A Great and Terrible Beauty
We are all here. Wet. Cold. Silent. Miserable. Felicity sits on the flattened boulder, braiding the same section of hair, unbraiding, braiding it again. Every bit of her fire is gone, washed out to wherever the rain takes things.
Pippa wraps the ends of her cape about her, paces, moaning. "He's fifty! Older than my own father! It's too horrible to contemplate."
"At least someone wants to marry you. You're not a pariah." It's Ann, taking a break from holding the palm of one hand over the candle flame. She dips it lower and lower till she's forced to pull back fast. But her wince lets me know she's burned herself on purposetesting once again to make sure she can still feel something.
"Why does everyone want to own me?" Pippa mumbles. She's got her head in her hands. "Why do they all want to control my lifehow I look, whom I see, what I do or don't do? Why can't they just let me alone?"
"Because you're beautiful," Ann answers, watching the fire lick at her palm. "People always think they can own beautiful things."
Pippa's laugh is bitter, tinged with tears. "Ha! Why do girls think that being beautiful will solve every problem? Being beautiful creates problems. It's a misery. I wish I were someone else."
It's a luxury of a commentone that only pretty girls can make. Ann answers this with a sharp snort of disbelief.
"I do! I wish I were I wish I were you, Ann."
Ann is so stunned, she holds her hand to the flame a second too long, pulling it back with an audible gasp. "Why on earth would you want to be me?"
"Because," Pippa sighs, "you don't have to worry about these things. You're not the sort of girl people are constantly fussing over so there's no room to breathe. No one wants you."
"Pippa!" I bark.
"What? What did I say now?" Pippa moans. She's completely unaware of her stupid cruelty.
Ann's face clouds over, her eyes narrow, but she's too beaten down by her life to say anything and Pippa is too selfish to notice. "You mean I don't stand out" Ann says flatly. "Exactly" Pippa says, looking at me with triumph that someone in the cave understands her misfortune. A second passes and now it dawns on Pippa. "Oh. Oh, Ann, I didn't mean it like that."
"Ann, darling Ann. You must forgive me. I'm not clever like you are. I don't mean half of what I say." Pip throws her arms around Ann, who can't resist having someone, anyone, pay attention to her, even a girl who sees her as just a convenience, like the right necklace or hair ribbon. "Come on, tell us a story. Let's read from Mary Dowd's diary."
"Why should we bother when we know how it all ends?" Ann says, going back to her candle. "They die in the fire."
"Well, I want to read from the diary!"
"Pippa, can't you let it alone tonight?" I sigh. "We're not in the mood."
"That's fine for you to say. You're not the one being married against your will!"
The sky rumbles while we sit in our separate corners, alone in our togetherness.
"Shall I tell you a story? A new and terrible one? A ghost story?"
The voice, a faint echo in the great cave, belongs to Felicity. She turns around on the rock, faces us, wraps her arms across bent knees, hugging them close. "Are you ready? Shall I begin? Once upon a time there were four girls. One was pretty. One was clever. One charming, and one" She glances at me. "One was mysterious. But they were all damaged, you see. Something not right about the lot of them. Bad blood. Big dreams. Oh, I left that part out. Sorry, that should have come before. They were all dreamers, these girls."
"Felicity" I start, because it's her and not the story that's beginning to frighten me.
"You wanted a story, and I'm going to give you one." Lightning shoots across the cave walls, bathing half her face in light, the other in shadows. "One by one, night after night, the girls came together. And they sinned. Do you know what that sin was? No one? Pippa? Ann?"
"Felicity." Pippa sounds anxious. "Let's go back and have a nice cup of tea. It's too cold out here."
Felicity's voice expands, fills the space around us, a bell tolling. "Their sin was that they believed. Believed they could be different. Special. They believed they could change what they weredamaged, unloved. Cast-off things. They would be alive, adored, needed. Necessary. But it wasn't true. This is a ghost story, remember? A tragedy."