The Lighthouse between the Worlds

by Melanie Crowder

  Vinea. The servants were from Vinea.

  Griffin leaned back against the wall, dropping his head into his hands. Why had she bothered to tell him all those stories? Why did she need him to know about this place? Or Vinea or Maris or the rest? Was she trying to tell him about her life when clearly there was so much she had to keep from him? Did she worry he’d end up here someday? Grief ripped through Griffin’s chest. Did she know that she wouldn’t be here to help him when he did?

  When the boy returned, he dropped the basket and rose on his tiptoes for his kiss, just as before. But this time, when he trotted off, Griffin crept into place under the windowsill. Inside, the woman hummed while she worked. The sashes swished in the basin of water, and the iron hissed with steam as she pressed it onto the soft fabric.

  Every time her footsteps approached the window, Griffin flinched, expecting to be yanked by the ear out of his hiding spot. But who would be so foolish to steal a basket of sashes from the priests? Who would even think of it?

  The woman crossed to the window, set down her basket, and called to the boy. Griffin waited until he heard her exasperated tsk and her footfalls drift back across the room to the washbasin. Then he lifted the basket down as quietly as he could and set off at a sprint. He ran until he’d wound his way out of sight. Shouts rang out from the street behind him, first a scolding, and then the boy’s high-pitched protests.

  An itch between his shoulder blades insisted someone was chasing after him, but Griffin didn’t look back. Sweat slicked down his temples and across his neck, sticking his stola to his spine. He panted for breath, his sandals slapping the dirt beneath him. Only when he rounded the last curve and the walls of the rectory loomed did Griffin slow to a walk.

  He crossed the brick path as if he did that very thing every day. He knocked at the servants’ entrance as he had seen the others do all morning. He ducked his head and hid the exposed skin on his forearms beneath the basket. The door was whisked open after the second knock, and a soldier in a black stola shoved Griffin inside. “Hurry up. The dressers have been waiting.”

  Griffin bobbed his head and scurried down the hall. When the soldier slammed the door and stomped back to the guardroom, Griffin let out a slow breath. He set out down the hallway, trying to reconcile what he’d seen in his mother’s map with the rooms and passageways all around him. He held the basket to one side, ducking his head so he could sneak a look inside any open doorways as he passed by.

  Wherever they were keeping his dad would probably be locked, with a guard posted outside. Griffin wove past libraries and offices, sleeping quarters and kitchens, and a lavish dining room with the longest table he’d ever seen. He dumped the sashes at the end of the table and nicked a polishing rag someone had left on the serving buffet. He sidled into the hall and began polishing wall sconces and the ornate window grates set into the doors, trying to look like he belonged among the army of servants. Every so often, a priest swished by in robes the color of dried blood, a pair of soldiers trailing close at his heels.

  Griffin kept his body angled away and his head down, but nothing could shield him from feeling the wave of magic that swept past with them. It was like a sneeze trapped high in the bridge of your nose, like eyes boring into the back of your skull.

  Griffin reached a dead end and began scrubbing the resin window set into the wall. He checked back over his shoulder, but no one was there to notice that he was completely lost.

  His shoulders sagged, and a sliver of doubt worried its way in. It was getting late—and from the sounds coming from the kitchens, a big meal was going to be served soon. The last thing he wanted was to be caught out in the open while all those priests and their peppery magic filed into the dining room. Maybe he should start looking for somewhere to hide until night fell, under one of the reading tables in the library or in one of those broom closets.

  Griffin doubled back, but then couldn’t remember whether the library was down the hallway on the left or the one to the right. His mouth went dry. He shifted his weight to one foot and then the other. Keep moving. Don’t get caught.

  He wandered down the hallway on the right. He rounded the corner, and there, in the middle of a long corridor, was a single door with a soldier standing guard. His thumbs were looped through the belt at his waist, his fingers splayed over the dangling weapons. Griffin’s throat tightened, and suddenly his legs wouldn’t move him a single step farther. Was it—could his dad be behind that door?

  He should be able to feel it, right? If his dad was really in there. He should know, somehow. A scuffle sounded behind him, and Griffin hurried past the guard and into the intersecting passageway. It was empty too. He slid to the floor in relief, his spine pressed against the wall. He gulped a quick breath and peered back around the corner.

  The guard didn’t look like he’d be leaving anytime soon. Maybe if Griffin threw a rock or something, the soldier would go check out the noise. Or he could start a fire and run into the hallway, begging the soldier to help. Griffin shook his head. He didn’t have a rock to throw. And he didn’t have anything to burn, much less a single match.

  He edged forward a second time, risking another glance around the corner. Suddenly Griffin was yanked backward. A ball of cloth was jammed into his mouth and he gagged, trying to scream for help. Behind him, a door was flung open, and he was shoved backward through it.

  The door slammed, and everything went pitch black. He struggled to sit up, but something knobby jammed into his chest and knocked him back down. A foot pressed against his throat. Griffin closed his eyes to shut out the dark, and a muffled wail escaped him.

  He had failed. Utterly and completely.

  13

  A PROBLEM

  Fi had spent every day of the last twenty-seven months as a servant in the rectory. She scrubbed dirt out of the cracks between bricks. She scoured scraps of baked-on food from the clay dishes. She carried messages from the temple to the garrison (and yes, of course she steamed open the seal to read the contents). But if she ever got to choose from the unending list of undesirable jobs, she picked cleaning the rugs. Not washing them—beating them.

  Once a week the servants stretched a cord across an interior courtyard, and each of the carpets adorning the walls and the rugs padding the rectory floors was strung up and whacked repeatedly to shake the dust free. There was a special paddle suited to the task, a metal stick with a bloom of interlocking petals like an iron daisy. When her turn came, Fi slammed the paddle against the heavy carpets over and over again until she was panting and sweating and blisters bubbled up on her palms.

  It was exhausting work. Maybe that’s why it was her favorite. She was always too tired to think at the end of those days. Too tired, even, to miss home. That, and there was a certain satisfaction in hitting something as hard as you possibly could, as many times as you could. (Especially when what you really wanted to clobber was off-limits.)

  None of the Vinean servants were there because they loved attending the priests. They didn’t do it out of some twisted sense of devotion to the invaders who had colonized their home world. No, when the priests had taken the first batch of Vinean people to serve them on Somni, the resistance spreading its roots beneath the surface of everything their oppressors set into place had recognized an opportunity and latched on to it like a vine choking the life from its host plant.

  There was only one reason Fi and the others put up with the scowls and condescension (not to mention scouring the floor around the toilets). Soon, they were going to overthrow the priests and their brainwashed soldiers, and Fi would be reunited with her family. Somni would rue the day they had even thought about attacking Vinea. And Fi was going to be there when they did. She may have been only eleven years old, but she had more than earned her place in the resistance. No way was she going to let whoever this kid was make those awful years of scrubbing and simpering and aching for home all for nothing.

  The boy blinked, his face turning red as a poppy. She probably should m
ake sure he could actually breathe. “Promise you won’t scream if I take that out?”

  He nodded. Well, as much as he could with her foot balancing on his windpipe and jamming the sash between his teeth.

  “Because if you scream, I’ll just shove it back in there for good, and if you can’t breathe, it’ll be your own fault.”

  The boy’s eyes blinked even wider. Fi scowled to make sure he understood she wasn’t somebody to mess with. And then she lifted her foot off his throat and yanked the sash out. The boy choked, sucking in deep breaths, but she didn’t ease up on the paddle pinning his chest to the bricks. Gradually the shock drained from his face, and something else flushed over the tops of his cheekbones and the tips of his ears.

  Fi squirmed. She knew that look. Fi and despair were old friends.

  Sometimes she woke in a panic in the middle of the night, fists clutching her sheets and her body slick with sweat. She wasn’t afraid of the priests catching her. She wasn’t scared of the soldiers. She knew what she risked every day. But she hadn’t known when she signed up how much she needed to see green, growing things all around her.

  When she came to Somni, to this barren world of dry air and dry soil and a starless sky, a big chunk of her went missing. Fi had faced down the idea of dying, but she hadn’t counted on living with the knowledge that she might never set foot on Vinea again. She hadn’t counted on the despair.

  Fi thrust her paddle harder into the boy’s chest. “I saw you and the other three outside the temple last night. You thought since you snuck through the portal while the priests and their soldiers were all at their stupid ceremony that no one noticed? Think again.”

  The boy held out his arms, pleading. “No—I’m not with them. I swear.”

  Fi let up on the paddle, swinging it up over her shoulder like a scythe. She began to pace the length of the small closet. “Why should I believe you?”

  The boy sputtered. “They kidnapped my dad—I just want him back.”

  “You mean that guy the priests brought through a couple of days ago?”

  The boy sat up. “You saw him?”

  “Well, from far away.”

  “Is he okay? How—”

  “You don’t ask questions,” Fi interrupted, as much to keep from spilling more than she should as to keep from thinking about her own family and whether she’d ever find them while they were still alive. If they were still alive. “You were in the temple. You saw the dreamers hanging there—why didn’t you unhook your dad and take him back to your miserable world?”

  “He’s not in there—I checked.”

  “So you decided on a whim to try the rectory? To go poking around that hallway and that door, oh, just because?”

  The boy’s eyes darted to the closet door. Fi leaped forward, knocked him flat again, and pressed the toe of her sandal against his windpipe. “Try it,” she whispered. “That would make my decision so much easier.”

  The boy’s eyes drifted closed, and he let his hands fall back to the floor in surrender. “I guessed he’d be in the rectory.”

  It’s not that Fi didn’t notice the tear slide out of the corner of his eye. She just couldn’t afford to care. “How?”

  “I was following Dr. Hibbert. That’s where she went.” His chin began to quaver, and his voice shook as he continued. “Also, my mom kind of showed me where to look.”

  Fi tapped a finger against her paddle. She was quickly losing patience. “And she is?”

  The boy’s eyes snapped open at her tone, and even flat on his back, completely at her mercy, defiance steadied his jaw and dried his eyes. “Her name was Katherine Fenn.”

  Fi lifted her foot and stepped back, bracing herself against the door. She blew out a low whistle. Well that complicates things. She groaned, dropping her head into the palm of her hand. If this kid’s mom was Katherine Fenn, the Katherine Fenn, that would mean the guy the priests brought through last night was Philip Fenn? Liv and Eb definitely needed to hear this.

  Fi knelt beside the boy. “All right. What’s your name?”

  “Why?”

  Fi rolled her eyes, staring for a long moment at the ceiling. “If I’m going to risk my neck and, well, let’s just say everything else that’s important to me in my whole life to help you, I’d like for us to be on a first-name basis.”

  “Oh.” He cut his eyes toward her, and his frown softened at the edges. “It’s Griffin.”

  “And I’m Fionna. Fi for short. Hold out your arms, wrists up.”

  Fi ran her palm along each forearm and then leaned close, squinting at the veins barely visible below the skin. She grunted, then leaned her paddle against the door and began unwinding the sash around her waist. She picked at the seam, snapping the threads with her teeth and carefully separating the fabric. She pinched a thin sprig of malva vine between the tips of her fingers and slowly drew it out. As she had done with her own forearm the day she left Vinea for this lifeless world, she laid the vine along the path of Griffin’s vein, waiting for the plant to awaken, sink into his skin, and begin the process of mingling with his blood.

  His eyes bulged wide. Griffin didn’t pull his arm away, but the rest of him shrank back as the vine roused, searching out his vein and shifting to line itself up with the blue shadow beneath his skin.

  “Will you just sit still? I’m trying to help you here.”

  “What is that . . .” Griffin trailed off, disgust twisting his lips.

  Fi didn’t wait for him to pick that line of questioning back up, or to start in on others she shouldn’t answer—about the resistance, or the protection the malva vine offered against the priests’ mind control. It was better if she was the one interrogating him. “So after you got into the chapel and found your dad, you thought the priests and their soldiers would all just let you go free because, hey, it was really hard for you to get that far?”

  The word stung as it passed Fi’s lips. Free. In her whole life, she’d never once breathed a free breath. She’d never known a life without soldiers toppling the trees and trampling the undergrowth on Vinea.

  Griffin sat up and rubbed his forearm, staring at his skin as if it didn’t belong to him. He scrubbed his fingernails over the vein as if he could scratch the vine out of his bloodstream again. “I only knew I had to try to get my dad out of there before Dr. Hibbert or Fergus and Sykes got to him.”

  “And why is that?”

  “They’re going to kill him.”

  Fi’s eyes narrowed. “So you get him out of the chapel, and away from them. Did you think the soldiers wouldn’t see you two sneaking out? Did you think the priests weren’t going to notice when their prisoner went missing?”

  Griffin’s shoulders rose and fell again in a defeated shrug. “He’s all I have left. And I’m all he has too. I didn’t have time to plan it all out. I just needed to get him back.”

  Fi crossed her arms, and then she uncrossed them. She’d spent years learning to tuck her emotions deep down, like heather seeds hiding underground, dormant for years, waiting for fire to lick everything clean. It was the first lesson Eb had taught her: Never let the priests see how you really feel. Don’t give them any reason to look twice in your direction.

  But the fact that Griffin was there, in the rectory, without any real plan or backup or escape route made her want to scream. He wasn’t only risking his own life—Fi couldn’t care less about that. Griffin was pretending to be a servant. If the priests figured out someone in their service had betrayed them, everything the resistance had planned—everything it had taken them years to set into motion—would be finished. And they would never get this close again.

  Her family had been captured and sent to Somni as prisoners on one of the raze crews, forced to uproot every weed or sprout growing in the wastelands. They were out there, somewhere, dying a little more each day. They were counting on her. The resistance was counting on her. And Griffin could have ruined everything, just to save his dad. That one life was worth her whole world?

&n
bsp; Fi must not have buried her anger as deep as she’d meant to, because Griffin scrambled to his feet and grasped her arm, his eyes bright and pleading. “I may not know everything, but we’ve got the same enemy, right? We could help each other.”

  Fi wrested her arm away, lifted a finger to her lips, and pressed her ear against the door. When the footsteps had passed, she grabbed a bucket and scrub brush off the shelf and thrust them into Griffin’s hands. “You do exactly what I tell you. You do not ask questions. Got it?”

  “Are you going to help me?”

  “That’s a question.”

  “Well, are you?”

  Fi blew out an impatient breath. “Yes. Wait—no, no, don’t get excited. I wasn’t finished. I’ll help you if we get approval, and when the time is right.”

  Griffin frowned. “Approval? From whom?”

  “I said no questions.”

  Griffin searched Fi’s face for a reason to trust her, for even a trace of compassion. But the scowl was back. She wasn’t budging. After a long moment, Griffin reached out and took the brush and pail. “Fine.”

  Fi nodded in return. “Welcome to the resistance.”

  14

  TWO STEPS BACK

  A door slammed deep within the rectory. Griffin jumped and hurried to catch up with Fi. The last thing he wanted to do was leave the rectory when he’d worked so hard just to get in there. But Fi was right. If he found his dad, Griffin had no idea how to get him safely home again. He couldn’t do this alone, not with the Keepers and the soldiers and the priests in his way. Much as he hated to admit it, he needed help.

  He should have known that rushing straight at the problem was never going to work. How many times had his dad reminded him to study a problem from every angle before jumping in? But it was one thing when the puzzle in front of him was getting the angle just right on a prism or fitting a pane of glass into its metal frame. It was another thing entirely when his dad was the problem, and every second he was missing felt like a lifetime too long.