There was no time for doubt. Simon followed.
They passed the half-open door to the laboratory. If the wet, raspy snores from inside were any indication, Dr. Hawking was passed out drunk at his desk. A sharp twinge of pain lanced through Simon’s chest. He ignored it and kept walking, down the stairs and out through the front door. Cool air washed over him as the tiny imp led him through the overgrown garden.
Near the edge of the cliff, illuminated by moonlight, stood a slender figure in a patched, shabby cloak. The fuzzy orange imp flitted over, perched on the figure’s shoulder, and folded its wings.
A slim hand reached up and pulled down the hood, revealing a gaunt face and masses of dirty, feather-decorated braids—the newspaper seller. Simon’s jaw dropped. “You.”
The imp on her shoulder nuzzled her cheek. She scratched under its chin with one finger, and its eyes slitted with pleasure. “Huzzuh.”
“Thank you, Garzi. You may return now.”
The imp vanished in a puff of smoke.
“Who are you?” Simon asked.
She smiled. Her face rippled, warped, and shimmered. Her wild hair tamed itself into straight, jaw-length, graying blond locks. Her rheumy, gray-yellow eyes turned clear and green. Her gaunt cheeks filled out, growing smooth and firm. “Much better,” said a familiar voice.
It was his mother.
Chapter Eighteen
Simon’s mouth opened, but no sound emerged.
“It’s been a while, hasn’t it?” She stepped forward and embraced him. “I’ve missed you.”
She smelled the way she always had—like arcane powders and herbs. Floral and faintly bitter.
He wanted to hug her back, but he was frozen, arms limp at his sides. A part of him was afraid to accept the reality in front of him, afraid that it was some trick, some illusion or drug-addled hallucination. Still, her scent triggered a rush of memory so powerful, it was like being struck by lightning, and all at once he was a child again. A lump rose into his throat. “You came back,” he whispered.
“I never really left you. I just had to . . . go undercover for a while. To take care of some business.”
“Mother . . .” His voice cracked. “Where were you?”
“That’s a rather long story.” She stepped back and gave him a small, strange smile—half wry humor, half pain. “I think we have a great deal to talk about.”
This was real. After four years, his mother was here, in front of him. Questions swarmed his brain. “Why didn’t you ever contact me?”
Her smile faded. “I’m sorry, Simon. I wanted to. But I had to wait for the right moment.”
“You could have at least let me know you were alive.”
She shook her head. “If I’d contacted you in any way, you would have tried to find me. And that might have led the Foundation to me. They watched you carefully, you know. I couldn’t take that chance. You’ll understand everything once I explain, but for now, you must come with me. Quickly, before your father discovers my presence. Believe me, he won’t be happy to see me.”
Simon hesitated. “Father . . .” His voice shook. “I . . . he told me . . .”
“Olivia is alive, Simon.”
He drew in his breath sharply.
It was what he had always hoped for, in his secret heart, yet never dared to believe. His mother had erased his mistake. She had brought Olivia back. “Is she . . .” His voice caught. “Is she . . . the same?”
A brief pause. “Some of her memories haven’t returned yet. She may not recognize you at first. But she is Olivia. Come with me, and I’ll show you.” Veera pulled a slender silver dagger from beneath her cloak and stuck it into the air. The tip of the dagger disappeared, and she drew it downward, leaving a luminous green line. She sheathed her dagger, then pushed her fingers into the green slit and pulled it open like a curtain. Beyond, he glimpsed another place. Jade sky, black rocks.
She stretched out a hand. “Hurry.”
He took her hand, and she pulled him through.
The portal sealed itself shut behind them. They stood on dark stone under an alien sky swirled with purple clouds. A sickle-shaped moon hung low in the sky . . . except it wasn’t a moon. A bulging yellow eye stared down from its cratered surface. It blinked once. Simon stared. “Mother . . . why does the moon have an eye?”
“Why shouldn’t it?”
“Is it . . . alive?”
“Probably. In the Eldritch, the line between animate and inanimate is a little more blurry.”
Rock formations towered here and there, forming grotesque, treelike shapes; contorted protrusions, somewhere between branches and tentacles, reached for the sky, and formations resembling half-melted faces peered out from the rock. Simon wasn’t sure, but he thought he saw them moving, very slowly, from the corner of his eye; when he looked at them straight on, however, they remained frozen. A huge, black, eyeless bird with a serpent’s tail flew down from the sky and landed on one of the rock formations. It let out a rusty shriek, then lifted one scaly yellow leg and deposited a dropping on the branch.
Simon didn’t need to ask where they were. He’d seen the ink drawings in books. The Eldritch Realm, home to demons, imps, and other unearthly beings. Few humans ever had a chance to see it. He’d always assumed the illustrations were exaggerated or stylized in some way, but no—it looked more or less exactly like those black-and-white drawings, everything spiky and warped. It was a world scrawled by the hand of a drunken madman.
Roses grew in clusters near his feet, splotches of brilliant bloodred against the black ground. They swayed lightly back and forth, their leaves twisting in the still, windless air. When he leaned down closer, he saw that their leaves were not leaves, but wriggling green tentacles.
“Hurry.” His mother turned and strode forward. “This way.”
Simon jogged to keep up. New, bizarre sights tugged at his attention with every step: there was a stream filled with bubbling, steaming purple liquid, and there was a carriage-sized nest perched atop a rock formation, filled with iridescent rainbow eggs. More tentacle-roses grew here and there, some of them sprouting from the sides of outcrops. In the hazy distance, a herd of unfathomably huge, stilt-legged creatures grazed. It was difficult to tell, from so many miles away, but he thought they must be taller than the tallest buildings in Eidendel. Watching them was like watching a living city.
He struggled to pull his gaze away, to the back of Veera’s head. Her graying blond hair shone like platinum in the otherworldly light. “How is it that I never recognized you?” he asked, breathless. “Even if your appearance was different, I should have felt your meta.”
“This.” She tugged at her cloak. “It’s specially crafted to mask my energy’s signature, which is how I’ve been able to go undetected for so long. Disguising myself as a worshipper of Azathoth seemed only natural. They’re a fringe cult, so the Foundation doesn’t take them very seriously. Most of the time.”
Far away, one of the building-sized creatures lowed. The sound echoed, clear and bell-like.
It was all so much; he couldn’t take it in. But one thought swam to the top of his mind. Alice. How could he have forgotten about her, even for a moment? “Alice needs help,” he blurted out.
Veera stopped, so suddenly that he nearly ran into her. “Alice,” she repeated.
“She’s my friend,” Simon said. “She was taken by the Foundation. She may be in danger—”
“Shh.” Veera tilted her head, then dragged him to the side, behind one of the massive rock formations. “Something is coming.”
“A demon?”
“Shh.”
Simon pressed his back against the cold rock. A low rumble emanated from nearby, and the ground vibrated beneath his feet. He peeked around the rock. A huge shape lumbered past—smaller than the stilt-legged beasts, but still larger than a house, covered with wrinkled, leathery gray skin and possessing more than a dozen stumpy legs, its face covered with a multitude of eyes, all colors and sizes. A flat,
forked tongue flicked out from a hole in the center of its face, tasting the air, but it didn’t seem to notice them. It kept going. An eyeless black bird swooped down from the sky, and the gray beast’s tongue darted out and snatched it from the air, retracting into its mouth before its prey had so much as a chance to squawk. Bones crunched between boulder-sized molars. Gulp.
Simon squeezed his eyes shut. He listened, holding his breath, as the heavy footsteps receded into silence.
“Mother?”
“It’s safe now.” She released his arm and kept walking.
“Listen. Alice is—”
“We’ll talk once we get home. We need to remain alert.”
He followed, his eyes darting back and forth. “Those things . . . do they eat people?”
“Only the unwary ones. Ah, here we are.” She approached one of the larger rock formations; it was vaguely treelike, and almost as large as Blackthorn.
In a flash, Simon remembered the tree he’d glimpsed during his vision, when he was calling out to his mother. This was it. Except it wasn’t a tree—it was a sort of natural stone castle. Countless tiny, irregularly shaped windows dotted its surface. They glowed with soft greenish light. When he looked closer, he saw a door set into the stone of the base. His mother opened the door and stepped through it. “My home.”
“Did you make this place?”
“I discovered it, abandoned, and modified it to my own purposes. I don’t know who made it. A demon, probably. They do build things, as it turns out. There are no cities in the Eldritch—demons don’t like to cram themselves together, as humans do—but there are structures, here and there.”
He followed her inside, looking around at the vast, cave-like entrance hall, the walls lined by rows of lamps. Their glow bathed everything in an eerie greenish tinge.
Veera strode forward. Simon had to nearly jog to keep up. “You’ve been here the entire time? Ever since you left?”
“It’s an ideal place for me to conduct my research in peace.”
He caught her arm. “If we’re safe here, then please . . . listen. Alice is in trouble.”
“As you mentioned.” Veera’s calm, inscrutable smile flickered briefly, then returned. “We’ll talk about that, I promise you. But there is so much to talk about. I’ll make some tea.”
“There’s no time—”
“Simon.” She took his hands in hers. “Relax. Everything will be fine.”
His chest tightened with frustration.
Ahead, Simon heard claws clicking on the stone floor. A small, furry form with pointed ears appeared out of the shadows and strode toward them. It was catlike, with silvery-lavender fur, small, curved horns, and two pairs of crimson eyes. A long, scaly tail swayed behind it.
The creature rubbed up against Veera’s legs and let out a rumbling purr. She scooped it into her arms, and it curled up, eyes slitted with contentment. Hesitantly, Simon reached out to pet it. The beast pinned back its ears and hissed at him; he yanked his arm back.
“Careful,” Veera said. “Penelope doesn’t trust strangers.”
He studied the horns and bloodred eyes, and remembered the dead mouse floating in the jar. “She’s one of your experiments.”
“The first successful one.” Veera kept walking, cradling the demon cat to her chest. “All I needed was more time. But your father did everything in his power to hold me back.” Bitterness tinged her voice.
They came to another doorway, leading into a dining room with a huge, carved stone table in the center. Candles flickered, wax melting down their sides and forming amorphous shapes on the tabletop. At the head of the table was a towering, throne-like chair, and in it sat a girl of about twelve or thirteen.
Simon’s breath caught.
Veera placed a hand on his shoulder. “Olivia,” she said. “This is Simon, the one I told you about. He’s your brother.”
Olivia stood slowly. She was barefoot, clad in a simple white slip. Her skin gleamed like moonlight on bone.
He tried to speak, but the words hit a wall in his throat.
She stared back placidly with all-black eyes. No whites, no irises. Her long, silver hair shimmered with its own unearthly light. She reached up to tuck a lock behind her ear, which resembled a fish’s fin.
Finally, he managed to force out a faint whisper. “Olivia?”
Olivia hung back, eyeing him warily, like a wild animal watching from the bush.
He took a slow, unsteady breath. “Do you recognize me?”
She blinked a few times—a moist sound. Her eyes flickered, growing momentarily filmy white, and he realized that she had a second set of eyelids—a nictitating membrane, like a bird’s. Her pale gray lips parted briefly then pressed together. “I’m sorry. I don’t remember anything about my old life. Mother keeps saying it will come back to me, but . . .” She gave a little one-shouldered shrug, an achingly familiar gesture.
It was Olivia’s voice. But . . . wrong. Detached, as though she were half asleep or drugged.
“You know me,” he said, desperation creeping into his tone. “Maybe you’ve forgotten. But deep down, you know who I am. We’re twins.” He spoke the words like a magic spell, as if speaking them could make them true.
She stared back with her inscrutable black orbs. They may as well have been glass. He reached out to her, and she flinched back.
Something inside him died.
Olivia turned away. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t force it,” Veera said. She stroked Olivia’s hair, as though she too were a cat, and Olivia leaned into the caress. Her eyes flicked toward Simon, then away. She pressed a knuckle to her lips.
Simon told himself to be patient. He was a stranger to her; she just needed time to get used to him. That was all. Still, a voice whispered from the marrow of his bones, a voice that sounded like his father’s: This isn’t Olivia.
Olivia had been sharp and bright, like flame. She had laughed and smiled as easily as she breathed, had reached out a welcoming hand to every stranger. This Olivia had shades of her, but she seemed distant, unreachable as the moon. Or was it his own memory that was faulty?
Veera touched Olivia’s pale arm. “Will you give me and Simon a moment of privacy? Here. Take Penelope with you.” She placed the demon cat in Olivia’s arms, and Penelope immediately snuggled into her embrace, purring.
Olivia ran her fingers through the beast’s sleek lavender fur and walked toward the door. She cast one last, furtive glance over her shoulder at Simon, then disappeared.
It wasn’t his imagination, he thought. She was different. Her essence—the thing that made her Olivia—was gone.
No . . . not gone exactly. Changed. Like hot-burning coal crushed into a tiny, cold, glittering diamond. He felt it, on a visceral level. He had known Olivia since before he was a person. Their cells had mingled together in the womb; they had been part of the same whole, and when she’d died, Simon had been cut in half. He would recognize her even if she wore a different face and body altogether.
That wasn’t his sister.
Yet Veera seemed to accept her completely.
“Sit down,” Veera said. She lowered herself into the throne-like chair, picked up a bronze teapot, and poured its dark, fragrant contents into a cup. “Have some. It’s brewed from Eldritch plants. My own recipe.”
He remained standing. “No, thank you.”
She stared at him for a few seconds then sighed. “You’re angry. I suppose that’s understandable.”
Angry wasn’t the word. He felt empty and dull inside. So many times, he’d imagined a reunion with Olivia and his mother. And here he was . . . yet it was all wrong. Veera acted as though she’d simply taken a short vacation, a little jaunt to the Eldritch Realm, instead of abandoning Simon for years while he drowned in grief. “You left me,” he said. “You left us.”
“I had no choice,” she said, a hint of gentle impatience in her tone, as though speaking to a stubborn child. She lifted the teacup to her lips. A silver r
ing resembling a tiny snake curled around one finger. “I realize you’ve suffered. And I’m sorry. I truly am. But what I’m doing here is very important.”
“More important than our family?”
“Family is why I came here. Your sister—your previously dead sister, need I remind you—is alive and well. She might be a little skittish around strangers, but, well . . . we’ve had to be very careful, and I’m afraid some of my paranoia might have rubbed off on her.” Veera steepled her long, pale fingers. “You must have so many questions. Ask.”
He knew he ought to be brimming with curiosity, but it was hard to think past the cacophony of competing emotions inside him. Finally, he managed a single word: “How?”
“Ah. How did I bring her back?” Her smile widened. She always lit up when she talked about her research. “Well, I’d learned from my earlier failures. Injecting demon cells wasn’t enough. I needed something more potent.” She removed an object from her pocket—a tiny glass vial. Inside it was a slimy grayish lump, no larger than a coin. “This.”
Simon had no idea what he was looking at. “What is that?”
“It is a mass of cells with infinite regenerative capacity,” she said, “obtained at great personal risk. It’s unlikely that I’ll ever be able to get more.” She tilted the vial back and forth. “I stole it from the Queen herself. If I told you exactly what it was, you probably wouldn’t believe me.”
“I’ve seen a lot of things that aren’t supposed to exist. Try me.”
She hesitated . . . then shook her head and tucked the vial away. “It’s safer if you don’t know.”
“Safer for who? You or me?”
“Both of us. Regardless, this substance is the key. But even with it, I knew I needed a catalyst, of sorts. And I began thinking about Gaokerena trees. There are so many myths around them, so many stories about rebirth and healing. I’m sure you’ve heard the old tale of the sage whose daughter dies of sickness.”
“He buries her beneath the tree, and the next morning, she’s alive.”
“Just so. Of course, in reality it’s not so simple, but I thought . . . what if those stories weren’t just stories? What if those trees really do have some power?”
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