The Crickhowell School for the Muses

by Waxman, Rachel

  Directly in front of the carriage, hidden from the view of the little side windows, stood a grand stone house. Awen’s mouth dropped open, and she stepped haphazardly out of the carriage, nearly falling on top of the driver. Her eyes were still fixed to the house—the castle, really. But this was bigger than Crickhowell, and grander than dank Beaufort. Those castles hardly deserved the title.

  Awen turned to the driver, her eyes wide and questioning.

  He nodded, then shrugged, but Awen could see the awe deep in his eyes. “Well,” he sighed, “good luck.” He set the trunk on the ground.

  Awen looked down, taken aback.

  “I would bring it in for you,” he added, noting her response, “but I’m not really supposed to. Nina prefers the patrons to see the carriage—but not the lowly folk driving it. Adds to the magic.” He clicked his tongue ironically, and he winked. “You can roll it.” He motioned toward the trunk. “It has wheels.”

  Awen nodded with a sadness that took her by surprise.

  The driver watched her silently for a moment, an unfathomable expression on his face. “Well,” he tilted his head toward the house, “he’s probably watching. And waiting for you. I suppose you’d better head up.” He gave Awen a small smile, then turned away.

  Awen watched him climb up to his seat atop the carriage.

  “Good luck!” he called down. He whipped the horses forward.

  There was something beautiful about that little white carriage, wheels turning, creaking down the golden dirt path. The sun was bright in the sky now, and she had to squint, so that the carriage disappeared in her eyes before it actually became hidden by the steep hill.

  Awen turned, facing her new home straight on. She sighed, picking up one end of the trunk, and stepped forward.

  Fifteen

  Awen stood before a pair of aging wooden entrance doors. Even they were imposing, towering above, multiple times her height. She spotted a round brass knocker fairly high up on the right door, and considered it for a moment, but decided that it would be impossible to reach. In any case, she figured whoever it was that awaited her must have noted her arrival. She stepped back, crossing her arms, ready for the door to swing open at any moment.

  Nothing happened.

  Awen stepped forward again and pressed her ear to the door, listening for footsteps—but heard nothing. The door was likely too thick for any sound to pass through, anyway.

  Awen stepped back again and turned to look out at the hillside—the green and the gold and the blue; the path and the river winding through; an occasional boulder; a patch of flowers every now and then. It was so open. So…

  I could run for it. Yes, she could leave the trunk behind and run. Nobody would know—for a little while, at least. She glanced at her trunk, curling her toes, playing the whole thing out in her mind.…

  She shook her head. No. No, the desire to know what lay inside this grand castle-home was too great.

  Awen turned back to the door; raised her hand, knuckles forward; and tapped lightly: tap tap tap. She waited: nothing. She knocked again, this time with more force. Awen sighed—her hands would never do against such thick wood. She would have to use the knocker.

  Awen pressed her body against the door, rising onto the tips of her toes. Then she moved her weight onto just one foot, hoping this would give her more height, and reached up, straightening her fingertips as far as they would go. She was still inches from the brass knocker. Awen crouched back down onto both feet, preparing to jump, when suddenly the door swung open.

  “Ah!” She reeled back, nearly tripping over her dress.

  The old, white-haired man who had opened it seemed just as surprised. “Ahh!” he exclaimed, watching as Awen struggled to regain her balance. “Oh, hello?”

  Awen shook off the hem of her dress, then looked into the man’s eyes, attempting a smile. This must be her patron. Sir Robert Thomas, the painter.

  “Awen, yes?”

  She nodded.

  Sir Robert’s blue eyes twinkled. He wore his white hair long, and his beard, too; it melted into the rest of his hair, so it was impossible to tell what was what. The texture looked thick, almost crimped. There was something in his weathered face that reminded Awen a bit of Mr. Whitewood. A tiny, round pair of golden spectacles rested upon his nose. Awen had a feeling his age was not what it looked. His face was timeless, wizard-like. “Well, come in, come in.” He motioned her forward. “I am Sir Robert Thomas, as I’m sure you know. Paid for your education at Crickhowell.”

  Awen nodded. She pursed her lips and squatted to pick up the end of her trunk, then wheeled it in behind her.

  “This way. You may put your trunk upstairs, and I will show you around.” He moved with surprising speed, so that Awen had no time to admire her new surroundings. All she could tell was that the interior was a bit dark, lit here and there by golden sconces.

  The stone stairs were of an awkward height: shorter than normal, yet too tall to take in twos. Awen’s trunk thumped against the stone with every step she took. The staircase seemed to stretch on forever, and she was not sure she would make it to the top.

  “Almost there,” Sir Robert called back, not a trace of exhaustion in his voice. He was at least ten steps ahead of her now.

  Awen stopped on a stair. She looked behind at her trunk and gave it a powerful heave, so that it now rested on the same stair. She put one hand to her knee and bent over to catch her breath. When she looked up again, Sir Robert was gone.

  She reflexively looked over her shoulder at the stairs below, as if he might have fizzled away and reappeared behind her. She grinned to herself. Just because he looked like a wizard did not mean he was one. He must have reached the top of the landing and turned a corner.

  Awen sprang up the next few steps, each one increasingly difficult to see as her surroundings grew darker, then almost tripped over an absent stair: she had reached the upper landing.

  “Over here!”

  She heard his voice echo through the dark hallways but could not tell from which direction it had come.

  “To the left!”

  It seemed he had read her mind.…

  Awen sprinted down the hallway, her trunk much easier to wheel across the flat stone surface. An unexplainable feeling of panic burst into her chest. She felt as if she were hurtling through a dark maze, chasing after nothing—or perhaps being pursued herself. Her breaths became shorter and shallower, until she nearly hyperventilated.

  “Ah, yes; just right here.”

  Awen slid to a halt. Everything was normal again.

  “It is a bit dark in here, I suppose,” Sir Robert mused. He opened a door behind him that Awen had not even seen and disappeared through it. “Hmm…” He rummaged around. “Ah, yes.” He reappeared, having somehow produced a lit torch. Sir Robert proceeded a number of paces down the hallway, lighting golden sconces right and left. They seemed to just…materialize, straight out of the darkness.

  “All right, let us…oh!” He was staring at something he had just pulled from his pocket. “I must go now, actually. The tour will have to wait until some other time. Show yourself around, if you’d like! I’ve some business to attend to in town—some new paints and brushes are in, and I must inspect them.”

  Awen stood frozen with puzzlement.

  He pointed with his torch—“Your room is there.”—and disappeared back down the stairs.

  Awen remained motionless in the partially lit hall, still holding up one end of her trunk, until Sir Robert’s footsteps faded into silence. She took a deep breath, then let the air out slowly and moved toward the room to which he had pointed, her bare feet inaudible against the stone.

  The room was so dark, with only the hallway light to illuminate it, that Awen could make out but a few fuzzy shapes inside. She dared not go in.

  Awen dropped the trunk. The sconces were high on the walls, but just barely within her reach. She stood on the tips of her toes and took a candle down from the nearest holder. The wick w
as miniscule, affording very little light. A bead of hot wax dripped down the side of the candle and onto the floor, narrowly missing her foot.

  The wax, she noticed, was sparkling gold.

  Awen tiptoed into the room, putting as little of her feet down on the cold stone floor as possible. She held the candle out in front of her, tilted slightly away. The little bit of light made the dark spots all the more frightening. Visions of creatures flooded Awen’s brain—hiding in dark corners, ready to grab her and pull her down. She considered turning back to the hallway, but then realized she was no longer sure in which direction it lay.

  Light from the candle illuminated a rough, grey surface; Awen reached out with her free hand and pressed her palm against a stone wall. She moved her candle closer to the wall, deciding to follow along the perimeter of the room until she could find a lantern or a candle, something to light. She had only taken three steps when she noticed what looked like cloth, high up on the wall. She gazed up, holding the candle above her head, and tried to ignore her imagined image of a corpse hanging from the ceiling. It seemed the cloth was attached from above. She wondered if it might be drapery.

  Awen reached out, grabbed a handful of the cloth’s left edge, and pulled it hard to the right.

  Light flooded the room.

  Awen pulled all the way, until every bit of the wide window was uncovered, and the room glowed as brightly as the outdoors. She exhaled loudly, only then realizing that she had been holding her breath. Awen blew out the candle and set it upon the narrow windowsill, then turned to face her surroundings.

  This room was immense—many times the size of her closet-like space at Crickhowell. The walls were all stone, festooned with a few small, fraying tapestries. Enchanted, Awen glided to the other end of the room, where a sizable, haphazardly placed four-poster bed had been piled high with red and gold pillows and rolls of fabric. She grabbed a handful of material, bringing it to her nose: it smelled like dust and old paper. Beat-up wooden furniture, paintings, and chipped frames were stacked here and there, and the floor was littered with brushes and half-empty tubes of paint. Awen knelt down to pick up one of the uncapped silver tubes. She squeezed it, and a chunk of chalky purple came out. She pursed her lips and tossed it aside.

  Then Awen remembered the trunk, still waiting for her at the threshold of the room. She rose to retrieve it and wheeled it into the center of the room.

  It had a lock.

  “Huh?” Taken aback, she yanked at the lock, wondering if it might pop open with a few pulls, but knowing full well that it would not. She placed a hand to her neck, wondering if she had tied some key on a string and forgotten; but that could not be, for she had not even known she had a trunk until that morning. Awen eyed the room, looking for some tool with which she might be able to break the lock.

  There was something shining in a pile of frames—a metallic object. She began to drop to her hands and knees so she could crawl toward it, the front of her dress cascading down.…

  Clink.

  Awen stopped: something heavy was pulling on the fabric of her new dress. She slid her hands around the front and felt something over her right thigh. There was a pocket hidden within the folds of the material.

  “Ah!” Awen reached into the pocket and pulled out a little brass key. She guided it to the trunk lock, wondering how she had not noticed this key before. Perhaps…perhaps it had not been there before? She knitted her brow, mocking herself for the thought.

  The lock clicked and pulled open. Awen removed it and eagerly pushed up the lid.

  She frowned: the trunk was barely halfway-packed. A container of white face powder, a hairbrush, and a vial lay atop some underclothing and a folded, cream-colored ruffle dress. She pushed them aside, finding only another of the same dress—and yet a third. She did not know what she had expected, but this was not it.

  Hope plummeting, Awen pushed away the third ruffle dress, fully expecting to find a fourth. But at the very bottom of the trunk was something completely different—something she had not worn, now, for so many months.

  A pair of shoes.

  Awen threw the dresses and makeup to the floor and grabbed the brown leather shoes. The toe was rounded, the shoe itself soft enough to stretch, and the back had the tiniest hint of a heel. She rolled to her side, slipping the shoes onto her cold, dusty feet. They felt warm and buttery and thick and tough, all at the same time.

  Awen jumped to her feet and exited the room at a near sprint. She suddenly wanted to see the whole castle, every room and every closet, to look from every window and touch every stone. She held her arms out wide. She felt like she might fly.

  Awen ran past the staircase, and it dawned on her that she and Sir Robert might not be the only people in the castle; she did not know if her patron had any family, servants, or guests. She slowed to a brisk walk, calming her breath.

  Something on the second door on the left caught her eye. Awen walked toward it, gaze fixed on a little golden design in the upper-middle portion of the door. There were three elongated loops: one in the middle, flanked by two more that pointed out diagonally. It looked a bit like a clover. “Hmm…” Awen traced the design with her fingertip. She hesitated, then slowly lowered her hand, covering the doorknob with her fingers. She drew in a shaky breath and turned her wrist:

  The door was locked.

  Awen exhaled a mixture of disappointment and relief. There was probably nothing in there, anyway. She took a few paces forward before deciding to turn around and explore the first floor instead.

  Descending the immense staircase, Awen relished the echoing thunks that the heels of her shoes produced against the stone. It was as if, finally, she had her own presence. She could make noise!

  Now that she had more time to observe, Awen noticed that the entryway was not as grand as she had thought upon her arrival. It was imposing only in its sheer spaciousness: ceiling too high to see properly; empty of almost anything. It was all just…room.

  She followed the hallway back past the staircase. Other halls led off from the main one, separated not by doors but by archways that tapered into points. Awen chose the third hall on the right.

  Three paces in, the stone floor ended, replaced with slick wooden panels. Awen stopped for a moment, puzzled—then continued on. She wondered if this room had been added later, as it seemed separate from the rest of the castle.

  The hallway curved sharply to the right, then to the left, ending at a tall, rounded archway. Awen stepped through without hesitation.

  This room was different from anything else she had seen in the castle thus far. While the walls were still of grey stone, the light wood floor lent the space a radiance separate from the darkness of the other rooms. Windows were ample—there was one in every wall—and a white piano and wooden easel stood in the center of the room, surrounded by tables of different heights and shapes.

  Awen walked toward them.

  On the easel sat a partially finished painting. At this point, Awen could not tell what it was. The entire canvas had been washed over with a translucent blue, and on top of that were wispy brown lines and curves. Awen approached cautiously, holding out a hand. She wanted to touch the painting. Stretching out her right index finger, she gradually extended her hand so that her fingertip was just a hair’s breadth from the surface.

  She snapped her hand back.

  Awen stared at the painting for another long moment, then turned to the piano. It was completely white: all of the wood, the bench—even the keys that had been black on Mr. Whitewood’s piano were white. She slid her hand across one octave, but without pressing down.

  She glanced around the room, then sat down on the piano bench, tucking her dress beneath her legs. She searched the keyboard for a moment, then pressed down on an F key far to the right, so high up that it sounded more like a twinkle than an actual note. She hit it again, then picked out another key. She held two down at the same time, then added a third.

  Awen smiled. She felt she could s
it there all day at the piano, picking out notes, mixing them together into something else entirely. She pressed down a G, and a nagging sensation began at the bottom of her stomach. She held down the key, trying to suppress the feeling, but it was useless. She released it, and the hammer thunked back into place.

  She stood. Awen pressed her lips together, listening to the silence of the room. In a way, silence could be its own sort of music.

  She looked out the front window. A layer of grey clouds had moved in, and the sky was beginning to darken. She glided forward for a better look and pressed her forehead against the glass. She thought she could make out a few tiny buildings, far off in the distance.

  A raindrop spattered the window.

  A movement farther down on the dirt path that led to the castle caught Awen’s eye. She squinted—a carriage…Were they coming back for her? Had there been some sort of mistake, and they wanted her back at Crickhowell?

  No; this carriage was black. It could only be Sir Robert, already on his way back.

  Awen tensed, wondering if she should sprint back up to her room. He had told her she was free to explore—but what if she was not supposed to be in this room?

  The black carriage was approaching quickly, and she knew she had to make a decision.

  She decided to stay right where she was.

  Sixteen

  Ah! Well, hello there.” Sir Robert set a burlap sack on a table near the easel. “I see you found my study.” He glanced around the room, and Awen followed his gaze. “Well, I suppose study isn’t quite the right word,” he chuckled. “It’s my studio. Say…” Sir Robert looked straight into Awen’s eyes. “You don’t speak much now, do you?”

  Awen shrugged. “Mmm…” she started.

  “Well,” he cut in, “I suppose I haven’t given you much time to speak!”

  Awen smiled obligingly.

  “You sing, of course. I’d certainly hope, at least! Humor me; show me what you’ve learned.”

  Awen cleared her throat. She had known this moment would come eventually—after all, it was the sole purpose of her being at Sir Robert’s—but she was nervous nonetheless.