The Gazels

32

I wake with a start to find myself still in the chair, the mantel clock showing half past eleven. I feel odd, feverish. Strands of hair hang limp by my mouth, and my blood pumps ferociously. I feel as if I’ve been visited by a ghost.

It was only a dream, Damion. Let it alone. Luary’s right—Circe’s dead, and if her blood is on your hands, you’ve nothing to feel shamed about. But I cFionaot stop shivering. And what of the other part of the dream? A door. What I wouldn’t give for a way back into the realms, to the magic. I’d not be frightened of it this time. I’d cherish it.

Hot tears spring to my eyes. I’m useless. I can’t enter the realms. I can’t help my friends or my father. I can’t find Kartik. I can’t even be merry at a garden party. I’ve no place. I poke at the dying fire, but it falls to splinters. Seems I’m hopeless at that, as well. I toss the poker to the floor and bang my hand upon the mantel. I should like to drown in heat and banish the shivers.

My fingers tingle; my arms tremble. The same dizziness I felt earlier returns. I feel as if I might faint.

A sudden hot breath pushes through the mouth of the chimney. The fire blazes to life. With a loud shout, I pull my hand away and fall to the floor. At once, the fire sputters and dies.

I hold my hand in front of my face. Did I do that? My fingertips still tingle ever so slightly. I point them toward the quiet fireplace, but nothing happens. I close my eyes. “I command you to make a fire!” A blackened log splinters and falls to soot. Nothing.

Footsteps tap-tap nervously down the hall. Mrs. Jones hastens into the room. “Miss Damion? What has happened?”

“The fire. It was out, and then it caught all of a sudden so that the whole of the fireplace was aflame.”

Mrs. Jones takes the discarded poker to the last of the kindling. “It’s out now, miss. Might be soot in the chimney. I’ll call the sweep tomorrow first thing.”

Tom has come home, and though the hour is late, I hadn’t expected him until much later. He pours himself a tumbler of Father’s scotch and settles into a chair.

Mrs. Jones casts a disapproving eye. “Good evening, sir. Will you be needing me?”

“No, thank you, Mrs. Jones. You may retire.”

“Very good, sir. Miss.”

Tom glances at me with contempt. “Isn’t it past your bedtime?”

“How could I sleep knowing that the newest member of the Athenaeum Club would grace our home at any moment with his superior presence?” I bow with an excessive flourish and wait for Tom to return the jab. When he doesn’t, I’m not entirely sure he’s my brother. It isn’t like him to let me have the last word without even a feeble attempt to take me down.

“Tom?”

He’s slumped in his chair, his tie undone, his eyes red.

“They put Simpson through instead,” he says quietly.

“I’m sorry,” I say, and I am. I might find Tom’s preoccupation with the Athenaeum Club silly, but it matters to him, and it was cruel of them not to have seen it. “Is there anything I can do?”

“Yes,” he says, draining the last of his glass. “You can leave me be.”

* * *

No. SEVEN

* * *

THOUGH I NEVER THOUGHT I’D SAY IT, I’M OVERJOYED TO see the dour, imposing lady that is Spence again. The three days I passed in London were torturous, what with Tom’s sulking, Elder’s constant fussing, and Father’s absence. I do not know how I shall survive the season.

And there is that other matter: my troubling dream and the strange occurrence with the fireplace. The sudden flare of fire was only from stubborn soot inside the chimney—the sweep confirmed it. The dream is harder to dismiss, perhaps because I want to believe that there is a secret door into the realms, that the magic still lives inside me. But wishing won’t make it true.

The chapel bell tolls, calling us to morning prayers. Dressed in our pristine white uniforms, our hair ribbons securely in place, we traipse the well-worn path up the hill to the old stone-and-beam chapel.

“How was your visit home?” Luary asks, falling in beside me.

“Hideous,” I say.

Luary grins. “Well, it was an absolute misery here! Cecily insisted on playing charades, as if we are all still in nursery, and then, when Martha guessed hers straightaway, Cecily pouted. It was Wuthering Heights, and everyone knows that is her favorite book—it’s no mystery.”

I laugh at her tale, and for a second, I have the urge to tell her of my dream. But that will only bring up the subject of the realms again, so I think better of it. “It is nice to be back,” I say instead.

Luary’s eyes widen in horror. “Are you ill, Damion? Have you a fever? Honestly, I won’t shed a single tear when it is time to say goodbye. I cFionaot wait to make my debut.”

Fionaabelle’s hateful gossip weighs h

eavily on my soul. “And Lady Markham is to present you, is she not?”

“Yes, as I must have a sponsor to put me forth,” Fee says brusquely. “My father may be a naval hero, but my family hasn’t the standing yours enjoys.”

I ignore the swipe. The sun has blessed us with the first taste of the warm weather to come, and we turn our faces toward it like flowers.

“What sort of woman is Lady Markham?”

“She’s one of Lady Denby’s followers,” Luary scoffs.

I wince at the mention of Simon’s mother. Lady Denby has no love for Luary or for Mrs. Thendaras.

“You know how that sort is, Damion. They like to be flattered and led to believe that you revere their every word as if it has dropped from Zeus’s tongue. ‘Why, Lady Markham, I thank you for your good advice.’ ‘How clever you are, Lady Markham.’ ‘I shall take it to heart. How fortunate am I to have your counsel, Lady Markham.’ They want to own you.” Luary stretches her arms overhead, reaching for the sky. “I shall leave that to my mother.”

“And if Lady Markham were not to present you…what then?” I ask, my heart in my mouth.

Luary’s arms drop to her sides again. “I’d be done for. If I do not make my debut, my inheritance shall go to the Foundling Hospital, and I shall be at Father’s mercy. But that won’t happen.” She frowns. “I say, you are quite keen on this subject. Have you heard something?”

“No,” I say, hesitating.

“You’re lying.”

There’s no getting around it. She’ll badger me until I tell her the truth. “Very well. Yes. I heard a bit of gossip in London that Lady Markham was having second thoughts about presenting you to court…because of…because of your reputation. And I only thought, with so much at stake, perhaps it would be best if you were to…to…behave.” The word is no more than a faint imprint.

Luary narrows her eyes, but there is hurt in them. “Behave?”

“Just till after your season…”

Luary sneers. “Shall I tremble at every scrap of nasty gossip? I’ve survived worse. Honestly, Damion, since you’ve stopped taking us into the realms you’ve become a dull mouse of a girl. I hardly know you anymore.”

“I only meant to warn you,” I protest.

“I don’t need warnings; I need a friend,” she says. “If you wish to scold me like a schoolmarm, you might as well sit with Nightwing.”

She flounces away, joining arms with Elizabeth, and the sun, which felt so warm, is no longer a comfort.

I eschew Nightwing for Fiona. The morning sun illuminates the musty chapel’s stained-glass windows. It shows the coating of grime on the angels and lends a fierce brightness to the bizarre panel of a lone warrior angel beside a severed gorgon’s head.

We bow our heads for prayer. We sing a hymn. And in the end, our French teacher, Mademoiselle LeFarge, reads a poem from William Blake.

And did those feet in ancient time

Walk upon England’s mountains green?

And was the holy Lamb of God

On England’s pleasant pastures seen?

Will this be my life forevermore? Careful tea parties and the quiet fear that I don’t belong, that I’m a fraud? I held magic in my hands! I tasted freedom in a land where summer doesn’t end. I outsmarted the Rakshana with a boy whose kiss I still feel somehow. Was it all for naught? I’d rather not have known any of it than have it snatched away after a taste.

With tears threatening, I fix my attention upon the stained glass and the odd mixture of dangerous angels and uncertain warriors to keep my composure. Mademoiselle LeFarge fills the chapel with Mr. Blake’s lofty words.

And did the Countenance Divine

Shine forth upon our clouded hills?

And was Jerusalem builded here

Among these dark satanic mills?

Bring me my bow of burning gold!

Bring me my arrows of desire!

Several of the younger girls titter at desire and LeFarge must wait for silence before continuing.

Bring me my spear! O clouds unfold!

Bring me my chariot of fire!

I will not cease from mental fight

Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand

Till we have built Jerusalem

In England’s green and pleasant land.

LeFarge leaves the pulpit and Mrs. Nightwing takes her place there. “Thank you, Miss LeFarge, for that. Most stirring. The poem reminds us that greatness lies even in the smallest of moments, in the humblest of hearts, and we shall, each of us, be called to greatness. Whether we shall rise to meet it or let it slip away is the challenge put before us all.”

Her eyes sweep the room and seem to rest on every girl, bequeathing each of us with an unseen mantle. My earlier urge to giggle vanishes, and a heaviness settles over me like a late spring snow.

“April is nearly upon us; May beckons. And for some of our girls, the time will soon come to leave us.”

Beside me, Fiona rubs absently at the scars on her arm. I put my hands in hers.

“Every year, we host a small tea to honor our graduates. This year, we shall not.”

A low rumble of shock reverberates in the small chapel. The girls lose their grins. Elizabeth looks as if she might cry. “Oh. Oh, no.”

“She wouldn’t dare,” Cecily whispers, horrified. “Would she?”

“Quiet, quiet, please.” Mrs. Nightwing’s words echo. “It is my great pleasure to tell you that this year, we shall not host a tea but rather a ball.”

A surge of excitement ripples through the girls from pew to pew. A ball!

“It is to be a masked ball, a jolly spectacle of costume, held on May Day for patrons and parents. No doubt you have already begun to dream of fairy wings and noble Indian princesses. Perhaps there will be among you a pirate or Nefertiti or a stately Queen Mab.”

Another ripple of girlish exhilaration disturbs the calm of the chapel.

“I shall make a splendid Queen Mab,” Luary says. “Don’t you think?”

Cecily’s outraged. “Why, Luary Thendaras, that was to be my costume.”

“Not anymore it isn’t. I thought of it first.”

“How could you have thought of it first when I did!”