ekstasis

i

Back home, history feels something like a coat of grime that you can't wipe clean. It stains your clothes, settles deep in your lungs until you are too tired and old to carry its weight.

But driving through the Cotswolds feels more akin to a baptism. The air is clean and light, and so bitterly cold that I can already feel it stripping away the stains and muck that I had once been convinced were a part of me.

Every roadside cairn, every pockmark in the pavement, every gnarled oak and elm—we are surrounded by the weight of thousands of years of history, generations of lives that I will never know, and yet none of it is my joy, or my pain, or my self. That's what I respect about history: it's just there. It doesn't expect anything more than my acknowledgement.

It's clean. Refreshing.

As my taxi crests the hill, the trees peel apart in front of us, revealing a wall of brick, an iron wrought gate propped open, and beyond that, the proud brick facade of Bragdon Academy.

I rub the pamphlet with my thumb; the paper has grown so thin from my constant fidgeting that it's only a matter of time before it tears, but no matter. The text has become ingrained into my memory: Bragdon Academy, est. 1819. Ab scientia libertate, ab libertatem pax.

The quad is surprisingly quiet as I step out of the taxi. It's disquieting to be standing here, alone aside from the gargoyles leering down at me from the face of the main building. I'm not sure exactly what I expected—fanfare, or a red carpet, or the entire student body rolling out to meet me—but for now, it's quiet, and the air seems to hang heavier on my shoulders than it did a mere moment ago.

I pause, trying to take a moment to collect myself, when I notice a strange sensation. A weight, pressing down on the tops of my sneakers. Instinctively, I look down and—

A snake.

The creature seems utterly uninterested in me as it passes over my right foot, then my left. There is nothing I want more than to kick it far, far away from me. It would be as easy as a twitch of my foot, but I remember my father's warning—there are adders out there in the countryside. Be careful. Look out for snakes.

The thought of being bitten right here, right within reach of what I've been dreaming about for years, is horrifying. So I wait for the snake to pass, so paralyzed by fear that I barely notice the sound of gravel crunching behind me.

"It's just a grass snake. Won't bite."

A boy, cigarette dangling from between his lips, draws up beside me, hooks a long stick under the snake, and lifts it up and away from me. The snake just hangs there and watches us, its dark eyes and flickering black tongue giving me chills.

"My third year here and I've never seen an adder," he continues. He sets the snake down a good distance away from us and politely offers me a hand to shake. "I'm Alexei."

"Sophie."

I take his hand, and I can feel myself staring. He's lanky, with dark, close cropped hair, and his features are delicate. His nose is bent, as if it had been broken once and set crooked. I can't describe him as anything other than magnetic. The kind of boy that stirs poets and painters into motion.

"I don't think we've met before. You're new here, yeah?" He asks, exhaling a cloud of smoke up toward the sky. "Or are you just a recluse?"

"Just transferred here this year. For sixth form."

I know that there's no way I would have been able to slip in entirely unnoticed given how small this school is, but I'd at least hoped nobody would point out my outsider status right away. Even better would have been to get this scholarship two years earlier, but it's too late for that.