We sat there, not breathing, waiting to hear if the winged man would raise the alarm. But the only noise that came was the rattling and groaning of the chandelier chain, as the massive iron frame of the lights was hauled upward.
2.
Quentin looked at me, then nodded toward the top of the stair, where the roof exit was. I nodded back. It was time to retreat.
He crept quietly up the stairs, gesturing for me to stay back.
I was furious when I saw him wave his hand behind his back at me. Me, two or three years his senior! It was somewhat patronizing of him to assume that, because I was the girl, I had to go second; and I knew he probably picked this moment because we dared not talk, so I could not question his silent order. He had also turned his head toward the exit above, so as not to notice my rude gesture by which I answered him.
And I wasn’t going to push past him on the narrow stair; that might make a noise, too.
He squinted out into the night, looked around carefully. He actually—I am not kidding—he actually raised his walking stick like a periscope, and turned the little brass jackal head this way and that.
Then, satisfied, he rose to his feet and stepped out onto the roof.
Immediately, he seemed to explode with light. I blinked, dazzled. It was only a flashlight beam, but it had caught him from the knees up. From the angle, it looked as if the beam were coming from below, over the edge of the roof.
Quentin’s back and his left hand were still in shadow. He was blinking and raising his right hand to shield his eyes.
He extended his left hand toward me and dropped his walking stick. I caught it before it clattered on the stairs. Then with his now-empty left hand, Quentin pointed at me, and made a thumb gesture like a hitchhiker. Go back. Get away.
Dr. Fell’s voice came up from over the edge of the roof. “Well, well, if it is not our young Mr. Nemo. I was told to expect someone else, but I suppose you will do. Come down, young man! I am to take anyone I find to Headmaster Boggin’s office, but I suppose, since he is occupied, we may have time to visit the infirmary and discover from whence comes your amazing resistance to your medication. You are the last person I would expect to be able to negate my effects. I see certain magnetic anomalies around your person: these are merely material effects which material science has long since learned how to comprehend and negate. Observe.”
A beam of blue light from the ground came up over the edge of the roof. Quentin stood goggle-eyed at what he was seeing; the source of the blue light, I assume. There seemed to be little sparks or flickers of smaller particles flicking forward through the light, like dust motes. The beam played back and forth over Quentin.
By that point, one very quiet stair at a time, I had reached the bottom of the alcove again. There was a nook behind the potted plant where even someone standing on the balcony would not be able to see me.
I sat down there with my head down, clutching Quentin’s walking stick. I felt glad that I hadn’t been caught. That thought made me feel like a miserable coward.
I huddled into a smaller ball when, some minutes later (though it seemed like hours), I heard the happy talk and laughter from below give way to charming music of violin and guitar.
3.
Time seemed to stop when I heard that music, and all my grief fled away, as if a light shone through my heart, and no darkness could be there.
The music seemed eternal to me, as if it came from a higher, finer sphere, and made all this, what we call “reality,” seem flat.
A type of numbness came over me then, not of any limb or organ I could name or point to. I had a sense that there was a part of me that was being squeezed or strangled. I cannot explain it any clearer than that.
It is not as if I had not heard Miss Daw play before. I had, every day, and twice on Sundays. I knew her hand on the violin; I knew she could bring emotion out of the inanimate wood and catgut that infused and inspired every soul in earshot.
But this was different. Perhaps it was because this type of cheerful, voluptuous music was not normally what she played. Perhaps she was playing more strongly than was her wont, for an audience with stronger spirits than mine, and she let appear a strength and a magic in her songs she kept cloaked when around us. Perhaps when she played for me in class there was a deliberate policy guiding what she exposed me to, how quickly or slowly she allowed her influence to seep into the haunting songs.
Or perhaps it was because she was in duet with the headless man. His guitar notes floated up, and, above and behind the melody and harmony, his soul seemed expressed in song; and his soul spoke of escape, of release, of flight to the light beyond the dark places of the world.
For whatever reason, I was now aware of a quality in her music that I had never noticed before, not consciously. It was like ice. It stunned something in me, made it numb.
I tucked the walking stick under one arm and put my fingers into my ears. It did not help. I had to get away, and quickly.
4.
I am sure the wisest direction to flee would have been straight up stairs to the roof. From there, I could go down by the scaffolding.
I had two reasons against it. First, I did not know where the scaffolding was in relation to the windows of the Great Hall. I might be plainly visible walking down the workmen’s scaffold. Second, even though I should assume Dr. Fell left his post to go do something horrible to Quentin—Quentin whom I had abandoned to his fate—I could not shake the eerie feeling that the door to the roof was still being watched.
I had been in this building before, on several occasions, despite that it was never used for classes. The balcony went in a circle around the base of the dome and opened up into two corridors opposite each other, which ran the main length of the building. At the end of either corridor was a staircase. In both cases, the foot of the stair ended in an antechamber, which also held the main doors outside. Unfortunately, in both cases, the antechambers opened via a short corridor through an archway directly into what was now a ballroom, with no doors blocking the way. If only for a moment, I would be visible to the people in the room.
I decided to make for the Eastern corridor. Anything else required walking or crawling around 180 degrees of the balcony, in plain view (now that the chandelier light shone full upon it) of anyone below who happened to look up.
So down the corridor I went, softly, still half-benumbed by the music. There were tall doors to my left and right, offices of the School Administration, I supposed, or perhaps the living quarters of the Talbot family, should they ever return to their estate.
I took the stairs two at a time, for now the music had segued into a foxtrot or jig of some sort, and many feet were galloping on the floor, and I could not keep still, hearing it.
I was at the second landing, where the stairs switchbacked, before I heard, over the noise which was masking my descent, the sound of several feet ascending the stair I was about to step around the corner onto.
I was on the second floor. It was quicker to open the door and slip through it than it was to run back up the stairs.
I slipped into the darkened room, pushed the door shut (quickly but softly), and stood with my hand on the door, listening, trying to control my breathing.
