Our mystic powers—water for Evie, earth for Sarah, and air for Helen—had led us into strange worlds, where even death wasn’t what it seemed, and beyond the veil of death, our secret sister Agnes dwelt in the valley of light and served the sacred fire of the Creator. The four of us had achieved so much together, but it seemed clear to me that our quest wasn’t over.
Sarah, Helen, and I had left Wyldcliffe for the summer vacation in a state of uneasy truce. Like the rest of the school, we mourned the death of Miss Scratton, but our grief was real. She had been our Guardian and counselor in our battles with the coven, and now she was gone, killed not by a road accident as everyone believed, but by Rowena Dalrymple, one of the mistresses at the school and the most fanatical of the Dark Sisters. Losing our Guardian had hit Helen hard, but when she wept for Miss Scratton, I couldn’t help wondering whether it was really her mother that those tears were for. I desperately wanted to help Helen, though I didn’t know how. She had done so much for me, and I wanted to return the gift, to pay back her devotion in some way. Although Helen had forced herself to be strong for us, I felt that her nerves were finally strained to the breaking point, as she brooded over what was lying in wait for her, out there on the barren hills.
We’d been at Wyldcliffe a few days before we got the chance to talk alone. The three of us snuck away after supper to the old grotto on the school grounds. It was a fanciful underground structure, built long ago by Agnes’s father, Lord Charles Templeton, as a fashionable picnic place, an indulgence of art and leisure. The grotto was half cave, half stone temple, decorated with strange, pagan mosaics, and now it was damp and musty and abandoned, the perfect place for us to meet in secret. It was Sarah, practical as always, who came up with the first suggestion of what we should do next.
“I think we should go up to the Ridge as soon as we can and lay another binding spell on the stone,” she said. “That way we can be sure that the Priestess isn’t going to escape.”
“No!” Helen said, with surprising vehemence.
“Why not?” I asked. “I know it would be hard for you to go back there, but we’d be with you, Helen. You know we wouldn’t let you face it alone.”
“It’s not that—it’s just…well…” Her voice trailed off, and she blinked in the beam of Sarah’s flashlight, looking around nervously as if she would find the words she needed in the air.
“Just what?” I said encouragingly.
“Well, we don’t even know whether the rock could stand the force of another spell,” Helen replied. “We might end up shattering it and actually releasing her by mistake.”
“What do you think, Sarah?” I asked. “You understand the earth and stones better than any of us.”
“Those megaliths on the Ridge are ancient and very powerful in themselves,” she answered thoughtfully. “I think they could cope with anything we threw at them.”
“I just don’t think it’s a good idea!” Helen persisted. “We can’t go back and meddle again with what we’ve done—that’s not how this works. Each moment takes care of itself. You can’t go back.”
“But we’re only trying to think of a way to make you safer, Helen,” Sarah said.
“Well, don’t! The Priestess is a prisoner—just leave it at that. She can’t hurt us now. In fact, I don’t want you two getting mixed up in any more of this stuff. We’ve had three lucky escapes. It might not work out like that next time.”
“I don’t think it was luck,” said Sarah. “We used the powers we’ve been granted, and made them into something deeper and stronger by working together. That’s not just luck. We’re meant to face this battle as a sisterhood—united.”
Helen sighed. “Even if that was true, perhaps things are changing. The coven is weakened. Their Priestess is our prisoner. I don’t see why you need to do any more. Cal is waiting for you, Sarah. And Evie, you’ve got so much to look forward to. I’m alone. Let me deal with this stuff now.”
“You’re not alone, Helen, you’ve got us,” I said, alarmed. “And besides, what about the things Miss Scratton told us about, you know, the secret of the keys—and she said we had to be ready—and that our destiny was near.”
Helen looked at me strangely, her face half-hidden in shadow. “She said that my destiny was near, not yours or Sarah’s. It’s up to me to finish this. I want you and Sarah to stay away. Just stay with Josh and Cal and be happy. Let me sort it out.”
“But we’re sisters,” Sarah said again. “We work together. We need each other.”
“I don’t need anyone,” Helen muttered, looking away from both of us. But I knew she didn’t really mean that. Helen needed someone to love, and she needed us too. There was nothing we could do to persuade her that night, though. Our vows of friendship and support seemed not to touch her, like water rolling off a smooth, polished rock.
I was worried, but all Sarah and I could do was to keep an eye on Helen as the new term got underway, although we tried not to make it too obvious. I didn’t want to intrude. Helen was as elusive as thistledown on the wind, impossible to pin down, and as easy to alarm as a wild creature. She was beautiful too, though she didn’t realize it, with her cloud of fair hair, and her pale eyes full of sorrow, seeing things that were hidden from the rest of us. One wrong word and she would retreat into herself. It was as though the deepest part of her soul was kept in a locked glass case, and we didn’t have the key. Even with us, her closest friends, her only friends, she still had her secrets.
A gloomy atmosphere descended on the school over the next few days like a shroud of autumn fog. There was a subdued feeling, as though everyone was waiting for some unknown but secretly dreaded disaster. I’d only been at the school a year myself and had always found the place oppressive with its old-fashioned rules and regulations, but this—this was different. There was fear in the air. As the students passed through the dimly lit corridors or gathered in the high-ceilinged classrooms, there were whispers and hurried conversations all on one theme: What was going to happen to Wyldcliffe? This privileged world had been touched by sordid realities, and suddenly it no longer seemed such a safe haven for the daughters of the rich and powerful. Death and scandal and fear had touched its slumbering walls.
The teachers, or mistresses, appeared to be tense too. It was clear that quite a few girls hadn’t come back after the summer break. India Hoxton, for one, had carried out her threat to transfer to Chalfont Manor near London, and others had followed her lead. I wouldn’t miss India, as she had detested me from the moment I arrived at Wyldcliffe, but her snobby friend Celeste van Pallandt looked lost and unsettled without her. Poor Celeste, how hard she tried to hate. Her anger was eating her up like a disease, crippling the girl she might have been….
Celeste wouldn’t accept any sympathy from me, of course. She had tried to get me expelled in my first term at the school, when I had just arrived as a scholarship student, but I had forgiven her for that. I knew that her resentment of me was in some strange way bound up with her unhappiness about her cousin Laura, who had “drowned” in the lake, down by the ruins of the ancient chapel that stood on the school grounds. And every time I saw Celeste I thought of poor Laura and the sickening truth about her fate; that she had been murdered by the Dark Sisters, whose coven was rooted in Wyldcliffe’s lonely valley.
Laura was dead, but her soul was trapped, caught between death and the eternal darkness. Poor Laura existed as a Bondsoul, controlled like a zombie by the leader of the coven, who in life had been Helen’s mother, Celia Hartle, the High Mistress of Wyldcliffe, and was now the Priestess of the Eternal King of the Unconquered lords, and our deadly enemy. And although her spirit was tethered to the great stone at the top of the Ridge, she was still brooding over our destinies, still waiting for her revenge….
As the new term began and we settled into the familiar routine, I grew more and more uneasy. Why wouldn’t Helen let us try to help her in the fight against her mother? What secrets was she hiding from her sisters?
Five
FROM THE DIARY OF HELEN BLACK
SEPTEMBER 19
Yesterday I passed through the secret ways again, to visit my mother’s prison. Her words have created a web of promises in my mind like a glittering net, and now I have made contact with her, I can’t turn back.
I’ve been so angry with her in the past. I have tried to strike back at her before she hurt me again—I’ve even tried to hate her. But I was never very good at hating. Besides, hate is only love turned sour. Tell me, Wanderer, was it wrong of me to approach our fallen enemy? Or was it an act of hope, and faith?
I have to find out. It is painful to be near her, but I can’t stop now. I need to speak to her again. I must know if she means what she says. I must know the truth.
Every afternoon when classes had ended I made my way to the Ridge, desperate to speak with my mother’s spirit again, needing to work out whether her regrets were real. I couldn’t let Sarah and Evie suspect anything. I had tried to warn them to back off so that I could deal with this on my own. I didn’t want them to be hurt again, or in danger, but I couldn’t give up the notion that I might be able to save my mother. My mother—our enemy—the Priestess—oh, it was so dangerous! I was terrified, but excited too, wild with anguished hopes and dreams, and every day I begged the powers to send me a sign.
The excuse I made to Evie for not being around was that I was busy after school at the art studio, preparing a project for Miss Hetherington’s class. Art and music and stuff like that were the only subjects I was not completely hopeless at, so I think Evie believed me, but the lie was heavy in my mouth. You shouldn’t lie to friends. If I had told Evie the truth, though, she would have been frantic with worry. I couldn’t share this with them, so I lied, knowing that then she and Sarah would relax about me for a moment. They would go down to the stables to meet Josh and Cal without having me tagging along as the odd one out.
I didn’t mind that the four of them belonged to one another in a way that I never would. I wanted them to be happy. It gave me pleasure to think of Sarah and Cal, Evie and Josh…even the pairing of their names was like a poem to me; a song full of promise that they had happy futures ahead. One day, perhaps, Evie would love Josh as he loved her. A piece of Evie’s heart had been given forever to Sebastian Fairfax, whose tragic story was intertwined with Agnes and the coven and the long curse of Wyldcliffe. Evie still clung to Sebastian’s memory, but I knew that her heart was big enough to love again, and so I hoped that Josh’s patience would someday be rewarded. I wanted my friends’ stories at least to have a happy ending, even if I was destined to walk a lonelier path.
Another week at school drew to a close. It was Friday evening, with the prospect of a little relaxation of the rules over the weekend. Sarah and Evie were lingering in the stables with the boys, but I made up some story about having a design to finish. I set off as though I were really headed for the art studio, self-consciously clutching my sketchbook. As soon as I was out of their sight, however, I shoved the book away in my bag and switched direction. I needed to get to the locker rooms. No one would see me there. But as I was hurrying past the little music practice rooms on the way, I heard an airy, wild sound; a light, joyful melody. It seemed to lift my soul like a bird hovering over the moors. For some reason I thought of my Wanderer. His voice seemed to be calling me in the music.
I stopped dead, and without thinking, I pushed open the door of the nearest practice room. Mr. Brooke, the music master, looked up crossly. I had interrupted a lesson, but not with one of the Wyldcliffe girls. Mr. Brooke’s student was a boy. He was eighteen—nineteen? I didn’t really take in what he looked like, apart from being tall and fair and thin, but his eyes met mine, and he smiled as he broke off from his playing. He held a silver flute in his hands.
“I’m sorry,” I said, and slammed the door shut.
As I caught my breath, the boy started to play again. For a moment, I stood there, lost in the beauty of the music, remembering the boy’s smile, the cool radiance of his eyes, and his long, sensitive fingers poised on the shining flute. But my mother was calling me, and her voice blotted everything else out. I tore myself away and hurried to the locker rooms, which were tucked away in a back corner of the school. When I got there they were empty, as I had hoped. Now I could escape.
This was my one true gift: to be able to call to the unseen spirits of the air and ask them to carry me on their hidden paths. When I felt myself being changed from the heaviness of everyday life, when I almost dissolved into the light, I couldn’t help being exalted. At that moment, I was free, I existed everywhere and nowhere, on a wild rapture of rushing energy and power. I called it dancing on the wind when I tried to explain it to Evie and Sarah, but I didn’t really know how it worked, except that I reached deep inside myself and then, whatever I saw in my mind happened in reality. I could take myself to different places through space and air and light. And so I stepped into the unknown—into an invisible vortex of endless power—and when I stepped out at the other end I had reached the circle of stones that dominated the Blackdown Ridge.
It was already dark. Dusk fell quickly now that Wyldcliffe’s brief summer was over. The wind was racing wildly over the empty hills, and the few bent trees were already shedding their leaves.
I found a broken bird,
And a forgotten song…
I would have loved that place, if it hadn’t been my mother’s jail. The air was pure and sharp up there, tearing at my breath and hair, as though ready to lift me up and dance me away to a far, unknown country. The circle of massive stones had been made by long-forgotten men as a temple to their nature gods, and they vibrated with ancient power. But pulsing at the heart of the tallest stone, I sensed her abandoned heart, her agony, her questioning spirit. And in my mind, as I knelt at the foot of her prison, I heard her low voice, made gentle by pain and regret.
“Are you there again, daughter?” she began.
“I’m here,” I replied eagerly.
“It is good to hear your voice.”
“Do you really mean that?”
“What would be the point of lying,” she said with a sigh, “now that all my plans have come to nothing? My truth now is my utter humiliation. That has taught me to turn away from the path of lies. I am so weary, Helen. I can no longer fool myself that I will do great things. Now I am less than nothing, less than the dust under your feet.”
“Don’t say that.”
“Why not? It is true. You have youth, beauty, strength, and all life in front of you. I have nothing but eternal darkness and bondage and pain. My followers are scattered. My master, the Eternal King of the Unconquered lords, has abandoned me to my fate, now that I am useless to him and his dread captains. You have won and my power is decayed. My battles are over. Only the truth is left.”
“If you—if you really mean that,” I said haltingly, “tell me the truth about the Seal. What is it? Why did you give it to me? What does the sign of the Seal on my arm mean?”
The Seal was a little brooch, shaped like wings flying across the sun. My mother had left it with me in the children’s home when I was a baby, before she fell into darkness. “The one good thing I ever gave you,” she had said, when we met the term before in the underground cavern. Since then I had secretly cast spells over it, calling to its inner spirit, but it had not responded. It didn’t seem to have any powers, unlike Evie’s Talisman. By all appearances it was simply an inexpensive brooch, a small gift from mother to daughter. But there was something more.
A strange tattoolike mark—the exact replica of the shape of the brooch, a circle crossed by wings—had appeared like a brand on my skin a few months before, and it hadn’t changed or faded since then. Sarah had found something about marks like that in the ancient Book of lore that Agnes and Sebastian had studied so long ago and that had now come to us. I couldn’t forget what it said.
As to those who call themselves Witche Finders and do search a Woman’s body for Blemishes, if any such Markes are
founde, that poor Soule is declared a servant of the Evil
One and is set apart and destroyed. This may be Ignorance and Superstition and yet there remains a Questione.
From where do such signs come? Many Scholars declare they are a Sign of great Destiny, with Death in their wake.
I had to know what it all meant. I asked her again, more urgently. “What is the Seal? Why did you give it to me?”
There was a long silence. I thought perhaps she had retreated from me, but then faint images formed in my mind as I leaned against the cold stone. I heard my mother’s voice again echoing in my head, low and tender and regretful, and I saw her memories and felt her pain.
“When I was very young,” she began slowly, “I dreamed of many things. I looked at the sunset and dreamed of beauty and power and life that went on forever. I watched the birds fly away in the autumn and dreamed of going on a great journey that had no end, but was its own destiny. I saw snow cover the earth like spun silver and dreamed of healing and peace and a vast, eternal light. I longed for magic and miracles and mysteries. I had no one to share these feelings with. My family laughed and called me childish and romantic. My friends grew away from me. I was alone. I turned inward, and drew upon the secrets of my own heart and mind. Slowly and painfully, I discovered that I had powers. I didn’t need anyone else to make my dreams real. I could change the weather and make things move and create fire and do as I willed. I could take myself to strange places and see into people’s minds. But I didn’t know what to do with these mysterious gifts. I thought I was a freak, slowly going crazy. And then one day I met…someone.”
“Was it my father?” I asked eagerly.
“Your father? No!” She couldn’t keep the scorn from her voice, but then she controlled herself and went on. “It was a messenger from the unseen worlds who said that I was marked out as different, fated for great things. Once, I was told, many people had been in tune with the lost powers: seers and prophets and priests. Now it was a rare, precious gift, and those who had it were invited to join an ancient and secret order. I would live until the end of time, in every generation, and I would serve the world, dwelling always in beauty and light. And so I was offered the Seal, to confirm my vow of belonging.