Escape to Witch City

by E. Latimer

  “So it’s real!” Hope was starting to unravel the knot in Emma’s chest.

  “Of course it’s real,” the ambassador snapped. “Why else do you think the queen is so bent out of shape about it? Now, as I said, I can only get you started; you have to get through yourself.”

  “Through what?” Eliza said, clearly suspicious all over again. “My coven never said anything about through.”

  “Of course they didn’t. Not many people know about the In-Between.”

  “What’s the In-Between?” Emma frowned. She was about to demand a clear answer when the door behind them burst open, making all of them whirl around.

  It was not the queen in the doorway but a woman in a white-and-blue servant’s uniform. There was hair escaping from under her bonnet, and she looked very frazzled.

  When the ambassador saw her she sighed, pressing a hand to her chest.

  “Blast it all, Georgie! You nearly gave me a conniption.”

  Georgie ignored this, rushing over to the prince and enveloping him in a hug. Her voice was muffled as she pressed her face into his shoulder. “Oh, Edgar darling, I’ll miss you so very much.”

  Edgar Darling, for his part, looked taken aback. He squirmed slightly in her grip, but let her continue to squeeze him. “I’ll miss you too.”

  In spite of his blushing, there was an obvious note of affection in his voice, which left Emma feeling rather startled. She’d expected him to take on his familiar, imperious tone with someone in his mother’s employ.

  The woman released him and stepped back, smiling at each of them in turn. “Nice to meet you, girls. I’m Georgie, his nursemaid.”

  Even with everything that was going on, Emma saw Eliza and Maddie exchange a look, and Maddie tittered behind her hand.

  Emma glanced away. She’d had nursemaids in the past, but her mother had a tendency to drive them away. Her last one, a short, cheerful woman named Judith, had left a year ago, after her mother had accused the woman of stealing. Emma had been furious, but there was nothing she could have done; her mother’s mind was made up. It was only when Isolde had accused Emma of liking the nursemaid more than her own mother that Emma realized why poor Judith had been fired.

  She still felt a little guilty about what she’d shot back at Isolde: Of course I liked her better. It’s not a high bar, Mother.

  Maddie was still grinning. “Aren’t you a bit old for a nursemaid, Your Highness?”

  Edgar shifted from foot to foot, his face glowing. “Ex-nursemaid,” he mumbled.

  “Alright, enough goodbyes.” The ambassador glanced toward the door again. “Let’s get on with this.”

  “Wait, wait.” Georgie bustled forward, pressing the strap of a leather bag into Edgar’s hand. “Your poetry books, lad. I know how much you love them.”

  Edgar brightened, taking the bag and sliding the strap over one shoulder. He looked more at ease suddenly. “Thank you, Georgie.”

  The ambassador waved at them. “Up onto the edge of the fountain. Stand in a row here.” She patted the stone lip of the fountain, and then groaned when they all stared at her in disbelief. “We haven’t got time for this.”

  Surprisingly, Edgar was the first to obey. He hesitated for only a moment, and then put one shiny black boot up on the stone, and then the other. He placed his hands on his hips as he stared at the ambassador expectantly.

  Nothing happened. She only looked over at Emma and the others, brows raised.

  Emma hesitated, and then followed suit, and Maddie and Eliza did the same. It wasn’t difficult to balance on the edge of the fountain, as the stone was quite wide. When she looked down into the water, she realized it couldn’t be more than a foot or so deep.

  What exactly were they supposed to do?

  The ambassador nodded briskly and cleared her throat, surveying them. She raised a hand, and Emma saw she was holding a long, cloudy-looking quartz crystal set into a silver chain.

  “What’s that?” Emma said.

  The ambassador glanced over at her, mildly annoyed. “It’s a spell. Alright, we’re going to—”

  “A spell?” Edgar nearly fell into the fountain trying to back up a step. “What do you mean a spell? It’s a rock.”

  “For heaven’s sake,” the ambassador snapped at them. “Hush up, all of you, and listen to me carefully. You were supposed to get all of this information on the train! There’s far too much to cover now, so I’m going to try to give you a crash course in under a minute. Once you make it in, you’ll have to pass through the In-Between. Get to the other side of—”

  There was a loud crash, and the ambassador’s face went white. She whirled around as soldiers poured into the room. At the front of the party was Tobias McCraw. His hair was still standing on end, and he had a smudge of rock dust on his cheek, but his face was determined. He clutched his thistlewood staff tightly in one hand.

  For a moment, neither party moved. McCraw’s blue-eyed gaze flicked from Emma’s face down to the edge of the fountain and back, and he frowned, clearly taken aback.

  Emma felt completely frozen, as if panic had turned her limbs to stone.

  There was no way out. They were caught.

  A second later, a high, angry voice shouted at them to stop, and the queen appeared in the doorway behind her soldiers, expression twisted in rage, a terrible, white-faced figure in a blood-red dress.

  Emma saw Edgar stiffen. The queen didn’t even look at him; instead, she snatched at the witch hunter’s shoulder, jabbed a finger toward Emma and the others, and screamed in a high, furious voice, “Seize the witches!”

  Two things happened at once. First, Tobias McCraw looked straight at Emma, and then hesitated. It was a bare second that he stood there just staring at her, but long enough for the queen to turn her head and fix her gaze on him, enraged. McCraw jumped forward as if he’d been shocked.

  The second thing was that the ambassador to Irvingland—compliant neighbor to the south, good for oranges and not much else—whirled on the spot and swept both hands out, lunging toward the children.

  Emma squeaked in shock as the woman’s arm crashed into her, shoving her backward. She heard Maddie’s scream beside her as she fell back too, and the high, imperious voice of the ambassador cry out, “Aperi ianuam.”

  She fell.

  And fell.

  And continued to fall.

  There was no impact, and she didn’t break the surface of the water in the fountain. Emma’s eyes flew open in shock.

  Strange shapes and colors burst and bloomed in front of her. She was staring at the glass ceiling of the atrium above and the sky beyond, both rippling strangely, as if they were under water and not she. It was like a distant picture above her, shrinking quickly, first to the size of a table, then a painting, then a postcard. Alarmingly fast. She could hear shrieking in the distance, and the smell of smoke seared her nostrils.

  She squeezed her eyes shut, feeling a stab of terror.

  A second later there was a distant shout of alarm, and her eyes flew open in time to see a hand plunging toward her. She caught a glimpse of thick fingers with short nails, the cuffed uniform of the witch hunter, and the strange, unnaturally stretched arm attached to it. There was one horrifying moment when the fingers closed around her ankle, and Emma felt the drag of something heavy on her leg. She screamed, soundless in the strange void, and kicked violently. And then something grabbed her entire body from behind and sucked her violently backward, yanking her out of the witch hunter’s grasp.

  She had only a second’s warning before impact.

  One moment she was falling through a blur of shapeless color, and the next there was a flash of gray—a stone wall whizzing past.

  Emma threw her arms out in surprise, body twisting as she tried to catch herself. Instead, she sprawled on her face on a surprisingly cushioned surface.

  T
he wind had been knocked out of her on the landing, and Emma took a moment to regain her breath. Then she remembered the grasping hand. She scrambled upright, looking around in panic.

  There was no one.

  She’d landed in a stone fountain. Unlike the one back in the atrium though, this one was empty, and a great crack ran through the center, out of which sprouted a number of fluffy ferns. The cushioned surface she’d fallen on was a thick layer of moss blanketing the bottom.

  Beyond the fountain, the doorway was empty. Tobias McCraw hadn’t made it through.

  Emma’s shoulders slumped in relief. She let out another breath and then collected herself enough to take stock of her surroundings.

  The elegant glass atrium had changed. The windows were still there, but half of them seemed to be cracked or broken, and the wind whistled in past the jagged edges.

  There were old pots everywhere, empty and piled in stacks in the corners, or tipped over on their sides, dirt scattered across the floor. None of the pots held plants, but the plants had grown here anyway—ferns and creeping ivy and bushes full of sprouting flowers, all bursting through the holes and cracks in the floor.

  There was nobody here but her.

  A trickle of panic began to sink in past the relief.

  “Maddie? Eliza? Edgar?” She jumped as her voice echoed back at her, and then frowned. She stood up slowly, and carefully stepped over the lip of the fountain.

  It was disconcerting, this place that both did and didn’t look like the palace. It sent an uncomfortable sort of shiver down her spine.

  What had the ambassador called it? The In-Between?

  Emma turned on the spot, hands clammy with sweat. Wherever this was, there was no denying she’d gotten here by way of magic.

  And this place, as familiar as it looked, was not the room she had just left, so that had to mean it was magic too. On top of that it was damp and smelled of mildew, and it was dismally, eerily empty of any other human being.

  None of her friends had landed here; in fact, judging by the thick layer of dust on the floor, no one had ever been here at all.

  Emma wanted out.

  She took a deep breath and then moved toward the double doors at the end of the room, the sound of her footsteps echoing off the glass ceilings. Her thoughts were in turmoil, and each step made the panic in her chest grow a little more. Maddie and Eliza and Edgar had been pushed into the fountain too. She’d seen it.

  She couldn’t be here alone.

  Emma was breathing hard by the time she burst through the double doors with a shriek of rusted hinges. Staggering to a halt, she was shocked to find herself outside on a set of wide stone steps, and held on to the door to steady herself.

  Nothing could have prepared her for the city spread out before her.

  It was London. And yet, it was undeniably not London.

  The city was laid out differently, to start—more sprawling, with wider spaces between the buildings. Or perhaps it was merely an illusion created by the greenery that seemed to have sprung up along the edges of the streets and between each building. Incredibly, there were trees growing throughout the city, a towering thick-trunked forest that seemed to be trying to take over entirely.

  For a moment she just stood there, rooted to the spot, not understanding.

  She hadn’t known what to expect, but this…was impossible.

  In London, the streets would be full of people at this hour, which Emma estimated must be around midday, and streams of smoke would be trickling from the rows of chimneys along the rooftops. But here nothing moved.

  The streets were silent, the houses dark and empty, their cracked and broken windowpanes reflecting the orange of the sun. Displays at the front of the nearest shops showed rotten food and shriveled meat, and there were carriages strewn through the street, each of them rusted to a standstill.

  A ghost town.

  Dust motes hung in the air, illuminated by rays of light that slipped in through the cracks and spaces in the skyline, and Emma realized a moment later, a chill dropping down her back, that the sun was just now rising.

  It didn’t make sense. The sun had already risen, hours ago.

  She clutched the door so hard her fingertips ached, struggling to wrap her mind around this new information. Not only was this a different London, but it seemed to be in a different time. Or at least the timing was off by a few hours.

  It felt a little like something had reached in and clenched her heart in an iron grip. It was some kind of shadow London, a strange copy of the original. A ghost city swallowed up by a forest.

  When she turned on the steps and looked across the city line, she could only see more enormous trees in the distance: thick branches twined around church steeples and burst through windows; towering trees dwarfing brick houses. Not only that, but some of the nearest trees had golden-brown and yellow leaves, and it wasn’t nearly as cold as it had been this morning.

  It had been winter in London.

  She moved farther down the steps, unbuttoning her thick jacket a little as she went, trying to cram the panic back down. She had to find the others. They’d fallen into the fountain with her—

  Emma stopped short, once again remembering the hand that had burst through the blur of color. If McCraw hadn’t made it, who was to say the others had? What if he’d yanked them out?

  She squinted up at the buildings around her, thinking hard. She’d felt them beside her up until…when? The second before she’d hit the ground?

  Even if they had made it through, how was she supposed to find them? Slowly she turned and looked over the strange Forest-London spread beneath her—and spotted something that gave her another jolt of uneasy surprise.

  The clock tower loomed in the distance, standing perfectly straight. In this London, it would seem, it had not been crashed into and burned up during a witch attack. Even from this distance, she could tell it was dilapidated in spots. The hour and minute hands seemed to have rusted into place, and one side was entirely covered in creeping ivy, but it was still standing, the tallest structure in the near vicinity.

  Somehow, seeing the tower like this made everything sink in all over again. It felt like the earth had shifted beneath her. Her heart crowded up into her throat, choking off her oxygen. She felt dizzy, and forced herself to take a deep breath.

  A moment later, the low sound of a pulse in the back of her mind surfaced unexpectedly, and she stood up straight. “Maddie?”

  She turned on the spot, frantically searching the buildings nearby. “Eliza?”

  There. Someone was emerging between the thick trunk of a tree and the side of a crumbling brick building, a rumpled-looking figure in a black silk jacket.

  It was not Maddie or Eliza but Edgar. There was a smudge of soot on his left cheek, and the front of his silk jacket was torn. His black hair was disheveled and standing on end.

  Emma leapt forward with a cry of relief, bounding down the steps to grab him in a fierce, desperate hug. Beneath her arms, Edgar made a surprised oomf! sound, and she pulled back a second later, realizing what she’d done.

  Neither of them said anything for a moment, though Edgar looked just as relieved as she felt.

  “I thought you’d all gone.”

  “Where are the others?” Emma demanded, and her stomach twisted when his face fell.

  “I thought they were with you.”

  “No. No one came with me.” Worry gnawed at Emma’s insides. “They’ve got to be here somewhere. They can’t have been left behind.”

  Edgar frowned. “Hopefully that witch hunter didn’t pull them out.”

  “I think I shook him off just before I went through,” she said. “I’m not sure though.”

  At this, Edgar glanced around, clearly nervous. “Well, you know, even if he didn’t get through, I don’t fancy staying here. It’s creepy.” He
cleared his throat and threw his shoulders back, sniffing. “We should go.”

  Emma stared at him. The bossy prince act seemed to be back, and she found herself struck by the way he spoke. It was very like his mother, she realized: the haughty accent and the way he stated things as a fact, as if he was simply waiting to be obeyed.

  She opened her mouth, about to say something rude, and then stopped.

  Very distantly she could hear a frantic whoosh, whoosh, whoosh. At the end of every third beat came a quick double beat and then silence, before the whole thing started over.

  She’d heard that heartbeat before, in the square the day of The Testing. That had to mean it was either Maddie or Eliza, didn’t it?

  “Wait, I can hear—”

  A low rumble interrupted her, and Emma found herself rocked suddenly backward, nearly losing her balance.

  An earthquake? Pulling Edgar by the arm, she dashed back up the steps and braced herself against the door. She heard Edgar give a squeak of dismay as he grabbed the frame beside her.

  The city shook, the leaves on the nearest trees fluttering as if in a strong breeze, and as she watched in astonishment, Forest-London shifted.

  It happened before her eyes. The clock tower blurred, as if it were shaking so hard it was merely a smear of color in front of her, and then it was suddenly gone.

  Emma gaped as the buildings around it shifted, disappearing and reappearing in rapid succession, as if the city were indecisive in its shuffling. The roads too were moving, rearranging themselves with a great scraping sound of stone against stone.

  At last, the rumbling tapered off and the ground went still under her feet. When Emma turned to say something to Edgar, she realized with a jolt that the door she was clutching was one of the only things that appeared to have stayed the same. They now stood on the steps of a great stone building with a pair of boarded-up windows in front. There were a number of iron smokestacks up top and, just above the door, a sign that read Tuttle and Williams Cannery.

  For a brief moment neither of them said anything; they just stared at one another, wide-eyed, until Edgar finally murmured, “What…just happened?”