Midnight Law

by Geanna Culbertson

  She moved again, as did I.

  “Check,” I said again.

  The Red Queen looked over the board sternly, realizing what I had done. I had her. She stood abruptly and moved a game piece the only way she could. I responded with a final shift of my queen. “Checkmate.”

  “Half a condition for something that is halfway satisfying,” she declared, coming around to my side of the table. “This game was just that, so consider that half a condition fulfilled. I hate to lose, but I enjoy being challenged. I don’t like people to be more powerful than me, but I value a contender with skill and strategy. You are worth more to me than a simple prisoner.” She cupped my face in her hand. “And you are far too handsome to behead.”

  She strode toward the dungeon steps with her frog footmen and mole guards in tow. “Come now, Daniel. Your heart, and so many other things, are on the line.”

  stepped under a heart-shaped archway into the Queen and King of Hearts’ throne room. Checkered pillars as tall as pine trees stretched to the ceiling. The floor’s onyx tile was inlaid with a mosaic of red and gold hearts. Playing card guards lined the perimeter.

  Handfuls of stuffy courtiers turned their noses up at me when I entered, the ladies fanning themselves and the men smoking pipes. I met SJ below a golden chandelier with draping ruby garlands that hung from the center of a massive heart painted on the ceiling. Tiny Mauvrey sat on SJ’s shoulder.

  I turned to face the royals. Their thrones resided atop a crimson-carpeted staircase. The immense seats had heart-shaped backs that rose several feet above the queen and king’s heads. Beside them, in almost comically small thrones, sat their sons Tweedledee and Tweedledum. While the adults looked serious and unforgiving, the boys swatted at each other while whisper-bickering, much to the annoyance of their mother.

  “Boys!” The Queen of Hearts snapped her fingers. “Silence!”

  “Yes, Mother.”

  “He started it, Mother.”

  “I did not.”

  “You did so.”

  The twins began thwacking each other again and the queen’s face reddened. “Out of here! Both of you! And no playing with the Bandersnatch for a week.”

  “Mother!” the twins whined, but several fish footmen escorted them out at the queen’s insistence.

  “Back to the matter at hand—or perhaps should I say, at heart.” The queen laughed boisterously at her own joke. When she realized no one else was laughing, she repeated the joke. “I said, perhaps I should say, at heart.” She stamped her foot haughtily and all the nobles burst out laughing, as did the guards and fish footmen.

  “Bring forth the Heart Handpie,” the queen declared.

  One of the fish footmen zipped over to me and held up a tray covered with a silver cloche. When he removed it, I saw a small handpie topped with a single red jelly heart.

  “The potion in this handpie will transport your soul to another plane,” the Queen of Hearts explained. “Once you are there, you will discover your Heart House and be faced with a test. This test can only be passed by coming to terms with what truly lies in your heart and refusing the forces in life that would seek to break it. If you pass the test, your heart’s energy will be fully unleashed and I will be able to harvest a sample for my collection.”

  I picked up the handpie and glanced at the queen. “Does Wonderland have a thing about food magic? Mushrooms that make you shrink and grow, tarts that are miracle cures, handpies that take you on existential journeys . . .”

  The Queen of Hearts shrugged. “Why not make life a little tastier whenever possible?”

  I looked at the snack in my hand. “Do I need to like, sit down or something? Eat the whole thing or just a bite? Can I get a glass of milk to wash it down with?”

  “No. One bite is fine. And also no,” responded the queen. She gestured to SJ and Tiny Mauvrey. “Step aside, little girl and littler girl.”

  “Good luck,” SJ whispered to me.

  “I would sure like to know what’s about to happen in this trance,” I said. “Any handy Wonderland trivia you two would like to share?”

  “I am sorry, Daniel,” SJ replied. “I have never heard of the Heart Handpie or a Heart House.”

  “Me neither,” Mauvrey added. “If we make it back to school, I am sure our teachers would love for you to be a guest lecturer.” “Now I have all the motivation I need to survive this,” I replied sarcastically.

  The queen cleared her throat.

  “Okay then. Let’s get this over with. Cheers.” I held up the handpie and took a bite. Filled with cheese and strawberry jam, it was surprisingly good.

  Maybe I’ll take another bite to be—

  I gasped. All the air left my body and my body left the throne room. I found myself standing in a navy void. Sparse pine trees grew around me out of nothingness. Above lay a ceiling of rumbling storm clouds. Directly ahead stood a rustic mahogany structure. This had to be the “Heart House” the queen mentioned.

  I walked to it. On either side of the house’s iron double doors, a single gold brazier held a torch of crackling flames. I pushed the doors open. The building’s interior had a very different feel than the exterior. Not to mention it was way bigger on the inside than it was on the outside.

  I stepped in and the double doors shut behind me. I was startled, but knew there was no going back anyway. Before me, long corridors branched away from the foyer. This place was like a museum. Every part of the floor, walls, and ceiling was painted pure white. Spotlights ran down the center of each walkway, highlighting picture frames and podium displays. The most notable thing about the setting, however, was the giant crack. It started just inside the doors and branched through each corridor I saw.

  I chose the second corridor on my right at random, waiting for this test the queen spoke of to start. As I walked, my eyes lingered on the crack. It ran through the entire compound—sometimes going across the floor, other times climbing a wall and stretching overhead. It was wider in certain places and thinner in others, but it was all connected. One massive fracture through every part of this house. It made me wonder how structurally sound this place was . . .

  I continued down the hall, which kept branching off. I hadn’t paid much attention to the paintings at first; it seemed to be a lot of landscapes of Book and other Wonderlands—Century City, the Emerald City, Camelot’s citadel, Chance’s castle. Then I paused by an aerial view of Lord Channing’s when I noticed the flag flying above the school rustled in the wind. Upon closer inspection, there was more movement. Kids milled about on the lawn. Even the clouds in the background slowly drifted. This painting was magic, like a real-time view of the school.

  Now that my attention had been triggered, as I wandered the hall I realized all the pictures moved like this. I started giving closer consideration to the items displayed on the podiums as a result. Those I had passed so far had seemed like miscellaneous objects—baby shoes, firecrackers, a plastic sword—but to my amazement, I now recognized that these objects meant something. To me.

  When I turned the next corner, I came across the helmet from my Twenty-Three Skidd armor. The following podium held my oldest collectible Twenty-Three Skidd trading card in a glass case—the one that had survived the fire, which I kept hidden in my room at school. After that I found my sword on display, a replica of the one currently in my sheath. It was so strange and surreal to see all these different pieces of me on exhibit, even if just for an audience of one.

  The hallway that came next was different. Instead of landscapes, the paintings featured people. There was one of Javier and Gordon, along with the rest of my Twenty-Three Skidd team, laughing and talking as they got ready for practice. Following that was a rendering of Girtha, Marie, and Divya sitting at a library table reading. From there came Mauvrey, Yunru, Julian, Glinda, Ozma, Arthur, and so many more. Each image I passed was incredibly lifelike, as if these frames were windows to real moments in time.

  Transfixed, I went around the bend and found myself in front
of three much bigger frames. These were solo portraits. One showed SJ standing over a smoking cauldron, crafting a potion. The second featured Blue throwing knives at a target on a hay bale. The third exhibited Jason in our room, studying on his bed with his feet up.

  I took the next turn in the hallway. Then I froze.

  I’d reached a grand room that curved into a high rotunda. In the center of the space a tall glass podium had been positioned beneath a sparking ball of blue energy that reminded me of a Midnight Law flame.

  Two huge frames hung on opposite sides of the room. To the right: Knight. The frame displayed a never-ending, silent montage of unique moments—she fought with her spear, she rode her dragon, she ate, she laughed. The frame on my left had been violently smashed, as if someone had taken a club to it, but I could still make out Kai in a similar continuous montage. The white wall behind her frame had huge spidery fissures extending from it, as if Kai’s presence had struck the building with a massive blow.

  These fractures were not connected to that giant crack I’d been following, which threatened the integrity of the entire house. In this room that crack was the widest I’d seen it. It spread across the floor like one of the fissures Eva had stomped into the ground with her magic heels. That was a shame; this floor was one of the most beautiful and sad things I had ever seen. It was a compilation of moving pictures that made my heart swell and also sink—a montage of images featuring my mom, dad, and younger sister.

  I looked away from the images; it was too much to handle. I gazed around the room and took in the shocking number of smaller cracks that branched out from the main one in the floor like the roots of tree, spreading over all parts of the room, up the walls, and toward the ceiling. My eyes stopped at the blue ball of energy. If this was anything like a Midnight Law flame, maybe to pass this test I needed to touch it. I reached out, but when my hand made contact, I shouted—cursed because no one was around—and drew back. It was like touching magma. Thankfully, my hand didn’t melt off; the skin didn’t even blister. I shook my hand out as the pain subsided.

  Okay, that’s not going to work.

  My eyes drifted to Kai’s frame, but that was also a mistake. Looking at her, all the feelings I was trying to suppress came rushing back—I was tired and angry and carved out. My heart practically lurched from it.

  She was the person I’d most considered family since I lost my parents and sister. She was the only person I had fully, one hundred percent let in. And look where that had led me—a state of devastation I hadn’t been swallowed by since I was nine years old and raced up my street following the smell of smoke and the sounds of screaming.

  I shook my head.

  I’d been opening up to people a lot more lately—trying to change, trying expand the depths of what my heart would allow. Maybe this was a sign not to go any further, a warning to stop where I stood.

  If you open up and let yourself feel deeply for someone, care deeply for someone, this is always a possible outcome.

  WHOA!

  The room shook violently and the breaks in the wall behind Kai’s frame reached toward the ceiling more dramatically. Fragments of plaster rained down. I had to dive to the side to avoid a large piece that fell toward me. The shaking came to an end a few seconds later and I got to my hands and knees—forced to look at my family again.

  “You think about them every day, don’t you?”

  My heart stopped and I snapped my head up. Knight stood there, leaning against the wall. I clambered to my feet and opened my mouth to voice a dozen questions, but she held up a hand. “I’m not real, Daniel. I’m like, your emotional avatar—a manifestation of the feelings you don’t usually voice. I guess you trust actual Crisa enough to pick me for that job.”

  She strode across the floor until she stood directly in front of me. I reached out my hand to touch her, but it passed right through. My face fell, shoulders dropping in disappointment. To have her here when she really wasn’t felt sort of cruel. I missed being in the same room as her.

  “So why are you here?” I asked.

  “The same reason you let real me be a part of your life,” she replied with a shrug. “You need me. And you probably also just need somebody to talk to. Maybe about that.” She pointed at Kai’s frame.

  “I’m not going to talk to you, you’re a figment of my imagination. It’d be like talking to myself.”

  “Is that such a bad thing? You are dealing with a lot right now, Daniel. This Heart House is a representation of your heart—it holds everything that has ever truly made you feel something. And while there is plenty of good in here, the cracks are . . . troubling.”

  I gazed around at the extent of the damage. My body deflated a bit acknowledging how right she was. Troubling was an understatement. Is this really how broken I was inside—my heart cracked all over in a dangerous, potentially destructive way?

  “The fracture with your family will always be a part of you like a scar; that’s understandable,” Knight said. “But because of it, your heart is much more vulnerable. That tragedy cracked you completely and it took you a long time to find the stability to build a life despite it, and care about new things and people. I’m afraid of what will happen if you let other tragedies tear you up the same way.” She gestured at Kai’s frame. “You can’t throw away all the growth you’ve achieved by letting this new heartbreak spread and damage you the way the original one did. You’ll destroy yourself.”

  I turned away from Knight and paced, coming to a stop in front of Kai’s frame. When I focused on it, the room started to quake again. The cracks expanded and more pieces of ceiling fell. I leapt out of the way and then spun back to face my friend. The shaking stopped a moment later. I sighed, exasperated. “I can’t help how I feel, Knight. I loved her.”

  “I know,” she said compassionately. “But did that stop today, or did it start to stop a while ago and her betrayal just forced you into an outcome you weren’t ready for?”

  “That’s not . . . I mean, maybe, but I just . . . I don’t know. Either way I never expected to have to deal with feelings like these again. I spent so much of my life trying to avoid this kind of heartbreak.”

  “You spent your life trying to avoid your heart entirely.”

  “Is that such a bad thing?”

  “Hearts were made to be used, Daniel. They may get hurt or broken along the way, but that’s a much better fate than letting them wither away in your chest. What good is a heart if you ignore it beating?”

  My eyes darted to the floor.

  “Daniel.” She approached me steadily. “You’ve made so much progress. You got hurt. I’m sorry. But it happens. You can’t use that as justification to retreat back into yourself. You can’t let this thing with Kai define and scar you. People need you. I need you. And most importantly, you need you. All of you. You’ve been living life at a disadvantage in terms of your potential strength and happiness, and you were starting to realize that recently.”

  Knight walked away from me and toward the blue energy floating over the podium. It lit her face in shades of sapphire. “Time is almost up. You have to decide if you’re going to hide again or if you’re going to fight.”

  I moved closer to her. “I want to fight . . .”

  I paused. “But I am heartbroken, Knight. Kai may not be who I thought she was, but that doesn’t mean all my history with her vanishes. Those feelings are there and they may take a long time to go away. How do I move forward without that weighing me down or cracking me apart?” I gestured at the monstrous fissures that spread from Kai’s frame.

  Knight locked eyes with me. I knew she wasn’t real, but it felt like she was and I found that comforting. This figment of my imagination—this piece of my mind—talked to me the way she did. Maybe that’s why I valued real Knight so much. She got inside my head, understood where I was coming from, and was always brutally honest. She was the kind of person who would hold your hand as easily as she would smack you on the side of the head, depending
on what the situation called for. She would look you in the eye and be straight with you, even if you didn’t want to be straight with yourself.

  “You move forward by believing that things can get better, Daniel,” she said gently. “And you strive every day to make sure they do by filling your life with new love that slowly replaces the pain. It will take you some time to heal, but maybe in a few weeks you will start to forget the way Kai smelled. And weeks after that, you will forget the exact sound of her laugh. Then her smile, then her touch, and then eventually one day you will wake up and that scar on your heart will have faded and you can breathe fully again. But that outcome—a life where you can be happy and be the best version of yourself—all comes down to belief in yourself, and that the world can be better.”

  “Perseverance is dependent on perspective,” I said softly.

  Knight looked at me.

  “Something the White King said,” I explained. “His family imagines six impossible things every morning. They believe that believing in those outlandish things will help them approach huge obstacles with more optimism. It’s like a mindset for not being intimidated by challenging circumstances.”

  “I like it,” Knight said. “I mean, I have to because I am you, but still. And look, you’ve got way more than six impossible things right here.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean all these people in your Heart House. Jason, Blue, SJ, Javier, Gordon, Marie, Divya, Girtha, me. Considering who you used to be, for a while having this many people in your life who you care about would have been impossible. But now . . .”

  “It’s possible.”

  She nodded. “Perseverance is dependent on perspective. You changed how you see yourself, and how you see relationships with others, and that let you become a better version of yourself. Now all you have to do is not screw it up by letting this new heartbreak break you.”

  The ball of blue energy shone brighter and expanded. Knight glanced at it. “That’s the essence of your heart—the source of its strength. Looks like my words have gotten through your thick skull. It’s ready for you if you’re ready for it.”