“Halcy!” I stared wildly back at her. Now Miss Grange appeared to me gripped in the same strange madness—some gray dream of truth—as the widow in the attic of her own ghost story. I made to drop my hand from her grip, but she held fast.

“She drowned because this tale was never told. So the old story of Grange House has repeated once again!” She squeezed my hand. “Can’t you see, Maisie? It must be stopped! Someone must write the next story to replace the old—and I cannot, though I have tried. So”—she paused and smiled—“I pass it on.”

“Pass it on?” I repeated, sick and afraid.

She regarded me, and several answers seemed to flit across her lips. “To you. To write it,” she said at last. “I have chosen you, Maisie Thomas.” She smiled at me. “All these years, I have watched you grow proud and lovely, stretching your arms out to the world. You are the one to do it.”

I stared at her, transfixed.

At last, she let go my hand. “I am not well. You have seen it yourself. I do not need to tell you.” Then she brought her fingers gently beneath my chin and tipped my face up to look into her eyes.

“Now, what else do you see there?”

I looked. Miss Grange’s face bent to mine like a tending star. But what I saw there, I could not say. Her eyes held mine for a moment before I searched for answers along the ridges and hollows of her face itself. I was acutely aware of her slow breathing, and of the small throbbing at her temple. Her fingers held my chin firmly, and as I did not know what I should be seeing, I felt only that she was too close to me, that her face might lean down farther and blot mine out.

I blinked. “Your face, Miss Grange.”

She dropped her hand from my chin and stepped backward. Light reasserted itself between our figures.

“If you wish to see past yourself, you must learn to see the world through the veil, Maisie Thomas; you must learn to see the blots through the obscuring patterns of perfection.”

I stared back at her. My own words in her mouth now seemed twisted and malformed. “Miss Grange—” I began, careful not to seem too hasty.

“I am asking for your help, Maisie,” she broke in calmly.

A guilty flush stole up my throat. “My help?”

“Yes, I brought you to this spot,” she said quietly, “so you might see it—and so begin.”

“But—this is a grave, Miss Grange.” I was close to tears. “What is there to begin?”

“The story,” she repeated as if I were simple. “The story of this grave.” Then she turned to catch up her mushroom basket. Through the open top, the pile of white and fleshy masses attached to their thick stems seemed like hands.