Ordinary Monsters--A Novel by J. M. Miro

Author:J. M. Miro
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Flatiron Books

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It had been a strange encounter, almost like a dream. Whatever the rider and his passenger had been taking out to the dark carriage, Charlie couldn’t guess at. But Komako never spoke of it, and he knew better than to ask. And anyway, in the meantime there was daily life at Cairndale, and the whole strange world of lessons and of learning.

There were maybe fifteen boys at Cairndale. The boys’ bedrooms were all aligned along that same brief corridor with a master’s room—Mr. Smythe’s—at the far end, his door left ajar in the nights while the boys settled. Most of those boys were older, and white-skinned, though there were several Chinese and two silent brothers from the Gold Coast who kept to themselves. All of them snuck curious glances at Marlowe; even the older residents, and the teachers, would whisper and stare whenever Marlowe passed by. They’d all heard the stories; many of them had been there that night when Jacob Marber had broken into Cairndale. They seemed to think Marlowe half-miracle, half-monster, for having survived Marber’s attack. The hell with it: Charlie and Marlowe stayed in the little room they’d been given that first night; and other than Oskar, they had little to do with other boys.

It was Komako and Ribs they spent their days with. Miss Davenshaw had set the five of them up in lessons together, liking, as she said, the different abilities of each. “You will teach each other,” she said, “and learn that every one of us has our own gifts to share.” If she had other, darker reasons, she did not say.

They woke each morning to Mr. Smythe in the hall, ringing a bell, calling them to dress. Then came breakfast in the dining room, bustling, noisy, the scraping of plates and the shouting and the laughter, and then the scattering of the kids to their various lessons. Marlowe and Charlie, Komako and Ribs and Oskar: the five of them began each morning in the book-lined schoolroom of stern Miss Davenshaw, under her unseeing gaze.

It was probably the most normal of all that they’d learn there, though Charlie couldn’t know that at the time. Miss Davenshaw would stand rigidly at the front of the schoolroom and assign readings and tasks to each of them in turn, and they’d line up and take from her hands their assignments and sit back down and begin to learn. Charlie didn’t mind it, liked it even, going through his letters and learning to read more quickly, more smoothly. Then came geography, the acquisitions of the British Empire, the countries of the east, and an endless litany of cities and nations and languages. After that, the history of the British Isles, a list of kings and queens and dates of battles. And last of all they’d go through their arithmetic on the chalkboard in the corner, while Miss Davenshaw, though blind, followed along their work and tsked at each error, and the pale morning light slowly filled the high windows and fell across the bookshelves and crept, gradually, down to the carpeted floor.

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