then, cast one swift glance back at Annis, and saw that she still lay on the dew-damp grass, her head at a terrible angle, her hands thrown out. Her slender bosom rose and fell, but shallowly. And how long would that continue?
Harriet squinted up at the hall again. Frances, fixing her with a gaze she could feel even at this distance, held both manikins far out her open window. One, which she was sure must be James’s, was limp, unmoving. The other was still upside down, its makeshift dress falling around its wooden bead head, its poor legs helpless in Frances’s grip. If Frances dropped the manikins from the second floor, they would be smashed. Even if she regained consciousness, Annis would never walk again. And James? He was already weakened, unresponsive, with no way to fight this attack. He might never wake.
Frances called, in a carrying voice,
I will do it, this I swear.
The guilt will then be yours to bear.
Harriet had done her best. She had tried to avoid the worst thing. The fatal thing. Frances would not expect it. She would be sure Harriet could never bring herself to do it.
The entire crisis was proof of everything Harriet had ever believed about the maleficia. All of them—Frances, Annis, James, Harriet herself—were caught in its dangerous web.
There was only one thing left to do, though it offended all her principles, and despite her awareness that it would haunt her always.
She feigned surrender. She lowered the manikin and hung her head as if in defeat.
Peering up from beneath her eyebrows, she saw Frances pull her two manikins back, away from the drop that would destroy them. When they were safely inside the window again, Harriet muttered a swift, impassioned plea: May all the Bishops aid me to save one of our daughters.
She closed her eyes and opened herself to the ancient magic. It throbbed in her bones and burned in her bloodstream. A savage and familiar pain shot through her belly, and her head pounded. Her mind felt as if it would break free of her skull, rise above the physical essence that was Harriet Bishop. She could command the power of her ancestresses, their wisdom and learning, their suffering and endurance. She felt as if gravity disappeared beneath her, and the sky opened above her, a universe of energy.
She kept her eyes closed as she lifted Frances’s manikin in her left hand. Swiftly, the way a farmer might wring the neck of a chicken, she twisted the head of it with her right hand. It was mercifully quick and utterly awful. She wrenched the head from the body of the manikin.
With the head in one hand and the body in the other, she opened her eyes. She looked up just in time to see Frances’s head lift high, proud in the moment of her triumph. An instant later she dropped out of sight.
Still prone on the grass, Annis suddenly, noisily inhaled. She groaned, “Is it over?”
“I looked up, and I saw—” Annis took another noisy breath and coughed. “I saw—”
“What?”
The girl’s voice shook with wonder. “Aunt Harriet, you—you were flying.”
“I—what?” Harriet tore her gaze from the window and stared down at Annis. “What do you mean?”
“I mean—” Annis dropped her hands and pushed herself up to her knees, then, unsteadily, to her feet. She clung to the nearest pillar, the rhododendron leaves drooping over her shoulder. She said, breathlessly, “I looked up from the grass where I was—why was I there?”
“You fainted.” Harriet thought it would be best to explain the details later. “But, Annis, what were you going to say?”
Annis pressed her back against the pillar, as if she hadn’t the strength to stand upright. In a trembling voice she said, “You rose from the ground, Aunt Harriet. You—it wasn’t flying, exactly, but—your feet didn’t touch the grass.”
“You must have been dreaming.”
Annis shook her head. “I wasn’t. I saw you rise above the grass, and then you—” She grimaced. “You ripped the manikin in two. I saw you do it.”
“I did.” Harriet looked down at the two halves of Frances’s manikin. With distaste she crumpled them together. She walked back up the folly’s short steps and laid the mess of wax and pebbles in her basket.
The sun had risen, and its slanting rays set the waters below Seabeck gleaming like pewter. It woke the gulls, who swooped above the shore, announcing the new day with joyous squawks. The