by Anya Allyn
She closed her eyes. “They use us to see into other worlds, to find their prey. They roam from world to world through the universe.”
I eyed the crystalline object suspended in the air.
She followed my gaze. “That belongs to the serpent empress—the leader of the serpents. It’s a crystal with the highest vibration of any in the universe. It can transfer images from mind to mind. Each day, when I look into the crystal, I can see other worlds. My memories of those worlds are stored within the crystal. When the serpent looks into the images I have seen, she directs her species from planet to planet.”
“How does she see through it—the eye?”
“Francoeur—one of the servants of the castle—takes it to her each day.”
I stiffened. “She’s here? The serpent is here?”
“Yes.”
“I saw her... I saw her weeks ago, and I thought I was imagining her.”
“You weren’t imagining her. Her cave lies beneath the ocean, at the bottom of the cliff. The castle fountain—the one with the ugly gargoyles—is a deep well that draws water from her cave.”
I remembered the great spout of water that rose from the fountain on the day of the couplings, the day I was betrothed to Zach.
Her expression softened. “The serpent empress’s cave is the same one you entered when you escaped the dollhouse. When I sensed you moving towards the cave, I tried to go and help you—you and your double. One of you entered the water just before the other. And then the two of you became one.”
I exhaled steadily. “You saw me through the crystal eye—from here? And that time at the bay at Miami when I was drowning?”
“Yes, but I could only stay a few seconds. My energy is limited. And while you and Missouri have been at the castle, I couldn’t come to either of you at all. Everything here is under the castle’s control—they were able to block me from communicating with you.”
“Prudence... why were the girls taken to the dollhouse in the first place? And why them? It makes no sense. Any of it.”
She lifted stormy eyes to me. “Henry believes that all of us would either find our own way to the dollhouse or he would find the girls that were meant to be there. He believes that all of this is preordained. He wanted me because of a newspaper article he read, about my psychic ability. I’ve always had that ability, ever since I can remember. And he thought I would be of most use to the serpent, because I could see further than anyone. The shadow plagued me relentlessly, from the time I entered the dollhouse.”
She breathed out slowly. “The serpent wanted more of us in its service, so that it can see even further—but Missouri was too strong for it. And she made the others strong. She wouldn’t let any of them give in to the shadow. She beat herself up over what happened to me, but it wasn’t her fault.” Her eyes widened. “Because I could already see other worlds and ghosts, being in the dollhouse was too much for me. I could suddenly see evil that I’d never known before, and it broke me. I could sense Balthazar and the castle... and the tree that had existed on earth far before mankind ever did.”
“The tree that the castle was built upon?”
“Yes. And I could sense the hunger of the serpents. Exchanges between the serpent and humans goes back to the beginning of people on the earth. They were here long before us, in times when the earth was frozen. The serpent empress can inhabit the earth at any time she chooses, in her portal—the cave. The second book of the mirrored tree will show humanity how to use the serpents and their shadows at their will—to use them as servants to reach any part of the universes. But the serpents themselves cannot travel anywhere they wish. They are dependent upon us—they need our sight.”
I closed my eyes for a moment. “Please tell me, how do they use our sight? How does the serpent empress see through the crystal eye?”
“When Francoeur takes it, he puts it on the temple in an ocean cave at the bottom of the cliff. The serpent presses her third eye to it—which is a cavity in her forehead. Through the crystal eye, she sees everything I have seen. She communicates with the other serpents. She tells them what to do.” Prudence gazed downward. “Soon, it will be time for them to leave....”
I studied her pale face, holding my breath as I waited for her to continue.
“They’ll leave when every human is dead, except for those in the castle,” she whispered.
“Why must they kill every human before they leave?” My voice was dry and empty—a well without water.
“Because the castle wants it. Balthazar wants only his own kind to flourish on this earth. The castle wants the serpents to freeze the entire earth to a temperature that no one can survive. But the serpents are weary. Keeping the earth frozen is draining them. They’ll die if they remain much longer—they need to go somewhere where there are large deposits of the crystal that the eye is made from, as they need the vibrations of this crystal to heal. And the planet must be deathly cold. But they cannot leave until the person who summoned them—Henry—allows them to go, or until the second book of the Mirrored Tree is destroyed.”
“After they rest, where will they go?”
“To another planet that contains life. They prefer sea life to human, and those are the planets I direct them to.” She pointed to an array of charts and symbols pinned to the wall and lying on top of a heavy desk. “I’ve been taught how to chart and find planets in the universe.” Her gaze flickered over me. “I know that right now, you think I should kill myself, so that the serpent can never use me again. What is the death of one girl?”
“No!” I cried fiercely. “I don’t want you to die. Please, don’t say that.”
Her face hardened. “I would kill myself, a thousand times over, if I could. And I have tried, a thousand times over. I would ask you to run a sword through me—but a force that Henry keeps around me prevents me from being harmed. I am between life and death. I can’t die.” Tears streamed down her face. “I can’t die....”
Breath was thick in my lungs, like cement. I could never kill her, never cause her death, even if I was able to do so.
Frowning, I lifted my gaze to the distant trees being thrashed by the wind outside the window. I had known her death before—in the tunnels of the dollhouse. A darkness drew over me.
I had known her death before the dollhouse.
Before.
But how? Where?
Images flashed through my mind.
I saw Prudence as a ghost—in the cave of the serpent and in the crypt, and in the dark water of the bay. I saw her bones in the crystal tunnels. I saw the Prudence of my dreams, tangled in sea grasses underwater. Always the ghost, the dead girl, the apparition, the unknowable....
The visions faded, and I saw her standing in front of me. Prudence in the flesh. Prudence with her pale, slightly-olive skin—not the ghost Prudence with all her blood drained away. Prudence with her pleading almond eyes and the high curve of her cheekbones that were so familiar.
I heard my father’s voice, telling me about the baby he and my mother lost when I was three. I saw my dream of my home in Miami, with the two young girls lying on the bed listening to music—I saw them turn at the same time... but this time, this time I saw their faces. The same dark hair and oval faces, only the younger one with blue eyes.
Tears slid across my cheeks and I nodded softly at her, my jaw quaking. “I know you....”
She waited silently, her blood-stained chest softly rising and falling.
“You are my sister,” I told her.
A sorrowful relief washed over Prudence’s face. “You know me,” she whispered.
We hugged, tears flowing freely.
My chest burned inside—an empty place. I felt myself pulled backward in time. Long-buried memories ripped free. I drew back, gazing into her face. “I remember. I remember myself when I was three, refusing to believe the baby would never be born. The baby was supposed to be my sister and I couldn’t understand how she could just leave like that.” My breath caught as the memories tumbled over eac
h other. I gazed at Prudence through misted eyes. “I willed myself to follow you, to go where you had gone. I went to other worlds... worlds in which you had been already born. In those worlds, I was the ghost and no one could see me. I would stand at your crib and just stare. You were the only one who could see me. They were my secret worlds—the only times I was happy. My parents didn’t understand, and they made me forget. I still dreamed of you, for years afterwards. Until I didn’t. How did I forget you?”
“Cassie, you were supposed to let me go. In your world... I died. You never even knew me. I was never born.”
“I wanted you, so much. I couldn’t let you go.” I exhaled a long breath. “In the world you came from, were we all happy?”
A look of regret entered her eyes. “Cassie... there was an accident. When you were three. Mom and Dad had an argument one night, and Mom took you out in the car. She lost control of the car in the rain. Mom was pregnant with me at the time—she and I survived. But you died. I never knew the Cassie of my world.”
I had no reply. If one of us had to die that night on her earth, I was glad that it was me and that she had a chance to live.
She closed her eyes tightly. I wondered if she was thinking of the family she had left behind—the family that she had been missing from for seven years. In those seven years, she had only aged a month—the month she had spent in the dollhouse. She still looked fourteen. It was impossible to know how much time had passed in her world in all those years.
My view of her blurred through the wetness in my eyes, until she seemed as crystalline as the eye that turned in the air above us. Tears streamed down my face. Tears for the sister I’d never known, tears for her short life, tears for the wastelands of guilt and blame and regret that our family had lived in. I knew now, that people died—sometimes even before they had a chance to take their first breath. But death was just another birth—the person was never really gone. It wasn’t unnatural or ugly. It was nothing like the dark chains tying you to an existence between life and death—nothing like the horror Prudence lived each day here in the tower.
I understood now why I had been compelled to journey to the tower, why it held me in its grasp since the first day I’d seen it. My darkest nightmare had been the death of the sister I’d never known. It had been buried in the deepest parts of my mind, locked away from all points of light. This is what I had yearned for my whole life—the sister who stood before me. In other worlds, I’d grown up with her, known her—she’d been a part of my life and I’d been part of hers.
And I understood now the terror I had felt. It was the terror of the three-year-old me who had cowered in the rain-soaked woods the night my mother had crashed the car. It was the terror of watching my mother sitting unconscious at the wheel, blood dripping down her face. It was the terror of the words my father had said to me—that she had lost the baby. It was the blind terror of a small child who understood nothing. I didn’t understand lost. I had thought that if you lose something precious to you, then you should go and find it. You should go wherever you had to in order to get it back. I didn’t understand how they could just let her go.
Dr. Verena had been right about one thing. The castle held something I desperately wanted and would have risked anything to find. The castle had gripped my soul in its dark fist.
Pushing tangled hair back from my face, anger surged through me—my sister was being kept here in an existence infinitely worse than death. “Did Henry bring you here to the tower?”
“Yes. Straight after I tried to commit suicide in the dollhouse, he had me taken here through the shadow. At first, I was taken to the cave below the castle. But the dampness there caused my skin to begin to rot. A fungus disease grew upon me, and they needed to move me somewhere completely dry.”
I stared down at my hands, showing her the small spots between my fingers. “Like this?”
She nodded sadly. “Yes. Just like that. I’d give anything for that not to be happening to you.”
I thought of all the girls in Balthazar’s cabinet—they had been made to live in the underground of his chambers. They had been unable to wash properly and dry themselves properly, and they had been kept in a place where a thick, briny wetness hung in the air. And once they had been quarantined in the cabinet, things would have only grown worse for them. Etiennette was the only one to discover the ocean cave—perhaps she had bathed in the salty water and kept her skin clean. And then she had been taken to live in the castle, where the air was far better and drier. And my skin had begun healing after I had begun venturing down into the water of the ocean cave. There was no witchcraft. The affliction had just been caused by the terrible conditions of the underground. My spirit ached to think what those girls had endured. Just as I had ached at what the girls of the dollhouse had endured—especially Prudence.
As if she’d sensed my thoughts, she smiled grimly. “I can’t imagine being taken down to live in Balthazar’s chambers. I’ve overheard... things. About all his previous wives being kept down there. Is it true?”
I nodded. “He keeps them all in a cabinet, encased in wooden marionettes.”
She shivered. “I’m so sorry that you’re there too....” For a moment she didn’t speak, as though it pained her too much. “Be careful. If there is one thing I know about Balthazar is that he doesn’t like people leaving the castle—ever. Even if you die. He bound the spirits of prisoners in the dungeons and I have heard that he bound the spirits of his past wives.”
I gazed at her in horror. Could he have forced their spirits to remain inside the cabinets, for centuries? His words crushed into my mind—he had threatened I could not leave, that he would bind me.
“Cassie, I must go now,” she said gently.
I wanted to stay there with her and never go back to Balthazar. I wanted to tell her what I had learned about Etiennette and Reed—our ancestors.
A deep sorrow visited her eyes. “My heart aches for you, Cassie.” Her voice faltered. “It’s the last night... of summer. Yesterday I watched the people of the castle mark the day with a celebration. But for you, I know what this day means....” Her hand reached for mine, tears glistening on her cheeks.
“Don’t cry for me,” I told her. “I’ll be okay. And I’ll come back for you. I promise I will.”
I silently swore that I would get Prudence away from here. Whatever happened to me at the hands of Balthazar, I would endure. But I would keep the secret of the tower close to my heart, plotting for the day I could release my sister.
Tiring, she leaned against the sill of the window, her forehead against the window’s frame. Her face was drained, pallid—perspiration beading on her skin. Her breaths were shallow and rapid.
I wiped the wetness from my eyes. My mouth opened in a silent scream as I saw the thin trail of blood from the center of the floor to the window, saw the drips of blood running down Prudence’s arms.
All the time she’d been talking with me, she’d been bleeding, struggling against the loss of blood from her body.
“Prudence!” I cried.
She lifted her head to me, but her eyes were glazed and opaque. She drifted from me, rising through the dark air. Her head and arms fell back and her body grew limp. Her gaze moved to the crystal and stayed fixed to it. Her body began turning in time with the crystal, like an endlessly spinning ballerina in a music box.
I fell to my knees, staring in mute horror.
Outside the window, the glow of dawn spread its fingers along the horizon. A faint, dusty pink painted itself upon the dark sky.
11. Consummation
CASSIE
I raced away down the stairwell of the tower—the tower that had haunted and terrified me since that first day I’d seen it. Now I understood what the tower contained. A wish. A memory. Pain and loss. Things I’d buried long ago.
But how could I have not known all this time that Prudence was my sister? I’d blinded myself, seeing her only as the dead and not for who she was.
I wo
uld count down the days until I could make my way back to her.
The wind and rain had dropped—the world eerily calm. As I ran into the passageway, the clipping sound of my shoes echoed around the walls. I had no time to change into a dry dress. I hauled myself up on the chain as dawn broke on the horizon. Light shone into my face. From the ocean passage, I stopped and stared into the rising sun. It was intensely, insanely beautiful. The beauty cut me with the sharpest of knives.
I’m not ready. I’m not ready for Balthazar.
I will never be ready for Balthazar.
The wooden door at the end of the ocean passage slammed open.
Men strode in. I stood stunned at the sight of so many people after months spent almost completely alone. Zach’s father, Parker’s father, other men of the castle gave me stiff bows. Wide-eyed chamber maids followed after them.
Zach’s father moved forward and grabbed my arm. “Lady Batiste, what are you doing in the ocean passage, past dawn?”
My breaths quickened. “I fell asleep out here.” My teeth gritted. “But Batiste is not my name.”
“That is your name now,” he said tersely.
One of Parker’s uncles laughed harshly. “At least she won’t need cleaning. Looks like she’s already had a good shower.” He held up a white, filmy dress. “This is your wedding night gown. You will put it on, in readiness for your consummation.”
I struggled as they moved me into an antechamber.
Two chamber maids bustled in—one of them setting two flasks of red wine on the table.
“The wine is for Monseigneur Balthazar,” whispered one of them quickly. “But you should drink some and get yourself drunk, and pass out on the bed. That’s the best way to get through this night.” An expression of horror passed through her round eyes.
The maids took my wet dress from me and sponged me down. I stared numbly through a high window out to the clear sky as they fussed around me, applying cosmetics to my face and stringing beads through my hair. Satisfied, they pulled the gown over my head. It clung like spider web to my body.