Prophecy of the Sisters

by Michelle Zink

  Let the Angel’s Gate swing without the Keys, followed by the Seven Plagues and No Return.

  I reread the line, willing my mind to find the answer. Even in my current state of ignorance, it is quite simple; without the keys, something terrible will happen. Something that cannot be undone.

  If Alice and I are on conflicting sides of the prophecy, the keys would almost certainly be dangerous in her hands, which means I have to find them.

  And I have to do it before my sister.

  9

  Alice does not mention Sonia on our way to Wycliffe the next day. I have spent the time since Sonia’s visit avoiding my sister, hoping to put off her inquiry. I imagine my reprieve over and brace myself for Alice’s questions, but she remains silent. It is as if she already knows everything. And the knowledge she has she intends to hold dark and close.

  Our return to school is far from celebrated. Whether because Victoria blames Alice for the forbidden outing to Sonia’s or resents us for not having to submit to a more severe punishment, she and her closely guarded circle of friends greet us with icy stares. Only Luisa seems happy to see us, me in particular.

  She leans toward me during breakfast, having taken the seat next to me as if she has been sitting there all along. “Are you all right?”

  I nod. “Oh, but I am sorry, Luisa! Did you get in a lot of trouble?”

  She smiles. “Some, but it only made things more interesting. I don’t regret a thing!”

  After breakfast we are led through our paces in music, literature, and language. The day passes in a haze of whispered innuendo and mean-spirited laughter. By the time we file outdoors for the last lesson of the day, Landscape in Art, I cannot help noticing the stillness of Alice’s expression or the way she holds her head too high, her back too straight. She avoids my eyes. For Alice, isolation is preferable to pity.

  The easels are set up in the courtyard, facing the modest garden that is all but dead with the coming winter. Though the sun shines, the air is frigid with cold, and I realize this will likely be one of our last outdoor lessons of the year.

  “Lia! Over here!” Luisa calls, her breath a puff of smoke, waving to me from an easel near the brick wall.

  Making my way to Luisa, I am grateful and surprised all over again at her clear offer of friendship.

  “I saved you an easel.” She waves to the empty easel on her right, smiling up at me from her stool, paintbrush already in hand.

  “Thank you. What object shall I torture today?” I am not well known for my artistic ability.

  Luisa laughs. Not the polite giggle I am accustomed to from the girls at Wycliffe, but a full-fledged, joyous laugh. “I don’t know. Perhaps you should choose something that’s already dying.” Her eyes drift to Mr. Bell, our art teacher, as he stands before us on the stone walkway that winds through the gardens.

  Mr. Bell is not dapper, exactly, his face slightly too long and narrow and his hair carefully combed to hide the emerging bald spots, but he is otherwise quite normal. It is not his looks but his status as bachelor that is much discussed and wondered about among the girls at Wycliffe. Wycliffe’s students, particularly those who live there, are carefully sheltered from the attention of men. Any man of marriageable age who is, in fact, not married is worthy of speculation, thinning hair or no.

  “Ladies, as you know, autumn will soon be behind us. Today you will choose an artist from those we have studied, and using that artist as a guide, you may paint any scene from the garden that you wish. Given the cold, we will only have a few days to finish, so please work quickly and with focus. That is all.”

  Luisa is already absorbed in her painting, the beginnings of color taking shape on her canvas. I scan the dying garden for something worthy of my almost certainly doomed efforts. Dismissing anything too vibrant or complicated, my eyes light on a pointed purple flower, dark as a plum. It is a simple arrangement, one even I may be able to replicate. Good enough, I think.

  I am determined to do my utmost when something catches my eye. It is Luisa, her hand poised over the canvas, the tip of her brush stroking an area of barren purity.

  But not just Luisa. Her hand, her wrist, peeking out from her red velvet cloak and the silver bracelet loosely covering the white of her skin.

  And the Mark. Sonia’s Mark. Mine.

  It is only a sliver, only the smallest of outlines, but I would recognize it anywhere.

  “Whatever is the matter? Lia? What is it?” Luisa’s brush drips emerald paint, her eyes full of concern.

  “Your… The… Where did you get that?” I cannot take my eyes from her slender wrist.

  She follows my gaze, looking down at her hand, eyes wide with panic. Her brush clatters to the ground as she pulls the sleeve of her cloak down over her wrist.

  “It’s nothing. Only a scar.” She bends to pick up her brush from beneath the easel, her face white.

  “I don’t…” But I am unable to finish. Mr. Bell has suddenly appeared behind us.

  “Miss Milthorpe, Luisa. What seems to be the problem?” He surveys our canvases with a critical eye, avoiding our faces entirely. Even with the questions beating through my brain, I am angry that he has addressed Luisa by her first name, saving the more respectful “Miss” for me.

  “No problem at all, Mr. Bell. I’m quite clumsy today, that’s all. I dropped my brush, but I have it now.” Luisa waves it in front of him, as if to prove that she does, indeed, have the brush.

  “Yes, everything is splendid, Mr. Bell. Miss Torelli and I are working with as much focus as we can muster.”

  “I see.” He rocks on his heels, likely trying to decide how to handle my subtle breach of respectful conduct given that Father was a well-known benefactor of the school. “Carry on, then.”

  We exhale in unison when he is out of earshot.

  I pick up my brush, leaning toward Luisa while I make shapeless strokes on the canvas. “Where did you get it, Luisa? You must tell me!”

  She stiffens next to me, dipping her brush back into the green paint. “I don’t know why you should care. It’s nothing. Really!”

  I sigh, taking only a moment to think. We do not have much time. Mr. Bell is leaning toward the girls at the far end of the row, engrossed in the canvas of one of the more artistic students. Setting my brush into the wooden recess of the easel, I hold my hand in the folds of my skirt and begin rolling up my sleeve as I speak, my voice just above a whisper.

  “There is a very good reason why I should care, Luisa.” When my wrist is exposed just enough for the medallion to show, I push it aside, turning my palm up so she can see. “You see, I have one as well. And it is almost exactly like yours.”

  She stares at my wrist for a long time, her brush still in her hand. I don’t know how long we sit that way, but Landscape in Art is soon over and there is no privacy to be had as we put away the paint and carry our canvases to the art room amid the bustle of the other girls. Luisa’s eyes follow me as I put away my materials, but I need time to think, to figure out what it all means, and this makes me grateful for our forced silence.

  We are washing our brushes in a basin of water when she finally speaks. “I don’t understand, Lia. How can this be?”

  I keep my eyes on the water, murky with rinsed color. “I’m not sure. Something is happening, but I don’t understand it any more than you. Not yet.”

  She shakes her head, loose tendrils of dark hair curling around the sweep of her neck. “Why would we both have them?” she whispers. “We have hardly spoken before this week, and yet I’ve had this mark for all my life.”

  I meet her eyes over the smell of turpentine and paint. “I don’t know, Luisa, all right? Just… Please. Give me time to sort through everything I know.”

  “Oh, how I wish it weren’t Thursday! Now I’ll have to spend a long weekend waiting and wondering!” She is jumping out of her skin with anxiety, coiled so tightly I can nearly see the sinew of her muscles under her pale skin like one of the skeletons in Father’s medical
books.

  I shake my brushes, placing them in a tin cup by the sink to dry before I turn to her once again. “Wait for my word. I shall get to you somehow.”

  Alice maintains her regal posture until Edmund closes the carriage door. But once we are alone in the semi-darkness of the gathering winter afternoon, she crumples, her shoulders sagging, her face a mask of resignation.

  I put a hand on hers. “Are you all right?”

  She nods, pulling her hand from mine in one quick motion without meeting my eyes. In the moment before she tucks the hand into her lap, my gaze is pulled to the smooth skin of her wrist. It is just as I suspected. The skin there is as unblemished as that of her cheek. I am the only marked sister.

  She turns away from me to stare sullenly out the window, and I am grateful for her silence. I haven’t the energy or inclination to soothe her.

  I sigh deeply, falling back into the comfort of the padded seat. When I lean my head back and close my eyes, all I can see is the mark on Luisa. On Sonia. On me.

  It is beyond imagining that all three of us should have the mark, nearly identical and all in the same town. And yet nothing this careful, this sinister, can be so random. The belief that it must make sense is the only way to make sense of it at all.

  Alice and I pass the ride home without speaking, coming to a stop in the front courtyard as darkness settles its hand across the sky. Edmund is not even at the door to the carriage when Alice exits like a caged animal set free, turning away from the house and toward the path leading to the lake. I don’t try to stop her. After all that has happened, all that is happening even now, I still feel the pain of her humiliation at the hands of Wycliffe’s self-proclaimed royalty. It is like seeing one of Father’s beautiful thoroughbreds trained. It is all well and good that the horse can be ridden and contained, but I can never shake my sadness that such spirit should be broken.

  I am halfway up the stairs when Aunt Virginia’s voice comes to me from the foyer.

  “Lia?”

  I turn to face her. “Yes?” She stands at the foot of the stairs, looking up at me with a strained expression.

  “Is something wrong?” Small wrinkles form at the corners of her eyes as she studies my face.

  I hesitate, wondering to what she is referring. “No. Of course not. Why do you ask?”

  She shrugs her slim shoulders. “You seem as if you have something on your mind. And Alice seems distraught as well.”

  I smile to ease her worry. “Girls of our age — bored, wealthy girls — are not always kind, you know.”

  Her own smile is small and sad. “Yes. I believe I remember that.”

  “Alice will be fine. She’s simply tired and still grieving, as we all are.”

  She nods. I believe I’ve made my escape when she stops me again.

  “Lia? Will you come to me if there is anything you need? Anything I can do to help you?”

  I am quite sure there is something there, some trace of a message I haven’t the knowledge to decode. For one half-mad moment I contemplate telling her everything. I contemplate asking her how I am to maintain my role as Guardian, how someone as confused as I should manage to protect the world from something I don’t even understand.

  But in the end, I say none of this, for if I am the Guardian and Alice the Gate, who is Aunt Virginia? Which role did she play in the prophecy’s past?

  I smile in answer to her question. “Yes. Thank you, Aunt Virginia.”

  I make my way up the stairs before she can say anything more.

  Once in my room, the fire stoked and roaring, I sit at the writing table and consider my options. I stare down at the book. The book with no origin, no markings, no birthplace.

  A book as old as time.

  James’s notes peek out from behind the thin page of the prophecy. All that is left of The Book of Chaos. I want to solve its riddle alone, without involving anyone else, but I have come to a dead end in my understanding of its words.

  Sometimes one must ask for help, however much one may not want to do so.

  I take out a quill and bottle of ink from the drawer. Pulling two sheets of thick writing paper toward me, I begin to write.

  Dear Miss Sorrensen,

  Miss Lia Milthorpe requests the honor of your presence for tea.…

  With my invitations to Sonia and Luisa written and a reckless desire to ignore the book for just a while, I entice Henry into an evening of games. His eyes are still shaded with sadness, and truth be told, I could use the distraction from the many questions waiting for answers. They will still be waiting, whatever I do to pass the time.

  On the way to the parlor, I pass the glass doors of the conservatory, a figure within catching my eye. It is Alice, sitting with Ari on her lap in a large wicker chair by the window. Though I stand in the warmth of the hall, it is plain to see that the conservatory is frigid with cold. Starbursts of frost dot the glass, but Alice stares out the window into the darkness with only a blanket wrapped around her shoulders as if she is in a room no draftier than the fire-lit parlor. She pets the cat in a rhythmic motion not unlike the one she used to brush my hair. Even from my vantage point, I can see the vacant expression in her eyes.

  I am preparing to announce myself, to open the glass doors and step onto the tiled floor of the conservatory, when something stops me cold. It is Ari, moaning and trying to rise off Alice’s lap. The cat is partially blocked by the wicker chair, and I tip my head to get a clearer view. When I do, when I find a position that allows me to see more fully what Alice is doing, my skin crawls with disgust and dismay.

  It is Alice, holding down the cat. Not petting his fur. Not stroking him as she was only moments ago. No. She holds a small tuft of his hair, twisting it, twisting it until the cat hisses in pain and scrambles to escape her grip. But it is her face that frightens me most. It remains impassive, the dazed expression still written there as if she is contemplating the weather. Her grip on the cat must be ironclad. He cannot escape no matter how he arches and turns.

  I should like to say that I stop her at once, but I am so shocked that I have no idea how many seconds pass before I am spurred to action. When I finally fling open the door, she releases her grip on Ari without the slightest change in expression. He scrambles from her lap, shaking his body and running from the room with a speed I’ve not seen him display since he was a kitten.

  “Oh. Lia. What are you doing here?” She turns as I enter the room, but she does not look ashamed or in the least bit concerned.

  “I was coming to see if you want to play cribbage with Henry and me in the parlor.” My voice is hoarse, and I have to clear my throat to continue. “What were you doing?”

  “Hmmm?” She is back to staring out the window.

  I make my voice stronger. “A moment ago. With Ari.”

  She gives a small, distant shake of her head. “Nothing. Nothing at all.”

  I contemplate pressing her, forcing her to confess, but what would be the purpose in it? I saw her. I know what she was doing, whatever she might say.

  And though the moment may seem small, it is the knowledge behind it that fills me with dread. Because while I have never denied that Alice can be careless… self-centered… even spiteful, it has never occurred to me before today that she might actually be cruel.

  10

  Henry and I play game after game of cribbage and even manage to entice Cook into making popcorn and chocolate, two of Henry’s favorite indulgences. As the hours pass, we move into chess. Henry beats me time and time again, having spent years as a student of Father’s able strategy. We both laugh, but it is not the easy laughter of times past. Now, there is an undercurrent of sorrow coupled with a fear that is all my own. I try to lose myself in the simplicity of the hours with my younger brother, but it is Alice’s blank face I see when I stare into the fire while waiting for Henry to make his move.

  “Lia?” Henry’s voice breaks into my thoughts.

  I look up from the chess board. “Yes?”

&n
bsp; “You should be careful.”

  The words send a chill up my spine, but I force a laugh. “Whatever do you mean, Henry?”

  He looks away, gazing into the fire a moment before turning back to meet my eyes. “Father told me oftentimes things are not what they seem.”

  “Henry.” I favor his seriousness with a gentle smile. I do not want to patronize him when he seems so intent on passing along his cryptic message. “To what are you referring?”

  “Just…” He takes a deep breath as if summoning his courage, but in the end, he lets it out in a resigned sigh. “I don’t know what I mean to say, Lia.” He smiles, but it is a shadow of his normal grin. “Just promise you’ll be careful, will you?”

  I nod slowly, still trying to puzzle out the meaning in his words. “Of course.”

  We spend another twenty minutes playing chess, but our movements are half-hearted. Henry is yawning when we finally put the game pieces away and Aunt Virginia comes to help him to bed.

  As Henry says good night, his eyes are dark with worry and something I cannot help but think resembles fear. “Thank you, Lia. Ever so much.”

  “Of course. I shall be happy to beat you anytime,” I tease, trying to lighten his mood. I lean over and drop a kiss on his smooth cheek. “Good night. Sleep well.”

  “Sleep well, Lia.”

  Aunt Virginia wheels him around, turning to me as she passes. She smiles in silent thanks.

  “Good night, Aunt Virginia.”

  I stand in the quiet room after they leave. Moving to the large window in the parlor, I stare at the black night as Alice did, wondering what she saw in the emptiness beyond the conservatory windows. I look and look, the crackle of the fire the only sound in the room behind me. But I do not see a thing. Not the beautiful sky of my night dreams nor the answers I need.

  Only darkness.

  Later, as I ascend the stairs to bed, I hear something coming from the library. It is the sound of shuffling, of things being moved to and fro, and I turn on the carpeted steps and make my way toward the noise.