She bent to kiss the stones of the floor. The sacred space had been created when the Guard itself was born. Much like how the Whisper-world had separated from the mortal at the dawn of civilization, so had the sacred space split at the inception of the Guard, separating itself from both worlds similarly to the Liminal edge. Thus it had its own properties, could sometimes fashion the unexpected to serve the Power and the Light. Or, she supposed, it could serve another power. She wondered if a future Guard would inadvertently call upon the wrong side of the light.
“You may choose the wrong path, beloveds, but I cannot hold your hands forever,” she admitted ruefully. “You must make the right choices yourselves.”
Beyond the stone pillars lay shimmering darkness, a place between space and time that was unfriendly for mortal and divinity alike. She knew that every Guard who put a hand into that darkness came away scarred, and she prayed that those shadows would ever stay static, that nothing would come from the other side. She hoped that the dog would stay at heel, the Gorgon would never grow curious, and that Darkness would only fight when provoked. The time of their final battle was the advantage she sought.
Thinking of her vision, of Alexi and the girl bent over the Athens seal to free Guard spirits, Persephone laid hold of the key made of her tears. When she lifted it from the floor, the map vanished. Keeping her robes about her, she ascended to that upper seal and examined its fine tiles. There indeed was another keyhole. But when she tried the key, it did not fit. A different lock for a different key.
Her heart sank at the thought of keys. The most necessary key was the one Darkness had imprisoned within him. It would have to be stolen. She, whomever she would become, would have to obtain it. She would have to become the seventh member in a Guard of six, a mortal bringing them the final piece of an age-old puzzle.
But how was this all to take place?
“Ah, Beatrice.” Suddenly, an unprecedented idea filled her head. Two Guards. Was that possible? She would need the help.
Persephone blinked, feeling something shift within her heart, and clapped her hands. “Oh! They’re here!”
* * *
Once they disembarked from their train, the whole of London sprawled before them, brimming with life and sound. Beatrice and her Guard stood just outside the grand King’s Cross arches, taking in the myriad sights. London was more populous than Cairo, but there was a similar bustle and old-world chaos.
A ripping sound and a burst of colored light heralded the goddess. Lovely as ever she appeared, though there were disturbing dark circles under her iridescent eyes. Her layered gown was spattered with what appeared at first to be blood but then shimmered like red silk when she stepped into their world. The Guard looked nervously at one another.
“Welcome to London!” Persephone cried, visibly excited, beckoning them like an eager child as passersby darted around her, her colors lighting them preternaturally. Thankfully for Belle, the goddess had arranged her diaphanous gown in such a manner that her magic shielded her from view by the populace, visible only to her Guard.
The divinity tapped the temples of two cargo hands, who stopped what they were doing and moved away. “There, your bags and trunks are taken care of. Come! Let’s see the city!”
Wide-eyed, the goddess led them down a multitude of lanes and avenues, practically crowing with delight. Beatrice and her fellows took in London more warily, but none could deny the joy of adventure once they were in the thick of it.
This city was in some part theirs, though its citizens would never know. The sentiment bolstered Beatrice as she tried not to be overwhelmed by its size and density, its sounds and smells, its extreme wealth and staggering poverty.
Like every ancient city, London was host to many different styles of architecture—and to residents whose families originated in every country and culture England had pierced with its flag. Beatrice noticed that Ahmed’s and Ibrahim’s shoulders eased a bit when they saw they were hardly the only persons of color walking London’s streets, though the latter’s brow remained furrowed.
Perhaps he felt a burst of homesickness. She couldn’t blame him. London was a vast stage with countless sets and an infinite cast, asymmetrical and busy like Cairo, but where Cairo’s rouge was vermillion dust, London’s was soot. The wash of gold traded for the press of gray would take some getting used to.
A great, weighty pain burned in her bosom, and the Pull—or something vaguely like it—dragged her in the direction the goddess was heading. Was the great soul inhabiting her so magnetized to its missing parts?
“Separation from phoenix fire has quite taken a toll on me, but it being close, my body yearns more than ever,” Beatrice whispered to Verena, who, in reply, put a slightly glowing hand upon her back. It felt lovely, countering her pain and the irritation that still inflamed her skin.
In the Bloomsbury district they turned down a street that was more like an alley and came upon an oddly grand portico entrance to a Romanesque fortress of red sandstone. The lintel read FRIENDS.
“That’s nice!” Ahmed exclaimed. “Friends!”
Everyone smiled.
“What is this place?” George asked.
Persephone grinned, obviously pleased with herself. “We are going to open this school. It shall be full of friends, indeed, and it shall be called Athens Academy!”
“Why not the School of Friends?” Ahmed frowned.
“Because England is not terribly tolerant of the Society of Friends, or as some would call them—”
“Quakers,” Ibrahim finished. “James, my … father spoke reverently of his Quaker colleagues in America.”
“Indeed. This school was closed because it sought to employ teachers both male and female and from diverse races and backgrounds, to educate both men and women equally, and to allow students access to all subjects,” Persephone stated.
“Why should it be any other way?” Beatrice said.
The goddess nodded. “So I assume I’ll have your unconditional support in seeing it open once more, under a title that shall draw less scrutiny. The classicists of this age won’t mind a bit of Greek homage, for its students will never know that the Phoenix of their myths lives beneath its very eaves.”
“Ah,” Beatrice breathed. “That’s why, standing here, I at last don’t feel so broken.”
“Yes. My apologies,” Persephone said. “A lesser person would have fractured under the strain. You are Leader indeed, Beatrice Smith.” She touched Beatrice’s cheek with sisterly fondness, then turned to the rest of the company.
“Unless you wish to settle elsewhere, you can take to the upstairs rooms here or to the unfinished parts of the hall that will be used as dormitories. Do wander this rapturous city. But first, before we settle in, we need to locate some Friends to make good on this building’s valiant mission. Ibrahim, my Intuition, would you be so kind as to show me to some Quakers?”
CHAPTER
SEVENTEEN
The wind had picked up and carried something strange upon it.
Alexi Rychman was a practical young man; his parents encouraged the quality. His grandmother, however, was not. Not entirely. He knew that of his whole family she cherished him most. His sister loved him dearly, but his grandmother gave him the sense that he was the most important person in the world. His parents found this appalling, but it was an honor young Alexi took very seriously.
His grandmother encouraged hard work and pressed him to excel at school, but also supported his fascination with alchemy. She was an ardent Spiritualist and oft spoke with otherworldly airs. If Alexi believed in such things—which he didn’t—he would have thought she was secretly a witch.
Now, echoes of her mysticism had fourteen-year-old Alexi staring out from the flat where he was secretly apprenticed to a brilliant alchemist. Gazing down onto London, he felt the winds of fate were blowing. There was something in the air. A chill. A frisson of possibility.
“Oh don’t be silly,” he scoffed at himself and returned to mi
xing his powders.
CHAPTER
EIGHTEEN
An unlikely set of seven companions threw open the doors of an unmarked building Ibrahim had promised was a Quaker meeting house. Inside, a group of twenty middle-aged persons sat in the silence Quakers often kept at meetings, waiting for the Holy Spirit to move them to speak.
Several children were dispersed about the attendees, all with heads bent. The adults were dressed in modest fashions of the day: wide skirts, full-sleeved blouses cinched to slender waists, fine coats and well-kept waistcoats. Nothing ostentatious. The children were the same, well presented and not out of fashion but uniformly utilitarian. One woman was on her feet but not speaking.
At the sound of the doors thrown wide, everyone turned.
“Hello, friends!” cried Persephone. She was a prismatic, shifting, indescribable creature, and it was clear from their expressions she was like nothing their mortal eyes had ever seen. The entire room gaped.
“This is … She’s a … member of Parliament,” Belle stated, her French accent more pronounced when she spoke loudly, holding out her hands, bestowing her magic, “here to make a decree.”
“I’d vote for her,” George added with a grin.
“You’ll henceforth remember her—and all of us—as belonging to the Prime Minister’s…” Belle turned to George. “What do you call it?”
“A cabinet,” George said.
“Cabernet,” Belle repeated.
“Not wine, Belle. Cabinet.” Beatrice rolled her eyes. “This is absurd.”
“Cab-i-net.” Belle blushed.
The goddess continued with her proclamation. “I am here to tell you that your closed academy shall live once more. The building in Bloomsbury, abandoned due to injustices and prejudices, shall reopen as Athens and you shall staff it.” There were murmurs among the crowd of excitement and joy, like a dream was coming true. “But we must keep quiet about our venture, friends. We live in intolerant times. Who led the Friends Academy before its closure?”
A man stood, tall, sharp-featured, with blue eyes and a regal appearance. “I did, your honor. My name is Richard Thompson, and I wanted my niece to have the same chance that fellows at Oxford have.” He gestured beside him to a young girl in her early teens. Tall and spindly in a sensible dress, she stood and blushed, locks of brown hair falling stubbornly from their coif and into her wide blue eyes. “Rebecca here is absolutely brilliant, and I wanted her to have every opportunity.”
“And so she shall!” the goddess declared. “You shall see these fine fellow … ministers of mine around the institution. But remember! Athens Academy must be London’s best-kept secret. I daresay Parliament will shut it down again if they hear a word. So, carry on! Truth, equality, simplicity, and peace be with you all!”
The goddess whirled toward the door with a flourish and exited, leaving the thunderstruck congregants behind. Her Guard trailed in her wake, not wanting to be caught answering any questions they’d be hard pressed to answer.
“Don’t worry about the practicalities,” the goddess exclaimed, measuring their worried expressions. “They’ll run the school, as they were quite ready to do before. As for the bankers’ loans, well, let me take care of that. That whole world is delightfully intricate, but I can be very persuasive when I want to be!” Her prismatic eyes glittered with the delight of purpose and action.
As they darted again in the direction of Bloomsbury, Ibrahim caught up to the goddess and pointed back toward the simple brick building from whence they had come. “That girl. That Thompson girl.”
The goddess nodded. “An Intuition if I ever saw one. See? You can spot your own, can’t you?”
“But…” Ibrahim furrowed his brow. “Are my powers split in two?”
“Two Guards at one time?” the goddess exclaimed. “That’s never been attempted. Yet … we’re at a new dawning, so who knows what’s possible? Thrilling!”
They’d never seen her so invigorated. She seemed a bit feverish, in fact. But when one’s heart is exuberant, one becomes more compelling, and the goddess even more so, her luminous magnetism something none of them could deny.
They traveled to the school. Ascending the steps below the bold FRIENDS—a sight that again made Ahmed smile, though that took very little—the goddess moved through the foyer as if leading a tour.
She pointed to the left, down a colonnaded hall. “Sacred space, accessible there through the chapel.” She pointed toward an upper floor. “Above you’ll find the grave of Phoenix. Make yourselves at home. Stay safe. I must be off.” Then she flung her hand wide, a portal opened up, and she disappeared without another word.
* * *
While some of the Guard chose rooms within Athens’s halls, George and Belle decided to wander the city, as they had been wont to do all through their last days in Cairo. Making their way through a twisting set of winding alleys, they stumbled at last upon a cozy bit of treasure. The garden-level pub seemed thoroughly warm and inviting save for an unfortunate placard out front declaring it THE BEAST and decorated with a cracked, time-worn painting of a hellish-looking dog. With naught but a nod, George and Belle descended the stairs and took a bay window seat that looked out past the wrought-iron rails of the stairs and out to the winding cobbles beyond.
The place was nearly deserted and likely had been for some time, they determined, for the help waited upon them as if they were royalty. While the pair had dressed smartly, their trappings alone did not warrant such fawning attention. At one point their hostess muttered something about hard times and wishing someone would come along and take the place off her hands.
“I’m … getting a funny feeling,” Belle said, rubbing her temple.
“Me, too. I think I’ve found home,” George stated. “I can’t live in a school. A pub, on the other hand? Brilliant.” Ever the artist, he was already measuring wall space and redecorating.
The hostess’s husband came out to greet them, and it wasn’t long before Belle’s powers of persuasion came into play and it was suggested that George buy the property, which consisted of the downstairs pub and a few upstairs rooms. The price they settled on was quite reasonable—and as Belle’s family had long maintained comfortable wealth and a precedent of spending it lavishly on their daughter’s random desires, and George had made a handsome profit drawing on the boat, neither she nor George were concerned about the cost.
“The first thing we must do,” she insisted once the deal had been struck, “is change that horrid sign.” Her eyes lit up. “I’ve got it!”
When she whispered it in his ear, George gave a great laugh. “La Belle et La Bête? Beauty and the Beast. We shall tame the beast indeed, and this shall be a place of respite for all our friends. And a home for us.”
This was a wholly agreeable thought, and they passed several more pleasant hours dining and drinking and daring to hold hands. The sun had completely set before they stopped staring into each other’s eyes. They had begun a new life together, and the realization was glorious.
* * *
Their first experience of the Pull in London was quite odd, foreign, not at all like the way it had felt in Cairo. The feeling wrenched Beatrice’s heart as she descended the school stairs, and she dreaded to think this would always be how it felt here. Tears stung the corner of her eyes as her body all but dragged her toward the river.
That the change troubled the whole of the Guard was clear from the expressions on everyone’s faces. They gathered on the Embankment and stared at the mass of spirits that rolled across the Thames like whitecaps upon the ocean. London had more open, restless dead than the constraints of Cairo’s ancient tombs.
Beatrice noticed that Ibrahim’s face was grimmest of all. Surely he sensed her staring at him, for he snapped his head around to look at her, then glanced back at the spirits. His eyes darkened. “Which of that undulating mass are we meant to corral?”
“All?” Verena gulped.
There was an army suddenly. Troop after tr
oop, a wafting battalion in grayscale lines, a sea of floating forms that stared down at the Guard from a great height. This ghastly welcoming committee dove upon the Guard all at once. There was no time to take hands or gather their great fire.
“Why, this is the most coordinated effort I’ve seen yet,” Beatrice said as she and her companions dodged the spirits. Righting herself and smoothing her skirts, Beatrice lifted her hands, and blue fire leaped indignantly forth, as strong as it had once been in Cairo.
“Perhaps they’ve begun to unionize,” muttered George.
At this, Ahmed giggled. Beatrice could have blessed him for that sound, which reminded them all that they could choose to feel the freezing weight of death or instead find their position somewhat absurd. That simple shift in point of view made it easier to fight.
What followed was a haphazard battle, unfocused and unsatisfying. Belle was exhausted and had trouble rounding up and dismissing the passersby. Beatrice didn’t know which of the many spirits should be first upon which to turn her fire, so there was chaos for a time. Ibrahim declaimed verses loudly, as if addressing Parliament, whose lavish new houses were being built just down the riverbank. Ahmed and the rest kept up as best they could, but all of them flagged. In the end, the crowd of specters was dispersed and attended, but the Guard’s energy was spent.
As a reward, however, Belle and George suggested their friends come to the new café they’d just made plans to purchase, and the group agreed to the requisite journey. During the slow walk, Beatrice mused on the state of spectral affairs.
“We made a bit of a difference today, but we’ll never put to rest all of London. The city is simply too haunted, and we but scratch the surface. Maintain balance? It feels more of a struggle here than ever.”
“It’s all this gray,” Ibrahim murmured. “Are you sure this is England? Perhaps it is an extension of our goddess’s prison, of the Whisper-world itself!”
“There’s sun!” George countered unconvincingly. Ibrahim raised an eyebrow at his colleague, who mitigated: “Sometimes.”
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