A Great and Terrible Beauty

  Outraged, the thing howls and the dark races toward us, shrieking.

  “Pippa! Pippa!” Felicity shrieks till she’s hoarse.

  “Felicity, we’ve got to go—now!”

  The wraith is nearly upon us. There’s no time to think. I can only react. I reach the door and pull us through into the caves as the candles flicker and cough with the last of their light. We’re all here, safe and accounted for, it seems. But on the floor, Pippa’s body has gone rigid. It seizes uncontrollably.

  Ann’s voice is fluttery. “Pippa? Pippa?”

  Felicity is sobbing. “You left her there! You did it!”

  The last candle sputters and dies.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  “YOU’VE GOT TO HELP ME!”

  I’m a wild-eyed thing standing outside Kartik’s tent. He doesn’t argue with me, doesn’t say a word, not even when I tell him what’s happened. He hoists Pippa over his shoulder and carries her through the woods all the way to Spence. The only time he stops is when we pass the ravine and the corpse of the deer we’ve left there. He helps us get Pippa to her room, and then I’m racing for Mrs. Nightwing’s door. I bang furiously, calling her name with a desperation I can’t hold back.

  Our headmistress throws open the door. Her nightcap is sliding down her long, graying braids. “What on earth? Miss Doyle, what are you doing in your clothes? Why aren’t you in bed?”

  “It’s Pippa,” I gasp. “She . . .” I can’t finish, but it doesn’t matter. Mrs. Nightwing has caught the alarm in my voice. She springs into action with that immovable firmness of hers, a quality I’ve never truly appreciated until this moment.

  “Tell Brigid to call for Dr. Thomas at once.”

  The lights burn through the night. I sit at the window in the library, hugging my knees in my arms, making myself as small as possible. At the edges of sleep, I see her. Wet. Hollow-eyed. Slipping under the smooth surface with a scream for help. I dig my fingernails into my palm to stay awake. Felicity paces past me. She avoids looking at me, but her silence speaks for her.

  You left her there, Gemma. Alone in that watery grave.

  A lantern moves across the lawn. Kartik. The light bobs and shakes in its metal cage. I have to strain to see him. He’s carrying a shovel, and I know that he’s going back to what he couldn’t ignore in the ravine. He’s going to bury the deer.

  But whether he’s doing it to protect me or himself, I cannot know.

  I sit for a long time and watch the night bruise toward morning, the purple turning yellow, the yellow fading till it’s as if the dark has never marked the skin of the sky at all. By the time the sun peeks over the trees, I’m ready to take one last journey.

  “Keep this,” I say, crumpling the crescent eye amulet into Felicity’s hands.

  “But why?”

  “If I don’t come back . . .” I stop. “If something should go wrong, you’ll need to find the others. They’ll need to know you’re one of them.”

  She stares at the silver amulet.

  “It will be up to you to come after me.” I pause. “Or close the realms for good. Do you understand?”

  “Yes,” she whispers. “Promise you’ll come back.”

  The scrap of silk from my mother’s dress is soft in my tight fist. “I’m going to try.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  THERE ARE NO BIRDS. NO FLOWERS. NO SUNSET. THERE’S an eerie grayness to everything beyond the bright door. The empty boat is still on the river, stuck fast in a thin sheet of ice.

  “If you want me, here I am,” I shout. It echoes all around me. I am, I am, I am.

  “Gemma? Gemma!” My mother emerges from behind a tree. Her voice, sure and strong, draws me in.

  “Mother?”

  Tears spring to her eyes. “Gemma, I was afraid . . . but you’re all right.” She smiles, and everything inside me bends to her. I’m tired and uncertain but she’s here now. She’ll help me set things right.

  “Mother, I’m sorry. I’ve made a mess of things. You told me not to use the magic yet, and I did, and now it’s all ruined and Pippa’s . . .” I can’t bring myself to say anything more, can’t even think it.

  “Shhh, Gemma, no time for tears. You’re here to bring Pippa back, aren’t you?”

  I nod.

  “There’s no time to lose, then. Quickly, before the creature returns.”

  I follow her past the silver arch, deep into the garden, to the center of those tall crystals that hold so much power.

  “Put your hands on the runes.”

  I hesitate. I don’t know why.

  “Gemma,” she says, green eyes narrowing. “You have to trust me or your friend will be lost forever. Do you want that on your conscience?”

  I think of Pippa struggling in the icy water where she fell. Where I left her. My hands hover over the runes.

  “That’s it, my darling. Everything’s forgotten now. Soon, we’ll be together again.”

  I put my left hand to the rune. The vibration travels through me. I’m weakened from our other trips, and the magic starts to pull me under with its power. It’s too much for me. Mother opens her hand to me. There it is, pink and alive and open. I have only to take hold of it. My arm rises. My fingers reach toward hers, till my skin vibrates with the nearness of her. Our fingers touch.

  “At last . . .”

  Instantly, the thing that hides in my mother’s shape emerges, rising high as the stones themselves. With a great yell, the creature grabs hold of my arm. I can feel the coldness of it sliding through my arm, into my veins, creeping toward my heart. The heat leaving me. I’m no match for it.

  Everything falls away. We’re falling fast together, past the mountain and the churning sky, through the veil that separates the realms from the mortal world. The thing cackles in delight.

  “At last . . . at last . . .”

  This new magic takes me by surprise as it surges through me, joining to my will. It is overwhelming, the raw nakedness of this power. I never want to let it go. I could use it to control, to wound, to win.

  The creature cackles. “Yes . . . it’s intoxicating, isn’t it?”

  Yes, oh, yes. Is this what my mother and Circe felt, what they were afraid of losing—a power they could not have in their own world? Anger. Joy. Ecstasy. Rage. All theirs. All mine.

  “We’re almost there,” the thing whispers.

  Below me London spreads out like a lady’s fan, ornate and delicate. A city I wanted to see when I lived in India. A city I still want to see. On my own.

  The thing senses my discomfort. “You could rule it,” it says, nearly licking my ear.

  Yes, yes, yes.

  No. Not really. Not attached to this creature. The power would never be mine. It would control me. No, no, no. Let it win. Be joined. I’m weary with choice. It makes me heavy. So heavy I could sleep forever. Let Circe win. Abandon my family and friends. Float downstream.

  No.

  At this the thing seems to grow weaker. You have to know yourself, know what you want. That’s what Mother told me. What I want . . . what I want . . .

  I want to go back. And it’s coming with me. Suddenly, London shrinks to a pinpoint, out of reach. I’m pulling the thing back from the world with me, back to the mountaintop, back to the grotto and the runes.

  Shrieks and howls, the hideous cries of the damned lash at me. “You tricked us!”

  It expands into a ghastly, churning wall that reaches up to the sky. I’ve never seen anything more terrifying, and for a moment, I can’t feel anything but a fear so real I’m frozen there. Those skeletal hands grip tightly around my neck, squeezing. Panicked, I fight back, using the magic to wound it as much as possible. Each time it comes back, taking more and more of my energy.

  The hands come around my neck again, but I’ve got very little fight left.

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

  I can’t think. Can barely breathe. Overhead, the sky roils gray and black. We sa
t 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. Bu
t 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.”