6.
We got the chance to exchange talk after lunch. Colin pretended to throw an epileptic fit, and choke on his soup, and they rushed him off to the infirmary. It was quite natural that we were permitted to visit him, of course, since we all became so distraught that we could not attend our Home Economics lessons. Mrs. Wren let the four of us out early.
We had tried the same thing a period earlier, with Miss Daw, but she had simply smiled a cool, dreamy smile, as if she were listening to distant music, and continued with her fingering instructions.
“That’s great!” said Colin, when he heard what the Headmaster had said to me. “The door’s unlocked! You can get out any time!”
He lay in the hospital bed, his hands folded behind his head, looking pleased as punch.
“What did he say to you boys?” asked Vanity. Vanity was irked, because she had not been called in to see Headmaster Boggin.
Quentin said, “Substantially the same thing. We should behave while the Board meeting is in progress. He didn’t tell us the details, though.” He looked at me sidelong, as if thinking that I was, after all, two or three years older than he was, and was privy to information denied him.
Victor said, “We should not attempt our final escape until we discover more about who this guest of the Board is. This is our first hint that there is a power even the Headmaster fears. If we can enlist such a power to our aid, then we stand a chance of getting away from here. Otherwise, I do not see how we can get far enough away, fast enough. Even if we stole a boat from the village, Headmaster could have the police run us down.”
Colin said, “What about merely heading into the forest? It gets deeper and darker the further in you go.”
“The maps show the woods are only two miles wide,” said Quentin softly. “If you pass through them, you come to Oxwich Green.”
“Maps of England,” said Colin, “On Earth. The real forest goes on for a trillion miles, and then leads to a forest darker than it is.”
Quentin said in a mild voice, “I am not claiming this is Earth. But maps are powerful symbols, and may be influencing us in a subtle fashion. We should destroy or deface the maps here, to loosen their grip on us, and draw maps of our own portraying the true world beyond these walls.”
I said, “You know, maybe we should listen to the Headmaster. I mean, what you guys are saying does sound a little, well, crazy, doesn’t it? He said that the Board might just release us. And he said there were funds waiting for us. Some sort of trust fund held for us when we reach eighteen. I mean, can’t we try to give him a chance? The Headmaster?”
Victor looked puzzled, as if I had gotten the wrong answer on a math sum. Quentin looked pensive and slightly sad. Colin laughed at me, and stuck his hands under his own shirt, pushing them out as if he had breasts. “Let’s give the Headmaster a chance!” he said in a high falsetto, batting his eyelashes. “Oh, let’s listen to him! I want a good grade on my toad-eating class next week!”
Vanity yanked the pillow out from under Colin’s head so that his head fell back sharply onto the wooden bed frame, and smote him in the face with it, before he could get his hands clear of his shirt to defend himself.
She said, “Did you ask the Headmaster about the talking dog? Or Dr. Fell saying he wanted to cut us up for experiments? About me being a princess, and you being from before the fall of Adam?”
Victor and Quentin stared. “What talking dog?” came Colin’s muffled voice from under the pillow.
Fortunately, we had enough time to fill them in on the details before the nurse, Sister Twitchett, came back in.
By the time we were done reciting the tales of our discoveries, my pleas to give the Headmaster a chance began to seem to be the crazy talk, not Quentin’s soft-voiced observation that the room we were in might have a peephole in it, and could we have Vanity look for the secret door?
5
1.
That night Vanity climbed into bed with me, despite that we now had a roaring fire blazing in the hearth. After the lights were doused, all the shadows in the room pointed toward the fireplace, swaying and hopping to the music of the merry crackle of wood.
Mrs. Wren had actually been more watchful than normal, and stared at Vanity while she swallowed her medicine. While Mrs. Wren was looking at Vanity, I put a few drops of the liquid on my lip, and threw the rest of the cup into the fire. When she turned to me at the noise, I only licked my lips and smiled. This puzzled her. Mrs. Wren could hardly be angry for me being too eager to drink my medication, since she apparently did not want to admit she was supposed to watch us quaff it.
After she left, I tried to get Vanity to upchuck into the chamber pot, by putting her finger down her throat, but she was too squeamish to make a sincere attempt.
Now, lying next to me, she whispered in my ear: “If there are peepholes in the rooms, they have been watching us this whole time. Our whole lives.”
I did not bother to tell her my theory that she had created the secret passages, peepholes and all, out of her own thought, and that reality had shifted to accommodate her imagination. The word “reality,” by definition, referred to those things we cannot change by mere wishes. I had always thought the physical world was included in that set. Now, I wasn’t sure.
I said, “They all believed you. About the talking dog. Victor’s question about whether we saw the dog talk was just, you know, for the peepholes. Why do you think we were left alone in the infirmary for so long? They all had to pretend not to believe us. Except that it took Colin forever to catch on. What an idiot.”
“Do you think they were watching?”
“Boggin knows about our codes. He knows about the time Victor and I snuck out to measure the moon years ago. I think he knows everything.”
“But you still want to trust him, don’t you?”
“I don’t think he’d let Dr. Fell kill us, if that’s what you mean. I mean, if he were going to, why didn’t he do it when we were six or eight? Why wait till now?”
Vanity replied, “Well, if I knew the answers to that, maybe I’d trust Headmaster Boggin also. Because then he would not be keeping the answers from us.”
We heard noises from outside: the sound of an automobile engine, the noise of tires crunching the gravel on the carriage circle before the East Wing. Vanity and I hopped out of bed, went over to our North-facing window, and raised the sash.
The warmth of our nicely firelit room rushed away; the icy wind was shockingly cold against our faces. We heard motors, doors slamming, voices raised in welcome. From the reflection of the light against the trees in the distance, we could tell the East Wing windows were lit up. Faintly, over the snow, came music. Miss Daw was playing her violin, a haunting melody of a few simple notes, some Highland air I did not recognize. Nothing was visible from our side of the building.
Vanity said, “It’s the bigwigs.”
The Visitors and Governors. Plus whoever or whatever Dr. Fell had referred to as “the Pretender,” who might be the same person as Headmaster Boggin’s Trustee.
