Wealdenmynd - Chapter 5 Part 2 - Fine!

The fallout from a life changing decision

She hardly spoke to her parents over the next few weeks, spending most of her time either in the town library reading up on St. Greys or else wandering the streets in a half hearted attempt to find Kaytee whom she suspected was hiding in her room in the school house. She wished that she could see her however, as she longed to tell her that, one way or another, she would not travel alone.

 

She wasn’t sure if it was during the argument with her mother or after, but Reacca had resolved to leave Dounaton one way or another. She hoped that she could make her parents see sense and help her to continue studying but if they didn’t…

 

‘I will find a job there, it shouldn’t be too difficult. I am a clever girl,’ she muttered to herself a few days later, wandering through the open market, ‘I have plenty of experience of working in a shop, plus I’m a gladiator, who wouldn’t want a gladiator working for them?’ Despite these reassurances and the many like it she kept telling herself she couldn’t help but remember that the last gladiator she had encountered had ended up working for a travelling carnival. She made a couple of attempts to go and visit Kaytee. The first time she called at the house only to be turned away by Kaytee's brother. On the second attempt she tried to call up to her window. As she walked round the corner of the schoolhouse, she saw Searah trying the same thing. She didn’t speak to her for long as it was obvious they were not going to be able to reach Kaytee and Searah didn’t seem in the mood to talk.

 

Reaccas father has been a little more understanding but no more willing than her mother was. She had tried talking to him a few days later hoping that he would be able to persuade her mother to let her go.

 

‘I’m not sure you’d be accepted my dear.’ He said between serving customers. ‘I mean your marks were pretty good, but not good enough for somewhere like St. Greys.’

 

‘I know,’ said Reacca wrapping up a customers newly bought black dress, ‘but I have been reading up on it and…’

 

‘Reading up? Where?’

 

‘The Library, they have all kinds of history books and biographies of famous professors.’

 

‘How did you know which ones were from St Greys?’ 20 Gold Pieces please.’ He said, switching his gaze from Reacca to the customer whom Reacca strongly suspected would not fit in to her new black dress.

 

‘I looked it up,’ Reacca said sarcastically, ‘research, I’m not that idiotic father. Anyway, that’s really not the point. My marks are good enough as long as I get a sponsor, someone big in the community, someone who owns their own business...’ she trailed off.

 

‘Someone like me you mean. But I’m your father, surely that means I wouldn’t count.’

 

‘I think you would,’ said Reacca, handing the dress to the rotund customer and smiling, ‘enjoy your evening.’

 

‘Thank you,’ said the woman in a gruff, pompous voice, ‘enjoy your argument.’

 

‘Where was I?’ asked Reacca.

 

‘About to contradict me I think.’

 

‘Yeah, I think you would, I’m over Condant age so technically,’ she leaned forward, ‘all your legal obligations to me have ended.’

 

‘Sounds good to me.’ Said her father slumping down onto the counter.

 

‘So,’ continued Reacca ignoring him, ‘you should still qualify.’

 

‘Look my love,’ he said with a sigh, placing a hand on either side of her head, his spirits drifting up to her hair, ‘I’m sorry but I just wouldn’t want to put you through that. Besides,’ he said a little louder, holding Reacca tighter as she tried to pull away, ‘we need you here in the shop, maybe in a couple of years we might want to expand, open a shop somewhere else and you could be running it.’

 

‘Then think how much better I’d be at doing that after a few years more study.’

 

‘I’m sorry Reacca but I’m siding with your mother, I’ll not sponsor you.’

 

At that moment, another customer came in with a young child, stopping Reacca from replying and by the time the mother and child had gone again, the moment had been lost.

 

That night she went to try to speak with Kaytee, fully expecting to fail but hoping to catch a conversation with the Master. The night was chilly for the time of year and she felt sorry for anyone travelling alone on a night like this, hoping that she wouldn’t become one of them when the time came to leave. Her spirits hugged close to her hands as she opened the big iron gates to the schoolhouse and walked down the crunchy gravel path. The Masters wife opened the door and, seeing one of her daughter’s friends, invited her to step inside while she went to see if she could fetch Kaytee.

 

The hallway of the schoolhouse was long and tall, framed with a dark wooden floor and a high, ornately carved white ceiling. Portraits of previous schoolmasters hung at intervals along the wall and disappeared up the stairs that led round to the right at the far end of the hall. Dotted around the edge stood several small tables and the occasional chair that had always baffled Reacca, as she could never work out why you needed individual chairs in the hallway to a large house. At the far end next to the stairs was a pair of double doors that led through to the main dining room and from there into the kitchen and gardens. Reacca only really knew parts of the house such as Kaytee's bedroom, the dining room and kitchen as those were the only parts she had even had any call to enter.

 

Kaytee's mother trotted down the stairs a few minutes later, her spirits bouncing along dutifully behind her heals, looking vaguely apologetic.

 

‘I’m sorry Reacca but Kaytee is, um, indisposed at the moment but you could try again tomorrow.’

 

‘She said that?’ Reacca raised her eyebrow.

 

‘Well no, but we must hope that tomorrow will bare more fruit than today mustn’t we.’ Said the slightly hassled looking woman, speaking more to herself than to Reacca. ‘I’m sorry you’ve had a wasted trip.’

 

‘Well, a-actually,’ stuttered Reacca, a spirit trying to pull her hand away from her mouth, ‘I was wondering…wondering if I could have a word with the Master. I mean,’ she added quickly, ‘only if he’s not busy.’

 

‘No, I can’t see why not,’ said Kaytee's mother musingly, ‘he’s not busy, he’s asl… reading the back of his eyelids at the moment.’ She said with a grin. ‘Come with me.’ She led her down the corridor and through an unremarkable door to the right just before the stairs. Behind the door was another, far less grand, corridor lit by a number of oil lamps. She walked a little further before pausing outside a dark red door at the far end of the corridor. ‘Wait here, I’ll go and prepare him.’ She walked in and Reacca could hear muffled voices before the Masters wife came out again and ushered her in, closing the door behind her.

 

Apart from the door, a window that seemed to look out over the rear gardens of the schoolhouse and a large fireplace with a grand old mirror hanging over it, every inch of the walls in this room was covered in books. It was not a large room but there must have been many hundreds of books rising from the floor to the tall ceiling. In each corner stood a ladder that looked like it would roll along the wall to wherever the reader wished to get too. The Master himself was sat in a tall-backed leather armchair next to the fire putting down a dusty old volume.

 

‘Good evening Master,’ said Reacca tentatively, ‘I’m sorry for disturbing you this late.’

 

‘If you’re here to talk about Kaytee then be gone, I’ve had enough of that girl.’

 

‘No, not directly.’ Said Reacca, taken aback by the rather brash greeting.

 

‘Hmm. Then what can I do for you?’

 

‘St. Greys…’

 

‘You said this wasn’t about Kaytee.’

 

‘Its not, it’s about me. I want to go. I was hoping you would sponsor me.’

 

‘Marks not good enough?’

 

‘Its not that,’ said Reacca a little hurt, she was starting to think she preferred the happy boasting Master over the foul mood Master, ‘it would just stand a greater chance of success with your name on it.’ This small piece of flattery seemed to get through his bad mood as at these words he got up from the armchair and looked at her.

 

‘You have a point errm, Reeka.’

 

‘Reacca, sir, and thank you, I think so.’

 

‘Yes, well, I don’t see why not,’ said the Master, muttering to himself. ‘Might cheer up that little bicce at any rate. Yes, alright, I can sponsor you.’ He walked over to the desk by the window and pulled something out of one of the draws. ‘You’ll need an application of course. Its lucky I have a number spare.’

 

‘Thank you,’ said Reacca, finally stepping out of the doorway, ‘this means a lot to me. I was wondering where I would get an application from in time. Do you know the code I need to let them know which area I’m coming from?’

 

‘My my,’ said the Master, grinning for the first time,’ you have been doing your research.’ He bent over the paper and started to write. ‘You know, your father would carry almost as much weight as I would, you could have got him to do it.’

 

‘He didn’t want to sir, he isn’t that keen on me going.’ The Master stopped writing and looked up.

 

‘He doesn’t want you going?’

 

‘No sir, but that isn’t going to stop me, I want to go.’ The Master put his pen down and gave her a piercing look before walking over to her with the paper in his hand. ‘I’m sorry then my girl, in that case I can’t sponsor your application.’

 

‘But…I mean…why?’ stammered Reacca, half shouting.

 

‘I’ll not be responsible for the break up of a family.’ He looked up at the ceiling. ‘It’s a horrible thing to witness. No,’ he said raising his hand to cut across Reaccas interruption, ‘that is my final word. You may take the application, but I’ll not be party to it. No, that is my final word.’

 

It took Reacca several days to get over her anger at the Master enough to go back and apologise for storming out of his house and slamming the gates behind her. Her anger seemed to go in cycles, sometimes she would be angry at the Master or sometimes at her parents or at Kaytee for her stubborn lack of communication. Every night at dinner, her spirits would flash across the table at her parents if they tried to make conversation with her. She stopped spending any time in the shop, mostly out of spite at her parents for having chosen her destiny for her.

 

She had filled in the application and sent it via the Inter-Territory courier, putting every last bit of information about herself on it. She told herself it was in the vain hope that the professors or whomever chose the new entrants would look past her grades but really she had sent it because she couldn’t bare to throw it away and she couldn’t bare to keep looking at it.

 

She made no attempt to pack or make any other arrangements to leave when the time came for Kaytee to go to St. Greys. She told herself that it would be easier to do it all in a rush right at the end and not to think about it until then. She knew she was scared about leaving, but found it easier not to admit this to herself.

 

It was several weeks before she saw or spoke to anyone again. It was early morning and she had gone out for a walk around the Green to avoid breakfast. She knew that she would have to tell her parents that she was planning to leave soon as there were only a few weeks left until Kaytee took the long journey to St. Greys. She had decided that that day was as good as any other and so had headed back to the shop to talk to both of them. As she opened the door to the shop making the bell above the top frame tinkle, she heard heavy footsteps and panting coming from behind her. She looked round and saw Searah, red in the face from running, holding what looked like a stitch in her side with one hand and a piece of paper in the other, her spirits streaming out in a long line down the road behind her.

 

‘Reacca. Reacca!’ called Searah as she came running up. ‘Yes, I’ve caught you.’

 

‘Yes, well done, I’ve been caught, what did you want?’ said Reacca blankly, her mind still on the conversation she was about to have with her parents and with the realisation that during all this time she hadn’t once thought of how Searah would feel about her leaving.

 

‘I’ve got some news, you’ll not believe it!’ panted Searah, putting a hand on Reaccas shoulder and doubling over to get her breath back.

 

‘What is it?’ said Reacca. Before Searah could answer however the voice of Reaccas mother came yelling from inside the shop.

 

‘REACCA!!’

 

‘Why is every one yelling my name today, I’m not likely to forget it.’

 

‘Get in here girl! I want a word.’ Reacca turned to Searah and pulled a worried expression.

 

‘You wouldn’t come in with me would you? It might lighten the blow if someone else is there as well. You can tell me your news afterwards.’

 

‘Lead the way.’ Said Searah letting out a large puff of air and still grinning manically. They were barely inside the door when Reaccas mother started again.

 

‘What do you think this is!’ she yelled.

 

‘What what is?’ asked Reacca as calmly as possible, looking at the piece of paper her mother was waving wildly in the air.

 

‘This came in with horse rider today addressed to you.’

 

‘You’ve been looking through my private correspondence?’ said Reacca, raising her voice slightly.

 

‘Explain yourself young lady!’

 

*

 

‘Fine!’ exclaimed Kaytee, standing up violently sending her stool and the empty glasses flying. ‘I’m going home. I guess I should start packing. No no,’ she said, throwing off Searah’s and Reaccas hands as they tried to sit her back down, ‘I’m going. I’ll send you a letter or something before I leave.’ She stormed out, stopping only long enough to shoot her parents a dirty look.

 

She knew that Searah and Reacca would try to follow her home and talk her out of her bad mood but Kaytee did not intend to allow her anger to die down any time soon. As she left the inn she took a hard right and stomped off through the dirtier parts of town, past metal working shops, wood carvers and potters yards and out towards the farms that laid beyond. A little while later she picking her way up the muddy hill that stood behind the town that formed half of the valley in which Dounaton was nestled.

 

By the time she reached the top her legs and hands were coated in mud. Her hair was also streaked with it where she had tried to push it back out of her eyes. It was all her spirits could do to keep from being batted away by her flowing clothes or wildly angry gestures. She picked the muddiest, wettest spot to sit in and splashed herself down feeling something cold oozing onto her skin through the fabric.

 

She knew she shouldn’t have gotten her hopes up but it made her angrier than she had ever been. All through her childhood she had been fighting against her parents and the life they thrust upon her. She hated the long boring parties full of dull academics and intellectuals, she hated the music lessons and the deadly straight forced conversations over the dinner table. Likewise, she knew that her parents and brother looked down on the things she enjoyed, on the outlandish clothes and colourful artwork that covered her bedroom walls. When her father had opened her final school results and read them out to the room at large over the breakfast table, she had dared to hope that she could see the end of it, a light in the near future marking a glimmer of freedom.

 

Now, however, all she could see in her future was a never-ending stream of dinner parties, lectures and, no doubt if her father got his way, a teaching job at the school she had hoped she had escaped. She kicked out violently at a nearby clump of grass and missed, toppling over sideways into the mud, finally completing the overwhelming state of misery that had been threatening to consume her ever since she had seen her friends at the Confirmation ceremony earlier that night. Tears started to roll down her face as she imagined them walking the streets of the town in which they had grown up, looking this way and that trying to find her. The anger swelled up again, sending yet more tears, this time of frustration, falling down her cheeks. She was jealous of her friends, jealous of the fact that they had the choice to do what ever they wanted to do and were free of over baring parents scribbling their own handwriting all over their lives.

 

It was coming up on daylight when Kaytee finally trudged in the front door, more exhausted from the emotional turmoil of the last few hours than from the lack of sleep. Her clothes left wet, brown lines on the wooden floor as she walked past the portraits of previous school Masters and up to her room. She picked up an oil lamp from the second floor corridor on her way past and, with it in one hand and her muddy shoes in the other, walked into her room and locked the door behind her.

 

Her room was large, the centrepiece of which was a grand four-poster bed covered in multicoloured drapes and folds of fabric. On the left was a floor to ceiling mirror that hid her walk-in wardrobe and on the opposite wall was a wide bay window covered in think cream curtains. During the day the window showed her the most fantastic view over the schoolhouse gardens and on to the hills and fields of crops beyond. Her room was above her parents bedroom below which was her fathers study. She had always loved her bedroom and felt very lucky to have such a comfortable place to come back to every day. She knew that her family were very well off, perhaps the most well off in the town and she had always been grateful for the success of her forbears but at that moment, as she looked around the room she knew and loved, she thought the price that came with it was to high.

 

She had come to a horrible conclusion up on the hill in the time she had spent wallowing in the mud, and this same conclusion kept playing through her mind as she undressed and got into bed without washing or putting on her nightclothes. She knew she had no choice. If she tried to defy her father, she knew that he see to it that she was thrown from the house and that no one in Dounaton would employ her, making her an outcast in her own town.

 

She barely left her room over the next few days, instead spending her time going through all her clothes, all of the drawings on her walls and all the jewellery she had made to work out which things she would need in her new life as an academic.

 

Searah and Reacca came to the house a couple of times as the summer drew on and every time they came she would send them away before seeing them. Every time she did it, she felt guilty for treating her best friends so badly, but every time she did it she thought it felt a little easier to be leaving them, every time she did it, she imagined them hating her a little bit more. They threw notes through her window that she refused to read. Kaytee knew that she wouldn’t be able to avoid her parents forever and so it was, about ten days after Confirmation that she met the Master coming down the hallway.

 

‘Father.’ She said curtly hoping she could walk past him on the way to the bathroom but his spirits and his ample stomach blocked the way forward.

 

‘Kaytee,’ he nodded, ‘your alive then.’

 

‘So it would appear.’

 

‘I was wondering,’ he said, shifting his weight and putting some papers under his arm, ‘you’re usually so, well, it’s usually difficult to miss you when you’re in the house. Its nice to see you’ve toned yourself down a little.’ She had indeed toned herself down. Kaytee hadn’t been wearing her usual clothes, they felt somehow awkward on her as she imagined herself walking the halls of a Collegium.

 

‘I’m sorry, I didn’t realise I annoyed you so much. Can I get past please.’

 

‘There’s no need to apologise for that,’ he said, ignoring her request, ‘but you might like to apologise for your attitude.’

 

‘What attitude.’ Kaytee said bitterly, her spirits slowing moving closer and closer to her fathers face.

 

‘That attitude young lady, the ungrateful attitude you’re taking to this opportunity you have been granted. Kaytee snapped. It was as if the entire stock of emotions she’d been feeling had crashed over her at once at these words.

 

‘Ungrateful! Yes, I’m fokkén ungrateful! Did you not stop to think if I would actually want to go! NO, YOU DIDN’T. Of all the selfish, unthinking things you’ve done in your life this is by far the worst.’ She was breathing heavily and the walls were spinning slightly. The only thing that stood steady in her vision was her fathers face getting steadily redder and redder. Moving faster than she could react to, he came crashing forward, scattering spirits left and right, and threw her to the floor. He was breathing almost as heavily as she was.

 

‘A place like St. Grey is where you belong,’ he panted, ‘with a knowledge on the Old Language like that you belong in a place where your…talents…can be honed.’ He bent down closer to her so his face was only inches away. ‘I don’t know where you learned words like that but you’ll be wise not to use them in my presence again.’ With that he walked off, shuffling his papers and brushing some dust off his clothes.

 

Reacca tried to visit the next day but again Kaytee turned her away. A nice bruise had come up on her cheek where she had hit the floor hard and she didn’t feel like explaining it. A little while later she heard what sounded like Reaccas voice coming from the hallway downstairs followed by the slamming of a door and guessed that she wasn’t happy about being turned away again.

 

From that day on she didn’t come down into the house, instead using a rope to climb out of her bedroom window and out into the town. She would visit the same stall holder on the outskirts of the open market every day and he would sell her pies, fruit and mead to take back to her room.

 

‘What's it like out there?’ she asked him one day as she passed over some money.

 

‘Ou’ where?’ he asked, his warn and wringled face curling into a frown.

 

‘Anywhere really, how does this place compare to the other towns you visit?’

 

‘Wha’, Doonaton? Pretty nice place all-in-all really, folks are always nice ta me.’

 

‘You know, that’s not really the answer I was looking for.’ She said with a faint grin.

 

‘Oh, sorry girl.’ He grinned back. ‘Musta misunderstood the ponderer ya posed. Naa, the pits this place, don’t know why ya stay ‘ere meself.’

 

‘Thanks.’ Said Kaytee, patting him on the back.

 

By the time she had walked her way back to the school house she had eaten most of the fruit she had bought from the stall holder. She climbed over the iron fence around the back gardens to the house and stopped by the corner of the house to pull out the rope to get back in to her room. As she pulled at the bags strings to close it again she heard voices coming from outside her window. She peered round the corner and saw Reacca and Searah standing there, both with their arms folded.

 

‘…stupid girl.’ Said Reacca coldly. ‘I’m going to loose patience soon and stop trying.’

 

‘Hmm’ said Searah, in a non-committal tone.

 

‘I bet she isn’t even in.’

 

‘There’s no way to tell I guess, unless you fancy climbing up.’ Said Searah, looking up.

 

‘No, I’m going home. See you later.’

 

‘Bye.’ Said Searah, but by the time she said it Reacca had already gone. She stood there for a few more minutes before turning and following in Reaccas footsteps. Kaytee snuck round the corner, threw up the hook tied to the end of the rope and climbed back up to her room. As she sat in the semi-darkness eating her pie she couldn’t help but feel guiltier than ever before. She hadn’t realised that Reacca and Searah had been being so cold with each other. She had always imagined them together on the Green, or else walking round the market talking, joking, laughing.

 

The image of the two girls who had previously been her best friends standing so coldly beneath her window as she hid round the corner was all she could think about. The hours turned into days and the days blurred together as she slowly walked around her room pulling down drawings and packing up clothes, the voices of her friends going round and round in her mind, her spirits drifting hopelessly over the bed, barely moving.

 

The next time she heard Reacca and Searah's voices she almost didn’t notice that they were coming from downstairs in the hallway and not from her mind. She opened the door to her room and listened to what was going on downstairs. Both Searah and Reacca seemed to be down there, and by the sounds of it so was her father.

 

‘…care, we’re going through anyway.’ Came Reaccas stubborn voice.

 

‘Oh are you now.’ Blustered the Master. ‘And what gives you the right to enter my home is such a fashion, especially after the way you spoke to me on the previous bar-one occation you were here?’

 

‘Because,’ said Searah in what sounded to Kaytee to be an almost happy tone, ‘she’s our friend and we’ve had enough of this so we’re going to see her.’ Kaytee heard the sound of footsteps on the wooden flooring followed by her fathers voice.

 

‘Well if she doesn’t let you in don’t say I didn’t warn you.’ He called after the two girls who were now walking up the stairs to towards the second floor.

 

Kaytee quickly closed and locked the door to her room, not noticing that one of her spirits had gone out at the sound of their voices. A few seconds later, she heard a heavy knocking at the door.

 

‘Kaytee?’ came Searah's voice through the wood. ‘Kaytee let us in.’

 

Kaytee closed her eyes and bit her lip. ‘Why should I?’

 

‘Because if you don’t,’ barked Reacca, ‘I’ll sell this ring you made for me.’

 

Without thinking, Kaytee opened the door. ‘You wouldn’t!’ She caught the briefest of glimpses of Reaccas beaming face before she felt herself crashing to the floor, Searah's arms thrown tightly around her shoulders laughing hysterically.

 

‘Kaytee you silly witch what are you doing in here!’ screamed Searah, hugging her even harder. ‘We’ve missed you.’

 

‘I’ve missed you too.’ said Kaytee, pushing her off and getting to her feet. She walked over to the open bay window, looked out over the fresh, late-summer morning and felt a sinking feeling in her heart. ‘It doesn’t change anything though, does it?’

 

‘No,’ agreed Reacca, ‘it doesn’t, you’re still leaving.’

 

‘So how does forcing you way into my room help!’ spat Kaytee, turning to look at her old friends, tears welling up in her eyes.

 

‘Because,’ said Searah, grinning, ‘We’re coming with you.’