A Great And Terrible Beauty (38 page)

“Yes, that’s it. Give yourself over to me.”

I can’t think. Can barely breathe. Overhead, the sky roils gray and black. We sat here and counted clouds in the blue. Blue as my mother’s silk dress. Blue as a promise. A hope. She came back for me. I can’t leave her to this.[]

Those black, swirling orbs lean closer. The smell of rot fills my nostrils. Tears sting at my eyes. I have nothing left but that hope and a whisper.

“Mother . . . I forgive you.”

The grip loosens. The thing’s eyes widen, the hideous mouth opens. Its power shrinks. “No!”

I feel my strength returning. My voice grows, the words take on a life of their own. “I forgive you, Mother. I forgive you, Mary Dowd.”

The creature writhes and screams. I roll from its grasp. It is losing the fight, diminishing. It howls at me in pain, but I don’t stop. I repeat it like a mantra as I grab a rock and smash the first rune. It crumbles in a shower of crystal rain, and I smash the second.

“Stop! What are you doing?”
it shrieks.

I smash the third and fourth runes. For a moment, the thing changes shape, becomes my mother, trembling and weak on a patch of strawlike grass.

“Gemma, please stop. You’re killing me.”

I hesitate. She turns her face to me, soft and tear-stained. “Gemma, it is me. It’s Mother.”

“No. My mother is dead.”

I smash the fifth rune, falling back against the hard earth. With a great gasp, the thing loses its grip on my mother’s spirit. It shrinks in on itself, becomes a thin column of twisting moans, until it is sucked up into the sky and all is silent.

I lie still.

“Mother?” I say. I’m not really expecting an answer, and I don’t get one. She’s truly gone now. I am alone. And somehow, this is as it should be.

In some ways, the mother I remember was as much an illusion as the leaves we turned into butterflies on our first trip to the realms. I’m going to have to let her go to accept the mother I’m only just discovering. One who was capable of murder, but who fought the dark to come back to help me. A scared, vain woman, and a powerful member of an ancient Order. Even now, I don’t really want to know this. It would be so very easy to escape into the safety of those illusions and hold fast there. But I won’t. I want to try to make room for what is real, for the things I can touch and smell, taste and feel—arms around my shoulders, tears and anger, disappointment and love, the strange way I felt when Kartik smiled at me by his tent and my friends held my hands and said, yes, we’ll follow you . . .

What is most real is that I am Gemma Doyle. I am still here. And for the first time in a long time, I am very grateful for that.

It’s a lot to think about, but I’m at the river’s edge now. Pippa’s pale face pushes up against the ice, her loose, dark curls spreading out underneath the surface. I use a rock to break through. Water rushes up through the cracks.

To pull her out, I have to plunge my hand into that murky, forbidden river. It’s warm as a bath. Inviting and calm. I’m tempted to submerge myself in that water, but not yet. I’ve got hold of Pippa’s hand and I’m pulling with all my might, yanking her free of the weight of water, till she’s on the bank. She sputters and coughs, vomits river water onto the grass.

“Pippa? Pippa!” She’s so pale and cold. There are great dark circles beneath her eyes. “Pip, I’ve come to take you back.”

Those violet eyes open.

“Back.” She turns the word over softly, glances longingly at the river, whose secrets I both want to know and want to keep far from me, for now. “What will happen to me?”

I have no more magic left for lies. “I don’t know.”

“Mrs. Bartleby Bumble, then?”

I say nothing. She strokes the side of my face with her cold, wet hand and I already know what she’s thinking, not because it’s magic but because she is my friend and I love her. “Please, Pip,” I say, and stop because I’m starting to cry a little. “You have to come back. You just have to.”

“Have to . . . my whole life has been that.”

“It could change . . .”

She shakes her head. “I’m not a fighter. Not like you.” In the winter-brittle grass, she finds a small handful of shriveled berries, no bigger than seeds. They rest in her palm like coins.

My throat aches. “But if you eat them . . .”

“What was it Miss Moore said? There are no safe choices. Only different ones.” She takes a last look at the river, and her hand flies to her mouth. There’s a moment when it’s so quiet that I can hear the ragged edges of my breathing. And then color flows beneath her skin, the hair curling into ringlets, the cheeks a vibrant rose. She’s radiant. All around me, the land is coming alive again in a ripple of blooms and golden leaves. On the horizon, a new pink sky is born. And the knight stands waiting, her glove in his hand.

The warm breeze has pushed the boat to our shore.

This is a time for goodbyes. But I’ve had too many goodbyes of late, a lifetime of them to come, so I say nothing. She smiles. I return the smile. That’s all that’s needed. She steps into the boat and lets it carry her across the river. When she reaches the other side, the knight helps her out, into the sweet green grass. Beneath the silver arch of the garden’s gate, Mother Elena’s little girl, Carolina, watches too. But soon she realizes this is not the one she’s waiting for and she drifts out of sight, cradling her doll in her arms.

When I return, I find Felicity perched outside Pippa’s room, her back pressed up against the wall. She throws her arms around me, sobbing. Down the hall, Brigid sniffles as she places a sheet over a mirror. Ann comes from Pippa’s room, red-eyed, nose running.

“Pippa . . .” She breaks down. But she doesn’t have to finish it.

I already know that Pippa is gone.

The morning we bury Pippa, it rains. A cold October rain that turns the clump of dirt in my hand into mud. When it’s my turn at the graveside, the dirt slips through my fingers onto Pippa’s burnished coffin, where it makes the lightest of sounds.

All morning, Spence has been a well-oiled machine of activity. Everyone doing her bit, quietly and efficiently. It’s strange how deliberate people are after a death. All the indecision suddenly vanishes into clear, defined moments—changing the linens, choosing a dress or a hymn, the washing up, the muttering of prayers. All the small, simple, conscious acts of living a sudden defense against the dying we do every day.

The girls of first class have been allowed to travel the thirty miles to the Crosses’ country home for the funeral. Mrs. Cross has insisted that Pippa be buried with her sapphire engagement ring, which, no doubt, pains Mr. Bumble greatly. He spends the entire funeral checking his pocket watch and grimacing. In deep, resonant tones, the vicar tells us of Pippa’s beauty and her unfailing goodness. I don’t know this flat placard of a girl. I wish I could stand and give a full account of her—the Pippa who could be vain and selfish and in love with her romantic illusions; the Pippa who was also brave and determined and generous. And even if I told them all this, it still wouldn’t be a full measure of her. You can never really know someone completely. That’s why it’s the most terrifying thing in the world, really—taking someone on faith, hoping they’ll take you on faith too. It’s such a precarious balance, it’s a wonder we do it at all. And yet . . .

The vicar gives a final blessing. There’s nothing left but for the gravediggers to begin their work. They fix their caps on their heads and bite into the mud with their shovels, burying a girl who was my friend. All the while, I can feel him watching me from the trees. When I turn to look, he’s there, his black cloak peeking out. As soon as Mrs. Nightwing is occupied with comforting the Crosses, I sneak away to Kartik in his hiding spot behind a large marble seraph.

“I’m sorry,” he says. It’s simple and direct, with none of the nonsense about God calling home an angel too young and who are we to question his mysterious ways. Rain beats against my umbrella in a steady rhythm.

“I let her go,” I say, haltingly, glad at last of the chance to make a confession of sorts. “I suppose I could have tried harder to stop her. But I didn’t.” Kartik lets me get it out.

Will he tell the Rakshana what I have done? Not that it matters. I’ve already made my decision. The realms are my responsibility now. Somewhere out there, Circe waits, and I’ve got an Order to put together again, mistakes to remedy, many things to master in time.

Kartik is silent. There’s nothing but the constancy of the rain in answer. Finally, he turns to me. “You’ve got dirt on your face.”

I swipe haphazardly at my cheeks with the back of my hand. He shakes his head to let me know that I haven’t removed it. “Where?” I ask.

“Here.” It’s only his thumb brushing slowly across the lower edge of my lip, but it’s as if time slows and the sweep of that thumb below my mouth takes forever. It is no spell that I know of, but it holds such magic, I can scarcely breathe. He pulls his hand away fast, aware of what he’s done. But his touch lingers.

“My condolences,” he mumbles, turning to go.

“Kartik?” He stops. He’s soaked to the bone, black curls matted to his head. “There’s no going back. You can tell them that.”

He cocks his head to one side quizzically, and I realize he’s not certain whether I mean there’s no backing away from my powers or from his touch. I start to clarify but I realize I’m not certain either. And anyway, he’s gone, running on strong legs to the safety of the cart I can see down the road.

When I join the others again, Felicity is staring at the new grave, crying in the rain. “She’s really gone, isn’t she?”

“Yes,” I say, surprised at how sure I sound.

“What happened to me on the other side, with that thing?”

“I don’t know.”

We look down at the mourners, blotches of black in a sea of gray rain. Felicity can’t bring herself to look at me. “Sometimes I see things, I think. Out of the corner of my eye, taunting me, and then it’s gone. And dreams. Such horrible dreams. What if something terrible happened to me, Gemma? What if I am damaged?”

The rain is a cool kiss on my sleeve as I link my arm through hers. “We’re all damaged somehow.”

WE’VE
BEEN
GIVEN
THE
DAY
TO
REST
AND
REFLECT
, and so Mademoiselle LeFarge is surprised to see me at her classroom door. She’s positively flummoxed when I hand her five neat, orderly pages of French translation.

“This is all quite good,” she announces after careful inspection of my work. There’s a smart new vase of flowers on her desk where the tintype of Reginald used to sit. She stacks the papers and offers them to me with her corrections noted in ink.

“Good work, Mademoiselle Doyle. I believe there’s hope for you yet.
Dans chaque fin, il y a un début.
”

My translation skills aren’t quite up to this one. “In the end, also, is a debutante?”

Mademoiselle LeFarge shakes her head. “In every end, there is also a beginning.”

The rain has stopped but it has ushered in a bracing autumn wind that pinkens my cheeks till they look freshly slapped. October blooms in bursts of red and gold. Soon the trees will lose their cover and the world will be laid bare.

Miles from here, Pippa lies in her coffin, fading into memory, a bit of Spence legend to be whispered late at night.
Did you hear about the girl who died in that very room down the hall?
I do not know if she regrets her choice. I like to think of her as I saw her last, walking confidently toward something I shan’t see, I hope, for a very long time.

In a world beyond this one, that river goes on singing sweetly, enchanting us with what we want to hear, shaping what we need to see in order to keep going. In those waters, all disappointments are forgotten, our mistakes forgiven. Gazing into them, we see a strong father. A loving mother. Warm rooms where we are sheltered, adored, wanted. And the uncertainty of our futures is nothing more than the fog of breath on a windowpane.

The ground is still wet. The heels of my boots sink in, making it a rough walk, but I see the wagons of the Gypsy camp just through the trees ahead. I’m on my way to deliver a gift. Or a bribe. I’m not entirely certain of my motives just yet. The point is that I am on my way.

The package is wrapped in today’s newspaper. I leave it outside Kartik’s tent and slip back into the trees to wait. He comes soon enough, carrying some squab on a string. He notices the package and spins around to see who might have left it. Seeing no one, he opens it and finds my father’s gleaming cricket bat. I don’t know if he’ll accept it or find it insulting.

His hands run along the wood in a caress. A hint of a smile tugs at the corners of what I have come to realize is a most beautiful mouth. He picks a crab apple from the ground and tosses it into the air. The bat makes a gratifying crack as it sends the apple soaring, flying high on a lucky combination of direction and possibility. Kartik lets out a small yelp of satisfaction, and swats at the sky. I sit and watch him hit the apples, again and again, until I’m left with two thoughts:
Cricket is a wonderfully forgiving game
, and
Next time, I must get him a ball
.

Forgiveness. The frail beauty of the word takes root in me as I make my way back through the woods, past the caves and the ravine, where the earth has accepted the flesh of the deer, leaving nothing but a bone or two, peeking above Kartik’s makeshift grave, to prove that any of this ever happened. Soon, they’ll be gone too.

But forgiveness . . . I’ll hold on to that fragile slice of hope and keep it close, remembering that in each of us lie good and bad, light and dark, art and pain, choice and regret, cruelty and sacrifice. We’re each of us our own
chiaroscuro
, our own bit of illusion fighting to emerge into something solid, something real. We’ve got to forgive ourselves that.
I
must remember to forgive myself. Because there’s an awful lot of gray to work with. No one can live in the light all the time.