Page 54 of Tis The Season for Secrets
“I’ll be sure to return the favour,” Will pressed. “Don’t you have a daughter on the Outside? I can make sure she’s looked after in a manner befitting your service to Yule?” Apparently his manipulation knew no end.
Phyllis looked thoughtful. “She has been trying to get my granddaughter into a good school in England, which is proving difficult, considering her primary education has been in Yule. She has the grades, and I’m only asking for a fair application—”
“Consider it done.”
There was another moment of silence, but then Juliet heard the clink of a key.
“You’re a gem,” Will said. “And, might I add, look far too young to have a grandchild.”
“Be gone before I change my mind,” Phyllis grumbled, but Juliet heard the smile in her words. She’d put up a good fight, but it seemed that despite Yule’s magical and wondrous nature, its citizens were still susceptible to bribes.
The golden lantern on the walls highlighted the gold flecks in the white marble, making the ceiling look like it was twinkling.Breathtaking.She’d have settled for just seeing this. Then she saw Will waving a hand behind his back.
Juliet made a run for the corridor, careful to keep low. She barely made it around the corner when she bumped into someone.
“I’m so sorry!” Juliet exclaimed, but the woman, whose dark hair was streaked with grey, just stared at her blankly. “Are you alright? I didn’t mean to startle you; I was in a hurry.” Juliet fidgeted with the ends of her scarf.
“There’s no running in the corridors, and visiting hours are restricted for family members. If you wish to see a boarder, then you must wait until 7pm.” The dark-haired middle-aged woman looked down at the file in her hands, continuing with what she was reading while scolding her.
“Right. I must have got the times mixed up.” Juliet started to back away the way she’d came.
The woman closed the file and held it behind her back. “You’re here now, and since we’re so close to the holidays, you can go ahead and wait quietly. The students out training will be back in thirty minutes.” In spite of her warning, there was a kindness in her eyes.
“Understood.” Juliet nodded.
“Don’t stay too long – I don’t want the students to be put out by one getting special treatment,” the woman reiterated, opening her file once again and heading down the corridor past her.
Shivering at the close call, Juliet hurried on to find the gold door. She only had to wait a few anxious moments before Will appeared.
“I think we should get out of here. I ran into a woman, and she said the students out training will be back soon. She only let me through because she thought I was visiting someone,” she fretted.
Will frowned, looking back down the corridor. She wondered if he’d seen the same woman. “Don’t worry,” he promised, “once we get inside, you won’t have to worry about being discovered.” Using the gold key he’d obtained from Phyllis, he unlocked the door. Juliet stared into the room, dumbfounded.
Chests. Dozens and dozens of chests lined the walls.
“All of these families were banished?” She swallowed, thinking she’d underestimated just how strict Yule was about rules.
The chests, identical to the one she’d been sent, each had their own section built into the high walls. To get a closer look, she moved around the small individual desks with study lamps that she suspected were for visitors to inspect the contents of the chests.
“No, every family in Yule has an ancestral chest. Only those with the key for their family chest can get in here, and my sister has ours. I can also request any documents the council has on the Frost banishment. I removed most of what was contained in the Frost chest so you only had access to what you needed to see. You didn’t need generations of birth certificates and wedding licenses. I’ll return them when you’re done with it.”
Will walked over to the wall, where Juliet saw a metal pneumatic tube. He pulled out a scroll from his pocket, apparently having come prepared; before she could ask what was written on it, the scroll was sucked up the pipe. Next, he turned a brass dial on the wall. One row of chests was pulled back and another was pulled forward until Juliet saw a row with names beginning with F. The Frost name was labelled in gold on an empty wooden shelf.
“These chests are so old that only legacies really come to visit them, which is how we got yours out. No one would know yours was missing unless they went looking for it,” Will said.
Juliet placed her hand on the empty shelf to make sure she wasn’t dreaming, and a thin layer of freshly settled dust coated her fingertips. “You risked bringing me here to show me an empty shelf?”
Her question was answered when a small dumbwaiter positioned in the middle of the wall binged and flashed green, opening to reveal an object.
“A book?” she asked, looking at the brown leather volume. She was afraid to touch it.
“It’s yours.”
The Frost signal embossed in the cover told her as much. Juliet picked it up, surprised by how heavy and thick it was. Its uneven pages tried to escape the binding.
“Why wasn’t this in the chest?”
“It’s an important Yule text, so the council prefers to keep it locked up,” Will said. “It’s the history of Frosts in Yule, in your family’s own words. No one knows who truly founded Yule– whether it was the Klaus family or the Frost family – but the Frosts were always the protectors of dust, responsible for its mining, while the Klaus family oversaw distributing it. They worked together,” Will explained, as she walked over to one of the tables and flicked on the study lamp.
