“Mission Control to Vanishing Boy,” she murmured. Her voice hummed in the cave, sounding like breath across an open bottle. Even in her own ears, the words blurred, so she spoke a little louder. “Mission Control to Vanishing Boy. Come in.”
It took three more tries before Eddie realized she was calling and turned around. “Huh?”
Sophie gestured with the shell. For a second, the kid looked baffled. Wide-eyed, red-cheeked, dead earnest. Natalie’s boy. Then he scowled because he’d been interrupted, and that made him even more Natalie’s boy, even though he’d hardly known his mother and certainly wouldn’t remember her scowl.
That sweet, savage Natalie scowl.
Fumbling in his pocket, Eddie withdrew the dead phone and accidentally flipped out the apple core along with it. Not that he noticed or cared. For some reason, he shook the phone as if that would wake it before putting it on his ear.
Then he grinned at her again.
From nowhere, a laugh seized Sophie. It was like none she could remember, or rather, like the actual laughs she’d stopped having almost exactly five years ago. The vibration of her ribs jiggled the ghost-weight that was always there on her chest, and for one ridiculous second, Sophie actually thought that she would look down at her body, and there, in his sling, blinking goggle-eyed, would be her own boy.
Her Roo. Who was not asleep on her chest but on Natalie’s, in the cave in the ground that Sophie and Jess had dug for them. No matter how often Sophie lifted a shell to her ear and called, her Roo would never answer.
She stood. Eddie did, too, and slipped. He slid on his butt toward the water just as the orca glided into the cave.
It came so smoothly, so naturally, heading right for Eddie, that Sophie had the crazy thought that he’d called it on that dead phone she’d given him. Summoned it like a water taxi, so he could ride across the cave to her side. An image flashed through her head from some old nature TV show—God, TV!—of a whole pod of orcas tossing a screaming kid back and forth between them. Hurling the kid so high in the air, it was as though they were flying him.
Dolphin, she snarled inside her head. Not a kid.
“Eddie,” she hissed to startle and alert him. He looked up, looked at her, looked down and saw the whale.
Five years, she was thinking as Eddie froze, his little sneakered feet inches from the edge of the water. Five years, and she’d hardly seen so much as a crab in this cave. Not even a bird.
For a long few seconds, both she and Eddie seemed to hang suspended over the water, not quite motionless but rooted, waving in place as the orca surfaced. Its rubbery skin looked blacker than anything Sophie had ever seen except for the black in its eyes. At least its skin reflected the green of the cave, which seemed to flicker across it and become imprinted in the white patches. The cave, painting itself. The whale’s jaws unhinged. The teeth inside were slimed with something dark and glinting that dripped into the cavernous well where its pink tongue lolled. Nothing about that face seemed to be smiling. Slowly, slowly, the whale rolled all the way over on its back. It kept rolling until it was upright again, as though it were bathing in this shadowy light. Taking a shower.
“Sophie…” Eddie said, softly—in awe, and fear, but not enough of either. His expression triggered the memory, and the memory flattened her against the rocks:
That night in the Okefenokee, when Natalie had made them turn around, stop running, head home to try to reclaim and save their children. And Sophie, still drunk and giddy in her new body—which was actually the body she’d always had, it was her that was new inside it—had slid out of their flatboat into the brackish, heavy water to float with the alligators.
So reckless. So stupid.
But their skins! Bumping against her. All that cold, throbbing, knobby weight. How impossible it had seemed that anything that heavy and hard could be alive. And yet the alligators were unmistakably, impossibly alive, and old-seeming. Like tipped-over tree stumps, swimming. Hunting.
Insane, Nat had called her. Shouted at her, actually, while demanding that she get out. So Sophie had, eventually. So that Nat—the sane and supposedly less reckless one—could send them screaming right back into the hands of the Whistler and his Mother and Natalie’s mother, who had turned out to be the most ruthless, reckless, and murderous of all.
Abruptly, Sophie was off the wall of the cave, scuttling around the rocks toward Eddie, and not slowly, either. “Hang on, kiddo,” she murmured, possibly to the kid, possibly the whale. Both of them, she thought, had better listen if they knew what was good for them. Interestingly, no part of her seemed to want to slip into this water.
Eddie, though, was leaning way out over it. If it was possible to teeter while lying flat atop rocks, he was doing that. “Hey,” he said. There was no doubt about it. He was talking to the goddamn whale. “Hello.”
In the shallow water of the inlet, which barely covered its back and left the top third of its fins jabbing into the air, the whale glided closer. It’s going to leap, Sophie thought, and lunged across the last bit of rock to grab Eddie’s wrist. He cried out while she yanked him to his feet and all the way back against the wall, which wasn’t nearly far enough.
When she let herself—made herself—look down, the whale was still gliding past them, turning lazily, almost as if it hadn’t seen them, except Sophie was positive it had. It looked enormous, wilder and even more alien than her alligators. It flowed past, less a thing in the water than of it. Water with teeth. Finally, like an inkwell emptying itself, it flowed back out of the cave into the Strait and vanished.
“Wait,” Eddie croaked as Sophie pinned him against the wall. When she was sure the whale was gone, she pulled him around to the safer, wider ledge of rocks along the right-hand side of the cave. His little shoulders shuddered under his coat. His hands seemed to be pushing against and grabbing onto her stomach at the same time. He might have been talking to her or the orca.
She brushed his head, felt his silky little-kid hair. It wasn’t downy like her Roo’s had been, but still so soft. “Yeah, yeah,” she muttered, pulling him closer. She didn’t so much see as feel the shadow shoot up her back.
Whirling, she shoved Eddie behind her and almost lost her footing, imagined both of them plummeting right into that black, dripping, unsmiling mouth. But she didn’t fall, and there was no whale in the water anymore.
There were two girls standing in the cave mouth, haloed by light, staring in. One was a long-haired, willowy thing who was weaving back and forth without moving her feet, the other a squat, cornrowed teen with her fists curled. Sophie felt a surge of panic, and underneath that, guilt. And underneath that … nostalgia? Because as far as she could judge, the sensation she had now was the exact one she used to have when Jess caught her and Natalie smoking cigarettes. For a single, crazy moment—for the second time that morning—Sophie almost felt like herself again. Like actual-Sophie. Or, Sophie-before, assuming she was some sort of Sophie, still.
Which she was. Wasn’t she?
An all-new dread seized her, this one an entirely Sophie-now experience. Because even squinting into the light, and even though she’d hardly ever seen the cornrowed girl when she’d skulked around the perimeter of Jess’s compound, Sophie knew her. That girl had been in the New Hampshire woods on the night of the Whistler. She’d been there to watch Sophie bury her face in the back of the Whistler’s skull, filling her teeth with his cold, weirdly crusty brains (and sure, Soph, right, most brains are wetter, it’s the crustiness that was weird about that experience).
Her next thought landed softly; it wasn’t a prayer, barely even a wish. She simply hoped the cornrow girl hadn’t recognized her. Sophie just wasn’t in a hurting sort of mood.
The girl was peering hard into the cave, shading her eyes with her hand. She stepped inside. Eventually, inevitably, she squeaked, “Eddie?”
“Hi, Trudi,” Eddie called from behind Sophie’s back, then marched right past her. The little traitor.
“Where t
he fuck have you been, you brat? Everybody’s totally freaked. Get over here!”
Eddie didn’t look back, nor did he bother keeping to the safety of the rocks. He sloshed through the shallow neck at the top of the inlet, right past the place where the orca, less than thirty seconds before, had waited with its black mouth gaping. The cornrow girl scuttled forward to meet him.
The other girl now caught Sophie’s attention. She’d stepped forward, too, but only enough to fold herself into the shadows at the cave mouth. More interestingly, she appeared to have eyes only for Sophie. Her head was cocked, and—from what Sophie could discern at this distance—there was a sort of flatly curious expression on her face. It reminded Sophie of something, but she had no idea what at first.
Then she did.
That was the look—the exact one, right down to the angle of the head and compression of the mouth—that Sophie imagined on her own face as she’d studied the alligators drifting around the flatboat that night in the Okefenokee. It was the expression she was almost sure she’d been wearing as she slipped into the water. It communicated curiosity, she supposed, and was also a sort of greeting. A tentative Hello?
As the cornrow girl reached out and tugged Eddie to her side, Sophie glanced away from the willowy girl. She watched green light rippling on the rock walls. She didn’t so much remember all the endless, empty hours she’d spent in this place these past few years as retreat toward them like an alligator into its estuary. She no longer had anything to do for the foreseeable future. No one to talk to or stalk or study or hunt.
“Hey, Eddie,” she called abruptly. “Should we show your friends around?”
Instead of answering, Eddie spoke to the cornrow girl loudly enough for Sophie to hear. “I want to stay!”
A brand-new smile broke over Sophie’s face. This one was equal parts Sophie-then and Sophie-now, Roo-haunted and Natalie-derived and ferry-godmother-fueled and her own. The moment had come, she realized, to make some changes. Set some ground rules. It was time to have a come-to-Sophie chat, for starters, with Queen Jess and all her fearful little Jesslings. Sophie had had enough cave-phantoming and forest-skulking for three lifetimes.
Well, two, anyway.
The willowy girl was well inside the cave now, crouching to run her fingertips back and forth over the surface of the water like lures. As far as Sophie could tell, her pretty, pouty mouth wasn’t moving, but she looked like she was making a wish.
Be careful with the wishing, Sophie thought, and experienced a surprising twinge of something warm, almost pleasant, deep inside her chest. Watch out for whales.
Moving slow, making sure the cornrow girl saw her coming while keeping her own face averted, Sophie started toward the entrance to the cave. Beyond it, sunlight spangled the surface of the Strait like glitter. What she had in mind was going to hurt, all right. How come, every time she had to deal with Jess’s minions, she had to do it in daylight, and therefore burning?
Keep not recognizing me, Cornrow Girl, Sophie thought. Wished. Just let me go. And by that, what she meant was, Let me let you go.
“You guys want to watch the kid a bit?” she purred. Super-casual.
Too late, she realized that that request was just weird enough to cause exactly the reaction she didn’t want. Which was exactly what happened: the cornrow girl jolted upright, pulled Eddie tighter against her, and looked straight into Sophie’s face.
Oh, don’t, Sophie thought. Willed, really. Could she control their memories, too, or just their movements? Five years into her new life, she still didn’t know basics like that. She could see the struggle on the face of the girl in front of her. That still might not mean the girl knew who Sophie was. It could have been an automatic reaction to meeting Sophie’s gaze, a sort of terrified-cat crouch. Probably that was all it was.
Maybe that was all.
Five feet away—well within lunging distance—Sophie stopped. She had to squelch a sudden impulse to crouch at the girl’s feet and roll over in place like Eddie’s okra. To see what the girl would do, and also for fun. Because it would be fun.
All right, she thought. Spit it out.
But the girl said nothing. She might have been fighting to say nothing, or she might have had nothing to say. As a test, Sophie let her own gaze drop to the girl’s throat. Upon deciding that might not be so reassuring, though, she glanced instead toward the cave wall. Then she made herself wait.
The girl didn’t run or challenge or say anything. She just stood there.
“There’s plenty of food,” Sophie murmured, gesturing toward the indentation in the rocks where she’d stored the groceries. “Just make sure he eats one piece of fruit per Cheetos bag.”
“Boooooooo,” said Eddie, squirming in the cornrow girl’s grasp.
The girl didn’t seem to be letting him go. That was a less good sign.
The way Sophie saw it, she only had a couple options, at this point. And only one of them ended with her possibly seeing Eddie again. Or at least, ended with her seeing Eddie without destroying the rest of Eddie’s family. Then she wondered if she wasn’t at least as much Eddie’s family as they were, except for Jess.
The question really was whether he would think so?
She made up her mind. “Okay, then. See ya later, Cheshire cat–kid.”
“You’re the cat,” said Eddie, right on cue.
“Damn straight.” Sophie was moving, now, steeling herself to deal with the daylight. The willowy girl finished wishing and stood up right in her path. Sophie made to brush past, and the girl grabbed her arm.
Not hard. But the fingers felt funny, chalky-dry despite having dangled in the water (although Sophie wasn’t sure they’d actually touched it).
“You live here?” the new girl said, and met Sophie’s eyes.
Just as she should have, the girl stiffened. But … what’s this I’m feeling? Sophie wondered. Not a jolt. More a tickle. So strange …
“I live nowhere,” Sophie answered, without meaning to answer.
“Me, too.” This girl’s eyes were a different shade than the green in the cave. Deep-woods green, and full of shadows.
Sophie realized she had no idea what to say next, yet her mouth opened anyway. What came out was, “Well, in that case. Howdy, neighbor.”
The girl smiled, or at least, a smile ghosted over her face. That was enough distraction to free Sophie—no, that was ridiculous, the smile had simply broken the weird and clingy mood—and she edged past the girl toward the cave mouth. One more time, she stopped to stare out at the Strait, with its everyday accompanying clouds way out on the horizon, gaseous and imaginary as islands she’d never reach.
Feeling those deep-woods eyes on her back again, Sophie turned.
“Can I come?” the girl said.
Her instincts told her to flee right now. But Sophie made herself take a good, long look. It was as though this wispy teenager had somehow attached herself with a single touch, as if she were a spiderweb Sophie had walked through. Or, better—assuming she was sentient under that blank stare—a remora. A parasite, awaiting scraps.
But the stare wasn’t completely blank. And underneath the blankness was something familiar. In Sophie, that something was a loneliness so old, it predated Natalie’s death, or even their encounter with the Whistler. Was probably exactly as old as Sophie was.
How on earth had this kid come by it?
“Take care of the boy,” she said. “Of Eddie. Please? I’ll … be right back.”
Was that a shrug? A smile?
Whatever it was, it sent a shiver of pleasure through Sophie. Maybe, in some way she couldn’t begin to understand yet, her luck—her lifelong luck—had changed. Just now, in the instant this girl had walked into the cave. Maybe this weird, willowy creature was way more fairy godmother than Sophie had ever been. Maybe this girl was her fairy godmother.
“I’ll see you soon,” Sophie said, and stepped into the light.
17
To Emilia, trembling and ting
ling in the single shard of sunlight between two towering firs, it was like coming out of a coma. Although she could remember every single thing that had happened since the moment the Invisible Man had turned on her—reached out and claimed her, let her see him—the weeks since then felt like home movies of someone else’s life or dreams. Not recent dreams, either, and not whole ones, but fragmentary bits that had somehow escaped into daylight to flutter at the edges of consciousness like ash from some long-ago campfire.
She was Emilia again, or very nearly: Butterfly Weed spinster-in-training, or in-residence; catfish taco and Kacey Musgraves lover; Colombian-Mississippian only child; Storybooktime mesmerizer of local kids with nowhere else to go. Standing here blinking and prickling in this weak, almost wintry morning sun, this air so much lighter and more gossamer than any air she had previously known.
Apparently, her coma-dream had been all too real, though, because not five feet away, sheltered in the shadow of the firs, bandaged hands waving and head bowed, her Invisible Man was still talking. His companion—that regal, magnificent woman with the black, curly hair bubbling over her shoulders and down her back like just-tapped oil and eyes deeper and darker than the river back home—was still listening. Her mouth was slightly parted, and sometimes parted a little more. When it did, Emilia felt surges of inexplicable, sickening … what? Pride?
Because this woman was his Queen? Maybe everyone’s Queen? And Emilia’s man had pleased or at least amazed her?
Wriggling where she stood, turning back and forth in the light, Emilia felt threads of dream stretch around her but not tear or melt. Indeed, they seemed to be expanding, wrapping more of the landscape like a cocoon. The longer she stayed in the dream, she somehow knew, the more she would change. She had to get free, return to the world she was almost sure she was still part of. If she could just shake her shoulders a little harder, stop leaning forward to hear more of the Invisible Man’s tale and observe the Queen’s responses …
Abruptly, she went still, holding her breath. How long, exactly, had the Invisible Man not been talking? When had he stopped? He was just waiting, hands folded in front of him yet fumbling over each other in eagerness while the Queen stared. Incredibly, only now did Emilia realize she had no idea what any of this was actually about. And that was proof, more than anything else she’d thought or done, that the Emilia who’d emerged from the Butterfly Weed basement and wound up on the other side of the country in the company of a man whose face she’d never actually seen was no one she knew, or at least no one she’d been.
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