The first time she saw it, she was distracted; Meg was saying - well, what did that matter, anyway? Meg was always saying something - and Olivia was crying, and Nicholas and Xavier were (loudly) locked in battle with their ancient enemy, the wicked Bucket Knight who served the dreaded Cleaning Witch, waging war on cleanliness itself, and she wasn't entirely convinced that she'd seen anything at all.
Just a shadow, she thought, and brushed it off. The orphanage was full of them.
Until she saw it again, bleeding from the wood and paint, drifting slowly along the dormitory wall. A shadow much darker than the others, large and softly formed, weaving through the stains and splinters, floating slowly along the dormitory wall.
She'd been lying on her bunk above Meg, listening to the snores and whispers of her fellow prisoners, picking at the fraying end of the ratty bandage wrapped around her thigh.
Just a shadow. They were everywhere in the orphanage. Sprawling across the floors, splashed across the walls.
Then it came back around, moving (strange, she thought, abandoning the bandage in favor of the thin, faded blanket which suddenly seemed much too low on her body, which felt terribly exposed, having shed the armor of her heavy, striped dress in favor of her ever shrinking nightgown; like it's looking for something... but that was a silly and childish theory, wasn't it? Imagine her, at her age and social rank, believing in such nonsense. Why not just suck her thumb while she was at it?) in her direction.
And then it was gone.
And that might have been it, for the evening at least, and she might have forgotten about it all together, if not for the fact that, as she lay on her bunk above Meg, teetering wearily on the edge of consciousness, overlooking the churning black waters of the dream sea, she felt something brush against her leg.
There!
The shadow drifted lazily across the classroom wall as Diana tried to follow it without drawing too much attention to herself.
Even so, both Meg and Eleanor watched her with varying degrees of interest; Eleanor looking away when Diana's eyes met hers, and Meg studying her brazenly.
But they couldn't see it, and they didn't believe her.
They thought she was losing her mind, she was sure of it.
Perhaps, she thought, as she followed the blackened shape around the perimeter of the room, they're right.
Perhaps she was losing her mind.
Did it matter?
She didn't know if they were right, or why the thought of it didn't worry her more, and she couldn't remember why it used to.
The shadow moved, unhurried, and Diana followed, a small crease appearing between her brows.
"Diana?"
Meg's voice fought to cut through the thick fog that had rolled in off the dream shore and seemed impossible to dispel. Diana was quietly thankful for it; Meg had such a grating voice.
"Diana, what on Earth are you doing?"
"Class will start soon," Eleanor said, softly. Eleanor was another one she couldn't stand, but she made herself tolerable by never speaking. "We need to find our seats soon."
Well. Almost never.
She turned her attention back to the shadow, or rather, the empty wall where it had been.
Damn.
She didn't know why, but the fact that it had evaded her made her feel... cheated, somehow.
"Diana?"
Ignoring them, she let her eyes wander about the room, searching for the greater darkness that weaved in and out of the shadows. Surely, it was somewhere, still...
"Diana?"
"I don't know what's gotten into her!"
"Should we let her be?"
"Let her be what?" Meg whined, trying and failing to keep her voice low enough to escape Diana's detection. "She's always like that these days; she never wants to play anymore. Not even airship, and she loved that more than anyone! She hasn't even come to the last two meetings of the Aristocrat Club! I've had to make up all kinds of excuses to tell the Princess!"
Diana sighed. Meg was right; she usually was. Just not usually about her.
It was just that the thought of playing airship sounded so... tedious lately, and where, oh, where had the nasty little thrill that used to ricochet up and down her spine when a meeting was called in the attic gone?
It all felt so small and far away now, like marbles lost and hidden in the cracks and gutters at the back of her mind.
And she just didn't have the energy to go and find it anymore.
"Diana?"
She jumped slightly as fingers curled, claw-like, on her shoulder.
"Yes, Mr. Hoffman?" she asked, the personification of sweetness and innocence. Just the way he'd taught her.
Eager and grateful for his attention.
She used to be grateful; grateful, and proud. Why wouldn't she be? None of the other children got private lessons with the headmaster.
None of the other children got to go to his room late at night.
None of the other children got to keep all of his secrets and promises.
She'd been so special.
So grown up... for her age.
Still young enough, though; still plenty of time, if she just did what he told her. If she just learned all of his most important lessons, he promised, he promised, he promised...
He'd promised her a new mummy and daddy if she just...
New daddies, especially, liked it when...
She'd been so good, and tried so hard.
But no one had ever come for her, or Clara, or even Olivia.
Slowly, she'd begun to realize that no one was going to come at all.
She'd end up like Clara.
Stuck there in the orphanage.
Or cast out; what would they possibly do with two budding spinsters?
Still, her private lessons continued.
"You seem distracted today, Diana," he said, still holding onto her shoulder. His other hand, warm and dry and all too familiar, leapt to her other shoulder, holding her in place.
"I'm just tired, Mr. Hoffman," she answered, finding herself sharing with the old lech a rare moment of honesty; the effort required to lie to him was simply too great. "I haven't been sleeping well."
"Oh, my dear," he said, and one dry, knowing hand snaked around to touch its thin, papery underbelly to her forehead. "Mmmm. You do feel warm, now, don't you? I hope you haven't caught something... it will spread like the plague here, if you have." He sighed, and let his hand drop from her forehead back to her shoulder, and they stood there, the two of them, almost picturesque. A proud grandfather, and his pale, weary grandchild.
As fantastical and hideous as any lie she'd ever told.
She wished he'd stop touching her.
She wished, she wished...
She wished he'd catch fire from the old wood stove at the back of the classroom. She wished he'd burn and melt and scream before collapsing to the floor at her feet and laying still.
She wished those foul-smelling cigars he was always smoking would fill him so with smoke that he'd run out of air, gasp and claw at his throat, and with one final, sooty exhalation, fall upon his desk, his eyes wide and glassy and still dripping tears onto the blotter.
She wished that he would push his arm against her throat a little too hard, a little too long, and not realize what he was doing until it was too late.
She shook her head.
Oh, where had that come from?
She didn't want to -
"I'm okay, sir," she said, slipping back into a well-worn lie. "I'll just go to bed early tonight, if it's all right with you."
"Mmmm," he said, gazing down at her with an unreadable expression.
"Yes," he said, finally. "That will do just fine, I think. For now, though, why don't you have a seat? No, not there. At the front. I'd like to keep an eye on you, at least until this passes."
And then he returned to the front of the classroom to begin the day's lessons, casting a baleful look over his shoulder, quickly silencing the chorus of groans that had risen among the boys having yet another raucous sword fight against the Broom King, or whatever they called that awful creation.
"Diana, over here!" Meg called, pointing to a seat between herself and Eleanor, which Diana rejected in favor of one at the front of the room.
She slumped into the cold, hard seat without a single ounce of grace or aristocratic pretension. The headmaster rewarded her obedience with a fond smile, and a pat on the head as he placed a blank sheet of paper and a pencil on the table before her, and a funnel of darkness fell across her desk as the shadowthing lolled across the ceiling above her.