Orphans of Chaos

1.

How did we all start debating about boundaries? When did we become convinced we were all something other than human? Every starting point has an earlier starting point before it. Some of the roots of how it came about, I remember. Others have become misty and autumn-colored with time.

If I had to choose a starting point, there were three I would select, not one. I remember when Victor made us all put our hands together and promise. I remember when Vanity found the notes, which had our lost tales in them. And then, many years later, Quentin discovered the secret.

2.

I don’t know how old I was. Vanity (or Tertia, as she was called then) only came to my shoulder, and Quentin was small enough that Victor (Primus) could carry him in his arms. When he stood up, Quentin’s head only came to the level of Victor’s elbow. Quentin was too young for lessons; I remember being jealous when he was allowed to sit on the floor and play with a wooden horse on wheels while I had to practice penmanship, making rows and endless rows of slightly lopsided O’s and Q’s.

As for me, the doorknob to the coal cellar was right below the level of my eye, because when Mr. Glum slapped me roughly on the back of my head (I was afraid to open the door to the cellar) the doorknob struck me on the cheek, and I had a bruise there for a week.

I don’t remember why they were locking us in the coal cellar, but I do remember wishing and hoping that the Headmaster would come back from wherever he was, and set things to rights. He and Dr. Fell had dressed up in dark clothing, with black scarves fluttering from their top hats, looking grim and terrible. A funeral, I suppose. I remember the two stalking silently off into the freezing rain, wide black umbrellas overhead. The rest of the staff was particularly cruel to us that evening, or so it seemed to me. Mrs. Wren was raging up and down the corridors, howling like a banshee, toppling suits of armor on racks and pushing over floral vases that stood on the pillars next to the main doors. I think this was before she took up strong drink.

They locked us in the dark and cold. Whatever our crime had been, I did not know. It was dark and starless that night, the drafts smelled of snow, and the dirt floor was colder than ice.

I was shivering and my teeth were chattering. I remember Vanity saying, “Quentin’s all cold. He stopped moving. Is he going to die?” her voice was as thin and high as a flute.

Victor told us all to gather up in a huddle for warmth. His voice was high-pitched then, but it was very earnest, and just hearing it made me feel better. I could hear him rummaging around in the dark.

“This is a coal cellar,” young Victor said. “There is wood and kindling in the wood box.” There was a tremble in his voice, too, but I could hear how he forced himself to speak calmly.

Colin, or as he was called back then, Quartinus, said, “Boogers! There’s nothing to start a fire with! Mrs. Wren’s had a nightmare, and we’re all going to die for it.”

In the pitch blackness, Quentin’s voice came up from the pile where we all lay together, “A ghost. She saw her husband’s ghost.” I was relieved to hear him, because I was so very afraid he had passed away. Certainly his skin felt like ice up against mine.

Victor laid his coat over the pile of us. I wondered how he could stand the cold in his thin shirt, but he did not complain. Victor never complained. “I’ll start a fire. I’ll make something. Lend me your tie. I found a bent stick in the woodpile, and I can make a drill.”

Minutes passed, and it grew colder. I could hear Victor sawing away at something, the hissing noise of wood on wood, but no fire came.

“Boogers!” shouted Colin, who did not know any of the many foul words he was to learn later in life. “Do you think you are a Red Indian? Rubbing two bloody sticks together? We’re all going to die, and it will be your fault!”

Victor said to me, “Secunda. Get them talking. Keep their mind off it, you know? We’ve all got to hang together.”

My teeth wanted to chatter, but I made myself speak. “OK, attention, everyone! I know we are all cold and afraid. But we have something we have to do. We have to remember our Tales.”

I do not remember a time when I had not been the unofficial Keeper of the Tales for our group. It had always been my task. Colin used to joke that I was to be the Tale Keeper because my memory was so good. (“Whenever I do something wrong, she always remembers to remind me, eh?” so he would say.)

I spoke gently to young little Quentin. “The Tales are the only thing we know about our home. Our real home. Quentin, you start.”

“I-I’m t-too cold.”

“Quentin, you must start. We can’t lose our Tales. You have to tell.”

But Quentin simply whimpered and did not answer.

Colin said, “C’mon you great booger. Talk! You don’t want them to win, do you?”

I felt Quentin’s cold body stir in my arms.

He spoke in a voice so weak and thin that I could barely hear him, even though my ear was but inches from his mouth. “I remember my mum. Her hair is gray. She’s blind. I remember how I would run and she would spread her arms and say, ‘Where’s my little shadow? Where’s my little shadow?’ and I would run and jump into her arms, and mum would hug me, and give me a kiss, and she would say, ‘I know you, little one. I will always know you.’ And I would say, ‘How’d’ you know it’s me? How’d’ you know it’s me?’ and she would say, ‘My soul knows your soul, little one, my heart knows your heart.’ That’s what I remember.”

I said, “Tell us more. Tell us about the giant. You’ve got to remember the whole of the Tale. It is your Tale.”

Quentin said, “My dad. He lives in a room with statues. Statues and chessmen and dolls. His beard is gray and comes to the floor, and his hair is gray, too. He has a harp that sits in his lap. And when he plays, the statues dance. Once upon a time, he took me and took his harp, and sat on the statue of a big crow, and he played, and the crow flew up in the air.”

Vanity said, “That couldn’t really happen, could it?”

Victor, from somewhere in the gloom, said, “Maybe it was an airplane. Only looked like a crow.”

I said sternly, “Stop! You can’t talk back to the Tales. You can’t change them or make fun of them! That’s the rule! If you start changing the Tales, they might go away, and then we won’t have anything!”

Victor said, “She’s right.”

I said, “Go on, Quentin. Tell us about the giant.”

Quentin was quiet, and then he spoke in a sad whisper. “I don’t know the rest.”

“Sure you do! Your father took you to see the Shining Mountains! Instead of snow, the mountains all have light, silver light, all along the tops. Do you remember what he said? He told you, ‘This is the place where the falling stars fall whenever stars fall down.’ ”

Quentin said, “I don’t remember. I don’t. Leave me alone.”

I said insistently, “In the dark valley between the mountains of light, your father the magician took you to see the giant, who was trapped up to his neck in the ice. There were dwarfs all digging and digging, chipping away at the ice, to get him out.”

Quentin said, “It was cold. It was so cold. I saw his hand. It was a mile below me. Under the ice. The fingers. I thought it was five rivers coming to a lake, it was so big. So cold.”

I said, “Yes! Yes! And the giant said—do you remember what the giant told you—once he was free, the bad people would be punished, and the good people would all live happily ever after? The Golden Age would come again. Do you remember?”

“It was so cold.”

“Quentin, maybe the giant has gotten out of the dark valley! Maybe he is coming to save us, right now!”

Quentin sniffled and shivered, but did not answer.

Vanity spoke up next: “I remember my Tale! Me next! Oh, pick me! Oh, me!”

“OK. It is your turn, Tertia.”

“My house is in fairyland,” Vanity said primly. “There is a gold dog who sits by my front door, and a silver dog, too. They come to life when you want them to, and fetch a stick or chase away someone making fun of you. When you don’t need them, they just sit still. There is a singer who sings to me, and he sits in the sunlight in his chair of ivory, and beats the ground with his stick when he sings. He sings of wars and ships and deeds of kings. There are bowls made of silver that hop on three legs like bugs. Hop! Hop! Hop! They walk around and give you fruit and candy. If you’re good. It is always springtime there. My mommy has red hair like me. My daddy is the king there, but Mommy is the one who actually runs the kingdom. My brothers play out in the green field, and throw spears and throw disks. And they run. Sometimes Daddy takes me sailing, and our boat is faster than the wind. Sometimes Mommy plays hide-and-seek with me, and she pops out of the floor! Pop! And she puts her arms around me. She tells me to be good, because she loves me. That’s all.”

I said, “There is another part. Something about being watched.”

“Oh, that. It is not like here. Nothing pays you any mind here. The rocks and the wind and the grass. It’s all dead. Where I come from, they are all friends. They are all alive. You can feel them watching you, like a tingling all over your skin. It is like being at the recital, when everyone applauded. Like being on stage. Remember how nice that was? It tingled. It wasn’t lonely. I am always lonely here. I want to go home. I don’t want to be alone any more. When can we go home?”

Victor said, “I will get you home. I promise. I will get us all home.”

I said, “You next!”

Victor said, “Let Quartinus go first.”

Colin said, “My story is better than his. My turn. I climbed up the pole of my da’s longhouse, all the way to where it holds up the sky. That’s where he keeps his cloak, in the North Star. My brothers all sent me to get it, because I was the youngest and lightest, and the roof pole wouldn’t break under me. They said I would not get punished for stealing it, on account of I was too young.

“I put on the cloak and told it to make me into a wolf. A big, ferocious, giant wolf. So I turned into a wolf, and jumped out the window, and I ran through the forest. The trees are so tall there that sometimes the stars get caught in them. The stars are these beautiful women with lanterns, and when their robes get caught in the branches, they sing, and the trees feel sorry for them, and let them go. Anyway, I remember I was running to this spot my brothers had told me about. This black cave where my uncle lived, guarded by this big three-headed dog. I figured I could take on the dog, seeing as I was a big wolf. Then a storm came, and the clouds fell down through the trees, and it was my ma. She took me around the throat and yanked da’s cloak clean off me. I thought she was going to be mad, but it was weird, because she just cried and cried and held on to me. Like she was afraid. And she pushed my hair back and she said, ‘If ever you go away from me, oh my beloved son, on that day sorrow surely will slay me.’ She took me home and fed me from this big pot we had over the fire in the middle of the house.

“I sat in the middle of the pot and ate stew, and da beat the tar out of my brothers. I have three. One wears a mask. One wears an animal pelt. The third has leaves and twigs in his hair. And they were right. I didn’t get punished. They did. That’s all I remember about it. Cool, huh?”

Colin was silent for a while, shivering in the cold. Then he said, “You don’t suppose my ma’s really dead, do you?”

I said, “No, she is not dead. No one is dead. My father told me.”

Victor said to me, “Your turn.”

I said, “It is warm there. My home is filled with light. I am a princess and I live in a palace. My father is the king, and he knows everything. He sees everything. I remember once my mother, the queen, took me swimming in our pool. But the pool hangs like a ball in midair. It is bigger on the inside than on the outside. There are stars inside it. And planets. You can swim right up to them and look at them with your eye. I remember once I was swimming. I saw a dark world and it was filled with dead bodies. Mother folded her arms around me, and took me back up out of the pool. I remember how afraid I was that something from the Dark World would get me. My mother sang a song for me, ‘My little spark, my shining one, never fear, never fear. The darkness is so very small, and the world of light is endless, here.’

“I remember she took me to the tower where she said she first saw my father. It was a palace that floated, and everything was rose-red marble. The windows were pink and the walls were scarlet. I remember he had a throne set in the very middle of a floor of glass, and the floor was one hundred miles wide. When you sat on the throne, you could look down at the world, and see everything in it. It was like a telescope, but bigger. Bigger than the moon. Father made me look at the Dark World again, even though I was scared and didn’t want to. I remember he held my hand, and said, ‘Shining daughter, do not be afraid to look into the darkness. There are no dead, no ghosts, no shadows. Look, look closely, and you will see the happy gardens made of light, into which all of those who have been hurt by Time are brought, once Time has no more power over them.’ I looked and I looked, but I did not find the happy place anywhere in the picture. That made him sad, and Mother was sad, too, and Father kissed me right here on the forehead, and said, ‘I have commanded all my people to love you, but there are those whom I cannot command. You will be taken from us for a time, brought into a cold, dark land. But you shall soon be free, and return to the land of light, and return to be with your mother and me.’ He promised. My father promised. He will come save me.”

Victor said, “No one is coming to save us. No giants, no kings. We are going to save ourselves.”

I shouted, “That’s not fair! You can’t talk back to the Tales! They are all we have!”

Colin said, “It’s his turn. Tell us your dumb story about the worm, Prime.” By which he meant Victor.

Victor said, “There’s not much to tell. I don’t remember any mother or father. We lived in a space station. Once I put my hand out the window into the rain. How there was rain in outer space, I don’t know, but that’s what I remember. The raindrops rolled together in my palm and made a puddle. I stuck my finger in the puddle and it thickened into clay. I rolled the clay between my palms and made a worm. Then the worm came to life, and started climbing up my arm. I thought it was gross, so I threw it out the window into outer space, where it fell forever.

“They took me to see a man. I don’t remember who the man was, but I was scared of him. He was like a teacher or something. He had a lamp in his forehead like a miner’s torch. He said, ‘Life is a set of rules. If those rules break, life ends. Here is our first rule: Any life you create is yours, and must be cared for. No matter how humble or small, it is still yours, and you must answer for it. Do you understand?’

“I remember I answered some smart answer back. I don’t know what it was, though.

“The teacher said, ‘Your own death is nothing, because death is nothing but the disintegration of the atoms of your body. There is no pain and no sorrow afterwards. But to kill another living thing is wrong, and is forbidden by our law.’

“I said, ‘Human beings kill each other.’

“The teacher said, ‘In every human being, there is a spark of divine fire, which makes them sacred. We have nothing like that in us. We are mightier, older, wiser than man, and we do not violate our laws; but Mankind is a finer thing than we are, and some day we will save them from the Demiurge, who made them merely to be playthings. He did not know what he made.’

“I said, ‘If we are greater and stronger, why must we serve them?’

“The teacher said, ‘The great must protect the weak. If this law is broken, those who are greater than us, those who made us, would destroy us. The same logic applies to all beings. I am putting this memory into your permanent storage, so that you will not be able to forget it, even after all else is lost.’ And a light came from his head.

“That is all I remember,” Victor said.

And he smiled, and I was able to see him smile, because a little spark had come to life where he was drilling a stick back and forth with a crude bow he had made. Gently, he breathed on the spark, and gently the darkness receded.

One twig, one dry stick at a time, he fed the flame, until it was large enough to accept a lump of coal.

That night, in the cold cellar, Victor told us all to put our hands together like the Three Musketeers.

He said to me, “We must all promise not to forget. We have to remember our Tales. We must all remember Quentin’s giant, and Quartinus’ wolf cloak, and the golden dogs that sit outside the House of Tertia in Fairyland, and the palace of light where the father of Secunda is a king, and the city in the void where my Teacher lived, and told me what my duty was. We must all keep our Tales for each other, if one of us loses or changes or forgets them, the others will remind him. Everything in this world will try to convince us that these are nursery tales, or dreams, or that we’re mad, or that we’re just playing pretend. We must promise never to forget. We must promise never to give up. We must promise we will escape from this place, and find the mothers and fathers who love us, our friends, our kin, our real world. Promise!”

And then he promised us that he would see to it that we would all get out of here together.

Oh, and it was warm when he said that.

3.

I do not know how old I was when I found the notes, but I must have been quite young, because I remember that I had to stand on tiptoe to reach the handles of the cabinet where the cleaning things were kept. We had been told to scrub the floor of the dining hall, a task usually done by the servants, because of some prank Colin had pulled involving a bucket of fishheads. None of us was willing to turn Colin in, not even Vanity, even though (I am sure) everyone knew who had done it. This was back before we chose names, so it was Quartinus we were all mad at for getting us in trouble. I remember it was spring, and the great windows were wide open, and I could smell the new-mown grass of the playing field outside, and I remember how dearly I wanted to jump and run and play, rather than kneel and scrub.

I was wearing a smock from the art room, and had my hair tucked into a kerchief. I remember there was a bucket of smelly stuff I was rubbing into the floorboards with a brush. I had taken the bigger bucket, because I thought Tertia (Vanity) was too small to carry it. I remember how proud I was when I picked up that bucket, because I felt like a grown-up girl; and I remember how terrible it was, once I had walked out to the spigot and filled it, that I could not carry it. I staggered and stumbled as I waddled up the steps (and the steps were taller back then) and there were tears in my eyes, because I was so afraid I would be punished if I spilled it.

We had been studying astronomy in Lecture Hall that morning, and I remember thinking that if the five of us could build a rocket ship, we could fly to the moon, and be away from this place forever. And I remember my plan was to ask Tertia to stay aboard the ship once we landed, so I could be the first woman on the moon; and the moon people would be so grateful they would make me their princess; but I was going to let her be the first off the ship when we landed on the next planet, Mars or Venus, to make it up to her.

It was actually Tertia who found the notes, some sheets of foolscap paper folded and refolded and crammed into a little crack where the wainscoting had become separated from the wall. We were both kneeling and scrubbing, and we exchanged a quick glance at each other. By the look in her eye, I knew she knew (as I did) that we had found a great treasure, which must be kept away from the grown-ups at all costs.

I pretended I had to go to the lavatory and made a fuss, while Vanity stole a fork from the silver drawer. Mrs. Wren, of course, did not let me go until chores were done. So we both diligently pretended to scrub the section of wainscoting where our treasure was, and Vanity would pluck at the papers with the tines of the fork when Mrs. Wren was idling near the liquor cabinet.

Like a fluttering pale moth, the papers came free with a rustle of noise, and I quickly stuffed them down my shirtfront. We were let out for recess and exercise, but I was too cunning to take them out where someone might see, so I quickly folded them into my uniform shirt when I was changing into my field hockey gear, and then ripped a button from the shirt. Sadly, I displayed the torn shirt to Mr. ap Cymru, who was coach then, and I got permission to go put it in the hamper in the East Hall for the maid to repair, and told to get a new blouse from the dormitory, so that I would have something to change into after practice.

Easy as pie. The notes were soon hidden in my room. I gazed at the handwriting, seeing the fine but strong feminine penmanship, and thinking how lovely it would be to have a hand as fine as that. Whoever wrote this (I remember thinking) would never have her knuckles rapped because her Q’s and O’s were lopsided. It was some sort of fairy tale, but one that made no sense, merely fragments; and I remember thinking that I was too old for fairy stories.

This will seem strange, and impossible to explain, but I did not recognize the stories, the handwriting, any of it. I wrapped the sheaf of paper in a plastic bag and took it to a hidden spot, a dry deep hole in the bark of a tree on the back campus, deep enough so that rain could not reach. And left it.

A year, perhaps two, went by before I was old enough not to be ashamed of my interest in children’s tales, and I thought to look at it again.

By that time, I had learned my penmanship. My cursive letters flowed in a fair, clean hand from my pen, far better than the crooked scrawl I had been using even a year before.

And here were these papers at least ten years old, or more. It was my handwriting.

4.

You must have guessed what was on those papers. I read the tales we had told each other that night in the coal cellar. I had forgotten every single one of them, including my own. The paper trembled in my hands when I held it, and the tears blurred my vision.

I did not for a moment doubt the truth of them. Titans trapped in ice. Werewolves running through trees so tall their branches caught the stars. Magic dogs who sit by the door, and poets who sing tales of yore. A city in outer space, inhabited by creatures wiser than man, meant somehow to protect the world. A castle of light, where a throne sits on a magic glass where everything in every world can be seen.

One moment, it merely sounded familiar, like a dream you can half recall. The next moment I remembered the coal cellar, that night of terror. Victor had saved Quentin from freezing to death. He made a vow never to forget stories that were obviously already half-forgotten things, pages torn at random from lost diaries.

But I did not remember the events captured in the Tale. I remember telling the others about my mother and father, but I did not remember my mother and father. Nothing. Not a face, not a sound of voice, not the feel of a hand holding mine.

I told Victor what I had found. He was as tall as a man at that time, but it was before the hair appeared on his lip, so perhaps this was a year or so before the experiment when he tried to measure the moon, and prove Einstein’s theory false.

It shook him. I had never seen him actually so frightened before. He kept wiping his eyes, as if the fear was making him want to cry.

He said, “If they can erase our thoughts, if they can blot out our past, what chance do we have?”

I was more shaken by the fact that he was shaken than I was by the fact itself. “You believe it? All this stuff?”

He shook his head, but it was one of those head shakes where you don’t know if you mean yes or no. “I don’t see why not. It is no stranger than some of the things we learn in science. All this time, I was thinking we were from France, or maybe Asia, or, well, at least the planet Mars. Or…”

He took a deep breath, and calmed himself.

I said, “Let’s not tell the others.” I was thinking that if Victor, who was (in my mind) the paragon of self-control, was frightened by this, Quentin would go mad.

Victor said curtly, “We keep no secrets from each other.”

5.

Vanity did not faint; she was delighted. “My mother has red hair!” I remember how she used to whisper that to herself as she was falling asleep in the dormitory bed next to me, as if it were her own form of prayer.

We did not have many chances to speak together without being overheard. But, from time to time, Colin would create an opportunity, such as by pulling the fire alarm.

I told him the story in hurried whispers as the alarm was ringing and ringing in the hall, and slipped him the papers quickly. He had some questions for me, so there were fire alarms the next day, and the next.

Colin acted as if he did not believe it. “They might have faked your handwriting. Put those notes up to fool us, ruin our morale,” he said. But I overheard him asking Quentin a few weeks later, “People don’t really die from grief, right? That’s just a saying, right…?”

Quentin’s reaction was the opposite, when he found out. He was not skeptical at all. I remember it was after he got the copy of the papers from Colin that he began, during our very rare trips into town, to ask the librarian, or the local fishermen, or the granny selling flowers on the street corner, about tales of Welsh witches, King Arthur, or the Great Gray Man of the Hill. He took in every little story he could find, and asked for extra homework, just to get the chance to spend more hours than normal in the library, leafing through Ovid’s Metamorphosis, or the Malleus Maleficarum.

By that time, Colin had bored a hole through the locker room wall into the girls’ shower, with an awl he stole from Mr. Glum, so we could have longer conversations in private, so he said.

Myself, I just got into the habit of squirting hairspray into any hole I saw in or near the shower. I never heard Victor’s voice suddenly cry out in pain from behind the wall, and Quentin’s only once.

But nearly a month passed while that whisper hole was in place, and no teacher really minded if you spent a long time in the shower. And we supposed the sound of the water might hide our voices.

That was the summer Victor formalized our rules, and put them to quick votes which we registered in whispers, or by a quick knock on the wall.

It was Quentin who insisted we all take once more the vow we had made, and forgotten, in the coal cellar. “Vows are powerful things,” he said. “They set things in motion.”

We could not all put our hands together through the tiny hole in the locker room, so Vanity and I held hands, while the boys (I assume) did their Three-Musketeers slogan.

And Quentin added one personal codicil to the group oath. “Whatever has been hidden in darkness, I will discover. I will learn the secret, I will find the key, I will dare to turn it; I will pass through the door. The sleeper slumbers; he shall awaken.”

Quentin was the one who discovered the secret. It was more than a year, but he kept his word.

6.

We had been told that the boundaries were bad for our health, that we would become ill if we passed too far beyond them. Victor dismissed this alarming news as a trick, something to keep us away from the estate boundaries, gathered in toward the center of the grounds. He defied this ban as often as he could, and the Headmaster could invent no reason to keep Victor from climbing among the rocks and slopes of the Eastern Downs, provided he stayed inside the bounds.

As I said, it was Quentin who discovered the first of the secrets. He had been among the barrows and ancient graves of the North, perhaps in some place told to him by a winged shape which flew at night, late in the year.

It was an autumn day, then. It was cold for the time of year. Morning dew formed frost on the windowpanes. I remember how, in that season, the rising red-gold sun sent weakened beams to bring a mist rising from the North Lawn like steam from a cauldron. The trees to the South seemed to be afire, if fire could burn cold. We had icicles hanging from the rain-spouts and the saints in the chapel, even before the leaves had turned.

I remember it was not long after Quentin’s first experiment with shaving. He appeared at the breakfast table, dressed, as we all were, in formal morning clothes, but with daubs of cotton clinging to his cheek where he had nicked himself. I remember this was about nine months after Colin’s first attempt to grow the stringy mess he called a goatee, and almost two years after Victor’s lip began to show fuzz.

On that day, Quentin announced at the breakfast table that he had learned how to fly. He spoke in a very low voice, without moving his lips.

Dr. Fell and Mrs. Wren, who normally sat at the great walnut table at breakfast, had been called away that morning to prepare for some important meeting of the Board of Visitors and Governors (who were due later that week). Only Mr. Glum was there to watch us, but he was not allowed to sit at the table as the teachers were. There was a window seat at the bay window, and the morning sun was sparkling off the diamond-shaped panes. Mr. Glum sat there, yawning and grumbling over his porridge. The sunlight glanced off his balding head, and he kept pushing aside the drooping ferns Mrs. Wren had placed in the hanging pots before the bay window.

He was too far away to hear us, and Quentin had given Colin the secret sign (asking for the butter twice) that told Colin to make a racket. Colin was asking Mr. Glum about the trees in the orchard, whether they moved at night, or spoke to each other in leaf-language when the wind blew, or if they felt pain when their branches were lopped off.

I held a piece of buttered toast before my lips and hissed to Quentin, “Where did you get an airplane? The nearest airfield is in Bristol.”

I remember feeling green with jealousy. But I do not remember doubting him, not for an instant.

“No plane. I don’t use a machine. I can make the wind dense. Its essence is to give way, but other essences obtain when the signs are right.”

I daubed my lip with a napkin. “You’re going to show me tonight.”

Victor leaned across the table, teapot in hand as if to pour some tea into my (full and untouched) teacup. Victor whispered, “Not tonight. There are workmen and a cleaning crew going over the Great Hall. We’ll be locked in early. Tomorrow. Their guard will be relaxed.”

He was right. We knew the Headmaster had ordered a large antique table, made of a single huge slab of green marble, to be moved into the Great Hall to prepare for the meeting. It was too large for the main doors. Workmen were tearing shingles off the roof and were going to lower the enormous table in on a crane. The table was resting in a temporary shed on the North Lawn, covered in rope and canvas.

We also knew the teachers kept a closer eye on us whenever there were outsiders around.

And yet it was Vanity who said, “Oh! I’ve an idea! Oh! Listen! Being locked up is better! No one searches for a locked-up person.”

Victor looked dubious.

Quentin rubbed his nose, so that his hand hid his mouth. He whispered in his soft, smooth voice, “Triune of Mars, Jupiter, Saturn tonight. Jupiter moderates between the warm violence of Mars and the leaden coolness of Saturn. Good time for transitions. Should be tonight.”

Vanity wiggled and whispered excitedly, “I can get us out of the girls’ dorm room. Secretly. It’s my Talent. If you can get out of the boys’, we’ll meet. Where?”

Quentin muttered, “Barrows. Midnight. Look out—!”

Mr. Glum straightened up from his porridge. Evidently Colin had not completely distracted him, or maybe he had been resting his eyes on Vanity, and had seen her lips move. She had also been louder than the rest of us.

Now Mr. Glum stood up. “What’s all this peeking and whispering, then? What plot are you lot hatching?”

Vanity half-rose from her seat, and leaned forward, palms on the table top, exclaiming in her cheerful, earnest voice: “But Mr. Glum! Dear, dear Mr. Glum! We were just talking! It cannot be wrong to talk: you did it just now, when you told us not to talk!”

Whether she intended it or not, her posture was such as to afford Mr. Glum a clear view down her shirt.

That same youthful electricity, which often I found annoying in her, adults (especially adult men) found fascinating. She was so fair skinned that she blushed at the slightest emotion; her eyes flashed like emeralds. Between her red lips, red eyebrows, and red hair, Vanity was an incandescent thing, glowing.

Mr. Glum was not what could be called handsome in any part of him. His nails were grimed with dirt, always. I assumed the only woman who ever spoke to him was Mrs. Wren; I don’t think he ever saw any pretty young girls, except us. Usually he was out in the garden, weeding, and we were behind the windows of the classrooms, gazing outside with longing. I wondered in pity if perhaps he ever looked up and saw Vanity and me staring out, dreamy-eyed, and wished we were dreaming of him.

Mr. Glum was confounded with lust for a moment. He could not take his eyes from where Vanity’s bosom strained against her starched white shirt.

But he gathered himself and barked at her, “Enough of your jaw! Impertinence! Rule of silence! You’ll eat your food as quiet as Jesuits, you will. Rule is on!”

Victor said stiffly, “But I didn’t talk back to you, sir. I wasn’t talking at all.”

“Then you won’t notice any difference, will you? And you’ll have detention for talking when I just put the rule on! Rule is on for all of you! Any more back talk? Eh? No? And no passing notes nor making signs with your fingers, neither!”

And so Victor had no chance to overrule our plan. Tonight was to be the night.

7.

As was her custom, Mrs. Wren had taken a nightcap or two before she came in for evening inspections. This evening, her breath, as usual, stank of sherry; her eyes were blurred.

The routine was always the same: we would stand in the nude, usually on tiptoe because the floor was cold, with our hands out in front of us, either palm up or palm down depending on whether or not she was looking at our nails. She would hand one of us a tape measure, and would have us measure the other one: neck, bust, waist, hips, inseam. Vanity always tried to tickle me or get me to break attention; I tried to pinch her when Mrs. Wren was not looking when it was my turn. Meanwhile, Mrs. Wren would jot down in an unsteady hand the numbers we called out.

We had decided long ago always to call out the same numbers, no matter what the measurements were, or how different they were from night to night.

Then she would have us stand at attention and she would peer at us while we were ordered to smile and show our teeth. I have no idea why she would stare at our teeth. When I was young, I thought it was to make sure we were brushing. But she stared and never said anything whether we brushed or did not.

Then she would ask, “Any moles or skin discolorations today? Aches? Pains? Strains? Strange dreams?”

Vanity would usually answer back: “I’ve got freckles! Does that count?”

Mrs. Wren never seemed disturbed by back talk. She had a melancholy face, and eyes that always seemed to be staring somewhere else. There was no sign of gray in her hair, no wrinkles on her skin, and yet she never stood fully erect, and walked with a stoop-shouldered shuffle, as if weights were on her shoulders. Her hair was a mouse-colored bun, with wisps and unruly curls always escaping it; her eyes were half-hidden behind coke-bottle-glass spectacles. She always wore the same gray sweater, which had as many loose threads and escaping wisps as her hair.

“Well, duckies,” she would answer, “don’t fret about a few spots. I am sure, in time, you will appear as howsoever fair or foul you wish to appear. In time, in time. All chickens come home to roost in time.”

And she would sigh.

Then she’d say: “Hold out your pretty fingers for the needle, my chicks, ’twill only prick a slight prick.”

She would take a small blood sample from a forefinger or an elbow, and spend (what always seemed to me) several minutes fumbling with the self-adhesive label, onto which she had written the date in her wandering hand. No matter how long she muttered and fretted (and it always seemed long to me) the labels always went onto the little plastic sample bottles crookedly, or wrinkled, or with their sticky sides stuck to each other.

Finally we could don our nightgowns.

When we were younger, Mrs. Wren would watch us carefully while we took the little cup of medicine Dr. Fell left each night on our nightstands. And she would stand over us while we put our pillows on the cold floor, to kneel upon while we said our nighttime prayers. We had to pray aloud, in Latin, with Mrs. Wren standing by with a stopwatch, to make sure we got the cadence and the rhythm correct.

But all that had stopped long ago. Perhaps she had lost her religion as she got older, perhaps she wanted to depart from our chill room as soon as the blood samples were gathered. These days, she would merely wave her hand in the direction of the cups and say, “Take your medicine, my poppets, and remember your prayers. Angels heed the young and sweet more closely than you know.”

Recently she was in the habit of adding, as she turned to the door, “And say a good word to the Good Lord for poor old Jenny Wren. Ask on my behalf: your voices will carry farther than hers, I am sure.”

Then she would depart.

8.

Neither one of us took the medicine, of course. It was Victor’s most strict rule: no matter how sick we were, take nothing Dr. Fell gave out, if it could be avoided. Anything he made you take orally, hold in your mouth; if you absolutely had to swallow, vomit it up at the first opportunity. We poured our little cups into the chamber pot.

(Yes, we had a chamber pot. I remember once talking to a boy from the village, who envied us for living in such a fine manor house. I asked him if he was allowed to visit a bathroom with indoor plumbing when he had to go at night, or whether he was locked into his room. He stared at me, uncomprehending. I envied that incomprehension.)

Vanity sometimes said prayers, sometimes not, depending on whether or not there was something she wanted for Christmas, or a birthday rumored to be in the works. She prayed in her ungrammatical Latin. I don’t know if that officially made her “Low Church.”

Me, I had stopped praying not long after I had read The Talisman, by Sir Walter Scott. I had fallen in love with the character of Saladin, and it occurred to me that the God of the Saracens, Allah, might be the real one after all. Judging by surface area, the Mohammedans had conquered more territory more quickly than the Christians; in fact, the Byzantines had lost ground every year since Constantine.

This thought had led to the fear that I might pick the wrong God to pray to. I thought that, because praying to the wrong God was expressly a sin, and because a merciful God might forgive me for forgetting to pray, it therefore followed that, even without knowing which one was the right one, my best chances lay in staying quiet and hoping for the best. That strategy worked in class when I didn’t know the answer, so I supposed it might work in the arena of theology, also.

I do admit that sometimes, when I was particularly depressed, or sad, or hoping for some point or purpose to my life, I would pray to the Archangel Gabriel. Jews, Christians, and Mohammedans all believe in Gabriel, and apparently it is the selfsame Gabriel. Or Jibrael, as he is also called. I figured Gabriel, if anyone, would know what the situation was in Heaven, who was in authority there, and he could get the prayers to the right God.

After prayers or the lack of prayers, as the case may be, we would go to bed. If it was cold, Vanity and I would have a brief argument about whether she should crawl into my bed or I should crawl into hers, depending on who had done it last time, who was colder, and other esoteric considerations. We would pile both sets of blankets on one bed and cuddle up with our arms around each other for warmth.

9.

One of our windows faces North. Last winter, when we had many very clear nights, Victor spent hours in our bedroom, using a compass and straightedge, and scarring the glass with a glass cutter to make a star dial for us. The position of the polestar was marked; the motions of the major stars in Ursa Minor and Ursa Major were plotted against the time of year. In effect, Alioth, Mizar, and Arcturus in Bootes became the hands of our clock, telling us the hour as they swung around the polestar. To hide our marked-up window, all we need do is raise one sash, lower the other, and keep the blind at half-mast.

I think Victor enjoyed standing in our room, late at night, night after night, with his back to us, meticulously scratching the glass, while we girls in our nightgowns peered at him over the top of our blankets. He worked with his nose almost touching the pane, and his breath fogged the glass.

10.

Tonight, Vanity and I waited, our heads under the covers, arms around each other, her chattering in whispers, and me trying to take a nap until the appointed hour. Every now and again (after a brief debate as to whose turn it was) one of us would raise a nose above the covers like the periscope of a submarine, and look at the positions of the stars through our Northern window.

When finally Arcturus had reached the position marked XI (DEC), we slid, shivering, out from under the sheets.

I stepped over to the door, hopping a little from the icy touch of the floor stones on my feet. I have seen doors in modern houses; they are flimsy. If you want to see a solid piece of seasoned oak, bound with iron and riveted to huge hasps and hinges, visit a nice old-fashioned chamber in a manor house. Our door was massive and stern, heavy enough to keep any noise in or out. I yanked on the lock, just in case it had not been padlocked, for once. The door did not even tremble.

“What do they expect us to do if there is a fire?” I asked scornfully, hugging myself and hopping from one foot to another.

Vanity’s teeth chattered. She said mournfully: “Quentin says Mr. Glum should not have cut down the Great Escape Tree. He says there was a Dryad living there, who now wanders, houseless, among the winds.”

“And it was our only way down from the window. You don’t think Dryads exist, do you?”

“Well, that one doesn’t any more, obviously. Are you going to get dressed? Not there!” she added when I hopped over to the dresser. “Those will be ice-cold. I wrapped up things for us to wear in our pillows. They were under the sheets with us, nice and toasty.”

“Clever, clever!” I said. She also happened to pick out my favorite out-of-door outfit: jodhpurs and a heavy blouse, and high-waisted jacket of buff leather that went with it.

From the top shelf of the wardrobe I pulled my leather aviatrix cap and my goggles. I buckled the chin strap and slung the goggles around my neck. There was also a six-foot scarf which wound around my neck.

Vanity was staring at me in disbelief. “We are not going to a fancy dress ball. Why are you putting on a… costume?”

“What? This? This is my lucky helmet,” I said, tucking strands of hair beneath the cap. “Besides, how are we going to end up going anywhere? Are you going to pick the locks without touching them, the way Victor does?”

Vanity said, “I don’t think Victor actually can do that. Who has ever seen him?”

“The sun will come up in the West before Victor Triumph tells a lie!” I said. I was seated, pulling on my high-heeled boots.

But Vanity had pressed her cheek up to the stones along the East wall of the room.

On the other two walls, the stones were covered with white plaster and wainscoting. This wall was irregular granite blocks, cemented together, for about ten feet. Above that were deep casements and small, barred windows looking East, surrounded by plaster and uncarved wooden frames. Below these frames were massive iron mountings, carved into gnome faces. What these mountings were originally supposed to hold, either torches, or curtain rods, or other fixtures, I did not know.

11.

As a little girl, I had always been afraid of the faces, and was terrified to find them staring at me when I woke in the middle of the night. My fear was not alleviated when Primus (so he was called at the time) told me sternly that inanimate objects could not hurt anyone.

It was little Quartinus (Colin) who saved me. One day when he was playing sick, he sneaked from the infirmary, and stole nail enamel from the boudoir of Miss Daw, who was our music teacher, a fair-haired woman of ethereal beauty with skin as clear as fine porcelain. He then went out to steal a ladder from Mr. Glum’s shed. Somehow he carried a ladder all the way up three flights of stairs in midday without being seen, and all the way to the girls’ dorm.

There he was, balanced precariously eleven feet high, painting the noses red on the ugly metal faces, crossing their eyes, giving them moustaches and goatees, and he had managed to deface six out of the seven goblins when Mrs. Wren walked in and caught him.

He was punished by being sent to his room without supper. I smuggled him part of the tuna fish casserole we had for dinner, wrapped up in my skirt. At that time, of course, the ash tree outside the North window gave me easy access to the ground. I tied the skirt in a bundle and threw it through the window of the boys’ dorm. Quartinus thanked me the next day, but he never returned the skirt.

I asked him why he defaced the goblins. He told me: “Your fear gives them energy. When you see them as stupid-looking, though, you get energy from them.”

Whatever the reason, it worked. They always looked silly to me after that; all except the one on the far end, whom little Quartinus had not gotten to.

12.

Vanity stood with her cheek pressed to the stones, her eyes closed, as if she were listening intently. She motioned with one hand, pointed to the long-handled candlesnuffer which (we assumed) had been in the room since before the candelabra had been electrified.

I handed her the pole, and she put the hook end (used for lighting candles) in the mouth of one of the gargoyle faces. It was the one at the far end. She tugged.

With a sigh and a click, a section of stone moved forward and then swung out, revealing a secret passage beyond.

“That’s impossible!” I said, flabbergasted.

The door was small and square, no more than three feet by three. The stones, which had seemed so thick and sturdy, were merely an eighth-inch of shaved granite face affixed to a wooden door.

The door was set to the frame with sets of hinges of a type I had not seen before: each hinge was riveted to a second and a third, to form a little metal W-shape. The triple hinges unfolded like an accordion when the door was opened, allowing the door to move directly out from the wall for a half-inch, before swinging to one side. This also allowed the door to swing outward, even though the hinges were on the inner side.

The crawl space beyond had a floor of unpainted, unvarnished wood, and narrow walls of brick. The three-foot ceiling was curved in an arch. It looked like a chimney lying on its side.

“When did you find this?” I asked Vanity. I was kneeling, with my head in the door, and she was peering over my shoulder.

“During the summer, after Mr. Glum chopped down the Great Escape Tree. I would check for panels every night. I could only find it, for some reason, if it was the thirtieth or thirty-first of the month. Weird, huh? I bet it’s on a timer.”

I turned on my knees to look up at her. “Dr. Fell gives us our injections on the first of the month.”

She blinked at me, her wide, emerald-green eyes brimming puzzlement. “What has that got to do with anything?”

Now I knew how Victor felt about me when I asked a question about something he thought obvious.

I nodded toward the dark hole: “Where does it go?”

“I was never able to get a light in here. If you follow the left-hand wall through two turns, you come out near the clock in the Main Hall. There are two other ways I never explored.”

“Left? You mean right, surely?”

“Just go as I tell you.”

We crawled in the pitch dark. My fingers felt occasional spiderwebs or splinters along the dusty wood floor. Once or twice I banged my head against the brick ceiling, and was glad for the humble protection of my aviatrix helmet.

The stale air was warm and close, and I was grateful for the warmth on a cold night like this. Once or twice I heard a noise: it sounded like the rumble of breakers.

“I hear the sea,” I whispered over my shoulder.

Her voice sounded very close in the pitch darkness. “Some trick of the acoustics, I doubt not. Like a whispering gallery. Maybe there is a tunnel which leads down to the sea cliffs…?”

“Ow! I found where the wall ends. It goes left and right.” I was glad I had bundled my hair into a cushion under my cap. I took a moment to adjust my goggles so they rode atop my head. Another extra inch of leather and glass might mute the next skull impact.

“Take the left-hand way.”

We turned left, which was impossible. By my reckoning, that would take us further East than the East Wing.

At the next fork, we turned left again. By my reckoning, this should have put us in the middle of the North Lawn.

“But how on earth did you get the notion to look for it in the first place?”

“Sometimes, in the night, I would get the feeling I was being watched,” Vanity explained. “So I figured there was a peephole.”

I thought that if there was a peephole, Mr. Glum might be using it, to watch us when we doffed our clothes before bed. I didn’t say anything, for fear of frightening her.

There came a tapping noise ahead, regular and rhythmic, like the noise of a sentry, in metal boots, pacing.

“What’s that?” I hissed.

Vanity ran into my bottom. “Oh, you! It’s the clock. Just keep on. We’d better hurry.”

But the noise unnerved me, and I did not hurry. Instead, I put one cautious hand in front of another. And I was glad I did, for my forward hand suddenly felt nothing.

Was I poised over a brink? I felt around in the air, and encountered a wooden step a few inches below, and another below that.

We were at the top of a stairway. I squirmed around so that I could go down feet first and, keeping my other hand on the stone overhead, I found that the ceiling did not drop as the stairs did but drew away as the stair descended. The ticking now was very loud; it seemed to come from directly ahead.

The stairway was only five stairs long, dropping just enough so that, by the last step, Vanity could stand upright, and I had to stoop.

There was a surface before me. In the dark, I could not tell what material it was, except that it was smoother than stone. It could have been wood, but it was so cold it felt like metal.

“Now what?” I whispered.

“There’s a switch, I suppose,” she said.

“You suppose? How did you get out this way before?”

“I suppose I found a switch.” And she crowded up against me in that little space, tighter than a phone booth. I could hear the soft noise of her hand fumbling along the panel.

“You don’t remember?”

“I think I wasn’t exactly awake last time I did this. You have to be in the right state of mind. Sometimes it’s hard to remember nighttime thoughts during the day.”

“You think? What do you mean you think you weren’t awake?”

“Well, how else do you explain the fact that you never saw me searching for the panel with a ten-foot pole in my hand every night before we went to bed? Now, hush!”

“This is ridiculous—!”

“Just be quiet! Don’t think you are too old to be spanked!”

“I’m taller and stronger than you, and I don’t fight like a girl.”

“I’ll get Colin to do it. You’d like that.”

I was so shocked that I actually did shut up. I was glad it was dark; I could feel my face burning.

A crack of light appeared. Vanity pushed the panel aside.

13.

This was about four feet tall and a little over a foot wide. A metal blade, tipped with a weight, swung past, inches from our faces.

I tried to shrink back, but Vanity and I were pressed up together too closely. She made an annoyed noise in her throat. I blinked and looked again. Blade? We were looking out at a pendulum, swinging back and forth, back and forth.

Beyond that was a pane of dusty glass, blurred with age. On the other side of the glass, moonlight fell across carpet, heavy chairs, two mannequins in Norman helm and mail carrying pikes.

This was the Main Hall. We were in the grandfather clock, looking out.

Vanity whispered, very quietly, “The watchers will notice if the ticking stops. We have to slip past the pendulum without touching it, and get to the main doors and outside. Ready?”

I would have pointed out to her that, as a matter of mathematics controlling such things as volumes, moving bodies, and areas swept out by pendulums, that two girls (four-and-a-half and five-and-a-half feet tall, respectively), cannot turn sideways, and climb out of a one-foot-wide box, open the inner latch of a rusted antique clock, and get clear in the time it takes for a three-foot pendulum to swing back and forth once. Not to mention that there were weights and chains hanging in front of us as well.

But I did not get the chance. Vanity was already thrusting herself through the narrow opening. The pendulum jarred against her arm, of course, while she was yanking the latch free to open the glass panel of the clock.

The ticking stopped. The silence was enormous.

“Quick!” she hissed.

But we were not quick. We had to move the now-still pendulum aside, squeeze her out, squeeze the somewhat taller me out, and fumble with the pendulum to see if we could get it into motion again…

Tick tock. We could. The noise started up again.

“Yeah!” cheered Vanity.

I closed the cabinet door. “Quiet! We’re trying to be quiet!”

“Well, you’re making all the noise saying ‘quiet’!”

We both heard Mr. Glum’s voice, in the distance, querulous. And footsteps.

14.

There was a drapery that hung before the alcove of a window opposite, between the two mail-wearing mannequins. We scampered over to it, quick as mice. Inside, in the angle between three windows, was a little table holding one of Mrs. Wren’s potted plants. Vanity stood on the table. I put my heels on the window casement but the ledge was precarious, so I put my hands against the window opposite to support my weight. This required Vanity to crouch into a ball so that I could lean across her.

There were actually two sets of men’s footsteps, and a clattering of dog’s nails on the floorboards.

“Who’s there?” growled Mr. Glum. His boots made little creaking noises on the carpet and the floorboards. We could hear the deep, slow breathing of his great mastiff dog, the rattle of its neck chain. We saw the splash of light from an electric torch pass back and forth. There was an inch or two of clearance beneath the drapes; the light shone clear.

The other set of footsteps was sharp and crisp. They clattered as if steel soles had been affixed to the bottom of the boots, click-clack, in time with the clockwork.

“Eyah, ’tis you, Doctor. You give a body a fright, walking along without no light, in the dark. What would you be doing a-stirring at this hour, sir?”

Dr. Fell’s precisely measured nasal tones answered him: “All things must be in order before the Visitors and Governors manifest tomorrow, Grendel. An Envoy from the Pretender will be in attendance, and no doubt the True Heir will force the Visitors to make a final disposition of our charges.”

“I want the redhead. She were capering and flaunting at me today at the breakfas’ hour, and giving me the eye. Ever since she were twelve year old, I’ve set my cap for her. She’s to be mine. I have the skull of a preacher I kill’t set on a post at the bottom of my well, and he can do the service. I kill’t him clean, so that makes him still a holy man, right?”

“The disposition of our charges is not a matter within our discretion, my dear Grendel. I, for one, can only operate within the latitude allowed by my maker’s instruction. Had I free will in the matter, certainly there are interesting experiments I would perform on all of them. It is a crime against science that such specimens will escape from the anatomy scalpel!”

“Nonetheless, sir, the redhead were promised me. I heard a voice in the wood.”

“Did you recognize this voice?”

“Naw, not at all, sir.”

“Then, on what grounds do you conclude that this person or persons had authority to treat with the matter, may I ask?”

“A damn fine question, Doctor, and one where’s I got a set and goodly answer.”

“Please share it, my dear Grendel.”

“I figger that if’n it were someone trying to trick me, he would’f em-personated some voice what was known to me. As this were no voice known to me, then it were no one trying to trick me. Asides, I were dead drunk at the time, it being Sunday morning, when what’s I’m off duty.”

“That is, perhaps, not the most reliable and cogent test of authenticity. Have you approached the Headmaster? He has given us all strict orders to communicate with him immediately if any of our original principals attempt to contact us.”

“Brrr! I ain’t going no damn where near that one, if’n I can help it. You talk to the Headmaster. He respekt you, he does. You ain’t show no fear of his kind.”

“It is not an emotion I have been instructed to suffer.”

My arms were beginning to tell me I had not picked the most comfortable posture to support my weight. I am sure Vanity was having similar problems, folded in double above a leafy plant, which threatened to rattle at her least breath. We held our breaths and waited. It reminded me of those medieval tortures where witches were strapped into various positions and unable to move. And Vanity and I were in the role of the witches.

“Well, if’n that’s all, Doctor…”

“I do admit to a curiosity, Mr. Glum. I distinctly heard the clock operation suspend itself. If I may ask, were you the party who interrupted the movements of the clock, and, if so, for what purpose did you do this?”

“Eyah? I were thinkin’ you did it.”

“An unwarranted assumption. As your own finely honed senses no doubt imparted to you, I walked up from the Portrait Gallery while you were within view of the clock, and therefore could not have been at that spot at the time when it was meddled with, absent a certain amount of brisk jogging, which, I hope you will agree, is not in keeping with the dignity of my profession.”

“Hoy. Hum. We should look around. Of course, we sat here jawing for minute atop minute, so the scamps may be well away by now.”

“You have your suspicions, then?”

“Doctor, you is a bright fellow, I know. Here on the grounds there are five of us, our servants and our creatures, and some human beings what teach some of the classes. Who do you s’pose would be sneaking and spying around in the wee hours? It’s Colin, I’ll warrant, maybe the priggish Victor, or the sly one what don’t talk much.”

“May I suggest, then, my dear Grendel, that we have Lelaps scent around the base of the clock? He can tell us who passed by here. Meanwhile, I will check the reading of the hand against my pocket watch, which will enable us to deduce—if both timepieces had been in perfect synchronicity to begin with—how long the grandfather clock was interrupted in operation. The difference between the two times, you see…”

“Your pardon, sir, but old Lelaps can’t talk no more. All these years in the sunlight have robbed the voice clean out of him. He misses the shadows of the Darker World. The trees there are a proper size, and blot up the sun; and he’s a bit bigger himself, deep in the wood. I don’t think he’s going to talk.”

But there was a cough, and the breathing of the huge hound stopped, and then a breathy whisper came, hoarse, and sounding just as a dog would sound if dogs could talk.

“Two walked here, light of foot, slim and fair. One has hair of sunlight-hue, one as red as flame. The first is a Prelapsarian, from time before the Fall of Man; the second is the Daughter of a King, Alcinuous his name. Neither bears scent of any crime to merit the fate Fates have assigned. Perhaps they are near; or yet perhaps far. Perhaps they will recall what Lelaps did, or did not do, when they have the ascending star.”

“Up now, me bully!” said Mr. Glum. “If you have the scent, go find them! Go!”

We heard the noise of the chain rattling, and a scuffling sound. Mr. Glum was no doubt booting the dog in the rear. The dog growled a bit, but nothing further happened.

Dr. Fell said in a polite and distant voice: “I have a chemical in my office which may render the beast more pliant.”

“Garn! (He just want the redhead for himself, don’t he?) Well, she’s not for you!”

“I suppose the matter is moot, my dear Grendel. All we need do is inform Mrs. Wren that her charges are absent from their beds. This permits us to levy a punishment. Although, I must admit that antics of this type are the very things which, should they be discovered by the Board of Visitors and Governors, might lead to decapitation, defenestration, or crucifixion for all of us. This whole matter would have been more easily arranged if, from the first, we had pretended to be a hospital for the criminally insane, or a penitentiary, rather than an orphanage.”

“Oh, to be sure, Doctor. To be sure. No one would cock an eye at a jailhouse full of babies and toddlers, no one at all. Har har. We should’ve just kept them in the pantry in my mother’s house far beneath the lake water, like what my folk wanted.”

“Originally, we thought the imposture would be needed for a few months, perhaps a year at most. No one foresaw these unfortunate events. It is a shame we were not allowed to kill them once they reached puberty. We certainly do not have the facilities for dealing with fully matured Uranians.”

“Aye, well, there’s no help for it. Even Lelaps is turning against us. Let’s go wake Mrs. Wren.”

And they moved off down the corridor, loud footstomps and sharp staccato footfalls. We continued to hold our breath and hold our positions till the silence was complete.

Then we both collapsed on top of the potted plant, and knocked over the little table. The drape was flung wide by the fall, and dirt from the pot was scattered in a fan across the carpet.

Vanity was laying atop me, her face slack with fear at the huge echoes we had raised, and she said, “We must agree never to tell Victor about this.”

The clatter and noise we had made was so loud, that we ran pell-mell to the front doors, yanked them open, closed them behind us, and threw ourselves headlong over the railing into the bushes to one side of the Main Hall’s stairs.

We held silence for an endless time, while Mr. Glum’s electric torch came back, playing across windows of the Main Hall. He opened the door and peered out into the cold moonlight.

His giant mastiff came bounding out, looked between the marble pilings of the rail, and cocked his head to one side. He seemed to grin. He was looking right at us.

Vanity and I just stared back at him.

The dog threw back his head, and gave tongue.

Mr. Glum, stumping up from behind, said, “You scent ’em boy? You got ’em?”

Howling, the dog now raced away across the lawn, going South, toward the blacksmith sheds.

15.

We crawled on all fours in the other direction, our hands slowly getting numb with the frost. Eventually we got to our feet and ran across the North Lawn to the nearest copse of trees.

I turned to Vanity. My breath came in cold plumes. “Not tell Victor about what? About the talking dog? We have to tell about that.”

“And I cannot believe his first name is Grendel. What kind of name is Grendel Glum?”

“What kind of name is Vanity Fair?”

“Better than Vanity Glum! I don’t want to have a severed head on a post do my wedding. No, we can certainly tell Victor all of that. We just can’t tell him how easily we were caught, knocking the plant over, stopping the clock, all that stuff. The official version is, we were cleverer than the Scarlet Pimpernel, agreed?”

“We should go back. If we are found in bed when Mrs. Wren comes, then we might not be punished.”

“It’s probably too late already, Amelia! Dr. Fell went to go get Mrs. Wren minutes and minutes ago!”

“You know how long it takes to get her awake when she’s been drinking. Come on. We can make it. What other evidence do they have that it was us? I mean, it sounds like they’re pretty skeptical. They’ll think the talking dog was lying.”

“Say that again.”

“Say what again?”

“They’re skeptical. They’ll think the talking dog was lying.”

16.

Vanity and I put all our faith in speed, and did not even try to be quiet. We ran back to the Main Hall. I arrived long before she did. As we agreed, I did not wait for her, but pushed aside the pendulum and stepped into the clock. The panel had not been slid shut (how had Glum missed seeing that?) so I was able to slide through without stopping the clock.

I heard the noises of something crawling after me in the tunnels. I dared not call out to discover if it was Vanity, in case it was not. In the fear and stale air and utter darkness of the blind labyrinth, however, I said my prayers to the Archangel Gabriel, and told him that I wanted to meet him some day, but not yet.

I could see, in the distance, the square of moonlight indicating that the little secret panel was open. I could see a bit of the girls’ dorm, and could hear someone at the door. The key was scraping in the lock.

I won the world’s women’s championship for the hundred-meter crawl in the next two seconds, as well as the women’s across-the-bedroom broad jump. I yanked off my cap and pulled the covers up to my nose just as the door swung open, and an angle of lamplight fell across my bed.

Here was Mrs. Wren, blinking and looking as irritable as her kindly face was capable of looking. I could see the thin, tall silhouette of Dr. Fell behind her. The lamplight caught his round, rimless spectacles, turning them opaque, and gleamed against the short brush of his white hair, against his pallid skin, so as to make him look like a thing made of metal, with lenses instead of eyes.

I tried to impersonate a yawn, but it came out so fake and forced, that I was sure Mrs. Wren was going to break out laughing on the spot. I was sure that Dr. Fell was going to smile at how foolish my attempts to trick them were, and he would no doubt make a small gesture with his hand; then Mr. Glum would come in, and stave in my skull with a shovel, and have my bloody corpse stuffed in a bag and taken out with the morning rubbish.

None of that happened. Instead, Mrs. Wren said, “Sorry to wake you, my ducklings.”

I tried to impersonate a sleepy voice, and, again, failed miserably. “Wha—” (fake yawn) “—wha’sa’matter Mrrs. Wen?”

Dr. Fell, whose night vision was apparently better than most, said, “I do not detect that Miss Fair is in her bed.”

I said, “She’s curled up with me, on account of it is so cold. Her head is just under the cover. Should I wake her? It is so hard for us to fall asleep in this terrible cold. Can’t we have a fire in our room?”

Mrs. Wren said in her bleary, unsteady voice, “Now, now. You just quiet down, my gosling. Dr. Fell just has a bit of constipation or something, and maybe is imagining too much. Come away, Doctor, we’ll wake up Cook and get something for your bowels, there’s a nice whippet!”

Dr. Fell stepped forward with a stiff-legged stride. “I sense a magnetic anomaly in the chamber. If you will permit me to enter for an inspection…?”

He was at the doorway when Mrs. Wren said, “Halt! You may not pass my wards without permission!”

I heard, very dimly, the notes of a violin in the distance. It was Miss Daw, the music teacher, in the conservatory. But why would she be playing now, at this hour of the night? The music was haunting and dim, as if it had come from very far away, and I could not shake the feeling that Mrs. Wren had summoned it.

Dr. Fell now stood in the door, his face blank (well, blanker than usual, anyway), making tiny motions with his shoulders and knees. It was very odd, as if he were pinned in place against a glass wall across the door frame.

Mrs. Wren said, “The care of the young girls was given to poor Mrs. Wren, long after my darling Robin never came for me again. Year by year, the Headmaster has taken my prerogatives from me, till little enough remains this day. Yet I still have this privilege; no man may step into the girls’ dormitory, not without my say.”

“There is something odd in the room, my dear Jenny. Further investigation is warranted.”

“My head is a whirl of aches, Doctor. Surely it will wait till morning.”

“But if there is something amiss, it is our duty to examine…”

“Those who set those duties on us are long gone, as you well know. Life is hard, and there is little enough joy in it for anyone, Dr. Fell. Let us let the wee children sleep and dream of fine things, true loves, handsome princes. It is a joy I no longer have, since I lost the key to my dreaming. Come away, come away.”

And the door closed, and the lock turned.

Vanity came out of the secret door a moment later and closed it silently behind her.

17.

We climbed back into bed together, and lay there discussing the night’s events.

I said to her, “That secret passage made two left turns and dropped about six feet. It came out, however, at the Main Hall, in the West Wing, about three stories below us. How was that possible?”

Vanity said, “The turns may not have been right angles; the floor may not be level. What if it sloped slightly all the way to the West?”

“That wall is not thick enough to have that crawl space inside it. Look. There are windows above the gargoyle heads. Those casements are not six feet thick.”

Vanity yawned; a real, sincere-sounding yawn, and said, “I think things like feet and measurement and all right angles being equal are not real unless you pay attention to them. If you don’t know for sure what shape the walls are, they could be any shape, couldn’t they?”

“You are saying this mansion is multidimensional?”

“I don’t even know what that word means,” she said.

I lay in bed trying to calculate what degree of curvature in the fourth dimension a plane figure with two right angles would need to have in order to have lines built on those angles also be at right angles with each other. It occurred to me that two lines could be drawn on the surface of a sphere, intersecting at right angles at the North and South poles, and still be parallel at the equator. A third line following the equator also would intersect at right angles. If the mansion stood on a hypersphere slightly greater in diameter than the mansion grounds, a person could move from any point to any other with what, in three-space, would seem to be right angles.

How many equal three-dimensional spaces would a hypersphere be cut into by hyperplanes at right angles to each other? A circle can be cut into four pie quadrants; a globe into eight round-bottomed pyramids… Was it sixteen…?

I was trying to visualize how to construct a tesseract around a four-dimensional sphere when I drifted away to sleep.