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“…my poor little baby laid to rest, and do they know I am dying inside, too…”
“…a new dress with a bonnet to match…”
Please stop. I can’t. I can’t breathe. I…
Everything around me slows to a crawl. Beside me, Grandmama’s foot hovers above the street midstep. On the curb, an organ-grinder moves the bellows of his instrument with excruciating slowness. One note takes an eternity, and matched to the slow toll of Big Ben’s bells, the melody has the air of a funeral march. The wheels of wagons and carriages, the ladies and gentlemen, the liniment vendor hawking his miracle cure—they are like dreamy figures in a pantomime.
“Grandmama?” I say, but she cannot hear me.
I see quick movement from the corner of my eye. The lady in the lavender dress marches toward me; her eyes flash with anger. She grabs my wrist tightly, and my skin burns in her rough grasp.
“Wh-what do you want?” I say.
She thrusts out her arm, pulling up her sleeve to expose her flesh. Words etch themselves into her skin: Why do you ignore me?
The cold metal taste of fear lies on my tongue. “I’m not ignoring you, but I don’t understand what—”
She pulls me hard into the street.
“Wait,” I say, struggling. “Where are you taking me?”
She places her hands over my eyes, and I am joined to her in a vision. It’s quick, too quick. The footlights of the music hall stage. The illusionist. The lady writing upon the slate: The Tree of All Souls lives. The key holds the truth. A woman in a tea shop. She turns her head and smiles. Miss McCleethy.
I hear the quick gallop of horses on cobblestone. The vision lady’s head snaps up, and she looks about wildly. A black carriage drawn by four sleek horses breaks out of the London gloom and barrels swiftly down the street. Black curtains blow out its windows.
“Stop!” I scream, but the horses pick up speed. The carriage is nearly upon us. We shall be trampled.
“Let me go!” I scream, and the lady dissolves into leaves and blows away. The carriage passes through me as if I were made of air and disappears into the fog. The world snaps back into place, and I’m squarely in the road, between wagons and hansoms trying to navigate around me. A footman shouts at me to get out of the street.
Grandmama looks up, horrified. “Gemma Doyle! What are you doing?”
I stagger to her. “Did you not see it?” I gasp. “A carriage came out of nowhere and disappeared just as quickly.”
Grandmama’s dismay fights with the magic inside her. “Now we shan’t have our sweets.” She pouts.
“I tell you, I saw it,” I mumble. I’m still searching the streets for signs of the carriage and the lady. They are nowhere to be seen, and I can’t be certain I saw them at all. But one thing I am certain of: That was Miss McCleethy in the vision. Whoever this lady was, she knew my teacher.
Father rescues me from exile in my room, asking me to join him in the small study on the second floor. It is filled with his books and papers, his maps of distant places where he has traveled on various adventures. Only three photographs sit on his desk—a small daguerreotype of Mother on their wedding day, another of Thomas and me as children, and a grainy photograph of Father and an Indian man making camp on a hunting expedition, their faces grim and determined.
Father looks up from his birding journal, in which he has made a new entry. His fingers are stained with ink. “What is this I hear about carriage drivers gone amok in the streets of London?”
“I see Grandmama could not wait to share the news,” I say, sullenly.
“She was quite concerned about you.”
Do I tell him? What would he say if I did? “I was mistaken. In the fog, it was difficult to see.”
“In the Himalayas, men have been known to lose their way when the clouds roll in. A man might find himself disoriented and see things that are not there.”
I sit at Father’s feet. I’ve not done this since I was a little girl, but I have need of comfort just now. He pats my shoulder gently as he tends to his journal.
“Was that photograph on your desk taken in the Himalayas?”
“No. It was a hunting expedition near Lucknow,” he offers without further explanation.
I gaze at the photograph of my mother, searching for some of me in her face.
“What did you know about Mother before you married her?”
