The Furies

by Katie Lowe

  ‘Robin,’ Alex said, again. ‘Shut up, would you? Just for once?’

  Robin rolled her eyes and stalked over to the east face, bristling. I looked at Nicky, her cheeks flushed red, sweat lingering in the well of her collarbones. ‘You should go,’ I said, quietly, sensing my opportunity. If I was kind, she might not tell Robin what she’d seen; one secret traded for another. ‘If Annabel finds you up here, she’ll …’

  ‘Fine,’ Nicky said, grabbing her mask – white feathers, diamonds, a silvery ribbon tie – and heading towards the door. ‘The ball’s starting soon, anyway.’ She gave a conciliatory smile. ‘I’ll see you there?’

  I walked with her to the door. ‘Yeah, we’ll be there soon.’

  We stood in silence as the elevator rolled down; until the metal grate creaked shut, echoing from the bottom of the stairwell. I closed the door.

  ‘She heard us,’ I said.

  Alex looked at me. ‘Are you sure?’

  I nodded. ‘There’s no way she’d have left like that if she didn’t already know something.’

  ‘Fuck,’ Alex said, slamming both hands on the desk. ‘Fuck, fuck, fuck.’

  ‘Maybe she won’t say anything,’ Grace said, the words almost a question.

  ‘She wouldn’t have anything to say if Robin hadn’t—’ Alex spat.

  Robin spun around, glaring. ‘Oh, fuck off, Alex. It’s always my fault, isn’t it?’

  ‘Well, you had to go and bring up the Dean. You and your stupid—’

  ‘How was I supposed to know she was hiding in the fucking cupboard? I thought it was just us!’

  ‘Even if it was, it’s not fucking funny. You always—’

  ‘Guys,’ I said, my heart thudding in my chest. ‘Please. This isn’t going to help anything.’

  ‘She’s right,’ Grace said. ‘We should get down there. See what she’s doing.’

  ‘And then what?’ Robin said, voice trembling a little. She steadied herself. ‘We can’t let her … We can’t let her tell.’

  ‘No, we can’t,’ Alex said, sitting down on the sofa. She looked at Robin. ‘Where’s the book?’

  ‘Alex—’ I said. ‘We …’

  ‘Where is it?’ she said again.

  Robin stood, walked over to the desk, and crouched down. She reached up into the hollow under the table, and the book fell to the floor with a thud.

  Alex looked at me. ‘It’s been here all this time?’

  I shrugged. ‘I didn’t know.’

  ‘So what do we do?’ Robin said, opening the book wide on the desk. As she flicked through the pages, light reflected from the gold leaf, casting sharp beams along the walls.

  ‘We tried this before,’ I said, searching for objections. ‘It didn’t work.’

  ‘You must’ve done it wrong,’ Alex said. ‘Most of these rites need four, anyway.’

  ‘But she’s not – I mean, we can’t—’

  ‘Violet, look. I know you like her – I know you think she’s your “friend”,’ she said, making scare quotes in the air. ‘But this is dangerous. She knows what we did – you said so yourself.’

  ‘I know, but—’

  ‘And anyway, who left the gate unlocked? I haven’t been up here all day – have you, Grace?’

  Grace shook her head; Robin did the same.

  I blanched. I’d been up, briefly, between classes, to fetch a textbook. ‘Annabel might have …’ I began, the words trailing away. Annabel was so cautious about getting caught. She’d never leave the gate unlocked. There was no denying it. This was all my fault. I sat down, steadying myself, while the girls gathered around the book, whispering hushed suggestions and reading passages aloud.

  ‘That one,’ Alex said, at last. ‘That’s it. Let’s get the stuff.’

  Robin grabbed a lighter from the kitchen, while Grace pulled four red tapered candles from a drawer, handing one to me as she passed. ‘Come on,’ she said, squeezing my hand. ‘It’ll be okay.’

  I stood at the table, where our masks sat, antlers intertwined. They’d sat on the shelves all year, as though ornamental; but when Robin pulled one down as a joke, a long, white ribbon unwound from behind. The other three were the same, old masks stolen from another time, their long, sharp faces cracked and cold. Only Alex had objected to our wearing them to the ball, only to be swiftly outvoted by the three of us. ‘We’ll be like Flidais,’ Grace had said. ‘The goddess of the woods. Ruler of wild beasts.’

  ‘Sounds about right.’ Robin had laughed, the mask slipping as she tied the ribbon through her hair. ‘Beasts, demons, witches – and us.’

  Each of us stood, now, at the table’s edge, the book open in front of Alex, who lit a wreath of dried flowers and dropped it into a glass bowl in the centre. Robin lit her candle, and the three of us leaned in to steal the flame. I saw the hairs on her arm stand up, and felt mine rise to meet them. I don’t want to do this, I told myself, though I felt a dull ache, a quiet longing awakening in the pit of my stomach.

  ‘Ready?’ Alex said, looking at each of us in turn.

  I nodded, feeling a drop of wax begin to roll down the candle, bracing for the burn as it reached my hand.

  She took a deep breath, and closed her eyes. ‘Goddess, hear us. We four offer our spirits to you this summer night. We come to you with our souls open, our hearts cool and clear.’ The wreath began to crackle, the smell tranquilizing, bittersweet. ‘We ask of you to help us keep your secrets, and our own, by silencing the one who would speak them.’

  I looked at Robin, who stared down into the candle’s flame; felt the red wax crawl across my thumb, oozing heat.

  ‘We thank you, goddess, for your Furies and their work, and send them to—’ She stopped, coughed, the wreath smoking black.

  Her eyes flickered to the doorway, where Annabel stood, staring at the masks on the desk, the steaming bowl. She closed her eyes, as though summoning patience. ‘Do not tell me you’re doing what I think you’re doing.’

  ‘We’re not—’

  She raised a hand. ‘Robin, don’t. Don’t. Put those candles out.’ She shook her head. ‘I thought better of you girls; I really did.’

  ‘But Annabel,’ Grace ventured, nervously. ‘Nicky found out. She came up here.’

  Annabel stared at her, eyes cold and dark. ‘So you decided to do this? I cannot imagine why you’d think …’

  ‘Not just about the room,’ Alex said, her voice strained, the words seeming caught in her throat. ‘She … She found out what we did. To … To the Dean.’

  She knows? I thought, glancing at Alex; felt a flicker of envy at imagined conversations spark, then disappear, as I looked at her eyes. They were desperate and hopeful, willing Annabel to acknowledge the things we had done. To say that she’d known all along; that she understood.

  Annabel closed her eyes again, as though choosing her words. Drew breath, stopped herself; took another slow, deep breath. The usual rush of wind against the clock faces, the rustle of ravens and bats high above, all seemed to hush, waiting for her to speak: an endless, aching silence, the truth of what we’d done lingering cruelly in the air.

  She sighed. ‘You know what, girls? Just go.’

  ‘But—’ Robin began.

  ‘I don’t want to hear another word out of any of you. Go on. Get out.’

  We crossed the Quad in silence, crushing blossom underfoot, our masks leaving sleek, black shadows in the grass. Robin brushed her hand against mine, and we walked with the backs of them touching, gently, towards the Great Hall. The sky was bruised with the sunset, the fields beyond yellow as though to spite the coming dark; our campus was as picturesque as it had ever been. We passed the wych elm, Emily’s portrait still smiling from among the faded cards and trinkets, her candles lit for the very last time. Over the summer, we’d been informed in our final assembly, the tree would be pulled down at last. We were to pay our respects before we left.

  Girls dressed in white lingered outside the hall, posing for photos, brushing sweat from thei
r foreheads and cheeks with sticky powders. Boys too – drafted in from the nearest school and given stern warnings about appropriate behaviour on the Elm Hollow campus – looked wide-eyed at the school grounds, and then, at us, as we passed without looking back.

  There were gasps as we walked through Reception, conversations turning hushed and icy as we walked by. Never had I experienced such pleasure at being the centre of attention – the centre of all things, it felt, as I took Robin’s hand and we opened the doors to the ballroom, entering two by two. The ceiling of the dome was lit with creamy spotlights shining up to the arches, and pendant lamps swaying gently in the air’s breath; great sheets of organza hung from wall to wall, and the statues of angels and demons looked down upon us as the gathered students seemed at once to turn, for a moment, and stare. We walked slowly through the room, to the edge of the hall, and stood, watching as the dance resumed, feeling the rhythmic rumble of footsteps and the slow pulse of the bass in our teeth.

  The band began to play a slow song, grimly sentimental – I’ll love you, love you, I will love you seemingly the full extent of the lyrics, repeated ad nauseam – and we watched as students paired off, rocking gently with the beat.

  ‘This is so cheesy,’ Robin said, her voice muffled through the mask.

  ‘It’s not that bad.’ I looked at the swirling blur of students dancing in the centre of the room, under the white hangings, brushing up billows of dry ice and dust in low clouds. On the ceiling, the frescoes were given a new lease of life, heightened by the transformation of the room. The painting of the Moirai, a somewhat dubious pastiche of the panels that line the Sistine Chapel, now seemed alive with beauty, cleansed of the faults that leapt out in daylight. I saw Clotho’s thread in gold leaf, connecting with the gilded edges that separated each of the panels, binding all of their tales together; Lachesis examined the thread, her eyes narrowed in concentration as she stooped to read the viewer’s fate, and Atropos stood with her shears raised high, prepared to cut the thin thread of life, right above our heads.

  ‘Do you see her anywhere?’ Grace whispered, lifting her mask to get a better look as she searched for Nicky among the crowd. I shook my head.

  Robin hooked her arm around mine. ‘Come on – I need some punch.’

  ‘I think I need something stronger than that,’ I said, my voice echoing inside the mask.

  We walked the edges of the ballroom, followed by Grace and Alex, who leaned into one another, absorbed in their own, private conversation. ‘Do you really think she’ll tell?’ Robin said, eyes flickering under the skull’s thin seams.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘If we could talk to her – maybe tell her it was a joke—’

  She snorted. ‘Funny joke, huh?’

  ‘Hilarious,’ I said. ‘But everyone knows your sense of humour is way off, so …’

  She slapped my arm with the back of her hand, nails leaving a scratch. ‘At least I have a sense of humour.’

  I rolled my eyes, realized she couldn’t see. ‘Whatever,’ I said, reaching for the sticky ladle resting up against the punch bowl and filling two cups.

  She took one, and raised it in a toast, sliding her mask back with her free hand. ‘Let’s hope this is spiked.’

  ‘Here’s hoping,’ I said, taking a sip, the drink sickly sweet and warm.

  Alex stepped forward, holding her mask. ‘We’re going to go,’ she said, coldly.

  ‘We just got here.’ Robin handed her a cup. ‘Have a drink at least.’

  ‘No,’ Alex said, pushing it away. ‘I’m fine. Thanks.’

  ‘Alex, come on,’ I said, looking at Grace for support. ‘Don’t let Nicky—’

  A scream erupted from the dance floor, and we turned, the teachers stepping dutifully forward. ‘Put me down!’ Melanie Barker squealed, writhing in the arms of a boy whose tux was stained punch pink. ‘Put me down, now!’

  I turned back to the girls. ‘Please don’t go. Just stay a bit longer. Please.’

  ‘You guys stay,’ Grace said, with a weak smile. ‘Have fun. We’ve got to be up early tomorrow, anyway. We wouldn’t be much fun even if we stuck around.’

  ‘Fine,’ Robin said. ‘Go. Whatever.’

  I looked at Alex and Grace apologetically; we shared an awkward hug, Grace wincing as I caught a bruise blossoming at the nape of her neck. ‘Have a great summer,’ she said, squeezing my hands tight in hers. ‘We’ll miss you.’

  They parted the crowd as they left, masks back on, antlers reaching out towards the ceiling above. I nudged Robin, gently. ‘Come on. Let’s have some fun.’

  She sighed. ‘I guess if we’re going to prison tomorrow, we ought to make the most of it.’

  ‘That’s the spirit.’

  And so, in spite of everything – the terrible music, the stares of our fellow students; in spite of Nicky, and all she knew (or didn’t know, I told myself, as though saying it might make it true); in spite of Annabel, Alex, and Grace – we danced. We danced on tiptoe, as though we might catch the music with our bare hands, spiralling out of control, not caring a damn about the bitter stares of the girls we pushed out of our way. We danced until our feet ached, and the air was thick with sweat, and the lights went up. We danced a little more, while the students streamed onto the steps outside, lighting lanterns that floated into the dark, sparkling through the glass centre of the dome.

  ‘Girls,’ Professor Malcolm said. ‘It’s time to go.’

  ‘But I’m not ready to leave,’ Robin whined.

  He smiled. ‘Go on. Off you trot. I’ll see you both next year.’

  ‘I don’t want to go,’ Robin said, again, as she sat with a thud on the steps. The buses were lined up outside, students teetering towards them, stumbling in heels, faces wet with tears that seemed too much, an excess of drama.

  ‘Me neither,’ I said. ‘Not with them, anyway.’

  ‘We could go to the tower.’ She leaned back onto her elbows. ‘Hide out there for the summer.’

  I looked down at her, lit by the headlights of the first bus to leave. ‘There’s wine in the tower.’ I shuddered, the sweat drying cold against my bare arms. ‘And my coat.’

  ‘You, my friend,’ she said, reaching for my hand, ‘are a genius.’ I pulled her up, and we walked towards the tower, lurking in the shadows as the buses drove away. When darkness finally fell, the moon was erasing itself; the air cool and crisp with cut grass, hissing with bugs. We walked arm in arm, silent but for the click of our shoes on stone.

  ‘I can’t believe you need a coat,’ she said, unlocking the grate and slipping inside. ‘It’s a gorgeous night.’

  ‘It goes with my outfit.’

  She rolled her eyes. ‘Whatever. Wuss.’

  I opened the door to the tower room, bowing as Robin passed. She stopped dead, looked back at me with something like horror. I followed her eyes, surveying the mess. An empty wine bottle without a glass, the muddy scrape of a heel on the edge of the desk; papers scattered all about, furiously strewn, as though some storm had blown in through the clock face and turned the room around; all chaos and disorder. I walked past notes and pictures, torn from their books; I saw a thin vein of ink dripping slowly off the desk, onto the tan leather seat of the chair. The singed edges of a letter, by a stack of burnt-out matches. I picked up the page, damp with a smear of lighter fluid, and wondered why the flame hadn’t caught; wondered still more at the absence of text.

  ‘What the hell …’ I said, finally. ‘What happened?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ She picked up a cracked spyglass and held it up to the light. ‘It’s fucking creepy, though. Let’s get the wine and go.’

  She ducked into the kitchen, and I grabbed my fur coat, still slung over the back of the chair, where it’d been since one morning in spring, when I’d dropped it there and left it, always meaning to take it home.

  ‘Ready?’ she said, clutching three bottles of wine. She handed one to me. ‘Let’s go.’

  We lay in silence, staring at the stars. D
own the hill, the last caretaker’s car roared into life and passed slowly down the driveway, the whirr of the night chasing after it: crickets, birds, the whisper of the wind in the trees, the roar of the sea whistling in the distance. Beside me, Robin’s lighter made its familiar whoosh, and the tip of a joint glowed in the darkness, gold as jewellery, red as blood. She took a long drag and passed it to me, our fingers touching a moment as I took it from her hands.

  ‘That thing got pockets?’ she said, turning to me.

  ‘Yep.’

  She handed me the bag, filter papers, and lighter. ‘You’re on supply duty, then.’

  I felt the familiar, syrupy warmth, the comforting cocoon sensation, skin feverish and combustible. ‘Do you really think—’

  ‘Shhh,’ she said, shifting closer to me, her head resting on my shoulder. ‘No thinking for a minute.’

  I plucked a blonde hair from my lip. ‘I’m sure you didn’t moult this much before.’

  ‘I know. It’s gross.’

  The wind picked up, the rustle of the trees brittle and cool. I looked away, shielding my eyes from the salty air.

  ‘So what are we going to do?’ I said, at last. ‘We can’t stay here forever.’

  She sat up, her body leaving a hollow of herself, a thin frame in the crushed grass. A fox screeched in the distance, birds bursting from the trees. ‘We should run away,’ she said, turning to face me, eyes sparkling in the moonlight.

  ‘Oh, sure, yeah,’ I said. ‘That’ll be easy.’

  She narrowed her eyes. ‘I’m serious. You’ve got money, right?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I mean, you’re loaded, aren’t you?’

  ‘Not loaded,’ I said, nervously. ‘I mean, I only get an allowance.’

  ‘Yeah, but your mum wouldn’t notice if … You know.’ She shivered, looked away.

  I saw my chance to change the subject. ‘Are you cold?’

  ‘Fuck off. I’m fine.’

  I laughed, shrugged off my coat. ‘Here. You have it for a bit. I’m warm now.’

  She took it without a word, slipping it over her shoulders.

  ‘“Thank you, Violet”,’ I said.

  ‘Thank you, Violet,’ she mimicked back, clicking the cap off a bottle of wine. ‘Want some?’