by Anna Day
“What am I going to do?” I repeat, slightly annoyed by her lack of direction.
She swallows. “You still have those ruby slippers, maybe you walk a different path.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You find your own way, Violet. Stop trying to be Rose.”
“But, I thought sticking to the script was the right thing to do. I thought the story needed to complete so we could go home.”
I must look really perplexed, because she offers me a sympathetic look and says, “But you took the odd risk, didn’t you, Violet. And what happened?”
I reply without thinking. “I fell in love with the wrong character.”
“Or is that why you took those risks? Chicken and egg. Everything’s just a loop in the end.”
“Baba, please, you’re making no sense.”
“Look at it another way—if you were stuck here, here in our world, how would you live your life? What kind of an Imp would you become?”
I can feel the irritation building inside. “I can’t stay here, Baba. I have to go home—me, Nate, and Katie, we don’t belong here.”
“Belonging is just a state of mind, ask Alice.”
She sounds like one of those wall stickers in my auntie’s living room. Learn to dance in the rain. “Please, Baba. Stop talking in riddles, just tell me what to do.”
“Now, where would the fun be in that?” The apple reappears in her hands, a bright, shiny orb. She hurls it into the air like she’s releasing a dove—it punches through the branches and sails into the infinite sky. Her laughter dissolves into birdsong. The colors of the orchard run together like paint, and the scent of apples gradually fades.
WE’RE BACK IN the chamber, her hands still resting on my head. I look at her, almost surprised to see those waxy lids in place of the green.
She smiles, her teeth long gone. “Thorn’s here.”
Moments later, I hear the thud of his boots approaching.
He strides through the door. “Your minute’s up.”
It felt so much longer than a minute, and I suspect time passes more slowly during a mind blend.
“Let her see the boy,” Baba says.
“No way.”
Baba pulls her hood over her head. “Will you ever learn to trust me?”
We enter the corridor, but instead of leading me back to the main body of the church, Thorn leads me deeper underground until we reach a blue rusted door. I recognize it from the film—Thorn took Rose to see Willow in this very cell. I’m tracing Rose’s footsteps again, and it feels like the canon has started to mock me, constantly reminding me of what I should have been doing had I not screwed it all up at the manor.
Looking at that blue door, the skin on my scalp begins to crawl. That scene from canon scared the life out of me—Thorn nearly killed Willow, shoving him against the cell wall and wielding a knife right next to his cheek, Rose screaming in the background. Alice and I bawled at the telly, “No, no, don’t you dare damage his perfect face.” I think Nate even threw Doritos. But Willow saved himself by telling Thorn top-secret Gem information about an underground, Gem-run brothel: the Meat House. Information Thorn used to raid the Meat House that very night. Alice and I high-fived at the point when Thorn lowered his blade. I thought it was romantic, the way Willow gave up Gem intel so he could be with Rose. Now I just think it was a bit pathetic, spilling the Gems’ secrets like that. Typical Willow.
But it isn’t Willow slumped behind that blue door, it’s Ash—my lovely, brave, honorable Ash. I think about Thorn’s knife, probably at this very moment stashed in his belt, and my heart begins to race.
Thorn opens the door. “One minute. That’s all.”
I step into the cell. The door clicks back into place and darkness surrounds me—darkness and the smell of wet moss. I hear the faint rhythm of someone’s breath syncopated with the drip of water.
“Ash?”
“Over here,” he replies. I recognize the timbre of his voice, but not the tone—it sounds so flat. I follow the direction of his words and my eyes grow accustomed to the dimness. I begin to pick out his silhouette, hunched in the corner, knees pulled to his chest. I scoop his hands into mine. “Jesus, Ash. Are you OK?” Even in the gloom, I can see how badly his face has started to swell.
“You’re a rebel?” he says. “You didn’t think to mention it?”
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry. That night, when you helped me put the rose on Willow’s windowsill … I thought you knew.”
“You think I would have shown you the Dupes if I knew you were a rebel?”
“I guess not.” I couldn’t feel more guilty if I tried. “I’m so sorry, really I am. I didn’t want to put you in danger by telling you the truth.” The truth. That unattainable thing we can never share. I brush the hair from his forehead and inspect a deep cut. In the dark—against the pallor of his skin—it looks like a black gorge. He sucks the air over his teeth as I gently pinch the skin back together.
“You need stitches,” I say.
“Oh, well, drop me at the nearest Imp hospital.”
We lock eyes for a moment and begin to laugh.
“Why did you follow me?” I leave my palm pressed against his head. I no longer need to pretend I have feelings for Willow. I feel slightly giddy at this thought, like I’m back on that carousel. And I suddenly grow very aware of my own exposed skin, how my face, throat, wrists all seem to absorb Ash’s body heat.
He lets his eyelids close and turns his head into my palm. “I thought you were in trouble. You see, I didn’t go back to the city after you kissed me—”
“You kissed me back,” I say, and then blush for being so petty while he’s lying beaten in a cell.
“I didn’t get much of a choice. You were all over me.” He tries to wink, but his eye looks too swollen. He settles on a half smile. “I went to the orchard and when I came back to talk to you, you’d gone. All the slaves were talking about how Saskia had been really angry and you’d all left in a hurry. So, I caught the next bus back to the city and tracked you down. It wasn’t hard, I remembered where you were headed the first time I met you. And you’ve got this really noisy way of breathing, kind of like a pig.” He makes this snorting noise and I laugh.
A pause hangs between us. I notice the scraping of a rodent’s claws, the drip of water keeping time. My voice cracks. “After I told you I wanted Willow, I thought—”
“I’d just give up?”
“Yeah.”
“You know what I told you about climbing? How you always keep one limb on a branch so you don’t fall.”
I nod, realizing my fingers have begun to twine through his hair.
“Well, I broke my own rule.” He catches my fingers with his own. “And now I’ve fallen way too hard.”
My insides feel warm and I can’t help grinning, in spite of our current situation. “Are you comparing me to a tree?”
“A big, old gnarly one.” A sudden look of panic dislodges his smile. “What are they going to do to me?”
“If you have no use, Thorn may kill you. It depends if Saskia can talk him round.” I try to sound calm.
His head thumps against the wall. “I’m a dead man.”
“We just need to make you useful to them—indispensable.”
Light floods into the cell. Thorn stands in the doorway. I hurriedly untangle my fingers from Ash’s hair, angry at myself for dropping my guard, desperately trying to think of a way to make him seem invaluable.
“OK, Little Flower, time’s up.” Thorn draws a knife from his belt, the same knife he held against Willow’s face in canon. Ash’s breath quickens against my cheek.
Thorn looks at the blade and then at Ash. “Now I just need to take out the rubbish.”
“Wait.” I stand, forming a barrier between Ash and the knife. Beneath my overalls, my legs feel like paper.
“Violet, don’t …” Ash says.
Thorn sneers at me. “Are you going to tell me another story about Ruth? It w
on’t work this time.”
My brain aches as I try desperately to think. Not Ruth, not Ruth, another part of the canon. I stare at him, speechless and floundering, my eyes drawn to that rusted, bloodstained knife. I’m reminded again of the canon, and suddenly, I know what to say. “It turns out Alice doesn’t know everything. Willow did tell me some of the Gems’ dirty secrets, before she got her claws into him. But I’ll only tell you if you agree to spare Ash and Katie.”
Thorn knocks me out of the way and hauls Ash to his feet, ramming him against the wall and sticking the blade into the masonry right next to his cheek. “Tell me,” he shouts.
This sudden burst of aggression shocks me. Even though I half expected it, feeling the rush of air and the spray of mortar dust against my face, inhaling the tang of anxious sweat, and seeing every tendon protrude from Thorn’s wrists—it’s so much scarier than anything on the telly.
I talk fast, my gaze never leaving the blade as it bends and scrapes against the stone. “I know where all the rich and important Gems will be tonight. Ambassadors, generals, even President Stoneback’s nephew—Howard.” My brain can hardly keep up with my mouth, pulling Willow’s lines directly from canon. “There’s a brothel known as the Meat House. It’s run by some twisted foot soldiers, offering the Gems whatever Imp meat the customer desires—male, female, some disabled, some children. As long as the customer can pay the price, the concubine will be provided.” I hear Ash grab a shaky breath. The point of the blade rotates against the wall, releasing dust and sand. The desperation climbs in my voice. “And I know where it is. I can take you there.”
Thorn looks at me, the knife still hovering millimeters from Ash’s face. “These brothels are disturbing, but they are not new.”
“But the customers are not your average Gems,” I say. “You storm the brothel, free the Imp concubines … you ruffle some very important feathers.”
“OK, but to launch an attack on the other side of the border would be suicide. We would be behind enemy lines.”
“That’s the thing. This brothel has got an extra thrill factor. It isn’t in the Pastures, it’s in the city.”
Thorn begins to laugh, the brilliance of his smile practically illuminating the cell. “Well, well, not so shrinking anymore, are we, Violet?”
“You get treated like an ape, you get pissed.”
“Pissed at whom?” Thorn asks.
I recall the decontamination block, those prying hands on my body, the crumpling paper chain, the dead eyes of the Dupes, Nate’s arms stretched before him in the marketplace. This anger flares in my stomach and I begin to shake. And when I finally speak, I speak not as Violet, avid fan of The Gallows Dance, but as Violet the Imp. “Those bastard Gems deserve everything they get. They deserve to dance on the gallows and know how it feels.”
I watch Thorn’s blade lower, just as it did in canon. He’s going to let Ash live. The relief washes over me.
Thorn turns, a dark expression clouding his face. “But I’m afraid only Katherine wins the reprieve.” He spins back to Ash, blade drawn back and ready to strike. In that awful sliver of a second, I realize Ash is going to die.
“Wait!” I cry. The blade hovers. “I know more, I know more …” The canon can’t save Ash now. I need to take a risk, I need to stop relying on the script, like Baba said. The last time I took that leap, I was holding Ash’s hand. It was when he took me to see … “The Duplicates!” My words trip over each other. “Ash, tell him about the Duplicates.”
Ash looks at me, his face a muddle of swellings and abrasions, all pinks and blues against the white. But his eyes look sharp, alert, his gaze intense. I nod softly to him and the understanding spreads between us like something concrete and real.
He begins to talk, his voice surprisingly clear. “I found a cloaking device in the Harper estate, deep in the woods where nobody goes, not even the other Imps. I disabled it, and this strange bunker appeared. Inside, there were eight Duplicates. Three Willows, two Mr. Harpers, and three Mrs. Harpers. One of the Duplicates has no legs, and I think one has no heart.”
Thorn blinks long and slow. “You found Duplicates?”
“Yeah, suspended in tanks of fluid.”
“Duplicates are real?” Thorn gasps.
Ash nods. “I’ve seen them with my own eyes.”
“Me, too,” I add.
Thorn releases Ash, his disbelief morphing into excitement. “This is … huge. I thought Dupes were just some sick rumor the Imps made up to turn the average Gem against the government.” He pushes his hands through his hair, the knife sandwiched between his thumb and forefinger. “This is beyond huge.” He turns to me. “How many Gems know about this?”
“I don’t know,” I reply. “Just the really wealthy ones, I think. Alice said most of the Dupes are stored in secret warehouses. The Harpers moved theirs because some of the guards were … you know … doing disgusting things.”
“To the Dupes?” Thorn says.
I nod.
Thorn exhales. “So, it’s widespread among the Gem rich and elite, but a very well-kept secret. The average Gem obviously hasn’t got a clue, otherwise I would already know about it. If this gets out, well, it would really shake things up. Turn the average Gem against the government.” A smile spreads across his face and he turns to Ash. “And you said you found this bunker?”
“Yeah.”
“With no help?”
Ash shakes his head. “No help at all.”
“When?”
“A few months ago, I guess.”
Thorn laughs. “And you figured out there was a cloaking device, and then you didn’t tell a soul until you met young Violet here?”
Ash nods. “I kind of like being alive.”
Thorn tucks his knife into his belt. “Enterprising and secretive. Maybe you aren’t rubbish after all.” He turns to face me. “The Meat House, Duplicates. You’ve excelled yourself.” He pauses in the doorway, the smile still stuck to his face. “I’ll send Darren to get you in five minutes. Consider it part of your reward, Little Flower.”
Ash and I slump against the wall, our arms and hips pressed together.
“He is one scary guy,” Ash says.
I rest my hand on his. “Seeing him with that knife—”
Ash silences me with a kiss and I feel the anxiety gradually begin to lift.
He pulls away, a thoughtful look on his face. “Little Flower.”
“Thorn always calls me that. I hate it.”
“It’s just strange, you know. Ash and Little Flower. I never thought about it until now.”
I shake my head, confused.
“I guess I never told you the last bit of that skipping rhyme,” he says.
“No.”
He begins to speak, just out of time with the constant drip of water.
“Count the thistles, one, two, three,
Soon the Imps will all be free.
Count the thistles, four, five, six,
Take up your guns, your stones and sticks.
The ash trees turn from green to red,
Spring has gone, the summer’s dead.
Count the minutes, not the hours,
’Cause hope starts as a little flower.”
HOPE STARTS AS a little flower.
This line really gets under my skin. I follow Darren through the stone corridors and up some stairs, but I still can’t shake that line from my mind.
Hope starts as a little flower.
It seems to be about … me. Could I be the little flower? The little flower who left spring back home, missed summer, and arrived here in autumn. The little flower who’s supposed to bring hope? It can’t be about Rose. After all, roses are large if anything. And I remember Baba’s words when I first met her: That’s the thing about the viola flower. It’s little, but it’s rather special.
This rhyme wasn’t in canon, which makes sense if it’s about me—I wasn’t in canon. But it sounds more like a prophecy than a children’s rhyme, like I was a
lways destined to save the Imps, which makes no sense. I understand how my clumsy butterfly wings can affect the present, the future, but this rhyme existed long before Ash’s birth. Surely, I can’t change the past and create a prophecy? And more important, if it is a prophecy, it’s an unbelievably crap one. I’ve screwed up big time—there’s no way I’ll be inciting a revolution anytime soon.
It’s just a rhyme, I tell myself. A dumb kids’ rhyme. At the moment, my very own personal prophecy is more likely to be Humpty-bloody-Dumpty.
I’ve been so buried in my thoughts, I barely notice that we’ve climbed the stairs and reached the wooden door that leads to the ocher room—to Katie. A sense of calm spreads through me, just thinking about her soft Liverpudlian accent.
Darren unlocks the door. “The boss said you get one last reward.”
I push through into that musty, dank smell. The door slams behind me.
Katie lounges on a tattered gray sofa pushed up against the back wall. Her delicate features spring into a smile. “Violet!” She throws her arms around me.
I hug her back.
“I can’t believe it’s you,” she says. “It’s just a massive pile of scum here.”
It can’t be much fun for her, still stuck in this poky room, but at least there’s some daylight now, the window cleared of grime just like she said in her letter. I visualize Katie and Thorn, working side by side, and can’t help feeling a little curious about their conversations.
She no longer wears her catsuit, but a blue linen dress and a brown woolen cardigan. And judging from her slightly floral smell, Thorn’s been allowing her to bathe frequently. She looks even more Jane Austen than Sally King right now—her cheeks all rosy like she’s just come in from a stroll across the hills.
I hold her at arm’s length. “I’ve been so worried about you.”
“You’ve been worried. I’m not the one who’s been gallivanting around this horrible place for days. I’m just so glad you’re back.”
“Not for long.”
Her face falls.
I give her a sympathetic smile. “I’m still trying to sort it all out.”
She slumps onto the sofa, clouds of dust billowing around her. “So, how’s it all going?”
