A Great and Terrible Beauty

And then the world falls away.



The vast night sky wraps us in its blanket. We're standing at the top of a mountain. Clouds rush overhead at impossible speed, coiling and uncoiling. The strong wind is a roar as it whips our hair out behind us. And yet there's no fear. Nothing about me feels the same. Every cell in my body is acutely aware, every sense heightened. We don't need to speak. We can each sense what the others are feeling.



I'm suddenly aware of Felicity's face; the gray of her eyes looms larger. The black heart in the center of her gaze moves and swirls till I'm drawn inside, where I'm floating over an open sea, icebergs poking through the waves, the cry of whales nearby. Like liquid, I'm poured into that sea, swallowed whole, and then I fall through the bottom of it into a London twilight. Below me is the Thames, dappled with street light. I'm flying. I'm flying! We all are, rising so high that the chimneys and rooftops are no more significant than coins thrown into a gutter. Close your eyes; close your eyes, Gemma . I'm awake in a desert under a full moon. Dunes rise and fall like breath. My foot sinks in. I'm melting into the warm brown sand. Under my touch, the fine sandy grit changes into the softness of skin. His body rolls out underneath me like a plain. Kartik feels like a country I want to travelvast, dangerous, and unknown. When we kiss, I'm falling again, back onto that mountaintop where Felicity, Pippa, and Ann are standing, back from their own journeys, and yet it feels as if we've never left this place. We smile at each other. Our fingertips graze; our hands clasp. There is a searing white light. And then nothing.



"Gemma, wake up." Ann gives me a little shake. My room comes into focus by degreesthe ceiling, the gray light at the window, the worn wooden floor. Vague recollections of last night come to methe realms, the runes, the huntress's strange expression, the four of us stumbling home from the caves afterwardbut it's mostly a fog in my head. I've lost all sense of time and direction.



"What time is it?" I mumble.



"Time for breakfast." It can't be , I think, rubbing my head.



"Well, it is," she answers.



That's odd. "How did you know what I was thinking?" I ask.



"I don't know" she says, wide-eyed. "I heard it in my head."



"The magic" I say, sitting straight up.



Felicity and Pippa burst into the room.



"Look at my dress," Pippa says, beaming. There's a large grass stain on the hem.



"Bad luck, Pip," I say.



She's still smiling like an idiot. She closes her eyes and in seconds the stain is gone.



"You made it disappear," Ann says in wonder.



Pippa's smile shines. She twirls her skirt this way and that, letting it catch the light.



"So we've done it," I say. "We've taken the magic out of the realms." And everything is fine .



I am dressed in record-setting time. We trip down the hall and the stairs like a breeze , whispering to each other in half-spoken sentences that somehow are finished inside our heads. We're so alive with our discovery that we can't stop giggling.



A figurine of a little cupid sits inside an alcove under the stairs.



"I want to have a bit of fun," Pippa says, pulling us to a stop. She closes her eyes, waves her hands over the cherubic plaster boy, and then he's sporting rather large br**sts.



"Oh, that's awful, Pip!" Felicity says. We dissolve in laughter.



"Think of the redecorating possibilities!" Pippa says, in hysterics.



Brigid is bustling down the hall toward us.



"Great heavens, fix it quick!" I whisper.



We're falling all over ourselves trying to hide the thing.



"I can't do it under pressure!" Pippa says in a panic.



"Here now, wot's all this fuss about?" Brigid puts her hands on her hips. "Wot you got there? Move aside and lemme see."



Reluctantly, we obey. "Wot on earth is this?" Brigid holds up a statuette of the world's ugliest cancan dancer, formerly a cupid with br**sts.



"It's the latest from Paris," Felicity says coolly.



Brigid puts it back in the alcove. "Belongs on the rubbish heap, if you ask me."



She moves on and we're all giggles again.



"It was the best I could manage," Pippa says. "Under the circumstances."



Every head turns when we arrive for breakfast and take our places at the long table. Cecily can't stop staring at Ann.



"Ann, is that a new dress?" she asks between bites of her bacon. We've come late so there's only porridge.