The Crickhowell School for the Muses

by Waxman, Rachel

  He nodded slowly. “Do come in.” He motioned Awen into the room, closing the door behind her. “I suppose you did not have much time to review that piece of music there.” He motioned toward the sheet of paper in Awen’s hand. “I had hoped to hold off on teaching you how to read it until next week, but it looks like Rosaline has other plans for you.” He paused for a moment. “Well then, come now.” He walked to the piano and patted the bench.

  Awen sat, but he remained standing. “The song I gave you yesterday can wait for a later lesson. Instead, let us take a look at this.” He motioned toward a sheet of paper sitting on the piano’s music stand.

  Awen studied the page before her, illuminated in the windowless room by the same crimson candle she had seen atop the piano yesterday. The page was thick and cream-colored, with rows of thin black lines, separated by white gaps. The little black music notes on this sheet were more organized than the ones on “A Rainbow,” spaced evenly, rising up on one line and descending on the other.

  “As you can see,” Mr. Whitewood said quietly, “there are five lines on a staff.” He pointed. “This note, here, is C.” He hit a white key on the piano. “The next, D.” He pressed the next white key. Mr. Whitewood worked across the page, pressing each corresponding key, and then moved on to the black ones, explaining the funny little sharp and flat signs that caused a note to shift up or down in pitch.

  Awen watched eagerly, completely still except for her eyes, which moved feverishly from the keyboard to the sheet of music, up and down, right and left across the page. She repeated his every word in her head, memorizing the names of the notes, the different values—note-heads empty or filled; numbers of flags on the stems; the shapes of the rests and the signs; curved lines and straight pointy ones; triangles and dots; letters: p, m, f, the symbols of another language.…

  She thought it was too much to remember—that it should have been too much to remember. But Awen’s mind was working like a dreamcatcher, the language of music passing through and sliding down the feathers, while everything else caught in the web.

  When Mr. Whitewood, who had sat down on the piano bench midway through the lesson, finished his explanation of the music, he fished out his golden pocket watch from the depths of his coat. “Well, it has been much more than an hour,” he said in his quiet yet faintly gravelly voice. “I don’t expect you to remember all of this.” He waved toward the music. “It is impossible to learn a new language in a day—yes, music is just that, another language. But, ah, it would not surprise me if you have indeed retained it all.” He smiled, shaking his head slightly. “Tomorrow, I suppose we can start on that song you have there.”

  Awen looked at him, wondering what it was he referred to. Her eyes did a quick survey of the room, as if the answer lay somewhere outside her. She spotted her sheet of music on the floor, upside down, having fallen out of her hand sometime during the lesson. She felt a warm blush in her cheeks and leaned over to pick it up, trying to hide her face. Now that the little dots made sense, she felt guilty for letting the music fall—as if she had dropped a bible.

  When Awen left her lesson this time, pulling open the heavy door with the different wood on each side, there were no surprises. No Rosaline falling into the room. Nobody listening at the wall.

  As Awen turned the corner into the hallway, the same swell of unexplained emotion—that mixture of excitement and anticipation—swirled about her stomach. But this time, there was another feeling, a more tangible one. Awen felt the closest thing to pride that she had since…well, this might have been the first time. Her life before Crickhowell had been fading away like grains of sand pouring out between dirty fingers, as if that life had never existed. Every sensation from those days had been erased by the white walls of the castle. Had she felt pride then, it would mean nothing now.

  A weird tingling sensation filled Awen’s chest, and for a moment she wondered if maybe she were walking in somebody else’s body—or, perhaps, in no body at all. She just floated along, moving so slowly that it seemed it could take half an hour to reach her room.

  As she drifted through the hallway, Awen looked down at the sheet of music just to make sure it all still made sense. The notes were in the same places, arranged in the same patterns—but they were different now. They held an answer to an unasked question, the solution to an undefined equation. She could understand their whisperings.

  Awen moved past the white doors and mysterious, unlabeled rooms, head still bent forward, eyes foggy with the music.

  “I see you are done with your lesson.…”

  Awen stopped. Her left foot hung in the air, ready for the next step. But Rosaline was standing inches in front of her, blocking the way. Frustration coursed through Awen; suddenly, she wanted to rip the page she was holding into tiny shreds and throw it in the woman’s face. It seemed Rosaline was always trailing her, always knew where she was. Awen cut her teeth into her bottom lip to keep from screaming.

  “You are supposed to be able to read music now, yes?”

  Awen narrowed her eyes, but then nodded. How had she known? Awen wondered if Rosaline had again listened in on her lesson.

  “Well then, turn around and walk back from where you came.” Rosaline pointed down the hallway.

  Awen looked up and focused her eyes on Rosaline’s chin, turning her head sideways in puzzlement.

  “No questions,” Rosaline huffed. “You had your lesson; now, obviously, you must practice.” Rosaline leaned over, grabbed Awen’s shoulders and whirled her roughly around to face the other way. “Follow me.” She walked briskly forward, past four white doors, finally stopping at one on the right-hand side of the hallway. It had no label etched above the door frame. She spun around to face Awen, who had not moved an inch. Rosaline raised her eyebrows. “How else do you expect you’ll get any better?”

  The tingly feeling, the excitement, the anticipation…it fizzled out like dissolving sugar. And Awen had no choice but to walk forward, toward that little white room.

  Seven

  At first, it was almost fun. Almost relaxing, almost enjoyable. It almost could have been something to look forward to.

  A little locked room. White. Wooden. A four-paned window that she never looked out of, and a scent of cedar that seemed to come from nowhere. There was a piano pushed up against the wall; it was old and bruised, but it worked. When the strings were struck, it sounded like they were gasping. But they sang nonetheless.

  It was almost right.

  Almost.

  But then, the hours got long. Three hours of practicing every afternoon, with only lunch to separate the practicing from the one-hour lesson. They were an innocent three hours, at first. But they became something different: six half-hours. Twelve quarters of an hour. One hundred and eighty minutes. Ten thousand eight hundred seconds. And finally, Rosaline would come and release her from the room.

  Singing had once been breathing. Now, after hours and hours of the same songs, the same notes, the same scales, the hidden patterns and the pitches and the discordant études—now, singing was strain. Singing was hoarseness. Singing was suffocation.

  The little white room. It was stifling.

  * * *

  Awen hit an A on the piano. She tried to match the pitch with her voice, but no sound came out. Her throat was dry. On fire. She forced out a cough and tried again. This time she sang the note easily, letting the sound gush forth until she was out of breath. She let her head fall down upon the piano keys; a crash, a dirty dissonance, roared back in protest. She did not hear it. Or, at least, she pretended not to.

  It was Monday. She had lost count of the number of days and now knew only their names, differentiated merely by prefixes, and the lack of lessons on Saturdays and Sundays. All the rest felt like the same mushy grey.

  The measured clanking of high-heeled shoes resounded from the hallway. Awen jerked her head up. She hit a key on the piano and sang it softly while trying to listen to the footsteps. She already knew it would be Rosali
ne, but had three hours really passed? She heard a key jiggling in the door. She looked up at it, then away, staring back at the piano in feigned concentration, all the while continuing to sing the same soft note, but her vision was blurring and the white keys were growing black and the black, white, until all congealed into grey. The door opened, and she pretended not to hear it. She sang more loudly. Fortissimo.

  “Awen.”

  She heard Rosaline calling to her through the noise.

  “Awen. Awen!” she shouted.

  Awen ceased singing and looked up.

  Though her voice may have suggested otherwise, Rosaline smiled. She leaned against the door, silent for a moment. “Today…” she eyed the silver pocket watch in her hand. “Well, in twenty minutes, as it happens to be, you will have your singing evaluation.” It seemed she had been waiting for this moment since Awen’s arrival at the school. Her black eyes gleamed so brilliantly, a greenish color appeared on the edges. Awen shivered as she thought about her own bright green eyes. She did not want any similarities between herself and Rosaline.

  “I have spoken with your teacher, and it seems you have been working on a piece. You will be singing that,” she said pointedly.

  Awen bit her lip at the mention of Mr. Whitewood. She had seen him that very morning for her lesson, and not once had he discussed anything about a singing evaluation. For a moment, she wondered if it was all a lie, a creation of Rosaline’s to get something from her. But there was a song she had been working on—working on to perfection. She had it memorized, even.

  “Well, come on, get up! This is a very important singing evaluation. And if you’re not up to our expectations…” Her eyes narrowed. Then she smiled, and the result was unnerving.

  Awen followed Rosaline out and down the hallway. What would normally be relief at leaving the confines of the little white room now turned to sweat that coated her palms. She wiped them on her white ruffled dress.

  Awen expected a long walk, leading to some secret room she had never seen before—perhaps to a dark chamber on the first floor of the castle. But Rosaline stopped not far past Awen’s bedroom door. Their destination was the big open room. The dance hall with the mirrored walls.

  Rosaline disappeared partway into the room, and Awen heard her speak some muffled words. Rosaline turned back and motioned. “We’re ahead of schedule. They’re ready for you.” She smiled enthusiastically. Then she disappeared back into the room, leaving Awen alone in the hallway.

  Awen thought it strange—Rosaline’s interest in her singing, and her seeming desire for her to do well. Coming from anyone else, it might have been comforting. Inspiring, even. But it was not either of these, and she did not quite know why. She thought about skipping the evaluation and running off somewhere. The idea was so terrifying, she almost laughed aloud.

  Awen forced a gulp of air into her lungs to quiet the queer crawling sensation in the bottom of her stomach. But it only made her face feel hot. She grabbed two handfuls of fabric from her dress to clean the sweat from her palms, letting the material crumple. She took another deep breath, which caught in her throat, and started toward the room.

  Every step was pondered, then placed. Right foot—toe, heel. Left foot—heel first. Right foot—flat. Left. Right. Left. And so, she came to the center of the room, mirrored all around like the hallway of a palace. She could see herself from all sides: her black hair pulled into a tight bun, but somehow still looking messy and frazzled; her bare feet. But it was her eyes that she could not look away from. Her green eyes, once radiant, were drained, hardly green anymore. Just a pale pastel, a foggy trace of color. She stared at them with such intensity, she could have fallen right in. But she knew her eyes could not catch her.

  “Awennn.” A drawling voice called her back. It was strikingly unfamiliar. A man’s voice.

  Awen slowly turned her head toward the speaker. He sat between two women at a small rectangular table pushed back to the far wall; each had a notebook and pencil. One of the women was Miss Nina. Awen felt a tightening in her chest. The other woman, she did not recognize. She had a blank expression.

  Rosaline leaned against the mirrored wall with her arms crossed over her chest, gazing intently at Awen. Despite their physical distance from her, the small assembly of evaluators had a suffocating presence. They gave off a thick fog that only Awen could sense.

  “Awen,” the man said again. He pronounced the word clearly, seeming to delight in the sound and the shape of it. He smiled as if it tasted like blueberry pie. “We are ready to hear you sing, if you are ready.” He repositioned his notebook and scribbled something on the page without looking down.

  “Yes, indeed,” Miss Nina added slowly, nodding. Her expression was tight and serious. “You must be evaluated,” she continued in her vague accent, “in order for us to determine if you are fit to be sent to your patron.”

  Awen pursed her lips and curled her toes. She let a shiver run through her legs, then pushed it away. She tilted her head slightly to look at the ceiling, somewhat surprised at the absence of a mirror. The crawling sensation in her stomach began to subside, but her palms were still sweaty. She thought about wiping them and decided against it.

  “Sooo…” The man’s voice was polite on the surface, but it seemed to hide a different kind of manner, a quality that barely leaked out from beneath its cover. “Do you have something for us?” he asked, his voice lifting upward in pitch. “A song to sing, I hope?”

  Awen noticed that the man was holding his breath. She pressed her tongue against her teeth and gave a sluggish half-nod.

  “Wonderful!” He let out a lungful of air and shifted comfortably in his chair. “Let’s hear it, then.” He leaned back, clasped his hands, and looked to the women seated on either side of him. Their serious expressions remained unchanged. Rosaline also did not move, but continued to watch Awen with her arms crossed.

  Awen opened her mouth, then snapped it shut. She shifted her feet. Breathed in. She meant to stand there silent for another moment—at least a minute—but her mouth opened against her will, responding to the words of the man before her rather than to her own command, and she began to sing. It was the song she had memorized for her lesson—wordless. Just vowels melting from one to the other.

  She watched the faces of her judges, and it took her a moment—six measures?—to realize how strange that was. Singing had always incapacitated her, in a way. She could only focus on the song, while everything else blurred into silver-blue fog. Now, she could read their faces, could observe the smile break through the blankness on the unknown woman’s face, the shine in Miss Nina’s black eyes, the unabashed smile on the man’s face. Rosaline had uncrossed her arms, and there was something decisive about her air, as if she had finally come to some secret, pivotal decision.

  Awen knew she was no longer able to lose herself completely in the music. Its power had withered in those endless hours locked in the little white room with the piano. Music was her hiding place no more.

  She stopped singing.

  For a moment, the room was silent. The man’s eyes were wide with surprise at Awen’s abrupt stop, and the women’s eyebrows were knitted in confusion. But the man relaxed as unexpectedly as Awen had ended her song, and he smiled, throwing his hands together in a brief yet loud series of claps. “Ah, brava, very nice. Very nice!”

  The women took his cue and smiled, but did not join in the applause.

  “Well…” He looked down at his notebook and started to scribble, then turned to his colleagues. “Well?”

  “Thank you, Awen,” Miss Nina cut in smoothly. “That is all, I suppose. You may go.”

  Awen shot a glance at Rosaline, who had moved over to the rectangular table and was looking down at the evaluator’s notes. She did not look at Awen.

  “Go.” Miss Nina flicked her wrist in Awen’s general direction, donning a fake, annoyed smile.

  Awen turned, escaping from the room as quickly as possible without running.

 
* * *

  Awen placed a hand on her bedroom doorknob, making a move to twist it. But the door was ajar, her work already done for her. She removed her hand, taking a step backward. Miss Nina and Rosaline were still inside the mirrored room, so it could not be…at least, she thought.…

  She stepped forward again, holding her breath, and pushed on the door with two fingers, slowly inching it forward until she could see a ray of light on the floor, the edge of her mattress, the side of a face and a cascade of dark brown hair.…

  Awen leapt back behind the cover of the door.

  “Awen?”

  She exhaled, and a foggy smile flitted onto her face. It was Vivienne. Awen had not seen her since lunch two days ago. She peered around the edge of the door to see her friend still sitting on the mattress, then slid into the room to sit beside her.

  Vivienne did not miss a beat. “Guess what?”

  Awen pursed her lips, trying to come up with something, but she could never guess with Vivienne. She leaned in toward her friend to hear whatever exciting news she might have.

  “I’m leaving!” she exclaimed. “Today! Now! My training here is done and I’m going to my new family!”

  Awen had known this day would come, eventually; Vivienne had been there for over seven months—maybe eight months now, or nine. She tried to smile, but a little tear crystallized at the edge of her eye.

  “Oh, I’m so excited!” Vivenne squeezed Awen in a hug. “I didn’t even quite have to stay a full year—I’m leaving a bit early.” She pulled away and grinned proudly, then added in a loud whisper, “That means I must be good!”

  Awen tried to nod, but she feared that any movement might release the tear.

  Vivienne jumped to her feet. “Well, then, I think I must be going now. Outside! Can you believe it, Awen? I haven’t seen the out of doors for months!” She made a small movement with her hand—a final goodbye wave. And this time, her voice lowered into a tender whisper. “Goodbye, friend.” Then she left the room.

  Awen remained seated, watching the wooden door shut. Learn, but seek not too far, she read. For you shall aid…for you shall aid, she read again, for you shall aid in the seeking of others.