by Isobel Bird
But she had had time to think about it, and she’d done a lot of thinking. No, she wasn’t really dying. But what if she were? What if she really could know when the time of her death was coming? What would she do on her last day? What would be the last thing she ate? What would be the last thing she said, and who would she say it to?
All of these things had gone through her mind in the past twenty-four hours, and she still didn’t have definite answers. There were so many things she wanted to do, so many people she loved, so many things left to say. There was no way she could pick just one of any of them. She needed more time.
Ivy placed a strip across Annie’s mouth, her fingers applying pressure as she conformed the strip to the shape of Annie’s lips. For a moment Annie panicked. How would she breathe? What if she needed to say something? But then she felt Ivy’s hand stroking her hair, and she relaxed. Was this how Ivy had felt yesterday while Annie was making her death mask? Annie was glad that she had thought to reassure Ivy from time to time, and she was even more glad that Ivy was doing it for her now. It made her feel not quite so alone.
As Ivy continued to build the mask over Annie’s face, Annie found herself sinking into a kind of meditative state. Her thoughts faded away and she found herself feeling safe and loved. It was an odd feeling, because she felt like she should be more apprehensive about what came next. But she didn’t. She just felt calm. As each new bandage covered her face and the light reaching her eyes grew dimmer and dimmer, she let go of her worries and concentrated on the way Ivy was lovingly caring for her.
After what seemed like hours, Ivy smoothed the last plaster strip into place. She ran her hands over Annie’s face, lightly touching her nose and eyes and mouth and then stroking her hair. She then moved behind Annie so that Annie’s head was nestled in her lap and continued to rub Annie’s temples while she sang to her quietly.
“Hush little baby, don’t say a word,” she sang in a low voice. “Mama’s gonna buy you a mockingbird.”
Annie listened to the words of the familiar lullaby. At first it seemed like a strange thing for Ivy to be singing. But the more she thought about it, the more Annie realized that what Ivy had just done for her was very much like what someone caring for a baby would do. She had tended to her needs, preparing her for what lay ahead. And given the age difference between them, it really was almost as if Ivy had been caring for someone who could easily have been her daughter.
They sat like that for some time, with Ivy singing one lullaby after another and Annie letting the woman’s voice fill her head while she readied herself for the next step. Then Annie heard Ginny call for them to stand up, and she felt Ivy’s hands helping her to rise. She stood unsteadily, the loss of her sight making it hard to get her bearings. But every time she stumbled there was Ivy’s hand, holding her up.
Ivy led her to the doorway and out onto the lawn. Annie felt the change in air temperature. It was much colder outside. And there was no sun today. She could tell because no warmth touched her bare skin to lessen the bite of the wind, which was blowing steadily. She even felt a few snow-flakes touch her hands and neck as they entered the labyrinth and began walking the circular route to the land of the dead.
As they walked, Annie could tell that the path, which had been clear yesterday, was covered in a thin layer of snow. She wondered when it had begun and how much was falling now. But she quickly brushed that thought aside and imagined herself walking the long, spiraling path to the underworld. She let Ivy guide her as she moved forward, sightless, her feet crunching on the snow.
When they reached the center they stood and waited as the others joined them. The wind was blowing harder now, and Annie was really cold. The snow brushed her neck, and she was glad that Ivy was holding her hand and keeping it warm.
“Attendants, leave your dead and return to the land of the living!” Annie heard Ginny calling, her voice faint in the wind.
Ivy let go of Annie’s hand. “Safe journey,” she whispered in Annie’s ear. “I’ll be waiting for you.”
Then Annie was alone. Suddenly she was freezing. Without Ivy there she felt vulnerable and afraid. The wind picked up, blowing her hair around, and the snow seemed to bite into her skin where it touched her. She imagined herself stranded in a blizzard, not able to see where she was going or what lay ahead of her.
“Return to the land of the living!” called Ginny. “Hurry! Time is short.”
Annie stood in the cold, listening to the feet of the attendants as they ran back to the safety and warmth of the hotel. She wanted to follow them, to escape the bitter embrace of the wind and snow. But she knew it was not time yet. She had to wait for Ginny’s call.
There was a long silence during which all Annie heard was the wind in her ears. Then came Ginny’s voice. “Dead,” she cried, “turn your backs on the living. Turn away from them and face the land that is now yours.”
Annie turned slowly and faced away from Ginny’s voice. She knew that Ivy would be staring at her back, mourning her passing. But what was she facing? What was ahead of her? What awaited her in the land of the dead? Was she ready to find out?
“It is time to remove your masks,” called Ginny. “Take them off now.”
Annie reached up and felt for the edge of her mask. She slipped her fingers beneath it and gently pried it off. At first it resisted, but with a little effort she felt the hardened plaster separate from the film of petroleum jelly with a soft, sucking sound. Then the mask was in her hands and she was blinking in the gray, fuzzy light.
She looked up at the sky and saw angry clouds and swirls of snow. She couldn’t believe how hard it was snowing. In only a short time the storm had doubled its strength, and it seemed to be getting stronger by the minute. The people in the land of the dead had dustings of snow on their clothing and in their hair, and all of them seemed uncomfortably cold.
“Leave your masks and return to us!” Ginny commanded them. “Come now!”
Annie wasted no time in putting her mask in the snow and turning to find the path back. But it had snowed so much that the beautiful circles of the maze had become mere outlines. It was almost as if someone had tried to obscure the path, to keep those who had entered the land of the dead there. Annie sensed the others hesitating as they tried to decide how to leave. Part of her wanted to just run straight across the lines of the labyrinth and back to the land of the living. After all, what difference did it make? But another part of her knew that finding the path was important.
Finally she saw it, a faint outline of a once-clear track. The level of the snow was lower there, but not by much. The falling snow had almost completely filled it in, and the tumbling flakes seemed determined to erase all evidence of the path.
Annie stepped forward, putting her foot on the path. She moved quickly, following the traces of the circles as she traveled toward Ginny and the others. Her pathmates followed along behind her, stepping into her footprints. Together they journeyed around and around the maze, the circles becoming wider and wider as they reached the outer rings. Then they were walking down the final stretch and into the arms of their waiting friends.
“Get inside,” Ivy said as she took Annie’s hand and pulled her forward. “It’s terrible out here.”
They all ran inside as quickly as possible. When the last person was inside, Ginny shut the door and secured it. Shaking the snow from her clothes, she looked at everyone and smiled. “Well, we’ve never had quite such a dramatic setting for that ritual before,” she said. “I think you all made it back from the land of the dead just in time.”
As if responding to her, the wind rattled the windows of the room. Annie looked out at the snow and saw nothing but white. Imagine if we really had been lost in that, she thought, shivering at the thought.
“What about the masks?” asked a woman standing beside Ginny. “They’ll be covered by the snow.”
“You don’t need those masks now,” Ginny told her. “Those are the faces of death. What’s important now is
the face you created for your new life.”
Annie had forgotten about that part of the ritual. She turned to look at the masks they’d made on the first day. As had happened the day before, the masks had been arranged on a table that had been set for a party. Seeing them there, looking so cheerful and full of life, made her happy. She was excited about putting on her face of sunflowers and dancing with the others.
“Annie!”
Annie looked up to see Cooper standing in the doorway. She had a look of fear on her face, and she appeared to be out of breath, as if she had been running hard.
“What’s wrong?” Annie asked, going over to her friend.
“It’s Nora,” answered Cooper. “She destroyed the talisman.”
Annie looked puzzled. “What do you mean?” she said. “How did she even get the talisman?”
“Kate got it,” Cooper told her. “From Lucy. We were going to do a ritual tonight to destroy it, but Nora stole it from my backpack and did it before I could stop her.”
Annie still didn’t understand. “But we wanted to destroy it,” she said. “I know she shouldn’t have done it without us, but why do you look so upset?”
Cooper looked at her friend, her eyes dark. “Nora lied to us,” she said. “She was using us to help her free Mary’s ghost, all right, but she didn’t tell us the whole story.”
“What do you mean?” Annie asked anxiously. “Is she okay?”
Cooper shook her head. “I don’t know,” she said. “Mary has taken over her body, and from what I saw, she isn’t the friendly ghost Nora wanted us to believe she was.”
Annie groaned. “Now what do we do?” she asked.
“We have to get Kate,” replied Cooper. “And Lucy,” she added. “I think maybe we should have been listening to her all along.”
“Annie, are you going to join the party?”
Annie turned and saw Ivy smiling at her. Behind them, the rest of the class was dancing a spiral dance, the newly masked participants laughing and having a good time. Annie badly wanted to join them, to celebrate her successful journey to the land of the dead and back.
“I have to go do something first,” she said to Ivy. “But save me a place. I’ll try to be back soon.”
She turned and followed Cooper, who walked down the hall. As they went to get Kate and Lucy, Cooper told Annie a little more about what had occurred in the tower room.
“I didn’t know what was happening at first,” Cooper said. “I thought Nora was just fooling around. But you should have seen her face, Annie. It was a totally different person in there.”
“What did you do?” Annie asked.
“I got out of there,” answered Cooper. “I really felt like whoever Nora had become, she wanted me dead. Her eyes were so cold, so dead. It was like looking into blackness.”
“And you think it was Mary?”
Cooper nodded. “She said that’s who she was.”
“But I don’t understand,” Annie said. “Nora seemed to really trust her.”
“I have a feeling we don’t know the real story behind all of this,” Cooper said. “Someone has been lying—either Nora or Lucy. We have to find out which of them it was.”
They reached Kate’s classroom and looked inside. The class was seated in a circle. Jackson was standing in the center, doing something with his hands as he talked.
“What are we going to do?” asked Annie. “We can’t just barge in there and drag them out.”
“We don’t really have a choice,” Cooper answered. “We’ve got to find out what’s going on and figure out what to do about Nora, or whoever she is now.”
Suddenly the lights in the hallway flickered. They went out for a moment, came back on, and then flickered out again. This time they didn’t come back on.
“Now what?” Cooper said in exasperation.
“It’s the storm,” Annie said. “It knocked out the power.”
“Great,” replied Cooper. “Just what we need.”
“Maybe it is,” said Annie. “Look.”
The doors to the room were opening, and several of the Water path participants came out to see what was going on. Annie and Cooper took the opportunity to slip inside. They found Kate and Lucy and took them aside.
“We have a problem,” Cooper said. “Nora took the talisman.”
“What?” Lucy exclaimed. “How did she get it?” She turned to Kate. “I thought you said you hid it in your room.”
“Well, not exactly,” Kate said, sounding sheepish. “I hid it, but not in the room. I gave it to Cooper to hold on to.”
“It was in my backpack,” Cooper said. “Nora took it and ran off before I knew what she’d done.”
“Where is it now?” asked Lucy. “We have got to get that talisman back or I can’t even tell you what kind of trouble there will be.”
“That’s the thing,” Annie said when no one spoke. “Something already has happened.”
“No,” Lucy said, sounding scared.
Cooper nodded. “She broke it,” she said. “I found her in the tower room.”
Lucy let out a sound like a moan and a cry combined. “No,” she said. “No. Tell me it’s not true.” She put her hands to her face for a moment, then turned to Cooper. “Do you know what this means?” she said angrily. “Do you have any idea what you’ve done?”
“Actually, no,” Cooper said. “I was hoping you could tell us. Nora said something about not being Nora anymore. She said she was Mary now.”
Lucy was nodding, her hands over her mouth. She seemed to be about ready to burst into tears. “She is Mary now,” she said. “Or at least Mary is using her body. That’s what she’s wanted ever since Nora started talking to her. She wanted a way back here.”
“But Nora said that’s what Alice was trying to get you to do,” Kate said.
Lucy sighed. “She lied,” she said. “She lied to you. I thought you said you believed me. I thought you were helping me keep the talisman away from her.”
Kate, Annie, and Cooper all looked at one another. “We just told you that so you would give us the talisman,” Kate said finally. “I’m really sorry, Lucy. Nora convinced us that you were the one we had to be afraid of. We thought we were doing the right thing.”
“No,” Lucy said. “You were definitely not doing the right thing. In fact, you couldn’t have done anything more not right if you’d tried. I don’t know what we’re going to do now. She’s out. She’s back.”
“You mean Mary?” asked Annie.
“Yes, Mary,” Lucy said. “She’s back, and she’s more powerful than ever. This storm is proof of it. I told you that yesterday.”
“What is she going to try to do now?” Cooper asked.
“For starters, she’s going to try to kill me,” answered Lucy. “Then she’s going to try to complete the spell she left unfinished when Alice killed her, the spell that will make her more powerful than anyone can imagine.”
“And how do we stop her?” Kate asked.
Lucy looked at her sadly. “I have no idea,” she said.
CHAPTER 14
As the girls entered the lobby the lights flickered back on, although they weren’t as bright as they usually were.
“The generator,” Lucy said. “Mr. Greaves must have gotten the generator running.”
“That’s one good thing,” Cooper replied. “But it doesn’t solve our big problem.”
“Lucy, have you seen your sister?”
The girls turned to see Mrs. Reilly standing behind them. “I’ve been looking all over for her,” she said.
Lucy shot a glance at the others. “No,” she said. “I haven’t seen her.”
“I think she was going to go work on a project for our path,” Cooper said. “We’re supposed to be writing chants for tomorrow, and she wanted some peace and quiet.”
“Okay,” Mrs. Reilly said. “Well, if you see her, tell her I’m looking for her.”
“Is the power going to be on full strength soon?” Annie ask
ed Mrs. Reilly. “I, um, need to use my hair dryer tonight.”
“We don’t know yet,” answered Lucy’s mother. “Mr. Greaves is trying to reach the nearest village to see what’s going on there. If a line is down between here and there, it could be out for a while. But don’t worry, our generator will keep us going as long as we need it to.”
She left the girls and went to speak to one of the hotel workers. A moment after her departure, Sasha appeared. “There you are,” she said. “What’s up with the power?”
“That’s the least of our worries,” Annie informed her.
Sasha looked at their faces. “I take it this isn’t good?” she asked.
“It’s so not good,” Kate answered.
“Lucy, I think we owe you an apology,” Cooper said. “And you’ll get it. But first maybe you should tell us exactly what’s going on here. Let’s go to our room. I have a feeling this isn’t something we want to be talking about here.”
They went upstairs to the girls’ room. The lights there were rather dim, so they lit some candles that had been set out on the dressers to provide a little more light. Once that was done, they sat on the beds and waited for Lucy to tell them her story.
“I don’t even really know where to start,” she said, looking at the four of them. “I don’t know what Nora told you, so I don’t know what you know and what you don’t know.”
“Just start at the beginning,” suggested Annie. “Nora told us that she found a diary.”
Lucy nodded. “That’s right,” she said. “She found Mary O’Shea’s diary. When she first showed it to me we were both really excited. We’d heard about the O’Shea girls a little bit, but no one was ever able to tell us much about them. Only Mr. Greaves really knew anything, and he didn’t seem to want to talk about it. I think the fact that they were twins and Nora and I are twins freaked him out a little.”
“What was in the diary?” asked Cooper. “Nora said it was just the usual stuff.”
Lucy laughed. “It was hardly the usual stuff,” she told them. “It was all about these powers that Mary and Alice had. Nora and I were really excited about that because she and I have always been able to do some stuff that we knew was a little bit different, and we’d never read about anyone else who could.”
