So where do you want to begin?” asked Helen.

“I’ve been trying to understand my powers better,” I said eagerly. “I don’t know all the answers yet, but I spent hours at home in the holidays trying new things, up on the cliffs before anyone was around, or in my room late at night. I’m learning more; I want to show you. Look at this.”

I held my hands out in front of me and closed my eyes. I went into myself, deeper and deeper. Everything fell silent around me, yet I could hear, as though a long way off, the sound of the waves crashing on the shore at home. My body began to tingle and I was aware of the blood rushing through my veins. The water of life…the blood of my veins…awaken in me…. I felt an invisible wave of energy flooding over me. I opened my eyes and knelt down to trail my fingers in the stream that gurgled around the base of the statue. The next second I heard the crack of ice. The stream had frozen, as still as the statue that stood above it. I clicked my fingers and the stream flowed once more.

“That’s fantastic, Evie,” said Sarah. We looked at each other and grinned excitedly, still totally awed by this new world we were discovering.

“What about you?” I asked her. “Have you done anything new?” Last term I had seen Sarah use her earth powers to make a seed spring into life before my eyes and to make the ground shake under our feet.

“Yes, I think so,” she answered shyly. “Yes, I have.” She searched around in the dim cave, then stooped to pick up a small chunk of rock that lay on the bed of the stream. Holding it cupped in the palm of her hand, Sarah covered the rock with her other hand and frowned with concentration. When she drew her hand away the rock had crumbled into dust.

“Wow! This proves that last term wasn’t a fluke. Helen, let’s see if we can awaken the Talisman. Let’s do it now, straightaway,” I begged. “At home I tried calling to it and chanting over it and anything else I could think of, but nothing happened. But here in Wyldcliffe, in Agnes’s home, it might respond, if we all work together.”

“I’ve got a feeling you have to do this on your own, Evie,” Helen replied. “Didn’t Lady Agnes say in her journal that she was leaving the Talisman to you? That she was sealing her powers in the necklace so that they would be guarded for you to use? I’m not sure if she meant us to be part of that.”

“But we could try anyway, couldn’t we?” said Sarah.

“Well, we’ve nothing to lose. Let’s try.” Helen gave me an encouraging smile and took some candle ends from the niche in the rock and arranged them on the ground. As she lit each one, she chanted, “May this light guide our steps, may it illuminate our minds, may it cleanse our hearts….”

At last the candles were burning in a ring of quivering flames. A thrill of anticipation ran through me. In the Sacred Circle our powers would be united and magnified; we would be stronger, ready for anything. I stepped inside the ring of fire, undid the shining necklace, and laid it carefully on the rocky ground. Then Sarah and Helen stepped into the circle and we held hands. Helen began to speak in a low voice: “We call on you, our sisters of wind, earth, and sea. We call upon the fire of life. Bless our circle. Guide us.” Then Sarah began to chant softly, “The air of our breath, the water of our veins, the clay of our bodies…”

We raised our arms to the moon and the stars, which wheeled above us unseen.

“Sacred Powers,” I called. “Permit me to use the gift that our sister Agnes bequeathed to me. Let me know its strength; let me understand its secrets. Open the Talisman to me, I beseech you.” Then I knelt down and placed my hand over the crystal at the heart of the Talisman. A silver-blue light flared out from the jewel as I touched it, making the mosaics spring to life with a thousand reflections. My heart began to race. “Water of life, I call on your powers to open this path to me. Agnes, Sebastian, help me….”

I tried to focus my mind on the great and boundless ocean, as deep as my love, as wild as my dreams, as powerful as my enemies. I heard the sigh and roar of the waves. I heard Sarah and Helen chanting and I joined in, summoning my secret self as I had when I had raised the lake from its quiet bed: “I think, I feel, I desire…I command the Talisman to hear my call…. Mystic Powers, come to our aid…help us now….”

But the light from the crystal died away and nothing happened.

Reality.

The Talisman remained beautiful and lifeless in my hand. The moment had passed.

“It’s no good.” I sighed. “This isn’t going to work.”

I fastened the necklace around my neck again and stepped out of the circle. Helen blew out the candles on the ground. The grotto looked like a dank cave, not a place of wonder. All my excitement had evaporated.

“I’m sorry, Evie,” said Helen said quietly. “But somehow I never felt it would be as easy as that.”

“What are we going to do?” asked Sarah. “Every day, every hour and second is precious. We have to make some kind of progress.”

“Perhaps that’s the problem.” A thought had struck me. “Maybe we haven’t progressed far enough in the Mystic Way. When Agnes made the Talisman, she was at the height of her powers. I know Helen has been in tune with her gifts for a lot longer than we have, but you and me, Sarah—well, aren’t we really just beginners? Perhaps I need to develop my powers more so that I have the same power over water as Agnes had over fire. She had all sorts of amazing abilities. Won’t I need the same?”

Sarah seemed struck by what I had said. “It seems to make sense. But we’ve so little time—”

“Then we’ll practice as much as we can,” I interrupted. “We can come here every night if necessary, or find somewhere in the school where we won’t be seen. What do you think? Is it worth trying?”

Helen and Sarah placed their hands over mine, as though they were taking an oath. “We won’t stop until the Talisman opens itself to you, Evie. We’ll make this happen; we promise.”

And we didn’t stop. The first week at Wyldcliffe went past in a blur as I threw myself into my studies, by both day and night. I was buzzing with adrenaline, hungry to learn, and it didn’t seem to matter what. Whether I was in the grotto turning water into silver mist, or drawing liquid essences from the stones of the cave, or hunched in the cold classrooms studying Latin verbs or chemical reactions, I was on fire. Knowledge was power, I kept telling myself, and it seemed to me that the knowledge I sought might lie anywhere: in an obscure bit of poetry, in a scientific formula, or in an ancient spell. This term I was going to be at the top of every class and ahead of every idea.

All that week the snow lay around the Abbey, white and blank and cold. Any lingering hope that Sebastian would contact me had withered like a green shoot in the bitter frost. But I refused to despair. I was young and strong, I would outwit the coven; I would find Sebastian; I would soon know every secret of the Mystic Way.

Wherever there was darkness, I would bring light, and that light would never be overwhelmed.