by Connie Glynn
‘Because …’ she repeated, ‘I’m the princess of Maradova.’
11
The tension in the room was so thick Lottie was sure she would suffocate under it. The awkward silence as the two stared each other down was only broken by the soft ticking of the clock above the door. Ellie’s eyes were ablaze. She was truly furious and Lottie could feel the intense anger radiating towards her – that same storm she’d felt when she first saw Ellie at the school entrance. She willed herself to say something, anything to break the oppressive silence before it consumed them both.
‘I tried to tell them it wasn’t true.’
Ellie laughed humourlessly. ‘You are so selfish – it’s unbelievable.’
Lottie flinched as if she’d been slapped. That stung. She prided herself on being kind, on being welcoming, helpful. Selfishness was the exact opposite of her nature. She hung her head in shame. ‘I’m so –’
‘I bet it didn’t even cross your mind once what this means for the real princess, did it?’
She couldn’t argue with that; it hadn’t. Not once had it occurred to her that the Maravish princess might actually be at Rosewood. She’d thought it all sounded like a fairy tale. She suddenly felt exceptionally stupid, not just because of her lack of thought but the idea that she could ever pass as an actual princess. A feeling she had never experienced had settled firmly in the bottom of her stomach, hard and cold, and wound its way up through her chest and caught in her throat. She was truly horrified. By not clearing up the misunderstanding as soon as it happened she’d been partly responsible for the rumour spreading. She prayed that this wouldn’t affect Ellie’s attempt at a normal life.
Ellie stared at her, but Lottie couldn’t think of any way to make it better.
‘I’m sorry. I tried to tell people it wasn’t true, but it got out of hand.’ Somehow the words felt empty and useless.
Ellie grunted in furious exasperation. She grabbed the photo of her and the mystery boy from her bedside table and sank into her bed, shoulders hunched over in a protective little shell. Her raggedy hair covered her face as she stared intently at the picture. Lottie wondered if the boy in the photo was her boyfriend.
Ellie sighed deeply, placing the picture frame back on the table. ‘I’m not going to tell anyone it’s not you,’ she said firmly.
Lottie was incredibly confused. If Ellie was saying this to make her feel better, then she had to stop her – she couldn’t face that much guilt.
‘You can if you want to. I know I should have tried harder to correct everyone.’ Lottie sat opposite her on her own bed with a new feeling of resolution. ‘You can shame me as much as you want; I completely deserve it.’
‘No, you don’t understand,’ replied Ellie. ‘I’m not even mad at you. I’m mad at the situation but …’ She looked down at the photo again. ‘This might actually be a blessing.’
Lottie blinked a few times, trying to understand how this could be a good thing for either of them.
‘Maybe –’ Ellie paused and took a deep breath – ‘maybe it’ll be OK if we keep pretending it’s you.’
‘What?’ There was no way she’d heard that right.
Ellie responded with her usual little side smile.
Lottie quickly composed herself. ‘I mean, if that’s really what you want?’ The idea that she would actually get to pretend to be a princess sounded like a story she’d made up as a kid.
This caused Ellie to burst into fits of laughter. Lottie was starting to get the feeling she might be better suited for the title Princess of Mood Swings.
Ellie wiped the tears forming at the sides of her eyes as she snorted. ‘It’s just so funny. I would do anything to be in your position, Lottie. All I’ve ever wanted is to not be a princess … And then I end up getting roomed with a girl who’s obsessed with them.’ She let out a long breath. ‘You know before I came to Rosewood I’d only met twenty people in my life? Twenty!’
Lottie’s jaw literally dropped at this statement.
‘Wow!’ she said in amazement. ‘How is that possible?’
Ellie chewed her lip and began fiddling with her locket. ‘I’m the sole heir to the throne of Maradova, but I never wanted to be announced or play the part of the perfect princess so … the only option was to hide me away in the palace until one day I’d be ready to take on my role.’
Lottie listened with fascination, her heart aching for the lonely little girl Ellie.
‘Don’t get me wrong. I’d sneak out sometimes, but that started some rumours and my parents had to put me on lockdown. So here I am, fifteen years old, and only the most trusted members of the royal Maravish household even know what I look like.’ Ellie didn’t look up as she finished speaking.
Lottie had thought her life had been challenging, but at least she’d been free to make her own choices.
‘I’m not obsessed … with princesses, that is.’ Lottie said the words before she had even processed them. ‘I know it probably seems really childish but –’ Lottie paused but she owed Ellie the truth considering she’d just shared so much with her – ‘it’s my mum. See … I got this tiara from my mum before she passed away … and she taught me this silly phrase that I say to remind myself to be like a princess when I’m anxious or frightened.’ She was sure Ellie was going to laugh at her, but she couldn’t stop herself. ‘I say “I will be kind, I will be brave, I will be unstoppable”. And then everything seems clearer and I’m OK again …’ Lottie looked away, scared to see the reaction on Ellie’s face at her childish mantra.
‘It’s not silly,’ Ellie said sternly, surprising her. ‘You’re not silly, Lottie – you’re very smart.’
Lottie looked up to see Ellie looking at her with complete and utter candour. She felt the sting of tears prick at the corner of her eyes. She hadn’t realized how much she needed the validation until she got it.
‘Thank you,’ she said softly.
Ellie gave her a little reassuring smile before lying back down again. She absent-mindedly began tracing circles in the air until she abruptly stopped and turned to Lottie again.
‘Eleanor Prudence Wolfson,’ she said quietly. ‘That’s my real name. Not a lot of people know it.’
Lottie looked at her properly then, as if they were meeting for the first time.
‘It’s lovely to meet you, Princess Wolfson.’
Ellie grinned at her, clearly finding it funny to hear Lottie using her title, but her face slowly turned pensive again and Lottie waited calmly for her to unravel her thoughts.
‘What I don’t understand –’ Ellie paused, rubbing her forehead in consideration – ‘I don’t understand how anyone figured out I was coming to Rosewood. We didn’t even tell the headmaster who I really am.’
Lottie didn’t know what to say. She just assumed everyone knew everything here; they were all so inherently gossipy.
‘Anastacia said she heard a rumour, but I don’t know how the rest of the school knew or where the rumour started. She promised she didn’t tell anyone.’
‘Do you trust her?’
Lottie took a moment to ask herself if she really did and found there was hesitation in her gut. ‘I would like to trust her, but I don’t know who else could have told everyone.’ She hated playing the blame game but she couldn’t think of any other logical explanation.
Ellie bit her lip before turning over to look up at the ceiling. ‘It’s probably nothing to worry about.’
Something told Lottie that she definitely didn’t believe that.
12
It was a testament to how occupied Lottie was with studying and fixing her less-than-perfect maths grades that she didn’t remember the ominous book message until a week later. She was sitting with Binah and Ellie in the small oak-lined Stratus library that was open to Stratus students and registered guests. It was shortly before the 9:30 p.m. curfew and Lottie was writing her first letter to Ollie. Most students were still thrilled by the idea of Lottie being the secret Maravish princess so th
e cosy Stratus library was a pleasant retreat from all the whispering.
Dear Ollie (the resident troublemaker of St Ives),
My personal PO Box is very easy to use so I’ll be expecting lots of letters from you and your mum, please. The address is: Ivy 221A, Rosewood Hall, Oxfordshire.
You will truly laugh at me when you find out about the pickle I’ve got myself into. I promise I’ll tell you all about it when I come home for Christmas. Give your dog a cuddle for me and make sure your mum knows I’m doing really well here.
Miss you so much,
Lottie
PS You can help yourself to the stash of chocolate hidden under the floorboard in my room but only if you check up on what Beady’s doing to the house.
‘Big puffy rats make Dora always scared.’ Lottie looked up from her letter to see Binah leaning over Ellie’s shoulder, the two of them staring intently down at the numbers on the paper. ‘That’s how I always remembered it,’ explained Binah.
Ellie laughed in response to Binah’s odd statement. ‘I suppose,’ Ellie said, rubbing her chin as she filled in another number on the paper. ‘I just always remembered the calculation order as BPRMDAS. I never bothered with cheats.’
‘It’s not a cheat!’ Binah protested. ‘It’s mathematical mnemonics.’
Ellie gave Binah a teasing smile that led to giggles from both of them. They had quickly bonded over a love of puzzles, particularly numerical ones. Although Lottie couldn’t understand what they were talking about half the time, she loved watching them get enthusiastic about numbers.
Binah’s face turned pouty and she reached into her bag. ‘Ellie, you’re banned from teasing me until you crack my code.’ She laid a piece of paper down on the table that was filled with complex equations. Lottie watched in fascination as Ellie’s cockiness melted.
x1= .92*x12
x2=(x1+4)/3
x3=(x1+1)/2
x4=x3
x5=(3/4)x3
x6=(x8-x9)^2
x7=(x1+x10)-x3*x4/x5
x8=x9-1
x9=(x4+x5)
x10=ROOT(x5)+ROOT(x12)+2i^2
x11=x1-x2+x3-x4+x5-x6-x7+x8-x9+2*x10
x12=((x4-x3)-5)^2
Lottie had never seen anything so confusing in her life. She could not even begin to imagine how to solve something so complicated.
‘I made this puzzle especially for you, Ellie, and I have a little something for you both to go with it.’ Binah reached into her bag again and placed two blue leather-bound boxes on the table, a cool, iridescent sheen twinkling on their surface. Ellie immediately went to open hers.
‘Uh-uh-uh!’ Binah tutted, pulling the box out of her reach. ‘Neither of you is allowed to open these boxes until Ellie figures out this puzzle.’
At this, Ellie pouted with indignation.
‘Well, you could,’ Binah added, ‘but it would be a futile endeavour because they won’t make sense until you’ve unlocked the message.’
Lottie was relieved to see that Ellie seemed equally perplexed by this statement.
‘Message?’ asked Lottie in bewilderment.
Binah gave her a knowing smile.
‘Yes, the coded message in the maths problem.’
Ellie and Lottie looked at each other again.
‘How am I supposed to decode the message?’ asked Ellie, frowning.
‘You’ll find a way,’ Binah replied with a little giggle, delighted at their baffled expressions. ‘Oh, and one more thing. I know how much you love fairy tales, Lottie, so …’
She pulled a beautiful red hardback book out of her bag. A large wolf’s head was engraved on the cover. Across the top in big gold letters it read LITTLE RED RIDING HOOD.
Lottie gasped, the memory of the ‘gift’ from her first day flooding back: The Company of Wolves.
Binah looked confused at Lottie’s expression. ‘Is something the matter?’
‘No, no, not at all! It’s gorgeous – thank you so much.’
Lottie was suddenly desperate to get back to their room and show Ellie the creepy message. She took the book and gave Binah her best reassuring smile. ‘I just realized how close to curfew it is. We’d better get back before we get in trouble.’
This wasn’t exactly a lie. Lottie really was terrified of breaking any rules, especially after their little run-in with Professor Devine. She couldn’t imagine her being so lenient a second time.
Binah nodded, but Ellie’s expression remained sceptical so Lottie gave her a quick look to signal she’d explain when they got back to their room. They said their goodbyes and as soon as Binah was out of sight Ellie turned to Lottie with an eyebrow raised.
‘What’s so urgent?’ she asked, struggling to keep the excitement out of her tone.
Lottie took a deep breath before she spoke. ‘Ellie …’ she began, nervous of how she’d react. ‘There’s something I need to show you.’
‘You got this on the first night? And you didn’t think to say anything! That was a whole week ago!’ Ellie’s voice came out a tight-lipped screech as she read the gold text inside the cover of the book.
Lottie looked away sheepishly. ‘Well … I was kind of worried you might have put it there yourself.’ Ellie choked out a laugh and Lottie quickly corrected herself. ‘Just at first … because you seemed so grumpy … and … it was before I knew you were, you know … a princess.’
The laughter stopped as Ellie stuck out her bottom lip in thoughtful agreement.
‘Whoever did it was obviously trying to intimidate you … me … I mean, the princess, into reacting. It was an experiment. We need to find out who did this,’ she said abruptly, closing the book with a loud thud. ‘Whoever they are; they’re probably also responsible for telling the whole school.’
Lottie nodded; she’d been thinking the same thing. Together they sat on the floor and started thinking of potential suspects who could have left the book until they had fifteen names. All three Ivy heads of year and the six Ivy prefects from Years Eleven to Thirteen, as they all had access to the dorms without looking suspicious. Then all the people Lottie had met on her first day, who thought she’d said she was from another country: Raphael, Saskia, Lola, Micky, Binah and Anastacia.
‘Well, it definitely can’t be Lola or Micky because they didn’t know until Anastacia told them,’ Lottie said defensively, ‘and Saskia didn’t even meet me until before the fireworks, and there’s no way the Year Eleven head of Conch House could go by unnoticed.’
Ellie nodded but was not really paying attention as she started flicking through The Company of Wolves again.
‘Ellie?’
‘It’s a library book,’ she said flatly.
‘It’s … what?’
Ellie handed the book back to her and Lottie opened the back cover to see the little tear-away marks where a library-ticket holder had previously been.
‘Ellie!’ she exclaimed in excitement. ‘You’re a genius! All we need to do is find out which students accessed the main library on the first day.’ She grabbed Ellie and hugged her.
Ellie returned it by softly patting her back, clearly not used to such sudden displays of affection.
Lottie quickly pulled away feeling embarrassed, a hot pink blush creeping on to her cheeks. ‘Right, anyway, we can do that first thing tomorrow.’
‘Tomorrow?’ Ellie’s face shifted into a mischievous smile. ‘There’s no way I’m waiting that long.’
‘But it’s past curfew,’ Lottie replied in confusion.
Ellie’s face turned into a full-on grin, baring her teeth like a wild animal. ‘That’s why they invented sneaking out.’
13
Lottie could not believe she was doing this. She’d always prided herself on being a paragon of good behaviour. She’d never had a single black mark on a school report or anything close to a pink slip and yet here she was, dressed in a black shirt and jeans that she’d had to borrow from Ellie, climbing down the side of their balcony to break into the library. Lottie had protested, but Ellie
declared she would be going whether Lottie came or not.
‘And look at the vines on the wall,’ Ellie had said, ‘they’re practically begging us to sneak out.’
So once again Lottie found herself doing something completely out of character, overcome by a peculiar thrill that felt both foreign and familiar all at once.
The lights outside the dorm room were dimmed after curfew, but the bright full moon lit up the grounds, leaving them feeling exposed on the path. They knew that the on-campus bodyguards would be watching the gate, so they would have to figure out another way round.
‘We could walk back through the woods, under the bridge and back round to the front entrance?’ Ellie whispered. Lottie shook her head. There would definitely be surveillance at the front entrance too and, if they were going to do this, she was not letting them get caught. Professor Devine would definitely not forgive such a transgression.
‘No, we’ll go through the woods.’ She conjured up the map of the school in her head and the secret tunnel she’d found on the first day through the glitter cloud. She wondered if the tunnel might lead down towards the bridge. ‘I might know a secret way into the school.’
Ellie looked at her with genuine shock, then gave her the little side smile that had Lottie feeling like a proud puppy.
‘You sure do love to surprise me,’ she said with a hushed laugh.
Lottie blushed at the compliment and quickly moved forward, signalling for Ellie to follow her while she explained about the tunnel she’d found. They ducked into the shrubbery and crawled to a clear spot before legging it into the woods. Lottie had not prepared for how intensely dense the woods would be at night and thoughts of werewolves and ghosts began invading her mind. The Rose Wood was mostly untouched with little in the way of a path for guidance, so they had to stay close enough to the school not to get lost but far enough away to avoid getting caught. Ellie strode over the moss and exposed roots of the oak trees fearlessly, as if this was nothing more than a stroll in the park. Something barked in the distance, making Lottie jump and grab Ellie’s arm for protection.
