A Great And Terrible Beauty (31 page)

“Felicity.” Pippa sounds anxious. “Let’s go back and have a nice cup of tea. It’s too cold out here.”

Felicity’s voice expands, fills the space around us, a bell tolling. “Their sin was that they believed. Believed they could be different. Special. They believed they could change what they were—damaged, unloved. Cast-off things. They would be alive, adored, needed. Necessary. But it wasn’t true. This is a ghost story, remember? A tragedy.”

The lightning’s back, a big one, two, three of light that lets me see Felicity’s face, slick with tears, nose running. “They were misled. Betrayed by their own stupid hopes. Things couldn’t be different for them, because they weren’t special after all. So life took them, led them, and they went along, you see? They faded before their own eyes, till they were nothing more than living ghosts, haunting each other with what could be. What can’t be.” Felicity’s voice goes feathery thin. “There, now. Isn’t that the scariest story you’ve ever heard?”

The rain beats down relentlessly, mixing with the strangled sounds of Felicity’s sobbing. Ann has stopped torturing her hands. Now she stares through the flame at cave walls that show her history, promise nothing. Pippa twirls her engagement ring round her finger till I fear she’ll break it off.

Maybe it’s the steady downpour driving me mad. Maybe it’s the thought of lovely Pippa, married off to a man she doesn’t love, who doesn’t love her, only wants to acquire her. Maybe it’s imagining Ann squelching her voice to work for pompous aristocrats and their hateful children. Or Felicity trying to hold back her tears. Maybe it’s that every word she’s said is true.

Whatever the reason, I’m thinking now of a way out, of bringing the magic back from the realms. I’m thinking of those mothers today in their ornate dresses and their vacant lives. And I’m thinking of my mother’s warning that I’m not ready to use my full powers yet.

Oh, but I am, Mother. I am.

Outside, there’s a fresh wave of thunder rumbling a warning, a prayer. All around me in the semidarkness are the symbols etched into rock with the sweat and blood of women who’ve gone before us. Their whispers urge me on in a single word.

Believe.

I can see the glint off Pippa’s unwanted ring. Hear the labored struggle of Ann’s mouth-breathing. Feel the desperation meeting the silence with its unasked wish.

There’s got to be something better than this.

My voice rises to the unseen top of the cave, a bird taking flight.

“There is a way to change things. . . .”

“
ARE
YOU
SURE
YOU
KNOW
HOW
TO
USE
THESE
RUNES?” Ann asks as we place the candles in the center of our circle.

“Of course she does! Stop trying to frighten her,” Pippa snaps. “You do know, don’t you?”

“No. But Mary and Sarah did it. It can’t be that difficult. Mother said I simply place my hands against the runes and . . . and then . . .” Then what? The magic enters me. It’s precious little to go on.

Felicity is beside me. She’s stopped crying.

“We’ll just try it and see. That’s all. Just a trial run,” I say, as if to convince myself.

We enter the realms through our door of light and make our way to the grotto as quickly as possible. The runes rise before us, tall and imposing. They’re guards protecting the sky’s secrets.

“I didn’t see anyone,” Felicity pants.

“Then I don’t think anyone saw us,” Pippa says.

Promise me you won’t take the magic out of the realms, Gemma. . . .

I’ve promised her. And yet I can’t abandon my friends to these empty lives.

It’s been such a long time since the magic here has been used. There’s no telling what could happen.

That doesn’t mean something terrible
will
happen. Perhaps Mother is worrying about nothing. We’ll be so very careful. Nothing will find its way in.

The huntress appears. “What are you doing?”

Pippa yelps in surprise.

“Nothing,” I say, too quickly.

She’s silent, watching us. “Will you hunt today?” she asks Felicity at last.

“Not today. Tomorrow,” Felicity answers.

“Tomorrow,” the huntress repeats. She turns and walks toward the silver arch, glancing back once with a curious expression. And then she’s gone.

“That was a close call,” Ann says, letting her breath out.

“Yes. I think we’d best act quickly,” I say.

“What do you think will happen to us?” Pippa’s voice is filled with apprehension.

“There’s only one way to find out,” I say, moving closer to the runes. I can feel their energy calling me. I’ll touch them only for a second or two, no more. What can possibly happen in an instant?

The girls place their hands on me. We’re connected, like some newfangled apparatus that gives off electric light. Slowly, I place my palms against the warm strength of the crystalline shapes. They hum against my skin. The hum bends into a shudder. It’s more powerful than I could have dreamed. They glow, faintly at first, then more strongly, the light spreading quickly into a swirling pillar that spins out, around and through me. I can sense my friends within me—the quick pulse of blood in their veins. The rhythm of our hearts beating in unison, like the thundering of horses trampling across winter-bleached fields, hope thumping freedom inside us. A locomotive scream of thoughts flies by. Different voices, different languages overlap, merging into one flickering murmur. It’s too fast. I can’t absorb it. It could break me. I need to tear away but I can’t.

And then the world falls away.

The vast night sky wraps us in its blanket. We’re standing at the top of a mountain. Clouds rush overhead at impossible speed, coiling and uncoiling. The strong wind is a roar as it whips our hair out behind us. And yet there’s no fear. Nothing about me feels the same. Every cell in my body is acutely aware, every sense heightened. We don’t need to speak. We can each sense what the others are feeling.

I’m suddenly aware of Felicity’s face; the gray of her eyes looms larger. The black heart in the center of her gaze moves and swirls till I’m drawn inside, where I’m floating over an open sea, icebergs poking through the waves, the cry of whales nearby. Like liquid, I’m poured into that sea, swallowed whole, and then I fall through the bottom of it into a London twilight. Below me is the Thames, dappled with street light. I’m flying. I’m flying! We all are, rising so high that the chimneys and rooftops are no more significant than coins thrown into a gutter.
Close your eyes; close your eyes, Gemma
. I’m awake in a desert under a full moon. Dunes rise and fall like breath. My foot sinks in. I’m melting into the warm brown sand. Under my touch, the fine sandy grit changes into the softness of skin. His body rolls out underneath me like a plain. Kartik feels like a country I want to travel—vast, dangerous, and unknown. When we kiss, I’m falling again, back onto that mountaintop where Felicity, Pippa, and Ann are standing, back from their own journeys, and yet it feels as if we’ve never left this place. We smile at each other. Our fingertips graze; our hands clasp. There is a searing white light. And then nothing.

“Gemma, wake up.” Ann gives me a little shake. My room comes into focus by degrees—the ceiling, the gray light at the window, the worn wooden floor. Vague recollections of last night come to me—the realms, the runes, the huntress’s strange expression, the four of us stumbling home from the caves afterward—but it’s mostly a fog in my head. I’ve lost all sense of time and direction.

“What time is it?” I mumble.

“Time for breakfast.”

It can’t be
, I think, rubbing my head.

“Well, it is,” she answers.

That’s odd. “How did you know what I was thinking?” I ask.

“I don’t know,” she says, wide-eyed. “I heard it in my head.”

“The magic . . . ,” I say, sitting straight up.

Felicity and Pippa burst into the room.

“Look at my dress,” Pippa says, beaming. There’s a large grass stain on the hem.

“Bad luck, Pip,” I say.

She’s still smiling like an idiot. She closes her eyes and in seconds the stain is gone.

“You made it disappear,” Ann says in wonder.

Pippa’s smile shines. She twirls her skirt this way and that, letting it catch the light.

“So we’ve done it,” I say. “We’ve taken the magic out of the realms.”
And everything is fine.

I am dressed in record-setting time. We trip down the hall and the stairs like a breeze, whispering to each other in half-spoken sentences that somehow are finished inside our heads. We’re so alive with our discovery that we can’t stop giggling.

A figurine of a little cupid sits inside an alcove under the stairs.

“I want to have a bit of fun,” Pippa says, pulling us to a stop. She closes her eyes, waves her hands over the cherubic plaster boy, and then he’s sporting rather large breasts.

“Oh, that’s awful, Pip!” Felicity says. We dissolve in laughter.

“Think of the redecorating possibilities!” Pippa says, in hysterics.

Brigid is bustling down the hall toward us.

“Great heavens, fix it quick!” I whisper.

We’re falling all over ourselves trying to hide the thing.

“I can’t do it under pressure!” Pippa says in a panic.

“Here now, wot’s all this fuss about?” Brigid puts her hands on her hips. “Wot you got there? Move aside and lemme see.”

Reluctantly, we obey.

“Wot on earth is this?” Brigid holds up a statuette of the world’s ugliest cancan dancer, formerly a cupid with breasts.

“It’s the latest from Paris,” Felicity says coolly.

Brigid puts it back in the alcove. “Belongs on the rubbish heap, if you ask me.”

She moves on and we’re all giggles again.

“It was the best I could manage,” Pippa says. “Under the circumstances.”

Every head turns when we arrive for breakfast and take our places at the long table. Cecily can’t stop staring at Ann.

“Ann, is that a new dress?” she asks between bites of her bacon. We’ve come late so there’s only porridge.

“No,” Ann answers.

“Did you change your hair, then?”

Ann shakes her head.

“Well, it’s an improvement, whatever it is.” This makes the rest of the girls titter. Cecily goes right back to her bacon.

Felicity puts her spoon down hard. “You’re very rude, Cecily. Did you know that? I think it would be best if you just didn’t say anything else today.”

Cecily opens her mouth to reprimand Felicity, but no words come. She can barely speak above a whisper. Her hands fly to her throat.

“Cecily, what’s the matter?” Elizabeth hands her some water.

“Cat’s got her tongue,” Felicity says, smirking.

“Fee, you have to give Cecily her voice back at some point,” Pippa chides as we make our way to French.

Felicity nods. “I know. But you must admit—it is an improvement.”

Mademoiselle LeFarge has a particularly sadistic smile on her face when we arrive. It doesn’t bode well.

“
Bonjour, mes filles
. Today we will have a conversation to test your French.”

A conversation class. I am the absolute worst at this, and I wonder how long I can make myself unnoticeable.

Elizabeth raises a hand. “Mademoiselle, our Cecily has lost her voice.”

“Has she? That was very sudden, Mademoiselle Temple.”

Cecily tries again to speak but it’s useless. Ann gives her a small smile and Cecily looks positively terrified. She buries her nose in her book.

“Very well,” Mademoiselle LeFarge says. “Mademoiselle Doyle, you shall go first.”

I’m in for it now.
Please, please, please let me keep up
. My stomach is aflutter. This may be the day that Mademoiselle LeFarge gives me the boot down to the lower classes. She bats a question about the Seine into my court, waits for my response. When I open my mouth, we are all astonished. I’m speaking French like a Parisian, and I find I know a great deal about the Seine. And France’s geography. Its monarchy. The Revolution. I’m feeling so clever that I want to go on for the whole of the period, but finally Mademoiselle LeFarge recovers from her shock, breaking her own rules in the process.

“That was remarkable, Mademoiselle Doyle! Truly remarkable,” she gasps in English. “As you can see, ladies, when you are willing to apply yourselves, the results speak for themselves! Mademoiselle Doyle, today you shall receive thirty good-conduct marks—a record for my class!”

Someone should probably close Martha’s, Cecily’s, and Elizabeth’s mouths before the rains come and drown them like turkeys.

“What do we do now?” Pippa whispers as we take our seats for Grunewald’s instruction.

“I think it’s Ann’s turn,” I say.

Ann’s face falls. “M-me? I d-d-don’t know. . . .”

“Come on, then. Don’t you want everybody to know what you can do?”

She furrows her brow. “But it won’t be me, will it? It will be the magic. Like your French.”

This brings a blush to my cheeks. “I did get a bit carried away. But you can truly sing, Ann. It will be you at your very best.”

Ann is skeptical. She chews nervously on her lips. “I don’t think I can.”

We’re interrupted by the arrival of the short, squat Austrian. Mr. Grunewald in usually in one of two tempers—foul and fouler. Today, he surpasses himself, sliding right into foulest.

“Cease the incessant chatter!” he barks, raking a hand through his thinning white hair. One by one, we’re called to the front of the class to practice the same hymn. One by one, he criticizes us nearly to death. Our vowels are too flat. Our mouths are not open sufficiently. I crack on a high note and he lets out with a sharp “Ack!” as if he’s being tortured. Finally, it’s Ann’s turn.

She’s timid at first. Mr. Grunewald shouts and grumbles, which doesn’t help. I’m practically willing Ann to let her voice fly.
Sing, Ann. Come on!
And then, she does. It’s like a bird leaving the nest, soaring high and free. We’re all quiet and awed. Even Mr. Grunewald has stopped counting. He stares with a look of utter joy on his face.