Eternal

by Gillian Shields

  As I hovered over Helen’s white face, strangely beauti-ful even in this extremity, Miss Hetherington’s words came back to me. Did Helen actually want to leave this world? Would I be wrong to call her back, even if I could?

  Disconnected images spun through my mind: Helen crying over her mother’s submission to the Unconquered lords, Helen standing on the roof of the school and stepping into the void, Helen carrying us with her through air and space like a shooting star. Helen—loveless, tragic, misunderstood. She had never really been happy. Perhaps it would be easier than I had thought to let her go, and let her be in peace. Was that what she wanted? I hesitated, desperate to do the right thing.

  My fingers closed around the glass phial that was still in my pocket. I had to try. I couldn’t give up, and neither could Helen. She hadn’t had her chance at life yet, and everyone deserved that.

  I unsealed the little bottle and dropped some of the remaining liquid onto her lips, then dabbed her forehead with the rest. Helen stirred and moaned. Her arm shifted position on the white cover, and I saw the livid scar on her skin and noticed that her hand was tightly clenched. Taking her icy hand in mine, I kissed it, and her muscles seemed to relax and her hand opened up. She had been clutching a small round object. I had never seen it before, but I knew at once what it must be. It was the brooch that Mrs. Hartle had left with Helen as a baby, and it was the exact size and shape of the tattoolike marking on Helen’s skin.

  I remembered the words of the Book: “From where do such signs come? Many Scholars declare they are a Sign of great Destiny, with Death in their wake. . . .”

  A sign of great destiny. This seemingly insignificant bit of jewelry, or whatever it was, had started all this trouble for Helen, I thought. I picked it out of Helen’s open palm and examined it. Was the pattern in the center of the circle supposed to be crossed swords or a pair of stylized wings? Was it a sign of danger? And how—and why—had it transferred a perfect image of itself onto Helen’s skin?

  For a second I seemed to see the flames dancing on Agnes’s hand when she had shown us the vision of Helen. An odd phrase came to me: Fight fire with fire. Without stopping to analyze it, I took the brooch and placed it exactly over the mark on Helen’s arm, then pushed it into her flesh like a seal. At once, Helen sat up, her eyes wide-open in pain.

  “Aaah . . . that hurt . . . ah!” She clutched her arm. The mark stood out red and angry. But the next moment she threw her arms around my neck and sobbed, “Thank you . . . oh, Sarah, thank you so much. I wanted so much to come back after I fell, but I couldn’t. She was holding me—”

  “Who was it?” I asked. “Your mother? Or was it Velvet?”

  Helen stared at me with haunted eyes. “No, it wasn’t. It wasn’t like that.”

  “So what happened? Who was it?”

  “I was in a deep, secret place,” Helen said faintly. “And someone was keeping me prisoner.” She hid her face in her hands and whispered, “It was Miss Scratton.”

  “Miss Scratton?”

  “Yes. She was holding me back. She’s working against us.”

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Nothing made sense anymore.

  The rest of the night passed like a slow-motion dream. First we had to face the nurse, who must have been woken up by the sound of us talking. She came into the sickroom to find me sitting on Helen’s bed, and she furiously brushed away my explanations about being worried for Helen. “I’ve never heard of anything so selfish, bursting in here in the middle of the night like this! And Helen needing to rest so badly, you could have given her a real setback.” Yet she was clearly surprised and pleased with Helen’s pulse and breathing, and calmed down a little when Helen pleaded with her not to be angry.

  “You don’t know how Sarah has helped me,” she begged. “Seeing her has made me feel so much better. Please don’t tell anyone. Don’t get her into trouble.”

  Eventually the nurse stopped scolding and let me go to my dorm, but I couldn’t sleep. Nothing made sense. Helen had been cured by a sign of evil, and Miss Scratton was the one who had trapped her spirit and body and dragged her to the brink of existence. So our supposed Guardian had fled and become our enemy. Now everything had another interpretation. Miss Scratton must have set up that road accident herself somehow, and then escaped to join the Dark Sisters. That’s why she was never in the hospital. It was all a fake, and everything Miss Scratton had told us was a lie. But she helped us, I told myself. I believed in her. . . .

  I didn’t know what to believe. I couldn’t take it in. I kept saying the same words over and over again. “But the mark is evil, and Miss Scratton is on our side,” until I got all mixed up. “The mark is on our side . . . Miss Scratton is evil . . . the mark is Miss Scratton. . . .” I must have fallen asleep, because I plunged into a vivid dream.

  I was with Cal. We were in the woods, and the earth was alive with light and warmth. The trees were newly crowned with fresh green leaves, and a swath of bluebells shone purple against the tree trunks. Between the trees a smooth lawn of grass was sprinkled with white flowers. Cal bent to pick some of them and twined their fragile stalks in my hair. Then we stood face-to-face, as though waiting to dance or speak, but we were silent, too full of strange new feelings to talk. He looked at me questioningly and then ran his fingers through my hair and down my neck. Our mouths searched for each other, and we trembled as we kissed, as though we couldn’t believe that this happiness was really for us. I seemed to hear the trees breathing, and sense the grass growing, and the sweet, heady scent of the bluebells was as potent as wine.

  The next moment everything shifted, and the grass became a boggy field of mud. From behind the slender trees an army of grotesque clay-colored creatures emerged. Their misshapen bodies and swollen heads filled me with disgust as they began to paw at me, pulling me away from Cal. I was slipping out of his grasp, leaving him behind. “No!” Cal shouted. “Come back!” Then his face changed, and he was reaching out to me and shouting, “Maria, Maria, come back! Don’t touch her! No!”

  I echoed his cries and called wildly, “No, no, no . . .” I woke up sweating, not realizing that I had shouted out loud.

  “Sarah, what’s wrong?” Ruby was sitting up in bed and staring at me in concern, blinking shortsightedly. “Are you okay?”

  “Oh . . . yeah . . . sorry. Nightmare.” I fell back on my pillows and wiped my face. I could still see those pawing, bony hands. I could still see the distress in Cal’s eyes as I was dragged away from him. I could still hear the frantic voice calling Maria’s name.

  “What the hell was all that about?” Velvet asked, glaring at me from her rumpled bed.

  “Nothing—a bad dream. Sorry.”

  “Sounded like you were having total hysterics. Mind you, I don’t blame you.” Velvet yawned and looked at her watch. “Oh crap, the bell will go in a minute. Might as well get up and face another perfect day in the madhouse.” She got out of bed and started pulling clothes out of her drawers and throwing them down in a heap. “This place is enough to drive anyone crazy. I can’t stand the thought of wearing this disgusting uniform for one more minute. If my parents don’t get me out of here soon, I’ll burn the place down. I’m not joking.”

  “I thought you were enjoying being the ‘Wyld Child,’” I said, trying to cover up the confusion I still felt about my nightmare.

  “Oh please, don’t insult me,” Velvet drawled. “Freaking out a few dimwits like Sophie and ragging ancient teachers isn’t exactly hard.”

  “Velvet, don’t go looking for trouble,” I said, sitting up and pleading with her. “You don’t know what you might stir up.”

  “Like what? Getting a detention? Getting the school picnic canceled or whatever it was that Miss Scratton promised all the good little girls for a treat?”

  “No, it’s just—Wyldcliffe is kind of different. Things go on that shouldn’t.”

  “How interesting,” she replied coldly. “Do tell me more.” She stared at me with her deep, sult
ry eyes, and I wondered again just how much she really knew.

  “What did you say to Helen before she fell through that window?” I asked.

  “Me? I didn’t say anything to her. I wasn’t near the place. Why should I have been?”

  Because Sophie isn’t a liar. Because you were there when your sister died, and when that fire started at your last school, and when your mom’s assistant got injured. Because I don’t trust you.

  It was hopeless. I couldn’t say any of those things. “I just don’t think you should do stuff that affects other people like Sophie,” I said lamely. “She’ll end up getting hurt. She was really upset after your little scene at the ruins the other night.”

  “Yes, she was,” added Ruby. “It’s not fair. You’re rich and famous, Velvet, so it doesn’t really matter what you do, or what happens to you, but some of us want to do well at school and get into college and stuff like that. We need to get good reports.”

  “So it doesn’t really matter what happens to me?” Velvet’s expression hardened. “Is that what you all think? That I haven’t any feelings, just because my picture gets into the papers?”

  “Ruby didn’t mean that—,” I began.

  “Forget it. You’re right, Ruby. I shouldn’t ask anyone to be involved with me. I shouldn’t try to have any friends or any fun.” Velvet’s voice became harsh, and she began to tear her nightclothes off and fling her uniform on anyhow. “I’m a bad influence,” she said savagely. “I should be the one who gets hurt. Everyone hates me, even my mom.” She pushed her feet into her shoes, then stood up and leaned over my bed. Her face was so close to mine that I could see the soft texture of her creamy skin and smell the trace of the heavy, expensive perfume she always used. “I liked you to start with, Sarah. I would have been a better friend to you than that snotty redheaded Evie Johnson and crazy Helen Black. But it’s too late now. So if we’re not going to be friends, we’ll have to be enemies.”

  “Don’t be so—”

  “Enemies,” she snarled, and swept out.

  I started to get dressed, churning up with every emotion. Deep down I was sorry for Velvet, but she scared me too. I didn’t know what to think of her. Was she a melodramatic poseur or something more dangerous? But as I walked down the marble staircase I told myself there was only one person I needed to think about, and that was Evie. Helen had come back from the threshold of death, but Evie was still lost, and every hour, every minute was precious in the race to find her.

  When I went into breakfast, I was surprised to see that Helen was there too, looking extremely pale and tired.

  “Why aren’t you resting?” I asked.

  “I’ve persuaded the nurse that I am well enough to come back to school,” she replied. “My fever has gone, and she couldn’t find anything wrong, so she had to let me.”

  I was so glad to have her back, but she still seemed slightly feverish to me. There was a hectic look in her eyes, and she wasn’t touching the food in front of her.

  “Can I see it?” she asked in a low voice.

  “What?”

  “The brand—the thing you touched me with to release me last night.”

  I reached in my pocket for the little brooch. For some reason I felt reluctant to give it to her.

  “Where did you get it from, Helen?”

  A shadow seemed to fall over her face. “Miss Scratton gave it me, before she set off for St. Martin’s. She said she had found it in her study and that it must have been left there by my mother, and that she thought I should have it.”

  “But why would your mother still have it? Didn’t you see someone take it from you when you were a baby in the children’s home?”

  “That was only a kind of dream. Maybe what I saw wasn’t true. Or maybe the home had just put it away safely and they gave it back to my mother when she came to collect me all those years later. Anyway, it doesn’t matter. I’ve got it back now.”

  She took it from me and quickly pinned it to the slip under her school blouse.

  “I don’t think you should do that, Helen,” I whispered. “It’s a sign of evil, isn’t it? If we can’t trust Miss Scratton, we should be very careful of anything she gave you. And it came from your mother in the first place. That’s all the more reason to fear it.”

  “But I was only a baby! Don’t you think my mother could have given me just one good thing?” Helen’s voice shook. “It released me from Miss Scratton’s hold, didn’t it?”

  “So why would Miss Scratton give it to you, if you could use it against her?”

  “I don’t know! Maybe she thought it was a worthless trinket. I don’t know and I don’t really care. It’s a gift to me, from my mother, before she became what she is now. You can’t stop me having it, Sarah. I won’t let you!”

  I had never seen her like this before, white and trembling and furious. I hated it when people like Celeste sneered at Helen and called her crazy, but the uncomfortable thought came to me that perhaps she really was on the edge of a nervous breakdown. But then again, anyone would seem crazy if they had gone through the stuff she’d had to deal with.

  “It’s okay, Helen,” I said, aware that a few other students had turned to look at her. “It’s okay.”

  I sat in silence, letting the moment pass. Then I busied myself with eating my breakfast, though I wasn’t hungry.

  “I can’t stop you keeping the brooch,” I said quietly. “But please be careful, Helen. We don’t know what other powers it might have. I just want you to be safe.”

  “I am safe,” Helen muttered. “But what about Evie? Where can they have taken her? And Agnes just said that you had to seek? Nothing else?”

  “No, just that.” I sighed. “Seek and ye shall find. I hope that’s true.”

  I didn’t tell Helen that already, before breakfast, I had walked down to the pool, dreading and yet half expecting to see Evie’s body floating in it. But there had been no one there except the gardener, cutting the lawns and whistling softly to himself. And Josh had said that she wasn’t dead, despite the image of the drowned girl that Agnes had shown us. After going to the pool I had gone to the stables to see Josh, who was there already, working early. He told me that they had found no trace of Evie down by the river and that he was still convinced she was alive. He was planning to search over the moors again as soon as he had tended to the horses in the stables and could get away. That much at least I could tell Helen.

  “Let’s check out all the places on the school grounds that we know the coven has used before,” I said to Helen, pushing my plate away. “There’s the crypt under the ruins where we had our first battle with them. I’m going to cut classes and have a look down there for a start.”

  “I’ll come with you,” she replied quickly.

  “No, it would attract too much attention if we are both missing from class. You cover for me, say I’m doing errands for one of the mistresses or something.”

  The bell rang for the end of the meal. We stood for prayers and then fell into line as everyone filed out to get ready for the day’s work.

  “I’m just going to check the mail,” Helen said, “to see if Tony—Dad—has written again.”

  We walked down the corridor to the black-and-white entrance hall. Here, on a polished table, the students’ mail was set out each morning after breakfast. Helen found her letter. She opened it, and I could see the first few lines. Dear Helen, Miss Hetherington called me to say you’d had an accident. I do hope you are feeling better. I’ve been worried. . . .

  Helen stuffed it into her pocket, looking pleased. “I’ll write back to him later. Look, isn’t that something for you?”

  A small parcel stood at the back of the table, labeled To Miss Sarah Venetia Rosamund Fitzalan, Wyldcliffe Abbey School for Young Ladies. I recognized my mother’s flamboyant handwriting and remembered with surprise that I had written to her at the beginning of term asking about Maria. It already seemed such a long time ago. I picked up the parcel eagerly, though something war
ned me not to open it in front of any other students. The bell was already ringing for the first period of the day, and girls and mistresses were crossing the hall on their way to various classrooms. I caught sight of Agnes’s portrait hanging on the wall. She seemed to be watching me, encouraging me. She had shown me the image of Maria, and I was more certain than ever that there was some connection between Maria and everything else that had happened. Then I remembered that it was Miss Scratton who had moved the painting into the entrance hall so that it could be seen and admired—Miss Scratton who had gone back on everything she had promised us. My sense of certainty tumbled again, and I felt a swift pulse of panic run through me. How could I possibly find Maria? And how much more desperately did I want to find Evie? “Seek,” Agnes had said, but it was like searching for a leaf in a great forest.

  “Helen, when you get to class make some excuse about me. I’ll see you later.” I ran up the white marble stairs with the parcel under my arm. As I reached the dormitory floor, I bumped into Velvet. She was wearing riding kit.

  “Careful!” she snapped.

  “Oh—sorry—”