everything; Miss Nina and Rosaline. Maybe even Hannah would catch her. Awen knew what would happen if she were seen. Or actually, twice as frightening, she did not know what would happen.

  Vivienne saw the hesitation on her friend’s face. “Oh, don’t desert me, it will be fun! We won’t get caught, I promise!”

  Awen was not convinced by Vivienne’s weightless words, but it was enough. It was something to do, after all—a diversion, a minty breath across the film of stasis forming on her teeth. Awen smiled, held up a finger to Vivienne, and then finished her dinner with one big scoop of her spoon.

  “Fantastic!” Vivienne exclaimed, trying, unsuccessfully, to keep her voice down. She stacked her empty bowl on top of Awen’s, then sprang up, throwing her chair back a foot. She giggled and reached across to pull Awen up. “Let’s go!”

  The two girls slipped through the dining hall, Vivienne leading the way. They weaved in and out of the half-empty tables, making every attempt to suppress their smiles.

  “The library is on the first floor,” Vivienne whispered matter-of-factly. She padded toward the stairwell, occasionally looking over her shoulder.

  A nervous energy swept through Awen, and she, too, surveyed the hallway as they walked. Every footstep from the floor above, every scraping of a chair from the dining hall, every voice floating from some room, sent a tingling through her fingertips. Threatening images of Miss Nina and Rosaline, with their glistening black eyes, drifted into her head. But she pushed them aside and followed her friend down the hall.

  The two girls reached the stairwell, and Vivienne stopped, turning behind her to Awen. “I don
’t think we’re supposed to be on the first floor at all,” she whispered, eyes wide. “So we should be as quiet as we can.” She turned back and began to tiptoe down the stairs in the way that only a dancer could. She moved in absolute silence.

  Awen took a deep breath, then followed.

  This stairwell was much the same as the one between the second and third floors, only it was longer, forming a full spiral rather than a mere curve. The entryway must have had an imposingly high ceiling, but she could not remember it clearly from that very first night, nor from the morning after, when all she had focused on was the main entry door and the possibility of escape. She recalled only small bits—the dazzlingly ornate chandelier that hung from above, and…she stopped. A glint of brass. Miss Nina had used a brass key to open the library that first night. Would the room be locked?

  “Awen?” Vivienne whispered. She stood at the foot of the stairs, peering inquisitively up at Awen, who had stopped a few steps short of the bottom.

  Awen shifted her feet. Then she shook her head and continued down the stairs. Now, it all came back to her, the memory of that first night. This time, however, she could actually step back and take in her surroundings. The tiny flickering candles, evenly spaced around the chandelier, glowing iridescently like Saturn’s rings. The structure itself was of gold, and it was massive, with countless hoops of candles dwindling in circumference and rising in height until just one candle burned at the top. The gold chain that attached it to the ceiling sparkled in the light, as if it housed thousands of tiny diamonds.

  The entrance hall itself was strikingly different from the rest of the castle. The walls were stone rather than bare white, and the light wooden floor of the upper levels had been switched out for a dark oak. It was as if this room were an artifact from a different time altogether. There was no doubt that the upper floors had been built specifically to house and train students, but Awen wondered if, at one time, this first floor had served an entirely different purpose. Something more beautiful, perhaps.

  “Psst! Awen!”

  Awen peered around the corner of the stairwell and found Vivienne leaning against the wall next to an ornately carved door. The library door. A smile gleamed on her face.

  Awen tiptoed toward the library, looking around her shoulder, listening for any sounds coming from the stairwell. She crossed her fingers behind her back, desperately hoping the door would not be locked.

  “You ready?” Vivienne whispered.

  Awen gave a tentative smile.

  Vivienne turned to the door and, delicately, twisted the brass knob. She pushed, and the door opened.

  Awen gave a quiet sigh of relief. With that obstacle passed, she felt ready to walk right in, lead the way even. But then a new thought struck her like cymbals in her ears. This door was probably meant to remain locked, and, not being so, there was a great chance that it was currently in use.

  But Vivienne had already entered the room, and Awen had no choice but to follow.

  The library was pitch black. Though somewhat unnerving, this was a promising sign—there could not possibly be anyone else inside. A hint of dust and mold permeated the air, tickling Awen’s nose and throat. She sneezed. Awen tried to picture the room from her only previous visit, when it had been lit by a solitary candle, standing on a desk near the entrance.

  She did not know where Vivienne had gone. She could only hear her breathing, coming from somewhere to the left, and the sound of hands rummaging through…something.

  Awen crept forward, the wooden floor cool beneath her bare feet, holding both hands out until they hit a hard surface—the desk. She circled her palms around the top, searching for…there it was: a glass container with a candle inside.

  “Got it!” Vivienne’s voice, though a whisper, pierced the heavy blackness of the room.

  Awen jumped, nearly throwing the glass off the table.

  “Matches…Where are you, Awen?” Vivienne’s voice drew closer. Awen could hear her hands hitting various surfaces, trying to feel her way through the darkness, until she felt Vivienne’s presence beside her.

  “Candle?” Vivienne asked.

  Awen scooted the glass jar into Vivienne’s waiting hands. A soft scraping chhk filled the air, followed by a deep orange glow and the pleasant smell of burning. Awen heard the faint sound of singeing wick as Vivienne lit the candle and brought the room to life.

  The two girls stepped back, taking it in.

  “Perfect,” Vivienne said in a loud whisper. “You know, this isn’t my first time in here.”

  The library was much the same as Awen’s fading memory of it—the table, the candle, the rows and rows of leather-bound volumes lining the walls. Awen almost wondered if there were, in fact, any walls at all, or if the shelves acted as the only barrier between this room and the next.

  “Now I’m going to go find my book.” Vivienne skipped to the far left wall, where the waterfall of books began. “I have no clue where it is,” she mused. “It’s been too long since I’ve looked. Oh, of course!” Awen thought she must have deciphered some pattern in the titles, as Vivienne skipped through the entire section on the left and disappeared to browse through the back wall.

  Awen stayed where she was, elbows on the table. She remembered there had been a chair there, once; she wondered where it had gone. Awen tried to recreate the memory of her first night in the library. The volume with her patron…she remembered gold letters, but every book here had gold letters. Singers. Yes, it had the word Singers on the spine.

  Awen also began her search from the left side of the room, but she could not see any rhyme or reason for the organization: Pianists next to Fan Dancers next to Lutenists and Artists—Painters. She sighed, but continued her search.

  “Aha!” Vivienne exclaimed from the back wall.

  Awen dropped her eyes from the shelf she was scouring and turned her head toward Vivienne. She could just see the outline of her friend, who was sagging beneath a massive volume. She appeared to be leaning it up against the bookshelf just to keep it from tumbling to the ground and crushing something—her foot, perhaps.

  Awen smiled at her friend’s success and began to turn back to the shelf before her. But something—a fuzzy outline—caught her eye on the way. Lurking in the corner of the room was—she began toward it—the chair. The simple wooden chair she had remembered from her first time in the library. As she crept closer, Awen could see that something had been stacked on the seat: a pile of leather volumes. She glanced up at the bookshelf but saw no gaps, no evidence as to from where they had come.

  Awen knelt carefully on the chilly floor and spread her dress about. She scrutinized the stack of books before her, letting her eyes drift over the curves of the spines. She wondered what it was about these particular volumes that had made someone lay them aside. Two were deep red, still dusty in some places, with Ca and Ga written on the spine. Another was green, and the one at the very bottom…Awen stopped. Yes, the one at the very bottom proved strikingly familiar.

  Singers, it read on the spine. S-Z. And the funny little orb? Now she knew what it was: a musical note, like the ones on the sheet of paper still up in her room.

  She pulled this volume out from the bottom of the stack, simultaneously pushing the rest back with her other hand; with a heavy thunk, the other three books fell to the chair, filling in the space. Still kneeling, Awen placed the book on the floor and cracked it open to the first page. Blank. She ran her right palm in a circle about the page, taking in the pulpy texture, leaning in close to let the scent fill her nose. Old paper and lavender.

  Awen took a chunk of pages in her left hand, letting them flip across her thumb until, one-third of the way in, she reached a section that had more space between the pages. It had been opened here before, and the spine seemed to want to be creased back yet again. She opened the book all the way. Sir Robert Thomas, her patron’s name, was written in large, bold lettering on the top of the left page. The rest of the text was too small and dense for her eye
s to make out in the feeble light.

  “Awen, did you find anything?” Vivienne must have been back at the desk, reading by the candlelight. “I found my patron in here, but there isn’t much on him…hmm…”

  Awen’s left leg started tingling under the combined weight of her body and the book. She closed the leather volume, keeping place with her right index finger, and struggled to her feet, accidentally stepping on the hem of her dress; she stumbled, righted herself, and then hurried back to the candlelit desk, eager to get the heavy book off her hands.

  Awen stood opposite Vivienne and, plunking the book down, reopened her page. In this new light, she realized the top corner of the left side had been folded back. Marked for future reference.

  “Sir Robert Thomas.” Vivienne leaned across the desk, reading upside down. “I like his name. Have you found out anything about him?”

  Awen shook her head, still eyeing the dog-eared corner. She took her left hand and creased it back in the other direction. She folded it over, back and forth, until the paper thinned and the little triangle tore off. She slipped it into her dress pocket. Awen turned her eyes back to the small text on the left-hand page, now clear in the bright candlelight. But yet another detail caught her gaze—one that had escaped her in the low light near the shelves. There on the right-hand margin, scripted in silver pencil, was her own name.

  “Awen?” Vivienne was whispering again. “Awen, I think…”

  Then Awen heard it, too. The steady clanking of shoes on wood, slowly growing louder, closer.

  “Hide!”

  Awen slammed her book shut, not bothering to keep her place. She heaved it into her arms and sprinted toward the far back corner of the library, Vivienne hurtling behind her.

  With a gasp, she realized the candle was still lit.

  Awen flung the heavy leather volume forward, low, in the hope that it would hit the floor and slide into the corner. She pivoted before the book landed, hair flying in her face, and launched herself toward the table with a force she did not know she had.