Because I know the story, I barely listen to the words. I ask Filippa if I can roll the window down, and I hang my head out like a dog. She laughs at me, but says nothing. The fresh Illinois air skips across my face, weightless and flighty. I look out at the world through my eyelashes, alarmed by how bright it is even on this overcast day.
My mind wanders down the road to Dellecher, and I wonder, will I recognize it? Maybe they’ve torn the Castle down, razed the trees to make room for real dormitories, and put up a fence to keep kids out of the lake. Maybe now it looks like a children’s summer camp, sterile and safe. Or maybe it, like Filippa, has hardly changed at all. I can still see it, lush and green and wild, in some tiny way enchanted, like Oberon’s wood, or Prospero’s island. There are things they don’t tell you about such magical places—that they’re as dangerous as they are beautiful. Why should Dellecher be any different?
Two hours go by, and then the car is parked in the long empty drive at the Hall. Filippa gets out first and I follow slowly. The Hall itself is the same, but I look immediately beyond it to the lake, resplendent under the bloodless sun. The surrounding forest is as thick and savage as I remember, the trees stabbing fiercely up at the sky.
“You all right?” Filippa asks. I haven’t moved from the side of the car.
“This is as strange a maze as e’er men trod.”
Panic flutters softly around my heart. For a moment I’m twenty-two again, watching my innocence slip through my fingers with equal parts eagerness and terror. Ten years of trying to explain Dellecher, in all its misguided magnificence, to men in beige jumpsuits who never went to college or never even finished high school has made me realize what I as a student was willfully blind to: that Dellecher was less an academic institution than a cult. When we first walked through those doors, we did so without knowing that we were now part of some strange fanatic religion where anything could be excused so long as it was offered at the altar of the Muses. Ritual madness, ecstasy, human sacrifice. Were we bewitched? brainwashed? Perhaps.
“Oliver?” Filippa says, more gently. “Are you ready?”
I don’t answer. I never was.
“C’mon.”
I trail behind her as she walks. I’ve braced myself for the shock of seeing Dellecher again—unchanged or otherwise—but what I’m not expecting is the sudden ache in my chest, like longing for an old lover. I’ve missed it, desperately.
“Where is he?” I ask, when I catch up with Filippa.
“He wanted to wait at the Bore’s Head, but I wasn’t sure you should go back yet.”
“Why not?”
“Half the same people still work there.” She shrugs. “I didn’t know if you’d be ready to see them.”
“I’d be more concerned that they’re not ready to see me,” I say, because I know that’s what she’s really thinking.
“Yeah,” she says. “That, too.”
She leads me through the front doors—the Dellecher coat of arms, Key and Quill, staring disapprovingly down at me as if to say, You are no longer welcome here. I haven’t asked Filippa who else knows I’m coming back. It’s summer and the students are gone, but the staff often linger. Will I turn a corner and find myself face-to-face with Frederick? Gwendolyn? God forbid, Dean Holinshed.
The Hall is eerily empty. Our footsteps echo in the wide corridors, usually so tightly packed with people that any small sound is trampled underfoot. I peer curiously into the music hall. Long white sheets hang over the windows, and the light falls in wide pale stripes across the vacant seats. It has the haunted feeling of an abandoned cathedral.
The refectory, too, is empty, almost. Sitting alone at one of the student tables, nursing a cup of coffee and looking distinctly out of place, is Colborne. He stands hastily and offers one hand. I grasp it without hesitation, strangely glad to see him.
Me: “Chief.”
Colborne: “Not anymore. Turned in my badge last week.”
Filippa: “Why the change of heart?”
Colborne: “Mostly my wife’s idea. She says if I’m going to risk getting shot on a regular basis, I ought to at least be paid well for it.”
Filippa: “How touching.”
Colborne: “You’d like her.”
Filippa laughs and says, “Probably.”
“And how are you?” he asks. “Still hanging around this place?” He glances down at the empty tables, up at the corniced ceiling, as though he’s not quite sure where he is.
“Well, we live in Broadwater,” she says. “We,” I assume, refers to her and Milo. I didn’t know they’d moved in together. She is almost as much a mystery to me now as she was ten years ago, but I don’t love her any less for it. I know more than most about desperately kept secrets. “We don’t come out here much during the summer.”
Colborne nods. I wonder if he feels at all awkward around her. He knows me—he knew all of us once—but now? Does he look at her and see a suspect? I watch him closely and hope I won’t have to remind him of our bargain.
“Can’t be much reason to,” he says, amiably enough.
“We’ve got to decide on a season for next year, but we can do that in town.”
“Any ideas yet?”
“We’re thinking about Twelfth Night for the third-years. We have two that actually share some DNA for the first time since—well, since Wren and Richard.” There’s a brief, uncomfortable pause before she continues. “And we really have no idea what to do with the fourth-years. Frederick wants to branch out and try Winter’s Tale, but Gwendolyn’s insisting on Othello.”
“Good group this year?”
“Good as ever. We picked more girls than boys for once.”
“Well, that can’t be a bad thing.”
They share a fast grin, and then Filippa looks pointedly at me. She raises her eyebrows, just barely. Now or never.
I turn to Colborne, mimic her expression. He checks his watch. “Shall we take a walk?”
“Whatever you want,” I tell him.
“All right,” he says to me. And then, to Filippa: “Coming?”