by Sarah Zettel
The frog stones froze, except for their eyes. Those gray clay eyes all swiveled toward me. I felt their gaze like hail dropping against my skin.
“Her,” said the first one.
“Her, her, her, her,” echoed all the others. Their recognition hit as hard as their gaze did, as hard as their words did.
“Down!” Shake’s order cracked over that flock of frog stones. His will pressed against them, forcing them backward until they hunkered down into their hollows. But they didn’t go easily, and I could tell they didn’t want to stay.
“Quickly now. I won’t be able to hold them for long.” Shake pushed me forward.
This time, though, I found the sense to dodge sideways. “Are you nuts? I’m not going in there!” The stones rumbled and strained. They ground their teeth together and pushed against Shake’s commands. I could feel the hatred welling out of them, the way I felt their stares and their words.
“You’re not going to get another chance like this, Callie. There are those here who will help us both.”
“Help us do what?”
Shake rolled his one good eye in exasperation. “You want to free your parents? So do I. But we can’t do it alone. Come on. I can take you to my friends.” He reached for me again, but I yanked my hand away.
“You didn’t say anything about this.”
“I wasn’t sure we’d find a thin place. There’s no time to argue. Come with me, now.”
My uncle was grabbing for my thoughts the way he was grabbing for my hand. He wanted to knot my wishes up with his. The problem was, the closer he pulled me, the better I could see what was going on inside him. I saw that Lorcan was scared. He was seeing faces—people made of sticks and twigs, or drops of water and pure wind. He saw animals with human faces and humans with horns and tails like Halloween devils and shining, tall, perfect people carrying bronze spears. He’d promised all these people he’d bring me back. He’d promised them power if he got to the Midnight Throne. That was how he’d got out into the human world. He hadn’t been cast out at all. He’d escaped from wherever my grandparents had him jailed. All these people had helped him get free, in exchange for that promise.
Now he was stuck. Because we can’t break our promises.
“You hoped we would find a thin place,” I said slowly. “You brought me here on purpose.”
“All right, yes. It doesn’t change anything. There’s help for us here, but you have to go now.”
But while Shake was trying to tighten his grip, his hold on the frog stones slipped—not much, but enough.
“Her, her, her, her.” The stones opened their eyes again, pop, pop, pop, their words and their eager anger going off like firecrackers, sending out sparks. “Send the word. Spread the word. It’s her, her, her, and she’s with him. Him, him, him!”
From root to branch and stone to stone, the warning traveled like a signal down a telephone wire. Everything in this whole world that had its own little mind and thought and spirit—which was just about everything—was waking up. All those minds turned toward Lorcan … and me. None of them was happy, but all of them were hungry.
“Close the gate!” Lorcan shouted. “Close it!”
The stones bounded forward, shouting and hating. I scrabbled at the gate’s edges, struggling to hook my magic around them. But the stones had jammed themselves into the gate. They were hungry and greedy. They wanted to get through, to see what was on the other side, to grab some of it up and take it for themselves. If they succeeded, if they got us, the king and queen might let them keep little pieces of us and anything else they scooped up from the other side of the gate, so they could change, grow, become new and stronger things.…
The first of the stones heaved itself toward me, tendrils reaching, teeth bared. I screamed and jumped back, but not fast enough. Twisting gold fingers tangled around my wrist, ice cold and steel strong.
Lorcan swore. He grabbed hold of the frog stone’s fingers, and I felt a burst of magic. The stone screamed, and its fingers snapped. Shake howled with pain and effort as he caught me around the waist and hauled me off my feet, across the threshold, and into the betwixt and between.
Panic and anger knotted together inside me. I reached deep and held tight, pulled and twisted. The stones cried out. They wept and strained, but the world closed in front of them, and they were gone and it was just betwixt and between flickering around me and Lorcan.
And while I was standing there getting my head around the fact that I’d just almost gotten killed by a herd of living stones, Lorcan smiled.
Well, that was closer than I’d hoped.
I knew it! I knew you did that on purpose!
But all the outrage I could muster slid right off him. I wanted to bring us help, and I hoped that when you saw your home you would be drawn to it.
You tried to trick me! Again!
How did I trick you? You wanted time; I’ve given it to you. You wanted to know how your powers work; I’ve showed you.
I wanted time to sleep!
Then sleep. You know I will not let anything hurt you. I can’t. I’ve made promises, niece, and you’re a part of them.
I’m supposed to trust you after what you just did?
I did nothing. You did that to yourself. Sleep as long as you like. When you wake up, we step back through your gate. His thoughts pointed and mine followed. Or when you’ve had the chance to think better of it, you will open another gate, and I will take you to meet my friends.
He wasn’t going to stop. He’d bully, cheat, trick, and coax until he got me there. The worst part was, part of me wanted to just give in and do what he said. I wanted to see more of the Unseelie world beneath its indigo sky. I wanted to find out if my uncle really had friends who could help me find my parents. But I couldn’t do it. I didn’t dare. Lorcan had been straight about exactly one thing since I’d asked him to show me my own magic: I did, in fact, know just what he was. I hadn’t wanted to believe it. Now I had to do something about him before he dug his hooks in any deeper. The truly frightening part was, I had a plan.
I made the thoughts as small and whispery as I could. How am I going to fall asleep here?
Little niece, little niece, you know we can give such gifts to one another.
He was telling me he could put me to sleep. I felt him urging me to trust him. I’d sleep sweet and easy, and when I woke up, he’d show me how to walk to whatever world I wanted to reach, just like he’d shown me how to open the gate to betwixt and between, and to the Unseelie world beyond. We were family. I could trust him. I had to trust him. Everything depended on it.
We can send each other to sleep? I faced my uncle. Really?
Truly. He smiled indulgently. He thought his little niece was finally coming around, and maybe he was right.
Okay. I took a deep breath, and I reached down into my magic, where Lorcan was already waiting. Go to sleep, Uncle.
Both his eyes flew wide. He tried to pull away, but he was too late. I knew what sleep felt like—the warmth and the slow drift into comfortable darkness. I raised all of that and passed it over to Lorcan. Because he was already inside my blood and bone, he had no chance to get away.
“Oh, very good,” Lorcan breathed. “Didn’t think you had it in …”
His eyes closed, and he was snoring, sound asleep in a place outside of time.
I turned toward the gate I’d opened from the human world. I moved through it, and back around the corner and stepped up, and I was inside the world again. I pulled the gate shut. The lock turned and I opened my eyes, which I hadn’t realized I’d closed. I was in my dingy boardinghouse room. I was also alone.
I’d done it. Just like the prophecy said I could. I’d opened a gate where none had been before, and I’d closed it again. But I hadn’t made it go away. I could feel its warmth and shape at my back. I’d feel it every time I walked into this room from now on. I could feel something else too. I could feel Shake, my uncle Lorcan. Awareness of him sat heavily in the back of
my head. He was asleep, yes, but he was also waiting for me to return, and if I didn’t, he’d wait forever.
My stomach lurched. All at once I was shaking like a leaf. I was hot. I was cold. I was weak as water. I was too full of energy. One feeling was stuffed inside the other, and they were all stuffed inside me, like I’d carried back all the contradictions from betwixt and between and now they were fighting it out with my everyday self. I’d almost fallen deep into a home that saw me as a danger. I’d opened and closed gates between worlds. I’d put my uncle to sleep without knowing whether I’d be able to wake him up again. And according to the clock on the dresser, I’d done it without even one full minute passing by in this room.
I bolted down the hall and made it to the bathroom just in time to be sick in the sink.
Somebody was banging on the door.
“Callie? Callie, is that you in there?” called Mrs. Constantine. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine. I just … I just need a minute.” I grabbed the edges of the sink and tried to stop the shakes. I looked up at myself in the mirror, blinked, and looked again. Had something changed around my eyes? I leaned closer. They looked brighter, shinier, maybe. I tried to tell myself it was my imagination. It didn’t come close to working. I’d changed. I’d stood on the threshold to my fairy home, and I’d let something into me, or maybe out of me, and I was not going back to the way I used to be.
I turned away fast and fumbled with the knob. Mrs. Constantine filled the hallway.
“Fine, she says!” My landlady snorted. “When she’s whiter than a sheet. Have you had anything to eat today at all?” she asked abruptly.
That question caught me off guard. “I … um … not since breakfast.”
“I thought so. Where’s that uncle of yours?”
“He’s … he’s out calling on the trade.”
“Hmph.” She frowned down the hallway. “Well, then, you’d best come along with me, young lady!”
The next thing I knew, I was being marched into the kitchen and made to sit in a chair. Mrs. Constantine turned her back on me and began bustling about, pulling bread out of the larder and cold cuts out of the icebox, talking the whole time about how nobody could be expected to do any kind of job when they weren’t feeding themselves properly and how I ought to have more sense, a great grown girl like me. She muttered and banged around that kitchen like she was giving orders to her pots and pans. Considering that I’d just seen my uncle ordering a bunch of rocks around, I really didn’t want to think about that, because it made me dizzy.
Mrs. Constantine slid a bologna and cheese sandwich and a glass of milk in front of me. “Now you eat that. You’re not going to be doing anyone any good if you’re starved.”
I didn’t want to eat, and then all of a sudden I did. I really was starving, which probably wasn’t normal after a person had just been sick, but I couldn’t help it. I wolfed down two bites of sandwich before I felt Mrs. Constantine’s frown, and remembered to slow down, chew, and show some manners, even if this was the best-tasting sandwich I’d ever eaten.
I’d expected my landlady to be angry when I told her I was leaving before my week was through, but once I told her the reason, she puffed up so far, she nearly busted the seams on her work dress. She made me promise I’d come back when I got a day off to tell her all about Ivy Bright and life at the studio. She already had Miss Patty for movie gossip, of course, but Miss Patty only worked for a new starlet, not a world-famous star the way I did now. But this was past wanting the studio gossip. This came from the same part of her that made sure I wrote my mama and kept to the rules of the house so I wouldn’t get hurt. Mrs. Constantine was still looking out for me, the way she’d done since I washed up on her doorstep.
“Mrs. Constantine?” Sumner knocked on the back door. “Miss Callie, we need to get going, or—”
“The girl’s not going anywhere until she’s finished her sandwich,” announced Mrs. Constantine. “So you may as well come in and have one too.”
Mr. Sumner looked at me and my sandwich. I knew he wanted to protest, but there’s nothing stronger in this world than a woman in her kitchen when she’s got the need to feed.
I guess Mr. Sumner knew that too because he just took off his cap. “Well, I guess that’s how it’ll be, then.”
Mrs. Constantine made him a sandwich, then did up one for herself. We all sat at that table. I kept my mouth busy with chewing and let Mr. Sumner and Mrs. Constantine’s conversation wash over me. They talked about prices and work, and where each of them came from and how they’d gotten where they were. It was as steadying as the good bologna and bread, all normal and comfortable. Friendly. As simple as that word sounded, I felt it bone deep right then.
“Well, now, Mrs. Constantine, I thank you for that,” said Mr. Sumner when he pushed his plate away. “But I do have to get Miss Callie back.”
“I’ll go get my case.” I climbed to my feet. But halfway to the door, I stopped and turned. “Mrs. Constantine?” My landlady looked up at me, the remainder of her sandwich halfway to her mouth. “Mrs. Constantine, if you could wish for something, anything, what would it be?”
I thought she’d laugh. The question sounded ridiculous, but it didn’t feel ridiculous, and her face stayed serious. I don’t know whether it was magic or this little space of friendship we’d set up in her kitchen over sandwiches. She set the sandwich down and looked at her big rawboned hands. “I’d wish to hear from Sophie, I suppose,” she said. “Just to know she’s all right.”
I wasn’t surprised. I could have guessed it, but she had to say it. She had to wish. I opened my magic and saw her Sophie. She was in a cold-water flat in New York. She was working hard cleaning rooms, and wishing she hadn’t run away. She was wishing she could find the nerve to call home, and wondering if her mother would even talk to her, especially after she found out about the baby.
I nodded, muttered a good-bye, and hustled up the stairs to get my suitcase. I wanted to be out of the house before the phone rang.
11
The Folks Back Home
When I got back downstairs, Mr. Sumner took my case. He had to shoo the latest group of kids off the running boards before he could open the car door for me. The Rolls pulled smoothly away. The boys chased after it, cheering and waving. I tried not to feel Shake’s extra weight in the back of my head. I told myself it wasn’t like I’d done anything permanent to him. I’d get him out as soon as I could figure out what to do about him. It was only fair anyhow. He meant to trick me; I’d just beaten him to it. But nothing eased that weight off my mind, and I was sure nothing would, not until I let Shake go.
I swallowed and tried to concentrate on what I needed to do next.
“Mr. Sumner?”
The chauffeur chuckled as he eased that big car around the corner onto South Central. “Just Sumner, Miss Callie. What can I do for you?”
“Could you take me to the Dunbar Hotel?”
“Why would you want to go there?” Sumner shot me a glance in the rearview mirror.
“There’s somebody I’ve got to see. It’s important, and personal.” Mr. Robeson was a singer and they toured around a lot. I had no idea how long he’d be in town. If I was going to talk to him, I’d have to do it soon. But there was more to it than that. Given all that had happened just today, Jack and I might be in over our heads this time. We needed a friend. A real friend.
“Well … I guess it won’t do any harm. But make it quick, all right? If I’m not back on the lot to drive Mrs. Brownlow around, old Tully’ll have my hide.”
“Mine too.” I made myself smile the way Jack did, or the way Ivy did. “Miss Bright always dines at six.”
Sumner chuckled again. “We’d both better be quick, then.”
As he spoke, I felt Shake roll over in the back of my mind. I clenched my fists to try to keep from twitching. It sort of worked.
The Dunbar wasn’t the biggest hotel I’d ever seen, but it was done up fine, with plenty of mar
ble, dark wood, and fresh flowers. To one side, doors opened on a restaurant with white cloths on the tables and a set of smells coming out of the kitchen that made me hungry all over again. On the other side, matching doors led to the nightclub. They were closed, but you could hear the music clearly anyhow. Big, brassy horns slid into a river of jazz with a long piano line rolling underneath. After a couple of bars, it’d break off to the sound of laughter or cussing, then start up again. The folks crossing the lobby or standing at the desk were all turned out in their best. The men sported sharp hats and the ladies stylish dresses, and every last one of them had black skin.
I walked through that grand lobby feeling strange, like I’d put my shoes on the wrong feet. I’d never lived anywhere with lots of Negroes. I was used to thinking about all the places I couldn’t go if anybody found out my papa was a black man. I’d never thought about how black folks—how we—might make new places where we could be ourselves.
The clerk on the desk had light brown skin and his hair was arranged in gleaming curls. He looked me up and down carefully. My mission-store clothes didn’t seem to fit too well right then.
“Can I help you, miss?” he asked in the kind of voice that meant This better be good. I straightened up and met his eyes. No matter how fine, the Dunbar was a hotel, and if there was one thing I knew, it was how to behave in a hotel.
“You can call Mr. Robeson’s room and say Callie LeRoux would like to speak with him.”
“One moment, please.” The clerk picked up the house phone and dialed.
While I waited, I watched the lobby around me. I liked being here. I liked the way the smell of good cooking and the music wrapped around me, bringing the feel of the people with them. The halting jazz was filled with the satisfaction and frustration of making something grow, bit by bit, note by note. I wondered what it’d be like to work in a place like this, where I wouldn’t have to worry about my coarse hair or my skin, which turned too brown in the sun. I didn’t think much about my own life. There’d never been time for it. I’d always had something or somebody else to look out for, even before the Unseelies and their magic had barreled over my world. But right then I wondered. I knew how a hotel ran. I was a good cook. What if one day I came back here and got a job? Or … what if I opened my own place?