3 - The Fairy School

A castle in the forest. The newly minted president.

the beginning begins by beginning

An unfamiliar ceiling swam into focus, and for a moment, Demi could not place herself.

But then the pieces fell into place, one by one.

Item one: the dusty, tired wooden beams laid like a loose lattice overhead, crossing and criss-crossing in an impossible jumble of exposed timbers that ran right up to the underside of the distant roof.

Item two: dozens of slender, stilted ladders leaning helter-skelter, against walls, against towering piles of junk, against anything at all (and sometimes against absolutely nothing at all). They were piled on top of one another like stairways to heaven, and nailed into place from beam to beam like somewhat questionable catwalks. The tableau might have inspired M. C. Escher to illustrate a game board for chutes and ladders.

Item three: the sunlight that came in through high and strangely placed octagonal windows, each one featuring a different esoteric symbol in the center of the frame (upon reflection, that was honestly a pretty strange choice for a church building).

Item four: the spiders and doves and moths and the larvae of half a hundred butterflies: Lumina Calloway’s larvarium, and the dovecote these two little birds shared with one another, and with their numerous avian roommates.

Conclusion: this was the unfamiliar ceiling of the original chapterhouse. This strange building was located on the grounds of St. Mary’s Nativity, Santa Maria Nascente, in the Cradle of St. Mary.

She was a church mouse.

It was certainly the most unfamiliar ceiling that Demeter Serraffield had ever contemplated, and very much at odds with the one she had expected to wake up to, even so recently as yesterday morning. Yesterday, she had come to the City expecting to be squired to Marquis Lysander and to move into the main town residence of the Serraffield family: Starry Falls. It might have been different from her life in the country, but perhaps not terribly different. She had not expected to have much freedom of choice or much influence over the course of her life until she turned twenty. Her previous experience with her father and her sober understanding of her hereditary position had made her ever aware of boundaries: what was allowed and what was not allowed.

And most everything interesting was quite assuredly not allowed.

Demi had spent the whole of her life like a great jungle cat in an enclosure at a zoological garden. Great pains and tremendous expense had gone toward making her habitat as comfortable and realistic as possible, and so long as she followed some basic rules, she was allowed to do exactly as she liked inside of it — but she was always carefully protected from the outside world. She was always carefully monitored and tracked. She knew she was in a cage, that she had been born in a cage, and that she would live in that cage until fate afforded her a chance to escape from it.

But even though Demi had a very practical understanding of her situation, she never stopped feeling out the corners of her enclosure. She was always pushing against the edges of things to find out what was flexible and what was not. She was an expert at determining which rules would be rigorously enforced and which would be routinely ignored in favor of keeping the peace.

That made her a habitual rule breaker who was almost never punished. When she was punished, she felt that it was arbitrary, with little connection to any particular infraction and with no discernible relationship to her behavior. Therefore, Demi was audacious in the way she committed the crimes she could get away with, and always threading the needle on the crimes that were likely to be punished. If there was a red line that absolutely could not be crossed, she would approach it and walk it with calm self-possession, as if she were on a high wire.

Whatever freedom existed inside the ornate cage of her birth, Demeter Serraffield was an expert at finding and devouring every last drop of it.

It was the only way to live, really, because she chafed at her confines. She could be a paragon of manners when it suited her, but as any of her tutors might have said, Demi had always been at least half wild animal.

But even given her innate authority challenging and conversely authority worshiping nature, the wild animal who was Demi understood that she lived in a cage, and that there were some restrictions it was fruitless to question.

Her mother had helped to make her cage as comfortable and interesting as possible, until —

Until.

Until she had not any longer.

Demi couldn't think about it. Not this morning. If she did, then she would get angry, and she would get hot and tense and all her muscles would hurt, and she would cry and cry miserably, and here there was no Robert Grave to quietly comfort her, no Alexis Bryce to challenge her with another book, no familiar quilts to hide away in, no assortment of animal friends to pet and pet and then messily cry on.

She was on her own.

That feeling was as unfamiliar as the ceiling.

This was the first day of the rest of everything.

Or it was the second day.

But perhaps it would always be the first day, over and over again.

Things kept on happening and happening, quite without her permission.

It was a lot to take in.

Something very extraordinary had happened the day before — something unexpected, something perplexing, something marvelous, something arresting.

She had met a serious man in a serious suit who had caught her arm and caught her fancy — as easily as winding a bit of ribbon around his fingers. He had cautioned her about her attitudes, made her laugh without intending to, and then taken her as his squire without even asking her what she thought about the idea, offering his protection and guidance. He had changed her unchallengeable, unchanging tomorrow with a crisp snap of his fingers.

He had opened the door of her cage as if it were nothing, and had beckoned her out into thrilling, terrifying freedom.

It was still strange to think back on her father’s reaction to everything. She had expected — well, she had expected something. Instead, he had remained cool and remote, and had not given away any surprise at all when Matthias Eisenreich had calmly announced her new affiliation.

(Matthias Eisenreich had certainly not asked for her father’s permission. He had informed her father of her squiring as if it were an incontrovertible fact.)

Demi had expected a stare down, some clear conflict between their powerful, intense personalities, but her father had given her up without even changing expressions. His poker face remained absolute. In some ways, it was a little disappointing.

It wasn’t as if she had wanted to see her father and the Iron Duke in some kind of grudge match, but the ease with which he gave her up made it feel as if he really didn’t care particularly what happened to her.

I suppose it doesn’t change much for him, she reflected, feeling a bit distant and disconnected. I was going to be squired one way or another. He knew he’d be giving me up to somebody.

That left her feeling a little sad and hollow. She had no illusions that her relationship with her father was anything approaching chummy, but it still hurt that he could let her go without even changing expressions.

But despite how unmoved he had been by the entire escapade, her father had sprung one unexpected surprise upon her, and that surprise was the reason why she had woken disoriented, staring at an unfamiliar ceiling.

In compliance with his decree, Demi would not be living at Starry Falls, or at any of the other family properties. She didn’t believe she was even permitted to, had she asked for such a thing.

This declaration had put something of a damper on her planned investigations, but Demi imagined that she was still allowed to visit the family properties as she chose, simply not to live there.

The whole thing was rather peculiar, even nested as it was inside a rummage sale’s worth of peculiar events. Demi had very little experience with what squiring entailed, having not grown up inside the City, and having been overly sheltered, but she did know that squires generally lived with either their birth families, or their mentors, depending on the agreement.

She was deeply grateful that she did not have to live as Marquis Lysander dictated, but she would not understand how narrowly she had avoided trauma until some time later.

But she had never heard of any squire who resided with an unrelated third party, apart from those who chose to live at school dormitories, if they remained enrolled.

And yet it was unquestionably true that her father had arranged for her to be looked after by one of his old school friends. That old friend had turned out to be the Apostolic archbishop in charge of Santa Maria Nacente. He was a Lord of the Curia in his own right, although his mild temper and sunny disposition made him less forbidding that he otherwise might have been.

Her new living arrangements weren’t a punitive measure, as far as she could tell, and seemed to have been planned months — perhaps years — in advance.

It figured that she would be the last to know. It wasn't as if her opinion would have been consulted even if she had known about it.

And so now she was in the care of the sisters of the Nativity of St. Mary and a man who looked too young and boyish to be called an archbishop. Nonetheless, ‘archbishop’ was what he was properly called, just as she was properly called ‘Lady Serraffield,’ although she still wasn’t quite used to wearing it yet.

No one had called her that at Forest Home during her childhood. Instead, she had been ‘the young mistress,” or more informally ‘the little miss.’ After the funeral, she had become ‘my lady,’ but she still felt like something of an imposter.

She had been the Lady Demeter Serraffield, heir to the seat of Serraffield from the time of her birth, but it still felt sometimes that the title belonged to someone else, that she was merely participating in a pantomime, and would eventually be found out.

She looked up at her unfamiliar ceiling.

Somewhere far above there was the warm, dusty sound of wings: a dove in the dovecote, probably.

Demi took a deep breath and let it out slowly.

It was her sixteenth birthday, but she didn't feel any different than she had the day before. She was simply one day older than she had been yesterday.

Her birthday brought no expectations of a party or presents. Demi didn't really mourn the loss of either. Those things had passed out of the world. Robert Grave had tried to put together a small gathering the birthday after the funeral, but it had fizzled out weakly, like a tired sparkler that had passed one too many seasons unchosen in a beleaguered box of summertime amusements. While Demi had thanked him sincerely, she had prohibited further birthdays, and he had respected her wishes, although it had been hard for him to let such milestones pass uncelebrated.

She was the young lady of the Serraffield family, after all, and the most precious of his charges.

But despite the roil of emotions adolescence and profound grief had made an operational standard of her everyday life, Demi felt no sharp sting of persecution over the fact that her birthday was sure to pass unremarked upon.

For Demi, the lack of celebration (and interest) was just an ordinary and unquestioned element of her life. And she was circumspect enough to know that she was not the only newly sixteen year old girl who did not look forward to a lavish celebration. There were many terrible circumstances in the world, but her own circumstances, her own standard of living, were among the most exalted, measured by any metric. It seemed childish to lament something as silly as a birthday party when there was famine, disease, and poverty in the world. She was acutely sensitive to personal loss, to systemic injustice, to human despair.

Deeply mired in grief at the age of fourteen, she had resolved that she had grown too old for birthday parties anyway. She was a Serraffield, after all. She had responsibilities.

In any case, Robert Grave was not here, under the eaves of the original chapterhouse. He could not have arranged a birthday party for her even if she had begged for one. He was on his way back to Forest Home, having reluctantly delivered her into the care of Clarence Darby. That was where Mr. Grave belonged, where he was most happy. At Forest Home, he would carry on his duties with precision and regularity, the same way he had for forty years.

Demi would have to look after herself.

The antique alarm clock on the side table began to ring as angrily as if it were warning of a catastrophic fire (absolutely overdue at the original chapterhouse, as she had discovered the day before). Demi sat up in bed groggily, reached over to seize the alarming clock and then shoved it into the blankets on her bed, throwing two pillows over it.

It could still be heard ringing, although it had been somewhat muffled.

I hate this alarm clock, Demi thought for the thousandth, the millionth time.

Then she shoved one hand into the nest of blankets and located the key on the back of the clock. She turned it one way, then another way, then another way, and at last it clicked, and came out of the back of the clock, and the clock stopped ringing.

It was the only way to shut the alarm clock off once it had begun ringing, and the sleep addled Demi, who was a very slow starter, could not manage to shut it off while half awake. It was the reason she kept the alarm clock, even though she hated it: it was the only alarm clock she had ever used that could successfully get her out of bed.

She didn’t hate it when it wasn’t ringing. In fact, she rather liked it. It suited her sensibilities.

It was a beautiful piece of art in its own right: languid nymphs lolling around the unsympathetic face of the austere clock, shading themselves with palm fronds. Under the face of the clock was the möbius loop of a metal ribbon with a single twist and the words ‘Time will always get away,’ engraved into it.

That was true enough. Time was always getting away from her.

As Demi ran her hands through the hair that fell into her face, she came to a realization.

She was not alone.

Lumina Calloway was in her pajamas, a toothbrush in one of her hands, standing as still as a statue cast in bronze at the foot of Demi’s bed. There was no telling how long she had been standing there, silently observing her new acquaintance. If Demi had been a little more awake, she might have recognized the situation as being a little unnerving.

Demi ran her hands through the hair again and made some vague noises of good morning to her small roommate. Demi was not a collection of best habits, although other people often expected her to be. She was not early to bed and early to rise. She was more likely to stay up all night reading and thinking, and at last collapse into slumber at the edge of dawn. If left to her own devices, Demi would have likely not gotten out of bed until noon, and then only with the promise of a cup of tea and buttered toast.

She liked to be gently carted into wakefulness, the sleeping beauty passenger of a wheeled bower tugged along by fluffy rabbits with sweet expressions and accompanied by angels singing hosannas (quietly).

And then she’d have a languid hot shower, take her time detangling her hair, and go through the twelve ordered steps of her morning skin care routine.

By the time she was finished with all her important morning rituals, nearly two hours had generally passed. Demi would by then have emerged fully from her torpor, ready to engage fruitfully with the day ahead, as bright and as curious as a robin.

For people who did not see the sluggish, shambling Demi — who might fall asleep at the breakfast table if not regularly prodded awake — it was easy to imagine that she sprang into each morning fully formed: cheerful, inquisitive, playful, mannered, and courteous.

Lumina didn't seem perturbed by Demi’s vague and unintelligible greeting, or the fact that she seemed like some sort of swamp monster, shrouded in the tangled veil of her hair. Lumina said simply, “The sisters prepare breakfast between five thirty and six thirty. If you ask, they will also prepare a box lunch. I’m not certain if high school students need box lunches,” Lumina admitted seriously.

“I'm not either,” Demi agreed drowsily. “What time is it?”

“Six twenty five,” Lumina announced evenly, causing Demi to lurch unsteadily out of bed.

“I know I set the alarm for five thirty,” Demi said to herself, trying to untangle herself from the blankets as she tumbled out of bed. She ended up in a pile of blankets on the floor, with a book open over her face. Lacey had tumbled off the other side of the bed when Demi had fallen onto the floor, but Demi didn’t have any time to see to her.

“Oh right,” she said, pushing the book off her face. “I reset the alarm because I couldn't go to sleep until almost five am. I decided that some sleep was better than no sleep.”

But because of her questionable decision to sleep in, Demi found herself pressed for time in a way that was profoundly distressing. She didn't have nearly enough time for her morning routine. She had to be on her way by seven thirty at the latest, and she had never been to St. Muirgein's before.

She had committed the directions to memory, but she was still very unfamiliar with the City. If she got lost or turned around on the way, half an hour would not be enough time to get to school, and she would surely be tardy. It was not the first impression she wanted to make.

She had to move at top speed. She couldn't afford the luxury of a lazy wakeup. There were things to do.

Demi staggered around, trying to collect the things she needed for her morning toilette, and soon she was ready to toddle off in absolutely the wrong direction, deeper into the strange maze of the chapterhouse attic.

“The bathroom is downstairs,” Lumina reminded her. “On the ground floor. I would lead you there, but I’m afraid I don't have time. I have to feed the pigeons before I go.”

Demi made an about face, and rushed off, but still had to double back to get her uniform, a pair of clean underwear, the map Lumina had drawn for her, and the set of ornate keys that was required to unlock the six doors that stood between the attic and the ground floor bathroom.

After maddeningly fumbling with the large ring of skeleton keys half a dozen times in short succession, Demi hit the bathroom like a hurricane, and somehow managed to get herself ready in only twelve minutes by exhibiting dizzying feats of flexibility and ambidexterity.

But even setting the land speed record for cleaning herself up and getting dressed did not avail Demi with regard to breakfast or lunch. The sisters were very punctual, and had moved on to other responsibilities by the time Demi got to the kitchen at the abbey.

Given that she was functioning on very little sleep, Demi had at least hoped for some toast.

But everything had been carefully put away, and although Demi rummaged through several cabinets, the only foodstuffs she could find were canned.

Canned green beans were not really the kind of thing that set a young girl’s heart dancing. Besides that, she didn't have the time to make them and eat them, even if she had acquired permission to use the kitchen (and she had not, at this point, acquired permission to do much of anything).

With no possibility of morning norriture, Demi backtracked to the original chapterhouse to do a final check on her hastily arranged uniform and to pack her school bag. As she straightened the bow around her neck and pulled her vest down snugly, she owned to the fact that she had done all she could. She needed to be on her way, even as she faced her morning commute with some trepidation. Lumina had already gone.

Demi’s nervousness was perhaps understandable.

It was her first day of school.

It wasn’t only her first day at a new and unfamiliar school. It wasn't the first day of a new term, or even a new year.

It was her first day of school ever.

She could only hope that things would go smoothly and quietly, and that she would find a comfortable place where she could be something like herself.

And a friend.

She wanted to find a friend.

It felt like she hadn't had one her own age for a very long time.

Demi was so preoccupied with thoughts of her new school life that she didn't remember that she needed to return the original chapterhouse’s pass keys to the hook in the attic until she was halfway across the saint’s walk, bound for school. She had to beat a hasty retreat to the attic to return them. There was only one set, after all, and she had to share them with Lumina Calloway. The ground floor bathroom could not be accessed without them.

Even if she was in a hurry, she couldn't just run off with the keys to the only toilet they had.

That was beyond unconscionable.