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"Birds?" Felicity asks.
"Gulls," Ann says."We must be near water."
We're close to the top of the hill. I offer Ann my hand, pulling her up.
"Criminy," Ann says, taking in the scene.
Before us, across an expanse of water, is a small isle. From it rises a majestic cathedral with a blue and gold painted dome. The seagulls we heard earlier circle it. "That's it. That's the one from my vision," I say.
"We've found it," Felicity shouts."We've found the Temple!"
In our mad haste to keep up, I have forgotten to look down at my amulet to check our course. When I do, I see that it has stopped glowing.
"We're off the path," I say, panicked.
"What does it matter?" Felicity says. "We have found the Temple at last."
"But it's not on the path." I say."Nell said to stick to the path."
Exhaustion has made Felicity irritable. "Gemma, she was speaking gibberish. You're following the advice of a confirmed lunatic!"
I turn in a circle, moving the amulet up and down in an attempt to get some sort of signal from it. There is nothing.
Ann places her hands over mine. "It is true, Gemma. We've no idea if what she's telling us can be trusted. At best, she's a lunatic. At worst, she could be working with Circe. We don't know."
"How do you even know that amulet is reliable? Honestly, where has it led us? To the Untouchables? To those girls in the thicket? It nearly got us killed by those horrible trackers the night of the opera!" Felicity insists.
Ann nods. "You said yourself that the girls in white came to you in a vision. They showed you the Temple, and here it is!"
Yes, and yet. . .
It's off the path. Nell said we shouldn't be led astray. Nell, who strangled a parrot in a mad rage, who tried to strangle me as well.
Don't trust her, the girls in white said.
But Kartik said nothing from the realms could be trusted.
I don't know what to believe anymore. The cathedral stands like something that has existed for many years. It has to be the Temple. What else could it be? Down on the shore, a small rowboat sits waiting, as if we have been expected.
"Gemma?" Felicity asks.
"Yes," I say, tucking the amulet away."It must be the Temple."
With a yelp, Felicity runs sliding down the hill to the boat. In the distance, the magnificent cathedral beckons with a thousand lights burning. We untie the boat and push off from the shore, paddling toward the isle.
Out on the water, it grows foggy. Night rolls in suddenly. The cries of the gulls are all about us. The moat that separates us from the Temple is surprisingly wide. I look up through the haze and, for a moment, the towering church seems no more than a ruin. The yello"Y moon bleeds through one of the cathedral's tall, hollow windows, glinting off the shards of glass that remain there like a beacon calling in a wayward ship. I close my eyes, and when I open them again, it is still magnificent and whole, an enormous monument of stone and spires and great Gothic windows.
"It seems deserted," Felicity says. "I can't imagine anyone living there."
Or anything, I want to say.
We pull the boat ashore. The Temple sits high on the hill. To get there, we'll have to take the steep stairs that have been carved into the rock.
"How many do you think there are?" Ann says, peering all the way to the top.
"There's only one way to find out," I say, and start climbing. It is rough going. Halfway up, Ann has to sit to catch her breath."I can't do this," she huffs.
"Yes, you can," I say."It's just a bit farther. Look."
