by Kim Newman
After prep one night, Amy went back to her cell to find Frecks sporting full Black. She was looking herself up and down in the mirror inside her wardrobe door. Though cut from the same pattern, the black blazer seemed tighter in the waist than the grey. The glossy material caught the light. Dark rainbows rippled across Frecks’ lapels.
Kali lolled on her bed in green silk pajamas, chewing gum and reading Black Mask. She looked away as Amy stepped into the room. Since the unmasking of Red Flame, Kali and Amy were on the outs. Amy felt lasting, urgent shame, but was also ticked off with her friend. Kali made no attempt to see things from Amy’s point of view. Really, what was she supposed to do? She had only suspected Kali’s father. It wasn’t until the skirmish over Beauty at the Runnel and the Flute that she’d known for certain he was up to his beard in the Hooded Conspiracy. Besides, Kali was always going on about how she would bump off the old man when she had the chance. It wasn’t as if she didn’t believe him complicit in all manner of wickedness, not least the death of her mother. Still, Amy nagged herself, uselessly…
She should have told Kali her father was behind her kidnapping.
Then they’d still be friends.
Frecks going Black wasn’t going to help dissipate the poisonous atmosphere either.
Light Fingers sat in her rocking chair, embroidering a green shawl with moth-wing patterns. She rocked harder than usual, repeatedly stabbing the cloth with her tiny needle as if she were doing it harm. The chair had a creak which became a whine if Light Fingers was in a mood.
‘It’s just new kit,’ said Frecks, raising her voice over the rocking. ‘Not as if I’m going to take up skipping like a loon. Though I could do with shedding some of this unwanted avoirdupois.’
Frecks had been sold on Black when Martine of the Fourth, one of Desdemona’s first converts, said it was slimming. Frecks was infected with the belief she was growing thick in the midriff. The notion had been maliciously planted by the cunning Viscount Ralph. Frecks had spent a martyr’s Christmas spurning the mince pies, plum pudding and chocolate bon-bons her brother cruelly scoffed in front of her.
Now, she smoothed her shiny skirt tight across her hips and was satisfied.
‘…and, one thing you have to say for the Black Skirts is…’
The whining creak stopped. Light Fingers tossed her embroidery aside and pushed out of the cell.
‘I don’t know,’ said Frecks. ‘Some people are getting tetchy-touchy…’
‘In spades, sister,’ said Kali, glaring pointedly at Amy.
Black might not make Frecks look thinner, but she was more commanding in her new uniform. Amy saw how her friend was changing. After leaving School, she would be reborn. Debutantes didn’t have names like Frecks. When presented at court, she’d be Lady Serafine.
A stunner, but cold.
And Kali was a princess. Her people owned palaces and commanded hordes when the forebears of Alexandra Vansittart and Sidonie Gryce were painted blue and living in mud huts. She would be a bandit empress.
Lips red as blood could easily look like lips red with blood.
The cell had been cosy, not just for its small fire, piles of quilts and the scent of Kali’s herbal gaspers… but for the warmth of shared friendship. That seemed to be chilling. No daring night-rescue or flight into masked adventure could put magic oil back in a broken lamp. The Moth Club was in danger of dissolving.
‘I’ll go and see what’s the matter,’ Amy said.
‘As you please,’ said Frecks, distracted by the way the sharp shadow of her tilted hat brought out the sparkle in her eye. ‘Any de-wettening of the blanket would be appreciated.’
Amy went out into the passageway.
The low, soft patter of the skipping rhyme came from Inchfawn’s cell. Surely, there was no jumping in there? She looked through the open door. Inchfawn and Frump sat on a bed, patting themselves and each other in a complicated pattern while reciting the ‘ants in your pants’ mantra. Both were Black Skirts.
Shivering, Amy passed on.
Light Fingers was at the end of the corridor, by a window, face turned away. In the dark reflection, her cheeks were wet.
‘Emma,’ said Amy…
Christian names were little-used at Drearcliff – saved for moments of intimacy. This seemed to qualify.
Light Fingers knuckled away her tears and turned.
They hugged quickly. Amy knew what the trouble was.
‘They don’t even see it,’ she said. ‘Frecks and Kali. For them, it’s just a new hat. They don’t mean anything by it.’
‘The Black Skirts don’t have Unusuals,’ said Light Fingers.
Amy was startled. She hadn’t thought of that.
Besides, it wasn’t altogether true. ‘What about Rayne? She started this, and she’s… certainly not Ordinary.’
‘But is she really an Unusual? Or something else entirely?’
Amy agreed. There needed to be a new phylum for Rayne. She didn’t fit into the way things had been. She’d changed School, as she said she would. A terrifying achievement. How had it happened, with the whips and Swan and Tradition and the Rules all against her?
What was Antoinette Rowley Rayne?
‘There are Unusuals in Black,’ said Amy, remembering. ‘Gould of the Fourth. With the fur and fangs.’
‘She wants to be Ordinary, though – the way your mother wants you to be. If Gould could give it up, she would. Before you came, she rowed with Headmistress. From Fourth Form on, Unusuals take personal tuition with Swan. You’ve heard her talk about her cygnets. We’re like an invisible House, spread across the five you can see…’
This was news to Amy. Sometimes, she forgot how much she’d missed by not being at Drearcliff since the First Form.
‘Gould denied her Attributes and Abilities and swallowed all the Infractions the whips could stain her with, but still didn’t give in. She files her nails and shaves where she can, though there’s not much she can do about the teeth. She had an epic bust-up with Marsh last year, which started when she called Marsh a “fish-fluke”. Gould trounced her on the beach, scratching and biting, but Gill Girl dragged her into the sea and nearly drowned her. The Black Skirts make Gould Ordinary, the way they make Frecks thin or Inchfawn not a pariah.’
‘Frecks is thin.’
‘Not in her head, where it counts.’
Light Fingers was more rattled than Amy had thought.
‘When Mum and Dad got nabbed,’ her friend said, ‘I saw what Ordinaries were really like. You’ve heard Headmistress’s speech about her cygnets. The Unusual Girls of Drearcliff. Our place in the magnificent century. She’s right, in part. Some of us will turn out like the Aviatrix, Ghost Lantern Girl or that prig Blackfist. Biffing rotters, kissing babies and worshipped like little Gods.’
Amy understood why Light Fingers was cynical.
‘We’re not all nice people,’ she continued. ‘We’re no better than anyone. I think even approved Unusuals are just afraid. They make a show of being helpful and vigilant against lawbreakers because they know what’d happen to them otherwise. Jail is just the start of it. My parents didn’t do much harm, but got slapped down hard. Swan happily witters on about Lucinda Tregellis-d’Aulney, Grace Ki and Monica Bright. She’s less keen on bringing up Ligeia Theleme, Mary Mourdur or the Slink.’
Amy knew who all these women were.
‘They’re Drearcliff Old Girls too, Amy. They were cygnets once. The Slink got the better of Dr Shade when that airship crashed into Mount St Michael – no matter what the papers say. Her real name is Molly Whittle. Desdemona House Captain in 1913. Same year Shiner Bright was Head Girl. They’re in the class photograph together. They were friends. The Slink slept in our dorm, Amy! Now, she’s the Most Wanted Woman in the World. They’ll never catch her! She’s like Jimmy O’Goblins, Anthony Zenith or Sally Nikola’s father. Unusuals who don’t try to please anyone but themselves. The ones they’re afraid of. I don’t want to be like them, I don’t even want to be like Mu
m and Dad… but what if they don’t give us a choice?’
‘Who won’t give us a choice?’ asked Amy.
‘The Ordinaries. Seeing inside their minds drove Imogen Ames out of hers, you know. The vile things she told me… even about my friends, our friends. I didn’t want to believe her then. Now I know it’s all true. Abilities didn’t make Ames happy.’
‘…and it shouldn’t make us miserable! That was her, not us. Besides, like I said, Frecks and Kali only see new hats and socks that pass for stockings. They’re not going to take up skipping… and, if they did, what harm could it do? It began as a craze in Viola, remember? Something for wets and babies. As soon as spring comes along, the kerfuff will pass and Rayne’ll be on her own again.’
Light Fingers shook her head, sadly wise. ‘It’s not skipping, Amy. It’s drill.’
Amy shivered. Light Fingers had seen it too.
‘D’you know why armies make soldiers march up and down? Whole regiments of men doing the same pointless thing at the same time?’
‘For parades.’
‘No. It’s so that they can fight as one man. A lot of bodies. One purpose. To conquer, to kill, to devour. Like…?’
‘Ants,’ Amy said.
‘Exactly,’ Light Fingers said. ‘Like soldier ants.’
XI: Becoming a Ghost
EVERY DAY, SCHOOL grew blacker. Those three-girl Black Skirt clusters – or larger groups, six or nine or even twelve – were everywhere, on patrol. The Gym and the Quad were given over entirely to skipping groups. The ‘ants in your pants’ chant was a constant thrum. Amy didn’t even consciously hear it any more, but felt it in her stomach, her bones, her teeth. Like the weather, the skipping continued well after its exhaustion as a topic of conversation.
Should Amy number herself among the living ghosts of Drearcliff Grange? Along with Inchfawn, Palgraive, the Crowninshield sisters, Shrimp Harper and Dora Paule? Not expelled, but shunned.
These ghosts had broken the Code of Break. If anything, the unofficial rules were more exacting and merciless. Infractions weren’t forgotten after a Heel-scrubbing or ten transcribed encyclopaedia pages. The stain would stay with a girl for her whole school life and beyond. Transgressors were as dead. The Crowninshields knocked about together. Palgraive and Shrimp were so peculiar they’d had no friends to lose. Paule walked her path uncaring and insensible, secretly Head Girl of the Purple yet ignored on this Earth.
However, Rayne changed even this.
Inchfawn and the Crowninshields went Black and their sins were washed away and forgotten… except by Greys, and they didn’t count. Amy saw Inchfawn and a newly Black Smudge together in the library, doing History prep. Smudge knew about Inchfawn, knew for a fact what she had done, but could now fib even to herself and let the traitor back in. All Black Skirts together and no mention of the past – like in the French Foreign Legion or General Flitcroft’s Regiment of the Damned.
The Black Skirts would not take Amy.
Which was as she wanted it, only every day there were more of them. Amy had to give up Miss Borrodale’s monthly Arthropod Discussion Group when it went Black Only. Like Digger Downs and Ponce Bainter, Fossil had an ant-badge pinned to her gown, signifying alignment with the Black Skirts. In lessons, the remaining Greys went unnoticed… carelessly marked down on prep, never called to speak. Amy’s arm hurt from holding up her hand often and long without being asked to speak.
The ways of the Staff were mysterious and beyond understanding, but Amy sensed the schism had invaded the teachers’ common-room. Miss Kaye and Miss Borrodale, youngest of the mistresses, had been friends last term, but now sat apart. Each was brittle when the other was mentioned. Amy reckoned Miss Kaye disposed to the Grey, but feared she was isolated. Eventually, Mrs Edwards would return and Miss Kaye’s spell at Drearcliff would be over.
Headmistress was seen only in Chapel and then chose not to speak.
Bainter sermonised often about the bold, electric spirit sweeping School and how fine a thing it was. Amy remembered his eagerness to cut off a girl’s face and seethed whenever she saw him. Had he recognised her behind the mask of Kentish Glory? He had seen Kali’s face that night and it wasn’t exactly a secret that Amy shared a cell with her. Thwarting ghastly sacrifice in the woods hadn’t checked the inexorable rise of Ponce Bainter. Red Flame and the Professor – whoever she might be – were still in the game somewhere, and Amy had nightmares about ‘the Other Ones’. Bainter and the Hooded Conspirators knew something about the Purple, but she didn’t think they’d ever been there – which put her one up on them. She had no one to talk with about her worries. Kali shut up when she tried to raise the matter. Beauty was mute and now wore Black. Was the conversion her way of assuring she wasn’t dragged back to the Runnel and the Flute?
Bainter droned on from the lectern.
Dr Swan sat tight-lipped throughout his infernal nonsense. Amy didn’t understand the shift of power. Surely, Headmistress was unassailable? Keys – who wore an ant badge – served as gatekeeper, warding off petitions of complaint. Amy felt bitterly let down. Swan was supposed to be High Priestess of the Unusuals. How could she let this Black Skirt thing take hold?
Or was Rayne the Most Unusual of All?
Rayne went around as if she were still on her tour of inspection, as if she’d bought the school. Miss Kaye let slip that the non-Black Skirt teachers referred to the girl as ‘demi-Napoleon’ so Amy wasn’t the only one who had noticed. Rayne was always flanked by short, stout, earnest Rintoul and tall, slim, droll Beeke.
If Rayne was the Queen Ant, Prompt and Beeke were Chancellor and Jester.
Amy thought again about Boney. The concept of a personal Boney. It had struck her before that Rayne might be hers.
Queen Ant against Kentish Glory.
Rayne’s triad was usually accompanied by a three-girl praetorian guard. The Cerberus. Henry Buller was dog-head in the middle. Either side were Gould and Crowninshield II. Gould let her nails grow out. Crowninshield II did tricks with a skipping rope. Even whips daren’t cross the Cerberus. A week after refusing to make the Star-Gazing Society Black Only, Miss Bedale suddenly quit Drearcliff. Word went round that a visit from the Cerberus persuaded her to pack her bags.
One Tuesday in late February, while hurrying down to breakfast, Amy saw de Vere, wearily trudging out to destroy yet another incarnation of Captain Freezing. As the Sixth’s lonely campaign dragged on like the Thirty Years War, her supporters had fallen away. Amy assumed everyone had decided to leave de Vere and the Captain to their private duel. Only, this morning de Vere met the Cerberus returning from their own snowman-smashing expedition. Buller had the Captain’s shako speared on a hockey stick. Gould gnashed her fangs around his oversized carrot-nose. Crowninshield dragged a prisoner, trussed up with skipping ropes.
Dilys Frost, a Desdemona Fifth. Her cell-mates called her the Frost.
It transpired that the captured girl was an Unusual who had been raising Captain Freezing from the dead every night. The Frost could command snow to stand up by itself and take shape. Apparently, her Ability was for manipulating ice, not making it – so the trick only came into play in winter.
The name should have been a tell-tale, Amy supposed. Tearful at being found out, the Frost claimed the Captain was as much to blame as she. He called to her in dreams, demanding she use her peculiar sympathy with ice and snow to summon him again and again. She tried to say sorry to her House Sister, but was met with a flinty glare. The battle had exhausted them both.
The Frost had begun the term with a white dash in her dark hair. The streak spread with each new incarnation of the Captain. Now her hair was almost completely white, with a dark dash.
The next day, de Vere went Black. Frost – lumbered with a Major Infraction that was almost an afterthought – was shunned even by Greys, even by Unusuals.
‘They want us to be alone,’ Light Fingers told Amy after Lights Out, whispering so Frecks and Kali wouldn’t hear. ‘Each of us, alone. Like Shrim
p Harper. Like Daffy Dora. Like the Frost.’
Amy lay in her bed, unable to sleep, on the verge of floating. She imagined she was pinned down by tight bands across her chest. Her head ached and she couldn’t stop thinking.
She was fed up with Light Fingers going on and on as if pitchfork-and-torch mobs were coming for Unusuals in the next five minutes. But she also hotly resented Frecks’ casual assurance that the Black Skirt thing was nothing to fuss over and Kali’s meaningful, lazy-lidded cold shouldering. She hated that she and her friends were at daggers drawn. She wished people wouldn’t keep doing foolish things which made bad situations worse.
The Black Skirts were smug about their triumph. The Cerberus were heroines, even to girls they had picked on for years. Frost looked like a monster.
The Frost had driven de Vere crackers. Girls like her needed to be reined in before they became the next Slink or Adept Mother Theleme. By being selfish or stupid, Unusuals could make the pogrom Light Fingers was obsessed with much more likely. The ice-witch’s explanation for Captain Freezing was generally ignored. Most Ordinaries thought Frost just wouldn’t own up, but Amy wasn’t sure. An Ability could be like a different creature, nestled inside the mind, forever seeking freedom to run riot. Shrimp couldn’t help sucking the air out of a room. Marsh felt the call of the sea in her gills. Though she’d deny it now, Gould’s claws sharpened and bled when the moon grew full.
Paule was more and more in the Purple. She wandered about School, muttering as if trying to learn a complicated mnemonic. At Break, she picked up a train of Firsts and Seconds who tried to tease or taunt her with chants or impertinent questions. When Amy saw this, she shooed the pests away. Like midges, they swarmed back again. Paule, poor thing, didn’t seem to notice, either her tormentors or her rescuer. With Gryce a spent force, her former pet was safe game for vengeance-seeking victims of the Murdering Heathens. Amy suspected Paule could, if she put her whole mind to it, be more dangerous than Frost or Harper. If she ever woke up angry, she might whisk all the midges off to the Purple to be supper for the realm’s unimaginable denizens.
