“Can we help you?” her dad asked coldly, wrapping an arm around her mom. The grandparents quieted in the kitchen.
After a long silence, the stranger ripped her gaze from Annalise, more flustered than she was seconds ago, and said, “Yes. I’ve . . . come for the girl.”
Annalise whimpered and crawled back toward the wall. Her big hand, hot as lava, trembled. She held it against her chest and sang it a soft song in her sweet child’s voice, “Go to sweep, go to sweep . . .”
Her dad glared. “We don’t know who you are, but if the town put you up to this, you’ve wasted your time. This is our home, and Annalise has as much right to live in Carriwitchet as anyone else!”
“I’m afraid you don’t understand,” the strange woman said as if each word caused her pain. “I have a very good reason for being here. You see, a mistake was made the day of your daughter’s birth. Somehow, she defied the laws of fate—the laws that govern your world.” She flicked her soulless black gaze onto Annalise. “She stole something from me, and I’ve waited long enough to take it back.”
The woman moved to step over the threshold. Electricity zapped in the doorway, pushing her back, crumbling part of her dress sleeve to dust. When the woman raised her hand in surprise, Annalise caught a glimpse of her marked left palm. At the shattered-looking black heart, identical to Annalise’s own.
“Who are you?” Harry asked the stranger.
“I know who she is,” Mattie replied with breathless awe, staring at the woman’s marked hand. “This is the Fate Spinner. The enchantress who ravaged our town and cursed Annalise.”
The Fate Spinner grinned her display of perfect white teeth. “If you want your child to live, give her to me. I promise she’ll live a long, useful life. But if you let me leave without her, life for you will . . . not be so kind.” Annalise’s grandparents entered the room and stood behind Mattie and Harry. The pale woman leaned in as close as possible without getting zapped by the membrane of electric current between them. She said something Annalise couldn’t quite hear. Every word was muffled except these: “Mazelands . . . Labyrinth . . . Dreamer!”
Annalise’s mom grabbed the door, readying to shut it in the Fate Spinner’s face. “If you really are the Fate Spinner, you’re not allowed to touch us or enter our home. Try, and you’ll crumble to dust. We know the laws, too, Kismet, and since you’re most certainly not invited into our home, leave and never return.”
“Hear me, and hear me well,” the Fate Spinner shrieked for all Carriwitchet to hear. “The next time we meet—and we will meet again—it will be on my terms. And none of you shall survive.” White crows screaming behind her, she banged her staff on the porch. Sparks and smoke plumed in a wash of black. The Fate Spinner grinned at Annalise as her mom slammed the door.
“Hey there,” Annalise’s dad said, jolting her from the vision.
Annalise jumped. Her heart galloped too fast and her breath was lost in the stampede. She re-hid her big hand and slid the strange book behind her.
Her dad adjusted his glasses and knelt at his daughter’s side. “Sweetheart, are you okay?”
Was she? Annalise didn’t know. What had just happened? That couldn’t have been a real memory. Could it? And if so, why did it come to her now, when she touched the odd little book?
“Annalise?” Her dad repeated, “Are you okay?”
Finally, Annalise faced him, wondering if she’d imagined the whole thing. “I’m, um . . . just sad, I guess?” And alarmed, worried, confused, and heartbroken about losing her feline friend. “I really just wanted that nice cat to like me.”
“Yeah, I know.” Her dad sat on the floor beside her. “And I’m sure he did, too. I think, in the end, his fear got the best of him.”
“I’m so sorry, Annalise.” Her mom knelt before her daughter, eyes glinting with love. “After enduring so much abuse, maybe the poor thing just needed freedom.”
“And you,” her dad added, “were the one to give it to him. I’m sure he’ll think of you fondly for that.”
Annalise closed her eyes and sighed deeply from her scared, worried heart. Inside her dark mind, she recalled the Fate Spinner’s face.
Annalise hugged her parents fast and hard. “I love you,” she said quietly. “No matter what, I will love you forever.”
“And we love you back,” they said together, and helped Annalise to her feet.
Annalise slipped the strange book into her cloak pocket before anyone saw.
“Now,” her dad said, “let’s go home so I can take off this ridiculous mask. What do you say?”
“Yes,” her mom agreed, and wrapped her arm around Annalise. “And hey, no matter what, we always have each other, right?”
Annalise smiled and nodded at her parents. “Right.”
What would she do without them?
The Meriwethers drove home in silence. Annalise sat in the backseat inside a clean ray of sunlight, safely out of her parents’ sight. She slid the black book, its cover the texture of bat wings, into her lap. No shock of electricity or vision came. It seemed like an ordinary book. There was a title on the cover in gold she hadn’t noticed before:
The Book of Remembering.
There were very few pages inside. They all appeared blank until charcoal sketches began to appear—drawings of ferocious monsters and people battling them inside a large skull-shaped maze. Pristine crystalline palaces and strangely colored beasts flew in stranger-colored skies. Golden butterflies fluttered around a king and a queen in rich robes. Beneath them, words bloomed on the page. And Annalise read the story writing itself before her eyes:
THE TWIN ENCHANTRESSES: THE FATE SPINNER AND THE SPINNER OF DREAMS
Once upon a time, in the Mazelands on the flip side of the sky, there lived a set of very different twin girls: Kismet, the Fate Spinner, and Reverie, the Spinner of Dreams.
Kismet, born first, had hair like silk spun from moonlight and frost-pale skin. Her eyes, as large and dark as the polished night sky; her clothes, always black; her hair, severe and fantastic. She carried a powerful staff of enchanted mirrored eyes said to see into her subjects’ souls. Kismet held charge over all events that occurred in each person’s life. She bestowed hardships, luck—both kinds—along with love, pain, mercy, death, good health, disease, and curses.
The Fate Spinner decided each person’s fate.
Reverie had dark brown skin and black hair, both of which glittered with mica-like stars. Her eyes were gold and warm; her clothes, bright and wild and ever-changing to suit her mood. Her crown bore horns and crows. Reverie held charge over people’s dreams. Not those found in sleep, but rather one’s most heartfelt desires: the wishes they longed for with their entire being.
The Spinner of Dreams granted the power of dreams.
The gifts of the twin enchantresses came with four unbreakable laws:
If either perishes, the surviving Spinner will inherit the other’s gifts and lands.
The Fate Spinner (All That Must Be) cannot possess the ability to see or change her sister’s fate.
The Spinner of Dreams (All That One May Become) cannot possess the ability to see or change her sister’s dreams.
If any mortal challenges Kismet’s assigned fate, said mortal maintains the right to enter the Mazelands, conquer the Labyrinth of Fate and Dreams, and earn a dream of their choosing. However, at no time are they to touch, hurt, aid, or influence anyone by any means, magical or otherwise, once inside the labyrinth.
If either Spinner disobeyed any of the above four laws, the other Spinner would immediately take her crown.
Many traveled far to challenge the Fate Spinner, but most were never seen again. Still, if one had a devastating fate and a dream worth fighting for, if one wished to find the Mazelands and the enchanted labyrinth, one only needed to follow the arc of moonlight on the night they were ready to go, and it would lead to an extraordinarily dressed cat with an exceptionally large paw. Follow the dream cat, the right hand of the Spinner of Dream
s herself, and it will show you the way to the labyrinth, where one’s most desperate dreams might come true.
However, if you be such a dreamer, a word of caution. If you survive the journey to the Labyrinth of Fate and Dreams, know that anything you see within the labyrinth’s walls might be real—or it might be an illusion borne of the maze that bears a mind of its own.
Eyes wide, Annalise shut the book. Heart beating like a pair of glass wings at what she’d read, she felt the car bump and rattle in sync with her thoughts. She knew about the Mazelands and the Spinners, of course. And she’d heard murmurs of a labyrinth before, but she’d never heard of a cat guide with an exceptionally large paw.
Like the one from the shelter.
Mercy.
The book seemed to hum in her hands. Annalise took another peek inside.
The pages had changed. Now an elaborate sketch of a white cat in a top hat and monocle stared back at her with deep purple eyes. Could the cat from the shelter be the same as the one in the book? Had he come to show her the way to the Mazelands, to help her find the Fate Spinner and break her curse?
Had she missed her chance?
Sketched in charcoal on the next page was the Fate Spinner, the same woman from her vision, the enchantress who ruled her destiny and had marked her with a curse.
Alongside the drawing of the Fate Spinner was another of her twin sister, the Spinner of Dreams. She wore a crown of crows and horns, and a dress of white crow feathers. Her lips and eyes were gold. Color and light moved through her dark skin like sunlight through a prism, alive with creation, empathy, and love. Annalise skimmed Reverie’s face with a finger from her kind hand. At her touch, ripples of memory returned, of every happiness, wish, and beautifulness Annalise had ever experienced.
Annalise smiled dreamily from the back seat. Until an electric bolt of fire pierced her blackened mark and she cried out in surprise.
“What’s wrong?” her mom asked while elbowing her dad to keep his eyes on the road. Annalise hid the book behind her, tears in her eyes from the piercing hot pain.
“Annalise, answer your mother.” Her dad’s eyes bored into her through the rearview mirror.
Tapping her small hand against her thigh—four times, repeat—she answered, “It’s just my mark. I’ll be okay.” Annalise forced a reassuring smile while trying to count her hurt and fear and anxious thoughts away.
“Try not to worry, sweetheart,” her dad said, taking a curve. “We’ll be home soon.”
Her dad turned up the music. They’d just passed the wooden sign for Carriwitchet—topped with four white crows—when a rivulet of smoke seeped through her plum cloak from her cursed hand. Annalise clamped her fist tight, gritted her teeth, and recited her new dream under her breath, “I wish to rule my own destiny and rid myself of this curse.”
The powerful words pushed everything else away and left only one truth behind. Tonight, even if her panic attacks came one after the next, she’d run away and not look back. Annalise would leave the last people who loved her and begin a quest for her dreams. She’d follow the moonlight and find the cat in the top hat and monocle. She’d rule her own destiny and escape the Fate Spinner’s curse.
Then Annalise would be free.
She removed The Book of Remembering out from behind her back, held it close, and imagined the Fate Spinner’s face.
I am coming to find you, Annalise thought as she stared out at her broken town. And then I will show you just what a dreamer can do.
Chapter 6
Goodbye
Later that evening, after Annalise had opened and closed The Book of Remembering until the pages cleared, she, Mattie, and Harry played a rousing game of Castles, Angels, and Fiends—sort of like chess, but with wizards, ghosts, and monsters. Her dad won—again. Miraculously, Annalise’s devilish hand behaved itself the whole time. They enjoyed a supper of her favorite foods: mashed potatoes, sweet-and-sour noodles, and appleslaw. They even had a rare treat: chocolate brownies with whipped cream and bright red winterberries, purchased several towns away. The night wolves stayed clear of the Meriwethers’ field, despite the full moon. The crows were suspiciously quiet, asleep on the bars of their home, nary a flutter in sight. Annalise and her parents enjoyed a perfect last night together as a family. But soon, Annalise would have to say goodbye.
Annalise stroked her braid with her nice hand as her parents tucked her into bed. She wanted to remember them this way forever. Her dad, smelling of cedarwood, donning his famous goofy grin and onyx-rimmed glasses. Her mom, kissing the crown of her head, perfumed in moonlight, black roses, and home.
Before closing the door, her mom paused. “Annalise?” The candle in the corner of Annalise’s bedroom cast everything in a golden glow, including her mom’s face. “If you could have any dream in the world come true, what would it be?”
Annalise’s nerves zinged, and the hairs on her arms rose. She shifted onto her back and focused on the shadow-bars on the walls, not wanting her parents to see her in case she cried. “Anything?”
“Yes,” her mom answered. “Anything.”
A whirlpool of emotions swirled inside Annalise like a hundred mixed colors of paint. If they’d asked her what she wanted most a week ago, even more than an end to her curse, her answer would have been, “My grandparents, alive,” every time. But after everything that had happened, only one answer remained.
“I’d want to rule my own destiny. I’d want to decide my fate for myself.”
Something within her big hand moved. Like a small monster was growing and writhing within her, gaining a life of its own.
“Now that is a fabulous dream,” her mom replied. “I hope, more than anything, that it comes true.”
“Ditto, kiddo,” her dad said warmly, straightening his glasses.
Together, they returned to Annalise’s side. Her mom scooped her up and latched on. Her dad stroked her strange purple hair. And Annalise held tight to her family, knowing, when she let go, she might be letting go for good.
Suddenly, all Annalise’s pent-up heartache and woe, worry and pain, shook from her chest like a solid thing, a dragon birthed from a rip in the earth. “I’m so sorry! Sorry I’m such a burden”—she gulped—“such a broken and ugly, cursed thing.”
“Annalise.” Her dad’s eyes twinkled sadly behind his glasses. When he continued, he was uncharacteristically stern. “Don’t ever say such things about yourself. You are one of the only two stars in my sky, and don’t you forget it.”
Her mom perched on the bed beneath the cracked window and midnight moon. “That’s right. You were our greatest dream; did you know? It’s true! Before you came along, we wished for a daughter just like you.” Her mom’s smile jigged nervously around the edges. “So whatever you think of Fate, she let us have you. Your dad and I are grateful for that, and we wouldn’t have it any other way.”
Annalise sighed. How could she leave the last people who loved her?
But if there was even a small chance that the Fate Spinner would take her mom and dad from her, hurt them as she’d done to Annalise’s grandparents, how could she not?
Annalise whispered the words that swam up from her heart, “I don’t know what I’d do without you.”
They kissed her and stepped into the hall. “Good thing you’ll never have to find out,” her dad said. “Good night, little love.”
“Good night, sweetheart.” Her mom waved on her way out the door.
“Goodbye,” Annalise said instead of good night, alone with her monsters once more.
Outside, the night music played: wind twisting the spines of dead leaves; crows, feathers, and wings making eerie harmonies; night wolves howling at the ghost moon. If Annalise listened closely she could hear all the fears of the dying world sing. It was an incredibly lonely sound.
A while later, in the room beneath hers, her parents snored. The clock read 11:02 p.m. The numbers added up to four.
That was her cue from the universe: it was time.
Annalise needed to check the book’s instructions to make sure she remembered them correctly. But given her experience with The Book of Remembering, she wasn’t sure what she’d find. Carefully, sneakily even, Annalise pulled back the enchanted book’s cover. Thankfully, the instructions were waiting for her:
. . . if one wished to find the Mazelands and the enchanted labyrinth, one only needed to follow the arc of moonlight on the night they were ready to go, and it would lead to an extraordinarily dressed cat with an exceptionally large paw. Follow the dream cat, the right hand of the Spinner of Dreams herself, and it will show you the way to the labyrinth, where one’s most desperate dreams might come true.
If the white cat in question was the same cat she’d found in the shelter, he had escaped too fast to follow. Plus, the shelter was filled with sunlight, not moonlight.
Maybe it’s a coincidence?
Maybe not.
Either way, Annalise decided to follow the moonlight across the field and see what happened. The thought of doing so made her insides shrivel and curl with worry.
But, she told herself, if you want to be free, you’re doing it anyway.
Quietly, Annalise slipped from her bed. Her home’s perfume—of static, warmth, and the unnameable scent of family—circling her head, she snuck about and packed a bag with essentials. Some of the water and snacks she kept in her closet for panic-attack emergencies. The Book of Remembering. The small wooden heart her dad gave her for her second birthday that read: My Heart Is Yours. She almost brought a change of clothes, but nothing more would fit. Finally, she donned her favorite plum cloak, which would remind her of her mom.
How nice it would be, Annalise thought, to be a normal child. Not having to worry about my fate or curse or leaving my loved ones behind.
The part she’d been dreading had arrived. Annalise took a deep breath and exhaled in a whisper directed at the room below, “Please forgive me. I love you. Goodbye.”
The Spinner of Dreams Page 4
