The Headmistress by Milena McKay

 

1

Of Dragons & Wishes

The light from the street lamps trickled into the small hotel room in silver threads, impeded by the hastily drawn shades, marking the bed and the figures entwined on it with lines that seemed to separate reality from imagination.

If this was a dream and Sam was to wake at any moment, she hoped she’d remember every sensation. How the skin underneath her lips glimmered eerily with a sheen of perspiration, and how the body under her fingertips moved, graceful even in rapture. Making another memory, she lowered her head again, choosing to keep her eyes open and to watch the havoc her mouth wreaked on her lover.

Her lover, whose spine was arched back, head thrashing on the scattered pillows, body taut as a bowstring. Her lover, who let out a sensuous moan that tore open something inside Sam. Her lover, who was undone by Sam’s lips and Sam’s tongue, and who grasped at the ruined sheets in a futile effort to stave off the sensation and to keep herself from the precipice. All for naught, for when the climax overtook her, like an arrow from that bowstring, Sam set her free. Unable to behold the sheer beauty in front of her, Sam surrendered and closed her eyes, still hoping to remember everything.

* * *

“Thank heavens, I thought this school year would never end! The brats are gone and it’s time to celebrate!” Joanne Dorsea’s excited voice sounded loud right next to Sam’s ear, jolting her out of her reverie. Three months and Sam still got lost in thought, remembering the tiny hotel room and all the things she had no business keeping this close to the forefront of her consciousness. She wanted to roll her eyes at her own foolhardiness—if not outright stupidity—and turned her attention to her colleague.

Here she was in the middle of the end-of-year party held, as usual, by the illustrious Headmistress at her cottage, a stone’s throw from the school itself. And instead of focusing on the things at hand, such as the rather decent whiskey she was clutching, Sam’s mind was miles away.

She tried to subtly shake her head to dispel the treacherous memories and focus on the present. Joanne, her erstwhile friend, mentor, and for all intents and purposes mother figure, was grinning and enjoying herself, sipping on her own drink. Sam willed her brain to function and tried to form coherent words. What was that? Brats?

“Hush, Jo, or they will think you hate the children or dislike being a teacher here at Dragons. Plus didn’t you win the sweepstakes when Sky Blue took all the awards this year? You should be thrilled.”

She recalled the ultra-competitive finals of the lacrosse and soccer championships, where Sky Blue House had claimed glory in the dying seconds of both games. Sure, it devolved into a brawl, as these things usually did, with the girls as animated and excited as they were. Still, it had certainly been much more interesting than their total domination in the Debate Club she herself chaired. But Sam would take that observation to her grave. As far as her public stance was concerned, Debate Club ruled and was the absolute best and most riveting activity in the Academy. If she privately enjoyed cheering for the Sky Blues during their sports competitions, no one needed to be the wiser. And if under duress, she could always tell them she’d been a Sky Blue once upon a time herself, when she had attended Dragons and worn the Dragonette uniform.

“I am thrilled. For a second there I thought Amber House would beat the Sky Blues in the soccer championship, but your house persevered, little one.”

Sam had to smile at the old nickname that tended to pop up every time she and her friend found themselves alone. Joanne had called her that when she was five, and still did so now that Sam was almost thirty and no longer little by anyone’s stretch of the imagination, standing at a pretty commanding height. In fact, just the right height to have looked directly into those intriguing eyes and to not have to bend her head to kiss those sensual full lips that night three months ago.

“Where do you keep disappearing to, my girl?” Joanne gave her a knowing gaze, and Sam suddenly felt like she was five again and Joanne had caught her with jam smears all over her face, despite claiming that she had not been down at the kitchens stealing blueberry pie filling.

“Ah, Jo…”

“‘Jo’ nothing. You’ve been acting like this ever since you came back from that conference in New York. Three months ago, was it? Spacing out. Daydreaming. What has gotten into you, Sam? Or should I say who?” The older woman’s eyes were twinkling with mischief.

“Oh my god!”

Sam’s scandalized hiss made Joanne laugh out loud.

“Girly, you are forgetting that I listened to you go on and on and on about Abigail Hodges when you were fifteen. It was all you talked about, her hair, her smile, her eyes, her—” Joanne made a demonstrative move with her hands in front of her chest, and Sam all but choked on her whiskey.

“Shhhh, Jo!” Sam looked nervously around to see if anyone paid any attention to them, but with the party in full swing, she could count on relative privacy. Still, her sexuality wasn’t something she wished to discuss around her colleagues. “Someone will hear. And I have never mentioned her attributes.”

“Always a worrier, little one. People are too busy getting drunk to care about us. You were easy to tease then, and you are easy to tease now, Sam.”

Joanne chuckled, obviously tickled pink by having the upper hand over her protégé. Sam pouted at how easily she was still falling into these situations with Joanne. She loved her like the mother she had never known, but damn if it wasn’t just a touch annoying that Joanne could still read her like an open book.

“Jokes aside, I worry about you. You haven’t been yourself lately. You can beat around the bush all you want, but you are broody, you spend way too much time on that cliff of yours where you think nobody can see you, and your head is somewhere else. Or is it your heart? Nether regions?”

Sam groaned and hid her face in her hands as Joanne simply laughed at her again and gave her a brief hug.

“Okay, okay, I will stop teasing you, but we are not done with this conversation, not by a long shot. Something clearly happened in New York.” Sam tried to school her features into the best poker face she could muster, but Joanne just raised her eyebrow and Sam smiled sheepishly. Both of them were well aware that Sam’s aforementioned poker face was so bad, it was rather legendary around the school.

“Now that I’ve given you enough grief and you’ve as good as confessed to having been up to no good down in the Big Apple, I can change the subject. And to answer your previous question about our darling little pupils, I absolutely do not hate them and they did win me pocket money. But they do become extremely tedious as the year progresses, and in spring doubly so. All that teenage angst and the hormones? Bah, spare me!” She shuddered dramatically and emptied her glass in one gulp.

“I hear you. The boys from town have been jumping the fence much more often. I understand that’s inevitable with an all-girls school, the attraction for them is just insurmountable. I separated at least three couples from rather compromising positions just last week.”

“Spoilsport. You were their age once, and the way you keep daydreaming about whoever it is that has you completely ensnared, you’re still prone to flights of fancy. Thank goodness you are just a touch more discreet than our esteemed leader. Cause she’s downright shameless tonight. And at least the Headmistress’ flavor of the week is cute. Very much so. And good for her too.”

Sam followed Joanne’s gaze to the front of the room where the dark-haired, older woman held court. As Sam observed, the Headmistress slid her hand up the aforementioned cute guy’s shoulder and into his hair, playing with the longer curls while he blushed rather endearingly.

“Good for her indeed,” Sam chimed in. “It’s been a long and difficult school year, we’re celebrating, she can let her hair down every once in a while. Nothing wrong with that.”

“Okay, okay, you’re right, Sam, she deserves all the rest and recuperation she can get. We all do. I have to say that I’m quite envious of how flirty she is tonight, and it feels like she really doesn’t care who is watching. Perhaps the end of the school term is affecting her much more strongly this year?”

Of relatively small height, with astute blue eyes and a pale complexion, Orla Fenway’s appearance was a proud reflection of her Irish ancestry. A champion brooder with the ability to drink anyone under the table, she was also a well-established published poet in her own right, which seemed par for the course for her countrymen.

Headmistress Fenway had taken over the helm of the once prestigious and exclusive Three Dragons Academy for Girls twenty years ago and had kept the school from falling apart around her with the sheer force of her will, a firm hand, and probably a prayer or two. She walked the very thin line of dwindling funding and outrageous demands from a fickle and tightfisted Board of Trustees, and it took its toll on her. Joanne was right, she looked tired, worn around the edges, and something in Sam clenched at the thought of her mentor and good friend not projecting her usual air of confidence and infallibility.

As if sensing her unease, Joanne placed a hand on Sam’s shoulder with surprising gentleness after pretty much teasing her the whole evening.

“It’s the end of the year, we are all tired, it’s to be expected.”

Sam gave her a lopsided smile, grateful for Jo’s attempts to assuage her anxiety. But they both knew something was off. Yes, Orla was a notorious flirt and went through men faster than anyone else in Sam’s acquaintance, but her behavior was still rather unusual, for she was normally discreet when discretion was called for.

Orla wasn’t just a Headmistress and an educator. Her formidable style of teaching had inspired Sam to pursue pedagogical studies herself. She was also a dear friend, and when Sam graduated with honors from Boston College, the Headmistress extended the most coveted invitation of them all - to take over the Math Chair at Three Dragons Academy.

They enjoyed a relationship of vivacious camaraderie and quiet, leisurely evenings spent sipping tea on the deck of the small cottage located next to the sprawling school building.

Seeing her friend looking as gaunt and as worn out as she did, and to observe her behave—while not entirely out-of-character—decidedly in poor judgment, made Sam uncomfortable. Despite Joanne’s quiet assurance, she kept watching Orla circulate from one group of guests to the next, often returning to continue her overt flirtation with the young, handsome man from town.

Under Sam’s watchful scrutiny, the Headmistress, as if sensing that she was the subject of discussion, approached in a cloud of her signature scent. Roses. Initially, when Orla had started at Dragons, Sam found the scent cloying and distracting. With time and familiarity, she had grown to appreciate the strength and reliability of the flower. You could always count on a rose to be what it was meant to be, no more no less, the centerpiece and attention-grabber of any room. Roses did not pretend, did not hide or obfuscate. Roses reigned. And so did Orla.

As she approached, Joanne removed her arm from around Sam’s shoulders and stood just a bit straighter. Despite her friendliness with the staff, Orla still projected an air of forceful authority, even in the midst of a party.

“Oh, do stop hoarding our dear Ms. Threadneedle, Joanne! Other people, such as, for example, our dear History Chair over there on the other side of the room, are damn near pining themself out of their turtlenecks, observing how you are monopolizing this one’s time.”

It made Sam a touch uncomfortable to be the center of attention, so she tried to deflect it as soon as possible.

“You better be joking about David Uttley, Headmistress. I assure you, he has not been pining over me in the slightest.” Sam gave both her colleagues a quick glare before grabbing another glass of whiskey from the passing server. “Your jokes need work, Headmistress, but you always throw one hell of a party, I’ll give you that.”

“You were always a cheeky one, Sam. I saw you and Jo here keeping an eye on me tonight. I assure you, I’m going to behave. Or as much as I know how to behave.”

Sam snickered and earned herself a light smack on her bicep.

“Stop giggling, missy. And ouch.” Joanne rubbed at her knuckles. “When did you become skin and bones? All this running up and down and around the island, I never understood it, Sam. You run and you run and you get nowhere, cupcake. It’s still an island and you end where you begin.”

“It’s not about getting somewhere, it relaxes me!” Even to her own ears, the defense of her preferred way to exercise sounded weak. She ran to escape her thoughts, even though lately her thoughts chased her and overwhelmed her no matter where she found herself.

“Oh, we are all in agreement that you need some relaxing, hence the delectable Mister David over there may not be such a bad option.” It seemed that Joanne wasn’t the only one who made it her mission tonight to tease her, as Orla smirked and gestured again toward David Uttley who was lounging by the far wall, ever the removed observer, watching the three women from behind his horn-rimmed glasses.

Before Sam could roll her eyes or protest at another gauche attempt at matchmaking, Joanne elbowed her in jest, clearly amused at Sam’s predicament, and Orla raised her hands at their roughhousing.

“Children, children. Please, this is a party, not a sandbox at recess. I enjoy your jokes as much as the next gal, but for the love of god, keep it more or less civil before you scare all the handsome boys away.”

Orla rubbed her forehead, and Sam’s look turned to concern. Her own sparring with Joanne was par for the course, and in fact, they were notorious for their silly banter—something that was enjoyed by the entire school as it livened up their monotonous days. But Orla looked like she had a nasty headache that was giving her a lot of trouble.

“Before you go all mother hen on me, Sam Threadneedle, it’s just a headache. I will leave you and your partner in crime to your shenanigans since you’re bound to make it worse. You two keep each other in line enough to remember the teachers’ staff meeting tomorrow at the Mess Hall. And before y’all give me more of a headache over the unusual choice of venue for an official gathering, I just want to have coffee and eat a muffin in peace with my friends and colleagues before the end of the year. I don’t want to be surrounded by the townies and the racket of the pub. And I will have to clean my cottage for a week after you all depart later tonight. So the Mess Hall it is! Now, allow me to enjoy the company of someone who is hopefully much more fun than the two of you, dears. Sláinte!”

They watched her swan away and exchanged a puzzled look. Sam knew Joanne was just as surprised by the behavior on display from their normally unflappable leader tonight. Come to think of it, Sam tried to remember the last time she’d seen and interacted with Orla. Not in the past two weeks. The Headmistress had been in Boston in consultations with the Board of Trustees, a select group of people entrusted to steer Three Dragons Academy and its students, as their school motto suggested, along the Viis Novis, the Latin term for New Ways.

Sam often wondered what had stood behind choosing a radical motto like that in 1810. It must have taken considerable testicular fortitude on behalf of the founders to decide to go with it, especially for a newly established private boarding school for Protestant girls. Or it was yet another thing about Dragons that wasn’t quite what it seemed. Its first charter was overwhelmingly conservative even for the time of its inception.

Still, the motto had been so apt because women desperately needed new avenues back then. Not that a lot of women couldn’t still use all the help they could get to pursue new paths towards knowledge, education, and fulfillment today, Sam mused. And despite the charter’s conservatism, the school had always had the heart of a rebel.

* * *

Since Joanne had been pulled aside by an acquaintance whom Sam only vaguely remembered, she looked at the assembled group of friends and colleagues, trying to determine what her next course of action should be. The party was still in full swing. She could hear the PE teacher, Jen Rovington, attempting to convince her husband to do a jig with her, and several other teachers were already having a blast on the dance floor.

But despite the joy and camaraderie around her, Sam felt the walls slowly closing in on her and the air getting sparser and sparser. What she needed was solitude, if only because she kept retreating into her own thoughts and finding them in disarray. She felt uneasy, and not just about how out-of-character Orla was acting. Premonitions weren’t something she believed in, she was a scientist, a math nerd, and gut feelings were distinctly unscientific. And yet, she felt discomposed and out of sorts for no particular reason at all.

She wasn’t entirely sure it was such a good idea, all things considered, but when in doubt Sam Threadneedle oftentimes chose to play turtle, disappearing into the safety and peace and quiet of her imagination. It happened a lot these days, especially since she’d returned from her trip to New York and had seemingly left her sanity in the small hotel in the heart of Manhattan.

* * *

Sam exited the cottage and looked around into the evening dusk. In comparison to Martha’s Vineyard, Nantucket or other islands off the coast of Massachusetts, Dragons Island was small and utterly unremarkable. And that was fine by Sam. Dragons did not get the tourist crowds the other islands got, but they were better off for it in Sam’s eyes.

Around her, the school grounds lay in eerie quiet, sheltered from the ocean wind and the town’s prying eyes by three massive cliffs, bearing the names of the legendary dragons: Amber, Viridescent, and Sky Blue.

Fairytale had it that, once upon a time, in order to escape from the minutiae and ruin of men, the dragons had settled on the island, retreating to live amongst its massive rocks. They sought peace, and they’d found it by transforming into the three cliffs that guarded the island on the east side, effectively protecting it from the fury and the clamor of the ocean.

The rocks were illuminated by the sole beam of the Eye Lighthouse, and the legendary Three Dragons stretched in front of her, with the Academy and the school grounds tucked safely between them, like their crowning glory on top of the plateau surrounded by thick pine woods.

This walk towards the cliffs was picturesque, away from the school and the town huddled on the beach down below. The wide-open spaces had always soothed Sam’s racing thoughts, even as an introverted and restless child who’d avoided her peers and could not sit still for very long. She had walked this path so many times, had run it, had skipped it. Sometimes she’d fallen, skinned her knees on the sharp rocky surface, but she always rose, feeling the massive Dragon Cliffs watching over her, their gaze benevolent, their enormous shapes protective over the lonely orphan. A charity case in a rich girls’ school and a closeted lesbian in a conservative institution, Sam Threadneedle had always felt awkward. And equally, the cliffs always watched out for her when she felt like the sole round peg in a square hole. She would squeeze herself in it, but it did not feel right then, and it felt uncomfortable still to this day.

They were watching over her now as she trudged up toward her favorite place in the world, past the school to her right, delving deeper into the rocks. She knew every twist and turn of the desolate, narrow road winding up to the cliffs and around the school, and yet whenever the imposing mansion appeared, it always took her breath away. As chiseled and elegant as the Dragon Cliffs were massive and brawny, the Academy reigned over the magnificence of nature as proof of enduring humanity and the fruits of its labor and craftsmanship.

Yet these days very little was left of said magnificence or elegance of old. The school lay sprawled on acres and acres of land that needed tending and care and a considerable investment. The buildings themselves—the Main Hall and its wings that served as dormitories holding the three school Houses, and the surrounding campus and support structures—fared slightly better than the grounds, but that was a testament to the stonemasons of that time, who’d known their craft and had wielded the chisel and hammer to build things that lasted for centuries.

Still, the feeling of decay, of disrepair, was permeating the air, even if only for someone like Sam, who was raised on these grounds and who’d run amok among these walls. She could see the cracks, the gaping wounds in the soul of the school itself, not just in the sagging of a roof or the leaking of a ceiling.

Perhaps it was a poor woman’s allegory, but to Sam’s mind schools reflected society with great precision. With the American public at a crossroads, torn at the very seams of the fabric that made the nation, and splitting further, the school had been undergoing the same kinds of changes over the years. The Board of Trustees remained largely the same, as the positions were occupied for life, then passed on to heirs along with all the other property, unless a person wanted to abdicate their responsibilities towards the school. To Sam’s knowledge, nobody had ever resigned, as the role wasn’t too onerous but very prestigious. Change still happened on the nine-person Board, and it did not always lead to bigger and better things.

In the past twenty years, these nine people had slowly but surely choked the life out of Three Dragons, either with a tightening of the purse strings, or, more recently, by trying to impose a stifling conservative curriculum. The latter changes materialized with the new trustees stepping into their role. They’d called it ‘a return to the roots’ since the school had begun as a religious institution. Nowadays some of the decisions the board took made very little sense. Orla, who was progressive to the core, kept them at bay as best as she could, but even for someone who was as removed from the gossip about the battles the Headmistress waged with the trustees as Sam was, she could hear the distant rumbling of an impending storm.

Orla had not been able to gain much ground with the Board in her tenure as Headmistress in many aspects of the school management, but for much of her time at Dragons, she had stemmed the tide of the incursions into the school curricula and admission requirements. Which meant there was a very tenuous detente that could blow up at any moment and cover the school, its thirty faculty, and roughly two hundred students with the debris of uncertainty. But the detente was also unsustainable because it was staving off any progress, leaving the school in quite a desperate state. Something would have to give and soon.

Sam took a moment to look back at the majestic building before turning towards the water, slowly making her way to the very edge of the Amber Dragon Cliff. She raised her face, enjoying the cool breeze ruffling the flyaways from her braid and the foaming ocean underneath that was relentlessly trying to overcome the seemingly insurmountable obstacles in front of it. She understood the impetus. After all, that was what Sam had done all her life. Try, strive, overcome.

This was her favorite place in the entire world, a secluded spot on the chiseled rock overlooking the enormity of the water, yet still sheltered from the storms and the destruction they brought. The structure of the cliff was thus that it created a sort of crevice where little Sam as well as big Sam hid her troubles from the world, rocked to safety by the roar of the ocean and the whistle of the wind. Her spot—as that was the only thing she had ever called the place—also had one of the most exquisite perks going for it. In spring and early summer, it carried a distinctive, fresh and sweet scent, as several evergreen shrubs and vines of wild jasmine grew along the rocks towards it. And that sweet perfume had always signified home. The only home she’d ever known. This unwelcoming place, this uneasy peace, even if the edges of it were consumed by so much uncertainty, made Sam inhale this scent with her whole chest and close her eyes at the almost painful familiarity of it all. No, she never fit in, but if she tried really hard, she could at least pretend that the wild jasmine bloomed for her alone.

She reached into her messenger bag where the familiar weight of a book that she rarely left at home was just as soothing. The worn-out cover of The Light Princess—a centuries-old Scottish tale of a girl with no tether, no purpose, and no connection—felt comforting against her chilled hands. During nights like these, when she felt alone in the world, the book seemed uncannily similar to her own life.

She swallowed the unexpected lump in her throat at the anxiety that consumed her, and with one last look around her at the Amber Dragon Cliff, Sam whispered a quick prayer towards the dark and menacing skies above. She made a wish. A wish for change.