by Libba Bray
“Yes, but that is not all of the story. You must see.” Eugenia moves her hands over my eyes. When I open them, I see the young priestesses, no older than I, cowering before a band of ghastly creatures. One priestess has escaped; she hides behind a rock, watching.
“This dagger is rich in magic,” one of the frightened priestesses says, offering the jeweled piece. “It can be shaped to any purpose you would give it. Take it in exchange for our freedom.”
The Winterlands wraith snarls at her. “You mean to placate us with this?” He grabs the dagger away. “If it is powerful, then let us put its gifts to work for us now!”
The creatures surround the cowering priestesses. The hideous wraith raises the dagger and it descends again and again, until all that can be seen of the girls is one blood-smeared hand reaching toward the sky, and then, even that falls.
Where their blood spills, the ground cracks open. A mighty tree rises, as barren and twisted as the creatures’ hearts—and full of magic. The creatures bow before it.
“At last, we have power of our own,” the wraith says.
“It is the sacrifice that made it so,” another hisses.
“What has been forged in blood demands blood. We will offer it souls in payment, and twist its power to our needs,” the wraith announces.
“But there was one saving grace,” Eugenia whispers, waving her hand again, and now I see the young priestess still behind the rock. While the creatures revel in their new power, she steals the dagger and runs quickly to the Order. She tells the tale, and the high priestesses listen, their faces grim. The runes are constructed, the veil between the worlds is closed, and the dagger passes from priestess to priestess through the generations.
“The Order protected the dagger from all harm. And we did not dare speak of the tree for fear someone might be tempted. Soon, its existence passed into myth.” Eugenia wipes away the image with a wave of her hand. “I was the last guardian of the dagger, but I don’t know what has become of it.”
“I’ve seen it in my visions, with one of your former students, Miss Wilhelmina Wyatt!” I blurt out.
“Mina appears in your visions?” Eugenia asks. Worry limns her face. “What does she show you?”
I shake my head. “I cannot make sense of most of it. But I’ve seen the dagger in her possession.”
Eugenia nods, thinking. “She was always attracted to it, to the darkness. I hope she is to be trusted….” Her gaze is steely. “You must find the dagger. It is imperative.”
“Why?”
Now we are on a mountaintop. The wind licks at us. It threatens to turn my hair into a lion’s mane. Far below in the valley, I see my friends, as small as birds.
“I suspect that a rebellion brews once again—that old alliances are being forged between the tribes of the realms and the Winterlands creatures,” Eugenia says. “And that one of our own has made a wicked pact in exchange for power. I didn’t believe it possible before, and that naïveté cost me dearly,” she says, and I feel shamed for what my mother and Circe did. I want to tell her about Circe, but I cannot bring myself to do it.
“But I thought the Winterlands creatures were gone,” I say instead.
“They are here somewhere, make no mistake. They have a fearsome warrior to lead them—a former brother of the Rakshana.”
“Amar,” I gasp.
“His power is great. But so is yours.” She cups my chin in her cold hand. On the horizon, the inky sky pulses with strange, beautiful lights again. “You must be careful, Gemma. If the Order has been corrupted in some fashion, they could use your power against you.”
Electricity wounds the sky, leaving momentary scars of light upon my eyes seconds after. “How so?”
“They could make you see what they wish you to see. It will be as if you are mad. You must be vigilant at all times. Trust no one. Be on your guard. For if you fall, we are lost forever.”
My heart’s beating has begun to match the storm’s frenzy. “What should I do?”
Light pulses again, and I see the hard determination in Eugenia’s eyes. “Without the dagger, they cannot bind my power to the tree. You must find it and bring it to me in the Winterlands.”
“What will you do with it?”
“What I must to make things right and restore peace,” she says, taking my hand. Suddenly, we stand at the edge of a lake where the mist clears. A ferry carrying three women emerges. An old woman with a timeworn face pushes the barge along the placid water with a long pole. Another woman, young and beautiful, raises a lamp to guide their passage. A third woman stands holding a cornucopia. They move along, taking no notice of us.
“Those women—I’ve seen their likenesses on the stones that guard the secret door. Who are they?”
“They have been called by many names—the Moirai, Parcae, Wyrd, Fates, the Norn, and the Badb. We have always known them as the Three. When a priestess’s death is imminent, she walks through the mists of time and is met at the crossing by the Three, where she is granted a final request and a choice.”
“A choice,” I repeat, not understanding at all.
“She may choose to travel on their barge to a world of beauty and honor. When she has crossed safely, her likeness will appear in the immortal stones as testament.”
“So all of those women depicted on the stones…”
She smiles and it is as if the sun shines only on me. “Were once priestesses like you and me.”
“You said she had a choice. But why would she not choose to go on to such a place?”
“She may feel that some important duty has been left unfinished. If she refuses, she returns to this life to complete the task, but she forgoes glory.”
The crone guides the ferry farther out on the lake. The mist rushes in to hide them.
Eugenia watches until they’re gone. “I should like to be freed, to take, at last, my place in that land beyond and on the stones that sing our history.” She strokes my face as lovingly as a mother. “Will you bring me the dagger?”
The fog envelops us. “Yes,” I answer, and we are once again before the Tree of All Souls. I stare up at its majesty—the three strong branches, the thousands of smaller twigs twisting out and around, the faint veins underneath the tree’s skin. My friends still stand with their hands to it, looks of awe on their faces. It’s as if they are listening to voices I cannot hear, and I feel apart and alone.
“What is happening to my friends?” I ask.
“It is the magic of the tree. It shows them the secrets within their hearts,” Eugenia answers. “I must go now, Gemma.”
“No, please. I need to know—”
“You mustn’t come back until you have the dagger. Only then will we be safe.”
“Don’t go!” I call. I try to grab hold but she’s as inconsequential as air. She vanishes into the tree. It absorbs her. The tree throbs; the veins pump its blood faster.
“Would you see?” the tree calls in a strangled whisper.
Around me, my friends have already glimpsed whatever wonders lie inside, and I am weary of standing apart.
“Yes,” I answer, defiant. “I would.”
“Then look inside,” it murmurs.
I press my palms against the rough bark of the trunk and am lost.
Images dance around me like the fractured pieces in a kaleidoscope. In one sliver of the prism, Mae sits at a table crowded with an opulent feast. As she finishes each dish, another arrives to take its place. Beneath the table, lean dogs sit, panting and hopeful. They fight each other for scraps, tearing into each other’s flesh till they are bloody, but Mae takes no notice. She will never be hungry again.
I see Bessie in a fine gown made completely of gold and jewels, an ermine cape resting upon her shoulders. She walks past the rows of bedraggled, dirty women sewing in the factory where she lost her life, until she reaches the owner, a fat man with a cigar in his mouth. She slaps him hard, again and again, until he cowers at her feet, no better than an animal. Ann is bathed
in the glow of footlights. She bows to her audience, drinking in their thunderous applause. Wendy has a small cottage with a rose garden. She waters the buds and they flower into magnificent blossoms of red and pink. Mercy rides in a fine man’s carriage. I see Felicity dancing with Pippa in the castle, the two of them laughing as if at a joke only they are privy to, and then I see Pippa sitting on the throne, eyes blazing.
Beside me, Pippa wears a rapturous smile. “Yes,” she says to no one I can see. “Chosen, chosen…”
“Look closer,” the tree whispers, and my eyelids flutter. Everything I lace tightly to myself is loosed.
I open a pair of doors and I’m back in India. It must not yet be summer, for Father and Mother sit drinking their tea out of doors. Father reads aloud from Punch, and it makes Mother laugh. Tom is a blur of a boy as he runs past with two small wooden knights locked in fierce battle in his hands, that one impossible lock of hair falling across his eyes. Sarita scolds him for nearly upending Father’s old urn. And I am there. I am there under a long ribbon of bright blue sky, not a cloud to be seen. Father and Mother smile upon seeing me, and I feel a part of them all; not separate and alone. I am loved.
“Come to me, Gemma,” Mother calls. Her arms open wide to receive me, and I start to run, for I feel that if I can reach her, all will be well; I need to catch the moment and hold it tightly. But the more I run, the farther away she gets. And then I am in the cold, dark parlor of my grandmother’s house. Father in his study, Tom on his way out, Grandmama with her calls to pay; none of us seeing the others. All of us alone, a few odd beads strung together by sadness, by habit, by duty. A tear trickles slowly down my cheek. This power’s truth is like a poison I cannot spit out.
Small pale creatures crawl from under the rocks and stones. They touch the hem of my gown and stroke my arms. “This is where you belong, where you are needed, special,” they say. “Love us as we love you.”
I turn my head, and there is Kartik, bare-chested, walking toward me. I take his face into my hands, kissing him hard and recklessly. I want to crawl inside his skin. This magic is nothing like the magic we have played with before. It is raw and urgent, with no facade to hide behind. This is what they don’t want us to feel, to know.
“Kiss me,” I whisper.
He presses me against the tree; his lips are on mine. Our hands are everywhere. I want to lose myself to this magic. No body. No self. No concerns. Never to be hurt again.
The Tree of All Souls speaks inside me. “And would you have more?”
For a moment, the Temple magic fights within me. I see myself standing before the tree while Kartik screams my name, and I feel as if I’m struggling to wake from a laudanum dream.
“Yes,” someone answers, and it isn’t me. I struggle to see who has answered so, but the tree’s branches hold me fast. It holds me like a mother and coos as softly.
“Sleep, sleep, sleep…”
I fall through the floors of myself, waiting for someone to catch me, but no one does, so I just keep falling into a dark that never ends.
Later—I cannot say when, for time has lost all meaning—I hear a voice telling us it is time to go. I am suddenly aware of the cold. My teeth chatter. There is frost on my friends’ eyelashes. Without a word, we turn from the tree and stumble back the way we came. We pass the bodies hanging from the trees like ghoulish chimes, their entreaties whispered on the wind: “Help us….”
The rest of the journey out of the Winterlands is a dream of which I remember little. My arms are scratched, and I cannot recall how they have come to be this way. My lips are bruised, and I wet them with my tongue, feeling small cracks in the skin. When we step across the mist-shrouded threshold of the Borderlands, I ache with a desire to turn back. The strange twilight beauty of the Borderlands no longer excites. I can feel it in the others as well, can see it in their backward glances. We step over the vines that slither from the Winterlands. They stretch their arms, reaching closer and closer to the castle.
Bessie speaks as if in a daze. “It’s like it knew me. Really knew me. I saw m’self and I were a proper lady—not pretend, but respected.”
“No fear,” Felicity murmurs, stretching her arms overhead. “No lies.”
Pippa twirls around, faster and faster, till she falls down laughing. “It all makes sense now. I understand everything.”
Gorgon is waiting for us in the river. I try to avoid her, but she sees me slipping behind a tall wall of flowers.
“Most High, I have been looking for you.”
“Well, you have found me, it seems.”
Her eyes narrow, and I wonder if she can smell the forbidden on my skin like another’s sweat. The other girls run wild. They wear a new fierceness that brings a gleam to their eyes and a flush to their cheeks. Felicity laughs and it sounds like a call to arms. I want to go to them, to relive our experience in the Winterlands, not suffer under the watchful eye of Gorgon.
“What is it?” I call.
“Come closer,” that syrupy voice demands.
I stand on the grass a good ten feet from where Gorgon sits on the river. She turns her head and takes in the sight of me—hair a ruin, arms scratched, skirt torn. The snakes dance hypnotically. “You have been, I see,” Gorgon says.
“And what if I have?” I answer, defiant. “I had to see for myself, Gorgon. How could I possibly govern without knowing? The Tree of All Souls exists, and its power is immense!”
The snakes round her face writhe and hiss. “Promise me you will not return to that place until you have made the alliance. Most High, your power—”
“Is that all I am—the magic? No one sees who I am. They see what they want to see, what I can do for them. Who I am, how I feel doesn’t matter a bloody bit!” I’ve started to cry, which I hate. I turn my head away till the tears subside, and when I face Gorgon again, I am a different girl, one who will not be told what to do or where to go.
“You may go now, Gorgon. Our conversation has ended.”
For once the proud warrior seems unsure, and I’m glad of it. “Most High…”
“Our conversation has ended,” I repeat. “If I want to speak with you, I shall find you.”
On the grass, a merry game has sprung up. Felicity pushes Bessie, who pushes back harder.
“Ye can’t best me,” Bessie taunts. Her eyes glimmer.
Felicity’s laugh is brittle as weeds. “I already have, or hadn’t you noticed?”
Howling like banshees and laughing, they lock arms and struggle to see who shall remain standing while Pippa cheers them on. I run with speed and force, knocking them down like pins and bloodying my lip. And no one laughs more than I do as the hard, metallic taste fills my mouth and the blood spills over my dress like a merciless rain.
* * *
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
* * *
THOUGH OUR MASKED BALL IS WEEKS AWAY YET, MRS. Nightwing is adamant that we girls should prepare some sort of entertainment for our guests.
“It would be a tribute to them to show what fine young ladies you’ve become—and how talented,” she says, though I suspect our little trained-monkey performances have far more to do with proving the talents of our headmistress.
We’ve been assigned our various parts: Cecily, Martha, and Elizabeth are to perform a ballet. Felicity will play a minuet. As I have no talent in singing, dancing, French, or an instrument of any kind, I ask Mrs. Nightwing if I might read a poem, and she agrees, apparently relieved that there is something I can do that does not involve animal husbandry or cymbals played between the knees. There is only the matter of my choosing a poem and not tripping over my words. Sadly, Ann is not allowed to sing for our guests. Our scheme at Christmas has cost her this, for Mrs. Nightwing can’t afford to upset her patrons, and by now, they all know of the scandal.
Ann bears the injustice stoically, and I’ll relish the day she tells them all she’s off to tread the boards as a member of Mr. Katz’s company under the tutelage of Miss Lily Trimble herself
.
Felicity sits at the piano, playing a minuet. “It’s but a small party, really, no grander than a garden tea. It’s only the costumes that give it flair,” she grouses. “It’s nothing compared to the ball Lady Markham’s hosting for me in two weeks. Did I tell you she’s to have fire-breathers?”
“I believe you might have, once or twice.” Or twelve times. I comb through a book of poems given to me by Mrs. Nightwing. They’re so treacly they make my teeth ache. I should never get through a one of them with a straight face.
“This one about the light bearer isn’t too awful,” Ann offers.
I grimace. “Is that the one in which Florence Nightingale appears on the battlefield like an angel, or is it the poem that likens Admiral Nelson to a Greek god?”
Felicity leaves the piano and joins us on the floor. “I can’t stop thinking about last night. It was the most exciting time yet in the realms.”
“You mean the Winterlands,” Ann whispers. “And you really saw Eugenia Spence there, Gemma?”
“She didn’t appear to us,” Felicity sniffs, and I fear it shall become a competition.
“I told you everything,” I say, defending myself. “Do you realize that we can save her and the realms?”
Felicity purses her lips. “You can, you mean.”
“We can,” I say, correcting her. “But first, we must find the dagger Wilhelmina took, and I’ve no idea where to look.”
“Perhaps it’s here at Spence,” Ann suggests.
“We don’t even know that Wilhelmina is trustworthy. After all, she stole it, didn’t she?” Felicity muses.
“I think she made a mistake and now she means to redeem herself by leading me to it,” I say.
“But why take it in the first place?” Felicity presses.
“You’re supposed to practice your performances!” Cecily chides, hands on her hips.
“They are helping me to select a poem,” I answer with as much disdain as is possible.
The doors swing open, and I fear that Mrs. Nightwing has come to reproach us for not working harder. Instead, she calls for Ann.