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“What are you doing?” I demand. I yank the pail away, and the dark liquid in it sloshes against the sides. “What is this?”
“The mark has to be made in blood,” she says. “For protection.”
“You’re the one who painted the East Wing. Why?”
“Without protection, they’ll come,” she says.
“Who will come?”
“The damned.” She grabs for the pail and I hold it out of her reach.
“I’ll not spend another morning scrubbing,” I say.
Mother Elena tightens her shawl about her. “Two ways! The seal is broken. Why would Eugenia allow it? She knows—she knows!”
The whole ghastly night rises in me like a battered dog who’ll take no more taunting. “Eugenia Spence is dead. She’s been dead for twenty-five years. You’re not to do this again, Mother Elena, or I shall tell Mrs. Nightwing it was you, and you’ll be banished from these woods forever. Do you want that?”
Her face crumples. “Have you seen my Carolina?”
“No,” I say wearily.
“She’s a good hider.”
“She’s not…” I trail off. It’s no use talking sense to her. She’s mad, and I feel if I stand here talking longer, I’ll tip into madness myself. I empty the bucket into the grass and hand it back. “You mustn’t do it again, Mother Elena.”
“They’ll come,” she growls, and limps away, the empty pail clattering against her bangles like chimes.
It’s noticeably colder on my return to Spence, and I curse myself for not bringing a wrap. Just one of the many foolish things I’ve done, such as trying to change Kartik’s mind. Something flies close to my head and I yelp.
“Caw! Caw!” it cries, soaring ahead of me. Nothing but a bloody crow. It settles in the rose garden, pecking at the blooms.
“Shoo, shoo!” I flap at it with my skirts and it rises. Then I see a curious thing: A patch of frost has taken out several of the budding roses. They are stillborn on their stalks, half-formed and blue with cold.
“Caw! Caw!”
The crow perches on the East Wing turret, watching me. And then, before my astonished eyes, it flies over the spot that marks the secret entrance to the realms, and disappears.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
BY THE FOLLOWING EVENING, OUR LAST AT SPENCE BEFORE Easter week, we are desperate to enter the realms again. I don’t try to conjure the door of light on my own anymore; it’s hardly worth the effort when I shall only be disappointed and we’ve another way in that never fails. Once we’re certain our teachers are gone to bed, we run straight for the secret door by the East Wing and then on to the Borderlands. We no longer bother with the garden. It feels like child’s play, somehow, a place where we turned pebbles into butterflies as girls do. Now we fancy the blue twilight of the Borderlands, with its musky flowers and the magnetic pull of the Winterlands. Each time we play, we find ourselves a toehold closer to that imposing wall that separates us from its unknown expanse.
Even the castle has grown less forbidding to us. The wealth of deadly nightshade blooming from its walls gives it color—like a Mayfair parlor covered in the most exotic paper. We burst through the castle’s vine-twisted doors, shouting Pip’s name, and she runs to us, squealing with delight.
“You’re here at last! Ladies! Ladies, our fine party can begin!”
After the magic has joined us in blissful communion, we own the night. The party spills out of the castle into the blue-tinged forest. Laughing, we play hide-and-seek behind the fir trees and the berry bushes, running merrily across the tangled vines that crisscross the frosty ground. Ann begins to sing. Her voice is lovely but here in the realms it achieves a freedom it does not have in our world. She sings without apology, and the song is like wine, loosening our cares.
Bessie and the other factory girls cheer wildly for her—not with the polite, tempered applause of drawing rooms but with the boisterous, joyful whoops of the music hall. Bessie, Mae, and Mercy have clouded themselves in a glamour of gowns, jewels, and fancy shoes. They’ve never owned such finery before, and it does not matter that it is borrowed by magic; they believe, and the believing changes everything. We’ve the right to dream, and that, I suppose, is the magic’s greatest power: the notion that we can pick possibility from the trees like ripe fruit. We are filled with hope. Alive with transformation. We can become.
“Am I a lady, then?” Mae asks, strutting in her new blue silks.
Bessie shoves her affectionately. “The Queen of Bloody Sheba!” She laughs hard and loud.
Mae shoves her back, a bit less gently. “’Oo are you, then? Prince Albert?”
“Oi!” Mercy chides. “Enuf! It’s a happy occasion, ain’t it?”
Felicity and Pip perform a comical waltz, pretending they are a Mr. Deadly Dull and a Miss Ninny Pants. In a ridiculously stuffy voice, Felicity prattles on about fox hunting—“The fox should be grateful to face our guns, for they are the finest guns in all of society trained on his lowly form. How lucky indeed!”—whilst Pippa bats her lashes and says only, “Why, Mr. Deadly Dull, if you say it’s so, it must be so, for I’m sure I have no opinions of my own upon the subject!” It is rather like Punch and Judy come to life and we laugh till tears fall. Yet for all their silliness, they move beautifully. With exquisite grace, they anticipate each other’s steps, sweeping round and round, Pip’s gems winking in the dust.
