Reverie

by Ryan La Sala

  Kane stayed silent as Ursula endured the barrage of people congratulating her, blessing her, and asking about her wedding dress.

  “Where did you get it?”

  “France,” she’d say.

  “Oh! Tell me about the material!”

  “It’s white,” she’d say.

  Kane’s mind drifted from the reverie, wondering where Sophia had run to. Maybe she was at home. Maybe she was at the police station right now.

  The sun set and the garden shifted to hues of pink and orange, a cue that caused the guests to drift up the wide patio steps toward the château. Ursula remained lost in thought until suddenly she clapped her hands and yelled, “I’ve got it!”

  People turned on the steps. She rushed Kane onto the patio and into an isolated alcove behind two hydrangea.

  “This is all so familiar, and I couldn’t figure out why until just now. The wedding, the garden, the Beazley family. It’s all from The Devil in the Lily! It was a big romance novel last year. Like, huge. They’re making a movie.”

  Kane shrugged.

  “Okay, well the details don’t matter, but basically the book focuses on a rivalry between the main character—who I guess is Helena—and her competitor, the wicked Katherine Duval. They’re after the same guy, this hot industrialist prodigy, Johan Belanger, who totally despises Katherine but has no choice but to marry her because of her family’s investment in his business, and—what?”

  Kane didn’t realize he was making a face.

  “Listen, don’t judge me. It’s a good book, okay? I know you don’t read romance so I’ll just tell you how it ends: Katherine is totally insane. She’s like…the devil, I guess? It’s a metaphor. I don’t know. But this gives us everything we need to know about this reverie! Don’t you see that? All we need to do is make sure we re-create the resolution in the book. Oh, it’s so easy!”

  Ursula was thoroughly convinced, and there was little Kane could do to counter any of this. She knew this story, and she knew this world. Still, Kane couldn’t quite reconcile the reverie’s plot with the Helena Quigley he had imagined. But, then again, he didn’t know the woman at all, and it wasn’t his place to speculate what worlds she harbored in her mind.

  Ursula peered through the hydrangea.

  “Okay, listen to me Kane. The climax of The Devil in the Lily happens the night of Augustine’s wedding. My wedding, that’s happening right now. If I’m right, Katherine is going to try to stop Helena and Johan from eloping, and Helena is going to shoot her. That happens during the fireworks in the book. My husband told me those are at midnight. That means we need to find Katherine and make sure she discovers Helena’s plan, but not too soon. Only soon enough to get murdered. Oh, it’s so good! I love this.”

  Ursula looked truly enthralled to be acting out this book, but Kane couldn’t shake a churning uncertainty that something was off. Nothing was ever this easy for him.

  “I’m not Elliot, but here’s the plan.” Ursula sat Kane down. “Stay here. You’re Cousin Willard, a side character who tried to run away at the start of the book but got caught and dragged back, then put in some sort of institution. He doesn’t talk and barely listens. Basically a warning of what happens to those that defy societal expectations, like Helena and Johan will by eloping. The point is that this is a Beazley family affair, and you should stay out of it, okay? Let me and the Others handles this. Just chill until we can get Helena and Johan to elope, and then we’ll come find you once the reverie is ready to be unraveled. Okay? Okay.”

  Wait! Kane mouthed.

  “What?”

  Don’t leave me.

  Ursula took his hands.

  “Don’t worry, I’ll take care of everything. You have nothing to worry about, okay? Just get ready for the unraveling, and promise me you’ll stay here.”

  “I—”

  “Don’t say it. Just do it.”

  She hustled into the crowd, leaving Kane to wait with his fear.

  And wait he did. Just not there. Whether it was his usual anxiety or a sharper instinct, Kane found himself edging the patio, watching the faces in the crowd. He wondered who they were. Were they completely made up by the reverie, or were the faces memories of people Helena knew? Perhaps her mind had gathered all the ghosts of her past to inhabit her imagined world, to witness her triumph over her rival, to respect Helena here in ways they’d failed her in her actual life.

  It didn’t feel right.

  Guests pressed into couples beneath archways festooned with vines and glittering berries. Kane slipped into the ballroom, gasping at the towering pillars, glowing chandeliers, and a skylight striped with sunset. He found himself at a table heavy with fruits and pastries, where he saw the strangest thing. Topping off the lavish display was a birdcage, which was odd, but the birds within it were even odder; they were assembled from delicate feathers of porcelain, with chrome beaks and unseeing eyes made of ball bearings. Little, ornate machines.

  Then they blinked. Were they windup? Clockwork? Kane leaned close and they ruffled their feathers. It was oddly organic. Then something past the birdcage snagged Kane’s eye.

  It’s him!

  Kane rushed around the table, pushing through guests until he reached the dancing couple he’d spotted. He clapped a hand on the man’s shoulder and spun him around.

  Kane looked into the sea-foam eyes of Dean Flores. Recognition, then dread, masked Dean’s face.

  “Cousin Willard,” Dean said, as lucid as Ursula.

  Then the person Dean had been dancing with pushed the two boys apart.

  “What in the heavens is going on?” she said, looking over Kane with unmitigated disgust. “What gives you the right?”

  Kane saw her eyes, and his heart cracked clean in half. He couldn’t answer even if he wanted to, for the person berating him in the middle of the reverie’s ballroom was none other than his own sister.

  Sophia was here. She had followed them in.

  Sophia was in the reverie.

  • Seventeen •

  THE NEST

  “No.”

  Kane choked the words out, the pain only a fraction of the horror he felt seeing his own sister adorned in the reverie’s splendor. And the way she looked at him, without a hint of familiarity; she wasn’t lucid in the least. She had no idea who he was. She had no idea who she was.

  She belonged to this world now. She belonged to Helena.

  And, by the easiness of the embrace Kane had torn apart, a moment ago she had belonged with Dean. They were together.

  Dean shuffled them all into a dark hallway. He whispered a few placating words to Sophia before taking Kane aside.

  “It’s not what it looks like,” he said. “I recognized her as your sister. I was keeping her safe.”

  “She shouldn’t even be here, and how did you get…”

  Kane had so many questions, about Dean being here, about Sophia and Elliot and Adeline and how they were all going to survive this, but before he could say another word his throat hissed shut. The sconces lining the hall flickered; a threat. Stale oxygen roiled in Kane’s chest, spinning him around until he fell into Dean. Slowly his throat reopened. He exhaled unsteadily, just a few deep blue breaths, and let Dean comfort him.

  “What’s wrong?” Dean’s hands fell over Kane, strong and knowing as they grazed Kane’s ribs, his neck. “Can you speak? Why aren’t you speaking?”

  “Don’t you know?” Sophia joined them. “This is the infamous Willard Beazley. He’s…well…” she gave Dean a wide-eyed warning, hinting at some great scandal.

  Dean’s hands tucked into his coat as Kane stood himself up. Sophia talked about Kane like he was one of the paintings on the wall.

  “You shouldn’t bother with Willard Beazley. He’s Eva Beazley’s oldest, the one who left. He hasn’t been the same since he got back from his holiday.” S
he raised her eyebrows for holiday, implying it had not been a nice one. “Doesn’t talk to anyone anymore. The poor thing.” She looked at Kane and enunciated her words loudly. “I Am Sorry For Yelling At You, Willard. You Just Surprised Me.”

  Kane still couldn’t reconcile seeing his sister here, like this. Her curls were woven with downy blossoms, and she wore a golden gown that matched the vest beneath Dean’s coat. He gathered they were a young couple. Guests at the wedding and not main characters.

  Good.

  Still, Kane felt a subtle shift ripple through the fabric of this world. It was watching them.

  He took Sophia’s hand and pulled her away from the ballroom, farther down the hall. She let him.

  “It’s okay!” She flapped her hands at Dean. “He’s harmless, dear! Where are we going, Willard? What do you wish to show us?” Then to Dean: “This is perfect. An opportunity to see what the Beazleys hide in all these rooms. No one can get mad at us if we’re just taking care of Willard.”

  Kane lead the trio through the cavernous house, looking for an exit. The escape took them through room after room full of indigo shadows and chocked with furniture, but never back outside, as though the house knew better then to let them go. They kept ending up in the massive library, instead. While Sophia poked through books, Dean took Kane to an alcove to talk.

  “We must go back. There is no outrunning a reverie. You’ll have to unravel it when it is ready. When you are ready.”

  Kane felt many things. Mostly fear, but also captivation. Dean was the prettiest boy he had ever seen up close. Kane bit down on the surge of electricity that came with Dean’s breath on his lips, his chin. An accent rounded his words, and it was powerful in a way Kane didn’t know he was powerless against. Kane turned away. Still, they stood too close in the narrow alcove. Kane didn’t know if they were enemies or friends. For now, they were simply close.

  “You’re more powerful than you know. Than the Others are telling you,” said Dean. He fit to the curve of Kane’s back, and his knuckle brushed Kane’s temple where the burns began. “Never expect a world designed for someone else to show you mercy. When it’s your turn, you cannot flinch.”

  Somewhere nearby came a click, then a yelp from Sophia. They found her at the back-most bookcase, halfway through a previously hidden passage in the wall.

  “I knew it!” she whispered, pulling them in. “The Beazleys are known for two things: their sudden wealth and the secrecy it demands. I believe I just found our way toward an explanation for both.”

  Kane again felt that bristling dread, that subtle shift among the threads of the reverie. They had been led here for a reason. This reason. But were they abiding by the plot, or defying it? Was this part of Ursula’s book, or an embellishment born of Helena’s mind? As they entered a passage of velvet blackness he found the whistle in his pocket. He should have blown it when he had the chance, but now their sneaking demanded utter silence.

  They crept down a spiraling staircase lined in spitting gaslights. When Kane stumbled, Dean caught his wrist. They held hands the rest of the way, until they entered a room that must have been deep beneath the estate.

  It was a laboratory of umber wood and frosted glass. A wide desk stood in the corner, covered in brass contraptions and beakers of smoky liquid. It sat beneath an even bigger mirror. In all the cases, glittering like trapped starlight, were eggs. Hundreds of bejeweled eggs.

  It was, and was not, a version of the living room Kane had seen in the videos of Maxine Osman. Kane doubted that steampunk technology or precious eggs were written into The Devil in the Lily. Whatever world they explored, it was not the predictable book Ursula believed she was acting out. She couldn’t know all its secrets.

  Sophia’s eyes glistened as she surveyed the collection. “I knew it. I knew it. The Beazleys make their money in the trade of precious stones and metals, but no one can figure out their source. Mines, my father says. Or pirates. But this proves my theory! The Beazleys don’t mine their precious stones. They breed them. You saw those splendid creatures in the garden, didn’t you? The fish and the peacocks and that gargantuan turtle crusted in jade? Like everyone, I figured they’d simply been ornamented for the wedding, but no. Those creatures were hatched that way.”

  Kane remembered the delicate, enamel birds he’d seen upstairs. He remembered Helena, as an old woman, telling the interviewer about the ornamental egg collection that she and Maxine shared. We talk about what would hatch from them. This, then, was their game made real. A vein of fantasy stitched through the Victorian elegance of Helena’s reverie.

  Kane needed to get back to Ursula. He hovered by Sophia, unsure of how to dislodge her from her snooping. She was peering into an open case at an egg of exquisite rose gold. Ribbons of green enamel folded over the curved bottom, like new leaves, each dotted with pearls and diamonds so that the egg seemed to shiver with fresh dew.

  When Sophia reached in to touch it, Dean grabbed her hand away. His eyes were distant.

  “We shouldn’t be here.”

  “This laboratory shouldn’t be here, either, yet it is,” said Sophia. “And besides, Willard led us here. On accident. Right, Willard?”

  Kane resented being used as a prop, but to show it would defy Sophia’s understanding of him. In both the reverie and reality, actually. He tried to catch Dean’s eye, but the boy was looking at the stairs. Nervous, Kane rolled the whistle in his palms.

  “Someone’s coming!” Dean said. There was a commotion as the three tried to hide, all of them crushing into the space under the desk.

  Nothing happened, and it seemed like Dean was mistaken. And then, sure enough, a person appeared at the bottom of the stairs.

  Kane watched in the mirror.

  It was Helena. She had changed from her red dress into trousers and a coat, swapped her bird hat for a sensible cap that hid her hair. She lugged a canvas suitcase to the middle of the room, set it down on the desk above them, and popped it open. Then Helena began selecting specific eggs from the showroom. She took the rose-gold egg, then the diamond and garnet one. After a long deliberation she snatched up an egg of milky opal, and finally a plain egg of simple blue stone veined in gold.

  “I fear all that time in this laboratory cost Mother her perspective. She should never have created you. And Father will never see you as anything more than your precious skins and scales,” she said to the eggs. “I promise I will return for the rest of you. Please be patient. Please, be good.”

  She kissed the blue egg and placed it in the case, then paused to pick something off the floor. The black whistle.

  Shit. Kane hadn’t realized he’d dropped it.

  Helena held it up, looking around as she did so. Her eyes caught on the desk. She moved to block the door.

  “Who’s in here?” Defiance laced her voice, as hard and glinting as the cut crystals of the eggs.

  Kane grabbed Dean’s face and mouthed one word.

  Go.

  Then Kane stood up. Helena blinked, but the threat drained from her at once.

  “Willard? How on earth did you find your way down here?”

  Kane obediently shuffled out from behind the desk, meandering so that Helena turned away from the desk completely. It was not hard to feign bashfulness at getting caught. It was even easier to stay silent.

  “I’m surprised you remembered how to get to Mother’s Nest,” Helena said, referring to the laboratory. Her amused tone turned sad. “I’m surprised you remember this house’s secrets at all, actually, after what they did to you.” She showed him the whistle. “Is this what you’ve been playing with?”

  Behind her, Dean and Sophia crept from the desk to the stairs. Helena turned to see what Kane was looking at, but Kane grabbed at the whistle to keep her attention.

  “Now, now,” she laughed, snatching it out of his reach. “I’ll hold on to this for now. We must be very, ver
y quiet, Willard. Wherever did you find this? Not here, I assume. This metal is dead as can be.”

  Kane couldn’t help himself. He frowned deeply as she strung the whistle onto a chain around her neck that also held a key. She dropped them both beneath her collar with a safe pat.

  “Don’t be like that. I understand. I have treasures, too. See?”

  She lifted the suitcase carefully, as though the eggs within might break open.

  “I wonder, do you remember our family’s secret? Anyone who knows is bound to our family forever, Father says, which is why none of us are free to go into the world and make our own lives.” When she said this, she said it with the flat polish of a well-worn motto, though it was cold and not her own. “Come, let’s get you back to the party. I’m sure your mother is irradiating nearby guests with her worry by now.”

  They advanced up the stairs and into the library, then into the corridors. The sounds of merriment could be heard again, and he saw the pale glow of the ballroom deep in the distance. Helena stopped and wouldn’t get closer.

  “Willard, listen,” she said. “I need to say something to you in case I don’t get a chance after tonight.” She took his hands, warming them in hers.

  “I’m sorry about what our family did to you. I understand what it is like to hate the life you are given, and the form you take, and I understand the determination to find a new life and to create a new form.”

  Perhaps because of Kane’s furrowed expression, she whispered, “I know about your piano tutor. I know you wanted to go with him. I very much understand why.”

  She hugged him. Kane didn’t think it possible for her voice to soften further, but it did.