Free Blythewood by Carol Goodman Page A

at poor Miss Sharp. “Together we three will decide if
you are suitable for Blythewood. The school is most selective.
Family legacy alone will not gain you admission, nor will consideration for your recent bereavement, although I personally
would like to say that you have the Council’s condolences for
your loss.”
The three women briefly bowed their heads, which left
me looking into the hard beady eyes of the three crows atop
their hats, who didn’t look the least bit sorry that my mother
had died.
“Now,” Mrs. van Hassel said, “we will move on to the examination. At Blythewood we follow a rigorous regimen of
classics and athletics. As you appear to be physically fit—”
“She’s a bit thin,” Mrs. Jones said with a hungry look in her
eyes that suggested she might like me fattened up a bit before
having me slaughtered for dinner.
“And pale,” Miss Fisk added, tilting her head at me like a
robin listening for worms in the ground.
“I’m sure she’ll tone up with a regular regimen of archery and
bell ringing,” Mrs. van Hassel asserted. Clearly she was in charge
here. She might even be the one to decide whether I went to Blythewood. “Would you like to ask the first question, Lucretia?”
Miss Fisk cleared her throat and asked me to conjugate
the verb incipio in all tenses, moods, and voices. I took a deep
breath and launched into the conjugation, grateful my mother
had quizzed me on my Latin every day over tea. When I was
done Mrs. van Hassel informed me that I had slaughtered the
pluperfect subjunctive and instructed Miss Sharp to award me
a seven out of ten. Then she asked me to recite the story of Niobe as given by Ovid. And so the examination went on, containing a great deal of Latin, Greek, mythology, English poetry,
and etymology, including an entire section on collective nouns.
“An exaltation of larks. A parliament of owls. A cete of badgers,” I responded, glad and surprised that my mother’s strange
fascination with “the language of the chase,” as she’d referred
to such terms, was finally coming in handy. As I answered each
question successfully it came to me that she had spent my lifetime preparing me for this exam. Did that mean she had wanted me to attend Blythewood?
After I answered the last question, Mrs. van Hassel
asked to see Miss Sharp’s notebook. She ruffled through the
pages, Miss Fisk and Miss Jones peering over her shoulders,
their heads bobbing so that it seemed again as if the three
crows were picking over my answers like seeds of grain.
“Not bad,” Mrs. van Hassel concluded, handing the notebook back to Miss Sharp, “but there’s more to being a Blythewood girl than intelligence and learning. There’s character.
Miss Sharp, would you mind stepping outside for a moment?”
Miss Sharp looked up from her notebook, an expression
of surprise on her face that was immediately extinguished by
what she saw in Mrs. van Hassel’s face. She glanced at me and
then quickly turned and knelt to gather some books that lay beside her chair on the floor. A sound drew my attention behind
me. Only as I was turning did I realize that the sound came
from inside my own head. It was the bass bell tolling danger.
Were the three women in danger? But when I turned I found
that they were no longer women.
Three enormous feathered creatures perched on the long
black-and-gold table. As I watched, one of them spread its
wings and launched itself at the tender white nape of Miss
Sharp’s neck. Without knowing I was going to, I leapt to my feet
and threw myself between the bird and Miss Sharp. I heard the
sound of wings thundering in my ears, felt the brush of feathers against my cheek and the scrape of talons on my wrist . . .
and then I felt nothing but air. I stumbled into Miss Sharp, who
looked up, surprised, and steadied me with her hand. I whirled
around to face the creatures, but found the three women again,
sitting sedately, their eyes coolly watching