A Tale of Two Proms (Bard Academy) (25 page)

Headmaster B continued, as she nodded curtly at me. “Their relationship grew quite serious, I’m afraid.”

Coach H reluctantly pulled his eyes from Headmaster B to me. His face was still a splotchy purple. “Is this true Miranda?”

I had a flash of memory of Heathcliff proposing to me in the cabin, his eyes intent on me, determined for us to be together. The last thing he wanted to do at that moment was go back to
Wuthering Heights
. Personal attachment didn’t even begin to cover it. Of course, now that Catherine was in the picture, I was sure it was a completely different story.

“Miranda?” Coach H pressed. I could feel the eyes of everyone on me.  Sydney, in particular, seemed to take interest.

“Yes,” I admitted. But, apparently, I’d been wrong about just
how
deep a connection we had. Looks like I was wrong about a lot of things.

“You knew you could never be together,” Coach H thundered. “You knew it was impossible.”

“It doesn’t even matter now,” I said. “Headmaster B’s big plan worked. Heathcliff isn’t interested in me anymore.”

Hana squeezed my arm and Lindsay moved a protective step closer to me. I felt suddenly like crying. Everything was hopeless. Heathcliff didn’t want me. But I was still in love with him. The harsh reality of it hit me like a cold wind.

“Did you bring Sydney over, too?” I asked Headmaster B. “Was he part of your plan as well?”

Sydney’s face looked surprised. “She was not the one I saw,” Sydney said.

“No, I’m afraid not,” Headmaster B agreed. “I did not bring over Sydney.”

“Then, who did?” Hana asked the room.

“Maybe he just came over—like the Cyclops,” Lindsay offered.

"Maybe," I said, but I didn't think so. A woman had summoned Sydney. He'd said so.

“Well, what a mess,” Coach H said, running his hand through his short shock of gray hair. “I thought better of
both
of you.” Coach H just shook his head from side to side, as he glared at me and Headmaster B in turn. “It was a foolish risk. You know the dangers!”

“Do I?” I challenged. “I don’t think
you
even know what will happen.” I was feeling a little bit defensive. I was tired of all the grand but vague warnings the faculty was always dishing out.

Coach exchanged a guilty glance with Headmaster B. This much was true. They knew it could be bad, but they weren’t sure how bad.

“Rules have been broken in the past,” Hana said. “What about Miranda’s great-great grandmother or whoever came to live in this world without a problem?”

“Yes, but that’s because…” Coach H began.

Headmaster B seemed to know where Coach H was headed with his train of thought. “You can’t tell them,” Headmaster B interrupted.

“They have a right to know,” Coach H said. “We should’ve told them a long time ago. Maybe this wouldn’t have happened if we’d told them everything.”

“Told us what?” Blade asked. We all turned intently to hear what Coach H had to say.

“Main characters are much different than supporting ones in the fictional world,” he said. 

“Well, no
duh
.” Lindsay rolled her eyes.

“If a minor character like your ancestor leaves,” Coach H said. “There’s hardly a ripple in the story. But if a main character is lost from a fictional story, then…”

“The world ends. That’s what you said.” Samir looked at Coach H pointedly.

“Well, it’s not that simple,” Coach H said. “If a main character leaves, a couple of things
could
happen. One, the book will collapse on itself. It will no longer exist.”

“Which would be the end of the world to one of you—the authors,” Ryan said.

Coach H nodded. “Figuratively,” he said. “But there’s another, more dangerous possibility. Sometimes, when a main character leaves, the story remains, but a vacuum is created.”

“What kind of vacuum?” Hana asked.

“One that wants to be filled,” Coach H said. “With someone. Probably from this world.”

“You’re saying that if Heathcliff leaves for good,
Wuthering Heights
would suck in some random tool to take his place?” Blade shook her head like she couldn’t believe what she was hearing—or that she thought it was completely awesome. It was hard to tell with Blade.

Sydney watched the entire conversation with a confused look on his face. I knew how he felt.

“It’s likely,” Headmaster B said. “The more important the story—the more connected and strong its bonds are with other works of fiction—the more likely it will survive the removal of a main character.”  

“
Wuthering Heights
is the original gothic romance,” Hana said. “Without it, even modern day books like
Twilight
might not exist.”

“It’s true,” Coach said.

“I still don’t understand how a real person could wind up trapped in
Wuthering Heights
,” Ryan said.

“The dimensions, the real world and the fictional one, are tied together,” Coach H said. “Think of them like two tangled strands of time. The strands are twisted, but together find a balance. Imagine them as two sides of a scale, always trying to seek a balance of weight. If one side loses too much, the scales tip.”

“And then what?” This was Lindsay.

“And then the scale tries to right itself.” Coach H looked at each one of us in turn.

 I thought about what it would be like to spend your whole life in the modern world only to wake up and find yourself trapped in some other world, maybe even one from hundreds of years ago. Like now, where there were crazy bloodthirsty French revolutionaries wanting to behead everyone in sight.

“Who gets sucked in?” Lindsay asked.

“We don’t know,” Headmaster B said. “It could be anyone. At any time.”

“Okay, so you guys don’t want Heathcliff to stay here because you didn’t want to have to send a real person to take his place,” Hana said.

“And there’s another problem,” Coach H said.

“Oh, of course there is.” Lindsay’s voice was sarcastic.

“Catherine has moved the vault,” Coach H said. “The vault acts as the doorway between the two worlds. And since the doorway has been moved, all equilibrium between the two dimensions might be off.”

“Which means?” Blade asked.

“Vacuums and worse,” Headmaster B said. “No one has ever moved the vault before.”

“Okay, so we have to find Catherine and Heathcliff and get the vault back to where it belongs?” Ryan asked.

“Right,” Coach H said, nodding. 

 “So Emily Bronte really had nothing to do with any of this?” I still couldn’t believe that after all this time thinking Emily had managed to create another elaborate scheme to destroy Bard, her sister Charlotte had simply done it by accident.

“No, she did not,” Headmaster B said.

“So we need to find the vault, right? To stop all the crazy,” Blade said.

“Yeah, but how do we do that?” Hana asked.

“We’ve been looking,” Coach H said. “We haven’t found it here. And we suspect that Catherine wanted to bring
all
of
Wuthering Heights
into the real world. But the transition didn’t go as smoothly as she hoped.”

“Which is why Netherfield Park is sitting on Shipwreck Island right now instead of the Grange,” I said.

“The Grange?” Lindsay asked me.

“An estate in
Wuthering Heights
.”

“That’s why she needed all of Bard to disappear – for an equal swap,” Hana exclaimed. 

“Yes,” Coach H nodded. “But the thing is that we don’t know if the swap will really work.” Coach H looked at Headmaster B.

“We don’t know how stable the worlds will be with so many things out of the natural order,” she added.

I was guessing she meant that if you swap things out between the dimensions, it’s an iffy science at best.

“So, where do you think the rest of Bard is?” Lindsay asked. 

“What about London?” Hana asked. She had Lindsay’s copy of
A Tale of Two Cities
in her hand. “I don’t know for sure, but it seems like some of the passages here have been changed.”

“Let me look,” Coach H said, as he took the book from her hands.

A hard knock came on the outside of the door and a man shouted something in French. We all looked at the door. I didn’t know what he said, but it sounded like he wanted in.

“Were you followed?” hissed Coach H to Headmaster B.

“I did not think so, but…” Headmaster B looked worried. She slid to the window near the door and peered out. “They have pistols and knives,” she said.

The man on the other side of the door banged again, harder this time. His voice sounded more forceful, his words even less polite. Sydney stood up straight, his face tense.

“He wants Sydney,” Coach H told us. “He thinks we’re harboring fugitives.”

“We are harboring a fugitive,” Blade pointed out, reasonably.

“I believe I’ve changed my mind about losing my head today,” Sydney told Samir. “Would you kindly tell those gentleman that message?”

“
You
tell them yourself,” Samir snapped.

Between the two of them, it was clearly going to be a coward-off.

Headmaster B turned, her eyes fixed with purpose on Lindsay. “Read the chapter Hana holds in her hands,” she commanded.

“Where should I start?”

“Where Hana’s finger lies on the page.”

Hana scooted closer to Lindsay and held the open book up to her so she could read it. Lindsay began to read the words. In the middle of the room another portal opened to a different chapter inside the book.

“Wait—we’re already in a book, how can we go into
the same book again?”
Ryan asked.

“We’ve never done it before,” Headmaster B said. 

“First time for everything,” Coach H said. “Or would you rather take your chances with the revolutionaries?”

I thought about the guillotine and the very real possibility of losing my head. I glanced over at the glimmering portal. Seemed like as good an option as any.

The portal grew larger, even as the man outside gathered others with him. We could hear an angry horde bunching up outside the door. They were getting ready to break down the door. I could hear them yelling back and forth.

“Let’s hurry up,” I told Lindsay. Her tempo grew faster, and the portal opened wider, and suddenly, I could see London. There were lots of buildings crowded together and clusters of streets filled with horse-drawn carriages. The modern day signs of the city—Big Ben, among them—were missing. It looked like a very different place than the London I’d seen on TV.

Outside, there was a loud bang on the door. The angry mob outside was attempting to break it down with something hard and heavy.

“Now,” Coach H said, ushering Ryan and Hana through as well as Blade and Samir. Samir was hesitant, and grabbed Coach H’s shirt, causing the ghost to tumble into the portal with them. Lindsay jumped in after, leaving Headmaster B, Sydney and me. Just then, the small shop door cracked open and a half a dozen angry men streamed in. Headmaster B put herself between us and the men. Sydney blanched and ducked, and he had a brief look of terror on his face. It was strange to see a man who looked so much like Heathcliff show so much fear, when Heathcliff acted as if he didn’t even know what the emotion meant.

Sydney bumped into me in his haste, nearly knocking me to the ground to get the portal. One minute he was lamenting the fact we’d saved him from the guillotine, and the next he was running over me to save himself. He did have the decency to grab my hand on his way by, yanking me with him through the portal. And then we were tumbling away together to another world.

C
HAPTER
S
EVENTEEN

The first thing I felt was cold London drizzle on my face. This city didn’t smell that great either, but the rain at least dampened the stink. I had a feeling when the rain stopped everything would smell like wet dog, but for now, the odors were under control. Sydney pulled me under a nearby awning to shield me from the rain. Headmaster B appeared behind us; she’d made it through just as the portal sealed shut.

“You all right, m’love?” Sydney asked me. He still had his arm around my shoulders, as if worried I’d fall again. He had a look in his eye I hadn’t seen before. Concern?

“I’m fine,” I said, brushing raindrops off my hair. “No thanks to you. Do you always run first and fight later?”

“I don’t like odds not in my favor,” Sydney admitted with a reluctant smile. “But I like to believe that I could stand my ground when I’m cornered. Or if I’m paid large sums of money.”

“But you were about to sacrifice yourself today. At the guillotine.” I was realizing quickly that Sydney was a man full of contradictions. “You need courage to do that.”

“Liquid courage,” he said. “Which sadly, I am out of.” He pulled a small tin canister from a pocket in his coat and turned the flask upside down to show it was empty. “I hope you weren’t thinking that I was a brave, valiant knight in shining armor. You’ve got the wrong man.”

“You won’t convince me that going to the guillotine for love isn’t brave.” I may not completely trust Sydney, but I couldn’t argue with the ending of
A Tale of Two Cities
. “You volunteered to get your head chopped off so that your true love could happily end her days with the man
she
loved.”

“You give me too much credit,” he said. “What if I told you that I was only doing it hoping that the lady in question would spend
every waking moment of her life
regretting she gave me up?” Sydney’s eyes took on a hardened quality. I’d seen that look before. And suddenly all thoughts of him being a hero vanished. There was a coldness to him, a hardness, and I’d better not forget it, either. “Lucie, the woman I loved,” Sydney continued, “was a very sensitive lady. I don’t know if she could’ve lived well with herself knowing I committed suicide so her lover could live. And even if she did, there’s no way they’d actually be happy.”

 “Why not?”

“Charles can’t compete with me as a martyr.” Sydney shrugged. “Granted, if I lived, I’d always come up short to him. He was always
better,
always so
righteous
.” Sydney nearly spat the word, like it tasted bad in his mouth. “But, with me dead, Lucie could glamorize me to her heart’s content. Eventually, in her mind, I would be better. Because, let’s face it, I was willing to die for her. Was Charles? How righteous was he
really
?”