by Kit Alloway
“You think I won’t do it?” Peregrine screamed, pointing the gun at her again.
“I think you will,” Mirren said. “I think you’re depraved enough to kill me. But I’ve known that from the start, and I swore to myself when I began this that I would do what my parents would want. You took their lives, and you might take mine and my family’s, but that’s all you’re going to get from us.”
The gun shook. “You stupid bitch,” Peregrine swore.
Mirren’s smile sweetened. “The file cabinets are reinforced tungsten steel, by the way. It’ll take you years to cut them open.”
Peregrine’s whole body quivered. “You,” he said, his voice trembling violently. “You … you…”
“Me, me, me,” Mirren agreed.
Silence filled the room.
A martyr’s death to seal her ruse, Mirren recalled, thinking of her scroll. From the way Peregrine held the gun, she could see straight into the barrel, and the dark void reminded her not of Death, but of deep space, and of gravity. What’s the ruse? she wondered. That I’m a martyr? That I’m a princess?
Or is Death itself the ruse?
Katia grabbed Mirren’s hand, and they waited.
“I believe the devices are ready,” Feodor said calmly.
Peregrine’s hand shook, and Mirren watched his finger tighten on the trigger.
“Of course,” Feodor continued in the same casual tone, “you can shoot the girl before you test the devices. But I thought you might wish to use them to force her to unlock the cabinets. Or you might tear her body to pieces, rather than just shooting her.”
The idea made Peregrine crack a smile. He was panting.
Slowly, he lowered the gun. Mirren released a breath she hadn’t known she was holding.
“Fine,” Peregrine said. “Give them to me.”
When he looked away from Mirren, she felt as though she’d stepped out of a very hot spotlight.
I guess gravity isn’t ready for me yet, she thought, and almost laughed. Instead, she hugged Katia. “Tighten the tourniquet,” she whispered, and her cousin nodded.
Feodor carried the devices over to Peregrine, and as Mirren turned to watch him, she caught sight of a tiny movement in the file room doorway.
“Have you worn them before?” Feodor asked Peregrine.
“No.”
Who is that? Mirren wondered. All she could see was a slice of blue fabric floating at the edge of the doorframe, perhaps a shirt.…
“Roll up your sleeve, please.” Feodor turned Peregrine’s arm in order to locate his veins.
Will ducked his head into the room for the briefest of instants.
He’s alive! Mirren’s heart jumped. She honestly hadn’t been sure whether or not Peregrine and Bash had killed Will earlier—or Josh, for that matter—but when they’d left, he’d been lying motionless on the living room floor.
“Ow!”
Feodor had just clamped the vambrace shut around Peregrine’s arm. “Apologies, apologies.”
“Is it supposed to hurt like that?”
“I’m afraid so. The current requires access to the central nervous system in order to transmit electrical signals.”
But something sour had entered Peregrine’s expression, and he stopped Feodor from putting the circlet on his head.
Will peeked into the room again. He had something in his hand—the activator?
“Wait,” Peregrine said. “Try them on her first.”
He nodded toward Bayla.
“Yes, yes!” Bayla cried, rushing forward. “It’s my turn!”
Feodor looked between them, and something in his face made Mirren think that this was not a good idea. “The devices have already damaged her system greatly. It will be impossible to prove that their new configuration won’t hurt the wearer if we demonstrate it on someone already so injured.”
He’s up to something, Mirren realized as Will snuck another look at the room. And Will—are they working together?
Of everything that had happened to her in the last month, Will and Feodor working together seemed the most improbable.
“I want to wear them!” Bayla cried, and Feodor had to lift his arm to keep the circlet out of her hands.
“Then you test them,” Peregrine told him.
This time when Will ducked around the door, he saw Mirren watching for him. He gave her the fleetest of smiles, and she felt a surge of hope.
But Feodor and Peregrine were staring at each other with such fire in their eyes that she was surprised the space between them didn’t burst into flame.
“Do you think I’m stupid?” Peregrine hissed. With his unencumbered arm, he pushed the barrel of the gun into Feodor’s gut. “Do you think I forgot what you did to me, old friend?”
“I think you’ve forgotten what I did for you,” Feodor replied. He smiled, but his jaw tensed.
“I loved her—”
“Do not speak to me of love,” Feodor snapped, and all the civil tidiness Mirren had admired before was gone from his expression. Now she saw the Feodor that Will was so afraid of, the man with the crazed rage in his eyes and the snarl that destroyed the crisp line of his lips.
Feodor lowered the arm with which he held the circlet, as if he had forgotten it. Bayla, who had been standing beside him, jumping up and down to reach it, grabbed the device out of the air.
“It’s mine!” she cried, and jammed it onto her own head.
Feodor shouted, “Now, Will!”
For a heartbeat, nothing happened.
Then Peregrine’s arm exploded.
Bayla’s head blew apart like a dropped watermelon.
Peregrine, his face emptied by shock, stared at Feodor and then shot him in the gut before fainting.
The room shook, and Feodor fell to the floor beside Peregrine.
“Will!” Mirren screamed, throwing herself over her cousin.
Upstairs, something heavy crashed. Glass shattered, and the walls creaked. Plaster floated down like snow.
Mirren tried to put pressure on Katia’s wound again, but Katia said, “I’m okay—help that guy!”
She meant Feodor. She doesn’t know who he is, Mirren thought, and she didn’t know if she should help him or not. If he died, would they still get Haley back? No one had told them.
Mirren didn’t know what to do for Feodor except to put pressure on his wound, so she clapped her hands over the hole in his abdomen. Blood poured between her fingers, slick and hot.
Feodor groaned, his eyelids fluttering.
“What’s happening?” Will shouted at him.
Mirren took off one of her shoes and used it to beat at the flames coming from Peregrine’s arm. The vambrace had been blown to bits, and she couldn’t bring herself to look at what was left of his arm for more than a second; the skin had blistered and burst like a microwaved hot dog, and his hand was gone entirely.
“We may have…” Feodor said, and his eyes fluttered again. “Activating the transmitters … destabilized this universe.”
The floor began to vibrate, and the sound of crashing upstairs morphed into a crush of white noise.
“You must leave,” Feodor told them. “Go.”
“We can carry you,” Mirren said.
“No! Save yourself, Your Majesty.” His face had gone as white as the moon, his lips nearly colorless, but he smiled faintly.
Will grabbed one of Katia’s arms and Mirren grabbed the other, but as they rose Mirren saw a crack in the ceiling running from both ends. It widened like a great maw diving down to devour them, and only when the ceiling collapsed did Mirren remember how much she had wanted to live.
Thirty
Josh was dying.
She could feel it in every bit of her body, a sense of shutting down, of one cell after another being turned off, of tiny fires burning out. The weakness that had suffused her limbs was fading to numbness, then to nothingness. Over the dragging of her own breath, she heard Deloise crying and begging her to wake up; she didn’t even have
the energy to squeeze her sister’s hand.
But as the sensation of closure slowly shut her out of her body, she became aware of another place, somewhere deep inside her, that she could go, a place she remembered.
Death, she thought, and suddenly she wanted to go there, to escape the pressure of being forced from her own skin and instead run free on the golden shores of the river.
Something stopped her.
I’m not done, she thought.
I can’t leave yet.
There’s still so much I have to do.
She didn’t think of her life or how she wanted to spend it. She didn’t even think of the people she loved.
She thought of the Dream.
I was supposed to balance the universes.
She had failed. Why? Hadn’t she had the power? She could feel it closer than ever before, but the tighter she held it, the farther away it moved.
You can’t force it, Josh realized.
Somewhere, Deloise screamed. Furniture crashed, and a sound like a dozen trains approaching filled the air.
You can’t force it, Josh thought again, remembering how hard she had tried to open an archway and save Will.
You have to follow it instead.
What did that mean? Now Whim was screaming, too, and other voices she didn’t recognize.
You have to follow it—
Suddenly, she was surrounded by silence. She opened her eyes and found herself standing on a shapeless gray plain. Three strong lights shone away from her, illuminating three different paths.
On the left, she saw the gods of Death, radiating golden light, their arms outstretched for her.
In the center, she saw the Dream, the ocean of colored lights that were the souls of the dreamers.
On the right, she saw the World, all blue and green and bursting with energy.
But she didn’t walk toward them.
You have to follow it, she thought, and she turned around to see where the lights originated.
Behind her, the gray brightened to white—white stone floor, white walls, an indistinct ceiling of white light. A few feet away, a rough-cut black pillar rose to waist height, water pouring down from it. Sitting atop the pillar was a pale stone shaped like an egg, small enough to fit in her hand, but just barely. The water burbled out from beneath the egg, and the reflection of the light on the moving water made the egg sparkle.
Follow it, she thought, and she put her hand on the egg. The shell was not completely smooth, but bumpy and a little rough, and it was warm, even though the water pouring down around it was chilly. Josh picked it up, liking the warmth in her hand.
And then she understood that some things were meant to be.
The knowledge hit her in a flash, a bright light turned on right before her eyes. There is a plan for each of us, she thought, and she saw the three universes as three stages where different parts of a single great play were being performed. They moved together like cogs in a clock, souls spilling from one to the next in a choreographed dance too complex for Josh to follow.
And her own part? She tried to focus on herself, on the line of light representing her path, but it was short and too bright. Her soul hadn’t emerged from the Dream, as all the others had. Instead, hers simply appeared the moment she was born, an unexpected entrance in the play.
Because I’m the True Dream Walker? she wondered. Is that why?
She didn’t even know if she was the True Dream Walker, but she followed the idea as it led her into memory. She remembered being in the Dream, watching Ian’s body bleed out while she lay, helpless, on the floor. She remembered Will whispering to her, telling her that she had to admit she was the True Dream Walker and save them. She remembered giving her life up to whatever was meant to be, and how in that moment she had merged with the Dream so completely as to almost lose herself.
It’s my ego, she realized. I can’t access the power with my ego in the way. I can’t decide what should be.
She was a servant to a greater power, and only when she was facilitating that power’s intentions could she act as the True Dream Walker. It wasn’t a god she served, or even a consciousness. It was the way of things, an inevitability, a current guiding souls.
Except mine, she thought. No path lay before her soul; she was forging it herself, every day, every moment.
She stared at the egg, feeling its heat in her palm, and within it she saw her own body, splayed on the floor with manacles attached to every limb. She saw Whim and Deloise cowering beside her with drawers over their heads to protect themselves from falling debris, and Mirren’s aunt and uncle crouched beneath a mattress torn off the bed.
Stop, Josh thought, and the warmth within the egg increased. Go back.
She watched the bedroom walls straighten, the ceiling flatten itself out, and the plaster dust rise from the floor.
Get rid of those, she added, and the manacles vanished, along with the chains and the cement block to which they had been attached.
She felt the castle rise upright, like a pop-up tent opening. The Hidden Kingdom reordered itself neatly.
Josh’s attention turned to the file room, floors below. Will, Mirren, and Katia lay curled in balls beside Feodor’s bleeding body. Near the first row of files, Bayla’s headless body was sprawled lifeless on the floor, and Josh passed her by without interest. There was nothing she could do for Bayla now.
Instead, she went to Feodor’s limp form. He lay like a child, his small limbs heavy with the sleep of impending death. Josh touched him and waited, listening in a way she never had before.
Not yet, she thought. Not yet.
This wasn’t Feodor’s time. Not quite.
In his ear, she whispered, “All things grow toward the light. Even you.”
His eyes flicked open, and he sucked in a great breath of air as the wound in his abdomen closed and blood rushed to his cheeks.
Josh ran her fingertips over Katia’s leg, and those wounds, too, were healed.
There was one more person in the room, and even unconscious, pain and rage radiated from him. He’d lost his left hand, and the skin on his arm had burned away, leaving charred muscle visible, raw bones exposed to the air. But even more horrifying was the tangled mess of his mind. It was as twisted and thorny as an overgrown thicket from which no berries grew, and Josh knew she could heal him with a word.
Not yet, she thought again, this time with a different meaning. He has to play out his purpose.
But for the first time she felt something other than peaceful acceptance of the way things were meant to be. She didn’t want to let Peregrine go on hurting people, and she struggled against the knowledge that she wasn’t meant to change him. Maybe the wisdom was wrong—
In that instant, she lost the confidence and comfort that had come with holding the egg.
And she woke up standing in the bedroom.
Every cell in her body was alive, almost too alive, vibrating with energy.
“Josh?” Deloise asked. She was still crouched on the floor with a dresser drawer held over her head. “Wait—where are your chains?”
“Where are all the chains?” Whim asked. He gazed up at the perfect, smooth ceiling.
“What happened?” Mirren’s aunt asked, peeking out from beneath the mattress.
Collena, Josh thought. She’d seen her in the vision and known her name. Also beneath the mattress was Mirren’s uncle, Fel.
Josh didn’t wonder how she knew these things or how the manacles had disappeared. When she had held the egg, all knowledge had been available.
“Peregrine’s in the file room,” she said. “We have to decide what to do with him.”
She started for the door, ignoring Whim’s and Deloise’s protests of confusion. “Josh, what happened?” Deloise asked as she followed her sister down the hallway. “You were barely alive, and then the house started coming down.”
“I’m alive now,” was all Josh said.
How could she explain? For a brief moment, the way o
f all things had been clear to her, and she had been part of the stream of time, her own current helping to move it forward. But what could she tell Deloise except that she had left her body and held an egg? That she had somehow healed Feodor and Katia?
Except Josh was fairly certain she hadn’t been the one to heal either of them. She had been the tool, but not the power.
She ran down the hallway and then down the stairs. She had no trouble finding her way, despite having been to the Hidden Kingdom only once. The house’s layout seemed to be part of the knowledge she now had.
“Josh,” Will said when she burst into the file room, and the relief in his face was so real that Josh felt she could wrap it around her hand.
She threw herself into his arms, but he hugged her for only an instant before pushing her away by the shoulders.
“You gave Feodor the activator,” he said.
Somehow she couldn’t quite believe he was going to complain about that when Feodor’s plan had likely saved both their lives. I killed Bash for you, Josh thought, but Will’s expression contained no gratitude, only more accusations waiting to be voiced. There was no love in the look he gave her, and Josh wondered what direction their path took and whether they would walk it together or alone.
“I’m sorry,” she said, and he shook his head, as if he couldn’t believe how weak her answer was.
She turned away to escape his anger, and Mirren hugged her. Katia hugged her, too, even though they hadn’t yet been introduced. Josh barely felt their embraces.
“Did you heal my leg?” Katia asked.
“Sort of,” Josh admitted.
Feodor was standing with his blood-soaked shirt pulled up so he could examine his unblemished torso. Josh didn’t hug him, of course, and he certainly made no move to hug her. In fact, he looked irritated.
“Thanks for your help,” Josh told him. She knew exactly what he’d done.
“I demand an explanation,” he said.
“Maybe later. Right now, we have to decide what to do with Peregrine before he wakes up.”
Behind her, Whim was throwing up at the sight of Bayla’s corpse. Feodor was pulling a bullet from his belly button, where his body had spit it out while healing. Mirren was examining her cousin’s leg with gentle fingers, but she ran to her aunt and uncle when they entered the file room.