gemma-doyle

No one asks how or what I am doing. They could not care less. We__e all looking glasses, we girls, existing only to reflect their images back to them as they__ like to be seen. Hollow vessels of girls to be rinsed of our own ambitions, wants, and opinions, just waiting to be filled with the cool, tepid water of gracious compliance.A fissure forms in the vessel. I__ cracking open.

Centuries of fighting, and for what? I say. "Today it ends. I can't live in fear any longer. I've cursed this power. I've both enjoyed and misused it. And I've hidden it away. Now I must try to wield it correctly, to marry it to a purpose and hope that is enough.

I know it. I know I shall make beastly mistakes, Father-""The world does not forgive mistakes so quickly, my girl." He sounds bitter and sad."If the world will not forgive me," I say softly, "I shall have to learn to forgive myself."He nods in understanding."And how will you marry? Or do you intend to marry?"I think of Kartik, and tears threaten. "I shall meet someone one day, as Mother found you.

I've heard it said that God is in the details. It's the same with the truth. Leave out the details, the crucial heart, and you can damn someone with the bare bones of it.

But Gemma, you could change the world.""That should take far more than my power," I say."True. But change needn't happen all at once. It can be small gestures.""Moments. Do you understand?" He's looking at me differently now, though I cannot say how. I only know I need to look away...We pass by the pools, where the mud larks sift. And for only a few seconds, I let the magic loose again."Oi! By all the saints!" a boy cries from the river."Gone off the dock?" an old woman calls. The mud larks break into cackles."'S not a rock!" he shouts. He races out of the fog, cradling something in his palm. Curiosity gets the better of the others. They crowd about trying to see. In his palm is a smattering of rubies. "We're rich mates! It's a hot bath and a full belly for every one of us!"Kartik eyes me suspiciously. "That was a strange stroke of good fortune.""Yes it was.""I don't suppose that was your doing.""I'm not sure I don't know what you mean," I say.And that is how change happens. One gesture. One person. One moment at a time.

One day, as Sarita tended to the wash, Gemma played in the garden. She was a knight, you see, with a sword fashioned out of wood. Most formidable, she was, though I didn't quite know how formidable. As I sat in my study, I heard screaming from outside. I ran to see what the commotion was. Sarita called to me, wide-eyed with fear, "Oh, Mr. Doyle, look- over there!" The tiger had entered the garden and was making his way toward where our Gemma frolicked with her wooden sword. Beside me, our house servant, Raj, drew his blade so stealthily it seemed to simply appear in his hand by magic. But Sarita stayed his hand. "If you run for him with your life, you will provoke the tiger," she advised. "We must wait."...I must tell you that it was the longest moment of my life. No one dared move. No one dared draw a breath. And all the while, Gemma played on, taking no notice until the great cat was upon her. She stood and faced him. They stared at one another as if each wondered what to make of the other, as if they sensed a kindred spirit. At last, Gemma placed her sword upon the ground. "Dear tiger," she said. "You may pass if you are peaceful." The tiger looked at the sword and back at Gemma, and without a sound, it passed on, dissappearing into the jungle."..."The tiger had gone. He did not come around a gain. But I was a man possessed. The tiger had come too close, you see. I no longer felt safe. I hired the best tracker in Bombay. We hunted for days, tracking the tiger to the mountains there. We found him taking water from a small watering hole. He looked up but he did not charge. He took no notice of us at all but continued to drink. "Sahib, let us go," the boy said. "This tiger means you no harm." He was right, of course. But we had come all that way. The gun was in my hand. The tiger was before us. I took aim and shot it dead on the spot. I sold the tiger's skin for a fortune to a man in Bombay, and he called me brave for it. But it was not courage that brought me to that; it was fear..."But you," he says, smiling with a mix of sadness and pride, "you faced the tiger and survived."..."The time has come for me to face my tiger, to look him in the eye and see which of us survives." - Mr. Doyle

I change the world, the world changes me.

Pippa's laugh is bitter, tinged with tears. 'Ha! Why do girls think being beautiful will solve every problem? Being beautiful just creates problems. It's a misery. I wish I were someone else.

I'm an oddity of one, my strangeness too complicated to explain or share.

She shrieks above the din. "If you wish a battle, I shall give it. I am the last of my kind. I shall not lie down without a fight.

Oh, I didn't think it wise to hide it. Might not be able to find it again," I say, cheerily. "It's sitting in plain view on your chair in the great hall. I do hope that was the best place for it.

Do you ever feel that way?""Lonely?"I search for the words. "Restless. As if you haven't really met yourself yet. As is you'd passed yourself once in the fog, and your heart leapt - 'Ah! There I Am! I've been missing that piece!' But it happens too fast, and then that part of you disappears into the fog again. And you spend the rest of your days looking for it."He nods, and I think he's appeasing me. I feel stupid of having said it. It's sentimental and true, and I've revealed a part of myself I shouldn't have."Do you know what I think?" Kartik says at last."What?""Sometimes, I think you can glimpse it in another.

I know you adore Father, but he isn't the white knight you imagine him to be. He never was. True, he's charming and loving in his way. But he's selfish. He's a limited man determined to bring about his own end-""But-"Tom grabs both my hands in his and gives them a small squeeze. "Gemma, you can't save him. Why can't you accept that?"I see my reflection on the surface of the Thames. My face is a watery outline, all blurred edges with nothing settled. "Because if I let go of that" - I swallow hard, once, twice - "then I have to accept that I am alone."The ship's horn howls again as it slips out toward sea. Tom's reflection appears beside mine, just as uncertain."We're every one of us alone in this world, Gemma." He doesn't say it bitterly. "But you have company, if you want.

You and I, we must carry on, Gemma. I cannot afford the luxury of love. I must marry well. And now I must look after you. It is my duty.""If you wish to suffer, you do so of your own free will, not on my behalf. Or Father's or Grandmama's or anyone's. You are a fine physician, Thomas. Why is that not enough?""Because it isn't," he says with a rare candor. "Only this and the hope of nothing more? A quiet respectability with no true greatness or heroism in it, with only my reputation to recommend me. So you see, Gemma, you are not the only one who cannot rule her own life.

My whole life I__e been ordered about. Now I shall give the orders._ I__e never seen Felicity so wounded. __ot me,_ she says. __ never ordered you about._ __h, Fee._ The old Pippa surfaces for just a moment, hopeful and childlike. She pulls Felicity to her. Something I cannot name passes between them, and then Pip__ lips are on Fee__ in a deep kiss, as if they feed on one another, their fingers entwined in each other__ hair. And suddenly, I understand what I must have always known about them__he private talks, the close embraces, the tenderness of their friendship. A blush spreads across my neck at the thought. How could I not have seen it before?

A man bumps me on his busy way without so much as an apology. But that is all right. I forgive you, busy man about town with the sharp elbows. Hail and farewell to you! For I, Gemma Doyle, am to have a splendid Christmas in London town. All shall be well.God rest us merry gentlemen. And gentlewomen.

I don't have time to feel sorry for myself. I've got to think.