Last time on Gemma, Gemma decides screw the rules, she has feminist outrage.
Ann, interestingly, is our voice of reason, asking if Gemma’s sure she knows how to use the rune magic. Gemma admits that no, but it can’t be that hard and this will just be a trial run anyway, because trial run is a meaningful concept when your mother already explained that doing anything opens the doors completely.
They enter the garden and Gemma gets to work rationalizing things through the magic of selective memory.
It’s been such a long time since the magic here has been used. There’s no telling what could happen.
That doesn’t mean something terrible will happen. Perhaps Mother is worrying about nothing. We’ll be so very careful. Nothing will find its way in.
Except, of course, her mom made it clear that messing with magic was an all or nothing proposition. She didn’t say they couldn’t take it out because they might accidentally open the doors, it’s just going to happen. This is stupid.
They sneak around, only to be surprised by Felicity’s naked huntress. I was hoping they’d ask her advice, but instead they just say they’re not planning to hunt today and the woman disappears again.
Implicitly acknowledging that they’re doing something wrong and know it, the girls say that was close and they should hurry up before anyone else notices.
So they link arms.
We’re connected, like some newfangled apparatus that gives off electric light.
Remember when the writing of this book was praiseworthy? Those were some good days.
It’s not just this line, the writing generally seems to have taken a nosedive in quality. I think it’s a matter of polish running out. We’re about three fourths done.
Anyway, she touches the runes and there’s your generic sudden knowledge bit – first it’s lots of voices until they’re overwhelming, then suddenly she’s up somewhere high feeling awesome and looking down at the rest of the world with all her senses supercharged, and also she thinks about sex with Kartik. It’s utterly formulaic.
We scene change to the next morning, as apparently the girls just stumbled home in a daze and went to sleep after all that.
Ann accidentally reads Gemma’s thought about how unbelievable this is, and that shocks Gemma into realizing that wow, she really did do it. Right then the other two wolves rush in and Pippa disappears a grass stain.
Okay, that’s cool and all, but I thought we were taking the magic at huge risk to everything because of imminent personal danger, not because it’s really fun.
“I want to have a bit of fun,” Pippa says, pulling us to a stop. She closes her eyes, waves her hands over the cherubic plaster boy, and then he’s sporting rather large breasts.
I stand corrected.
Right then Brigid comes by and Pippa panics and can’t fix it, and ends up turning it into a cancan dancer statue, but luckily Brigid thinks nothing of it beyond that it’s tacky.
Ann has presumably already started messing with her appearance, because Cecily notices something about her.
“Ann, is that a new dress?” she asks between bites of her bacon. We’ve come late so there’s only porridge.
“No,” Ann answers.
“Did you change your hair, then?”
Ann shakes her head.
“Well, it’s an improvement, whatever it is.” This makes the rest of the girls titter. Cecily goes right back to her bacon.
Felicity snaps because that was incredibly rude? And says Cecily shouldn’t speak, so she can’t.
Then they have French class and Gemma uses the magic to make herself a not only fluent but knowledgeable speaker.
Someone should probably close Martha’s, Cecily’s, and Elizabeth’s mouths before the rains come and drown them like turkeys.
Yes, those stupid girls, being shocked just because a shocking thing happened because you used magic.
It’s really depressing just how unlikeable and catty she is.
When it started with Felicity and Pippa, it was fine because they were side characters and there was absolutely no sense the book thought this was okay behavior. They were enjoyable in an over the top way. Even still, I was still glad when we got past that and the girls started actually acting like friends. But whenever anyone else is around, it becomes something worse, the Good Girls vs the Bad Girls. It’s less severe than the usual setup where there’s two girls, one good and one bad, because at least we’re allowing for girls to be decent and not setting them all into automatic, inescapable competition with each other. But it’s still dividing people into one camp or the other, and it still tends to come off as “all girls but me and my friends are jerks” which is not that many steps up from “all girls but me are jerks”.
Next, they encourage Ann to do something.
“Come on, then. Don’t you want everybody to know what you can do?”
She furrows her brow. “But it won’t be me, will it? It will be the magic. Like your French.”
That’s wise of you, Ann, and you should be proud. Of all of them you have the most to want here, and it’s good to see that despite everything you still care about actually accomplishing things in your own right.
Instead her friends reassure her that okay, Gemma totally relied on the magic, but she can use the magic just to show what she can really do, which seems a contradiction.
Anyway, Ann does end up singing perfectly.
I’m so proud of her. How could my mother not want us to use this magic? How could she think we weren’t ready for it?
THIS ENTIRE CHAPTER IS WHY.
Even assuming that the author realizes this is fucking stupid, which I’m not entirely convinced of when we’re getting descriptions of how incredibly happy Ann is and how thrilled the teacher is and so on, it’s too fucking stupid for the kids.
Gemma saw the undead shadow monster. She saw her mom kill herself rather than let it take her, and she saw another person eaten by it and trapped in the Winterlands. She knows the other girls died in a fire, even if she doesn’t know the details. She should know this isn’t a game. Her mother never said not to use the magic, she just said they can’t use it right now or else horrible things happen.
At the end of the day the magic wears off and they’re all suddenly tired. Nightwing notices and suggests Pippa go to bed, because Bumble is coming to see her tomorrow.
“Ugh, I’d forgotten he’s coming to call,” Pippa laments as we trudge up to bed.
Ann stretches her arms overhead in a catlike movement. “Why couldn’t you dispense with him? Just tell him you’re not interested.”
“That should go over very well with my mother,” Pippa scoffs.
“We could go back into the realms and make you hideously ugly,” Felicity says.
“I think not!”
…why not, though?
When she was saying she’d rather be Ann, I was expecting them to try switching bodies. It actually wouldn’t have to immediately lead to an aesop about how they’re really happier in their own lives. I think Pippa really is tired of having everything revolve around her appearance and having the weight of expectations sitting on her shoulders, constantly reminding her to be a perfect lady. Being Ann, or even just not jaw-droppingly gorgeous, might be freeing. And Ann wants attention desperately, and does enjoy it the few times she gets it.
During the conversation Gemma starts noticing there’s grime and soot on the walls and ceiling.
Pippa decides she’ll tell her suitor about the epilepsy thing. That’ll break the engagement for sure.
So…what the fuck was the point of opening the realms and unleashing god knows what?
Meanwhile, Gemma realizes that there’s the smudgy outline of a picture in the row of school pictures, as if there was a fifth one there once. Oh come on, she looks the whole thing over earlier, wondering why there isn’t a 1871 one, and she doesn’t notice that? The book doesn’t even have the decency to say it’s a faint smudge.
None of the other girls care about her revelation. Ann brushes her off and says Gemma can look for it if she likes.
Yes, I think. Perhaps I will at that. I don’t believe there was no photograph.
I think it was removed.
Yes Gemma we got that.
Gemma has another meaningful dream of vague symbolism, and then she has a sex dream with Kartik, ending another chapter.
Next chapter is Pippa’s bid for freedom. Gemma is acting chaperone as Nightwing is distracted by Felicity faking illness, so no one’s there to stop Pippa from confessing her shameful affliction. Bumble is a picture of well-bred disgust.
He says he’ll talk to her parents, and she tells him no, they’d hate her if they knew she’d admitted to it, it was only she couldn’t bear to lie to such an honorable man like him.
He actually is being pretty undickish here, for all the narration describes him harshly. He says that if he breaks the engagement it’ll hurt her and make people question her virtue. She says that yes, the only way out is for her to refuse him, and that way honor is satisfied all around. She returns his ring.
I wait to see if he will beg her to reconsider, if he will pledge his love in spite of her ailment. But he seems relieved, his tone imperious.
“What shall I say to your parents, then?”
“Say that I am too young and foolish to take as a wife and that you have been noble enough to allow me to end things and save my reputation. They will not press you.”
I mean, I’m not saying he’s a saint, but he generally seems to be trying to work things out in a way that’ll do the least damage to her, and he agrees to go along with all her requests for how to end it.
They head back to Felicity’s scarf-room and tell all about it. Afterward, she says she wants to try getting magic again.
“It might be pressing our luck to do it again so soon,” I say.
“Do be a sport,” Ann pleads.
Felicity nods. “Yes, after all, nothing terrible happened. And think of how marvelous it’s been having all that power at our fingertips.
The only problem you had you solved without magic. And even Ann didn’t really need magic – she became a better singer by practicing in the garden, she didn’t need to take the magic out to amaze people with her voice. All that’s actually been done with it are cruel pranks, cheating at French and fixing grass stains.
“Perhaps,” I say. I must admit that I’m in love with the feeling the magic of the runes provides. One more visit to them can’t hurt. And then I promise I’ll stop and do as my mother says.
God damn. I can’t even call Gemma stupid here, because this is in retcon territory. There’s no way anyone would misunderstand “taking out magic immediately and irrevocably opens the door for everyone else too” like this.
Also, Pippa’s too tired to walk all the way to the caves, so they decide to do the circle right there.
They’re turned invisible and everything seems to be moving extra slow.
Pippa lets out with a tiny whelp of joy. “They can’t see us! It’s as if we’re not really here! Oh, the things I’d like to do . . .”
“Why not do them?” Felicity says, arching a brow.
So she flips around the book Nightwing’s reading, because fuck this, this is stupid.
What the hell is with all this? Is this from the very first draft when there was no larger plot and it was just boarding school shenanigans? Was it added in afterward to up the word count because the author just didn’t care if it made sense?
There’s a bunch of fairies in the marble column.
An odious little gargoyle unfurls his wings, cocks his head to one side. “You see things the way they really are now,” he says. “The others think this is only dreaming. But they live in the dream, not us.”
Well that’s meaningless bullshit.
A fairy boy asks to be freed, and since we established earlier that they’re morons, Gemma immediately says they’re free, and they all stream away to run around poking things.
“We can’t let them do this,” I say, half-laughing myself at their pranks. As the satyr climbs the girl’s calf, I pick him up with my fingers. “Oh, no you don’t,” I chide merrily.
He writhes and curses in protest. In an instant, his face transforms into a demonic mask and he sinks his sharp teeth into the tender skin of my wrist.
Oh my what a surprise who could have seen that coming.
The girls freak out but have no idea what to do. Gemma, recovering a bit of her brains, grabs one of the gargoyles and holds it over the fire by its wings, demanding the secret. Luckily, the rest of the fairy host have been infected with the stupid.
The gargoyle calls out to his friends for help, but the satyr only laughs. “Proceed. What’s one less gargoyle in the world? It should prove most amusing.”
Hey dumbass, she’s not threatening the guy to get you to talk, she’s threatening him to get him to talk. If you don’t stop one of the two, he’ll talk and then she’ll put you back.
This noninterest would make sense if there wasn’t an easy fix, but all Gemma has to do is say a rhyme and the gargoyle immediately coughs it up. The fairies are all put back.
The girls are all freaked out and decide they’ve had enough.
Only Ann disagrees. She lingers near Cecily and Elizabeth. “One last bit of fun.”
“What are you going to do?” Pippa asks.
Ann smiles. “Nothing they don’t deserve.”
In conclusion, taking the magic out seems to have brought out the worst in everyone.