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 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.