by Anya Allyn
“Neither did I. It seems they’re very practiced at living double lives.” Her mouth pulled into a grim line. “But it isn’t true they can do anything they want. Because they need us, remember? Or at least, they need you.”
She wandered around the room, rubbing her arms. “This stuff is ancient. I don’t think we’re still in America....” She pulled open the drawers in an antique desk—a chunky monstrosity of a thing with carved gargoyles on every drawer. Inside the drawers were a set of chess pieces carved in dark ivory, a cloth picture that looked as though it had been embroidered by a child and some crackly old writing paper.
She replaced everything carefully back in the drawers and went to sit cross-legged on a bed. She eyed me with a serious, questioning expression. “You started to say something to me… just after you boarded the yacht....”
Meeting her gaze, I shook my head. “I don’t know how to tell you what that was about. I don’t even know how to tell it to myself.”
“Just say it.”
I sat heavily on the bed opposite. I couldn’t find the words. It was like I was at the edge of a precipice—staring into a bottomless darkness. We sat in silence while minutes slipped away. I couldn’t stop my limbs quaking, even though I was now dry. Cold bit into my limbs, into my mind.
I heard Molly softly sigh. “It’s something Ethan said to you, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“Cassie, he came to our rescue, but we don’t really know why. And we don’t know that we should trust him. I mean, how did he even get out of prison and get to America? He must have had some heavy-duty help. And in court, he did say he’d been helping Henry.”
A hard lump formed in my throat. “He’s not the Ethan that we saw in court.”
She frowned. “You mean he’s changed?”
“No.” I paused, trying to gather myself. “Molly... what if the ice world is a copy of this one. I mean, an exact copy. A copy of everything... and everyone.”
Her face tightened. “That had to be just some creation meant to trick us. I mean, look what they did when we escaped from the Batistes’ house. They made the whole island look like it was back in 1920.”
“I know. Maybe that was a trick, but this is different. We felt the snow under our feet. And Sophronia... she was there.”
“Maybe they took us into a future world.” Her voice faltered. “That sounds crazy, but everything is crazy.”
I closed my eyes for a moment, picturing the museum. “But the science museum, it looked the same.... We went there when you first came to Miami. Did it look any different?”
“No.” Her voice had a note of finality to it. “It didn’t look different. But it wouldn’t if it were only a few months into the future. Though how the world could be plunged into an ice age in just months I couldn’t guess.” She ran her hands across her head. “I’m grasping at straws here, but I can’t believe....”
Sucking my mouth in, I tried to remember Henry’s words from earlier at the ball. “At the party... Henry spoke of being masters of all the universes.... He spoke of universes, as though there were more than one.”
She eyed me directly. “There can’t be more than one.”
I blinked away the growing wetness in my eyes. “Why not?”
“Because I refuse to believe it. They’re playing with our minds. I mean, why would Sophronia even be in Miami? Maybe she was just an illusion.”
“Trust me, I don’t want to believe this either.”
Her eyes widened. “You think the Ethan that rescued us is from the ice world... don’t you?”
My throat tensed as I nodded.
“He told you that?”
“Yes.”
“Then why didn’t we see him there?”
“We didn’t see him, but he saw us. It was Ethan who pushed us from the top of the stairs in the museum. He said he pushed us into something that took us back through the shadow—back to the Batistes’ house.”
“It was him who did that?”
“Yes. He said he did it to save us.”
“From what?”
Staring down, I shook my head. “I don’t know.”
She was quiet for a moment. “It makes no sense,” she said finally.
How could I explain to her that I’d seen the truth of his words in his eyes—that I’d seen the reflection of another world within Ethan’s eyes?
I stepped over to the window, watching the ghostly mists swirl in the darkness below. “Molly... it’s my world too. The world of ice.”
Her expression froze. She stared at me open-mouthed. “What? How can you believe something like that? Cassie, that’s insane. The girl who found her way into the dollhouse is you. And she’s the girl who—”
“Died when she entered the cave of the serpent.” I cast my gaze down, trying to push the thought away. “Just after she landed in the pool of water in the cave, I also entered that pool. As I connected with her, we fused into one. And I climbed from that cave into a different world than my own.”
“She died...?” Her voice had a cold edge to it, making me die inside. “The Cassie that I knew in the underground is dead?”
“I don’t know if you’d call it death or something else... but yes.... And the cave, it doesn’t really exist in our world—it exists somewhere else. From the moment I entered that cave, I was somewhere else. Molly, the times that I went far beyond The Dark Way in the dollhouse, I wandered through tunnels that had columns and walls of some kind of crystal. I know now that those tunnels weren’t in our world—they were tunnels from wherever the serpent lives.”
“God. Cassie, I know you don’t really believe any of this. You’re in shock. You nearly drowned. Those people have your parents....”
I stared upward at the ceiling, praying for answers. “I didn’t want to tell you....”
She stood. “I shouldn’t have pushed you to talk. We need to give ourselves time, figure out where we are and how to get out of here.”
I turned to face her, my jaw trembling. “I know it’s true. When we were in that other world, I felt a strange connection I couldn’t explain. Like I belonged there. I didn’t understand it... until now.”
Things crowded into my head—things too sharp, too vast. I no longer wanted to think or reason or know anything. My legs were wooden as I made my way back to the bed. I curled up, fetal. I didn’t want to shut Molly out. But if there was no way out of here, if I couldn’t keep running—then all I could do right now was to block everything out. I could still feel the waves crashing over me, pushing me deep underwater. I caught a glimpse, a memory of Prudence’s light, and it was enough—just enough for me not to lose my mind.
Exhaustion closed over me, my mind sinking into an abyss.
* * * *
I opened my eyes into the shadowy darkness of the strange room. A heaviness hung over me, as though I’d been asleep for a long time. A quilt covered me—Molly must have done that.
I paced across the room, my mind filling with rage—rage at all that had happened to us, rage at the control that had been stripped away. I wanted to run away from everything at this moment, even from Molly.
What happened to the Molly I’d known before? Did she and the others lay dead in the dollhouse—the ground above buried under a mountain of snow? How did Sophronia get out? And Ethan? Where were my parents? If I returned to my house in the ice world now, would it still be there? Would my mother be there? And everyone I’d known? Did the entire earth that I used to know lay under ice? How could anyone survive that? How many were still alive?
Rigidly, I walked over to the door. I slammed my fists against it over and over.
A ceramic tile inlaid in the door cracked.
I stepped back, breathing heavily.
Molly stepped behind me. “Cassie....” Her voice was controlled but shaken.
“I can’t bear it anymore. I need to get out of here.”
“I know.”
I stared at her, shame heating my temples. She’d spent fiv
e years trapped in the most terrible of places. She knew more than anyone what it was to want escape.
I gazed back at the cracked tile. There were nine ceramic picture tiles inlaid into a frame in the door. The tiles were etched with crazy images that made no sense: A demon chasing two children by a river. Eggs from a tipped basket broken on the ground. A boy fishing in the river.
Molly set her mouth into a thin line. “These are in the wrong order.”
I shook my head slightly, not understanding.
“The tiles on the door. It’s a puzzle,” she told me. “What if... this puzzle is the lock for the door?”
I studied the tiles. There were ten spaces, nine tiles.
“You’re right—a puzzle of some kind.” The tightness in my chest relaxed a fraction. Of course this was Molly standing before me. Molly with her calm composure. Molly who was always seeking a way. She was the Molly of the dollhouse. If I didn’t understand how one person could simultaneously live lives in other universes, I didn’t have to. Molly was proof enough.
She frowned at the pictures. “I think the girl collecting eggs from the barn goes first.”
“That makes sense—she’s collecting the eggs for breakfast.”
We worked out the sequence of the story together.
Girl gets eggs from the barn with a basket. Boy fishes in the river. Girl comes with basket to tell the boy it’s time for breakfast. Demon frightens the children. Eggs smash on the ground. Boy falls in the river. Girl saves the boy with a stick. Boy uses stick to defend themselves against the demon. The children return home and eat bread for breakfast instead of eggs and fish.
Molly began sliding and rearranging tiles. She’d had years of practice with puzzles in the dollhouse and would be a lot faster than me.
She slid the last tile into place.
With a sharp clicking sound, the entire panel of tiles pushed in, and the doors cracked open.
5. LE CHTEAU SUR LA FALAISE
I turned to Molly, my heart hammering in my chest. Wordlessly, we stole out into the wide corridor beyond the room—a corridor that looked like it had been standing there for centuries. Flickering wall lamps lit the dark passage and old paintings of people with intense gazes. Cold air whistled like ghosts through cracks in the stonework.
At the end of the passage, we stepped onto a stone spiral stairwell. Breaking into a run, we hastened down to the bottom floor.
A labyrinth of drafty corridors lay ahead. Staying close together, we crept along the uneven floor. A set of heavy oak doors sealed the corridor—a hum of noise and voices on the other side.
Molly gestured to me to go back and find another way. Turning, we stepped along a narrower corridor.
Iridescent dark blue light spun from a doorway, then snapped off like the glow from a flashlight.
A murmur of voices followed. Henry's voice rang out clearly above the others—Cursed thing! Try the ninth dial again and see if we can set the high gears in motion.
Clicking and grating sounds followed.
"It's no good. The gears are frozen. These are the furtherest universes we can reach. It's showing nothing beyond these," came the voice of Zach's father.
Frowning as she listened, Molly pointed toward a corridor that forked off from the one where we stood.
I shook my head slightly, stealing next to the door with the blue light and pressing my back into the wall. A worried look clouded Molly's eyes, but she moved to stand beside me. A desperate need had woken inside me—a need to know what Henry did. A need to know how it was possible to cross universes, and how I had crossed universes.
Footfall crossed the floor inside the room. Someone pacing in agitation. Slowly, I positioned myself so that I could see into the room in the wide space between the door and door frame. Out here in the dark corridor, no one could see me. Touching my shoulders, Molly peered in beside me.
The room was bare but for some kind of enormous device set into the middle of the floor. It was like a table, with upright, teethed gears turning in tiny increments. A globe of dark glass revolved in the center. Henry adjusted a series of dials and levers. The deep blue light shone out again—tiny clusters of white spots wavering in mid-air. The clusters turned as the cogs on the machine turned. The light cast a bluish sheen across the faces of Henry and Zach and Parker’s parents—and a few other men and women I’d seen at the ball.
“They’re looking at stars,” whispered Molly close to my ear.
I’d once seen a device something like this, on a school excursion to a museum. They’d called it an astronomical clock—in past centuries, it measured the changing positions of the stars and moon and planets. Only that clock hadn’t been the size of a car or had a globe suspended in the middle of it, and it hadn’t been anything near as complicated as this one.
Zach’s father leaned back, staring upwards at a planet-like globe amongst the blue air. Stroking his chin, he sighed audibly. “Which ‘verse is this one?’
“The fifth, sir,” said an elderly man dressed in a kind of antique butler suit.
“Can we reach it, Francoeur?”
The butler gave a half-nod. “Perhaps. But it is a terrible distance. And according to the position of the stars, that universe is still in the fourteenth century.”
“Is it a parallel universe?” He peered over the top of his glasses.
Francoeur tilted his head back and gazed at the planet, the globe reflecting in his watery eyes. “Yes, it is indeed. It is exact to our earth in every way.
Zach’s father turned to him with interest. “Where in the fourteenth century, exactly?”
“Before the time that we had the tomes of the Speculum Nemus in our grasp, sir. Just the same as the fourth universe.”
Blowing out air between his teeth, Henry stared around at the others. “So we cannot obtain the book.” He placed two hands on the frame of the astronomical clock. “And without the book, we cannot work this blasted device. All the billions of universes are ours for the taking, if we can just figure out the mechanics of it.”
A man with wispy white hair and bulging eyes lowered his glasses. “Can’t we just fiddle with the knobs and settings until we locate more?”
Henry fixed a contemptuous gaze on the man. “Fiddle with the knobs? This is not a toy. And if the clock hadn’t endured centuries of mismanagement and neglect, it might not be in the state it is today.”
“Now see here, Henry,” admonished Zach’s father, “It doesn’t bode well for you to accuse us of mismanagement.”
Henry straightened defensively. “Forgive me if I find it difficult to believe that here you had the most intricate machine ever known to mankind, and it has been in this room gathering dust and cobwebs. You cannot deny that in the years since I have been here at the chateau, I have brought the clock back to life. And we have now discovered five universes—and the serpent world.”
“No one denies you are hungry for knowledge,” Zach’s father told him curtly, “and your discoveries and efforts have greatly benefited us.”
Parker’s mother eyed the display of star systems fearfully. Like Parker, her eyes were a milky shade of gray. “It’s all very well probing into the universes, but who knows what’s out there? There is likely to be much worse out there than even the serpent world. I understand that keeping the girls in that dreadful dollhouse place with the serpent was necessary, but are we really sure of what we might unleash on ourselves?”
Parker’s father tut-tutted. “That’s why you’re better off not attending these meetings, dear. It’s all rather too much for you. I don’t want you upset.” He patted her hand and glanced over at Henry. “Perhaps we have gone too far in trusting the serpent. The creature has abilities far beyond what we understand.”
Henry’s expression darkened. “Think of it as a circus act, with us as the ringmasters.”
“Of course, it’s natural that you would use a circus analogy,” sniped a pompous-looking man in a pin-stripe suit.
Henry’s mouth wavere
d between a smile and a firm line. “I have had to prove myself over and over since I arrived here. Do not underestimate me. Yes it's true I grew up only knowing the circus. But from the time I found Uncle Tobias’s book, I threw myself into studying astronomy. I studied space and time and energy and matter. I delved into the mysteries of quantum physics.”
Leaning over the clock, Henry paused before speaking again. “There are theories that state there are billions of earths in billions of universes—some a mirror image of our earth and others vastly different—some in same time period as ours, others in the past or future. On our earth, we are the first human beings ever to hold the proof of those theories in our hands. At one time in our distant past, our ancestors were poised to rule. That age will come again.”
A deep hush came over the room—so deep I could hear myself breathe. The sense of greed was tangible in the air—the people seeming like there was something dangling so close to their noses they could almost reach out and grab it.
. “What about the Monseigneur’s wishes?” said the man with the white hair, adjusting the cravat of his crumpled suit. “Can we fulfill them?”
Henry lifted his head, his expression hardening “If it were possible to bring doubles of those who are deceased on this earth from an earth in an earlier time, all of us who are spirits could be fused with our human bodies. But a human body cannot be brought across the centuries. At least, not yet. That knowledge is unreachable, until we have the book.”
“But the Monseigneur wants—“
“Too much,” Henry cut in. “It cannot be done. It is beyond us.”
The others glanced at Henry with nervous eyes.
Zach’s father crossed his arms. “I should remind you, Henry, of your place here. We are in service of the Monseigneur. We do his bidding, as we have always done, and we do not question him.”
Henry gave an exasperated sigh. “Even if our time and energies are being spent on fool’s errands?”