Page 25 of Gothikana

Mr Deverell walked around his table to the board at the front of the class, a marker in his left hand uncapped. He raised his hand, continuing to speak and write at the same time. Corvina was surprised to observe that he was left-handed. Perhaps it was because of the way he’d used his right hand on her the other day in the library that had made her unconsciously think he was aligned toward it.

‘D-A-N-S-E M-A-C-A-B-R-E,’ his deep voice enunciated the alphabets he wrote in bold, block letters on the board, and he turned to face the class. ‘Danse Macabre.Can anyone tell me whatthis is?’

One of the girls at the front raised her hand hesitantly, and he nodded at her. ‘Yes, Miss Thorn?’

‘The Dance of Death?’ she said in a tone that was more questioning than responding.

‘Correct.’ He swept his gaze over the sunlit classroom and the students. ‘The idea emerged in the Late Middle Ages. The idea that there is universality in death, that regardless of who you are in your life or your station or how much you possess, you will have to dance with death in the end. Kind of beautiful, if macabre, isn’t it?’

It was. Both terribly beautiful and horribly macabre, that death came to all in the end.

‘The idea later impacted art, music, and literature,’ Mr Deverell continued, playing with the marker caught between his index and middle fingers. ‘In literature, in particular, this became an allegorical device that inspired the use of many motifs to represent and even foreshadow death in stories. Now, close your eyes and think about death. What’s the first image that comes to your mind?’

Corvina looked around to see everyone close their eyes, just as his gaze came to linger on her for a split second, a heated, visceral, and entirely forbidden look in them before they moved on. Thankfully, Jade was on a bathroom break so she didn’t notice that.

‘Mr Morgan?’ he asked a boy sitting near the window.

‘Skulls,’ the boy replied.

Mr Deverell nodded, turning to write the word on the board with a bullet point. ‘Give me another.’

‘Scythe?’ someone piped up.

Mr Deverell’s shoulders shrugged. ‘Depending on the context, yes. With the Grim Reaper, yes. Next.’

‘Crows,’ Jax offered, giving Corvina a wicked grin.

Mr Deverell’s hand paused before he wrote it as well. ‘Yes. Crows are considered symbols of death in many cultures, considered to bring bad omens with them. They are mostly a gothic motif in literature.’

‘Graveyards.’

‘Yes. Next.’

‘Skeletons?’

‘Fits with the skull. Next.’

For the next few minutes, she took notes in her old, browned notebook and let the class do the talking.

Mr Deverell finally turned back to the class once the board was full. ‘Death is fascinating. It’s the only inevitability of life, but one that most people spend their lives trying to outrun. Character death can be the most powerful weapon in a writer’s arsenal but one that needs to be used extremely carefully. For your creative paper, I want you all to write about death. Make it impactful. Make it surprising. Make me not predict it.’

He let his eyes rove over everyone. ‘Give me a natural death, a murder, a suicide, or anything else. Think. I want to see it and be moved. It’s due in four weeks.’

On cue, the bell rang and everyone began to wrap up. Corvina watched a girl from the front, one whose name she didn’t remember, walk to Mr Deverell while hugging the books to her chest. She observed the rigid way he held himself, slightly away from her, the eager body language of the girl, and she knew simply from watching she was another one of his admirers. God, it felt like he had a buffet to sample and select from despite the rules.

Shaking her head at herself for silently lusting after a man half the school lusted after, she pushed her notebook in her bag and walked down the aisle, keeping her gaze on the door.

She became aware of his eyes on her, but she kept her head down and walked out. He watched her, all the damn time, and then he expected her not to be affected or to think with some rational brain cell when they collided. It wasn’t possible. Something between them — chemical, emotional, psychological, she didn’t know — came together like molten lava and hot ash, caused by an eruption unpredictable to them both.

It was another beautiful day, but her mind was muddled. She didn’t understand why he affected her so, why the idea of him standing so close to another girl made something fiery twist in her stomach. She didn’t know him. He didn’t know her. But there was something there, almost sentient in the way it kept growing and bringing them together.

Gritting her teeth, she exited to see Jax waiting for her, leaning against a wall. He was good-looking and playful, something she’d learned over the course of weeks that she’d hung out with Troy and hisboys. Jax had a tendency to say stuff with that wicked gleam in his eyes but in a well-meaning way.

‘Yo, Purple,’ he greeted her, pushing off the wall and joining her as she made her way to the gardens. She gave him a small smile, not really shy but not particularly wanting to talk either. She was mostly an introvert, perhaps because of the way she had grown up with silence as her companion. Silences were comfortable but most people didn’t feel that way. She was realising that most people had an unnecessary need to fill silences, a need she didn’t share. It made people uncomfortable around her, adding even more to her oddities.

‘So, gloomy lesson, huh?’ Jax filled in the silence.

Corvina shrugged. It had been gloomy, but beautiful. Death as an idea was fascinating, and her mind was already churning with how she would write her paper. Out of all her classes, she was learning she loved Literature the most. While her Psychology elective was helping her understand the mind a bit more, it was purely for understanding and nothing else. With Literature, she could feel herself both analyse and imagine, both the rational and creative sides of her mind engaged fully with the subject.

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