by Anna Silver
Zen nodded once and grabbed Kim by the elbow, dragging him back the way they’d come. There was a place they’d passed where the trees fed into a small orchard bordering an ironwork pavilion. He’d use that as their lead in.
London turned to Rye and Tora. “Come on, let’s keep going.”
Another half hour or so later, they stopped again. It was late. They were wet and tired and no closer to locating Avery than before. And now, they were down three sets of eyes. Worry over Zen and Kim was eating away at London’s resolve. They needed a new plan. Some direction.
“We can’t keep going like this. The settlement is too big. We’re not getting anywhere. We need something to go on,” she complained. London turned to Tora. “You have to use your Sight.”
“I told you, it’s not like that.”
“I know,” London said. “But we didn’t think the dreams were either, and we were wrong. We just didn’t know how to use them, how to control them. You have to try, Tora. Try to tap into it. Try to See.”
Tora sighed. “I don’t know your friend. I’ve never met her, never even seen her. I would need something to help me get started, to help me connect.”
London leaned against a tree, kicking the heel of her boot on the trunk as she picked at her bottom lip. There had to be a way.
“Where’s that effing moth when you need it?” Rye muttered.
“That’s it!” London jumped up. “The moth! Avery sent the moth. Concentrate on that.”
Tora looked skeptical. “I don’t know. That’s sort of indirect.”
“Just try, Tora. We’ve come all this way. Zen won’t leave without her. We can’t lose him, too. And who knows what they’re putting her through. We can’t leave her here.”
Tora’s shoulders sagged, but she nodded anyway. “Keep quiet,” she commanded as she squatted on the ground and closed her eyes.
Rye and London waited for what seemed like hours, though it couldn’t have been more than fifteen or twenty minutes, exchanging glances in the dark, while Tora’s face remained impassive, whatever she was Seeing shuttered behind closed eyes. At last, her lashes fluttered, her jade irises cut the calm and she rose, Rye and London springing to their feet beside her.
“So?” London asked, eager for something, anything that might help.
But Tora’s face was conflicted, her demeanor reserved. She shook her head sadly.
“Nothing?” Rye echoed, defeated.
London couldn’t believe it. She was sure this would work, that Tora’s Sight would be their secret weapon. She kicked a nearby tree in frustration and started to stomp back down the tree line.
“Wait.” Tora took a deep, decisive breath and let it out. She faced them both and said, “This way.”
TWENTY-SIX
Rose-Colored Glass
The house Tora led them to was only a little further in the direction they’d been going, but without her help, they would have likely overlooked it. It was smaller than many of the others, though still massive by city standards. A two-story dwelling assembled out of rough, light stone. The garden here had only small, interconnected strips of lawn that meandered between islands of thickly clustered ornamental trees and flowers. There was a glass shed with a spired roof crammed with unusual plants and a small pool sunken in the earth, filled with cool, crystalline water.
Rye stopped at the pool and stared, the dancing water casting an eerie aqua glow across his freckle-spattered cheeks and cinnamon eyes.
“We used to have one of those,” London said. “In our building.”
He looked at her sideways. “Where?”
“Bottom floor. They filled it in after the Crisis. That’s the rumor anyway.”
“I’ve only ever seen one on TV,” Rye said dryly. “What do they do with them?”
“They get in,” London said. “Like a giant bathtub.”
Rye blinked. “Avery had a bathtub.” It was true. Their tiny apartments could only afford showers, but Avery’s condo in the Rise had an oval porcelain tub. London only saw it whenever she used the bathroom.
“Let’s keep going,” Tora said.
There was a heaviness in the words that London couldn’t yet understand.
At the back of the house, they ducked down beneath the ledge of a jeweled window, its brilliantly colored panes pieced together in a floral mosaic. London tried to peek through a swirled fuchsia pane near the bottom, but it was distorting and she couldn’t make anything out.
“I can’t see anything,” she whispered. “Are you sure this is where they’re keeping Avery?”
Tora nodded and pointed upwards.
London followed her finger but couldn’t understand what Tora was showing her. Did she mean Avery was on the second floor? She shrugged. “What?” she mouthed.
“Back up,” Tora whispered.
London crawled back a few paces and looked up again. This time, she saw it. Nestled among the glass flowers and crawling vines of the decorative window, was a carefully placed green moth, cut and constructed from slivers of opaque glass.
London crawled back beneath the stone ledge, but said nothing. She was confused. Could Avery have put that there? How? London believed Avery sent the moth as a symbol because of the green wings, so similar to those she remembered on Avery’s Otherborn. Was it possible she sent it because of the window and London’s memory was wrong? Was it all just some crazy coincidence? Or was the Astral overlapping with this world again, as it had with the rain?
There was no time to sort it out now. They needed to find Avery, get her, and get out. Then they could puzzle it all back together. Somewhere safe.
Rye cocked his head to the right, signaling that he should move around the corner and London nodded in agreement. She threw a thumb the opposite way and he nodded in return. He would take one side, she another. Tora pointed to a small, rounded back door just off from the window they were crouching under. She pulled a tiny folded knife from her pocket. She would work on getting inside.
Carefully, they followed their respective directions. London crept on hands and feet to the right of the house until she reached the corner and turned it. Two smaller windows pocked this side of the structure, their panes made of a solid rose-colored glass, ripples of dusty pink. The nearest one was dark and lifeless. That room must be empty. But the second sparkled with a flickering interior light. Perhaps that space was occupied. It wasn’t likely that the Tycoons would keep their victim near a window where they could be spotted, but maybe she could glimpse who was holding Avery here, get an idea what they were up against.
It had been surprisingly simple sneaking into the settlement. No fences and only a couple of guardposts at one road. These Tycoons weren’t as smart as they appeared to be. Didn’t they worry about predators from the forested ridge? London had passed enough twirling iron cages containing rare birds and other exotic pets on their search of the gardens to indicate a need for concern. Tora suggested that they did worry about being discovered by Outroaders and that they had built the Capital operations to the east of the city to avoid detection from city workers on transport. But aside from that, London didn’t see much to suggest the Tycoons were uncomfortable flaunting their wealth. It was right here under everyone’s noses.
Slowly, she scooted to the second window. A small tree, heavy with large, white, waxy blooms, stood to one side. Its drooping petals littered the ground below, making the air there thick with sweet vanilla perfume. London used the tree to shield her on one side as she squatted among the tall grasses surrounding it. The smell was overwhelming, singular. Like cake and oranges. There was nothing like it in all of Capital City. She could have squatted there for days taking in that unique scent, basking in the freshness of something so extraordinary. But she couldn’t let herself get distracted now. Almost as an afterthought, she picked up one of the almond-shaped petals and crammed it into her pants pocket.
London took a steadying breath and rose, ever so slowly, on her haunches to peek through the window. What she sa
w there sent her mind reeling with such profound confusion, left her so disoriented that she forgot herself entirely. She stood to her full height and gazed, mouth gaping, at the mauve-hued scene before her.
On a bench inside sat a young woman, no older than London, in a silvery nightgown. She was brushing her long, silky hair before a dark vanity, an oval mirror rising before her. It was what was reflected in the mirror that had London in total shock. No monster. No ghost. Not a Tycoon even. The face in the mirror was entirely human. Soft and lovely. Familiar. It was Avery.
In the pink glass, London watched Avery’s face freeze when her eyes met London’s through the mirror. Slowly, she set the brush down. Her hand fumbled for something under the vanity, then she turned.
London simply stared, unable to move or speak. A thousand questions clouded her mind. She couldn’t grasp the serenity of what she was seeing. Avery was supposed to be a prisoner. They were worried for her life. She was supposed to be wounded or beaten or ragged or at least tied up. She wasn’t supposed to look so comfortable. So happy. So at home.
With a floating grace, Avery moved to window. She unlocked a latch in the middle and swung the two sides outward, like miniature double doors. The color and warmth of the room blasted out to London. Avery took a step back as London scrambled over the ledge and climbed into the pristine space.
They eyed each other for a moment, speechless. London’s face full of shock and misunderstanding. Her bedraggled appearance settling on Avery’s picturesque setting like a plague. Avery’s cornflower eyes glistened in the romantic glow of her room. There was shock on her face as well, at the sight of her friend’s poor condition. And something else. Surrender? Guilt?
London opened her mouth to speak but managed only a croak. She cleared her throat and tried again, her voice a strangled murmur. “I-I don’t understand…”
Avery held a hand out as if to touch her friend’s arm, but London found herself jerking away, repulsed by the delicate shimmering fabric of her gown and the perfectly pink pads of her fingers.
“London,” Avery said. “Please, don’t make this any harder for me.”
London’s face twisted at those words, recoiling from the implication. “Hard? For you? It doesn’t look like much of anything is hard for you here.” Her words were a snarl, and she felt like a blistered and beaten cat on its ninth life next to the pristine cloister of Avery and her room. “Whose place is this? Who’s keeping you here?”
London circled the room, slowly. She fingered the velvet cushion of the bench she’d seen Avery sitting on and the garnet lamps upon the wall. The brass handled brush Avery had just been holding. She noticed the towering carved shelf stocked with more books that she could count, their spines neatly stacked in gilded rows. Among them, she recognized the notebooks that had been missing from Avery’s room in the Rise. She eyed the girl with a host of accusations, but waited for an answer. She would hear it from Avery’s mouth. She would make her say it out loud.
Avery’s eyes softened. “No one’s holding me here, London. This is my place, my home.”
London clutched the brush on the vanity, wrapping her fingers around the ornate handle so tightly that her knuckles flushed white. “I don’t understand, Avery. Make me understand,” she said through gritted teeth.
Avery laced her fingers together and cast her demure eyes downward. “I think you do.”
London shook her head wildly and bit her bottom lip to stop the tears, but they came anyway. “No. No!”
“I’m sorry,” Avery proffered.
But it was hollow in London’s ears. She spun on Avery, pointing the brush like a weapon, her hands shaking with tension and fury. “You sold us out!” It wasn’t a question. “It was you! Always you! You sent that netcom. You set it up to look like Ernesto. Then y-you led us straight to him in the woods!”
Avery didn’t respond. She didn’t argue or defend. She just stood there while London pieced it together. Then she said simply, “You weren’t supposed to come after me.”
London could feel the whole world crumbling, could feel her chest folding in on itself, her heart crumpling like wadded paper. A flood of tears and rage surged like lava rising to the surface of a volcano. It spewed out of her with such force she thought she’d tear the room apart. Something like a howl burst out of her, and she threw the brush into the pretty oval mirror, shattering the silvered glass into a thousand pieces, just as Avery’s betrayal had shattered her.
Avery flinched, tears springing to her eyes as well.
“How could you? Why?” London demanded.
Avery’s shoulders hitched with her sobs, but her contrition only made London hate her more. “I couldn’t do it!” she said. “I can’t take this world. That vile city. We were wrong, London. About everything. They were wrong.”
“No,” London spat, knowing that by they, Avery was speaking about their Otherborn. “No. They came here to help. To save us from ourselves. From the Tycoons. From this lie!” The last word sizzled like a hiss as she swept a hand across the vanity top, sending a host of delicate, multicolored perfume bottles crashing to the floor. “You’re just weak.”
Avery took a step back and her image shimmered, like a ripple had gone through it. Like it wasn’t real. “I am! I’m weak. This planet, this life, it’s suffocating. Out there, it’s impossible for me to breathe. But the settlement is different. It’s a chance. A new start.”
“A chance for who? You? Your parents? What about everyone else, huh? What about my mother? My father? What about all those people back in Capital City? Where’s their chance? Don’t they deserve a new start?”
Avery stiffened. “They’re not my problem anymore. I have to think of myself. It’s not too late, London. You can join me. Here, in New Eden. They’ll give you a chance. I can talk to them. I can get you a better life.”
“I had a better life,” London said, her voice low. “I sacrificed it to come here. So did you. Remember? And then we sacrificed our lives all over again to leave the city and try to rescue you.”
Now Avery eye’s glinted like blue steel. “Don’t talk to me about remembering. I remember everything. That’s my problem. While you guys were screwing around on your instruments and whining about insomnia, I was remembering. I’m sick with remembering! If I could scratch every last trace of it out of my mind, I would!”
“Weak,” London said, shaking her head with disdain. “You’re pathetic. You only think of yourself.”
“You have no idea what I gave up. It was a mistake! We were wrong. And now we’re trapped. Here. In this hell of a dimension. I can never go back. You can never go back. We can’t fix this place. No one can. We were wrong to think so. And Hantu was wrong to ask it of us.”
London’s mind sparked with connections. How much sense it was all making now. “You killed him. You killed Degan and Pauly. You set them after us. So we’d be trapped in the Astral. You sold us out for a big house and a garden.”
“I didn’t kill anyone,” Avery insisted. “That was their doing. The Tycoons don’t allow the dreaming. It’s forbidden behind the walls.”
London laughed, giddy with irony. “Don’t you see? You’re just as trapped now as ever. Look around! You’re still inside the walls, their walls. You’re a canary in a gilded cage. And my, how you’ve sung. Sung your sick, weak little heart out. You think you’re free? You think you’ll ever know anything now besides fear and captivity?”
“Maybe. But at least these walls are green. And the air is breathable. And I’m not hemmed in by an endless life of reprocessing. There’s variety here. Beauty.”
London chuckled. “It’s still just a bunch of reprocessed hype. Stolen from a pre-Crisis world. Don’t you see? It can’t last, not like this.”
Avery shrugged. “We don’t know that. We also thought we could graft ourselves onto these souls and remain unfettered, return unchanged. We were wrong then. And I’m making a difference here. That’s what I’m offering you. Maybe the art and the tech in New Ede
n is technically pre-Crisis, the best of it, but I can bring New here. They want me to. They want you to.”
“Why? So they can keep it to themselves? Hoard it away? No, thank you.” London picked up a shard of mirror and looked at her pale, sunken features. She was tired. Bankrupt inside. Avery had emptied her. “Zen will be crushed,” she said.
Avery took a deep breath, steeling herself. “He’ll live.”
“Where is your heart? It’s not too late for you, either,” London said, a small hope still burning inside her, for Zen, if for no one else. “You can still leave with us. I-I can find a way to forgive.”
“I belong here,” Avery said. “They’re letting me dream, create. It’s all I want.”
“They’re holding you hostage for their own amusement,” London scoffed. “They just want to see what they can squeeze out of you because they don’t have the souls to do it for themselves anymore. And they don’t want you infecting the rest of the world with your night pictures and second mind full of New ideas. It’s not a real life, Avery.”
“I’ll die out there,” Avery whispered, turning away.
“So you’d kill us instead?” As usual, London would mince no words. “My mother warned me not to trust you. She said you Rise-types were all the same. She had no idea. I knew you were pampered, Avery. But I had no idea you were such a callous bitch.”
Avery turned back to her, a glint of defiance in her own eyes. “Look at me,” she demanded. Her appearance shimmered again, shifted. The silvery gown, the downy brown hair, it all faded. In its place stood a milky green specter. Human in shape, but thin and frail. Dainty joints strung together on fragile limbs. The skin a membrane like mint crème, interlaced with deep green veins throughout. Behind, glistening, gossamer wings spread out, as slick and new and untouched as a baby fresh from the womb. They were pale and quivering, several shades lighter than the skin, and so thin it looked as if a puff of smoke could tear them apart. The eyes were white on white. Milky irises with barely discernible lavender markings. Her face was gaunt, no real nose to speak of. Lips like tissue paper. No hair, anywhere.
