by Anya Allyn
Her hands closed into tight balls in her lap as she sat silently. A mask-like expression appeared on her face. “It is good that you have all come here today, for today is my birthday, and you can help me celebrate.”
“How old are you, Jessamine?” said Frances from her perch on the carousel horse.
Frances wrinkled her nose and forehead. “But you were fifteen on your last three birthdays. Anyway, we don’t have cake.”
“Perhaps not this time. But we can hold a dance.” Jessamine moved her gaze to the old gramophone that sat on a carved chest. The needle shifted to the record and a stream of discordant notes shattered the air.
The gramophone records had always sounded scratchy, but after Jessamine’s fit of rage when we’d tried to escape the dollhouse, the gramophone had ended up misshapen. Its needle now scraped and jumped along the grooves of the record. I already knew what the music would be. Chopin’s nocturne number twenty. The music that haunted my nightmares.
Jessamine didn’t seem to notice the distorted music. A smile spread thinly on her face. “Now the boys may each take a partner and lead them into the dance. The girls will wait their turn to be asked.”
Ben and Raif stared around at us, their eyes large and questioning.
We nodded at them. Jessamine was going to make us play by her rules.
Ben stepped hesitantly up to Lacey. At first, she stood looking back at him rigidly, then she relaxed and allowed him to place a hand on her shoulder and waist. They began an awkward waltz. I guess neither of them had ever waltzed before. Lacey had never lived in the dollhouse and hadn’t been through endless hours of Jessamine’s instruction in the art of dance.
Raif glanced nervously at us, straightening his collar. He held his hand out to Sophronia. A look of surprise entered her dark eyes. She walked toward him, her steps uneven and her cheeks flushed. Raif caught her up in his arm, holding her so close to him that he was half holding her up. They danced together in a strange harmony—Sophronia with her shortened leg and Raif with his one arm, in something that was part waltz and part something that came from Raif’s confidence in himself. It was obvious he didn’t know how to waltz either, but he was doing a good job of making it up as he went along. He smiled down at Sophronia. She tried to respond, but ended up closing her eyes instead, seeming to be embarrassed by the attention from him.
Ben and Raif danced with each of the girls in turn—Raif taking his last dance with Frances. Frances twirled around and around at the end, as Raif held her hand, making her white dress spin out.
Jessamine began clapping, and we all joined her. She’d taught us that it was good manners to clap at the end of a waltz.
“Though you would benefit proper lessons,” she told the boys, “you did your best.”
Raif and Ben bowed at her. She returned their gesture with a small smile. The boys were much better at getting on Jessamine’s good side than Ethan had ever been. Ethan hadn’t accepted Jessamine or the dollhouse for one second. All he had done was to confirm Jessamine’s suspicions that males were horrid creatures.
Raif held out a hand to Jessamine. “But the birthday girl hasn’t danced yet.”
I heard a soft gasp from Molly. I tensed as I eyed Jessamine, waiting for her reaction.
Jessamine straightened in her seat, like a regal queen who’d just been spoken to by a lowly servant. “I’m not sure that your imposition is proper.”
Raif frowned back. I was sure she had meant to say, proposition, but we never, ever corrected Jessamine. She was the instructor and we were the instructees.
“But the dance isn’t complete,” he countered.
She bowed her head, her eyes vaguely panicked. Her expression reminded me of Molly the first time that Molly had been made to dance with Ethan. And then I knew—I knew that Jessamine had never danced with a boy before. And Raif was an especially handsome boy, with his olive skin that was darker than his sister’s and his green-blue eyes.
“Very well,” Jessamine replied in a quiet voice.
Raif didn’t wait for another cue from Jessamine. Striding forward, he extended his hand to her.
She accepted his hand, and the music started up again. Raif swallowed as he threaded his hand into hers, a wet stain of sweat on his forehead. But he took her into a waltz, allowing himself to be guided by her expert steps while he remained the one leading. He spun her out at arm’s length with panache if not with skill. I stared on in amazement. Jessamine had never allowed any of us to touch her before—except for Frances. And Raif was dancing with Jessamine as if she were just like any other girl, like she were not made of smoke and mirrors. He kept his expression straight, though I knew he must be battling with himself. He must have reached down to depths I’d never understood him as having, just to get past his fear of beings that he hadn’t imagined could be real.
Jessamine’s gaze was faraway and impossible to read.
At the end, he stepped back and clapped her. “Thank you.”
She nodded briefly, clasping her hands. “And thank you.” She gazed around at the rest of us, unsure of what to do with herself.
“Is it time for games? Sorry, I don’t know the rules here.” Raif eyed her innocently.
“Yes, quite,” she breathed. “It’s time for games.”
I cleared my throat. “May I start? If you guess our riddle, Jessamine, then you can put us to task to guess yours.”
She appeared to try to steady herself. “We shall have riddles, but I will start. You mustn’t think that’s rude, but as it is my birthday, it is only right. You must guess mine before offering yours.”
I felt crushed inside. Jessamine’s riddles were often impossible to crack. She referenced things and people that were before our time—a hundred years before our time.
She bent her head, frowning in concentration. We held our collective breath. Finally, a secret smile edged into her pink lips. “I have one. Picture a boy and a girl by a river—the boy fishing and the girl carrying a basket of eggs. The girl shrieks and drops the eggs. The boy falls in the river and is rescued by the girl with a stick. The boy uses the stick to defend himself and the girl. What is it that he was defending against?”
She inclined her head. “You must answer within five guesses.”
Molly put her hands in the air. “But the riddle is impossible. It could have been anything. A wolf or a bear... or even a leprechaun!”
“That’s three guesses, Missouri.” Jessamine gazed directly at her.
“That’s unfair,” gasped Molly.
“I provided you the rules,” she told her.
“A serpent,” said Frances darkly. “There was a nasty serpent in the river.”
“A good guess, Philomena.” Jessamine raised her eyebrows. “But that wasn’t it. That’s four guesses.”
A memory rushed through my mind—a memory of the room the otherworld Molly and I had been held in when we’d first been captured and taken to the castle. The room had been the childhood bedroom of Jessamine’s grandfather. The door hadn’t had a latch or keyhole—instead it had a picture puzzle set into the back of the door that unlocked it if the tiles in the puzzle were sequenced correctly. The tiles showed the story of the children at the river. Tobias must have told the puzzle to Jessamine.
“A demon,” I said quickly. “A demon frightened the girl and made her drop the eggs, and the boy beat it off with the stick. The girl was his sister—she had collected eggs and then gone to the river to call her brother for breakfast.”
The others eyed me both in alarm and hope. This was our last guess.
Jessamine glared at me, her head askew. “How did you know the answer?”
“It’s not part of the game to ask how people know the answers, is it?” I tried to keep my tone even.
“Very well, Calliope” she said stiffly. “You have earned your right to speak your conundrum.”
Concentrating to remember each word correctly, I spoke the riddle out loud:
A puzzle for a penny
A room without any
And mermaids pray
The burning orb away
Pain crept into her eyes. “Where did you get that from?”
“It’s not part of the game to tell where a riddle came from, either,” I said.
She didn’t reply. Wordlessly, she began pacing the room. Books rattled on their shelves in the library. Papers picked up and flew about in the darkness behind her. Frances edged over to Molly and clung to her side.
Stopping dead, Jessamine closed her hands over each other. “Some riddles are not meant to be solved, Calliope. You may think you need all the answers, but the truth is that one can be perfectly content without knowing, and without needing to know. There is no need to solve every conundrum one comes across.”
My heart pumped unevenly in my chest. “But we’re playing a game.” A dangerous game. A game in which losing might turn deadly.
A dark cloud crossed Jessamine’s face. “Grandfather wrote that riddle, didn’t he?”
I inhaled deeply and nodded. “But it’s still a riddle.”
“True. But it isn’t your riddle.” Jessamine’s voice was cold and matter-of-fact.
Had I blown our only chance with Jessamine? Closing my eyes for a moment, I stilled myself. “Neither is the riddle you just told. Your grandfather told it to you.”
Her face blanched. Her shoulders drooping, she returned to her chair. She sat quietly for a time, her eyes glazed and unseeing.
Wind crept up around us, chilling our bones through the thin clothing we wore. We stared at each other—for comfort, for direction. But none of us could make Jessamine do anything she didn’t choose to do. She could refuse to answer, or start a different game... or kill us.
She raised pale blue eyes to us. “Well, it is obvious to any simpleton that mermaids are a reference to the ocean....”
I breathed a silent sigh of relief. She’d chosen to play the game.
“And there must be something beneath the ocean,” she continued, “Perhaps the burning orb is the sun, as mermaids must surely be afraid of drying out in the sun. The sun... it illuminates things. The mermaids are afraid of whatever is under the ocean being brought out into the light of day and seen. So they pray it remains in the deep.”
“What’s the things that the mermaids are so afraid of being taken out of the ocean?” Molly’s eyes were bright in glow of the lamps.
Jessamine shook her head. “I don’t know.” She frowned. “Except... that a room without any could be a room without any doors—a puzzle room with no way in except if you solve a puzzle. Grandfather used to have puzzles that operated with a penny—perhaps that explains the penny.”
“Anything else at all? Any other clue?” Sophronia pressed.
Her eyelashes fluttered down. “Perhaps, if I have rest, I can bend my mind to this vexing riddle again. But for now, I must sleep. And you too, must sleep. Perhaps it’s time for tea?”
She faded away, until nothing was before us except for the rocking chair.
“What now?” Ben turned to us anxiously.
Molly exhaled a long, tight breath. “We wait.”
Heading out to the kitchen, we made ourselves breakfast from the supplies that we’d brought. Ben boiled water and made tea from a small cooker he’d brought along, but all the girls turned down his offer. None of us could bear to drink tea or coffee or any hot drink at all.
The day passed, and Jessamine did not return. I couldn’t tell where she had gone—she wasn’t in the bed chamber. I suspected she was in The Dark Way, resting in the cradle of her skeleton.
Ben and Raif sat in the ballroom and told us about what they called The Big Freeze—when the world had turned to ice, and all that had happened afterwards. Sophronia and Frances and I told our stories, about what we’d seen and known after our escape from the dollhouse. My muscles clenched as I heard Frances tell about being captured by rangers and imprisoned in their holding bay.
We headed into the bed chamber for another night of restless sleep. There was nothing else to do but to wait for Jessamine. She held the clues that I desperately wanted. I craved the knowledge of the book—with an intensity that terrified me. Was I becoming like Tobias, so intent on possessing the book that I’d risk anything to have it?
21. The Order of Sister Celia
ETHAN
They whirl onto the ice out of nowhere. Six men in long hooded coats and boots—black against the world of white. They stride in the direction of the museum, side by side.
At first, their clothing tells me they’re rangers. Usually only rangers are so brazen as to wear such dark colors and stand out like that on the ice. But the rangers have been gone for months, and they never approached us in a group and out in the open—they’d be too easily picked off by our guards. My intestines turn to ice water—these people are not rangers. These men are from the castle.
I break into a run as I head for the museum. Our only hope against the castle was the Order, but somehow, their concentration failed.
As I reach the zone in front of the museum, no one opens the planetarium. Either no one’s keeping watch or they already know what’s coming. Ploughing through the snow, I make my way to the side of the building. All the secret entrances have been secured with sheets of metal—bolted into place. There’s no way in.
Sweat trickles down my back. My hand reaches into my pockets, curling around the long-bladed knives that I keep there. I’ve fought three rangers at the one time before. It was a matter of being quicker, of making moves that were unexpected. But there are six of these, and they hold the power of the shadows, and the might of the castle.
I have the box of medicine in my other hand. It took me days of watching and searching the rangers' encampment to get this. I grabbed antibiotics, bandages, morphine and any other medicines I could find—the antibiotics for Cassie and the other stuff to add to the dwindling stores of medicines at the museum.
The grinding noise of the planetarium opening travels through the air. Blood charges through my head. The museum might as well give an open invitation. I race around to the front of the museum, shouting at the guards to close the damned entry. But the Order steps from the planetarium onto the snow, flanked by armed guards.
“What are you doing?” I roar. “Don’t you know what’s coming? Those men are from the castle. You’re just going to let them in without a fight?”
Sister Bettina swivels her thin neck my way, her lips pursed so tightly they’re almost white. “The Order of Sister Celia does not fight. We prevail.”
My mind closes in. “I don’t see you prevailing now. How did they get past your block?”
“We do as must in the gravest of circumstances, as we have done since our inception.”
Her words make no sense to me. No sense. No reason. “If you want to be sitting ducks, that’s your call. I’m going to secure the museum.”
Calhoun and Rogers point shotguns at my head.
I back up a step. “What the hell? What’s going on?”
Calhoun fixes an intent stare on me. “Just something the Order should have done a long time ago.”
I spin around to face the Order and march toward them. “What did you do?” I yell the words but my voice is weak, uncomprehending.
Sister Bettina piously clasps her hands. “Ethan McAllister, you have always been a danger to us, but that danger has reached a point we can no longer tolerate. Those demon snake creatures were gone, yet as soon as you return, so do the demons. And now you insist upon bringing us a daughter of the castle—Balthazar’s bride no less. The castle’s attempts to break through our barrier is exhausting our energies.”
My legs buckle at the mention of Cassie. “She’s no bride of Balthazar’s.” Blood flashes through my brain. “You’ve agreed to hand her over to them. Haven’t you? Haven’t you?”
She tilts her head upward, stretching her scrawny neck. “You left us with no choice.”
“You don’t know what you’ve done. You cannot make de
als with these people. They will destroy you. All of you.”
Brother Hudson steps forward. “You may not speak to Sister Bettina in that way. It was a consensus. We stopped blocking the castle long enough to allow a quick exchange of words between us. They will return Balthazar’s bride to the castle, and in exchange, they’ll call off the snake beasts.”
I stare at him as the horror of his words dawn on me.
Calhoun and Rogers grab each of my arms.
“We’re giving them you in the bargain too.” Calhoun nods, a smirk twitching at the sides of his mouth. “Package deal.”
I try to wrench myself away, but their hold is too tight.
“Cassie! Cassie!” I roar at the museum.
The men are mere meters away. They stop, side-by-side. It’s Henry, Armand, Zach and Parker’s fathers and two others I don’t recognize.
Zach’s father fixes his gaze on me, his mouth twisting. “You didn’t die.”
I struggle against the hold on my arms. “Sorry to disappoint.”
“We’ve come for the wives of the castle,” Zach’s father tells me. “Cassandra, Molly and Aisha. They belong to us.”
All the breath in my lungs hisses between my teeth. “The hell they do.”
Sister Bettina stares at him curiously. “We only have the monseigneur’s wife. I’m afraid there are no others here.”
Henry taps his knuckles together impatiently. “Come now, Sister, I sent them here myself—and they did not return. I know you have been blocking the shadow from bringing them back to us.”
“We are doing no such thing,” she insists.
“Then somehow, they are hiding here of their own accord. I’m sure you will help us find them.” Henry gives a short, bowing nod of his head.
“We will assist you all we can,” she said. “We do not wish to keep those here who flit between worlds. The world must keep its order, Mr. Batiste. If we see them, we will contact you.”
Henry eyes her with suspicion. “You won’t mind if we search the museum for ourselves?”
“I would indeed mind,” says Sister Bettina. “Entering the museum was not in our agreement.”