Page 23 of The Light Between Worlds

“We’ll be safe,” she promises. “One way or another. And we’ll get home when all this is done. I promise you, Ev. Leave it to me.”

So the three of us each find our weapon—for Jamie the sword, for Philippa the pen, and for me the seed. Because there is power in these things—in bravery and cleverness and hope. I try to remember this as I work alongside Dorien, planning and working for the winter to come, and the spring after that. He and I fight with our belief, that there will be a Woodlands still left to plant for.

I sink every seed into the rich forest earth with a prayer for peace on my lips and under my skin.

15

WE’RE GIVEN OUR MAIL AFTER DINNER. GEORGIE CURLSup on her bed with a package of sweets and a thick letter from one of her cousins. I sit at the desk with letters from my parents and from Jamie that have been passed over in favor of a note from Tom. I try not to notice the continuing absence of anything from Philippa.

Tom’s untidy scrawl rambles across a single page, eating up paper at an alarming rate.

Hello, Ev.

I’d ask if you’ve pulled any weeds lately, but as the weather’s been fine, I suppose you haven’t. I’ll be by again on Saturday, if it’s alright with you, and I’m looking forward to the exciting groundskeeping tasks you’ve surely got planned for me. Here’s something for you in the meantime.

Tom Harper

I’ve just opened up the little paper-wrapped box that came along with his note and found it full of toffee when Georgie speaks.

“Ev, take a moment and look at yourself, will you? Tell me what you see.”

I glance back at her. I hadn’t thought she was paying any attention to me.

“Go on then,” Georgie coaxes. I look up at the mirror that hangs above the desk, still thinking of the note, and the gift, and that it’s really terribly kind of him after so many years of sugar rationing.

And the girl staring back from the mirror’s gilt frame takes me entirely by surprise. It’s me, to be sure, but a me who’s smiling, not just with her mouth, but with her eyes.

Georgie gets up off the bed and pads over to me in her bedroom slippers. She leans down so that her face is next to mine, and she’s smiling, too. “Ev, darling, you lookhappy. Do you feel it?”

I turn inward, prod cautiously at my heart, my soul, my mind. “I think I do.”

Georgie presses a quick kiss to my cheek. “Good. Then that boy is worth having around.”

She retreats to her bed again, and I lean back in my chair, unable to look away from my own reflection.

I’m happy. I’m happy right here, right now. At St. Agatha’s, in my cramped, familiar room with Georgie not ten feet away. The door’s open, and the usual early evening sounds drift in—girls chattering and laughing, a hair dryer being run, someone practicing the violin. From where I’m sitting I can see the end of the hallway, and Max seated on a chair there. She’s got it tilted back against the wall and a pile of papers that need grading rest forgotten on her lap, because a first year’s regaling her with some sort of story, adoration plain on her childish face. Max nods indulgentlyuntil the girl’s finished speaking, then says something with a smile and the first year skips away. The Bakelite radio next to Max’s chair crackles a bit, and she leans down to turn up the sound as a new jazz standard starts up.

I snap off a bit of toffee and let it melt on my tongue, sweet and rich after the usual lumpy, tepid school dinner. I’m happy, and for once I don’t wish I was elsewhere.

But I do wish it was Saturday.

I’d hate to disappoint, so when the weekend comes I get to work early, out in the large, weed-infested kitchen garden behind St. Agatha’s. It’s a mess of thistles and birdsfoot trefoil and dandelions with taproots as thick as my thumb. Hobb rakes up leaves that have drifted between the beds and carts them over to a sandy-soiled corner to burn. Soon the pungent smell of smoke hangs on the brisk October air.

Beyond the stone wall that borders St. Agatha’s grounds, the trees are luminous, ablaze with autumn splendor. Inside the wall, the sounds of shouting and of a high-pitched whistle float over from the mown area to the side of the dormitory, where some of the girls are playing field hockey. The cook, a broad, quick-tempered woman with greying brown hair and a face the color of the tasteless mashed potatoes she serves, stumps out from the main building to inspect my handiwork. She points out a few salvageable vegetables she wants for dinner before trudging wearily back inside.

I’m on my knees pulling up turnips when Georgie appears, a copy ofJane Eyreand a notebook tucked under one arm. She’s meant to be studying, but from the way she bounces on the ballsof her feet I can tell she’s full of frustrated energy and would rather be anywhere else.

“Can I help, or are you expecting your swain?” Georgie asks.

I rock back onto my heels and squint up at her in the bright morning sun. “I am expecting him, but I do need help. Did something happen?”

“I could use some fresh air,” she says, picking up a spade and stabbing it into the earth fiercely. “I tried to convince Penwallis’s study group to readAnnie Allen, and got the usual lecture about sticking to good English authors for my pains. Which of course means white English authors, and before you remind me, I know, Evelyn, Cambridge, but honestly, at what cost?”

Georgie stalks off across the kitchen garden and sinks down to sit with her back against the low stone wall. We respect each other’s need for distance, Georgie and I, and so I don’t go after her—she always wants time after something like this, to scribble down new lines of her own verse. No one’s ever allowed to read it—not me, not even Max. I suppose it’s Georgie’s way of wandering in the woods.

After half an hour, she sets her notebook aside and joins me. I hold the spade out wordlessly and she takes it with a sigh. So Georgie and Hobb and I all work together, putting the garden to rights. Before long there are swaths of dark, fragrant soil showing where Hobb has raked and I’ve weeded and Georgie has turned over the earth. When the weeding’s finished I fetch another spade, and we dig without speaking as rooks call to each other from the dormitory eaves.

We’re nearly finished when Tom shows up. Georgie’s in bettersorts, teasing Hobb about something as I straighten and brush my hands off on my dirt-stained trousers.