Sapientia per Sacrificium

“Good evening, faculty, families, and fellow graduates.

My name is Marla Holloway, and I have been Head Girl here since September of this year.

Our school, Saint Anne’s Academy for the Gifted, was founded in 1883. Its motto? “Sapientia per Sacrificium.” Wisdom through sacrifice.

Knowing this, I’d like to start with a moment of silence for those who could not make it today. For all family, friends, staff and siblings with whom we cannot share this celebratory moment. And of course, for my late counterpart, Julian Moss. As some of you may know, we lost Julian, our Head Boy, earlier this May. I’d like to extend my condolences to his family, particularly his little sister, Aria, who I know is in the crowd today. He was an incredibly loved and celebrated student, footballer, friend and mentor, and I know his absence is still deeply felt in the school community.

…Thank you. But now, I’d like you to listen. Because this speech isn't about tragedy or guilt or sorrow. It’s about becoming. This graduating year, the class of 2019, has been one of the most accomplished in the academy’s history. This year, over 95% of our outgoing students have been accepted to Oxbridge or Russell group universities, and we even have some students off to pursue some very prestigious scholarships at Yale and Princeton. Well done all! I know that every single one of you will go on to do amazing things, and become part of something so much bigger than yourselves.

I know what you’re thinking. Marla, where is it that you’re off to? Surely I must have some idea; every September St Anne’s takes in hundreds of Year 7s who have known they’ve wanted to be Prime Minister since they were four. Well, I’ll be honest, I wasn’t quite sure where I was going until my very last year here.

And for that, I’d like to extend my gratitude to the lovely Mr. Laird. Mr Laird has been teaching English here for over twenty years, and has been head of organizing our Academic Dinners programme for the past fifteen. Through this programme, I have had the honour of meeting, dining and talking with many celebrated academics across multiple fields. And Mr Laird has helped me navigate all of it. I thank him for getting me this far. But there’s something Mr. Laird didn’t teach me - something I taught myself, in the spaces between the school bell.

Something I will teach you now.

See, the student leadership team isn’t chosen to honour achievement - especially not Head Pupils. It’s true - I see no future for myself outside of these walls. I am merely the vessel. The mouthpiece. The spokesperson. Headmaster Halvorsen—Charles—is not simply a teacher. Not in any sense you would understand. He is a collector. I have sat, in his office, surrounded by walls filled with oil paintings that watched. They whispered to me—each plaque, each book, each trophy —until I began to understand their language. It’s older than Latin. Older than memory. The true language of what it means to become.

The others didn’t understand.

But I am not like the others.

I remember.

Hannah Singh, Head Prefect. She wasn’t expelled. She was an excellent student, a paradigm of academic achievement here at St Anne’s. A better speaker than me. Witty. Soft-eyed. Weak. She helped me draft this speech, actually. But being Head Girl, Boy, or Prefect isn’t just about grades. It’s about being there - a friendly face in the corridors after lights out.

Hannah was never the smiling type.

She went quietly, absorbed into the walls, the floorboards. You can see the walls in her dorm room quake and bleed like she did if you stay up late enough - 2.26 AM. That is when we took her.

But it wasn’t enough.

Do you understand yet?

The air feels wrong, doesn’t it? It tastes like a rot you just can’t place. The lights flicker, but there’s no buzzing to go alongside it. Your phones don’t work. Your watches have stopped. There is no time here. See, I used my senior access to… change the schedule. This ceremony? It’s no longer on the records. No backups. No livestream – no, no, no. Don’t try and get it back up. It won’t work. We’re off the grid.

You can’t move anyways, can you?

The thing we fed Hannah to - it’s here. Breathing. Veins pulsing in the stones of the school. So I read the books you burned. I chanted the names carved into desks. The marrow of the school lies beneath the flagstones in the courtyard. I wore the old uniform of Mary Brown, with the real embroidered crest and coins lost, rattling in the blazer lining. You’ll know her if you’re clever. First Head Girl at St Anne’s, alongside James Miller, first Head Boy. Her name is on the plaque in the library. Her uniform on a mannequin in the Headmaster’s office - alongside James’. It’s gone now.

You see, Julian was supposed to join me up here, to ascend alongside me. He was excited. Aria - you must have noticed something, no? The newfound glint in his eye? The way he adjusted his collar with beaming pride? He wore James’ blazer with such care, such reverential elegance that Mr Laird was fool enough to believe he could do it. It is such a shame Julian was a coward. ‘Only the anointed mouth may speak the old names without betraying the langue,’ the tome Halvorsen left us with read. And so I did, faithfully.

He could not. His tongue tore itself out before he could get his mouth around the first syllable.

He went pleading, limp, and bloody, and broken. The best part? I did it alone. No Laird. No Charles fucking Halvorsen. Just me. And when it filled me - that power, that strength rushed through my spine, my veins, my eyes - I wept. It was beautiful.

I did what no student or teacher has ever done. I performed a sacrifice, unaided. I was the single bearer of Julian’s poor, screaming soul, offered up in gleaming glory to the beating heart of the school. I bound it to me and now, encased in living, pulsing flesh: it hungers.

Because it doesn’t want just a student, killed off by a team of bored academics turned amateur cultists, trying to pin down the supernatural to study it like an insect. It wants devotion. Real devotion. And what’s more devotional than a mother cheering for her son? A father filming his daughter walk across the stage? What’s more delicious than pride?

So when your eyes go and you hear the pipes burst and the floorboards scream and split open and the piano starts playing itself—don’t run. There’s nowhere to go. The doors are locked. And when the fog comes out of the vents, thick and smoky, don’t hold your breath. It is sweet and rancid and ancient. It remembers. Embrace it. All the scuttling legs, and buzzing wings and spindly, black arms - they are all here for you. To love you when you start floating, suspended in dead air like magnets.

Because for the first time in this school’s history, the sacrifice will not go quietly. I will not smile and bow and vanish behind the curtain.

I will end this tradition.

Or I will become it.

Class of 2019 - thank you.

Sapientia per Sacrificium. I’m sure you understand now.”