A Great and Terrible Beauty

Page 111

The dark wraith grows another pair of arms and another. She slinks toward us, ready to crush us in her embrace. Felicity is coming out of it now, stumbling, then running. We've reached the river, but where is Pippa?
Ann's scream rips the air apart. "Help me!"
She's staring into the river, tearing at her hair. Her reflection has turned. She's covered in hideous boils. Her hair falls out in thick clumps and sores bubble up on her scalp. It's as if her skin is melting from her bones.
"Stop looking at yourself, Ann! Stop!" I scream.
"I can't! I can't!"
She's leaning closer to the water's edge. I slip my arms around her chest, but she's heavy and won't budge, and then she's free, falling back in the grass, thanks to a hard tug from Felicity. The gray of Ann's eyes has returned. "Where's Pippa?" she screams over the wind.
"I don't know," I shout.
Something slithers over my hand. Snakes wind through the tall grass as it shrivels and dries up. We jump onto a rock. Pears fall from a tree and rot at our feet. Ann is whimpering, watching her skin dissolve into ugliness.
"Help me!" Pippa's scream tears through us. When we stumble across the brittle grass, we see her. She has taken a large boat, a bier, onto the river, where the wind has pushed her out into the wide deep of it. The wraith paces the bank, forcing us to keep our distance.
" Yes, that's it come for her " it laughs.
"Please! Help me!" Pippa cries. But there's nothing we can do. She's cut off from us. We can't let it capture us. I'm so afraid, I can think only one thingI've got to get us out.
"Through the doorquickly!" I shout.
The wind whips Felicity's hair across her pale face. "We can't leave Pip!"
"We'll come back for her!" I scream, pulling her hand.
"No!"
"Don't leave me!" Pippa moves onto the bow of the boat. It tips under her weight.
"Pippano!" I scream, but it's too late. She jumps into the river and it closes over her grasping hands like ice, entombing everything but her watery, strangled cry. I remember my vision the day of Pippa's seizure, of her pulled down into the water. And now, with great horror, I understand at last.
Outraged, the thing howls and the dark races toward us, shrieking,
"Pippa! Pippa!" Felicity shrieks till she's hoarse.
"Felicity, we've got to gonow!"
The wraith is nearly upon us. There's no time to think. I can only react. I reach the door and pull us through into the caves as the candles flicker and cough with the last of their light. We're all here, safe and accounted for, it seems. But on the floor, Pippa's body has gone rigid. It seizes uncontrollably.
Ann's voice is fluttery. "Pippa? Pippa?"
Felicity is sobbing. "You left her there! You did it!"
The last candle sputters and dies.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
"You've got to help me!"
I'm a wild-eyed thing standing outside Kartik's tent. He doesn't argue with me, doesn't say a word, not even when I tell him what's happened. He hoists Pippa over his shoulder and carries her through the woods all the way to Spence. The only time he stops is when we pass the ravine and the corpse of the deer we've left there. He helps us get Pippa to her room, and then I'm racing for Mrs. Nightwing's door. I bang furiously, calling her name with a desperation I can't hold back.
Our headmistress throws open the door. Her nightcap is sliding down her long, graying braids. "What on earth? Miss Doyle, what are you doing in your clothes? Why aren't you in bed?"
"It's Pippa," I gasp. "She" I can't finish, but it doesn't matter. Mrs. Nightwing has caught the alarm in my voice. She springs into action with that immovable firmness of hers, a quality I've never truly appreciated until this moment.
"Tell Brigid to call for Dr. Thomas at once."
The lights burn through the night. I sit at the window in the library, hugging my knees in my arms, making myself as small as possible. At the edges of sleep, I see her. Wet. Hollow-eyed. Slipping under the smooth surface with a scream for help. I dig my fingernails into my palm to stay awake. Felicity paces past me. She avoids looking at me, but her silence speaks for her.
You left her there, Gemma. Alone in that watery grave.
A lantern moves across the lawn. Kartik. The light bobs and shakes in its metal cage. I have to strain to see him. He's carrying a shovel, and I know that he's going back to what he couldn't ignore in the ravine. He's going to bury the deer.