She smiles and it is as if the sun shines only on me. “Were once priestesses like you and me.”
“You said she had a choice. But why would she not choose to go on to such a place?”
“She may feel that some important duty has been left unfinished. If she refuses, she returns to this life to complete the task, but she forgoes glory.”
The crone guides the ferry farther out on the lake. The mist rushes in to hide them.
Eugenia watches until they’re gone. “I should like to be freed, to take, at last, my place in that land beyond and on the stones that sing our history.” She strokes my face as lovingly as a mother. “Will you bring me the dagger?”
The fog envelops us. “Yes,” I answer, and we are once again before the Tree of All Souls. I stare up at its majesty—the three strong branches, the thousands of smaller twigs twisting out and around, the faint veins underneath the tree’s skin. My friends still stand with their hands to it, looks of awe on their faces. It’s as if they are listening to voices I cannot hear, and I feel apart and alone.
“What is happening to my friends?” I ask.
“It is the magic of the tree. It shows them the secrets within their hearts,” Eugenia answers. “I must go now, Gemma.”
“No, please. I need to know—”
“You mustn’t come back until you have the dagger. Only then will we be safe.”
“Don’t go!” I call. I try to grab hold but she’s as inconsequential as air. She vanishes into the tree. It absorbs her. The tree throbs; the veins pump its blood faster.
“Would you see?” the tree calls in a strangled whisper.
Around me, my friends have already glimpsed whatever wonders lie inside, and I am weary of standing apart.
“Yes,” I answer, defiant. “I would.”
“Then look inside,” it murmurs.
I press my palms against the rough bark of the trunk and am lost.
Images dance around me like the fractured pieces in a kaleidoscope. In one sliver of the prism, Mae sits at a table crowded with an opulent feast. As she finishes each dish, another arrives to take its place. Beneath the table, lean dogs sit, panting and hopeful. They fight each other for scraps, tearing into each other’s flesh till they are bloody, but Mae takes no notice. She will never be hungry again.
I see Bessie in a fine gown made completely of gold and jewels, an ermine cape resting upon her shoulders. She walks past the rows of bedraggled, dirty women sewing in the factory where she lost her life, until she reaches the owner, a fat man with a cigar in his mouth. She slaps him hard, again and again, until he cowers at her feet, no better than an animal. Ann is bathed in the glow of footlights. She bows to her audience, drinking in their thunderous applause. Wendy has a small cottage with a rose garden. She waters the buds and they flower into magnificent blossoms of red and pink. Mercy rides in a fine man’s carriage. I see Felicity dancing with Pippa in the castle, the two of them laughing as if at a joke only they are privy to, and then I see Pippa sitting on the throne, eyes blazing.
Beside me, Pippa wears a rapturous smile. “Yes,” she says to no one I can see. “Chosen, chosen…”
“Look closer,” the tree whispers, and my eyelids flutter. Everything I lace tightly to myself is loosed.
I open a pair of doors and I’m back in India. It must not yet be summer, for Father and Mother sit drinking their tea out of doors. Father reads aloud from Punch, and it makes Mother laugh. Tom is a blur of a boy as he runs past with two small wooden knights locked in fierce battle in his hands, that one impossible lock of hair falling across his eyes. Sarita scolds him for nearly upending Father’s old urn. And I am there. I am there under a long ribbon of bright blue sky, not a cloud to be seen. Father and Mother smile upon seeing me, and I feel a part of them all; not separate and alone. I am loved.
“Come to me, Gemma,” Mother calls. Her arms open wide to receive me, and I start to run, for I feel that if I can reach her, all will be well; I need to catch the moment and hold it tightly. But the more I run, the farther away she gets. And then I am in the cold, dark parlor of my grandmother’s house. Father in his study, Tom on his way out, Grandmama with her calls to pay; none of us seeing the others. All of us alone, a few odd beads strung together by sadness, by habit, by duty. A tear trickles slowly down my cheek. This power’s truth is like a poison I cannot spit out.
Small pale creatures crawl from under the rocks and stones. They touch the hem of my gown and stroke my arms. “This is where you belong, where you are needed, special,” they say. “Love us as we love you.”