PEREGRINATE

CHAPTER 4

The past two weeks went in a blink of an eye as well as took an absolute eternity to pass. What I thought would be a beneficial adjustment period turned out to be agonizing hours of trying to break into friend circles that were formed even before they could spell the word friends.

The first few days I hung about the community center hoping to be picked up like a stray. But I could not help but gravitate towards the comforting smell and silence of the library. So every day I would arrive with the resolution that I would depart with at least one single friend and every day I returned home with some borrowed book or the other.

Here was to hoping that school would be marginally better. The last week majority of my day was consumed by preparation. Printing the syllabus. Cleaning out my bag. Filling up my planner. Watching motivational videos to fire me up for this last year of my school.

If we were still back in the city, a new school would not seem so daunting. Someone or the other would be a new student and I could have been friends with them. But as already established, trying to infiltrate a lifelong relationship is easier said than done.

The cafe was another popular hangout in the town. I could often take my work there and get a cup of coffee or any drink. Though I did not make much conversation I could feel the eyes of others upon me. I did my best to appear easygoing and friendly giving smiles whenever I made eye contact. But I only received smiles in return.

I had asked my dad to pick my uniform up from the store. I was yet to have another encounter with the cafe guy. Who knew with newfound and sudden bouts of confidence I would blurt out something totally embarrassing?

The uniform was a maroon-colored plaid skirt with a white full-sleeved shirt and tie. I liked the blazer they gave along with it. Besides keeping me warm it looked very chic. With excitement and anxiety churning in my stomach I dived into the sea of students in the hallway the next morning.

The day went as standard as it could but my mind drifted multiple times to the articles I had read in the library. The whisperings and the sightings. And the incidents the walls had witnessed. I wondered if these walls contained any ghosts, figuratively or literally. 

I had to admit that Inder too was on the forefront of my mind more times than okay for someone to think about a deceased person who had been dead for centuries. I guessed I could not be graced by his presence as he had technically not died in the castle but I yearned to see at least a painting of him on the walls if not his apparition. Most of the paintings were of the lords and ladies who came much later after him. It saddened me that all anyone could find of him could be contained in just a page. Not a trace anywhere else.

I had grown up with the practice of sitting in a classroom and the teacher changing with each period. However, here they preferred an opposite system meaning the teachers had a fixed classroom and we students were expected to find our way to them. So in the five-minute break between classes, one would find the corridors milling with students varying between age ten to seventeen catching up with friends after hour-long classes and a very haggard girl darting in between with excuses and sorries trying to reach her next class.

I once asked a few girls the directions for my next class. I never got to know if they had given me the wrong direction or if I managed to lose my way all on my own. When I reached the class however I found them sitting right up at the front row. Since then I relied on the direction boards stuck to the walls.

Having never attended my classes in a castle silly me lost her way several times during the first week. Something or the other would always catch my eye and I would wander off trying to look at it properly. This led to several apologizing sessions with the teachers but most of them understood. I was the first addition in my year for quite a long time so they were lenient with me.

The grandeur of the classes, halls, or the cafeteria hardly bothered the other students. They rolled their eyes while I gaped at the carvings and the antique door handles open-mouthed.

As expected the school was huge even though only a part of the castle functioned as the school. It felt as if every night the corridors and doors changed their position. Sometimes I was sure that I saw a staircase ahead but it turned out to be a solid wall when I reached it. And there were so many courtyards. They were absolutely lovely with a carpet of green and shady with just the right amount of trees and shrubs. I would have loved to read or eat in one if I ever passed by them during lunch hours and not while rushing to a class. Surprisingly enough these sections of the school were empty of students.

I get this town was small with less student population and the castle was huge but it was all very strange. Sometimes I could see drapes, and elegant period furniture in a room, and after a blink, they would all vanish and it would be a regular empty classroom. I could see girls with odd dresses rushing down the corridor through the corner of my eyes but once I turned my head to look at them there would be no one. I heard whisperings in empty library sections behind the huge racks of books.  Some parts of the castle would feel frigid cold and yet when I moved away the shivers and feeling of being watched would wane away. I did my best to chalk it up to my overactive imagination. It was getting worrisome.

I was so close to begging my dad to homeschool me. And it wasn't pretty with my schoolmates. I sat on my own in classes and had lunch on my own. Who would want to be friends with the jittery new girl who heard unheard voices and saw absent figures?

It was the middle of my second week here. I was sitting at the window of a room having my lunch. My next class was to be held here so I would be on time at least. The window offered a view of a massive grove of trees. And in between the trees, the roof of a house could be seen. It must have been a big house as the trees were tall. Tall chimneys rose above the canopy of the tree. A wall ran around the trees, creating a small world of their own. I had heard a massive gate stand on the east end. This must have been the residence of the royal descendants.

I initially skimmed over the details of the family and their personal details. It did not feel right with me then to get information on them from magazines and books when they were practically my neighbors. I was yet to receive a sight of this elusive family. But I did hear that they had a son who went to this same school. Again no inkling of who it might be. This family might have been royal only in name and did not have a single mannerism that set them apart from the others.

Author's Corner:

Drop the name of the fort or the castle that you were imagining while reading this chapter. For me, it was the Mehrangarh Fort in Jodhpur!

Do vote for the chapter if the castle of your imagination was the Alnwick Castle from the Harry Potter series!