Grimm's School for the Erratically Gifted: Chapter 20

Dear diary, (Edmund wrote)
My first year of school at Grimm’s is finally finished. I had expected to learn a lot, and I have, thought not as much as I thought, and not the subjects I had planned. Learning is easy enough; I simply have to listen and put effort into understanding.
I have learned quite a lot about power, and how to apply it. Sometimes, applying power is less powerful than not applying it at all. I seem to remember reading something similar in ancient scrolls from the Orient in the Library at Moulde Hall. I shall have to find them again. A second read may provide me greater understanding.
I have publicly separated myself from Lady Tinbottom’s Teapot Coterie. I do not think they are a group that I wish to belong to. They are very concerned with scandals, gossip, and maintaining their position, and after due consideration I think this is will be at odds with my goals for the Moulde Family.
Leeta is gone. I will miss her, but perhaps her absence in my life is for the best. I will have to marry Googoltha soon, and having Leeta nearby would only weaken my resolve.
All the same, it was good to see her. I wonder if I will ever meet anyone else from the Orphanage. I think that would be interesting.

Had Edmund known what was to come, he would never have written that final sentence.

Instead, he finished the entry without a second thought, just as he felt the train to start to slow. Packing up his things, he shoved his diary into his pocket, and was off the train almost before it had stopped pulling into Brackenburg Station.

His sanguine humours were pumping through him, carrying his limbs into the air with a levity he hadn’t felt in a year. His bag was light in his hand, and he was out of the station and breathing the black smog-coated air within seconds.

A glance was all it took to find his driver’s skeletal form towering over the crowd. Pushing his way through the masses, Edmund climbed inside his carriage, settled on the familiar stiff seat, and waited for the driver to take him home.

Home.

Edmund had only ever had two homes in his life. The first was Mrs. Mapleberry’s Home for Wayward Lads and Ladies, which had been less a home and more a place where he had lived.

The second was Moulde Hall, and while he had only lived there for four years, he had lived more in that first year than eight at the Orphanage. When he at last stepped out of the carriage in front of the massive stone mansion, he felt an ache in his heart that felt like it would burst out of his chest.

He was home.

His joy might have been tarnished by the absence of anyone to greet him, but he didn’t mind. He had expected Ung or Matron to simply know when he was coming home, the same as they knew everything, but it didn’t matter. Guests were greeted when they arrived at Moulde Hall, not residents.

There was only one greeter; Kalamachus, the Gran Gargoyle, squatted over the door, its teeth bared in a vicious grin. Beneath it, a stone sign with the words Memento Mori hung in its grasping claws. With a terrifying visage, it dared Edmund to cross into the domain of the Mouldes and risk his fate. It was a comforting sight.

Edmund strode up the steps and pulled on the massive doors. The thick wood swung open, revealing the giant foyer of Moulde Hall. The giant pillars stretched into the ceiling, carrying their statues of dour men and women. Paintings of similarly aggressive faces covered the room, and in the middle of the far wall sat what Edmund had once thought was the most terrifying thing in the whole of Moulde Hall; the foyer clock.

As if in greeting, the clock chimed out a doleful ring, marking the eleventh hour. The bell echoed in the room, growing louder and louder as the entire building began to heave. Somewhere in the thick walls, the mechanisms of the clock shook the mansion with its vibrations. Once it had been as a demon’s roar. Now, it was as soothing to Edmund as a mother’s rocking.¹

The ringing had just begun to fade when there was a gasp and clatter of crashing chinaware on the marble floor. Edmund turned to see Mrs. Kippling standing in a nearby doorway, her hands clasped to her cheeks in shock. A broken tea-service lay on the floor in a puddle of bubbling black tea.

“Master Edmund!” She gasped, her hands clenching and unclenching. “Begging-your-pardon I hadn’t heard you were returning today! Is everything all right?”

“Everything is fine,” Edmund nodded. “My first year finished today. I was going to take a quick walk around the grounds before lunch. Would you take my bag to my room?”

“Oh, Master Edmund!” Mrs. Kippling somehow managed to curtsy at the same time as she rushed forward to pluck Edmund’s bag from his hand. She was gone in an instant.

The grounds were as dark and dead as ever. The maze was still full of holes, and the gardens full of dried flower stalks. Gnarled trees hung over the paths like grasping hands, and the wind clacked the branches together like bones.

The whole walk cheered Edmund up immensely. Some things never changed.

He had just decided to turn back — he had worked up quite an appetite — when he turned down the path to see the dark gnarled form of Matron standing in his way.

Up atop the hill, Moulde Hall began to strike noon.

“What are you doing here?” Matron snapped after a racking cough broke through the air.

Edmund blinked. It had only been a year, but the Matron standing in front of him was already different than the Matron in his memory. She was looked shorter, her natural vulture-like posture collapsing in on itself. Her wrinkles were deeper and her skin darker. Her black umbrella looked taller than it had before, and she wasn’t wearing nearly as many lace ruffles as she used to.

“My first year at Grimm’s finished today,” he said. “We were all sent home for two months.”

“Ah,” Matron sneered. “I see. A little rest then. Your brain is taxed, I suppose? Exhausted from all that thinking they made you do? Not used to thinking, is it?”

“No, it’s well rested.”

“I suppose it’s good,” Matron stepped closer. “Best to get you used to quitting every now and then. That’s how the world works, isn’t it? Tea breaks every other hour? A bit of food to soothe the ache in your stomach?”

“You’re making fun of me.”

“Damn right!” Matron spat, slamming her umbrella into Edmund’s chest. “Grimm’s is on break, is it? Well good for them. You’re not! You can damn well turn yourself around and get right on that train back to Mothburn. Our family isn’t going to sit back and wait for you to be ready when they come for you, so you need to always be ready!”

“There won’t be any lessons —” Edmund began before she interrupted again.

“Grimm’s’ lessons. School lessons. So what? Life is a lesson, boy. I’m not going to let you sit and relax while important lessons pass you by! Anyone can learn from lessons, but true genius is learning when no one teaches you. If you didn’t learn twice as much outside of that school than inside it, than I damn well adopted the wrong child! You name a genius for me, boy, any genius, who invented or discovered anything when they were relaxing!”

“Archimedes,” Edmund said.

The dark thunderclouds of Brackenburg, the faint roar of the German army’s Stahlbrecher long-guns, even the distant howl of the Black Dogs of Clare did not auger a future of pain and suffering more clearly than Matron’s eyes.

Edmund clasped his hands in front of him. “I suppose you are right,” he said by means of apology. Of course she was right. He had been so eager to see Home again that he hadn’t spared a thought for himself. “Rest is for the sick, and sleep for the dead. I am neither.”

“Good.” Matron’s voice was like ice. “I do not expect to see you again until you have graduated.”

Edmund walked past his mother towards the mansion, only to pause.

“I don’t suppose I could stay for lunch?” he asked. “With you?”

Matron’s face tightened. When she spoke again, her voice was quiet. “Oh, you’d like that, would you? Spend some time with me? You think I’ve been lonely here without you and your constant chattering? Think I haven’t been breathing a sigh of relief every day you’re not around to muck up my day?”

Edmund had not, in fact, been thinking that.

“It will be a long time before I get back to Mothburn,” Edmund said. “I won’t be able to focus if I’m hungry.”

Matron’s mouth twisted.

“Getting soft, are you? Gotten used to eating? A real genius could learn while starving in the desert.”

“It is only my first year.”

“What do they serve you?”

“Gruel, mostly. A bit of bread.” He decided not to mention the Teapot Coterie’s soirees.

“Hm,” Matron’s finger shot forward like a knife, pointing directly between Edmund’s eyes. “Don’t think this is going to be a nice relaxing meal. I’ll have questions for you to answer. I’m not going to let you rest for even a moment.”

“I know.”

“Good.” Matron began to cough again as she pulled a tiny bell from her waist. The tiny sound drifted through the open air like a faint breeze, pitifully small compared to the foyer clock, but Ung appeared nonetheless. Edmund wondered if he could hear the bell all the way from inside. Perhaps he could sill hear it if he was submerged in the ocean.

“Inform Mrs. Kippling,” Matron said, as they walked back up the garden path, “there will be two for lunch.”

---

Edmund’s remaining years at Grimm’s passed without incident.

This statement, as benign as it may seem, is perhaps one of the most controversial statements ever uttered about Edmund’s life. Entire factions of scholars and historians have developed, warred, and faded again over countless theories, excuses, and explanations regarding his activities during his time at Grimm’s.

As has been stated, the majority of information about Edmund’s life has to be gleaned from the writings of his contemporaries, due to the loss of the majority of Edmund’s dairies after Moulde Hall’s conflagration and subsequent collapse. This is especially true of his time at Grimm’s School, where the writings of his fellow students and professors provide most of the pertinent details.

In fact, perhaps the most fascinating thing about Sir Edmund’s first year at Grimm’s School for the Erratically Gifted is the fact that this is the only year we can conclusively prove that Sir Edmund attended the school. The lack of his own personal writings is, of course, part of the reason for this; but the lack of second- or third-party accounts is a source of great consternation for scholars. In fact, the only unassailable facts we have of Edmund’s time at Grimm’s is that he returned to the City of Mothburn at the beginning of his second year, and left it again at the end of his fifth.

The following are also facts: No surviving diary of Edmund’s lists any activity at all during the subsequent four years. No credible contemporary source from any student, professor, or citizen of Mothburn directly mentions Edmund. No letters, contracts, dissertations, or legal paperwork of any kind bares Edmund’s name. The only surviving documentation of Edmund’s presence at Grimm’s is a steady supply of class-work, dated and submitted with near clockwork regularity, all signed with Edmund’s name.

All else is speculation.

Countless scholars and historians have advanced their own pet theories, ranging from dashing adventures that forced Edmund to delegate his education to a reliable substitute, to Ennui-fueled seclusion in his room.

Some believe it reasonable to assume Edmund’s remaining years at Grimm’s were full of nothing more than reading, writing, and exams. Others point to irregularities in Edmund’s signatures, and suggest his papers were merely distractions to fool the less perceptive — and therefore the less deserving of tenure — into thinking that his remaining years at Grimm’s were full of nothing more than reading, writing, and exams.

These same scholars usually advance theories regarding his involvement in any number of extravagant events in modern history, including several fanciful explanations of how Edmund could have been in Cliffside during the Issleswitch Riots, thereby resolving some of the more confusing irregularities of the riot’s conclusion. Contrarians to these theories generally need do little more than drag out old train schedules and carefully detail the mathematical impossibilities required to place Edmund in the proper location.²

Perhaps the most widely accepted theory comes from the Duchess of Hempsborrough, Lady Ilsie Vandervan, in her scandalous work: A Study of Sir Edmund Moulde’s Personal Effects. As a Duchess herself, she proclaims with great confidence:

“To say that Edmund remained at Grimm’s is not to say he extracted himself from influencing current affairs. It should be well accepted fact at this point that, for the Founding Families especially, there is quite a lot one can do with a well-placed letter.”

Lithographers and other such scholars agree. A timely invitation could insure a chance introduction, or prevent the same. A gentle apology could reduce passions before an important meeting, while a poorly phrased one could inflame. A well-turned phrase could place one’s own indiscretions at the forefront of their mind, and thus make their behavior all the more predictable. Even a purposefully miss-labeled envelope could cause years of another’s planning and subterfuge to twist in the wind like an unmoored kite.

As a bonus, this theory provides much to the historian with a fanciful and excitable imagination. It allows for the romantic notion that Edmund had truly become a master of manipulation during his time at Grimm’s, while maintaining the laws of physics. It allows for Edmund remaining busy for his years at Grimm’s, though to the outside eye it seems like little happened at all.

As for the scholars and experts on the Founding Families themselves, as demure and circumspect as they are,³ they say only this: The man Sir Edmund became was a man of incredible importance to European history and culture. If we know nothing about his life between the ages of thirteen to seventeen, it is because he wished it.

---

There is one other fact that Historians must accept when dealing with Edmund’s school years: His final exams were not particularly impressive.⁴

Edmund knew he could have impressed his professors. He could have corrected their questions and adjusted their formulas until they begged to learn from him. Well, some of them, anyway. Instead, he scraped by with an eight out of ten.

Some of the teachers suspected, Edmund was sure, but exams were exams and it didn’t matter who the student was or what they actually knew; all that mattered was what was written down. As far as the Machine of Academia was concerned, if it wasn’t written, it wasn’t real.

So Edmund decided who he was going be.

Grimm’s had taught him a lot: Edmund could have spent his time amazing everyone who crossed his path, wowing the Founding Families with accreditations of talent and accolades of expertise, but then they’d expect perfection. They’d demand it. Any mistake Edmund made (and he would make many) would be a stain on a supposed genius’s career. Even his successes would need to be spectacular lest he be judged to have “lost his touch.” No, if he was a genius the way they wanted him to be, he’d have no time to think.

So, as far as anyone else was concerned, he would just scrape by. He would appear intelligent enough, while still incredibly lucky. He would regularly appear to have stumbled upon a single piece of secret information and have used it deftly. They’d think he had friends no one knew about, or he’d have passed by a certain conversation at just the right moment. He wouldn’t be a magician. They used to burn magicians at the stake.

Of course, it took time to refine this plan, changing his mindset like he was changing outfits. It was like a fine suit; a nip and a tuck here, a little bit of trim there, and before long a beautiful and ornate world-view had been built up in his mind.

By the time he was finished, the whole world had changed. He was seventeen now, and everything was smaller. His clothing didn’t fit anymore, his thin pale limbs sticking like tree branches out of pants that used to be the perfect size. His shirts choked his throat, and he could barely move without hearing the seams of his clothes strain against his skin.

Even his face looked different. Thinner. More bony. His already sunken eyes had sunken further, and his perpetually combed hair now dipped straight down, almost to his shoulders. From the shadows of his brow and the covering of his hair, his eyes glinted out from the depths of his skull like jewels in hidden caverns.

He wondered what Matron would think of his new body.

“Edmund!”

“Hello, Victrola,” Edmund glanced behind him. Victrola was standing in the doorway to his room. “Off to the station?”

“Yes,” Victrola tossed her hair. She had become quite tall during her time at Grimm’s. “I suppose you heard about me and Hubert.”

“No,” Edmund lied.

“We are going to get married in two years. Only we have to, you see. We got to know each other so well during the Journey to the Underground Palace, and the romantic tension only got stronger during our Escapade on Shilling Hill. I’m sure you read about it?”

Married.

“I’m afraid I didn’t have the time,” Edmund admitted.

“Oh,” her voice was strained. After a moment of biting her lip, she took another step into the room. “This is where we say goodbye. We’re supposed to say we’ll never forget each other, and both start crying, and promise to write each other every week.”

“Ah.”

“You know, you’ve been such a good friend these five years. I really…I don’t know what I’ll do without you.”

“Me either.” She’d have to find out quick.

“Only…” she paused, her calm confidence wavering, “Hubert and I are leaving together. We both think jobs as Investigators, or perhaps Adventuring Archaeologists is in our future. You know, like the Von Blanc sisters. Only married.”

Married in two years.

“That will be good fit for you,” Edmund nodded, one last bit of cruelty twisting in his chest. “You took a lot of classes about Archaeology. You turned in a paper about South American tombs, didn’t you?”

“Yes,” the word hung in the air. Edmund looked and saw the trepidation in Victrola’s eyes. Over the last few weeks, she had to have realized that everything she ought to have learned at Grimm’s had gone into Edmund’s head instead of hers.

“I…I don’t suppose you have plans for after Grimm’s?” her voice was hopeful. “Only I could use a faithful companion, you see…”

“I do, actually. A great deal of plans.” The Teapot Coterie owed him a few favors, and if Leeta really was heading of to…

Leeta…

A sniff drew Edmund’s gaze to Victrola. Her eyes threatened to spill over, and her lip was trembling. Edmund could see that what to others might have looked like an emotional farewell was in fact nothing more sentimental than abject terror. Perhaps, after five years, she was finally realizing how far she had ridden on his back.

A moment of mercy fluttered in Edmund’s chest: “I bet you’ve learned a lot during your adventures with Hubert already.”

“Yes,” there was a pause.

“Not much essay writing in tombs and ruined cities, I’ll bet. Nor in bars or crime scenes.”

“I suppose not.”

“Well, I’m sure you’ll learn everything you need to excel,” Edmund nodded, “and Hubert will be there to help. You’ll be fine.”

It was a lie, of course, but not an unkind one. Edmund sighed as Victrola flounced out of his room. She would make any number of foolish mistakes, he was certain. If she survived it would be because she wore short pants and screamed a lot while Hubert did all the machete-swinging and gun-shooting. After five years at Grimm’s she’d be well equipped to hold the torch.

Or maybe not. Maybe now she’d put in the effort, focus her attention, learn from experience, and become one of the better explorers the country had ever seen. Leeta had taught Edmund that books were only half of an education. Maybe Edmund had saved her, as for five years she had avoided the classroom and had experiences instead of expectations. Who could tell what their future held?

Well, Edmund, for one.

Married.

He was seventeen years old. In one year, he would be eighteen. His contract with the Rotledges…his arranged marriage…would come in force. It had been his first act as a true Moulde. It had set him on the inexorable path to Grimm’s. It was the single act that had convinced the Founding Families that he had to be a genius in the first place.

He hadn’t thought about Googoltha, that strange silent girl that had terrified him so during his first year at Moulde Hall, for some time. Had she forgotten about him? Had he become a distant memory over five years? Had she grown up and found a suitor that suited her better?

Leeta’s fiery red hair flared in his mind’s eye. Her smile. Her broken nose.

Regret. That is what I’m feeling.

With what-might-have-been surging in his gut, Edmund picked up his bag and left his room for the last time.

---

There was no one around as he walked through the main doors of Grimm’s School for the Erratically Gifted; the other men and women had already left for pastures new. It suited Edmund just fine; he was busy thinking about the chess game he was playing with Junapa. They were currently playing best five out of nine, the scores tied.

Edmund paused at the gate.

There was something dissatisfying about it. In the back of his mind, there was still a part of Edmund that cried out for something grand and spectacular to end his time at Grimm’s. A final confrontation or admission that would reassure him that his time had been well spent. In the end, however, there were no more adventures, no grand designs, no fantastic journeys. His farewell was accompanied with no more than an old stone gate with planks of wood hammered over the bars.

“Well right then,” the familiar wheeze of Basil Tombswell hacked out from his shack as he hobbled his way over. “Master Edmund. You headed to greener pastures, eh?”

Edmund considered the pale grass of Haggard Hill. “No, not very green at all.”

“Oh, a’fore I forget.” Basil’s grubby hand shoved into his pocket, pulling out a black envelope. “Post come for you. In the last batch. We doesn’t bother with mail-calls now, not when e’eryones scarpered.”

Edmund took the letter and popped open the seal of Junapa Knittle.

After he finished reading, he looked up and stared at the tops of the walls that surrounded Grimm’s. For a moment he did nothing but examine the brickwork. They were really foolishly built walls. Perhaps building them at all had been foolish.

Another minute passed before he turned to Basil. “You helped me these five years. Is there anything I can do for you in return?”

“Ah, ye done enough for me already,” Basil shook his head before tapping his nose, “but we’ll no speak o’ that again, aye?”

“Do well, Master Tombswell,” Edmund nodded to him. He needed to get home. He couldn’t do anything here.

“Aye, an’ I keep myself to myself, I will.” his blackened teeth slipped out from behind his lips.

The gate had almost closed behind him when Edmund’s hand shot out, and forced it open again. “I will give you a gift, Master Tombswell,” Edmund’s voice was cold. “You keep your ear to the ground, and if you ever hear anything that gives you pause, for any reason, you leave Mothburn at once. Pack a bag for a month and head north to Sprysdale, or Buffin-on-Fish. Do you understand?”

“Nay, not really,” Basil’s brow furrowed, but he had long since learned to trust Edmund’s sudden insistences. “Something bad coming? Do I need to get Ol’ Thunder out o’ the shed?”

“Something bad is here,” Edmund released his grip on the door. “Something very great, and very bad.”

“Ah? Well spit it out, lad!”

Edmund looked at Junapa’s letter. For five years they had been playing chess, sharing anecdotes, teasing truths about the world and each other out from the shadows where they hid. The world was changing, and together they had spent five years gaining an understanding of what was going to happen. Now there was this, her final letter. Her final move. A final warning: Checkmate in five moves.

“The Gilded Queen,” Edmund said. “Her majesty, Crown Isabelle Mortuero of Spain, has claimed Cassus Beli on our King Wilheilm’s holdings on the Gibraltan Rock.”

“Ah? An what’s that when its at home?”

Edmund hefted his bag. He needed to get home. “It means that unless our King surrenders, which he will not; or the Gilded Queen backs down, which she cannot; the Treaty of Versail will be enforced and the German Republic will declare war on Spain. This means Russia will declare war on the Germans, and the French must reply in kind. The Scandanavians, the Italians, maybe even India will mobilize to defend their boarders, and perhaps expand them if there is opportunity.”

Edmund paused and looked at the old groundskeeper, his eyes wide and confused. “It means, Mister Tombswell, that within the year, there will be war. A great and terrible World War.”