The Elowen Society
You found the door, and you came in, and so you may as well know how it works. This is not clicked into. It is found. You have found it.
What is inside
Inside it is dark for a moment, and then it is not.
There is a lamp, and there are cushions that were once somebody’s, and a tin box, and a great many candle-ends, and on the wall, cut into the wood with a penknife by a girl whose name nobody now remembers, there is a star with seven points.
Underneath it, someone has carved four words. They are the oldest thing in the room.
We keep the light.
The girls who use this place call themselves the Elowen Society, and there have been girls in it, on and off, for as long as there has been a school, and not one of them has ever written a list of who they were.
There is no list now either. Nobody has taken your name. Nobody is going to.
But you got in. And a girl who got in is a girl who was paying attention, and that, as it happens, is the only qualification there has ever been.
The one rule
The Society has exactly one rule, and it is not about secrecy. It is this: if you find a girl alone, you go and sit by her. That is all. That has always been all.
The Star Cipher
Seven clues are set around the seven-pointed star, and each answer is a single word from the world of St Elowen’s. Take the first letter of each answer, in order, from the top and around, and they spell the password. You will want a pencil.
- The wood where the noise of the school falls away behind you.
- Walled, and best in June, and much visited by a girl with something to think about.
- What stands at the top of the spiral stair, with the sky in it.
- She is exacting about name-tapes, and she has an opinion about your shoe.
- It grows all over the courtyard, and it has covered a worn flagstone for years.
- Seven points, and silver, and hidden in a pudding, and it cannot be sought.
- It stands at the gate with its arms out, and it has never once come down.
Well done. You have it.
Solving a cipher does not win a prize. It only proves you were paying attention, which is the one thing the Society has ever asked of anybody. Now you have the word. Keep it, the way the others always have.
A new cipher is set each term, on the Noticeboard. Keep your pencil sharp.
The cipher is answered with a word, never an address. Nothing you type here is sent or kept anywhere.