Page 6 of The Black Table
And I stand alone, stupefied,wordless,in the cavern of the chapel, for God knows how many moments longer, until the tears on my face are long dry and my heart has slowed to normal.
His handkerchief still clutched in my hand.
TWO
GWENNA
For the restof the morning, I hide.
No lunch—that’d require seeing people.
No dorm—ditto.
Instead, I lay low in the library, a stone building that’s as stately as the chapel but not asdangerous, and go down to the very deepest basement level I can find—B2, way below where most people even bother to venture. I find an alcove with a table, very much out of sight, where I can sit with my legs clasped to my chest and my forehead on my knees.
Breathe in. Breathe out. Breathe in. Breathe out.
I feel the heat of my breathing flare over my skin and think about etymology.
In Latin, the wordanimameans bothbreathandsoul.Or, technically speaking, notsoulprecisely—not something that’s immortal and outlasts your mortal body—butlife force.
The thing that separates you from being dead.
And as long as you have that, you have something.
Don’t go where you’re not invited.
Duly noted. Message received.
At ten of one, I head to my assigned classroom, a cold cell of aplace in Stuart Hall, dragging my suitcase along. Post-panic-attack, post-confrontation with a sword-carrying Greek God of a man, and without anything in my stomach, I’m hardly in an ideal state to take a test, but fortunately, that’s been the case for most of my life, and my grades have never suffered. Possibly the only thing that hasn’t. Give Gwenna a test, and she will pass it.
Latin is fairly trivial: vocabulary, grammar questions, and a sight translation from a section of Cicero’sIn Catilinamthat I haven’t read before, but pick up well enough. French is barely a problem. Calculus, a little less so, especially because I’m not allowed a calculator, but that’s a class I intend to knock out as quickly as possible, so a lower ranking would do me a favor.
All the while, I’m keenly aware I’m being watched. The proctor they managed to find for me—presumably some TA, a hulking figure with sandy red bedhead and what appears to be a hangover—stares me down like I’m suspicious. Yet when I turn in my sheaf of papers, he barely looks me in the eye, and that’s just as well, because by the time I’m out of there, I’m ready to collapse.
It’s around 4 p.m. and I haven’t even been to my dorm room yet. The campus isn’t big, so it doesn’t take me long to find my assigned hall, Broceliande—a bit of a ridiculous name, but presumably some donor who wrote a check large enough to merit a nameplate. The front door is unlocked, making my first key superfluous. I’m on the third floor, a girls-only floor, Room 326, tucked in the back. Some doors are propped open, snatches of study groups or music floating out, the occasional student slipping out to fill a water bottle or head to the library, but mostly quiet, stately, relaxing.
Even the promise of what is sure to be a thin plastic dorm mattress sounds like a relief.
I fit my key into the brass lock of 326 and turn, and find myself staring into a pair of honey-brown eyes in a confused expression.
“Well, hello there,” says a husky female voice.
I blink, trying to process.
“H-hi,” I stammer. Roommate, of course. College roommates. Those are things, Gwenna. BE NORMAL.
The girl staring back at me is around my age, slightly taller, with endless waves of golden blonde hair and lips held in a slight pout. She’s gorgeous and not entirely happy to see me.
“Hello,” she says again. “And you’re…”
“Gwenna?” I say like it’s a question, and feel immediately stupid. “This is my room. We’re roommates.” I look down at my dorm assignment, at the name I had not really bothered to register before. “You’re Morgan.”
She blinks, tips her head. “I know who I am. I’m just wondering…” She chews her lip and casts around the room.
So do I, for the first time.
It’s bigger than I had been anticipating, with arched windows that let in plenty of light and a glimpse of the quad, a small ensuite bathroom, and a set of furniture—bed, desk—neatly tucked on either side. Except that one bed is absolutely covered in…stuff: clothes, books, makeup, apparatuses, and all sorts of decorative trinkets I can’t even place—vases, dried flowers, long strings of beads, scarves. The other bed—Morgan’s bed, presumably—is outfitted with plush purple and pink bedding. A moon-shaped lamp hangs above it, suspended from something that I can’t see, and glowing almost like the actual moon itself.
