by Robin Jarvis
“Are you my protector – my saviour?” she asked in a quavering voice. “Or do you mean to slay me also?”
Stepping through the blood-drenched snow, its own hide splashed and smeared scarlet, the unicorn advanced. There was nothing Jill could do. Tears dropped from her eyes.
“Death has so many guises,” she said. “But surely none so beautiful. If it must be thus, then bring it and be swift!”
The unicorn lowered its head and came running. Jill squeezed her eyes shut. Her heart thumped. She breathed hard. Let the ending be quick!
Then, to her amazement, she heard a faint purring noise and felt a weight press against her lap.
Opening her eyes, she found the unicorn was lying before her, resting its head on the white folds of her gown. The animal’s eyes were gentle now. They blinked contentedly and a pink tongue licked the tears that had fallen on to her hand.
The Jill of Hearts stroked the unicorn’s head, cleansing it of blood, washing it with snow and combing her fingers through the fine, silken beard.
A movement stirred the oak trees that towered around the glade. From the dense growths of mistletoe that clogged the high branches, a small shape dropped on to the encircling ridge.
“You’ve done it now,” said the hearty but warning voice of the Mistletoe King as he looked down on the girl and the unicorn.
“What have I done?” she asked.
“Fettered him in new chains,” the little man-shape said. “But those are stronger bonds than the last. He will never be free. Even now they strangle and he shall die before the morning.”
“No!” she cried. “Why?”
“You have stolen his heart and pierced it with your beauty. How can he live without it? A unicorn can never survive once a maiden has tamed him. Your tenderness has brought this upon him. It was unwise of you to venture hither to this wood. See what ruin your selfish folly has caused? As he is cursed, so too must you be. You cannot rob the world of so rare a miracle and expect no punishment.”
“Am I to die also?”
The Mistletoe King rustled his glossy leaves and the pearly berries jiggled. “Not so quick and not so easy,” he told her. “Hear me now. This then is your portion of the curse. No one who strays across your path shall want to tread another. A daughter of the Royal House of Hearts you are, and hearts you shall collect – as freely as children gather daisies. None whom you wish for shall escape, save one, and that heart shall be the only one you truly desire. It is a bitter cup you have put to your lips.”
“I did not want it so!”
“Yet the first sip has already been taken. The curse is placed and I am its witness.”
With that, the Mistletoe King jumped back, up into the tree, and rolled along the branches until he merged with another evergreen cloud.
The girl gazed up at the oak unhappily. Then she patted the unicorn’s head and bowed her own over it, gathering her ragged cloak about them. She remained there until the first rays of the winter dawn touched the rim of the eastern hills and the unicorn lay dead and withered on her blood-stained lap.
With a cry, Sandra Dixon slumped forward on to the table. Her face was pinched and blue with cold, and frozen tears clung to her cheeks. Her brothers were still bawling at one another elsewhere in the house.
“I am the Jill of Hearts,” she sobbed. “I am the Jill of Hearts.”
Chapter 12
Let the peasants sing, hear their cheery ring, hear them sing out loud and long. Flowers and gifts they bring, and any other thing, to see their betters in the throng. But someone has a knife, to stab and take a life, someone will do bad that day. See the Jockey run, flee from everyone, do not let him get away. What a merry sight, to see him taking flight, soon he will be made to pay.
BARRY MILLIGAN ARRIVED at school nice and early on Monday morning. The gates were smothered in cellophane-wrapped bouquets and laminated messages. But it wasn’t them that caused his stomach to flip and make his hangover even worse. He immediately saw that he had forgotten to cancel the knife arch. The police unit had already set it up alongside the flowers. The clash of imagery was far too good for the early-bird reporters. Photographers were already snapping away and someone was doing a live piece to breakfast television, trying to interview one of the officers.
Barry wished he was a million miles away, but the reporters saw him and came stampeding forward.
“Mr Milligan!” they called, taking pictures and pushing microphones in his face. “Eight of your pupils died last Friday and another twenty-three of the deceased were former pupils here.”
“A terrible tragedy,” he said. “Let me through.”
“It was one of your students, Daniel Marlow, who was responsible for the crash. The three passengers in that car also attended your school. What do you have to say to that?”
“No comment.”
“People are calling this a ‘Yob School’, and the ‘School of Death’. What is your reaction to that?”
Barry tried to control himself, but it wasn’t easy. “Nobody as far as I am aware has ever called this school those names,” he growled.
“Then what is the meaning of this knife arch? Surely, by its very presence, you’re admitting that the children here are out of control?”
“Not at all.”
“Are you anticipating trouble here today?”
“We just want to get through this difficult time as smoothly as possible.”
“So you were expecting some kind of violence! That’s a sad indictment of your school, Mr Milligan. Do you think you will be able to keep your job after this?”
Barry really wanted to punch someone. He hadn’t experienced a scrum as hostile as this even in his rugby-playing days, but he managed to push his way through and sought the sanctuary of his office.
“What a balls-up!” he said to himself.
The rest of the morning went as expected. After a delayed registration, due to the slow ingress of the children filing through the knife arch, the whole school assembled in the sports hall. Barry read out the speech he had spent most of the previous night writing and rewriting. There were tears, from staff and pupils alike. When it was all over, Barry summoned Emma Taylor to his office.
The girl slouched in. She was wearing her shortest uniform skirt and ankle socks, the better to show off the fresh dressings. She had already received murmurs of sympathy from some of the younger members of staff, but she knew the Head wouldn’t be so easily deluded or appeased.
“You know why you’re here, Emma,” he said, in full television detective superintendent mode.
The girl nodded, but there was a belligerent glint in her eye.
“You’re about as low as it gets, aren’t you?” he told her. “I’d say you should be thoroughly ashamed of yourself, but that’s beyond you, isn’t it? The only person you ever think about or feel sorry for is yourself. You disgust me, you know that? You haven’t changed from the first day you came through those gates. There are pit bulls, bred and trained to savage other dogs, with more humanity and compassion in them than you’ve got. Normally I’d exclude you from school for what you and the others did to Sandra Dixon last Friday, but I know you’d view that as a result. I expect the police have already spoken to you about it?”
“Yes, Sir.”
“Then it’s up to them, and the Dixons, how they proceed. Don’t smirk, girl, it’s a very serious offence. If they were to press charges and if you were a couple of years older, you’d be banged up in a young offenders’ institution. Don’t think you’ve got away with this here, because you haven’t. This is going to drag on for you, Miss, and your life is going to get very difficult.”
“Already is, Sir,” she interrupted. “I was at the fort on Friday when I saw my best mates…”
“Oh, don’t even go there!” he shouted. “I know exactly why you’ve turned up today, flashing your burnt legs. Poor you, poor you. It doesn’t work on me. I know you too well, Emma. I’ve got no sympathy and don’t think you can try t
o skive off lessons by seeing the counsellor this week.”
“I had to go hospital!” she protested.
“So did Sandra after you kicked the hell out of her!” he roared back, slamming his hand on the desk. “If you were half as smart as you think you are, you’d be more worried. Without Ashleigh and Keeley, you’re going to get the full blame for the attack. Do you understand?”
Emma chewed the inside of her cheek, her eyes fixed on the carpet. “Yes, Sir,” she mumbled.
“Now Sandra is in school today,” he warned. “If I hear you so much as look at her the wrong way, you’ll be out of those gates for good and you won’t be coming back – ever. It’s my duty to find somewhere else to take you, but wherever it is, God help them, it won’t be within walking distance like this place so that’s an almighty headache your parents would have to solve, and frankly, I really don’t give a monkey’s. I’m not making idle threats here. I won’t tolerate that kind of viciousness from any of my students. This isn’t a bloody zoo. Are you listening? Have I got through that thick head of yours?”
“Yes, Sir.”
“Then get out of my sight!”
Emma closed his door behind her. It had gone better than she had hoped. Swinging her bag over her shoulder, she sauntered off to her first lesson.
Martin Baxter’s Year 10 class filed in, unusually quietly, and found their desks. Three of them would be empty that day – and every day after. The youngsters’ eyes could not help but stare at the vacant places. Owen Williams had always sat next to Kevin Stipe. Today the ginger-haired lad gazed down at the blank space where his friend should be and felt sick. Conor sat in front and he could hardly bear knowing that void was directly behind him. He bowed his head and pressed his fingers against his temples. The knowledge that there had been a fourth passenger in that car was eating away at him. He should have told someone.
At the back, three unfilled places made a large hole in the class. The three witches would normally be making the most noise by now. Martin’s conscience had won out. Yes, he would miss Keeley and Ashleigh. In their own mouthy and raucous way, they were entertaining and at the very least always kept him on his toes. “Had been entertaining,” he corrected himself.
“OK,” he began. “Let’s get through these first days as best we can. The sooner we can get back into a routine, the better it’ll be.”
“I don’t think I can sit here!” Owen blurted.
Martin had expected this. The obvious solution was an extra desk, but there simply wasn’t room for another. They were squeezed in as it was.
“Does anyone want to swap with Owen?” he asked.
Silence and a shaking of heads.
“I can’t sit here – next to where he was!” Owen insisted, scraping his chair back.
A hand slowly went up in front. “I’ll swap,” Conor said.
“Good lad,” the maths teacher told him, quite impressed. “Owen, would it bother you to sit in front of… of Kevin?”
Owen nodded vigorously.
“All right, will anyone swap so Owen can have their seat and they can sit in Conor’s?”
A few minutes later the exchange had been made and they were looking up at Martin once more, their faces expectant and respectful. Suddenly it struck him, for the first time, just how cynical and case-hardened he had become over the years. He had come to view most of these youngsters as thuggish gang members or just pointless scum who would never contribute anything to society and would always leech off it. But at that moment, he saw them afresh and clearly. They were still only children.
The disaster had done more than rob them of friends and classmates. It had told them, ferociously, they were not invincible and immortal. It had demonstrated, in lurid sounds and colours, absolute chaos, and they had been terrified. Now they were searching for sense and order again and there was no better place for that, in their adolescent universes, than in Mr Baxter’s lessons. He was a reassuring symbol of constancy and structure.
The maths teacher realised all of this in a sudden instant and, for a few seconds, he struggled with his own sense of shame. But the expectant faces were still waiting.
“Open your books,” he said eventually. “We’ll start with…”
“What do you think of the number, Sir?” Owen asked.
“Number?”
“Of smiley faces.”
“I’m not with you.”
Some of the others joined in. The coincidence had been spotted by many of them yesterday and they were keen to discuss it.
“On the invite email that went out,” they told the teacher.
“There were forty-one smilies.”
“And forty-one people died…”
There was a profound silence. They looked at their teacher, hoping he could make sense of it for them. Martin felt a chill spread down one side of him. Then he realised the door had opened and a cold draught was blowing in.
Emma Taylor entered. Martin’s eyes flicked across to where Sandra was sitting. The Dixon girl looked different today. The hair she normally hid behind was pinned up behind her ears in a strange sort of old-fashioned style. She seemed distant and didn’t even look up when her attacker came into the room.
“I’m not gonna cause any trouble,” Emma promised, also glancing in Sandra’s direction. “I’ve just been with Mr Milligan, Sir.”
Martin nodded. “I know,” he said. “Look, Emma… if you want to find somewhere else to sit, we’ve been doing some musical chairs already. I’m sure we could do another round.”
“Why would I want to do that?” she asked. “My desk’s over there.”
Feeling Conor’s eyes upon her, she strode to the far left corner of the classroom and threw her bag on Keeley’s seat as she sat next to it.
“So what we doing?” she said stonily.
The rest of the lesson progressed as normally as it could, given the circumstances. Emma, of course, had neglected to bring any of her books. When it was over, Martin called Sandra over as the rest of them shuffled out.
“Are you sure you should have come in today?” he asked, concerned. Even for her, she had been unusually quiet throughout the lesson.
The maths teacher studied her pale, bruised face. There was something remote, almost even serene, about her expression. She looked back at him impassively.
“I am most well, Sir,” she said when he prompted her again. “Why should I not be?”
“The staff will be keeping a lookout,” Martin promised. “We won’t let it happen again. I really don’t think Emma will try anything though – even she isn’t that stupid.”
Sandra smiled at him, a strangely playful smile. He noticed that the pupils of her eyes were peculiarly large.
“That was another life ago,” she said, as if she were the teacher, patiently explaining the most rudimentary fact to a slow learner. “Now I am reborn, in new and cleaner clothes – to a better, bolder world. Nothing that happens in this grey life matters any longer.”
The smile gave way to a soft chuckle and her forehead crinkled. “Blessed be your day,” she said, heading for the door.
Martin watched her leave the classroom and he scratched his chin with a pen. He hadn’t realised the Dixons were so religious.
Grabbing his briefcase, he headed to the staffroom to grab a coffee and eat his lunch.
It was busier than usual in there. The members of staff who normally popped home or to the shops during the lunch break had remained on site. In the old days, this would have meant walking into a blanket of smog, because most of them smoked like chimneys. Staffrooms had always been bad places for the lungs. Martin was so glad those times were gone; he could munch on his sandwiches without them being poisoned by that nicotine miasma. He always smiled at the irony that nowadays it was the teachers who were compelled to smoke behind the bike sheds.
The customary cliques were already grouped together, but of course there was only one topic of conversation. The disaster and how it had affected the children and their
own lessons was on everyone’s lips. Martin tuned in to each separate discussion as he peeled the lid from his Tupperware box and took out a ham sandwich.
“Apparently the Prime Minister’s just made a flying visit to the hospital,” Mr Jones, the head of biology, announced, reading a text on his phone. “Had his picture taken in the children’s ward. So he got his warm and fuzzy publicity after all.”
“Hyena,” muttered Mr Roy of geography.
“And those news vans are still parked outside the gates,” Mr Jones grumbled.
“I couldn’t get little Molly Barnes in Year 7 to stop crying,” said Yvonne Yates, the French teacher. “We had to call her mother to come and collect her and then those swine out there ambushed both of them. It’s disgusting.”
“They’ll vanish as soon as the next actor or pop star is caught with their pants down,” Mr Roy foretold. “Which should be any time now – must be a week since the last feeding frenzy.”
Martin waved his half-eaten sandwich and joined in. “Can anyone explain what all that is about?” he asked in bewilderment. “Half of those so-called celebrities who keep these magazines in print aren’t famous for actually doing anything; they’re just famous for being papped falling out of nightclubs and shooting their mouths off. There’s no talent or achievement there. Why are people so interested in them?”
Mrs Early, the English teacher, laid her knitting on her lap. “Because they can afford better clothes and go to far more glamorous parties than the readers ever could,” she said in her languid, poetry-reading voice. “And everyone loves to see the overpaid privileged punctured. I know I do. Seeing some silicone-bagged horror gagging on kangaroo testicles in the jungle is just the modern equivalent of watching the guillotined heads of the aristocracy roll into baskets. Nothing has changed. We all lap it up.”
I don’t, Martin thought to himself.
“Is there a new game or movie out?” Mrs Yates interrupted. “Some of the kids today were behaving a bit… weird.”
“We’re all behaving weird today,” Mr Jones reminded her.
