Lily and the Shining Dragons by Webb Holly

Author:Webb, Holly [Webb, Holly]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9781408316412
Publisher: Hachette Children's Books
Published: 2012-04-04T22:00:00+00:00

Lily had expected that a reform school would mean working all the time. She’d even had vague ideas of a giant treadmill hidden in the cellars, perhaps powering some strange furnaces. But from what the others told them, apart from lessons in the mornings, and needlework and suchlike after lunch, it seemed the children at Fell Hall were left to amuse themselves.

The girls had been given one of the parlours, where there were a few tattered books, and an assortment of old furniture that had been exiled from the smarter rooms. A similar room further down the passage housed the boys, but in the summer weather they stayed mostly in a hideout down by the lake, so Elizabeth told them.

Upstairs there were two long, chilly dormitories, with rows of ugly metal beds. Lily stared down the girls’ dormitory in horror. She had always had her own room at Merrythought, and at the theatre she’d only had to share with Georgie, and there had been plenty of other hidey-holes around the warren-like building. How could she ever be on her own here?

‘I’m not sure how Fell Hall is supposed to be reforming us,’ Lily murmured to Georgie as they got ready for bed on that first night. ‘It can’t just be lessons where Mr Fanshawe shouts about how awful magic is, can it?’

‘The spells in the blue bottles, I suppose,’ Georgie said sadly, holding up the skimpy white cotton nightgown she’d been given. Tomorrow they would have to wear the same white blouses and grey pinafore dresses as the other girls, and Georgie was missing the clothes from Aunt Clara’s house already. ‘And perhaps Miss Merganser’s meant to terrify us into giving up magic. It would work on me.’ She looked Lily up and down. ‘That nightdress is horrible.’

‘So is yours,’ Lily pointed out.

Sarah, one of the few older girls, about the same age as Georgie, came in to the girls’ dormitory carrying a huge tray, laden with thick white china mugs. A pleasant smell of chocolate floated across the room, and Lily’s nose twitched.

‘Cocoa!’ Sarah yelled, and the girls hurried between the iron bedsteads to fetch their cups.

‘You see?’ Lily muttered, frowning. ‘It isn’t like a prison, at all. They’re all lining up to get their cocoa! Cocoa, honestly.’

‘Are you really complaining because Fell Hall is too nice?’ Georgie asked her.

‘Yes. I don’t trust it.’ Lily sat down on the lumpy bed, and folded her arms. ‘I’m not having any. I’m full, anyway.’ A lifetime of scratched and stolen meals at home meant that a whole dinner – even the solid, uninspiring food at Fell Hall – felt like a feast. The idea of a mug of cocoa on top actually made her feel queasy.

‘Well, I’m having some.’ Georgie had a taste for chocolate, from sharing violet creams with Maria and the ballet dancers in the theatre wardrobe. She went to fetch her cup, and came back with one for Lily too. ‘I told Sarah you didn’t want it, but

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