8. Things Recovered in Search of Snacks
An attic heaped with potentially magical detritus has rapidly lost its shine, now Briar knows they don’t have a hope in hell of untangling a single sentence of thaumaturgical writing.
It’s not that they haven’t tried, repeatedly, alone in the attic without an audience, but it’s .
. . nonsensical. Indecipherable. Tate was right, because the introduction doesn’t help at all.
Sometimes they think they might be getting the hang of a sentence, a few familiar words to grasp onto like life rafts, and then it takes a rapid left turn and they end up in appendixes I) through XXVI), and Briar gives up again.
It hurts. God, it hurts. An old injury with a fresh sting.
They must be Temple alumni. People groomed for excellence within these walls.
The most powerful thing I can do is make people happy to see me.
Tate had been modest about his magic, but Briar wonders if even that could be enough to tip the balance in someone’s favour, depending on their chosen career. How far could it reach? That influence? What had Alistair Buckingham said to that pip, before he’d willingly drowned himself?
Briar rubs a thumb over the headline they’re reading, one they’d presumed unrelated - SHOCK VOTE TO END UNION STRIKE - and shivers.
The newspapers aren’t quite so much fun after that.
It’s a sweltering day. There’s a round window at one end of the attic, at least Briar’s height in diameter, but it doesn’t open, so Briar spends all morning sweating profusely.
Their only relief comes at lunch, when they say a quick hello to Eugenia - who’s elbow deep in work, with her food untouched next to her in the cramped staff dining room - and then walk laps of the grounds eating an unspiced burrito, across the lawns, through the neat, perfumed rose gardens, past the real grass tennis courts, avoiding the ivy-covered entrance to Jim’s Passage, more innocuous by day.
The sun throws everything into aching technicolour, the sky too blue, the vegetation too green.
Scholars picnic in the dappled shade of trees, reclining against their balled-up blazers, sporting expensive sunglasses and smoking with their hands angled carefully away from school windows.
In the afternoon, Briar tackles some of the bigger items of furniture that have been uncovered inch by dusty inch - a desk, an armoire, a carved camphor chest - dragging them into their newly designated zone.
By five o’clock, they’ve got an impressive constellation of soft blue bruises on their shins, a cut on their inner forearm from a rogue nail, and lungs scratchy with dust. They trudge back to Eden to shower, boneless and dehydrated, and afterwards collapse onto their bed to stare vacantly at the wall in a towel for approximately twenty minutes, as post-showering custom dictates.
When they groan awake from a long, unintentional nap, it’s dusk, and the air has cooled.
Turning over to squint out the window, Briar can see that lights are still glowing in the main building.
It’s half past eight; second shift of supper will still be in full swing, but Briar doesn’t quite have the strength to face it.
There’s a vending machine downstairs in the common room. Briar puts on a soft, black hoodie and a pair of very worn jeans and slopes downstairs, resisting the urge to put the hood up and fully commit to the skulk.
The common room is soothing without a million boys hanging off every piece of furniture. In fact, there are only two scholars in there, and they’re sitting opposite each other playing video games on separate handheld consoles, not talking.
Everything is very brown. The leather sofas are old but were obviously once quite nice, tan Chesterfields studded at the arms, cracked open in places to reveal their soft yellow insides.
There’s a fireplace that seems functional, based on the many warning signs to ask the Dame for help lighting it, with faded boxes of puzzles stacked on the bench nearby next to baskets of folded wool blankets.
Had they been a scholar, Briar might have liked to read in here, when it was quiet like this.
Maybe some of Briar and Seb’s fireside traditions could have continued after lights-out.
Illicit whispers and laughter in the dark.
It’s not worth thinking about.
Briar stops by the floor-to-ceiling bookcases on the far wall to study the contents, and finds them stuffed with Capital-L Literature and faded classics (Orwell, Dickens, Vonnegut) as well as a few contemporary wildcards (Nicholas Sparks, John Green, Bridget Jones).
The vending machine is ominously dark. Briar gives it a once-over, a brief shake, then checks that it’s plugged in: it is.
Damn. Not just sleeping but perhaps comatose, or recently deceased.
After a second of wondering wistfully if one of the more modern keys Eugenia gave them might allow access to Twixes and Takis, Briar decides to search further afield.
The Hawthorn dormitory is just across the lawn, glowering in all its Gothic glory, and when Briar ducks inside the entrance hall, it becomes clear that it’s a lot nicer than Eden.
It’s the hallowed nave of a cathedral, or at least a mid-range wedding venue: wood and stone, dramatically vaulted ceiling, décor with Victorian sensibilities rather than faded mid-century glory.
There’s a stack of The Times sitting on a trunk by the door in the hallway, and a stand stuffed with a stately flock of smart umbrellas.
The common room is empty. It’s painted a deep burgundy, the fire actually lit, burning low with nobody to attend to it.
There are armchairs here, tall wingbacks, and even an actual chaise of faded pink silk.
Someone’s been playing cards on a felted table by the window, hands still neatly laid.
Briar wonders if it costs more to room in Hawthorn.
That’s the sort of information that was probably included in the thick brochure they’d only seen once, in Seb’s shaking hands, the contents lost to them once he had been.
The softly glowing vending machine seems to be the only thing in the common room added in the past hundred years. Briar pounds the keys until they’ve kangarooed a can of ginger beer, two packets of crisps - both prawn cocktail - and the much-wished-for Twix into the pouch of their hoodie.
Back out on the lawn, it looks like the second supper shift has just been unceremoniously kicked out. Briar plans to put their head down and barrel through, but something pulls them up short: a flash of silvering hair.
A second glance confirms that it is indeed attached to one Sebastian fucking Wolfe.
He’s not pushing his way through the supper crowds or stalking about with his fellow capes.
He’s sitting with his long legs tucked up to his chest in a domed wall niche which is ridged like a shell, carved into grey stone that’s blanketed by climbing roses.
His waistcoat is undone, his tie loose and unpinned, and he looks .
. . a wreck. He’s hunched over with the heels of his hands pressed to his forehead and his shoulders heaving, breathing like he’s the one who’s drowning, long hair hanging over his face.
Suddenly he’s really Seb - the one Briar spent so many hard nights with at Grove House.
Overwrought and shaking, silent and unreachable.
Bright blood beneath his nails. Briar can almost still see it there.
When he was younger, he’d cried easily, but Briar knew there had been a few cold, horrible conversations with his father about what it meant to be a man, and after that it was all clenched fists and soft toothmarks in his lower lip instead, turning inwards and downwards and off.
Briar knows that approaching him is a terrible idea.
Maybe the worst they’ve ever had. They should keep walking.
But some part of them has been waiting for a spark of recognition - for Seb to feel like somebody Briar really loved once, instead of a total, inexplicable stranger - and this guy who’s clearly having some sort of breakdown between supper shifts in full view of about a hundred people . . . Briar knows him.
There’s something extremely strange about the fact that nobody else has stopped to look, or to point and laugh.
At Dunts he just stares at Briar, confused and disarmed, until Briar clears their throat to speak.
‘What are you doing?’
The answer to this is very obviously ‘having a panic attack’, but it’s not really what Briar means. They wish they didn’t sound so upset. It’s impossible not to.
Seb is still staring at Briar with the kind of shock that would be more appropriate if they’d just broken down the door of his dormitory, rather than spotted him from across the busy lawn.
‘I’m . . .’ he says, and then he seems to remember himself and the shutters come down. ‘What are you doing?’
‘I work here.’
Seb’s expression slides into something like a sneer, as if he can’t imagine any scenario in which a person might have to work at a school, and Briar becomes the exact size and shape of seven years of anger.
Unbelievably, Seb says, ‘You shouldn’t be talking to me.’
‘Why? Are you going to push me over and spit in my lunch? Drag me to a cave and try to drown me for fun? Sic your brigade of draconian toffs on me? So pathetic you’ll just follow anyone around, will you, even if they’re—?’
It happens again - a weird, wild push of magic, this time like a hot hand on Briar’s chest, giving them a strong shove that winds them and sends them stumbling.
They don’t fall this time, though; they just stare at Seb incredulously, seething, and watch his face go on a strange journey from anger to momentary confusion, ending up somewhere completely unreadable.
‘Go fuck yourself,’ Briar says, with a wave of their hand like an ironic curtsey. They’re about to walk away when Seb does something that makes absolutely no sense: he half gets up, clumsy in his hurry, reaches out and grabs Briar by the arm.
Not with malice, or any real violence. Like he wants to check if Briar is really standing there, hating him in a hoodie. His long, narrow fingers are tight on Briar’s wrist without hurting - insistent, like this is somehow very, very important.
His eyes make piercing contact with Briar’s, searching rapidly back and forth like he’s scanning for something, a line of text he’s committing to memory.
Briar is too confused to do anything except gape back, thinking for the most fleeting of seconds that it’s very unfortunate that hazel eyes and long, tousled hair and sharp features blotched red with emotion are sort of objectively attractive.
Seb was always pretty, but most children are generically cute, before they’ve grown into their faces.
Now, he’s practically ethereal. A fantasy prince from one of the books Briar can’t read any more. Born to be here. Made of magic.
It feels like a matter of pride that Briar isn’t the one to look away, to back down, so it’s an enormous relief when Seb lets go and drops his eyes in a sudden rush, like switching off a light.
‘You dropped your Twix,’ he says quietly, and then he gets up, puts his hands in his pockets and lopes away. Briar watches the crowd part subtly around him. Nobody looks at him, but they move anyway, automatically: fish avoiding a much worse fish, filings fleeing the wrong end of a magnet.
The crowd thins as scholars find their way into the refectory or back to their dormitories.
It makes the air feel more breathable, somehow.
Its underside might be plagued by rot, but the school is so beautiful like this, teetering on the edge of dusk with a chill in the air, accompanied by the sound of a bell chiming.
Briar sighs, retrieves the Twix, and heads for Eden.