Felicity grabs her sword and sets off for the trees.
“Where are you going?” I shout.
“To find Pip. You may come or not.”
We go, of course. Once Fee has set her mind on something, there’s no talking sense into her. And I want to know the truth, though I hope we’ll not see Pip. For her sake and ours, I hope she’s already crossed over the river.
Felicity leads us through a flower-laden meadow. It smells of hyacinth and my father’s pipe tobacco, fresh dosa, and my mother’s skin-warmed rose water. I turn around, half expecting to see my mother behind me. But she isn’t. She’s gone, dead nearly a full year now. Sometimes I miss her so deeply it is as if I cannot breathe without feeling an ache lodged in my ribs. Other times I find that I’ve forgotten small things about her—the shape of her mouth or the sound of her laugh. I cannot conjure her memory. When that happens, I’m nearly in a panic to remember. I am afraid that if I cannot hold on to these memories exactly, I’ll lose her forever.
We come to the poppy fields below the Caves of Sighs. The bright red flowers show us their dark hearts. Felicity picks one and places it behind her ear. High above us, the cliffs rise. The char pots belch their rainbow of smoke, hiding the very top, where the Untouchables guard the Temple and the well of eternity. It is the last place I saw Circe.
She’s dead, Gemma. You killed her.
Yet I heard her voice in a dream, telling me she was still alive. I saw her face, ghostly white, in the well’s depths.
“Gemma, what is the matter?” Ann asks.
I shake my head as if I can clear it of Circe’s memory forever. “Nothing.”
We walk for some time, until the lush ripeness of the meadow gives way to thick copses of gnarled trees. The sky is gloomy here, as if it has been streaked with soot. There are no flowers, no bushes. In fact, there is no color at all, save for the brown of the brittle trees and the gray of the sky above them.
“Ugh,” Felicity says. She lifts her boot and shows us the bottom. It is dark and mealy, like rotted fruit. When I look up, I see that the trees are laden with what seem to be clusters of berries. They hang flat and defeated on the branches.
“Oh, what has happened here?” Ann wonders aloud, pulling a rotting husk from a branch.
“I don’t know,” I say. “Let’s change it back, shall we?”
We put our hands on a trunk. Color flows beneath its withered bark. Leaves burst through the broken skin of the tree with a sound like the earth itself cracking open. Vines slither along the dusty ground. The shrunken fruits grow fat and purplish red; the branches sag under their succulence. The magic surges in me, and I feel as ripe and beautiful as the fruit.
I grab Ann, who yelps as I lead her about in a giddy waltz. I let go and take hold of Felicity, who, being Felicity, insists on leading. Soon we’re all twirling round and round dizzyingly fast, my happiness fed by theirs.
Sudden thunder rumbles in the distance; the sky pulses red like an angry abrasion. I lose my hold on the others and we fly apart. Ann lands hard with an “oomph.”
“Really, Gemma!”
“Did you see that?” I ask, running toward the path. “The sky turned all funny for a moment.”
“Where?” Felicity searches the sky, which has settled into dusk again.
“That way,” I say, leading them on.
We walk until we reach a long wall of brambles whose thorns are both sharp and plentiful.
“What now?” Ann asks.
Through the small gaps in the brambles, I see a strange mixture of green and rock, fog and twisted trees, much like the English moors in the Brontë sisters’ eerie tales. And farther on, something rises from the mist.
“What is that?” I ask, squinting.
Felicity searches for a peephole. “This is hopeless. I can’t see a thing. Let’s find a way in.”
She sets off running down the hard path, stopping here and there to test the strength of the bramble wall.
“Ahhh!” I pull my hand back. I’ve pricked my finger on one of the sharp points. My blood stains the tip. With an anguished sigh, the brambles unclasp. The long, thorny threads slither free of each other like snakes scattering. We fall back as a wide hole appears.
“What should we do now?” Ann whispers.
“We go inside,” Felicity answers, and there is the hint of a dare in her smile.
We squeeze through the narrow opening and toward the barren forest. The air is noticeably cooler. It tickles our skin into gooseflesh. Thick vines twist along the ground, strangling the trunks of the trees, choking off much of what might grow here. A few valiant flowers poke their heads up here and there. They are few but large and beautiful—a deep purple with petals as fat as a man’s fist. Everything is coated in a blue light that reminds me of dusk in winter. The land here has a peculiar feel. I am drawn to it, yet I want to run. It is like a warning, this land.
