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. . . .”
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
“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.