Page 66 of The Light Between Worlds

“I do.”

It’s not long before we’re both fitted out in tall boots and Hobb produces a lantern from a high shelf. Not an electric torch, but a genuine kerosene lantern, which he carefully fills and trims before we set out. Bracing ourselves, we plunge into the wild night.

The gale in the treetops murmurs and moans. At the rusted back gate, Hobb squeezes through first, then reaches back with a gnarled hand to help me. The entire evening seems strange, two steps removed from my London life, as if there’s magic in these English woods, and in the wizened, lamplit face of my guide. I follow after Hobb and the bobbing circle cast by his lantern. Last autumn’s dried leaves skitter across the trail and cold, brackish puddles lie in the hollows. Once, an owl swoops soundlessly overhead. It’s a fey night, a quicksilver night, a night for passing between the worlds.

But I’ve gone through the veil before—had my return trip and paid for it in blood and pain and tears. No matter how sly and half awake the woods may seem at night, I know this: the trees are only trees, and the beckoning shadows no more than trickery.

We walk by the birch ring, a white gleam away to my right, but don’t stop to enter. The river’s roaring with meltwater, already calling out with its full-throated song. Hobb and I press on.

“Tell me a story, Miss Hapwell,” Hobb calls over one shoulder. “It’s a night for remembering home and hearth, to keep our feet from wandering.”

Caught up in the witchery of the woods, I begin speaking words I ought not to.

“Once upon a time, there were three children—a brother and two sisters—who loved each other very much. They lived ordinary lives in an ordinary place, until one day—”

Pebbles shift on the trail beneath me, and I nearly lose my footing. Hobb grabs my elbow to steady me. The river lies ahead.

Another step and the trees are behind us. There is only the stony riverbank, and the song of the water, and the spark of moonlight on frothing rapids.

And though I’m standing on the bank with Hobb’s hand still on my arm, I can feel the cold river close around my knees, my waist, my ribs, my shoulders, then lap hungrily at my hair, my neck, my lips—

With a gasp, I turn to Hobb. He’s more inscrutable than ever, here in this halfway place.

“You know what they say about her,” he rasps. “They say she—”

“Please,” I cut in, and there’s water still purring around my throat, making the rest of me weightless. “Please don’t you say it, too. Not here, not now. I couldn’t bear it.”

Hobb pulls a pipe from the pocket of his greatcoat, fills it, and lights it with a guttering match. Only after the first draw has coiledback out of his mouth like dragon smoke does he speak again. “I never believed it, Miss Hapwell. Not of our Miss Evelyn. Gone off on some adventure, she has, or been taken by the Folk. But not that, and not her. Maybe I’m a fool for hoping, and maybe you are, too, but we’ll go on doing so, won’t we? Until the very end.”

I have always been a fool to hope. I see that now. Reaching up, I unclasp the chain that hangs around my neck. Moving forward, I make my way to where the river tugs at the toes of my borrowed boots. There, holding the stag pendant so tight in one hand that the miniature antlers dig into my palm, I whisper a last confession.

“I’m sorry, Ev.”

My sister’s final gift drops into the dark water and is carried away.

On the damp, bone-chilling walk back to St. Agatha’s, I try to feel some measure of peace. But when I’ve collected my things from Hobb’s cottage and am bypassing the dormitory, intent on catching a train home and never returning to this place, a voice stops me.

“Miss!”

A first-year student in a winter coat and scarf runs across the gravel. It’s nearly lights-out, and I can’t imagine why she’s outdoors.

“Miss.” The girl stops in front of me, breathless and red-cheeked. “You dropped this in the quad, Miss. Here you are.”

On her gloved hand rests a silver chain and a silver pendant, worked in the shape of a leaping stag, with a bit of river weed still clinging to it.

I take it from her and watch as she hurries into the dormitory. When she’s gone, I clasp the chain around my neck once more. It’s yet another whisper in that language without words, but I don’tknow who’s speaking. I don’t know what any of this means.

I do know I was a fool to hope even for this—that any offering of mine might be acceptable. There are bonds that join Evelyn and me, across time and across the worlds. Nothing but the truth will set me free, and I have no idea where to find it.

48

THE PICASSO IS STILL IN PRESSWICK’S OFFICE ON MONDAY,waiting to make its journey home to Leningrad. I’m glad my back is to it over the course of the morning, and when Presswick takes her lunch break, I eat in the office as usual but don’t change seats. I can’t bring myself to sit with those two sad figures in my peripheral vision.

As always, I’m so absorbed by my fair copying that I startle when Presswick sweeps in with a lean man in a suit. She seems surprised to see me, though I’ve been sitting across the desk from her every day.

“Oh. Hapwell,” she says. “I forgot about you again. This is Director Hendy, and we’ve got business to discuss. Go make yourself useful elsewhere, will you? Have someone in the restoration room show you what they’re about, or something of the sort.”

With that, I’m unceremoniously escorted into the hallway, where the door is shut behind me with a decisive click. I haven’t been dismissed in such a perfunctory way in, oh, lifetimes. Not since before the Woodlands. I can’t help but smile, and there’s nodazzle in it, just dry amusement.