Sometimes, reality was too painful to bear.
I shifted in my seat and rested my aching head on the cool glass of the window. A memory forced itself into my mind; I saw an underground crypt lit by flickering torches and a crowd of hooded women, the coven of Dark Sisters who had once served Sebastian. They were chanting in a wild frenzy, desperate for Sebastian to claim the Talisman and lead them to eternal life. Sarah and Helen and I had been trapped there, and yet—and yet—when it seemed that we were beaten and that Sebastian would tear the Talisman from me, he had refused to hurt me. I love you…I love you, girl from the sea. His love had given me the courage to reach out to my elemental powers, and I had raised a storm that had swept the coven away. But when it was all over, Sebastian had disappeared. His black horse had been found wandering over the moors, and all trace of its rider had vanished.
I had to see him again, though. Dreams weren’t enough. Memories weren’t enough. I was going back to Wyldcliffe to find Sebastian, but I didn’t know what would be waiting for me. All I could do was ask myself the same unanswerable questions for the hundredth time. What was Sebastian’s reality—his love for me or his need for the Talisman? Would he stay true to his brief words of love? Or would he, in the end, betray me in order to save himself?
“Come on, come on, hurry up,” I muttered under my breath to the train. I had to get to Wyldcliffe. I had to know the truth.
Three
FROM THE PRIVATE PAPERS OF SEBASTIAN JAMES FAIRFAX
It’s because I love you that I had to tell you the truth.
You know everything now, Evie. You know that these were my failings: greed, ambition, selfishness, madness, destruction.
I did not mean to do wrong. I wanted to stride across the world like a great explorer, flying near the sun, soaring in thought and time and space.
I wanted to live forever.
Now my grave lies empty and I shall never find rest there. That is the inescapable fact, the dreadful truth. That is my reality.
But there is another truth, even here in the darkness. This memory is true. I must hold on to it and not let go.
This is what happened. I was in the crypt under the ruins at Wyldcliffe. You were there too—I saw your bright hair and your pale face—and there were women baying for your blood, screaming with fear and hatred. The coven. The Dark Sisters. They were trying to hurt you, trying to turn me against you. You were afraid. And then, beyond my own fear and my own need, I remembered something. I remembered that I loved you.
I called to you, my girl from the sea. I called out my love for you. I remember it so clearly.
You were transformed, like an angel. You summoned your powers against the High Mistress and her women: I saw the waters rise; I saw a vision of Agnes. I remember that you were close to me, and I wanted you so much, and then you were gone. Then there was only darkness and pain, and I forced myself to crawl to this hiding place.
Here, in this secret corner, I am surrounded by the tattered remnants of my former studies. I have no need of food or companionship, or light or warmth. I have pen and ink and my memories of you. I scratch out these words in order to try to reach you.
It is because I love you that I have to tell you the truth.
I am leaving this world, Evie.
Soon I will close my eyes and awake not in your arms but into everlasting night. And then there will be no waking from that deepest, darkest dream.
Four
I woke suddenly from a deep dream. Someone was talking to me.
“Um, excuse me—are you going to Wyldcliffe?”
A girl, about eleven or twelve years old, was hovering nervously near my seat on the train. She was dressed in the dark gray and red Wyldcliffe uniform, all new and stiff and slightly too big for her. I was still in jeans and casual clothes.
“I hope I didn’t wake you up,” she said apologetically.
“No—um, of course not, it’s okay.” I shook myself from sleep. “I’d just drifted off. Silly of me.”
“So you are going to Wyldcliffe?” The girl pointed at my luggage on the rack over my head. My suitcase had an address label tied on the handle, printed in Dad’s firm handwriting: Wyldcliffe Abbey School.
“I guess that gives me away.” I smiled up at her, trying to be friendly. “Yes, I am.”
“Can I sit with you?” She had a nasal kind of voice, as though she had a permanent head cold. “I’ve been wandering up and down the train, trying to find another Wyldcliffe girl.”
“Sure. Of course you can.” I moved some magazines from where I had chucked them on the opposite seat and she sat down. “Is this your first term?”
“I was supposed to start in September, but I was ill,” the girl said with a kind of suppressed excitement—or was it fear? She was dark and thin, with a sickly complexion and dull black eyes that seemed to fix themselves onto my face. “Do you like Wyldcliffe?”
I hesitated. I wasn’t going to tell her what I really felt about Wyldcliffe, or what I really knew about the place. “It’s an amazing building,” I began brightly. “Like a castle in the middle of the moors. The teachers are, well, a bit old-fashioned, but they know their stuff. There’s a choir and orchestra, if you like music. And most girls ride on the weekend. Even I’m going to learn.”
It sounded like something I was parroting from the school’s prospectus:
Wyldcliffe is England’s premier traditional boarding school for girls. Located in the stunningly beautiful Wylde Valley, we pride ourselves on the highest academic and social standards….
What the prospectus didn’t say was that Celia Hartle, the High Mistress of Wyldcliffe, had disappeared in strange circumstances at the end of last term. It didn’t say that she was High Mistress not only of the school, but of the deadly coven of Dark Sisters. The authorities had been baffled by Mrs. Hartle’s disappearance, but Sarah, Helen, and I knew that she had vanished after the battle in the crypt. Part of me hoped that she was dead, and yet part of me was sickened by the idea. Either way, whatever had happened to Celia Hartle, the coven would be waiting for me and my Talisman when I got back.
“But horses are unpredictable, aren’t they? It must be really frightening.”
“Oh…um…” I hadn’t really been listening, lost in my own thoughts. “Sorry?”
“Horses,” the girl repeated, looking more scared than ever. “You can get hurt. You know, thrown off and all that. It’s dangerous.”
I laughed shortly. After everything I had faced at Wyldcliffe I wasn’t going to get too worked up about sitting on the back of a well-fed pony. “I don’t suppose I’ll be going very fast,” I said. “So you’re not going to ride then?”
“My mom can’t afford to pay for extras like that.”
“Oh, yeah, of course…” I tried to cover my blunder. “Anyway, Wyldcliffe is a good place to study, though I expect you’ll be a bit homesick to start with—”
“I won’t,” she said abruptly. “There’s nothing for me at home. My dad lives in America and my mom is always working.”
Poor kid, I thought, poor sad kid. She looked so young to be going off to boarding school all on her own. “Couldn’t your mother have traveled with you to Wyldcliffe, you know, on your first day?” I asked.
The girl flushed scarlet and I immediately wished that I hadn’t said anything. It was none of my business if her mother couldn’t be bothered with her, and now I had put my foot in it again. “Mom came to the station, but she couldn’t spare the time to come all the way with me. She said I’d be okay, that there would be other Wyldcliffe students on the train.” The girl frowned for a moment before looking up at me with her disconcerting, hungry eyes. “Anyway, she was right. I’ve got you now, haven’t I?”
I smiled uncomfortably, feeling sorry for her, yet somehow repelled at the same time. There was something needy about this girl, something that would condemn her to being a bit of a misfit. Well, I knew all about that. The Wyldcliffe students had made it clear that I didn’t fit in. I w
asn’t a blond, carefree English rose with a nice little trust fund and a pedigree going back to William the Conqueror. I didn’t belong, and I had a funny feeling she wouldn’t either.
Silence fell between us. I didn’t know what else to say, so I took a book from my bag and pretended to read. After a few minutes, she interrupted me with another question.
“Is there a teacher called Miss Scratton?”
“Yes. Why?”
“She taught my mother at Wyldcliffe, years ago. Mom says she was a good teacher but a bit weird. Always on about the past.”
“Well, Miss Scratton’s a history teacher, so I guess that’s natural.”
The past. I can never get away from the past, wherever I go…. Sebastian had said that, and now it was true for me too.
“What are the other teachers like?” the girl asked nervously. “Are they all like her?”
The faces of the Wyldcliffe teachers, or mistresses, flashed in front of my eyes. I let the book fall onto my lap. There were plenty who were a whole lot weirder than Miss Scratton. Miss Dalrymple, for instance, the plump geography mistress, with her bright blond curls and little-girl laugh. Or Miss Raglan, stiff and awkward and angry, who taught math. It wasn’t the love of teaching that kept those two at Wyldcliffe; I was sure of that.
“Well, they tend to be kind of strict,” I said. “There are lots of rules at Wyldcliffe, so you have to be careful, or you’ll end up with a pile of demerits and detentions.”
The girl rummaged in her bag and pulled out a faded booklet. “Have you seen this before?”
My heart thudded as I recognized it. Of course I had seen it before. I had devoured every word of that little book a hundred times over, searching for clues, searching for the truth….
“Yeah, I think so,” I said evasively, taking it from her. The title was printed in gold letters on the blue cover: A Short History of Wyldcliffe Abbey School, by Rev. A. J. Flower-dew. “There’s a copy in the library at school,” I said. “Where did you get this?”
“I told you that my mother was at the school. She’s into all this kind of thing, and I’ve read tons of stuff about Wyldcliffe.” The girl snatched the book back from me, flipping through its pages, searching for something. “Have you seen this picture? Do you know who it is?”
As I looked down at the page, my heart seemed to explode in my chest. Yes, I knew who was in that painting.
“It’s Lady Agnes Templeton,” the girl went on. “Her family owned the Abbey before it became a school. It says here that Lady Agnes died in a riding accident.” She looked up and added confidentially, “But it’s not true. She ran away.”
“What?” I stared at her, utterly astonished.
“All I know is that she went off to London and that it wasn’t her parents who went looking for her. It was a young neighbor of hers, a distant relation. Have you heard about him? His name was Sebastian Fairfax.”
“Um…no…” I lied. But the blood was racing in my head: Sebastian…Sebastian…Sebastian… I switched the girl’s voice off and plunged back into my own private world.
Right now, at this very minute, Sebastian would be fading. The frightening, supernatural process had already begun last term. I remembered his pale face, his weakened voice, his reddened eyes, and his horror at the idea of becoming a demon spirit. Second by second, drop by drop, Sebastian’s existence was draining into the shadow world. Time was running out. Perhaps—the thought tormented me—perhaps it had already happened. Perhaps when I got back to Wyldcliffe I would discover that he had already left this world and vanished into the darkness.
I wouldn’t think that. I wouldn’t let that be true.
There was a way out of this nightmare, and I was going to make it happen. Somehow, I had vowed, I would master every secret of the Talisman that Agnes had bequeathed me and wrench Sebastian’s destiny into my hands. I would not let him fade in torment for my sake. I had to find him, before it was too late. The train rattled out an endless, grinding song: Come back…too late…come back…too late…too late….
“Sebastian Fairfax was crazy.” The girl leaned closer and touched my arm to get my attention. “They say Wyldcliffe is cursed because of him.”
I recoiled from her touch, suddenly furiously angry. This girl knew nothing about the reality behind her stupid tittle-tattle. How dared she drag Sebastian’s life out to be picked over like some cheap newspaper gossip?
“I don’t believe in all that nonsense,” I said coldly.
“Well, everybody says Wyldcliffe is haunted.” The girl slumped against her seat again, looking small and skinny in her badly fitting uniform. “And my mom said that when she was at Wyldcliffe the students were always daring one another to look for Agnes’s ghost after dark. Mom never saw her, though. Have you?”
I stood up abruptly. “I’m going to get some coffee in the buffet car.” As I dug my purse out of my bag, I tried to calm down. After all, she was just a kid going to boarding school for the first time, excited by what she had heard about the old Abbey and its long history. It wasn’t her fault she was awkward and plain and tactless. I tried to force myself to sound friendly, even if I didn’t feel it. “Well, I won’t be long then…um…what is your name?”
“Harriet.” She smiled faintly. “Harriet Templeton. Enjoy your coffee.”
I jumped, as though someone had fired a pistol.
Templeton. Harriet Templeton. Could she…Was she related to Agnes in some way? If so, was she related to me? And why was she so interested in Sebastian?
The train swerved on the track and I stumbled along to the next carriage, where the drinks and snacks were served, my head whirling. I paid for my drink, but I didn’t go back to my seat. I found an empty corner in the corridor and stared out of the window, letting my coffee grow cold as we sped farther and farther from London, and into the far, wild north.
Five
FROM THE PRIVATE PAPERS OF SEBASTIAN JAMES FAIRFAX
In the far wild north I watch and wait,
For the girl from the restless sea.
Oh, far wild wind, please find my love
And send her back to me.
In the far wild north my heart will break
For the girl with the sea-gray eyes.
Oh, my love—my love—
Evie—my words die, my body trembles, my heart is cursed.
I tried to write a poem for you once before and I failed then, just as I am failing now.
The effort of using pen and ink is almost too great for me, but somehow it brings you before me so clearly. I long to be with you, to hear your voice and see your face, and in these desperate moments when I try to find the words to tell you how I feel, I can fool myself that you are close.
But it is all for nothing. My words are empty and meaningless. The ravings of a madman, people would say, if anyone ever chanced to read them.
They called me mad, long ago—more than a hundred winters ago, in another life. Another reality.
I had returned from London, fired by every possibility of the Mystic Way, both permitted and forbidden. I was obsessed with the dark secrets I had discovered and determined to pursue my selfish dreams of eternal life, whatever price I would have to pay. I studied, plotted, and schemed until my brain was fevered and my body was weak. My family and friends thought I was crazy. Back then it was Agnes who watched and prayed for me from a distance, as I believe and trust that you do now.
Dear Agnes.
Dearest, darling Evie.
How clearly I can recall every detail of that other life—my mother weeping and my father cold and angry and the servants lingering in corners and the doctor making his pompous pronouncements that so enraged me. Everything that happened then stands out sharp and clear like a picture, and yet the things that happened only recently seem to be fading in my troubled mind.
Fading, blurred and confused, like water clouded with ink.
Everything is fading.
I must remember. I must rouse myself to fight. I must find y
ou.
And yet what can I bring you but more danger and sorrow? It is best that I hide here, like a wounded animal waiting for the end. Here I can but hope to die, thinking of you with my last strength.
No, that will not be the way—my fate is not to know death. There will be no end to my pain and degradation. No end. Life without end. Darkness without end, enslaved.
Is this what I worked so hard for? Is this what Agnes died for? Yet even now I feel my masters hovering, ready to suck me into their black world of demons and shadows.
Evie, I am so afraid. I, who thought I was destined to know and conquer everything! I dreamed that I would be a master amongst men, a conjurer, a magician, a lord of the Mystic Way. I was fated to be a worker of marvels, to triumph over death itself, and yet now I am afraid.
I have one fear greater than all the rest—that you were never there at all. Perhaps, like my fatal vision of eternal youth and knowledge, you were simply another crazy dream. The raving of a lunatic.
A dream girl.
A dream life.
A dream love.
In my dream we were by the wild sea. It was cold, as cold as the first day of winter, yet my heart was warm and alive, because you were there. I saw you standing by the shore, shrouded in thought, your head bowed. Then I stole up behind you and wrapped my arms around you, kissing your neck, and breathing in the scent of your beautiful hair. I remember your hair, as bright as a living flame. I wanted to tell you something.
I want to tell you—
Do not come back. She is still near, the High Mistress. She is waiting, getting ready to tangle you in her evil webs once again. You must not come back. Never come back. It is better that way.