Page 24 of The Light Between Worlds

“Alright, Georgie?” I murmur, and she nods.

“Alright, Ev.”

“You’re late,” I tell Tom as he stops in front of us. “There’s no groundskeeping left to be done. Better turn around and walk back to St. Joe’s.”

“Very well,” Tom says affably, and turns to go.

I hurry to catch up with him and wave goodbye to Georgie, who smiles and shakes her head.

Tucking my arm through Tom’s, I steer him away from the school buildings and the front drive, and toward the back field.

“Best not go that way,” I explain. “We’re not allowed to leave school grounds except on special occasions, and then only with a chaperone. Must be very freeing to be a boy, and go where you will.”

Tom raises an eyebrow. “I hadn’t thought of it that way.”

“Of course you haven’t. You don’t need to.” We arrive at the back gate, which I open with a shove. The rusty hinges complain, but finally give. Tom stands back and watches.

“What was that about you not being able to go where you will?”

I frown. “It’s just more complicated. Are you coming?”

He has to stoop very low to get through the gate. We amble down the leaf-strewn laneway, and because I have been happy for days and feel as if I’m about to shed old skin and emerge reborn, I lead us off into the woods.

Tom’s as loud as an ox as he stumps through the forest, but I take off my shoes and walk in just my stockings, moving along without so much as snapping a twig. At one point, when Tom bendsdown to tie up his bootlace, I go on ahead and slip behind a thicket of dense undergrowth.

When he straightens, I stifle a laugh at the look of confusion that crosses his face. “Evelyn? Ev? Where’ve you got to?”

“Here,” I call.

“Where?” Tom scans the surrounding forest, but can’t place the source of my voice until I reach a hand out through the thicket and beckon to him.

He pushes through to join me, and when he’s come out on my side with leaves in his hair, I point to what lies before us. “Look. I wanted to show you this.”

Through the grey-brown trunks of the beeches, my birch ring gleams, the grass at its heart still jade green, even in fall.

“Now that’s something I haven’t seen before,” Tom says, before narrowing his eyes at me suspiciously. “Ev Hapwell, are you one of the Folk? Am I being fey-led, and when we walk back out of this wood, a hundred years will have gone by?”

I make no answer, but step out onto the greensward and sink down to sit on the velvet grass.

After hanging back for a moment, Tom joins me. We lie on our backs and watch the pale blue autumn sky, and the waving tree branches, and the golden leaves, a few of which fall in a little flurry each time wind stirs the birches.

Eventually, I hear the rustle of brown paper and Tom passes me a wrinkled bag from in his coat pocket. Not toffee this time—I’ve eaten the last of it, I suppose—but peppermint lozenges. I put one in my mouth and suck on it as the wind travels over us and the grass ripples around us and the world turns beneath us.

By the time we sit up, it’s grown a good deal colder, and shadows stretch long across the ground.

“It’s like a church,” Tom says, still staring at the arch of the tree branches overhead. “That’s how it makes me feel. Like I shouldn’t speak too loudly, and like I can’t quite wrap my mind around all of it.”

I reach out and take both his hands in mine. My blisters have scabbed over, and itch now rather than burn. We sit cross-legged, face-to-face in the birch ring as twilight creeps in. “Tom Harper, what if I told you I’m from another world?”

He looks at me, his grey eyes serious. “In this place, I’d believe you.”

“And outside? Away from here?”

Tom turns away and smiles ruefully. “Maybe not. Would you say it to me elsewhere, though?”

I run a hand through the soft grass. No. I haven’t got the courage. But I’m not sure it matters anymore.

I scramble to my feet and reach a hand down to help Tom up. “Come on. If I’m not back for dinner, the Curmudgeon will be sure to notice. And I ought to return you to St. Joe’s before a hundred years have gone by.”