Diaries / Hollis’s Lost Property Book
Everything left behind at the academy on The Corso, recorded by the caretaker: sandals, a wand that may be a chopstick, a letter from an owl, a newt and a great deal of sand.
Fiction. The diaries, legends, reports and some of the staff are invented. The academies are real.
Item 1
Found in the stone corridor, the week after opening. Child’s size, blue, still damp from the beach. Placed in the box.
Nobody has claimed it. The Headmistress has suggested I stop announcing it at assembly.
Sketch: the sandal, labelled “still here”.
Item 2
Found under the scroll table. Could be a wand. Could be a chopstick from the place on The Corso. Tested it carefully by waving it at the broom. The broom did nothing, which proves very little about either.
Placed in the box, labelled “wand (?)”.
Note: Bramble says it is definitely a chopstick. Bramble has been wrong before.
Item 3
Left by an apprentice who came in costume and left, I am told, too pleased with themselves to remember it. Purple, with stars. Too tall for the lost property box. Now hanging on the hook by the door, where it frightens nobody but Bramble.
If it is yours: it is very fine, and I have brushed the sand off it.
Note: costumes welcome. Closed shoes, please. See Item 1.
Item 4
Not lost, exactly. Arrived on the staffroom table addressed to the Headmistress in a very careful hand, from Melbourne. I put it in the box by mistake, and she found it three days later and was cross with me for a whole afternoon.
Now I check every envelope before it goes in. This one was marked “Hoo”.
Sketch: a feather, which came with it.
Item 5
Found a small newt in the corner of the stone corridor, looking unimpressed. Put it in a teacup with a little water. The Headmistress took one look and said “Crumpet”, as if that explained anything.
By morning the teacup was empty and there was a note on the saucer, in very bad handwriting, reading “THANK YOU FOR NOTHING. — W.”
Note: the newt was very polite. Its owner was not.
Item 6
Found: sand. In the corridor, on the stairs, inside the scroll case and, somehow, on top of the chandelier. Owner unknown. Suspect: the entire beach.
Placed in the box. The box is now mostly sand. I have ordered a second box.
Sketch: two boxes. Both labelled “sand”.
— Hollis, caretaker (box two now open)
