The Sweet Far Thing (34 page)

“Pip, I’ve got a present for you,” Felicity says, holding up the box.

“And I can’t wait to see it. I’ll just be a moment!”

Felicity’s face falls as Pip spirits me away to the crumbling abbey, humming a merry tune. Once we’re safely behind the rotting tapestry, she empties her berries into a large bowl and grabs my hands. “All right, I’m ready for the magic.”

I pull away. “And hello to you, too, Pip.”

“Gemma,” she says, putting her arms round my waist. “You do know how very much I love you, don’t you?”

“Is it me or the magic you love?”

Hurt, Pippa takes refuge on the altar, tearing marigolds from the floor by their stalks and tossing them aside. “You wouldn’t deny me some measure of happiness, would you, Gemma? I shall be trapped here an eternity with no one but those coarse, common girls as my companions.”

“Pippa,” I say gently. “I want your happiness, truly I do. But someday soon, I’ll have to return the magic to the Temple and form an alliance to oversee its safety. I won’t always have it at my fingertips like this.

Have you given any thought to how you will spend the rest of your days?”

Tears pool in her eyes. “Can’t I join your alliance?”

“I don’t know,” I say. “You’re not—” I bite the word off before it comes out of my mouth.

“Alive? A member of a tribe?” A fat tear rolls down her cheek. “I don’t belong to your world and I don’t belong to theirs. I’m not a part of the Winterlands, either. I don’t belong anywhere, do I?”

It’s as if she’s pierced me straight through, for how often have I felt that way myself?

Pip buries her head in her hands. “You don’t know how it is for me, Gemma. How I count the hours until the three of you return.”

“It is the same for us,” I assure her. For when we are together, everything seems possible, and there is no end in sight. We will simply go on like this forever, dancing and singing and running through the forest laughing. That alone is enough to make me take her hands and share the power with her.

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“Here,” I say. I stretch out my arms and she comes running.

“Pip, I’ve a present for you!” Felicity says again when we return. She unfurls the fur-trimmed cape.

“Oh,” Pip sighs, cuddling it. “It’s extraordinary! Darling Fee!” She gives Felicity a sweet kiss on the cheek, and Felicity smiles as if she were the happiest girl in the world.

Bessie Timmons muscles between them. She holds the cape up, examining it. “Don’t seem so special.”

“Now, Bessie,” Pip scolds, snatching it from her hands. “That won’t do. A lady must say something kind or not speak at all.”

Bessie leans against a marble column whose many cracks are threaded with weeds. “Guess I’ll keep it shut, then.”

Pippa lifts her hair and allows Felicity to secure the cape’s ribbons around her slender neck, and she preens and prances about in it.

Ann and the factory girls take over the altar. She tells them about
Macbeth.
She makes it sound like a ghost story, which I suppose it is.

“I ain’t never been to no real theater,” Mae Sutter says when Ann finishes.

“We shall have our own here,” Pippa promises. She settles into the throne as if born to it.

Felicity finds an old drape. Under her touch it becomes a cape just like the one she’s given Pip. It’s lovely, but when she settles beside Pip, the illusion shows. It cannot compare to the real one. “Our Ann is to have an audience with Lily Trimble.”

“Go on!” Mae laughs.

“I am,” Ann says. “In the West End.”

“Back there,” Mercy says with a mixture of admiration and jealousy. “Remember them chips we could get on Wednesdays, Wendy?”

“Aye. Greasy.”

“Drippin’ with grease and pipin’ hot!” Mercy’s smile fades. “I miss it.”

“Oi, not me.” Bessie Timmons jumps up from her spot by the fire and pushes to the front. “Nuttin’ but misery. Work from dark to dark. And nuttin’ waitin’ for yer at home, neither, ’cept yer mum with too many moufs to feed and no’ enuf to go round.”

Mercy keeps her eyes on her boots. “Wasn’t all bad. M’sister Gracie was right sweet. And I ’ad grand dreams.” Tears come, and she sniffles, wiping her nose.

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Bessie crouches low and brings her snarl to the girl’s face. “A bellyache and stiff fingers from the cold is wot you ’ad, Mercy Paxton. Don’t go cryin’ fer it.”

Mae steps in. “We’ve got ever’thin’ here, Mercy. Don’t you see?”

“Mercy, come to me,” Pippa commands. The girl struggles up from the floor and walks shyly to her.

Pippa cups the girl’s face in her palm, smiling at her. “Mercy, that’s all done now, so let’s dry our tears.

We’re here, and it shall be everything we ever dreamed it could be. You’ll see.”

The girl rubs her nose on her sleeve, and with that one movement, her youth shows. She’s no more than thirteen. It’s terrible to think of her working in that factory from sunup till sundown.

“Who wants to go on a merry adventure, then?” Pippa asks.

The girls erupt in enthusiastic cries. Even Mercy manages a smile.

“What sort of adventure?” Ann asks.

Pippa giggles. “You’ll have to trust me. Now, close your eyes and follow me. There shall be no peeking!”

With Pip at the lead, we’re pulled along holding hands, a paper chain of girls. We’re out of the castle. I can feel the cool of the Borderlands on my skin.

“Open!” Pip commands.

Before us is an enormous hedge, well over eight feet tall. At one end I spy an entrance.

Ann breaks into a grin. “It’s a maze!”

“Yes,” Pip says, clapping. “Isn’t it splendid? Who’s game?”

“I am,” Bessie Timmons says. She runs around the corner, disappearing into the maze’s belly.

“And me.” Mae runs after her.

“I love a good hide-and-seek. Find me, Fee!” With that, Pippa pulls up her skirts, and Felicity, giggling, gives chase. I’m the last in. I don’t know how the others could have gotten away from me so fast. I turn corner after corner, but all I see is a maddening flutter of color and then nothing. The hedge walls are the most unusual I’ve ever seen, made of tightly woven clover and small black flowers, and I swear they shift so that when I look behind me, the passage has changed. The isolation sends my mind into strange corners, and I quicken my steps.

“Ann!” I cry.

“Over here!” she shouts back. The sound comes from everywhere at once, so I cannot be at all certain where to go next. I hear whispering. Is it coming from up ahead?

When I go round the edge, there are Felicity and Pippa standing close, foreheads touching, hands clasped. They murmur in private conference, and I can hear only a word here, a phrase there.

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“…there’s a way…”

“…but how…”

“…we could…together…you see?”

“…Pip…”

“…promise me…”

“…promise…”

I step on a downed branch. It breaks with a loud crack. At once, they drop hands and charm me with too-quick smiles.

“You oughtn’t sneak up like that, Gemma,” Fee scolds, but her hand is at her heart, and her face is flushed.

Pippa jumps in, all smiles. “Fee was teaching me how to curtsy for the Queen. It’s hideously difficult, but she can do it brilliantly, can’t you, Fee?”

On cue, Felicity drops to the ground, her arms holding her skirt, her head low. Those cool eyes dart a glance upward at me.

“You were discussing the curtsy,” I repeat dumbly.

“Yes.” Pippa’s smile is a lie.

“It’s no matter. You needn’t tell me,” I say, turning.

“Gemma, you’re being silly!” Felicity calls after me. “It was the curtsy we were speaking of!”

I hear them whispering behind my back as I walk away. Fine. Let them have their secrets. I twist and turn through the maze. The magic swirls and eddies inside me. I could eat the world, devour it whole. I need to run. To hit. To wound and heal in equal measure.

I
need,
and it is more than I can bear.

On nimble feet, I fly into the forest. Where my hands touch, something new is born. Strange flowers as tall as men. A flock of butterflies with shiny yellow wings edged in black. Dark purple fruit, fat and heavy on the branch. I squeeze one hard in my hand and the juice turns to maggots. I throw it quickly away from me; the disgusting creatures burrow into the earth, and the earth responds with a crop of wildflowers.

Lights blink in the trees, and a fairy creature appears. “Such power,” she says, marveling.

My head is light; I’m swollen with magic. Suddenly, I want only to get rid of it. “Here,” I say, laying my hand upon her head. It’s as cold as snow where we touch, and I glimpse a vast darkness before I pull away.

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The creature turns loops, trailing sparkles. “Ahhh, I know you now,” she purrs, and trails a finger across my heart.

I shake my head. “No one knows me.”

The creature circles me slowly till I feel dizzy. “There is a place where you
will
be known. Loved.” Her cold breath whispers in my ear. “Wanted. You need only to follow.”

She flies deep into the fog banks that obscure the Winterlands, and I give chase, letting the mist swallow me till my friends’ laughter is a faint memory of sound. I’m farther in than I’ve ever been. Slimy vines slither across my bare feet like serpents come aground; I hold still, calming my breath.

The fairy creature hovers near my shoulder. Her eyes are black jewels. “Listen,” she whispers.

Close in my ear, I hear a voice from the Winterlands, as soft as a mother’s goodnight kiss: “Tell us your fears and your desires….”

Something deep inside me wants to answer. Such longing, as if I’ve found a piece of myself I never knew was missing till now.

The voice comes again: “This is where you belong, where your destiny lies. There is nothing to fear….”

The fairy’s lips turn up in a smile. “Do you hear it?”

I nod, but I can’t speak. The pull is strong. I want only to go, to join with whatever waits on the other side.

“I could show you the way to the Tree of All Souls,” the thing with the bright golden wings says. “And then you would know true power. You’d never be lonely again.”

The vines caress my ankles; one slithers up my leg. The mist parts; the gate to the Winterlands beckons.

I take a step toward it.

The little creature shoos me on with her spindly fingers. “That’s it. Go on.”

“Gemma!” My name drifts through the mist, and I take a step back.

“Don’t listen! Go on!” the fairy hisses, but my friends call out again, and this time I hear something else—horses riding hard and fast.

I turn away from the Winterlands and the fairy creature, running till the fog thins and I’m back near the castle. The girls spill out of the maze. “What is it? What’s happening?” Ann shouts. She’s got Wendy by the arm.

“Over there!” Felicity shouts, and we run to the bramble wall.

Coming quickly up the path is a band of centaurs, Creostus in the lead. They slow at the sight of us.

Creostus points to me. “Priestess! You’re coming with me.”

“She isn’t going anywhere with the likes of you,” Felicity says, standing to my right like a soldier.

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The centaur paces on his strong legs. “She is called by Philon. She must account for herself.”

“We shall accompany you, Gemma,” Ann vows.

“But we were having such fun.” Pippa pouts.

“Shall we come?” Felicity asks, but she doesn’t let go of Pip’s hand.

I think of the two of them whispering behind my back, sharing secrets, leaving me out. Well, perhaps I’d like a secret of my own.

“No. I’ll go alone,” I say, and duck through the brambles to the other side.

“Yes, Gemma will sort it all out, won’t you?” Pippa says, dragging Felicity toward the maze again.

Creostus eyes Wendy hungrily. “I should like to take
you
with me and make you my queen. Have you ever ridden on a centaur’s back?”

Mae pulls Wendy away. “’Ave a care, sir. We are ladies.”

“Yes, I know. Ladies. My favorite sort.”

“Creostus, if you’ve done with your suit of Miss Wendy, I shall accompany you to Philon,” I interrupt, wondering what is so urgent that Philon has sent for me.

Creostus’s booming laugh leaves gooseflesh upon my arms. He paces close to me. “Jealous, Priestess?

Do you wish to compete for my affections? I should like to see that.”

“I’m sure you would. But you will die first and so let us journey to Philon, if you please.”

“She worships me,” he says with a wink, and I have the urge to put a bonnet on his head and paint him dancing to the pipes to hang on a fashionable lady’s wall.