A Great and Terrible Beauty (Gemma Doyle #1)(72)

“What did you wish for?” Mother asks me when it’s just the two of us.

“I have what I want. You’re here.”

She strokes my cheek. “Yes. For a little while longer.”

My good mood evaporates. “What do you mean?”

“Gemma, I cannot stay forever, else I could be trapped like one of those wretched lost spirits who never complete their soul’s task.”

“And what is yours?”

“I must set right what Mary and Sarah did so many years ago.”

“What did they do?”

Before Mother can answer, Pippa runs to me, nearly knocking me over in her gushing enthusiasm. She hugs me tightly. “Did you see him? Wasn’t he the most perfect gentleman? He pledged to be my champion! He actually pledged his life for mine! Have you ever heard of anything half so romantic? Can you bear it?”

“Barely,” Felicity says wryly. She’s just returned from her hunt, exhausted but happy. “That’s not as easy as it looks, I can tell you. My arm will ache for a week.”

She moves her shoulder in small circles, wincing a bit. But I know she’s grateful for that aching arm, grateful to have proof of her own hidden strengths.

Ann wanders over, her fine, lank hair curling about her shoulders in new ringlets. Even her perpetual runny nose seems to have cleared. She points to the tall, thin crystals arranged in a circle behind Mother. “What are those?”

“Those are the Runes of the Oracle, the heart of this realm,” Mother says. I stand beside one. “Don’t touch them,” Mother warns.

“Why not?” Felicity asks.

“You must understand how the magic of the realms works first, how to control it, before you can let it live in you and use it on the other side.”

“We can take this sort of power with us to our world?” Ann says.

“Yes, but not yet. Once the Order is reestablished they can teach you. It’s not safe until then.”

“Why not?” I ask.

“It’s been such a long time since the magic here has been used. There’s no telling what could happen. Something could get out. Or come in.”

“They’re humming,” Felicity says.

“Their energy is very powerful,” Mother says, making a cat’s cradle from a skein of golden yarn.

When I tilt my head one way, they seem almost to disappear. But when I turn my head another, I can see them rising up from the ground, more dazzling than diamonds. “How exactly does it work?” I ask.

She snakes her fingers in and out of the yarn. “When you touch the runes, it’s as if you become the magic itself. It flows through your veins. And then you are able to do in the other world what you can do here in the realms.”

Felicity brings her hand ever closer to a rune. “Strange. It stopped humming as I got near.”

I can’t resist. I hold out my hand, not touching it, but near it. I’m seized by a rush of energy. My eyes flutter. The urge to touch the rune is overwhelming.

“Gemma!” Mother barks.

I pull my hand back quickly. My amulet glows. “Wh-what was that?”

“You are the conduit,” Mother explains. “The magic flows through you.”

Felicity’s face clouds over. But an instant later, she’s wearing a ripe smile, thinking some naughty thought. She leans back on her elbows in the grass. “Can you imagine it? If we had this power at Spence?”

“We could do as we wish,” Ann adds.

“I’d have a closet filled with the latest fashions. And bushels of money.” Pippa giggles.

“I’d be invisible for a day,” Felicity adds.

“I wouldn’t be,” Ann says bitterly.

“I could ease Father’s pain.” I glance at Mother. Her eyes narrow.

“No,” she says, unraveling a Jacob’s ladder.

“Why not?” My cheeks are hot.

“We’d be careful,” Pippa adds.

“Yes, terribly careful,” Felicity chimes in, trying to charm Mother as if she were one of our impressionable teachers.

Mother crushes the yarn in her fist. Her eyes flash. “Tapping into this power is not a game. It is hard work. It takes preparation, not the wild curiosity of overeager schoolgirls.”

Felicity is taken aback. I bristle at this comment, at being chided in front of my friends. “We are not overeager.”

Mother places a palm on my arm, gives me a faint smile, and I feel churlish for having acted like such a child. “When it is time.”

Pippa peers carefully at the base of a rune. “What are these markings?”

“It’s an ancient language, older than Greek and Latin.”

“But what does it say?” Ann wants to know.

“‘I change the world; the world changes me.’”

Pippa shakes her head. “What does that mean?”

“Everything you do comes back to you. When you affect a situation, you are also affected.”

“M’lady!” The knight has returned. He’s brought out a lute. Soon, he’s serenading Pippa with a song about her beauty and virtue.

“Isn’t he perfection? I think I shall die from happiness. I want to dance—come with me!” Pippa pulls Ann after her toward the dashing knight, forgetting all about the runes.