Pegasi and Prefects (9 page)

“I am almost beyond words at your impertinence, Rosalind. You will come to me directly after supper, and you will copy this poem out over and over until I am satisfied that you fully appreciate its beauty.” Miss Evans is smiling smugly, the aptness of the punishment obviously making up a bit for the humiliation of having her middle-class birth flung in her face by a mere girl. “Sit up, you defiant child!”

After a long moment, Rosalind obeys. Her face is streaked with tears, and I feel the sudden urge to go comfort her like I would Ember when he’s frightened, stroking and soothing. Seated behind her, Cecily moves impulsively, then drops her hand, obviously fearing adding fuel to the flames. Her gentle, intelligent face is drawn with pain itself. It must be difficult for her, as a Sensitive, being close to so much distress.

Almost as difficult as it would be for someone with my Gift to be present at the murder of a unicorn during a hunt.

The lesson resumes, the form somewhat subdued. Rosalind sits very straight and does not react to anything else at all. Miss Evans is far less dramatic than usual, and eventually writes a set of comprehension questions up on the board, as if we were lower school babies. Rosalind, I notice, makes no attempt to write any answers out.

When we finally file out, Diana slips a consoling arm around Rosalind’s waist, all sympathetic affection.

“What a beast Miss Evans is, dear heart! I wonder that you could endure being scolded like that. It’s this terrible school—I'm sure you weren’t used to this kind of treatment at your last school. Why, my own school—"

"It’s not a terrible school," Rosalind interrupts in her usual soft voice, a world away from the way she was talking to Miss Evans. "It’s awfully decent, really. I don’t have the least idea why I made a scene in that horrid way. It's only—she has no idea. It's so dreadful I can hardly bear remembering it." She bit her lip. “I suppose Miss Evans just doesn’t understand, and neither did the poet. If you had been there, you could never write a silly poem about it.”

"I hate the very idea of mythical hunting." I’m not really certain why I’m interrupting, except that I’m the only one, I think, who can truly understand what Rosalind was feeling, and that I’m aware that there is something frightfully likable about little Rosalind Hastings after all. The two girls turned toward me in surprise, and I feel heat rise on my own cheeks. Diana’s finely drawn brows are rising in surprise, while Rosalind looks at me questioningly. I realise that, apart from our brief conversation while dancing together, I’ve rarely spoken directly to Rosalind.

For her part, of course, she’s rarely spoken a word to me. Just watched me, with those round blue eyes, now a little swollen and red. I hate it when girls cry, the itchy feeling of embarrassment it gives me. I can’t give a girl in the Sixth hugs and sweeties to make the tears go away like I would with my own little sisters. Somehow, Rosalind isn’t the kind of girl it’s easy to tell to dry up.

I press on through my embarrassment, awkwardly, although I’ve lost the impetus of what I was saying. "I know exactly how you feel. If I imagine the prey was Ember. . ."

"Your pegasus? I was there, the first day. He’s magnificent." Rosalind's distress is wiped away by eagerness, flooding her thin face with light. Why, when she smiles like this, she’s almost pretty, despite the glasses and her smallness and the redness of weeping. She hesitates for a moment, then visibly gathers her courage. "Oh, Charley, do you think that some day—"

"Come on, Rosalind,” Diana says, taking her arm. “You promised that you’d help me with my darning in break, as some people,” she glares at Gladys, “insist we do it the hard way.”

"But. . ." The light in Rosalind's eyes fades a little, and she hangs back, still turned toward me.

"Come on!"

Rosalind lets herself be tugged away by her arm, and I feel a flash of irritation and hurt, especially when I catch my own name in Diana’s whispered undertone, her tone making it certain what she thinks of me, as the girls hurry away. Not that it matters. It was no news to me, nor any skin off my teeth, that Diana frankly detests me. I feel the same way about her, no matter what Miss Carroll wants in the way of devoted friendship from me. There’s no earthly reason to care what any of precious Diana’s friends thinks of me. She can fill Rosalind’s pointy ears to the brim with poison for all I care.

Besides, what good would it be trying to make friends with a timid, overly cosseted thing like Rosalind in the first place, even if it wasn’t for Diana? I don’t really know what I could say to a frightened mouse like that. Once we’d exhausted the topic of fabled beasts—which, to be fair, can generally keep me going until Esther threatens to smother me with a cushion—we wouldn’t have a single point in common.

Far better to stick with Cecily and Esther—and Gladys, for that matter, who seems to have more or less formed a quartet with us this term, miraculously without coming to blows with Esther even once. An inevitable result, I suppose, of someone as warm-natured as Cecily sharing a study with even someone as difficult to get along with as Gladys. Besides, Gladys really isn’t all that bad, once you get to know her.

The three of them, echoing my thoughts, come to walk me down to the Quad. for afternoon break.

“Poor kid,” Cecily says, softly, as we settle on a sun-drenched wall. Perhaps it’s not Australia, but the late roses are turning to rose hips and the leaves are turning a multitude of different colours and I’m happy right where I am. I wish we didn’t have to go back inside for lessons.

“I didn’t think Rosalind had in it her!” Esther giggles. “I should have known, I suppose—still waters. Look at our Gladys and her campaign against elves. I’m sorry I missed that. It’s a good thing Rosalind doesn’t have Gladys’ talent, after all, or Miss Evans would be a smoking patch on the carpet by now.” She stops to savour the image.

Gladys frowns. “All the same, she shouldn’t be allowed to get away with cheeking a mistress like that. Not when we’re going all out for the School Banner. Now Miss Evans has given her detention, that’s several conduct points lost.”

Cecily bites her lip. The School Banner is her weak spot. “I don’t think she’ll do it again. She was really upset.”

“I think she’s a Fable Empath,” I say, thinking aloud. It’s a pretty rare gift. A lot of girls have Franciscan ability with other animals. Some even have a Dryadic talent for plants. Magical creatures, however, tend to keep their souls to themselves. While it runs in my family, as far as I knew I was the only Fable Empath in the school.

“I think so, too.” Esther shoots me a quick look. “It’s an idea, you know,” she says, more to Cecily than to me.

“What is?”

The two look at each other again, silently communing. I wonder if Gladys feels as shut out when they do that as I do.

“I haven’t been quite easy in my mind about Rosalind,” Cecily says at last. “She’s a new girl, and she seems a decent little thing. She hasn’t been away to school for years, you know, Miss Carroll said. Ill health. It doesn’t seem quite kind to leave her in the hands of dear Diana and Valerie without interfering.” She presses her lips together a little self-consciously. “Interfering in a properly Head Girl-ish way, of course.”

“What do you mean?”

Cecily claps me on the back, grinning. “Take her to the stables, my love. You can hang adoringly together over Ember’s stall or something. Try to get her talking; after all, you’re half way there. She’s already just said more to you than she has to anyone but Diana and Valerie all term. She must like you.”

I turn the idea over in my head. “I don’t think she will come with me. Diana has her claws into her properly, and Di doesn’t like me much, you know.”

“She doesn’t like Rosalind all that much, for that matter,” Gladys says crisply. “Val is far more her type. I suppose Diana took her up because she feels the pointy ears need to hang together.”

“It’s no good me talking to Rosalind about it, because she’s terrified of me,” Cecily tells me. “Not just shy, you understand. Scared half out of her wits. I can’t understand it. I mean, it makes sense that she’s nervous around Gladys and Esther, I would be too.” Gladys looks distinctly affronted at that, and Esther screws her face into a demonic leer. “But she’s a bundle of nerves every time I so much as smile as her. I don’t get the same feeling of fear when she’s near you. I really think you have a shot at winning her over.”

I shrug, helplessly. “I’ll help, if you want me to. I just don’t know why you’re casting me as a potential friend for Rosalind,” I add, a little resentfully. I seem to be spending this term assigned to spread love and light among new girls. “I should have thought Frances would make more sense as a pal; they’re study-mates, after all. I don’t see that anyone who likes Diana so much would be interested in someone like me. Not that I can see what
anyone
sees in Diana.”

Esther shrugs her slender shoulders. “I can’t stand the poisonous snake, personally, but she has her points.”

“What points?”

“Well, she’s very good looking, of course,” Gladys says dismissively, with a fine disdain for beauty.

“Is she? I really don’t see it.”

Three startled faces turn to me, then a slow grin spreads over Esther’s face. “You don’t see it, do you? You really, truly don’t. What do you think of Diana’s ears, then?”

I tilt my head at her, confused. “My dear girl, have you gone mad? What kind of a question is that to ask me?”

Esther shrugs and turns to Gladys. “Gladys, dear, tell me about our Diana’s ears.”

Gladys lifts her rather broad shoulders and lets them fall. “I think a good character is far more important than elfin blood.”

“Answer your Auntie Essie’s question, child, and don’t be so shatteringly pi about it.”

“Oh, all right, they are very long and quite pointy. If you must know.” Gladys looks disgusted at having to say it.

I stare at her. “No, they’re not. They’re nothing out of the ordinary. Less pointy than yours and Frances’, in fact.”

Gladys and Cecily stare at me in astonishment. Esther laughs. “Our Charles has hidden talents, it seems. I have suspected it for simply ages.”

I try to recall the words Esther had used to describe Diana on the first day. Charming. . . glamorous. . . enchanting. I thought at the time she was just being spiteful.

“She uses Glamours,” I say, realising.

Esther nods, as if I’ve just correctly performed a trick. “She does. It seems that you, my angel, are so completely immune to them that you don’t even know she’s using them. Interesting, that. I think we have a Truth Seer in our midst.”

I’m a little awestruck. I’ve never been able to do this before, at least not to my knowledge. Of course, it’s not unknown for new abilities to manifest on reaching womanhood. I just had assumed that I only had one talent, like most folk, and was otherwise a dry well.

Gladys seizes on a different aspect of the situation. “The horrid little sneak! Doesn’t she know it’s not done to use Glamours at school?” She jumps to her feet, and there’s an ominous glow around one of her fists. Gladys, like most Pyromancers, sometimes has trouble with control.

“Now, Gladys. There’s no actual rules against it,” Cecily says, unhappily tracing shapes in the dirt with her toe, regardless of what it is doing to her shoe. “But you’re right. It really isn’t playing the game.”

“She doesn’t do any of her own darning, or clean her own shoes, and I think Rosalind and Valerie do most of her prep.,” I say, thinking it over. “If she’s using Glamours to get out of chores, isn’t that against the rules?”

Cecily nods. “Yes. Maybe we can fix her with that. We have to be careful, mind you. We need to handle it ourselves, and not bring it to the attention of the mistresses.” For the sake of the School Banner, we all understand. Her indignation suddenly bursts out. “For a Sixth former to be using such tricks, like a cheap actress! Esther, why didn’t you tell me?”

Esther flicks her fingers in response to the accusing tone. I had forgotten myself that, as well as having the Gift of Illusions herself, Esther sometimes has the ability to tell when other people are using their gifts. It’s not a Gift she has very strongly, not like the talented Perceptives who work for the courts to foil slippery lawyers; she’s barely Gifted enough to have a suspicion that something is up, some of the time. “Simmer down, Cis. It didn’t seem to be quite playing the game, as you so adorably put it, to sneak on her. I do play cricket myself, just sometimes, for the novelty of it. It’s not even that I was certain—I can’t see right through it like Charles does, I just could sense that she was trying something magical on. I wondered, too, when you’d realise for yourself. Didn’t you Sense an unlikely amount of devotion around?”

“Oh, I know some of the girls are a bit gone on her. That does happen with a pretty newcomer sometimes, even in the upper forms, you know. Purposely using magic to influence them, though, that’s different. We’ll have to put a stop to it. It’s all the more important that you get Rosalind out from under her shadow a bit, Charley. Will you do it?” She reaches out and squeezes my hand.

“Of course. Anything for our beloved Head Girl,” I say, although the prospect is more daunting than ever. Still, part of me likes the thought that, deep down, maybe Rosalind really isn’t the type to choose a nasty piece of work like Diana as her friend. She really does seem a nice little thing. At least, she cares about fabled beasts as much as I do, and she stood up to Miss Evans. Besides, Ember likes her.

It doesn’t mean that Rosalind will like me in return.

Esther seems to guess what I’m thinking. She winds her fingers in my curls. “Don’t worry, Charles. I’m sure that even Diana’s Glamours can’t hold out long against your boyish charms.”

I shake her hand out of my hair, and laugh, to hide my discomfort. I wish I could be sure that Esther doesn’t know exactly what she’s doing when she confuses me like this. I wish I could go talk to Miss Roberts, and sort everything out.