“Don’t step out of the Circle, whatever you do. Now hold hands.”
We linked our hands. I felt silly, like a child at a birthday party waiting for the magician to pull a rabbit out of his hat. But Helen looked deadly serious.
“Try to empty your minds,” she said. “Concentrate on the Elements that we come from: the air of our breath, the water of our veins, the earth of our bodies, and the fire of our desires.”
She began to chant it over and over, and we copied her: “The water of our veins…the fire of our desires…”
Then she raised her arms and face, just as we had seen her standing on the roof, and spoke in a low, clear voice: “We stand here, pure in intention, courageous of heart, young in spirit, united of purpose. We ask that the powers within us might awake. We ask Agnes to show us the truth of her Talisman. We call on our sisters: the wind, the earth, and the seas. We invoke the fire of life.”
Even then part of me was saying, Nothing will happen; I can’t really do this…. I wasn’t prepared for what happened next.
The lights flickered to a ghostly glow. A wind sprang up, wrapping itself around us, blowing our hair, taking my breath away.
“Hold out your hands.”
Shaking, I held them out in front of me, and Sarah did the same. A column of bright white fire shot up from the Talisman, and tiny flames danced around the circle that Helen had drawn on the floor. I gasped. Water was flowing from my hands, spilling to the ground like a waterfall. I looked across at Sarah. Fine dust was pouring out of hers. Earth, water, air, fire…Then I saw a girl in white at the heart of the column of fire. “Agnes!” I cried as I went spinning out of control, falling into another world….
Everything was black. It was over.
“Don’t step out of the circle!”
I blinked and opened my eyes. The only light came from the candles, which were burning steadily. The Talisman lay cool and unharmed on the floor. I bent down and picked it up, and heard Agnes whisper, I am with you always….
Helen quickly rubbed the chalk markings away with her foot. Then she turned to us with flushed cheeks. “The Elements have spoken. Earth for Sarah, water for Evie. I thought it would be like that.” She smiled. “So now we are complete. Four friends, four Elements, four corners of the circle.”
“But there are only three of us,” said Sarah.
“No, there aren’t,” I said, looking up slowly. “Don’t forget Agnes. She’s in this too.”
Now I had glimpsed her world, and I could never go back to being the girl I used to be.
Forty-six
A
gnes.
I was aware of her every day. She was by my side as I walked down the long, echoing corridors of Wyldcliffe. Sometimes she was as vivid and real as any other girl, sometimes just a shadow, like a sigh. I was afraid of what Sebastian had told me and of the things that Helen had shown us, but Agnes somehow gave me the courage to keep going in that place of twisted secrets. She even gave me the strength to deal with Celeste, who seemed more determined than ever to land me in trouble.
She must have had plenty of time lying in her hospital bed to dream up her pathetic campaign—stupid stuff like tearing pages from my books, or hiding my gym clothes, anything to make life uncomfortable. It wasn’t enough for her to dislike me personally; she wanted India and Sophie and the whole of her crowd to hate me too. Sophie looked a bit awkward, but she was too weak to say anything, and soon fell back under Celeste’s control. I didn’t care. I knew who my friends were.
“Do you really think you’re going to get me expelled by doing all this childish stuff?” I asked Celeste wearily as I came into the dorm and found my clothes scattered on the floor for the third time that week.
“Not for this, Johnson,” she replied. “This is just to wind you up. It’s kind of fun, though.”
“You’re sick, you know, Celeste.”
“Really? How kind of you to tell me,” she drawled. Then she laughed. “You’re the one who’s going to be sick when you’re packing your bags to leave.”
I walked out without speaking. I had to get away from her before I lost my temper. I mustn’t draw attention to myself—hadn’t Miss Scratton said that once? I ran down the marble stairs heading anywhere—the stables, the library, it didn’t matter.
“No running on the stairs!”
I stopped and looked behind me. It was Miss Dalrymple.
“Where are you dashing to like that?” She looked smiling and cheerful, but she watched me unblinkingly, like a snake. She came closer to me and I started to feel sick. Lights seemed to press on my eyes until I saw a bright patch hovering in front of me. It was in the shape of a cross—no, a kind of sword, and then for split second I saw Sebastian as though faraway, his beautiful face taut with concentration, as he cut the air with swift movements, a silver dagger flashing in his hand. The silver dagger…
I tried to speak: “Sorry.”
“Remember that running on the stairs can be dangerous,” she said blandly. “We wouldn’t want anything to happen, would we? Why, Evie, you look so pale. Are you all right?”
“I’m fine.”
“But so untidy, dear.” Her eyes were darting all over me. “Make sure your hair is tied back in the future. And you’re not wearing jewelry, are you?”
Jewelry. My heart was big and loud in my chest. The blood sang in my head.
“N-no…no…of course not.”
Was she an overzealous teacher searching for rule breakers, or a member of the coven searching for the Talisman? Either way I was trapped. She was standing so close to me now that I could see the fine veins in her cheeks, could smell the heavy, hypnotic perfume that she wore. I had to get away. I panicked and pulled open the first two buttons of my shirt, showing my bare neck.
“I don’t have any jewelry,” I stammered. “I don’t have anything.”
Miss Dalrymple’s face fell as she stepped back; then she smiled again.
“Of course not. Why would you?”
She let me go. I was shaking, but safe. Miss Dalrymple couldn’t have known that seconds before I had run down the marble steps, I had obeyed a blind impulse and hidden my necklace in a dark crack on the old servants’ staircase. But I couldn’t hide it forever.
“You have to make progress in the Rites, Evie,” urged Helen. “Look at what happened with Dalrymple. She could be involved. I’m sure she is. If the coven finds out that you are hiding the Talisman, they’ll close in on you. And Sebastian might attack any day.”
“He won’t!”
“Evie, you can’t be sure about that.” Helen sighed. “It’s desperately important for you to be prepared.”
“I’m trying! I’ve been practicing the Rites with you and Sarah every day. It’s just that I…”
“What?” asked Sarah.
“I can’t make anything happen,” I said. “Not since that first time.”
I don’t know what I had expected. Perhaps I imagined that I would be able to wave a wand and perform miracles, turn back the clocks and make everything all right by magic. It wasn’t like that, though. I couldn’t dance on the wind like Helen or heal people like Agnes. I couldn’t do anything.
I had brooded over the Talisman, called to it, turned it over in my hands, and hung it around my neck once again, but I had not been able to awaken it from its long sleep. And when Helen drew the Circle in our secret meetings, nothing happened to me. Sarah, on the other hand, was leaving me far behind. She knew how to perform the incantations, and when she placed her hands over a mound of earth that had been ritually scattered inside the Circle, a tiny green shoot would spring up from it before our eyes, like a fast-forwarded film. But I was completely useless.
So here we all were again, down in the grotto, trying everything one more time.
“You just need to trust yourself,” Sarah said. “It will come.”
They watched me anxiously as I waved my hands like an idiot over a bowl of water, trying to make it turn into steam, or c
reate waves in it, or make it turn pink, or whatever I was supposed to be doing….
“Open your mind,” Helen urged. “Feel your Element calling you; harness its powers—” “I can’t!”
She looked up at me thoughtfully. “Or you don’t want to.”
“I do, I do,” I cried. “I know it’s important.”
“It’s not a question of knowing, Evie. You have to feel.”
Perhaps that was the problem. I didn’t want to feel anything. My mother’s death all those years ago had shut something down inside me. I had grown up kidding myself that I was strong and independent, not needing anyone, but I saw now that I had simply been afraid to love, in case the person I loved vanished, as she had. And then Sebastian had come along, and I had stepped out of my protective armor. I had thrown myself headfirst into loving Sebastian, but he had gone, leaving me even more painfully alone than before. The boy I loved was a murderer, a wandering spirit, one of the doomed, and he was out there somewhere, beginning to fade. He was my enemy.
I was so unhappy that it hurt, like being cut with a knife. Of course I couldn’t feel anything; I didn’t want to, ever again.
“Evie, are you paying attention?” Helen’s voice jerked me back from my thoughts.
“Try again, Evie,” Sarah pleaded. “They’re getting closer; I’m sure they are. You’ve got to be able to defend yourself!”
And another distant voice echoed across the years in my head, as light and quick as silver: Find your powers, my sister, find yourself.
“I am trying,” I lied. Stretching my hands over the bowl of water, I closed my eyes and began to chant.
Water.
A single drop falling from a leaf onto the ground. The distant ocean, unimaginably vast, as deep and dark as the space behind the stars. Fine mist on the moors in the morning. Rain falling into the rich earth. A mountain stream singing as it raced down, down, down to the sea.
I couldn’t do anything to command water, but I dreamed about it. The dream I’d had on my very first night at Wyldcliffe, of a great wave rising up to sweep everything away, haunted me night after night. And from the minute I woke and splashed my face in the bathroom, I was aware of how it was impossible to live without water. Water of life, cleanse and refresh us…. The half-remembered words of a hymn that Frankie used to hum under her breath drifted up from my memories. Every time I drank a glass of tepid water in the dining hall, I thought of those useless bits of information you pick up without noticing.
Fact: There are more atoms in a single glass of water than there are glasses of water in all the seas in the world. All I had to do was turn on the tap to touch a living miracle.
More facts: The world’s surface is seventy percent water; a child grows in the womb in a sac of water; our “human bodies are largely composed of water….”
Water. The world. A child. My body. My tears.
Water for Evie. The old craving to swim came over me again, but I ignored it. I shut out the rain and the mists and the dreams. You have to feel, Helen had said, but I wasn’t going to be tempted. I didn’t want to feel anything. My heart had been wrung as dry as a bone, and I was going to keep it that way.
Forty-seven
S
o what is this Memorial Procession actually for?” I demanded. “Is this another of your crackpot Wyldcliffe traditions?”
We were down at the stables on a chilly December evening, grooming Bonny and Starlight. Sarah stopped brushing Bonny’s chestnut coat and glanced into the next stall to make sure no one was there.
“It’s for Lady Agnes,” she said. “At sunset on the twelfth day of the twelfth month, on the anniversary of her death, every girl in the school has to gather down in the old chapel ruins to say prayers for her soul. I get the feeling the staff would like to abolish the procession, but it was a condition laid down in Lord Charles’s will when the school took over the Abbey, so they’re stuck with it.”
“Oh.” I hadn’t expected this. Part of me still couldn’t accept that Agnes was dead. I had come to know her face, her voice, her smile, until they were part of me. I blinked and kept brushing Starlight’s tail and tried to keep my voice steady. “Well, it’s a good thing, isn’t it? Honoring her memory and all that?”
“Yes, of course,” said Sarah. “It’s just that there was some trouble a couple of years ago. One of the juniors became hysterical and swore that she had seen Agnes’s ghost hovering in the chapel. The whole thing turned into a kind of morbid drama, and the girl’s parents removed her from the school. So the mistresses are always worried that things will get out of hand again. I’m worried too. I can’t get rid of this feeling that we’re being watched.”
Just then someone came over with a bucketful of feed for the ponies. It was the boy I had seen working in the stables before.
“Hi, Josh,” Sarah said, turning to him brightly. “Thanks for bringing that.”
The ponies greeted the boy like an old friend. He laughed and set down the bucket. His clothes were scruffy, but he moved with the confident grace of an experienced rider.
“No problem.” He smiled. “I thought Bonny was dragging her hind leg earlier, but I cleaned out her hooves, and she seems fine now. I just thought I’d let you know.”
He turned the warmth of his smile on me, but I looked away.
“Okay, I’ll watch out for it,” said Sarah. “Thanks, Josh.”
“See you.” He strode away, whistling cheerfully. I busied myself with the ponies, my thoughts racing. I could hardly bear the idea of hanging around in the ruins with all the other Wyldcliffe girls, trampling the ground where Agnes had been, where Sebastian and I had once walked together. But I mustn’t think about Sebastian….
Very soon the Memorial Procession became the only topic of conversation in the school. Uniforms were ironed and shoes polished to Miss Scratton’s satisfaction. Tubs of white flowers from the greenhouses were arranged in the main hall, filling the corridors with their secretive, papery scent. The music master, Mr. Brooke—one of the few male teachers allowed over the Wyldcliffe threshold—insisted on extra classes every morning to practice the hymns. I glanced over at Celeste and her snooty blond friends and wondered what they would say if they knew they were going to be singing for my ancestor, Lady Agnes Templeton. I was part of the Abbey now, just as much as they were. Like Effie, I rightly belonged.
This was one Wyldcliffe tradition I would be proud to uphold.
We lined up on the winding marble stairs, with the younger ones in the front and the tall top class on the higher steps at the back. The whole school was there, except for Celeste, who had been excused because of her injured leg. We were all wearing our bloodred winter coats and holding a single white lily in our gloved hands. Excited whispers ran through the crowd of girls like little dancing flames. They didn’t care a bit about Agnes, of course; the night’s procession would just be a theatrical excitement, nothing more.
There was a clatter of heels on the black and white tiles, and the mistresses swept into view below us: Miss Scratton and Miss Schofield and Miss Raglan and Miss Dalrymple and all the rest of them. They were robed in their dark academic gowns and carried tall white candles in silver holders. Mrs. Hartle was holding what looked like a heavy prayer book, and she frowned as she looked up at the rows of girls waiting on the stairs. I tried to see any likeness to Helen, but although they were both tall, they couldn’t have been more different. Mrs. Hartle’s face was dark and smooth and heavy, and Helen’s full of light, like a medieval angel. It was hard to believe they were mother and daughter. No wonder it had been easy to keep it a secret.
“Silence!” called Miss Scratton. Her eyes darted over us. “Elizabeth Fisher, your coat is unfastened.” The unfortunate Elizabeth fumbled to do up her buttons. “We will proceed from the main door to the chapel ruins. There will be no talking. There will be no giggling. There will be no silliness. Let us begin. Mr. Brooke, are you ready?”
The slightly flustered music teacher gave us the note and w
e began to sing, our voices echoing high and clear. Then the High Mistress led the way down the steps of the Abbey. A few crimson streaks of sun were visible in the pearl-gray sky. The day was dying. We paced slowly, in time to our solemn singing, which floated across the shadowy lawns like the thin chants of the nuns in the old times. The black robes of the mistresses fluttered in the biting wind, and I was glad for my thick coat.
The procession made its way around the edge of the lake and up to the ruins. Then we fell silent and stood in a circle around the green mound of the altar. The broken columns and archways of the ancient church gleamed in the candlelight. The whole place felt like a stage waiting for something to happen. Mrs. Hartle handed the book to Miss Scratton, who began to intone a kind of prayer, her voice carried away by the wind.
“‘Man, that is born of woman, hath but a short time to live, and is full of misery. He cometh up, and is cut down, like a flower…. In the midst of life we are in death….’”
The words washed over me. I watched each girl go up to the mound and lay her flower on it, whispering the words, “In memory of Lady Agnes.”
“Whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die. The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death….’”
It was my turn. I walked up slowly. This was where she had lain in death, killed by the man I loved. In a flash I saw it all again: the struggle in the dark, Agnes’s pale dress, the fury in Sebastian’s eyes, and the terrible, eternal regret….
“For Agnes,” I said. Then I remembered the other silent victim of this haunted place and added quietly, “For Laura.”
I turned away and looked with surprise at the ranks of watching girls. I had forgotten that anyone else was there with me. Miss Scratton’s dry voice was still chanting in the background. “‘We give thee hearty thanks that it hath pleased thee to deliver our sister Agnes out of the miseries of this sinful world.’”