Eleven Minutes Past Twelve

They went out through the laundry room, where a window latch had been loosened so long ago that its screws spun freely in the wood. Dash went first, then reached back to pull Wren through. The October air was cold enough to sting her teeth.

Two more figures waited in the shadow of the hedge. Imogen Vale, whose family had donated the new gymnasium and who wore her wealth like an unbuttoned coat, was zipping a torch into her pocket. Beside her stood Teodor Marsh, a thin, serious boy with a notebook, who nodded at Wren as if she were a late but expected answer.

“You didn’t tell her about the rules,” Imogen said to Dash.

“I was building up to it.”

“Rule one,” said Teo. “No lights until we’re inside. Rule two: nobody goes anywhere alone. Rule three: nothing leaves the dome. Not photographs, not stories, not even dreams.”

“That last one sounds hard to enforce,” Wren said.

“You’d be surprised,” murmured Imogen.

They crossed the lawn bent low, keeping to the long shadows of the beech trees. The observatory rose before them, its copper dome gone green with age and silvered by moonlight. A chain and padlock hung across the iron door. Dash produced a key from his sock, and Wren raised her eyebrows.

“Where did you get that?”

“Inherited,” he said. “From the last society. Eleven years of students have passed it down in a hollow book in the library. You just have to know which book.”

The lock opened with a groan. Inside, the air smelled of cold metal, dust, and something faintly sweet, like old paper. Imogen switched on her torch and a narrow white beam swept across a spiral staircase, brass railings, and a great shape beneath a canvas sheet at the top.

Wren climbed with her hand on the railing, feeling the grooves where thousands of palms had worn the brass smooth. At the top Teo and Dash drew the canvas away, and she forgot to be careful.

The telescope was enormous, a long barrel of black iron and polished brass, fitted with gears like a clock’s heart. Above it the dome’s shutter was a seam of darkness waiting to be opened.

“Help me with the crank,” said Dash.

The four of them turned the handle together. The shutter slid back with a low grinding sigh, and the whole sky poured in: ten thousand stars, sharp as salt on black velvet.

Wren had grown up in a town with orange streetlights. She had never seen the Milky Way. She stood there with her mouth slightly open until Imogen, not unkindly, said, “Yes. Everyone does that the first time.”

It was eleven minutes past twelve. For the first time since September, Wren Calloway forgot to be afraid of anything at all.