Ambitions 

“I’m so relieved, Nell! I’m positively the most popular girl in school!” Evelyn declared, throwing herself onto the couch in a flurry of red hair and petticoats.

Nell laughed from her seat near the fire, where she had been watching the snow fall outside while impatiently waiting for Evelyn to return for the Yule holiday. The edges of her depression had already begun to fade, dissipating in the wake of seventeen-year-old Evelyn’s rambunctious energy.

“Of course you’re the most popular!” Nell said, not the least bit surprised. “You won the Competition, and you were the most popular first-year and second-year, weren’t you?”

“That’s true,” Evelyn said. “Some of the girls hate me, like the maids here do, but they’re just jealous because I have more currency than them. The poor girls are always complaining about my tea parties because I don’t let them attend.”

“How could they hate you?” Nell asked, unable to fathom another witch not approving of her red-haired ball of sunshine. Evelyn waved it off with a careless flap of her hand.

“It’s mostly May’s granddaughter, Mabel. She thinks she’s so much better than the rest of us just because she’s pretty. Well,” Evelyn huffed, her chest expanding with pride, “I’ve shown her plenty of times who is in charge. I won the Competition, and I keep winning the best prize of all.”

“What’s that?”

Evelyn flashed a grin. “May’s attention outside of class. May has tea with me and takes me on special outings. Mabel hates it!”

Nell didn’t like the thought of Evelyn vying for any other witch’s attention but pushed the thought away. Evelyn’s education was of the utmost importance. If May gave her a little extra time, all the better.

“You must have been very busy,” Nell said, trying to keep her tone neutral, unable to make eye contact with the vibrant young girl. She smoothed the wrinkles out of her lacy handkerchief. “You’ve hardly responded to any of my letters.”

“Very busy!” Evelyn agreed, missing—or ignoring—the subtle accusation. “There were baking competitions, game days on the weekends, and Stella and I snuck in a few secret sleepovers. One night, we went out into Letum Wood and pretended to be ghosts! You should have seen the first-years, Nell. I almost died from laughing. Mildred transported over during a few of the long weekends, and we had a picnic. It was wonderful!”

Nell smiled. This sounded much more like the lovely girl she’d sent off to school. “It appears you are having a wonderful time. Have you enjoyed your teachers?”

“Studying is such a bore, but May is a wonderful teacher. She seems to know everything,” Evelyn said, banging the back of her feet against the couch in a very unladylike way. Nell couldn’t bring herself to reprimand her yet.

“Oh?” Nell asked. Surely May didn’t know everything.

“Yes, she’s very smart. Most of the other students don’t like her, although I can’t figure out why. They say she’s too strict, but she’s never seemed that way to me.”

Leslee set a tray of cookies and tea on the table and stepped away. Evelyn hopped up and grabbed one in each hand, biting into them before Nell had a chance to ask her to pour.

“I’ll pour,” Nell said with a glance at Evelyn that quickly faded from its severity. “But just this once.”

Evelyn smiled her crumb-littered gratitude.

“I can’t wait to visit the Council Members,” Evelyn declared, spewing crumbs on the table. She brushed them onto the floor and resumed eating the cookie.

“I thought we might spend the evening together,” Nell said. “I asked Mrs. F to send up your favorite dinner, and I purchased a new puzzle from the shops in Chatham. Leslee and her sister Lavinia picked it out.”

“We’ll spend time together, Nell,” Evelyn said, popping the rest of the second cookie in her mouth. “Right after I make the rounds of the castle. I have so many friends I want to talk to!”

Nell paused, uncertain how to proceed. It would take no less than three hours for Evelyn to jabber with all her friends, and Nell had been waiting for this night for weeks.

“Are you going to go to the kitchens to see Mrs. F?”

“Perhaps,” Evelyn said with a shrug. “I’m not all that interested in talking to servants. May told me not to waste my time because they can’t really advance my career, and everything I do from here on out needs to benefit my future in some way. But I do so look forward to seeing Council Member Gloria.”

Nell poured her own cup of chamomile tea, a bell of alarm ringing in her mind. Not all that interested in talking to servants? Mrs. F had always been a role model for Evelyn. When had that changed? Instead of pursuing the topic, Nell asked the next most pressing question.

“What do you and May talk about during tea?”

“Oh, everything!” Evelyn said breathlessly, leaning back against the couch with a sigh. “Life here at the castle, mostly.”

Another tremor of suspicion ran up Nell’s spine. “Oh? What kinds of things does May ask?”

“Normal stuff, I guess. What the Council Members do all day. What they think of the educational system. How many meetings they attend. How many servants work here.”

“Why would she want to know so much about the Council?”

“Because she lives in a small little country estate, I suppose, and doesn’t get to enjoy the benefits of wealth and prosperity that you and I do. Who doesn’t want to know more about the castle if they don’t live here? Anyway, she asks a lot about you and Donovan as well.”

“About me?” Nell asked, pressing a hand to her heart in surprise. “Why me?”

“Doesn’t want me to get homesick. She says that the more I talk about you, the less homesick I’ll feel.”

“What do you tell her?”

Evelyn must have caught on to the sudden anxiety in Nell’s tone, for she rolled her eyes in a dramatic but amused way. “Silly Nell! It’s nothing important. She was just curious about how long you’ve had depressive episodes, if you advise Donovan in his choices, if you resent that Donovan is Highest Witch and not you, if you’ve seen the Esmelda Scrolls, that kind of thing. General stuff. Last night we talked about the article in the Chatterer reporting that Donovan’s old knee injury is getting worse. Is it true?”

“Donovan is none of your business,” Nell said. “You need to focus on studying, not taking tea with the Head Witch and discussing idle gossip.”

“It’s not idle gossip, is it?” Evelyn replied indignantly. “Donovan’s so fat now!”

“I haven’t seen any signs that he can’t perform his job at his current weight,” Nell snapped.

“It certainly is my business if the High Priest of my Network is sick. I’m learning a lot about politics and how things work, you know. May knows everything there is to know about the Network, and she discusses it with me like I’m an adult because she knows I want to be a Council Member. She even told me about the Tobacco Riots that killed my mother!”

Nell stifled a gasp. “What?”

“I know all those poor people trampled Mama to death, that Papa died because he didn’t get the potion he needed soon enough. The poor rioters and the gypsies just didn’t want to pay a fair tax on tobacco, and my parents died because of it. They didn’t even know that the tax money was going to help fix the broken highway. Stupid gypsies.”

“Evelyn, I never withheld that from you. We simply never spoke of it,” Nell said, leaning forward. “Darling, we have no secrets.”

Evelyn relaxed slightly. “Well, it’s no secret that Donovan has become lazy ever since he fell off his horse ten years ago and injured his knee.”

“That’s enough of that!” Nell cried, setting her tea saucer down so forcefully the cup rattled. “While you live in this castle, you will show respect to those in power. I’ve never in my life heard such a high-handed opinion from a teenage girl that can’t even sit up straight and eat with her mouth closed! My goodness. I believe your manners have gotten worse since attending school!”

Nell shot to her feet and turned her back on Evelyn, ignoring the indignant flash of anger on Evelyn’s face. Oh, this wasn’t going at all like Nell had planned! Evelyn replaced her tea cup and drew in a long breath.

“You’re absolutely right, Nell,” Evelyn said in a repentant tone. “I suppose I just get so tired of maintaining perfect posture and decorum the way May demands that I just completely relax when I’m around you. I apologize.”

Nell bit on her bottom lip and swallowed hard. She wanted to go back to the beginning of the evening and start over. Perhaps she’d been too hard on Evelyn. After all, wasn’t she just a social, excitable young girl?

“I didn’t mean to snap at you,” Nell said, turning around with a frustrated breath, feeling guilty for not asking Evelyn about her poor behavior before reacting. Evelyn’s new world had wrapped Nell in a heavy coat of bitter jealousy. How she longed to be at the school with her little darling! To have weekly chats with her over tea, to watch her mature and grow. The jealousy in her heart burned like a fire. She tried to quench it but found depression creeping up in its wake instead. “I suppose I’m just tired.”

Evelyn gave her a warm smile. “Me too, Nell. Coming home from school may have caused more excitement than I planned on. Let’s eat dinner and put the puzzle together. I’ll visit Gloria later.”