Chapter 14
A Father First
Vigau, Arielle, Bonaventure
Mr. Pommard was droning on about verb conjugations, putting about half the class to sleep as usual. However, even if the subject and the speaker were interesting, Margot still would not be paying attention. How could she? No matter how hard she tried to distract herself, no matter how hard she tried to forget, her mind kept returning to that day, the day of the culture festival...
How did things go so wrong? All they wanted to do was spice up their play with a little of the magic they had been practicing in secret. No one was supposed to get hurt...
Just thinking about it made the muscles in her back twitch. The wounds had healed, but the scars remained, both in her flesh and in her mind. She could not complain too much, though. Poor Netty lost her father to the monster that carved up Margot's back. Netty was away from school for a couple weeks after it happened, and when she came back, she stopped visiting the drama club. The other girls seemed content to leave her be, but Margot tried to reel her back in. Netty may have been at the bottom of the food chain in their little group, but she was still one of them.
Margot's efforts were rebuffed, though. For the moment, at least, Netty was not interested in having anything to do with her friends, if she even still considered them to be her friends. She blamed them for what happened to her father and then there was all the abuse she had to put up with from before... At this point, there was probably no salvaging their relationship, but Margot was not going to give up just yet.
Even though it was the middle of class, the door opened and in walked the Vice-Proviseure.
"I apologize for the interruption, Mr. Pommard," she said. "I need to pull out a couple of your students. Miss Gamble, Miss Leider, please come with me. Bring your things."
If they were being told to bring their things, it meant they were not going to be back in the classroom anytime soon. Or maybe not at all. Margot had the feeling that the day she was dreading had finally arrived. There was no running from it. There was no fighting it. The least she could do was face what was coming with a little dignity.
She was gratified to see that her hand was not shaking too much as she put her writing implements in her pencil case. She might just be able to pull this off.
When she had her things together, Margot walked over to the Vice-Proviseure, who motioned for her to go into the hall while they waited on Netty. Jenny, Bernie and Angie were already lined up in the hall, pretty well confirming her suspicions. Jenny was known for being proud and brazen, the queen bee of the group, but now she looked more like a deflated balloon. Angie was looking about fretfully, while Bernie was showing more of the stoic reserve Margot hoped to imitate.
Netty soon joined them in the line and they then went to collect Amelie, the remaining member of the group, from her classroom. Students were not supposed to talk in the halls, but probably no one was in a talking mood anyway.
Margot thought they would be going to the Vice-Proviseure's office first, but instead they went directly to the entryway.
"Put on your shoes and wait by the door," the Vice-Proviseure said.
The faculty shoe lockers were off to the side, so the Vice-Proviseure had to step away for a moment while she got her outdoor shoes. Margot and the others quietly swapped their indoor shoes for their outdoor ones and gathered by the door like they were told.
When the Vice-Proviseure returned, she led them outside. Mr. Farneau and Ms. Lafitte, the athletics instructors, were standing by the front gate. Margot imagined they were there in case anyone tried to run.
As they got closer to the gate, they saw the paddy wagon parked by the curb, and Margot's father.
Opening the back door of the paddy wagon, Margot's father said, "Ladies, if you'd get get inside..."
Margot was no expert, but she was pretty sure that police officers were not supposed to be sent to arrest friends and family, just as they were not supposed to be assigned to cases involving people close to them. Maybe the Superintendent thought it was the lesser of two evils if sending Margot's father would make it easier to bring them in.
"What's going on here?" Angie asked. "Why is Margot's dad here? Are we being arrested? Why!? We didn't do anything wrong!"
Surely none of them should have been surprised at what was happening, but Angie was either feigning ignorance or she was just plain ignorant. The latter was quite plausible with her.
"Shut up, Angie," Bernie said.
Normally it would be Jenny taking charge to rein Angie in, but with Jenny in her current state, Bernie had to step in and pick up the slack.
"But, Bernie!"
"Just shut up," Bernie said. "Keep quiet. Not another word."
Angie was not particularly smart, but she had a keen sense of the pecking order and it did not take much from either Jenny or Bernie to get her in line if she ever strayed. With that sorted out, the girls quietly loaded into the paddy wagon. Margot's father paid his respects to the Vice-Proviseure and then got in the back as well closing the door behind him. He rapped his knuckles on the partition dividing the cab from the back and the engine rumbled to life.
As they started moving, Margot's father spoke to them in a voice just loud enough to be heard over the noise of the engine.
"If you've got any brains to you at all, you know why you're here. Maybe that's askin' too much, given the stupid shit you've pulled."
Margot's mother would have smacked him for speaking so vulgarly around impressionable young ladies, but her mother was not here.
"You were lucky the damn auditorium burned down. There wasn't much evidence left in the rubble. The Witch-hunters know magic was used and you six are the prime suspects."
Netty leaned in and whispered into Margot's ear in a singsong voice, "I told you this was coming."
Bernie was keeping her eye on Angie as she was the most likely to buckle under the pressure, but Netty did not need any pressure to give them up. Her resentment had been building for years and the loss of her father was the final push to drive her away from the group entirely. She had been cowed into submission by Jenny before, but with Jenny having dropped her domineering ways, there was nothing to stop her. Probably the only reason Netty was not singing like a songbird was because it looked like she would get her revenge on them without doing a thing.
"Violatin' the Mage Ban is bad enough," Margot's father continued, "but now the Witch-hunters've got orders to round ever'one up."
The words hung in the air ominously. Whatever the Witch-hunters had in mind, it could not be anything good for the mages who were rounded up. And if they were going to go so far as to arrest even the mages who had done nothing, how much worse would it be for people who not only violated the Mage Ban but were also the prime suspects in an incident that led to the deaths of several people?
Part of Margot could not believe her own father was the one to bring her in, but another part of her was not surprised in the slightest. He had always been a policeman first, a father and a husband second. Maybe he would have tried to do something for her if she came clean earlier, before things got out of hand, but it was too late for that now. "You made your bed. Now sleep in it," he would say.
The paddy wagon came to a stop.
"We're here," her father said.
The back of the paddy wagon could not be opened from the inside, so the driver had to come around and open it. They were not at the police station, though. Margot was not even sure what part of town they were in.
Margot's father got out of the paddy wagon and pointed to a nearby alleyway.
"You go down this alley and there'll be a carriage waitin' for you. Don't speak to the driver. Just get in an' God be with you."
Confused, Margot asked, "Papa, what—?"
"I've spoken with all your parents," he said. "Here."
He reached into his tunic and pulled out a small stack of letters, then handed them to Margot. The letters were addressed to each of them. Margot recognized her mother's handwriting on the one for her.
"We don't know where you're goin'," her father said. "We can't know. This is the only way we can keep you safe."
Margot could have imagined him trying to pull some strings for her, but never anything like this.
"They'll come after you, Papa," she said. "They'll come after all of you. You'll be the first ones they go to."
"Which is why we can't know where you're goin'," her father said. "This way, no matter what they do to us, they won't get nothin'."
"You can't!" Margot exclaimed. "Not for us!"
Her father held up his hands, saying, "Keep it down. You want the whole neighborhood eyein' us?"
Bernie put her hand on Margot's shoulder and said, "Margot, it's too late now. They can be charged with conspiracy just for getting us this far. The least we can do is not waste their sacrifice."
"Sacrifice?" Angie asked. "What sacrifice? What do you mean?"
"Not now, Angie," Bernie said.
Jenny just stood there hanging her head, muttering, "It wasn't supposed to be like this... I never... I never meant..."
Netty's earlier smug satisfaction was gone. Much like Jenny, she was muttering to herself.
"I wasn't part of it... It wasn't my fault... How could she... How could she..."
Bernie took hold of Margot by both shoulders and told her, "You're the only other one here with her head screwed on straight. I can't do this alone. I need you, Margot."
Margot did not know what to say, so she said nothing and only nodded. Bernie was right, after all. The ship had sailed, as it were. Someone had to take the rudder and apparently that someone was Margot.
She turned to her father. With the weight of his and her mother's sacrifice bearing down on her, and with the thought that she might never see him again, she could not help welling up. It was unfair of her, as the other girls did not have this opportunity, but she could not hold herself back. She threw herself at her father, crying, "Papa!"
She could not help crying, but at least she was able to rein it in so that she was not loudly bawling her eyes out. As she was clutching his tunic, she could feel his large hand stroking her head, as he used to do when she was little.
"Get going," he said.
In all her life, nothing had demanded so much willpower as her letting go in that moment. She wiped her eyes as she straightened up and tried to put on a brave face for her goodbye.
"I love you, Papa. You and Mama. Makes sure she knows that, okay?"
"She knows it," her father said, pulling down the bill of his cap to hide his eyes.
Margot turned to the others, putting on the best cheery facade she could muster and saying, "Sorry about that, guys. Let's go."
Bernie took the lead stepping into the alley, leaving Margot to pull up the rear shepherding the others. Jenny and Netty were nearly catatonic, Angie seemed to have no real idea what was going on, and Amelie was just staring at the letter from her parents in melancholy silence. At least Margot could get them to move with only a little nudging.
The alley was rather long and narrow, to the point where a grown man would have to walk sideways to pass, but thankfully it was not filled with garbage or teeming with rats or anything unpleasant like that. Waiting for them on the other side was the promised carriage. As they were told, they got inside without a word and once they were all in, the driver cracked his whip and the horses began trotting down the road.
Now that they were safely on their way, Angie gripped at Bernie's sleeve.
"Yes, you can talk now, Angie," an exasperated Bernie said.
"Okay, so what's going on? What's with this carriage? Where are we going? Why weren't we supposed to speak to the driver? Why—?"
Bernie put her hand over Angie's mouth to stop her.
"I've changed my mind."
Angie made some muffled whining noises. Bernie sighed before proceeding to answer the questions, keeping Angie's mouth covered lest she add to the list in the middle of the explanation.
"Something happened and now the Witch-hunters are after all mages, not just the ones who violate the Mage Ban. Actual violators are still going to be a priority and that includes us. Apparently they've been suspecting us since the culture festival. It looks like they want to blame us for that thing."
"But we didn't do that," Margot said, "did we?"
"It was all we could do to light those candles," Bernie said. "Summoning a creature like that should be impossible. Though we may have drawn it to us by using our magic."
Margot could feel the scars on her back squirm at the memory of the creature. Sometimes those memories were accompanied by the pain from that day as well, but happily today was not one such day.
"It wasn't supposed to be like that..." Jenny said. "How were we supposed to know?"
Like a frightened child, Jenny hugged Bernie's arm and nuzzled up to her. Bernie gave her a pitying look before continuing.
"The truth of the matter won't change things. We make for an easy scapegoat. It'll help scare off other kids from playing with magic like we did. That's more than enough reason for them to throw the book at us."
"They throw the book at us, but will we catch it?" Amelie said, her first words since she was called out of her classroom and it was nonsense.
Bernie, however, was able to spin a turn of phrase from Amelie's nonsense, saying, "We're going to catch it, all right. Who knows what the Witch-hunters would do to us? Which is why we should be thankful for Mr. Leider. If he hadn't arranged all this, it'd all be over for us."
"How do you know all this was Papa's idea?" Margot asked.
"No one else could've come up with a plan like this," Bernie said. She nodded to the letter in Margot's hand. "Your mom is probably telling you just that."
Margot opened the letter and started to read it.
Dearest Margot,
If you are reading this, then your father must have sent you on your way. You don't know how hard it was to see you off this morning like it was any other day. God willing, we'll see each other again when all this passes. If not, never forget that we love you, me and your father both.
I know things have been difficult between you and your father in recent years. He's such a clumsy man. But I want you to know that all this was his idea. He went around to all the other parents so that you and your friends could all get out together. I don't know anything about his plan, but I trust him and you should too.
There are going to be hardships along the way. You're going to be scared. You're going to be lonely. In those times, you and your friends are going to have to rely on each other. Remember the old story. A rope of one cord snaps easy, but a rope of many cords isn't easy to break.
Stay safe. Be well. I love you, I love you.
Forever yours,
Your loving mother
A teardrop fell on the page, smudging the flourish her mother put on her signature. When Margot realized how much she was crying, it was a wonder the whole letter had not been ruined. At first she was embarrassed to be the only one crying, but as she looked around, she saw that she was not the only one. Even Bernie, who was supposed to be the stoic intellectual of the group, had tears in her eyes.
"We don't waste this chance they've given us," Bernie said, "right?"
Margot nodded. It was the least they could do to show their appreciation for the parents who had given up everything for their wayward daughters.