The Sweet Far Thing (9 page)

I’m surprised to see Brigid leaving a bowl of milk on the hearth. Even more curious, she has affixed a crucifix to the wall beside the door, and small sprigs of leaves mark the windows.

I help myself to a hard crust of brown bread from the larder. “Brigid…,” I say then, and she jumps.

“By all the saints! Don’t sneak up on your old Brigid like that,” she says, putting a hand over her heart.

“What are you doing?” I nod toward the milk. “Is there a cat about?”

“No,” she says, grabbing her basket of sewing. “And that’s all I ’ave to say on the subject.”

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Brigid always has more to say on every subject. It’s simply a matter of luring the gossip out of her.

“Please, Brigid. I won’t tell a soul,” I promise.

“Well…” She motions for me to sit with her by the fire. “It’s for protection,” she whispers. “The cross and rowan leaves on the windows as well.”

“Protection from what?”

Brigid dips her needle into the fabric and pulls it through the other side. “The East Wing. Ain’t right putting that cursed place back as it was.”

“You mean because of the fire and the girls who died?”

Brigid cranes her neck to be sure we’re not overhead. Her sewing sits idle in her lap. “Aye, that, but I always felt that there were somethin’ not right about it.”

“What do you mean?” I say, taking another bite of bread.

“You just get a knowin’ in your very bones about such things.” She fingers the cross she wears around her neck. “And one day, I heard Missus Nightwing askin’ Missus Spence somethin’ about the East Wing and Missus Spence, God rest her as an angel, tellin’ ’er not to worry, that she would never let anything in, even if she ’ad to die first. Gives me a shudder jus’ thinkin’ abou’ it.”

Eugenia Spence giving her life to save everyone from the Winterlands creatures. The bread I’ve been chewing goes down hard.

Brigid looks through the windows at the dark woods beyond. “I wish they’d leave it be.”

“But, Brigid, think how lovely it will look when it is complete and Spence is as she once was,” I argue.

“Wouldn’t that be a fine tribute to Mrs. Spence?”

Brigid nods. “Aye, ’twould. But still…” She cups my chin in her hand. “You won’t tell on your old Brigid ’bout the milk, will you?”

I shake my head. “Of course not.”

“There’s a good girl.” She pats my cheek, and that, more than any good-luck charm, has the power to rid my soul of ghosts. “When you first came in your mourning weeds, I thought you the strangest thing.

It’s your green eyes—they put me in mind of that poor Mary Dowd ’oo died in the fire and her friend, Sarah. But you’re nothin’ like them. Nothin’ at all.”

“Thank you for the bread,” I say, though it’s turned to lead in my belly.

“You’re welcome, luv. Best get back. You’ll be missed.” She looks again at the dark beyond. “Ain’t right putting it back. I can feel it. Ain’t right.”

The all-seeing eyes of Eugenia Spence watch me climb the stairs to my room. Her white hair is arranged in the fashion of the day, with curls on her forehead and a mass of coiled hair at the back of her head.

Her dress has a high collar and an elaborate ruffle running down both sides of the bright green

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bodice—no sedate gray or black for Eugenia Spence. And there at her neck is the crescent eye amulet that now hangs from my own, hidden beneath my gown.

My mother caused your death.

In my room, I take out my mother’s diary and read again of Eugenia’s heroism, of how she offered herself as a sacrifice in place of Sarah and my mother.

“I will have payment,” the creature cried, grabbing fast to Sarah’s arm.

Eugenia’s mouth tightened. “We must hie to the Winterlands.” We found ourselves in that land of
ice and fire, of thick, barren trees and perpetual night. Eugenia stood tall.

“Sarah Rees-Toome, you will not be lost to the Winterlands. Come back with me. Come back.”

The creature turned on her. “She has invited me. She must pay, or the balance of the realms is
forfeit.”

“I shall go in her place….”

“So be it. There is much we could do with one so powerful….”

Eugenia threw to me her amulet of the crescent eye. “Mary, run! Take Sarah with you through
the door, and I shall close the realms!…”

The thing caused her to cry out in pain then. Her eyes were filled with a pleading that took my
breath away, for I had never seen Eugenia frightened before. “The realms must stay closed until
we can find our way again. Now—run!” she screamed…and the last I saw of Eugenia, she was
shouting the spell to close the realms, even as she was swallowed by the dark without a trace.

I close my mother’s diary and lie on my back, staring at the ceiling and thinking of Eugenia Spence. If she hadn’t thrown her amulet to my mother and closed the realms for good, there’s no telling what sort of terrors might have been visited upon this world. In that one act, she saved us all, though it meant her destruction. And I wonder what became of her, what terrible fate befell the great Eugenia Spence because of my mother’s sin, and if I could ever possibly be enough to atone for it.

When my dreams find me, they are disquieting. A pretty lady in a lavender dress and hat races through London streets thick with fog. Her ginger hair falls loosely about her frightened face. She beckons me to follow, but I cannot keep pace; my feet are as heavy as lead and I can’t see. The cobblestones are coated with paper adverts for a spectacle of some sort. I reach for one:
Dr. Theodore Van
Ripple—Illusionist Extraordinaire!

The fog clears, and I’m mounting the stairs of Spence, past the enormous portrait of Eugenia Spence. I climb until I find myself on the roof in my bedclothes. The wind rips through me. On the horizon, storm clouds gather. Down below, the men continue their work on the East Wing. Their hands are as quick as an owl’s blink. The stone column rises higher. A shovel strikes the ground and will not go farther. It has hit something solid. The men look to me. “Would you like to open it, miss?”

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The lady in the lavender dress opens her mouth. She’s trying to tell me something, but there is no sound, only alarm in her eyes. Suddenly, everything moves very fast. I see a room lit by a single lamp. Words. A knife. The lady running. A body floating upon the water. I hear a voice like a whisper in my ear:
“Come
to me….”

I wake with a start. I want to sleep again but I can’t. Something’s calling to me, pulling me downstairs and out to the lawn, where a full moon spreads its buttery light over the wooden skeleton of the East Wing. The turret rises into lowlying clouds. Its shadow reaches across the lawn and touches my bare toes. The grass is cold with dew.

Upon the roof, the gargoyles sleep. The ground seems to hum beneath my feet. And once again, I am drawn to the turret and the stone there. I step down into the hole. The framing of the East Wing looms above my head, and the night clouds move like lashes from an angry whip. The crescent eye glows, and in the faint light, I see an outline in the stone that matches the amulet’s shape.

A tingling begins in my fingers. It travels through my body. Something inside me wants release. I can’t control it, and I’m afraid of whatever it may be.

I put my hands to the stone. A surge of power pushes through me. The stone glows white-gold, and the world pitches. It is like looking at the negative of a photograph: Behind me is Spence; before me are the skeletal East Wing and, farther on, the woods. But if I turn my head, shimmering there is another image of something else that stands between. I blink, trying to clear the image.

And when I look again, I see the outline of a door.

“Gemma, why have you brought us out here in the middle of the night?” Felicity grouses, wiping sleep from her eyes.

“You’ll see,” I say, shining the light of a lamp over the back lawn.

She shivers in her thin nightgown. “We might at least have brought our cloaks.”

Ann wraps her arms about her middle. Her teeth chatter. “I w-want to go b-b-back to b-bed. If Mrs.

Nightwing should f-find us…” She glances behind us for signs of our headmistress.

“I promise you won’t be disappointed. Now. Stand here.” I position them beside the turret and place the lantern at their feet. The light washes them in an unearthly white.

“If this is some childish prank, I shall kill you,” Felicity warns.

“It isn’t.” I stand on the ground above the old stone and close my eyes. The night air nips at my skin.

“Gemma, really,” Felicity complains.

“Shush! I need to concentrate,” I snap. Doubt whispers cruelly in my ear:
You can’t do it. The power’s
left you.

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I won’t listen. Not this time. Slowly, I let go of my fear. The ground vibrates beneath my feet. The land itself seems to call to me, pulling me under its spell. My fingers thrum with an energy that both frightens and excites. I open my eyes and put out my hand, searching for the hidden door. I don’t see it so much as feel it. The sensation is one of exquisite longing and joy. A wound of desire that cannot be healed. It’s whispering to me secrets I don’t comprehend, languages I do not know. The wind howls. It whips up small tornados of dust.

The land shimmers. The faint outline of the door appears again.

“Blimey,” Ann gasps.

Felicity reaches out tentatively. “You believe that leads to the realms?”

“On the night of the fire, the Winterlands creature came to take Sarah,” I remind them. “And Eugenia Spence offered herself in Sarah’s place. She threw her amulet—this amulet—to my mother and sealed the door into the realms. The East Wing burned. All traces of the door were gone.”

“We don’t know that this is the same door,” Ann says, shivering. “It could lead anywhere. To the Winterlands, perhaps.”

“I’m willing to take that chance,” I say, embracing the glimmer of hope I’ve been offered.

“W-we c-c-could be trapped,” Ann says.

“We’re already trapped,” Felicity says. “I want to find out what has happened to Pip.” She takes my arm. I grab the lantern.

“Ann?” I reach out, and she slips her cold fingers into mine, holding tightly. I take a deep breath, and we step forward. For a second, it feels as if we’re falling, and then there is nothing but the dark. It smells musty and sweet.

“Gemma?” Ann’s whisper.

“Yes?”

“What has happened to Felicity?”

“I’m here,” Fee says. “Wherever that may be.”

I swing the lamp in first and am able to see a few feet ahead. It’s a long passageway. The lamplight falls on high arched ceilings of pale stone. Roots dangle through cracks here and there. In back of us, Spence sleeps, but it’s as if that world lies behind glass, and we push on.

As we pass, the walls flicker with a faint glow, like hundreds of fireflies lighting the way ahead, while the path behind us shifts into darkness again. The passageway twists and turns in a confusing fashion.

Ann’s jitters echo in the tunnel. “Don’t get us lost, Gemma.”

“Will you be quiet?” Felicity scolds. “Gemma, you’d best be right about this.”

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“Keep walking,” I say.

We come to a wall.

“We’re trapped,” Ann says in a shaky voice. “I knew it would come to this.”

“Oh, do stop it,” Fee barks.

It has to be here. I won’t give up.
Let the magic go, Gemma. Feel it. Unleash its power.
Something’s calling to me. It’s as if the stones themselves are waking. The outline of another door appears in the wall, fierce light bleeding around its corners. I give the door a shove. It swings open, accompanied by a flurry of dust, as if it has been sealed for ages, and we step into a meadow redolent of roses. The sky is a clear blue in one direction and the golden orange of sunset in the other. It’s a place we know well but have not seen for some time.