Chapter 2
Kat
“You’re so lucky, Kat,” Mary says to me with a sigh, leaning against the fence post as she stares up at me, a wistful look on her freckled face.
My mare, Snowdrop, shifts her weight from under me, probably wondering why I’m not dismounting and tying her up to the post as I usually do when I visit with Mary.
Little does my horse know that I’m not staying.
Today is the first day of classes at Sleepy Hollow Institute, and I have to stop by Mary’s house so that her younger brother, Mathias, can escort me to the college.
The whole thing is ridiculous. I know the way, and I’ve been riding off into town whenever I want with nary an escort for years.
But my mother was insistent that I not ride alone.
I have no idea why since it’s not an especially long ride, and the weather today is warm and pleasant, like summer has bled over into autumn.
And it’s not like I’m a child anymore—I just turned nineteen a month ago and am capable of taking care of myself.
But my mother isn’t someone you’ll win against when it comes to a battle of wills.
“Do you want to trade places?” I ask Mary, sounding hopeful despite knowing the futility.
Mary wanted more than anything to attend the institute.
The tuition is free, they accept women in all areas of education, and many students are said to go on to do stupendous things with their degrees.
Mary has always had a dream of becoming a botanist, and the institute has a biology and botany department.
But the school isn’t open to just anyone.
Mary scrunches up her nose. “I think they’d notice,” she says with a deeper sigh. “Just promise me that you’ll teach me everything you learn. I don’t care what it is.”
“Even Shakespeare?”
She laughs, a light ringing sound. “Even that.”
While Mary yearns for education, that school is the last place I want to be.
I’d grown up believing I wouldn’t have to fulfill the family tradition of attending.
For so long, my future had been set out for me by my parents: become Brom Van Brunt’s wife and start a family.
But ever since he disappeared four years ago, my mother changed trajectory.
I thought the moment I became eighteen that she’d try to marry me off to someone else—a different kind of trap—but instead, she told me I’d be off to Sleepy Hollow Institute to earn a liberal arts degree like all the Van Tassel women before.
What I really want is to leave Sleepy Hollow for good.
Part of me wants to try to find my childhood friend and onetime lover, see where Brom could have gone and ask him why he could so easily leave me behind.
Another part of me wants to head west, discover the new lands, places I’ve only read about, and see my country through new eyes.
Yet another part wants to go to Manhattan and write a book and eat at cafés and get lost in the people and sounds and life of the big city that beckons just thirty miles south of here.
But my mother had other plans for me. Sometimes I lie awake at night and think about slipping out the window, much like I did on that last night with Brom, and disappearing into the night, never to return.
Then I remember my father’s dying words.
“Watch your mother,” he said, pulling my ear to his mouth as he took his last breath. “Watch her.”
With endless tears in my eyes, I promised him I would, and since I’d already broken one promise to him, I knew I’d carry this one to the grave.
I would watch over my mother.
I would stay in Sleepy Hollow.
And because it means so much to her and that side of the family, I would go to the institute and try to become the very person I’d hoped to find if I ran away.
“Good morning, Ms. Van Tassel,” Mathias says as he walks out from the corner of the stable, pulling his horse along, a strawberry roan that matches his hair.
He sticks a toothpick in his mouth and nods at me, like he’s pretending to be an adult for the day.
Mathias is about twelve but still stuck in that phase between being a kid and a gangly-legged teenager.
“Good morning, Mathias,” I say to him with a jaunty tip of my head. “Are you ready to escort me through the dangerous woods of Sleepy Hollow?”
His brows go up at the mention of danger, his toothpick going slack in his mouth. “Do you think I should bring a gun?”
Mary rolls her eyes. “Go get on your horse, boy,” she says to him. “And when you stop by McClellan’s orchard, see if you can get me a few apples.”
He groans. “If McClellan sees me stealing again, he’s going to have my head.”
“Wimp,” Mary says, smacking the fence. “And here you are supposed to be Kat’s protector.”
He looks steadily at me, ruddiness on his cheeks. “I won’t let you down,” he says.
Now it’s my turn to roll my eyes. “Come on, I don’t want to be late.”
He gets on his horse, and we say goodbye to Mary and start on our way toward the school.
The village of Sleepy Hollow is located north of Tarrytown and situated between the wide expanse of the Hudson River and low, wooded hills to the east. My house and Mary’s house are at the northern end of Sleepy Hollow, where the town streets and houses turn to farmland and forest.
“So what really goes on at that school?” Mathias asks me after we’ve ridden in silence for a bit, just enjoying the morning chirp of finches and sparrows, waving hello to farmers in the fields and a couple of carriages riding past. The hot breath from the horses rises in the cool air, but it’s growing warmer by the minute, and I wish I had gotten dressed in a more breathable gown instead of the one I’m wearing now.
It’s yellow and ruffled, my favorite, and I obviously hoped to make a good impression on my first day.
“What do you mean?” I ask him.
“They’re so secretive,” he says, flicking the toothpick around in his mouth. “That’s what Mary says anyway. Maybe because she doesn’t know why they didn’t let her in.”
“I believe all private institutions are secretive. That’s what makes them so prestigious.”
He squints at me. “It’s your family that runs it. I’m sure it’s not so secretive to you.”
I shrug with one shoulder. Every year at this time, strangers filter into the town to attend the school, coming from all over America and sometimes even Europe.
They live on campus while earning their degrees, from botany and astronomy to liberal arts, philosophy, and ancient civilizations.
They rarely venture into town during that time, and when they do, they come in groups and keep to themselves.
That alone creates an air of mystery. What really happens at Sleepy Hollow Institute, and why are the students so strange?
Of course, by now I know the truth about the school.
My mother sat me down and explained it to me a few days after my father died.
A lot of people in town also know the truth and accept it, while others put blinders on and refuse to believe the rumors.
I always thought that was ignorant, considering the magic that runs in Sleepy Hollow’s veins.
Brom believed it. His mother was a witch, after all, and he’d seen the few things I could do. But Mary and her family moved to Sleepy Hollow only a couple of years ago.
Since the Wilsons were the closest neighbors to us and Mary was only two years younger than me, we became good friends.
She filled a void that Brom left behind, even if she came from a pragmatic family, focused on science and having zero interest in the occult.
I assume any talk of witchcraft would go over Mathias’s head too.
Besides, I’ve been sworn to keep it a secret.
Sometimes it feels like my life has amounted to little more than keeping one secret after another.
“I guess I’m about to find out,” I tell him. “I’ll be sharing a lot of my studies with your sister, so if you ever want to glean some knowledge from me, all you have to do is ask.”
Granted, I won’t be sharing everything, but that’s enough for Mathias to make a face.
“No, thank you. I learn enough at school. I’m just grateful my ma asked me to give you a ride to your classes so that I can miss the start of mine.”
We ride in the sun along rambling fences and pink hollyhocks that tower over us, reaching for the clear blue sky beside the sunflowers, their yellow heads nodding as if paying their respects.
Then we cross the old wooden bridge over Hollow Creek, hoofbeats echoing on the wood, a comforting sound.
The creek that flows underneath is a soft murmur of water, waiting patiently for the autumn rains to replenish it.
We then emerge to where the road forks, with one road skirting off toward the river and settlements farther north, while the other becomes a narrow trail that goes through the woods and up a slight hill toward Pocantico Lake, where the school resides.
The minute we enter the woods, a hush comes over us.
Parents always warn their children never to go beyond Hollow Creek Bridge, that the woods hold dangers and wild animals, that you could easily get lost and never come out.
I always thought it silly, since my mother would ride here in the dark alone every month for a meeting with her sisters.
Still, even when I used to play here with Brom, we never ventured too far.
“So how come you’re not living at the school like everyone else?” Mathias asks me. His voice trembles slightly, and I can tell he’s getting more anxious the farther we ride into the forest, passing by the stagnant water of Wiley’s Swamp.
“My mother said it made more sense to stay at home since I live in town,” I say.
I know the school represents an escape from Sleepy Hollow in its own way, but it didn’t feel right leaving my mother alone.
Even aside from the promise I made to my father, she hasn’t been the same since his death, her health steadily falling ever since.
We ride for another twenty minutes, the trail getting so narrow in parts that the branches are reaching for us, and if there hadn’t been fresh wheel ruts in the ground, I’d have a hard time believing that anyone could have come through here on a carriage.
Finally, the morning light reaches through the gaps in the canopy.
I see the slick surface of the lake through the trees, and the trail opens up to reveal the school in all its dark glory.
In front of us are large iron gates flanked by a high stone wall crawling with ivy.
A brass placard reads Sleepy Hollow Institute: Where Learning Goes Beyond.
Looking past the gates, I can make out the shapes of the buildings, most old and castle-like, though there are two more modern and squat.
The modern ones are made of brick, but the rest are this dark stone that looks perpetually wet, flanked by gargoyles.
All of them are surrounded by a thick fog that seems to hang over the entire complex.
As we get to the gate, it becomes apparent just how far back the school extends, disappearing into the woods.
There are several large buildings sprawled around a central courtyard that looks like it could have been taken straight out of a fairy tale, with its cobblestone paths lined with statues and lanterns that cast light onto small patches of groomed grass and gardens of orange dahlias.
But despite how impressive the school looks, a strange feeling of fear kicks up inside me like a wild horse, a tightness in my chest. Perhaps this is because, even in broad daylight, all the windows are shuttered tightly. As if it’s trying to keep something out.
Or something else in.