Dead Voices

by Katherine Arden

  Seth said a single word that made the air smell like rotten eggs, and the mirror rippled once.

  It was open.

  Coco, heart beating rabbit-fast, crossed the room, put both her hands on the mirror, stepped forward, and found herself in a moonlit mirror world.

  Behind her, she heard Seth say, “Your turn,” to Brian.

  But Coco wasn’t even paying attention to Seth anymore. Because she had her eye on three things. One was Ollie herself, lying asleep in the bed directly across from her.

  Another was the oil lamp, lying abandoned.

  The third was Mother Hemlock, standing there waiting for her. Coco seized the blanket off Ollie’s bed and flung it over Mother Hemlock’s head, winning herself a few seconds. “Ollie!” she screamed. “Olivia Adler, you have to wake up!”

  The sound of her friend’s voice answering made her weak with relief.

  “Coco?” Ollie’s voice filled with horror. “I can’t see you. You—no—you can’t be here?”

  Coco didn’t answer. She had dived for the oil lamp under Ollie’s bed. There was a little oil in the chamber. “Ollie, your matches, right now,” Coco snapped.

  Ollie, without another word, dug into her pocket, grabbed a matchbook, and, with trembling hands, lit one. Her eyes were still frozen shut; she was working by touch. Coco brought her the lamp, and the wick kindled just as Mother Hemlock’s hand descended.

  Coco whipped around, holding the lamp, just as she saw fire bloom in the mirror on the other side. The lamps were connected. She had been right.

  And now there was fire on both sides of the mirror.

  Mother Hemlock recoiled from the flames. But Coco’s blood went cold, because she saw Seth reaching for the lamp, obviously meaning to put it out on the other side. His mouth twisted; he’d seen what Coco was trying to do.

  Mother Hemlock was coming for her; Coco shoved the burning lamp in her face; she cringed away.

  “Brian!” she shouted, praying that Brian could hear. “Keep the fire going!”

  Brian was a very practical person. But in this case, maybe desperation or the long, terrible night made him too quick to decide what to do. Rather than risk Seth smothering the lamp, he set the curtains on fire.

  The curtains on the ghost side of the mirror went up too, sending living, golden light across rows and rows of dead faces. Coco, figuring that she couldn’t make things worse, threw down her own lamp so that it spilled oil over the floor and set fire to it.

  Well, she thought, giddy with rage, terror, alarm, and exhaustion, I really hate this lodge. And now we have fires on both sides of the mirror.

  “Come on,” she said to Ollie. “Time to go.”

  Ollie looked confused. Meltwater was running like tears down her face. “Where is Gretel?” she said. “What about the bones?”

  “No time to explain!” yelled Coco. Fire was already roaring all around them. She grabbed her friend’s hand and ran full-speed at the mirror.

  Either I’m right, Coco thought, or we’re trapped forever in a burning building.

  They slammed into the glass.

  And through it. Brian was already red-eyed from the smoke. “How?”

  “Tell you in a minute,” said Coco. “The lodge is on fire.”

  Seth was still there. He stared at her with an expression Coco could only describe as fascinated horror.

  Coco couldn’t resist. She grinned at him and she hoped her smile was as scary as his had been.

  “Checkmate,” she said, and pointed at Brian, who had put Ollie’s watch on his wrist. Seth’s lips tightened, seeing it. He looked from the watch to Ollie herself, who was still leaning on Coco, the ice thawing from her eyes. Coco saw him understand what she’d done.

  The room was full of smoke. But she didn’t care. From the hallway came the reassuring wail of a fire alarm. Through the burning curtains, outside the window, she saw a pearl-pink dawn and a world lying under a perfect blanket of snow. “I tricked you in the chess game,” she said to Seth. “And you tried to trick me. You tried to distract me with those stupid bones. We were supposed to spend the whole night chasing around the lodge for them. When the answer was just Ollie, and her watch. Or maybe even the Ouija board would have worked, if we’d known. Something that exists on both sides of the mirror opens a doorway through it. And I guess the fire helps too.”

  Seth looked torn between anger and admiration. Coco’s two friends were on either side of her. “We won,” said Ollie strongly. Water was running like rain down her face and her eyes were open and bright now. “Coco won. Go away.”

  “Guys,” said Brian practically. “Forget him. He’s just a jerk, and he tried to come here and mess with us, but he lost. Does anyone know where there is a fire extinguisher?”

  Coco had expected Seth to look furious. But his face was completely expressionless. That scared her worse, somehow.

  Then he bowed suddenly, an old-fashioned gesture that looked completely natural. His eyes were suddenly bright, and he smiled his wild-wolf smile at them.

  “Until next time,” he said, and then the smoke billowed up and he disappeared.

  The three of them were already choking on smoke. They ran for the door of the room. But not before Coco looked back at the mirror and saw the ghosts on the other side dissolving into smoke and fire with looks of profound relief on their faces.

  Thank you, mouthed Gretel. And vanished into the light.

  19

  OLLIE, BRIAN, AND COCO found the fire extinguisher just as Mr. Adler came thundering up the stairs with Coco’s mom and the Wilsons on his heels. Mr. Adler saw the smoke, saw the fire extinguisher, grabbed it out of Brian’s hands, and used it on the burning floor, the burning curtains. Mr. Wilson had another fire extinguisher, and after a few tense seconds, the overhead sprinklers came on, drenching everyone.

  A small silence fell when the fire was out.

  Ollie, Brian, and Coco were all red-eyed and coughing from lack of sleep and from the smoke. They stood there. None of them knew what to say.

  “What happened?” asked Ollie’s dad.

  “We heard the fire alarm,” said Ollie glibly. She was still coughing. “And ran upstairs. You guys slept so hard. But it was okay; Brian’s a Boy Scout and he grabbed the fire extinguisher. It’s okay now. It’s okay.” Ollie was babbling. Then she burst into tears, ran over, and hugged her dad. Her dad hugged her back, looking a little puzzled.

  “Coco,” said her mom. “What happened to your lip?”

  Coco ran her tongue over it, where she’d split her lip on the door. “Oh,” she said, and waved an arm. “I tripped. Um, so did Brian.” Brian had a split lip too.

  Her mom raised an eyebrow.

  “Going to the bathroom,” Coco improvised. “It was—uh, slippery.”

  Brian nodded jerkily.

  “Oh,” said her mom practically. “Well, we’ll have to disinfect it, then.” Her mom hugged her, and hugged Brian for good measure.

  Outside, Coco could see the sun rising over Mount Hemlock. It was really over. They had won.

  She had won.

  Ollie stepped back from her dad, wiping her eyes. “I don’t know about you guys,” said Ollie, “but I want to go home today. Sorry. It’s just—it was a weird night. I want to go home.” She nodded apologetically at the Wilsons. But they barely heard her. They were going through the bunk room, annoyed at the smoke damage and the broken mirror.

  “Okay,” said Mr. Adler, looking at Ollie with concern. She was white as a sheet, her face wet with tears and meltwater. “Is that what you want, Ollie-pop?”

  Ollie nodded.

  “Then let’s get packing,” said her dad.

  Ollie, Brian, and Coco hurried to get their stuff.

  They went back to the Egg that same day, leaving Hemlock Lodge without a backward glance as soon as they had dug out Susi
e and plow trucks had cleared the road. Neither Mr. Adler nor Coco’s mom objected at all to their leaving.

  “I had the weirdest dreams,” said Mr. Adler to Ollie. “You were lost, and I couldn’t find you.” He shook his head. “It was terrible. Must have been the cold. Such a cold night last night, huh?”

  “Yeah, it was,” said Ollie, shuddering. She got into the car and closed her eyes with relief. Coco and Brian were right behind her. As they peeled out of the lodge parking lot, Ollie asked, “Can we make waffles at home?”

  “Definitely,” said her dad.

  Ollie, Brian, and Coco all fell asleep in the car on the way back to the Egg. They barely woke up enough to shovel down waffles before they crawled onto beds and couches and went to sleep again.

  “Poor kids,” Coco heard her mom say as she drifted off to sleep again. “That weird day in the lodge must really have stressed them out.”

  You have no idea, Mom, Coco thought.

  * * *

  —

  They finally woke up enough to eat dinner properly, and afterward they sat on beanbags on the floor of Ollie’s room, eating apple pie.

  “But,” said Ollie a little plaintively, “I still don’t get it. The bones were . . .”

  “Maybe not a lie, exactly,” said Coco. “But a distraction. A feint. Like in chess. It just—I felt like it kept being thrown in our faces. Dreams about Gretel’s bones, and Gabe telling us about Gretel’s bones. But Gabe was working for the smiling man. How trustworthy could he be? And then I thought about the world behind the mist. Remember? Seth used scarecrows, visible in both worlds, to hold the door open between them. But, Ollie, that time, you got us home because the book Small Spaces existed in both worlds. So I was like, well duh, more than one thing can open a door between worlds, or hold one open. Why did it have to be Gretel and her bones? Why couldn’t it be Ollie and her watch? I wasn’t sure about the fire, but I figured lighting the lamps couldn’t hurt since there was a fire in both sides of the mirror when you went through the first time, Ollie.”

  “Wow,” said Brian. “BK, you were brilliant.”

  “BK?” asked Coco.

  “You’re the Black Knight,” said Brian solemnly, and Coco grinned.

  “I guess I am,” she said.

  “I hope they’re all okay now,” said Ollie, low-voiced. “Gabe and Gretel and the rest. I hope the fire set them free.”

  “I think it did,” said Coco.

  “That’s good, then,” said Ollie.

  None of them said anything for a second. Then Brian asked, “You guys want to ski tomorrow? We could just go up to the Punch Bowl.”

  The Punch Bowl was their local mountain. It was small and friendly.

  “That sounds fun,” said Coco. After the night before, no ski mountain would ever scare her again. “Just don’t leave me behind.”

  “You didn’t leave us behind,” said Ollie seriously. “Why would we ever do that to you?”

  Brian nodded. Coco felt herself smiling.

  But that night, just as they were falling asleep, Coco heard Ollie’s voice from the bed. Coco was on an air mattress next to her. “Hm?” she asked.

  “I said,” Ollie repeated, “do you think he’s really coming back? The smiling man?”

  “I don’t know,” said Coco. She had to be honest. “Maybe—probably. But next time we’ll be ready.”

  “Yup,” said Ollie. “We’ll be ready.”

  Ollie pulled out her watch. Coco had given it back to her in Hemlock Lodge. The word LOVE had returned to the watch face. Ollie held it to her cheek a moment.

  “Thanks, Mom,” she said softly. “I love you.”

  “Thanks a lot,” Coco added from the floor.

  Then Ollie tucked the watch under her pillow, and they all fell asleep to the quiet of a windless winter night, and Mr. Adler and Coco’s mom playing music very softly downstairs.

  Turn the page for a sample of Katherine Arden’s . . .

  1

  OCTOBER IN EAST EVANSBURG, and the last warm sun of the year slanted red through the sugar maples. Olivia Adler sat nearest the big window in Mr. Easton’s math class, trying, catlike, to fit her entire body into a patch of light. She wished she were on the other side of the glass. You don’t waste October sunshine. Soon the old autumn sun would bed down in cloud blankets, and there would be weeks of gray rain before it finally decided to snow. But Mr. Easton was teaching fractions and had no sympathy for Olivia’s fidgets.

  “Now,” he said from the front of the room. His chalk squeaked on the board. Mike Campbell flinched. Mike Campbell got the shivers from squeaking blackboards and, for some reason, from people licking paper napkins. The sixth grade licked napkins around him as much as possible.

  “Can anyone tell me how to convert three-sixteenths to a decimal?” asked Mr. Easton. He scanned the room for a victim. “Coco?”

  “Um,” said Coco Zintner, hastily shutting a sparkling pink notebook. “Ah,” she added wisely, squinting at the board.

  Point one eight seven five, thought Olivia idly, but she did not raise her hand to rescue Coco. She made a line of purple ink on her scratch paper, turned it into a flower, then a palm tree. Her attention wandered back to the window. What if a vampire army came through the gates right now? Or no, it’s sunny. Werewolves? Or what if the Brewsters’ Halloween skeleton decided to unhook himself from the third-floor window and lurch out the door?

  Ollie liked this idea. She had a mental image of Officer Perkins, who got cats out of trees and filed police reports about pies stolen off windowsills, approaching a wandering skeleton. I’m sorry, Mr. Bones, you’re going to have to put your skin on—

  A large foot landed by her desk. Ollie jumped. Coco had either conquered or been conquered by three-sixteenths, and now Mr. Easton was passing out math quizzes. The whole class groaned.

  “Were you paying attention, Ollie?” asked Mr. Easton, putting her paper on her desk.

  “Yep,” said Ollie, and added, a little at random, “point one eight seven five.” Mr. Bones had failed to appear. Lazy skeleton. He could have gotten them out of their math quiz.

  Mr. Easton looked unconvinced but moved on.

  Ollie eyed her quiz. Please convert 9/8 to a decimal. Right. Ollie didn’t use a calculator or scratch paper. The idea of using either had always puzzled her, as though someone had suggested she needed a spyglass to read a book. She scribbled answers as fast as her pencil could write, put her quiz on Mr. Easton’s desk, and waited, half out of her seat, for the bell to ring.

  Before the ringing had died away, Ollie seized her bag, inserted a crumpled heap of would-be homework, stowed a novel, and bolted for the door.

  She had almost made it out when a voice behind her said, “Ollie.”

  Ollie stopped; Lily Mayhew and Jenna Gehrmann nearly tripped over her. Then the whole class was going around her like she was a rock in a river. Ollie trudged back to Mr. Easton’s desk.

  Why me, she wondered irritably. Phil Greenblatt had spent the last hour picking his nose and sticking boogers onto the seat in front of him. Lily had hacked her big sister’s phone and screenshotted some texts Annabelle sent her boyfriend. The sixth grade had been giggling over them all day. And Mr. Easton wanted to talk to her?

  Ollie stopped in front of the teacher’s desk. “Yes? I turned in my quiz and everything so—”

  Mr. Easton had a wide mouth and a large nose that drooped over his upper lip. A neatly trimmed mustache took up the tiny bit of space remaining. Usually he looked like a friendly walrus. Now he looked impatient. “Your quiz is letter-perfect, as you know, Ollie,” he said. “No complaints on that score.”

  Ollie knew that. She waited.

  “You should be doing eighth-grade math,” Mr. Easton said. “At least.”

  “No,” said Ollie.

  Mr. Easton looked sympathetic now, as th
ough he knew why she didn’t want to do eighth-grade math. He probably did. Ollie had him for homeroom and life sciences, as well as math.

  Ollie did not mind impatient teachers, but she did not like sympathy face. She crossed her arms.

  Mr. Easton hastily changed the subject. “Actually, I wanted to talk to you about chess club. We’re missing you this fall. The other kids, you know, really appreciated that you took the time to work with them on their opening gambits last year, and there’s the interscholastic tournament coming up soon so—”

  He went on about chess club. Ollie bit her tongue. She wanted to go outside, she wanted to ride her bike, and she didn’t want to rejoin chess club.

  When Mr. Easton finally came to a stop, she said, not quite meeting his eyes, “I’ll send the club some links about opening gambits. Super helpful. They’ll work fine. Um, tell everyone I’m sorry.”

  He sighed. “Well, it’s your decision. But if you were to change your mind, we’d love—”

  “Yeah,” said Ollie. “I’ll think about it.” Hastily she added, “Gotta run. Have a good day. Bye.” She was out the door before Mr. Easton could object, but she could feel him watching her go.

  Past the green lockers, thirty-six on each side, down the hall that always smelled like bleach and old sandwiches. Out the double doors and onto the front lawn. All around was bright sun and cool air shaking golden trees: fall in East Evansburg. Ollie took a glad breath. She was going to ride her bike down along the creek as far and as fast as she could go. Maybe she’d jump in the water. The creek wasn’t that cold. She would go home at dusk—sunset at 5:58. She had lots of time. Her dad would be mad that she got home late, but he was always worrying about something. Ollie could take care of herself.

  Her bike was a Schwinn, plum-colored. She had locked it neatly to the space nearest the gate. No one in Evansburg would steal your bike—probably—but Ollie loved hers and sometimes people would prank you by stealing your wheels and hiding them.