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I can't resist. I hold out my hand, not touching it , but near it. I'm seized by a rush of energy. My eyes flutter. The urge to touch the rune is overwhelming.
"Gemma!" Mother barks.
I pull my hand back quickly. My amulet glows." Wh-what was that?"
"You are the conduit," Mother explains. "The magic flows through you."
Felicity's face clouds over. But an instant later, she's wearing a ripe smile, thinking some naughty thought. She leans back on her elbows in the grass. "Can you imagine it? If we had this power at Spence?"
"We could do as we wish," Ann adds.
"I'd have a closet filled with the latest fashions. And bushels of money." Pippa giggles.
"I'd be invisible for a day," Felicity adds.
"I wouldn't be," Ann says bitterly.
"I could ease Father's pain." I glance at Mother. Her eyes narrow. "No," she says, unraveling a Jacob's ladder.
"Why not?" My cheeks are hot.
"We'd be careful," Pippa adds.
"Yes, terribly careful," Felicity chimes in, trying to charm Mother as if she were one of our impressionable teachers.
Mother crushes the yarn in her fist. Her eyes flash. "Tapping into this power is not a game. It is hard work. It takes preparation, not the wild curiosity of overeager schoolgirls."
Felicity is taken aback. I bristle at this comment, at being chided in front of my friends." We are not overeager."
Mother places a palm on my arm, gives me a faint smile, and I feel churlish for having acted like such a child. "When it is time."
Pippa peers carefully at the base of a rune. "What are these markings?"
"It's an ancient language, older than Greek and Latin."
"But what does it say?" Ann wants to know.
" 'I change the world; the world changes me.'"
Pippa shakes her head. "What does that mean?"
"Everything you do comes back to you. When you affect a situation, you are also affected."
"M'lady!" The knight has returned. He's brought out a lute. Soon, he's serenading Pippa with a song about her beauty and virtue.
"Isn't he perfection? I think I shall die from happiness. I want to dancecome with me!" Pippa pulls Ann after her toward the dashing knight, forgetting all about the runes.
Felicity brushes herself off and trails behind them. "Are you coming?"
"I'll be there in a moment," I call after her.
Mother resumes her meticulous yarn architecture. Her fingers fly, then stop. She closes her eyes and gasps, as if she's been wounded.
"Mother, what's the matter? Are you all right? Mother!"
When she opens her eyes, she's breathing hard. "It takes so much to keep it away."
"Keep what away?"
