“Nazi propaganda was essential to their war effort, why?” The teacher cast his spectacled gaze around the room and I slunk in my seat. I wasn’t fast enough, and he settled on me. “Miss Adams, if I’m correct? Have you studied Nazi Germany before?”
Coughing, I straightened up, trying not to focus on any of the faces twisting in place to watch me squirm. “Not so much, we focused on the War of Independence.”
The elderly teacher, his face wrinkled like scrunched paper, nodded understandingly. “Of course, you did.” He stepped closer and I glared at him, willing him to let it go. “Using your highly intelligent brain, Miss Adams, which I am sure you have in there, what do you think propaganda could be used for by the Nazi’s?”
With my skin heating to face-melting temperatures, I churned through my foggy brain. “To make people believe whatever they wanted, so not necessarily the truth.”
He nodded slowly. “Yes, propaganda is highly manipulative, especially if it is used within the mechanism of state organised forms of media.”
I nodded just to get him to go away. He smiled and waved at me with his hand. I assume he was telling me to relax. “I’m sure we can have a lively debate about the War of Independence between us, Miss Adams.”
“Mm, great.”
A snort filled the air and I shifted to see Phil in her seat with her face down towards her desk. The history teacher, whose name for the life of me I couldn’t remember, glared first at Phil and then at me. I scrambled quickly—he was the history teacher, he might be able to help me find out about the stones. “I’d like that, we also did a lot about slavery and inequality.”
He clapped his hands together. “Yes, yes, American history is rich in inequality.”
I raised an eyebrow. “That’s rich from a British person. Didn’t you invent slavery?”
He laughed, a booming sound which made all the sleeping kids sit up straight. “Hahaha, yes they did. I on the other hand am Scottish, so am free from that English guilt.”
He wandered back to the front of the classroom, snatching up his chalk and beginning to scratch it across the chalk board again, chuckling every so often to himself. I turned for Phil and glared at her, shaking my head. Holding her hands to the side she feigned innocence. I shook my head again and turned back for the front. The sooner this lesson was over, the quicker I could tell her what I found.
“Are you sure it was here?”
I stared bewildered at the shrubs and trees. “Yes, I’m sure.” A sharp glance either way and I turn mystified for the path, waving my hand at the gravel I marched down only hours before. “He was—” I cut myself off. I didn’t want to tell her I’d run into Tristan Prince again or explore the fact we inexplicably hated each other without reason. Nor the fact I couldn’t stop thinking about him and maybe was dreaming about him in a freak out historical re-enactment.
Phil had the hate to tell you, but you’re totally crackers look on her face. “Mum and Dad looked everywhere. The whole site was charted, graded, and searched. There was nothing, Mae, not even one speck of crockery, let alone standing stones.”
On the rushed walk here I’d described the stones, trying to remember that place I knew existed somewhere in England, but whose name I couldn’t recall. Stonehenge, apparently.
“I don’t know if they were standing stones. They were smaller than pictures I’ve seen of Stonehenge.”
She shrugged her shoulders. “There are different ones around the country, some smaller, some only partially surviving.”
I shivered, even though the day had turned relatively dry. I say dry. What I meant was that the never ending wet whirling mist had lifted, but grey clouds still hung like dark curtains in the sky. “But the bones.” I shook my head. The image of those tangled bones, the way the two skeletons seemed to be holding one another… it was unsettling. The image of them seemed to echo in my heart. “It was awful, Phil, they were huddled together. But how were they still there? Why haven’t they been destroyed?” I went to tell her about the necklace, but reluctance stole my words. “Surely two skeletons can’t remain intact like that, exposed to the elements?”
Phil shook her head. “No, they must be recent. Skeletons do survive, but they are buried in the earth. Locked in an unexpected pocket of soil which preserves them. If two skeletons had been left on stones out here in the wilderness, they would have been carried away a long time ago by wild animals.”
I knew what she said was right, but I also knew she was wrong. I’d seen them. Felt them.
“I want to know everything.” Out in the forest, alone, it should have been natural to feel uneasy. I didn’t. I had no fear out here. I turned my view to the castle—I’d rather stay out here with the trees than go back in there with its draughty hallways and chilled bedrooms.
Phil shook her head again, this time with determination. “There isn’t anything to find out.”
I glared at the trees, sure they were teasing me, hiding my find so I couldn’t share it with anyone else. “I reckon there’s got to be records in this castle somewhere.” I frowned at the sprawling crumbling reddish stone. “There has to be something, this place is too weird. Why is there a school in the middle of nowhere? Where is my aunt now? How does she find these artefacts you say she always sends back to the school?”
Phil and I stared at one another. My chest rose and fell with the agitated catch of my breath. “I know it’s crazy, but I can sense something strange going on. I keep having these dreams, they are so real, exhausting even.
