Story The Second Background Diary Entry 1
"Circaea Acacia. You are to report to the Headmistress after evening prayers," said Miss Hawthorne from her raised desk at the front of the classroom.
I looked up from the thaumatalurgical text I was diligently reading, along with all my classmates. There was no clue as to why in her angular visage. "Yes, Miss Hawthorne," I said meekly before I turned my gaze downwards again, to details of binding and cursing and summoning.
What had I done wrong? There was no other reason to be summoned to the Headmistress. None that I had ever known, at least, other than those seemingly mythical occasions known as 'family visits', which I had never experienced myself.
My classmates giggled and whispered around me, sending gleeful, hateful glances my way to the extent that Miss Hawthorne had to stun Matilda Rosaea with a devastatingly accurate throw of the blackboard eraser before they would shut up. Then the classroom was quiet again. But I could tell they were still gleeful at my coming misfortune. None of them liked me. I knew that. I was too tall, too clever, to strong. And although I often felt that a friend would have been a nice thing to have, I knew I had no such here. And given the life that our teachers outlined for us - growing up, marriage, children, grandchildren, death - it seemed I might never have such.
And so, after evening prayers, the rest of the day having been something of a blur, I stood outside the door of the Headmistresses office. As neat and tidy as I knew how to be. Standing bolt upright. Eyes ahead. Butterflies in my stomach. My heart in my mouth.
That forbidding door creaked open and Miss Ashberry, the Headmistresses ancient, forbidding secretary gestured me in. Meekly, I entered that room which I had never seen, too frightened even to look around and see that it was not really so different in aspect to the rest of the Orphanarium. Dark. Spartan. Cold.
The Headmistress watched my approach from behind a vast, monolithic desk of time-worn black wood, its ancient-seeming surface bare apart from inkwell, pen, and blotter, all aligned relative to the desk and one another with geometrical precision. Behind her a wall of bookshelves made of the same ancient black wood as the desk, each filled with worn dark-spined books towered from floor to ceiling.
I stopped before her, and curtseyed in the approved manner before standing waiting, eyes downcast, hands clasped neatly before me, heart in mouth, for the punishment I was surely here to receive. I felt myself shrivelling under that pitiless gaze.
"Circaea Acacia," said the Headmistress unexpectedly. Her dry, rasping voice took me entirely by surprise, and I jumped. Equally unexpectedly, she did not comment upon this minor breach of discipline.
"Circaea Acacia," she repeated. "Your teachers tell me that you learn well. That you are a credit to our Orphanarium."
In my surprise, I risked a glance upwards, at her. This was not how punishments usually began. "Thank you, Ma'am," I managed to whisper, curtseying again.
"You are doubtless wondering why you are here," continued the Headmistress. She seemed to be amused by something. "What you have done, what transgression you have performed, to be brought here before me."
"Yes, Ma'am," I whispered.
"You have done nothing wrong," she said. I glanced upwards, surprised again.
She had opened a drawer of her desk, and from it placed a book upon her blotter. It lay on the neatly folded wrapping paper it had doubtless arrived in. I knew no parcel was delivered into the hands of one of we Orphanarium girls without a most vigorous inspection. Not that I ever received parcels myself, but I knew, from the talk of those who did, what happened. But those other girls were never called in to see the Headmistress when they received a parcel!
"This package arrived for you today. It appears that thanks to the inefficiency of our Royal Postal Service it has been lost in their system these last ten years, until today. The return address, and inscription inside, indicate that it was dispatched by your father, shortly before his death."
I could not help but gasp. My father? I could not remember a time when I had not hoped that he or my mother might come and take me away from the Orphanarium, despite my told, from an early age, that they were dead. Then the words of the Headmistress sank in ... "before his death". So, just a book then, far too late, from a father I would never know.
The Headmistress pushed the book, on its square of folded wrapping paper, across her desk towards me. "Take it," she said. "You may go. And keep up the good work."
My eyes on the book, I barely remembered to curtsey and whisper, "Thank you, Ma'am."
Then, almost before I knew it, I was in the hall outside the Headmistresses office, the book clutched tight to me, and Miss Ashberry was shutting the door behind me.
I risked a glance at the book I held. Small, but heavy. Its covers of expensive-looking brown-black leather. Its pages edged in gold. Its title in gold leaf on the spine. 'The Young Lady's Illustrated Primer.' Oh.
Despite its discouraging title, I hurried back to the dormitory I shared with fifteen other inmates of the Orphanarium to examine my new possession more closely, almost breaking the strict injunction against running in the corridors on several occasions.
I ignored the pre-bedtime clamour of my dormitory companions, their obvious surprise at my not appearing to have been punished. That alone was almost sufficient recompense for the terror I felt before my interview with the Headmistress. But if there was one thing I had learnt from sharing a dormitory with fifteen other girls, it was how to ignore distractions.
Unfortunately, the interior of the book proved to match its exterior all too well. Just another improving tract, filled with illustrated advice and instructions on proper behaviour and etiquette for a young lady of Verantium, written in a style that implied is was actually for the use of one considerably younger than I.
I might never have looked at it again but for the inscription inside the front cover:
"To my darling daughter, Circaea.
May this book provide you with all you need to prosper beyond the Orphanarium.
Best wishes from your loving father,
Brand"
That made it different. Not just an improving tome, but something sent to me and me alone by my father, who I had never known. I felt tears welling up in my eyes and knew I had to hide them from my dorm-mates or they would be used as one more piece of ammunition against me.
I managed to contain my tears until bedtime - fortunately only a short time away - and lights-out. I could not help but bring the book - the Primer - into bed with me, hugging it to me as a younger girl might hug a stuffed animal. As I had once hugged a stuffed animal.
And then I cried. For the first time in years. Streams of tears there in the dark, curled up under the covers where no-one would see. Silently, so no-one would hear, or know. As other girls also cried, from time to time. I cried for the faceless father I had never known, but whose death, along with that of my equally faceless mother, had left me here in this cold and lonely place.
It was only when my tears finally dried that I noticed something very strange.
The Primer was glowing. Very faintly, just enough to see, just enough for me to be sure I was not seeing things. How could this be? Surely the Headmistress or whoever had examined the Primer before it was given to me would have noticed as enchantment upon it?
But as it lay there, glowing softly there under the covers, what else could I do, but open it?
To my amazement, although the dedication inside the front cover remained the same, no other page remained the same as when I had looked through the Primer in daylight. Now they contained different words, different pictures. And such pictures, of places and things I had never before imagined. And a picture of a man, red-haired, blue-eyed, dressed in green. Somehow familiar.
As I gazed at that man, that picture, it somehow sprang to life, as if the page itself were a window to wherever he was rather than merely a sheet of illustrated paper. And the man depicted therein turned, and looked out at me. And he spoke, a tiny whisper that I could barely hear. "Circaea. Hello."
"As you no doubt know by now, this is - I am - no ordinary book. I am the spirit of this volume, made in the image of your father, Prince Brand of Amber, and sent here by him to teach you in his stead, circumstances being such that he cannot be here to do so himself, much as he wishes he could. But not just more of what they teach inside these walls, but of what lies outside them, and outside the walls of this world, too. It all lies within these covers. You have only to look, to ask."
An he pointed at the edge of the page, faintly glowing and flickering with whatever words and pictures - whatever wonders - were now inscribed on that page.
My tears now utterly forgotten, curled up there under the covers in the Verantian night, what else could I do?
I turned the page.