Night School

She looked across the circle to see Carter sit down. He didn’t look at her, but she had the feeling he was conscious of her gaze.

‘So, what’s he saying here? What does he mean by “fear in a handful of dust”?’ Isabelle looked around the class. Impetuously, Allie started to speak and then immediately wished she hadn’t.

Isabelle nodded at her.

‘It sounds like …’ she faltered, but her teacher’s gaze was steady and patient. Allie thought it through and started again. ‘I mean, to me, it sounds like a warning. He’s saying “Be afraid of me. You will get hurt with me.”’

Isabelle nodded again. ‘I think that’s fair enough – there’s obviously a warning or a threat in there. Does anybody else have thoughts?’

‘It’s about death.’ Carter didn’t wait to be called upon.

Allie’s heart beat faster.

‘Everything he’s writing about is unstoppable – unavoidable. And what’s everybody most afraid of? Death.’

Allie stared at her desk but she knew without looking up that Carter was staring at her.

‘Zelazny is such a wanker!’ Jo was furious. ‘You were only, like, two minutes late. I don’t know how he could do that to you when you’re still in your first week.’

It turned out that Jo’s French teacher hadn’t even noticed she was late as he’d been discussing an impending trip to Paris with some advanced students and hadn’t realised that class should have begun. So Allie was going to be alone in detention. Jo had few comforting words for her.

‘I’ve done detention so many times I’ve lost count. It’s such a thing here because the rules are so strict and if you veer even a step outside them …’ She made a pistol out of her fingers and fired it into the air. ‘There are always at least ten students in it. But it’s bloody hard work, so brace yourself.’

Allie was puzzled. ‘Isn’t it just reading or studying?’

Jo’s tone was wry. ‘Oh no. Not at Cimmeria. Here it’s hard labour. You’ll either be painting something or weeding, planting, clearing … God knows. It’s always something that makes you sweat. It only lasts a couple of hours but it can be horribly dull if they give you something awful. But, you know, at least you’ll get to meet the other troublemakers.’

Allie rolled her eyes. ‘Oh great. Lucky me. Like I don’t know enough troublemakers already.’

They were sitting at the table after dinner in the quiet dining room; most of the other students had left. Jo looked around the emptying room. ‘Let’s get out of here. Have you explored the grounds yet? Or have you just been imprisoned inside with dusty books and me?’

She hooked her arm through Allie’s and they strolled out of the dining room. Ahead of them, the flow of students swirled in several directions; they followed the tributary rolling to the door.

They wandered out across the drive, which in the evening light had lost the ivory lustre that Allie remembered from two days ago. Now it just looked like an ordinary grey gravel path. The smooth green school lawns stretched out in all directions, and the long shadows of the trees reached out for them as Jo led the way onto the grass.

‘Where’s Gabe tonight?’ Allie asked.

‘He’s working on some special project, I think it’s going to keep him busy until curfew.’ Jo smiled indulgently. ‘OK, FYI? See that path through the trees there?’ She pointed at a row of pine trees across the lawn of the east wing. Allie could just make out a path going into the woods. ‘That leads to the chapel. That’s where you need to go tomorrow.’

Then she pointed in the opposite direction at a pathway that wandered from the west wing of the school building down to the treeline.

‘Over there,’ she said, ‘there’s a summerhouse just beyond the edge of the woods. Sometimes we have picnics there.’

‘So what’s further out in the woods?’

Jo looked at her quizzically. ‘Trees?’

Allie laughed. ‘No, I mean, are there more buildings? Or things to do …?’

‘I think there are a few houses far in the woods where staff or teachers live, but I don’t know for sure. We don’t actually do much in the woods, and they kind of discourage it because of, I dunno, health and safety or something. You’ll like the chapel though. It’s really old.’

They walked around the west side of the building and then behind it, where stone steps led up through a series of terraced lawns edged with colourful flowers. Beyond the last stretch of grass, the ground rose steeply up a lightly forested hill.

‘There’s a tower at the top of the hill.’ Jo pointed and Allie could faintly make out a structure. ‘It looks like there used to be a castle or something there but it’s just ruins now. The tower’s kind of cool. You can climb to the top and see everything. Some people say they can see all the way to London, but all I see are trees and fields.’