Chapter Three #2
Ava found herself fascinated by this pale, witchy creature who seemed so confident.
But she could spy sparks of her roommate’s past. When she looked at Lauren, she saw cemetery paths and long, cold, blue evenings, and a garden where the roses bloomed black and a girl sat in the boughs of a tree. “You’re lonely,” Ava said bluntly.
“If you want to talk, talk to the crows,” Lauren responded in a chilly, precise tone.
“I prefer my own company.” Soon she would head off to collect the rest of her luggage from the first floor, calling over her shoulder, “Don’t forget to check for your invitation.
If all goes well, we’ll both be gone by tonight. ”
“To where?”
Lauren threw Ava an exasperated look. “Lilith House. Do I have to spell it out for you?”
Ava had never heard of Adam’s first wife, Lilith, who had not been created out of her husband’s rib but had been made of her own flesh and blood and bone.
When Lilith refused to do as she was told, she’d been exiled to wander through the night, so forgotten she’d been mentioned only once in the Bible.
She was the night bird called upon in the most ancient incantation, the owl pictured on amulets and talismans, the wife some righteous people liked to forget.
Her castles will be overgrown with thorns, her fortresses with thistles and briars.
Lauren looked under the pillow of the bed Ava had intended to take for herself. There was an envelope addressed to Lauren Bell.
“I told you this bed was mine. You should pack up,” Lauren told Ava. “It’s not as if we’ll be here long. And we need to be ready for tonight.”
Ava had no choice but to take the bed that was under the eaves.
When Lauren saw Ava fussing with her bed, she laughed, then said, “Don’t worry. You likely won’t sleep tonight.”
Lauren made her nervous, and Ava wondered if she meant to play some trick that would cause Ava not to sleep.
There was maid service in the dorm, and the white sheets were freshly pressed and smelled of lavender.
Ava could hear the rising voices of girls moving into their rooms on the floors below.
They’d surely want nothing to do with her, and she couldn’t blame them.
She wasn’t like them, and the half-baked idea that she was a legacy of any sort was preposterous.
Neither of her parents had been to college.
Books will lead you down the wrong path, her mother always told her, but the path had led her here, to Radcliffe College, and so Ava did exactly as Lauren had suggested.
She reached beneath her pillow. There was an envelope addressed to Ava Abbot.
When she pulled out the card her heart began to race.
What was done could not be undone. What was read could not be forgotten.
The Lilith Society. The Cambridge Common. Midnight.
The message had been written in ink but was now disappearing as Ava read, leaving her with a blank card and the sense that she’d imagined the perfect sloping handwriting in red ink.
All the same, what was invisible continued to exist even when it could no longer be seen.
Even if the words had vanished, the invitation had not. Her future had already begun.
The bed was lumpy, the room was cold, and birds had gathered on the ledge like a black curtain, settling in for the night.
Ava had trouble falling asleep, especially with Lauren reading at the desk, the light switched on.
Ava was surprised to discover that she missed the scent of apples and the gusts of wind that shook the trees, and the white metal bed she’d slept in all her life.
When she did finally drift off, her dreams were pitch dark, as if she’d tumbled down a well.
Finally, she spied a yellow light in her dream.
Follow me, a voice told her, and before she knew it, she was in a garden where a lilac tree grew.
This is for you. I planted it on the day I lost you.
Do you think I haven’t thought about you every single day?
Someone was grabbing Ava out of the garden in her dreams, shaking her, telling her it was time.
“Wake up. We can’t be late!”
Ava sat bolt upright, and there was Lauren, hovering over her.
All of her mother’s warnings came back to her in a rush.
Lock the door, call out if there is a stranger, stay away from girls who go out at midnight, beware those who wish to take you to the world underground, where there are no rules and no way to return to all that you’ve known.
“It’s time,” Lauren said in a heated whisper. “Hurry!”
There was a full moon, and streams of light fell over them in a shimmer of white. Ava pulled on her clothes and her boots.
“Don’t forget your suitcase,” Lauren reminded her.
For once, Ava would act on instinct. She had the shivery feeling that she was meant to be somewhere else. Lauren had already opened the window and flung down a rope ladder that was stored beneath one of the bureaus for new Lilith initiates.
This is what you wanted, Ava reminded herself. Take a risk, take a chance, change your life. The air crackled as she stepped onto the window ledge. The blue lines of the world beneath the world were there to see. One step and she had entered the place where past, present, and future met.
As soon as Ava and Lauren climbed down, they took off across the lawn, suitcases in hand, their path illuminated by pink-tinged streetlights.
They didn’t stop until they could see the Cambridge Common, a large grassy area that had once been a meadow where sheep were set free to graze, protected from poachers and wolves by huge white sheepdogs.
Tonight, the women gathered under a large elm known as the Hangman’s Tree, where a witch had once been murdered in the middle of a dark night.
All who attended were dressed in black with crowns of ivy on their heads.
They wore crystals and malachite and small river rocks strung onto red cords, all meant to give the wearer protection and luck.
Ava stopped where she was, shivering even though the night was warm. Her heart was already pounding. She knew witches when she saw them. She had dreamed of them and read about them in storybooks.
Rise off the ground, jump from the roof, tell no one the truth.
“Afraid they’ll put a spell on you?” Lauren said mockingly when she noticed Ava’s anxious expression.
“I don’t think I’m meant to be here,” Ava whispered as she and Lauren continued down the dark street.
“The society never makes a mistake. Your mother was here, and now you are.”
“My mother didn’t attend Radcliffe. She never went to college at all.”
Lauren shook her head, marveling at the depth of Ava’s naivete. “You really don’t know who you are. Let me ask you this. What color is your blood at your time of the month?”
“I don’t know. I don’t look,” Ava said.
“You’re too afraid to look at yourself.” Lauren shook her head, then reached for a sharp penknife she carried in her pocket and quickly pricked the skin of her palm.
Ava gasped and took a step back, shocked. “What are you doing!”
“Showing you who you are. Someone has to.”
A single black drop fell onto the ground, and where it had fallen, a dark flower arose. It was a hyacinth, a flower associated with life and death and mystery.
“Who are you?” Ava said, her thin voice wavering. She gazed at the women gathered under the tree and saw beyond them, to those who had gathered there long ago. She saw black birds, marshes, dark roads, hazel trees, hope. Ava felt herself shivering. “What are you?” she said.
“The same as you.”
“I’m nothing like you. I’m ordinary!”
They were pledging together; they might be judged together; if one failed to be inducted into the society, the other might meet the same fate, and so Lauren seized Ava’s hand and, before Ava could pull away, Lauren pricked the palm of her hand as well.