"I'd do anything"

They had been poring over anatomy diagrams on the sixth floor of the library for hours, testing each other on the name of each bone, each muscle, each nerve. They were an island of dim lamplight amongst the sea of stacks, shelves of books stretching out into the gloom. A flask of tea and a plate of biscuits adorned the table, surrounded by textbooks and notebooks. Whenever they needed a break they used the time to gripe about the professors, the workload, or the miserable November weather. Their current topic was some of the other students.

“Xander was hassling me today, saying I wasn’t going to last much longer, that girls simply couldn’t cope with the demands of university,” whispered Sylvia. “He was gloating over the fact that Celine hasn’t been seen in weeks, that she must have dropped out without telling anyone. And Florence hasn’t been at the last four lectures. I almost miss her constant sniffing. There’s only Cornelia and I left.”

“Xander can barely tolerate me, and he’s on the fringes of that group,” murmured Freddy, his strong accent betraying his northern origins. A mining village near Carlisle, if she remembered correctly. He pushed his perpetually unruly mop of hair back from his face. “I’d do anything to be part of that crowd, it would be so much easier. Chester might stop pushing me around for a start.”

“They’d never accept you, you’re not rich enough for them. Plus, even if you suddenly came into money, you’d be rejected for being ‘new money’. It’s not a circle worth being part of.” With this decisive statement, she pulled her diagram of the muscular system towards her and started to recite their Latin names under her breath. Freddy frowned but didn’t push the issue further. It was Sylvia’s strong will that got her into university, and it made her a formidable opponent in any debate.

They studied on in silence for a while longer, before the far-away chimes of the campus clock striking midnight drifted through the window. Freddy’s head snapped up and he swore in a low voice. “I’m late! I’ve got to go, Sylv, I’ll see you later”. He tossed his belongings haphazardly into his satchel and sprinted down the stacks, disappearing quickly into the darkness.

Bewildered, Sylvia called softly after him, but he had gone.

Suddenly unnerved by the silence stretching out around her, Sylvia decided to pack up and go home. She drained the last of the tea and shoved the final biscuit in her mouth, a lovely ginger one her aunt had sent in an assortment last week. The books were stacked up to be carried back to her dorm, and everything else was swept into her bag and slung over her shoulder. As she moved to leave, she spotted Freddy’s notebook on the floor. It must have fallen when he rushed off. It had opened to a well-worn page, filled with pencil scribbles in an obscure script, and what looked like designs for a mask. It wasn’t biology, that was for sure. She’d ask him when she gave it back to him tomorrow. It was shoved into her bag with the rest of her things and she headed towards the doors by the light of her lantern, her long skirts whispering around her ankles.

When she got there, she found the doors locked and the librarians long gone. It was late, she supposed, but Freddy must have found another way out. She skirted around the wall of the library, trying a few doors as she went, but finding them all firmly locked. She had nearly committed to spending all night in the library when she spotted a small door she’d never noticed before, deep within the dendrology section. It was short and seemed to be made of planks of different types of wood, unlike the other solid oak doors of the library. But the latch moved easily and the door swung outward without a single squeak, so Sylvia paid this no attention. Her lamplight poured down a steep staircase that seemed to curve towards the side of the building, illuminating a rope hung along the wall as a makeshift bannister. Balancing her armful of books with one hand, she grasped the rope and began her descent, pulling the door closed behind her.

The stairs continued for a long time, and Sylvia soon lost track of how many floors she’d gone down. There were no windows, but a warm breeze continually pulled at her hair, the strands worked loose over the hours of study. Her arm ached from the weight of the books. She slumped against the wall as she waited for her breathing to still. As tiring as the seemingly hundreds of stairs had been, continuing could only be better than climbing back up.

Her watch showed that it was almost one o’clock. She rested her head on the stone for a moment, and her eyes started to drift closed. Knowing that she would soon sink to the ground and sleep where she was, she pushed herself to continue with immense effort. The Latin terms she had spent the day studying started to float around her mind, keeping in time to the soft rhythm of her shoes on the boards of the stairs.

As she pressed on, the Latin seemed to escape from her mind and circle back into her ears. It was slightly out of rhythm from her footsteps now, and in distinctly male voices. Some of the terms she recognised, but most of the pulsing chant was lost on her, unable as she had been to pursue a full classical education. A final bend in the stairs and she reached a landing with five doors, all made from an assortment of different woods like the one at the start of the flight. No longer sleepy, she glanced around.

Four of the doors were quiet, with no light spilling from beneath them or through the cracks between the boards. They all seemed similarly latched to the one upstairs, though one also had a bolt across it. Sylvia tentatively opened the closest one, revealing a dim storeroom of glass jars containing some sort of biological specimens, much like she had seen in her laboratory classes. Another door revealed surgical equipment – had she come all the way to the medical sciences building? The staircase had twisted and turned a lot.

The chanting from behind the door had reached a frenzied pitch now, and as she drew close she could see intricate carvings on each plank, with words and dates inscribed along vines. The narrow gaps were too small to see through, though she pressed her eye to the spaces. She ran the fingers of her free hand along one of the grooves, its aged surface smooth.

The words from inside the final room came to an abrupt halt, and footfalls stalked towards the door. Keen not to be spotted by whoever was there, she pushed her way into the last unlocked room, which proved to be a closet with winter cloaks on hooks. Puddles of water had formed on the floor from the rain dripping off the coats. The gaps in this door were wider, and she shoved her face against them, hoping for a glimpse at whoever came out onto the landing.

A man in academic robes emerged, with his back turned to her. There was some sort of band across the back of his head, the black ribbon a slash of darkness against his fair hair. He pushed open the bolt on the fourth door and disappeared into the dingy room.

He emerged a moment later, dragging someone in a stained robe out behind him, with a large hood covering their face. By the state of their raw, bleeding nails and their grimy bare feet, it was evident they had been kept in there for a few days at least. The figure struggled against their gaoler as they pulled into the corridor, a final bid for freedom before inevitably meeting a horrible fate. Sylvia considered rushing out to help, but there were so many voices in the lit room that she and the prisoner would never get away.

The captor gave his prisoner a blow to the head, and they fell still with a familiar sniff. Florence! Sylvia jerked back, and her precarious stack of books crashed to the floor. She froze, praying that the robed man would somehow not notice, that he would pass her by. Her plea was left unanswered, as his voice thundered into the large room.

“Gentlemen, it seems we have an unexpected guest with us tonight! Would someone come out and welcome them in?”

Three more robed figures emerged, and Sylvia saw for the first time that they were all wearing wooden masks, with complex engravings reminiscent of the door. Two marched directly toward her cupboard, and she stumbled back in terror. Her heel collided with one of the dropped books and she teetered for a moment, trying to regain her balance. The door slammed against the wall, and she smashed into the ground, her elbow cracking against the stone. White-hot pain flashed through her body.

Strong hands gripped her shoulders and yanked her up. Cradling her arm, she stumbled along with the masked figures, who hauled her into the brightly lit room. There were candles on every surface, lanterns hanging from the walls and ceiling, and braziers of leaping flames stood on each side of a carved table, placed proudly in the centre of the room. The society stood in a crescent around this table, their engraved wooden faces impassable. Some stood young and proud, others were hunched with the passage of time, their silver hair visible behind their masks. She and Florence were each dragged to the side of the door by two men.

All attention was on the two robed figures that knelt before the table. Their masks differed from the rest. Uncarved, they had a sheen that reflected the dancing light, giving them a vitality the others lacked.

The man in the centre of the arc spoke. Though the voice was soft, it had a self-assured authority that commanded the attention of the room. Sylvia stood still, enraptured.

“We have two novices with us today. One of Hawthorn, joining his family tree. And… someone new. What tree have you chosen, sapling?”

To Sylvia’s horror, Freddy’s voice spilled forward from beneath the mask.

“Larch. I have chosen larch.”

“Yes, I imagine that grows quite well in the north. Well, sapling, complete your tasks tonight and you may take that mantle. Fail, and… well, you know the consequences. You want to join us? You want to engrave your mask? You want to belong? What would you do?”

“I… anything. I’d do anything”

A hushed chuckle rippled around the room. “Very well. Let us see if you are still so willing after seeing your fellow candidate’s induction. Alexander?”

“Yes, Oak?”

“Your father prepared you, I assume?” At a nod from the novice, he gestured for Florence to be dragged into full view of the crescent of people.

“This society stands for the preservation of purity at this esteemed university. Could the work of our forefathers have been done if they had been distracted by those beneath them? Could they have contributed to this country, unsullied, the way they did? No, they could not.” Murmurs of assent shimmered through the room. “We know this, the university knows this, and yet they continue to allow the rabble in! Women, and foreigners, and other riff-raff. So I ask you now, can we allow this to continue? No, we cannot!”

Heads shook across the circle, and a disgruntled mutter ran through them.

“So, those who have influence within admissions must exert it. Those who can… encourage their inferior coursemates to leave must do so. But, for those persistent few that remain, we must take matters into our own hands. Yew, Aspen, bring her to the table.”

The two men holding Florence pulled her towards the table, where the flickering light glinted off an array of sharp instruments and a large specimen jar, containing only formaldehyde. She tried to wrestle free, but they easily overpowered her and heaved her onto the surface. They grabbed her flailing limbs and secured them with straps before retreating into their spaces within the half-circle. The man called Oak lifted a long, thin blade from the head of the table, and presented the handle to the novice.

“To establish your place within this society, Hawthorn sapling, you must rid the university of this troublesome woman. Cut out her heart, and the position will be yours.”

Unflinchingly, the young man rose and grasped the proffered blade. He stalked to the table with a predatory approach and, considering for a moment, pulled off her hood.

“You had no place here, girl.”

Having lifted the knife above his head, he brought it swiftly down, plunging it into her chest. Her scream rent the air. Sylvia’s knees buckled and she hung, suspended, between her captors. Air felt like shards of glass in her lungs and her eyes burned, fixated on the blood pouring from her classmate’s chest onto the table. It ran along grooves and out through a spigot at the end of the table, swirling through a drain on the floor. He continued to carve, a steady arm parting flesh and bone. After the initial scream, it was all Florence could do to gurgle and strain as her life drained away at the hands of the novice. With a final grating gasp, her struggling fell still. His butchering done, he shoved his hand deep into her chest and pulled out her dripping heart. He dropped it into the waiting jar without ceremony.

“Good work, Hawthorn. Take your place. You may carve your mask at your leisure.”

Hawthorn joined the ranks, straight-backed and proud. Blood still dripped from his hands. His mask had lost its sheen.

“Larch sapling, your induction was not due today. But, as such an opportunity has… presented herself, we must make use of her. Birch, Hornbeam, bring her forward.”

The men tugged Sylvia’s crumpled form to the focal point of the arc as two others pulled Florence’s lifeless form from the table and dropped it into a corner like a discarded handkerchief.

Oak spoke again, with a surety that was bred through years of being the most respected man in the room. “You, girl, should not have come here – to this university or this room. But you did, and for that, the Larch sapling will decide your fate with his own. Beg him for your life, and you may get to keep it. Your tongue, however, that will have to go. We can’t have you gossiping about what you have seen”

“I will not beg.” said Sylvia, her head held as high as she could manage.

“Then you will not live.”

Birch and Hornbeam tightened their grips on her shoulder in preparation for lifting her onto the table. One grasped her elbow and fireworks exploded through her vision, blinding her for a moment. Before she could struggle, hands clasped her shoulders and ankles, and she was hoisted up onto the table and buckled in. The man trying to cuff her injured arm could not manage it, and desisted with a wave from Oak.

“She is hurt, she will not be able to do anything. Leave it.” His every utterance was a death knell.

A surge of courage ran through her, and she spat out words with every ounce of contempt she could muster. “Chain me to this dissection table if you will – ”

“Vivisection table”, interrupted Oak. “Have you learned nothing in your time here? See? An education, wasted. A place taken from a deserving young man.”

“Chain me, if you will”, she continued undeterred, though her voice shook. “You may break my body, you may take my heart. But you will not break my spirit. You will face judgement, and God will see what you truly are. And you will spend eternity in torture.”

“A pretty speech, certainly, but quite useless,” sneered Oak. “Sapling, now is the time. You know what you need to do.”

The handle of the knife was extended over her body, and a hesitant, trembling hand reached toward it and clasped it loosely. Freddy’s pale mask stared down at her, and he bent close to her, eyes shining.

“They will not accept you, Freddy,” she hissed “You will never be one of them. You will never truly belong.”

“Don’t you see that I have to try?” came a wobbly voice. “There’s no point in studying if I am pushed out of everything. There is no job worth doing, no fulfilling career available to me. I need their respect. I’d do anything for it.”

“You will never get it. And you’ve lost any respect I ever had for you.”

The eyes hardened. “Your respect is worth nothing to me. You are worth nothing to me. There is nothing you could ever offer me. There is nothing you could ever mean to me.”

Sylvia’s last resolve crumbled. “What have they done to you?”

“They have shown me what is true. You have no place here, you are not worthy of an education. You are not worthy of life.”

He reared back like an adder and sank the knife deep into her chest.

Pain lanced through her, radiating from her chest to the top of her head, the tips of her fingers, the soles of her feet. Her unrestrained arm came to the wound, the pain in her elbow forgotten with the new onslaught. Blood bubbled through her fingertips, crimson and warm. The corners of her vision darkened and cold crept in. Still, the mask hovered above her, the eyes behind it dead and devoid of mercy. Sylvia lifted her arm and with her last breath, raked her fingernails down the mask. Blood smeared over it, the marks gouged deep.

Stained.

Dull.

Carved.