CHAPTER 1: A Girl and a Cat

For as long as she had known, Obelie had lived in a vast looming gray stone building, in a field walled in with a high iron fence, in a school. The main impression she had of the place was that it was always dark. The classrooms were gloomy, lit only by dingy candlelight, and the empty, echoing hallways were always wreathed in shadow. It was easy to lose track of what time of day it was in that building, or even whether it was day or night — instead her routine was dictated by a series of bells, which summoned her and the other students to wake up, to eat, to go to their next class, and to go to bed.

Some of the students had been there much longer than her — a few had been there a very long time indeed, growing pale and moldering like the mushrooms that sprang from between the flagstones of its half-lit halls — and to them she was still an outsider. They refused to sit with her during meals, and invented nicknames for her that made her eyes sting with held-back tears. The headmaster, a lean towering man named Mr. Maypole, was cruel and indifferent. Obelie wrote letters to her parents begging them to take her away, but they never responded. With time she learned to keep quiet and blend into the background, and so managed to avoid the worst of it.

The one glimpse of light in the routines of this place, by which Obelie marked the passage of time, was the one hour when they were let outside to play in the yard. While the other children threw a ball back and forth or talked in groups, she would go up to the fence that marked the edge of the school and sit beneath it on the grass. There, if she was lucky, she would get a visit from her friend.

It was an ordinary, slightly shabby gray cat, that would slip through the wrought-iron bars of the fence and gather itself elegantly at her feet. Sometimes they would simply sit together in silence. Sometimes she would confide in it, telling it about her day in whispered tones. Sometimes it would nudge its wedge-shaped head against her hand and she would pet down its back, soaking up the sensation of the sun’s warmth and the cat’s low purring. All too soon, the hour would be up and the bell would ring that summoned her back inside. She would say her goodbye – it seemed appropriate to do, even if it couldn’t respond – and it would stare back at her with intelligent green eyes before disappearing into the grass.

One night, Obelie woke with a cough and went to the office to see a nurse. She was given a spoonful of foul-tasting oil and told to sit and wait while the nurse left. She swallowed it dutifully and took a seat in a stiff-backed chair, swinging her legs and watching the clock. It had stopped working at 2:35 some afternoon long ago. After a long time in the silent, empty room, she began to look around restlessly. There was a large roll-top desk against the wall – Mr. Maypole’s, lid half-open. She could see inside it dimly hundreds of tiny cubbyholes filled with papers and strange knick-knacks.

As she looked, she noticed with growing recognition a parcel of small envelopes made of pale blue paper, stuffed away in a cubbyhole. She hopped down off the chair, opened the lid of the desk on its sticky hinges, and drew out the bundle of envelopes. Suddenly sick, she stared down at her own handwriting, the neat address repeated over and over – all of her letters home, all unopened.

At that instant the door opened, and she spun around to see the figure of Mr. Maypole leaning over her.

“What are you doing looking through my desk?” he demanded.

Obelie began something about having a cough, and was cut off by him snatching the bundle from her hands. “A sneak and a thief! We don’t tolerate such badly behaved children here. Back to your dormitory at once!”

“They’re mine!” she finally managed to shout. “They’re my letters! What are they doing in your drawer? Did my parents get to read them?”

Mr. Maypole bent his long crane neck down to her level. “Your letters?” he leered. “Goodness no, young lady. Why would we mail your letters? All the children just complain – and it wouldn’t do to make the parents worried over nothing. Now get along back to bed.”

Obelie lay still in her bed looking up at the ceiling, hot tears sliding down her face. They hadn’t responded to her letters because they never got them. Every plea she had sent had gone straight into Mr. Maypole’s desk to be shut away, unread. They had probably forgotten about her.

No one is going to help me,she thought. Her eyes had begun to feel sore and her mouth was dry and sticky. She sniffed once, hard, and willed herself to stop crying.Well then, I will have to help myself.

Quietly, so as not to wake the girls sleeping in the cots on either side, Obelie put on her best dress and her warmest sweater. She checked its pockets – the extra sandwich she had taken from lunch was still there, wrapped in its napkin. Good.

It was simple enough to escape. She had envisioned many nights as she lay awake in bed how she would tiptoe to the window, slip off her sweater, lay it across the largest glass pane, and rap once sharply so that the glass shards would fall with a muffled tinkling sound into the waiting wool without cutting her hand. It worked exactly as she had imagined. Had it disturbed anyone? She turned back one last time to scan the room: a student turned over in bed, another coughed, but none woke. Satisfied, she hauled herself up onto the window ledge and jumped, landing slightly crookedly in the bushes just below. Her ankle throbbed – she shook it and kept going. The yard loomed out in front of her, cool damp grass brushing her legs. The imposing iron gate that was the only entrance to the school rose before her across the lawn, and she started toward it. Just a little further, just a little further, and-

It was locked. Obelie rattled the gates as loudly as she dared, but they would not give way. The fence around them was firmly built too, and intimidatingly high. She knew she could not climb it; she made a half-hearted attempt anyway, but the metal bars were cold and slick and there was nowhere for her hands to find purchase. Despair heavy in the pit of her stomach, she sat down in the wet grass in front of the gate and stared numbly through the bars into the woods beyond. There was nowhere to go – a dead end.