A teenage girl with short black hair stood among the shards of the shattered spider-head in a white-feather dress. The girl bowed low to Annalise. Laughing softly, she soared into the air and chased the golden butterflies until she faded from sight.
Another imprisoned dreamer set free.
The crowd cheered their names.
Annalise counted to four as Esh-Baal readied for another pass. Annalise and Esh-Baal blasted bolts of light at the final tarantula heads and missed. But when they struck its many smaller eyes, each hit made another fracture in the Fate Spinner’s mirror, arena, floor, and walls. Esh-Baal dodged tentacles and teeth. When the tentufear sped after Annalise and Esh-Baal, Annalise blasted another of its ugly heads—crack, smash.
It shattered into shards of red and fell.
The spectators jumped to their ghost-feet and cheered so loudly the walls blew dust. The spirit of another dreamer—a young woman with blue eyes, gold hair, and deep dimples—lifted into the crimson-lit sky. She thanked Annalise kindly, waved at the applauding crowd, and vanished.
The Fate Spinner shrieked over the frenzied crowd, glaring at Annalise. “Eat the traitor—and bring the girl and her monster to me!”
The wraiths booed and threw ghostly rotten tomatoes at the mirror; the glowing tomatoes hit and exploded into dust motes. They chanted Annalise’s name louder than ever.
“Get ready, dreamers!” Annalise cried. Only the charred head Esh-Baal had speared remained. The fire unicorn tipped her nose down and dived toward the staggering, smoking, shrieking mess of a tentufear through a cloud of ash and flame. Mister Edwards clung tighter. Annalise leaned over, legs gripping Esh-Baal’s sides, raised her great hand, and shouted to her unicorn, “Now!”
The power between Annalise and her unicorn surged from Esh-Baal’s horn and Annalise’s dark mark all at once. A beam of gold light blasted the last tentufear head. Crimson glass sprayed. More cracks grew in the walls, floor, and the Fate Spinner’s mirror. And the spirit of an old man with a cane in a ragged suit stood among the debris. He danced a jig and tipped his hat to Annalise. “Bless you, dreamer,” he said and disappeared in a glitter of dust.
The crowd went bonkers. Mister Edwards shouted to Annalise over the wind and the audience’s cheers, “You are nothing short of incredible.” He threw his head back and laughed.
“So are you, my friend!” Annalise replied. She realized then what it was like to have friends who laughed with her and not at her—and she was overcome with happiness.
Together, they and Esh-Baal soared.
“You won’t escape,” the Fate Spinner shouted from behind her fractured mirror. “None of these dreamers in the stands could beat all the monsters I threw at them. And neither will you.” She sneered at Esh-Baal, rising above despite her wounds. “Not even my enchanted sister could escape me.”
A prickle of warning inched up Annalise’s spine. Esh-Baal pumped her fiery wings and swooped over the stands. The crowd stomped and applauded and cried, “LONG LIVE THE SPINNER OF DREAMS!”
The Fate Spinner rose from her dais, eyes blazing. The tips of her hair glowed red with filament flames as she aimed her staff at her once-fearsome demon convulsing in the dirt before her, headless and dying. “Get up,” she demanded through gritted teeth, “AND BRING THE GIRL AND HER MONSTER TO ME!”
The poets of hope glittered like winged stars in a trail around Esh-Baal, Annalise, and Mister Edwards.
Hundreds of white crows caw-caw-caw-cawed above the bars. A thrill rippled through Annalise; their cries reminded her of home.
Hair splayed in a blackberry fan, she faced the Fate Spinner and roared, “You cannot have me!” Esh-Baal soared past the mirror again. “Dreams are the only true magic that exists. No matter what you do to me, I’LL NEVER GIVE UP MY DREAMS!”
As they swooped past the Fate Spinner, something odd shone through the cracks in the enchantress’s mirror: a faint golden light. “Do you see that, Mister Edwards?”
“If you mean the lights of Dreamland, then yes, Miss Meriwether. Yes, I do!”
“I see it, too,” Esh-Baal said, and galloped, hooves blazing over the stands. “Let’s finish this demon,” Esh-Baal shouted. “Get ready—our dreams await!”
The tentufear staggered into a standing position. In one last burst of energy, it drew itself to its full height and rushed them with everything it had. Annalise gathered every ounce of her power into her great hand and felt Esh-Baal funnel the same into her great horn.
Annalise and Esh-Baal locked eyes and grinned.
“Together,” Annalise said.
“Together,” Esh-Baal agreed.
“Together!” cried Mister Edwards.
One of the tentufear’s arms lashed out when they weren’t looking and struck Esh-Baal’s wing. Esh-Baal screamed.
Her wing went limp. A searing spike of pain struck Annalise’s great hand. “Esh-Baal, watch out!”
Tentacles coiled around the unicorn’s legs. Esh-Baal teetered and reared. Her passengers screamed. The unicorn’s hooves blazed brighter as she fought to get away, but more and more tentacles came. Mister Edwards hollered while biting at the fleshy black whips dragging Esh-Baal down. But the tentufear only wrapped them tighter in its strong arms—so tight, Annalise couldn’t breathe.
Esh-Baal strained, arching her neck and rearing. Mister Edwards punched and kicked the tentufear, ripping into its flesh. The string between Annalise and her unicorn dulled. Esh-Baal fired from her horn, and Annalise from her dark mark as the air leached from their lungs, but it wasn’t enough.
For the first time on her journey, Annalise let herself think: What if this is the end? What if I don’t make it out of this maze? What will happen to my parents, to my home, to Carriwitchet, to my dream?
Tears stung Annalise’s eyes. Panic set in and froze her with fear.
No, no, no, no! Stop this. You mustn’t give up—you need to fight!
Esh-Baal plummeted.
Mister Edwards shouted, “We can do this. We mustn’t give up!” He bit the beast again and again, but more and more tentacles wrapped around him anyway.
Annalise sought out the poets of hope, fluttering past the bars above. She remembered why she’d come to the labyrinth and drew upon the very last of her store of strength. Then she fought and wriggled and finally—she freed her great hand, and blasted herself free from the tentufear, and did the same for Esh-Baal and Mister Edwards.
“You did it!” the fox cheered, pulling himself free from the tentufear’s now limp tentacle.
“I knew you could do it,” said Esh-Baal, kicking free into the air.
Annalise leveled her great palm at the Fate Spinner’s demon. Esh-Baal did the same with her horn. They screamed a warrior’s cry and released the power within them. Mister Edwards hooted and hollered as twin streams of golden light converged midair and finally blasted the tentufear away in a spray of darkness and light.
“NO!” the Fate Spinner cried. “No, no, no!”
Everyone else cheered. The poets of hope dropped a golden shimmer of glitter, dusting the wraiths in a glamour of light.
Annalise, Mister Edwards, and Esh-Baal were watching to see if another spirit would rise from the fallen monster, when a sudden rumble shook the walls.
The wraiths all stopped cheering at once.
The chains binding them shattered, and each imprisoned spectator broke free.
The spirits of dreamers floated upward, darting, soaring, laughing, and crying ephemeral tears of joy. Happiness and sincerity, love and appreciation, all radiated from them in shimmering bursts of light. The freed dreamers said to the three at once: “Thank you, dreamers. Long live the Spinner of Dreams—and may the magic of dreams be yours!”
One after the other, the dreamers sped through the bars and into the night. After they’d gone, Esh-Baal skidded to a halt before the Fate Spinner’s mirror, so webbed with cracks, her reflection was barely recognizable.
The Fate Spinner shook her head in confusion. “How did you beat them all?
” She ran a hand over her plaited hair and scowled at Annalise. “How dare you—a nothing girl, a cursed dreamer—stand before me? How dare you beat me—the Fate Spinner?”
Then quieter, and more to herself, “How did she best me again?”
The dirt floor and walls, webbed with cracks like the mirror, ruptured with bright golden light from between the breaks. A jolt of energy sparked through Annalise’s mark, energy she recognized as truth.
Now she was sure that the entrance to Dreamland lay beyond the Fate Spinner’s mirror.
This is it.
Annalise and Mister Edwards dismounted from Esh-Baal, a good distance from the glass. Unlike the growling black fox, Annalise regarded the Fate Spinner with soft eyes. “If you truly believe people shouldn’t dare to dream, and that our heads are filled with nonsense, I feel sorry for you. How sad that you’ve forgotten how to dream, and that you’ve never let a dreamer be your friend.” Annalise smiled at Mister Edwards and then up at Esh-Baal. They returned the look with love.
The Fate Spinner drew away from her side of the glass. Her hair was disheveled; her black makeup smeared. And if Annalise wasn’t mistaken, she thought she saw sadness on the enchantress’s face, but that didn’t last long.
“How funny that you pity me,” the Fate Spinner replied with a coy tilt of her head, “when I, like those Tristle children, know the cold, hard truth. You may have beaten my monsters, but no gates of gold and white will rise through this arena floor and let you into Dreamland.” She drew closer to her cracked mirror. “As I said before, there is no Dreamland.” She grinned. “Ask me how I know.”
Annalise stroked her hair four times, breath quickening, a sour swirl in her gut. Esh-Baal gave her a pleading look, but for the first time, Annalise didn’t know what she was trying to say.
“Don’t listen to her, Miss Meriwether,” Mister Edwards said. “She—”
“There is no Dreamland,” the Fate Spinner snapped. “Because the Spinner of Dreams is dead!” Annalise and Mister Edwards gasped. The black and white crows all screamed. “That’s right. On the day of your birth, I struck my sister down with a curse so powerful, it broke two worlds. That is why,” she continued, snarling and baring her teeth, “even though you’ve defeated me and won my labyrinth, you and your friends will never have your dreams.” She glared, chin raised in defiance, and spat, “See for yourself.”
Jet-black smoke swirled behind what remained of the Fate Spinner’s mirror.
Adrenaline jumped into Annalise’s chest like a feral cat and scratched when the smoke cleared, and finally, she saw the truth.
Chapter 33
The Spinner in the Mirror
A new image emerged on the Fate Spinner’s cracked mirror. Annalise recognized the view as the same colorful land she’d been transported to before in the Spinner King’s memory: the palace of dreams in Dreamland. Except this time, Annalise watched the past unfold as a reflection. The same scene from before played like a movie. . . .
“My old dream was so simple,” the Fate Spinner said to her sister. “To be worshipped and loved by our people. But thanks to your selfishness, I have to conjure a new dream.” Four night wolves drew close to the Fate Spinner’s side, ears flat and snarling.
A flurry of crows took to the air.
“And what might that dream be, Kismet?” the Spinner of Dreams asked.
The Fate Spinner replied, “I wish to rule my own destiny and rid myself of this curse!”
But now, as Annalise stood before the Fate Spinner’s broken mirror, the memory of the day Annalise Meriwether was cursed continued. . . .
The Spinner of Dreams rose from her throne. “Sister, please, don’t—”
The Fate Spinner raised her staff and screamed, “It is done!” Black lightning shot from the end of her staff and struck her twin sister in her heart. The Spinner of Dreams flew back. The crown slipped from her head as her body transformed into a million black leaves with the blast.
Reverie’s spirit rose and swirled around the Fate Spinner, who stood by, clutching her staff in horror. “You are a fool, sister,” the Spinner of Dreams whispered as her body of charry-black leaves slipped down to the Fate Spinner’s feet. Reverie’s last words echoed far and wide: “No fate can ever kill a dream.”
Rumble. Shiver. Crack. BOOM.
The blackened curse that had struck the Spinner of Dreams had burned straight through the earth. A jagged crack, large enough for a castle to fall through, ripped the Mazelands in two. Through the gash, another sky, complete with a white moon, glittering stars, and the flickering lights of houses, appeared.
In the very far beneath, a newborn baby cried.
A darkness spread out from the Fate Spinner’s curse like spilled ink and dripped into the town below. A shroud of black draped Carriwitchet then—a shadow so complete it eclipsed the town’s sun permanently. What remained of the Spinner of Dreams dived through the crack between worlds in a dark and furious cloud, heading for the newborn below.
The Fate Spinner had tried to murder her sister. But the spirit of the Spinner of Dreams had survived—only now, it carried a curse.
The Fate Spinner stood before the chaos she’d wrought, motionless as stone, clutching her staff.
“Death to the dreamers,” the Fate Spinner cried through the sky of another world. “Now begins the sole reign of Fate!”
Behind the Fate Spinner, Muse, in his top hat and monocle, dropped to the grass and sobbed.
The vision changed suddenly to the town below the broken sky.
The door of a crooked house shaped like a witch’s hat swam into view. White crows flocked to the roof and cawed. Shadows shaped like wolves plunged to the ground on the horizon and charged into the surrounding woods. The scourge of heart-shaped black leaves holding the spirit of the Spinner of Dreams blew to the Meriwethers’ door. Where a few of the leaves fell, shadowshine trees grew.
One heart, larger than the rest, broken down the center and hanging on by a thread, slipped beneath the frame of their front door. Inside, her mom, glowing with pride, held a newborn Annalise. Her dad beamed with so much love, he practically shone. Her grandparents were happier than they’d ever been.
The shattered black heart of the Spinner of Dreams swirled and danced on a dark wind to baby Annalise. Her squinty purple eyes widened with awe, beholding the heart.
Annalise opened her left fist and wrapped the broken heart in her hand. She screamed when it seared into her skin.
Her parents and grandparents, busy chatting to the doctor, hadn’t seen the dark heart burn into her palm. And by the time the doctor opened her ironclad grip, the damage was done.
The Fate Spinner’s curse, and the spirit of the Spinner of Dreams, had entered Annalise and become a part of her. And from them, Annalise thought while watching her own magical history unfold, something completely unique had grown.
Something horned, enchanted, and dangerous, born from Reverie’s heart, Kismet’s curse, and from Annalise. Something powerful, passionate, gentle, and beautiful. A fiery spirit named Esh-Baal.
Muse had told her once: “Even when you can’t see me, I am here.”
A flutter of truth unfurled inside her then like millions of butterfly wings. Just because Annalise couldn’t see the spirit of the Spinner of Dreams didn’t mean she was gone. Annalise grinned when the truth wove together in her mind:
The heart of the Spinner of Dreams lives within me. And coming here, battling the Fate Spinner and her demons, continuing through the maze, all of it had helped Esh-Baal grow. Now Annalise knew why the Fate Spinner had always been after her. She wanted to finish what she’d started the night of her birth. She wanted to destroy the cursed spirit of the Spinner of Dreams housed within Annalise and Esh-Baal.
But Annalise would never let her.
We are all that remains of the Spinner of Dreams.
The vision from the Fate Spinner’s shattered mirror ended, and the full reflection of the Fate Spinner returned. “You see?” the encha
ntress said, gazing down upon Annalise, Esh-Baal, and Mister Edwards. “Everything you’ve done has been for nothing. Either way, I win. There is no Dreamland or Spinner of Dreams, not anymore. When I cursed Reverie and split the world, the curse not only spread to you and your town, but into Dreamland as well. It’s been a diseased place ever since.” She twirled her staff of eyes. Those that remained unbroken stared wickedly at Annalise. “Petrified trees, black-hearted leaves, dead grass and flowers, mutant beasts and woodland creatures howling at the red moon. Her land is in ruin. What you saw on your way here,” she quipped, “was just an illusion to make you feel like you could still win.”
Annalise stroked her hair with her great hand, the heat of flames bubbling into her throat as Fate’s words cut holes into her scarred heart. “No,” she replied.
“Yes.” The Fate Spinner’s lips twitched with joy. “Nothing remains of my sister but you. You should have taken my deal. You should have entered my mirror when you had the chance. But you failed to do so, and for that, you will suffer.” She leaned forward and laughed just behind the cracked glass. “And everyone you love will suffer, too, because of you.”
Mister Edwards lunged, teeth bared, at the splintered mirror. “How could you? Knowing there’s no Dreamland, no Spinner of Dreams, how could you deceive so many innocent lives? We—we trusted the labyrinth! We trusted that it would lead us to our dreams!” He clenched his tiny fist, shoulders shaking.
The Fate Spinner reached down as if to touch his cheek, hand hovering just before the glass. She sighed with false sincerity. “And I trusted that you would betray Annalise Meriwether, Mister Edwards.”
Annalise pulled him close, placed her small hand on his shoulder, and squeezed. “This isn’t over yet, my friend.” A single golden butterfly perched on the end of his nose. “See? We are not alone.”
Above, the white crows circled above the bars and cawed, louder, insistent. The remaining poets of hope, clustered on the dark mirror’s frame, flapped their gentle wings and whispered soft as down, “Dreamland exists for those who believe. . . .”
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