The Heartsong of Wonder Quinn

by Kate Gordon

  For my daughter, my small, precious hatchling;

  for my Leigh, who sees me

  Wonder Quinn sat on the roof of Direleafe Hall. There was a flickering in her belly. A tickling. Like moths, beating their wings at her insides.

  Hollowbeak noticed, of course. Hollowbeak noticed everything about Wonder, even a flickering deep inside her. He shook his small, dark head and sighed.

  Every year.

  Down below them, girls tumbled through the high iron gates that separated the school from all of the world. The gates were as old and life-worn as the hall itself, but the children were new and clean and shining.

  From where Wonder and Hollowbeak sat, it was tricky to see who was who. The students dressed in identical uniforms: navy pinafores that fell down to their calves, paler blue cardigans on top of those and blue socks held up by garters.

  Some of the girls grumbled about the uniforms. They called them old-fashioned and dowdy. Wonder didn’t see it like that. She liked her uniform. It made her feel like she belonged. She belonged to this old, dusty school, and she belonged to the girls, even if they might not know it.

  She searched the bobbing heads and shiny faces. That one – was that Amelia? And was that one Eloise? And that one …

  She knew that head – that snow-white hair. She knew that upturned nose and those cheekbones, sharp as arrowheads.

  Georgiana Kinch.

  She tamped down a shudder so Hollowbeak would not see, looked away from the pale-haired girl and recommenced her game of memory.

  She knew Alice from her pale pink bow and Jemima from her tight black ringlets.

  But, of course, some of them she wouldn’t know. There would be newlings, naturally, in first form.

  And there might – the flickering thing in Wonder’s belly began to quicken – there might even be a new girl in her class. Someone from across the seas, perhaps? Someone who had seen things. Someone who knew things. Someone who had walked off the edge of one map and on to another.

  Wonder had always wanted to travel through the skies and over the wide, wild lands and across the seas. She had dreamed of bathing in waterfalls and running with untamed horses and eating a ripe pink mango.

  But she was stuck here at Direleafe Hall and so … a friend from far-off lands might be the next best thing.

  But, of course, it didn’t matter – not really, not at all – where the new girl might be from. As long as she liked Wonder. As long as she saw her.

  A friend.

  Now, that would be a thing.

  A friend who saw her heart and loved it and knew it was good.

  It was a thing that Wonder had hoped for, each of these years at Direleafe. It hadn’t happened yet. But this year – Wonder grasped onto the charcoal shingles even more tightly – this year it just might.

  Last night, like every year on the night before first day, Wonder could not find sleep. She’d tossed and turned in her little nook, which was at the back of the school archives in the attic.

  The archive room was newer than all the other rooms of Direleafe Hall, but it was still old. And nobody visited it any more because it contained only the most ancient of cabinets, which held only the dustiest of files and the oldest of stories.

  The newer cabinets and the newer files lived down in Ms Gallow’s office. But the old attic archives that Wonder called home was a place for only dead, dust-covered things. Yet it was Wonder’s, and she loved it and, usually, she found solace and comfort there, and a place to rest her weary head and dream all the happy things.

  But not on the last night of holidays. Not ever on the last night before first day. On those nights – those edge-of-cliff eves – Wonder’s eyes seemed glued open. She felt like a doll with no eyelids or a waxwork imitation of a human that would never sleep, never dream.

  She might have believed it to be true – that she was wax only and not real at all – if her brain hadn’t been so filled with things. Surely waxworks and dolls didn’t buzz with thrumming thrills at the prospect of new years, new girls, new maybes and perchances.

  Wonder had tried, last night, to think of pretty things, like peacocks and golden-mote faeries dancing in sunbeams. She’d tried to read. She’d even tried singing to herself. She sang herself a lullaby, from when she was small. One her mother used to sing her. It always (usually) put her right to sleep.

  My small, precious hatchling,

  In your nest, tucked in tight,

  Flutter down your eyelids

  And bid the stars goodnight …

  The trouble was, always and usually didn’t apply on first-day eve and, instead, she found herself only missing her mother. But only for a little while. Before the thrumming thrill came back.

  A new year! New students.

  Maybe a friend.

  Now, that would be a thing.

  A friend who saw her heart. A friend who saw her. A friend to wind up the clockwork key and begin her again. Make her new.

  How could a child sleep when the possibility of something new was waiting just around the corner?

  Now, on the roof, Wonder rubbed at her eyes and yawned. Her whole body felt worn and weary. But her mind was bubbling like ginger beer. She shuffled a little down the charcoal shingles. A tiny bit closer, so she might see the girls a tiny bit more clearly.

  She could see more faces now – Genevieve, Evangeline, Lily – all of the girls who had stared blankly through her every previous year, as if she were part of the furniture. But she didn’t feel badly towards them. They simply weren’t meant to be her friends.

  One day, one year, she would find her perfect person. The one whose soul was the perfect mirror of hers. The one who knew her, who she was, entirely, and saw that she was good. The one who saw that she was golden inside.

  Not grey.

  And then, when she found her person, none of it would matter. Not losing her mother. Not living in the back of the school archives, invisible and alone. Not even having, for her only companion, a temperamental crow called Hollowbeak.

  He shook his feathers and looked up at her with those black-button eyes that seemed to see every inch of Wonder’s soul. You’re thinking it again, aren’t you? he said. You’re thinking that this will be ‘the year’. He gave a little noise that sounded like a snort.

  ‘Don’t hex me, Hollowbeak,’ Wonder growled. ‘You just want me all to yourself.’

  Now, why would I want that? You can’t even fly. I don’t need you. A crow needs only himself, entirely. But you need me.

  ‘Why, exactly?’ Wonder asked, but she knew in her deepest self that it was true. Hollowbeak had been there ever since her mother died. He looked after her. He provided for her. He was the best friend she’d ever had. Even as he professed to need only himself, he was at her side the moment she called. Just as her mother had always been. And just like her mother, he told her how to live, how to exist. He gave her form and shape and he helped her to survive in this strange, confusing motherless world.

  But he was wrong about one thing – he wasn’t all she needed.

  When her mother was here with her, curled around her, dancing her through life, she never felt lonely. But now she felt an aching within her. A hole that Hollowbeak could not fill.

  She leaned her chin on her palm and watched as the last of the girls trickled inside Direleafe Hall. Their feet left furrows on the dew-wet grass and black daubs on the grey stone steps. They moved in through the arched wooden doors, the hinges browned and groaning with age. And then they were swallowed up by the door, by the grey brick walls, by the stones. They were a school of blue-an
d-grey-scaled fish, made shining by the sea, swimming into the mouth of a whale.

  All except for one of them.

  That last one.

  That last one – a straggler – was new.

  She was tiny, thin, with a blaze of red hair. She carried an enormous backpack that threatened to tip her over. She huffed and puffed to keep up with the other girls.

  Then, she stopped, panting with exertion.

  And she looked up to the sky.

  Right at Wonder.

  Wonder Quinn sat in her usual seat, at the back of Ms Gallow’s classroom.

  The classroom was old and it was dusty and it was so wintry-cold, due to the ancient, wind-leaking windows, that the girls wore woollen gloves so their fingers could move enough to write.

  The desks had been in their same soldier rows for a hundred years and more besides. Their hinges creaked and there were cracks in the wood and, on Wonder’s desk, there was a knot that looked like a badger’s head. It had watched her, knowingly, for all these years. For this had been Wonder’s seat every year and every year the seat beside it had stayed empty, and the badger looked at her and the empty chair and it judged them both.

  And perhaps that was why the seat beside her was always empty: nobody wants to sit next to a judgemental badger.

  Wonder watched, each first day of school, as the new girls peered at the empty chair, as their faces took on a funny expression, as they gave a little shudder and pulled their cardigans closer, as they moved quickly away to another seat.

  Wonder tried her best to ignore it and have hope that one year, on the right year, the right girl would take the seat.

  And this year, she did.

  The girl with the red hair didn’t frown, didn’t shiver, and she sat down beside Wonder without even looking – at the desk or at her new neighbour. She flopped into the chair, threw her bag underneath it and huffed, ‘Well, that was a trial.’

  She put her pencil case and workbook on the table and ran her hands over the bumpy surface. ‘Hmm,’ she murmured. And then she gave the desk a pat and said, ‘I think you’re meant to be mine.’

  Then, she turned to Wonder. ‘Odd little place, this, isn’t it? This funny old Direleafe Hall. I’m Mabel Clattersham, by the way. Transferred here from Wolsey’s. Didn’t like it there and they didn’t like me, and that was the end of that.’

  ‘I’m … I’m Wonder,’ Wonder gasped. ‘Wonder Quinn.’ She impressed herself greatly, with the talking. She hadn’t talked to another person – not really – for such a long time. The girls never spoke to her. The teachers never called on her.

  Hollowbeak told her it was because they didn’t know how. They didn’t – even the teachers – know how to respond to a child whose mother was dead and who lived at the back of an office full of dull and dusty things.

  He said that was part of the reason, too, why they never visited her there. Who knows how to visit a girl with so much sadness? Who knows what to say?

  And then there was the fear, of course – that the grief would rub off on the visitor, as if the misery of it coated every surface.

  They think they’ll become you if they come too close, he told her.

  So nobody visited her. Nobody looked at her.

  Another reason for it, Hollowbeak explained, was because she faded.

  The other girls were all exciting, in one way or another. They glowed. They had talents. They laughed loudly. They ran and jumped and squealed.

  Wonder was quiet. Wonder whispered. Wonder dwindled into the background and she had no particular talents, except that she was very good at watching.

  Wonder was grey. Wonder was the same as the walls and the floor.

  But Mabel Clattersham saw her.

  ‘Pleased to meet you, Wonder Quinn,’ Mabel said, with a smile. ‘Let’s be friends, shall we?’

  Friends.

  Wonder sucked in a breath.

  Friends!

  She had said it, hadn’t she?

  It was real.

  It was almost as if Wonder could see the word, hovering in the air in front of her.

  Friends.

  It was real.

  Mabel was real and Wonder was real and she had said that word – that golden word.

  Friends.

  So. That was a thing.

  Wonder and Mabel sat below the silver birch tree, in the shadowy part of the grounds.

  It was Hollowbeak’s favourite tree. He said that the twigs were just the right size for his small claws to cling to. That was part of it, certainly, but the real reason Hollowbeak loved the silver birch was because it was strange.

  The tree, like Hollowbeak, was a bent and twisted thing, its bark as silver as twilight and its branches as black as midnight. It was peculiar and it was old and it seemed somehow imbued with age and wisdom, and Hollowbeak felt in it a kindred spirit. He loved to perch on a branch and gaze upon all below him and feel as if he were the Raven Master of all he surveyed.

  He had told all of this to Wonder before, and Wonder had told him he was king of all the world and had nuzzled his soft black feathers (he had shrugged her away, of course).

  On this day, though, Hollowbeak was giving Wonder the irrits. He watched her and Mabel from that spindly twig, his button eyes narrowed, his beak haughty and, when Mabel spoke, he shook his head and sometimes even snorted.

  Wonder got the feeling that Hollowbeak thought Mabel was silly. Maybe that was because Mabel was a bit silly, Wonder thought. But in a good way.

  Mabel was funny and bold and shimmery with colour. She wasn’t loud, like the other girls. She didn’t squeal. Her voice was like a tickling feather. But she knew so many jokes and she knew how to smile at Wonder as if she were a lovely thing. As if she were yellow or pink, instead of grey.

  Golden.

  Wonder thought she might like to listen to Mabel Clattersham talk forever.

  Hollowbeak was wrong and he was vexing, the way he peered down like that, so pompously, and when Mabel went home later that day, Wonder meant to have strong words with him.

  But for now …

  Now, she tried to ignore him and think only of her friend.

  Mabel had brown bread sandwiches for lunch, with banana and honey inside. Wonder thought it would taste like sunbeams.

  ‘Would you like some?’ Mabel asked. ‘I don’t have much of an appetite today.’

  Wonder shook her head. ‘No, thank you.’

  ‘You’ve not eaten anything!’ Mabel protested.

  Wonder lifted a shoulder and smiled. ‘Tell me another joke,’ she said.

  Mabel looked up into the branches of the tree. Hollowbeak gave a snort and then a disgruntled caw. ‘Why is a raven like a writing desk?’ Mabel asked, finally.

  Wonder smiled. ‘I know this one. I like this one. My mother used to tell it to me and I would lie awake at night, thinking on it …’ She trailed off, remembering.

  She had stayed awake, far past bedtime, snuggled in her warm bed, her mother snoring softly beside her. And she had imagined. She had imagined a raven, knocking at her bedroom window.

  It wasn’t a bad raven.

  It was a friend.

  She’d told her mother, in the morning, and her mother had held her tight and told her that it made sense. Because of what crows and ravens really are.

  Wonder shook herself. Mabel was staring at her, curiously.

  ‘Yes, it’s a good riddle,’ Wonder said. ‘I like it a lot, even though it isn’t very funny. Should a riddle always be funny?’

  ‘I don’t think so. Not always. Not if it’s clever,’ Mabel said. ‘I like funny things and clever things, too. I like all things. Why do I have to like all things? That’s too many things to like.’

  ‘But there’s a lot of time,’ Wonder pointed out. ‘There’s so much time, for all the things.’


  Mabel lay flat on her back. The sun, dappled between the leaves of the tree, made her into a glowing wood nymph. ‘A raven and a writing desk both produce notes, though they are very flat,’ Mabel murmured, answering the riddle. She smiled at Wonder, who gazed down at her in rapture.

  ‘Where did you come from?’ asked Wonder.

  ‘The stars,’ laughed Mabel. But she knew what Wonder meant. ‘I came from the city, but my parents thought I’d benefit from the clean country air.’ She looked sideways into the light at Wonder. ‘I care less about air,’ she said, ‘and more about doing things.’

  ‘What sort of things?’

  ‘All the things,’ Mabel breathed. ‘My parents won’t let me do any of the things. I can’t eat shellfish. I can’t bathe in the sea. I can’t go out at night. And there’s no sea in the city, anyway, and there’s no night either, really, because the lights are always on. In the city, you can’t do any of the things that mean anything. You can’t be free there.’

  ‘Why not?’ Wonder asked, enchanted.

  She’d never been to the city. She’d heard, though, that there were buildings there even taller than Direleafe Hall, and grand hotels where men stood outside in tall hats and gloves, and the ladies danced in beaded gowns, long into the evening. And you could buy any kind of food you wanted, whenever you wanted it. And there were bookshops on every corner, and libraries with twenty thousand books inside.

  ‘Muggers, mostly,’ Mabel replied, airily, and Wonder was too bashful to ask what a mugger was.

  So, for a little while there was silence, except for the far-off noises of the other girls, the lizards in the grass and scoffing Hollowbeak.

  Snort.

  Caw.

  Shush, thought Wonder, loudly, hoping that he could hear her thoughts in the way it often seemed he could.

  ‘Where is your house?’ Mabel finally asked Wonder.

  Wonder supposed she knew the question had been coming. She knew she’d have to tell Mabel, sooner or later. But inside of her, something shrank and cowered.

  What if she told Mabel all of the things that were wrong and missing and broken in her life and Mabel decided, like the other girls, that she couldn’t possibly understand Wonder? That she couldn’t talk to her any more? That they couldn’t be friends?