Chapter 27

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The evening is the most dismal yet. Cold, hard rain falls in sheets from the sky, letting us

know that summer is over for good now. A clammy chill seeps into our bones, makes

fingers, backs, and hearts ache. Thunder rumbles closer and closer, competing with the

steady drum of the rain. The occasional flash of lightning streaks the sky, light spreading

down and out in a smoky crackle. It bounces around the mouth of the cave.

We are all here. Wet. Cold. Silent. Miserable. Felicity sits on the flattened boulder,

braiding the same section of hair, unbraiding, braiding it again. Every bit of her fire is

gone, washed out to wherever the rain takes things.

Pippa wraps the ends of her cape about her, paces, moaning. "He's fifty! Older than my

own father! It's too horrible to contemplate."

"At least someone wants to marry you. You're not a pariah." It's Ann, taking a break from

holding the palm of one hand over the candle flame. She dips it lower and lower till she's

forced to pull back fast. But her wince lets me know she's burned herself on purpose—

testing once again to make sure she can still feel something.

"Why does everyone want to own me?" Pippa mumbles. She's got her head in her hands.

"Why do they all want to control my life—how I look, whom I see, what I do or don't do?

Why can't they just let me alone?"

"Because you're beautiful," Ann answers, watching the fire lick at her palm. "People

always think they can own beautiful things."

Pippa's laugh is bitter, tinged with tears. "Ha! Why do girls think that being beautiful will

solve every problem? Being beautiful creates problems. It's a misery. I wish I were

someone else."

It's a luxury of a comment—one that only pretty girls can make. Ann answers this with a

sharp snort of disbelief.

"I do! I wish I were… I wish I were you, Ann."

Ann is so stunned, she holds her hand to the flame a second too long, pulling it back with

an audible gasp. "Why on earth would you want to be me?"

"Because," Pippa sighs, "you don't have to worry about these things. You're not the sort of

girl people are constantly fussing over so there's no room to breathe. No one wants you."

"Pippa!" I bark.

"What? What did I say now?" Pippa moans. She's completely unaware of her stupid

cruelty.

Ann's face clouds over, her eyes narrow, but she's too beaten down by her life to say

anything and Pippa is too selfish to notice. "You mean I don't stand out" Ann says flatly.

"Exactly" Pippa says, looking at me with triumph that someone in the cave understands

her misfortune. A second passes and now it dawns on Pippa. "Oh. Oh, Ann, I didn't mean

it like that."

Ann switches hands, puts the left one to the candle.

"Ann, darling Ann. You must forgive me. I'm not clever like you are. I don't mean half of

what I say." Pip throws her arms around Ann, who can't resist having someone, anyone,

pay attention to her, even a girl who sees her as just a convenience, like the right necklace

or hair ribbon. "Come on, tell us a story. Let's read from Mary Dowd's diary."

"Why should we bother when we know how it all ends?" Ann says, going back to her

candle. "They die in the fire."

"Well, I want to read from the diary!"

"Pippa, can't you let it alone tonight?" I sigh. "We're not in the mood."

"That's fine for you to say. You're not the one being married against your will!"

The sky rumbles while we sit in our separate corners, alone in our togetherness.

"Shall I tell you a story? A new and terrible one? A ghost story?"

The voice, a faint echo in the great cave, belongs to Felicity. She turns around on the

rock, faces us, wraps her arms across bent knees, hugging them close. "Are you ready?

Shall I begin? Once upon a time there were four girls. One was pretty. One was clever.

One charming, and one…" She glances at me. "One was mysterious. But they were all

damaged, you see. Something not right about the lot of them. Bad blood. Big dreams. Oh,

I left that part out. Sorry, that should have come before. They were all dreamers, these

girls."

"Felicity…" I start, because it's her and not the story that's beginning to frighten me.

"You wanted a story, and I'm going to give you one." Lightning shoots across the cave

walls, bathing half her face in light, the other in shadows. "One by one, night after night,

the girls came together. And they sinned. Do you know what that sin was? No one?

Pippa? Ann?"

"Felicity." Pippa sounds anxious. "Let's go back and have a nice cup of tea. It's too cold

out here."

Felicity's voice expands, fills the space around us, a bell tolling. "Their sin was that they

believed. Believed they could be different. Special. They believed they could change

what they were—damaged, unloved. Cast-off things. They would be alive, adored,

needed. Necessary. But it wasn't true. This is a ghost story, remember? A tragedy."

The lightning's back, a big one, two, three of light that lets me see Felicity's face, slick

with tears, nose running. "They were misled. Betrayed by their own stupid hopes. Things

couldn't be different for them, because they weren't special after all. So life took them, led

them, and they went along, you see? They faded before their own eyes, till they were

nothing more than living ghosts, haunting each other with what could be. What can't be."

Felicity's voice goes feathery thin. "There, now. Isn't that the scariest story you've ever

heard?"

The rain beats down relentlessly mixing with the strangled sounds of Felicity's sobbing.

Ann has stopped torturing her hands. Now she stares through the flame at cave walls that

show her history promise nothing. Pippa twirls her engagement ring round her finger till I

fear she'll break it off.

Maybe it's the steady downpour driving me mad. Maybe it's the thought of lovely Pippa,

married off to a man she doesn't love, who doesn't love her, only wants to acquire her.

Maybe it's imagining Ann squelching her voice to work for pompous aristocrats and their

hateful children. Or Felicity trying to hold back her tears. Maybe it's that every word she's

said is true.

Whatever the reason, I'm thinking now of a way out, of bringing the magic back from the

realms. I'm thinking of those mothers today in their ornate dresses and their vacant lives.

And I'm thinking of my mother's warning that I'm not ready to use my full powers yet.

Oh, but I am, Mother. I am.

Outside, there's a fresh wave of thunder rumbling a warning, a prayer. All around me in

the semidarkness are the symbols etched into rock with the sweat and blood of women

who've gone before us. Their whispers urge me on in a single word.

Believe.

I can see the glint off Pippa's unwanted ring. Hear the labored struggle of Ann's mouthbreathing.

Feel the desperation meeting the silence with its unasked wish.

There's got to be something better than this.

My voice rises to the unseen top of the cave, a bird taking flight.

"There is a way to change things…"