“You too,” Nightingale said, shielding her eyes from the sun. She wore midnight-blue leggings and a white sweater with a unicorn across the chest. Bowie raised a hand. His green hoodie read I solemnly swear that I am up to no good. When he smiled, his dimples came out. “Did you find special passes in the labyrinth, too?”
Annalise looked questioningly at Mister Edwards, who shrugged in confusion. The scents streaming toward them were torturous. It was all Annalise could do not to drool. “Special passes?”
Nightingale grinned. “Yeah. Free passes into Dreamland?”
All the blood drained from Annalise’s face. “No. We didn’t.”
“Oh.” Nightingale frowned. “We figured, since you’re here, you must have. Well anyway, my brother and I took different paths into the maze, because”—she glared at her brother, who gave her a sorry-not-sorry shrug—“Bowie is stubborn. But once we got inside, we focused hard on our dream of having our family back together, and then,”—she laughed—“we found each other in the middle of the labyrinth! Isn’t that wonderful?”
“Yeah,” Bowie continued in his easygoing voice. “It was easy. Then we found this weird gothic black door. When we went through it, all we had to do was dodge these, I don’t know, bone spider things, and after that, these passes were waiting for us.”
Bowie held up two black-and-red, mirrorlike invitations:
Admit One for a Special Feast
Followed by an Audience with the Spinner of Dreams
Ticket Holder May Receive One Dream
“Yeah,” Nightingale said next. “It was so easy. Not as deadly as I heard the labyrinth could be.” When she scanned the feasting crowd, her smile could’ve lit a dark room. “See those two being served by the snake-lady there? Those are our parents.” Annalise nodded. They seemed nice—happily chatting and enjoying their meals. “When we got here, they were waiting for us.”
“Really?” Annalise perked up.
Maybe if their parents were here, hers were, too! She scanned the street and shops, searching for her mom and dad, but couldn’t see them.
“Really.” Nightingale beamed. “But the most amazing part is”—her voice became quiet—“they died two years ago. I know, right?” She sighed. “Getting them back was our dream, and we didn’t even have to finish the labyrinth to get it. Isn’t that amazing?”
The breath was knocked out of Annalise’s lungs. Her head buzzed, and her eyes stung. Her big hand smoldered behind her, like it understood her pain.
Why did they get their dream so easily? Why did they get free passes into Dreamland and not her? Annalise wanted them to have their family back together, of course. But why was everything always so hard for her?
A bitter skunk of a feeling soured her insides with envy. Annalise looked away, shrinking with shame.
“Annalise?” Nightingale said, concerned. “Are you okay?” When she took Annalise’s left arm by the elbow, probably trying to be kind, Annalise’s big hand seared and stabbed and erupted in a thick cloud of smoke.
Annalise jerked her arm away and hid her cursed hand behind her back. “I’m sorry.” A small bolt of black lightning burst from behind her. Nightingale screamed. Bowie pulled his sister away. Every spirit surrounding them stopped eating to stare.
Mister Edwards stepped back, eyes bright with concern. “Miss Meriwether. Your hand. It’s still . . . smoking.”
A circle of creatures widened around her as the others backed away, leaving Annalise in the center, alone. “I’m so sorry,” she choked as the spiraled horn shot out and her palm spat black flames.
The surrounding spirits shrieked and ran. Annalise clenched her cursed fist tighter, the spire between her fingers, and murmured stop, stop, stop, stop as Nightingale and Bowie fled back to their family.
Anger pulsed through Annalise—at the Fate Spinner for making her life hard and her hand cursed, and at herself for ever believing that her monster was on her side.
Annalise was ready to run in the opposite direction when a small paw pressed into her spine. “My father always said if you’re upset, go for a walk. That the mind needs a safe place to go, a task to draw its attention. Please, Miss Meriwether, would you walk with me?” He whispered, “We’re almost to where we need to be.”
The horn piercing her black heart retreated and the smoke cleared. But Annalise still couldn’t stop shaking. “Thank you, Mister Edwards,” she sniffed. “I’m lucky to have found a friend like you.”
“Likewise.” The fox smiled, almost sadly, before something stole his attention.
A giant of epic proportions burst out of the eatery and skidded to a stop before Annalise. “Who, pray tell, are you? And why were you spewing smoke outside my establishment?” The giant wore a food-splattered chef’s uniform and resembled a storybook river troll. Her hair of flowing water fell over skin covered in warts. Standing eight feet tall, she bellowed out in a booming croak, “This is a private party given by the Spinner herself!” She thrust out her sticky frog hand. “I’ll need your invitations—immediately.”
“I . . . um . . .” Annalise blinked at Mister Edwards, Mister Edwards blinked back. “We don’t have invitations.” She recalled the large white crow on the train who’d had her ticket. “Maybe you have some waiting for us?”
The river troll sighed. “Names?”
“I’m Annalise Meriwether.” Mister Edwards looked too nervous to speak, so Annalise answered for him; that was what friends were for. “And this is Mister Edwards. Is this . . . Dreamland?”
The river troll, riffling through a book, burst out laughing. A few passing spirits did the same. “Goodness, no. This isn’t Dreamland, and I have no ticket for any Annalise Meriwether. However,” she said, narrowing her eyes at Mister Edwards, “I do have a ticket for your terrified friend here.” The troll gave Mister Edwards a wicked toady-lipped grin and handed him a ticket. “You are free to go through with the rest.”
Annalise stroked her hair and shrank back, counting by fours. She glanced at the fox, but he wouldn’t meet her eyes. “Oh, I see.”
Did the Spinner of Dreams hate Annalise, too?
From the table behind the troll, Nightingale, Bowie, and their parents stuffed their faces with rice and red ginger curry. The waiter brought them starry-moon pie dripping in ice cream and a lovely lemon-zing cake. Watching their happy family, Annalise grew hot with rage—and Annalise rarely heated with rage.
She clenched her giant fist and glared at everyone stuffing their faces around them. “Did they all find special tickets from the Spinner of Dreams?”
The troll bared teeth as sharp as a shark’s. “That’s right. They are not cursed. Now,” she said, shooing Annalise back, “get out, go, go, go, GO!”
Annalise stumbled and fell. Her new clothes magicked into her old ones, tattered and singed. Annalise reddened with humiliation. Her anger morphed into tears.
Everyone cheered, including Nightingale and Bowie’s parents—not in encouragement for Annalise to rise, but because she’d fallen.
Mister Edwards knelt beside Annalise and helped her to stand. “I’m not going,” he told her. “I wasn’t hungry anyway.” When his stomach growled, he coughed to cover the sound. Then Mister Edwards ripped his invitation in half, threw it high, and grasped Annalise’s hand. “Rejecting their gift is the loophole.” He winked. “Now we make a break for it.”
Annalise laughed with excitement as the two sprinted past the troll.
“How dare you reject the Spinner’s invitation!” The river troll lunged at them. “She’ll have your hide for this, fox!”
“You can’t stop people from wanting a better life,” Mister Edwards shouted over his shoulder. “Invitation or not!”
“STOP, YOU DEVILS!” the river troll thundered. “SOMEBODY CAPTURE THEM!”
Black crows took flight from the roofs and shrieked. The troll and spirits gave chase.
“Where are we going, Mister Edwards?” Annalise’s hair fluttered around her like wings as they ran up the empty street, ba
ck the way they came.
“Just trust me!” The troll pounded the earth behind them. “We should be back in—” Mister Edwards tripped.
“Mister Edwards!” Annalise skidded to a stop.
The black fox screamed as the troll grabbed him by the scruff. Annalise’s big hand resumed burning and fighting for freedom.
“Looking for this?” The troll held him high. “We’ll see how you like the Fate Spinner when she gets her hands on you,” she snarled. “Eh, Mister Edwards?”
Annalise thrust her cursed hand before her and said, “Let. My. Friend. Go.” Her dark mark spewed black flames. Spirits scattered.
But the troll refused to move. “What if I don’t?”
A shock of electricity passed through Annalise’s big hand. “You’ll regret it.” She dived forward, grasped the troll by the warty leg, and squeezed until the troll’s flesh sizzled. The river troll screamed and released Mister Edwards. And when she did, Annalise was there to catch him.
“Come, my friend.” Annalise set Mister Edwards on his feet and gripped his paw. “Lead the way.”
“CAPTURE THE DREAMERS!” the troll shrieked. But the eerie beasts scattered instead. And Annalise and Mister Edwards ran. The farther they went, the more the town faded into the meadow beyond—until eventually the shops, the food, the spectral creatures, and the hideous troll faded to dust and seeped into the cobblestone cracks.
When Mister Edwards and Annalise stopped to catch their breath, charcoal smudged across the pleasant blue sky. Black crows swarmed, caw-caw-caw-caw. The heavens darkened, thundered, and swirled with ruby clouds. Behind them, Nightingale and Bowie stood at the side of the road in the recently vacated town, watching the last of their parents fade to vapor and vanish.
A cold rain began to fall, washing the city away, unearthing what they hadn’t seen before. Hundred-foot-tall walls covered in ivy, deadly leaves, and black moss rose out of the rain and gloom. The labyrinth had returned.
Or maybe it was never gone.
Annalise and Mister Edwards stood inside a large circle in the center of a four-way fork somewhere inside the labyrinth. Four ominous passageways led into the dark, with no signs, smells, or clues to what awaited them helping to guide their way.
Footsteps slapped the wet stones behind them. “You did this,” Bowie shouted, racing toward Annalise and Mister Edwards. Glaring at Annalise’s hidden big hand, he continued. “You made our parents disappear. We saw the whole thing.”
Rain fell in buckets. Annalise stroked her wet hair, grazing her four soggy ribbons. “I didn’t mean to.” Hot shame crept into her chest. “I swear, I meant you no harm!”
Nightingale and Bowie held their tickets in their hands. Nightingale started to cry. And it was the most horrible, hopeless sound Annalise had ever heard.
“If this is anyone’s fault, it’s mine,” Mister Edwards said. “Come on, Miss Meriwether. We can’t help them anymore. We need to keep moving.”
“But they’re right.” Annalise regarded him and the other two in turn. Tiny-spider-thoughts swarmed, overwhelming her brain and biting into her heart. “It’s my destiny to hurt people—to be alone. My whole life has been about this curse. I hate it, and I’m sorry!”
A storm of soaked, leaflike hearts plunged from the sky.
“Look,” Bowie said, comforting his sister and backing away. “Just stay away from us, all right? We don’t need your sorries or sad excuses. Just . . . stay away.” Nightingale glanced heavily at Annalise before darting into the passageway to the left and vanishing alongside her brother.
Sick with guilt, Annalise wanted to go after them. To explain she wasn’t a bad person—that she wanted to be good. At the same time, she wondered who she’d hurt next on her way to her dreams. She’d hurt her mom and dad, and Nightingale, Bowie, and maybe their parents.
It’ll be Mister Edwards next.
No. Annalise pushed her worry-thoughts away and remembered her dream:
I wish to rule my own destiny and rid myself of this curse.
Annalise gritted her teeth.
That’s just what I must do, she thought.
Her big hand zinged in reply.
“Which way do you think?” Mister Edwards asked Annalise, worrying his tail fur and looking forlorn. “This fork . . . I’ve never seen it before. Last time I beat the Gate of Rejection, there was only one way to go. I thought . . . I thought once we escaped that town we’d connect with path three but now I’m not so sure, and I can’t smell much in this rain. Oh Miss Meriwether, what if we’ve lost our way?”
Normally, this would have been Annalise’s moment of panic—when all the fours in the universe couldn’t pull her back from the dark flood coming to wash her away. But as Annalise scanned each entrance, she spotted something that shifted her attention. The passageway Nightingale and Bowie had entered had begun to glow. “Do you see that light, Mister Edwards?” Inside the threshold, one of the stones on the floor shone like a distant star.
The drenched fox turned away from the black crows filling the sky and squinted toward the opening. “What light, Miss Meriwether?”
Annalise approached the softly glowing passageway. Her big hand pulled her forward more urgently the closer she drew. “There’s a light, just there.” Her blackberry hair shifted uncertainly in the breeze. “I think this might be the right way.”
A sudden spark of power, the same she’d experienced earlier, zinged through her big hand from fingertips to wrist. Annalise’s heart sped up in reply.
Mister Edwards blinked rain from his eyes and peered harder into the corridor. “I can’t see any light, but if you think this is the right way, I’m with you.”
“Together, then.” As they moved into the corridor, the glowing stone brightened like a lamp in the dark. Annalise’s eyes flew wide open. “Mister Edwards. Do you see the glow now?”
Her cursed hand pulsed faster as she stepped on the stone. The fox had just opened his mouth to answer when the walls of the labyrinth dissolved in a surge of sheer lemon light.
Chapter 18
Interlude: The Poets of Hope
The moment Annalise placed her foot on the glowing stone, a carpet of sunny green grass rolled out in every direction. Annalise curled her bare toes into the meadow as her hair and cloak fluttered behind her like wings. Summer winds tickled her skin. Annalise felt warm for the first time since entering the maze.
She searched for Mister Edwards, but he wasn’t there.
Maybe he was up ahead?
The earth shook. Trees, as tall as houses, bursting with fat green leaves, sprang from the ground. Hundreds of golden butterflies fluttered from the branches and danced lightly around her. “Mercy,” Annalise breathed, and spun in a slow circle. Shimmering dust billowed from their wings and glazed her in a glitter of stars. “Who are you?” Annalise asked the butterflies with a grin she felt to her toes.
“We are the poets of hope.” The golden butterflies tittered in one ear and then the other. “We’ve come bearing a message, a sort of reward.”
Annalise clapped with delight. “And what might your message be, poets?”
They landed on Annalise, gilding her cloak in fluttering wings of gold, and recited in a single voice, “Even after the longest dark night, dreams will shine. As if darkness was a spark and dreamers, the birth of the flame.” The poets took flight, circling her in a blizzard of shine.
“Oh, that’s wonderful,” Annalise replied, watching them fly.
And that’s when she saw it. Just over the next hill stood a home like hers, except new and uncaged. Before the witch’s hat house grew a garden filled with her favorite flowers—black-and-silver lilacs that smelled like starry summer nights—all perfectly alive. Birds sang. Her parents stepped out the front door, smiling into the sun. “This is my dream, isn’t it?” Annalise asked them.
“This is hope,” the golden butterflies replied before fracturing into wisps of gold and blowing away on a cool wind.
Annalise’s delight
fell as a low vibration hit the earth. Black crows cawed a warning from the darkening sky. Night wolves howled at the edges of the field, and Mister Edwards was calling her name. The pretty scene disintegrated. The light vanished.
But still, Annalise remained covered in gold.
And even when the Fate Spinner’s labyrinth returned, the poets’ words wrapped Annalise in hope: “Even after the longest dark night, dreams will shine. As if darkness was a spark and dreamers, the birth of the flame . . .”
Chapter 19
You’ll Never Get Out of This Maze
“Miss Meriwether?” Mister Edwards inquired. “Did you hear what I said?”
The glowing stone she’d stepped on had darkened. She saw no hopeful golden butterflies, but their message hung soft in the air. Annalise wasn’t sure what had just happened, where the poets had come from or why, but she knew one thing for sure. She hoped to see the poets again.
Annalise blinked at the drenched fox. Mister Edwards didn’t seem to notice she’d been gone. A flurry of wings crossed the moon and cawed.
This time, the crows were white.
“I’m sorry, Mister Edwards.” She trembled inside her wet cloak, freezing cold. Golden glitter dripped from her hair. “I must have missed what you said.”
“I asked if you wanted to talk about what happened.” He observed Annalise warily. “With the Tristles, I mean.”
Annalise took four slow breaths. “No, Mister Edwards. I just want to f-find the Spinner of Dreams, and maybe s-some food.” She was so hungry and thirsty it felt as if her insides would devour themselves any minute. Her eyelids wanted to close with tiredness as well.
But Annalise wanted her dream more.
“May I ask a personal question, Miss Meriwether?”
They ventured up another, much warmer corridor. Annalise forced her eyes wide open and regarded the black fox warmly. “Sure. Ask anything you like.”
Mister Edwards covered his stump and lowered his ears. “What are your worst fears?” His gaze darted every which way.
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