Damaris supposed something passed between Aunt Elspeth and Gweneth but saw no sign of it except that for a few days after the storm there was restraint between them. That gradually wore away while July moved quietly toward August; everything became outwardly much as it had been. Damaris found it easiest to spend much of her time with Irene who seemed to notice nothing strange about her, but several times Damaris found Lauran looking at her consideringly. Afraid that he might guess more than she wanted him to, Damaris avoided even him as much as might be, just as at Thornoak she particularly avoided Kellan.
More than either of them or anyone else, she avoided her aunt. Aunt Elspeth had to notice it, but she said nothing and Damaris could only hope she thought it was because of some lingering resentment at being sent from Thornoak, or perhaps a kind of sad-hearted mourning for her last summer here, or even that Damaris was a little sulking. What mattered to Damaris was that her aunt did not try to talk to her about it.
Often and often she wished that no memories had come back to her, that she could forget all of it, or simply let it go and be as she had always been. But twice she dreamed of her parents, and once she dreamed of herself lost somewhere with nothing around her that she knew and no idea which way to go, so that she had been able only to stand still and be afraid. From each dream she had awakened knowing that until she understood more she could not let it go. Her mother had run away and still had not escaped, had always been afraid. That much Damaris clearly remembered about her: She had always been afraid. There were secrets here, and deep lies that guarded them, and apparently no safety in trying to run from them or forget them. But she had still found no way to learn more. Watching told her nothing, and questions would be useless. Yet she had to do something.
Or so she told herself. But she began to doubt, as the days passed, that she would do anything at all except leave, with her burden of ill dreams and uncertainties, when the end of summer came.
Late in July’s warm and easy days, old Mr. Thwaite of Laver Meadow Farm was "taken weak" and kept to his bed. He and his wife May were part of Damaris' best memories of Thornoak. She and Nevin and Kellan had always been welcome to raid the blackberry patch at the bottom of Laver Meadow and May Thwaite had always had something newly baked when they happened by. Now Aunt Elspeth was asked to come to him, and came home from seeing him to say that he was dying.
"It will be a kind death. A simple one," she said.
Word came the next morning that a little before dawn he had died quietly in his bed, May sitting beside him, holding his hand.
Damaris did not understand what her aunt meant by a kind or simple death. She only knew that it hurt to think that Mr. Thwaite was no longer part of the dale, part of her life. Like her parents, he was gone. Then at his burial in St. Cuthbert's churchyard, with all the village and the Thornoak household there to see his body go to rest, Damaris noticed more than anything the quietness among the mourners. There was mourning, surely, but no more grief than there was for the dying of the year when autumn came. Regret, yes, but not grief, as if his dying was simply an inevitable part of his having been alive, as autumn was simply part of a year. Even his wife was smiling gently and with love as she laid the last flowers on his coffin, her farewell to him full of the love there had been between them, not wracked with pain.
Damaris bent her head to hide her own tears and did not understand.
The month went on. The grain fields ripened toward harvest, golden among the green pastures. The days could have been any of the summer days Damaris had spent in the dale, except for the tightness around her heart whenever she thought of Lammas and the full moon coming and that after this there would be no more summers in the dale for her. She tried to close her mind to it, went on trying to exhaust herself with long solitary walks or long solitary rides when she was not with Irene. For a while she feared she might encounter Virna but never had even a distant glimpse of her and began to suppose she was no longer in the dale at all.
But neither did Damaris go anywhere near the Lady Stone or the Old Woman, standing in their silences on the moor.
Two days of rain at July’s end when the fields most needed it were followed by fair weather, ending Damaris' mingled fear and hope that bad weather might keep her from having to go to the moor on Lammas night. The day was warm, windless, promising a warm, dry night, and at sunset the sky was shiningly clear. Damaris, trying to make it seem like any other evening, went with everyone to the parlor after supper and even accepted Kellan's offer of a game of chequers. The familiar pasttime was a welcome distraction. She remembered once, watching them at play, Nevin had said, "It's amazing how you two can make something as simple as chequers into a cutthroat contest. Be nice, why don't you?" Tonight, however, Damaris was too other-minded to be cut-throat at the game or – as it turned out – even competent. When she lost the first game while Kellan still had more than half his men on the board, he scoffed at her claim of a headache as feeble, but after their second game, when Kellan wiped her pieces from the board before she had even a single king, he looked up from the devastation of his victory and suggested mildly, "Why don't you take your headache to bed like a good girl?"
Damaris supposed she might as well. She was doing no good staying here, neither hiding from her thoughts nor able to behave as if everything were well. Keeping her face carefully quiet, she kissed Uncle Russell good night and then Aunt Elspeth, who asked with seeming kindness, "Shall I send Agnes up with something for your headache?"
"Yes, please," Damaris said meekly. She had anticipated that, had meant all along to escape before tea came, and now did. She would drink whatever Agnes brought, so that no one would expect her to be anything other than soundly sleeping tonight. Yet still, while she readied for bed, she had to fight in her mind against all the different ways her fears wanted to go, and nonetheless was in her nightdress, just finishing braiding her hair into its single nighttime plait, when she heard Agnes' slow steps on the stairs. Damaris had waited until then because she was not sure she could do in cold blood what she had to do, but faced by the last few moments in which to choose one way or another, she put down her brush and took out the small bottle of cooking oil she had brought up yesterday and hidden in her drawer. The cork pulled loose readily, and with Agnes very near and no time to hesitate, Damaris gulped the oil. It went down before she had time to revolt against it and she had the bottle stoppered and hidden again, her lips wiped dry, before Agnes tapped at the door and came in.
Damaris looked up from folding her blankets back to the foot of the bed and said, "Oh, thank you, Agnes."
Agnes, holding one of the heavy pottery kitchen mugs, said, "You settle into bed and then you can have this. It's cider and warmed a little because cold would likely do your headache no good. Your aunt's put in what will ease you to sleep."
Damaris slipped between her sheets and took the mug and drank deeply. The cider would have been good, even with the taste of herbs in it, except her stomach was already in revolt against the oil, so she drank quickly and handed the empty mug back to Agnes, saying, "Thank you."
Agnes nodded and stood watching while Damaris settled to her pillow, then left, closing the door as she went. Damaris managed to wait until she heard Agnes reach the bottom of the stairs to the floor below before she threw off her sheet and quickly pulled her chamber pot from under the bed. This time she did not need a finger in her throat. Her stomach lurched and rose willingly, and very quickly the drink and much of her supper were out of her. Sick with the effort, Damaris covered the pot and wavered to her washstand to wash her face and rinse out her mouth. If she fell asleep now it would be her own fault, not someone else's.
That did not relieve her of the necessity of waiting, though. She stealthily changed from her nightgown into a dark green walking dress that would blend with night-shadows, then sat on the edge of her bed, not daring to lie down, her hands clasped tightly in her lap, watching full darkness spread across the sky above the hills across the dale and the first stars begin to show. She listened to the sounds of the house settling for the night until she was surprised by footsteps on the stairs to her room again. Quickly, she lay down, curled onto her side with her back toward the door, and pulled the sheet well up, making sure it hid her dress. She forced her body slack and evened her breathing, shut her eyes and made sure her eyelids stayed still. Someone carefully opened her door, stood watching her for perhaps half a minute by light of a candle held high, then almost silently shut the door and left.
Damaris went on lying still until they were safely down the stairs again. Had the footfall been Gweneth’s – too steady for Agnes, too light for Aunt Elspeth? More importantly, last time no one had come to be sure she was asleep. Why this time? What did Aunt Elspeth suspect? Had she betrayed herself in some way without knowing it?
It did not matter, she told herself firmly. They thought she was safely asleep. All she had to do now was wait. She could hear people stirring along the bedrooms’ hallway below her. If everything had been as it should be, they would be readying for bed, but they weren’t. She was certain they weren’t.
She had thought ahead to what she would do next, but first, worried now that someone might come to check on her again while she was gone, she rose as stealthily as might be, took a blanket from the chest at the foot of her bed, wadded it into something of a human shape in her place, pulled the sheet and a blanket over it, and hoped it was enough to fool someone who did not look too closely. That done, she went on as she had forethought. Across from her room here under the eaves was the storeroom where things were kept that were no longer wanted below but were somehow still too good to throw or give away. Its window looked toward the stableyard and the moor. From there she would be able to see who left the house and be sure they went toward the moor. Wary of creaking floorboards, she crossed the landing and made her way through the varied lot of furniture and boxes to the window. She had opened it earlier today, so she could lean out if she wanted, to see better who passed below, but for now, it was enough to lean against the window frame and wait.
It was a short wait. From the floor below, footsteps – more pairs than one – went along the hall, leaving.
With a smothered despair Damaris leaned forward into the window. In the clear starlight she could see four figures leave the house and go along the path between the garden walls and through the back gate into the stableyard. They were cloaked but not hooded, and even if they had been, she would have known each of them by how they moved.
Aunt Elspeth. Uncle Russell. Nevin. Gweneth.
Damaris held her breath, waiting, but no one else came. Only the four of them. Not Kellan.
Not Kellan.
Had he been drugged to sleep the way they thought she was? But he hadn’t been given the sleeping draught at Midsummer. Why now but not then? Unless, after all, there had been a drugged drink on that other tray and somehow given to him. That could be done, she supposed.
Either way, whether or not he knew what happened at the Lady Stone or not, he was not with them tonight. That had to mean that, no matter what he knew, he was not part of it, and with a relief out of all proportion to so small a concession against her fears, Damaris left the window.
The others were gone out of the stableyard gate and looked to be taking the pasture path, as she had expected. The stealth needed for her to escape the house without a sound cost her time but she was certain enough of where they were going that she took the time and, clear of house and stableyard, was not far along the pasture path to the moor when she saw them well ahead of her. Reassured that they were going where she expected them to, she cut away to the path along the stream, retracing the way she had taken the other time, and came again, unseen, she thought, to where she could crouch in the bracken above the Place with clear view of the Lady Stone and anyone near it.
This time, knowing where to look and for what, she immediately found Aunt Elspeth standing near the stone. With careful looking, she found the others, too, standing motionless around the edge of the circle, cloaked and hooded, no way to tell one from another. While they were still, she tried by the rising glow of the moon that was beginning to show beyond the hills to count how many were there – to know that much, even if she could not recognize them all. In their cloaks, spread well apart, and motionless, they were too much a part of the shadows for the count to be easy, but she finally thought there were eleven, with her aunt beside the stone making twelve.
If what that hateful book said was in any way true, there should have been thirteen. So there was one lie proven against it. Nor was there any circle of standing stones here, only the one. And unless tonight was going to be far different from before, everything else was a lie, too. No animal sacrifices. No naked dancing around a fire – and how could they dare a fire here anyway, where it would have been seen for miles up and down the dale? No goat-garbed devil-figure demanding obscenities from his "worshippers".
Still trying to reassure herself, Damaris counted again and still could make it only twelve, counting her aunt. But there was a gap in the circle, as if someone was missing. A suspicion brushed her mind. Old Mr. Thwaite had been the oldest man on Thornoak manor, and to judge by the part he had had in lighting the Midsummer fire, he had been part of... whatever this was. Was it his place in the circle that was empty?
Then the singing began, silver-haunting the starlight. Her aunt and the others around the Place could have been companion stones to the Lady Stone, so still they were standing, facing where the moon would rise, until – as if it came in answer to the singing – its upper rim slipped into sight. Aunt Elspeth stepped forward to greet it as she had before, her arms outheld but this time with something laid flat across her hands. A broad stick, Damaris thought, until moonlight gleamed on it like metal and she understood its shape. A sword.
There had been no sword the other time.
And now when the others should have begun their dancing, they stayed still and, again unlike before, they were singing, too, a lower singing, the notes more throbbing than her aunt's that wove in and out among them in a pattern of her own while she shifted the sword so she was holding it two-handed by the hilt, its point upward. Still singing she slowly turned in place as if to draw a circle with it around the sky. Around her, the others began to dance as they had before. They danced and Aunt Elspeth moved a few yards further away from the Lady Stone, lowered the sword's point toward the ground and began a slow, rhythmed movement of her own as if she were drawing a circle in the grass with the Lady Stone as its center. Exactly as she finished, the moon's lower edge cleared the horizon, its rising and the circle completed together. The dance and the singing quickened around her, the circle of dancers closing their circle almost but not quite to the smaller circle she had made with the sword. They were still too far apart to join their hands and there was still the break between them where someone was missing. For Aunt Elspeth? Damaris wondered. But she was facing the Lady Stone, not dancing now but singing to it as if she expected answer. And answer came.
Everyone must have known he was there, waiting to be summoned, but when he stepped forward from where he had stood in shadow against the stone it was as if he had stepped out of it, called from darkness into the moonlight by the singing. The hood of his robe was pushed back, leaving his head bare to the moonlight, his face easily seen even with the distance. But Damaris did not need to see his face to know him.
Kellan.
Her throat constricted with sick grief, made worse because for a while she had hoped he at least was not part of... this.
He stayed beside the stone, facing Aunt Elspeth. The others had ceased their singing and dancing, were standing silent, but if any words passed between him and his mother, Damaris did not hear them. There was a pause and then her aunt stepped back from him and raised the sword to rest its point against his chest, over his heart. They spoke, Aunt Elspeth as if challenging him, Kellan as if answering the challenge, but not clearly enough for Damaris to understand what either of them said.
The sword's point rose. Damaris breathed again. He was not a sacrifice. But what?
Aunt Elspeth took him by the arm with one hand, the sword held lengthwise across his chest with her other, and led him forward to the first person on her right of the gap in their circle. There was a pause when they must have been speaking, and then the person nodded assent to something and Aunt Elspeth led Kellan rightward to the next cloaked figure, with again the pause and then the nod, and so on around the circle, person by person, with the same pause and nod from each one until they reached the last person, on the other side of the gap from where they had begun. There was a final pause and nod, and Aunt Elspeth let loose Kellan’s arm and gestured for him to step into the space between the others. He did, and as he did, the dance began again. Without falter or hesitation he joined it.
The singing began again, too, and with it the dance quickened, the circle of dancers closing now, drawing in toward the Lady Stone until their hands could join. Just before they did, at the last moment, Kellan drew up his hood and was "gone". A few more moments and Damaris could not tell him from the rest as they moved and sang with a joyousness that hurt in her worse than did her fear and grief.
Even greater than her fear and grief, though, was the growing shock of beginning to believe that whatever they were doing there around the Lady Stone, they were conjuring something real, something more than merely in their minds. She could feel it where she lay, reaching out to her so that she wanted to go to it, be part of it, join in the joy of it the way they were joined. The way that Kellan was joined. But at the same time, bitterly, she wanted to escape, to go so far away that she would forget she had ever seen any of this, known any of them. They had all lied to her every day of her life here. Even Kellan. They were something she had never imagined existed and now that she knew...
What – now that she knew? The few answers she now had were of no more use to her than her questions had been. They were answers that only worsened her hurt. And what could she do with them? She supposed she could destroy Thornoak by betraying its secrets – fair return for how she had been betrayed. Except it would not be, because to betray her aunt and the others would be to betray – almost to deny – all of the good there had been for her here. All the good before she knew the lies.
And what of her parents? How much had her mother been a part of all of this? Was it because she had been a part of it – or refused to be a part of it – or had betrayed it – that she had first fled. Was that why, when she returned, she had died? Both she and Damaris’ father?
Damaris bent her head to hide her face against her arms on the ground in front of her, sick to the heart with the pain and uselessness of everything she had learned and everything she still did not know. She wanted to unlearn all of it. She wanted never to have known it. She wanted to run away and never think about any of it again.
But her mother had run away, had pretended none of this was real, and what had been the use of that in the end?
What, Damaris thought despairingly, is the use of anything?