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‘Elliot Kelly, put that sword down.’
If Hexmaster Ranjit Singh had a pound for every time he’d said that before, he’d probably have enough to retire.
Out of the corner of his eye, he watched Elliot’s ears droop, his whole body going still as he was caught in the act. Still, he scoffed. ‘I haven’t done anything.’
‘Yes, they’ll put that on your epitaph, Mr Kelly.’
Matthew Hinks’ voice was light, but Elliot still pointed the wooden sword at him indignantly. ‘I have apologised for my lack of presence regarding the mimic situation. In my defence, it all happened very quickly and I hadn’t even had a lesson with the first years yet. As for the Saikaku Incident, it was months ago, and well–’
‘He’s messing with you, Elliot,’ came Frank Hebden’s voice from the depths of the prop cupboard, likely to prevent the Steward of Respect from launching into yet another well-meaning but insufferably politician-like apology speech.
Understanding covered a wide range of areas, and in the years since Ranjit had employed Matthew he’d watched him work through perfecting his grasp of each and every one. That included both the academic stuff he taught the students and what Ranjit assumed was a personal hobby of Matthew’s, a close examination of his colleagues which led to him understanding exactly how to get under their skin. Ranjit was just relieved Matthew was in fact a good person and used it for light-hearted jokes rather than actual morale-affecting insults. Although, he was certain he was very capable of the latter.
‘Regardless,’ he chimed in, not turning around from the box of folded, moth-eaten costumes he was currently pretending not to be interested in, ‘please can no-one wave swords around in here? It’s crowded enough without one of you contributing a dead body to step over as well.’
‘Not my fault,’ came another voice from another corner. Sergeant Kerry Lewis’s gaze didn’t lose any of its ferocity even when glimpsed through a row of hanging costume capes. ‘This was supposed to be a two-man job.’
Again, Elliot scoffed. ‘I thought, Frank knows this place, he could save us time finding the clothing rack.’
‘Kerry’s found a clothing rack,’ Matthew pointed out, gesturing to the one the Steward of Control was currently standing behind. One of his eyes swerved around said rack at the gesture, because she was so far back behind piles of stuff that none of them could currently see her.
‘Not the one we’re after, love,’ said Frank. ‘We want the one I carved those runes into last summer. It’s got magical properties that keep the uniforms clean and fresh when they’re hung on it. The last thing we want is those new second years, some of them fresh out of their growth spurts – not a joke at the expense of Mr Locke – coming back to stale blazers.’
There was a loud crash as he lifted another box from a pile in front of him and threw it back into the room the rest of them were standing in, causing Elliot to skitter backwards on his cloven hooves. The prop cupboard of the St Churnley’s Drama Department, buried backstage in the school assembly hall, was a place that no-one could really guess the true dimensions of, it was so full of stuff. After a while, the room they were standing in had gotten too full to walk through and they’d had to expand into the room beyond, which meant the actors had lost their green room. What was lost in the depths of that second storage space, Ranjit could hardly guess.
‘It’s got to be buried back here somewhere,’ Frank continued, his voice strained as he lifted another box. ‘We did a big rearrange in here last year when our run of The Wizard of Oz finished, and we never came across it. And a clothing rack isn’t exactly something you easily lose.’
‘Like a massive magic car,’ Matthew muttered under his breath.
As Frank's head retreated back out of the dark chamber beyond, he shot Elliot a grin. ‘Bet you’re glad you asked me now, aren’t you?’
‘Of course, mate. Always.’ Elliot nodded, and thankfully put the sword down as he went to help Frank. Bracing the weight of the box against his thick, strong legs, he shot a glance over his shoulder at Matthew and Ranjit. ‘And we’re glad you’re here, too, both of you, even if you aren’t helping in the slightest.’
‘I’m making sure we don’t lose any of you in here,’ Matthew protested, gesturing around to his eyes. ‘It’s the Hexmaster who isn’t doing anything. Other than procrastinating.’
‘I am not procrastinating.’
‘You’re not working.’
‘The two aren’t mutually exclusive.’
There was a clicking of cubes on uneven wooden floorboards as Frank reversed fully out of the prop cupboard. Beside him appeared a couple of Matthew’s eyes, there to venture into the gap he’d cleared and look around. ‘Nah, I saw him rummaging through the tartan we used for The Scottish Play. Getting all misty-eyed.’
‘You? Macbeth?’ Kerry echoed, her own piercing blue eyes suddenly attached to a head that appeared as she manoeuvred around a box of hats someone had pulled out at some point.
‘Don’t say it,’ said Frank immediately. ‘It’s bad luck.’
She held his gaze for a moment, as they watched her realise that Frank was completely serious. ‘Oh, come on, you don’t really believe that? All the shit that goes on around here?’
‘We have a general rule around here, Sergeant,’ Ranjit told her. ‘Three little words.’
The other three male teachers filled in for him with varying levels of enthusiasm. ‘Don’t tempt fate.’
‘Right you are,’ the Hexmaster praised. ‘Noli fatum tentare. I’d have it painted on the coat of arms if we could fucking afford it.’
Did Ranjit, or any of them really, actually believe in the superstition that calling The Scottish Play by name brought bad luck? No. And even if it were somehow true, it technically only applied to actors, which none of them in the room currently were. But this was St Churnley’s. And as far as any of them knew, any kind of curse that had been fabricated in the outside world could very well turn out to have some small nugget of authenticity in a place like this. It was best not to risk it.
‘Your constant Shakespearean play-length lament about our lack of funding aside,’ the Sergeant said. ‘You? Really? Mac— That play? Theatre in general?’
‘Trust me, Ker, you don’t want to know,’ said Matthew. ‘It was a traumatic time for all of us.’
‘Excuse me, I was a phenomenal Lady Macbeth. It’s not my fault my co-star had the stage presence of a strip of gaffer tape. Which, ironically, he missed every time he looked for his mark.’
Ranjit’s eyes found a spot on the floor for a moment as he focused on the memory, missing Elliot peering over their heads to share an amused look with Kerry as he mouthed, Lady Macbeth?
A shaft of light from the candles in the auditorium poked through a gap in the stage curtain, and Ranjit remembered standing on this stage acting his fourteen-year-old heart out while a less enthusiastic Elliott Allan trudged through his lines a few paces away. Contrary to popular belief, the young poet hadn’t been overly fussed about Shakespeare. Perhaps he’d just always preferred poetry, or perhaps a certain Niles Moley had beaten any appreciation for the Bard’s plays out of him. Perhaps, to some degree, both.
As engrossed as he was in this vivid memory of his old classmate — and as relieved as he was that Matthew or Frank hadn’t voiced the things they were clearly thinking about him being bitter over Elliott Allan — he was jolted out of it by a distant chuckle, followed by a sharp prod in his shoulder.
When he turned around, there stood Elliot Kelly, who had reunited with the wooden sword and was holding it out to him. Dangling over the edge of the blade, gleaming ominously in the candlelight, was a crown made of gold card.
Elliot bowed dramatically. ‘My liege.’
For a long moment, Ranjit just stared at him. Then, when it became clear the Steward of Respect, who was making his status as the youngest very apparent, wasn’t going to relent, he took the crown from him.
‘Hail to thee, Ranjit Singh, that shalt be Hexmaster hereafter!’
The quote wasn’t even accurate, regardless of Elliot’s alterations. Moley would have his head. But Ranjit could hardly focus on that over that horrendous attempt at a Scottish accent.
‘That genuinely felt like shoving red-hot pokers in my ears,’ he said, ignoring the sniggers from elsewhere in the room. ‘Never do that to me again.’
Elliot chuckled and stepped away to continue helping Frank. Sighing, and trying to stop himself smiling, Ranjit looked down at the fake crown in his hands. It wasn’t only Macbeth that this particular prop had been used in, and as far as any of them knew it was far more than three decades old. The gold card was chipped slightly at the edges, but was still in decent condition, and Ranjit could see his own tired face reflected back at him. As little as he enjoyed thinking about his own appointment as Hexmaster nowadays, it had felt strangely like some kind of coronation. It wasn’t only the centuries-old oath he’d had to swear, or the elaborate ceremony conducted by his own Hexmaster as he passed on the responsibility of controlling the portal. Every so often, he remembered how St Churnley’s and the Plagueround was cut off completely from the outside world. This was an entire domain, a kingdom of its own, and Ranjit Singh held all the power. He was no king, certainly, but he was the closest this place was ever going to get.
But that sounded rather arrogant. And besides, thinking about that sort of thing tended to cause all the pressure and shame he’d also inherited alongside his title to rear their unpleasant heads.
He suddenly became aware of shadows on the walls, moving back and forth before his eyes. Kerry had picked her way through the clutter on the floor to go and help Elliot and Frank move stuff from the other room, and Matthew had dispatched all but one of his eyes to help navigate the space they’d cleared. Aware of living up to this ‘king’ metaphor by standing around letting his employees do all the work, Ranjit left the crown on a shelf and rolled up his sleeves to grab boxes that were being passed clear of the door.
‘So, Hexmaster,’ said Kerry, briefly meeting his eyes. ‘Be honest. Did they only cast you because of the accent?’
‘Oh, you’d be surprised.’ Matthew’s voice was the clearest, given that he wasn’t going in and out of another room. ‘Ranjit was quite the thespian in his teens. Then again, there weren’t many Scottish kids at the school then. Not to taint the fond memories I’m sure you have, Ranjit.’
‘Don’t worry,’ Ranjit reassured him. ‘I’m just eternally grateful they didn’t make my Macbeth try and do the accent.’ Elliott Allan had – and still did have, Ranjit was sure, despite his attempts to avoid contact with him on Edgar’s first day – many talents, but accent work was not one of them.
‘And why wooden weapons when so many students carry the real thing?’ the Sergeant asked. ‘Don’t get me wrong, I’m extremely relieved that you’re not letting kids pretend to kill each other with real weapons. But I’d have thought they wouldn’t care about that sort of thing back in the day.’
‘The reasons you’d think. These are kids. Not only are they kids: they are theatre kids. They will get extremely into it and then before you know it, limbs are being hacked off and blood is spraying all over parents on opening night.’
Frank’s voice was clipped, laced with the exact kind of morbid tone that suggested he was definitely speaking from experience. Ranjit could vouch. He knew Matt could, too. Thankfully, no theatre productions had suffered a similar fate during his own time as Hexmaster. Thinking back to Elliot’s time as a student, he didn’t remember him being too invested in the performing arts. He liked practicality, Elliot; something he could get his hands on.
‘Another question,’ Elliot said, who was currently getting his hands on a prop horse which Frank was passing through. ‘Does the curse still apply with character names? Like, do we have to say ‘Lady The Scottish Play’? Because if so, I think we might all be fucked.’
‘Ah,’ Ranjit said breezily. ‘No change there, then.’
From the pitch-black of the old green room came a wordless exclamation of delight in a West Country accent. A second later, a gaggle of floating eyes surfaced like buoys bobbing up out of deep water. The significance of the moment was undermined somewhat by the creaking of rusty wheels over the floorboards echoing towards them through the dark. Elliot’s face lit up as a metal clothing rack, complete with a few hangers and covered in delicately-engraved runes, rolled unceremoniously through the door. Following it was the triumphant face of Frank Hebden. ‘Here she is.’
Elliot beamed, looking more than slightly relieved. ‘Amazing, Frank, thank you.’
Frank picked his way through the accumulated piles of boxes and props that had been moved from cluttering up the other room’s floor to this one,. Kerry’s hand hovered near his back in case he slipped and Matt took him by the arm to help him over the rest of the way. He smiled at his husband gratefully before turning around and fixing the Stewards of Respect and Control in a steely glare.
‘Any scratches on this when it’s returned, and I kill you both.’
The Sergeant nodded firmly. ‘Yes, sir.’
An amused smile was still playing on her lips. Ranjit suspected that wasn’t at Frank’s very real threat but at the severe expression on Matthew’s face, which was fixed far more pointedly on Elliot than her.
Elliot’s ears flattened against his head, burying themselves in his thick hair as if to hide from the Steward of Understanding’s multi-angled gaze. He nodded, swallowing hard.
‘...How is Saisaku doing, Matt?’