by Anya Allyn
Nabaasa nodded. “It’s a terrible load, to wake from a long coma and have all this put on your shoulders. But she’ll find her way.”
Frances returned with the water for Molly. She climbed back into her lap and promptly went to sleep—just as she’d done in the days of the dollhouse.
~.~
Ethan didn’t stay and rest. He headed out with two other guards to go and fetch medical supplies. Nabaasa told me it could take days for him and the guards to be back. Getting through the rangers’ defenses was a difficult task.
I couldn’t wait around here any longer. Now that I was away from the castle, I had to keep going—to discover all that I could. I had to go and talk to Jessamine—and ask her what her grandfather’s riddle meant. It’s was a fool’s errand. Jessamine could kill me, or trap me there. But I hoped I could get there and back before Ethan even returned.
After otherworld Molly and I had found the letter with the riddle behind the wall in Tobias’s house, we’d planned to take it to Jessamine together. But the castle had had other plans for us. There was no one who could come with me now. Molly and Aisha were only just beginning to recover. Sophronia was needed here at the museum. And Jessamine despised Ethan so much she’d probably refuse to see me at all if I went there with him—that was if Ethan would even let me go. He’d insist upon going himself, which could only be a disaster.
The riddle was the only lead I had. And I would go alone.
I looked everywhere for Sophronia in the massive museum. I knew she’d worked tirelessly on so many different jobs each day—checking the makeshift windmills on the roof that ran the electricity, feeding the rabbits and watering the plants that were food for the museum population, and a dozen other things. I found her on level three, rocking a newborn infant to sleep for his exhausted mother.
“Soph,” I said, “Do you remember months back, when the otherworld Molly and I came here and gave you a letter for safekeeping? I’d really like to see that letter again.”
Sophronia’s dark eyes narrowed slightly as she lifted the baby onto her shoulder, patting his tiny back. “I do remember and I have it. It was Tobias’s letter. What do you mean to do with it?”
“I just want to read it again.”
“It’s in the first drawer of the filing cabinet in my room,” she answered.
The mother of the baby shuffled up, holding her stomach. She cupped a hand around her baby’s head, kissing his forehead.
Sophronia’s room was an office within the museum that she shared with others, with a makeshift bed. No one had proper bedrooms here. Some had beds salvaged from abandoned homes and stores, while the rest slept on sofas and cushions.
I retrieved the letter, and pushed it securely into my pocket. Then wrote a quick note, slipping it under the pillow in Ethan’s bed.
The day was unusually still as I made my way across the broad expanse of ice and through the serpent tunnels that led to the bay. The refraction shimmered in the air—my passage away from here.
A hand lightly grabbed my shoulder. I turned with a sharp intake of breath. In that brief moment, the thought had shot through me that this couldn’t be a ranger—they would more likely put a knife in you than grab you.
Aisha’s cool aqua eyes stared back at me. She had her hair back in a knot, with loose wisps hanging about her thin face. “Are you going to look for Ethan? Sophronia’s looking for you—she’s worried for some reason.”
I returned her level gaze. “No. I’m not going to look for him.”
“But you’re going somewhere?” she persisted.
At first I was going to deny my plans, but I changed my mind and nodded.
“Are you going because of me? I know I’ve been a bit... hostile.”
“Aish, I don’t blame you for that. You went to sleep and your whole world changed.”
“My world was hardly good at the time I went to sleep. I wanted to die. I’m having trouble figuring out my world as it is now, but I want to.”
“I wish you’d woken in a normal world.”
Her mouth twisted wryly. “It’s kind of ironic to be rescued from certain death, only to end up in a whole world that’s dying.”
It struck me then, at just how much she’d had to take on board in the past three days. In the dollhouse, we’d accepted that even if we never got out, the world outside would still go on. But the world had stopped. It had frozen solid. Soon, every last living person would be gone—except for those of the castle.
Her eyes caught the reflection of the sky outside the tunnel. “Cassie... I’m okay... about you and Ethan.” She dug her hands deep into the pockets of her woolly coat. “I guess I never—I mean, I never appreciated him when I had him. I deserved to lose him.” She breathed out a stream of condensed air. “In the beginning, I wanted him so desperately because... he wanted you.”
“I know...” I said softly.
“You know? Did Ethan—?”
“No, it was you—the otherworld you.”
She eyed me in surprise for a moment, then tilted her head back and stared at the silvery ceiling of serpent skin. “Then you know the whole story. About Lacey’s party and how I went after Ethan, and how—”
“Yeah, but Aish, it’s all over now. All of us have to keep finding ways to start again.”
The whites of her eyes were intense in the stark light. “Wherever you’re going, I want to come. I want to help.”
I shook my head. “You’re still recovering.”
“And you have a bad leg. That’s not stopping you.” Her arms crept around her torso. “It’s because you don’t trust me, isn’t it? I know enough about what the otherworld Aisha did to know that she and you weren’t friends.”
I hugged her. “I trust you.”
Two figures stepped through the tunnel behind us.
Molly and Sophronia eyed us questioningly.
“Just sorting out some things.” I wiped wetness from the corner of my eye.
“I am glad.” Sophronia’s gaze was steady. A frown indented her forehead. “Cassandra, you are going somewhere, are you not? I suspected something when you asked for Tobias’s letter.”
Sophronia often called me by my full name. In her melodic Indian accent, my name sounded so different—exotic even. It gave me comfort to hear it said that way. One of the few other people to call me by my full name was Balthazar, and the memory of the way he hissed my name sent fingers clawing down the back of my neck.
I bent my head slightly. “I hoped to leave without any fuss. I left a note in Ethan’s bed so that no one would worry.”
Sophronia’s eyes opened wide. “Please tell me you are thinking of taking that letter to Jessamine? I do remember that was what you and the otherworld Molly planned to do.”
“Yes....”
I heard a sharp intake of air from Molly and Aisha.
Sophronia shook her head, her deep brown eyes surveying me. “You were going to do this on your own? And what is it you hope to achieve by giving her this letter from her grandfather?”
Drawing out the letter, I pointed to the riddle at the bottom of the letter. “Tobias hid this letter really well—so well that Henry and the castle didn’t find it. I don’t know if this rhyme is important or not, but it’s all I have, and I need to find out.”
Molly puzzled over the riddle. “It sounds like a children’s poem. But you’re right—why would he write it down at the end of this letter? It’s a secret message that only Jessamine would know the answer to.”
A sudden light shone in Sophronia’s eyes. “You do realize what this riddle could tell us, don’t you?”
“Yes. At least, I had a small ray of hope that it could tell us, finally, where the book is,” I told her.
Aisha laced her fingers, bringing them up to rest against her mouth. “Cassie, don’t you remember how much Jessamine hated us, towards the end? She tried to kill us.”
“I don’t think she intended to kill us.” I bit my frozen lower lip. “If she did, she would
n’t have taken you all with her when she left the dollhouse—she wouldn’t have tucked you all into the beds at Tobias’s house across the bay there. She was still trying to take care of you.”
Sophronia stared at me, considering my words. “I will come with you.”
“I can’t ask you to do that,” I told her.
“I spent three years in the underground,” she said. “My family lost the first book of the Speculum Nemus when Tobias arranged for it to be stolen from us. My descendants guarded that book for centuries. I was raised to guard it with my life.” A small smile formed on her lips. “And you tell me you cannot ask me to come with you? Well, I must tell you, I am coming whether you wish it or not.”
“Cassie, what about your leg, and the antibiotics Ethan’s bringing for you?” Molly folded her arms against the cold.
“The castle is trying to find ways to break through the Order’s stronghold," I said. "They’re growing desperate and they’re throwing all their resources at breaking through. Any day could be the day. I planned to go to Devils Hole and return before Ethan gets back.”
Molly grasped my arm. “You can’t make any plans where Jessamine is concerned. You know that.”
I nodded. “I know.”
Her blue eyes grew distant. “I’m coming with you, too.”
Aisha stared at me. “You already know that you’re not going without me.”
The thin rays of the morning sun reached inside the tunnel and slanted across our shoulders. I shielded my eyes, staring out at the endless white.
16. Doorways
CASSIE
Endless winter had settled into every dark reach of the mountains. Molly, Sophronia, Aisha and I drew our coats in tighter around ourselves. I never thought I’d ever walk this road again, never thought I’d walk back into that forest. It was the road that all of us from the underground had taken, in one way or another.
Molly stared directly ahead—her thoughts impenetrable.
Sophronia took up a sturdy stick to help herself cross the uneven ground. “Wait, someone is watching us.”
“Are you sure?” I glanced over my shoulder, but saw no one.
“Yes,” she assured me. “I make it my business to notice everything. I always have. Whoever it is has hidden themselves beyond the trees to the right of us. They’re watching us now.”
Molly touched her finger to her mouth, deep in thought. “Well they must know by now that they’ve been seen. If they were a danger to us, I’d imagine they’d have made a move.”
“Perhaps,” said Sophronia. “But none of you have known much of this world since it became ice. People are starving. Some will eat whatever they can find—even if what they find proves to be human. My legs are not capable of running from cannibals, and none of you can run from a whole gang of them, especially if they have us surrounded.”
Nodding, Molly took a gun from her jacket and pointed it toward the right of her. “Show yourself! Or I’ll shoot!”
“I doubt anyone will show their faces. They can easily just run away.” Aisha squinted toward the trees.
“At least they’ll know we’re armed,” Molly said quietly. “Hopefully they’ll leave us alone.”
But a lanky youth moved out, hands in the air.
“Trust no one, even someone who surrenders,” Sophronia whispered.
The boy stepped toward us, pushing his thick hood back from his face.
“Ben Paisley,” said Aisha in shock.
I remembered the pale, awkward boy from school—the boy who tried to impress Lacey by jumping in the freezing water of Lady’s Well.
“Ben,” I called to him, “what are you doing here?”
He gazed at us with round eyes that were reddened and watering from the cold. “God, it’s you—and Aisha! Where were you both all that time?”
I stared back, not understanding. Until I remembered. The girls who disappeared in this world—my own world—were never found. Jessamine had taken them through the shadow of the empress to the house in Miami. The world had frozen over with the dollhouse undiscovered. It was only on the second earth that the girls and Ethan had been rescued—and that second world had found out about the dollhouse.
“We can’t explain now, Ben,” I said. “Just please don’t tell anyone you saw us.”
He whistled. “If I did, people would call me crazy, just like the kids at school used to do. Not that there’s anyone much left to tell. But dammit, I’m seeing you guys right here in front of me. You’re here and you’re alive.”
Aisha’s face tightened. “What do you mean, there’s not anyone much left?”
He shook his head numbly. “Everyone’s gone from the houses. They’re all gone. When the big freeze came, everyone still alive headed for the river. The army set up camps there for the people. But once the stocks of fish in the river were gone, people starved and things went bad after that.”
My heart stilled at hearing his description of the big freeze.
Ben was different than he had been at school. Back then, he would have struggled to say two words to us. Whatever he’d been through in the ice world had taken the boy right out of him. I didn’t want to know any more, right now. I didn’t want to know what my mother might have been through in her last days here.
Aisha closed her eyes for a moment, as though she were drawing from deep within herself. “Have you seen my parents?”
“Maybe it’s best not to ask too much, all at once....” Ben’s voice trailed off.
“That means my parents are dead, doesn’t it?” Aisha demanded.
Ben struggled to give her an answer. He thrust his hands deep into his pockets. “Your brother’s here.”
Aisha gasped. “Raif’s here?”
“Yeah. I can take you to him. We’ve been hiding out together for a few months now—kind of pooling resources. Guess you think that’s strange.” His mouth twitched wryly. “Raif and I didn’t get along after you disappeared. Being best friends with Ethan didn’t exactly endear me to him. But when the big freeze came, and everyone else moved on—both me and Raif had reasons to stay. Raif didn’t want to leave the place where you went missing. And I always thought that one day, I’d find out the truth of what’s really out there in the forest.”
I remembered the twins from school, Caitlin and Breanna, telling me about the nine-year-old Ben seeing giant monsters in the woods the night he and his class went camping at Devils Hole. I knew now those monsters were real.
Ben eyed us with incredulity. “What is it about this forest? Things you don’t expect just seem to happen here. And then you all just turn up, out of the blue.”
“What kind of things have been happening here?” asked Molly.
He shrugged his shoulders nervously. “How about you lot tell me where you’re going first? I mean, there’s nothing in there. Not even any animals—all the ones dead and frozen on the ground have been taken away and eaten months ago.” He pressed his thin lips together grimly. “There’s only one person alive in there—a crazy dude who lives in that weird old house.”
“The house is still standing?” I breathed.
“Yeah—it’s the house they reported in the news when Aisha went missing. There’s a huge stock of tin cans in there. No one else knows about the stash. I can steal you girls some.”
“Ben, we don’t want the food, but can you help us find the house?” I asked. “The snow has covered up a lot of the tracks.”
He chewed his lip and nodded. “Yep. If that’s what you want.” He paused. “Just don’t go shooting anyone you might see along the way. Is it a deal?”
Molly shoved the gun back into her pocket. “Sorry. Should have put this thing away.”
“But didn’t you say there was no one here in the forest—except for the man?” said Sophronia, her voice tinged with suspicion. “Why did you ask us not to shoot anyone?”
Ben exhaled a sharp breath of white air. “There’s a girl. I’m trying to find her.”
“A girl?” Molly fro
wned at him.
He lowered his blonde eyelashes. “Yeah... Lacey.”
“Ben,” I said. “You mean Lacey is in the woods somewhere?”
Ben nodded awkwardly. “You won’t believe me, but I know it was her. I saw her—not just once. But she didn’t see me.” A flicker of a frown crossed his forehead. “She looked strange—like dressed in really odd clothing.”
Sophronia and I exchanged glances.
He caught the glance and shook his head. “I know what you’re thinking. You think I imagine things. Why not, huh? Everyone else does.”
“Which way did she go?” I said quickly.
“There’s the thing. I saw her in one place and tried to track her. Then I saw her somewhere else—somewhere she couldn’t have got—unless she can bloody fly. And she was wearing different clothes.”
Molly placed a hand on Ben’s shoulder. “Whatever you’ve seen in the forest, just know that we believe you.”
He stared around at us as we nodded at him, his eyes opening a fraction wider. “Well, you people are the first to ever say that.”
“But we need to go now,” I urged. “Will you help us?”
“Yeah, I’ll help you. And no questions asked.” Pulling his hood back over his head, he started walking.
“Wait.” Aisha held her hands to her head. “Where’s Raif? I’d like to see him if I can.” Her eyelashes drifted down. “In case... in case I don’t make it out of where we’re headed.”
“Why wouldn’t you make it out?” Ben squeezed his eyes shut for a moment. “Oh, yeah, that’s right—I’m not supposed to ask questions. But don’t worry, you can meet up with him on the way.”
We trudged on through the thick snow. Ben guided us away from what he said were buried rivers, telling us that the ice was too thin over those and we’d fall through into freezing water. My legs began aching—walking up a mountain in snow took everything I had. And it was twice as hard on Sophronia. Ben put his arm around her and helped her walk after she stumbled and almost fell.
Ben stopped suddenly and turned, surveying the forest behind us. “I heard something.”