Free Destiny by Gillian Shields

when she is safe, and when my friends are safe—then I’ll come back for you.”
    Another sigh. A breath of hope.
    “Thank you, my daughter. There is something I can tell you that might be of use. To help Laura, first you mustfind her. The Eye of Time watches her. When I was…taken…by you and your sisters, Laura fled from me. Now she wanders in one of the secret places between this world and the shadows. Seek her at the next new moon, when the sky is dark and all things begin again. She is under the Eye of Time. Find the Eye of Time and you will find her.”
    “So where is this ‘Eye’? Where should I look for it?” I asked, but at that moment a horrific scream seared through my brain. An image of my mother engulfed in black flames flashed in front of me, and I felt her agony.
    “My master—sees—and hears—He is angry with me for helping you—Helen—aaah! No, please, no more—please—stop—”
    Her spirit had retreated into dark realms beyond my reach, and now I was crying too. I couldn’t bear it. I would rather have faced Dr. Franzen a hundred times than hear the sound of my mother suffering for my sake.
    Sinking into the damp bracken, I sobbed until my throat ached and my eyes burned. Well, I had made my choice. No doubt crazy Helen Black had got it wrong again. Everything I did led to sorrow and despair, and I deserved to suffer, like Dr. Franzen had told me a thousand times.
    But the Wanderer had told me a different story. You’re special, Helen…. You want life to be beautiful, and it will be one day, I promise. You’ll be happy….
    The pain in my heart seemed to ease slightly. I sat up and pushed my hair out of my eyes. It was getting late, time to get back. I had come to the Ridge that day with such high hopes, imagining that I would be able to return to my friends and say to them, “Laura is free!” But it wasn’t going to be as easy as that. Nothing would be easy, but I wasn’t going to give up. Maybe one day, all promises would come true: Celia Hartle’s promise to be a mother, the Wanderer’s promise of happiness, and Miss Scratton’s promise of salvation. And I would keep my own vow to help Laura. Only death would stop me.
    Laura. She was the one who mattered now. She was the key to all the rest. When she was free I would come back to find my mother, but not until then. I had a job to do, and crying in the wind wouldn’t get me anywhere. I willed myself to feel nothing, to put on an icy armor of numbness so that I could fight this last battle; then I strode down the slope, leaving the desolate circle of stones behind me.

Fourteen
    T HE W ITNESS OF S ARAH F ITZALAN
    H elen slipped back to class later that morning, her face ashen but set hard, as if she had tried to shut off her emotions. She whispered briefly, “My idea didn’t work,” and then seemed to concentrate on her math book, but I noticed that she didn’t even attempt to do any work. At the end of the class she passed me a note: Saturday afternoon at Uppercliffe. The Circle. Then she walked on by without speaking. I sighed and wished that she would trust me with her secrets. But at least she had agreed to cast the sacred Circle with us to help Laura. That was a step forward.
    On Saturdays we older students were allowed to go out for a ride or walk without supervision. Dr. Franzenhadn’t gotten around to changing that rule yet. I hoped he never would, though he had certainly made an impact since his arrival, and was already proving to be unpopular. Helen wouldn’t talk about him again, and I couldn’t guess what she was really thinking. I didn’t know that whenever Helen passed Dr. Franzen in the corridor, every time he read prayers at breakfast or supper, every time he marched into one of the classrooms to inspect the work that was going on, she felt sick. I was blind to her pain, and I should have seen more clearly, but despite the fact that I was proud of my Gypsy ancestry and was sometimes gifted with flashes of