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I sit beside her, try to stroke her hair. “There, there, Pip.”
She pushes my hand away. “It’s your fault!”
I’ve never felt so desperate, so awful. “Wh-what if you had magic to help you?” I blurt out between my own sobs.
Pip’s tears slow. “Magic? Like we used to?”
“Yes, I—”
Gorgon cuts me off. “Most High. May I have a word?”
The ship’s plank lowers to the ground with a soft creaking, and I climb on board and take my preferred seat near her face. “What is it?”
Gorgon whispers to me in that syrupy hiss of a voice. “I would warn you against hastiness, Most High.”
“But I can’t leave her here like this! She was one of us!”
“The girl has made her choice. Now she must accept the terms. She may choose the Winterlands, or she may choose another path. She need not fall.”
I look over at Pip, who’s tearing blades of grass neatly in two. Her skin is pale, but her cheeks are ruddy with grief. She seems a lost lamb.
“Pip has no talent for making decisions,” I say, feeling more tears threaten.
“Then it is time to learn,” Gorgon says.
She’s behaving as if she were my mother, as Miss Moore and Miss McCleethy have. I’ve done with people telling me what to do. Tom and Grandmama and Mrs. Nightwing. So many who would lace me up tightly with their good intentions.
Gorgon is unbothered by my tears. “Sympathy can be a blessing and a curse. Be careful yours does not trap you. This is her battle, not yours.”
“You are too hard by half. I don’t wonder that you are the last of your kind,” I say. I am sorry for it at once. But the damage is done. Something like pain moves across Gorgon’s usually mysterious face. The snakes lie down softly, rubbing against her cheeks like children in need of soothing.
“It is not the way of things,” she says.
“It wasn’t the way of things. Everything is changing, and now that I have this power, I intend to make changes of my own,” I snap.
Gorgon searches my face for what seems an eternity. At last, she closes her eyes, shutting me out. “Do what you will.”
I have insulted her. I shall have to tend to that wound later. For now, I must help Pippa. She is sobbing, stretched out upon the shore, blades of grass strangled tight in her closed fists. She sits up with ferocity. “You’ll go on, all of you. To dances and parties, marriage and children. You’ll find happiness, and I shall be here forever, with no one but those horrid girls from the factory who’ve never even been to a tea.”
She falls in on herself, rocking like a small child. I cannot bear her pain or my guilt for having brought her to the realms in the first place—and for not being able to help her now. I would do anything, say anything, to take this from her.
“Pip,” I say, “shhh. Give me your hands.”
“Wh-why?” she hiccups.
“Trust me.”
Her hands are cold and wet but I hold fast. I feel the magic leave me in a fierce pull, as always. A few seconds of us joined. Her memories and emotions become mine to see, traveling as fast as scenery viewed from train windows. Young Pip at the piano, learning her scales dutifully. Pippa submitting to her mother’s harsh brushing, her hair gleaming beneath each endured stroke. Pippa at Spence, looking to Felicity for guidance, to know when to laugh at a jest or cut someone deliberately. Her whole life she has done what was asked, without questioning. Her only rebellion was to eat that handful of berries, and it has stranded her here in a foreign, unpredictable world. I feel her joy, sadness, fear, pride, longing. Fee’s face flashes, the light turning her golden. I feel Pip’s aching fondness for our friend. Pippa wears a rapturous smile. She is changing before me, bathed in sparkles of white light.
“I remember…Oh, it’s wonderful, this power! I shall change!”
She shuts her eyes tight and presses her lips together in furious determination. Slowly, her cheeks turn pink and her thick black ringlets return. Her smile is restored to its former glory. Only her eyes will not change. They waver between violet and that unsettling blue-white.
“How do I look?” she asks.
“Beautiful.”
Pippa throws her arms about my neck, pulling me down. She’s so like a child at times. But I suppose it is what we love about her.
