Mire

Chapter 8

Most of the schoolgirls had been born on the island. Very few of them recognised their own mothers. The Siren were harshly criticised for showing favouritism to any of the girls, even the ones who they had carried in their bellies. Cossetted girls became unruly adults, after all. Some of them were Mainlanders, like myself, but they had been brought over as infants and now nobody could tell them apart.

They had no idea how to treat a new arrival, especially one with ugly cropped hair and calloused hands. Dahra's apathy was as good as a condemnation. Within a few hours I was back where I belonged: worthless and mocked. Well, I was used to being treated like that. I did not let them see how much it hurt.

All of the children had flawless skin, arched feet and no idea how to tie their own shoes. They had started their lessons months before I had arrived. They could sound out their letters and knew the difference between a d and a b without having to bunch their hands into shapes.

What skills did I have to offer? I could climb trees and catch fish; I could scour a cooking pot and pinch someone's earlobes so hard that they squealed. By the standards of any normal six year old my talents were exceptional. But these were not normal children.

They clustered around me as soon as I arrived. The tiles they had been drawing on clattered to their desks, and their soft shoes swished over the dusty stone. When they found out my name they shrieked and sang it back to me. Clay-ay-aya-yay!

The teacher came over to break them up. There was no sweetness in her sweating face, Dahra's rudeness had seen to that. She looked at me as if she had scraped me off her shoe.

"How dare you make so much noise?"

When my mouth fell open at her harsh words she scowled and pulled me out of the cluster by my braid. My first morning in school was spent with my head pressed against the courtyard wall, and with my rump stinging from five lashes with a ruler. Pettiness, as I learned that day, meant more to Mistress Piper than any notion of common sense.

She was the kind of woman whose whole bearing could become utterly childish at the slightest attack. The cool, collected face she showed to the other Mistresses vanished the first time a child whispered behind her back. When she was alone with us she was spiteful. She enjoyed picking on a single child, singling them out and taunting them, until the little girl's whole body would quiver with unshed tears. If the girl actually cried – but no, she would always bite back her sobs. The older girls told us that bad things happened to weeping brats, and we believed them.

Mistress Piper was cruel to the girls that she liked; she openly despised the ones that she did not. I was so far beneath her notice that for a few weeks she did not even bother to look at me. I learned my lessons by sneaking looks at other girls' notebooks and tracing letters onto the table with a moist fingertip. When Mistress Piper finally noticed she made me polish every table in the schoolrooms and wash my hands with hard, stinging soap. She dropped a notebook into the bin and told me I could fetch it out at the end of the day. When I finally rescued my book the blank pages were curled up from apple cores, and the cover was stained with pickle.

When our classes were over we played outside until the old women called us into the kitchens for supper. We were only sent to our cubby rooms to sleep, and we were usually so tired from our lessons that we just fell into the sheets.

We were whisked off to the bathhouse before sunrise. We could only use it while the Siren were asleep. It would not do for them to hear us splashing around. I was so scared of making one of them angry that I held my breath whenever I passed the dividing door. Mistress Piper had scolded us so often that I was terrified of her. Surely, the real Siren would be even worse.