Those Lovely Children Of Lys

Chapter Six ~Blythe and Rosemary~

Blythe looked me up and down, and something registered in her eyes. 

"You sure you want to come with us?" She asked, her voice husky. I wondered what she meant by that. "Why won't I?" I asked her. Rosemary giggled. "Don't mind Blythe!" She chirped, "She likes to sound a little scary. She's quite sweet, really." 

Blythe's expression changed into a sweet smile as she gently slapped Rosemary on the back. "Yeah, right!" then, she turned to me, and then said, "So let's go."

We walked down the dormitory stairs, and meanwhile Blythe explained to me that they had a TV in the girls' lounge, as did the boys in their lounge. Rosemary giggled and added that they watched sports while the girls stuck to cheesy 1950's rom-coms. They used to have a common TV, but they boys lost interest in the cheesy musicals and romantic comedies and clamored for another TV. To make space, Miss Wiltshire moved the TVs to their respective dorm lounges, and herself listened to the radio to entertain herself. 

"How does Miss Wiltshire manage it?" I asked as we slipped past a dark wood door on the side of the informal sitting room which I had missed before. "Manage what?" Rosemary asked. Blythe gave me a look that said Ask this later. Not in front of her.

"Never mind, tell me, how old is this place?" I asked, trickily side stepping my previous question. "Who knows?" Blythe asked, "About as old as this town. Even older, some people say." 

"Yeah!" Rosemary said, "Our home is supposed to be named after the town, but some say Briarwood Town was named after Briarwood Home!" I laughed at the absurdity of it. Nobody named whole towns after orphanages, no matter how famous and grand the latter was. "Wait, if it's that old, who managed the place before Miss Wiltshire?" Rosemary shrugged. Since nobody answered, I decided to examine my surroundings a little better. 

The walls were stone, and dark. Unnoticed by me until now, Blythe had taken out a torch and was shining it across this dark corridor. This place smelt of rainwater. Huh, weird. According to the geography of this place, it experienced very little rainfall, mild summers, and snowy winters. The towns money lay in the few creepy bestsellers its authors wrote and the corn fields irrigated by the constant rivers. Unlike London, where rain washed away everything. 

"Um...where are we going?" I asked, wondering when would this dingy corridor end. For a moment, a flash of fear gripped me-- what if classic boarding school way they were going to rag me? My god! No, I need to calm myself. They wouldn't do that. And Rosemary was what--eleven!

She giggled and said, "Blythe's crazy." Blythe laughed too. It echoed off the walls. "This secret passage leads to the boys dorm." "What?!" I couldn't help but laugh a little myself. This was my first day here and I was already breaking rules. 

We reached a dead end, and I glanced around, puzzled. Blythe crouched, and opened a trap door. It led far below, and I couldn't see where it was ended. The trap door had been concealed perfectly, it looked like part of the black tiled floor. If anybody apart from Blythe would enter, they would dissapointedly return after witnessing nothing more than a dead end. 

She crouched lower, and whisper-shouted, "Julian!" No response. She rolled her eyes and said, "he's having it from me." saying so, she jumped down. I almost screamed, but Rosemary had the foresight to rap her hand around my mouth. "It isn't deep," she whispered, "Only very dark to give the illusion of depth. Jump down, come on."

I do not blooming well think so! I felt like retorting, but inwardly, my heart was pumping. This felt...adventurous. I'd never done anything like this. I lowered myself down, and then, all at once, let go and landed noisily but painlessly on what felt like a floor of stone covered by layers of dirt and clay. "All right then, Rosemary?" Blythe asked, while helping me up. I looked around, and found a passage lit with fire torches in brackets on the walls. What was this place?

Rosemary landed like a pro beside me, and clanked the trap door shut with a chain attached to its underside. A ladder rested below. I guess return trips happened through this way too. Blythe smiled fondly at the cavernous expanse  of space and said, "Our hangout." 

We made our way across the space, and I found a mat, and a biscuit tin in one corner. In another corner, there was an ancient looking wine bottle embedded in the soil/clay/dirt. 

"Exactly how many people know about this place?" I asked. It looked a rather lot like an underworld nightclub. There were no electric lights, and the place was quite cold, and again, what was with the smell of rainwater? 

"Rosemary and I, Beretta, and now you. That's all among the girls. As for the boys, all of them, though only Julian, Darby and Josh come her to hang out with us. The rest," she waved her hand and rolled her eyes, "Think it's immature, dangerous, and a betrayal of Miss Wiltshire's trust." 

"They don't tell her?" "Oh no," she said, a gleam in her eyes and a sardonic smirk on her lips, "We must never snitch. Never ever. It's a pact as old as these walls. The children are all one, and the rest of the world against them. Telling her would make them an outcast, a villain."

It sounded all very fraternity-type to me. Like some sort of cult, though a cool teenage one. We reached the end of the room, where waited us an aged brown wooden door. Rosemary winked at me. "Let's have fun, Leta." 

She opened the rather creaky door, and sprinted up what looked like a slope of stone. This place was dusty, cobwebs lined every other inch, and I sneezed abut five times. Blythe helped me up with her hands, as I struggled to go up the dust-covered slope. When we finally conquered it, we found another trapdoor on the white (surprise, surprise!) stone ceiling. This one, though, stood out. Rosemary was waiting for us at the top. She eyed me critically.

"Get used to it," she said, "You're in the gang now."