The Secrets of Drearcliff Grange School

by Kim Newman

  Gryce wasn’t seen much these days. Mansfield, the first House Captain in Black, acted as if she had suddenly been made Head Girl, though there was no system for contesting the position. Even in Viola, the Black tide didn’t wash over all. Vanity Crawford remained all-the-way Grey, and kept one or two acolytes. But the Revolution continued.

  Handsome Helena cut a dash in black, and was as a consequence admired. She set a style among Sixths – somehow acceptable within the uniform code – for sheer black silk stockings with fine grey seam-stripes. Girls gave up baggy, scratchy grey wool socks for black hose, not caring about the cold.

  At Break and before Prep, the Black Skirts skipped together.

  In defiance of tradition, girls from all Houses and forms fell in step. A negotiation was effected with Wicked Wyke, acting for the Headmistress. Skippers were allowed use of the Gymnasium. It was a powerful recruiting tool. The Gym was draughty, but indoors. Rayne might share the freeze tolerance of the flightless midge or the alpine cockroach and be hardy enough to endure the Arctic climes of the Quad and beyond, but most who followed her in fashion and exercise were not so blessed. The winter options of hibernation or migration were denied too.

  Passing the Gym after lessons, Amy heard regular clapping over that blessed chant. ‘Send reinforcements, we’re going to advance.’ Advance where? Not to any dance Amy could think of. The skipping was a form of close-order drill. Chinese fighting monks were less disciplined than Rayne’s Black Skirts. The building shook. The massed jumping sounded like the crump of heavy guns on the Western Front.

  Amy remembered skipping as fun. Years ago, she had skipped with the best of them… until she felt herself coming unstuck with each leap. She gave it up lest she betray her secret. Mother would not have been pleased. Besides, she started getting light moments about the time most girls grew out of skipping. For the Black Skirts, skipping was a calling, not a pleasure. It most certainly wasn’t a game.

  Making sure no one else was around, Amy let herself lose weight and scaled the wall of the Gym alongside the the tall, ice-rimed windows. She found handholds in the brickwork. Peeping in from above a window, she saw the corps de skip hard at it. Mansfield and Buller called the rhyme, but Rayne was mainspring of the clockwork parade, dead centre of a square formation. All around, Black Skirts followed her lead. No Greys in sight.

  That absent-yet-focused expression was on all their faces. Amy had to rub ice away with her sleeve to get a better look and pick out individuals. The traitor Inchfawn… shut out in Desdemona, but finding a place among the automata. Rintoul, Rayne’s first acolyte, now just another ant. Garland, defected along with Buller. Phair, the not-lookalike. Gould, of the hairy cheeks and stubby claws. ‘Even’ Keele, who’d talked so much sense. She-With-No-Mercy Aire. Thicke, Brydges, St Anne, Gallaudet, so many others.

  Swots were skipping. Sloths were skipping. Rolled-stocking flappers were skipping! Hockey hooligans were skipping! Firsts bobbed up and down, higher so they’d fit in. Sixths were skipping like Firsts! Fearsome whips – practically grown women, exemplars to the school – jumped to a tempo set by a new bug Third. It was stranger, almost, than the Purple. Wrong in a way which gave Amy the collywobbles.

  This was the Reign of Rayne.

  Floating and an upset tummy were a bad mix, so Amy tried to get herself under control. She settled back on the path. She gulped a little, but did not heave. She had spots before her eyes and a copper taste on her tongue. She blew her nose and blood smeared her hankie. She inhaled cold air and the shock settled her.

  She kept her head down and hurried on, anywhere but into the Gym.

  IX: The Runnel and the Flute

  ON THE FIRST Saturday of February, Amy was woken by icy little touches on her face. It was snowing again, and a couple of windowpanes had blown in. Frecks slept on, undisturbed by snow on her counterpane, but Kali and Light Fingers were swiftly stung awake. Amy shook Frecks to make her aware of the situation.

  ‘Not this guff again,’ said Frecks. ‘We might as well build igloos.’

  After breakfast, the Moth Club barricaded their cell against the elements. Kali had scrounged plasticine oddments from the Art Room, pressed into a large, multi-coloured ball. Amy used some of the oily, pliable stuff to fix cardboard squares into the empty spaces in the window, then layered more of it over the hard, cracked putty to forestall further damage. Finally, she squashed thick plasticine ropes into the cracks around the frame to minimise draughty rattling. Every time Amy touched glass, it was like brushing black ice – she was afraid she’d leave raw skin behind.

  For once, the Sixths – on the highest floor of Old House – had the worst of it. The weight of new-fallen snow strained the roof and opened fissures in the ceilings of their cells. Joxer went up on the roof – the site of Kentish Glory’s debut! – with a spade and tried to shift dune-like humps off the weak spots, but snow fell faster than the old retainer could shovel. De Vere, apparently, was terrified that Captain Freezing, who stood fully eighteen feet tall by now, was going to appear on the roof and crash into her cell.

  In the afternoon, Pelham – the Desdemona House Captain – put out a call for volunteers to help Joxer. When only Palgraive stuck up her hand, a press-gang tore through Old House, conscripting everyone who didn’t duck out of sight fast enough. Amy and Kali, snug in their newly secured cell, were the first victims. Inchfawn whined that she was expected in her skipping circle, but waving a black hat cut no ice with Pelham and she was on the work party… along with Honor ‘Stretch’ Devlin of the Fourth and Winifred ‘Beauty’ Rose of the Fifth. Palgraive fetched them all shovels.

  The girls tended to clang spades together too often and get in Joxer’s way, but made the best of the Sisyphean chore.

  Devlin was tall for a Fourth. She was also an Unusual. As Stretch shovelled snow with no loss of her natural jollity, Amy wondered if she had nerves wired in reverse so she perceived icy blasts as gentle breezes. Then, she noticed Devlin’s arms were extended, lengths of wrist showing between her sleeves and her gloves. She got her nickname from her Ability.

  The girl must have bones like India rubber. Useful for fetching down balls caught in high branches or fishing out rings stuck in plugholes. By making her arms longer, she could shovel better. Light Fingers’ Ability would have been the most use on the snowy roof, but she’d cleverly stepped into a wardrobe when the press-gang hit the Third corridor. Catching Amy looking, Devlin twisted her head round further than she ought to have been able to and wiggled her eyebrows cheekily. She was alarming, but refreshingly natural about it.

  By nightfall, the conscripts had done what they could to shift the drift. Even Drearcliff whips couldn’t expect anyone to stick to a job like that after dark. Digger Downs’ lesson on Great Mutinies of Imperial History, much admired in the Whips’ Hut, was that native peoples could be mistreated only so much before they beheaded the missionaries and fired the garrison. Drearcliff girls might put up with more than the average Zulu or sepoy, but there was a tipping point… and whips were trained to stow the cat just before the cry of insurrection rang out across the playing fields.

  The shovel party was called in and Keele served hot chocolate and crumpets in her cell. Keele wore her new black uniform.

  ‘I’ve read that book,’ said Devlin, joshing. ‘A Fashionable Woman, by Nathalie Dresst.’

  Amy, still not comfortable with Black Skirts, couldn’t see that Keele had changed, apart from her clothes. But… part of the Sixth’s new kit was an ant badge like the one Rayne wore. Thinking about it, she realised she’d seen more of them lately. Many girls who took the black uniform option sported these tiny lapel brooches. The ants reminded her of the maggot inside Palgraive’s brain. Were these metal insects the real invaders and the hosts who sported them their slaves?

  Inchfawn, emboldened in black, thanked Keele for the warming treats. She was rewarded with the sort of fond hair-tousling you might give a puppy. Outside the Moth Club, few were aware of the exact nature of Inchf
awn’s perfidy but word got round that she was – like Shrimp or Snitcher – not to be trusted. But Kali’s abduction was last term’s hot news, fading in memory. The Black Skirts were the big story this year. Rayne was rising… and Gryce falling.

  Kali and Amy sat in a corner of Keele’s cell with Beauty Rose. She got her nickname for obvious reasons too. Almost supernaturally lovely, Rose had fair fluffy ringlets, cornflower-blue eyes, a blush in pale cheeks and appealing, dainty features. The official School stunner was always in demand in the Art Room as a model for sketches and watercolours. She was also a tragic case, much pitied in poems by those with literary inclinations – works which would embarrass their authors in a few years’ time. Born without a larynx, Rose was mute. When she had to, she communicated with elegant, wrist-flicking gestures. It seemed cruel to put such a delicate flower on the work party and Amy feared she’d shrivel when exposed to the elements… but she proved hardy and deft.

  Still, Beauty was easier to look at than to know. She sipped her cocoa and licked her chocolate moustache like a cat.

  Light Fingers and Amy had talked about girls who were on the fringes of Unusual… cultivating Talents to such a degree that they might be classed as Abilities or possessed of physical qualities that came close to being Attributes. Rose was one of those.

  Amy and Kali both tried to start ‘conversations’ with the Fifth.

  She smiled sweetly and made gestures. She wasn’t like Palgraive, who sat vacantly while the maggot took a rest from pulling the wires, but she was hard to follow.

  Nevertheless, Amy had a sense that Rose appreciated the kindly effort.

  She recalled that sympathy after supper, when she and Kali saw Rose again. Bundled into a grown-up’s greatcoat, Beauty was being walked out of the Quad by the Reverend Mr Bainter. Sure-footed while working on the roof, Beauty now dragged like an invalid. As she was pulled past Mauve Mary’s shrine, a purplish glow illuminated the pair…

  Amy thought she might be about to see the ghost… but this was just a random shaft of violet light.

  What she did see was Beauty’s face. Her big eyes were bigger and her pretty mouth was open in an O. If she’d had a larynx, she’d have been screaming.

  Then she was dragged out of the light.

  ‘Something’s up,’ Amy told Kali.

  ‘I’ll say,’ said Kali. ‘Ponce’s filthy paws are all over Beauty’s bod. If he tried them holds on a beerhouse moll, he’d get a slap across the puss.’

  ‘We have to follow them.’

  ‘In this climate? It ain’t gonna be no picnic in the park.’

  The snowfall had stopped before sunset, but the thermometer plunged even further. Their breath was white mist. Amy and Kali went through the walkway and came out the other side. Bainter and Rose were a way ahead, struggling through driven snow. They were off the path and headed towards the woods.

  Knowing they could pick up the trail, the girls went back to their cell and changed. Amy hoped to enlist Frecks and Light Fingers, but they weren’t home. There was a Black Skirt after-supper skipping rally in the gym, and the rest of the dorm had gone to watch. Light Fingers, at least, would be inclined to smuggle in snowballs to throw at the skippers.

  Amy and Kali changed into their uniforms.

  Kali’s Moth Club name was Oleander Hawk, after a dramatic arrowhead-shaped species found in Kafiristan. Light Fingers had run up a brown-and-white mask to mimic its wings. Kali wore it with a dark-green trenchcoat and her hair coiled up inside her black faux fedora. She had also assembled a bandolier of implements – a multi-bladed penknife, a sharpened throwing star, several handy tools and her cigarette lighter. So far, Kali had only dressed up in their cell to see how the Oleander Hawk outfit looked. It was judged suitably fearsome.

  Kali said she’d like to add a tommy gun to her bandolier, and made a hose-directing gesture and pow-pow-pow noise as if spraying wrongdoers with hot lead. Even allowing for the difficulty of obtaining firearms in England, toting guns wasn’t quite the thing. Of course, the Moth Club would be set against desperate characters unlikely to be handicapped by such scruples – so perhaps a small tommy gun might be allowed, eventually. The Thompson company must make a ladies’ model.

  Amy saw Kali was glad of an excuse to put on a mask and hare off into the woods. She had missed out last term, when she was the one tied up and in need of rescue. Amy hoped her friend wouldn’t be too headstrong in the field.

  ‘We’ll save that dame from a fate worse than death,’ Kali said.

  ‘You think Bainter might tie her to a tree and deliver one of his sermons?’ suggested Amy. ‘That would be dreadful. She can’t even scream to drown him out.’

  ‘Yeah, I think he’s rotten enough… or worse.’

  For winter, the Moth Club added padded coats and wellington boots to their costumes. The effect was more cocoon than imago, but even daredevil adventuresses had to take care not to catch their deaths of cold.

  Quietly, they crept out of the dorms. Kali trained a small battery torch on the crisp snow. The trail was plain. Bainter’s boot-prints were deep and regular, while Rose’s were shallow and scuffed – she was resisting him. She might even have the presence of mind to leave an obvious track.

  Because she was pretty and dumb, it was too easy to think Rose empty-headed. Amy knew that wasn’t so. Beauty had learned to be wary. She was sceptical of flattery and suspicious of worship. Amy suspected she was a rose with thorns, not a drip like those Yank flicker serial heiresses.

  Along with moth masks, they wore earmuffs and scarves. Amy’s mask kept the wind off her face. She had goggles, adapted from her Goosey Gander helmet, but kept them up on her forehead for the moment.

  Kali trod in Bainter’s tracks, trying to make none of her own. A bandit trick her father had taught her. His fiefdom ranged from fertile river valleys to snow-capped mountains.

  Making herself light, Amy tiptoed, leaving only the barest impression. The wing-like underarm webbing of her coat caught the air, but she didn’t soar. For the moment, she wanted to keep her eyes on the ground.

  Soon there were tall trees around them. By day and in other seasons these were the woods. By night and in winter, this was a forest.

  Amy had written off Smudge’s stories about Bainter being head of a white slavery ring as fables, no more credible than the theory that Digger Downs had brass bones. Smudge had also told Amy three entirely different, contradictory yarns about Mauve Mary – each time, with a quivering, infectious conviction.

  Was Bainter’s vile villainy harder to accept as fact than Palgraive’s brain maggot? She only had Paule’s word for that, but believed it. Or the Purple, which she’d visited. If she talked about that, people who hadn’t been there would think she was a lunatic.

  Far from the lights of School, they only had Kali’s torch to go by. She held fingers over the lens so the shining wouldn’t be obvious if Bainter happened to look behind him.

  Amy remembered Hale’s talk of eyes in the woods.

  …and those famous wolves.

  The high wall didn’t run through the woods. The bounds were marked by flags hung from trees, but they hadn’t been maintained since the first snowfall. Even in more congenial weather, few abscondees scarpered this way. Braving broken glass on top of the wall or shingle bays which could be cut off by tides were more sensible options.

  Everything here was dead, frozen or sleeping out the winter.

  Except the things that could hurt you. They never slept, they couldn’t die and they didn’t care about the cold.

  A huge white thing loomed up ahead of them. A face leered down.

  Kali played the torch beam up a swollen white body. It was Captain Freezing, remade again. Did the snowman lurk this far in the woods to lure poor, deluded de Vere into danger?

  Bainter’s tracks looped around Captain Freezing, keeping well out of reach of the twiggy fingers stuck into the bulbous ends of its icy arms.

  The snowman’s shako was as big as a pillar box. />
  ‘Where did he get a hat that size?’ Amy asked.

  ‘I last saw that lid on a giant toy soldier in the godawful Waltzes From Wiener-Schnitzel Land pageant two terms back,’ said Kali. ‘No clue how it got out here.’

  They hurried on.

  Up ahead, between the black bars of the trees, they saw lamplight. Muffled voices came on the wind.

  Amy and Kali stopped.

  Bainter and Beauty were meeting other parties.

  ‘We get any closer, they’ll rumble us,’ said Kali.

  ‘Maybe not,’ said Amy. ‘If there’s fuss, chuck some pebbles over that way to distract them. I can get to a better eavesdropping spot.’

  Making herself float, Amy rose until she thumped into the lowest branches of a spreading tree. Snow dislodged and showered on Kali, who shook it out of her hair.

  Amy sprung from branch to branch, from tree to tree, getting better at it each time. She stopped slamming against branches and began to push herself through the air with some agility. Her wings filled and she was able to glide a little, pushing against the shaking branches to propel herself through the space between the trees.

  She ascended, almost to the treetops.

  It was colder up here, but snow wasn’t falling. She lost feeling in her face and her mask felt stuck to her skin.

  This was as near to flying as she had ever managed.

  If she let go of the trees, would she drift upwards until she froze solid and plummeted to shatter on the earth? She extended her mind’s grip like an anchor-line and hauled herself on that.

  She couldn’t deny it. She was flying.

  Suddenly she couldn’t feel the cold. Exhilaration warmed her. For a moment, she knew what it was like to be literally above it all.

  Nothing was keeping her on the ground.

  On a moonlit night the view would be spectacular. Now, with heavy cloud cover, she saw only twin funnels of light ahead and the tiny glint of Kali’s torch.