Last time on Gemma, the garden and some apple blather.

This chapter opens with the girls playing tennis and making vague references to their specialness. Okay, we’re past the halfway mark now, the time for interludes with the girls doing general school things has come and it has gone. Let’s get back to the drama.

Instead, they talk about the realms and Gemma says she’ll bring them tonight and they can meet her mom, which creeps Pippa out.

Down by the lake, I see Kartik leaning against the boathouse, arms crossed, watching me. His black cloak flutters in the wind.

Kartik that is not how you subtly stalk people. Even if you’re trying to intimidate her, she is a sheltered rich girl, there should be people keeping an eye on her. Those people do not like creepy strangers in black dramatic cloaks hanging around.

Pippa, who apparently has eye problems as well, “recognizes” him as one of the Gypsies.

“He is rather handsome, isn’t he?”
“Do you think so?” It’s out of my mouth before I can stop it.
“For a heathen, that is.” She tosses her head in a coy fashion. “He seems to be looking at me.”
It hadn’t occurred to me that Kartik could be watching Pippa and not me, and for some reason, this bothers me. As infuriating as he is, I want him to be gazing only at me.

Ugh. Well, at least we have historically accurate racism.

At this point Felicity comes over and explains about the whole late night Gypsy visit.

And then she has her arm around Pippa’s shoulders, telling her the story of our adventures in the Gypsy camp in a way that completely exonerates me. I am a noble, self-sacrificing girl who endured his kiss only to save us. It is so convincing that I almost believe her myself.

So yeah, looking pretty shippy. Hamhandedly so, but hey, YA, I try not to complain overmuch about it not being subtle.

But luckily we drop it for now and head into the garden. She leads them to where her mom was, but her mother isn’t there. The other girls are confused and wonder where Gemma’s mom is…and then she appears. Not sure what the point of that is.

Her mother is super charming, and then she teaches them that they can do anything in the realm if they want. So Ann sings and it turns her beautiful, then Pippa summons a hot eighteen year old blond knight, and Felicity, ever the only one with brains, goes right for the heart of the issue, summoning a naked Athena to teach her of power.

Gemma’s mother is disapproving of the wish for power, but actually it seems extremely healthy. Ann’s wish is, at the least, not really using her new abilities to their potential. Pippa is summoning not true love but pretty devotion, and she’s falling further under the spell of the imaginary realm. Felicity, though, returns from her time with the huntress with an aching arm from learning how to fire a bow – she’s actually being taught something real.

Like back in the cave, Gemma can’t think of a particular wish. When her mother asks she says she has what she wants in her mother being there, but her mother explains that this is only temporary. She can’t stay long or she’ll end up like the ghosts in the forest.

Her mother’s unfinished business?

“I must set right what Mary and Sarah did so many years ago.”

So yes, she’s definitely involved and must be one of the girls since it doesn’t seem like anyone else in the school was involved.

Then Ann asks about the pile of crystals they see.

“Those are the Runes of the Oracle, the heart of this realm,” Mother says. I stand beside one. “Don’t touch them,” Mother warns.

So you can guess where this is going.

Gemma’s mother proceeds to be a total moron.

“You must understand how the magic of the realms works first, how to control it, before you can let it live in you and use it on the other side.”
“We can take this sort of power with us to our world?” Ann says.

It would be hard to do a worse job at this if she tried.

Gemma’s mom claims they need to wait to reopen the realms, wait for the Order to reform, and then get taught before they can touch anything. Then she goes back to explaining how totally awesome they are and how it’ll let them do magic in the real world. Felicity waves her hand near one, noticing that the humming quiets as she gets close…then when Gemma reaches over there’s a burst of energy through her. What the hell Gemma, I was expecting one of the others to be messing with it, not you. Anyway, it’s because she’s the conduit sue.

Still, her mother shouts and she yanks her hand back before actually touching a rune. Then the girls talk about what they could do if they had the power in the real world and Gemma’s mother again says no.

Also, the runes say “‘I change the world; the world changes me.’” in some language that’s older than Greek or Latin. I expect this is just pretension and this isn’t going to matter much beyond maybe a moral about the magic warping you if you mess with it too much.

Her mother starts to look stressed and then the little girl reappears and she relaxes. She explains that the shadow is still looking for them but she can fool it for now. It seems the kid’s part of it, so maybe the kid’s a decoy of some sort.

Along the way, I spy the girl, still looking at my mother with her frightened eyes. There’s something compelling about the child. Something I feel I should know, though I can’t say what.

Huh. This is written like there’s some clue we should be able to figure out, but since Gemma’s been so all over the place with remembering useful things it’s hard to say. Does she remember seeing the kid in her dream or not? Is there some other feature that’s important?

So far, what we know of the kid is that it appeared in London and the shadow thing left it alone, it led Gemma to the diary, and it was in her dream in the burned wing of the school. I’m not sure what we’re supposed to know. Maybe it’s just the empty foreshadowing where Gemma will suddenly reveal something she knows but didn’t bother telling us beforehand.

When they return, Ann mentions that she doesn’t remember her mother, and wonders if her mother remembers her. In Gemma’s bed there’s a note telling her again to stop what she’s doing, from Kartik, saying he’ll take action if he has to.

Next chapter, Gemma says that their visits to the garden are making everyone improve, weirdly.

Under the tutelage of the huntress, Felicity is becoming an accomplished archer, fleet and unstoppable. Ann’s voice grows stronger every day. And Pippa isn’t quite the pampered princess she was a week ago. She’s kinder, less shrill. The knight listens to her as no one else does. I’ve always been so irritated when Pippa opens her mouth, I haven’t stopped to think she may babble on because she’s afraid she won’t be heard.

This sounds like a stretch.

Felicity, sure. As I said, what she asked for is the only one of these that’s a good idea.

Ann I can see, just barely. Her personality is because she has low self-esteem, so any boost, even if it’s just “secretly, I am beautiful” might help her be more assertive in the real world.

And Pippa? I really, really can’t see how someone created to listen and agree with her would improve her temperament. And it doesn’t seem like it’s dealing with her known issues, like the fact she’s scared of getting married off.

Gemma says the place is helping because it gives them space to be themselves and be honest with each other.

It isn’t that we do what we want. It’s that we’re allowed to want at all.

This is very poignant, but in order to actually work, the past twenty chapters needed to actually show some repression. Besides, they already had that – their original, no-magic mini-Order meetings were about being themselves, and they revealed their secrets to each other.

Gemma asks how the runes work again.

“You touch your hands to the runes and the power enters you. It lives inside you for a while.”
“That’s it?”
“The gist, yes. But you first have to know how to control it. It’s influenced by your state of mind, your purpose, your strength. It’s powerful magic. Not to be toyed with.

And it’s very, very short-lived, lasting at most a day.

Gemma says she thinks she’s ready. They’re watching the clouds and her mother transforms a kitten-shaped one into a monster that swoops down on them. The moral is that you have to know what’s really there because Circe can make things look different. Gemma suddenly relearns uncertainty and wonders what’ll happen if she can’t do it. She’ll have to try, her mother says.

Her brother shows up one day and is surprised to see what a good mood she’s in. She asks about the rest of the family and he lies and says everything’s fine but maybe their dad will be too busy to visit the school.

Ann comes to get Gemma for waltzing practice and sees Tom, who she instantly falls in love with, deciding he looks kind. Gemma doesn’t say that Ann doesn’t have a chance. Instead, she thinks that Tom would love Ann if he could see the way she is in the realm. So maybe it isn’t Ann that’ll fuck things up with wanting, but Gemma by trying to give her what she wants.

Then Felicity shows up with actual good news – her dad is coming to Assembly Day for the first time in years.

“But why can’t we take the magic out of the realms where it could do some real good?”
“I’ve told you—it isn’t safe yet. Once you do that, once you bring magic back through the portal, it’s fully open. Anyone who knows how could get in.” She pauses, tries to get herself under control. I remember these fights now—the ones that used to make me hate her.

This is so fucking stupid.

Gemma knows the deadly shadow thing is stalking her. The argument should be “I’m ready to fight Circe!” not “lol consequences, my friend wants to get hitched”.

The fight continues for a while without Gemma being sympathetic in the slightest. I don’t know why, it seems like it’d be so easy to make it understandable and it just doesn’t. Instead she’s accusing her mom of just not wanting to help her father or saying that maybe she could just take out a little, how about that?

Finally she goes off to sulk. All her friends are happy but she’s not.

I’m the only one chafing here, feeling discontented and powerless. The thrill of our adventures has begun to wear off. What good is it to have this supposed power if I can’t use it?

Well – Felicity’s learning an actual skill she can take back with her, and Ann seems to be managing to further improve her singing and gain some general self-esteem, both positives. Even Pippa, apparently, is somehow improved by her knight. So while this place seems designed around wish-fulfillment, it actually seems to be oriented toward self-improvement. Summon up a warrior of your own to teach you to combat Circe, or at least to defend yourself if Kartik ever works up to actually stabbing you to death. Summon an adviser to help you learn, or else to help you deal with your other problems. Summon anything, really, anything would be more helpful than sulking you can’t directly solve your problems with magic.

Of course, then Pippa says she wishes they could stay forever. Gemma reacts poorly, but not because she’s worried or anything, it honestly comes off as because she’s mad they’re happy.

“Because this is not a place to stay,” I answer, defensively. “It’s a place of dreams.”
“What if I choose the dream instead?” Pippa says. It’s such a Pippa thing to say—foolish and taunting.
“What if I refuse to bring you here the next time?”

At this point Felicity shows up and Pippa tattles that mean Gemma says she won’t bring them back, and Gemma says that’s not what she said, and they all fake-pout at her until she laughs and all is forgotten.

On the way out of the place, she sees the kid with her mother.

Beneath the large white pinafore, the girl’s dress is colorful and unusual. Not something one would see at an English girls’ school. Interesting that I’ve never noticed it.

So that’s it?

That doesn’t make sense. Her mother never said the girl had anything to do with an English girls’ school. From what her mother said, she wasn’t even part of the whole Order business until she was told about it when Gemma was a little kid. Even if she was, she also didn’t say anything about where the kid came from. So why would Gemma think the kid have been a schoolgirl in the first place? It’s not even clear yet if the kid is an actual kid or just some construct like Pippa’s knight, though I’m assuming such from the dream.

This is obviously supposed to be important but there’s no reason for Gemma to consider it important.

The only thing I think when I think of colorful is the connection to the Gypsies. But surely Gemma would mention if the kid looked like a Gypsy when she’s dressed like an English girl? Although there is the Caroline Mother Elena mentions, but then, in that case wouldn’t Gemma’s mom know her name, since, if Gemma’s mom is one of the two girls they visited regularly.

The two of them are looking at me, hopeful and wary. As if I can change things for them. But how can I help them when I don’t even know how to help myself?

A more important question is why don’t you just ask your mother why she’s eying you in a hopeful/wary way. What does she want changed? She’s said that she’s dead and nothing will change that, and she’s just hesitating from moving on because she wants to help with the Circe business. And if the kid has separate wants and hopes, that’s again a subject that should be brought up. You still don’t even know what’s going on with the kid.

And continue with your starter voting.