The Wicked Years Complete Collection

by Gregory Maguire

  It was time to go on the offense. “I chose St. Prowd’s for its traditions of excellence in the rearing of proper young men and women. I thought you might defend its record against your competition. I can examine the alternatives if this is proving a waste of your—”

  “Oh, there is no competition, not seriously,” said Proctor Gadfry. “We’re almost within shouting distance of the great colleges of Shiz—not that our students are inclined to raise their voices in any unseemly display. I am sure you know the history of St. Prowd’s. We opened our doors in the third year of the reign of Ozma the Librarian, as you could guess from the magnificent carvings in the lintel. They were thought to be from the school of Arcavius, but we have documentation on file more or less proving the master did them himself.”

  Nor hadn’t noticed the carvings and she didn’t turn to look. “It’s a beautiful building in a magnificent setting,” she said, indicating the narrow and sunless street on which Founder’s Hall fronted.

  “Magnus St. Prowd was a unionist theologician whose work paved the way for the famous Debate on the Souls of Animals held at Three Queens College. Uncommonly prosperous for a bishop, he left his home to the causes of education—this was once a bishop’s palace—and he endowed the school to serve as a feeder pool for young students of unionism. As the times have become more secular, we’ve striven to retain as many of the customs of prayer and obedience as seem sensible.”

  “Though we strive for a jolly nondenominational middle road that occasionally strikes me as lunatic,” remarked Miss Ironish, a rare instance, so far, of her appearing to disagree with her brother.

  “I’m sure it’s difficult to strike the perfect balance between piety and populism, but I’m equally confident you manage it.” Nor was eager to get away before Rain did something to disqualify herself.

  “Where did you train, Dame Ko?” asked Proctor Gadfry.

  “You wouldn’t have heard of it. A very small local parish school in the Great Kells.”

  “Ah, the godforsaken lands,” said Miss Ironish.

  “Not godforsaken, merely godforgotten,” said Nor with a pretense at merriment. “But before we settle up, may I enquire about the size and makeup of the student body this year?”

  “We began as a school for boys, of course,” said the proctor. “We opened to girls during the reign of Ozma the Scarcely Beloved.”

  Miss Ironish put a gentle fist to her breast. “Kept hermetically distant from one another, of course. The girls lodged in the dormitory, with the boys in the annex above the stables.”

  “In these sorry times, though,” said Proctor Gadfry, “the boys are all called to train for the army. So we’ve had to make arrangements to house them out of town. In a junior military camp. For drilling in the use of firearms and rapiers and such musical instruments as are required in marching bands.”

  “The boys are kept intensely busy, so the girls here in town no longer mingle, even socially, with the boys in camp. St. Prowd’s Military Center, we’re calling it, though we don’t know if this is a permanent arrangement or if we will contract after the war is over.”

  “Because I know mothers worry, I find it consoling, these days, that no boys are housed on this campus to pester any of our St. Prowd’s girls,” said the brother.

  “Not that you worry overmuch,” said the sister to Nor. They both glanced again at Rain, who was slumping in her chair and showing scant devotion to the art of posture.

  “And there are other girls her age?” asked Nor.

  “We have about forty girls this year, from a little younger than Miss Rainary to a few years older. Some five or eight will finish next spring and proceed to Shiz University if they are lucky enough to secure a place. About eight have done very well on their O levels, but Z levels is where distinctions come out.”

  Forty girls. Rain ought to be safe enough hidden in a bevy of forty girl students roughly her own age.

  “How will we reach you in case there are problems?” asked Proctor Gadfry as his sister set about to draw up a bill.

  “I shall take rooms at a small house of residence when I am in town,” said Nor. “Once I have settled myself, I’ll post you the address. But I will be unavailable much of the time, so I must trust that in a crisis you will treat Rainary as one of your own.”

  “Upon that much you can rely,” said Proctor Gadfry.

  “That much, and much more,” said Miss Ironish, blotting the paper and folding it demurely before handing it to Nor so she could open it again. Sweet Lurline. What a lucky thing that Nor’s former employer, that old lascivious ogre, had died leaving a small sack of gold and mettanite florins ripe for the plucking. Keeping the sack under the table so the Clapp siblings couldn’t see how much she had, she withdrew six coins and set them in a shiny line along the table.

  “I forgot the food tax,” said Miss Ironish flatly, and a seventh coin came out to join the others.

  “Miss Rainary is now a St. Prowd’s girl,” said Proctor Gadfry, standing and extending his hand to Nor. “She has come a long way already, and she has a long way to go.”

  “I will find her a room and examine her,” said Miss Ironish. At Nor’s expression, she said, “I mean for what she knows, so we decide in what classroom to place her.”

  “She is hard to place,” murmured Nor. They all looked at Rain once again, who didn’t notice them rising. She had taken Tay into her lap and seemed to be whispering to it.

  “Oh, goodness, of course there are no pets,” said Miss Ironish.

  Keeping her eyes upon Rain, Nor fingered an eighth coin and laid it slap upon the table. She didn’t know which coin it was, but she tucked her purse back into her sleeve and left the room without comment. She made sure the door had closed behind her, sealing the Clapp family inside, before she spoke.

  “You may be happy here or you may not,” she said. “None of us knows where and when happiness happens. But I think you will be safe. We intend to head for Kiamo Ko, in the Kells, to see if a more private life might be had so far away.”

  “How long do I have to stay here.” Presented as a statement.

  Nor didn’t want to lie. Since Rain so often refused human contact, Nor put her hand on Tay’s scalp. Its bristles felt warm and papery. “Someone will come for you.”

  From the end of the street she looked back at Founder’s Hall. It was a severe limestone box in the symmetrical mode, with narrow, watery windows set in deep recesses. Like nine icy tombstones sunk into the facade. Not so much as a single curl of carven ornament on the architrave or the capitals of the pillars holding up the portico.

  The ribbon that Nor had bought for Rain to pretty her up for her new friends now seemed less a present than a blow. The heart-shaped locket, lacquered redder than yewberries, hung on a chain around the girl’s neck and was hidden behind the yoke of her shift. A silly sentimental thing picked up at a jeweler for an outrageous sum. The kind of thing Nor imagined a girl might like, though she would not have done so, and Rain had accepted it without comment. Nor hoped it might mean something to the girl one day, when and if she ever learned what a heart was.

  Though maybe being an isolate already would help the girl not to suffer so much in the company of her peers. Oh, Rain, she thought. I had myself sewn so I could never have children to mourn, and you wandered into my life anyway.

  8.

  Let us not start with disapproval,” said Miss Ironish.

  “But there’s no light,” said Rain. No, Rainary. She was trying to remember.

  “You’ll be here at night mostly. All rooms are dark at night.”

  “Not if there’s a moon.”

  “You’ll be too tired to stay awake mooning over the moon. It’s too bad that there is no extra bed downstairs but your mother paid no attention to the registration deadlines. You’re lucky we’re accommodating you at all. Call it charity on our part.”

  “There’s no light. And no window.”

  Miss Ironish seemed not to hear. “You have more cat
ching up to do than any girl we have ever admitted. And believe me we have entertained some real losers in our time.”

  Rain reached out her hands. She could touch the sloping beams on either side. This wasn’t a room. It was a coffin the shape of a tent. And it smelled of wood-mold; she could see the blotched rot where rain must come through the slates.

  “You’ll want to watch these protruding nails,” said Miss Ironish. “They will rake your scalp if you sit up too fast. Breakfast is at five. There will be a bell, struck once. If you don’t hear it, you miss breakfast. You won’t miss it more than twice, I guarantee that.”

  Rain put her small carpetbag down. She thought about the stone in it, the bone, the shell, the feather.

  “You can hang your garments on that pair of hooks—I can tell you didn’t arrive with many. That’s proper humility, and I applaud it. I believe we shall get along very well, Miss Rainary.”

  “What should I do now?”

  “You can spend the evening settling in.”

  “Can I get something to eat?”

  “Your board doesn’t vest until breakfast tomorrow. However, I am not a monster. I shall send up a girl with a tray. Including water for your creature. What is it, anyway?”

  “A rice otter. Its name is Tay.”

  “I do not think it will be happy here.”

  Rain thought better than to reply with the first thing that came to her mind. Who could? See, she was learning already. “Where is a lamp?”

  “We did not budget for a lamp.”

  “How can I study and catch up on my learning without a lamp?”

  “Very well. I shall begin to keep a ledger and write down all your demands so that your mother can reimburse the academy when she comes on Visitation Day.”

  “When is that? And a book too, if you have one.”

  “Visitation Day is the month after Lurlinemas. Some eleven, twelve weeks away. As for your reading selections, I shall pick out a volume from my private library of devotional literature. How well do you read?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “If you can derive any grace and benefit from what I send up for you, I will be surprised.”

  Me too, thought Rain. But anything to read was better than nothing.

  Miss Ironish retired down the dusty wooden steps—not down one flight but several, as an attic filled with battered furniture separated the aerie from the dormitories in which the other girls slept. As she went she sang something quite cheerfully in a minor key. Rain took out her shifts, her petticoat, and the new pair of pale leather shoes that laced up the sides. A little light lanced through chinks in the roofing tiles, which meant, she suspected, that chill and wind and snow would sift through, too.

  When she heard steps again, she went to the door to greet the girl. Mounting to the landing, hauling a lamp and a plate upon a tray, stumped a funny-looking kid with gappy teeth and freckles, and a weedy head of close-cropped ash-brown curls. “Here you be, then, Miss Rainary,” she said. “All’s you could hope for in the penthouse suite.”

  “It’s not a lot. Is that supper?”

  “Likewise it’s very nice to meet you,” said the girl pointedly.

  Rain tried to sort this out, and made a second attempt. “My name is Rainary.”

  “I know, Miss Rainary. And my name is Scarly. Them’s biscuits and some hunks of cheese hid under the serviette, if you please. I also tucked in two gingery scones when Cook weren’t looking.”

  Rain took the tray. Tay, who liked cheese, made off with the lot of it. “Oooh, you gots your own private rat,” said Scarly. “That’ll help some, up here.”

  “Would you,” said Rain, trying, trying to be normal, “would you like a scone?”

  “I gets my own after cleanup time. When dinner’s done.”

  “Will we be in studies together?”

  “Miss Rainary, I en’t a student. I’m the scullery maid.”

  Dim memories of Mockbeggar Hall. “I was a scullery maid once.”

  “Hoo no! Really?”

  But Rain had been told not to speak of her past, ever. Already she was breaking rules. She tried to correct her mistake. “No. I just wondered what it might be like.”

  “It might be like a whole lot of fun. But it’s not. Now I have to go down. There’s the tables to lay. They gets roast crinklebreast of the fields tonight.” Scarly put her hands in her apron pocket. “Miss, I brought you a few extra rags to stick in those cracks. That one near the chimney stack is the worst of the lot. It’ll help.”

  “How do you know?”

  “This is usually my room.”

  “Why do they put me here?”

  “Not to feel special.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “School begun two weeks ago. You’re late. The one thing Proctor Gadfry Clapp and Miss Ironish Clapp and the others agree on is that St. Prowd’s students shouldn’t feel special about nothing but being students of St. Prowd’s. The rich ones gets their fancy cloaks locked up and their allowances locked up too. The smart ones gets to learn enough other languages to make their heads spin.”

  “What about the poor ones?”

  “They en’t admitted most often. And you, I don’t know if you’re rich or smart, but I do know you’re late. So you got put in my room. Perbably you’ll shift out after they get a better sense of how humble you are.”

  “Oh, I think I’m pretty humble.”

  “That’s the right train to take.” Scarly laughed. “Oh, I almost forgot your book.” She pulled it from behind the bib of her apron and scowled at the silvery foil words stamped on the spine.

  “What book is it? What does it say?”

  “Miss Rainary, I already told you,” said the maid. “I’m not a student here. I can’t read. Pretty curly letters though, en’t you impressed?”

  Rain took the book. She could hardly make out the title due to the flourishes of display type. “I think it says Read Me and Die,” she said.

  “You’re a right card! We’ll like having you around.” Apparently Scarly thought Rain had made a joke. Hah! Her first joke, and she didn’t even get it herself.

  When the maid was halfway down the top flight, Rain hurried to the door. “But, Miss Scarly, where will you stay tonight?” she asked.

  “It’s only Scarly, no miss about it. I’ll doss down in the boys’ dormitory ’cross the way,” came the reply. “It’s empty of boys but haunted, say all the girls.”

  “Haunted with what?”

  “All the boys they wish was there!” She chortled to herself down both flights. She must be a bit dim, thought Rain.

  The title of the book turned out to be Reach Me Each Day. It was a collection of prayers in tiny cramped print. Rain still couldn’t read well enough to be inspired by it. She did try. She ended up staring at the letters and imagining them to say something more juicy, and she fell asleep with Tay on her pillow. Tay’s warm odor helped mask the reek of mildew.

  She missed the breakfast bell, not only that morning but for eight mornings more.

  9.

  There were six instructors. Proctor Clapp supervised them all. At whim he would strike the iron bell in the hall, and only then could the teachers stop at the current topic and proceed to the next. Perhaps in his study he suffered narcolepsy for hours on end, for some days they would spend all morning on a single matter—the number line, or the Chronologies of Ozmas, or Primary Divinity, or dictation and diction—before the bell finally sounded.

  Rain (Miss Rainary, Miss Rainary, Miss Rainary) was in a class with girls apparently three years younger and six years smarter than she was. They were young enough to adore tattling on her.

  “Madame Shenshen, Miss Rainary doesn’t even know how to do her algorhythmics.”

  “Madame Shenshen, Miss Rainary didn’t finish her tallies so I can’t check my work against hers.”

  “Madame Shenshen, I was paired with Miss Rainary for Spellification yesterday. Today may I have a partner who actually knows somethin
g?”

  Madame Shenshen was a taurine woman who drenched herself in essence of floxflower to disguise the symptoms of a powerful digestive ailment. She was impatient with Rain up to a point, but however hard she might try, for the promotion of Rain’s humility, Madame Shenshen couldn’t disguise her admiration of Rain’s swift progress. “For someone so evidently abandoned to the winds of chance,” she claimed once, clasping her hands like a smithy, “you are proving yourself worthy of the opportunities St. Prowd’s supplies you, Miss Rainary Ko. Bravo. Except this word, admonition, is spelled incorrectly. Please, if you will, tonight prepare me a page on which you spell it correctly three hundred times.”

  Rain could not yet count that high, but Miss Scarly was clever at figures and worked it out. Sort of. When Rain arrived the next day with five hundred admonitions, she was punished for showing off.

  The girls were noisy at breakfast and lunch and sat in silence at dinner while Proctor Clapp or Miss Ironish read aloud from Meditations of the Divine Emperor, a slim volume bound in ivory kid that was all the stir in the bookstalls that season. Rain knew this for herself because once a week they went for promenades along the Suicide Canal or into Pfenix Park, taking care not to step on the dead pigeons. Inevitably they passed a book cart or a storefront, and Meditations was everywhere, in stacks and stacks.

  Popular, or maybe not, as the stacks seldom seemed to shrink.

  Rain wondered when the other girls were going to sort themselves out in her mind as individuals, or if they would. Unlike stones and pinecones, they never stayed still long enough for her to collect them. Perhaps because Rain had met Scarly first, she thought the maid was the most interesting of the bunch. Rain wasn’t well used to launching conversations, while Scarly was trained to keep her lips closed unless spoken to. It seemed a losing proposition in terms of friendship, except that Scarly could communicate more in a saucy expression tossed in Rain’s direction than the Divine Emperor seemed to be able to do in fifteen pages of discourse about his own divinity.