These aren’t their thoughts. These are the Fate Spinner’s words. She’s scared I’ll win. This is the Fate Spinner trying to break me. And I won’t listen!
The last charred skeleton jumped before Annalise. It reeked of fires long dead and of Grandpa Jovie’s cedarwood soap. “You should have known you wouldn’t make it,” Grandpa Jovie’s impostor said in his gentle voice. Annalise knew it wasn’t really her grandfather—a man who would never say such a thing to her—but her heart broke a little hearing his voice say so. “Not even your parents believed in you or your dreams. Give up, Annalise. Deep down, you know you’re not worthy of anything good.”
Her parents. All this time she’d barely thought about them. She should have been trying to find them since she’d first seen them on the train of wolves. She was a terrible daughter and an even worse friend. She had failed. She had killed. She had been selfish, and maybe she didn’t deserve to win.
Annalise tried, she really did, not to let her grandparents’ words in. But her panic had a mind of its own.
The monster inside her great hand fought and writhed, and maybe even spoke. But whatever it said, it wasn’t as loud as the scrabble of thoughts swarming her mind. Poisonous notions released within her like black balloons in a gale. Darkness welled up. Cold seeped in. Annalise’s breath came faster. Hot ugly tears streamed down her frozen face, and oh, how they burned! All while the Fate Spinner’s monsters looked on.
Annalise was spiraling, down, down, down, down, into a bottomless darkness. Suddenly, she didn’t feel so strong.
The black skeletons towered over her on every side. Annalise stumbled backward and tripped over the snow. She fell flat on her back. Blinking away tears, her face hot, her heart broken—as broken as her hand; her sky; her beautiful, improbable dream—Annalise didn’t even try to get up. She was so tired. How had she even made it this far? What was she doing here in this place, so very far from love, warmth, home?
Annalise let her burning eyes close.
“There now, child,” the Fate Spinner said, her voice echoing across the heavens. “Let my labyrinth take you. Let the snow cover you until you are still.” Soft blankets of shimmering snow coated Annalise until only her left eyelid showed through. The Fate Spinner’s soft-spoken words settled into Annalise’s spirit and spread. The four burnt skeletons curled over her like the petals of a black daisy, reaching for her great hand.
Annalise sighed beneath the snowdrifts, pain and worry and fight melting away.
Her journey had been so long. So dark. So cruel, desperate, and cold. The weight of her life sat upon her, attempting to crush all the power and will and strength she’d gained. The snow-blankets wrapped her in a mother’s gentle arms as the Fate Spinner whispered, “It’s all right, Annalise. Give your curse to me, and you’ll finally be free of all those foolish dreams.”
Annalise’s eyes snapped open.
Foolish . . . dreams?
Her dad in a green-grass backyard building longboats in the sun.
Her mom writing by a fire, smiling triumphantly at an award on the wall.
Mister Edwards and his love crafting sweets in Caledonia in peace.
And Annalise free of her curse, the sky healed, her town prosperous and its people content; the architect of her own destiny.
These were not foolish dreams. They were true, and lovely, and real.
And they belonged in the world.
A twinge of heat kindled within her dark mark. Not pain, but flame. Annalise pushed herself through the snow. And as the skeletons were about to reach her great hand, a stream of golden butterflies caught her attention.
The poets of hope drifted from the trees to her right and fluttered back the way Annalise had come. As one, they formed a gold-winged frame in the middle of the clearing, where the mirror through which she’d entered had been.
“You’re almost there,” they twittered. “In the dark, your fires spark. In the light, your dreams take flight!”
With each word they spoke, the frame glowed brighter, lighting up the deep blue night. And finally, an image of mirrored glass within the butterfly frame appeared. Within it, her parents waved her forward, calling her home. “Come on, Annalise,” her dad said. “You can do it.”
“We love you, sweetheart,” her mom said with a proud smile. “Finish the maze, beat the Fate Spinner, and come home.”
Annalise’s heart warmed at once. The icy spell the Fate Spinner had cast over her cracked and fell away. Annalise trembled, small and cold, in the center of a circle of monsters.
The Fate Spinner’s laughter rattled the sky. “We know what you are, Annalise Meriwether,” the skeletal creatures screamed in the voice of their mistress. “And we will never let you leave!”
The blizzard grew thicker, darker, colder. Annalise no longer felt her great hand or her own monster within, but the horn twined steadily out from her palm.
There was no visible end to this wasteland of ice and space—but she couldn’t give up now.
Annalise lunged from the snowdrift, horn first. “I am a girl with a dream,” she shouted over the howling gale. “And that makes me stronger than you!”
A flash of power rushed through her. Annalise spun toward the giant bone monsters and took aim. Fire raged through her. The creatures shrieked and hissed. Their charred bones contorted in pain as they swatted the gold-and-black flames shooting from her dark mark.
“Get back!” The spiraled black horn was as long as a sword, and Annalise’s hand bigger than it had ever been. The energy surrounding her doubled, tripled, quadrupled. The enchanted wood seemed to gather strength.
Or maybe, the power was coming from her.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” she shouted louder, “but I will!”
The skeleton closest to her screamed and grabbed for Annalise’s great hand; she blasted it so forcefully, it flew backward and scorched the trees. The charred skeleton landed and galloped off on all fours, screeching into the night. The others bounded after it, and soon, they were gone, too.
Annalise crouched in the snow—frozen and heaving, adrenaline supercharging her blood. How many times had her great hand helped her? Even though she’d spent most of her life wishing it away, how many times since she started treating it kindly had it fought valiantly at her side?
“I see you for what you truly are,” Annalise said, cradling her great hand. The creature shifted beneath its horn. “You are a gift—a strength I didn’t know I had, and I swear, I will never take you for granted again.”
Maybe that was another reason the Fate Spinner wanted her great hand. Maybe the power growing inside her exceeded her own.
“You can’t escape me, Annalise,” the Fate Spinner howled through the trees. “No matter what you do, you cannot escape your fate. . . .”
The winds slowed and fell with her voice. The snow tapered and died. And from out of the enchanted field of snow, four familiar walls rose—the one directly before her held the flutter-winged mirror of gold, her parents waving her forward. Annalise grinned so hard at her great hand, the high dimple on her left cheek appeared. “Let’s go show the Fate Spinner what we’ve got.”
Her stomach twisted. And hopefully find Mister Edwards along the way.
With each step that Annalise ran, the more the snow melted, and the more defined the walls became, and the brighter the butterflies glowed. The midnight-blue darkness lit up with their wondrously warm shine. Annalise hurried toward the golden butterflies, braid waving behind her, confident all she’d have to do was walk through the mirror into the labyrinth.
But by the time she arrived, the mirror had turned to stone.
“No.” Here came the trembling thump-thump-thump-thump of her heart, the anxiety fighting her body for control. But Annalise fought back.
She shot fire at the wall, hoping to melt it; but nothing happened. She tried pushing it—but it wouldn’t budge. The Fate Spinner’s laughter crawled across the skies but that only fueled her on. “Annalise,” she whi
spered to herself, “you mustn’t give up.”
The poets of hope opened their wings. Words written across each wing, when read in sequence, created a poem:
Even after the longest dark night, dreams will shine. As if darkness was a spark and dreamers, the birth of the flame.
“You’re r-right,” Annalise said, the cold seeping in deeper. “D-dreams will sh-shine.”
A light grew and grew from the pocket of her cloak.
The Book of Remembering.
Fingers numb, Annalise lifted the book from her pocket with her small hand and it flipped open on its own. The pages glowed, illuminating the frozen, dark night. A picture of her real grandpa Hugo emerged on the page, along with his real voice: “Never doubt your greatness, Annalise. You are the very definition of the word.” He looked right at her, eyes sparkling with pride. “Find her, dear Annalise. Find her and make all your dreams come true.”
Hugo’s image faded. The Spinner King appeared in the book next and spoke directly to Annalise. “This dagger, forged from a cockatrice’s heart, yields the power to shatter illusions on the path to one’s dreams. Use it to free the demon queen, and win the final reward.”
The book snapped shut. The dagger hummed in its sheath. And Annalise brightened with hope.
Maybe if she stabbed the wall with her dagger, the illusion, if that was what this truly was, would break? “Thank you, Grandpa Hugo and the Spinner King, thank you!”
Behind her, a murder of black crows screamed. Hundreds, heading straight for her. Annalise faced the wall ahead.
“The only way to escape these four walls is to break one of them down.” Annalise removed the silver dagger from her scabbard, cried like a warrior, and thrust it deep into the crack of the stone.
The Fate Spinner’s scream shot across the night.
Black fire exploded from the place the blade penetrated the wall. Crows cried. Night wolves howled. Then everything went still. Annalise didn’t see any demon queen appear, but slowly, the blocks of the wall rearranged. They pushed back and back until they made way for Annalise and her dreams, and only the frame of wings remained.
A sign hung over the winged frame.
The Gate of Death.
Annalise remembered the words of the thin tree in the beginning of the maze. “Inside each of these paths hide four smaller passageways known as the Gates of Doubt, Rejection, Panic, and Death. They will appear to you in this order and contain many surprises within.”
This was the final gate to Dreamland.
Mercy.
Annalise was almost there.
A thick haze of silver-red smoke obscured the tunnel ahead. The cheers of a large audience or mob drifted out from the opening and pummeled her skin. It was the sound of spectators pumping fists, hungry to see someone fall. Of creatures out for blood. Annalise inhaled four deep breaths, but they did not clear her dread.
“Together,” Annalise said to her monster—to her friend—and stepped forward through the frame, ready to fight her way free from this labyrinth once and for all.
“Together,” her monster answered—but not as a thought in her mind. Though the reply came from beneath her monster’s horn, it spoke with a voice of its own.
Annalise froze. Her great hand contorted and grew—and grew and grew and grew. Her eyes and mouth popped wide as a lightning bolt of pain stabbed through her great hand. The spiraled horn pushed farther outside of herself, the skin of her hand on fire.
Annalise screamed in horror and agony and collapsed on the other side.
Chapter 28
The Monster Born from a Curse
All her life, Annalise had abhorred her great hand. It was the villain that made life hard for her parents, killed her grandparents, and kept Annalise hidden from the world. Until entering the labyrinth, she’d blamed it for every pain, hardship, and sorrow bestowed upon her by the Fate Spinner. But she hadn’t realized that by vilifying it, by wishing it gone, Annalise had made her great hand a monster, when maybe all it needed was to be wanted, treasured, accepted—loved.
She wasn’t just a girl with a curse. Annalise was a being of strength, will, fire—magic. A force capable of growing a mythical creature inside her, a power born from misfortune. Annalise was a girl with a dream bigger than fate—powerful enough to change the world.
When Annalise landed on the other side of the golden frame, she dropped to her knees in the dirt, screaming in agony. An audience she couldn’t see stomped and cheered from every direction. Land of snow gone, red haze surrounding her, Annalise shuddered as the horn twisted up and out, higher and higher from the black heart marking her palm.
What is happening? Tears streamed down her cheeks. Hair hung in her face, grit dug into her flesh. Teeth bared, Annalise watched as her great hand stretched and distorted—and grew—until finally, it became too heavy to lift, and fell to the ground.
Spiraled black horn pointing at the sky, a blast of golden fire rocketed from her great hand and the monster within. Annalise screamed so loud, the cheers of the crowd were silenced—as a creature of myth, magic, and flame propelled from her great hand, horn first.
Annalise’s monster charged into the crimson mist and vanished. The second her monster was free, the pain in her great hand died, and the golden-framed entrance through which Annalise had arrived shrank and disappeared.
The unseen crowd broke its stunned silence and erupted in wild applause. Annalise’s great hand had reduced to the size it was before she left home. The skin of her dark mark where the beast leaped free sealed as if nothing had happened. Not only that but the shattered black heart of the Fate Spinner was no longer broken.
Annalise grinned.
The heart on her palm was whole.
And something new had appeared. A long golden thread, thin as a spiderweb, drifted out from her black mark and into the smoky air. She couldn’t see where it ended, but Annalise felt sure that the monster she’d come to know as her friend was tethered to its end.
Annalise had seen the creature as it leaped free, but she still couldn’t believe it. “Mercy,” she whispered into the haze.
A black fire unicorn had been inside her all along.
Still shaking, Annalise pushed off her knees. As soon as she stood, the vicious crowd booed, and the haze running the ground cleared. Annalise recognized where she’d landed at once.
She’d read many stories of grand colosseums where lives were sacrificed for sport. Where gladiators and gladiatrices battled for their lives, and only one walked away. But never in Annalise’s wildest imaginings had she thought she’d be one of them.
Until now.
A caged arena spread out before her. Massive black bars domed high overhead. A towering oval wall rose from the hardscrabble ground, joined with the barred dome, and locked her in. Two solid iron doors stood on either side of Annalise, embedded in the walls. A thick haze still veiled the spectators shouting from the stands.
Annalise searched the smoke for her unicorn but found only vague blurs of gold flame shining out from the mist.
When she took a step, the grinding of a rising door screeched to her left. A winged creature, twice the size of the cockatrice, emerged. The top half of its body resembled a tawny lion with a mane of black flames. Dark scaled wings stretched at its sides. Glowing red mirrored eyes and sharp black horns decorated its massive skull. Its back legs were hooved like a Minotaur’s, and its tail took the form of a writhing fanged snake, hissing and biting the air. It carried a gold box in its massive fangs.
Was this the demon queen the king mentioned—the one that held another reward as powerful as the last?
Shackled to the ground with the thickest chain Annalise had ever seen, the lion-headed Minotaur fixed its ruby eyes on her, dropped the box with a clatter, and roared. Fire blew from its jaws. A blast of flames crossed the arena toward Annalise.
She hurried backward and ducked. The tops of her black ribbons scorched. Annalise lost breath at the whip-beats of her heart as she squelche
d the flames in her hair. The chimera leaped and strangled at the end of its chain.
She’d had Mister Edwards to help her the last time she battled a monster.
How could she do this without him?
The invisible crowd, so loud only moments ago, hushed. The hairs on Annalise’s arms stood. When she turned, her black unicorn of fire and horn charged like a winged demon out of the shadows, straight at her.
Purple eyes giant with fear, Annalise stumbled over her feet in awe.
“Climb on,” the unicorn said in a familiar voice, skidding to a halt before Annalise. Sparks of cinder rose with each beat of her bone-and-leather wings. The unicorn’s sleek black head was that of a horse, but with one spiraled black horn between her eyes. Her tail, mane, and hooves flamed out in fires of gold. Black-hearted scales, matching Annalise’s dark mark, armored her body. The golden thread trailed from the unicorn’s chest and anchored inside Annalise’s marked palm.
They were joined, even when separate.
“Hurry!” The enormous unicorn lowered a wing to her feet. Without hesitation, Annalise climbed up onto her back. “Now,” the fire unicorn said as the chimera blasted another torrent of flames, “let’s show the Fate Spinner what we can do!”
The unicorn pumped her wings and pushed off the dusty ground.
Annalise’s excitement spoiled quickly as she slipped sideways on the unicorn’s scales. She fought to stay on. With the unicorn’s wings thrashing up and down at Annalise’s feet, and her flames licking up around her, there was no place to hold that wouldn’t burn her.
“Grab my mane,” the unicorn said as she circled the ring. “And don’t worry.” Her gold eyes met Annalise’s purple ones. “Nothing on me can hurt you.”
Annalise grasped the unicorn’s mane—to her amazement, she found it cool. A zing of energy filled her upon gripping the unicorn’s mane—lightning, thunder, magic, a universe spinning inside her. The thread connecting them brightened and glowed.
“You’re beautiful!” Annalise said past the lump in her throat and wrapped her arms around the unicorn’s neck. “You’re a beautiful and mighty unicorn.” A glitter of golden ash flew out behind them, dusting the arena below. Annalise laughed. “And you came from me!”
The Spinner of Dreams Page 18