The Sweet Far Thing (84 page)

The girls clap in excitement. “What sort of game?”

“Tonight, we’ll pretend the pixies are coming. And to keep them out, we must mark all the doors and
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windows,” I answer.

Brigid says nothing but her eyes are as big as saucers. The girls squeal with delight. They want to play the game too.

“What is this?” Elizabeth stares into the pot and wrinkles her nose. “It looks like blood.”

Martha and Cecily turn up their noses.

“Really, Mrs. Nightwing. It’s unchristian,” Cecily sniffs.

The younger girls are enthralled. They scream, “Let me see! Let me see!”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Mrs. Nightwing scolds. “This is nothing more than sherry and molasses.”

“Doesn’t smell like molasses or sherry,” Elizabeth grumbles.

Brigid pours the foul mixture into small cups. “’Ere, we’ll all help.” The girls take the cups doubtfully.

They sniff the mixture and come away with wrinkled noses and curled lips. But each girl dutifully paints the mark on a window and soon it becomes a merry competition to see who can complete the most.

They laugh and jostle for position. But beads of sweat appear on Brigid’s forehead. She wipes at them with the back of her hand.

With everyone’s help, we seal and mark every door, every window. Now all we can do is wait. Dusk slips too quickly into night. The pinks and blues of day shade first into gray, then indigo. I cannot will the light to stay. I cannot hold back the dark. We peer out at the violent night. The lights of Spence blind us to the shadows of the woods.

The air has gone still as death. It’s warm, and my skin’s moist. I pull at my collar. By nine o’clock, the younger girls have grown tired of waiting for the pixies to show themselves. They yawn, but Brigid tells them we’re to stay together in the great room past midnight—it’s part of the game—and they accept it.

The older girls share disapproving glances about Gypsies in our midst. They gossip over their needlework, small stitches to match their small talk. I am alert and afraid. Every sound, every movement terrifies. Is that them? Have they come for us? But no, it is only the creak of a floorboard, the hiss of the gas lamp.

Mrs. Nightwing has a book in her hands, but she’s not reading a word of it. Her eyes dart from the doors to the windows as she watches, waits. Felicity and Ann play whist in Felicity’s tent, but I am far too agitated to join them. Instead, I hold Mother Elena’s hand and keep watch over the mantel clock as if I can divine the future there. Ten o’clock. Fifteen after. Half past. Will this day pass uneventfully? Have I been mistaken again?

The second hand moves. To my ears it sounds like the firing of a cannon. Three,
boom,
two,
boom,
one.

By eleven o’clock, most of the girls have fallen asleep. Kartik and Fowlson keep steady watch by the closed doors, stopping occasionally to glare at one another. Beside me, Mother Elena has drifted into fitful sleep.

Those of us still awake sit straighter, alert to danger. Mrs. Nightwing places her book on the end table.

Brigid clutches her rosary beads. Her lips move in silent prayer. The minutes tick past. Five, ten, fifteen.

Nothing. Outside, the dark is quiet, undisturbed. Half past eleven o’clock. Only a half hour left in the day.

My eyelids have begun to feel heavy. I am slipping under sleep’s spell. The clock’s rhythm eases me into
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rest.
Click. Click. Cli…

Silence.

My eyes snap open. The clock on the mantel has stopped. The great room is as quiet as a tomb. Kartik draws his dagger.

“What is it?” Brigid whispers.

Miss McCleethy shushes her.

I hear them too—the faint sounds of horses outside on the lawn. The sharp caw of a crow. The color drains from Mrs. Nightwing’s face. Mother Elena has stirred from her slumber. She clutches my hand tightly.

“They have come,” she says.

CHAPTER SIXTY-FIVE

THE ROOM IS UNNATURALLY STILL. SWEAT BEADS ON MYupper lip. I wipe it away with a trembling hand.

“They can’t get in,” Brigid whispers. “We’ve marked every door, every window with a seal of protection.”

“Their power is strong. They will not stop until they have what they want.” Mother Elena looks at me as she says this.

“Let’s not jump to any conclusions,” Miss McCleethy says. “A horse. A crow. It could be nothing.”

“You promised there would be no danger,” Mrs. Nightwing says again, almost to herself.

“I am not convinced that there was danger at all save for what has happened to Miss Doyle’s mind.”

From outside I hear again the sounds of restless horses, birds.

“What is it? What’s the matter?” Elizabeth says sleepily.

“Mrs. Nightwing, can’t we please go to bed now?” one of the girls asks.

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“Shhh!” Mrs. Nightwing says. “Our game will end only after midnight.”

“Mr. Fowlson, would you check?” Miss McCleethy asks.

With a nod, Mr. Fowlson peeks behind the drapes. He turns around, shaking his head. “Nuffin’.”

Brigid breathes a sigh of relief. It is so warm in the room.

“We shall not move from this room until after midnight,” Mrs. Nightwing whispers. “Just to be certain.

After that…” She stops, frowning.

“What is it?” Felicity asks.

Mrs. Nightwing is staring at the column in the center of the room. “It…it moved.”

My heart gathers speed. Instinctively, I back away. The hiss of the lamps grows louder. The flames quiver in their glass cages as if even they are afraid. We’re listening for them, for some sound to betray them. I hear the ragged cadence of our breathing. The scratching of branches against the panes. The hiss and pop of the lamps. They make for a strange symphony of terror.

Before our eyes, the creatures on the column stretch, pushing out of their stone forms.

Brigid’s eyes are wide open in horror. “Sweet Jesus…”

The nymph is freed first. She falls to the floor with a thick plop, an insect being born. But she rises to full size quickly.

“Hello, darlings,” she hisses. “Time for the sacrifice.”

The others begin to break free—a fist here, a hoof there. Their whispers tumble into a spine-chilling chorus:
“It is time for the sacrifice, sacrifice, sacrifice…”

The room brightens till my eyes ache. Inside the lamps the flames expand. They press against the glass and lick the walls. With a great roar, the lamps explode, sending a shower of glass raining down on us.

The girls awaken with screams. The naked flames flicker angrily along the walls, making us seem like apparitions in a magic-lantern show. But what I see coming off the column is no illusion. The creatures are no longer imprisoned there. They take shape in the room, hissing and laughing.

“Our sacrifice…”

“Mrs. Nightwing!” two small girls scream as a satyr reaches for them, narrowly missing.

“Run! Run to me!” Nightwing shouts over the din, and the girls make haste for her.

“Bloody ’ell!” Fowlson says in awe as a hideous winged beast swoops about the room.

“Hugo! The children!” Miss McCleethy barks, and immediately, Fowlson grabs the two girls nearest him and shoves them toward the great room’s massive doors and away from the column. Kartik clutches my hand and pulls me away just as the nymph makes a grab for me. I reach for the fireplace poker and use it as a sword to fend her off. Brigid prays her rosary loudly as she pushes the younger girls out into the relative safety of the hall.

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“Gemma! Come on!” Felicity and Ann beckon from the hall. Kartik and I have the expanse of the room to travel. Kartik has his knife at the ready, and I’ve got the fireplace poker.

“Gemma, your right!” he shouts.

I turn to my left, and the winged beast clutches at my hair with its claws.

“Ahhh,” I screech. Turning quickly, I jab it with the poker. Injured, it pulls back, and Kartik drags me toward the doors, which we shut behind us with the full weight of our bodies. Ann grabs an umbrella from a stand and shoves it through the handles. I place the poker through the other side.

“I…said…your right,” Kartik pants.

“Mary, Mother of God,” Brigid mumbles. Several of the little ones cling to her skirts. They cry and whimper, say they don’t like this game anymore.

“There, there,” Brigid says, trying to give comfort where there is none.

Cecily, Martha, and Elizabeth cower together, their screams uniting into one long howl.

“Gemma! Use your magic! Gift us to fight them!” Felicity pleads.

“No!” Mother Elena yells. “She mustn’t. It cannot be trusted now. There is no balance to the dark. No balance.” She pricks her finger and uses her blood to mark the door. “It will not hold long but it will give us time.”

“What do we do now?” Ann asks.

Kartik answers. “We stay together and we stay alive.”

The hall is dark. Every lamp has been extinguished. Mrs. Nightwing and Miss McCleethy light two lanterns. They cast long shadows that dance devilishly on the walls.

“The chapel. We should be safe there,” Mrs. Nightwing says, casting an uncertain glance toward the doors. I’ve never heard her so afraid.

“We shouldn’t go out there,” Kartik says. “That’s what they want. They could be waiting.”

The girls tremble and whimper, huddling together for protection. “What is happening?” Cecily asks through tears.

Mrs. Nightwing responds in the voice that tells us we should wear our coats and eat our turnips. “It is part of our pixies game,” she says.

“I don’t wish to play anymore,” Elizabeth cries.

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“There, there. You must be a brave girl. It’s only a game and whoever proves bravest shall have a prize,” our headmistress says. Mrs. Nightwing isn’t a good liar, but sometimes a bad lie is better than having nothing at all to hold. The frightened girls want to believe her. I can see it in their quick nods.

The creatures inside the great room begin to break through the doors, and the girls scream anew. Sharp teeth show themselves in the wood; they get to work, biting a section into splinters.

“We can’t stay here with those things,” I say to Kartik and Nightwing.

“Follow me to the chapel, girls!” Miss McCleethy says, taking the lead.

“Wait!” Kartik says, but it’s no use. There’s another loud crash from inside, and the girls run for Miss McCleethy. They join hands with Brigid and Fowlson. In a long snaking line, they follow Miss McCleethy as if she were the Pied Piper of Hamelin, and my friends and I fall in behind.

I have traipsed across Spence’s lawn and through its woods hundreds of times, but never have they seemed as frightening as they do now with only Mrs. Nightwing’s lantern and our fragile courage to light the way. The air is so still it is suffocating. I wish my mother were here. I wish Eugenia had stopped this twenty-five years ago. I wish none of this had ever happened. I wish it had not fallen to me, for I’ve failed so horribly.

When we reach the woods, my fear rises. A thin layer of frost covers the ground. The flowers are dead, strangled on their stalks. We can see our breath in the dim light.

“I’m cold,” one of the girls says, and she is shushed by Brigid.

Kartik holds up a hand. We hold our breath and listen.

“What is it?” Fowlson whispers.

Kartik nods toward a copse of trees. The shadows move. My hand strays out, searching for the trunk of a tree, and it comes away covered in frost. A snort comes from just behind the tree. I slide my eyes toward the sound. A horse’s nose peeks out from behind the large fir. Steam pushes out its nostrils.