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Gilbert is back, and a strange man with him– Avonlea buzzes with the news. Anne is again pointedly refusing to talk to him, but with less determination than before. She is preoccupied by something else: parts of her visions, at least, are coming true. It is vital that she find out what they might mean, and how to end or control them. There is one person she knows of who could help.
Anne is at the train station, waiting for Matthew to return from business in another town, when she spots her.
“Miss Owens!” she calls, waving wildly. The faded blue coat is retreating into the crowd, and Anne runs after it, shouting her name. She has been waiting for weeks to talk to the magician, and she will not pass up her chance now.
“Miss Owens! Wait a minute!”
Finally, she turns. Anne grins with relief and runs up, narrowly avoiding throwing her arms around her. Instead she draws herself up; professionalism is the best defense against her nerves.
“Why, Anne,” says Miss Owens, blinking mildly at her, “To what do I owe the pleasure?”
“I need to speak to you,” Anne says without preamble. “About something dreadfully important.”
Her eyes crease in concern. “Is this something to do with magic?”
“Yes. No. I don’t know, partially. I thought you might be able to–”
Miss Owens seems to sense her distress, because she nods solemnly and says, “Then we had best not talk about it here. Let’s go outside the station, yes?”
Outside, they lean up against the wall side by side, and Miss Owens asks, “Now what is it that brings you to ask my help?”
Anne takes a deep breath. “I cast a spell, one that I came up with myself, and it worked! Which was marvelous of course, but then I realized I quite forgotten to– to–”
“To include a way of ending it?” Miss Owens says gently.
“Yes! How did you–”
She laughs. “It is a common mistake. I have done the same many times, and I’m sure I can help you undo it. But there is something more, isn’t there?”
Nodding, Anne says, “The spell I made was for seeing visions. In some of the dreams I saw people… someone… that I knew, and I felt something very confusing. It was… I don’t know. Do you think it might have been an effect of the magic?”
Miss Owens is smiling now. “I doubt it’s anything so sinister. The spell ought to run out in its own time; if not, try burning what you used to cast it. And speaking of time–” she pulls out a slightly battered pocketwatch– “The one-thirty train should be here just now, and I’m expecting someone. You are as well, I am sure.”
She turns back to the entryway and says, “Shall we?”
Feeling dubious, Anne follows her back into the station, where the steam and clamor of the arriving train can be discerned over the heads of the people on the platform. She has come to think of Miss Owens as all-knowing, someone with an answer to any magical problem, and this was not the detailed help she was hoping for. Letting out a huff, she ducks out of the way of a woman’s swishing skirts and stumbles.
When she gets her footing again, she looks up to see someone stepping off the train, and is struck with the realization that she has seen this before. Deja vu is the French for it, she thinks. Now, freed from the blurry edges of a dream, she can see that before her is the most peculiar woman she’s ever laid eyes on.
She wears an elegantly cut suit of deep maroon, with tall black boots and a matching top hat. Gold earrings catch the light beside her short, dark curls, and her stride is long and languid as she approaches Miss Owens.
“Well met by daylight, miss,” she drawls, extending a gloved hand.
Miss Owens’ face lights up, and in an uncharacteristic display of emotion, she throws her arms around her. Anne recalls the silver bracelet she wears on her wrist.
“Olivia,” Miss Owens breathes when they draw apart, and kisses her cheek. She has to stand on tiptoe to do this; the top-hatted woman is quite a bit taller. “It’s been a long time.”
“Too long, Dee,” says Olivia. A smile spreads across her face like butter melting in a pan. “But I promised I would come, and voila! Here I am.”
Watching them, Anne is breathless and relieved all at once, feeling something unwind deep within her chest. It feels just the same as listening to Josephine Barry talk about her lifetime friend, just like laughing with Diana and Cole and knowing that they understand her completely.
“Here,” says Miss Owens, “Where are my manners? Olivia, this is my one-time student Anne Shirley-Cuthbert. Anne, this is my… dear friend, Olivia Wintersall.”
“Pleased to meet you, Miss Wintersall,” Anne says promptly.
“Likewise. Though it’s Captain, actually. I have packed away my uniform at present, but I have not resigned the Corps yet.”
Anne puts it together easily– her acquaintance with Miss Owens, the Corps, her smooth, articulate English accent.
“You’re in the British Magicians’ Corps! Oh, how incredible! I never met a fighting magician before– do they really allow women? What adventures you must have had!”
Captain Wintersall holds up a finger. “Ah, but you have met a fighting magician. Former, in any case. I do keep trying to convince her to come back.”
Miss Owens blushes.
Anne turns to her, eyes wide, but just then she feels a hand on her shoulder. She looks up to see Matthew smiling at her.
“There you are, Anne.” His voice is so low that she can barely hear him.
“Well, we won’t keep you,” says Miss Owens, taking Captain Wintersall’s arm. They walk together toward the exit, looking perfectly at ease with the whole world. Anne wishes she could feel so herself.
She and Matthew walk outside to where Jerry is waiting with the horse and cart, and he snaps the reins, beginning the journey back to Avonlea. She had hoped Miss Owens could give her answers, but now she only finds herself with more questions.
Word comes about Josephine Barry’s party, and Anne is nearly swept off her feet with excitement. A real grown-up party, a soiree, and she is invited! It is barely believable, and she thinks she should have expected it when Marilla refuses to let her attend.
“Too young!” she fumes to the fox in the woods, “I’m practically a woman! As if I couldn’t take care of myself– a woman and a witch to boot! I am perfectly capable, thank you very much!”
The fox twitches his ears in agreement, watching her solemnly.
“And why is it only girls who can never go about on their own? Completely unreasonable, and I– Diana, why are you staring?”
Diana is sitting next to her on the mossy fallen tree, looking a little unnerved. “You are talking to a fox,” she points out.
“He’s an excellent listener.”
“So am I,” says Diana, with a twist of something in her voice that Anne, for once, has trouble naming. “You can always talk to me, you know.”
“Oh, my dear Diana! I know I can,” Anne tells her warmly. “Here–” she gestures to the fox, who tilts his head and then leaps up to sit between them. Diana makes a strangled noise that suggests she would be shrieking if she weren’t so self-possessed, but when the fox only curls up beside her and rests his head on his paws, she gives it a tiny smile.
“Now I can complain to both of you. You must tell me everything that happens at the party– I’m sad to miss it, but I’m so pleased you can go–”
“Oh, but I can’t,” she cuts in. “Father is sick, and now we all have to miss it!”
“What?”
“I know! It’s so unfair. If only we had a boy to escort us, then we might…” Diana trails off. She strokes a gentle hand over the fox’s ruff, and there’s a silver spark in her eye that makes Anne grin.
“We may be able to go to the soiree after all, if you’ll help me, Anne,” she says.
It takes time to convince Cole, but once he agrees they are able to work rapidly. He takes time to make his decisions, but when he chooses to do something he invests his whole effort in it.
Anne puts time and thought into the letters she writes. She sits at the table and holds up the newly named Pen of Duplicity, turning it between her fingers.
“The words I create from your ink will be believed,” she says to it, staring hard. “You will help me reach my dearest wish.”
She feels a shiver go through her fingers, and then she lowers the Pen and begins to write.
When at last everyone’s family has been taken in and relented, they travel together in the carriage, watching snow fall lazily outside. Cole is silent and moody– he has been different since he broke his hand, less cheerful, more easily given to anger. His magic goes awry so often now, shaky as the strokes of his pencil. Anne knows he must be in the depths of despair, having lost his art and the control it gave him over his gift, but she wishes he would talk about it. In her experience, things are always simpler when said out loud.
Diana, Anne can tell, is over the moon with excitement, but she senses the mood and speaks softly. Her hands are folded neatly in her lap, but over the course of the ride she relaxes, stretching out and unwinding her scarf from about her neck. It’s warm and dark in the carriage, and Anne is nearly asleep against the wall by the time they pull up in front of Aunt Josephine’s grand house. The jolt of the horse stopping shakes her upright, and her elation immediately returns.
“Let’s go!”
She helps her friends down from the carriage, and together they go up to the door. The butler opens it right away; Aunt Josephine is standing in the hall.
Inside, she comments on the party preparations and every other lovely thing that catches her eye. “Thank you ever so much for letting us spend the night in your gorgeous home,” she says.
“Yes, it’s so kind, Aunt Josephine,” Diana adds. Great-aunt Josephine says not to mention it. Cole says nothing– he looks a little overwhelmed. Nevertheless, he follows them upstairs to see the rooms laid out: one for Cole, and one for Anne and Diana.
Later, Anne speaks to Aunt Josephine about the soiree– and then about other things. Love, Jane Eyre, Gertrude: they fill the ornate bedroom, and she breathes them in with the air. Whenever she talks with Josephine Barry, she catches glimpses of an entirely different life, one full of travel and adventure, sunsets abroad and at home, tears and laughter, the better class of novels, the most beautiful colors, and the most wonderful people. She never knew a life like that could exist in the real world.
“I’d be honored to read for the party,” she says.
The night goes by in a whirl. The guests stream in like so many rainbow-winged, shimmering birds, calling and chattering over one another. Everywhere she turns, she sees suits and scarves, skirts and top hats, short hair and long hair and flowers and feathers, all in the most remarkable combinations. There is more magic, too, than she’s ever seen in one room together. Not just the man pulling cards from the air, but real magic. A woman makes a neat quarter-turn, and her lavender dress becomes a lavender evening suit with delicate pinstripes. A boy takes his partner by the hand, and they float into the air as easily as two shining soap bubbles, their heads brushing the hanging flowers as they dance. Anne thinks she has never seen so many interesting people in all her life.
She dances with Josephine, and Diana, and several strangers until she is dizzy, and eats till she can eat no more. She spots Cole speaking to a pack of artists (they can’t be anything else) in the corner. When her feet get tired, she steps off the floor and watches Diana go starry-eyed over Cecile Chaminade, though Diana does seem pale and somewhat worn thin. She thinks that for a moment she spots Miss Owens, in a dress only slightly nicer than her workaday clothes, with her elegant friend the captain in a dashing black uniform, but they waltz away before she can be sure.
Anne never knew a party could be so wonderful and effortless; she feels buoyed, floating on tide of her own happiness and her friends’. She does not even notice how the flowers she brushes with her fingers perk up, their colors intensifying.
“Oh!” she says to no one in particular, “I wish I were old enough to try the champagne. It must taste just the way I feel right now.”
After she reads from Jane Eyre, she notices that Diana looks troubled.
Up in her room, she dances with Cole, twirling and falling over herself with laughter every time they switch leads.
“I’m going to be an artist again, Anne!” he says gaily. “Clay– it’ll work for me, I can feel it.”
His smile is huge and genuine for the first time in weeks. She grins just to see it. Cole the artist, Cole the magician, Cole her friend; it’s like meeting him all over.
She flops down on the bed, running a hand through her newly-light hair.
“Diana! Wasn’t it magnificent? And Cecile Chaminade, did she inspire you to play and play till your heart flew right to the stars?” She is hardly sure what she is saying, still full of the feeling of dancing.
Diana hugs her knees to her chest.
“Aunt Josephine kept her lifestyle a secret,” she says quietly. “My parents never knew. That– that must mean it’s wrong.”
As she talks, Anne feels something inside her squeeze awfully. But she’s my friend! A part of her thinks. How could she say such things about Josephine, about Gertrude, about– but she cannot finish the sentence.
It’s Cole who has the final word.
“Shouldn’t we be happy for her?”
There is something crackling in the air here, words that no one will speak aloud. His voice is strained with suppressed feeling; Diana’s eyes are wet. She really does seem ill.
“Please,” she whispers, “Let’s go to sleep.”
Anne smiles at Cole as best she can. He puts a hand on her shoulder and then leaves the room.
Diana turns over, pulling the covers up to her neck. Anne slides in next to her, tamping down a flutter of nerves. There is nothing to be afraid of in this bedroom, naturally.
Despite it all, happiness bubbles up inside her again, warm and glowing. She sees so many more possibilities than she did only yesterday. A bright young girl armed with her imagination, her books, and her Gift: what can she not do, if she sets her mind to it?
She does not dream.
Some time in the middle of the night, she wakes up. It could have been a rustle of sheets, a draft in the room, the sounds an old house at night; she cannot pinpoint the cause. But slowly, muzzily, her eyes drift open. The room is brighter than it should be, lit up in the washed-out monochrome of night.
She hears a creak, and looks up just in time to see the hem of Diana’s nightgown disappearing through the open window.
She’ll be cold out there, Anne thinks. Half-asleep, she pushes off the covers and slides out of bed, hissing as her feet touch the icy floor. She looks around, blinking– she meant to do something.
“Hm– yes,” she says, and drags a blanket off the bed, pulling it around herself. Diana will want it, out in the snow. She gets through the window with little trouble, and steps gingerly out onto the roof.
The shock of the cold slaps her in the face. She gasps, and the air burns in the back of her throat. More fully conscious, she remembers what cold can do to a person. Diana won’t just be chilly; she is in true peril. She looks around with a new urgency.
There, in the smooth layer of snow covering the roof, are footprints. They lead right up to the edge– and then stop.
Anne rushes forward, seized with fear. She looks over the lip of the roof, half-expecting to see–
But there is nothing, not even a girl-shaped hole in the snow. There is a blank stretch of moonlit white, and then the footprints pick up again, heading in a purposeful line toward the trees.
Anne shivers.
“I must find Diana,” she says to the empty air.
She scans the wall. No close-by balconies, no ladders, but– ah! At the far corner of the house is a trellis hidden in the shadows, reaching almost to the roof. She stumbles over to it, and pauses. The ground suddenly appears much farther away.
I am a brave mountain climber descending a cliff, she tells herself. Somehow, it lacks the romance of being a princess or chivalrous knight. She seems to recall that mountain climbers frequently fall to their deaths.
Nevertheless, she knots the blanket about her shoulders, gets down on her stomach, and slides over the edge of the roof.
For a terrifying moment her legs dangle in the air. Then her toes find the trellis, and she begins to climb down.
The wooden slats are holding up a climbing rose, brown and leafless for the winter. Anne tries not to step on it, but ends up breaking a few twisted, thorny branches despite her best efforts.
“Sorry,” she whispers.
Though the trellis creaks ominously, it does not fall, and for the first time in her life Anne thanks the Lord that she is all skin and bones. One step after another, she descends. Her arms arms are beginning to ache from the effort of clinging on. Then she yelps as her foot jars against the ground.
She exhales shakily.
There are Diana’s tracks leading to the woods, just a few yards away. She balls her stinging hands into fists and sets off running.
Luckily, the moon is full tonight; the footprints are easy to follow, and her way is brightly illuminated. The slender trees around her have a faint shine on their bark.
“Diana!” she shouts, “Diana, where are you?” Her voice is small and ragged in the silence.
She comes to a break in the trees, and stumbles into a small, snowed-over meadow, the sort of place children might play in summer. Dead grass pokes up in patches. The moon shines directly overhead, surrounded by lacy scatterings of stars. And there, in the middle of the field, is Diana.
Anne cries out with relief and rushes forward, but stops before she can reach her.
Diana stands in her nightgown, hands turned upwards, looking up into the sky. Her dark hair drifts about her face, suspended in slow waves as if she were underwater. Every line of her body is crisply sketched, surrounded by a silver glow that shimmers on her eyelashes, the edges of her fingernails, the curves of her cheeks. It is impossible to tell whether the light comes from above or, in some way, from inside her. Her toes don’t quite touch the ground.
Anne knows by now what magic looks like, and Diana crackles with it.
Then Diana lets out a soft breath. It turns to frost in the air; she collapses into the snow.
This has crossed into manageable territory. She runs up and throws the blanket round her friend, hoisting her to her feet.
Diana groans. Even though she in unconscious in a forest in the wintertime, she looks to be in good health now, almost radiantly so. Her eyes flutter open, and Anne could swear there are whorls of moonlight still caught in them.
“Anne… but what are you–”
“Diana,” Anne says in a tone of delight, “Are you a witch?”
“What? No!” She looks more alert now. “I am not, I’ve never done, it’s only–” she struggles to stand on her own– “No. I’m no magician.”
“But that was magic! I could feel it!”
Diana bites her lip and screws up her face, as she does when she feels guilty about something.
“I meant to tell you before. Honest, I did, but I never knew how. It was magic,” she says, nearly whispering, “But not mine. You’ve seen now, and you are my dearest friend, so– you ought to know why.”
Anne squashes the flutter in her chest and makes a solemn face to listen, then realizes she cannot feel her feet. She mutters a few clumsy, memorized Latin phrases, and blows into her cupped hands. A flickering yellow light dances across her palms. It is dim, but lets off all the heat of a campfire.
“There,” she says, pleased. “Do go on.”
Diana leans into the warmth.
“When I was born,” she begins, “I was very sick. My parents called for every doctor on the island, and then three from the mainland, but it did no good. I just got worse and worse. Mother and Father thought I would die.”
She pauses and looks down at her hands.
“And then one day the schoolteacher– he was a young man boarding at our house, you see– he said he could help. That he was a magician. But I’ve heard my parents talking, and they say he couldn’t have been a proper magician, a modern one, you see, because what he did next was so– so dreadfully pagan.”
Despite herself, Anne is immensely interested. “A pagan magician? What did he do?”
“He– he made a bargain for my life with the moon . I don’t know how– Mother only ever told me the once, and the way she explained it all was terribly confusing. But he took me outside one night, when the moon was full, and when he brought me back in the house, I was as healthy as any baby that ever lived. It was incredible. Father cried, he was so grateful. But then the teacher said that because the moon had saved my life, I belonged to it.”
“To the moon? But how–”
“Yes– oh, don’t interrupt! I have never said this to anyone else before, it’s difficult enough without your interrupting.”
Anne closes her mouth and listens with wide eyes.
“He told my parents that I was no longer bound to obey them, since I didn’t belong to them, that I could never marry, since then I would belong to my husband, and that once a month, on every full moon, I would have to… renew the contract.”
She gestures around her.
“They were quite angry about that– they said he must be lying, and after they had thanked him he was told to move out. They didn’t want to believe it. But the next month, they found me outside on the lawn. And the next. They tried to lock me in my room one time, all the doors and windows, and I fell so sick I nearly died for good, until they carried me out onto the porch. So the third rule, at least, is true.
“Oh, Anne!” she bursts out. “I’m sorry I was so awful tonight! I saw how upset you were, and Cole, even though you both tried to hide it. I know it was cruel, those things I said, but I was so scared! I’ve tried so hard to be good and obedient, because it would break my family’s hearts if the moon’s curse came true all the way. Mother has her heart set on my being settled with a nice man. But when I heard Cecile Chaminade talk about her life, and when I realized about– about Aunt Josephine and Aunt Gertrude, I thought, just for a second, I thought– why must it be a curse? And I saw, the world was so much bigger than I had realized before, and I thought I might be– but I could never– it was so– so–”
Diana is crying now, gasping for breath. Big tears slide down her face and the side of her nose, leaving silver traces; not in a poetic sense, either. They glow with faint, unearthly light.
Anne lets go of her spell and hugs her, trying to gather her up in her arms as Matthew does when she is disconsolate.
“I’m not brave like you,” Diana sobs into her neck. “But I didn’t mean a word. I understand if you can’t forgive it.”
Putting a hand against her hair, Anne breathes in the smells of wool, winter leaves, Diana’s lavender soap, and something entirely else, which she fancies might be the scent of moonlight.
She pulls back and puts her hands on Diana’s shoulders. Looking into her eyes, she imagines for a moment what it might be like to kiss her.
“Of course I forgive you,” she says, for once leaving off the beautiful words. “How could I do anything else?”
Diana smiles tearfully.
“I want to ask you, though– on full moon nights, is it frightening? I should hate for you to spend so much of your life afraid.”
“It isn’t very,” she says. “It feels like sleepwalking; I don’t remember a thing, until I wake up outside somewhere. I only wish–” she falters– “I only wish that someone would stay with me, once in a while. Mother and Father only want to give me my privacy, but– well. Sometimes I feel that they’re ashamed, or, or afraid of me. And it can be so chilling to wake up alone.”
She wipes her eyes.
“Well, you live right across from Green Gables. I’ll come every full moon, regular as clockwork, to keep you company throughout the long night. Mrs. Barry can stuff it,” Anne declares.
Diana giggles just a little. “Thank you. Thank you ever so much,” she says. “Let’s go back now; it is freezing out here.”
Under the night sky, she takes Anne’s arm, and they turn back toward the house.