Page 83 of The Light Between Worlds

Without hesitation, the stag steps forward and noses his elegant velvet muzzle into the palm of my hand. I put an arm around his ruffed neck and we sink to the pavement together, to sit side by side. I hear a sigh go up from the waiting crowd, and I know the Woodlands look is on me, that I’ve briefly become a fey and untouchable creature, the sort of girl who slips between worlds.

The stag lays his great head in my lap and I rest one hand between his antlers.

“We’ll wait together,” I tell him. “Until you find your fate, or it finds you.”

We haven’t long to wait, as it turns out. There’s a flurry of running feet in the direction from which the stag has come, and half a dozen uniformed zookeepers appear, one with a rifle, another with a bucket of grain. The stag and I stand as one, as gracefully as we sat. He turns his head toward me and I whisper in his ear.

“Go quietly, my love. And thank you for coming.”

I press a kiss to the creature’s muzzle and we stand for a moment, forehead to forehead, before he swings around. The keepers hoveruncertainly, but then one rattles the bucket of grain and the stag follows after her, mannerly as a house pet. It’s not until they reach the square’s edge that he stops and turns back to look at me.

I raise a hand and the stag stretches his neck and bellows. His full-throated roar reverberates from one end of the square to the other.

Then he turns a corner and is lost from view.

The groups of people hanging back throughout the square begin to speak again, and I feel more than see that they turn to watch me as I climb the Gallery steps and sit at Jack’s side.

He looks at me, and his face is troubled. “Philippa Hapwell, who are you?”

I sigh, and rest my head on his shoulder.

“I’ve been asking myself that question for a very long time.”

The restoration room is empty. It’s late, and the other restorers have gone home, and I stand in front of the far wall, looking up at the pictures on it.

TheLady of Shalottsits in her little boat, one hand still on the chain that bound it to the bank. She wears white, and a hopeless expression. Around her lie the drapes and folds of her tapestry, in which she wove images of the lives she longed to live, and which was her undoing in the end. At the prow of the vessel are three candles, two burned out, one still guttering in the wind. I want to ask her who those candles are, which one of us is still alight and which two have gone dark and cold, but she refuses to meet my eyes.

Opheliais worse. She floats on her back, and perhaps her gown was once white, but it’s gone grey from the water. Fallen flowers liearound her, as if she’d picked her own funeral bouquet on the way into the river. Her open eyes stare skyward, her cold lips part, and I long to read relief in her expression. I ache to see peace, rest, calm at last, but there’s nothing. Her face is a mask, and gives no quarter in death. She bears no secrets, as badly as I want to find them.

I linger in front of her, loath to move on to the painting that separates her and theLady. But at last I step once to the side and confront it.

Watts’sFound Drownedis not a beautiful picture, but it is an evocative one. The stone arch of the bridge. The bare and comfortless bit of shoreline. The clear light that illuminates the prone form on the sand, so focused it seems to radiate out from her. The gloomy city, uncaring in the distance. The serene, untroubled expression on the woman’s face, and the perfection of her features. She doesn’t look at all like the poor soul I saw at Scotland Yard—the scene is sterile and antiseptic, a drowning with its teeth taken out.

I can’t see truth here either, because inside me there is a thing with fangs always gnawing away at my stomach, my lungs, my heart.

59

I DREAM OF A BIRCH RING THAT IS AT ONCE IN THISworld and the other. In it, Evelyn stands before me, and Cervus stands beside her. I walk toward them, but mist rises and shrouds the clearing, and when it passes, they’ve gone. The whole birch ring has vanished, and left me alone on a pebbled riverbank, watching the darkly rushing water as it rises up and tugs at my ankles with longing hands.

On the opposite bank stand my family, and Jack, and Presswick, and everyone I knew at St. Agatha’s, but from upstream comes a little boat, carried by the current. Evelyn sits in it, clad all in white, and she reaches out a hand to me. The water pulls harder as I wade further in. It ripples around my knees, my waist, my ribs, my shoulders, then laps hungrily at my hair, my neck, my lips—

The last thing I see as the river closes over my face is Evelyn, peering down from above the surface and still reaching out to me.

60

THE TULIPS HAVE NEARLY FINISHED THEIR BLOOM INSt. James’s Park and fledglings are busy in the trees the day I take my seat and Presswick pushes a sealed envelope toward me.

“It’s not for copying,” she says, watching me closely. “It came for you.”

I slit the envelope open. There are two pages inside, one on stationery, bearing familiar handwriting, and the other an invitation printed on thick parchment paper.

Dear Philippa,the handwritten letter begins.

I hope you don’t think your father and I haven’t been to the Gallery to see you because we’re angry. Truly, we want nothing more than for you to come home. But since the war we’ve been at a loss as to what to do with the three of you children, and since Evelyn, more than a little afraid of any misstep we might make.

I don’t want to push you, Philippa, but when you’re ready, we’d like to see you. If not at home, perhaps we could meetelsewhere. Enclosed you’ll find an invitation that came for you from St. Agatha’s. We’ve had one as well—they’re holding a candlelight service for your sister, which your father and I plan to attend. If you and Jamie came, it would mean the world to us.

Whatever you decide, we hope you’re happy. We hope you’re well.