Echo North

by Joanna Ruth Meyer

  “The wolf needs me, and the house is shedding rooms, and I’m already nearly late for dinner—” That wasn’t quite the whole truth, of course, but I wasn’t about to tell her she’d interrupted my moment with Hal.

  Mokosh waved an impatient hand. “That’s all you’re worried about? I’ll just have my mother bend time for you, a little, and have you back the moment you leave.”

  The rain was warm on my skin and tasted sweet as candy. I hated to see her staring at me with such drooping hope. But I could still feel the prints of Hal’s fingers, still see the haunted sorrow in the wolf’s eyes. I shook my head. “I’m sorry, Mokosh.”

  She sagged in the rain, whispered a word to the sky. The outline of a mirror shimmered into being. “Just for an evening, then? An hour? I swear to you it will be like you never left. Please, Echo. You’re my only friend.”

  The word pierced me, more powerful than Mokosh could have known. “An hour, then. But I must be back before midnight.”

  Mokosh squealed with delight and grabbed my hand, pulling me through the mirror.

  We stepped out onto a wide terrace, the last glimmers of a sunset tracing lines over a glittering sea. Behind us loomed a huge white palace. Below us, endless ocean.

  Far below us—there were no waves lapping against the shore.

  “A floating island,” I said. “It’s beautiful.”

  “It’s one of the twelve wonders of the world.” Mokosh beamed. “My mother made it.”

  “She made it?”

  Mokosh nodded. “When she was younger than I am now. I haven’t even half her ability. I’m hoping I grow into it.”

  I was too awed for words.

  “I’ll show you my room. Come on!”

  And then she was tugging me across the terrace, through a tall green door, and into a grand hall. We traipsed up stairs and down a corridor—I felt like my whole life had narrowed to stairs and corridors—then into an airy suite, its windows flung wide.

  We sat on silk cushions and drank tea as light as perfume. We nibbled seed cake sprinkled with sugared roses. Mokosh babbled on and on, about her endless lessons and the tediousness of her daily life—that’s why she was always reading, she confided.

  At one point, she leaned back on her elbows and fixed me with a knowing grin. “I’ve been meaning to reprimand you for abandoning me completely at the ball the other night, but I’ve decided I don’t blame you. Your partner was very handsome. You must tell me all about it!”

  I blinked at her, and traced the designs etched into my glass with one finger. I still didn’t want to tell her about Hal. He was a secret I didn’t want to share.

  She must have seen as much in my expression. “Echo! You’ve been keeping delightful things from me!”

  I flushed. “He’s a reader, too. I’ve met him a few times.”

  “Another reader! What’s his name? Where’s he from?”

  Starlight flashed out over the sea. I thought of fencing lessons and a rainy wood and dancing close enough to feel his heartbeat. I didn’t want to be there anymore. I stood. “I’m sorry, Mokosh. I really must get back.”

  She fixed me with a shrewd glance, the laughter in her face shifting to something hard, and dangerous around the edges. But then she smiled, and that sharp expression melted away. “Forgive me. I shouldn’t press you to share if you aren’t ready. Thank you for coming.”

  I relaxed, relieved that she wasn’t angry. “I’ll come back soon. You can show me the rest of the palace.”

  “I’d like that.”

  She hugged me, quick and tight, and then spoke a mirror into existence, right there in her bedroom.

  I stepped into the library and ran right back into The Thief’s Field, my heart in my throat.

  It was still that blue-black dark of faded twilight. The sky was streaked with stars. The field danced with fireflies.

  But Hal was gone.

  Dejected, I returned to the library.

  I popped into a half-dozen other book-mirrors, looking for him, but he wasn’t anywhere to be found.

  But out in the hall, the wolf was waiting for me. I was glad to see him, and impulsively dropped to my knees and wrapped my arms around his neck.

  He whuff-laughed into my hair, and I knew he was glad to see me, too.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  IN THE WOOD BEYOND THE HOUSE, the trees had turned from green to gold. Swallows danced in the currents of the air. Bees sparked like yellow-bright embers among the waving grasses. Time was slipping away. I still didn’t go back to the room behind the obsidian door, telling myself I was sure to find the answers I needed in the book-mirrors soon. I couldn’t shake away my nagging fear of that room, like splinters deep under skin.

  We were opening the cages of the gold dragon-birds several weeks after the venomous garden had been unbound, when it happened again.

  The room started to shake. A crack splintered through the floor.

  The wolf was further from the door than I was, and I lunged for him, grabbing the scruff of his neck and hauling him over the crack as the room shuddered, and fell into the void.

  We tumbled together into the hallway just before the door melted into the wall, the ragged remnants of the binding shimmering for a moment in the air before also vanishing. The wolf shook himself, and growled. “That was too close. We have to be more careful.”

  I studied him, my hand still touching his neck. He was bound to the house—was he going to start unraveling as well? “Wolf … Are you really going to die, when the year is up?”

  Slowly, carefully, he extricated himself from my grasp. “I will be worse than dead. I will belong wholly to her.”

  “You told me before that you welcomed death—that it would make you free.”

  His ears flattened back against his head. “I lied.”

  He stalked off down the corridor and I followed at a distance, watching as he disappeared into the bauble room. I didn’t follow; whatever magic was bound behind that obsidian door made my skin crawl. And I couldn’t shake away my fear of the library becoming unbound.

  So I left him to his remembering.

  I FOUND HAL IN AN outdoor market by the sea, where merchants were selling their wares under brightly colored awnings. Ships gleamed white on the horizon. The sun was warm; the wind was cool. He was haggling with a dark-haired young woman over a pair of daggers, while she smiled up at him under long lashes. She was very beautiful. I tried to ignore the jealousy that took root inside of me and started to sprout. I hadn’t seen him in some weeks.

  “Hal?”

  His eyes brightened when he saw me. He paid the young woman for the daggers, and tucked his arm through mine. Together, we walked down to the shore.

  “Shall we get some fencing practice in?” He laid the daggers on his coat in the sand, and rolled his shirtsleeves up to his elbows, loosing his sword from its sheath.

  “Hal, will you try something for me?”

  He must have heard the seriousness in my tone. He grasped my hand. “What’s wrong?”

  “The house is unraveling. I don’t want you to be unraveled with it. Will you … will you try to come back to the library? You can stay with the wolf and me. We can figure out how to get you home.”

  The wind smelled of salt and fish and damp. The sea washed over the shore, crawling up to greet us.

  A sudden longing sparked in his eyes. “I’ll try,” he said.

  I let out a breath and gave him a shaky smile. “Library. I’d like to stop reading, please.”

  The mirror shimmered in the air between us.

  “You first,” I told Hal.

  He stepped up to the glass, stretched out one hand to touch it.

  But nothing happened.

  “Try again. Please.”

  He put both palms flat against the surface of the mirror. He stood so close his nose touched.

  Nothing.

  His eyes flicked to mine. “Please, Hal.” I was shaking. “Please.”

  And that’s when I gr
abbed his hand, and ran with him toward the mirror.

  He hit it with a resounding crash, and fell onto the beach in a shower of glass fragments. Blood showed bright on his arms and his face where the shards cut him.

  I knelt beside him in the sand. He gripped my shoulders.

  “I’m sorry, Echo. I don’t think I really exist, out there. I’m just a shadow.”

  “I can’t accept that. You’re as real as I am.”

  “Maybe I was, once. But I’m not anymore.”

  I touched a spot of blood on his cheek, brushed it away. He sighed and sagged against me.

  I fought back my rising sense of helplessness. I’d thought it would work. I’d needed it to work. “I’ll find a way to help you. To free you. We’ll fix this.” But I didn’t know if I believed that anymore.

  “I hope so.”

  Hal’s breath was warm against my cheek, and the nearness of him made my stomach wobble. I didn’t know quite what to do with my involuntary reaction, so I stood to my feet, pulling him up with me. “In the meantime, how about another fencing lesson?”

  He grinned, though a sort of haunted blankness lingered in his eyes. “I thought you would never ask.”

  We fenced for an hour along the beach, though I could tell his heart wasn’t in it any more than mine was. We finally collapsed in the sand, watching the waves whisper up onto the shore and then fall back again.

  Hal’s hand found mine. I shifted closer to him.

  An explosion shook the ground, and we looked back to see the market bright with flames.

  Hal tightened his grip on my hand.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  “That’s never happened before.”

  Another explosion wrenched through the earth, shaking us apart from each other. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean I’ve read this book half a dozen times and that’s never happened. The story is changing.”

  My chest tightened. My mind flew to the unraveling house, shedding rooms like snakeskin. “I have to go,” I breathed. “I have to—Library, I want to stop reading.”

  “Echo, wait—”

  But I was already reaching out for the mirror.

  THE LIBRARY WAS SHAKING, BOOK-MIRRORS tumbling from the walls, crystals falling from the chandeliers like beautiful, deadly rain.

  No. No.

  Not the library.

  Not Hal.

  A crack splintered through the floor and one of the couches fell into it. Mirrors smashed onto the tiles. The library began to scream.

  I leapt across the widening crack, stumbling on the other side, nearly falling in myself. My hand went automatically to the pouch at my hip, and I slipped on the thimble while loosing the needle and the spool of golden thread.

  I refused to let the library become unbound.

  I refused to lose Hal.

  I flung myself toward the door, fingers scrabbling around the frame, and touched it with the thimble. My hand fell through the wall and I found the scarlet binding threads, slippery and smooth, frayed at the edges. Broken. I held tight.

  The library shrieked. The shaking grew worse. Mirrors crashed and skidded around me, slivers of glass bouncing up to cut into my cheeks, my arms, while the crystals from the chandeliers sliced my neck or caught in my hair. The room tilted backward and I grabbed the door frame with one hand, my body dangling in empty space. With my other hand, I clung to the scarlet cords. My heart beat triple time: Don’t let go, don’t let go, don’t let go.

  But if I didn’t let go, I wouldn’t have both hands free for the binding stitch.

  And if I let go, I would fall.

  “Echo!”

  I looked up into the hallway, where the wolf crouched, every hair standing on end. “Echo, reach! I will catch you!”

  But I couldn’t lose Hal.

  I glanced behind me, into the chaos of shattered mirrors and the widening chasm that spiraled down into the void.

  It was worth being unbound, for a chance to save Hal.

  I let go of the door frame. I slipped the needle into the scarlet threads.

  For three heartbeats, I didn’t fall. For three heartbeats, I sewed the binding stitch, the needle humming in my hand.

  And then the wolf’s teeth clamped around my arm and he was hauling me upward, over the door frame and into the safety of the corridor.

  “I wasn’t finished!” I wrenched away from him, wheeling on the library.

  It was still there, shaking, shuddering. But the crack didn’t open any wider. The screaming stopped.

  “We can still save it,” I told the wolf.

  He growled. “It’s too dangerous.”

  “I’m not giving the library up. Go to the spider room. Gather all the binding thread you can.” It was strange giving him orders, but he just dipped his head mutely and went off down the hall.

  I brushed my hand around the door frame, willing the library to grow still. “By the old magic,” I said softly, “I command you to stay.”

  And somehow the room quieted. Somehow, the shaking ceased.

  The wolf was back the next moment, hauling a basket full of thread in his teeth. I grabbed it and hopped down into the library before he could protest.

  I glanced back. “Aren’t you going to help?”

  He grunted but leapt down as well, careful to avoid the crack in the floor.

  “We can fix this,” I said, with more confidence than I felt. I tried not to look at all the book-mirrors, tried not to register the fact that most of them—if not all—were clearly broken beyond repair.

  I knelt beside the crack and pushed the needle into the floor. It went in easily, the thread sighing and singing. Without any warning, I leapt across to the other side, skidding to a stop in a shower of broken glass. The wolf giving a sharp bark of alarm.

  “I’m fine,” I assured him.

  He stayed where he was, glowering at me.

  I ignored him and pushed the needle into the floor on that side, preparing to leap back across.

  “Throw me the needle, Echo,” said the wolf drily. “I will make the stitches over here.”

  That certainly sounded less exhausting than leaping across the crack over and over all the way down the room. I threw it to him.

  It took hours to mend the library, hundreds of stitches on either side of the crack. When we’d finished stitching, I joined the wolf on his side, and we seized the thread together and pulled the seam shut, the whole house groaning and grinding beneath us. After that, I made more binding stitches around the door frame, and we pulled the room up to its proper level again.

  There was nothing to be done about the book-mirrors.

  “The house may be able to fix them,” the wolf told me, following my mournful glance.

  I didn’t believe him, but I hoped he was right. I fought the urge to dig among the slivers of glass, piece together a book-mirror, and step through to see if Hal was all right.

  The air in the hallway turned suddenly icy; the lamp grew a tail and floated down from the wall—it was nearly midnight.

  “Come, Echo. We’ve done all we can.”

  The wolf caught my eye, and I sagged against him. “Thank you for helping me.”

  He cocked his head. “I would never have left you to do it alone.”

  We paced down the corridor as we had done that first night, my hand wound in the scruff of his fur, the wolf pressed up warm against my knee.

  I dreamed that Hal shattered to pieces like the book-mirrors, and spun away into the darkness where I could never reach him.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  IN THE MORNING, I WENT STRAIGHT to the library. To my staggering relief, it was still there. I sewed six binding stitches around the door frame, just to be sure, and then stepped inside.

  The crack in the floor was barely visible, reduced to a shimmering, silver scar. The chandeliers had re-strung themselves.

  And miracle of miracles, the wolf was right—the book-mirrors had pieced themselves back together.


  “Oh, House!” I breathed, giddy as a child. “Oh you marvelous, marvelous House.”

  The air hummed around me; the house was pleased at my praise.

  I stepped into the nearest book-mirror without even checking the description plate, and found myself in a lighthouse, waves crashing noisily against the stone.

  A staircase coiled above me like a nautilus shell, beautiful and strange; the stone steps were beginning to crumble, but the railing was freshly lacquered. There was a window at my eye level, and outside the sun sank softly into the restless sea.

  The incongruous whistle of a teakettle drifted from somewhere above me, and I climbed the stair until I came into a little round room where an old man was just taking the kettle off the fire. He poured hot water into a teapot awaiting him on a low table, and looked up at me with a soft smile. “Stay for tea, my dear?”

  “I’m afraid I can’t—I’m looking for my friend.”

  “A shame.” The old man settled down in front of the fire, the springs in his ancient armchair creaking in protest. “I would have had two visitors today.”

  “Found the biscuits,” came a voice from the stair.

  I jerked around to see Hal in the doorway, holding a biscuit tin and a bottle of brandy.

  For a moment I forgot how to breathe. Then I squawked and leapt toward him, pulling him into a fierce hug before I recollected myself and let go, embarrassed.

  He laughed. “Save the brandy, Echo! What’s gotten into you?”

  It was all I could do to keep from breaking down in the middle of the lighthouse. “I thought I’d lost you.”

  “You could never lose me.”

  But I saw in the haunted hollows under his eyes that that wasn’t true.

  “Let’s have those biscuits, then,” said the lighthouse keeper.

  Hal and I joined him in front of the fire, me in another ancient chair, Hal perching on the arm. He leaned into me. Took my hand. I smoothed my thumb against his skin to assure myself he was really there.

  We sipped tea and ate biscuits, while the lighthouse keeper told us in his soft voice about his life. He’d lived all alone in the lighthouse since losing his wife and child forty years ago. “But don’t you feel sorry for me,” he said. “I have the sea to keep me company. And sometimes the Winds sing me to sleep.” Coughs wracked his thin body, and I noticed how frail he was. I regretted not reading the description plate, not knowing if this story had a happy ending.