The Sweet Far Thing (77 page)

“It’s my fault,” I say, dropping the note on her desk.

“Poppycock!” Nightwing barks, and it is what I needed—a bracing wind at my back. “I shall have
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Brigid help you with your things. Mr. Gus will drive you to the train station first thing in the morning.”

“Thank you,” I murmur.

“My thoughts are with you, Miss Doyle.” And I think she means it.

On the long walk to my room, Ann runs up to me, out of breath.

“What is it?” I can see the alarm on her face.

“It’s Felicity,” she gasps. “I tried to reason with her. She wouldn’t listen.”

“What do you mean?”

“She went into the realms. She’s gone to be with Pip,” she says, wide-eyed. “Forever.”

CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX

WE STAND BESIDE THE HALF-FORMEDEASTWING. FIRE-FLIESblink in the trees, and I have to look twice to be certain they are only those harmless insects. The passageway into the realms feels colder to me, and I hurry my steps. The moment we step through the door in the hill, I can feel that something’s not right. Everything’s a bit gray, as if the London fog has rolled in.

“What is that smell?” Ann asks.

“Smoke,” I answer.

In the distance, a large black plume of smoke scars the sky. It is rising from the mountain that houses the Temple and the Caves of Sighs, where the Hajin live.

“Gemma?” Ann says, her eyes wide.

“Come on!” I shout.

We race to the poppy fields. Ash rains down, coating our skin in a fine layer of silver-gray soot.

Coughing, we fight our way up the mountain. The path bleeds with crushed poppies. Ann nearly stumbles over the body of an Untouchable. There are more. Their charred corpses line the path to the smoldering Temple. Asha stumbles from the smoking wreckage.

“Lady Hope…”

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She sags against me, and I rush her to a rock where the air is not so heavy with ash.

“Asha! Asha, who has done this?” I sputter.

She collapses, coughing. Her scorched orange sari settles around her like the singed plumage of a magnificent bird.

“Asha!” I shout. “Tell me.”

She looks into my eyes. Her face is streaked with black. “It…it was the forest folk.”

Gorgon calls from the river below. Ann and I take Asha to the ship and bring her water, which she drinks like a woman whose thirst will never be slaked. I shake with anger. I cannot believe that Philon and the forest folk would do such a thing. I thought them to be peaceful. Perhaps the Order was right after all and the magic cannot be shared.

“Tell me what happened,” I say.

“They came as we slept. They swarmed the mountain. There was no way out. One of them held a torch to the Temple. ‘This is for Creostus,’ it said. And the Temple burned.”

“This was retaliation?”

She nods, wiping her face with the moistened edge of her sari. “I told them we had no part in the slaughter of the centaur. But they did not believe me. The decision was in their eyes already. They came for war, and they would not be stopped.”

She puts her trembling fingers to her lips as the Temple burns. Where the flames fall on the poppy fields, beautiful curls of red smoke rise. “We have never questioned. It is not our way.”

I put my arm around her shoulders. “Your way needs to change, Asha. It is time to question everything.”

We form several lines with the Hajin, passing buckets of water till we douse what we can of the flames.

“Why do you not cure this malady with magic?” a Hajin boy asks.

“It isn’t a good course just now, I’m afraid,” I say, looking at the ruined, smoldering Temple.

“But the magic will fix everything, won’t it?” He presses, and I can see how desperately he wants to believe, how much he wants me to sweep my hand over his broken home and make it whole. I wish I could.

I shake my head and pass the water down the line. “It can only do so much. The rest is up to us.”

Gorgon ferries us through the golden veil to the island home of the forest folk. They flank the shore in an ominous line, their newly fashioned spears and crossbows at the ready. Gorgon keeps us a safe distance
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from the shore—close enough that I can be heard but far enough that we can retreat. Philon glides to the water’s edge. The creature’s leaf coat has taken on tinges of orange, gold, and red. The high collar blazes about Philon’s slender neck.

“You are not welcome here, Priestess,” Philon shouts.

“I have just come from the Temple. You burned it!”

Philon stands imperiously. “So it is.”

“Why?” I ask, because I can think of no truer question.

“They took one of our own! Would you deny us justice?”

“And so you took twenty of theirs? How is this justice?”

Asha stands feebly. She clutches the ship’s railing. “We did not kill the centaur.”

“So you say,” Philon thunders. “Then who did?”

“Look within for the answer,” Asha replies cryptically.

Neela throws a rock at us. It lands in the water, spraying the side of the ship. “We’ll have no more of your lies! Be gone!”

She throws another and it narrowly misses me, landing on the deck. On impulse, I grab the rock, feeling its weight in my hand.

Asha stays my arm. “Retaliation is a dog chasing its tail.”

There is wisdom in what she says, but I want to throw the rock, and it takes every bit of strength to hold it firmly in my palm.

“Philon, did you stop to consider this: How will we join hands in an alliance now that you have burned the Temple?”

A ripple passes through the assembled folk. And for a moment, I see a hint of doubt in Philon’s cool eyes. “The time for alliances is past. Let the magic take its own course now. We shall see who stands in the end.”

“But I need your help! The Winterlands creatures are plotting against us! Circe has gone to them—”

“More lies!” Neela shouts, and the forest folk turn away.

“Come, Most High,” Gorgon says. “We have done all there is to do here.” She steers us away from the shore, but it is not until we are well past the golden veil that I am able to loosen my grip on the rock. I drop it into the river, where it makes not a single sound.

Ann takes my arm. Her face is grim. “We must find Felicity.”

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We find Pippa and the girls in the castle, drinking wine and playing. Dusky light coats the chapel in a pretty gloom. Bessie pulls the wings from a dragonfly, and she and Mae laugh as it hops about on the floor, desperate to fly away. Pippa sits on the throne, eating berries from a golden chalice till her lips are a deep shade of blue. Platters and goblets are stacked high with the fruit.

“Where is Fee?” I ask. “Have you seen her?”

“I’m here.” Felicity waltzes in, outfitted in her warrior chain mail, her cheeks rosy and her eyes bright.

“What do you want?”

“Fee, you can’t stay here,” I say.

She takes a seat beside Pip. “Why not?”

“The realms are falling to chaos. The tribes are at war, the Temple’s been razed, and Circe has gone to the Winterlands to join with the creatures.”

“Nothing has touched us here,” Pip says, gesturing to the chapel walls. “Now, shall we have another ball this evening?”

“Pippa,” I say, incredulous. “We can’t have a party.”

Pippa’s laughter is light and girlish. “Let the creatures have at each other. They’re no match for me.”

She lowers a berry onto her tongue and licks her fingers.

“That’s right,” Bessie agrees. “Miss Pippa will serve notice.”

She and Mae gaze at Pippa with a fierce devotion, and I want to knock Pippa from her throne.

“Did you tell them how you came to be here? Why you can’t cross?”

Pippa’s eyes flash. “Oh, Gemma, really.” She shares a grin with the factory girls. It turns to a round of giggling that makes my skin crawl.

“She asked me to help her cross the river, but she couldn’t go on. Because she stayed too long here.

Because she ate the berries,” I say. I knock over a chalice; the fat purplish berries spill across the floor and are swallowed by the vines.

“You meant to cross? Without telling me?” Felicity says softly.

Pippa ignores Fee’s hurt. She fixes those wavering eyes on me. “What does it matter now? For I was saved for a higher purpose.”

I look around at the girls’ adoring faces. Wendy isn’t among them.

“Where’s Wendy?” I demand. In Mercy’s eyes, I see a flicker of fear.

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“She ran away,” Pippa answers coolly.

Next time it will not be a bunny.

“Will you tell me she bit through her cage, too?”

Pippa shrugs. “If it will amuse you.”

“Tell me where she is!” I bang my hand on the altar.

Pippa puts her hands to her hips, a taunting pose. “Or what?”

Felicity steps in. “Pippa, stop.”

“Are you on her side now?” Pippa demands.

“There are no sides,” Ann says. “Are there?”

“There are now,” Pippa answers, and my blood pumps a little faster.

“She took Wendy to the Win’erlands,” Mercy says quickly.

Bessie hits her hard across the mouth, knocking her to the floor. “’At’s a bloody lie, Mercy Paxton.

Take it back!”

“No one likes a traitor, Mercy,” Pippa scolds.

The girl cowers on the floor. The castle groans. The vines are blighted, diseased. When they move, they seem to calcify. One, heavy as stone, creeps over my foot, and my foot is nearly trapped under it. I yank it free.

“Pippa,” I say, “what have you done?”

“What you wouldn’t. Poor Gemma, always so afraid of her power. Well, not me.”

“Pip, you didn’t make a bargain with those creatures.”

“What if I did?”

Felicity shakes her head. “You didn’t.”

Pippa strokes her face gently. “It was such a small thing they asked. A sacrifice no one would miss. I offered that silly bunny—that’s all. You see what we’ve been given in return!” She opens her arms wide but all I see is a moldering castle corrupted by weeds.

“Tell me that you didn’t take her to the Winterlands, that I’m wrong for thinking it,” I plead.

“I shall tell you whatever you’d like to hear,” she says, gorging on berries.

“Tell me the truth!”

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Pip’s eyes flash. Her teeth are blue-black with juice. “She. Was. A. Burden.”

Felicity clutches her stomach. “Oh, God.”

“No, Fee, you’ll see. It’s going to be so wonderful.” Pippa grins coquettishly at the others. “Shall I tell you what the tree promised? What I saw there after my sacrifice? I saw the Order’s time ending and something new being born,” she says, her voice tinged with wonder. “Their days have passed. Our time is at hand.”

The girls move close and sit at her feet, lost in the pull of her sureness. Her features are a mesmerizing amalgam of before and after. The delicate cheekbones, the long tangle of black curls, the dainty nose are still there. But every now and then, her eyes waver between a deep violet and an alarming blue-white circled by black rings. It is a new, savage beauty, and I cannot look away.

“I heard the voice whisper sweetly in my head:
So special you are. You are chosen. I will exalt you.
”

She smiles brightly with a giggle. Cold fear slithers in my belly.

“I am the chosen one.
I
am the way. To follow me, you must be as I am.”

With two fingers, Felicity turns Pip’s face gently to hers. “Pip, what are you saying?”

Pippa wrenches free of Felicity’s touch and marches purposefully to Bessie. She offers the chalice of berries. “Would you follow me, Bessie?”