I hurry after Ann, calling her name, but she doesn’t stop. Instead, she quickens her pace till she’s nearly running, desperate to be away from us and our talk of parties and teas. All that glittering promise close enough to touch but not to have.
“Ann, please,” I say, stopping at the bottom of the stairs. She’s halfway up. “Ann, you mustn’t pay them any mind. They’re not true girls. They are hideous fiends—troglodytes in ringlets!”
If I’d hoped to make Ann laugh, I’d missed my mark. “But they are the ones who rule,” she says without looking up. “They always have and they always shall.”
“But, Ann, they’ve not seen the things you have in the realms. They don’t know what you’ve done. You turned rocks to butterflies and sailed through a curtain of gold. You saved us from the water nymphs with your song.”
“Once,” she says flatly. “What does any of it matter? It won’t change my fate, will it? Come May, you and Felicity will have your season. I shall go to work for my cousins. It will end, and we’ll never see each other again.”
For a moment, she looks into my eyes, obviously hoping to find comfort there. Tell me I am wrong; tell me you’ve got another trick up your sleeve, Gemma, her eyes plead. But she isn’t wrong, and I’m not quick or glib enough to lie. Not tonight.
“Don’t let them win, Ann. Come back to the tent.”
She doesn’t look at me, but I can feel her disgust. “You don’t understand, do you? They’ve already won.” And with that, she retreats into the shadows.
I could return to Fee and the others, but I’m in no humor for it. A melancholy has settled over my heart and will not yield, and I want solitude. I find a proper reading chair in the great hall far away from the chatter of girls. I’ve read no more than a few pages when I notice that I am only an arm’s length away from the infamous column. It is one of the many odd touches at Spence. There is the chandelier of carved snakes in the foyer. The leering gargoyles upon the roof. The ridiculous ostrich-feather paper on the walls. The portrait of Spence’s founder, Eugenia Spence, looming at the top of the stairs, her piercing blue eyes seeing all. I would count among these oddities the giant hearths that seem less like mantels and more like the open maws of terrible beasts. And then there is this column in the center of the great room. It boasts carvings of fairies, satyrs, sprites, nymphs, and imps of all sorts.
It is also alive.
Or it was once. Those “carvings” are realms creatures stuck here for eternity. Once, we foolishly brought them to life with the magic, and we were nearly destroyed by it. Some of the mischievous creatures tried to escape; others attempted to compromise our virtue. In the end, we forced them back to their prison.
I peer closely at those tiny bodies frozen in stone. The creatures’ mouths are open in a scream of anger. Their eyes stare through me. If they got loose, I shouldn’t want to be here. Though it frightens me, I’m compelled to touch the column. My fingers come to rest on a fairy’s rigid wings, stopped in midflight. A shudder passes through me, and I lay my palm elsewhere. It lands on a satyr’s snarling lips, and my heartbeat quickens, for I feel a curious mixture of fascination and repulsion. I close my eyes and allow my fingers to explore the rough grooves and rises of its threatening mouth, the tongue, the lips, the teeth.
My fingers slip on the stone; a harsh edge cuts my skin. I gasp at the pain. Blood beads in the slim crevice. I’ve no handkerchief, so I plunge my finger into my mouth, tasting the bitter tang of it. The column is silent, but I can feel its menace in the throb of my injury. I move my chair closer to Brigid’s comforting patter, her motherly maxims, and far away from the column’s dangerous beauty.
At ten o’clock, our eyes heavy and our bodies longing for the warmth of blankets and the forgetting of sleep, we girls climb the stairs to our rooms for the night.
Felicity squeezes past me. “Half past twelve. The usual spot,” she whispers. She does not wait for my nod. She has given the order and that is all.
The lamps still burn softly in my room. Ann is asleep, but she has left the sewing scissors where I can see them. The blades are closed, but I know they have done their work marking the insides of her arms. I know she is covered in fresh welts that will soon blend into the tapestry of old scars woven into her flesh. If I had a way into the realms again, a way to the magic, I might be able to help her. But for now, I cannot change her fate. I can only wonder if she will.
CHAPTER FOUR
WHEN I FIRST ARRIVED AT THE SPENCE ACADEMY FOR Young Ladies, I knew nothing of its past and its relation to my life. I had come in mourning weeds, my mother having died only months before. Cholera was the official explanation for her death. But I knew better. In a vision I had seen her die, hunted by a hideous wraith from another world, a tracker, that meant to take her soul had she not taken her own life in self-defense.