Reverie

by Ryan La Sala

  “But Katherine—”

  “Her too. And so was Maxine Osman, I’m guessing.”

  Ursula shook her head in awe, the whole world recalibrating in her eyes. Tentatively she pointed at herself. “So, am…I…?”

  Kane took her hands. “Ursula. It doesn’t matter. We need to find my sister.”

  Resolve hardened in Ursula’s eyes. Then, panic. In a blur of tulle, she grabbed Kane by his waist and hurled him backward. Then she was slashed away, the beetle ramming into her at full force. Only the flash of pink magic assured Kane she’d put a shield up in time as the beetle carried her right through the ballroom wall, then the wall beyond that, then the wall beyond that. Guests ran, screaming, as the château shook.

  Kane sat up among the shattered mirrors, staring into the dust and smoke after his friend. Silence congealed around him. He closed his eyes and focused on the fabric of this reverie, feeling for the seams he’d been able to sense when he unraveled Benny Cooper’s world, but his mind couldn’t get a grip. This reverie was still too strong. They were trapped here, with only one choice: survive.

  Kane looked at his hands and the pale glow of etherea beneath his fingertips. What power did he have? What could he do besides unravel and destroy? He looked down into the fractured depths of the glass strewn around him. He found his eyes, filled with shadows as the remaining chandeliers swung. The world around his reflection seemed to close him in a silent, deadly grasp.

  Then Kane felt a sticky strand of hair loop over his ear. Swatting at it, his hand came away dotted in small orbs.

  Pearls? They were clustered on a web of pinkish-gold wire, still warm from whatever had produced it.

  Kane had one second to wonder: What else hatched from an egg?

  He didn’t let himself look up. He just shot both hands directly upward, releasing a jet of rainbow etherea that collided instantly with something that had been looming just above him. Then he launched himself sideways, glimpsing the creatures many legs as they punched after him. Massive, its abdomen sat like a bulbous egg among the nest of eight lethal legs, its entire form furred and rose-gold-colored and shivering with pearls as it rounded on Kane.

  “Helena, listen to me!” Kane cried. “I know you’re in there!”

  The spider launched up into the spacious heights of the ballroom, nimble atop a network of wires that unspooled from its body. It gathered itself right above Kane, poised.

  “Helena, please!”

  It leapt downward, balling itself up and unclenching all at once, a hand meant to crush Kane. Kane didn’t want to, but he had to. Right before the spider landed on him, he unleashed a burst of ethereal energy using both hands. The magic burned from his entire body, stabbing up through the spider and ripping it apart.

  Kane hissed, every nerve coursing with clarity. His body pulsed, especially his temples. He felt the raised lines of his burns, and in the remains of the mirror was his reflection, winged in ethereal light. It buoyed him, pulling him upward, as though he had mastered not just light, but lightness itself.

  A rumbling pulled Kane back to earth, with just enough time to duck. The far wall exploded, and in crashed the beetle with Ursula riding atop it. The gargantuan bug slid and swung, but somehow Ursula stayed put. And somehow, so did her dress. She threw a shield out ahead of the beetle’s path, and the pair rocketed toward Kane.

  “Kane! Jump!”

  He tried to, but his new levitation was hard to control. The next thing he felt was something grab him—Ursula, he thought—and all at once he was clutching the beetle’s curved horn as it flailed. He held on for dear life.

  “Don’t let go!” Ursula cried. The beetle screamed, and suddenly its shell popped open like a car hood. Clear wings veined in cerulean shot out, beating in rapid motion as the beetle took to the sky.

  Kane closed his eyes, fighting not to vomit as the beetle flew straight up and through the ballroom’s skylight. A cloud of razored glass tore over him, but there wasn’t time to feel the pain before the beetle crashed back down, tossing him onto a roof eaten through by fire. Ursula was at his side a second later.

  “Kane! Your powers! Can you fly?”

  “Fly?”

  The gardens smoldered below them, an impossible escape. The beetle turned and charged, but Ursula was ready to block the guillotine slice of its horn. She stopped the attack with a shield before catching the horn in her bare hands.

  Her voice came gritty and urgent. “Are you ready to jump?”

  “Are you nuts?”

  Ursula did something with her feet beneath her tremendous skirt, perhaps to brace herself, because the next thing she did was hoist the beetle straight into the air. It gave a few stunned clicks as it reached the upright point of momentary balance.

  “Kane,” she wheezed. “Scoot to the left, will you?”

  Kane did just that. As the beetle’s wings shot out again, Ursula brought it down in an epic backward bend that crushed its own wings beneath it. The château shook, the roof buckled, and Ursula dove for Kane, wrapping him in a hug as they hurtled off the edge.

  “Fly, Kane!”

  What right did Kane have to tell her he couldn’t? He’d just watched Ursula execute a suplex against a gigantic gemstone beetle while wearing a wedding dress, atop a flaming dream mansion. The bubble-thin partition between can and cannot had popped right then. Kane imagined she was right, that he could fly. He believed her, and she believed in him.

  He twisted toward the flaming garden and let loose another ethereal blast, opening a crater in the patio right before it was too late. The blast swung them up, and suddenly gravity’s grip was broken; they careened over the garden, swathed in rolling waves of ethereal light from Kane’s body.

  Ursula let out a whoop. “You’re doing it! Oh my God! You’re actually doing it!”

  Kane laughed with her, but their joy was short-lived. Down from the clouds like a shaft of moonlight came a creature of silence and speed. There wasn’t time to see what it was before it slammed into Kane with a haunting cry. Ursula yelled, there was a burst of pink light, and then they were falling.

  Falling.

  Kane’s light was gone.

  He hid in Ursula’s embrace as the first branches swatted them. Wave after wave of magenta magic cradled them as they bounced through the trees, finally rocking to a stop on solid ground. Ursula let the shield dissipate, falling to her knees.

  “You okay?” she asked.

  “I’m okay. You?”

  “Oh, super.”

  “Was that a bird?” Kane peered into the sky, but it was gone.

  Ursula shook out her hand. “Yeah, but it was made of like…quartz or something.”

  “You punched it?”

  Ursula shrugged. “I would literally punch any bird. They all suck.”

  Then she stood and began to rip away her skirts.

  “Honestly, I wish I could wear one of these outfits without having to end up fighting. I mean, how is anyone supposed to fight anything in this many layers?”

  The air around them began to quiver with what Kane recognized as indignation.

  “Ursula, I think we’re in trouble.”

  “This frickin’ dress is in trouble, I’ll tell you that much! And those frickin’ geode monsters are in trouble as soon as I can actually kick—”

  “No,” Kane grabbed her hands before she could do more damage. The skirt had been shredded into a singed nest circling her feet. She now stood in just gigantic high heels, lacy white stockings, frilly garter belts, and a tuft of charred crinoline about her hips. There was nothing to be done about the corset, but at least she’d peeled off the puffy sleeves.

  “You’ll make the reverie mad,” Kane warned.

  Ursula was a little out of breath. “No sense worrying about fashion when the whole house is on fire, Kane. Pleasantries ended when Helena tried to
blow up Elliot’s face.” She stepped from the ruined wedding gown and strode off. Kane trailed after.

  “But what do we do?”

  “We find your sister. I bet she’s hiding in this garden. Then we find the Others. And then we defend ourselves until the reverie exhausts itself.”

  “And then what?”

  “You unravel it.”

  Kane stopped. “But what if I can’t?”

  Ursula put her hands on her hips. “Trust me, you can. You just flew, Kane. You’ve never managed that before, but look. You did it. And besides, you unraveled a reverie just last week. No more can’t-ing, all right?”

  Another no was poised on Kane’s lips, but then a scream tore through the night. It was shrill and distant, a soaring last resort from the far reaches of the garden. Ursula locked eyes with Kane, and he knew she was thinking the same thing. There was one beast left, and it had found Adeline.

  • Twenty •

  CLARITY

  They ran along the aisle of poplars bordering the hedge maze, tuned to Adeline’s screams. Kane pushed himself to keep up, to not stumble. The screams multiplied as they passed through archways of rotten roses and barbed vines until, finally, they burst into the place where Kane first awoke: the clearing with the gazebo.

  Helena lay in a crumpled heap, sobbing and reaching toward the gazebo, pleading over and over, “Not her! Leave her! Spare her!”

  She meant Adeline, who clung to the top of the gazebo as it tilted sideways, slowly collapsing as something coiled through the beams. It was a serpent, as large as the other beasts, but somehow more unreal. Its entire length was bedazzled in diamonds, the frosty white interrupted only by teardrops of garnets that squirmed upon its fluid body. It spooled and flexed, powerful and unstoppable as it peeked its triangular head over the roof’s edge. Its onyx tongue tasted the air between itself and Adeline, who could do nothing but shriek again.

  “I’m sorry,” sobbed Helena, as though Adeline were already dead. “I’m sorry, Katherine.”

  Yet another beast was even closer, right in front of them on the lawn. Kane recognized the luminous opal of the thing that struck them out of the air before. Its body was shapeless at first, until it ruffled its massive wings and turned its head around completely. It gazed at Ursula and Kane with bulging, porcelain eyes. An owl.

  And from its beak hung intestines.

  Kane and Ursula were too shocked by the sight of blood on pastel stone to move. The owl lost interest and turned back to the meal under its claws.

  Elliot.

  Shock dulled Kane’s hearing. Elliot’s blood was everywhere. Elliot was everywhere. Here an arm, there a lung. Prince-shaped parts scattered through the garden.

  Ursula crumpled over her knees in defeat.

  “Gruesome, isn’t it?” said Adeline’s voice, right next to them.

  Kane jumped, turning to find not just Adeline, but also Elliot hiding off to the side of the clearing, near the bench where Kane had first awoken. Elliot’s eyes glowed golden as he focused his power.

  “Those…those are…” Kane stammered.

  “Illusions,” finished Adeline. Aside from a dried bloody nose, she looked fine. Ursula, on the other hand, still looked sick as she stood. Kane couldn’t shake the gruesome sight, either, and he reached for the whistle for comfort before remembering it was gone. Taken by Helena.

  Elliot’s voice was laced with effort of sustaining the magic. “It didn’t take long to realize we had it wrong when Helena came after us. Luckily she was pretty focused on Adeline—or Katherine—so we were able to lure her out here. We thought it’d draw you guys here, too, and not a moment too soon. This reverie is going up in flames.”

  Elliot grinned, but Adeline sighed and said, “Elliot, now is not the time for Dad Jokes.”

  “Who is Dad Jokes?” asked a meek voice behind Kane. He spun toward his sister, who hid behind a poplar tree.

  Kane rushed to hug her. She stiffened in his embrace, annoyed.

  “Who are you people, really? Why have you brought me here?”

  “We found her hiding in the garden,” Adeline said. “She’s very hard to keep quiet.”

  Elliot chuckled. He glanced at Ursula’s tattered burlesque outfit. “Having a rough wedding, Urs?”

  Ursula crossed her arms over her cleavage and turned bright red. “Unravel it, Kane,” she grumbled. “Let’s go home.”

  He tensed. Unravel all this? Unravel Helena, who tore at the grass and wept with despair? Wearily he spread his arms out and tried to regain that power he’d summoned at the end of the Cymo reverie. It hadn’t felt like power then—it had felt like knowing. And so he fought for focus and did the one thing he remembered. He clapped.

  A lot happened in the instant his palms met. First, with bracing clarity, the reverie snapped into gruesome detail: the desiccated flowers bobbing in the ash-laced breeze, the splintering wood of the gazebo, the estate overtaken by inferno, every particle of fog, every strung pearl.

  Second, all around him, he felt Helena. She blinked at him with wide, bloodshot eyes, and he was forced to embrace her fear. Her grief. Her stunning, spinning hope, which had bloomed into a world of remarkable loveliness, then turned to ruin in the blink of an eye. That same world cracked open to breed unfeeling creatures of metal, stone, and rage. Exquisite and lethal, they defended their mistress, but now they had grown beyond even her control.

  Third, there was a small explosion.

  Kane’s whole body rang with pain. His hands, surprisingly, were still attached to his wrists, but the poplar trees had all snapped back. Sophia and the Others were strewn around him, stunned. Pale smoke rose from the ground.

  Ursula crawled to him. “Kane?”

  He coughed, tasting blood. “I can’t…”

  He couldn’t unravel it. He couldn’t unravel Helena. This reverie wanted to live more than he wanted to kill it.

  “Guys…” Adeline whispered.

  Helena stood, swaying, her eyes finding them. The owl turned, too. Elliot’s illusions had been blown away, and now the viper lowered itself to the ground, as silent as snow.

  Elliot turned to Ursula. “I hope you’re not spent.”

  Ursula shook off her dizziness. “Nah,” she spat to the side, cracked her gloved knuckles, and walked right at the viper.

  She didn’t make it very far when a cacophonous buzz shook the air and the beetle, fully re-formed, dropped atop her like a comet. In the same instant, the viper whipped forward, cutting them off from Adeline.

  “Run, Adeline!” Elliot screamed, even as the owl battered the air with great, opalescent wings. Its eyes locked onto him, the meal it had lost.

  With tears racing down her face, Adeline sprinted into the hedge maze. The viper slithered after.

  Kane hauled up his sister, shoving her at Elliot. “Vanish! NOW!”

  Elliot for once did not dispute Kane. As soon as Sophia was in his arms, they drifted behind a curtain of golden magic. Then they were gone.

  There was a series of thrashes from Ursula and the beetle as she was thrown across the clearing. Kane waited for her to turn in midair, to get her legs under her and bounce back, but her body was limp as it sailed through one of the gazebo’s worn supports. He hobbled after her, his legs aching, his hands throbbing, and just as he reached her, the gazebo collapsed.

  “Augustine!” Helena screamed, and she was right beside Kane as he dove into the mess of wood and vines. Together they tore away the mess, digging, thinking only of Ursula.

  “I’m sorry! I’m sorry!” Helena cried.

  Kane’s heart was a stinging, pulsing liquid in his ears. He found Ursula’s knee, dug a hand behind it, and pulled. As he did, the spider—just as re-formed as the beetle—scampered into the clearing. Its pale green eyes locked on Kane. It bent, ready to spring atop them.

  Helena pulled Kane close, a
nd something cold and metal around her neck stabbed into his arm.

  The spider leapt high into the air. Its legs spread a claw across the sallow moon.

  Kane had only one breath between him and death. One chance. No snapping fingers, no sparkling hands. Just one move left to make. It was too late for him and the others, and maybe even for Helena, but maybe he could convince fate to spare his sister.

  As the spider landed atop Kane, he grabbed the whistle from Helena’s neck, pressed it to his lips, and let his last breath go.

  • Twenty-One •

  FINDERS KEEPERS

  The whistle made no sound. It made silence. A thrilling, halting silence that pinned the reverie in a single instant.

  Humid air brushed Kane’s matted curls. He was looking right into the glistening space between the spider’s furred fangs, two of its legs already hooked under his arms. But the spider did not bite. It was petrified. Kane sat in a cage of unmoving legs atop the ruined gazebo.

  Beside him lay Helena, one such leg digging into her thigh. The reverie had halted, but her blood flowed freely around the rose-gold dagger. She touched it, gingerly, knowing it was a mortal wound.

  “H-h-help me,” she whispered.

  Kane untangled himself from the spider, amazed that it let him. He spun around, stunned at the whistle’s work. Everything was still. No wind, no drifting ash. Even the mist of the gardens hung in frozen, marbled curls around the inert beetle. And it was quiet. Faintly, Kane could make out a distant creaking, as though they existed in the hull of a great, rocking ship.

  Kane couldn’t remove the spider on his own.

  “Help!” he called. “Somebody!”

  “Here!” It was Adeline. Kane ran for her.

  “Where are you?” His voice was flat in the stilled air.

  “Over here!”

  “Are you okay?”

  “Sort of.” But the long pause before her answer told him something was wrong.

  He turned a corner and came upon the serpent, its body frozen in a tight knot.