“Harriet will recover from this,” replied Miss Scratton, “if that’s what you mean. She sleeps now by Agnes’s grave, which, if Celia Hartle had but known it, gives her a kind of protection. I will ensure that she will wake with no knowledge of this night and nothing worse than a chill from being outside. But she has been possessed by a mind stronger than her own, and that takes longer to heal. We must tend to her.” She looked down at Mrs. Hartle’s body and covered it with her cloak, then gave a high, clear call. The next moment her magnificent white horse galloped out of the gloom and halted by her side, restlessly shaking its head and pawing the ground. Miss Scratton bent down and lifted up Mrs. Hartle’s body with surprising strength, then gently laid it on the horse’s back. “We must tend to this matter, too. But not you, Evie.”
“Why not? I…I want to help.”
“The new day is beginning. This is your day—for you and Sebastian. Go to him, Evie. Use your day well. And if you should chance to pass by the grounds of Fairfax Hall at sunset tonight, your sisters will be there to greet you.”
I kissed Helen and Sarah, then walked up the hill to where a boy with dark hair and blue eyes was waiting for me.
Sebastian James Fairfax. My first, my only love.
Forty-eight
This is the day. This is now.
It is the perfect morning. The storm has passed and everything is beginning again. Although it is not yet March, the air is gentle, the sky is a soft, sweet blue, and the earth is warm in the sun. Under the trees, the rain-dashed buds of snow drops and crocuses are raising their heads again, determined to live.
Sebastian smiles at me and folds me in his arms.
“You gave me one day. So I want to give you this day in return. One perfect day that will last forever. And then…then I will receive your final gift.”
It is a day when all things meet and make sense. A day to treasure, like a precious jewel. A day I can look back on: when Sebastian and I were together, and happy, and blessed. My heart goes out in gratitude to Agnes, to Sarah and Helen, who helped to make this happen.
I love…I am loved…just for one day.
We walk and walk over the high hills, as close to heaven as we can get. The sun shines, and the earth turns beneath our feet, and life flows on in an endless stream around us. All that we have is here and now, and it is enough. Each minute. Each second. A lifetime of love and laughter crammed into a few hours.
It is the only time that Sebastian and I have ever met in the sunlight, out in the open, away from the darkness and the shadows. We don’t need to hide anymore. I see the clear blue sky reflected in Sebastian’s eyes; I see the whole world in his smile. We walk far over the moors, talking of everything, asking questions, making confessions, searching for explanations.
“I couldn’t leave this life with you thinking that I was your enemy. That was a greater torment than anything else I was facing. You don’t know how much I love you, Evie.”
“I loved you the first time I saw you,” I reply.
“Liar!” He laughs. “You couldn’t have. I was awful to you.”
“Well, maybe the second time.” I smile, taking his hand and pulling him close. “I’ll always love you, Sebastian; you know that.”
“I know.”
He leans down and kisses me, and our souls touch. Then we cling to each other and try to memorize each other’s faces, trying to make it last forever, trying to hide from what is to come.
Memories.
Do you remember when we first walked up here on the moors…do you remember the moon…and the night we rowed across the lake…do you remember?
I remember everything. I’ll always remember. I’ll spend my whole life remembering.
A cloud covers the sun. “Let’s not think about the past anymore,” I say. “The past is done. I want to think about the future. Our future.”
Oh, we plan it all. We talk about the places we will visit together: Paris, Italy, India…so many places. We’ll see temples and museums and rivers and wide oceans. We’ll lie in the sun, lazy from food and wine and happiness. We’ll climb mountains and find new places, and study and write books and make discoveries, and give something back to the world. We’ll do it all together, day after day, step by step, and all the time our love will be wrapped around us, like a blanket of stars. And our children—how lovely they will be, I tell him. I see them playing around the gray stones at Uppercliffe: a sweet, solemn girl and a little boy with bronze curls. They laugh and tumble and rush over to Sebastian and cling to him, as though they will never let him go. We see everything, rolling along on the river of time….
Time.
We are running out of time.
The hours are slipping past. The sun begins to sink in the west and the air bites coldly. The bright day is fading into a dim haze of evening light. We pass the trees and gardens of Fairfax Hall and walk up the slope to the granite monument that Sebastian’s parents left in memory of their son who could never die.
In memory of a beloved son…in memory of my beloved…beloved memories.
So many memories. Our golden day is nearly done.
Helen is there, and Sarah, waiting by the memorial stone, and I am glad they are with me, now that the end has come.
“Are you really going to do this for me, Evie?” Sebastian asks.
I nod slowly. It is all I can give him now, the meaning of everything I saw in the Talisman. But it hurts. It hurts so much.
“Thank you.” He clasps my hand tightly. “I wish I knew what to say. Do you remember that poem I tried to write for you? Words are useless, aren’t they? ‘I’m grateful.’ ‘I love you.’ It’s just not enough, is it?”
“It doesn’t matter. You don’t have to say anything. We’ve said it all.”
I am crying now. I can’t stop my tears. Sebastian reaches out and touches a strand of my hair, just like he did when we first met. “Don’t cry, Evie. It won’t always hurt. You have to trust me. I want you to do this. It’s the only way.”
I throw my arms around his neck as though I will never let him go. But I must, because I do trust him. I will always trust him. I will do this. I am strong enough.
“It’s okay. I’ll do it. Just for you.” I manage to smile. I want him to remember me smiling.
“There’s one more thing I want you to do for me,” he says.
“Of course. Anything.”
“Then live, Evie. Just live. Don’t spend your life grieving. I don’t want you to stop loving because I…because our story wasn’t as we once hoped.”
“I’ll never love anyone else,” I say passionately. Sebastian smiles, and there is only a trace of sadness in his bright eyes.
“Oh, yes, you will, Evie. You must. You must love and marry and have a daughter with hair like fire and eyes like the sea. And you will tell her that no life is wasted, however short, if it has been touched by love. Oh, Evie…”
One last embrace. The very last kiss.
“Good-bye, girl from the sea,” he whispers. “Every ending is also a beginning. We’ll meet again, I promise.”
Sebastian lets go of my hand and walks over to the monument that catches the last few rays of the sun. He lies down on the bright turf with the great stone at his head, closes his eyes, and folds his hands over his chest.
“Are you ready, Evie?” asks Sarah softly.
My heart is on fire, but yes, I am ready.
I unfasten the Talisman and place it on Sebastian’s breast, like a star, then hold out my hands. They fill with clear water, which I sprinkle in a circle around us on the grass. Sarah takes the silver dagger and scores the ground, following the circle I have made, cutting the damp, sweet earth. Then Helen summons a wind that races around us in an endless ring of power, hiding us from the world’s eyes. Water, earth, and air. Three elements. Three sisters. We need one more.
The water of our veins…the earth of our bodies…the air of our breath…the fire of our desires…come to us now.
I reach out in my mi
nd and see the sacred fire rising up like a wild, brilliant bird. I click my fingers and tiny flames dance along the edge of our circle. They look like flowers dancing in the grass. Now the fourth element, Agnes’s power, is present through me. Water, air, earth and fire—we are ready to follow the Mystic Way, the path of healing.
Helen passes me the Book. It is heavy in my hands as I find the page I need.
The Gift of Death. That is the only thing I can give Sebastian now. Death, for so long feared and avoided, is now ready to save him, and only I can open the gateway. This is my final gift to Sebastian The pages that had refused before to reveal their secrets now fall open under my touch and I know their strange truths.
That death is not the end. That the Creator has given life everlasting to all who truly seek it, not in this life, but beyond the threshold of our final sleep…
We make the incantations. We scatter the offerings. We do all that is required, secret and beautiful and sacred. And a fourth girl comes to join us, our sister Agnes, at the heart of the mystery. Her rich red hair hangs loose over her white dress; her arms are held out in gladness to me, her eyes full of love. “I have come for my brother,” she says. “It is time.”
I take the silver dagger and place it in Sebastian’s hand. He puts his other hand on top of mine, intertwining our fingers so that we hold it together.
“Receive our brother into your eternal rest…. Receive him into the light….” Helen and Sarah and Agnes speak the words of the mystery, but my heart is too full and I cannot speak. “Receive him into the light,” I beg silently.
As the knife slides into his heart, Sebastian opens his eyes and looks up to the sky and his face is bathed in radiant light, so blinding that we cannot watch. And when the light passes, he has gone. The earth in front of the stone memorial is raw and soft, like a freshly dug grave. Only the Talisman remains, a bright jewel on the ground. I reach to pick it up. It is all I have left to tell me that this really happened. Our story.
And now it is over.
If the demons of the Unconquered realms ever come seeking Sebastian Fairfax again, they will not find him. He is far beyond them now. He has taken my gift, and crossed the threshold of death into a new beginning.
I stand up and look across the hills. The sun is setting, and my heart is breaking, but Sebastian is at peace.
Forty-nine
Little by little, I was coming back to life. All around me, the school was recovering too, slowly getting used to the shocking news that Mrs. Hartle’s body had been found out on the moors. We fell back into some kind of routine, the only difference being that Miss Raglan was no longer around. The students were told that she had suddenly had to leave due to urgent family reasons. She wasn’t missed. Miss Dalrymple and the others kept quiet, ashamed or embarrassed. Or biding their time, perhaps.
The days crept past, and Wyldcliffe Abbey School for Young Ladies carried on in the only way it knew how—with rules and order and calm English self-discipline. For once I was glad of the rigid routine that had enabled the school to survive so long in a changing world. It helped me to get through each day with something like normality. The visits and inquiries from the police and press were hard to ignore, though, as plans were made for an inquest into Mrs. Hartle’s death. The funeral would be held later, when all the investigations were over.
We managed to get hold of the newspapers and read everything we could about the case. The authorities were suggesting that the High Mistress had suffered some kind of breakdown. She must have been hiding out in the caves on the moors for weeks, they speculated, then had a fatal heart attack as she was wandering in the storm.
Sometimes reality is just too hard for people to accept. This story would do as well as any other. Something for the headlines, until the next sensation came along. Something for Celeste and India and the others to gossip over, then forget.
In those quiet, drifting days, Helen and Sarah and I stayed close together, united in grief and love. Whatever had happened, whatever we had lost, we had one another, and nothing would ever break that bond. With each passing day, the weather grew warmer and brighter, and the hills echoed with the sound of newborn lambs bleating to greet the bright and mysterious world.
The following weekend, Harriet’s mother came to take her home. I went to say good-bye in the black-and-white-tiled hall as they waited for the taxi to arrive. A fire was crackling in the grate and a bowl of roses glowed on the long polished table.
“Mum, this is Evie, the girl I told you about. She was my friend here.”
Harriet looked different, thin and tired, but the strained, hysterical look had left her. She didn’t know that she had been controlled by a warped mind and used as a pawn in an insane game. She didn’t remember the dreadful paths that Mrs. Hartle had sent her down. She only knew that she had come to boarding school and had not fit in, that she had been nervous and anxious and overwhelmed by homesickness. Harriet’s eyes shone as she introduced her mother to me. Mrs. Templeton was rather like Harriet, sallow and thin and eager to please.
“Thank you so much for being kind to Harriet,” she said apologetically. “I had no idea she would be so homesick and upset, starting all that sleepwalking business again.”
I felt like a fraud. I hadn’t really been so kind. But Harriet’s mother waved away my embarrassed denials.
“No, Miss Scratton says you’ve been wonderful. It’s funny,” she added, glancing at the marble steps and the trophy cabinets and the antique prints on the walls. “The school hasn’t changed at all. But being back here…well…it makes me remember how lonely it could be.”
“Yes,” I said. “Wyldcliffe can seem very far from home sometimes.”
“Guess what, Evie? Mum’s going to start working part-time so she can be with me at home and send me to a local school in London. Isn’t that great? Not that I won’t miss you,” Harriet hurried on. “And you will write to me, won’t you?”
“Of course.”
“Thanks! Tell me if you see Lady Agnes’s ghost, won’t you?” She laughed and pulled her mother by the sleeve. “Come on, the taxi’s here. I can’t wait to get home.”
They bustled into the car and drove away. For a second I wished that I were still twelve years old and that my mother could arrive and make everything right. I remembered how close she had seemed to me that night out on the hilltop. I tried to send her a message. I’m okay, Mom, I told her. I’ll survive….
“What are you thinking about, Evie?”
I jumped and turned around. It was Helen.
“Mothers,” I said softly. Our eyes met and I read the flash of pain in her face.
“Do you still miss not having her?” she asked.
“Of course. And I miss Frankie too. But I’m fine. I really am.”
“I know. And you’ve got your dad too. That makes all the difference.”
I looked at Helen curiously. She was holding a letter in her hand. “Miss Scratton gave me this. It was sent to her so that she could pass it on to me.”
Dear Helen,
I can’t quite believe I am writing this letter. Miss Scratton at the school tracked me down through the newspapers after the publicity about your mother’s death. It seems that you and I are related. In fact, she seems to think that I might be your father. I don’t know if that’s good news for you or a terrible shock, Helen, but I am so happy to find out about you. I often wondered if this was the reason Celia suddenly disappeared like that when we were young kids together. I wish she had trusted me enough to tell me. But that’s all in the past. I hope we can meet—soon.
Please write.
Tony Black
I reached out and hugged Helen tightly.
“I’m so, so glad,” I said.
She smiled, and her fragile beauty shone like a flower opening in the sun. “Me too. I’m going to write back. Where are you off to?”
“Oh…I’ve got a riding lesson. I’d better go.”
I walked outside and made my way down to the
stables. This would be my last lesson with Josh before his mother came back to work, and my stomach was twisted with nerves. A couple of days ago I had given him the torn fragments of Agnes’s diary to read, and Sarah had promised to tell him the rest. He deserved to know the truth, but I didn’t know whether he would think I was lying or crazy. Either way, I had to face him.
Josh was waiting for me in the yard, holding Bonny by the halter. I swung into the saddle and he grinned. “My mother will be impressed. I’ve turned you into a passable rider. Anyone would think you’d been at Wyldcliffe for years.”
“Thanks.” I smiled. “At least, I think that’s a compliment.”
“Where’s Sarah?” he asked, as I rode into the paddock and he strode along next to me.
“She’s riding up on the moors with Cal. Miss Scratton said it was okay.”
“So is his family staying in Wyldcliffe?”
I shook my head. “I’m not sure. There’s still so much rumor and gossip about them—all those horrible animal killings that Mrs. Hartle was behind.” I halted and looked at him steadily. “That is, if you believe what Sarah told you.”
Josh rested his hand lightly on mine. “I believe you, Evie. I know this valley. I know it hides many secrets. Besides, I knew you were in trouble all along. And so this guy, Sebastian…he’s…”
“He’s dead,” I said briefly. “It’s all over.” There was a yawning hole where my heart had been, but I wouldn’t cry. Sebastian wouldn’t want that. When I am dead, my dearest, sing no sad songs for me….
Josh tightened his hold on my hand. “Evie, I know you won’t want to hear this yet, but you know that I…I can’t help wondering if there’ll ever be any hope for me.”
I felt a wave of panic rise up in me. “I can’t; it’s too soon. I don’t think I can ever…love…again. What you’re saying…it scares me.”
“I’m not asking for love. It’s just that I really like you, Evie.”
“And I like you,” I said, feeling awkward.