John Wright - Orphans of Chaos

Vanity said that Arthur’s Table clearly could not be in the forest, because there were no trees there. A forest, by definition (Vanity would exclaim) was a place full of trees, wasn’t it?

So (she would conclude triumphantly), there was no Southern boundary, provided we all agreed that there was none. What other people said amongst themselves was their own affair.

Colin would ask sarcastically, “And when they send Mr. Glum and his savage dog to hunt us down and maul us, does it then, at some point, become our affair?”

Vanity would roll her eyes and say, “If the dog mauls us on this side of the boundary, we could still say he was on the other side, couldn’t we? Things like boundaries don’t exist if you don’t see them when you look for them, do they?”

“And I guess dog fangs don’t exist if you don’t feel it when your arm gets ripped off, right?”

“Exactly! Suppose the dog only thought he mauled us, but we did not see him nor feel him when he came to attack us! How do you know the dog hadn’t just dreamed or imagined he attacked us? We could agree he hadn’t done it, couldn’t we? We could even agree the dog had agreed not to hunt us!”

Colin would respond with something like, “Why bother arguing with me? Why don’t you just agree that I agree, so that, in your world, I have?”

Vanity would rejoin, “Because I prefer to agree that you argued and you lost, as anyone who heard the dumb things you say would agree.”

Colin was not one to give up easily. “If you merely dreamed you had found a secret way out of here, that would not let you walk through a solid stone wall, would it?”

“Of course not. But no one knows which walls are solid and which are hollow because no one can see the inside of the solid ones, can they? The ones you can see inside aren’t hollow, are they? No one else has any proof one way or another.”

Vanity’s argument was as incomprehensible as Quentin’s, and as brief (when pared down) as Victor’s. Apparently as long as she, Vanity, in her solipsistic purity, did not believe the Southern boundary existed, then, for all practical purposes, it would not.

Vanity was short, redheaded, with a dusting of freckles on her cheeks. Her eyes were the most enormous emerald, and they sparkled. She had a little upturned snub nose I always envied just a bit. She was fair skinned and always wore a straw skimmer to keep the sun off her face.

With her lips so pale a rose color, and her eyebrows so light, I always thought she looked like a statue of fine brass, held in a furnace of flame so hot as to be invisible, so that she seemed to glow. Even when frowning, she seemed to be smiling.

She was curvy and she took wry amusement at the fact that the boys, the male teachers, even Mr. Glum, could have their gazes magnetized by her when she walked by.

I always thought Vanity was a little sweet on Colin, because she yelled at him and called him names. In the romances I read, that was a sure sign of growing affection.

As I grew older, I noticed how carefully she noticed everything Quentin did, Quentin the quiet one, and I realized she doted on him. And I began to realize Vanity actually was annoyed and exasperated by Colin.

That was when I realized, for the first time, that the five of us were not the tightly knit band of Three Musketeers Plus Two that Victor said we were, one for all and all for one, and all that.

It was not until I was around an age which, in a human being, would be between sixteen or eighteen or so, when I had the thought that with two girls and three boys, one of the boys in our merry band would end up a bachelor, or married to a stranger.

I remember where I was when this thought came to me. I was sitting on the lip of the Kissing Well, with my skirts flapping in the gusts coming from the bay, quite alone. I had just come from the infirmary, and was still seasick from Dr. Fell’s most recent round of vaccinations. We were usually allowed to skip lessons any afternoon when Dr. Fell worked on us, provided we made up the lessons later. The well was high on a hillside, and overlooked the water. Sea mews were crying, and the sad sound lingered in the air.

It was spring, I remember, and two male birds were fighting. That was what prompted my thought.

That was also when I started wondering what my future would be. I wanted to be a pilot, an explorer. A cowgirl with a pistol. Anything that got me away from here. The idea of being a housewife seemed intolerably dull and lacking in glamour. On the other hand, the idea of never having a child was like death.

And then I said aloud to the well, “But what if they never let us go?”

The voice in the well said back softly, “…never let us go…?”

My name is Amelia Armstrong Windrose. I should say, I call myself that; my real name was lost with my parents.

We chose our own names when we were eight or ten or so. It was not until we started sneaking off the estate grounds that we realized that other children in the village were christened at birth, and kept anniversaries of their birthdays, and knew their ages.

We knew about birthdays from various readings, of course. There were references to such things from histories, where boy kings had to be killed before they ascended the throne, or from gothic romances, where girl heirs had to be wedded before they came into their majority. We knew, in a general way, what a birthday party was.

Mrs. Wren started holding them for us, with snappers and barkers and wrapped gifts, and candles on cake with icing, and toasts and games, when we complained. But her notion was to have them twice or three times a year, usually during months with no other holidays of note. And the number of candles she put on the cake could be anywhere from one to one score, depending on her mood, or the success of her shopping.

The gifts we got from her did not seem odd at the time, for we had no other basis of comparison. Once I got a wrapped roast duck, which had turned cold in the cardboard box, and lay amid its own congealed grease. Another time, a box of nails.

Colin got one of Mrs. Wren’s shoes at that same party; Vanity got a drawer from the kitchen with knives and spoons in it. And yet, other times, her gifts were things of wonder and pleasure: a wooden rocking horse, painted fine, brave colors; a toy train set with an electric motor and a cunning little chimney that puffed real smoke; a dress of breathtaking beauty, made of a soft scarlet fabric, perhaps satin; an orb of pale crystal that glowed like a firefly when you held it in your hand and thought warm thoughts; a walking stick with a carved jackal head with silver ears, which Quentin was convinced could find buried streams and fountains underground.

One birthday party, the Headmaster simply announced we were to choose names for ourselves, and put our baby-names behind us. Only Quentin refused to choose, and kept his original name. I, who had been Secunda, used the chance to name myself after my heroine, the American aviatrix, Amelia Earhart. My family name I took from that eight-pointed star which decorates maps and determines North.

You see, I had always felt closed-in and trapped by the walls and boundaries of our estate. No matter how handsome and fine the grounds, it was still a cage to me. My dreams were for far, unguessed horizons, hidden springs of unknown rivers, un-climbed mountains shrouded in cloud. The edges of maps interested me more than the middles.

Naturally, such dreams led me to admire that breed of men who sailed those horizons, found those springs, conquered those mountains. Roald Admussen was my idol, along with Hanno, Leif Erickson, and Sir Francis Drake. My favorite books from Edgar Rice Burroughs were those where the lost city of Ophir appeared.