Havenfall

by Sara Holland

  Surprise freezes me in place. A few moments ago, I’d have said I’d never be caught dead on a motorcycle, but I’m ever more conscious of how dark it is and how far I have to go. I glance at the motorcycle, and Taya must be able to read the hesitation on my face, because she grins.

  “I’m a good driver. I swear. But if you’re worried, you can wear my helmet.”

  “There’s no need—” I begin, but Taya has already lifted the helmet and plunked it down over my ears. I cock my head, a little charmed and a little indignant, as she turns and strides back toward her bike, seeming to assume I’ll follow.

  She pauses and looks over her shoulder at me, lifting one eyebrow. “Unless you’d rather walk. Alone. In the dark. With coyotes.”

  Unable to think of a way to reply to that, I trail after her. “So, do I just, um …”

  Taya already has her leg over the bike, and it kicks to life with a growl. “Get on behind me and hold on.”

  I do as she says, nervous but trying not to hold her too tight. I don’t remember the last time I’ve gotten this close to, well, anyone. But Taya is easy, comfortable as she grabs my hands and situates them so they’re wrapped around her, not resting on her sides. I need to scoot up, my chest pressing against her back.

  “Sorry,” I mumble, glad she can’t see me blushing.

  “It’s fine,” she replies distractedly, kicking the bike into gear. Then it leaps forward, and under the roar of the engine I hear her oof, because I’ve instinctively squeezed her tight as the unpaved road spools away beneath us. “Mind loosening your death grip?”

  “Sorry,” I call again, adjusting my hold and trying to breathe normally. Taya drives us up the road, and I know we aren’t going that fast from the leisurely way trees slide by, but it feels like we are. The motorcycle rumbles beneath me.

  “So how did you hear about this place?” Taya shouts as she takes us smoothly around the curve of a switchback. The fresh, damp air whips past, and the last of the clouds are scudding away in the sky, revealing a few stars starting to blink through the gathering dark.

  “My uncle.” I have to try the words twice, because the first time the wind steals them away.

  “Think you can put in a good word for me?” Taya asks.

  A little flame of pride curls in my chest. “I’ll think about it.” I risk taking my hand off her waist to point up ahead, where a ridge juts up dark against the sky. “Focus till we get over there.”

  Taya half-turns her head to glance at me. “What’s there?”

  “You’ll see.”

  Not much longer. The mountains seem bigger now than they did on the bus. The air is chilly and sharp with scents of pine and wildflowers. More stars are winking into existence above us. And—

  We crest the ridge. Even over the rumble of the engine, I hear Taya gasp.

  Mirror Lake is laid out before us, a silver crescent slash in the landscape, reflecting the night sky perfectly beneath the black line of the bridge. The water looks like indigo silk sprinkled with diamonds, the round moon’s reflection—floating right in the lake’s center—seeming to give off its own light. And on the other side, lit by the pale rays of the twin moons and by gold light spilling from inside:

  Havenfall.

  My uncle has told me that this place has been rebuilt hundreds of times over the centuries, and of course I know it’s true—the portals in their caves have been here longer than humans, longer than memory. The caves, and the structures the portal-keepers have built on top of them, have been buried by avalanches, burned down in fires, and twice destroyed in wars spilling over from other worlds—Fiordenkill, Byrn, Solaria, and the countless others that at one point or another opened up in the caves beneath these mountains. The inn that currently stands was built by my great-great-grandmother after the ranch house that stood here before burned down. At least that’s what we can tell from the journals she left and the stories Marcus remembers from when he was a child. We don’t know who came before her, or why whoever it was chose her.

  Still, it’s hard to believe the inn hasn’t been here forever—it looks so timeless, so natural. The inn is massive, built right into the side of the mountain so it looks almost like it’s growing from the earth. A sprawling creation of cedar and slate, girded by staircases and balconies. A waterfall behind the inn turns into a winding stream that circles the inn like a silver ribbon before feeding into Mirror Lake. A wide paved drive in front holds a mixture of cars and horse-drawn carriages, cherry paint and polished wood, chrome fenders and the flanks of horses standing side by side.

  Haven—not the town, but the world, Earth—doesn’t have its own magic, obviously. That’s why the other realms see it as neutral territory. But the spark that lights up in my chest as we crest the ridge is a kind of magic too, I can’t help but think.

  We coast down the slope toward the lake. Taya’s spine is rigid, her knuckles tight on the handlebars. She stops the bike before we reach the bridge and kicks out a foot to hold us upright.

  “What’s wrong?” I ask. My voice comes out embarrassingly high and breathy. I want to leap off the bike and run. All my tiredness seems to have evaporated. But Taya is still.

  “That’s a lot of water,” I hear her say, quietly.

  “We don’t have to swim across it. There’s a bridge.”

  “I see that.” She turns back to give me an irritated glance, and one of her braids hits the side of my helmet. She swings off the bike, forcing me to grab the handlebars to stay on. Something in her voice lets a chill seep in. I dismount too and pull off the helmet, my legs cramping and my heart beating fast from the ride.

  It’s easier to look at Taya when she’s glaring at Mirror Lake and not at me. She’s smaller than I originally thought, shorter than me and slight beneath the bulk of the jacket. Her face is closed off, expressionless.

  “It’s safe,” I say. “Look, all those cars got across it fine.”

  “You can go ahead if you want,” she says, standing stiffly beside the bike. “I’m walking, so I’ll be slower.”

  My stomach twists. She did me a solid, taking me here after I made her crash, even if it was 50 percent her fault. It feels wrong to just leave her now. “I’ll come with you.”

  Her mouth turns down, but she nods, and we walk over the water, Taya wheeling the bike in neutral along the bridge and me trailing behind. She flinches when the old wood creaks beneath us. If she notices how the ground is dry here—despite the all-consuming rain in Haven—she doesn’t comment on it.

  Halfway across, a gust of wind sweeps down the mountain, making the trees and the bridge sway, and Taya freezes. I almost run into her.

  “Sorry,” she whispers.

  “It’s okay.” I mean it this time, because I know what it’s like to have seemingly irrational fears.

  “We’re blocking the bridge,” she says.

  “It’s late. I doubt anyone else is coming tonight.” But my words don’t seem to land. Taya is staring straight ahead with a lost expression marring her face. I think of something to distract her. If she’s going to be here all summer, maybe it doesn’t matter if I tell her a secret or two.

  “My uncle says this water shows you as your best self,” I say, drifting to the wooden railing to my right. “Do you want to take a look?”

  A harsh laugh escapes her. “Not really,” she says, but puts down the kickstand and joins me anyway.

  As our images form in the water below, I almost wish she hadn’t.

  I’d forgotten why I always avoided this lake when I ran around the grounds as a kid with Brekken. His reflection matches him perfectly, but for me, Mirror Lake seems to reflect something other than real life and nothing I could ever aspire to be. The Maddie in the water looks serene and happy. Even without a smile this Maddie looks ethereal, like nothing anyone says—nothing the world can do—can touch her.

  And that’s not me. Not the girl who feels constantly scraped raw by the cruel words that have sunk through my skin and nestled in my heart
, braiding with the poisoned strands of lingering memories to create something heavy, dense, and thorny. The Maddie in the water is just another bit of Havenfall magic. A fantasy.

  I glance over at Taya, the ease of earlier having vanished, hoping she isn’t looking at my reflection. She’s not. She looks troubled, her brow furrowed and lips flattened into a line, even though her reflection seems to more or less match what I see.

  Before I can think of something to say, she crouches down, picks up a pebble stuck in between the planks of the bridge, and splashes it into the water. It sounds like breaking glass, and I flinch. The water ripples, silver and black, sending our reflections to the depths.

  “My parents died in a car crash going off a bridge,” she says evenly, without looking at me. “In case you were wondering why.”

  I wish I had a better response than “That’s horrible. I’m sorry.”

  She shrugs. “I’m fine now. Just not a fan of big bodies of water.” Gripping the railing tight, she looks over at me with those uncanny eyes. Sorrow curls in my stomach, heavy and cold. “What about you?” she asks. “Why are you here and not home working, or partying, or whatever it is normal people do with their summers?”

  I feel my walls going up, my wariness rising. She’s shared a secret and now she wants one in return. Maybe the near-death experience we had earlier has pushed Taya to trust, but not me.

  “I feel like myself here,” I say, a half truth.

  What happened to her family is no one’s fault. Mine, though—those secrets are ugly. And looking down at the water, at who I could be, I know I want none of those memories at Havenfall. They are my past, but this place is my future.

  It has to be.

  3

  Over the bridge, Havenfall looms above us against the starry sky, towering at the end of a winding gray cobblestone path. Two guards materialize from the trees to check our IDs before they let us go any farther. They’re human, but one wears a Fiorden fur cape and one a Byrnisian scaled jacket. Taya’s eyes narrow in confusion at their strange clothes as she hands over her driver’s license. I’m just glad the guards’ swords are hidden beneath their outerwear. And that Taya doesn’t see the rest of the guards, the ones I know are here, hidden in the trees, to make sure no unauthorized people get into the inn.

  They wave us through, and faint strains of music float down to us as I lead Taya up. Excitement builds in my stomach when the inn’s gold-lit windows come into view, and it’s all I can do not to make a beeline for the door. Instead, I go with her to park her motorcycle in the stables, which Marcus has converted to double as a parking garage. Taya cocks her head as we claim a stall next to a huge, gorgeous chestnut mare.

  “Never seen a hotel like this before,” she remarks, pocketing the keys.

  In the low light, her locket seems to have the pearlescent shine of Haven silver, of Nathan’s jacks, and I wonder if she’s telling the truth about never having been to this town. Why would she lie about that, though?

  “So where are you from?” I ask, trying to fill the silence.

  Maybe I’m imagining it, but Taya seems to tense as we head up the path toward the inn’s grandiose front door.

  “All over,” she says after a moment. “Foster care will do that to you.” Her voice is mild, conversational, but there’s the hint of a challenge in it. I detect it, because it’s the same tone I’ve deployed on so many “concerned” onlookers in my own life. Tell them the facts, see how they react. The more syrupy-fake pity in their reaction, the more likely they’re only talking to you to get the lurid details.

  So I take a moment to figure out how to reply, reaching my hand out so it brushes the flowers lining the path. The soil here is rocky, hard to grow anything in, but the gardeners—with the help of a little Fiorden blood magic and a bit of Byrn-born rain in the dry times—have coaxed up small riots of brambles and rosebushes, their colors bright even in the dim of the evening. Birch trees line the path and vines drape picturesquely over the inn’s cedar walls. Muffled music and light spill from the windows above our heads.

  “Which was your favorite place?” I ask her finally. Interested but casual, not nosy. A question to do with her, not her tragic circumstances. Sure enough, pleasant surprise flickers over her face.

  “Roswell,” she says with a little smile. “I lived with an older couple. They were a little weird—said they’d seen UFOs, the whole thing—but kind. The town was shit but the desert was beautiful.”

  “Ugh, that sounds terrible.” I fake-shudder. “Nothing but cactuses for miles around.” I imagine a flat, sunbaked plain, dotted with prickly plants and scraggly trees, the heat beating down. No whispering pines, no fog-scented wind, no mountains like the ones surrounding us now like silent sentinels, towering and safe.

  “It’s ‘cacti,’ actually. And it’s not just that. There’s hills, sand dunes—”

  She stops talking when we reach the inn’s carved, polished double doors, which look like something out of a storybook castle. They stand open to reveal the grand entrance hall, cedar-paneled walls rising to a high, sloped ceiling and lit by torches in sconces along the walls. A split staircase frames an archway on the other end, blocked with a green curtain, but the hall is empty except for a side table bearing a crystal flagon of wine and a deep armchair where Graylin, Marcus’s husband and the sole member of Havenfall’s welcoming committee, sits.

  Graylin looks up from his book—Leaves of Grass—as we enter. “Maddie! And …”

  His voice trails off in confusion as he looks at Taya, then back at me, and rises from his chair. He’s striking, over six feet tall with dark skin and light brown eyes, and despite spending so many years with Marcus on this side of the divide, he still has an otherworldly air about him. He’s a scholar of the Realms and still visits Fiordenkill every so often to give lectures. His walk is fast but light-footed, like he could pass through the woods in winter without leaving footprints in the snow. And even though he’s basically family, I still feel an instinctive rush of awe and unease, as I always do meeting anyone from the Realms. But the embrace he wraps me in is familiar, if a little sharp and bony.

  “So good to see you,” Graylin rumbles in his deep, faintly accented voice. Then he pulls back, his brow creasing. “But I thought you weren’t coming this year.”

  I guess Marcus didn’t get my texts, then. “I changed my mind,” I say, aiming for breezy. “Hope that’s okay.”

  “Of course.”

  Graylin studies me, blinking, and the soft look in his eyes makes me realize he probably knows about Mom and the death penalty. There’s nothing in all the worlds I want less to talk about, so I speak quickly, beckoning Taya forward.

  “Graylin, this is Taya. She applied for a landscaping job …?”

  Picking up my cue, Graylin turns to her and smiles. “Of course. Maddie will show you in and introduce you to Willow, the head of house. Won’t you, Maddie? But first …”

  He reaches back, catching the carafe of wine and two glasses in his long fingers. He pours and extends the drinks to us. “Won’t you have a drink to celebrate the start of summer?”

  Taya glances at me, uncertain, and I smile reassuringly, though a small pang of regret goes through me. We’ve built a weird little bond in the last half hour that it feels wrong to erase. But that’s just my loneliness talking, I tell myself. Someone almost hitting you on their motorcycle’s hardly a promising start to a friendship.

  I tip the wine against my closed lips and swallow, pretending to drink, and Taya follows suit for real. I resist the urge to lick the flower-scented berry wine off my lips.

  The effect on Taya is immediate. She blinks, dazed, and sways on her feet a little. Graylin takes her arm gently and settles her in his chair as she looks around, as if seeing the hall for the first time.

  It’s necessary for the staff to let go of their lives before and to accept the existence of magic, I remind myself. And then it’s necessary for them to drink another glass before they leave at the
end of the summer, to forget all they’ve seen at Havenfall and keep its secrets safe. So necessary that before the door to Solaria was sealed shut, the portal-keepers used to employ Solarians to track down anyone who let word slip about the other realms. Now, of course, that’s not an option. So we use the wine—made from Fiorden-grown enchanted fruit—to remove the possibility of any leaks.

  Of course, a few whispers have gotten out over the years. Marcus thinks that in ancient times, there were other omphalos, other places where the worlds converged, and that our myths—of dragons, vampires, djinni, fae, what have you—stem from other realms. The myths, the stories winding their way through human society, sometimes bear a strange similarity to the Realms. Graylin swears that Narnia’s resemblance to Fiordenkill is more than just a coincidence.

  “I’m so sorry we didn’t pick you up, Maddie,” Graylin says, sliding my duffel and backpack from my shoulders before I can knock over the wine. “Did you call?”

  “It’s my fault. I decided to come at the last minute.”

  “Well, of course you’re welcome anytime. But I will warn you,” he adds apologetically. “The Heiress returned this afternoon. So Marcus may be a bit … distracted.”

  “The Heiress?” Surprise colors my voice.

  The elegant elderly woman has been a fixture at Havenfall for as long as I can remember; she has her own suite in the north wing. And she likes to be referred to as “Heiress,” as if she never had a name—or has ditched it on purpose. She looks human, but moves with languor that seems a little unearthly. She claims to be a former member of the Fiordenkill High Court who wanted to spend her twilight years in the place she loves most, Havenfall. No one really believes that, nor do we know where she really comes from. She has tales and gossip from across all the worlds, and every summer when I’d return to the inn, she’d always have some little treat for me: Fiorden candy that tasted like sunlight or a Byrnisian glass figurine that whistled a song when you held it up in the wind.