The sound of the bells was coming without cease now, peal after peal, shaking the whole world. There was water trickling down the streets as if it had rained too hard, but it had not been raining at all.
Lillian had been right. Rob had not been able to resist the temptation to come down from Aurimere and into the streets.
But it was not only Rob’s sorcerers walking through Sorry-in-the-Vale. Holly saw other people in the streets instead of hiding in their houses. She saw one woman with a piece of paper crumpled in her fist. Kami’s article, she thought, and was as proud as she had been to see Kami walking toward the woods this morning. They were wandering, watching, looking uneasy. They weren’t doing anything more, but they had come out.
The other sorcerers seemed disconcerted by the townsfolk, as if they had expected a victorious parade through empty streets. Rob looked around at them, laughed and pointed, held out an open hand to a boy walking beside his mother and sent the boy spinning into a wall. The boy fell on his hands and knees in the water. Holly recognized him: it was Raj Singh.
The other sorcerers started to laugh. Some of them.
“Leave him be,” said Lillian.
Rob glanced at her, amused. “It hardly matters.”
“It matters,” Lillian said shortly. She shoved past her husband, knocking him roughly aside, and strode toward the child. She stuck out her hand. “Grab my hand,” she said, and when he looked up, she added, “Take it. I won’t let any harm come to you.”
“Won’t you?” asked Rob. There was a world of meaning in his voice.
Lillian swung on him, her hair flying from her shoulders like a silver cloak. “No,” she said. “You cannot possibly have thought I would. And if you did, if you know me so little, what does that say about all your love?”
She turned back to Raj. “Take my hand,” she repeated.
Raj hesitated, then grabbed hold of Lillian’s hand. Lillian lifted him to his feet and walked him across the street to his mother.
“If you’re not with me, you’re against me,” said Rob. The wind rose as his voice rose.
There was a sound like thunder in the streets, and more water came pouring down over the golden cobblestones, in every direction.
“Thank you,” said Mrs. Singh. She looked at Lillian and did not glance toward Rob or show any fear.
“Go now,” Lillian told Mrs. Singh and her son calmly. The path on which the two were walking home stayed dry.
Water rushed toward Lillian, higher than before, like a wave crashing in from some strange sea. Lillian stood tall and straight as a spar of rock about to be engulfed in that sea, and Holly caught her breath, realizing that Lillian could not stop it. She tried to summon up magic enough to combat it, to save Lillian, and knew that whatever magic she had would be about as much use as a straw in a hurricane.
A black horse leaped over the low wall of the churchyard, into the square and up the High Street. Jon Glass snatched Lillian up onto his saddle and rode through the raging waters up the way the Singhs had gone.
There were more and more people coming outside or looking out of their windows. Rob’s own group was looking apprehensive.
“Come on,” said Rob. “Let us leave them to their fate. Let us return to Aurimere.”
He turned, and Holly looked in the same direction.
“You think so?” Angela asked, at the top of the street on her golden horse, blocking the way to Aurimere. She was holding a chain in her hands: a chain Rob Lynburn had bound her with once. She smiled brilliantly at them.
The bells sounded like giants fighting with clashing weapons, the deaths of gods imminent. Holly saw Jon turn his horse around, back to Angela, back to join the battle. She saw Martha Wright step out of the door of the Water Rising.
Holly could not stay. She coaxed her motorbike into sputtering life, felt its wheels spinning in the water and thought that it might not go, until she remembered that she had magic. She let her desire to escape from her home, to help her friends, travel down her fingertips, and the motorcycle began to move.
Kami drew in a deep breath and jumped in the pool after Jared. This was the sinister pool, the coldest, deepest pool, and she knew no matter how deep a breath she took, it would not be enough, but she had to try.
The water was cool, cooler than it should have been, but it was not the bleak midwinter chill she had felt once before. The year had turned in her favor. She could bear this.
She took a swallow of the water. It could be air, she told herself. Sorcery came from the elements: she was a source. Every element could nourish her if she willed them to.
It felt like swallowing water, but she was still alive. She opened her eyes and all she saw was painted in green and gold: the lake bed below her, her feet about to touch it, and Jared nowhere in sight.
But she knew he was there. She knew, she knew.
She reached out. She was not falling. She was diving for treasure, diving for what was hers. She had chosen to jump and she was going to accomplish her purpose.
She knew Jared, better than anyone, inside and out.
She closed her eyes once more and stretched out her hand again, not clawing but calm and sure, reached through water and touched his face. She ran her fingertips over the sharp line of his cheekbone, the curve of his jaw, the slight irregular roughness that was his scar on water-slick skin. She felt as if she might be creating him anew. She believed she could do that: she knew him so well. She felt the curling tendrils of his hair against her fingers. She felt his hand reach out and take her hand. She could trust herself to always know him. She could trust him to always reach for her.
When she opened her eyes, for a moment it seemed as if she was in one pool and he in another, or as if one of them was in a looking glass and the other in the real world, as if they were reaching each other across a great distance. But water moved differently than air: water could draw two people together. Jared opened his eyes, and his lips shaped her name.
Their hands met, and between their linked hands shone a fierce and sudden gold.
They rose to the surface of the pool as if they were a bubble racing toward the surface, and emerged from it wet and gasping, the sun sparkling in every drop that fell from their clothes and hair. Kami gasped at the glory of it, but could not stop to marvel. She had to claim both of them. She had to get Ash.
Jared would not let go of her hand.
I have you again at last, he said, and she felt her own heart in rhythm with his, in agreement with his, echoing at last, at last. Did you think I would let you go?
They jumped again, jumped together, into the green and gold below the surface of the water, the writhing shadows and dancing lights at the very depths of the pool. She did not know Ash as well as she knew Jared, enough to create his image out of air or water, but she could feel him. She could feel him more strongly than she ever had before, with more power than she had ever had before.
She could feel Ash’s loneliness and uncertainty. She could feel his fading hope.
We’re here, she told him. We’re coming to find you.
There was no answer from Ash. She could not even feel a flicker of response, could not tell if he had heard her. She felt something else: she felt Jared reaching out to Ash as well.
She put out searching hands, and found them empty again, and again, and again once more. She tried to float in the water toward the direction of Ash’s thoughts, tried to follow where Jared went. She did not know if she could have reached Ash without Jared, but she did reach him. The tips of her fingers touched the floating ends of his golden hair. They both reached out with their free arms and drew him in toward them.
They both had him. She was holding Jared, and she was holding Ash. Jared was holding Ash, and the circle was complete.
And she knew how Anne Lynburn and Matthew Cooper died.
The power was like water, like darkness, like fire, like all those things at once, overwhelming and assailing her, dragging her under and consuming her.
She felt how it was for Ash, felt how completely overwhelmed he was, felt all that was Ash being washed away like glittering grains of sand scattered and obliterated by the sea. The power came through her. She was the source. She was the conduit, she was the wellspring, she felt oblivion coming for her as well as for Ash.
The power could burn all the way through her, save the town and destroy her. She could see it coming, the darkness and the light, coming to blot out and burn away the fragile boundaries that set her apart, made her who she was.
Except that she had worried about her own control so much that she knew that her boundaries and barriers, the way she kept hold of herself, might feel fragile but were strong. She had already been tested like this, a hundred times before, and she knew she did not have to be isolated to be herself.
Except that she felt Jared too.
She was used to being part of something and still knowing who she was—so was he.
Jared was here, able to shape her out of any element. She could feel his belief in her, carrying her through the tide of power when she could not carry herself. She might feel lost, but he had not lost her. She could not be lost, when she was so well known.
They had been preparing for this moment all their lives.
They struggled upward, through power and awe, through drowning and darkness, fire and light, until they surfaced. Until they managed to struggle and scramble out of the Crying Pools and into the light and air of Sorry-in-the-Vale.
Until Kami, Jared, and Ash sat by the side of the pool. Ash was lying on the bank, his face still lost in dreams, his golden hair mingling with the tender blades of grass. Kami felt she should be much more worried, but she could feel the life pulsing strong through him. She could feel the life in everything.
I’ll wake him, said Jared. I won’t let him go.
Kami stood, and felt her legs tremble beneath her as if she was a fawn newly born. She felt light tremble under her fingertips, as if she could play the rays of the sun like harp strings. She felt newborn and ancient. She knew all the secrets of the forest and was waiting to be told a great truth.
She looked down at Jared and saw herself the way she liked herself best, reflected in his eyes. They stopped for a moment, rapt with each other, her hand on his shoulder, the white material of his shirt soaked through and the skin of his shoulder warm beneath the clinging fabric. She closed her fist on his wet shirt, bent down and kissed him on his open mouth, felt the springtime and the sunshine and the sorcery rushing back and forth between them. She wanted more, but she had a task to fulfill.
She let go of his shirt but she kept him with her, warm in her mind, as she walked through the woods. Flowers opened as she passed; fox fire danced in the trees. The woods woke to her footsteps; the leaves sighed with her breath. Once there was a glimpse of bright pearl and ivory: once Kami would have sworn she saw a unicorn.
Kami smiled, stepped out onto the road, and waited for the motorcycle to come purring down the lane.
“Remember you told me you had an imaginary friend once too?” Kami asked.
“Yeah,” said Holly.
“I think I saw Princess Zelda,” Kami told her.
“You think you saw a unicorn?” asked Holly, and then laughed without mockery, without Kami having to answer her, laughed with sheer delight. “Do you want a lift? I’m afraid there isn’t any room for Princess Zelda.”
Kami climbed on, and the motorbike roared to life beneath her. With her friend in front of her and her arms spread, the whole world hers.
Jared could feel Kami’s elated triumph thrumming through him. He could feel her and knew that she was with Holly, knew that she was going all around Sorry-in-the-Vale and soaking up every drop of magic there was to be had.
And he knew his place in this—he knew who he had to save. He forced himself to focus on his own body, his own surroundings.
He could feel Ash, in a way he hadn’t felt anybody but Kami: thoughts as well as feelings. He knew the shape of his soul, and knew that every soul was made of different stuff, shone a thousand different colors.
He sat on the earth, legs still in the cool deep water, one hand in the deep spring-soft grass and one set against his brother’s heart.
Come back, he said. Come on. Come home.
Home. Not to Aurimere, but to him and to Aunt Lillian. Jared thought about Ash, reaching out to Jared no matter how many times Jared turned him away, of all the good about Ash that he had ever been jealous of.
Ash’s eyes opened, the same color as the sky, which was now washed clean of clouds.
“We need to get there now,” Ash said, starting up. “We’re going to be too late.”
“Come on,” said Jared. “Aunt Lillian did it. Amber and Ross did it. We’re Lynburns, aren’t we? Don’t tell me there’s anything we can’t do. Let’s not get there. Let’s be there already.”
He was still holding Ash’s hand when they wished themselves from the soft grass and the calm waters to the heart of their town, and found themselves on the High Street of Sorry-in-the-Vale.
Jared looked up at his father’s shocked face and saw the moment when he realized what they must have done—saw his father raise his hand to strike him down. Jared felt the catch of his scar twisting his smile out of shape, and he only smiled wider.
“Don’t you touch him!”
Martha Wright stooped in the swirling water and debris, then stood with one of the cobblestones clutched in her fist. She drew her arm back and hurled it with all her might.
The people of Sorry-in-the-Vale watched as the lord of Aurimere staggered backward, blood streaming down his face.
Jared dropped Ash’s hand, bolted across the street to stand in front of Martha with power gathering in both his hands. It streamed to him out of the air.
“Don’t touch her,” he said.
Angela was circling Ruth Sherman, spinning her chain over her head. He could see his aunt Lillian, with Kami’s dad. Her hands were full of light, and the light was shed on every soul she could see, protecting, blessing, keeping no power for herself. People were turning their faces toward the light, toward her.
Then there was sudden unrest in the group of sorcerers behind Rob.
“Did you kill my brother?” Hugh Prescott asked suddenly, loudly, as if the words had been waiting in his mouth for days and had to come out now.
“What?” snapped Rob, waving his hand as if the question was an irritating fly. “Why are you bothering about this now? That was twenty years ago!”
“He did it,” Jared called out. “He killed him. I saw him. He’s been walled up dead in Aurimere for twenty years. This whole town will be dead with him if Rob has his way.”
Rob turned on Jared, furious, but he did not even have a chance to lift his hand. Holly’s father gave a great bellow like a wounded animal and plowed directly into Rob’s back.
Ross Phillips lifted a hand to help his leader, but Amber Green caught it and forced it down. Alison Prescott ran to help her husband. And Dorothy, the town librarian, a woman with no magic at all, ran through the water and dived at a sorcerer who was going for Alison Prescott.
Sergeant Kenn punched Jared in the face: Jared felt his lip break. He tasted blood as he laughed, and punched him back.
“What do you people think you’re doing?” Ruth Sherman demanded. “What do you think you can do?”
Angela stopped twirling her chain and kicked Ruth Sherman in the kneecaps.
“We’re fighting,” she said. “My brother taught me that.”
It was some of Rob’s sorcerers, but not all, rising up against him. It was some of the townspeople, though not all, flooding into the street to fight sorcerers with whatever they could find.
It was chaos, but Jared felt like it was a bright hopeful chaos, the sound of fighting ringing with the bells. They were all together, sorcerers and ordinary mortals, the guilty and the innocent. They were different but united in sudden determination. They were not giving up their town without a fight.
Kami and Holly raced to the farthest outskirts of town, to the fields and hills, and they chased the clouds away. Everywhere they went, gold followed. They passed the house where Rob Lynburn and his parents had killed, Monkshood Abbey, and Kami felt it as a blot on the landscape: bloodstained and unredeemed. It was no part of the town she believed in, no part of the home she loved.
Kami held on tight to Holly, felt Holly’s laugh go all the way through her, and raised her free hand.
A ray of light from the sun went rogue, streaked down from the sky like a falling star and hit that low dark dwelling. A crack appeared in the roof and spread in a wild, jagged zigzag down the gray façade of the house. The fissure widened and the winds blew in wild, and the house shattered like a mirror, into nothing but dust.
Kami thought she heard a tumult of sound, like shouting underwater. She thought of Rob’s victims, the victims of all the Lynburns.
No more of the Lynburns’ stories, Kami thought. My story now, just as real as theirs. More real, because the story was hers. She was not going to let anyone tell her that her story was less important than anyone else’s. She was going to believe in it with all her heart.
Jared had said Rusty was not gone, and he had been more right than he knew. Kami should have realized that, all this time.
If the Lynburns had drawn power from death as well as life, she could too. If the power was here, some part of the people it had come from must be here too.
Those the Lynburns had killed would not want to help them. They would want to help her, to save the people they loved and to protect the town that was their home. If there had been power in their deaths, there had been more power in their lives. Kami thought of Rusty and how he had chosen to give his life, a sacrifice offered not out of fear but from the desire to shield and preserve, a sacrifice offered without being asked. She thought of her grandmother who had lived for decades in this town and would never have borne any of this, thought of Lillian’s poor lost sorcerers, thought of the stranger Henry Thornton’s kindness.
She had thought they were lost, but if some part of them had been made into magic, then it was not Rob Lynburn’s magic. Then they were not lost at all. She could not be lost, either. She did not know why she had ever feared it.
Why be broken, when you can be gold?
They drove around Aurimere itself, and Kami felt the mellow gold of the stones seep into her, knew the wild glory of the growing garden, the memories kept in paint and stone. The Lynburns did not get to be the only ones who told the stories anymore, but the Lynburns were part of the story too. Elinor Lynburn had put her golden bells under the water, but they had not been lost. They had only been waiting to be woken to life, to warn and to protect. Every Lynburn who had loved their town, she took them all with her.
The murmuring that had started in her ears when Monkshood Abbey fell came to her louder and louder, a glad tide washing up on her shores. She could feel the sunlight laid on her like a blanket by her grandmother’s loving hands, she could feel wind rushing and leaves whispering like Rusty’s low laugh. She could feel Ash, and most of all Jared.
Her friends were in the streets below, in the rising waters, struggling and never surrendering. She saw Angela swinging her chain against Ruth the sorceress.
She came down from the golden house and into the High Street, and she carried the town with her as an army that could not be defeated. Never sorry, never stopping, a world within a world. She was the world. She was sorcery in the vale.
Rob Lynburn was in her way.
He turned and looked at her, his arrogant head held high. He looked surprised and offended, his lips parted as if he was going to ask what she was doing there.
The very stones cried out against him. This town was too big for him. He had never understood that.
Water came to drown him, earth to bury him, fire to burn him, and air to carry every particle of the dust that had been him away from their town.
The supernova of the elements, the whirl of air and light, was too much to look at. But Kami kept looking. She did not see any of what they told her later had happened, how Jared and Angela chased off Sergeant Kenn and Ruth, how the other sorcerers left Rob at the last. The only thing she saw was Rob Lynburn vanishing, a stain of red and gold being wiped from her town.
When it was done, Kami could not look at any of them. She turned, chasing the last of the magic, the last bright dizzying moments of exhilaration and strength that felt like the strength of stone and mountains, of the hatred turned to dust and the love that had lasted.
She went wading through the water, stumbling on the tumbled cobblestones as if they were the stones on the bottom of a riverbed. There was a blockage in the middle of the High Street, where it was the narrowest before it opened up into the town square. A fallen street sign and a tree trunk had formed a dam there, choked with leaves and branches, the water foaming and gurgling.
Kami did not dare waste a drop of magic. She tried to scramble over it, and then Jared was at her side. He stooped and slid an arm around her, put his other arm under her legs, and lifted her against his chest for a moment. Then he helped her over the obstacle in her path.
She ran down into the town square, laid her warm hand in her mother’s cool stone palm, and held her breath. All she felt was stone against flesh, her heart sinking and her blood pounding under her skin; all this magic and life, and yet she could not help her.
Nobody had ever gained anything by despair. She pressed her mother’s hands, so hard that her own hands hurt. Then she felt, so gently at first that she thought it might be her imagination and then with a stronger pressure, her mother trying to hold her hands back.
From an enchanted faraway place, she called her mother back, from stone to flesh, from grave to embrace. Kami felt her mother’s hands clinging, and slid her hands up her mother’s arm, cupped her mother’s face, as her mother’s hair turned from dead white to warm chestnut. Her skin flushed, and the light washed along the suddenly bright curl of her eyelashes as they fluttered open.
Her mother took her first breath in over a month, a gasping sob, and fell into Kami’s arms.
The sun blazed in the sky. The links between them all were strong and shining, forming a line that bound them each to each like jewels on a chain. Kami looked to Ash, and nodded.
The link snapped. The feeling of being so bound you might blend together faded. Kami put her arms around her mother and knelt with her in the water and the debris, in the center of their wrecked and saved town. The river-soaked gold of Sorry-in-the-Vale glowed in the sunlight like treasure discovered underwater and lifted out into the light.
They had lived. Beyond all hope, they had lived.