A Great and Terrible Beauty

by Libba Bray

  “But in her web she still delights

  To weave the mirror’s magic sights,

  For often thro’ the silent nights

  A funeral, with plumes and lights

  And music, went to Camelot . . .”

  “Oh, not this again,” Ann snarls, leaning her head against the boulder.

  Felicity is taunting me with the poem. She knows it reminds me of Miss Moore. Like a whirling dervish, she throws out her arms, spiraling faster into ecstasy.

  “Or when the Moon was overhead,

  Came two young lovers lately wed.

  ‘I am half sick of shadows,’ said

  The Lady of Shalott.”

  Her hands fly out against the cave wall to stop her fall. She rolls her body against the craggy surface till she’s facing us again. Strands of hair, wet with perspiration, stick to her forehead and cheeks. She’s got a strange look on her face.

  “Pip, darling, do you really want to see your knight?”

  “More than anything!”

  Felicity grabs Pip’s hand and runs toward the cave’s mouth.

  “Wait for me,” Ann yells, following after.

  They spill out into the night like Bedouins, with me trailing in their wake. The cold air is a shock to our damp skin.

  “Felicity, what are you up to?” I ask.

  “Something new,” she teases.

  The sky, indifferent earlier, pulses with the light of a million stars. There’s an early-autumn moon, buttery golden, riding high over spun-thin wisps of cloud that tell us all it will soon be the time for harvest, the time when the farmers raise a pint to the legendary murder of John Barleycorn.

  Felicity howls at the globe in the sky.

  “Shhh,” Pippa says. “You’ll wake the entire school.”

  “No one will hear us. Mrs. Nightwing had two sherries tonight. We couldn’t wake her if we placed her in the center of Trafalgar Square with a pigeon in each hand.” She lets loose with another howl.

  “I want to see my knight.” Pippa pouts.

  “And you will.”

  “Not if Gemma won’t take us.”

  “We all know there’s another way,” Felicity says. In the moonlight, her pale skin glows white as bone. A chill works its way up my spine.

  “What do you mean?” Pippa asks.

  Something stirs in the trees. There’s the sound of twigs breaking and movement, quick and furtive. We jump. A deer wanders closer to the clearing. It has its nose to the ground, sniffing for food.

  “It’s only a deer.” Ann exhales in a whoosh.

  “No,” Felicity says. “It’s our sacrifice.”

  The moon dips behind clouds for an instant and our faces are mottled with light.

  “You aren’t serious,” I say, coming out of my sullen stupor.

  “Why not? We know they did it. But we’ll be smarter.” She’s like a carnival barker trying to entice a crowd into a sideshow tent.

  “But they couldn’t control it—” I start. Felicity cuts me off.

  “We’re stronger than they are. We won’t make the same mistakes. The huntress told me . . .”

  The huntress offering me the berries, whispering to Felicity on their hunts. Something’s fighting to take shape in my mind, but it won’t come. Only the fear remains, bold and undeniable.

  “What about the huntress?”

  “She tells me things. Things you are not privy to. She’s the one who told me I could have the power if I offer her a token.”

  “No . . . that’s not—”

  “She told me you’d react this way. That you couldn’t be trusted because you want the power of the realms all to yourself.”

  Pippa and Ann look from Felicity to me and back again, waiting.

  “You can’t do this,” I say. “I won’t let you.”

  Felicity creeps forward, knocks me backward into the dirt. “You. Can’t. Stop. Us.”

  “Felicity . . .” Ann looks as if she doesn’t know whether to help me or run away.

  “Don’t you see? Gemma wants the power all to herself! She wants power over us.”

  “That’s not true!” I struggle to my feet and take a step backward, away from them.

  Pippa comes up behind me. I can feel her breath on my neck. “Then why won’t you take us?”

  I’m caught. “I can’t tell you.”

  “She doesn’t trust us,” Felicity says. Suspicion spreads like a disease. She crosses her arms in triumph, lets the damage sink in.

  The deer is just beyond us in the thicket. Pippa watches it. She shifts her weight from one foot to the other. “I wouldn’t have to marry him. Would I?”

  Felicity takes her hands. “We could change everything.”

  “Everything,” Ann says, joining them.

  I saw a fire start once in India. One second, it was only a spark lost from a beggar’s fire, caught on a high wind. Within minutes, everything in sight was ablaze, thatched roofs crackling like so much dry kindling, mothers scurrying into the streets, carrying crying children.

  That is how fires start. With a spark. And I see the spark catching the wind.

  “All right,” I say, desperate to keep them from going it alone. “All right, I’ll take you. Let’s go back to the cave and join hands.”

  “That time has passed,” Felicity says, crossing her arms over her chest.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean that we are no longer content to ride on your coattails, Gemma. We’ll enter the realms by ourselves, thank you.”

  “But I’ll take—”

  Pippa turns her back to me. “How do we catch it?”

  “We chase it to the ravine. Trap it there.” Felicity unbuttons her sleeves, shimmies out of her blouse.

  “What are you doing?” I ask, alarmed.

  Felicity explains to the others, ignoring me. “Take them off. We can’t catch a deer in corsets and petticoats. We’ll never stand a chance. We’ve got to be naked, like the huntress.”

  This whole situation is veering wildly out of control. I feel as if I’m watching a building collapse, with no way to stop it.

  Ann folds her arms protectively across her plump middle. “Is it absolutely necessary? Can’t we catch the deer as we are?”

  “How exactly will you explain the stains to Mrs. Nightwing?” Felicity is naked now. Pale, like bark whittled raw. Her voice, hard and aching, cuts through the rustle of dry leaves. “Stay if you like. But I won’t go back to the way it was. I can’t.”

  Pippa sits on the grass and pulls off her boots, starts removing her petticoats. Ann follows suit.

  “Ann, Pippa, listen to me. This isn’t right. You can’t do this. Please listen to me!” They’re paying me no mind, peeling off their garments with frantic fingers. The deer’s head darts up. They crouch low on the forest floor. Felicity holds up a finger for silence. The deer senses danger, bolts for the cover of trees.

  With a grunt, they’re up, naked and shining, running toward the woods till they’re nothing but a flurry of white, a flapping of angel’s wings in the moss-covered night.

  I chase them as they chase the deer. It slips in and out of trees. Felicity is in the lead, her skin a beacon. I hear the sharp cracking sound of twigs trampled, hear the heavy panting of my own breath in my ears. And then something that sounds like a great crash up ahead where I can’t see.

  When I reach the ravine, Ann and Pippa are poised on the edge, breathing hard. The deer is nowhere to be seen. A great chunk of earth wall has been torn away. Carefully, I scoot to the edge. My boot sends showers of dirt and rocks into the ravine, and I have to grab hold of a low-lying root to keep from falling in.

  The deer lies wounded at the bottom, struggling to lift its head, making the most awful sounds. Felicity crouches low, creeps closer. She leans over it, stroking the brown fur, making comforting shushing noises. She’s not going to do it. A feeling of relief floods through me as I wait for her to scramble up the embankment.
/>   The clouds shift, stretch out thin as a scream. The moon is dazzling us with its hard fair light. It bathes Felicity in a white like plaster, turns her into a statue frozen in time.

  She’s fumbling with something down there in the dark. In an instant, her hand flies up. She brings the rock down with a sickening thud. And again. Again till there’s nothing moving in the ravine but her and creatures too small to detect from where we stand above her. Slowly, Ann and Pippa scuttle down the slope in crablike movements and each take their turns with the rock. Their bare backs, arched and taut, shine in the night. When they move away, the thing at the bottom of the ravine no longer resembles a deer above the neck. The head is pulpy, an overripe melon fallen on the ground and split open in surprised outrage. I turn and vomit into a sparse bush.

  When I stagger over again, they’re crawling back up the steep slope on hands and knees. In the dark, the splattered blood looks black as ink on their alabaster skin. Felicity climbs up last. She still grips the blood-slick rock in her hand.

  “It’s done,” she says, her voice ripping the still of the night.

  This is how the fire starts.

  This is how we burn.

  Everything is slipping out of my control.

  She places the rock in my hand. The weight of it pulls me forward and I stumble. It’s sticky in my hand.

  “What happens now?” Ann asks. In the dark, there is no answer, just a slight breeze rustling through the dry leaves over our heads.

  “We hold hands and make the door of light appear,” Felicity says.

  They join hands and close their eyes but nothing happens.

  “Where is it?” Pippa asks. “Why don’t I see it?”

  For the first time this evening, Felicity seems lost. “She promised me . . .”

  It hasn’t worked. They’ve been tricked. I would feel sorry for them if I weren’t both relieved and appalled.

  “She promised . . . ,” Felicity whispers.

  Kartik steps into the clearing, stops when he takes us in, bloodstained and half wild. He takes a step back, ready to retreat, but not before Felicity sees him.

  “What are you doing here?” she screams.

  Kartik doesn’t answer. Instead, his eyes flit to the rock in my hand. I drop it fast, and it hits the earth with a thud.

  In that one instant of distraction, Felicity seizes her chance. Grabbing a sharp stick, she charges Kartik, scraping him across the chest. Blood seeps up through the torn shirt, and he doubles over from the surprise of the gash. Her new skill as an archer is on display. She’s got the stick poised, ready to run him through.

  “I told you we’d carve your eyes out the next time,” she growls.

  I had thought Felicity dangerous a moment ago, when she felt powerful. I was wrong. Wounded and powerless, she is more dangerous than I could imagine.

  Injured, Kartik is unable to defend himself for the moment.

  “Stop!” I shout. “Let him go and I’ll take you into the realms.”

  Felicity is panting, the stick still raised above his eyes.

  “Fee,” Pippa whines, sounding a bit scared herself. “She’s going to take us.”

  Slowly, Felicity releases him, saunters back to join us.

  “She’ll give us the power once we’re there,” she says, trying to save face. “I’m sure of it.”

  On the ground behind her, Kartik is worried. I give him a small nod to let him know it’s going to be all right, though I don’t know that. I have no idea what will greet us on the other side of that door now. I don’t know what they’ve started, if anything. I only know that I’ve got to do it.

  Felicity gives me a hard look. Things have changed forever. There’s no going back. I follow them into the woods so that they can dress again. Soon, they are ready.

  “Take my hands,” I say, hoping for the best, fearing the worst.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  THE DOOR PULSES WITH LIGHT. WHEN WE STUMBLE through, everything seems as it was. The river sings sweetly on. The sunset is still a gorgeous spill of colors. Flowers float by.

  “You see?” Felicity says, eyes shining in triumph. “There’s nothing amiss. I told you she only wanted the power for herself.”

  I ignore her, listening for anything out of place.

  They glide down into the meadow ahead of me, walking toward the garden, hand in hand like a trio of paper-doll cutouts from a doily.

  The wind shifts, bringing the scent of roses and that other, unfamiliar stench, which sends me running after them.

  “Wait! Felicity, please listen, I think we should go back.”

  “Go back? We just got here,” she says, mocking me.

  Ann’s face is a stone. “We’re not going back without the power to cross over by ourselves.”

  The huntress is suddenly by our sides. It startles me. Odd that I never heard her approach. I can’t help thinking of her offering me the berries. It makes me cold all over. She wipes a finger across Felicity’s bloody face, rubs the stain with her thumb. She brings the finger to her mouth, tastes it and smiles.

  “You’ve made a sacrifice, I see.”

  “Yes,” Felicity says. “Will you grant us the power to enter the realms?”

  “Didn’t I promise that I would?” She smiles but there’s no warmth in it. “Follow me.”

  I grab Felicity by the arm. “This is wrong. We shouldn’t go,” I whisper.

  “No, something’s finally right,” she says, breaking away and running after the others.

  I follow them under the silver arch, into the grotto. My mother is nowhere to be seen. The smells of my childhood waft by. Curry. Pipe smoke. And something else. There it is again. That unpleasant stench.

  We’ve reached the Runes of the Oracle, the heart of everything.

  The breeze shifts. The smell is back. Underneath the memories is something pungent, like meat rotting in the sun. Does no one else smell it?

  “What do we do now?” Pippa asks.

  “Use the magic to take me through to the other side,” the huntress says.

  “If we join hands and take you through, you’ll give us the power we need, to come and go as we please?”

  “Not me. My mistress. She will give you what you deserve.”

  Wariness steals inside me and takes its perch.

  “Your mistress?” Felicity is confused.

  Everything in me is screaming to run. I’ve got my hand on Felicity’s arm, and as if she can feel my terror, she backs slowly away from the circle. The huntress seems to grow taller. Her eyes go black; her voice becomes a hiss.

  “Come to me, my pretty ones.”

  The sky opens into a churning sea of dark clouds. Quick as rain, she rises before us, a towering, screeching wraith, carrying the souls of the damned inside her unfurling black cape. Felicity can’t break away, can’t stop staring at that skeletal face, the eyes rimmed in red with swirling black ovals for centers, the sharp, jagged teeth. The thing clamps a hand onto her arm. Felicity’s mouth stretches into a ghastly O. Like ink, the black floats across her eyes, till they’re bottomless.

  “No!” I scream, barreling headlong into Felicity, the two of us sprawled on the ground. She’s shaking all over, her eyes still black. Screaming, Pippa falls to the ground, scrambles down the hill, toward the river.

  “Ann! Help me! We’ve got to get her back now!”

  We’re on either side of Felicity, running for the river. We have to find Pippa. We have to leave. A storm wind is blowing. It rips blossoms, leaves, and branches from trees, sends them flying over us. A branch narrowly misses my head and scrapes the side of my cheek, drawing blood.

  The dark wraith grows another pair of arms and another. She slinks toward us, ready to crush us in her embrace. Felicity is coming out of it now, stumbling, then running. We’ve reached the river, but where is Pippa?

  Ann’s scream rips the air apart. “Help me!”

  She’s staring into the river, tearing at her hair. Her reflection has turned. S
he’s covered in hideous boils. Her hair falls out in thick clumps and sores bubble up on her scalp. It’s as if her skin is melting from her bones.

  “Stop looking at yourself, Ann! Stop!” I scream.

  “I can’t! I can’t!”

  She’s leaning closer to the water’s edge. I slip my arms around her chest, but she’s heavy and won’t budge, and then she’s free, falling back in the grass, thanks to a hard tug from Felicity. The gray of Ann’s eyes has returned.

  “Where’s Pippa?” she screams over the wind.

  “I don’t know,” I shout.

  Something slithers over my hand. Snakes wind through the tall grass as it shrivels and dries up. We jump onto a rock. Pears fall from a tree and rot at our feet. Ann is whimpering, watching her skin dissolve into ugliness.

  “Help me!” Pippa’s scream tears through us. When we stumble across the brittle grass, we see her. She has taken a large boat, a bier, onto the river, where the wind has pushed her out into the wide deep of it. The wraith paces the bank, forcing us to keep our distance.

  “Yes, that’s it . . . come for her . . . ,” it laughs.

  “Please! Help me!” Pippa cries. But there’s nothing we can do. She’s cut off from us. We can’t let it capture us. I’m so afraid, I can think only one thing—I’ve got to get us out.

  “Through the door—quickly!” I shout.

  The wind whips Felicity’s hair across her pale face. “We can’t leave Pip!”

  “We’ll come back for her!” I scream, pulling her hand.

  “No!”

  “Don’t leave me!” Pippa moves onto the bow of the boat. It tips under her weight.

  “Pippa—no!” I scream, but it’s too late. She jumps into the river and it closes over her grasping hands like ice, entombing everything but her watery, strangled cry. I remember my vision the day of Pippa’s seizure, of her pulled down into the water. And now, with great horror, I understand at last.