Destiny

by Gillian Shields

  Lynton picked up my thoughts. “It’s okay,” he whispered. “No one knows we’re here.” We stood just inside the room, not going any farther, as if we were afraid of disturbing a deep dream. The past…the past weighed so heavily on everything at Wyldcliffe. I wondered if Agnes had ever danced there with Sebastian. And long before Wyldcliffe was built, before even the Abbey was made for the glory of the One, perhaps the people of the valley came and danced here, barefoot in the moonlight, to greet the spring….

  “It seems a shame to waste a ballroom, especially now that the Christmas ball has been canceled,” Lynton said. He turned to face me and held out his hand. “Let’s dance.”

  “No—I can’t—” I laughed awkwardly. “I’ve never danced with anyone in my life. I’d step on your feet.”

  Lynton smiled, but didn’t drop his arm. “Will you dance with me, Helen?” he asked insistently. His eyes grew dark and serious, and it seemed that he was asking me something more.

  “Well—yes—if you really want to—”

  “I really want to.”

  I took his hand. For a moment we stood without moving, looking at each other, waiting…. Then he led me slowly down the center of the high, cold room, and we moved together in a measured, solemn pace, like medieval courtiers. I had thought that dancing there with Lynton would be just a silly romp in one of his laughing moods, but this was different. As we moved to the slow, somber beat of our hearts, it felt as though we were making silent, timeless vows, walking open-eyed into some deep danger. Our dance in the silent ballroom seemed more like a funeral procession, a solemn sacrifice, a dance of death.

  I pulled away from Lynton and stumbled as I did so, twisting my ankle. “Sorry—sorry,” I said as I recovered my balance. “I’m not very good at this. I did warn you.”

  “No, it’s my fault. I didn’t mean to—but it doesn’t matter.” His face softened with a smile. “Maybe one day you’ll dance with me again, when you’ve decided to trust me. And then we’ll really fly. What do you think?”

  “I think I’m a hopeless dancer.” I shrugged. “Anyway, we can’t stay here all night. Hadn’t we better start to rehearse?”

  “Of course.” Lynton turned away and leafed through his folder of music until he found the piece he needed. “Look, there’s a piano at the far end of the room. Let’s use that; it will give a different feeling and texture to the music.”

  In the far corner of the ballroom, on a low platform, a grand piano stood swathed by dusty covers. Lynton pushed the covers to one side and tried a few notes. Amazingly, they rang out true, though muted, as if even the music of the instrument had been softened by the passing of time. He did a few flourishing scales, and then paused. “Whenever you’re ready,” he said.

  I hadn’t felt self-conscious singing in front of Lynton before, not in the little practice room with him playing his flute as accompaniment. But now, in that great space with Lynton seated at the grand piano, it felt different.

  “I don’t think I can really do this,” I said hesitantly. “I mean, sing in front of the whole school on my own. My voice isn’t brilliant—I don’t want everyone looking at me—”

  “Helen, you’ll be fine, don’t worry.” Lynton was quickly at my side again. “And whatever happens, I’ll be right there, next to you.”

  I looked up at him. His face was pale, but strangely alight, as if reflecting an unseen sunrise. There was something unsettling about the way he looked at me, something I wasn’t ready for.

  “Who are you?” I asked him, and my voice shook.

  “I’m the luckiest guy in the world,” he answered softly. “Because I’ve found you again.”

  “Again?”

  He looked away. “I—I met you in my dreams. I thought about you, wanted to find you.” His voice dropped to a whisper. “‘Twice or thrice had I loved thee, before I knew thy face or name…’”

  I recognized the verses, and knew the rest, murmuring the words almost automatically in reply: “‘So in a voice, so in a shapeless flame, Angels affect us oft, and worshipp’d be…’” But my mind was racing. Was Lynton seriously talking about love? Was he really talking about me? And something else was bothering me, too.

  “How did you open the door?” I asked abruptly. “Sarah told me this room is always locked.”

  He didn’t look at me but spoke quietly to himself. “There are many kinds of keys. Just as there are many kinds of love. The love of a daughter for her mother. The love we feel for friends. And there is the love that lasts beyond the confines of this world.” He glanced up at me, his eyes clear and blue and honest. “Are you ready for that, Helen?”

  Beyond the confines of this world…who was he? Lynton gently put his hands on my shoulders and drew me closer to him. My heart began to pound. I was sure he was going to kiss me. I suddenly felt shy and stupid and useless. My body felt awkward and clumsy. No, I wasn’t ready. Dancing—love—kisses—this was too much, too fast. I couldn’t bear the idea that maybe for him this was all just fooling around, nothing serious at all. And yet if he meant it, if wasn’t just a dream…

  No, I wasn’t ready at all. I turned and ran.

  “Helen! Helen! I’m sorry.”

  I didn’t look back. I dashed out of the ballroom and down the corridor, wrenching open the first door I came across that led into the shadowed garden. I ran over the black lawn to the lake, then stood panting at its edge, looking up at the waning moon. My mouth was dry. I didn’t know what to do or think. I needed to be alone. Did Lynton mean what he said? Could he possibly be the one that Miss Scratton had told me about?

  But if he was the one, why was I afraid? Oh, I wasn’t afraid of Lynton, I could never be, but I was scared of being let down, being hurt again. And what was really frightening me the most, the idea of being rejected—or accepted?

  Twenty-four

  FROM THE DIARY OF HELEN BLACK

  OCTOBER 22

  I should be thinking only of Laura and my mother and our quest. I must watch over my friends. I must make sure that Velvet does nothing to hurt herself, or to harm others. I should follow Sarah’s example and get the Book out and search it for help. All this—this self-indulgence—is nothing compared to that. The new moon is only days away. We must make our preparations. That is my fate. Love is not for me.

  A stranger came knocking and said, “Let me in,”

  But the princess was locked up deep within.

  “Alas!” she cried. “Alas for me,

  I love my dark prison and can never be free.”

  I must tell Lynton that I can’t see him again.

  I was determined to put a stop to everything with Lynton. I thought it would be easy.

  I decided to tell him that I was too nervous to sing a solo in the concert and would simply sing in the choir like the others, and so I wouldn’t need to rehearse with him anymore. Two more days passed and the time for our next rehearsal came around. Before meeting Lynton at the practice room, I went down to the lake, still fighting with myself, trying to summon up the courage for what I had to do. It was dusk, and the thin piping of a bird at the edge of the water sounded like a long-lost soul calling from the land of the dead. As I stared into the lake, I remembered how Laura’s body had floated for a while, like Ophelia, before sinking into the black depths the night of her murder by the coven. The guilt I felt about that night was like a heavy stone crushing me. “That’s what my life is. It’s guilt and shame and lies and being bound by the past.” I lectured myself sternly: “You’re not fit to love, or be loved. What do you think is going to happen? Do you really think you could be Lynton’s girlfriend? What happens when you meet his parents, and they ask about your family? Are you going to tell them the truth about your mother?”

  The whole thing was impossible. If Lynton was serious about being part of my life, I would have to tell him the complete truth about everything. Then what would he think? That I really was crazy Helen Black. It would be totally impossible. And all that stuff about love and the
end of the world—they were just pretty words, meaningless phrases used by an eager, carefree student who was caught up in the atmosphere of a romantic old ballroom. Lynton belonged to the outside world of St. Martin’s, a young guy with prosperous parents and ambitions as a musician. He had nothing to do with my world of shadows and dreams. And so, I told myself, I would finish it all before it got too complicated. All I had to do was get out of the stupid concert and then avoid him and pretend that none of it had ever happened. Evie and Sarah would never know—no one would ever know. Lynton would soon be consoled by Camilla, or Katie or any of the other pretty, uncomplicated Wyldcliffe girls. All I had to do was tell him.

  “Tell me what?”

  I jumped and stifled a cry. I must have spoken aloud without realizing. Lynton was standing behind me, holding a single white rose. The evening breeze lifted his hair from his face. He was very still, and his smile was as gentle as I remembered, but there was something different about him. There was a guarded look in his eyes, and he held himself back, looking self-conscious.

  “Sorry if I made you jump.” He handed me the rose on its fragile stalk. “And I brought you this to say sorry for the other night. I had no right to push myself onto you like that. Dancing and spouting poetry at you and all the rest. You must think I’m completely dumb. I’m sorry.” He smiled sheepishly. “It was the ballroom, all those ghosts dancing around us…it made me get carried away. Please forget everything I said. I just want to be friends, Helen, I promise.”

  So I’d been right. He wasn’t interested in the love that lives forever and all that. His gesture with the rose meant nothing—simply that he had been foolish and now regretted it and was trying to console me. Fine. I had been stupid even to imagine that it could have been real. I’d thought I was going to put an end to things, but Lynton had beaten me to it. This was rejection, like a knife piercing my heart. I couldn’t breathe. And at that moment, I knew that I wanted him more than anything else in the world.

  I wanted to caress his face and lean my body against his, and be folded into him, then disappear into the darkness of the moors, leaving behind everything that would force us apart. But that wasn’t the path I was on. I had to pretend not to care, even though my heart was bleeding. And the nasty, vicious voice in my head, the voice that Dr. Franzen had driven into me, began to remind me that I was stupid and pathetic and ridiculous, that I had always been alone in this world, and always would be.

  “Oh—well, of course,” I mumbled. “Let’s forget it.”

  We stood awkwardly for a moment, the first time we had been lost for words with each other.

  “What were you going to tell me?” Lynton said at last.

  This was the moment to break everything off. I didn’t want to, of course. I wanted to hang on to the meager crumbs of friendship he was offering me, like a famished child. But I had to find some kind of dignity by walking away. This was the moment to murder my dreams.

  “I can’t be in the concert with you, Lynton,” I said in a stilted voice. “Thanks for trying to help me, but I’m not good enough to sing on my own. Please tell Mr. Brooke that I really can’t. I’ll sing in the choir with the others, but I won’t need to rehearse with you anymore.”

  “So you’re going to stand in the back row and blend in and pretend not to be there?” Lynton said. “Isn’t that what you’ve been doing ever since you came to Wyldcliffe?”

  “I suppose so.” I shrugged. “It seemed the easiest way of getting by.”

  “You’re worth more than that.”

  “No, I’m not. I’m not worth anything.” I couldn’t stop my voice catching with tears.

  “You’re the only one who thinks that.”

  I shook my head. “Even my mother didn’t really want me, not for years. And now—oh, it’s all so difficult. You can’t understand.”

  “I understand more than you think. I’m your friend, Helen.”

  Friendship was better than nothing. But it would be easier to live with nothing than try to make do with the scraps of his affection. I tried again. “I’ve lied to my real friends to see you,” I struggled to say. “I don’t think I want to see you again. There are things I have to do, things that come first, stuff from my past. I can’t see you again. It’s too—too difficult to be friends with you. We’ve only just met, you don’t really know anything about me, I don’t know if—”

  “If you can trust me?” he asked. “Let me help you with this stuff, whatever it is, and I’ll prove that you can.”

  I suddenly felt so tired, as though I hadn’t slept for a hundred years. The lake looked so black and deep. “I’m sorry, Lynton, you can’t help. And I can’t explain. There isn’t enough time, not even if I talked all night until the sun came up again.”

  Lynton shook his head and laughed softly. “It’s funny how everyone thinks that time is fixed, as though it has to be used in a hurry before it runs out. But it’s not really like that.”

  “Isn’t it?” I wasn’t really sure what he was talking about.

  “In music,” he began to explain, “time is like a framework to hang everything on. We can measure it, count it…but in life, and death, time is different.”

  “How? What do you mean?” Lynton seemed so sure of himself and his ideas, as the river is sure that it flows the right way.

  He took my hand. “You’re cold,” he said. “Let’s walk, and I’ll try to explain.”

  Lynton led me away from the lake and toward the ruins of the chapel. The stars were beginning to show faintly in the dark sky.

  “Time is only one more element, or dimension, in the universe,” he said. “It isn’t separate from the world we see around us. And the past is just as real as the present, or the future.”

  “But once something is in the past it’s finished, isn’t it?”

  “No. It still exists—it’s still happening, if you like.” We reached the ruins and sheltered from the wind behind the crumbling walls, where a single lantern lit up the shadowy chapel. “For example, the holy sisters who once lived and worshipped in this place are still here. Their time is wrapped up in ours, like a circle within a circle.”

  I had seen those women myself, in this place, when we had cast our spells. I had seen their faces and heard their voices. What Lynton said made sense to me.

  “So everything’s happening at once?” I said.

  “That’s one way of describing it. Everything is one single ‘now,’ if only we could reach it, like an eternal heartbeat. Look.” He took his hand away and then pulled a ring, which I hadn’t noticed before, off his little finger. He held the ring up to the light from the lantern. There was a faint inscription that ran around the inside of the gold band. The words said, NOW AND NOW AND NOW AND… It was impossible to tell where they began and where they ended. An endless circle of time.

  “Helen, let me see you again,” he begged as he slipped the ring back on. “Don’t shut me out. Go along with this concert idea, because it means we can spend time together. Every moment is precious. Every single ‘now.’ And you don’t have to tell me anything about your past if you don’t want to. I already know what’s important about you.”

  “You do?” I was startled.

  “That you’re struggling to forgive the people who hurt you. That you’ve never really loved yourself, because no one ever loved you. That you’re beautiful—”

  “Stop—”

  “Yes, you are. And not just on the outside, but on the inside where beauty lasts forever. Besides, where’s the law that says you have to know someone for years before you truly know them? Does it matter that I don’t know what your favorite food was when you were a kid, or that you don’t know the name of the pet rabbit I used to have, or where I spent my vacations? None of that matters now, does it? Tell me, Helen, you say we’ve just met, but what do you see when you look at me?”

  I made myself look at Lynton, at his sensitive, ever-changing face, and the light in his eyes. I told the truth, because every lie is a tiny dea
th. “I see you,” I said unsteadily. “I see the person I want to be with more than anyone else in the whole world. I see—” And then I swallowed my pride and told another lie. “I see my friend.” If friendship was all he could offer me, I would take it gratefully, and ask for nothing more.

  There was another silence. Lynton took my hand, then dropped it quickly as though it burned him. He seemed to be struggling with something. He looked down and stuck his hands in his pockets.

  Silence. Waiting. Silence.

  “Friends,” he said at last with a deep breath. “So that’s settled.”

  But that was not what I really wanted, not now.

  When I wrote in my diary that night, I carefully laid the white rose between its pages, meaning to keep it forever, as a memory of what might have been. Then I suddenly tore the fragile bloom to pieces, and flung the petals away like bitter tears.

  Twenty-five

  FROM THE DIARY OF HELEN BLACK

  OCTOBER 27

  I can’t simply be friends with Lynton. I am trying, but every time we meet, I fail a little bit more. And I don’t believe what he says about being “just friends” either. His words say one thing but his eyes say another.

  When we practice the song, he breaks off playing and I catch him staring at me intently. His hand brushes against mine as he points something out in the music. He stands next to me as he shows me breathing exercises. “The breath is everything,” he says, and he is so close to me that I can smell the wind that has ruffled his hair and caressed his skin that day. He keeps me talking after rehearsal, asking me questions, making me laugh, telling stories.

  Then he clams up and says it’s time to go and hurries away, and turns into a stranger again.