“Help!”
I’m going to bite you if you don’t move.
“Go ahead! None of this is real!”
Jasper takes her earlobe between his teeth, chomps down hard, and tugs in the direction of the doorway. The pain is real, and excruciating.
“Ow! Jasper!” Jane cries out, pushing him away and scrambling to her feet. She runs—past the umbrella, through the doorway, into another room, a dark room, where she crouches against a wall, shaking and weeping. Her ear is bleeding and hurts terribly. Would her ear be bleeding if this weren’t real?
Jasper comes beside her and leans against her. He’s warm and steady. Her arm goes around him. I know you’re inconsolable right now, he tells her. But I want you to know that I do know how you feel. The first time I went through the hanging from my world into your world, I felt the same way. And I was very young, and there was no one I could talk to. I had no idea where I was. I’m sorry about your ear. Are you okay?
She pulls him into her lap and grips the silky fur at his neck, petting it hard. “Is this real?” she whispers.
Yes, he says, snuggling against her happily.
“Can I go back?”
Anytime, he says, through the hanging. But only do it when no one’s in sight.
“Where are we?”
The land I come from, he says. It’s called Zorsted.
Jane understands the spelling of that one too, pronounced ZOR-sted.
We don’t actually have the same letters as you, he adds. I’m transliterating.
“You can spell?” Jane says in her shrieky voice.
Is that so surprising, considering I can also commune with your mind?
“Dogs can’t spell,” Jane says weakly.
I’m not a dog. I’m a strayhound. I’m an excellent speller. I was first in my class, he says, what you would call the valedictorian. We don’t have to go anywhere today. We can sit here until you feel strong enough to go back through the hanging. You can think things over and not come back here until you’re ready.
“Ready for what?” Jane says. “Why are we here?”
I’m here because Zorsted is my homeland, he says. I brought you here because you’re my person.
“Your person?”
Every strayhound can commune with one person, he says. Some never find their person. I thought I never would. Then you came along. I knew you right away, even in your Other Land form. I could barely believe it. My person, in the Other Land! Did you recognize me?
“Recognize you as what? I’ve never heard of a—strayhound. I don’t recognize you now!”
You’re still in shock, he says. I’m going to stop asking you questions.
He curls into a tight ball and snuggles deeper in her lap. Jane closes her eyes, leans back against the wall, and tries to stop her spinning mind.
*
When she opens her eyes sometime later, she’s still in Zorsted with a strayhound in her lap, but now she’s come to a conclusion: Either this is real, or she’s having hallucinations. And if she’s having hallucinations, she might as well collect more information to bring back to her doctor, Doctor Gordon, who always asks for details.
She tries the name out cautiously. “Steen?”
Yes! he says. Very good.
“I’d like to go back,” Jane says. “But first, I’d like a small peek.”
At Zorsted?
“Yes. At Zorsted.”
All right, he says. Let’s find a window.
“Are we in someone’s house?”
We’re in the servants’ quarters of the duchess’s mansion. The duchess takes in strayhounds who haven’t found their person, he explains. Come along, he says, leading Jane to a different doorway from the one she came through. The room they pass into is also dimly lit, by candles.
“Is there electricity in Zorsted?”
Not the way you understand it, but there’s something else, which you might perceive to be . . . legerdemain. Conjury. Wizardry.
“Wizardry?”
Magic, says Steen. Those candles won’t go out for a very long time.
“Are we going to meet wizards? Like, with wands? Like in Harry Potter?”
It’s not like that, he says soothingly, and anyway, we’re not going far.
“Okay,” says Jane, flustered. “Is it night right now?”
Yes, says Steen, the sun has just set. That’s why that bell rang, did you hear it?
“Bell?”
When we were in Tu Reviens and you were deciding whether to go with Kiran or not. Remember? A bell rang?
“I thought it was wind chimes.”
Yes, that’s what Tu Reviens people tend to think, because there are wind chimes in the east spire. They ring bells here in Zorsted, at sunrise and sunset. But these rooms are often dark. The duchess’s spy network operates from the servants’ quarters, which is where we are. These particular rooms are unknown to most people. They’re used for secret meetings.
“Spy network! What if someone sees me?”
I’ll bite them while you make a run for it, he says.
“Seriously? That’s your plan?”
Well, you don’t need to be making all that noise, he says. Stop talking. I’ll understand you even if you think your thoughts at me.
This is too much. “Are you telling me that you can read my mind?”
Only the things you mean to tell me.
“How can I know that’s true?”
Steen doesn’t answer. Then he says in a small, dejected voice, Because I told you so. You’re my person. I’m not going to lie to you, especially not on the same day I finally get to commune with you. He starts making wet, slurpy noises.
“Are you crying?” she asks.
I’m extremely sensitive, he says. It’s just how I am. And this has been an overwhelming day.
“I’m—sorry,” Jane says in utter confusion. “Jasper, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make you upset. There’s just a lot to take in, you know?”
You’re the only person in Zorsted for me. You’re the only person in either land, Steen says. We were meant for each other, don’t you see?
“But Jasper, don’t you see? It’s like I discovered my long-lost twin, except I never even knew I was missing a twin, plus he’s clairvoyant and always wants to sit in my lap! I’m sorry, Jasper—Steen,” Jane says hurriedly, worried she’s making things worse. “It’s just—” She stops when Steen starts to make a snorting noise. “Are you laughing?”
It is a little funny, he says.
Jane gives up. There’s a window in this room, hidden behind heavy curtains. She pushes the fabric aside. What she sees stuns her into silence.
It’s a dark city lit with pinpricks of flame, set against the backdrop of a vast purple sky. She’s high above the landscape; she looks across roofs and through windows into rooms lit with candles. She looks down thoroughfares, lit by street lanterns, that end abruptly at a darkness that puzzles her, until she sees water moving with the flashes of stars. This is a city on the shore of a great sea.
Reflected on the water are two enormous round moons.
“Two moons,” Jane says. “Two moons! Reflected like that, it’s four moons!”
Yes, says Steen. What’s the Other Land expression?
“For what? Multiple moons?”
We’re not in Kansas anymore, says Steen.
A strange instrument is playing wisps of music, somewhere so distant that Jane can barely hear it. It sounds like a piccolo, but even higher. Then laughter rings out, faint and far away.
“Jasper?” Jane says, overwhelmed by the moons, but comforted by the way he’s pressing himself against her feet. “I mean, Steen? Should I pick you up? Do you want to see the view?”
No, he says. I just want to look at you.
“Oh, don’t be such a dip,” Jane says. “You’ve seen plenty of me.”
Ahem-hem, he says. You know how when I stepped through the hanging into Zorsted, I became a different dog?
“Yes.”
Well, he says. You know what, never mind, it’s a lot to absorb, we’ll talk later, yes, please, pick me up so I can see out the window.
Jane has been standing with her face pressed to the glass. Now, looking down at Steen, puzzled by his sudden evasion, an impossible thought touches her. Backing away from the window so that she can see the reflection, she looks into her own face. Someone else’s face looks back at her.