Havenfall

by Sara Holland

  “What’s that frown for?”

  A gravelly voice to my right snakes through my music. I half-turn away, hoping that it’s not me being addressed, but the man across the aisle, the one with the newspaper, is looking at me, lips split to show cigarette-stained teeth. Reluctantly, I take off my headphones.

  This guy must be from Haven. He’s wearing a necklace with a teardrop-shaped pendant of the same odd, pearlescent silver that supposedly comes only from the old mines surrounding the town. But I’ve never seen him there before.

  I give him a bare, polite smile. “Just happy we’re almost there.”

  He rubs the pendant between his fingers. He has sun-weathered skin and pale eyes. “You going to Haven?”

  “Yep.” I can’t help popping my lips slightly on the P. It’s a stupid question—that’s the only stop left, which this guy surely knows. “Going to visit my uncle.”

  “You from there? You look familiar.”

  Wariness curls around my heart, but I push it down and shake my head. Haven has less than a thousand people, and it’s tucked away so high, inaccessible but for twisty county highways. It’s possible the man might remember me from seeing me around town. But he wouldn’t—couldn’t—have remembered me from the inn; Havenfall protects against that.

  “Like I said, just visiting family.”

  “Well, I’m pleased to meet you.”

  “Likewise,” I lie, reluctantly shaking the hand he sticks across the aisle. His hand is clammy, his grip too tight. When he smiles, I notice several fillings made from the same pale silver as the pendant.

  To my relief, he doesn’t ask further questions once I turn back toward the window. We’re climbing higher and higher as the sun sets, the air thinning and my ears popping. Clouds creep in from the west, covering the orange sky and casting the craggy mountains in shadow. The driver goes slower as the wind picks up. The towns are almost nonexistent now: the only signs of human habitation are the odd cabin or broken-down car. But the landscape gets more beautiful, even under the gathering blanket of storm clouds. Fog creeps down over the mountainsides, wrapping around the trees and spilling tendrils over the road, but the effect is almost comforting, like we’re the only people in the world.

  Another oddity about Haven: the weather is strange around here. Locals know it, and it keeps outsiders away. There are other measures, too, other precautions meant to keep this place secret and safe. As we pass the faded road sign that says Welcome to the Inn at Havenfall, I look at the trees on either side. My uncle employs a dozen people to keep watch outside town year-round. I know I won’t see them—they’re stationed deep in the woods, in cabins or converted deer blinds. There to make sure that no magic escapes the boundaries of the town.

  It hasn’t happened in years, and when it does, it’s usually easily explained—a maid sneaking out a bottle of Fiorden wine without realizing the power it holds, or a bored noble taking a ride through the woods that ranges too far. But once every few years a delegate will decide to try to smuggle magic out for profit. I don’t know what the punishment is for that, but I’ve never seen any of the offending delegates again.

  The clouds finally crack and rain drizzles down as we round the mountain and see the town of Haven up ahead, a smattering of buildings clinging for dear life to the mountainside, encroached upon by the trees and the mist. A bright river snakes down across the mountain before disappearing into the valley below us. And my heart leaps to see it, because Havenfall is just beyond the next ridge. The fog sparkles like a mirage. I glance behind me and see all my fellow passengers glued to the window, even the baby, looking out with round blue eyes.

  We reach the crossroads just outside town, the place where Marcus usually picks me up in his jeep. Ahead is the general store, a big log building with a generous wraparound porch, spilling welcoming yellow light from inside. Two women chatting in rocking chairs on the porch look when the bus stops and the passengers file off. I’m relieved when Silver Teeth Man exits, his fillings flashing as he gives me one more broad smile, and then disappears into the store. But then the anxiety slides back in. Maybe Marcus didn’t get my text. He isn’t here.

  When the door closes, the driver meets my eyes in the mirror. “Someone coming to pick you up?”

  I nod, holding on to the feeling of anticipation. No, it’s not anticipation. It’s need. Havenfall, my uncle and friends, Brekken—all less than a mile away now.

  “We can wait a few minutes, but I can’t take this thing any farther up these damn roads.” The driver slaps the dashboard with a mixture of exasperation and affection. “And …”

  He lifts a hand, pointing at the dark clouds coming in from the north, the curtains of rain in the distance. Even if he doesn’t know why, he knows that the weather gets more freakish the closer we are to Havenfall.

  “Sorry about this.” My voice catches as I shift in my seat, trying to call Marcus again. But I don’t have service here. It’s dead air. “My uncle should be here in a few minutes.”

  But a few minutes pass, and then a few more. No one comes.

  The general store’s lights have gone out; the doors are closed. And the storm is near, the scraggly pine trees around us stirring in the wind. My mouth is dry, my stomach heavy. The idling bus grumbles beneath me.

  I’m used to being forgotten—it beats the smirks and stares that usually come with being noticed. When you’re the loner, the weirdo, the daughter of the Goodwin Lane Killer, it’s better to not be seen at all. It’s different with Marcus, though. He’s always had a place for me at Havenfall. He’s never failed to be here at the crossroads when the bus has come in.

  At least, not before now.

  I dig through my backpack until I find my umbrella, then get up and thread through the aisle toward the driver, wishing I’d thought to pack a raincoat. “I’ll just walk into town a little ways,” I tell him. “I usually get service once I’m higher up.” This isn’t true, but I’m suddenly anxious to get off this bus, despite the rain. He must have places to be. As do I.

  His brow crinkles again. “Are you sure, dear? I don’t want you out when the lightning starts.” He gestures at the road. “There’s a diner about a half mile up the road that stays open all night. Ask Annie to let you use the phone—”

  “Okay.” I cut him off without meaning to, but the idea of spending another moment away from Havenfall puts a pit in my stomach. I lift my umbrella. “I’ll be fine, I promise.”

  The driver doesn’t look happy about this, but he pulls the lever to open the doors. Cool, pine-and-rain-scented air pushes into the bus, raising bumps on my spine. The smell of Havenfall. But tendrils of anxiety wiggle through me.

  “Be careful,” the driver reminds me as I stop on the stairs to open my umbrella. “If there’s lightning, knock on someone’s door, or find a ditch and hunker down.”

  “Thank you. Will do.” I smile at him, meaning the thank-you but not the rest of it. I’ll walk all night if I have to.

  He stays idling there as I walk up the deserted, darkening Main Street, my old Converse squelching in the mud. The incline here is so steep I can see it, and I internally groan thinking of the hike ahead. My duffel strap is already cutting into my shoulder, and this dollar-store umbrella won’t hold up against Haven weather.

  But I lift my hand, giving the driver one last smile and wave. Then I start the long trek up to Havenfall. A little walk, a little rain won’t stop me from getting to the one place where I actually belong.

  2

  Most of the townsfolk of Haven don’t know the truth, I think, about Havenfall and the Adjacent Realms and the Accords that we commemorate every summer with a summit. But everyone knows there’s something special about this place—an undercurrent, a breath of wind from another world.

  A few different stories float around town, passed along when you’re getting your hair cut, in line at the general store, chatting on sagging front porches. That a tiny village once here disappeared from the face of the earth, and no one
knows where everyone went. That a cult leader during a camp meeting walked a group of devout followers off a cliff. That Lewis and Clark types came here a little later in the nineteenth century, trying to map the Rockies, only to all vanish. People say the mountain has a will of its own. It can be magnanimous or cruel. If you come here with ill intentions, you’ll find yourself beset by rain, hail, and wind strong enough to dislodge rocks above and send them tumbling onto your path. But if you come here for refuge, the fog will swallow you up like a protective blanket and hide you from whatever you’re running from.

  The point is, people know that this is a place where you can vanish, even if they don’t know why. We’re hardly in Briar County, Colorado, anymore. We’re elsewhere.

  Giving up on keeping my feet dry, I look up from the ground and take in what’s around me as I walk through town. The other bus passengers have dispersed, and I pass a handful of clapboard houses built right into the mountainside, with flimsy wood porches overlooking the valley. Faces appear in windows as I go by. Then there’s the post office with its yellowed newspaper notices. That’s where gossip is traded, where to go if you want to know the stories about this town. There’s a sharp-eyed clerk there, Debbie, who’s run the place as long as I can remember. She always greets me by name and asks after Marcus when I stop by to pick up packages.

  There’s Dr. Abram’s house, the doctor-slash-veterinarian who almost certainly isn’t licensed but who everyone trusts anyway. There’s the shell of an overturned livestock truck that went into a ditch years ago and no one has ever picked up, which now seems to be home to a family of coyotes. I catch a glimpse of a skinny tail disappearing behind a ragged metal panel as I plod by.

  The town is diminished, as is Havenfall itself. The inn used to be the crossroads to uncountable realms, each behind its own door, and all but two have been sealed magically shut. There are only three worlds left—Byrn, Fiordenkill, and Haven, which is what everyone from the Adjacent Realms calls Earth; that’s how the town got its name. But even though neither the town nor the inn is what it once was, the air still feels laden with possibilities. Havenfall is the neutral zone between all the worlds, a peaceful, magical crossroads.

  I pass the long, low brick diner, where I’m supposed to call Marcus. I’m pretty sure it used to be some sort of factory, but now the steamed-up windows illuminate a smattering of people eating in red-vinyl booths. I try to see if there’s anyone I know. Sometimes guests from Fiordenkill and Byrn will venture out if they need to have a conversation too controversial for the inn, or if they’re curious about the human world. But I don’t recognize anyone, so I keep walking.

  And besides, I don’t want to be out once dark really falls. Even though I know the doors to Solaria have been sealed off since the postwar treaty over a hundred years ago, worry burns through me like a live wire when I remember that we are never fully safe. That plenty of Solarians crossed through into our world before the treaty, and not all of them were found. They’re shapeshifters, capable of adapting and living among us—of living in any of the realms. They wear monstrous forms when they’re hungry, using teeth and claws to hunt us and devour our souls, but the rest of the time they can look like whatever they choose. Can look human, can breathe our air indefinitely.

  The rest of us—humans and people from the other Adjacent Realms—can’t make it more than a few days, or a few weeks for the strongest of constitutions, in a realm other than our own before gasping and flapping like fish out of water. We are not meant to travel between realms. Except at Havenfall.

  That’s why the inn is so special. Its magic makes it different—makes it safe. It is truly the one place everyone can intermingle.

  I shudder and walk faster, passing the ancient motel with windows too dusty to see inside, which for some reason has never been knocked down or repurposed, even though Haven types are usually all about resourcefulness and reinvention in order to avoid having to interact with the outside world. A busted car becomes a chicken coop, the skeleton of a burned-down miner’s cabin becomes an illicit playground, an old bomb shelter becomes a bar. (Where, as Brekken and I have discovered, they don’t card.)

  The rain slackens enough for me to close my umbrella as I leave town behind and trudge up toward Havenfall—good weather always seems to wrap the inn like a bubble, no matter what’s happening in town. But it’s rapidly getting darker even as the clouds slide away, and here’s the part of my plan I wish I’d thought more about. There are no streetlamps, and the whispering pines block any light from the inn above or the town below. It’s twilight now, but soon I’m going to have nothing to guide me but the moon and stars.

  I’ve been walking on the side of the road for half an hour, squinting at the ground to make sure I don’t misstep, when an engine sound from down the road makes me look up.

  A motorcycle’s headed right at me.

  I leap back just as the bike roars around the bend.

  My chest jackhammers as I watch the driver swerve, tires skidding over the dirt road, the bike going out from under him. The rider tumbles into the road, rolling over, while the bike shoots across the gravel, the motor sputtering out, and tangles in the brush between the trees.

  My duffel is on the ground, my hands over my mouth. I run to the driver, who pushes unsteadily to stand. “Are you okay?”

  He’s wearing a helmet—one of those shiny black ones that make you look like a Martian—and a leather jacket. He pulls off the helmet and oh—not a he, I realize as two dirty-blond braids tumble on either side of a pale, heart-shaped face.

  “No thanks to you.”

  She’s pretty, with a thin, wide mouth. A white scar runs down her chin, like this isn’t her first fall. Dark circles beneath her blazing, dark eyes. She swipes the back of her hand across her mouth.

  “What the hell were you doing in the middle of the road?” She reaches up and touches a silver locket around her throat, as if to make sure it’s still there.

  “I’m sorry, the fog—” I start to say something about how she could have taken it easy on the turns, but then I register the smear of red across her cheek. “Shit, you’re bleeding.”

  Panic speeds my heart. I yank out my phone, not sure if I should call Marcus or 911. If she’s really hurt, could an ambulance even get up here?

  Her hand shoots out and grabs my wrist before I decide. Her grip is hot, too tight.

  “Don’t. I’m fine. Just bit my tongue.” She lets me go and spits blood onto the road, then troops off toward her bike, fists clenched. “This bike is my everything, though, so you better hope it still runs.”

  “Sorry,” I mumble, at a loss for what to do. A second ago I was panicked, then mad, and now guilt fills me as I trail after her. “Are you from around here?” I call out. “Is there someone you could call to—I really don’t think you should try to ride that thing right now.”

  She glares at me as she drags her bike from the underbrush back onto the road. Besides the left rearview mirror being cocked at a funny angle, the bike looks fine to me, but then it’s not like I know anything about motorcycles, and the way she took that fall …

  Once her bike’s back on the road, she props it on the kickstand and turns to me, crossing her arms. “Worry about yourself,” she says. “The real question here is why the hell are you wandering around in the dark?”

  Around us, the chorus of frogs and crickets slowly starts up again. I didn’t realize they’d stopped singing.

  I lift my head, trying to match her manner, though I can’t imagine I’m all that intimidating with my damp clothes and sagging umbrella. “I’m headed to the Inn at Havenfall.”

  “What a coincidence, me too.”

  “What for?”

  Marcus always hires all sorts of people to work at the inn every year during the summer summit; the meetings, parties, and events require extra maids and stable hands, cooks and attendants. But I can’t picture this girl blending into the background like a staffer is meant to. Besides, all the new staff was
supposed to arrive last week, a few days before the delegates, to get ready.

  “I saw an ad in the paper for a landscaper.” She lifts one shoulder in a shrug. “Seemed like a good deal.”

  “You’re late,” I snap. Then realize I didn’t mean to say it like that, but the adrenaline from a moment ago broke down my filters. “I mean, it’s okay. I’m sure it doesn’t matter.” I feel myself blushing, and quickly bend down to pick up my duffel bag.

  Her eyes are narrow. “I would be less late if you hadn’t been walking in the middle of the road.”

  “If you hadn’t been taking that bend like a madman—” I stop myself. Becoming irritated won’t help things. “You know what, arguing about it isn’t going to get us there any faster.”

  Havenfall’s got to be less than half a mile away now, and I can feel it, an insistent tugging like a balloon string tied to my breastbone. I don’t want to fight with this girl. I just want to get there, and I offer an olive branch. “I’m Maddie.”

  “Taya,” she says. But she doesn’t take my outstretched hand. Dark, unreadable eyes examine my face, and the scrutiny freezes me, makes me want to shrink away. It brings me back to my home in Sterling and the constant stares of everyone there, where I keep my head down and walk fast, hoping to stay under the radar.

  But that’s not who I am here, not in the mountains and not at Havenfall. So I hold my ground and meet her eyes, even if something about her gaze feels dangerous. In Havenfall, I am brave. I must be, if I want to prove myself worthy of preserving the peace we celebrate with every summit, protecting the portals to the world’s lost realms of magic. The omphalos.

  And in the long run, it’s not like she’ll remember any of this. Marcus always sees to that. No one ever remembers—except me.

  Eventually, Taya turns away with a shrug. She throws a leg over her motorcycle, then looks back at me. “Well?” she says after a moment. “Are you coming?”