A Great and Terrible Beauty (Gemma Doyle #1)(66)

She walks me down into a grotto, past a circle of tall crystals, delicate as glass. A deer scampers through. It stops to sniff at the berries cupped in my mother’s palm. The deer nibbles them, turns its sloe brown eyes to me. Unimpressed, it threads slowly through high, plush grass and lies under a tree with a wide, gnarled base. I have so many questions fighting for attention inside me that I don’t know what to ask first.

“What are the realms, exactly?” I ask. The grass feels so inviting that I lie on my side in it, cupping my head in my palm.

“A world between worlds. A place where all things are possible.” Mother takes a seat. She blows a dandelion. A blizzard of white fluff spreads out on the breeze. “It’s where the Order came to reflect, to hone their magic and themselves, to come through the fire and be made new. Everyone comes here from time to time—in dreams, when ideas are born.” She pauses. “In death.”

My heart sinks. “But you’re not . . .” Dead. I can’t bring myself to say it. “You’re here.”

“For now.”

“How do you know all of this?”

Mother turns away from me. She pets the deer’s nose with long, steady strokes. “I didn’t know anything at first. When you were five, a woman came to me. One of the Order. She told me everything. That you were special—the promised girl who could restore the magic of these realms and bring the Order back to power.” She stops.

“What is it?”

“She also told me that Circe would never stop looking for you, so that the power might be hers alone. I was afraid, Gemma. I wanted to protect you.”

“Is that why you wouldn’t bring me to London?”

“Yes.”

Magic. The Order. Me, the promised girl. My head can’t hold it all.

I swallow hard. “Mother, what happened that day, in the shop? What was that . . . thing?”

“One of Circe’s spies. Her tracker. Her assassin.”

I can’t look at her. I’m bending a blade of grass into an accordion of squares. “But why did you . . .”

“Kill myself?” I look up to see her giving me that penetrating gaze. “To keep it from claiming me. If it had taken me alive, I would be lost, a dark thing too.”

“What about Amar?”

Mother’s mouth goes tight. “He was my guardian. He gave his life for me. There was nothing I could do to save him.”

I shudder, thinking of what could have become of Kartik’s brother.

“Let’s not worry about that now, shall we?” Mother says, sweeping stray strands of hair from my face. “I’ll tell you what I can. As for the rest, you’ll have to seek out the others to rebuild the Order.”

I sit up. “There are others?”

“Oh, yes. When the realms were closed, they all went into hiding. Some have forgotten what they know. Others have turned their backs on it. But some are still faithful, waiting for the day the realms will open and the magic can be theirs again.”

Rippling blades of grass tickle the tips of my fingers. It seems so unreal—the sunset sky, the raining flowers, the warm breeze, and my mother, close enough to touch. I close my eyes and open them again. She is still there.

“What is it?” Mother asks me.

“I’m afraid this isn’t real. It is real, isn’t it?”

Mother turns her face toward the horizon. The glow softens the sharp lines of her profile into something muted, like the fraying paper edges of a well-loved book. “Reality is a state of mind. To the banker, the money in his ledger book is all very real, though he doesn’t actually see it or touch it. But to the Brahma, it simply doesn’t exist the way the air and the earth, pain and loss do. To him, the banker’s reality is folly. To the banker, the Brahma’s ideas are as inconsequential as dust.”

I shake my head. “I’m lost.”

“Does it seem real to you?”

The wind blows strands of hair against my lips, tickling them, and beneath my skirt, I can feel the dewy moisture of the grass. “Yes,” I say.

“Well, then.”

“If everyone comes here from time to time, why does no one speak of it?”

Mother picks dandelion fluff from her skirt. It floats up, sparkling like crushed jewels in the sun. “They don’t remember it, except as fragments of a dream that they can’t seem to gather into a whole no matter how they try. Only the women of the Order could walk through that door. And now you.”

“I brought my friends with me.”

Her eyes widen. “You were able to bring them over by yourself?”

“Yes,” I say, uncertain. I’m afraid I’ve done something wrong, but Mother breaks into a slow, rapturous grin.

“Your power is even greater than the Order had hoped, then.” She frowns suddenly. “Do you trust them?”

“Yes,” I say. For some reason, her doubt irritates me, makes me feel like a small child again. “Of course I trust them. They’re my friends.”

“Sarah and Mary were friends. And they betrayed each other.”

Far off in the distance, I can hear Felicity’s shouts of joy, Ann’s following after. They’re calling my name.

“What happened to Sarah and Mary? I see other spirits. Why am I not able to contact them?”