Fairies and Felicitations (Scholars and Sorcery) (2 page)

“What?”

“Solid, plain girls like you and Cecily always go a bit soppy over the pretty, glamorous type, dearest. That’s why you put up with the way I treat you, after all. It’s my good looks and charm.”

“I have absolutely
no
idea why I put up with you.” I shove her forcefully off my bed and crawl under the covers, my back pointedly turned to her. Solid and plain, indeed.

“Because you’re my best friend?” she asks, a little plaintively. “Anne, don’t be cross. I was just teasing.”

I pointedly refuse to answer.

After a while, I begin to relent. I start to think of how kind and amusing Kitty can be, the way she diverts and comforts me when I have my monthly pains, how much fun she can be, how sweet, how really truly beautiful with her red-gold hair and rose leaf skin…

“Cut it out!” I hiss, hitting her in the stomach with my pillow from the next cubicle.

Kitty breaks into unrepentant giggles, and the effects of the Charm diminish as Emily, the dorm monitor, wearily tells us to shut up and go to sleep. Kitty, mean thing that she is, keeps my pillow, and I don’t dare risk Emily’s wrath by getting up to steal it back. I sigh and try to settle my head on the bare mattress, vowing retaliation.

As we wash in the morning, Kitty starts up as if the conversation had never been interrupted. “Say what you like, Anne, I bet Cecily is completely gone on Esther. For all she is the kind to look down on soppiness and schlooping in other girls.”

“I don’t say anything about it at all.” I shift uncomfortably, wishing she would drop the subject.

“I bet there’s a way to get back at her using that.” Kitty ties her fluffy hair back with a green ribbon, admiring its effect. “I just have to think about it a bit and hatch a plan.”

“There’s nothing to get back at her for!” I snap. “Really, Kitty, you are the end! Just drop it.”

“Oh, have it your way, Miss Goody Two-Shoes,” Kitty says, and flounces down to breakfast in an offended whirlwind.

The next few days are relatively peaceful, for all my fears. Kitty behaves like an absolute angel at games, even running when the circumstances dictate and once or twice connecting with the ball, and I begin to relax. She’s a queer scratchy creature, but her claws, I decide, are rather blunt.

Wednesday morning, when lessons break after Geography, there is hot milk and cake waiting for our luncheon, as usual. Instead of going in with the other girls, Kitty drags me off into the rose courtyard.

“Kitty, what are you up to?” I wail. It’s cold and grey and I really could have done with that hot milk. That cake too; I’m starving. I don’t have my cape or scarf and the wind is monstrously cold. I wrap my arms around myself and shiver.

“Here.” She kneels down and digs with her bare hands among the dead, icy leaves. My teeth chatter with sympathy. “I knew it! Look, Anne.”

There’s a little group of rose fairies, looking up at us with wide, iris-less eyes. Kitty expertly grabs two by the legs as the others flee.

“There! Got you, my pretties!” She shoves them in her pocket and buttons it.

“Oh, Kitty, don’t be horrid. Poor titchy things.”

“I won’t hurt them,” she says impatiently. “Don’t be so soft.”
 

“Whatever do you want with them, anyway?”

“What’s Friday, silly?”

“Half day off.” I roll my eyes.

“No! Well, yes. But it’s also Saint Valentine’s Day.” Kitty smiles expectantly at me, but her smile turns into a grimace when I fail to react. “What did Miss Evans tell us about Saint Valentine’s Day, idiot? Oh, I suppose you don’t remember. You always sleep through English, you lazy numpty.”

“You just try copying my compositions again, that’s all.” English is my best subject.

“Ah, Anne, my darling dear, don’t be like that.” Kitty gives me her most winning smile and slips her hand into mine. It’s less a treat than she might expect, given that it’s still cold and slimy from her digging. I shake it away. “Miss Evans said that a traditional gift of romantic love is two flower fairies folded in a paper heart. When the heart is unfolded, the fairies fly away, and the lady love reads the valentine written on the paper. It’s a beautiful tradition.”

“It sounds cruel and nasty to me.” I tug her tie, somewhat more viciously than affectionately. “What are you intending, to win Cecily over to your side by confessing your secret love in a valentine? I don’t think it will work.”

“Oh, it’s not
my
secret love that’s going to be confessed in a valentine. And not
to
Cecily.” Kitty winks at me and starts back to the school.

I vehemently dispute the accusation of being a numpty, but I can be slow on the uptake sometimes. It takes me a moment to realise what she’s proposing.

“Kitty! Oh, Kitty dear, you can’t.”

I don’t have to feign being truly horrified. There are certain things a girl with any honour at all won’t even think about, and pranks that risk splitting up a friendship is definitely among them.

Kitty shrugs mutinously. “Cecily Kettler needs to stop pretending she’s as immune to good looks as all that.”

“Honestly, Kitty-cat, that’s beyond the pale. It’s not—it’s not playing the game.”

I realise my mistake as soon as I say it. Kitty scornfully tosses her bare head.

“Why don’t you advise me to die with the name of my school on my lips while you’re at it? You know that rot means nothing to me. And what are you going to do—tattle on me to Cecily? Would that satisfy your schoolgirl honour?”

“You know I can’t sneak,” I say, helplessly, and she grins triumphantly. “Oh, I wish you wouldn’t.”

“If wishes were horses, well, unicorns wouldn’t be so special. Calm down, pet, and come nab some cake before those greedy girls have eaten it all up.”

I am all of a dither as I follow her back into the welcome warmth of inside. I don’t want to believe Kitty would do something so malicious and simply mad in order to prove a silly point. The trouble is, even after two years of bosom friendship, I really never do feel like I quite know what Kitty will do at any given moment.

two

A S
EA
OF
M
ISFORTUNES

AFTER DINNER, KITTY grabs my arm and hauls me into an art classroom. “Now, I have the fairies, and I filched some stationery from Harriet’s drawer. Isn’t it gorgeous? Look, it has little sprays of roses on it. Perfect. I even dabbed some of my best cologne on. I say, you don’t think the scent will suffocate the fairies, do you?”

“I don’t want to know anything about it.”

“You have to know about it, dear, or how can you write the poem for the valentine?”

“What?”

Kitty perches on a stool in front of an easel, and surveys me calmly. “You know you’re better at poetry and all that muck than I am.”

“Why should I write your blithering poem for you?”

“I don’t know,” Kitty says, twirling her ribbon in her hands. Her expression is innocent enough to make the hairs on my arm stand up. “Maybe because—well, do you remember Second form, when I was caught with sticky fingers and you all were talking about reporting me to Miss Carroll?”

I pull at my belt, which is suddenly feeling tight around an upset stomach. “You managed to Charm your way out of it, like usual. And I never,
ever
said we should report you. I stuck up for you.”

“I remember. And I never,
ever
told anyone that I wasn’t the one who took Emily’s ring.”

We stare at each other for a long moment. Kitty looks unruffled and sweet as a purring little tiger cub.

I never wore that beastly ring. It’s at the bottom of my drawer at home. Sometimes I plot and plan about how to return it to Emily, but every plot ends with disaster and exposure, and besides, everyone has forgotten about it by now. It was lost in the stream of minor little thefts at the time, thefts to which Kitty had, when cornered, cheerily confessed, as if it was an astonishment to her that anyone would make a fuss about anything so unimportant.

“I would have confessed if you hadn’t talked your way out of punishment anyway.”

“Would you? I wonder, Anne darling. After all, what difference would one more trinket make to my fate? Far more sensible to shut up about it.”

“You didn’t tattle on me. Schoolgirl honour after all?” I say, my voice hoarse and weak in my own ears. I wish my stomach would stop aching.

“Nothing of the kind. You know I don’t have any to speak of. No… I was interested. And I wanted to be your friend. I didn’t have a real friend, you know. The big girls loved me, but you lot always steered clear. I knew no one would trust me again for simply ages, but it didn’t seem to matter so much as long as you weren’t worth trusting either. I knew we were two of a kind.” She says it so casually, as if the world wouldn’t fall apart if anyone knew what I’d done in that one stupid moment of temptation. “Now, about this Valentine poem.”

“I still don’t want to do it!”

“But you will. Because you know I have no schoolgirl honour. Oh, everyone will despise me for telling tales so long after the event. They may even send me to Coventry for a bit. Emily will probably be very kind about it and forgive you at once. And no one will ever quite trust you ever again, just like they don’t quite trust me.”

I really do feel sick, and my heart is pounding. Kitty gets up and gives me a little hug.

“Oh, Anne, darling, don’t look like that. I probably wouldn’t tell anyone, anyway. You’re my best friend. But you have nothing to lose by helping me. It’s only a silly prank, and it will embarrass some stuck up Fifth formers and put them in their place for a bit, before it all blows over. Cecily will tell Esther her little winged guests weren’t from her, and everything will go back to normal.” She pats my back and steps away, smiling.

I sigh, and resign myself to the situation, hoping desperately that Kitty is right about it being of no consequence. For once.

The worst of it is, once I get into it, it’s really not all that difficult to write a poem about Esther. She is really is that pretty, and graceful, and clever. The more I think about it, the more I admire her. She’s the star of the first eleven, and shines at the school plays, and is always top of her form. She’s pretty much perfect.

It’s odd to me that she doesn’t have many friends, but Cecily and Charley alike, both very down to earth girls, seem absolutely devoted to her. Maybe girls are unsettled that she’s so lovely, or intimidated by her genius, or maybe they care more than they pretend to that her grandmother is Chinese. Yet Cecily, who is brown even when there’s no sun to tan her, is loved by all—well, all except Kitty. It’s a puzzle.

I’m well away on the subject of sloe-black eyes with lashes like feathers when the bell rings for afternoon lessons. Kitty picks it up and glances it over.

“Super. I knew I could count on you.”

“I’m not finished.”

“There’s no time, and I don’t trust you not to change your mind. I’ll finish it up and copy it out.” She pockets it happily.

“How do you even know what Cecily’s hand writing looks like?” I ask, with one last spurt of hope.

“I don’t. I’ll print it. Valentines are supposed to be anonymous, anyway.”

I feel a jolt of relief. “Then there’s no reason Esther will think it’s from Cecily in the first place. She’ll probably think it’s a lower former with a pash on her. You know there’s a fashion for that stuff among the kids.”

“Oh, no, Anne dear. That’s the other thing I’m relying on you for.” Kitty twinkles at me, clearly enjoying my discomfiture.

“What do you mean?”

“Come on. We’re late for Maths. Honestly, you have no idea how to behave like a civilised schoolgirl.” Kitty takes my hand and pulls me out of the art classroom.