“After you burn,” says the person at the end of the line, “you’ll shake. After you shake, you’ll stop shaking, and then you’ll start to feel warm and sleepy and wonderful.”
“How do you know that?” chatters Piglet, who is beginning to shake.
“It happened to my aunt Magnolia,” says the person at the end of the line.
“Did Aunt Magnolia come back and tell you about it?” chatters Piglet, who’s shaking harder now.
“Not exactly,” says Jane.
“How did you learn about it, then?” asks Piglet, who yawns.
“It’s called hypothermia,” says Jane. “It happens to people who set out for the North Pole without the appropriate supplies.”
“Did Aunt Magnolia do that?” asks Piglet.
“No,” says Jane. “She set out for the South Pole, with the appropriate supplies. Isn’t it nice to be doing the parallel and opposite thing? Just like Aunt Magnolia, but different.”
“But, why did she get hypothermia if she had the appropriate supplies?” asks Piglet.
“She got caught in a blizzard.”
It begins to snow, steadily. The wind picks up and the snow blows harder. The snow looks an awful lot like cherry blossoms, soft and delicate and sweet-smelling, but when it hits Jane’s skin, it’s like being poked with pins.
“Ow!” cries Piglet. “Ow! Ow! It stings!”
“Hold on, Piglet,” says Jane as the stinging snow piles around Jane’s feet, her ankles, her shins. Her jellyfish tattoo begins to burn, a jellyfish-shaped fire stinging her arm. “This is how it’s supposed to happen,” says Jane, beginning to be alarmed. “Soon you’ll feel warm and sleepy and wonderful.”
The cherry-blossom snow has a way of finding the crevices in Jane’s clothing, and sticking to her skin. There, it’s like acid; it eats her top layer away. It lays her bare. It happens very fast. Christopher Robin is screaming. How strange, Jane thinks, watching him as he screams. He’s skinless. The cherry-blossom snow has eaten the skin of his face and arms and of the legs above his expedition boots. He’s red and oozing, his outside is visceral, he is the scene in the movie we turn away from because it’s horrible. But it’s how our bodies look, under our skin. Pooh is screaming. Piglet is screaming. Rabbit is screaming.
Jane is also screaming, but she makes no noise. Lying on the divan in the library, Winnie-the-Pooh open on her lap, her back is arched and her mouth forms a perfect silent scream. Jane is struggling with Octavian, who’s puttered in wearing his robe and found Jane there, flailing around like a person being skinned. Jane doesn’t look like a person being skinned, but she feels it, and Octavian understands.
“She’s taking you,” Octavian says. “Why is she taking you instead of me?”
Jane knows why, because Charlotte knows why, and there’s no boundary between them anymore.
Charlotte is taking Jane because Jane got here first, to this room, on this night when Charlotte is more powerful than she has been before. Charlotte’s more powerful because not just Octavian, but Jane, Lucy, Phoebe, and Kiran have been giving her power, by talking about her, saying her name, dwelling in her library. Jane got here first because Octavian was still asleep. She got here first because she closed Jasper in the closet. She got here first because Phoebe is elsewhere, trying to hold it together in her job, Kiran is elsewhere, trying to hold it together at the party, and Jane is the one who fed Lucy to Charlotte.
The moment Jane first entered the library, she gave Charlotte so many openings. An orphaned part, looking for where she belonged. Jane’s wounds were openings.
Jane entered the library because Kiran and Lucy described it in a way that made it sound like Aunt Magnolia’s underwater world. Kiran and Lucy described the library because they were talking about Charlotte, because, at the moment when Jane could have followed Mrs. Vanders, or the child, or Ravi, or Jasper the dog, Jane chose to go with Kiran.
None of this, incidentally, has helped Kiran. As it happens, Kiran is about to have the worst night of her life. Not because of what’s happening to Jane—though this would hurt her too—but because of a scene playing out elsewhere on the island. Kiran doesn’t know about it yet, but Jane does. At the moment, Kiran is shuffling around the ballroom, trying to keep the guests amused, while Ravi takes the two FBI special agents outside for a walk. A walk to a hidden bay, where they’ve stumbled upon a strange scene with Ivy, Patrick, Cook, and the missing Panzavecchia children. Remember the famous missing Panzavecchia children? FBI special agents are, by definition, armed, and so are Patrick, Ivy, and Cook. And it’s dark outside, and bad things happen when armed people get confused. And Patrick is the type to jump in the line of fire in order to protect children, when shots are being fired.
If things had gone differently, Jane, or Kiran, or both, might have been there to prevent it. Instead, Kiran will get some terrible news, and Ivy is on her knees, shaking over her brother, who’s bleeding into the sand of the island’s secret bay. It’s the worst night of Ivy’s life too.
*
But, back in the library.
Earlier, Jane wondered what it would look like when Lucy fell into the umbrella.
She knows now. Not just what it looks like, but what it feels like.
Yes?
It looks like—almost nothing, really. It looks like Jane: bright, living, fighting, fabulous Jane, writhing, in solitary, silent pain that no one but Charlotte has the power to ease, on a divan, while Octavian tries to hold on to her. And then, instantly, she’s not there. She’s gone. Octavian is left with empty hands and a lingering chord, a note that vibrates his throat and his teeth and makes him look up at the ceiling, where he knows to seek out the image of Christopher Robin, Pooh, and the other creatures of the forest, walking together alongside a stream. He sees that a tall figure has joined the end of the line.
*
What does it feel like?
The acid snow is skinning Jane alive. The snow isn’t just warm, it’s burning; freezing to death feels like burning. Where’s the numbness Jane was promised? Where’s the sleepiness, and the lack of pain? Jane understands now how scared Aunt Magnolia must have been.
Aunt Magnolia?
Aunt Magnolia can’t hear Jane. And Jane isn’t going where Aunt Magnolia went.
Jane’s final scream is the discordant strum that Octavian hears in some part of his being, causing him to look up at the ceiling.
Jane is stuck in the ceiling, at the end of a procession, in a cherry-blossom blizzard of acid snow. Jane’s physical vision is limited. With part of one eye, she can see some distant edges of the library. But she knows everything Charlotte knows. It’s dark, but she’s not numb. It’s silent, but she still feels pain. Jane is on fire. She understands that she is the house now. Except, not really: Charlotte is the house, and Jane is a smothered part of her structure. Charlotte is the jail and Jane is her prisoner.
Charlotte is trying to use Jane like glue.
It will not be painless, and it will not work. It won’t satiate Charlotte’s bottomless need to feel whole. What will happen then? It will depend on whether Kiran and Octavian and Phoebe and so on keep talking about her, keep saying her name, sitting in her library, giving her power. If they do, Charlotte will pick them off, one by one.
*
How much time has gone by? Days? Weeks?
The gala is still happening.
Jane thinks, Octavian will tell people what he saw, and someone will rescue me. Or will Octavian keep his mouth shut, and wait his turn?
Or Ivy will find my book open on the divan. But will Ivy know to look up? If she does, could she ever understand what she saw, and is her magic, her power, strong enough? Would she even care, now that her brother is dead? Deceased, departed, perished, quenched. Eight letters, with a q.