A Great and Terrible Beauty (Gemma Doyle #1)(67)

A caterpillar crawls over my knuckles. I jump. Mother gently removes it and it becomes a ruby-breasted robin, hopping about on frail legs.

“They no longer exist.”

“What do you mean? What happened to them?”

“Let’s not waste time discussing the past,” Mother says dismissively. She gives me a smile. “I just want to look at you. My goodness, you’re already becoming a lady.”

“I’m learning to waltz. I’m not terribly good at it, but I am trying, and I think I should have it down fairly well by our first tea dance.” I want to tell her everything. It’s all coming out in a rush. She’s listening to me with such attention that I never want this day to end.

A cluster of blackberries, plump and inviting, lies nestled in the ground. Before I can bring one to my mouth, Mother takes it from my hand. “You mustn’t eat those, Gemma. They’re not for the living.” Mother sees the confusion on my face. “Those who eat the berries become part of this world. They can’t go back.”

She gives them a toss and they land in front of the deer, which gobbles them down greedily. Mother glances at the little girl—the one from my visions. She’s hiding behind a tree.

“Who is that?” I ask.

“My helper,” Mother says.

“What is her name?”

“I don’t know.” Mother closes her eyes tightly, as if she’s fighting off pain.

“Mother, what is it?”

She opens them again, but seems pale. “Nothing. I’m a bit tired from all the excitement. It’s time for you to go now.”

I’m on my feet. “But there’s so much I still need to know.”

Mother rises, places her arms around my shoulders. “Your time has ended for today, love. The power of this place is very strong. It must be taken in small doses. Even the Order came here only when they needed to. Remember that your place is back there.”

My throat aches. “I don’t want to leave you.”

Her fingers give the lightest of touches on my cheeks, and I can’t stop the tears from coming. She kisses my forehead and bends to look me square in the face.

“I’ll never leave you, Gemma.”

She turns and walks up the hill, the child’s hand in hers. They walk toward the sunset till they merge with it and there’s nothing left but the deer and me and the lingering scent of roses on the wind.



When I find my friends again, they’re frolicking like happy lunatics.

“Watch this!” Felicity says. She blows gently on a tree and its bark changes from brown to blue to red and back again.

“Look!” Ann scoops water from the river and it turns to golden dust in her hands. “Did you see that?”

Pippa is stretched out in a hammock. “Wake me when it’s time to leave. On second thought, don’t wake me. This is too divine a dream.” She extends her arms overhead and dangles a leg over the side of the hammock, resting in her cocoon.

I am changed and spent. I want to go back to my room and sleep for a hundred years. And I want to run back down into that valley and stay here with my mother forever.

Felicity puts her arm around me. “We simply must come again tomorrow. Can you imagine if that prig Cecily could see us now? She’d be sorry she didn’t want to join up.”

Pippa drops an arm down to pick a handful of berries.

“Don’t!” I shout, slapping them out of her hands.

“Why not?”

“If you eat them, you have to stay here forever.”

“No wonder they look so tempting,” she says.

I hold out my hand. Reluctantly, she drops them in my palm, and I toss them into the river.





CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE


WE’RE SLEEPWALKING THROUGH THE DAY, RIDICULOUS smiles on our faces. The other girls rush past us in the halls like nettles blown across a lawn. We drift through them from class to class, going through the motions, absorbing nothing. We keep last night’s promise alive through furtive glances and little asides spoken in code that perplex our teachers and make us all smile.

We understand each other. We share a secret.

Not a terrible secret like the one that binds me to my family and to Kartik, but a deliciously forbidden secret that bands us together. Anticipation races through our veins, stretching our skins tight to the point of bursting. It’s all we can do to get through the day and wait for night to come so that we can open that door of light into the realms again. We are as one. There will be no outsiders. No intruders on our experience.

During our music lesson, Mr. Grunewald drones on for the whole of the hour about the merits of a particular opera. Elizabeth, Cecily, and Martha listen like the good girls they are, taking perfect little notes, their heads bobbing up and down in unison. Listen, write, listen, write.

We don’t jot down a word of it. We’re elsewhere in a land where we can be anything we choose. Mr. Grunewald calls Cecily to the piano to play her Assembly Day piece for us. Her fingers plod out a careful, correct minuet.

“Ah, good, Miss Temple. Very precise.” Mr. Grunewald is pleased, but we know the feel of real music now, and it’s difficult to feign interest in the merely pretty.

After class, Cecily pretends her playing was awful. “Oh, I simply butchered it, didn’t I? Tell the truth.”