I was wrong.
That night, I fell asleep in the wood, my back curled against a tree. When I opened my eyes it was already light. It was still early, but the town was starting to wake up. I jumped to my feet, worried about getting back to the home before anyone spotted that I had sneaked out, then I tried to step through the air again. Nothing happened. I panicked, thinking that I had lost the only thing that I was good at, that truly belonged to me. I didn’t know then that it’s just harder to travel the secret paths in daylight, that it requires greater concentration and confidence in one’s inner powers. And so I ran blindly, until my heart was hurting and my sides ached. I ran all the way back to the orphanage. The doors and gates were locked. I climbed over the wall, scraping my knees, then raced around to the back of the building, where I smashed a window by the kitchen door and crawled inside.
I got back to my room in time, but later that day the broken window was discovered and there was a terrible row. Dr. Franzen was only too happy to create a massive storm about it, going on and on in that smooth, slick voice of his about discipline and respect for property and delinquent children who were out of control. Someone had to own up to doing the damage and be punished for it, and he would wait all day until someone did…. Just as I was about to step forward, the Wanderer spoke and took the blame for me. Dr. Franzen hauled him off to the cellar before I could find my voice and confess the truth. I remember that Tom turned and smiled at me as he was dragged away. But later, whenever I tried to picture him, I saw a distorted version of his face like a surreal painting: bruised and battered, splashed with blood.
He didn’t show up at breakfast the next day, or the next. The staff eventually said that he’d been sent to a new foster family. The other kids whispered different stories about the Wanderer. That he’d been beaten so badly that he could hardly stand. That he’d escaped and managed to stagger to the town hospital. That he’d been transferred to another home under Dr. Franzen’s control. That his body had been found in the local garbage dump. They told so many stories, and I never knew which one was true. I only know that I never saw the boy they called the Wanderer again.
Was that Dr. Franzen’s fault, or my own?
I was haunted by the fear that my only friend was dead, even though I tried to tell myself that he’d be back one day. I was aching to believe that he would show up again, like he always had. But soon afterward, my mother came and found me and took me to Wyldcliffe. I thought it was a new life, but it turned out to be just another part of the old nightmare. The only comfort I found at Wyldcliffe was in art and poetry, and writing my diary for the Wanderer to read one day. Somehow I imagined that he knew what I was telling him and that one day he would answer. It seemed to keep him alive, even as my heart was breaking. For Tom, for my mother, for the family I never had, for the person I might have been and for the shame I couldn’t recover from. I found a poem in the library that said what I couldn’t say myself, and copied it into my diary:
I turn my face in silence to the wall;
My heart is breaking for a little love….
That was me. That was my secret history. Then I found Evie and Sarah, and Agnes. I had my sisters, and though that was not everything I craved, it was a great gift. And I told myself that another good thing about Wyldcliffe was that I would never have to see Dr. Franzen again.
But there he was, tap-tap-tapping his way into the Abbey like a crippled devil, ready to send me back to hell. And there was no one, not my sisters, or my mother, and certainly not a charming music student, who could protect me from him.
All I wanted to do was run.
Thirteen
FROM THE DIARY OF HELEN BLACK
OCTOBER 7
White wings, take me far away,
Take me where the wind blows free.
High, high in the stars I climb,
And the secret, silent spirit
Of the world’s heart enfolds me;
Like a breath,
Like a mother’s embrace.
I have been thinking endlessly, fighting myself and my fears. It would be cowardly to run away from Dr. Franzen. My mother ran away from the Seal and all that it meant, and she was left with an empty memento of what might have been. I don’t want to make the same mistake.
I desperately want to get away from Wyldcliffe, but I won’t go until I know that my sisters are truly safe. Dr. Franzen cannot treat them as he treated me when I was under his “care,” but my mother’s fate must be resolved before I can leave them here. And there is another task waiting for me. Laura.
Sarah and Evie have vowed to release her and break the spells that keep her as a Bondsoul. But the guilt of Laura’s fate is all mine, just as my shame over your fate, Wanderer, is my own private burden. I can’t do anything to help you now, but if I can reach out to Laura, perhaps that will pay off some of my debt. I should have thought of helping her before. You see how selfish I have been, wrapped up in my own thoughts and dreams? I won’t let Evie and Sarah take any more risks, though. I have to persuade them that I can do this myself.
Laura, my mother, my sisters. When they are safe, when all this is done, I will finally run from this place. When that day comes, I will start again, alone, and find my destiny.
“I can do this by myself,” I said. “I’m sure I can find Laura.”
“Alone?” Sarah asked in disbelief. “But what about our Circle? You can’t make the Circle on your own.”
“I might not need the Circle,” I said awkwardly. “I just want to try. I don’t want you two to risk anything, and besides, it was my fault that Laura was taken. I should be the one to put things right.”
“But wouldn’t it be better for us to work together, like we’ve always done?” asked Evie, looking puzzled.
“It will be easier if you let me do this myself,” I pleaded. “The quicker I find Laura and let her go, the quicker I can—”
“What?” asked Sarah.
“The quicker I can forgive myself, I suppose.” I shrugged.
“It wasn’t your fault, Helen, what happened to Laura,” Evie said softly.
“But I was there when the coven sucked her soul. I could have stopped it!”
“You didn’t know what they were going to do,” Sarah said. “You’ve got to stop blaming yourself.”
“Yes, I know, I know, we’ve been through all that already,” I replied. “But she’s my responsibility all the same.”
“We all feel a responsibility for Laura,” Evie answered. “That’s why we’re all here, to share things. You don’t have to carry that burden on your own anymore, Helen.”
Despite my attempts to persuade my friends to let me look for Laura by myself, I was touched by their determination to stick with me. But I wasn’t going to let that change things. “Look,” I said in a reasonable voice, “just let me try. If it doesn’t work, then okay, we’ll cast the Circle and see what we can do together. But if it does work, Laura will be safe and I’ll feel as though I’ve paid back what I owe her. So we’ll all be happy. You can’t argue with that, can you?”
They didn’t try, to my relief, though I saw the hurt in their eyes that I didn’t want to do this with them. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to be with Sarah and Evie. It wasn’t even that I had a crazy egotistical belief in my own powers. It was because the simplest of all possible solutions had occurred to me.
The Priestess had made Laura into her Bondsoul, and so I would simply ask the Priestess to release her slave. And if Celia Hartle was sincere in all she had said—if she really wanted to show that she had abandoned her dark ways—this would be the perfect way to prove it.
I set off that morning without stopping to think, bunking off class and leaving my friends to make some excuse for me. A few minutes later I stepped out of the secret winds and found myself flung breathless into the center of the stone circle on the Ridge. I looked up. A hawk was hovering above me in the brooding sky, looking for prey. In the far distance I saw a party of walkers in bright anor
aks toiling up the slopes on the other side of the valley. Everything seemed normal, but my pulse was racing. I got to my feet and strode over to the towering black stone and called to my mother’s spirit. She answered quickly, hungrily, filling all my senses with her intoxicating, disturbing presence.
“So you’ve come back?” she asked. “Do you believe me? Do you understand at last how I grieve for you, my daughter? How I repent of my past errors? And Helen, my darling—” My mother’s voice echoed in my mind, low and soft like a sweet caress. “Helen, have you come to set me free?”
The great stones, reaching up to the sky like an ancient giant’s crown, seemed to be waiting for my answer too. I crouched at the foot of the black rock and spoke slowly, hardly daring to breathe for fear of saying the wrong thing. “I need you to do something for me first.”
She seemed to draw her mind away from mine for a fraction of a second, then replied eagerly, “Anything! I will do anything for you, Helen. Tell me what it is.”
“Release Laura. Let her soul pass.” If Celia Hartle really loved me, I was sure she would do this for me. I was so sure….
There was silence. Then a sigh like a long breath of wind. Joy turning to dust and smoke.
“That is the one thing I cannot do.” She sighed. “I no longer have the powers to perform such complex mysteries. Here, imprisoned in this place, I am cramped and fettered.”
“You—you can’t release her?”
“Not in my present weakness. Besides, Laura is no longer with me. I am alone, and she is hidden in deep darkness. But if you let me go…Free me, and I will regain my strength, and I’ll be able to do this for you, Helen. We will achieve it together, side by side. Laura will be at peace.”
The vision I’d had of my mother the last time I stood in the stone circle flashed into my mind. She was smiling and holding her hands out to me. I wanted to run to her. We would achieve this, side by side…. She opened her mouth to speak, but it wasn’t her voice I heard. It was Miss Scratton, harsh and dry, saying, “Helen, wake up, wake up…”
Wake up from what? From the illusion that my mother had truly changed? I longed to trust her, to work with her, but what if…what if…what if…? I stepped back and looked up at the skies, desperate for guidance, but the skies were empty and mournful. I was alone, with the fate of others in my frail and feeble hands. Silence.
The moors. The autumn colors, bright as glass. The wind sighing its secret song. And silence from the black heart of my mother’s dark rock. The whole world was waiting for me to speak.
And the secret, silent spirit
Of the world’s heart enfolds me;
Like a breath,
Like a mother’s embrace.
“I will free you,” I said, clenching my hands into fists.
“My darling! You will not regret this—”
“I will free you,” I repeated, “but Laura must be free first.”
It was not the answer she wanted.
“But that will delay everything! You must trust me!” she replied in despair. “I have told you—I cannot free Laura from this prison. That is the truth.”
“Then I’ll have to help her on my own. And when she is safe, and when my friends are safe—then I’ll come back for you.”
Another sigh. A breath of hope.
“Thank you, my daughter. There is something I can tell you that might be of use. To help Laura, first you must find her. The Eye of Time watches her. When I was…taken…by you and your sisters, Laura fled from me. Now she wanders in one of the secret places between this world and the shadows. Seek her at the next new moon, when the sky is dark and all things begin again. She is under the Eye of Time. Find the Eye of Time and you will find her.”
“So where is this ‘Eye’? Where should I look for it?” I asked, but at that moment a horrific scream seared through my brain. An image of my mother engulfed in black flames flashed in front of me, and I felt her agony.
“My master—sees—and hears—He is angry with me for helping you—Helen—aaah! No, please, no more—please—stop—”
Her spirit had retreated into dark realms beyond my reach, and now I was crying too. I couldn’t bear it. I would rather have faced Dr. Franzen a hundred times than hear the sound of my mother suffering for my sake.
Sinking into the damp bracken, I sobbed until my throat ached and my eyes burned. Well, I had made my choice. No doubt crazy Helen Black had got it wrong again. Everything I did led to sorrow and despair, and I deserved to suffer, like Dr. Franzen had told me a thousand times.
But the Wanderer had told me a different story. You’re special, Helen…. You want life to be beautiful, and it will be one day, I promise. You’ll be happy….
The pain in my heart seemed to ease slightly. I sat up and pushed my hair out of my eyes. It was getting late, time to get back. I had come to the Ridge that day with such high hopes, imagining that I would be able to return to my friends and say to them, “Laura is free!” But it wasn’t going to be as easy as that. Nothing would be easy, but I wasn’t going to give up. Maybe one day, all promises would come true: Celia Hartle’s promise to be a mother, the Wanderer’s promise of happiness, and Miss Scratton’s promise of salvation. And I would keep my own vow to help Laura. Only death would stop me.
Laura. She was the one who mattered now. She was the key to all the rest. When she was free I would come back to find my mother, but not until then. I had a job to do, and crying in the wind wouldn’t get me anywhere. I willed myself to feel nothing, to put on an icy armor of numbness so that I could fight this last battle; then I strode down the slope, leaving the desolate circle of stones behind me.
Fourteen
THE WITNESS OF SARAH FITZALAN
Helen slipped back to class later that morning, her face ashen but set hard, as if she had tried to shut off her emotions. She whispered briefly, “My idea didn’t work,” and then seemed to concentrate on her math book, but I noticed that she didn’t even attempt to do any work. At the end of the class she passed me a note: Saturday afternoon at Uppercliffe. The Circle. Then she walked on by without speaking. I sighed and wished that she would trust me with her secrets. But at least she had agreed to cast the sacred Circle with us to help Laura. That was a step forward.
On Saturdays we older students were allowed to go out for a ride or walk without supervision. Dr. Franzen hadn’t gotten around to changing that rule yet. I hoped he never would, though he had certainly made an impact since his arrival, and was already proving to be unpopular. Helen wouldn’t talk about him again, and I couldn’t guess what she was really thinking. I didn’t know that whenever Helen passed Dr. Franzen in the corridor, every time he read prayers at breakfast or supper, every time he marched into one of the classrooms to inspect the work that was going on, she felt sick. I was blind to her pain, and I should have seen more clearly, but despite the fact that I was proud of my Gypsy ancestry and was sometimes gifted with flashes of insight into other people’s hearts, Helen was good at keeping secrets.
The other students weren’t frightened of Dr. Franzen in the same way that Helen was, but they resented his presence. Wyldcliffe had always been such a distinctly female institution, and his new authority was like some weird kind of violation of its past. Yes, the school had been narrow and bitchy and snobby, but there had been another side. At its best, over the long years of its history, Wyldcliffe’s scholarly spinster teachers had encouraged the young women in their care to study and work hard and take pride in themselves and their achievements. But Dr. Franzen was so cold and superior, so aggressively masculine with his beard and military bearing and walking stick and his heavy, piercing stare. It was as though he despised every one of us and thought we were stupid little girls to be told what to do at every single second of the day.
Miss Dalrymple and Miss Newman, the science mistress, and the bullying sports teacher, Miss Schofield, seemed to approve of the new Master and his methods, but I disliked him intensely. Timekeeping, prayers, extra lessons, d
emerits, and detentions were enforced more rigidly than before. Dr. Franzen marched up and down the corridors, giving out orders in his cold, deep voice, making both teachers and students nervous and clumsy. Even Velvet toned down her attitude and fell into line as he restored long-forgotten rules and regulations that actually made Mrs. Hartle’s reign seem relaxed and civilized. As for the reforms that Miss Scratton had tried to introduce, they were all swept away. The common rooms she had opened up for students to relax in were now constantly supervised by a member of the staff, as though the teachers were spying on us and on one another. But it was Dr. Franzen’s decision to cancel the ball that was going to be held at Christmas with the boys of St. Martin’s Academy that annoyed the older girls. It had been planned for so long as a great treat, to open up Wyldcliffe’s ghostly Victorian ballroom and fill it once more with youth and laughter. Instead it was announced there would be a music concert on the night of the Memorial Procession in December, when prayers were said for Agnes according to the will of her father, Lord Charles Templeton. It was a longstanding Wyldcliffe tradition, and this year, Dr. Franzen announced, all students would be expected to sing in the choir or play in a classical music ensemble. I was ready to give every honor to Agnes’s memory, but quite honestly, this concert of Dr. Franzen’s sounded dreary and old-fashioned—typically, horribly Wyldcliffe.
I was disappointed about the dance, but not heartbroken. So many of the good things that Miss Scratton had introduced during the short time she had been in charge of the school had been undone, and now that she had gone I couldn’t imagine that Cal or Josh, who weren’t St. Martin’s “gentlemen,” would ever have been welcome at a Wyldcliffe ball. Besides, it was the eternal dance of good and evil that concerned us, not parties and proms. Laura was our priority now, and when Saturday afternoon came round, we set off to Uppercliffe with high hopes.