You do not have to follow Rob Lynburn. You do not have to follow Lillian Lynburn either. It does not matter if your masters are kind or cruel, because either way they are trying to master you, and they have no right. If you were free, what would you choose to do? Do it. You are free.
This is true inside and outside our town. Other people will try to steal power that is yours. Never let them. Always fight. I do not believe that our power can be taken away from us forever.
Every town in England has a story, and our story can change.
Kami read the article aloud to her family and friends as they stood all together in Room 221B, Kami’s newspaper office. They had magically broken into the school.
“My baby girl has a way with words,” said Jon. “You’re wasting your talent on journalism, though. You should write the text for video games.”
“I don’t like the title,” said Lillian, and implicit in the words was her feeling Kami should change it, that a Lynburn still gave the orders around here.
Kami would take Lillian’s suggestions sometimes, but she was not taking any orders, and she was not letting Lillian influence her writing. It was the one thing that was all her own.
She wheeled on Lillian, looked her in the eye, and said calmly, “I don’t care if you like it.”
“I like it,” said Jared, kneeling on the ground and photocopying as others talked over his head.
His aunt sniffed. “You like everything that suggests chaos and the lower classes.”
Jared grinned up at her, heedless of his scar, his eyes pale and wild. “I am chaos and the lower classes.”
Lillian did not argue. She ruffled his hair and her fingers lingered for a moment, playing with the ends of his hair, her touch light and loving.
They had all agreed to spend the night putting a photocopy on every door in the town. Kami knew that Lillian was only doing it to please her boys, that the whole group was not arguing with Kami because of what might happen tomorrow. If she was going to die for them in the morning, they would do this for her tonight.
They went in groups. Lillian insisted that Ash and Jared would stay with her. Kami had asked her father to go with Holly, so she could stay with Angela. She didn’t want to leave Angela too, not until she absolutely had to. Almost the worst thought about dying was how alone Angela would be.
But at least Kami could try to do what Angela wanted. She could try to punish the people who had taken Rusty away from her.
Kami and Angela went around the town affixing Kami’s article to every door. Angela started complaining two doors in, and did not stop until they were done. Once they were done, though, once they were walking in the dark past the last house on Shadowchurch Lane, Angela said, “Remember the time you asked me to set up the school newspaper with you?”
“As I recall,” Kami said, a little rueful, “I didn’t so much ask you.”
“I could’ve said no,” said Angela. “I’m actually rather expert at it. ‘Do you want to go out with me?’ guys say, and I say, ‘Why, no, I’d rather spend an evening marinating my own eyeballs in a lemon sauce.’ ‘Do you feel like getting up before three p.m.?’ No. ‘Can you give me a smile?’ No. ‘Could you be less of a bitch?’ No. If you didn’t hear it from me a lot, there was a reason for it. I wanted to say no to the whole world, until you. The stupid sorcerers would have come without the newspaper, would have—would have done what they did, but because of your newspaper we made friends with Holly, and we won over Ash. And we got to yell at people. I like doing that.”
Angela stared across the square, up Shadowchurch Lane. The moon was low among the branches as if it was a softly glowing lantern hung from one of the boughs, and it had caught the cobblestones and made the normally dark street blaze like the path the moon sometimes painted across water.
“I guess I’m trying to say, thanks for making me do your dumb newspaper with you.”
“Thanks for doing it with me,” said Kami, tucking her chin against Angela’s shoulder. “Every step of the way.”
“Yes, well, I know how easily you get into trouble. I didn’t want you to do it alone.”
There was one thing Kami did have to do alone, though. She told Angela that she would meet her back at the inn, and she crossed the square.
Kami touched her mother’s outstretched stone hand as she went, not sure if it was in benediction or in the hope of getting a blessing for herself. She walked up the two stone steps and she wove through the gravestones, the wind-worn words and the tufts of grass, the angels and the shadows, until she reached the gravestone of the person who had belonged to her.
The stone was simple, as was the kanji inscribed on it. Kami had seen her father weeping and raging here this winter. There were snowdrops fringing the side of the grave now, and it was so quiet that rage seemed impossible. Kami looked at the gravestone as if it was a window her grandmother might appear in if she waited and watched long enough. Her Sobo had been small with dark hair and direct eyes, confident and impatient, always sure Kami was going to get into trouble and always sure she could handle it. Kami had been her grandmother’s favorite, as Ten was her dad’s and Tomo was her mother’s. She remembered telling Rusty that her every thought had been different because she shared thoughts with Jared, but Jared did not define her, had not been all that made who she was. She had been shaped by someone else, though her grandmother had never known what she was shaping her for. Kami hoped that she would have been proud.
She closed her eyes and tried to summon strength from the place that had made her.
“Obaasan,” she whispered, and laid her hand on the moonlight-cool stone. “Wish me luck.”
Do not stand at my grave and weep,
I am not there; I do not sleep.
I am a thousand winds that blow,
I am the diamond glints on snow,
I am the sunlight on ripened grain,
I am the gentle autumn rain.
When you awaken in the morning’s hush
I am the swift uplifting rush
Of quiet birds in circled flight.
I am the soft stars that shine at night.
Do not stand at my grave and cry,
I am not there; I did not die.
—Mary Elizabeth Frye
Chapter Twenty-Two
Three That I Loved
Kami woke on the dawn of their last day with Elinor’s bells ringing in her head, a chorus and a warning. The sky outside was cloudy, as it had been for both the days and nights since Rusty died. Through the windows, the sky shone like a gray pearl.
She had not been expecting to, but she had slept a little.
Kami, Jared, and Ash had to do the ceremony on the very day of the equinox. It would kill two of them. Elinor Lynburn had said it would.
Now the day of the equinox had come. It was as simple as that.
Kami remembered how clear Rusty’s eyes had been, how calm his voice, how steady and sure his hands. She wanted to say her goodbyes as well as he had.
Angela would not let her say a word. Angela just hugged her, her grip fiercely tight, and Kami closed her mouth and dipped her face down into Angela’s shoulder, and wished Angela would not let go. But they had to let go of each other eventually.
Holly hugged her next, her arms warm and enveloping.
“Look after Angela,” Kami said in her ear. “And—thank you.”
Holly smiled. Her eyes were bright with tears, but her smile was always brighter. “For what?”
“For being my friend,” said Kami. “Just that. You were fantastic at that.”
She pulled away from Holly, and saw Holly turn to Jared and give him a big hug and heard Angela drawl, “I’m just going with a friendly nod for both of you” to Ash.
Dad stood with Ten and Tomo on either side of him. She stooped and hugged Tomo, who looked bewildered but hugged her readily back.
“Good luck,” he said, blinking up at her. She thought he was still waiting for Rusty to come back. She swallowed a lump in her throat at the thought of him waiting for her.
“Thanks, kiddo,” she said.
Her dad leaned down and wiped away a tear from her cheek that she did not know had fallen. She saw it all in his face, that he wanted to tell her not to do it, that he wanted to lie and promise there was another way.
“I love you so much,” he said. “I could never let you go if it wasn’t that I trust you just as much.”
“I couldn’t go now if you hadn’t always trusted me,” Kami said.
When she tried to hug Ten, he moved away. She wanted to say, I’ll come back, but she did not want him to remember her last words as lies. She kissed his cheek, though his face was turned away, then straightened up and turned away. There was so very little time.
Kami began to walk through the fields and down toward the woods, her Lynburn boys on either side of her. She heard the drumming of small feet behind her, running desperately fast as if he thought she would not stop for him.
She did stop for him. She turned and went onto her knees in the long meadow grass and Ten came crashing into her arms. He buried his face against her neck and she felt the press of his glasses under her chin.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered.
“You have nothing to be sorry for,” Kami whispered back. “Nothing in the world.”
It was a little thing, a sweet small benediction before what was to come, before she did what she had to do.
Kami could not think of death as all there was to be done. She could not die until she had saved the town.
Holly knew that Kami and the boys had one part to play, and they had another. They had dropped Kami’s brothers off at the Water Rising, and now all that Jon and Angela needed was a ride. Holly knew exactly what had to be done.
The sorcerers might come out, on this last day. Rob might want to see his triumph, and Rob triumphing meant other people being hurt. They had to stop that, as far as they could, but the sorcerers were not only stronger but faster than they were.
Holly understood all that. She still felt the paddock had far too many horses in it.
“That’s sort of the idea,” Angie said.
Jon Glass had vaulted over the fence and was now approaching a horse chosen by some sort of weird horse-knowledge method, or possibly because it was shiny. Angie had noticed the way Holly was standing a careful distance away from the animals, though, and had stopped with her feet on the first plank that made up the fence to look at her quizzically.
“I thought you were a farm girl.”
Her dad did not have any horses on his farm. Holly had heard people talking about horses, of course, and how such and such a horse was a good goer, or had a temper, or was a spirited beast, but that was only talk. Holly had fed chickens, milked cows, and gathered wool. No cow or sheep was a spirited beast. You were not supposed to ride them. Holly had not realized until this moment what a deep and profound affection she had for cows and sheep.
“I am a farm girl,” said Holly. “Horses stopped being used on all farms about the time they replaced carts and horse-drawn plows with these newfangled things called cars and tractors. And I didn’t get any fancy riding lessons.”
Holly saw the moment of awkwardness and unease flicker across Angie’s face, the rare way that Angie sometimes looked when she’d been inconsiderate of someone’s feelings and she hadn’t meant to be. She had only seen Angie ever look that way about three people in the world, and one of the three was gone. She loved Angie so much, for still caring about Holly’s feelings, in the midst of all this chaos and all that Angie had been through.
“Well,” Angie said after a pause. “If you want, I’ll teach you, once all this is over. And you don’t need to get on a horse today. So there’s no reason to be afraid of anything. Don’t be.”
Angela didn’t smile at her. Angela’s smiles had always come seldom, and now her face looked stern and somehow fixed—older and less open to happiness and hope, but no less beautiful. She had the air of a warrior, someone who had been through fire and would no longer be touched by fire. For Angie, maybe it was easy not to fear. With Angie, not being afraid seemed possible.