with her hands over her face, crying but trying not to. Kitty, the wildest, fiercest slip of a girl that Annabel had ever met. Kitty, who made Annabel’s skin prickle and sting with her ways. Kitty, who had chosen to help her. Annabel did not want the wall to keep Kitty. Kitty would not become one of those human bones resting in the wall. Just the thought of it enraged Annabel. She wanted the wall to release Kitty.
The strange sensation she felt before one of her visions flooded through her body. The excited, terrified feeling. The joined-to-the-sky feeling. I want the wall to loosen around Kitty’s ankle, she thought, louder. I want to raise the bone wall around her ankle. Let go of her, wall.
“Benignus!” she cried, with that thought very clear in her mind.
Nothing.
But she didn’t give up. Benignus meant…
Benignus was…
She tried to picture Mr. Ladgrove, her Latin teacher at Miss Finch’s Academy, saying the word. Oh, that was horrible, for he did indeed have a voice like a sleeping potion, but it jolted something in her memory. Benignus meant “kind”!
She straightened her spine even more and raised the wand. Singing Gate, you will release Kitty’s ankle. Kitty is my friend. She wanted this with all her heart. She wanted it ten thousand times more than emerald-green ice skates.
“Benignus!” Annabel cried, and the voice was nothing like her own. It was strong and clear. Benignus meant many things, Annabel knew, but in that moment, it meant, By good, kind magic, by the magic of my kind heart, release my friend.
She felt a jolt in her hand.
A gushing sensation.
It seemed her hand melted into the wand, and suddenly from its tip there surged an arc of white light that hit the wall around Kitty’s ankle.
The wall made a stunned sound.
It gasped a deep breath, then paused.
The bones rattled around Kitty’s ankle, and she was released.
It was over. The wall relaced, and its great voice subsided. Kitty turned on her side, stifling her tears with her fists. And Annabel fell to her knees, staring at both her hand and the Ondona with wonderment.
“Let me see your leg,” said Annabel when she had recovered.
The large cavern on this side of the Singing Gate took her question and repeated it several times. The cavern was round and empty, and the floor swept clean. The shimmering light of the Singing Gate danced on the ceiling, but there were also torches burning in brackets on the walls. Someone tended to the place.
“Get away from me,” snarled Kitty.
She had sat up and was holding her ankle and was glaring at the Singing Gate. It’s just like them, those stupid faeries, she thought. Always doing things painful, always argumentative and spiteful and saying everything is theirs: every stinking tree and river. She needed her leg to walk. She needed her leg to visit all her places, to touch all her trees and stones.
“Did you see what I did?” asked Annabel, and she couldn’t help the smile. “I got the light to come out of the wand, just like Miss Henrietta. I felt it in my hand. It came from—”
“I don’t care,” interrupted Kitty. She moaned and held her ankle and hated the wall.
Annabel’s smile disappeared. “But we did it. We’re through, and the shadowlings are on the other side,” she said, softer now. “I must look at your foot.”
“Leave off,” said Kitty, staring at her stocking, which was soaked with blood. “Unless you know the spell for stopping blood, too.”
Annabel’s hand still felt heavy with magic. Comfortably heavy. She wondered what her great-aunts would think of her…or what her mother would think. Perhaps she could learn a spell for stopping blood, but for now what she needed was a bandage. The red cloak would do. It was her brand-new town cloak and she hated to ruin it, but with some trouble she tore a largish strip from the hem. She asked Kitty to remove her boot, and Kitty cursed her, of course, but pulled off her very old shoe. It was full of dirt and leaves.
“Your stocking, too,” said Annabel, which made Kitty swear even more.
There was a line of deep puncture wounds around Kitty’s ankle, and Annabel wound the red bandage there. Kitty’s ankle was thin and pale. Kitty had never known a bed or sweet puddings, and there, in the cavern behind the Singing Gate, that made Annabel feel very sad. She wished there were healing magic in the cloak, and she thought of the