Uppercliffe was an isolated farmhouse on the moors, far from prying eyes. The little house was now tumbledown and abandoned, but Agnes had once secretly lived there after coming back from London with her baby, Evie’s great-great-grandmother. It was a special place for us, full of the echoes of the past.
Evie and I rode there on my ponies Starlight and Bonny. We met Josh and Cal with their horses in the village, so as not to attract the notice of any gossiping tongues in the school. They were waiting for us outside the village hall, which hosted the occasional lecture or meeting, and where the local mothers organized an annual Christmas party for their children. Helen didn’t ride with us. She would arrive in her own way.
We trotted sedately down the high street, and left the village and its cottages behind. It was a fine autumn day, and the bracken on the moors glowed like a smoldering carpet of fire. Soon we were cantering over the hills, and it wasn’t long before the windswept remains of the old farm came into sight. Inside the deserted building everything was dark and cold. There was the rustle of mice in the corner, and the floorboards had rotted to reveal the rich, peaty earth beneath.
We waited, talking quietly, until the air seemed to twist and thicken, and a silver haze formed. I sensed the vibration of low, secret music, and then Helen stepped out in front of us. We had seen her do this many times before, but it was still amazing.
As Helen caught her breath, I noticed the heightened flush on her usually pale cheeks and the determined glitter in her eyes. She barely acknowledged the boys’ presence.
“Let’s make the Circle,” she said abruptly. “Laura is hidden between life and death. We need to find her under the Eye of Time, at the next new moon.”
“How do you know this about the ‘Eye of Time’?” asked Evie.
“I just know.”
Evie glanced at me and gave a slight shrug of the shoulders, an unspoken message: What do we do now? I’m so worried about Helen….
“I just know!” Helen shouted. “Stop treating me like a child!”
“Hey, Helen, no one’s doing that,” Josh said quietly. “We all really want to help Laura and strike a blow against the Priestess. Everyone’s ready to follow your lead, but we’d like to understand what’s happening.”
“I’m sorry,” Helen forced herself to say. “I thought you’d be pleased that I’ve found stuff out that will help.”
“We are,” I replied quickly. “It’s just…aren’t you going to tell us how you did it?”
“I—I had a dream. I dreamed about Miss Scratton—she told me what we had to do.”
It sounded kind of fake, and Helen was usually so truthful. Again there was the little frown from Evie, a slight shake of the head from Josh.
“Good. Well…that’s good,” I said uncertainly.
But Evie was still frowning. “What else did you learn from Miss Scratton in your dream?”
“Just that,” Helen replied. “We have to look for Laura and the Eye of Time on the night of the next new moon. Or at least I have to,” she added sullenly. “You don’t have to come.”
Silence. Waiting. Evie seemed to be weighing up Helen’s words, trying to work out what was going on. “Of course we’ll come with you,” she said at last. “We’re sisters, so we’re in this together. We don’t have any secrets, do we?”
“No,” Helen said, but I didn’t believe her and I guessed that she knew that. This wasn’t the time for quarreling, though. It was Laura’s time. I tried to be practical.
“Well, how do you suggest we start?” I said, as though everything was perfectly fine. “We need to make the Circle, of course, and I’ve brought the Book with me.” This ancient, leather-bound volume had first been discovered by Sebastian, and was full of the lore of the Mystic Way. “Hopefully we’ll find some guidance in here. I’ve looked at a few things already. There’s a charm to awaken people under curses, that might be useful—”
“No,” Helen said, taking the Book from me and handing it to Cal. “We won’t need that, not yet. I think I know what to do. We can’t do anything to release Laura from bondage until the new moon, but we need to make contact with her and prepare her for it. Evie, please may I hold the Talisman?”
The rest of us stared at her. There was a curious intensity about Helen’s words. She was standing in the shadows of the dilapidated farmhouse, wearing jeans and a shapeless sweater. Her fair hair fell across her eyes, and she looked like a pilgrim in an old painting, traveling to some mysterious destination. Evie nodded slowly and gave Helen the Talisman.
As Helen held it, the crystal at its center sparkled clear and white.
“Agnes,” Helen whispered. “Hear us. Be with us now. You poured the power of your love into this Talisman. It links all of us, present and past. Let it be a bridge between the light and the dark. Let it shine in the shadows where Laura is lost and afraid.”
Then she marked a Circle on the ground with her finger. The three of us stepped into the Circle and held hands while the boys watched. Cal looked torn between being proud of my gifts and slightly suspicious of anything that separated me from him, but Josh’s eyes were full of admiration for Evie as she echoed Helen’s words: “Agnes. Hear us. Be with us now. Complete our sacred Circle.”
And so we called upon the powers of air, water, earth, and fire. Helen held the Talisman high. She began to chant in her pure, clear voice. The humble stone-walled room began to fill with light and sound, which seemed to radiate from the heart of the jewel. Evie and I had stumblingly found our way to our secret elemental powers under Helen’s guidance, and now she was leading us again, like a prophetess, singing to the great unseen. A silver rope of light, which seemed to be summoned by Helen’s song, materialized from the Talisman, weaving circles within circles. Was it then that I first saw that Helen was far beyond anything I could ever be? Or was it when more colored ribbons of light formed in the air, creating shapes and pictures? As we looked up in awe, scenes from Laura’s life swirled into view. We saw her laughing on the terrace at Wyldcliffe with her cousin Celeste, then getting into trouble for some stunt, and being summoned for detention. We saw her enter the High Mistress’s study; then she was seemingly asleep in the crypt under the chapel ruins, and Mrs. Hartle was bending greedily over her neck as she sucked her soul away. Finally the shimmering images showed Laura as we had seen her last term in the underground cavern: a Bondsoul, white and haggard, as gaunt as a skeleton and totally enslaved to the will of her Priestess, Mrs. Hartle. Even in that hazy picture formed by the blended lights I saw that Laura’s eyes were like two dead pools, and the sight of her degradation filled me with horrified pity.
Helen stopped chanting. “Laura!” she called softly. “Listen to me!”
Laura seemed to focus her eyes, as if trying to look into the distance. She couldn’t see us, but perhaps wherever her spirit was held prisoner, she had heard Helen’s call. Her lips moved. “I’m not Laura,” she whispered. “I am no one…. I belong to the Priestess.”
“You don’t have to,” Helen replied. “You can still be saved. Do we have your permission to cross the threshold of your death and lead you on the path to your true home?”
“I can’t…all…all belongs to the Priestess,” Laura intoned again.
“That’s not true,” Helen said. “Your spirit belongs only to yourself and its Creator. The Priestess’s hold over you will end. I will make that happen, I promise. Let us help you.”
Laura seemed to look around fearfully, and a terrible spasm passed over her face. She moaned in a tormented whisper, “Yes…yes…find me, help me…please…” Her eyes lit up for one instant; then there was a flare of red light and a distant scream, and Helen’s delicately woven images shattered and vanished. The Talisman lay quiet in her hand. We looked at one another and let out our breaths and stepped out of the Circle.
“Helen, you were amazing!” gasped Evie.
“How do you know how to do all that?” asked Josh.
“I’m not totally sure.” Helen l
ooked down self-consciously and handed the Talisman back to Evie. “I see what I want to do in my mind, and somehow the powers make it happen. But it’s obvious that you can’t save someone who doesn’t want to be saved. We had to know whether Laura was willing to listen to us. At least we know now that some part of her wants to be free and can see beyond her bondage. Without that there’d be no hope—” She broke off, then murmured to herself, “The prisoner who loves her prison can never be free….”
“So what do we do next?” Evie asked.
“Wait for the new moon.”
“That’s all very well,” I said, “but we have to know where this ‘Eye of Time’ is—or what it is.”
“Don’t worry, Sarah,” Helen said, and the secretive, closed-up expression came over her face again. “I believe a sign will be given. You have to believe that, too.”
Something was stirring in my memory. “But I’m sure I’ve seen…look, there might be something in the Book. It’s worth a try.”
Cal put his jacket on the damp ground and placed the Book on top of it, opening it at the first pages. As we all crowded around, I read aloud the familiar words:
“Reader, if you bee not pure
Stay your hande and reade no more;
The Mysteries Ancient here proclaimed
Must not bee by Evil stained.”
“But it wasn’t here,” I said impatiently. “It was right at the end…. I remember, something about time…” I flipped the pages to the back of the book. There, on the very last page, was an elaborate design of an eye in a circle, surrounded by symbols and the words Oculus tempi omnia videt. For once I was glad of the dull Latin lessons at Wyldcliffe. “Look—oculus tempi—the Eye of Time…It says the Eye of Time sees everything….”
“The Eye of Time sees all things,” Helen murmured, tracing her finger over the words. “Yes, that’s right.”
“But that still doesn’t tell us where to go to find Laura,” Josh said.
“Like I said, I think we’ll be shown the way,” Helen replied. “But there’s something I could do that might help. I have to do it on my own, though.”
“You mean have another dream?” Cal asked quizzically.
Helen flushed faintly, and I frowned at Cal. She was too delicate to tease. But instead of being annoyed, Helen suddenly threw her arms around me and Evie, and looked up at Cal and Josh with tears trembling in her eyes.
“You four—you mean so much to me. Stay safe. Stay in the light. Let me do the rest, please.” Helen stepped back, and with a quick swirl she wrapped herself in the dim shadows of the ruined cottage, pulling the air like a soft blanket around her shoulders. The next second she was gone.
“What on earth did she mean?” Cal wondered. “And how does she do all that?”
“Yeah,” said a low, husky voice behind me. “That’s what I don’t understand. So who’s gonna explain?” My heart leaped as I spun around. Standing in the doorway with a wicked grin on her lovely face was Velvet. She had heard—and seen—everything.
Fifteen
FROM THE DIARY OF HELEN BLACK
OCTOBER 9
Everything has changed in a few brief moments this afternoon, my Wanderer. I have just got back from the moors, and my friends will be looking for me, but I want to write this down before I forget, while it is all still new, like a breath of wind at sunrise. There is no one here in the dorm to see me, and so I can tell you that a cunning little voice in my head is pleading, Forget about Laura for one moment. Follow this flickering marsh light instead. Dance down the fairies’ golden path. Just close your eyes and think about what he said. He might never say it again. Make the most of this sweetness. Taste it while you can.
My mind seems to burn with dazzling light! I am dancing, I am soaring through the air, I am a song on the wind….
I am crazy, I know. And so this is my moment of self-indulgence. Let me tell you what happened today, Wanderer, and don’t judge me.
After we had cast our Circle at Uppercliffe Farm, I decided it was worth approaching my mother’s spirit again to see if I could find out more about the Eye of Time. I was also longing to know what had happened after the terrible anguish I had heard her suffer on my last visit. I dreaded that she might have been snatched by her dark master beyond my reach. So I slipped away again before my friends could stop me or question me too closely. I had seen the curiosity in their eyes, and I didn’t want them to have any idea of what I had done, and what I was going to do.
My element of air was kind to me, and in a few moments I had taken the secret path to the Ridge. As I fell out of the air in the shadow of the great stones it started to rain. The first few drops of cool water on my face felt good; then the shower quickly turned into a savage downpour, as it can on the northern moors. Water, earth, and air—I was surrounded by elemental majesty. All that was missing was fire, but then a blue crack of lightning tore across the sky. I heard a strange cry, like the voice of a bird, driving through the storm, and I ran to the edge of the circle and looked out over the moor. Someone was climbing its slopes, head bowed in the rain. Then he looked up, and I recognized his thin, pale face, and his laughing eyes. It was him, the musician. He seemed to have been expecting to see me, though I can’t explain why I thought that. He strode against the wind, heading for where I stood. Laura—the Eye of Time—all thoughts of my mother and friends—everything vanished. For one moment, it felt as though he was the only other person in the whole world. There was just him, and me, and the wind crying over the hills.
In those few seconds I felt that I had always known the light of his smile, and his lean body, and his artist’s hands. His mind—sensitive and questioning and tender—seemed to brush against mine like a bird’s wing. But I didn’t want to feel like that. I didn’t want to feel anything. I had put on my armor, wrapping myself in my loneliness, and suddenly I was moved by this stranger. I told myself I should run and get out of there, but I couldn’t. I was waiting for him to come to me, waiting for him to say my name.
As he reached the summit of the Ridge, the wind and the rain and crashes of thunder were like the wild music of the ancient gods. The boy looked up at the sky and laughed, and I laughed too, just for the joy of seeing him. I couldn’t help it—it was like a madness that washed over me. But then the next minute we became deadly serious, and we simply stood in the rain on the hillside and looked at each other, as though we would never tire of looking and finding more to wonder at. I had the strangest feeling that since I had last seen him we had in fact spoken to each other many times. As the wind took my breath away, I realized that in all the past days, underneath everything else, an awareness of his presence at Wyldcliffe had been tugging at my heart like a golden thread.
At last, he smiled and spoke.
“What are you doing out here, Helen? Following me again?”
“Of course. To the ends of the earth,” I said lightly.
He grinned. “That’s settled then. But you’ll get soaked. Here.” Taking off his jacket, he flung it round both of us, then we ran to find some shelter under some of the smaller stones that had fallen over hundreds of years ago and now leaned crazily against one another. We huddled together under their sloping sides, and it seemed so natural, as if we had done this many times before. For a moment I even forgot why I had gone to the Ridge as we talked and laughed, and listened to the song of the wind.
I have never been a great one for laughter. Brooding, worrying, feeling lonely and anxious—I’m pretty expert at all that. But he made me want to laugh, not because he said anything funny or witty, but because hope seemed to rise up in me just at the sight of him and his clear, bright eyes, as though life could be as simple and sweet as the first few notes on a flute.
“So what are you really doing up here on the moors?” he asked. “Aren’t you young ladies supposed to be chaperoned at all times?”
“We’re still allowed out for a walk occasionally. It’s not Victorian times.”
“I heard that Dr. Franzen
would like to change all that,” he said. “Get everything back to what it was in the old days.”
I stiffened at the sound of Dr. Franzen’s name. I had forgotten my burdens for a moment, but now they came rolling back. “I don’t care what he does,” I said. “I’m going to leave school as soon as I can anyway.”
The boy looked at me quizzically. “I take it you’re not very keen on Wyldcliffe’s new Master.”
“I hate him.”
I hadn’t meant to speak so savagely. The boy leaned closer to me, so that I felt his body pressing gently against mine as he whispered, “Don’t forget that forgiveness is stronger than hate.”
I stared at him blankly. Miss Scratton had once said exactly the same thing to me.
“How—how do you know?” I stammered. “What do you mean? And what were you doing up here anyway?” All my ease with him began to drain away. I got up and stepped away from him. “Who are you?”
He stood up too. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you. My name is Lynton. And I told you, I’m a student at St. Martin’s. I have another lesson with Mr. Brooke this afternoon. It was such a lovely day that I asked the taxi driver to drop me on the moors so that I could walk the rest of the way to Wyldcliffe.” He shrugged his shoulders ruefully. “I underestimated the distance and how quickly the weather can change, though.”
“Never underestimate anything at Wyldcliffe,” I muttered, and turned to go. The wonderful feeling of lightness had vanished, and I felt a dull, aching nausea in the pit of my stomach. I had been making a fool of myself with self-indulgent nonsense; poor crazy Helen Black. He was just a stranger, and there was no connection between us. I didn’t want or need him in my life. I didn’t need anyone. I was just wet and cold and anxious to get away. To be alone.