LUNCH IN THE great hall would be a one off affair for the first years after their gruelling amble walk around the buildings of the school, which included warnings about boundaries and local dangers.
'Although there are no land mines in this area,' Miss Dubbers the sports mistress and dedicated hiker said casually as the girls in their dorm groups were led through shadowy forests, 'there are mines. That's why it is important to keep to the marked amble trails. There's plenty of them so quite frankly I do not know why anyone would wish to stray. And you there! No climbing of trees. We are ladies.'
Dolly Bloomen paused in her scrambling motion up a pine, looked down upon the teacher and then reluctantly slid back to earth with a crunch.
'Thought I saw a squirrel,' she muttered.
'Squirrels can be quite safely viewed from the ground at any time of day and possibly by night for I have heard there are some species which actually glow in the dark,' Miss Dubbers admonished the energetic Wonder girl. 'And they are not to be killed on any occasion,' she suddenly said turning round quickly on noticing another first year poised to throw a sharpened twig like a spear up into the foliage above.
'Sorry miss. My weapons were confiscated when I first arrived and I thought this might be a good opportunity to keep in practice,' came a sullen explanation from the dark-skinned girl whose hair was tied in a complex whorl of tight braids that must have taken her ages to do, much to the admiration of several other girls present, especially Meresinth. Her one braid was effort enough.
The sports mistress glanced at her notes.
'Toglak? From Mangoria?' she said and the other nodded. Mangoria was a great open grassland where wild horses roamed and the people of the land hunted across its wide open spaces in mobile hordes. Throwing sharp things accurately was taught from the saddle-cradle up.
'Here in Frangea,' and the way Miss Dubbers said the name confirmed her as Frangean-born, 'we do not hunt defenceless creatures for sport. The occasional vermin cull using deadly force is necessary, but otherwise we let the wildlife thrive as best it may upon the slopes of Mount Syzywyg.'
'Will that be in the curriculum?' the hunting girl asked, brightening at the thought of a vermin cull.
'Definitely not,' and here Miss Dubbers ended all further conversation by raising her flag and marching her charges down slopes, across fields and into gardens where flowers ranged themselves in orderly fashion in the morning sun. A bit of botany, a slightly dangerous fight with bits of gravel on the various walks and then the sharp whistle from the guide ended matters.
'Lunch!' was all Miss Dubbers said, and it had been all that was required.