"Heads held high!ĭo not smile, Miss Hawthorne! Serene, somber expressions! Empty your minds!" All the while she barks orders like Admiral Nelson himself. Her stiff skirts whisk-whisk across the floor as if to rebuke it for lying there. Nightwing paces the length of the ballroom. At present, that outcome is very much in doubt. I shall wear beautiful gowns, attend lavish parties, and dance with handsome gentlemen-if I survive my training. Come May, I shall make my debut a full year early, for it has been decided by all parties involved that at nearly seventeen I am ready and that it would do me good to have my season now. The block of wood is unyielding, and I am forced to stand as stiff as the guards at Buckingham Palace. The loops of the backboard chafe the sides of my arms. Nightwing, pleads as we attempt our slow march across the floor, heads held high, arms out like ballerinas. "Let us keep our eyes trained toward heaven, girls," our headmistress, Mrs. Alighieri would find too hideous to document in his Inferno. But I can say with all certainty that walking the length of a ballroom with a book upon one's head and a backboard strapped to one's back while imprisoned in a tight corset, layers of petticoats, and shoes that pinch is a form of torture even Mr. I do not know how it feels to be thrown into a lake of fire. It is called comportment, and it exists in schools for young ladies across the empire. There is a particular circle of hell not mentioned in Dante's famous book.
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