The Sweet Far Thing

“Got us a pheasant,” Bessie says, catching me looking. “’Magine that?” She smiles and her teeth are sharp.

“You’ve come back!” Pippa exclaims. She’s pinned up her skirts to the waist, forming a pouch that sags with a harvest of berries. She embraces each of us, and when she reaches me, she whispers sweetly, “Join me in the chapel.”

“Pip, I’ve got a present for you,” Felicity says, holding up the box.

“And I can’t wait to see it. I’ll just be a moment!”

Felicity’s face falls as Pip spirits me away to the crumbling abbey, humming a merry tune. Once we’re safely behind the rotting tapestry, she empties her berries into a large bowl and grabs my hands. “All right, I’m ready for the magic.”

I pull away. “And hello to you, too, Pip.”

“Gemma,” she says, putting her arms round my waist. “You do know how very much I love you, don’t you?”

“Is it me or the magic you love?”

Hurt, Pippa takes refuge on the altar, tearing marigolds from the floor by their stalks and tossing them aside. “You wouldn’t deny me some measure of happiness, would you, Gemma? I shall be trapped here an eternity with no one but those coarse, common girls as my companions.”

“Pippa,” I say gently. “I want your happiness, truly I do. But someday soon, I’ll have to return the magic to the Temple and form an alliance to oversee its safety. I won’t always have it at my fingertips like this. Have you given any thought to how you will spend the rest of your days?”

Tears pool in her eyes. “Can’t I join your alliance?”

“I don’t know,” I say. “You’re not—” I bite the word off before it comes out of my mouth.

“Alive? A member of a tribe?” A fat tear rolls down her cheek. “I don’t belong to your world and I don’t belong to theirs. I’m not a part of the Winterlands, either. I don’t belong anywhere, do I?”

It’s as if she’s pierced me straight through, for how often have I felt that way myself?

Pip buries her head in her hands. “You don’t know how it is for me, Gemma. How I count the hours until the three of you return.”

“It is the same for us,” I assure her. For when we are together, everything seems possible, and there is no end in sight. We will simply go on like this forever, dancing and singing and running through the forest laughing. That alone is enough to make me take her hands and share the power with her.

“Here,” I say. I stretch out my arms and she comes running.

“Pip, I’ve a present for you!” Felicity says again when we return. She unfurls the fur-trimmed cape.

“Oh,” Pip sighs, cuddling it. “It’s extraordinary! Darling Fee!” She gives Felicity a sweet kiss on the cheek, and Felicity smiles as if she were the happiest girl in the world.

Bessie Timmons muscles between them. She holds the cape up, examining it. “Don’t seem so special.”

“Now, Bessie,” Pip scolds, snatching it from her hands. “That won’t do. A lady must say something kind or not speak at all.”

Bessie leans against a marble column whose many cracks are threaded with weeds. “Guess I’ll keep it shut, then.”

Pippa lifts her hair and allows Felicity to secure the cape’s ribbons around her slender neck, and she preens and prances about in it.

Ann and the factory girls take over the altar. She tells them about Macbeth. She makes it sound like a ghost story, which I suppose it is.

“I ain’t never been to no real theater,” Mae Sutter says when Ann finishes.

“We shall have our own here,” Pippa promises. She settles into the throne as if born to it.

Felicity finds an old drape. Under her touch it becomes a cape just like the one she’s given Pip. It’s lovely, but when she settles beside Pip, the illusion shows. It cannot compare to the real one. “Our Ann is to have an audience with Lily Trimble.”

“Go on!” Mae laughs.

“I am,” Ann says. “In the West End.”

“Back there,” Mercy says with a mixture of admiration and jealousy. “Remember them chips we could get on Wednesdays, Wendy?”

“Aye. Greasy.”

“Drippin’ with grease and pipin’ hot!” Mercy’s smile fades. “I miss it.”

“Oi, not me.” Bessie Timmons jumps up from her spot by the fire and pushes to the front. “Nuttin’ but misery. Work from dark to dark. And nuttin’ waitin’ for yer at home, neither, ’cept yer mum with too many moufs to feed and no’ enuf to go round.”