The Headmaster’s Voice

Wednesday. The Headmaster does not come to the sanctum himself, I have discovered. He speaks to his students through the walls. Speakers, they call them. In my day we shouted down chimneys.

So the story and the hints arrive as a voice, and students who don’t hear well simply have a teammate pass the words along. The rest of the work, the looking and the handling and the fitting-together, needs eyes and hands, and the class shares it out.

A boy came in a wheelchair today, to the Sydney sanctum. Both castles take one chair per session. A few things in there are harder to reach sitting down, his sister told me afterwards, so she reached them and he told her what to do with them. Which, from what I heard through the wall, was the correct division of labour.

I have written to the Headmaster asking to borrow his speakers for a single announcement. I have not heard back. I expect he is busy talking.