Chapter Three
It took her a lot of effort to drag herself up the path to the dormitory. And not just because she was battered, and bruised,
and her burned legs were stinging. Not just because she was exhausted, right down to her bones, and every muscle in her moaned
whenever she moved. Or that she had only been able to wave at Anaya from afar as everybody was given their dorm assignments.
No, it was mostly him.
And the thought of how much more horrible he was going to be after this.
Now she wasn’t just a thing that didn’t belong. She had actively thwarted him. She had dragged him back to the beginning with
her. He was almost certainly going to be forced into some of her classes, thanks to this stunt. And all these horrid thoughts
made her actually hesitate on the path that led to the place she was going to be staying.
The Narrows, her assignment papers said.
Ominous sounding, she had thought when she had read it. And even more ominous with all this weighing on her. Brawls, and burns,
and the thought of being murdered for ripping away some of the privileges a man like that enjoyed. Better, she thought, to
turn back now, before this probably evil building finished the job he had started.
But then she saw it, between the trees.
A gray, teetering structure, five stories high and as thin as a knife. Thinner than that even. She took a step to the left,
and somehow the whole thing seemed to disappear. Then she stepped back, and there it was. A perfectly normal building, housing
at least a hundred students.
She could see some of them, in fact.
Candlelight danced in a few of the windows, illuminating all kinds of activity within. A boy was unpacking his things; another
was talking animatedly to someone she couldn’t see. Then a little up and to the left, she saw the silhouette of a girl sitting
on her windowsill. Single braid over her shoulder, head bowed, book in her lap.
Everything about it so beautiful it made her breath catch.
And she just couldn’t let him rob her of that.
She started walking toward it before the rest of her had even had a say. And she climbed the spiral staircase inside the same
way—in a daze of dreaming about what that might be like. That kind of peace, that kind of time to just quietly read, in some
gloriously dim and haunted-seeming setting.
Like something out of a gothic novel, she thought, as she got to the room they’d listed and slid the ornate key they’d given her into the similarly old-fashioned
lock. Then she shoved at the oddly narrow door to her room and burst in, and there before her was everything she had never
had in her whole life.
It was a room of her own, bigger than any in the tiny, cramped council flat she had called home.
And it was filled with things she had only ever dreamed of before now.
There was a dresser, with a whole oval mirror, on one side.
A wardrobe—big enough that she could imagine Narnia waiting for her just beyond its doors—next to a bookshelf absolutely crammed with books, overflowing with books, oh, it was more books than she had ever had at her fingertips in her whole life.
She had to physically force herself not to bury her face in them immediately.
And not just because she had other things to explore first.
She was also absolutely filthy. She held up a hand and saw there were still grass stains all over it. When she turned her
head, her hair left a trail of twigs and leaves. Her whole body felt stiff with dried sweat and almost stained in all the
places he’d touched it.
She had to sort herself out before she lived her bookish gothic dreams.
And she started by flicking through the sheaf of parchment on the dresser. A little welcome packet, with things in it like
instructions on how to use the tiny bathrooms that came with each room. There was a sink but no taps. You dipped your hands
in, and water was just supposed to appear.
None of which she believed, until she poked one finger at the ceramic bowl and suddenly it was wet. She jolted back, astonished—and
even more so when she realized the water had a scent. It smelled like wildflowers and summer grass, sweet and heady, and when
she drew a handful of it to her filthy face, it formed a lather.
She managed to soap herself with hardly anything at all, so eager she didn’t stop at her face. She stripped off in that tiny
teeth-like-tiled bathroom, then scrubbed until the last remnant of this hellish day was gone. Or at least, she scrubbed most
of her. Her shins were too sore to be treated so roughly—they gleamed pink and raw, even in the splinter of moonlight that
filtered in from the tiny window above the sink, and required more care.
She had to just dab them with damp toilet paper.
Though it wasn’t really toilet paper at all.
It was a cut glass bowl filled with tiny little sheets of what felt like silk.
She almost didn’t use them, they seemed so soft and luxurious.
It felt like a waste until she tried it, and somehow the sting eased almost immediately—as if they had some healing property she didn’t know about.
And sure enough, when she looked in the welcome packet under first aid, it listed this weird tissue.
Many materials in the magical world are adaptable to a number of circumstances, she read, and marveled—not for the first time—at the way these people lived. At all the amazing conveniences right at their
fingertips, so much a given that the welcome packet barely really touched on them. It was perfunctory about it, matter-of-fact,
almost bored.
Here is where you will find your personal items, she read, under the word storage in bold black. And before she could even form a skeptical frown, she unearthed exactly that. All her clothes folded and hung
in drawers and in the wardrobe. Even though she’d last seen them in the hall of headmasters, abandoned in a fright.
Do they just magic their way here automatically? she wanted to ask someone desperately. But it wasn’t until she got to page 4—school communications—that she realized she
could. She read about it in between shivering and shoving on her nightgown and almost screamed with delight.
She even knew who she was going to message immediately.
Anaya, can you hear me? she scribbled on a torn-off piece of one of her notepads. Then she pushed it into the top drawer of the dresser, as the welcome
pack instructed, and shut it closed around that ghostly white scrap of paper. Breath held, half of her sure the pack had to
be lying.
Until there came a thump.
And a rattle.
And she opened the drawer up in a fumbled rush, and there it was.
A reply from her new friend. Can you believe this?? it said. With a big thick underline to make the excitement extra obvious. Have you seen the mirror? It shows you what you’d look like with different haircuts and outfits on. Please talk me out of
giving myself a pixie cut, because I think it might be lying about how good I’ll look.
And after that, she simply had to test it out.
She sat at the dresser and thought of herself with a fringe. And it only bloody gave her one. She stared for a good thirty
seconds, caught between how incredible this was and how horrible she looked. Before she remembered that Anaya was waiting
for a reply.
Do not do what the mirror says. I think it might be mad, she scribbled, then sent it through the magical postbox drawer. And a second later, she got a reply. So fast, so full of
eagerness, in a way that wasn’t just delightful because it was so unspeakably magical. There was also the little pang she
got when she read Anaya’s next words.
I’m so glad I’ve got someone to share all of this with. Do you know there is no heating? Everything is just a perfect temperature,
all on its own. My Baba would be having a fit now over the thermostat if we had the house this lovely and hot, she had written, as if it was just that easy to find a friend and talk with them about things.
Familiar things, too.
She knew what it was to have to watch what you were doing. To have little money and wear three sweaters instead of having
the heating on. I’m so glad I have you, too, she wrote back, and for the first time in her life, it didn’t feel nerve-racking to say something like that. Someone else
had talked that way first.
Somehow here, in this cold and aloof and moneyed place, she had found an ally.
A partner in a crime. Someone as valuable and soft as that bastard was worthless and cruel.
It helped her breathe out. To settle in the same way the sight of the girl at the window, reading, had.
In a way that still did, once Anaya had said good night, and she was left alone with a candle that lit itself, on a holder with a handle like something from a novel by one of the Bronte sisters, and an armload of books that she carefully selected, for maximum immersion into this strange new world.
The Complete Compendium of Creatures, she chose immediately. And then: A Guide to the Underneath, Rules for Navigating in Between Places, The Complete History of Harrowhall. In fact, there were several histories of various schools there. She noticed a few American volumes, a Canadian one.
Though they weren’t quite as wide-ranging as she would have liked. Here is not going to be the place to find out what exactly happened with the three unseen wars, and the overthrow of colonial
rule, and the stalemate schism, she thought, as she searched and came up empty. Most likely living in England means you’ll never know how badly they were outgunned, simply because other countries grasped
magic quicker. All that matters is it made us a narrower, rule-obsessed place, and you need to know those rules if you want
to survive here.
All of which was disheartening.
But still fascinating in its own way. She clambered across her new big, lovely bed, thinking of all the secrets between what was said that she might be able to unearth, all the things they would probably dance around in official accounts.
She’d always been good at figuring out what was between the lines, layered in subtext, left unspoken.
She had needed to be, in order to navigate the world as an introverted fat girl, as someone forgotten and left to the edges of everything.
As someone clever but often thought of as not.
He thinks you’re not, she thought, as she eagerly turned to the first page of her first magical book. Then hot on its heels: And that will be his downfall, that will be the way you protect yourself. That will be how you live deliciously, in this dark
place. By doing this.
Though it was deep into the early hours before she found anything useful. Her eyes were drooping; the candle had almost burned
to nothing. She glanced up briefly to get the crick out of her neck and saw the darkness outside shifting to a cool, cold
gray. Then just before she drifted off, she saw it.
The Underneath feeds all magic.
And it is your clearest thoughts that forge the connection.